by PIRAO chief
While a majority of web sites are not pornography, the traffic at the minority of pornography web sites is very heavy and some heavily-used sites have put up MIM material. The print media corporations such as the New York Times run down the Internet by glorifying stories about pornography, cybersex and stalkers. It is in the interest of the print media monopoly capitalists to slow down the stampede to the Internet, because they can't compete there compared with the dominance they have in their current niches.
As is their legal and political right given MIM's distribution policies, some pornography web sites have put up MIM's non-copyrighted material. As an example of what happens, one can visit (http://www.totse.com/files/FA012/polstate.htm). (See also, http://www.totse.com/files/FA004/pcpdocs.htm) Another heavily trafficked site has MIM material and a heavy contingent of Comrade Gonzalo's work right on the home page.
In the website mentioned above, as of May 10th, 2000, we learn that the web site has served 70 million web pages in 26 months. Other web sites measuring hits show that millions of visitors have passed by MIM articles in a pornographic context.
MIM has put forward the line that pornography for profit will be abolished under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Although many people talk about the so-called freedom to pose naked, we believe 99% of pornography is not for expression's sake but for money and we think we will prove it when we abolish pornography for profit and most of it disappears. Nonetheless, MIM applauds the bureaucrats of gender dynamics and their consumers for circulating MIM material along with that of other Maoists such as Comrade Gonzalo in Peru. If MIM had the computer server running that could take the traffic, it would also run a pornography server with MIM work on it.
Currently, the number of hits on a pornography web site is like the number of people who pass by a laundromat and see the MIM Notes without necessarily picking it up. Obtaining 70 million hits for a web site with MIM material on it is no small matter. From PIRAO's point of view, since it is PIRAO's job to provide logistical support, the creation of a pornography website context for MIM articles distribution is a great accomplishment. In fact, while it is difficult to measure and know for sure, it is certainly in the realm of the possible that such web sites are a greater accomplishment than anything the PIRAO has done, based on the possibility of how many people could have read MIM articles on those websites.
If MIM were already dominating Internet web traffic, there would be no reason to applaud the gender bureaucrats and gender aristocrats producing and consuming pornography and putting MIM articles into circulation. In such a context it would be rightist (lagging behind conditions) to applaud the kings and queens of pornography for posting our work. Since pornography cannot be abolished by lifestyle choices under capitalism, it would be ultraleftism (getting ahead of conditions for victory) of a Christian sort to hold our noses at pornography's benefit to MIM article circulation.
A boycottist disdain does nothing concrete to advance our cause, while it does make a persyn feel more righteous. For the same righteous feel-good reasons, some people prefer to die or go to prison in one glorious gun battle with police than to do the steady work of revolution in the imperialist countries. Such subjective righteousness would be as wrong as failing to abolish pornography for profit when the dictatorship of the proletariat comes to power. MIM's limited history and the history of the communist movement more generally show that people with ultraleft lifestyle concerns don't get anything done in the movement, and they burn out and quit.
Many people would say that pornography is intrinsically wrong just as failing to die in gun battle for the revolution is intrinsically wrong. Without a scientific context, both ideological statements are true. They fail when it comes to materialism, a philosophical standard for what works toward achieving communism.
In the case of pornography, MIM does not hold that most imperialist country pornography is produced under conditions of dire exploitation; although the lumpen wimmin play a disproportionate role in pornography. To say that imperialist country pornography is exploitative may be playing into the idea that the depicted people in pornography are gender oppressed, when usually they are in fact gender privileged people in a leisured society.
The lifestyle line comes right out of the Bible and Ten Commandments. People who consciously and unconsciously uphold this approach may also distinguish between soft-core pornography and hard-core. They would applaud if Hollywood glorified a Maoist leader or if Rage Against the Machine or other major-label rock band did, but they draw the line against hard-core pornography culture. Feminism infused with such a view will tend to see the problem as very limited to a certain niche of society. These same people would not think twice about having a checking account with a bank profiting from super-exploitation throughout the Third World but they would gag thinking about MIM articles on a pornography web site. If we boycott everything that is associated with injustice, we would boycott everything in the world as it exists now. That is unsustainable idealism of an ultraleft sort.
Marx and Engels said "freedom is the recognition of necessity." The sooner we embrace the concrete situation we are in, the sooner we can advance past it.
Contact MIM by writing mim@mim.org