by MC5, April 25, 2001
During World War II, Mao Zedong distinguished between comprador lackeys of Japan and comprador lackeys of the U.$. and British imperialists. The latter he managed to have "chill" relatively speaking for a temporary period of time while he dealt blows against Japanese lackeys. According to some Comintern documents, Mao had some doubts about the advisability of playing off one set of lackeys against the other and thought it might be necessary to teach Chiang Kai-shek a few lessons, despite his leaning toward the U.$. side during World War II.
Nonetheless, and despite what the Trotskyists say, it did work out to some extent for Mao to fight one enemy at a time. Chiang Kai-shek even sent Mao money and light weapons, of course not enough to upset the balance between Chiang Kai-shek's reactionaries and Mao's proletarian forces.
Today, in 2001 in the imperialist countries, we are concerned about the contradiction between imperialism and the oppressed nations of the Third World. So that the Third World oppressed nations do not have to fight every single imperialist country enemy, there have been those who have favored economic nationalism--setting one imperialist country against another, to break up the European Union for instance. However, MIM has rejected the strategy of fanning economic nationalism in the imperialist countries, as reminiscent of both World War I and World War II's most reactionary aspects.
Instead, MIM has offered the model of taking the class struggle right to the globalizing imperialists as they globalize. We favor the example of how the fight for access to anti-HIV drugs in South Africa was won--with international solidarity, not with each section of the proletariat going its own way. See MIM Notes #233, May 1, 2001.
The struggle against pharmaceutical companies revealed a small fissure in imperialism that we will aim to take advantage of. In particular, there are those companies that have essential goods--the more expensive the better for contradictions--that the world's exploited and oppressed need and would buy, except that they do not have the money. For each individual capitalist-imperialist, it really does not matter where the money comes from as long as someone pays for his or her goods.
In the year 2001, the progressive social-democrat is only the internationalist social-democrat. Someone who seeks reforms that tax or regulate imperialist country companies or people on behalf of the oppressed nations and super-exploited is progressive and an ally of MIM. These social-democrats have some limited prospects of success because of the contradictions within the capitalist class. Social-democrats who stir up imperialist country economic nationalism or advocate labor aristocracy demands--the traditional social-democrat--is MIM's profound enemy. There has been news in their regard in this past year as well--the admission by Austria's social-democratic party that it did indeed have Nazi leaders in its party before, during and after World War II on a secret basis. (See MIM Notes 209.)
Glaxo, Merck and a host of other imperialists face a problem in their humyn needs industry. Their market is the whole world, because they market things that everyone needs, drugs that prevent death from AIDS for instance. Those companies like Pfizer fortunate enough to have Viagra can sell their drug to the whole world, but they really have a lucrative imperialist country leisure-time market. Even if Pfizer paid MIM, we would not lobby imperialist country people for tax money to pay for Viagra for the Third World. Viagra is not a humyn need and pushing for it would needlessly antagonize the labor aristocracy and perhaps many genuine feminists.
On the other hand, the victory in HIV treatments was so profound and novel, we will have to be especially vigilant against "too good to be true" take-backs by the pharmaceuticals. Not only have some companies surrendered profits, but they have allowed Third World generic manufacturers to make their drugs.
This is an example of how "intellectual property" can be transformed into "a non-tariff barrier to trade" as the Wall Street Journal would say. In other words, we can use the GATT's language of "free trade" to promote the needs of the international proletariat. If Merck invents a drug and gets a U.S. patent for several years and then extends it through special legislation later, that is an example of a non-tariff barrier to trade. Why? The reason is that some Third World generic manufacturer would like to make the drug for its own profit. Thus a question arises of fair competition within the capitalist class. When a country has a special law that other countries do not have, that country is placed under scrutiny by "free trade" logic for setting up special non-tariff barriers to trade. U.S. patent laws are "non-tariff barriers to trade," and that is why the imperialist countries are going to GATT, NAFTA and the FTAA pushing so hard for universal protection of "intellectual property" instead of admitting that their patent laws prevent hard-working Third World manufacturers from making money.
In the global balance of forces, there are those of us who seek to simply withdraw from GATT etc. by fanning economic nationalism. In contrast, MIM seeks to weigh in on behalf of the Third World bourgeoisie against the imperialists and sometimes between one imperialist and another, when the proletariat will benefit. In the case of Merck, Glaxo etc., MIM seeks to weigh in on the side of those wishing to make anti-HIV drug production in the Third World legal and cheap (no royalties for "intellectual property.") If our allies say that the reason is that they are for "free trade" and they are against "non-tariff barriers to trade," MIM will say that after all we too are for economic cooperation globally in the long run.
On the other hand, milk, egg and cheese producers and many other farm producers in the imperialist countries have learned to obtain government subsidies for destroying their products and keeping prices high. MIM would prefer to see those subsidies go to distributing the food to the Third World. The only problem is that doing so destroys the prices in Third World countries, and hence Third World capitalist production, so MIM would like to see price subsidies to global agriculture (instead of just U.$. agriculture) funded by imperialist country taxes just as they are now but only in imperialist countries. This would be another progressive social-democratic reform undoing the damage wrought by economic nationalist social-democrats before.
Another internationalist social-democratic reform that we have seen was in the global treaty to cut back ozone-depleting pollutants. We urge our readers to study our review of Elliot Benedick's book called "Ozone Diplomacy." (See http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/bookstore/enviro.html ) There again it proved possible to take advantage of contradictions between the European and U.$. chemical industries.
The anti-HIV struggle has had a disproportionate share of queer leadership. MIM believes that the past year has shown imperialist country queers did more for the international proletariat than all the imperialist country so-called "labor" organizers combined. MIM hopes to get some people at Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and Rainforest Action Movement also to realize that they are internationalist social-democrats and friends of MIM. These organizations also have tremendous proletarian potential; although some took a turn toward chauvinism during the Gore campaign year.
When multinational corporations or other capitalists have goods that can perish or become outdated, they come under special pressure to find customers and fast. For this reason, imperialist governments taxing their consumers are an apt target for their sales pitch. MIM is in favor of taxing imperialist country people to pay companies (that produce humyn-needs types of goods) and regulate companies for the benefit of the international proletariat. The imperialist country people will gripe about taxes, but they too benefit from cleaning up ozone-depleting production processes globally and from eradicating infectious disease globally. In questions such as food production subsidies, all that is needed is to take existing tax dollars and apply them to global food price support instead of allowing imperialist country farmers to destroy food and get paid for it while Third World people starve and have no price supports for their farmers.
MIM seeks to utilize contradictions in the enemy camp on behalf of the international proletariat. We will not fan economic nationalism simply to have contradictions to utilize. However, we do favor pitting humyn-needs sector multinational companies against imperialist country governments to obtain free "intellectual property" for the Third World. If someone is to pay for that property, it should be the imperialist country governments. We also favor pitting the Third World bourgeoisie against the imperialist country bourgeoisie, in the name of "free trade" and against "intellectual property."
"Intellectual property" is only possible when white-collar workers have had their basic needs taken care of --food, clothing and shelter for instance. Without cooperation from the productive sector workers, there would be no "intellectual property" producers. That is one of the most contemporary implications of the labor theory of value. The proletariat is always the revolutionary class bringing new things to the world. Whether it is the struggle for the environment or anti-HIV drugs, the proletariat has a new way forward.
Contact MIM by writing mim@mim.org