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The question arises, supposing that all of MIM's economic analysis is correct, why do we flaunt it in front of the enemy. What good does it do to remind the exploiters that they are exploiters. How will we win them over this way, our critics wonder. This article develops the question in one counterfactual direction.
There are three answers. Most importantly, the concern ignores the migrants, tourists, exiles and foreign students, people who in communist history have provided a vastly disproportionate share of communist leaders in the Third World. For them alone, there can be no watering down or confusion. MIM would have to go on as it is.
This brings us to the second answer. Our critics fail to see what MIM is doing so they should try their imagination another way. Suppose that through a sudden national struggle of fascist proportions the oppressed nationalities within U.$. borders found themselves deported. Now imagine MIM is left talking to just the oppressor nation Euro-Amerikans. There are no other audiences possible to reach. MIM being MIM it would still have its prison ministry. We would also retain our minority-strategy. In all likelihood though, after such fascism, there might not even be a prison ministry.
On the whole things look different then. Your publications have no chance of reaching anyone who is not enemy. What good does it do talking about the joint dictatorship of the proletariat of the oppressed nations with them in public. The answer could be that it is questionable.
There would still be far-sighted bourgeois as Marx said in the "Communist Manifesto." MIM could work on those. That is the third answer. We would have to feed these people anti-war and environmentalist ideas. If in that context the international communist movement asked us to take a position on Amerikan workers or petty-bourgeoisie or whatever, it really would not matter. We could sign any joint statement to please the international communist movement in that context. The reason is that the battle of the margin would be close to gone and we would have to consider pleasing the international proletariat some other ways.
On the whole, if one wanted only to do public opinion work, and could not see doing financial or other kinds of work, there would be a strong case to move into exile if we could only reach Euro-Amerikans or even Euro-Amerikans plus their lackeys. MIM does not do this because globalization has some unintended consequences for the imperialists inside imperialist country borders.
Mostly because of bourgeois democracy and the prejudices it creates, people cannot see why MIM is effective. They have not studied where Mao talked about operations behind enemy lines as a minority. In fact, some of our petty- bourgeois alleged communists make Uncle $am's Fort Bragg troops look rather more disciplined. They often land in a country not expecting to win an all-out battle which would be suicidal for them but keep functioning as a minority, in say Iran today for example.
Once we get past bourgeois democratic prejudice, we can see that globalization has created opportunities for MIM. MIM has its hand in many crucial struggles of the margin in fact, despite the oppressor nation majority. We do not publicize all the places that MIM influence shows up, but in fact there are all sorts of things going on inside u.$. borders and MIM's influence shows up in the darndest places. Just as a public example of one thing that people can understand, some editor must have been in a pissed off mood when Harper's decided to publish a MIM article with all the appropriate terms for the enemy.
We cannot go into rural Kansas and carry the white majority. Jimmy Carter's son is traveling around Nevada trying to win rural Nevada to his candidacy for the Senate. That is not a game plan for us at MIM. Once you write that off, you see the battle of the margin as it truly exists.
We keep using that term "margin," so let's try to work it through. The main body of the international proletariat and the main body of the imperialists rarely meet directly on the battlefield. If a meeting does happen as in 1945 World War II, then still prior to that moment there were countless struggles at the margin. These rural whites in Louisiana who vote over and over for fascists, the people in Kansas on the fence about Darwin, the rural whites in Nevada Carter is chasing in the hopes that they know the u$a cannot afford the Iraq War--this represents a main force, a relatively unchanging force. Likewise, we on the proletarian side have our main force that rural whites in West Virginia do not see unless they get sent off to a war. So there have been some famous West Virginian female troops in Iraq for example. The imperialists take a two-fold risk when they send off the West Virginians, one that West Virginians might learn something about the world and two that they might be defeated. That sort of main stage showdown is not usually the one that MIM can get its hands on. The proletarian side is usually out of MIM's reach and the West Virginian side is politically closed off.
On the other hand, walking with the West Virginians in Iraq are the people from Aztlán. This is something we can do something about. The people of Aztlán are from the very beginning much more ambiguous about the Iraq War. They are partly thinking they are their own nationality. Even those who think of themselves as Amerikan may not be too keen on seeing something that would set an example for a future invasion of Mexico. So our struggle with Aztlán is different. If we meet someone and convince him or her, we may not win someone all the way to socialist Aztlán, but we do not necessarily have to win 100% to have an effect.
The point about the exercise of imagining MIM stuck with an all Euro-Amerikkkan audience in a fascist situation is to bring out the main body of the enemy question. That exercise allows us to see what is not the margin. Mao put this in military language by saying he only fought battles he was 90% sure of winning. We should make sure to read Mao's military writings, not just the Selected Works. Mao wrote off a ton of battles. In politics as in military matters, we want to intervene where we can tip the balance in a close situation.
Politically, Mao did not have to write off many battles except in the cities. Because of enemy military superiority though, Mao wrote off most of the military battles that appeared before him spontaneously. It would always be possible to imagine that he should take his force and assault the enemy they know is waiting there in Beijing and Shanghai, but instead Mao's troops saved that for last and fought other battles of the margin that were less obvious.
Directly confronting the main body of the enemy is the stuff of legends. When David confronts Goliath or the one man confronts tanks in Tiananmen Square. It makes a great story, but it is wrong. Critics coming at MIM are so opportunist and democratically prejudiced they do not realize they are basically asking for a main body confrontation and that is why MIM makes no sense. We are trying to tip things over in those situations where we have a chance. We have a far better chance of inspiring Third World people to become scientific communists than we have of convincing Euro-Amerikans of anything. MIM is doing that and we are also winning some far-sighted bourgeois.
Euro-Amerikans are not everything. In fact, they are already in decline at the margin, because they are aging most rapidly. People opposing MIM just do not see that accurately. No matter how fearsome that enemy main body looks, MIM following Mao already knows that strategically it is nothing and MIM already sees countless contexts of struggle at the margin that could occupy infinite comrade time inside imperialist country borders. If you do not see that, you have bought into white nationalist assumptions. It is on account of how the enemy forces us to conciliate with his ideology and especially his dominance through force. Over and over again, people reconcile themselves to the enemy, because it seems impossible to defeat him.
MIM has found that it can assign countless people to tasks at the margin, but they grow weary of their tasks, mainly because they themselves cannot see how struggle is won and lost. Like Eldridge Cleaver, they see only the final shoot- out. Those of us able to see the margin the way Neo in the "Matrix" can see the Matrix, we are busy. MIM suspects it sometimes has something to do with math and attention span and so we do not allow any slacking on the requirements of vanguard party members.
We must always simply remember: us as individuals against the main body is an illusion. Even if it comes true that we are the individual facing the column of tanks in Tiananmen Square, we can be assured that others like us, the people of our class perspective are NOT in the same situation, so on the whole, it is an illusion. The illusion is created by a lack of dialectical connections. That's why in this article MIM wanted to push our critics all the way to their undialectical logical conclusion--a world of only Euro-Amerikans and no way for MIM to influence the oppressed and exploited. If people want to think about that, then by all means they should and see where lacking dialectical connections and margins leads.
MIM would say that even lacking all dialectical connections, it would be better to go to exile outside the united $tates than to capitulate and start serving exploiters, because you cannot see any other way to "be effective" and because MIM seems "impossible." That's the difference between a materialist approach recognizing the economy as it is and a subjectivist- opportunist approach where we fantasize reality is other than it is, just so that we know what to do within democratic parameters.
If we do not understand dialectical connections, there is no way to understand for example, that even a plurality of I$raelis believe they lost the war against Lebanon in 2006. Does anyone think that is just a matter of spin-talking bullshit, "rah, rah" cultism? Since when would I$raelis be guilty of spinning something against themselves. That margin thing is more real than the main body. So we need to think it through: I$rael had hundreds of thousands of troops and tanks. Hezbollah had a few thousand armed men and no tanks. Yet Hezbollah won. We need to transfer that example into the world of politics in the imperialist countries.
The next time you are even thinking about giving MIM bullshit about how "it's too hard" or "impossible," please think about the raw numbers involved in Hezbollah's facing the I$raeli Army and then put a cork in it: you just ain't thinkin' straight yet. Stick with MIM and you may yet come to a scientific approach. When you learn to see the margin accurately, you will stop giving MIM grief and you will actually see that what MIM is talking about is even less impossible than what just happened in Lebanon, which is a more lop-sided situation than exists already in the rest of the world facing U.$. imperialism.