From mim3@mim.org Wed Jan 21 23:33:10 1998 Date: Wed, 21 Jan 1998 23:33:09 -0500 (EST) From: X-Sender: mim3@mim To: marxism-general@lists.village.virginia.edu Subject: MIM reply to Proyect on U$ class structure

Louis Proyect says: The MIM is a disgrace to Marxism. They condemn the American working class as counter-revolutionary. The American working class is in a bitter

MIM3 replies: Let's stop Proyect from caricaturizing MIM line. MIM believes the Euro-Amerikan "working" class is actually petty-bourgeoisie and allied with imperialism.

We take Lenin seriously and literally, not out of worship but as something to check into. We looked into what he said and proved it numerous ways in our magazines.

"The export of capital, one of the most essential economic bases of imperialism, still more completely isolates the rentiers from production and sets the seal of parasitism on the whole country that lives by exploiting the labour of several overseas countries and colonies." V. I. Lenin, ITAL Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism END (Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1973), p. 120.

Notice, he says "whole country."

The difference is Proyect claims to take Lenin seriously, and in this Doug Henwood is much to be preferred, because he does not claim to be a Leninist while occupying pretty much the same social-democratic space in politics as Proyect does.

[Proyect says:] conflict with the capitalist class that can be observed any day of the week. It is fighting for higher wages,

MIM3 replies: True, MIM opposes this demand except for the real workers here in the U$A, like the orange, strawberry and flower pickers getting paid a dollar an hour and the sweatshop workers typically referred to as "scabs" by the chauvinists like Proyect. The Euro-Amerikan "working" class we have already shown fit in what Marx said in the "Communist Manifesto," "the middle-class owner of property. This person must, indeed be swept out of the way, and made impossible." (See that Doug and Workers World Party? Not made universal with everyone owning stock but "made impossible.") Sure, Doug can disagree, but he should call himself Marxologist, not Marxist.

[Proyect says:] clean air and water, the right to affordable medical care and a myriad of other improvements in their daily life. Meanwhile, the capitalist class keeps attacking these rights.

MIM3 replies: MIM agitates for these latter environmental and medical rights. They are in contradiction with agitating for more gravy for people to be tied to imperialism.

[Proyect says:] The only class in this society that has the power to transform society is the working class. All rhetoric about how evil the system is just hot air.

[MIM3 replies:] If it's true, then I guess we better look beyond "in this society." It's called "internationalism."

Looking to the petty-bourgeoisie and bourgeoisie just because they have strategic places in production does not change that they cannot be the vehicle of progressive change, even if some people like Proyect egg them on. The more he awakens them for their class demands in fact, the more he sets back the revolution.

Here is how Lenin said to deal with a "bourgeois majority" in a country-- not by capitulating to it you will notice.

"The conduct of the leaders of the German Social Democratic party, the strongest and most influential party belonging to the Second International (1889-1914), which voted for the military appropriations and which repeated the bourgeois chauvinist phrases of the Prussian Junkers and the bourgeoisie, is a direct betrayal of socialism. Under no circumstances, even assuming the absolute weakness of the party and the necessity of its submitting to the will of the bourgeois majority of the nation, can the conduct of the German Social Democratic party be justified. This party has in fact adopted a national-liberal policy." V. I. Lenin, "The Tasks of Revolutionary Social Democracy in the European War," Collected Works, Vol. 18, (NY: International Publishers, 1930) reprinted in Helmut Gruber, ed., International Communism in the Era of Lenin: A Documentary History (Greenwich, CT: Fawcett Publications Inc., 1967), p. 59.

[Proyect says:] Nobody needs MIM to remind us that the system is unjust. The burning need is to explain how socialists can begin to make a difference in the working class.

The hostility of MIM toward trade unions is absolutely reactionary. The

MIM is also engaged in its small ways in lending material aid to trade unions in more than one country where there is a proletariat, an exploited group of workers. So to generalize as Proyect does is wrong again.]

[Proyect says:] ruling class has been in a 25 year offensive to destroy the trade unions and these "Marxists" attack them as well. In one of the most important

[MIM3 replies:] This is the sort of thing where the U$ "Left" shows itself to be far removed from reality. If the state were really attacking the trade unions instead of co-opting them, we'd see some more struggle. However, over 99 percent of the time, negotiations and strikes end peacefully without political or violent conflict. Idiot Trotskyists seeking to be new labor bureaucrats says it's just the trade union leaders, but it is the workers voting for these leaders and Reagan again and again.

When the Proyect type does get out in the world to talk to these "workers," they think he and similar leftists must be borderline psycho to be so far removed from reality. The advanced workers MIM talks to know that people are bought-off and don't care to be post-modern tokens in anyone's petty-bourgeois intellectual fantasies about them.

Proyect's idea of "bitter" class struggle in the U$A is most of the industrial workers in the CPUSA quitting in the 1940s and not joining anything else-- that at the height of something that could have been called a class struggle. His idea is their applauding "All in the Family" and thinking it was not a satire of Archie Bunker, oh no, anyone but Archie Bunker-- Edith, Meathead , Gloria, but not Archie Bunker. (And if any reader doesn't know this, please get a grip on Amerikkkan reality and stop reading so much Proyectism.)

[Proyect says:] trade union struggles of the past few years, the Detroit newspaper strike, these clowns condemned the strikers.

[MIM3 replies:] How annoying, Proyect has raised this for the third or fourth time on this list and he never addresses our rebuttal. What's not to condemn in the following list Mr. Proyect?

1. You tried to mislead people on this list and count journalists as workers. We showed the Marx quotes that demonstrate he did not count journalists as workers--thereby raising once again, why are you trying to smuggle bourgeois classes into the trade union movement? If you want to call yourself a syndicalist and say MIM ain't, then fine! You win already! Godenas is the better persyn to argue with on that. Marxism is not syndicalism and so we don't care to argue with you on that one.

2. On this very list, we learned what they mean by "the" workers. They mean something neutral like the bourgeoisie says the state is. This way they take up their white nationalist agenda and CLAIM it is the agenda of all "the" workers. Concretely, right here on this Marxism Space, a persyn spread a completely false rumor about Latino scabs in the Detroit strike. MIM was the only opponent to this garbage, and eventually he admitted that it was invented information, a chauvinist rumor. To this day, MIM is the only speaker on the list to condemn this attack on oppressed nations people.

3. MIM brought the articles from the strikers' newspaper attacking the national liberation struggle in the Mideast as "terrorist" and such garbage to this list. None but MIM condemned the strikers' continuation of imperialist mouthpiece politics.

4. MIM brought the strikers' eulogies for dead bourgeois governors and cops engaged in oppression of Blacks. None but MIM criticized imperialism at home as usual by the mouthpiece strikers.

5. MIM brought the proof that the strikers were begging for their jobs back with the promise to make the paper more imperialist and profitable than ever and none but MIM criticized the strikers.

6. Now that the strike is pretty much dead, no one asks: could it be because all these phony Marxists are too busy oinking for higher pay to ever raise a political squeak? Could it be that this whole country is one parasite like Lenin said, and that's why it and similar strikes never reached the political stage (except in the sense that the mouthpiece strikers with their own press continued to prove their conscious political loyalty to imperialism in each issue of their striking newspaper?) Could it be that the strike was not much more militant and successful because the people are basically bought-off and found other petty-bourgeois things to do?

Above all else, why stop with the Detroit strike? Proyect has never answered repeated challenges. Give us your outline of the class structure in the U$A. Give us your idea of who is getting surplus-value extracted. Tell us how much the imperialists rake in from discrimination profits, repatriated profits and transfers from the productive sector in the Third World. These are the questions Marxists answer, but these are the questions white nationalist political economy must forever dodge. No, Proyect can only criticize. He cannot come up with his own line to put forward. That's why he's more or less a professional ex-this or ex-that like the rest of CoC. That's pretty much his whole schtick, talk about Lenin to get others to join him in ex-commitment.