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The leader of another organization claiming that it is Marxist and several followers are currently sowing doubt on MIM's class line for the simple reason that they cannot see how to implement it. This of course was the classic problem that Bernstein had with real Marxism as well. His infamous line was that motion is everything, the goal nothing.
First, we should recapitulate what MIM has already said about this. In terms of Marx's labor theory of value being at the core of analysis of conditions, we need to get with leaders who are going to bring that out. Anyone who can possibly say that they cannot see any implications for the line that the united $tates is a majority exploiters, because of the flow of super-profits--no matter how many years s/he thinks s/he has been practicing Marxism, it is clear that the scientific method itself never took hold.
MIM has a disproportionate share of the people capable of scientific method. There are others in other parties who do realize that the appropriation of labor does have immediate and staggering consequences for strategy and tactics. Not everyone outside MIM is utterly narrow and un-scientific.
We can divide this into two parts. The first part is implications for the proletariat, especially its vanguard party. It means that the party itself has little room for maneuver, because the predominance of exploiters means that it is far easier in everyday life to fall into the enemy camp than in a country where the concrete interests of the exploited manifest themselves various ways.
In the majority-exploiter countries, the enemy wins simply by re-labelling petty-bourgeois ideas proletarian ones and also by pushing individualism. Resistance to the quantitative aspect of the proletariat's science is a major part of petty-bourgeois individualism. The ability to generalize about classes and nations without experiencing them in terms of individual identity is key. That means attacking those who want to draw conclusions based on the experience of individuals here or there. Individuals can only illustrate something, never prove anything about classes or nations or genders. The vanguard party does not exist to put forward worker-identity politics.
The second part of the implications is what it means for the enemy. The purpose of this article is again to handle gross pragmatists and Bernstein revisionists. Subjectively, it seems to them that MIM asks them to imagine that they are surrounded by enemies. Then, in addition, since most of the people we are asking to envision this are petty-bourgeois to begin with, it just feels subjectively that MIM is asking them to take up the paralysis they already feel, thanks to a failure to ever adopt the scientific method.
That failure can stem from two sources. Leaders fail to push the scientific reasons for the same reasons as Bernstein revisionists or people like Kautsky, men of many years experience. The extraneous reasons are of all sorts ranging from bribery to police infiltration to wanting to be in parliament to being obtuse. Yet there is also the blame for new people and followers: when MIM explains the importance of science and you do not listen and you do not understand that science is what makes Mao able to say "line is decisive," not numbers, not motion, you become to blame yourself.
So let's handle this question of being surrounded by enemies as the particular contribution of this article. We seek to show that we can fight for the joint dictatorship of the proletariat of the oppressed nations (JDPON) and aim for the first stage of re-civilizing the oppressor nations which includes the crucial work of reparations.
Before one says, "I can't do anything if I'm surrounded by enemies," MIM has already asked people if they really think I$rael can send spies into the West Bank, the Palestinians can't do the reverse. The fact is that in struggle around the world, being surrounded by enemies is nothing new. It goes on every day, and some of the participants will say that it is actually the most thrilling work they could imagine.
Another crucial implication of the labor theory of value and Marx's theories of economic competition is that the exploiters are never united. Failure to understand this is one half the reason people cannot implement the MIM line.
Perhaps the largest scale expression of the division of the enemy is in the contradictions among imperialists. Lenin castigated Kautsky's theory of super-imperialism. Something we have to see is that the Bernstein paralysis and consequent willingness to give up goals when the movement seems imperiled, such revisionism flows easily into Kautskyism. Kautsky depicted an imperialist utopia where conflicts do not break out among exploiters.
It's easy to see how if one thinks the imperialists are truly united, paralysis becomes the line. Following the Kautskyite line, one believes that what MIM is saying seems too hard. After a period of paralysis comes the active switch to the enemy side. Here we see a whole range of phenomena--labelling fascists "friends," turning a blind eye when the labor aristocracy carries out chauvinist attack after chauvinist attack and coming up with reasons that the bourgeoisie is exploited. That is all in the nature of revisionism, Marxism hijacked by the enemy.
There is another road. The first task is defensive--knowing up from down oneself. Without a party opposing revisionism, the rest is moot. This part tends to be better known to the petty-bourgeoisie, the idea that the party may have to be small and not vacillating.
What needs more attention is offensive action. It's really very simple: surrounded by oppressed and exploited we must unite. Surrounded by enemies, we must divide.
During World War II, Stalin believed that strikes by munitions workers in France and the united $tates were reactionary. Today, a strike by the arms workers would be progressive. Obviously, MIM does not care about the wages of these so-called workers, but the important issue is supplying the war machine. Even though these so-called workers are by no means proletarian and have only a small minority of proletarian thoughts, it is possible they could go on strike, because of contradictions among the exploiters over how to divide the loot.
We have given unqualified praise to the longshore workers when they have held up shipments of goods aimed at repression of the international proletariat. It's not that we agree with their economic aims.
Perhaps the best example of offensive tactics possibilities is what happens at the Mexican border. On the one hand, MIM's own canvassing and bourgeois polls show the MIM position vastly, vastly outnumbered among u.$. citizens. The labor aristocracy has made a big point in outdoing the imperialists in viciousness against the proletarian migrants. We cannot win a frontal assault on u.$. public opinion on this question; even though the solvency of the labor aristocracy's Social Security and Medicaid programs is at stake, because of the shortage of the right age of workers. The oinkers are that short-sighted as exploiter classes have been through history. No, on the question of border crossings, we must take the unpopular stand for the benefit of our own proletarian pole. On the other hand, even the most dense can see the interest of the proletarian migrants in crossing the border and thus supporting a MIM line. What we are really in a position of globally is the same: allowing something to happen that wants to happen.
There are forces trying to make borders history. There are forces opposed to that. When we are among the exploiters our tactic is to divide to allow in.
Some Trotskyists want to represent prison guards in unions and get them raises. Likewise, they want to represent the INS workers (border guards, immigration officials). When the Trotskyists hear about the Minuteman Project, they seek to unite with the Minuteman Project on the basis of worker identity. All of this is reactionary to the core.
There is very, very little difference between the Trotskyist project based on white worker utopianism and the project to create Aryan unity. They are both going to the white workers to unite as a bloc. They are both doomed to historical failure, because the white workers are exploiters with contending interests based in the hard cold reality that bandits always fight over the loot.
Our tasks among the prison guards, INS workers and Minuteman Project are the same tactically. Divide the exploiters to allow the international proletariat freedom of action. As the example of the arms production factories in World War II demonstrates, in this context, it is not necessary that any of the prison guards, INS workers or Minuteman Project take up proletarian internationalism. The division of these forces has to be done within the logic of the exploiters' own demands. There is actually a division between the INS and the Minuteman Project, because the Minuteman Project does for free what the INS covers. Both the INS and Minuteman Project are composed of oinkers, but they are oinkers with contrasting self-interests. There is never anything wrong in setting exploiters against exploiters.
Many oinker manufacturing unions have a conflict of interest with sheriffs. Sheriffs want to use prisoners for slave labor for free, maybe even line their own pockets with contracts for such slave labor. Unions realize that if contracts get done for free, their wages are going down: it's competition. Thus, some unions have an interest in line with our battle for freedom and the lumpen's interests.
In many towns, there is a battle over free speech pitting city police against university police. In at least some towns, the city police and city administration side with demonstrators at universities with the hopes of obtaining increased jurisdiction and employment for themselves. They resent the university police for taking away a part of their turf. When the university police are not trained the same way as city police, for example, because they are only a step up from security guards, city police take added offense. In this contest, there is no need for the city police to take up a proletarian agenda. They need only have a conflict with university police for the proletariat to benefit. The exploiters have contrasting interests and the proletariat passes through the cracks.
The Mexican border is really a metaphor for the whole international apartheid system led by u.$. imperialism. Divide the exploiters at the border and the Mexican proletariat will do the rest. Fan the flames of exploiter division and the international proletariat will finish off imperialism.
The first tasks of the proletarian internationalist are defensive--getting one's own head screwed on straight and resisting the ideological offensive of the enemy. The second set of tasks go to the offensive. The work of division tactics among the exploiters is practically infinite. Successful completion of this work is every bit as honorable and specifically necessary in the majority-exploiter countries as the battle to unite the international proletariat of the Third World.