Preventing the restoration of imperialism in the ex-United $tates and other imperialist countries will differ from the Cultural Revolution in China above all in one regard--the question of parasitism economically and ideologically. The dictatorship of the proletariat in the ex-United $tates will necessarily acquire its main basis from outside the current borders of the United States. Those countries freed from u.s. imperialism may look in many ways like China did under Mao with the pressure of a peasantry seeking private plots of land for farming and the pressure of a national bourgeoisie arising in the vanguard parties of the oppressed nations that hold socialist state power and access to the means of production. In those questions, China's experience will be directly applicable.

However, even if there is a lengthy ground war amongst imperialist countries, Russia's experience will not light the road forward for the formerly entrenched parasitic classes of the imperialist countries. In Russia, a merely semi-imperialist country when Lenin led the revolution there, the labor aristocracy had not settled in and caused a hardening of the arteries the way it has in the advanced imperialist countries today.

The model for the imperialist countries in terms of the question of parasitism is more likely to be found in the U.S. Civil War that ended with the freeing of slaves. After the U.S. Civil War, former slave-holding classes did not surrender their political agenda, and they continued to have widespread influence amongst the oppressor nation as a whole. In particular, the gains of the Civil War were tempered by the embitterment of the white people in the South. However, unlike some authors, MIM does not believe the Civil War "nourished rather than canceled the hatreds and intolerance that persisted for decades."(311) We believe there was a net gain in that certain aspects of oppression became unthinkable. As in any other struggle, it was a case of two steps forward, one step back.

Likewise, in the future, decisive acts of force will settle the question of parasitism in the main as slavery had been finished by force before it. After the revolution, those who continue to put forward opposition to reparations in the name of nationalism will have to be put down by force and deprived of their political rights just as slave-owners once were in the United $tates when those slave-owners were not allowed to run for public office after the Civil War. Opposition to the re-distribution of resources including the unpaid labor of the Third World must become unthinkable.

Many Amerikans and other oppressor nation people falsely believe that they have lived under a democracy of majority rule instead of minority rule of Amerikans over the world majority. The period of Reconstruction after the U.S. Civil War is very useful to understand. None of the Confederate states had governments recognized by President Lincoln at first. He offered pardons to most Confederates, but at least one-tenth of a state (as measured by the number of the total vote in the presidential election of 1860) had to swear allegiance to the Union and then organize a government dedicated to abolition of slavery. Lincoln semi-succeeded in four states, but the Congress did not recognize their representatives, because the Congress was more radical than Lincoln, when Lincoln died.

The new president Andrew Johnson started out more radical than Lincoln by disenfranchising (a word that means taking away citizen rights such as the vote and ability to run for office) military and civil officers of the Confederacy and anyone with property in excess of $20,000 at the time. Estates were made liable to confiscation.

When the South elected some of the disenfranchised supremacists anyway, President Johnson backed down, but the Congress became more radical and nearly impeached him. The upsurge of the struggle led to the verbal recognition of the Black right to vote in the Constitution and the ratification of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments by the South. A few years later though, the KKK carried the day and the radical Republicans were undercut and removed from power in the South. The "solid South" for the Democratic Party started,(312) because of white resentment toward the progressive dictatorship exercised over them.

With every passing year after the Civil War the possibility of a restoration of slavery receded. Likewise, in a future socialist revolution re-civilization stage, for every year that ex-oppressor nation children experience a world of reparations and internationalist economics, the possibility for a return to parasitism will recede.

Many peaceful peoples of the world will be tempted to show a sentimental attitude toward the peoples of the imperialist countries. Indeed, the national bourgeoisie of the ex-neo-colonies may seek to cut a deal with the ex-labor aristocracy: "stay out of my country and I will let you resume your living standard of before." We may expect this national bourgeoisie to arise in the vanguard parties of the ex-oppressed nations. It will be similar to the comprador bourgeoisie of the past, but it will have much better leverage over the imperialist countries and it will have the possibility of striking a deal with the old labor aristocracies directly for the first time in history, once the imperialist countries are put into receivership by a proletarian United Nations.

Thus far in our discussions with peoples around the globe, the people with the greatest difficulty understanding the oppressor nation people of the imperialist countries are the First Nations. The difficulty lies in that the so-called "primitive communists" can look back 100, 200, 300 or 400 years to know what their own lives were like without the white man. For the white man to look back to a period without rigid classes and war--that would require thousands of years. For this reason we can say that the white culture and many other cultures effectively have no cultural reference points for living a peaceful life in economic harmony.

To the First Nations, the U.S. Civil War is a mystery. We must say to the First Nations, the U.S. Civil War brought a big advance in the white man's thinking. Yes, he suffered massive violence setting records for up to that time. That's the way the people of these hardened class societies are: they are better off after a hugely violent experience. In this way, some kinds of violence--those linked to slavery--become unthinkable to the vast majority of white people. To achieve the kind of harmonious society that existed in some First Nations not long ago or may even still exist in some places, the imperialist oppressor nations would have to go through a traumatic change involving tremendous violence. Even some First Nation peoples have been infected by class society and will undergo some violence in the process of self-transformation.

Some Black leaders have also misunderstood the lesson of the U.S. Civil War. Martin Luther King saw the bitterness of the Southern white man and opted for Christian pacifism. Nelson Mandela is adopting the same idea to a large extent in avoiding recriminations in post-apartheid society.

After the imperialist countries are put into receivership, the temptation is going to be to grant the ex-oppressor nation people an act of internationalist generosity. Why not forget about the reparations the reasoning will go--perhaps for the benefit of peaceful harmony. The labor aristocracy will have some basis for resisting reparations and even the would-be comprador bourgeoisie will have some basis for denying reparations. After all if the government can appropriate the means of production internationally for the benefit of socialism, it follows that the peoples of the old oppressed nations can expropriate the national bourgeoisie even more easily. To have its own sphere of operations for exploitation, the national bourgeoisie of the oppressed nations will have to pay lip-service to the revolution against imperialism while gutting its economic content and withdrawing from joint operations over the imperialist bourgeoisie as soon as possible.

There will also be much sentimental thinking about the oppressor nation that will only hold back the scientific development of the oppressor nation. The dictatorship of the proletariat will first teach the oppressor nation to respect other nations' military and political achievements. Perhaps there will already be some appreciation of various cultural achievements. However, to complete the process of thought reform, the oppressor nation will need to be confronted with economic achievements and the oppressor nation will have to be taught a whole new language of economic statistics hitherto lost in the haze of commodity fetishism and nationalism. In essence, the oppressor nation persyn will need to understand comparative socialist labor productivity coefficients with the effects of differential levels of capital, raw materials and schooling removed.

Without a simple way of understanding concretely the productivity of the Third World peoples, the oppressor nation is liable to believe that imperialism was a just order. The white man and womyn is capable of thought reform and revolutionary transformation, because dialectics applies everywhere. It is a mistake to believe the white oppressor nation people is simply revenge-driven, and hence pacifism is necessary. For reasons of the history of the oppressor nation, it does respect military force and can receive an important lesson in conjunction with overwhelming military force. A decisive act of force combined with a seizure of assets and a well-publicized burst of publicity for an increase in global productivity, environmental progress, and a burst in economic growth will work well. A generous combination of half-measures that leaves the oppressor nation believing it is vastly economically superior is likely to backfire and embolden opposition to the dictatorship of the proletariat. An expansion of global productivity can fire the imagination of the ex-oppressor nations, because that is something embedded in the oppressor nations' history.

The political organization administering the ex-imperialist countries will have a new bourgeoisie within. The difficulty of socialist transition in the advanced countries will be the ally of the new bourgeoisie. If reparations are not undertaken in a serious fashion, there will be a continued material basis for the formation of a labor aristocracy under socialism. The political grousing of the labor aristocracy will serve as a favorable political climate for the restoration of capitalism outright, possibly in some new combination of neo-colonial deals.

In the struggle to eliminate the material basis for the labor aristocracy, we must make maximum use of modern transport to ship off resources to the Third World from the imperialist countries, but there is another convenient weapon in the hands of the international proletariat, the power to force open borders. If it is too difficult for thorough reparations to occur such that ex-capital departs for the former neo-colonies, then the Third World workers must migrate to take over the means of production in the ex-imperialist countries.

In addition to shipping resources and opening borders, there are two on-paper means of settling the reparations question that will be at the disposal of the proletarian dictatorship. One is that a tax or interest rate on capital may be established in those countries or regions using historically stolen capital. A second method will be to use political mechanisms to set the exchange-rate between oppressor nations and oppressed nations so that no gains are seen in the oppressor nations from using capital representing dead-labor of Third World workers. That last method is the least desirable politically, because it will be the least clear politically and because having different currencies for the purpose of controlling consumption may not be compatible with removing borders.

As the early 21st century progresses one demographic fact of life will favor reparations in the imperialist countries. It is the fact that the white oppressor nations are aging in such a way that an increasing portion of white and Japanese workers will be retired. While ex-oppressor nation workers are retiring the political conditions for letting someone else use the means of production that the worker thought of as "his" or "hers" becomes more favorable. If there is a sentimental deal to be made, a sop thrown to the dying labor aristocracy to win it over to proletarian dictatorship, it should be the golden parachute of retirement. The moral standing of the Third World worker will rise in the eyes of the ex-oppressor nation when it is pointed out that the oppressor nation workers are disproportionately retired workers dependent on socialist pensions. Already in the ex-Soviet Union we see a basis for this as retirees are a political basis for the restoration of socialism. In 99 percent of cases of retirement, the ex-oppressor nation workers should not be allowed to take the means of production with them into retirement. If need be, there should be violence to prevent them from absconding with the means of production.

As long as the dictatorship of the proletariat does not allow an accumulation of property in the hands of the ex-exploiter classes or control of the means of production in the hands of a few in the vanguard party guiding the dictatorship of the proletariat, the transition should go well. In the case of former exploiter class people, particularly scientists and technicians, to the extent that they make great contributions to the ease of proletarian administration, they can be rewarded with higher living standards, including for their families or friends. The inventor of the computer menu called an operating system that eliminated the need for much programming and made it possible for the ordinary person to use a computer is an example of something that should receive an award under socialism as well, perhaps $2 million and much notoriety. In the thinking of individualists, lotteries motivate gambling behavior, and such will be the effect of giving out large awards for invention and innovation conducive to eliminating classes. If we think of the effort some people in the oppressor nations put into getting on professional sports teams, we can think of how to tap this sort of illusion on behalf of the proletariat.

In this way we can pay the old exploiter classes to eliminate their own class roles. A small number of people living luxurious lives is a small price to pay to eliminate the need for millions of bourgeois experts and to make the process of production fully accessible to the proletariat both technically and administratively. As long as it is illegal to use the $2 million for bourgeois political propaganda or trade in the means of production, it will go into conspicuous but relatively harmless luxury consumption. Even with such awards from the socialist dictatorship, the conspicuous consumption of the luxury classes will decrease considerably compared with previous capitalist life until that time when socialism has unleashed production to be environmentally sound and sustainable all across the planet.

Giving select material incentives to the bourgeois experts to eliminate the need for bourgeois experts is a phenomenon fully in-line with our expectation of materialist dialectics. It is materialist in that we must build socialism with the humyn materials at hand, not from some miracle delivered from God. It is dialectical in the same way that Lenin said the capitalist class would have to bid on the rope contract for the hanging of the capitalist class. In the imperialist countries, this should be our message to the dying exploiter classes. If they want their living standards, they can still have them by "working hard" as the psychology of this class goes, but not for building weapons of mass destruction or whatever else the capitalist needs for profit. Under socialism, the dying exploiter classes will have to contribute the technical and administrative advances that eliminate classes if they are to receive a material reward.

In this sense, we communists have the competition of class struggle to lead us to communism. Either the socialist system will conquer or the species will die. "Among the absurdities which the bourgeoisie are fond of spreading about socialism is the allegation that socialists deny the importance of competition. In fact, it is only socialism which, by abolishing classes, and, consequently, by abolishing the enslavement of the people, for the first time opens the way for competition on a really mass scale. And it is precisely the Soviet form of organisation, by ensuring transition from the formal democracy of the bourgeois republic to real participation of the mass of working people in ADMINISTRATION, that for the first time puts competition on a broad basis."(313) Communist equality in education alone will be sufficient to prove Lenin right.

Under capitalism, technical progress is held back because technology is private property. In contrast, we will seek to reward specialists for their innovations, but we will pay one-time rewards and then hand out the software or other technological knowledge free. This will also contribute to streamlining of innovation, which is currently faced with fragmentation caused by confidentiality concerns of property-holders. The spokespeople of humyn capital getting their paperback books published by the millions put forward their bromides like, "The catalyst for innovation is profit. An entrepreneur will benefit from profits generated through innovation, and an existing business will benefit if innovation causes profits to increase."(314)

The socialist transition in the imperialist countries will be very difficult, full of twists and turns. I have not touched on the subject of how the world's peoples will be represented in the dictatorship of the proletariat existing in the ex-imperialist countries. While the oppressed masses are correct not to trust the imperialist country workers, the oppressed nations are going to need some experience in internationalist cooperation amongst themselves before imperialism can be destroyed properly. This is a whole different subject that I will not elaborate on here, except to point out the danger in the future of a direct alliance of the national bourgeoisie of the oppressed nations with the labor aristocracy of the imperialist countries. To sum up the theoretical argument so far, the existence of a labor aristocracy that replaced the proletariat of the imperialist countries has ramifications for the movement now and under socialism. The special historical problems that have arisen in the imperialist countries will require that we socialists see to a whole stage of socialist history in which the ex-exploiting classes of the oppressor nations are cleansed of the many various parasitic habits and thoughts. In that stage, reparations to the Third World are not just a matter of justice; they are essential to eradicating the material basis for the labor aristocracy and a key to preventing the restoration of imperialism. On this question there can be no compromise without prolonging the agony of class war between the rising proletariat and the representatives of the dying exploiter system. Thus the dictatorship of the proletariat must act ruthlessly and quickly in this regard while it can offer ex-oppressor nation workers retirement generally and material incentives for doing select work that specifically undermines class formation.

Now I turn to a factual examination of the class structure applying the definitions, historical traditions and theories discussed above. We shall see that the theories of Lenin on imperialism are still vindicated, even by the publication of government statistics in the imperialist countries.

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