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Most people in the world operate at the story-teller level. Together with the nihilists criticizing everything, the story-teller is the ideological prop of the class system. We would like to connect this to gender theory, via a religious discussion we raised before.
Louis Althusser put the knock on the story-tellers correctly by saying that Anglo-Saxon historians deal only with the "ideologically contaminated." There have been recent examples of this idea, for example how a University of Colorado historian is attacking Ward Churchill on the question of the origins of blood quantum in tribal governance discussions. What the historian in question does not understand is that her method can at best produce the "ideologically contaminated," to put a MIM spin on how it would use Althusser. The approach is lacking in an overall method and leads down to the individual.
There have been other obvious examples where the lazy Anglo-Saxon mind attempts to settle a question by a reference to an historical individual and essentially an ad hominem theory of "origins." In just MIM's wee history, we've seen MIM face ad hominem attacks again and again. We also found that by letting some of these ad hominem attacks stand we obtained some benefits. 1) Weak-minded people stayed away from the party; the enemy attacked as Mao said was good. 2) We kept the door open to criticism of the party generally in line with our theory of the tasks of this period going from capitalism to socialism.
Recently we had to shoot down a number of attacks because their context was intolerable. We even had an enemy float a theory that MIM lets ad hominem attacks stand in order to attempt an assassination. So as usual, we get it both ways. Just to give some examples of things that some state employees and their followers of state-sponsored ideologies have said: 1) that "all sex is rape" was an invention to handle one girlfriend; 2) that the whole party was invented "to take" one womyn; 3) that one MIM campaign came as a result of a persynal conflict. Each of these have proved false even as bourgeois individualist history, but the point is that the method of producing these ad hominem attacks is never understood. The goal of the attacks is to cover the fact that MIM critics have nothing of substance to say and cannot otherwise reply. They are simply cogs in a state-sponsored ideology machine. The individualists create one, get shot down, and then create another one: "shut up bitch; you are full of worthless shit" would be completely appropriate. We need to learn to recognize the situations this comes up in. We are talking about college-educated people, including our "literary" critics. The solution for the story-tellers is always to tell another story, not to learn how to understand an overall situation.
The worst ad homs come in connection to gender. There was the one where we were deliberately confused with another organization and it was said our line was as it is because we are "reforming gays." When we said "sterilize all men" back in 1988, we received all kinds of interesting letters picturing a woman with a knife in hand running wild. The stupidity of the "personal is political" comes to mind.
We also get ad hominem attacks saying we are Palestinians, whites, rich, jealous poor etc. If the people using this sort of method would only talk among themselves with someone guiding them to see how their stories do not add up they would realize that their method is wrong.
We wish we could say the ad homs come about because MIM is in contact with fringy structuralist feminists seeing MIM as some kind of giant exchange of wimmin society. Alas, our pseudo-feminist critics are mere story-tellers very much of the post- modernist but atheoretical mode.
Many of these ad hominem attacks are especially useful in state employee self- justification. We have FBI and state employed psychologists and psychiatrists who with their state-sponsored ideologies offer safety in the embrace of the state. There is no overall evidence that what they say is true or helpful, just self-comforting ideology. Such ad hominem ideology can be invented and re- invented again and again, ad infinitum. It is the job of the story-teller.
It just goes to show that people are so narrow-minded that the only way they can imagine certain ideas is by picturing an individual first. MIM has raised this before by saying not only that Eldridge Cleaver HAD to be a convicted rapist for the rest of the picture to fit into place, but Huey Newton had to be a prison gay and sodomist or much of the public would not have been able to place the Black Panthers. How else would Soul on Ice have become so famous and propel Eldridge Cleaver forward? It speaks to how when a radical idea is placed in front of you, how do you handle it? Now we have MIM and we are scabs, rapists, pedophiles, terrorists, spies and owners of weapons of mass destruction--and we get away with it all thus probably existing as a major imperialist country in our own right. If we took all the people writing against MIM and put them together we could learn an excellent lesson about how truth does not advance. Then we would need to think up a level higher and try to come up with another way.
How the brain should work instead
When you go to a medical office and give a nurse your blood, you need to realize that your act is useless by itself. The numbers on white cells, cholesterol etc. are worthless by themselves. Their meaning comes from studying large numbers of people. Without the study of a large number of people, we would not know what to think about test results obtained from taking one blood sample. That is really a metaphor for the whole problem of the Anglo-Saxon individualist and pre- scientific approach to knowledge--why for example our TV shows are infested with cops chasing individuals.
Another common problem, the people who think all questions are "what is in it for me?" This question really can't be answered ultimately in a scientific way.
As a species we would have disappeared if we were really guided by "selfish genes" and thought about "what's in it for me" all the time. When saber-toothed tigers or packs of wolves came and all the humanoid tribes broke down into individuals who defended only themselves plus maybe their mates and offspring, they lost the fight. Those species organized that way did come to an end. Predators simply came and ate them one at a time. Maybe they would escape sometimes as individuals, but on the whole, such species were taking the road to doom. It is an important understanding of dialectics to see that. So for example, gay genes may have been helpful in having some individuals with no immediate interest in offspring. The invention of the "sentry" is key in social organization for species self-defense in humanoids. We raise this example to show how it is not simple to go from the individual to what is overall true. Our Reichian leader on the Internet is also unable to understand this simple point and supports creationism against dialectics, and individualistic methods leading to Liberalism.
MIM pounds into people the facts about the u$a being the world's imprisonment leader. The 1988 presidential election came down to a story-teller who knew Willie Horton in Massachusetts. There was no counter- story-teller to tell about the many prisoners wrongly imprisoned for every Willie Horton who might have actually existed. (MIM does not bother to check the Willie Horton individual facts.)
The basic problem with the immature mind, the pre-scientific and especially the Anglo-Saxon is that it has no lightbulb that goes off when it sees the international statistics on imprisonment. There is no "ah hah, everything about being a 'free country' is a pack of bullshit and somehow the 'justice system' must be flawed from top to bottom." The story-teller crowd bought the Willie Horton thing, but it has no capability to absorb the actual implications of the u$A being the leading prison-state--now for a generation of time.
This is also a problem of scientific integrity or tautness as MIM sometimes says. In response to the facts, we had one hard science Ph.D. say, "it's because there's too much freedom. Blacks don't know their place." This is an example of double-speak. The observable lack of freedom is called "too much freedom" and of course there is no knowledge whatsoever that by themselves U.$. whites would be the second-highest imprisoned country in the world after Russia, which after all has more poor whites.
So this is how science works. We get the overall picture. We do not rely on story-tellers. When we get the overall picture, we move beyond the "ideologically contaminated."
Now we get our post-modernists come and say, "yah, but you MIMers in the white coats, you have an agenda too." Yeah, so what. Someone had an agenda when she invented protease inhibitors to prevent AIDS. Whether people take up the agenda is up to them. Where society goes will be determined by the choices of the masses not MIM, but MIM can offer scientific guidance. Even if MIM existed solely to wage a war to obtain a womyn like Helen of Troy, it would not change anything. The whole individualist, psychological and ad hominem approach is useless.
Before there was a MIM, there was noise about the U$A being a "free country" even while it imprisoned more people per capita than the enemy capitalist Soviet bloc. So to say that the "free country" question is some kind of MIM agenda (because we are Black or poor or some such) is again just not very smart even by bourgeois individualist standards. The "free country" question and all questions exist independently of MIM, a point that the pre-scientific never seem to grasp.
This is a question, where people need to be forced to choose. Where do you stand? Can you deal? Do you get it or not? Are you 51% or more with MIM or 51% or more with the bourgeoisie? That's how all questions should be asked or answered, not one Willie Horton at a time.
There are all sorts of strategic implications for the party once we realize that the u$A is not a free country.
Wimmin in religion and monogamy
Recently we spoke with a womyn who explained how she chose religions. As many do, it is based on the appeal of Heaven or life after death as it is explained by a particular religion. This particular womyn made an interesting criticism of a Nordic religion. It seems that Heaven has a giant campfire and everyone gathers around it.
What she wanted instead was a Heaven where there are enough campfires separated that there is one campfire per two people. Upon going to Heaven each persyn is distributed to just one campfire, which means that every persyn must be matched on Earth in a perfect couple.
Heaven is thus perfect monogamy where on Earth each persyn finds their perfect lifetime mate. We don't have multiple people picking the same persyn or problems with premature deaths and the like; although how religion was supposed to solve those problems was not apparent.
So "what's in it for her" in this case is a perfect monogamy vision: that's what she wants to see in a religion. Yet it seems that as in video games MIM reviews, most religions offer a more social view of the afterlife.
We raise this example as one case of something Engels said was underlying monogamy, the class system. The value of humyn separation (not bonding) is placed as the highest possible value by this one womyn. Engels would say she got her idea about what religion should be based on her reality on earth, and how can we dispute it when there is no religion fitting the request of this womyn?
Yet despite the class origins of monogamy, MIM supports monogamy under capitalism and even early socialism as did Engels. Why is that?
This again we handle in the same way as the prison question. One side or another of this dispute is mostly correct. For MIM it is over with when we learn that people from oppressed communities have better infant mortality rates when they have more monogamy. Then there is the question of strategy in a not-free country. Being able to depend on our romantic partners if we have them would seem pretty obvious.
If we were in a free country, with a majority of exploited people, then the proletariat could make love to itself a la Reich or Marcuse and this might benefit the struggle. What we have in the imperialist countries is the opposite. Conspiratorial methods are key. There is no majority for the proletarian camp. The "Matrix" or "Men in Black" is more the model, with an activated minority.
Were you there by my side
when the "flashy-things" did hide
the future we were making
or were you just faking?
It's important to understand that failure to treat the gender questions the same way as the prison question leads to Liberalism and oppressor domination. So for example, it's not something we can have both ways. We are not telling lumpen to go steal for a living and we are not telling people to fuck their way to freedom either. "Be the change you want" is what the New Agers say, tapping into the same underlying Amerikkkan individualism as the Christians they seek to escape. Living within the limits of the capitalist system means the same thing to lumpen and lovers: there are limits.
The way our Marcuseans of the "free love" type lead us to Liberalism is by saying we should treat each individual or at least sub-group differently. So we had the theory offered that upper-middle class wimmin should be let out of monogamy, because upper-middle class men don't like it anyway and neither do the wimmin.
This is a failure to understand how the oppressed are united. We are responsible for putting forward a simple line uniting billions of people in action. That is the burden on our side representing the 5 billion against the 1 billion. It is our burden to unite.
We cannot modulate and have cross-cutting impulses for each individual or sub- group based on their subjective position. So our upper-middle class people should suck it up. "OK, I am a hypocrite, but I admit there is no real reply to the monogamy argument as benefitting the oppressed at this time." So we should learn to accept hypocrisy. We should not expect our subjective desires to match the revolutionary science all the time. We can see that when we try to invent a religion that does not correspond to the mating situation on Earth. You can try to paint a perfect and appealing picture for everyone, but it breaks down. What do we do with the people who die before they mate? What do we do with the people who only had one mate and that one is taken by someone else? Proceeding from religion to reality is infinitely destructive. We cannot proceed in that manner, so we need to leave behind the pre-scientific method. We should take each question and look at what we know overall in reality about it--see the pluses and minuses for the groups in society.
No proletarian revolutionary is 100% right on. Upper middle-class people working on the proletarian side of the struggle are going to have subjective problems as will brainwashed proletarians. The correct answer is to accept hypocrisy, not toss the science. Don't think, "I can't live in hypocrisy like that, so I have to abandon the scientific communism thing." That is wrong. The hypocrisy concept is Christian ideology anyway.
In our approach we divide things in two, oppressor versus oppressed. If we start breaking it down to sub-groups or individuals we end in Liberalism, not Marxism. We benefit the oppressor who needs the divisions when we don't keep our line simple to unite millions and billions.
Crying reading MIM articles
This same womyn who advocated the monogamy religion does not write any articles for the party on the subject despite having criticism of Engels. No one should treat a critic of revolutionary science as "equal" until they've proved they deserve it. Many of the worst attackers have no articles on how they would answer the same questions MIM does. For example, MIM also does not take anyone seriously who cannot deal with the imprisonment facts overall. Whether guised as gender equality or anything else, there is no equality between a mind that can deal with that and one that does not. That extends to all questions.
We have someone working hard with MIM who reads MIM Notes and often cries on the gender stories. The question arises, "why don't you ever extol heterosexual couples?" The real question should be why MIM does not extol anyone, but the response is typical of how MIM writing is taken. "What's in it for me?" is again at stake.
So we have some people who recognize that on country-versus-country conflicts, class conflicts, the environment, you best stick with MIM. Then when they see gender articles, they cry for various reasons.
It seems MIM is taking away gender privilege, happiness itself. Well what about it?
What we can say is that MIM did not make gender a cardinal question. We could have. The argument made by one persyn purged with the anarchist wind was that if you do not understand the MIM line on gender, we doubt you understand Das Kapital on class either. And that is true, but we still reasoned that gender does not have enough of importance to make it cardinal and thus divisive.
We do extol our prisoner struggles. They face the state as individuals. We will do that for individuals in that situation. We are not involved in extolling individuals generally. So if people read MIM as just criticizing individuals, despite being anonymous, then we are going to have problems, because we do not extol anyone not facing the state in immediate trouble, so things cannot balance out.
When the revolutionary struggle is really rolling, there is some drawback to not extolling individuals. Some people under pressure will get the heat but not the credit, sometimes without being in the party.
Our Reichians will come to us and say monogamy is a trap, and of course it is. It comes from capitalism. But so is free love at this time constrained by capitalism. So then our Reichians ask us how we are going to handle the problem of self-esteem. By emphasizing monogamy, the womyn now seeks the man who sees her as the be-all-and-end-all. And what if there is no such man?
One interesting point is why we still to this day do not ask this question about men. Where is the material basis for saying this is any less a problem for men now? Why do wimmin like men who are players, but there is some hoary worry about a womyn's reputation?
The reason intense psychological questions like these persist is partly that they serve antiquated professional interests. Women are disproportionately and historically psychology and literature majors in college. When it comes to the state-sponsored bureaucracies handling anorexia or date rape on campus, the employees will come from that background. And if there were not a psychological answer concerning vague ideas about "self-esteem," there would be no need for these jobs, also to be found in connection to domestic violence centers. In fact, ideally for a profession to expand, it has a political constituency outraged and convinced of that profession's necessity, as told by story-tellers. If answers were precise and professionals existed in proportion to the extent of a problem, many jobs would disappear. What the hell is this vague thing about "self-esteem" we hear on the campuses, now in connection to the "Vagina Monologues," for instance. Lesson number one is not to get it from your boyfriend: be the boyfriend instead of admiring him. MIM is OK with that idea, but how relevant is it anymore in the imperialist countries? And let's not do a have-it-both-ways, because we need to include in that discussion the men viewed as making less money than their mates. Whatever it is young wimmin are doing now, they are the ones with more college degrees than men. So now, are these agencies all asking about male self-esteem? The answer is usually not, because these agencies came about with historically specific political constituencies, not a scientific framework of thought. This vague self-esteem concept has countless other interpretations too. Perhaps wimmin would not worry about their reputations or popularity if this idea were drilled into them less often or only in a context where parallel questions of males also arose. And here we do not mean parallel questions designed to reinforce non-existent hierarchies of old. We mean that the goal of gender-related education in college should be to put wimmin in realistic touch with power.
So when old ideas are being pushed what is the result. Ironically, by pushing the self-esteem question so hard on campus, the pseudo-feminists are worsening gender problems. It is a systematic message to wimmin that they are somehow different than men, and actually deficient, despite the fact now that they are more academically achievement-oriented than men. This deficiency serves as a basis of an unrealistic politics.
An example of unrealistic politics stemming from antiquated views of reality is the Robin Morgan thing where feminism becomes evermore extremely fantastical to make up for the lack of reality supporting previous versions of feminism. Robin Morgan participated in an armed struggle that few young males today can even conceive in the imperialist countries, but her published work focuses on this supposed gap between her and the other "terrorist" men. These other men have to be handled by stories on the "demon lover." The male demon terrorist has to be made evermore fantastic to give something to Robin Morgan to love/fight. However, as we pointed out, her work recently contributed to terrorism against Palestinians. When Hamas decided to resist the West and do without Western-paid salaries, the Robin Morgan line came into play with a few wimmin that the West played up as representative of Palestinians. Supposedly wanting a Palestinian state is a male thing and so Robin Morgan used her power, yes HER power to increase the results of the Western embargo on aid to the Palestinians. The end result is service to I$rael and the post-911 agenda: it is not feminism. The Robin Morgan line is a new gift to the Pentagon, a militarist ideology in gender-phraseology. Even more obvious is how Phyllis Chesler has turned "feminism" into a meaningless word in support of Zionism and Amerikkkanism. These are the sorts of things that people need to learn in gender-related education, not vague psychological concepts with no grounding in any reality. Specifically imperialist country females need to learn when they are already exerting power, when the historical situation is as it is now--where wimmin have taken power in wide swaths of society but the ideologies floating around are from World War I or before. If they do not learn when they are already exerting power, they exert it by accident and they create evermore fantastic tales of male power. Ironically, in the long run, the lack of realism in understanding power already being exerted can lead to male power over the female.
When people are left with vague concepts instead of parameters, instead of the concrete and overall situation, the result can be anything. Pseudo-feminism becomes simple opportunism. Story-telling becomes about chopping, cutting and compressing to serve an opportunist end. It will be done in the name of a relativism that says science is run by men.
The Reichians asked what we can do about the vague ideas floating out there about "reputation," "self-esteem" etc. if we push monogamy, but let's answer further what we can do without taking up Reichian line. The answer is that of course there are drawbacks to any position taken under capitalism. One has to decide where 51% or more of the truth lies. There is no question what we see wimmin ask for. They ask all the time for men who are not commitment-phobic, both in imperialist countries and even more so among exploited populations. We believe that forced to choose between commitment from men and having to endure problems of self-esteem/reputation, wimmin will choose in their majority for promoting commitment among men, and more importantly whether they do so or not, economically that works out best for the oppressed people. That is the basic answer, again one of those things we cannot have both ways.
What we can do to further address the Reichians is clamp down on pornography, and not in the crypto-Trot definition where pornography is Playboy Magazine and Cosmo is some kind of Freudian social benefit. To address what the majority of wimmin are saying, we support the men who seek commitment. We do not punish them the way pornographic culture does. Likewise, when a womyn is having some kind of reputation issue--there needs to be a clampdown before it arises. How can a reputation issue arise if the definition of pornography is along the lines MIM says it is--third party fascination. Whether a womyn is a wall-flower or a slut, or whether a man is a player, stud or dud, it's not for discussion except by the direct individual, so keep your mouths shut. That's MIM's definition of pornography, so where is the question of self-esteem?
The answer is the party press, not individual confrontations. If you see an ideological problem that the party never addresses, then write articles about it. It could be true MIM and other organizations do not do enough about gender relations, but the answer is not talk, gossip or even just glaring. Leave that inside couples for the concrete and in the party press for the general.
People who think about this will see that the MIM line fits together. We have always criticized the rumor network, and we long required Joreen as study group reading. Our line also does the most to oppose lynching. Our principal task is not party-building. People need to get what that means via gender and opposing pornography as MIM defines it. If you see someone dating in MIM, keep your mouth shut, not just for security reasons, but for pornography reasons. This is even more true when a cell is going well and there is some kind of near celebrity or high profile thing going on in a locality. In that situation what is going to happen is men are going to be slaughtered for not being "stag" enough and wimmin are going to have reputation gossip. Put a clamp on it and have everyone in the party understand that. We don't want people spreading entertainment discussion in the guise of righteousness, in any direction, period. We can do that without capitulating to the Reichian line. The Reichian line might ease some issues, but it is also not compatible with an attack on pornography. If the Reichian line has any use it would be in a situation maybe of semi-feudalism and majority exploited people. Reichians probably should be in the democratic front, if not leading it outright on gender issues in those countries. We cannot have the loose style of pornographic talk in a country where we need conspiratorial methods against the majority. That would be ludicrous, buying the "free country" line in practice.
How is the world tied together
We will always have those who say we had to have some way of choosing our "values." We find the question mostly overrated. The most difficult questions have to do with how our planet really works.
MIM says there is a key to the planet to get the most out of what is on the Earth including among people. There is one key better than others--and it is called MIM Thought. It is subject to challenge from other thoughts about the keys. The real question at this point is species-survival. Of course, there are benefits from war for instance. Arms dealers can make much money and live a life of luxury. There are also benefits of global warming. If it ruins all humyn environments, then it will be easier for species from other planets to conquer Earth. Yeah, so what. So we are humyn and species-life centered. Marx said that meant attention to poverty, war and basic needs, but even when value agendas do not match, most important questions are about the keys to the planet and how they actually work.
MIM is not being "spiritual" when there would seem to be no persynal benefit for its line. It's just a question of taking sides. The bourgeoisie can afford division of people, because that is how its rule is preserved. So if you choose for certain things in the proletarian agenda even if you are inconvenienced by parts of it, you have no choice but to go with the method of producing truth MIM outlines here, the scientific method, because the proletarian agenda requires unity of the underdogs. The focus goes on dividing things into two, not twenty, thirty or a billion. Fortunately science works best that way anyway, because there is not much value to the science of the individual's blood for example. So a persyn needs to decide whether she is mainly in the bourgeois camp or the proletarian camp, because the methods of the two camps are totally different. In the bourgeois camp they can have "diversity," "tolerance" etc., because the point is to divide people. In the proletarian camp, our point is to unify. That means everyone in the proletarian camp will have to swallow things they do not like. It's probably only worth it if you see capitalism tied to war, starvation and environmental destruction the way MIM does. On some other set of issues, supporters of the proletarian side will have to appear "spiritual" as in not persynally tuned in to every aspect of the proletarian line.
Questions for review:
1. What is the difference between a story-teller and a
scientist?
2. What is the difference between the bourgeois individualist
approach to history and the scientific approach?
3. What are the drawbacks and benefits of the MIM line and the Reichian line on free love?