a. Mao on strategic confidence

Despite the situation of the oppressor nation working classes that created a "great obstacle to carrying through the revolution" according to Mao, Mao still had strategic confidence that revolution would happen. This was on account of the masses of Latin America, Africa and Asia who would resist U.$. imperialism and eventually overthrow it.

b. Mao on the United $tates

When it comes to national oppression, Mao is most famous for the analysis and strategy that led to successful war against the Japanese imperialists and the overthrow of U.S. lackey Chiang Kai-shek. In his writings on that subject, he speaks of "annihilating the enemy one by one." While Mao does seek to use the class contradiction in fighting the Chinese lackey troops, there was no such emphasis on the class background of Japanese troops. They were to be annihilated till they went home, and only within Japanese society would Mao speak of the class contradiction as having importance. Most of his works are speaking of the Chinese and their class structure, not details on the Japanese troops' class background. It is this example that the Black Panthers picked up, perhaps mechanically. Huey Newton instructed his followers to change the words Chinese to Black when reading Mao's works. Newton also correctly referred to white cops as "occupation forces" in the Black community.

Anyone who has read Mao cannot dispute that there is some logic to what Huey Newton did. The only question is whether it was appropriate for his conditions. We believe that Newton was correct and the rest of this document is to show some of the reasoning being applied.

It appears that Mao himself signed off on statements that it was not appropriate to copy the anti-Japanese war in the United $tates, because among other things, the majority of whites were also exploited according to Mao. Quite frankly, the Communist Party of China under Mao was responsible for a more eclectic position than what Stalin had recommended for the United $tates. Martin Luther King, the Progressive Labor Party and the Black Panther Party each presented something distinct and important to the Communist Party of China in the 1960s. Because Mao was anti-COMINTERN few people realize the extent to which articles written by communists here were distributed in China and more or less signed off on by Mao. It was also this anti-COMINTERN reasoning that led Mao to speak simultaneously of both national and racial oppression of Blacks. His stress on the racial was in order to bend the Black nationalist movement into a firmly communist and internationalist direction. For that matter, the revolutionary nationalist intellectuals went to Mao with compromise ideas on integration versus nationalism and Mao signed off on them. One has the sense from a close reading of Mao that he could have gone either way--with national liberation or the racial integration strategy, but the key mistake swaying him toward the racial integration approach was the following: "The black masses and the masses of white working people in the United States share common interests and have common objectives to struggle for. Therefore, the Afro-American struggle is winning sympathy and support from increasing numbers of white working people and progressives in the United States."(50 ) Mao's line on whites in the United $tates was different than his line on Japanese invaders. At the time, the Chinese Communist Party believed that the global upsurge might mean a relatively short life for imperialism and that the U.$. imperialists would unleash fascism on the oppressor nation workers. Today, we have to say that even if such a moment does come, we must not rush into integrationist strategies and suddenly treat oppressor nation workers as if they were right there in the struggle all along. There will be a difference in outlook between proletarians and oppressor nation workers, even after a severe crisis or fascist crackdown on oppressor nation workers.

Even more indicative of the bad advice the Chinese comrades got from North America, the Chinese communists published a whole essay called "The National Struggle and Class Struggle" in 1966 and did not mention superprofits anywhere. Instead it drew some parallels between white chauvinism and Han chauvinism without answering in depth the question of parasitism.(51 ) Today the CIA takes advantage of such facile comparisons by working for the dismemberment of China along ethnic lines. Perhaps the Chinese felt they had to set their own house straight first before they could answer the question about the national question in the United $tates, but it was simply an error to address the national question without addressing superprofits and parasitism, so for this reason the comparison between the Han chauvinism of an oppressed nation and the white worker chauvinism of an imperialist country was mechanical. In addition, there is also the question of how Mao respected the contributions from the U.$. comrades themselves. As Mao explained in his essay on why the COMINTERN abolished itself, he no longer believed there was any appropriate role for direction of various parties from the outside. Thus, the way Mao proceeded we in the imperialist countries and their internal semi-colonies bear responsibility for our own mistakes and should not try to lay them at the feet of a non-existent Mao-led COMINTERN.

In the late 1960s, the situation of the movement was if anything over-confident, even in the United $tates where the revolutionary movement thought U.$. imperialism was coming to an end any day. Sectarianism and narrow nationalism were bigger threats than they are today. Today the errors of liquidationism and assimilationist chauvinism are much more dangerous than the errors of sectarianism and narrow nationalism respectively.

The stage of the revolution in the United $tates led Mao to stress repeatedly the peaceful nature of change necessary there, contrary to the line that the imperialists were an occupier military force in much of the territory within U.S. borders. Martin Luther King was no communist, but Mao credited him hugely. We must understand this or we will fail to understand Mao's thinking about the United $tates at the time. Ever since that time the revolutionary movement has been in the throes of an argument between the Black Panthers and the Progressive Labor Party on the possibility of progressive integrationism by the white workers. J. Sakai did the most to sum up that history of the 1960s correctly and now in the 1990s MIM is able to sum up the question with hindsight and systematic data unavailable to the people of the time. That summation is that the Black Panthers were correct up and down the line and Stalin's original formulation of the problem has been vindicated. In the case of some First Nations, we must ignore Mao's concerns about armed struggle here and on the other hand, we must acknowledge that he is still basically correct on the military situation. It is not yet the turn of the oppressed nations within the belly of the beast to start the armed struggle. Instead it is our task to take up the long, slow and detailed work of the rear area of the international proletariat's army. This does not mean we need to take up Martin Luther King's position or the Progressive Labor Party's (PLP) variant of MLK integrationism. Our work should be peaceful and legal as Mao suggested, but with a correct analysis of the class structure and nationality, closer to what Stalin and the Black Panthers said than what Mao said under the influence of Black revolutionary nationalists like Robert Williams and the "revolutionary" integrationist PLP.

Likewise in Europe, the position of immigrant Third World workers is not such that they can be represented as simply a small section of the overall workers' movement in the imperialist countries-- unless those immigrant workers are also bought-off. Even the bought-off immigrant worker knows that his/her position is more fragile than that of the oppressor nation workers. The immigrant worker must attack the imperialist countries' military aid to fascist regimes and the closing of borders.

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