By MC206
The 1997 MIM Congress passed the following resolution.
"MIM Theory topics should be picked for the next year at each Congress. Comrades should propose topics raised from practice which need further Party-wide investigation/analysis and topics which influence what we will be focusing on in the next period of time. Congress will debate the necessity and importance of the topics as well as correct analyses of these topics to both direct future issues of MT and point the direction that the Party will be heading in the next year."
Although nobody noticed/mentioned it at the time, this contradicts the following resolution passed in 1992.
"From the [then] MIM Theory editor, MC5
"MIM Theory stuff is too long to go with the story conference idea. MIM Theory is more like an academic journal. You submit stuff. You do stuff never done before. There is a lot of gross pragmatism in people coming to me and telling me they want stuff assigned (and then not doing it anyway).
"I know that people implicitly hate to do a lot of work and then have someone say this or that is obviously wrong and probably be right in the assertion. There is no way to avoid that kind of ideological struggle and it should not be avoided on general questions of line that we are going to put out for the masses. Remember "fear no criticism."
"The solution is not to try to guess in advance what each of us in the party is thinking down to the last detail, especially on questions where our thinking is relatively impoverished. Generally if we need some theory of our own it's cause we want to go beyond what we have. The solution is to do a thorough study of what we are talking about before we write about it. Someone who gets all the pamphlets together on the national question is going to do a better job on the national question than anyone else in the party who doesn't do the same arduous reading. You can have all the great conferences and editors you want, but it will still amount to the ignorant leading the misdirected. Committees and editors can not substitute for reading when it comes to research for written propaganda. Some day we'll change all that, but right now the best science is in the printed word; although you have to do a lot of sifting in this bourgeois world to get some nuggets of proletarian science.
"Of course, I can tell you in a general way what is hot out there and you can tell me the same. Obviously we have to do "Soviet bloc collapse," the "failure of socialism" and the national question. At this time of year we also know that there are the Take-Back-the-Night marches. It doesn't take a genius or a committee to see any of that, so we shouldn't waste our time with it.
"I rather like what I saw XX do on Workers World and Workers Vanguard. THAT'S AN EXAMPLE OF HOW YOU KNOW WHEN SOMETHING HAS TO BE DONE, FROM STRUGGLES, not from MC5 or a committee telling you what to do. That's how you're going to have the most enthusiasm too. It's what Mao called getting your own bearings. If you are out there in struggle with the masses somehow (and there are a billion ways to do it), you know what people are saying and then you realize why you have to nuke certain lines. Implicitly you want to nuke certain lines because you have a different sense of reality more in line with that of the international proletariat. You want to nuke incorrect ideas because you implicitly want to extol something more correct that you have already seen or read about, something going toward communism. You bum out when people you know, maybe right under your nose, go for some bourgeois, chauvinist shit with a history of oppressiveness.
"XX had struggles with opportunists, revisionists and misled people and then realized the crying need to say something, for people like the youth sucked in by Workers Vanguard. In this case, XX noticed a debate, looked into it, took sides and then wrote something.
"That's what everyone needs to do. I think when they do, they'll realize the need to keep up with sectarians and pseudo-feminists and liberals on a number of questions in fine detail all the time. They'll also realize what particular work they can do beyond what MIM has already done/distributed. Also from struggling with the masses, people can come to grips with what priorities they should place in their work. I have the job of plugging theoretical work, but theoretical work has its place relative to other work.
"The question IS NOT what work needs to be done. Everyone knows we should be reviewing every so-called communist paper and journal in every issue of MIM Theory, not to mention pseudo-feminism, nationalism, bourgeois propaganda on the formerly socialist countries etc. That's not to mention getting up-to-date and thorough on the movements abroad. No one needs anybody to tell them that all that needs to be done.
"That stuff alone would occupy a lot of comrades. The question is what are people inspired to do: that has a lot to do with struggle and believing that you are capable of advanced theoretical struggle. When you can connect what you are doing to struggles with the masses and the impact that can have, that's when you realize you need to do some theoretical work."
The former is incorrect, the latter correct. We don't need to argue about what we should be writing about -- we need to be writing. Comrades having difficulty in this or the other area have to take the initiative to research MIM/the classics and "knit their brows" to come up with an answer.
"You can' t solve a problem? Well, get down and investigate the present facts and its past history! ...
"When they come across difficult problems, quite a number of people in leading positions simply heave a sigh without being able to solve them. They lose patience and ask to be transferred on the ground that they 'have not the ability and cannot do the job'; These are cowards' words. Just get moving on your two legs, go the rounds of every section placed under your charge and 'inquire into everything,' as Confucius did, and then you will be able to solve the problems, however little is your ability; for although your head may be empty before you go out of doors, it will be empty no longer when you return but will contain all sorts of material necessary for the solution of the problems, and that is how problems are solved. ...
"Investigation may be likened to the long months of pregnancy, and solving a problem to the day of birth. To investigate a problem is, indeed, to solve it."
--Mao Zedong, "Oppose Book Worship."
Furthermore, in practice, we have not implemented the 1997 resolution. Advances in MIM theory have come from comrades going out and tackling problems arising in practice, regardless of the mandated MIM Theory topic.
We rescind the 1997 vote above and reaffirm the 1992 "Producing MIM Theory" resolution.
[A note of self-criticism, that I was putting together this archive and didn't notice our self-contradiction either--mim3@mim.org]
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