This is an archive of the former website of the Maoist Internationalist Movement, which was run by the now defunct Maoist Internationalist Party - Amerika. The MIM now consists of many independent cells, many of which have their own indendendent organs both online and off. MIM(Prisons) serves these documents as a service to and reference for the anti-imperialist movement worldwide.

Pitfalls of Single Issue Organizing

Why revolutionaries should work with MIM and not with reformist organizations

by MC5 and MC17
Revised September 1995 by MCB52 and MC234

In recruiting anti-imperialists, anti-militarists and other activists to the party, MIM encounters a very common set of questions, especially among students. Many ask about the "effectiveness" of putting out MIM's line when only the most politically advanced will join the Party. Because they do not see work within MIM as effective, often activists will not want to work within MIM when they can work within reformist single-issue groups or other mass organizations.

First, we need a definition of terms. A single-issue group is a political organization that focuses on one issue -- e.g., apartheid or abortion. Sometimes MIM uses the phrase "single-issue group" interchangeably with "mass organization." Members in single or multi- issue mass organizations support a range of political views and do not specifically uphold a worked out universal ideology, such as Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. In other words, a mass organization is not a front group for another political organization, such as a supposed communist party or the Moonie Church.

Another type of organization accepts the leadership and the line of a different organization. MIM started two such Party-led organizations: the Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist League (RAIL) and MIM Supporters Group (MSG). Different than the Party, RAIL and MSG members are not required to uphold MIM's three dividing line principles; voting members must not have a worked-out line against them. People join RAIL because they want to do general anti-imperialist work, and they join MSG because they support our politics but are not yet ready politically or they refuse to make the personal sacrifices necessary for MIM membership. MIM considers it opportunist and dishonest not to explain openly that an organization is led by another or its line. Leadership and influence from another organization should not be hidden from the membership of the organization or from the masses.

The terms "mass organization" and "single issue group" are used to connote organizations that are part of mass movements. The distinction is important because while MIM may lead mass movements, MIM does not seek to lead mass organizations.

Do revolutionaries hold back mass orgs?

Questions of MIM's role and leadership in mass organizations tend to arise in the context of volunteer mass organizations as well as organizations having professional leadership like NOW or the NAACP. The argument given is usually that revolutionaries will be able to exert pressure on the organization, moving it further to the left. Thus, through the organization, they will be gaining greater concessions from the existing power structure, while at the same time, by pushing the organization to the left, they hope to slowly radicalize its membership as well.

There are several problems with this argument. First, if the goal is to gain greater concessions from the government or power structure without changing who's in power, the strategy is usually to build a group with the greatest numbers and most funding possible. Certainly the best way to do this is to create as broad a coalition of people as possible and, just as certainly, radical politics are going to reduce the number of people willing to work for or donate to a given cause. This is not to say that revolutionaries and radicals do not play a significant role in influencing mass movements, but rather to argue that their role should be outside of these more liberal- minded organizations.

Some people working in these groups recognize this problem but argue that radical politics put more pressure on the government and so radicals should still stay in these groups. But when working within the system in these organizations a radical voice is not one that gains popular support. Non-revolutionaries often correctly perceive that their single-issue goals are middle-class in nature and are in fact obstructed by the revolutionaries in the mass organizations. Because the Amerikan government does respond sometimes to middle class unrest when it feels threatened, what reformist mass organizations need to say on television is not that we need a revolution, but that the government is not playing nice and it needs to give us this little concession and then things will be OK.

Selling your revolutionary politics short

No one is disputing that reforms can and do improve the lives of some people. But by working in these organizations for these reforms, potential revolutionaries are forced to sacrifice their politics or risk alienation. In making this sacrifice they are supporting, dishonestly, politics they truly do not endorse. Telling people to Boycott Folgers (once boycotted in connection to the struggle in El Salvador), for example, says to people that all you have to do is make this sacrifice and people will stop dying in El Salvador, never even mentioning the larger role imperialism plays. By supporting these principles, they are missing the opportunity to present to people what truly needs to be done to improve the living conditions of all people. People who could have become revolutionaries instead work for dead-end politics or drop out of politics because they were never adequately challenged to move on to a more worked-out position on how social change is possible.

Many still argue sacrificing revolutionary goals is necessary to radicalize people one step at a time. The idea that people need to be exposed to politics in slow, increasingly radical stages unfortunately holds true for many in this country at this time. This view amounts to white middle-class chauvinism, as white middle-class people may be slow to develop politically, but that is not the problem with all people. Some revolutionary-minded people, particularly from oppressed groups, will not take a second look at a group mixed up in dead-end reformist politics.

Revolutionaries who choose to support reformism instead of working with MIM sell themselves and the masses short. In addition to weakening the reformist movement from within, they also fail to strengthen the real incentive for government concessions--a strong revolutionary movement. At this time, MIM isn't as strong as we could be, precisely because people who should be in MIM devote themselves instead to reformism.

Many of the demands of mass organizations are correct, but those who already recognize the systemic nature of problems and are revolutionaries should step up to revolutionary work. That's the best way to radicalize the masses as we make strides forward.

Why MIM and MIM members don't join mass organizations

MIM and it's members are often invited to join various mass organizations. We refuse, because membership in other organizations leads in only two directions: watering down our politics for the sake of unity, or risking splitting the mass organization over political issues it wouldn't split over by itself. Mass organizations may have less worked out politics, but they do a have a progressive role to play, bringing people into politics, letting people explore issues, taking leadership roles, radicalizing people, and so on. MIM wants to preserve this progressive quality while influencing the group and its members in the most productive way possible.

The most important reason MIM has not worked in leadership roles in mass organizations is its understanding of the historical experience of the most important student organization in the 1960s, Students for a Democratic Society.

SDS

Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), which once included hundreds of thousands of white students, offers relevant experiences in the question of mass organizations and their relationships to supposed vanguard parties. Although SDS was a multi-issue organization, it came to focus on the Vietnam War and had the classic single-issue approach of not insisting on a completely worked out line within its organization. SDS was also vastly more successful in terms of size, energy and radicalism than all the anti-imperialist and anti-militarist organizations of today put together. For all these reasons, it is important to draw conclusions from the experience of SDS, principally it's collapse into factions. This disintegration offers activists in North America the most important negative experience in the history of relationships between vanguard organizations and mass organizations.

What was in the early 1960s the vanguard party in the United States, Progressive Labor Party (PL) infiltrated SDS. It was partly a secret process and largely an open process. PL members became full members of SDS, taking up many of the important leadership roles. PL eventually split and destroyed SDS and then destroyed itself. By pushing its agenda on the group, PL scared off many people and forced those who remained into factional infighting. This effectively kept the group from bringing any more new people into politics while at the same time scaring off or dividing those who were already involved.

One fear MIM regularly encounters from radicals is that quitting leadership roles in the mass organizations hurts the mass organizations and the movement. MIM members have quit leadership positions in many mass organizations. None of the mass organizations collapsed afterwards. On the contrary, in some cases it appears that MIM members held back certain mass organizations because sometimes a year or two after the MIM member quit leadership roles, the ideas that MIM originally espoused become much more widely held within the organization and masses at large. It is very important for radicals and revolutionaries to look out for incipient leaders and to get out of their way.

From this lesson and the lessons of SDS, MIM from its beginning has refused to assume crucial leadership roles in mass organizations. Mass organizations need to exist, but the reformist ones are more effective in these pursuits without communists working from within. Radicals belong in communist-led mass organizations or in a communist party. Revolutionaries should not occupy the time, resources and opportunities of mass organizations except in very special circumstances:

When MIM is asked without solicitation to make a presentation on MIM, it might.
When MIM sponsors an educational event, demonstration or the like, MIM can go ask for help from a mass organization for that one project taking special care not to eat up too much of the organization's time and making it a point to identify the project as MIM- led so that no question of secret infiltration may arise.
MIM members may attend mass organization meetings to inform themselves, but not to attempt to exert political leadership within the meeting.
MIM members may join mass organizations and exert leadership within carefully specified and time-limited roles when MIM has made the determination that only a communist will be able to detonate a necessary mass movement. In this case, MIM members must make it clear that they are Maoists as they do their work and seek to get out of a leadership role as soon as the mass movement created generates people who could serve the role of mass organization leaders.
MIM members may seek to influence members of mass organizations, but not on the time of the mass organization. In other words: before or after meetings of mass organizations, MIM may talk to members of mass organizations in order to persuade them of the necessity of Maoism.
MIM may create groups, such as RAIL and MSG, but it may not deceive the masses about it's politics.
When MIM is in a position to lead a movement, it might. That will mean using the MIM organization to lead a movement without occupying leadership roles in specific mass organizations. Ultimately, MIM hopes to lead a successful revolution that will involve numerous organizations.

Sources: Black Panthers Speak, SDS, "American Leninism," Weatherman.