Review of MIM in 1998 on the global situation
[This is not a review of the entire global year of 1998, just MIM's part of it.]
International situation
The end of 1998 marked a great victory for the international communist movement as six Maoist parties practicing People's War signed a document upholding Mao's People's War and started the process of exchanging experiences on a formal basis.
Prior to the 1999 Congress, MIM also received its first fully fraternal greetings from any organization in our history. The Russian comrades belonging to youth groups (Revolutionary Young Communist League (RYCL(b)) and the Obninsk branch of the All-Union Leninist Communist Union of Youth (VLKSM) sent in their fraternal greetings, thus breaking MIM's international isolation.
At the same time, in the past year, MIM consciously scaled back its international work for reasons outlined in the section labeled "the subjective factors."
The United Front
MIM took some baby steps in setting up the proletarian-led united front in the past year. We still seek input from comrades throughout the world on how to do this.
We sought to forge a student-lumpen alliance by seeking to rally public university students against higher tuition bills caused by the prison craze of the United $tates. This was most notable in MIM's willingness to support an economic demand of the imperialist country petty-bourgeoisie in the context of a direct fight against the state.
MIM has also started to phrase environmental demands in the interests of the proletariat in language pleasing to the petty-bourgeoisie. MIM has determined that the environmental movement is something that the imperialists cannot successfully divert through a redivision of surplus-value. By its nature, the environment cannot be individualized and hence the environmental movement is a natural to overcome Anglo-Saxon individualism so deeply rooted in the imperialist bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie including the labor aristocracy.
First and foremost of classes within U.S. borders responding to the MIM line is the lumpenproletariat. Organizations within the prison arose to fill in the need for a united front in addition to MIM's existing RAIL organization which continued to enjoy success across the continent. In the prison, MIM attracted many conscious Muslims willing to join a united front led by MIM both as individuals and organizations.
MIM has also struggled to form a united front with the Almighty Latin Kings Queens Nation, which is probably the most important and advanced organization of Latino youth inside U.$. borders. Of course, the lumpenproletariat must seek to undergo proletarian ideological remolding to really focus its rebellion, but MIM is not put off from this work the way other parties are because of the millions of threads connecting them to the labor aristocracy and thus imperialism.
Also notable within united front work, MIM had to lay down the line against anti-Semitism during the year both within U.S. borders and internationally. Opposing the oppressor white nation and its parasitism is good. Opposing only the Jewish section of it is falling for a Nazi diversion to bail out imperialist parasites--the oppressor nation.
MIM's work suffered setbacks in the First Nations, but on the whole many baby steps were made on the united front. United front work could have developed further except for a shortage of Maoist comrades.
The international united front versus the North Amerikan one
MIM continued to face pressure from organizations across the world to drop its third cardinal principle on the fact that the working class of the imperialist countries has been converted en masse into a petty- bourgeoisie. Of course, that is impossible by MIM's Constitution and the nature of cardinal questions versus other questions.
No international forum of the past year put forward a sense of the international united front. In the past, the Seventh Congress of the COMINTERN was known for being a Congress indicating how the parties of the whole world should work together in one strategic plan.
MIM does not have a specific strategic plan for the international united front and would not attempt to form one beyond what is implicit in allying oppressed nations against imperialism. That is in accordance with Mao's views. An initiative for a specific strategy of resolving the principal contradiction would have to come from the parties in the Third World practicing People's War, not MIM. As MIM has outlined in previous Congress resolutions, we oppose the reformation of a COMINTERN.
The nature of communist advance is that it is best to take one approach and succeed or fail. At this time, MIM is accelerating its efforts to clarify the position of the international communist movement with regard to MIM's third cardinal. This has become necessary because of advances in the international communist movement. It is better to oppose liquidationism in the imperialist countries than to fail to resolve the third cardinal question for or against MIM. If the international communist movement unites without MIM that fact should be on the historical record so that it can be learned from.
It is possible to make nationalist errors by putting too much emphasis on the needs of revolution in one place versus the needs of revolution in another place. MIM is in danger of making a nationalist or "American exceptionalist" error by ignoring the demands of the many organizations internationally opposing our third cardinal with the exception of the Russian comrades.
Yet from examining MIM's current social base and the history of the Black Panthers, Young Lords, I-Wor- Kuen, Red Guard Party etc., MIM has added reason to stand by its scientific analysis of the international flow of surplus-value in the form of superprofits. With the exception of our Russian comrades belonging to a semi-imperialist country, there is no party in the imperialist countries taking up Maoism and MIM's third cardinal. The best amongst our critics are vague vacillators who mention the existence of the labor aristocracy and superprofits but have failed to calculate both their quantitative and qualitative extent. The others find even a mention of a labor aristocracy and superprofits as too extreme. The oppressed nations within U.$. borders and internationally are correct not to trust parties unwilling to get into this question inside-out, upside-down, backwards and to the very bottom.
Most of the international pressure on MIM comes from imperialist countries and it cannot be said that the Third World parties face MIM's quandary in quite the same way. Hence, MIM does not believe the risk of nationalist error by MIM is high. Bringing down U.$. imperialism is very important, and not a matter of nationalist pride. Hence, we will favor building our own united front at the expense of uniting with revisionists internationally.
The PTB (led by Ludo Martens in Belgium) aided the Unity & Struggle organization formed in New Jersey opposing the MIM line and already it has collapsed in its short existence. It seems that the European- minded comrades do not absorb the fundamental lessons of the Black Panthers and put pressure on MIM without regard to historical facts. We call on the imperialist country organizations to mend their ways and show the Almighty Latin Kings Queens Nation, the Mohawk Nation and the Five Percenters that MIM is not leading them into a chauvinist swamp dominated by oppressor nation worker concerns.
Avoiding the Progressive Labor Party error
Staking out MIM's position in relative isolation in the imperialist countries risks putting MIM on the road to oblivion of the Progressive Labor Party--our forebears in the 1960s. Whatever happens in the international communist movement, MIM resolves to avoid the PLP error. We will never go to the extent of criticizing actual People's Wars the way the PLP did unless better People's Wars arise.
The possibility of an alliance of the national bourgeoisie and the labor aristocracy on an international scale to redivide surplus-value with the imperialists might tempt MIM into complete idealist isolation of the PLP sort. That is to say our third cardinal might tempt us to form another version of PLP, which sees one world and one party. Although our reasons would be different than PLP's we could conceivably put more of an emphasis on attacking the national bourgeoisie the way the PLP has, if we saw a significant danger of the national bourgeoisie taking over the international communist movement in an alliance with the labor aristocracy.
What will save MIM from PLP's fate is MIM's basic training in materialism. Unless People's Wars arise that are led by parties agreeing with MIM's third cardinal, there is no reason not to give fraternal support to the Third World People's Wars that arise that do not agree with MIM's third cardinal.
Today PLP is in the position of criticizing Mao as a capitalist, but PLP leads armed struggle no where in the world. It views the parties upholding the "Gang of Four" as "centrist." Hence, the PLP attitude toward the six parties that just signed a communique on People's War is negative.
Most ultraleftists in the imperialist countries are 5 percent tough conscious ultraleft rhetoric covering up 95 percent dogshit right reformism. The PLP might be 30 percent tough "Marxist-Leninist" ultraleft rhetoric, but it is still 60 percent parasitic reformism and 10 percent sub-reformist lifestyle politics. Its willful placing of itself outside of armed struggle or concrete support for it should be a dead giveaway as to its bourgeois nature-- if the fact that anarchists in Montreal were publishing their essays and those of Trotskyists on China was not the clue.
MIM will not go down this PLP road and MIM calls on the proletarian scientific element in PLP to make a break for MIM. We are correct about surplus-value and superprofits. PLP made errors in the 1960s and 1970s, but not for the reasons PLP thought. By failing to even rebut MIM on international surplus- value flows and calculations, PLP is on the pragmatist road. It may have started its isolation from Mao's international communist movement for subjective reasons that seemed like the defense of revolutionary science, but by now PLP is surrendering even its scientific cudgels by refusing to polemicize with MIM or at least calculate international transfers of surplus-value and the extent of the labor aristocracy for itself.
The subjective factors
MIM suffered some serious setbacks in the past year, mostly in connection to the subjective factors needed for revolution. Political degeneration resulted in the loss of veteran comrades. Kim in Korea has also spoken on the lack of the subjective element, but MIM believes the problem to be more narrowly focussed.
Some people might think the arduous tone of struggle in MIM stifles the subjective element needed for revolution. However, MIM has rejected this line of thinking, because keeping imperialist country parties on the Maoist road is a jarring task. There is no getting around that the vanguard party must be the one place where science is valued more highly than ego or "self-esteem."
Political degeneration is common in the imperialist countries and may not seem noteworthy, but in the past year it hit especially hard. We can only remind ourselves of many of Lenin's statements in the early 1900s about petty-bourgeois influences and intellectual vacillation causing wreckage and waste. The state smashed Lenin's party a couple times, but it came back.
The subjective factor hurt our work in the Spanish language and international relations. Shortages of seasoned comrades also screamed out in PIRAO and Maoist Sojourner work.
The economic boom and unparalleled U.$. imperialist supremacy may actually be increasing degeneration pressures on our comrades. Imprisonment of the most oppressed people also continues to increase, further undermining our work in some ways, while generating an increase in resistance and consciousness at the same time. At the same time, we believe that two other factors underlying the subjective factor must be examined as more specific and central.
One is that MIM arose without the kind of cultural fermentation typical before successful parties arise. It remains true that MIM's overall cultural work lags. MIM has identified the scientific nature of the problem compounded by the enemy's chokehold on pseudo-feminism and pseudo-environmentalism--the general approach that says all problems can be resolved by a change of lifestyles. Identifying the problem and finding cultural workers to undo it are not the same thing.
Secondly, the collapse of Maoist Sojourner points to MIM's failures in organizing sojourners. Because of the historical chokehold of revisionism in imperialist countries, temporary immigrants or permanent first generation and even second generation immigrants do not give themselves much of a role in bringing down U.$. imperialism within U.S. borders. MIM's theory points to the essential role of having a sojourner backbone in the party that has the subjective umph to direct and carry out revolution.
The historical fact that the punk rock and rap music movements are the best elements of cultural fermentation we have in North Amerika is something we probably cannot fix through our own efforts. However, MIM has identified advanced elements in the sojourner community. Let history note that MIM has put the question of anti-party liquidationism to these elements and has offered to create leadership roles for the sojourners as MIM has done before for teenagers and wimmin. There is no reason that the core leadership of MIM could not be sojourners. While the Third World may be able to put off the question of imperialist country class structure for a strategic length of time, sojourners must not.
As time passes, comrades become more efficient in their work. This has shown in all areas of work-- finance, the web, journalism, tabloid production and distribution. Even a party of just one comrade can get a lot done in North Amerika. We will prefer that outcome to getting in the way of the struggle of the international proletariat, the way many degenerates and revisionists of U.$. history have.
We expect 1999 to be a year of some continuities but also a year of decisions by our fraternal comrades, some new and some old. This document is to mark for historical purposes the international context MIM is in and the difficulties it faces as well as summarize some of its areas of success. 1999 will be a year where sojourner and immigrant questions are squarely addressed and more steps are taken to split away the middle classes away from imperialism within North America.
Contact MIM by writing mim@mim.org