revised January 1994

by MC5

In the 1970s there were some groups that thought they were Maoist parties or pre-parties of the oppressed nations. They all dissolved or went in for revisionism. There was even a group of oppressed nationality Maoist parties and scattered whites called the Revolutionary Wing. This dissolution of student and oppressed nationality revolutionary organizations is a tragedy that people serious about revolution today must learn from.

People took a lot of lumps after the Black Panther Party demise and many felt they had no clear-cut place to go, no "shining path." The Maoist struggle in the United States has never been the same since the state smashed the Panthers. A key lesson to learn is the extent to which the state managed to split Maoist groups over non-fundamental questions. The combination of state repression and theoretical disunity proved deadly.

Today, Maoists need only look to the issue of Maria Elena Moyano's assassination by the Peruvian communists to see that the imperialists and their lackeys attempt to sow dissension within revolutionary ranks on questions of theory -- in this case feminism.

In the mid-1970s, most oppressed nationals left the Revolutionary Communist Party, but some Blacks and other national minorities stayed with the RCP and October League. So the issue became "who is vanguard?" The Maoist forces' failure to unite theoretically at the time caused a lot of individuals to degenerate politically.

The Revolutionary Wing, with its Black, Asian and Latino vanguards seemed to have the most momentum for awhile and then it splintered, from ultraleftist bickering, liquidationism and bourgeois nationalist opportunism.

The following is MIM's position for practice in the current period.

1. Currently MIM is a multinational party. However, MIM recognizes that there are times when vanguard forces from the oppressed nationalities believe they must have separate, single nationality vanguard parties. MIM recognizes the right of self-determination of such vanguard forces and hence would defer to such a party on the question of organizing the oppressed nationality in question and believes that the validity of single-nationality organizing has been proved in communist history.

MIM defines as vanguard those forces with a demonstrated experience of supporting the Cultural Revolution in China and opposing post-Stalin Soviet revisionism. In 1994, these issues are more clear-cut than ever. Anyone who doesn't recognize the ex-Soviet Union or China as capitalist cannot be leading the masses toward classless society.

In North America, MIM has the added stipulation that an organization applying the science of Maoism must be able to recognize that the Euro-Amerikan working class is not a proletariat, but instead a labor aristocracy, which means that the masses of Euro-Amerikan people are not objectively allied with proletarian revolution. The answers of any organization in North America to the three scientific questions just posed above are what separates those genuinely practicing the science of Maoism and those just claiming the Maoist science and mouthing the slogans.

Currently, and on the basis of these cardinal criteria, MIM is aware of no genuine Maoist single nationality party in the United States except those incipient in MIM circles; although, in the 1960s and 1970s there were many, so there is some basis to expect them to arise again.

MIM does not discount the possibility that single-nationality Maoist parties in North America will form outside MIM circles. On the other hand, the oppressed nationality comrades of the MIM may find themselves in a position to form the single-nationality vanguard party of their nation. Currently, however, MIM is the vanguard organization of all the nations in North America.

Should a genuine Maoist single-nationality party form outside of MIM circles, MIM will determines whether or not that party is the vanguard of the oppressed nation in question. Yet, even should MIM recognize that new party as the vanguard, we will still recognize as Maoists those oppressed nationality members of MIM who refuse to join the new Maoist single-nationality party. Such may sound like a contradiction, but it is a contradiction in the struggle for self-determination that cannot be resolved until the completion of the New Democratic stage, when self-determination is actual and not just ideological.

National liberation organizations that do not meet the conditions for being vanguards are nonetheless our allies.

Right now MIM is clearly the most advanced party for all nationalities within U.S. borders. This is no doubt in large part because of its firm anti-imperialist history of struggle on behalf of Third World oppressed nations.

We encourage all oppressed peoples to join MIM, because joining is necessary to maintaining a vanguard orientation in this period when we are recovering from the state's destruction of our most class-conscious organizations. It is a period of regroupment and education of the youth for the creation of new Maoist forces.

2. MIM is aware from history that oppressed nationalities may themselves sharply divide on the question of multinational parties. Applying the spirit of this resolution will require arduous struggle. In the event of the formation of a Maoist single-nationality party, MIM will struggle to inform its members of the views of the single nationality party, remain on good terms with all genuine Maoist groups and leave open party membership to the decisions of individual oppressed nationality comrades. Those oppressed nationality comrades who do not opt for a single-nationality party will always have a place in the organizations preparing for the day of the joint dictatorship of the oppressed nations over Euro-Amerika.

MIM also advocates that any vanguard organization for Euro-Amerikans always accept members from other genuine Maoist vanguards, since there is no Euro-Amerikan proletariat, and the material basis for a revolutionary Euro-Amerikan party is weak. It is very possible that the best possible leaders for the Maoist Internationalist Party of Amerika may be non-Amerikan immigrants.

There may be enough John Browns to run a newspaper and other communications networks, which is crucial at this stage in the struggle, but MIM does not believe there are enough to run a whole government -- a true dictatorship of the proletariat. Currently we base our strategic plans on that existing shortage of white proletarian revolutionaries. (There is a general shortage of revolutionaries, but history has shown that the proportion of revolutionaries in the oppressed nations can rise very quickly.)

3. The form of organization is not a cardinal question. Whether oppressed nationality comrades favor multinational organizing or single-nationality organizing, it is not a dividing line question in the Maoist camp. This is something that anti-revisionist forces have failed to grasp in the past and it is a line that represents MIM's unique application of the universal science of Maoism to conditions in North America. The goal of self-determination of nations is universal and the analysis of Maoist single-nationality organizing within U.S. borders is MIM's particular summation of conditions in North America.

Similarly, the liberation of national territory by oppressed nations of North America is not a cardinal question. As Black Panther Party Minister of Information Eldridge Cleaver said, the point is not to force one thing or another down a people's throat. The point is to organize the people for the actual power to choose between alternatives. The oppressed nations will choose in a plebiscite whether or not they want a liberated territory. On the way to those plebiscites, successful completion of many lower stages of struggle will have to lead the way.

In the same way, we must favor self-determination of Maoist comrades. They must have a choice between multinational and single-nationality organizing or a combination of both. In the short-run, MIM advocates multinational organizing.

For the long run, MIM advocates single-nationality organizing as the principal mainstay with an important complementary role for multinational organization in building the joint dictatorship of the oppressed nations over Euro-Amerikan imperialism. Yet MIM does not make the chauvinist or provincialist error of elevating this opinion to a dividing line question.

4. Given MIM's analysis of the current period, and the need for single-nationality parties, most glaringly in the First Nations where armed struggle is already fairly developed, it becomes necessary to identify a good point for MIM comrades to develop single-nationality parties. This will become apparent as the strength of MIM develops in practice, particularly as the MIM institutions and the independent power of the oppressed grow.

One good gauge of the readiness of a group of comrades to form a party that would not degenerate or die right away (as so many organizations have in North America) is its ability to put out a regular newspaper and put forward the necessary Maoist line. MIM Notes only comes out monthly for the benefit of all nationalities. MIM comrades looking to form single-nationality parties desperately need more comrades and funds.

MIM is not saying that vanguard parties require newspapers to be vanguard parties. If there were no MIM at all, then any group of two or more Maoist comrades in any nation would constitute the vanguard.

Now there is a MIM though, a MIM that is growing in order to facilitate the mutual development of revolutionaries in North America. At some stage, that development will entail the formation of single-nationality parties. When the struggle will take that form is principally a practical question, a question of when the struggle would be best served by its taking the single-nationality form. Once again, MIM must stress that while it voices these opinions on these questions, the line on these questions is not a dividing line among Maoists.

5. In the rest of the world, multinational parties have carried off successful Maoist revolutions. In South Africa and the United States, the world's most parasitic imperialist powers, the most advanced Maoist forces from the 1960s believed that national liberation required separate organizations for the different nations.

In the mid-1970s, the Revolutionary Wing and other groups were saying the parties should be separate. The Black Panther Party had said they should be separate. Others were saying that only a multinational vanguard can achieve the overthrow of imperialism and guarantee the right to self-determination.

A lot of groups supported self-determination in word, but divided on non-fundamental questions in deed -- constituting a blow for self-determination.

All Maoist organizations that recognize that the history of the international communist movement must be summed up in favor of Mao's analysis of the Cultural Revolution and the Soviet Union should work together. All organizations in North America that see in addition that the genuine application of Maoist science requires the analysis that the Euro-Amerikan working class is a labor aristocracy, either in its majority or its entirety, are regarded by MIM as fraternal affiliates.