A Reader Wrote:

Since I am already writing, and you say you welcome challenges, I will give mine. If you can respond via email, that would be welcomed.

First let me give you credit for changing my views on labor in the advanced countries. I now agree with you that super- high wages in these countries, frequently must be financed by plundering the third world.

When reading through the MIM notes, I found very astute, intelligent analysis of world affairs that sees through propaganda and conventional wisdom, to the often class core of various political struggles.

This being true, it is thus astonishing to me how rigid and shallow your views are re: China and other issues. You appear totally incapable (yet I know from MIM notes it isn't true) of seeing past Peking Review fulminations to find out what was actually going on.

For example, the Sino-Soviet split. It is well known now that the reason for this had little to do with "revisionism". In fact, I doubt you could identify substantial changes in the internal economic system of the USSR pre/post Stalin. A little tinkering here and there using a tiny bit of markets (which has little bearing on class relations, unlike ownership issues), and a tiny bit more openness re: public criticism. Purely cosmetic changes, nothing more. It was a rigid bureaucratic state run economy with minor labor input in both era's. In both era's, the level of popular participation never approached China's under Mao.

The true reason for the split had to do with Krushchev's smug demand to put military bases on China's coast. He also wanted China to organize its' economy to complement the USSR's (like Eastern Europe). Both these things were intolerable to Mao, who was (wisely) dead set on independent development, not the E.E. way. Then, during the GLF crisis, K withdrew all aid in one destructive swoop, and callously demanded Korean War loan repayment at China's weakest point. This is not the action of a friend.

Other issues were the denunciation of Stalin without consulting or even warning China, and the "peaceful coexistence" with the US, which alarmed Mao (ironic considering the Nixon thing later). So Mao began attacking the USSR, under ideological pretenses (for public consumption only), when in fact, nothing within the USSR changed much, and the true reason for the split was the behind the scenes diplomacy and the Soviet desire for a lackey, not an equal partner. This happens to be exactly what Stalin wanted too!

I should have started earlier, because the Mao-Stalin relationship was in fact quite different than the one portrayed in the propaganda. You must know, that Stalin never liked Mao, because he was too independent, not a lackey like the EE puppets. Thus he figured he could get just as much working with Jiang Jeishi than Mao. This is why he called on the CCP to make a coalition gov't with the KMT (after the failed attempt to control the CCP via Wang Ming et al).

You surely also know the cold reaction Mao got from Stalin in Moscow right after the revolution. Mao felt the same way about Stalin. However, he had to kiss up to get the essential aid China needed, facing a relentless force (USA) trying to topple or strangle China. Stalin, never trusting Mao, never gave them more than a trickle of aid.

The reason Mao continued to trumpet Stalin after his death, is to 1-use this propaganda against Kruschev and try to gain leadership of the world communist movement and 2-so the same thing wouldn't happen to him after he died...it obviously didn't work there.

Yet, instead of acknowledging the complexity of the situation, you blandly repeat nonsense propaganda from that era. There is a wealth of info that has come out in the last couple decades on the internal goings on inside the PRC inner circles. Naturally, some of it is fabricated for political purposes (the Mao's Dr. book) so it must be read critically, but it is possible to piece together the truth. I'm also not saying Stalin should be totally denounced, he did some good things: rapid industrialization, workers on top of the social ladder, WW2 victory (along with bad ones, like some innocent people in labor camps, etc.). But he should not be held up along side Mao, who made mistakes, but whose motives are unquestionably pure on every issue.

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If you can see the truth about the Sino-Soviet split, then you should re-evaluate Cuba, and it's revolution. You blame it for dependence on Moscow, but what choice did they have? They are a tiny island, just off the coast of a giant powerful country committed to destroying them. Independence meant slow starvation. Now, Cuba is quite democratic, by far the most democratic country in the region still trying to provide a better life for people through socialism. Yet all they get is contempt from you. I guess it doesn't matter to you that the Cuban gov't has huge popular support.

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I cringed when reading your lies about Zhou Enlai. You said Mao didn't go to his funeral, yet left the impression that was because of politics. That is bull and you know it. He was feeble, Parkinson's disease had ravaged his body, and he didn't want to be seen like that in public. He might not have even been able. Yet he sent genuine condolences, remarking on their lifelong friendship and common struggle. If Mao disliked him like you imply, he would have dumped him long before. And if Mao DID trust the gang of 4 as much as you would have people believe, he would have given them full power, instead of making them compromise with Lin Biao, then later Zhou and Hua Guofeng. Now obviously, he didn't want them purged, but he didn't completely trust them either. They were merely a left faction to be played against a less radical faction, to come at a balanced result. The scale was tipped only when all the cadres who rose during the CR were purged in favor of Zhao Ziyang types.

The fact that you call the April '76 protests "counter- revolutionary" reveals your contempt for the masses. Their opinions don't matter, only "line". This is fascistic. Pinochet feels the same way. He has a (reactionary) "line" and it doesn't matter if the people approve or not. A true populist revolution must ALWAYS be based on popular support. The gang angered a lot of common people with their personal vendettas and fanatic policies. Yes, not as much as Deng would tell you, I know that in the Northern Chinese countryside they had a constituency as well as among many workers. Did you know the gang wanted to use guns on those people? Mao said no! He said whoever uses the PLA against the people, will come to no good end.

Re: your championing of prisoners--this is so wrong. I am quite aware of the socio-economic roots of crime, and how reactionary "crack-downs" on crime without addressing the root causes, is a crime itself. But at what point, no matter how exploited someone is, does personal responsibility for one's actions kick in? When you rape or murder an innocent person, THAT IS WRONG IN ANY CONTEXT! For you to then champion that person as a hero is awful.

For non-violent offenses (drugs, racketeering, theft..) where the person acknowledges the immorality of the situation, you have a point. So you don't have to abandon your prison program, to be moral, only attempt to target non-violent prisoners who want to change. But to say poverty or exploitation excuses murder and rape is indefensible. Exactly who do you think the victims are, El Salvadoran military generals, or sweatshop owners? What about the victims side? Are you going to tell a 12 yr. old girl who has been raped, that her rapist is a "comrade", and she shouldn't want him to be in prison, because of the overall economic system? Exactly how many of the violent prisoners you champion are truly repentant for what they did? You need to do some soul searching. Just because the system is unjust, doesn't mean EVERYONE in prison is a victim, merely some [in fact, the majority are in for non-violent drug related things, as I'm sure you know, & they are frequently victims].

MIM Responded:

Thank you for writing. It sounds like you have a lot of unity with MIM. Particularly you agree with us that U.$. imperialism oppresses the majority of the world's people and in so doing extracts superprofits which it uses to bribe the Euro-Amerikan working class. And you give us credit for astute analysis of issues in our newspaper. Our purpose in engaging in dialogue such as this is to develop as much unity as possible, but more importantly to turn this unity into unity in practice. While it's great to have this much unity in theory, the main thing is to fight to end this injustice that we both agree is going on and that we both agree MIM has a grasp of. Are you a MIM Notes distributor? That is one way you can concretely support MIM's work. Another is buying a subscription to MIM Notes, if you haven't already. If you have any technical skills, such as computer skills, you could work on MIM's web site, for example. You could write book reviews or articles for MIM Notes or for the MIM Online Bookstore about things on which we have theoretical unity, or about things on which we have differences, so that MIM could comment on or rebut them. You could help organize anti-imperialist events. Are you familiar with the work of the Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist League (RAIL)? You may meet the membership requirements for RAIL, which are just opposing imperialism to the extent of supporting armed struggle against it, and accepting that it is MIM-led.

On to your criticisms:

(1) The Sino-Soviet split, Stalin, etc.:

While it may be "well-known" among bourgeois historians that the Sino-Soviet split was unprincipled, that doesn't make it true. You are correct to say that "markets" are not what is principally at issue in determining what class holds power but rather "ownership", specifically ownership of the means of production. Where you are wrong is in assuming that no change in ownership occurred after Stalin's death and Kruschev's rise to power. MIM sells a very detailed book by W.B. Bland called "The Restoration of Capitalism in the Soviet Union". The book is over 300 pages of the Soviet economists themselves detailing in their own publications how they restored capitalism in the USSR. The short version is, the workers' rights to work and to criticize managers and participate in economic planning were taken away; managers of enterprises were given the right to trade in means of production; enterprise managers were required to base plans on a goal of profit maximization. This leaves out lots of stuff that you can find in the long version. MIM sells the book for $7. So, we have no need to base our theory on Peking Review propaganda; we just ask the Soviet revisionists themselves whether they restored capitalism in the USSR after Stalin died and they say "yes we did."

You are absolutely correct that the level of popular participation under Stalin never approached that in China under Mao. We follow Mao in giving Stalin a 70%, not a 99% or 100%. Noone in the CPSU had a better line than Stalin, but that doesn't mean Stalin never made mistakes. Still, popular participation was encouraged under Stalin, though in limited forms, and this was not the case under Kruschev. And as you said, under Stalin workers were "on top of the social ladder." Not so under Kruschev, when workers could be fired at will with no recourse as a matter of state policy. As Maoists we believe we have the answer to both the lack of popular participation under Stalin and the rise to power of a new bourgeoisie in the form of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR). The lesson of the restoration of capitalism in the USSR is that mass mobilization is indispensable for combating the new bourgeoisie, hence the mass mobilization during the GPCR.

Your explanation of what caused the split is very formalistic; it doesn't get below the surface. Yes Kruschev wanted to militarily and economically dominate China. Because the USSR at the time was state capitalist and social-imperialist. You can't say Mao just made up the stuff about the USSR being capitalist and imperialist to cover the fact that he was really just trying to avoid submitting to economic and military domination by the USSR. They're the same thing. If the USSR was still socialist, economic and military domination wouldn't be an issue. Maybe you disagree that the USSR was socialist before Stalin died, but it doesn't sound like it (you say workers were "on top of the social ladder" under Stalin).

Again, Kruschev's denunciation of Stalin was part and parcel of his renunciation of socialism. Mao supported a scientific, materialist evaluation of Stalin's strengths and weaknesses so that the International Communist Movement (ICM) could learn from them. Kruschev gave him a blanket condemnation of everything the man ever did or stood for. It's not like Mao never criticized Stalin. He gave him a 70%, and said his mistakes stemmed from a limited grasp of dialectics. Again, the GPCR was the ultimate result of the Maoist appraisal of Stalin's weaknesses. MIM sells several books about the GPCR: "Turning Point in China" ($5) and "Hundred Day War" ($6) by William Hinton, "Daily Life in Revolutionary China" ($10) by Maria Antonietta Macciocchi, "The Chinese Cultural Revolution" ($6) by Jean Esmein, "Cultural Revolution and Industrial Organization in China" ($4) by Charles Bettelheim, "The Chinese Road to Socialism" ($7) by E.L. Wheelwright and Bruce McFarlane, and others.

I don't know why you say Stalin wanted a lackey. It's well known that Stalin gave bad advice to parties around the world at various times. It's also well known that Stalin was in Moscow and had limited information on what was going on in other countries. There's no reason to think the bad advice was malevolent. Ultimately any party that followed his bad advice without ascertaining for itself the road to follow had itself to blame for its failures. This is why Mao and MIM after him oppose having a COMINTERN. Noone can judge conditions in a country better than the people in the country itself. Look on MIM's web site for a reprint of the Chinese Communist Party's evaluation of the COMINTERN and how it had outlived its usefulness (they said it was useful in helping communist parties around the world to form, but once they'd formed it only held them back).

Mao himself said that Stalin didn't completely trust him until he proved his internationalism by sending troops into Korea. Mao was eventually able to earn Stalin's trust. If Stalin had a better grasp of dialectics he could have looked at Mao's line and recognized him as a person he could trust to take leadership in the ICM. But Stalin was always on the lookout for enemies he didn't know how to recognize. This is the reason capitalist-roaders like Kruschev were able to rise in the party during his tenure, and it is also the explanation for the excesses during what bourgeois academics incorrectly call the "Terror". Stalin never recognized the existence of classes and class struggle under socialism, yet realized that there were enemies of the people in the USSR and even inside the CPSU. Unable to connect this to the rise of a new bourgeoisie he concluded that the enemies must be covert spies employed by foreign intelligence agencies. Hence the panic during the hunt for enemies and hence Stalin's mistrust of others within the ICM. This is another case where we see the GPCR as the answer to Stalin's errors; once we recognize that there is a new bourgeois class under socialism the road is clear to engage in open struggle with it, but as long as we just recognize the enemies as spies there is no point in such struggle, and the class struggle is reduced to a police matter. Understanding that the enemies are class enemies also helps unmask them, whereas during the "Terror" people correctly believed there were enemies everywhere, but incorrectly believed that they were indistinguishable from friends, since as spies they would have hidden themselves. This is why a lot of friends ended up being imprisoned or killed. In fairness to Stalin, the "Terror" did uncover a lot of real spies, and a lot of real conspiracies against the USSR, and a lot of real enemies got what they deserved. It was part of the reason that a significant fifth column didn't develop in the USSR like it did in every other country Hitler invaded. You can read about this in MIM Theory 6, "The Stalin Issue". Also in fairness to Stalin, it is documented fact that he was often in the position of bringing rumors and suspicions under control and steering the USSR through panic that enveloped the population. See the review of the book "Stalingrad" by Anthony Beevor in MIM Notes 181; also you can buy the Stalingrad book through MIM's Online Bookstore. Stalin's role in bringing the "Terror" under control when much of the party, population and police were still letting the accusations fly is documented in the book "Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia" by Robert Thurston, available on the MSG Online Bookstore. MIM has not reviewed this book so keep in mind that we have no line on it and don't guarantee that it is the best book to read on the subject.

Whether Mao and Stalin liked each other is completely irrelevant. Who cares?

As for aid, how much aid was the USSR supposed to give after having a third of its industrial capacity destroyed and a fifth of its population killed during WWII? The Soviet economy was barely finished recovering when Stalin died. Soviet conduct during WWII is a shining example of revolutionary heroism and internationalist solidarity. The Soviet people under Stalin made incomprehensibly enormous sacrifices, including giving over 20 million of their lives, to defeat fascism and advance proletarian and anti-imperialist revolutionary struggles everywhere. If that isn't enough to convince you of the genuine internationalism of the USSR under Stalin, nothing can be.

Now, about "the Nixon thing" and peaceful coexistence, there is a difference between Mao's diplomacy and selling out third world revolutionary struggles. The peaceful coexistence line was that communists have to lay down their arms to avoid starting a nuclear war. That effectively sells out the anti-imperialist struggles of the oppressed nations and the international proletariat. Mao had no such line when he had discussions with Nixon. Nor did Stalin have such a line when he sent representatives to meet with the French and British to discuss an alliance against Hitler, or when he sent Molotov to talk to Ribbentrop about a nonaggression pact. Just meeting with the imperialists does not constitute a capitulation.

We're the Maoist, not the Stalinist, Internationalist Movement. We defend Stalin against unprincipled attacks, while encouraging scientific study and criticism of his errors as in Mao's "Critique of Soviet Economics" (available for $10). We aren't holding him up alongside Mao; although we do think he was a genuine Leninist who did much to build socialism in the Soviet Union, industrialize the economy of a tremendous country and defeat fascism, he also made serious errors that it is indispensable to criticize. These errors were more serious than any Mao made because they dealt with life and death matters of universal significance. However, assailing Stalin's motives is not a form of scientific criticism.

(2) Cuba:

The Cubans had the option of attempting to grow food for their people to eat rather than sugar for the Soviet people to eat. The island could easily feed itself. The Chinese were able to feed themselves when all the bourgeois academics said it was impossible. If Cuba needed it, the Chinese offered aid that they refused. This is also a demonstration of the principles involved in the Sino-Soviet split, the Chinese upholding economic self-sufficiency and the USSR demanding that subject economies tailor themselves to the USSR economy. If the Chinese could be self-sufficient, why not the Cubans? For more on MIM's Cuba line, see MIM Theory 4, "A Spiral Trajectory: The Failure and Success of Communist Development", available for $5.

Hitler also had huge popular support. But still, even if Cuba is the most democratic example of comprador-dominated bourgeois dictatorship in history, that doesn't make it socialist. Letting the people participate to some extent in running a country does not make it socialist, any more than letting the workers have a say in how enterprises could best extract surplus value from them made Yugoslavia socialist during its "market socialism" period. Castro shamelessly coddled the USSR revisionists, siding with them not just on political issues like invading Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan, but also their whole economic programme (of state capitalism). Cuba's economy is based on exporting sugar and importing tourists, which doesn't sound like production to meet the people's needs. It's also open to imperialist investment. It's very similar to Libya, which is also by all accounts a popular regime with lots of scope for mass participation at the local level, with an economy open to imperialist investment and based on export (of oil). Would you call Libya socialist?

The question of Cuba's planned dependence on the USSR is also related to the question of Maoist vs. revisionist (and focoist) strategy. The Maoist strategy of people's war is to build base areas which can be defended and in which the people can be led to meet their own needs. These base areas are built step by step until they engulf the cities and ultimately the cities are captured in a general offensive. So, all that time that base areas are being built, a self-sufficient economy is being built in the countryside. The focoist strategy is to do a lot of hit and run attacks without really building anything. It depends on a gang of "revolutionary superheroes" to liberate the people for them. Maoists have faith in the masses. We believe that with the correct line and analysis, the masses can accomplish anything, even feeding themselves. The revisionists (and focoists), lacking faith in the masses, talk about how the country is too small as an excuse for not trying to lead the masses to become self-sufficient. MIM has a variety of materials available about the current Maoist people's wars being waged around the world and how they are building self-sufficient base areas as a step towards seizing power nationwide. Look at our lit list on our website. MIM Theory 5, "Diet for a Small Red Planet" and "What Is MIM?" contain articles by MIM on focoism. MT5 is $5; WIM is $2 but you can also read the focoism article on the WIM part of the web site.

(3) The Gang, etc:

You must agree that Zhou was essentially a centrist. Mao relied on his support to carry out the GPCR, but he was an unreliable ally at best. He protected Deng, the number one capitalist roader in the party. Deng was his protege.

The GOF's line was the closest to Mao's. They were the Maoist pole in the party leadership because of this. It seems clear why Mao would put a centrist like Hua in charge instead of those representing his line. All through the GPCR the left in the party leadership was outnumbered by the right. The centrists tipped the balance to the lefts side. After Mao died, they swung the other way, but he couldn't predict that. But if Mao just put the left in charge, he knew the right and center would gang up on it. At worst it would split the party and lead to civil war.

(4) Prisoners:

MIM also stresses personal responsibility. You are correct that most people in prison are there for nonviolent crimes that harmed noone (except maybe themselves). Someone arrested for possession of drugs shouldn't even be expected to admit moral wrongdoing in this society. Having said that, MIM never said that oppressed nation people who kill someone or deal drugs are blameless for these acts. We have always said that some acts are crimes against the people; some people who are in prison have committed these acts, and under the dictatorship of the proletariat they will remain in prison until they are rehabilitated. However, oppressed nation prisoners have not received a fair trial, so we have no reason to believe they are guilty of their alleged crimes. The entire system is designed to get innocent people who are arrested and charged for being members of an oppressed group to plead guilty to a lesser charge and go to prison, just to avoid being convicted in an unfair trial of an even worse charge. Noone has any way of knowing how many of these people are guilty. So of course, it will be necessary to give everyone a new (fair) trial first to determine who is actually guilty of crimes against the people.

The problem with the current system is, it makes no effort at rehabilitation. The crime rate would be the same or lower if we just demolished all the prisons in the country and let all the prisoners run free. The current prison system is designed in such a way that its purpose seems to be to encourage criminal activity on the part of people released from it. MIM sells a very good book presenting concrete evidence and arguments for this and similar claims, called "The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison" by Jeffrey Reiman, available for $8. Also, see MIM Theory 11, "Amerikkkan Prisons on Trial". It contains an article by MC44 which addresses some of your concerns about MIM's prison line. MIM seeks to engage prisoners, some of whom may have done bad things, in righteous struggle against oppression. This kind of activity is already rehabilitative for prisoners. It's not about championing them as individuals but about organizing them in redeeming struggle. See the article for more; MT 11 is available from MIM for $5.

Incidentally, our supporters in prison, even those who admit to having committed crimes against the people, know about our line opposing their immediate release after our seizure of power and support it. They wouldn't mind being rehabilitated if it were an option.

Look at MIM's concrete activity to see where our prison line leads us in practice. We are not asking for immediate amnesty for all prisoners. We are demanding that prisoners be treated as human beings and allowed the basic human "rights" that others in this country take for granted, like the right not to be tortured, beaten and killed by bloodthirsty prison guards, the right to education, decent health care, etc. And we consistently expose the facts that the people doing the imprisoning are worse criminals than those they imprison, and that those in prison have been put there by a system of oppression that doesn't care whether they're guilty of any crime. MIM's major programs around prisons, the Serve the People Books for Prisoners and Prisoners' Legal Clinic programs, are programs of revolutionary reform working to secure prisoners' basic rights. These programs aren't about championing prisoners as individuals, but are about championing rights for all of the oppressed of whom prisoners are representative.

We would tell a 12 year old girl who has been raped that putting people in prison has nothing to do with rape. If you want to put people in prison that's your problem, tell me when you're ready to start doing something about rape. Putting people in prison is about punishment. Rape is about patriarchy, and ending it requires fighting patriarchy. If someone was put in prison every time someone experienced rape, the imperialist system would collapse for lack of personnel. MIM Theory 2/3, "Gender and Revolutionary Feminism", is available for $6. In it we argue that all sex is rape under patriarchy. MIM fights for revolution as the only way of ending rape. See MT2/3 for a summation of data from numerous studies proving that imprisoning people has absolutely no effect whatsoever on the number of rapes being committed, even as rape is defined by the criminal injustice system of imperialist patriarchy, and for arguments as to how that very definition itself is just an excuse for national oppression.

I've gotten into the whole issue of gender, about which MIM has a line unique in the entire history of the ICM. If you had said, "what will you tell the parents of a 12 year old girl who had been murdered" it would be, putting people in prison has nothing to do with murder. MIM has no problem with locking people up who have committed murder. Hand over the reins of state power to us so we can administer the justice and prison's systems and we'll happily lock that person up till they're rehabilitated. But this system cares not about rehabilitation, thus cares not about stopping murder. And it also cares more about perpetuating national oppression than it does about finding out who the murderer of any particular person is. So instead of fair trials and rehabilitation, you get unfair trials and a prison experience that just makes the prisoner want to go kill more people.

Also, MIM believes human life is valuable, all human life, and we believe human beings have inexhaustible potential. Someone doesn't forfeit their life by taking the life of another person. That just wastes two lives for the price of one. A person can always be rehabilitated. To see what MIM's prisons might look like and how we would rehabilitate people, get "Prisoners of Liberation" by Allyn and Adele Rickett, available for $10. POL is about the Ricketts' experience in the Maoist Chinese prison system after being convicted of espionage.

mim45