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MIM trashes revisionism for organizing for the global top 10%'s demandsThe Monkey, the Grape and the Cucumber
[Below is a debate that started with basic economic facts of life and then proceeded to debate the common revisionist view that 90% of Amerikkkans are exploited instead of seeing the dominant oppressor nation of Amerikkka as exploiters. In this discussion, it becomes evident that the "RCP"=U$A is desperate and so it changes the subject to whether Russia is imperialist (inventing MIM position to do so), how the RIM stole MIM's original name and MIM's line that "all sex is rape." These are emotional topics to be sure, but red herrings in context of how the "RCP"=U$A line was exposed.
Andrei Mazenov speaks as a supporter of the "RCP"=U$A.
mimcom2 does most of the speaking for MIM.
******************************************************************** mimcom2 Joined: 22 Aug 2003 Posts: 123 Location: imperialist country Posted: Thu Sep 18, 2003 5:29 am Post subject: The Monkey, the Grape and the Cucumber mimcom2 for the Maoist Internationalist Movement: http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/science/09/17/jealous .monkeys.ap/index.html Meanwhile to figure out if you are the monkey with the grape or the cucumber, try this Global Rich List stats used for this discussion ******************************************************* elijahcraig Comrade Joined: 23 Aug 2003 Posts: 31 Posted: Thu Sep 18, 2003 8:28 am Post subject: Since I am unemployed, you can guess. _________________ *********************************************************** Koba Comrade Joined: 08 Dec 2002 Posts: 613 Location: Kiev Ukraine Posted: Thu Sep 18, 2003 9:44 pm Post subject: WoW I feel so bourgeoisie now! Even a Ukrainian Wage ranks on the high end of the scale *********************************************************** _________________ Savinkov Comrade Joined: 17 Jan 2003 Posts: 628 Location: Beirut, Lebanon Posted: Thu Sep 18, 2003 11:58 pm Post subject: such a high ranking when i only get 120$ a month?! _________________ Lebanese Communist Party Lebanese Communist Students ************************************************************* mimcom2 Joined: 22 Aug 2003 Posts: 123 Location: imperialist country Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2003 12:31 am Post subject:
mimcom2 adds for MIM: Now if you work minimum wage (legal) in the United $tates 40 hours, 50 weeks, two weeks vacation unpaid, then your income is $10300. You would rank at 11.86% richest in the world. Considering that even the minimum wage folks are the minority of the united $tates, it gives you an idea of what our critics are smoking when we tell you the United $tates is a petty-bourgeois population and we should not aim at the economic demands of the majority. Like Mao said, the petty- bourgeoisie had a progressive role to play in China's Revolution, but not in any imperialist country. ********************************************* Renegade Comrade Joined: 18 Jul 2003 Posts: 34 Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2003 2:57 am Post subject: You are in the top 0,001% richest people in the world. You don¹t need to know any more than that (and besides our calculator can't do sums that big). Please consider donating just a small amount of your enormous wealth to help some of the poorest people in the world. Many of their lives could be improved dramatically or even saved if you donate just one hour's salary (approx $347.22) put my uncles then my dads and got this then did my other family members and got this samething oh wait NVM my dad got You are in the top 0.6% richest people in the world. *************************************** Comrade Smith Comrade Joined: 08 Dec 2002 Posts: 261 Location: New York,USA Posted: Sat Sep 20, 2003 7:53 pm Post subject: $8.20 an hours goes further then I thought Oh well i'm a self made person and I don't think that by being a cashier I am opressing anyone. ***************************************** mimcom2 Joined: 22 Aug 2003 Posts: 123 Location: imperialist country Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2003 3:49 am Post subject: mimcom2 adds for MIM: OK, now let's take what we know and start to apply it. You are going to find that if you read Trotskyist programs or programs of most calling themselves Marxist-Leninist, they don't apply what you just found out. What they do instead is promote a warped economic view of the world, because it's easier to get petty-bourgeois support that way. For this purpose, I'm going to pick on Bob Avakian and see if Janx and Masenov here can defend it; although I would prefer they prioritize the anti- fascist struggle right now swirling around us and come to this when they can. Here is what Avakian said, "Another way of saying this is that these two '90/10s' (uniting 90% in the U.S. and uniting with 90% of the people worldwide against the 10% representing the exploiters and their most hardcore social base) are not in antagonism in a fundamental sense." You can get more here. [mim3@mim.org interjects: I just want to say right here that the above quote is what MIM is debating in this article. Let's also be clear that it means that the "RCP"=U$A believes the imperialist country labor aristocracy is not enemy contrary to what Lenin and Mao both said. That's why right in their program they refer mistakenly to the labor aristocracy as "workers" and even "proletariat." (See http://www.rwor.org/margorp/a-uf2.htm ) From the very beginning of their pseudo-class analysis, "RCP"=U$A has confused friends with enemies. Separating friends and enemies is the first order of business for Marxist-Leninist-Maoists. The "RCP"=U$A has not even defined the words correctly in line with the tradition of Marx, Lenin and Mao. For MIM's free online treatment of the question of definitions see, http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/mt/imp97/index.html ] However, I just showed you that everyone legally working in the united $tates is in the top 12% of the world. So if we are going to pit 12% and 88%, (and such accuracy in class struggle of course would be a major benefit to us communists) we have to admit we are pitting the world against the imperialists and petty-bourgeois Amerikkka. But that's not what Avakian does. He juggles and says, oh no, there's no fundamental contradiction between an international 90/10 and a national 90/10 for the united $tates. In fact, it's quite clear from his document that his strategy comes from the national 90/10 that he wishes for. Are we not Leninists? Did we not accept Lenin's theory of imperialism? Is not the united $tates an imperialist country? Are we not internationalists? So how can we make the principal aspect the national 90/10? Our strategy for imperialism should reflect our internationalism in first place, not second. There is no progressive role for nationalism in imperialist countries. We have to stop about the crap of the majority of imperialist country people being exploited. If we do not, we cannot end exploitation or national oppression. *************************************************** Koba Comrade Joined: 08 Dec 2002 Posts: 613 Location: Kiev Ukraine Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2003 10:38 am Post subject: There are a few more equations we have to put into this example though... According to the stats given only 2% of America is in this 90% Majority but I think the number is greater than that. If we look at how far a $100 a month goes one can only be suspicious.... surely $100 a month isnt so high because there are so many people making 90 or 50 dollars a month.. It is probably more likely due to the fact of unemployment which is really bogging the scale down... It's not so much an issue of how much money one makes... its more an issue of a lack of work for so many people... That is the true root of the problem. The amount of money one makes is only problematic because the top 10%makes SO MUCH MONEY that there isnt a means to pay lets say.... anywhere from 15% - 40% of the people in Africa depending on the nation.. and so on and so forth... As you see the reason why a $100 goes so far is that there is not equal pay for equal work because there is no rights to work and be paid. We also have to take into consideration the costs of living. Sure... if you make $1000 a month I bet you'd deffinately be in the high end of this scale... but lets say you live in New York City. Apartment: $800 a month Electricity: $40 if you live alone Phone: $20 minimum (if you dont consider a phone a luxury) Groceries: $90 (lets say you dont eat much.. only $2.50 a day) Transportation: $60 (Take the train working five days a week) And there you are already over your monthly income. So lets scratch the phone because you cant afford it and you have a whopping $10 a month for rest and liesure. *********************************************** mimcom2 Joined: 22 Aug 2003 Posts: 123 Location: imperialist country Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2003 4:56 pm Post subject: Koba wrote: There are a few more equations we have to put into this example though... According to the stats given only 2% of America is in this 90% Majority but I think the number is greater than that. mimcom2 replies for MIM: Koba, you just made a huge factual mistake followed by post-hoc rationalizations for a revisionist dogma the West has had circulating. The first link to the globalrichlist is NOT saying anything about NATIONAL rankings. It is saying where people rank GLOBALLY. Go back and do it again if you forgot. It is not saying "2% of America is in the 90% majority." And if you read Avakian's article as I provided the link for, you can be quite sure that he knows the 90/10 thing is always approximate anyway. If we ever nailed down 88 to 12 in the world, we'd all be more than happy. That's why this anti-war movement concerning Iraq was so indicative. But anyway, I ask you to judge by Avakian's own logic from that article. So anyway, Koba, you are picking at the bottom of the u$a, but there is no way you are going to get around the fact that it is vastly outnumbered by a petty-bourgeoisie--and THAT is our cardinal principle that EVERY other party with the exception of a tiny handful cannot get right. The argument here is not how many sub-minimum wage workers, prisoners, migrant workers are in the united $tates. Shit MIM has said we go for the 20% of oppressed and exploited. The argument is about the VAST MAJORITY--the 70, 80 or 90% of the population. And on this scale, the "RCP-USA" is wrong with a completely warped economic view. Can we agree on that? MIM would never pick fights with people over adjusting at the edges. (And come on Koba, if there is only 2% of a country in the 90% don't you think it would never achieve class status/consciousness? All the people around them would be petty-bourgeoisie! How would they ever connect as a class? They're too close to petty-bourgeoisie themselves--even if we accept your logic, which happens to be wrong in this factual instance.) ************************************************** mimcom2 Joined: 22 Aug 2003 Posts: 123 Location: imperialist country Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2003 4:59 pm Post subject: Koba, What Avakian is saying if applied to the national conditions of each of the imperialist countries amounts to saying unite 90% of the petty- bourgeoisie and imperialists! There is no other interpretation possible now that we know the facts of the global economic scene. Please think it through! mimcom2 for the Maoist Internationalist Movement *************************************************** Andrei Mazenov Comrade Joined: 09 Dec 2002 Posts: 277 Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2003 9:05 pm Post subject: From what I've read, I find MIM's line on the American proletariat to be deeply flawed and nonsensical. Firstoff, let me start out simply by putting forward the RCP-USA's position concerning the proletariat in the U.S.: There Is a Revolutionary Class in the United States There is a proletariat in the United States. It is part of an international class of wage-laborers whose labor is the foundation of capitalist production and whose exploitation is the source of capitalist wealth. It is a large segment of U.S. society. And it embodies the potential to destroy the old order and to revolutionize society as part of the world proletarian revolution. The U.S. working class is extremely diverse and is made up of different strata and sections. The working class in the United States constitutes over 50 percent of the total labor force, numbering some 70 million wage-laborers. It includes 12 million manufacturing workers, several million other industrial workers, and far greater numbers in service, retail, and office work (both in the private and government sectors). The proletariat is found in the “smokestack” economy of auto, steel, machine tools production, etc., as well as in expanding job categories such as cashiers, health services, and truck drivers. It is found in the “new economy” of information technology—from immigrant proletarians forging, fabricating, packaging, and shipping high-tech products to armies of data entry and service workers. Many in the proletariat, and this is especially the case among oppressed nationalities and youth, are not regularly employed and often experience long spells of unemployment. The great bulk of the unemployed are part of the working class. Even in the “best of times,” millions are unemployed and underemployed; and the numbers of the unemployed soar in periods of crisis. Capitalism’s “reserve army of labor” is an essential and integral part of capitalist accumulation. The desperate circumstances of the unemployed exert downward pressure on wages and conditions overall—and these proletarians are available to be exploited in accordance with the dynamics and demands of capitalist accumulation. Sizeable numbers of proletarians are cast into conditions of homelessness and hunger. Many are forced into desperate survival measures—working odd jobs and exchanging goods and services in the “informal economy” of the ghettos and barrios, or moving between jobs and “hustles” and semilegal activities. Over the last 20 years, capitalism has been reshaped. There has been intensified globalization and massive centralization of capital. There has been technological transformation. There has been restructuring of employment and work relations, including attacks on the right to organize unions and bargain collectively. But these changes, and the dislocations that have come with them, have not led to the disappearance of the U.S. working class but rather to its recomposition. This process of recomposition has involved the decline of more stable and better- paid strata, the expansion of low-wage service sectors, and the growth of more “flexible,” temporary, and part-time labor with little job security and few benefits. The proletariat in the U.S. is highly multinational, consisting of Black, white, Chicano, Puerto Rican, various other Latino and Asian-American nationalities, and millions of immigrants from the Third World and elsewhere. The majority of the poor in U.S. society are white, but the oppressed nationalities have rates of poverty that are two and three times greater than that of white people. Large sections of the proletariat work in segregated, caste-like conditions. They are slotted into and stuck in low-paying and less desirable occupations and jobs. Owing to the whole history of oppression by the ruling class, in various forms down to today, Black, Latino and other oppressed nationalities and immigrants are disproportionately represented in the lower rungs of the proletariat and suffer high rates of unemployment, including high levels of more long- term unemployment. Women hold about half of all working class jobs. In the last 30 years, the proportion of women in the overall labor force has risen dramatically—a result of the decline of real wages, the growing number of single-woman and single-mother households, and the assault on welfare and other social programs. At the same time, women have also sought work out of a desire to break out of the narrow confines of the home and to participate in society more broadly. The large presence of women in the working class is a very positive factor for building revolutionary unity and for the revolutionary struggle overall. Women will play a critical role in the proletarian revolution. So there is a proletariat in the U.S. All the vital goods and services, from food and clothing to telecommunications and computer chips, without which society could not last a day, are the product of the interlinked efforts of this class. The functioning of cities, from transport to janitorial services, depends on the proletariat. -from The Draft Programme of the Revolutionary Communist Party USA at http://2changetheworld.info/ To deny that there is a proletariat in the U.S. is to be anti-working class itself. It is basically a slap in the face to millions of people in America, basically declaring that they don't exist! What kind of Communist position is THAT? It isn't one. As a youth trying to grasp Marxism-Leninism- Maoism, it seems to me that MIM has an anti- Communist line that is anti-proletariat, defeatist, and ultimately reactionary. It seems like MIM believes that the proletariat are racist bums, which is rather bourgeoisie, don't you think? The workers and peasants in China were very backwards and conservative; racism against other nationalities prevailed amongst the Han majority in China, and people told Mao that the proletariat and peasantry were "too backwards" to be mobilized for Communist People's War. Mao, however, recognized people become backwards for social reasons and ignorance, not because they "just are" backwards. He recognized that despite these contradictions, the people of China were oppressed, and he knew this was the most important fact. Thus he knew what to struggle with amongst the masses and was able to organize them towards revolution. Personally, I think anyone who follows the Maoist Internationalist Movement's line would do good to read Fanshen by William Hinton. It shows the flaws and prejudices of the peasantry of China and how they overcame those contradictions and flawed ideals. Sorry but from my own personal observations and dealings with the workers of the U.S.A., I cannot agree with MIM's line. EDIT: Another thing: What about living expenses? Just because someone takes home $XXXX amount of dollars each week doesn't mean they get to keep it; they have electricity and water bills to pay, food to buy, children to provide for, etc.... to base someone's class solely on INCOME is really mechanical. [mim3@mim.org replies for MIM: We've addressed this elsewhere in this article, but let's just quote Lenin on how income IS important to the labor aristocracy question: "it was by helping their 'own' bourgeoisie to conquer and strangle the whole world by imperialist methods, with the aim of thereby ensuring better pay for themselves, that the labor aristocracy developed." Notice how unlike "RCP"=U$A, Lenin says that the backward in imperialist countries are not just passive and do not just have an ideology or false consciousness, but they actually create the labor aristocracy by "helping their 'own' bourgeoisie." It is the "RCP"=U$A trying to hide this fact to smuggle the labor aristocracy into the workers' movement when Lenin clearly saw it as enemy.] _________________ Comrade Andrei Kuznets Support the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement! ******************************************************* mimcom2 Joined: 22 Aug 2003 Posts: 123 Location: imperialist country Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2003 2:31 am Post subject: [snip the whole post with not one word about the position of the U.$. population economically in INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT. Sure honoring your avatar there, huh Mazenov--mimcom2.] Mazenov says: Quote: To deny that there is a proletariat in the U.S. is to be anti-working class itself. It is basically a slap in the face to millions of people in America, basically declaring that they don't exist! What kind of Communist position is THAT? It isn't one. As a youth trying to grasp Marxism-Leninism- Maoism, it seems to me that MIM has an anti- Communist line that is anti-proletariat, defeatist, and ultimately reactionary. It seems like MIM believes that the proletariat are racist bums, which is rather bourgeoisie, don't you think? [mimcom2 for MIM: Where did we raise anything about "racist bums" in this thread? Grandstanding for the George Wallace vote again? But now that you mention it, Amerikkkans are getting a lot more than a "slap in the face" in Iraq right now. Are you criticizing that too? Or are you just inconsistent? Whose side are you on, the ones doing a lot more than slapping in Iraq or your domestic 90% of Avakian's 90/10? You can't have both. You are either internationalist or imperialist chauvinist, not both.] [snip--sorry Mazenov, Mao did not want us to talk about imperialist countries as if they were China- -mimcom2.] Quote: Mazenov continues: Personally, I think anyone who follows the Maoist Internationalist Movement's line would do good to read Fanshen by William Hinton. It shows the flaws and prejudices of the peasantry of China and how they overcame those contradictions and flawed ideals. [mimcom2 replies for MIM: Masenov you are ridiculous comparing economic conditions in the united $trates to economic conditions of peasants in China. Absurd. Nationalist.] Quote: Sorry but from my own personal observations and dealings with the workers of the U.S.A., I cannot agree with MIM's line. EDIT: Another thing: What about living expenses? Just because someone takes home $XXXX amount of dollars each week doesn't mean they get to keep it; they have electricity and water bills to pay, food to buy, children to provide for, etc.... to base someone's class solely on INCOME is really mechanical. mimcom2 replies for MIM: Yeah, what about living expenses Masenov? Still agitating for more for the top 12% of the world? What, you think maybe the Nepal peasants have expense accounts for those "living expenses"? Oink, oink, oink. It's a lot easier to piss on MIM than to provide your own replacement for income statistics. What, do you think it would have been any different if we had gone by assets? The rankings would not change and if you think so, you really do need to go to the Philippines or India or Nepal to see the conditions of these peasants you compare yourself to. Ridiculous. **************************************************** mimcom2 Joined: 22 Aug 2003 Posts: 123 Location: imperialist country Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2003 6:09 pm Post subject: mimcom2 to Janx, Masenov: You want to piss on us as "mechanical" while comparing yourselves to peasants in China. If you think MIM has it wrong on who the global 10% elite is, then tell us who the elite is instead. ****************************************************** mimcom2 Joined: 22 Aug 2003 Posts: 123 Location: imperialist country Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2003 6:15 pm Post subject: mimcom2 for the Maoist Internationalist Movement: 4 pounds 50 minimum wage in England=top 10.1% in the world. The minimum wages in Germany, Belgium, Luxemburg, the Netherlands and France are even higher than that. *************************************************** Cassius Clay Comrade Joined: 01 Mar 2003 Posts: 71 Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2003 8:02 pm Post subject: I'm no expert on 'economics' or what have you so I wont pretend to be. I have spoken in favor of MIM's line of the 'Labour Aristocracy' before. It is a fact that due to Imperialism and Globilisation alot of us here are 'bought of'. I dont think this is being 'anti-worker', it's a fact since if people in the western world were unhappy with their conditions there would be far more 'revolutionary' activity going on. They are not because what was 50 years ago a job wich paid near nought for long hours, which had no security or guarrentee's is today compariable to a 'working' family with a 100,000 grand house and two cars. One doesn't tend to be bothered about 'revolution' when they go home to a wide screen tv, microwaves, dvd's and the like. I will say though that people should stop themselves from falling into the trap of believing life is how it is portraid in 'Friends' in the western world. It's not. This is a clever propaganda trick used by the west, both to satisy it'w own citizens and spread the message of 'prosperity' in the Cold War. 4.50 is the minimum wage here in Britain, that doesn't get you anything, maybe a sandwich and tea. I think it's notable that 40,000 old people every year here in Britain die in the winter because they cant afford proper heating. Alot of people here in Britain on 4.50 a hour jobs are students living of their parents, there are also alot who have partners supporting them. At the same time alot aren't. I live in the South East of England which is the richest area in the country. Even here there's rough counclil estates which provide no education or job prospects above the 4.50-7.00 pound an hour jobs. On that often by the age of 17 a single mum is going have to be providing for her kids, their clothes and food not to mention her own, she's also got to pay for rent etc. Most likely she cant afford child care so she cuts back on her hours at work. The same conditions as a worker in South East Asia? No way, but petty-bourgesie reactionary? Hmm, now that I think of personal experience maybe. Afterall she more often that not wears the Nike clothes and trainers, she hold's rascist views towards 'immigrants and pakis'. Regretably she may indeed be a 'enemy of the proletariat', through her actions and views. But dont tell me she would not benefit through a revolution, through a socialist system. The key is to turn her and others away from chavaunistic and rascist views and get her to direct her anger where it should be. That is the system that promotes sexism, rascism and exploitation. Capitalism. Anyway that's my two sense. ***************************************************** mimcom2 Joined: 22 Aug 2003 Posts: 123 Location: imperialist country Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2003 8:48 pm Post subject: mimcom2 for the MIM: Of course I mainly agree with Cassius Clay. I would just add this one more thought for consideration Cassius Clay. You are able to say that the minimum wage earners would benefit from socialist revolution. Me too. The reason we are able to do that is that we are scientists taking a far-sighted view of what we can do in that socialist revolution. It's a funny thing, but again, the past is the guide. I can also say that slave-owners benefitted from the end of slavery. Does anyone disagree looking back on it? I mean how can you live in a more advanced society without revolution even if you are slaveowner? Any solid progressive thinks this way. The problem is that classes do not think that way --until after they have been reshaped into something new in a new mode of production. ************************************************ mimcom2 Joined: 22 Aug 2003 Posts: 123 Location: imperialist country Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2003 11:09 am Post subject: Masenov & Janx of "RCYB": I'm still waiting for you to tell me who IS in the top 10% of the world targeted by the bottom 90% if MIM is wrong about it. Or is your real point that there is no enemy? mimcom2 for the Maoist Internationalist Movement ************************************************** Andrei Mazenov Comrade Joined: 09 Dec 2002 Posts: 277 Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2003 12:26 pm Post subject: After doing some research I have some things to say about this. One thing to think about: workers in America live in a highly commodified economy. Workers in oppressed nations are (for the most part) outside commodity exchange. So when a peasant in Peru is living off $200 a year, they are outside commodity exchange and they aren't really eating much off that 200 bucks. Eating utensils, salt, pots, other manufactured goods... that's where their little bit of money goes. American workers on the other hand, while getting paid a great deal more, actually have to use that money within a heavily commodified society, and thus they must use that money on food and other essentials. On the whole top 10%, I have this to say: the proletariat is a class that receives the value of their labor power. The value of labor power may vary, but in all societies it basically means you only have enough to get you and your family by (i.e. paid enough to reproduce your labor power and the next generation of wage slaves). In the "third world", the masses are "superexploited" a great deal of the time. -i.e. they are paid BELOW the value of their labor power. MIM is wrong on several key points: -They deny that workers are exploited in the U.S. -They think that most surplus value comes from outside the U.S. (from so-called "foreign cheap labor"). In fact, only a TINY PERCENT (approximately 8% or 10% according to World Bank and other sources) of the surplus value of the U.S. bourgeoisie comes from "foreign cheap labor". [mim3@mim.org interjects for MIM October 10, 2003: We are still waiting for sources/citations for this and how it fits into "RCP"=U$A line and more importantly, Marxism. We won't hold our breath given "RCP"=U$A's decades of unwillingness to answer the question.] -They are stuck in identity politics. The U.S. has internal nations but the proletariat is NOT divided by geography, and at work is rather entwined as a single multinational class. Take the Mexican farmworkers for example: while they are members of the Latino/Aztlan/Chicano nation, they are exploited HERE, in the belly of the beast, and thus they are OBJECTIVELY part of the U.S. proletariat. I'll have more to say on this later, but right now I gotta split. I look forward to your comments. _________________ Comrade Andrei Kuznets Support the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement! **************************************************** mimcom2 Joined: 22 Aug 2003 Posts: 123 Location: imperialist country Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2003 5:51 pm Post subject: [quote="Andrei Mazenov"] Quote: After doing some research I have some things to say about this. One thing to think about: workers in America live in a highly commodified economy. Workers in oppressed nations are (for the most part) outside commodity exchange. So when a peasant in Peru is living off $200 a year, they are outside commodity exchange and they aren't really eating much off that 200 bucks. Eating utensils, salt, pots, other manufactured goods... that's where their little bit of money goes. American workers on the other hand, while getting paid a great deal more, actually have to use that money within a heavily commodified society, and thus they must use that money on food and other essentials. mimcom2 replies for MIM: If you think anything like that changes the global rankings, go ahead and name your rankings of who the top 10% is. Believe me, MIM can go tit for tat on anything you find, because we've researched it already, not just now after the second program of the "RCP-USA" is almost done/done. The Third World lives in an economy that makes it all the easier to steal from them. The real hidden commodity (uncommodity) never measured by the World Bank is the labor transferred from the Third World to the imperialists. This is what Marx called "the whole dirty secret of capitalism." "RCP-USA" will never train people to see, to penetrate this secret. You have to read MIM Theory to see imperialist exploitation and to get any significant part of its full extent. Quote: On the whole top 10%, I have this to say: the proletariat is a class that receives the value of their labor power. [snip] mimcom2 replies for MIM: It seems like you are conceding that MIM is right about who is in the top 10% globally, but now you want to say even those 10% are exploited. So there's no enemy. Until you name a different 10%, you haven't touched MIM's argument. Which is it? Different global 10% than who MIM says it is or no enemy? Quote: MIM is wrong on several key points: -They deny that workers are exploited in the U.S. -They think that most surplus value comes from outside the U.S. (from so-called "foreign cheap labor"). In fact, only a TINY PERCENT (approximately 8% or 10% according to World Bank and other sources) of the surplus value of the U.S. bourgeoisie comes from "foreign cheap labor". mimcom2 replies for MIM: OK, show us the World Bank report so we may know how your arrived at your view of the international proletariat's exploitation. Quote: -They are stuck in identity politics. The U.S. has internal nations but the proletariat is NOT divided by geography, and at work is rather entwined as a single multinational class. mimcom2 replies for MIM: Quite the contrary it is your "RCP-USA" that is documented repeatedly as attempting to substitute analyses of small patches of people or even party individuals for that of a whole class in a society with 290 million people. But anyway, I am still trying to give you more credit Mazenov, but you are making it hard. So now you think the workplace overrides nation, in which case, everybody working for a multinational corporation abroad is part of what you are calling the "multinational proletariat." I didn't think that was a very good Trotskyist move, so I resist saying you would even dream it, but if you insist. Quote: Take the Mexican farmworkers for example: while they are members of the Latino/Aztlan/Chicano nation, they are exploited HERE, in the belly of the beast, and thus they are OBJECTIVELY part of the U.S. proletariat. mimcom2 replies for MIM: Your idea of "HERE" is probably my idea of occupied Aztlan dominated by foreign exploiters. Again, there is no avoiding answering the question why by Stalin's definition you think Kanada's nation has more force than Aztlan. Until you think hard about why Stalin wrote about the national question instead of just worshipping the existing borders, you will never make an accurate analysis of nation and class. ************************************************ mimcom2 Joined: 22 Aug 2003 Posts: 123 Location: imperialist country Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2003 6:40 pm Post subject: Looks like Lenin was tangling with thoughts of national oppression--enemy. Why is "RCP-USA" busy hiding the enemy now that there is even more parasitism than in Lenin's day? V. I. Lenin Collected Works London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1960, Vol. 39, p. 736. "Notes for Lecture on 'Imperialism and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination'" "300-400 million out of 1,600 are oppressors." [MC5 adds: Since Lenin's time the population has increased to about 5,000 million, but the oppressors are still over 10 percent. Thanks to former SDS leader Noel Ignatin for pointing out this Lenin quote in the defunct Urgent Tasks magazine.] http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/classics/text.ph p?mimfile=oppresso.txt ************************************************** Andrei Mazenov Comrade Joined: 09 Dec 2002 Posts: 277 Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2003 10:01 pm Post subject: Why is Canada NOT a nation? It has a distinct national market, state, history, and ruling class. Once again, the Chicano nation within America is part of the international working class, but they are oppressed within U.S. borders as a part of the U.S. class structure. Thus, while both are nations, they both are in different situations. However, after the proletariat revolution in the United States, oppressed nationalities WILL have the right to self determination, including the right to autonomy and/or secession. Quote: Looks like Lenin was tangling with thoughts of national oppression--enemy. Why is "RCP-USA" busy hiding the enemy now that there is even more parasitism than in Lenin's day? V. I. Lenin Collected Works London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1960, Vol. 39, p. 736. "Notes for Lecture on 'Imperialism and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination'" "300-400 million out of 1,600 are oppressors." [MC5 adds: Since Lenin's time the population has increased to about 5,000 million, but the oppressors are still over 10 percent. Thanks to former SDS leader Noel Ignatin for pointing out this Lenin quote in the defunct Urgent Tasks magazine.] http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/classics/text.ph p?mimfile=oppresso.txt Well, I have a Lenin quote that I think applies pretty well to this discussion as well (and I would like to see the rest of that work, not just one little snippet from it!): Lenin in Imperialism and the Split in Socialism (1916)(available on line at http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/o ct/x01.htm ): "That these ideas, which were repeated by Engels over the course of decades, were so expressed by him publicly, in the press, is proved by his preface to the second edition of The Condition of the Working Class in England, 1892. Here he speaks of an "aristocracy among the working class", of a "privileged minority of the workers", in contradistinction to the "great mass of working people". "A small, privileged, protected minority" of the working class alone was "permanently benefited" by the privileged position of England in 1848-68, whereas "the great bulk of them experienced at best but a temporary improvement"..." "Neither we nor anyone else can calculate precisely what portion of the proletariat is following and will follow the social-chauvinists and opportunists. This will be revealed only by the struggle, it will be definitely decided only by the socialist revolution. But we know for certain that the "defenders of the fatherland" in the imperialist war represent only a minority. And it is therefore our duty, if we wish to remain socialists to go down lower and deeper, to the real masses; this is the whole meaning and the whole purport of the struggle against opportunism. By exposing the fact that the opportunists and social-chauvinists are in reality betraying and selling the interests of the masses, that they are defending the temporary privileges of a minority of the workers, that they are the vehicles of bourgeois ideas and influences, that they are really allies and agents of the bourgeoisie, we teach the masses to appreciate their true political interests, to fight for socialism and for the revolution through all the long and painful vicissitudes of imperialist wars and imperialist armistices." You know, a comrade pointed this out to me: this argument about wages is really a "you have it good" argument, which is the same as the "what are you whining about?" argument that Republicans and other conservative fascist forces make. MIM really making an argument that "American workers have it good, so let's stop thinking or talking about revolution". It is a reactionary, counterrevolutionary, un-Maoist argument. MIM sits around chalking up arguments why revolution is "impossible"... and why the masses must suck. And it goes against all our experience and our dreams! What kind of "revolutionary" outlook is that? It's not. _________________ Comrade Andrei Kuznets Support the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement! ************************************************** Andrei Mazenov Comrade Joined: 09 Dec 2002 Posts: 277 Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2003 10:56 pm Post subject: I thought this was appropriate to the discussion. Bold highlights added by Andrei Mazenov for emphasis: Excerpts from Reaching for the Heights And Flying Without a Safety Net by Bob Avakian I have been talking about how, even in the face of truly mass and truly heroic struggles and even where partial victories are won and concessions are wrenched from the powers-that-be, they will work to undermine and reverse these things--and the fundamental nature of the system and the fundamental conditions of the masses of people will not be changed, at least not for the better. Let me give another example of this--one which involves the outlook of people on what has been a gigantic question in the U.S., throughout its history and down to today: the oppression of Black people, and their resistance to that oppression. I recall that about 25 years ago (I believe it was in 1977) when, as part of the concessions coming off of the tremendous upsurge of the '60s which carried over into the early `70s, there was a whole TV series, Roots.It was up to that time, maybe still today, the most watched TV series in the history of television in the U.S.--it was watched by something like 100 million people, including a lot of white people. Roots was the history of a Black family, but it was also much more than that--it touched on the history of Black people in America as a whole. The story went back to Africa and the enslavement of people there and their forced transport to America, and it came all the way up into a period not far from the present day. And I remember the stories that comrades would tell of people working in factories or other work places, the white people in particular, who would be going to Black people they worked with and saying, "I had no idea about this"--which says something about the educational system and what the bourgeoisie wants people to know and not know. "This" referred to even basic level things, like the fact that Black people's names go back to the names of the slavemasters who owned their ancestors, and what that actually represents in human terms. The fact that little kids would get sold to another slave owner, ripped away from their mothers and sold at 8, 9 years old. White people in particular would say, "You know, I had no idea" and they would be very moved by this. This was a very transformative thing, to use that phrase, in terms of the consciousness of millions of people in the U.S., including and in particular a lot of white people who had never understood this. And yet today you've got these types who want to blot all that out. You know, Michael Moore wrote that book, Stupid White Men --you've got a lot of these stupid white people who write letters to editors in papers like the USA Today and say ignorant things like: "What is all this complaining about slavery --what about the Africans who owned slaves?" Or: "My parents came here from Europe and we never owned any slaves..." All this kind of nonsense that betrays, at a minimum, a woeful ignorance of the horror of slavery and white supremacy and oppression of Black people even after slavery and right down to today in the good ole USA. Why is there such ignorance? It's not really because there was an epidemic of stupidity that washed over the country or something. It's that the bourgeoisie worked very hard to wipe out and reverse what many people learned through the upsurges of the '60s and in its aftermath. Beginning with Reagan in particular, when he became President in 1981, there was a massive ideological assault to undo what people had learned, to make them "stupid" and to promote another view, a reactionary viewpoint. Sometimes you forget these things--and the ruling class works, through its media and in other ways, to get people to forget important lessons they have learned and to reverse important verdicts that get passed in society broadly, such as the basic fact that the origins of the U.S. are rooted in slavery and genocide. I remember that, back in the late '80s or the early '90s, Jesse Jackson made an outrageous statement, along these lines: "I hate to say this, but if I'm walking down the street somewhere at night and I hear people behind me and I look around and see it's white people I'm relieved, because I'm worried about what Black people might do to me." That's what Jesse Jackson said. Now, this is probably not something he wants to trumpet around today, but at that time Jesse Jackson was repeating this whole bourgeois line about crime and gangs, blaming the masses of Black people for the conditions the system has forced them into and forcibly kept them in --where even conservative analysts have to say that crime is a "rational choice" for millions of these youth. What Jesse Jackson was running on this was a straight-up bourgeois line that went right along with the racist propaganda by the Reagans and the rest, which basically said that Black people are inferior and are criminal by nature. These reactionaries were even trying to revive "theories" about the genetic inferiority of non- white people and how they are just genetically predisposed to certain things and incapable of certain things. This was a revival of shit that was disproved and discredited decades ago--theories of genetic differences between races which make some superior and others inferior, and all kinds of shit for which it has been clearly shown that there is absolutely zero scientific basis. That's been shown time and time again, and yet here it came again--with books like The Bell Curve that tried to give this racist garbage a "scientific" veneer. And the people who wrote The Bell Curve , they weren't treated as crackpots--they were treated as legitimate researchers, writers and intellectuals, respectable intellectuals. The bourgeois media, including the supposedly more "highbrow" New York Times , treated these authors with respect and treated their rehash of long-exposed racist rubbish as if it were serious science. All this was systematic--there was a systematic effort and campaign on the part of the ruling class to blot out important truths that people had learned about the history and the present-day nature of American society and to attack these truths through the revival of worn-out reactionary garbage. So, when we witness a lot of this "stupidity" from more than a few white people in the U.S., this is not just something spontaneous-- it is not just some kind of "personal prejudice" they developed all on their own--it stems from the underlying relations of white supremacy, which are built into the system in the U.S., and it has been consciously and systematically promoted by the ruling class whose system depends on and could not survive without this white supremacy and the corresponding racist ideas. You know, I once wrote something speaking to the question of what's wrong with white people--and I concluded that there's a lot wrong with white people in the U.S., which is not surprising, given that they live in a white supremacist society, but it's nothing that a good proletarian revolution couldn't cure.* In fact, there is a lot wrong with people living in imperialist countries in general, especially people in the more privileged strata whose privilege stems in no small part from the way in which imperialism plunders the world and super-exploits millions and millions of people in the Third World in particular. But this is not something inherent in them--it's not "in their genes," it's not "something they're hard-wired for," and all the rest of that. Rather, it comes from their social experience, their social position, their place in the imperialist network of exploitation and oppression throughout the world. And it comes from the tremendous ideological bombardment and the systematic miseducation perpetrated by the imperialist ruling class. * This article, "What's Wrong with White People?" appears in Reflections, Sketches & Provocations by Bob Avakian (Chicago: RCP Publications, 1990). REVERSING RIGHT AND WRONG And, once again, whenever and wherever that ruling class has to make concessions-- including concessions to reality, concessions to the truthful accounting of the history of the U.S. and the history of capitalism, which, as Karl Marx pointed out, comes into the world dripping with blood from head to toe and which had slavery built into its foundation, along with other brutal forms of exploitation-- whenever the ruling class is forced to make such concessions, they set out, in a systematic way, to undermine and reverse this. Returning to the example of Roots , the ruling class allowed this on TV at that time (the late 1970s) because they really needed a whole "cooling out" period after the tremendous upheavals of the '60s, which carried over into the early 1970s, and which shook this system to its foundations. If you didn't live through that period, maybe it's a little bit hard to understand it from today's vantage point, but they really needed a process of regrouping and of "recouping"--a systematic effort to win back, or neutralize, millions and millions of people who had become thoroughly disgusted with and alienated from the ruling structures, institutions, and values. With Carter in the presidency, they declared an "amnesty" of sorts-- they had thousands of veterans, for example, who had deserted and whose status was sort of in limbo, living in Europe, living in other places, in Canada, in the U.S. itself, living a kind of "semi-shadow" existence. They had to give a kind of pardon to those people and say: "OK-- reconciliation--you can come back out of the shadows." In other words, they had to make all kinds of concessions to try to "cool things out" after the upsurges that rocked the country through the '60s and into the early '70s. And Carter was a good choice for them as the president to preside over this. Of course, the ruling class never stopped brutally repressing people and groups who challenged it in any fundamental way, and the system never ceased brutally exploiting and oppressing masses of people, in the U.S. itself and all over the world. And, by the time Carter left office in 1980, he was putting forward a very different image and posture--he was threatening war with the Soviet Union if it challenged U.S. supremacy in the Persian Gulf area, and he came forward with a new war-fighting doctrine, including nuclear weapons-- which Reagan then picked up on and carried further when he beat out Carter for the presidency. Among other things, and beyond what it exposes about Carter himself, this was yet another illustration of the truth that it is the operation of the system and the needs of the ruling class that fundamentally sets the terms of things--and not which politicians are in office, or the personality traits or personal inclinations of those politicians. And so, after a period of some concessions and "cooling out," came an aggressive reactionary offensive from the ruling class. This was personified by Reagan but it had many manifestations--it was many-sided. It was felt in every sphere of U.S. society, as well as in the international arena, and of course it had a whole dimension of molding public opinion, including through the means of mass popular culture. One sharp example of this was the TV show Hill Street Blues.(This is also spoken to in Reflections, Sketches & Provocations.) This show had the explicit purpose of "repairing the image of the police" in the face of a situation where, through the whole upsurge of the '60s, millions of youth and others had come to see more clearly the real repressive and murderous role of the police, and it was widely popular to call them "pigs." Daniel J. Travanti, the lead actor in that show, openly talked about how it aimed to help repair the relations between the police and the people. Of course, he didn't mean that the show was somehow going to get the police to stop murdering people, particularly youth in the inner cities, time and time again; nor that it would somehow keep the police from attacking and seeking to suppress people protesting and rebelling against the system. No, the reality was that the show was aiming to repair the public relations image of the police. And, very interestingly, Hill Street Blues was kept on the air, even though its initial ratings were very poor. They kept it on until they built up an audience for it, because it was very important to them ideologically. It's important that we understand these things and that we enable other people to understand them, because one of the things the ruling class really likes to do, and constantly seeks to do, is to blame the masses for everything. You know, "people get the leaders they deserve" or "we're just giving the people what they want," whether it's politics, or popular culture, or whatever. They do this with elections and in all kinds of other ways--they give people "choices" that are no real choice, that all fundamentally come down to the same thing, and then they say that "the people have chosen this"! So it is very important for us to understand and to enable other people to understand that this is the workings of the system, both the "unconscious operation" of the accumulation process and dynamics of capitalism- imperialism, but also the conscious policy and actions of the ruling class through the superstructure--that is, through the political structures and institutions and the institutions of military power, as well as the mass media and the institutions and instruments of culture and (mis)education in general. __________________________________________________ to read the full article, go to http://rwor.org/A/1197/ba-reach2.htm and learn more about Bob Avakian's take on Race, Gender, and how this all ties in with the struggle for Communism. _________________ Comrade Andrei Kuznets Support the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement! ****************************************************** mimcom2 Joined: 22 Aug 2003 Posts: 123 Location: imperialist country Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2003 11:51 pm Post subject: mimcom2 replies for MIM: Read it, all of it, not because the "RCP-USA" answered my questions, but to learn their Jesuit tactics to avoid the question. WHO CONSTITUTES THE PORTION OF THE WORLD POPULATION THAT IS OUR ENEMY? WHO IS THAT 10% IF MIM IS WRONG? We at MIM can spit it out and quick: The imperialist country population with legal working rights is the enemy. The Third World masses, indigenous peoples and oppressed internal semi- colonies are our friends constituting 90% of the world's population. ***************************************************** mimcom2 Joined: 22 Aug 2003 Posts: 123 Location: imperialist country Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2003 11:57 pm Post subject: Mazenov quoting "RCP-USA" leader Avakian: Quote: You know, I once wrote something speaking to the question of what's wrong with white people--and I concluded that there's a lot wrong with white people in the U.S., which is not surprising, given that they live in a white supremacist society, but it's nothing that a good proletarian revolution couldn't cure.* mim3 replies for MIM: Cured with what? Armed struggle and the dictatorship of the proletariat as MIM says (and as all classic writers said about armed struggle being the highest form of struggle against the enemy) or through psychological counseling sessions in pre-socialist Amerikkka with the "Revolutionary Worker" as reading material? ***************************************************** mimcom2 Joined: 22 Aug 2003 Posts: 123 Location: imperialist country Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2003 12:08 am Post subject: WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON MAZENOV? THE 90% OF AMERIKKKANS SUPPORTING OUR TROOPS OR THE FIGHTERS IN IRAQ? WHICH 90% WILL YOU GO WITH? How many Amerikkkans do you think will support you if you come out and say you hope for victory for the Iraqi fighters? That every body bag is another step toward peace the way the Iraqi fighters look at it? We at MIM don't want your 90% of the U$A. Your 90% wants to "support our troops." The answer is to drop Avakian's vacillating rhetoric trying to split the difference but ending up in nationalism and to take up the MIM line that says the global 90/10 as even Avakian calls it IS PRINCIPAL AND DETERMINES STRATEGY INSIDE U.$. BORDERS. BTW, Mazenov, if you decided to stand with the Iraqi fighters, you did so by putting the global 90% FIRST--BY FOLLOWING MIM LINE, not RCP line. If we were to try to approach the Iraq question really trying to win 90%, there is no way in hell you could come out saying you are for Iraqi fighters' victory. It can only be done on principle, in the face of a majority opposing us. ************************************************** mimcom2 Joined: 22 Aug 2003 Posts: 123 Location: imperialist country Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2003 12:25 am Post subject: mimcom2 replies for MIM: If anyone in imperialist countries expects the imperialists to arrive at their door Rambo-style, announce "I am the enemy, so proceed to eat lead," they're never going to see the enemy. The imperialists "don't get out much" at least not much into friendly territory. In the imperialist countries, it is generally the labor aristocracy that shows up at your door after sugar-coated bullets have failed. It's not just the people who slacked off and let Khruschev in without a major fight. It's all of us globally who let the enemy off the hook. From a MIM Party Congress resolution in 2001: "In 'Is Yugoslavia a Socialist Country?' Mao said in 1963 what he would later say about the USSR. Some people do not realize that Mao never counted the 'labor aristocracy'as anything but enemy: "It shows us that not only is it possible for a working-class party to fall under the control of a labour aristocracy, degenerate into a bourgeois party and become a flunkey of imperialism before it seizes power." Furthermore, Mao said, 'Old-line revisionism arose as a result of the imperialist policy of buying over and fostering a labour aristocracy. Modern revisionism has arisen in the same way. Sparing no cost, imperialism has now extended the scope of its operations and is buying over leading groups in socialist countries and pursues through them its desired policy of 'peaceful evolution.'" Hence, Mao always said the question of labor aristocracy is linked to the question of the restoration of capitalism. For a supposed Maoist to ignore the "labor aristocracy" of the imperialist countries is revisionism. For people to talk about upholding the Cultural Revolution and opposing Soviet revisionism without opposing the labor aristocracy as enemy is just pure hogwash. ************************************************ mimcom2 Joined: 22 Aug 2003 Posts: 123 Location: imperialist country Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2003 12:34 am Post subject: Quote: You know, a comrade pointed this out to me: this argument about wages is really a "you have it good" argument, which is the same as the "what are you whining about?" argument that Republicans and other conservative fascist forces make. mimcom2 replies: Actually, I said "oinking," not whining. You are oinking. The Republicans want you to oink with them and quit whining. I want you to quit oinking and stand with the global 90% consistently, not just by accident. Quote: MIM really making an argument that "American workers have it good, so let's stop thinking or talking about revolution". It is a reactionary, counterrevolutionary, un-Maoist argument. MIM sits around chalking up arguments why revolution is "impossible"... and why the masses must suck. And it goes against all our experience and our dreams! What kind of "revolutionary" outlook is that? It's not. mimcom2 replies for MIM: Your revolution is of the Amerikkkan 90% against the global 90%. The only way to prove me wrong is by taking up the MIM line to make the Global 90% principal. In those cases when you make the global 90% principal, you are practicing MIM line. Stand with the Iraqi fighters in principle, regardless of popularity. If you are willing to stand with MIM in those most unpopular situations against an enemy, then you are already practicing MIM line. If you are waiting for 90% of the ["]masses["] to know fascism when they see it and attack it, then go on whining about "commandism." You will overlook enemy activity in the name of friendship. ************************************************ Andrei Mazenov Comrade Joined: 09 Dec 2002 Posts: 277 Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2003 12:54 am Post subject: Quote: Read it, all of it, not because the "RCP- USA" answered my questions, but to learn their Jesuit tactics to avoid the question. Good to hear you read it. But I don't see how I'm a member of the Society of Jesus. I'm a little too young and a little to Atheist to be a brother in the order. :D Quote: WHO CONSTITUTES THE PORTION OF THE WORLD POPULATION THAT IS OUR ENEMY? WHO IS THAT 10% IF MIM IS WRONG? We at MIM can spit it out and quick: The imperialist country population with legal working rights is the enemy. The Third World masses, indigenous peoples and oppressed internal semi- colonies are our friends constituting 90% of the world's population. That 10% is the world bourgeoisie, the international bourgeoisie that is found in all stradas of all nations (note: I am not speaking of the national bourgeoisie in oppressed nations, who are possible potential allies in New Democratic Revolution. I am talking about the imperialist and comprador bourgeoisie). [mim3@mim.org interjects for MIM: The above is a good point. The national bourgeoisie may make more than $10,300 a year and is still a class ally of the international proletariat because of tasks it needs to complete in the battle against imperialism and feudal lords choking it. This point actually supports the MIM line, because if we exclude the national bourgeoisie carrying out a progressive role, it becomes even harder to compile the 10% of the world that is enemies without the MIM line.] Quote: Cured with what? Armed struggle and the dictatorship of the proletariat as MIM says (and as all classic writers said about armed struggle being the highest form of struggle against the enemy) or through psychological counseling sessions in pre-socialist Amerikkka with the "Revolutionary Worker" as reading material? You guys make it sound like every contradiction among the people must be solved before revolution can happen. And I find it rather pathetic that you are against struggling with people towards revolutionary conciousness. You seem to say that revolutionary struggle is not in any American's interest, and thus they cannot be won over. Jeez, sounds like "people are inherently lazy" and "people are naturally greedy" or other bourgeois arguments against Socialism to me! Quote: WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON MASENOV? THE 90% OF AMERIKKKANS SUPPORTING OUR TROOPS OR THE FIGHTERS IN IRAQ? WHICH 90% WILL YOU GO WITH? Why can't I side with both? I support the Iraqi resistance fighters, and I support the American proletariat (even though they have been poisoned due to the fact that the ruling class's point of view permeates throughout all stratas of any class society, and the bourgeois media is currently waging a very effective war of public opinion on the minds of the proletariat). Quote: How many Amerikkkans do you think will support you if you come out and say you hope for victory for the Iraqi fighters? Right now? Not very many. But why can't we win them over with the truth? Quote: That every body bag is another step toward peace the way the Iraqi fighters look at it? Brother/Sister, I don't wish death on nobody. But sadly I know the U.S. invaders ain't goin' nowhere without a fight. "We are advocates of the abolition of war, we do not want war; but war can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun." -Mao Quote: We at MIM don't want your 90% of the U$A. Your 90% wants to "support our troops." Umm, actually only 60 or 70% of the American population supports the war. And like I said, the fact that the bourgeoisie have such influence on public opinion is something that must be combatted. Actually- scratch that- fuck the bourgeois press and their fuckin' polls. :D Quote: The answer is to drop Avakian's vacillating rhetoric trying to split the difference but ending up in nationalism and to take up the MIM line that says the global 90/10 as even Avakian calls it IS PRINCIPAL AND DETERMINES STRATEGY INSIDE U.$. BORDERS. Sorry, but I think the reasons I have posted in this debate give enough reasons to why I cannot take up the defeatist, pseudo-internationalist MIM line. Quote: BTW, Mazenov, if you decided to stand with the Iraqi fighters, you did so by putting the global 90% FIRST--BY FOLLOWING MIM LINE, not RCP line. If we were to try to approach the Iraq question really trying to win 90%, there is no way in hell you could come out saying you are for Iraqi fighters' victory. It can only be done on principle, in the face of a majority opposing us. Well guess what? I am for the victory of the Iraqi masses against the U.S. imperialists. And guess what? I decided to stand with them by following the RCP-USA's line. I won't help the bourgeoisie in helping to divide the international working class against each other; I will fight to unite the international proletariat against the international bourgeoisie. By the way, Saddam Hussein was a horrible, monstrous, U.S. puppet dictator who slaughtered countless innocent and helped the imperialists in their operations against the people of the Middle East. YET- the majority of Iraqis supported Saddam Hussein and the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party of Iraq. Does that make them labor aristocracy? Does that mean that it would be impossible to win the Iraqi masses over to revolution? Hmmm... _________________ Comrade Andrei Kuznets Support the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement! ************************************************** mimcom2 Joined: 22 Aug 2003 Posts: 123 Location: imperialist country Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2003 1:25 am Post subject: [quote="Andrei Mazenov"] Quote: Cured with what? Armed struggle and the dictatorship of the proletariat as MIM says (and as all classic writers said about armed struggle being the highest form of struggle against the enemy) or through psychological counseling sessions in pre-socialist Amerikkka with the "Revolutionary Worker" as reading material? Mazenov says: You guys make it sound like every contradiction among the people must be solved before revolution can happen. mimcom2 replies for MIM: Your definition of "people" includes enemies. Learn how to use the term "masses" the way Lenin and Mao did. Where do you stand on the liberation of Germany? That IS the only historical case relevant to this discussion of advanced capitalism. Most communist people after 1917 figured to unite behind Lenin, sort of like going with the winner, someone who proved how it could be done, not a utopian. http://elijahcraig.proboards2.com/index.cgi?board= history&action=display&num=1064272160 Your "RCP-USA" on the other hand, is ambivalent about the liberation of Germany in 1945. In place of talking about that actual history, "RCP-USA" spreads utopianism. Sorry Mazenov, but it was unwise then to take ex- Nazis and relabel what they did "socialist construction" in 1945 and it is unwise today in the imperialist countries to take people who have supported attack after attack on the Third World by renaming them "socialist." Do you understand that Mazenov: score 1 revolution by MIM's line 0 by "RCP-USA" line. Your utopian wishfulness and willingness to overlook decades of enemy activity by imperialist populations will lead to the construction of social-imperialism, that is all. In 1945 your line dovetailed nicely with ex-Nazis who wanted to return to power and today it will do the same thing--make excuses for enemies by covering them with socialist laurels. Quote: We at MIM don't want your 90% of the U$A. Your 90% wants to "support our troops." Quote: Umm, actually only 60 or 70% of the American population supports the war. And like I said, the fact that the bourgeoisie have such influence on public opinion is something that must be combatted. Actually- scratch that- fuck the bourgeois press and their fuckin' polls. :D mimcom2 replies for MIM: Sorry to interrupt your bong hit Mazenov, but this is another example of why Amerikkkans don't get the job done. There is imperialist, petty-bourgeois and proletarian opposition to the war. Opposing the war is not the measure we need for this discussion of the global 90/10. Sympathy for the Iraqi fighters is. In most of the world the sympathy is with the Iraqi fighters. Here in the u$A it is less than 10%. The petty-bourgeoisie vacillates between the imperialists and proletariat. And Mazenov, the war is already on, has been for more than a generation. It's not a question of wishing for it or not. The enemy has been carrying out attack after attack, but you let them off the hook for that. Last edited by mimcom2 on Fri Sep 26, 2003 1:38 am; edited 1 time in total ************************************************* mimcom2 Joined: 22 Aug 2003 Posts: 123 Location: imperialist country Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2003 1:30 am Post subject: mimcom2 for the MIM: Strategic consequences of getting the wrong global 10% as enemy
*ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia *Iran-Iraq war There should be a strong, united communist voice following the MIM line to show people the enemy. There is a bourgeoisie in the Third World. That's included in the http://www.globalrichlist.com The Third World bourgeoisie is too small to account for very much. Without the MIM line there is no realistic way of compiling that 10% of enemies. You will always end up talking like Liberal lawyers where there are no enemies at all or you will clear the way for the kinds of theories we see above. But go ahead Mazenov, if you think the Third World bourgeoisie is so big, go ahead and SHOW US. ************************************************** mimcom2 Joined: 22 Aug 2003 Posts: 123 Location: imperialist country Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2003 2:55 am Post subject: [quote="Andrei Mazenov"] Quote: BTW, Mazenov, if you decided to stand with the Iraqi fighters, you did so by putting the global 90% FIRST--BY FOLLOWING MIM LINE, not RCP line. If we were to try to approach the Iraq question really trying to win 90% [of the U$A], there is no way in hell you could come out saying you are for Iraqi fighters' victory. It can only be done on principle, in the face of a majority opposing us.
[mim3@mim.org adds for MIM: Quote: Mazenov says: Well guess what? I am for the victory of the Iraqi masses against the U.S. imperialists. And guess what? I decided to stand with them by following the RCP-USA's line. I won't help the bourgeoisie in helping to divide the international working class against each other; I will fight to unite the international proletariat against the international bourgeoisie. mimcom2 for MIM replies: Bravo Mazenov, you hit the nail on the head. I guess you did not oppose this war and stand with the Iraqi fighters, because of MIM line. I gave you too much credit. You stand with the Iraqi fighters because of a flip of the coin, taking the blame for who is more responsible for dividing the international proletariat, the Iraqi fighters or the Amerikkkan ones. Of course, pacifism can be dictated by opposing the split in the international working class. But picking one section of the international working class over the other requires a flip of the coin. In contrast, in MIM, the party is obliged to split before someone decides a u.$. imperialist war is more to be blamed on another section of the international working class. Your "RCP-USA" formula is a classically Kautskyist formula for vacillation on imperialist wars. The MIM line goes so far as to say that the u$ does not have a section of the international working class: only the oppressed internal semi-colonies do. There is no coin to flip with MIM line. Your "RCP-USA" does not support victory to Iraqis out of principle. If it mentions it, it does so out of opportunism--pressure from other recruiters out there including MIM but also more likely, Trots. There is nothing in the "RCP-USA" line that says building the Amerikkkan 90% that Avakian wants cannot come first. Avakian said in the quote in the first message that there was no "fundamental" contradiction between the global and U.$. 90%. Understand the words, what they mean. It means there could be circumstances in which Avakian would favor the Amerikkkan side of a split in the working class. It does not matter what Avakian says elsewhere. The RCP does not guide its strategy principally by the interests of the global 90%. That is in writing clear as day. Only MIM line would do so. The proof is also actually your statements on not being able to make revolution without a majority while MIM has constantly mentioned the bottom 20% of population here. Your statements show you lack strategic confidence in the international proletariat, regardless of the u.$. class structure. It shows that you are not confident that the international proletariat will deliver blows to u.$. imperialism so that we as a minority here will be able to have revolution. Understandably, in that situation, you support Avakian when he says there is no fundamental contradiction between the global 90% of population and the u.$. 90% of population. You want something to happen for you, whether or not the global 90% needs or wants it. BTW, not many historians would say the American Revolution of 1776 had majority support. We often hear a figure of one-third support. Your notion of how revolutions come about is mechanical and utopian rooted in generations of revisionism. Quote: By the way, Saddam Hussein was a horrible, monstrous, U.S. puppet dictator who slaughtered countless innocent and helped the imperialists in their operations against the people of the Middle East. YET- the majority of Iraqis supported Saddam Hussein and the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party of Iraq. Does that make them labor aristocracy? Does that mean that it would be impossible to win the Iraqi masses over to revolution? Hmmm... mimcom2 for MIM: Sorry to spoil yet another bong hit of yours, but you won't find many Iraqis in the global elite 10%. They can be guilty of false consciousness if they really did support Hussein, though I would not claim to know that. And certainly in time of war, the support for Hussein is intended as unity for war against the united $tates. It's not exactly precise. Yes, it's foggy. But no, it is not enemy consciousness. The people rallying for Hussein are still rowing the boat to shore, just not very well, as Stalin would say of the proletariat without its vanguard party. Note how Comrade Gonzalo even named Saddam Hussein by name in support in the first Gulf War. On the other hand, if Iraqis did make war on country after country, won booty and then decided to send troops to the united $tates for some gas for the pickup truck and SUV, then yes, I would say those Iraqis were demonstrating labor aristocracy consciousness. The difference with the u.$. is that today Iraqis didn't really get much for supporting Hussein. [They do so to reduce their exploitation by u.$. imperialism.] *********************************************** mimcom2 Joined: 22 Aug 2003 Posts: 123 Location: imperialist country Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2003 5:44 pm Post subject: Mazenov says: Quote: "Once again, the Chicano nation within America is part of the international working class, but they are oppressed within U.S. borders as a part of the U.S. class structure. Thus, while both are nations, they both are in different situations. However, after the proletariat revolution in the United States, oppressed nationalities WILL have the right to self determination, including the right to autonomy and/or secession." mimcom2 replies for MIM: The above is an example of "RCP-USA" double-dealing. It's very clear in the "RCP-USA" draft programme that Chicanos do not have a nation. "RCP-USA" intends "autonomy" within the u$a. "RCP=U$A" says: "For Chicanos this would mean the right to establish autonomy (i.e., self-government within the larger proletarian state) in large areas of the Southwest. This may take the form of a single autonomous region or several autonomous areas." And the following is a bold headline from the "RCP=U$A": Fighting For Socialism, Not a Separate Nation- State, Is the Road to Chicano Liberation In other words, "RCP-USA" says Kanada has a nation worthy of a nation-state and separate vanguard party and Kanadian workers at Amerikkkan-owned businesses are not part of the "multinational proletariat," but Chicano workers are part of the "multinational proletariat," because they have no nation. [mim3@mim.org interjects: What's important to remember here is that "RCP=U$A" can say both Kanada and Aztlan are nations, but they recognize only Kanada for a nation-state, recognize only a Kanadian vanguard party and deem only Kanadian workers as apart from the "multinational" U.$. proletariat. Had the "RCP"=U$A counted the English-speaking, contiguous Kanadians tied to the Amerikkkan economy part of the same multi-national proletariat (their Trotskyist notion), no one could accuse the "RCP"=U$A of racism just on that basis. It just so happens that the "RCP"=U$A gives more credence to Kanadians as a nation in practice than Spanish-speakers of Aztlan who have a super-exploited section. We find that absurd and indicative that Stalin's and Mao's theories of nationhood do not undergird "RCP"=U$A line.] ************************************************* mimcom2 Joined: 22 Aug 2003 Posts: 123 Location: imperialist country Posted: Sun Sep 28, 2003 1:14 am Post subject: [quote="Andrei Mazenov"] Quote: MIM really making an argument that "American workers have it good, so let's stop thinking or talking about revolution". It is a reactionary, counterrevolutionary, un-Maoist argument. MIM sits around chalking up arguments why revolution is "impossible"... and why the masses must suck. And it goes against all our experience and our dreams! What kind of "revolutionary" outlook is that? It's not. mimcom2 replies for MIM: I'm still waiting Mazenov. The above implies you lack what Mao called "strategic confidence" in the international proletariat and its ability to deliver blows to u.$. imperialism so that a minority can take power here. Trotsky shared your view. It says you think nothing of the contribution of the global 90% to the battle to take down u.$. imperialism, when in fact even by your silly argument equating the Amerikkkan petty-bourgeoisie with the proletariat and exploited peasantry, there are only 90% of 290 million people to take down u.$. imperialism (by your reckoning) while there are over 5 billion people outside u.$. borders who have the same interest. Who do you think is going to make the bigger contribution to ending imperialism--the 270 million or the over 5 billion? So why do we need a majority of Amerikkkans? Why is it futile to fight without them? Your line is capitulationist. Your view fundamentally says that the united $tates is just another country, not imperialism, and the headquarters of it at that. Do you have strategic confidence in the global 90% of the population or not? Are you promising above to punk out on the struggle if a majority of whites don't go along? If you were there during World War II, would you have been the German saying you have no strategic confidence in Stalin's socialist camp? Would you have been spreading defeatism because of Hitler's massive popularity? Would you have pointed to the pitiful remnants of the German communists still around when Hitler came to power and marched for war as a source of inspiration? OR would you have recognized the MIM line, the truth so you could continue fighting with a proper sense of the balance of forces? Would you have held to principle in the interest of the world's 90% of the population or would you have catered your line to fit the 90% of Germans who supported Hitler to the hilt? They tried it: it meant joining the Nazi party and unions and trying to tweak its ideology after 1943. Not surprisingly: it failed. The Stalin/MIM way succeeded. Welcome to reality. ************************************************** mimcom2 Joined: 22 Aug 2003 Posts: 123 Location: imperialist country Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2003 4:19 am Post subject: Quote: Well, I have a Lenin quote that I think applies pretty well to this discussion as well (and I would like to see the rest of that work, not just one little snippet from it!): Lenin in Imperialism and the Split in Socialism (1916)(available on line at http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/o ct/x01.htm ): [i]"That these ideas, which were repeated by Engels over the course of decades, were so expressed by him publicly, in the press, is proved by his preface to the second edition of The Condition of the Working Class in England, 1892. Here he speaks of an "aristocracy among the working class", of a "privileged minority of the workers", in contradistinction to the "great mass of working people". "A small, privileged, protected minority" of the working class alone was "permanently benefited" by the privileged position of England in 1848-68, whereas "the great bulk of them experienced at best but a temporary improvement"..." "Neither we nor anyone else can calculate precisely what portion of the proletariat is following and will follow the social-chauvinists and opportunists. This will be revealed only by the struggle, it will be definitely decided only by the socialist revolution. But we know for certain that the "defenders of the fatherland" in the imperialist war represent only a minority. mimcom2 replies for MIM: MIM has already addressed the con job above of interchanging the word "proletariat" when MIM is attacking the "labor aristocracy." We addressed that here. We also addressed the distorted picture "RCP"=U$A is trying to draw here of Lenin as saying a majority could never defend the fatherland. http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/classics/text.ph p?mimfile=majgerm.txt ***************************************** Andrei Mazenov Comrade Joined: 09 Dec 2002 Posts: 277 Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2003 10:29 pm Post subject: Mao actually spoke a few times on workers in imperialist nations: "The seizure of power by armed force, the settlement of the issue by war, is the central task and the highest form of revolution. This Marxist-Leninist principle of revolution holds good universally, for China and for all other countries. But while the principle remains the same, its application by the party of the proletariat finds expression in varying ways according to the varying conditions. Internally, capitalist countries practise bourgeois democracy (not feudalism) when they are not fascist or not at war; in their external relations, they are not oppressed by, but themselves oppress, other nations. Because of these characteristics, it is the task of the party of the proletariat in the capitalist countries to educate the workers and build up strength through a long period of legal struggle, and thus prepare for the final overthrow of capitalism." Not only that, but in The Little Red Book, Mao Tse-Tung continues on in a 1963 statement supporting the Amerikan Civil Rights Movement: "I call on the workers, peasants, revolutionary intellectuals, enlightened elements of the bourgeoisie and other enlightened persons of all colours in the world, whether white, black, yellow or brown, to unite to oppose the racial discrimination practised by U.S. imperialism and support the black people in their struggle against racial discrimination. In the final analysis, national struggle is a matter of class struggle. Among the whites in the United States it is only the reactionary ruling circles who oppress the black people. They can in no way represent the workers, farmers, revolutionary intellectuals and other enlightened persons who comprise the overwhelming majority of the white people. At present, it is the handful of imperialists headed by the United States, and their supporters, the reactionaries in different countries, who are oppressing, committing aggression against and menacing the overwhelming majority of the nations and peoples of the world. We are in the majority and they are in the minority. At most, they make up less than 10 per cent of the 3,000 million population of the world. I am firmly convinced that, with the support of more than 90 per cent of the people of the world, the Afro-Americans will be victorious in their just struggle. The evil system of colonialism and imperialism arose and throve with the enslavement of Negroes and the trade in Negroes, and it will surely come to its end with the complete emancipation of the black people." [mim3@mim.org interjects for MIM: MIM already addressed the above quote. It's mainly interesting in that the "RCP"=U$A and supporters always quote Mao and the Communist Party of China from before there was a Black Panther Party and while Mao was still fraternal with the Progressive Labor Party (PLP). We gather that the "RCP"=u$A supporters only aim to become another PLP. The part they like is that it talks about 90% of white "people," which is a word the "RCP"=u$A does not understand in MLM. They also do not understand that Lenin said there was an "something like an alliance" of imperialists and labor aristocracy--which constitutes the ruling alignment. In fact, Lenin stressed in italics that the imperialists took a portion of the proletariat and "amalgamated" it into the bourgeoisie. So once again, the "RCP"=U$A does not distinguish between bourgeoisie and proletariat. Nonetheless, we will grant them the use of that quote as the "RCP"=U$A intends it. However, that quote was dropped from subsequent statements by Mao on the u$A, not to mention the Peking Review. Speaking as its slower-witted imitators of the "RCP=U$A" did almost 40 years later, Progressive Labor Party denounced the above as "hate-whitey" and a few years later, PLP broke with Mao. For the exact same reasons, the "RCP=U$A"'s failure to embrace the liberation of Germany is indicative of its anti-Maoism.] _________________ Comrade Andrei Kuznets Support the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement! ************************************************* kasama Comrade Joined: 03 May 2003 Posts: 94 Location: in the belly of the beast Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2003 9:30 pm Post subject: Mao Exposes MIM Andrei: Your two citations from Mao revealed an important point: MIM is not maoist. Your post reminds us that Mao himself (the original maoist, obviously) was very clear that there is a proletariat in the U.S., and that it includes millions of white workers. And that he includes them in the 90 percent of the worlds people who have interests opposed to u.s. imperialism. And like all proletarian internationalists, he pointed out that in the U.S. it is the monopoly capitalist ruling class that is the enemy of the people of the world, not the broad masses. That was specifically his point in the essay you quote -- and he was urging people all over the world to take a class conscious stand vis a vis U.S. imperialism, not merely a nationalist one (that sees all Americans as "the problem.") It is also worth pointing out that not only does Mao see revolutionary potential in the masses of white workers, but also in middle class forces within the U.S. (including farmers and intellectuals). This is a stinging rejection of the line of MIM that ANYONE with privileges or some petty position is therefore (automatically and inherently) an enemy of the world's people. As you quoted Mao said: Quote: Among the whites in the United States it is only the reactionary ruling circles who oppress the black people. They can in no way represent the workers, farmers, revolutionary intellectuals and other enlightened persons who comprise the overwhelming majority of the white people. At present, it is the handful of imperialists headed by the United States, and their supporters, the reactionaries in different countries, who are oppressing, committing aggression against and menacing the overwhelming majority of the nations and peoples of the world. We are in the majority and they are in the minority. At most, they make up less than 10 per cent of the 3,000 million population of the world. I am firmly convinced that, with the support of more than 90 per cent of the people of the world, the Afro-Americans will be victorious in their just struggle. Of course, it is not just Mao who holds this. All of the world's significant maoist parties TODAY are proletarian internationalists and make such a class analysis of the U.S. This includes the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) whose writings on this are worth quoting, but also the RCPUSA (obviously). It also incluodes the Maoist parties that are not in the RIM (Revolutionary Internationalist Movement) like the Communist Party of the Philippines. [mim3@mim.org replies for MIM: In practice, the Turks, Filipinos and Peruvians inspired by the People's Wars all organize separately in the imperialist countries. They do not join multinational parties organizing multinational proletariats. Thus in practice, they carry out a MIM line; although, Kasama is correct that verbally they have not connected this practice to distrust of imperialist country parties like the "RCP"=U$A. It is a symptom of the confusion and split in the international working class. It is not a vindication of "RCP"=u$A line and nor can the endorsement of sister parties relieve the "RCP"=U$A of knowing its own conditions and fighting what Mao called the Wang Ming line. However, we are happy to have any answer from Nepal, Turkey, the Philippines or Peru: how much surplus-value do the imperialists take in from the oppressed nations and how does it affect the class structure? The "RCP"=U$A and its supporters are only too content to let people think the u$A is another largely peasant country. BTW, your RIM is counter to what Stalin and Mao both announced in 1943 in abolishing the Comintern. Yet, later in this article, you are going to denounce MIM as not Maoist for not upholding Mao of 1963 on U.$. class structure. Mao actually had experience with the Comintern and he never set foot in the united $tates. Yet, in your typical backward/upsidedown "RCP"=U$A way, you toss Mao on the Comintern while keeping him on something where his info came mainly from his fraternal party the Progressive Labor Party which has since proved its worthlessness. Your "RCP"=U$A is only putting forward the PLP line of 1963 with all the same undercurrents of Trotskyism.] (MIM itself confirms its isolation from the world's maoists: throughout their site where they whine that no one will talk to them because everyone thinks MIM's "third point" attacking the working class is utterly counterrevolutionary -- which it is.) The claim that there is no proletriat in the U.S. is completely untrue (as you have pointed out, Andrei, in various ways), it is also anti-maoist (as your quotes show). [mim3@mim.org replies: We said there is no white proletariat. There is definitely an Aztlan and First Nation proletariat and an immigrant proletariat. Notice how the "RCP"=U$A sees the "U.S" as all white and fails to break it down the way MIM does.] And where does MIM's mistaken and subjective view lead? to the reactionary conclusion that the masses can't make revolution, and that someone (who?) needs to invade the U.S. and force the masses to be socialist! What a fascist vision! Not "serve the people" but "conquer the people!" Pessimistic, anti-workingclass and wrong.
[mim3@mim.org replies: thanks for helping make this clear, and for upholding the CLASS stand of Marxism-Leninism- Maoism. Long live the working class, and its proletarian revolution. Kasama _________________ "We have fed you all for a thousand years... And here we are still unfed." (From an old revolutionary song) ************************************************** Andrei Mazenov Comrade Joined: 09 Dec 2002 Posts: 277 Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2003 10:29 pm Post subject: And I got a few other questions for MIM as well: Firstoff, why does MIM seem to assume I'm an expert in all RCP affairs? I'm not. I am not an RCP-USA member, I simply am a supporter. Don't play me up to make the Party look dumber. [mim3@mim.org replies for MIM: We never played you up, but the "RCP"=U$A is free to disown anything they think of yours that is wrong. They haven't.] What the hell is up with MIM saying that Russia is not an imperialist nation? If anything, Russia is pretty damn imperialist. Heck, look at this article from A World to Win talking about Russia and Iraq:
[mim3@mim.org replies for MIM: Russia is in the same boat. France doesn't need the $5 billion due to it from Iraq nearly as badly as Russia needs the almost $8 billion it is owed. Lukoil, Russia's leading oil company (a private concern, but just as surely tied in to the government as America's oil giants), concluded major agreements for Iraqi oil in 1997. The company recently reported that the Putin government gave it "guarantees" that it will have access to Iraqi oil in the future. Moreover, because Russia has been excluded from the exploitation of the Third World since the fall of the USSR, Iraq has been even more important to Putin's plans. Not only that, but Russia continues to dominate and exploit the Chechen people, as well as hold heavy business interests in surrounding former Soviet Republics. According to MIM's logic, Russia SHOULD be considered another "parasite" nation, but for some reason, MIM considers Russia non- imperialist. Huh. And then there's the fact that MIM says that "all sex under capitalism is rape". Okay, now, I agree that sexism really fuckin' permeates into all facets of our society, and relationships in the world today need a LOT of work, but, honestly, what the FUCK? MIM wants revolutionaries to abstain from all sex until after the revolution. Honestly, who wants that? Can't a male revolutionary who has taken up proletarian feminism and a female revolutionary who has taken up proletarian feminism have a healthy, loving, sexual relationship together as long as they love each other and respect each other as humans? Once again, MIM gives this whole feeling that men can never change, which is really pessimistic and really reactionary. It's hard to have a healthy, egalitarian relationship in today's society, true, but it's not IMPOSSIBLE like MIM makes it. Not to mention that's a slap in the face to a lot of revolutionary progressive couples out there.
[mim3@mim.org replies: But oh, there's more! MIM hypocritically says that all sex is rape, but that it's okay to post MIM propaganda on pornographic websites! What hypocrisy! If you want the proof, look at MIM's own words: http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/wim/cong/piraopo rn.html [mim3@mim.org replies: This is only proof that Mazenov thinks his/her Internet experience is porn-free, a typical individualist illusion. Keep on living your perfect lifestyle Mazenov. The rest of us think gender oppression is a system. "RCP"=U$A articles are also posted on porno websites. If it wants it can go denounce it! However, this is an example of where a lack of a cool head leads to self-contradiction. Mazenov here is willing to endorse People's Wars--the use of the bullet to settle contradictions. But he won't sanction the use of the porno-infested Internet? I'm sorry, but that sounds like someone preparing to punk out on the struggle in a hissy-fit to me. The proletariat fights desperately enough to use bullets and bombs. It sure as hell can take advantage of capitalist advertising methods.] Stuff like this only convinces me more that MIM is an unprincipled and revisionist organization that has no grasp of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. _________________ Comrade Andrei Kuznets Support the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement! *********************************************** kasama Comrade Joined: 03 May 2003 Posts: 94 Location: in the belly of the beast Posted: Wed Oct 01, 2003 1:30 am Post subject: MIM invents debates & positions Andrei you raise an interesting question that I'd like to address. Andrei wrote: Quote: Firstoff, why does MIM seem to assume I'm an expert in all RCP affairs? I'm not. I am not an RCP-USA member, I simply am a supporter. Don't play me up to make the Party look dumber. The answer is that this is MIM's method. Since they were founded, they have treated random remarks (or even completely invented remarks) as if they were "the line" of the RCP. This stands out most blatently in the MIM's so- called "history" (actually different evolving fictional histories) of their own development. These are strange and complaining little histories where they repeatedly describe positions as being "official RCP" that have no relationship with the RCP. I'd like to discuss this "history" and its method. You can find it yourself here: http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/wim/mimhist.html . This infantile essay is filled with bizarre claims and complaints. Here are a few: Mim claims for example that in 1984 "spokespeople for the RCP, USA consciously denied that they were Maoist." This was, of course, untrue. The RCP was formed on the basis of Marxism-leninism, Mao Tsetung Thought in 1976, as Maoism was called during Mao's lifetime. [mim3@mim.org replies: Lies and off the point.] In Mao's lifetime, the Communist Party of China itself used this formulation "Mao Tsetung Thought," not Maoism -- and this was universally the practice of Maoists throughout the world in their documents. In casual discussion people (including RCP supporters) called themselves Maoists. [mim3@mim.org replies: Lies and off the point.]
Later, in the 1980s, the international communist movement went through a process of discussion and debate over what to call its ideology -- and agreed to adopt Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as its name. The RCP was one of the parties urging this change, and adopted that formulation before the international organizaiton RIM did. In short, the RCP is the main expression of maoism in the u.s., and was mainly formed out of the Revolutionary Union (which was founded in 1968 also as a maoist organization.) There are countless quotes and statements by the RU and RCP about their support for Mao Tsetung Thought and Maoism -- going all the way back to the first publication Red Papers 1 in 1968, which had Mao's picture on the front cover. MIM invents a whole long history of the RCP criticizing MIM -- as you can see if you read their fictitious "history" which is filled with invented formulations attributed to the RCP. In fact, MIM is a non-event and has to invent this history in order to seem like "somebody." MIM writes for example, "The RCP then raised a number of criticisms of the new-born Maoist forces - which had existed for a long time as an organization named the RADACADS before changing its name to RIM and finally to MIM." The founders of MIM may have had momentary contact with the RCP long ago in some local area. But there has never been some big debate or relations. In fact, the RCP has officially only mentioned MIM once, in a passing footnote that said they were a suspicious organization that tried to crash gatherings organized by others. Mim writes: "The official RCP position was that the FMLN was 'not objectively anti-imperialist' and that it 'struck no blows against U.S. imperialism.'" This was clearly not the official RCP position, and they never said anything of the kind that i have seen. If MIM has some RCP statement that says this, let them tell us where it is. [mim3@mim.org replies: Lies and off the point.] Mim writes: "While the RCP admitted that the masses in oppressed countries always rise up against imperialism, it held that without a vanguard party formed on Marxist-Leninist principles, the masses could land no blow." This is obviously not the RCP's position -- as anyone reading the Revolutionary Worker's coverage can see. [mim3@mim.org replies: Lies and off the point.] There are many struggles around the world that the masses wage against imperialism (including mass movements against globalization, and uprisings like intefada etc.) and the RCP has always upheld their progressive character and importance (even while saying that such movements need revolutionary leadership in order to ultimately defeat imperialism and build a new society.) This was true about the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, the Palestinian intefada, the struggle of Polish workers in the 80s against the revisionist rulers there, the fight of people in Europe in the 80s against war preparations, and literally dozens of other examples. All of these movements had no Maoist leadership -- all received political support from the RCP. Never was it said that they could not and did not "land a blow." MIM even invents a line struggle within the RCP which doesn't exist. They write: "This was a sticky point within the RCP itself and the RCP was not always clear on whether or not the masses could land any blows spontaneously. For this reason, the words "objectively" and "are not anti- imperialist" and "strike no blows" were very important." Let's ask MIM: if those words are "very important" why don't you tell us where they supposedly exist? Where did the RCP say that non-Maoist movement "are not anti-imperialist" and "strike no blows"? The RCP has acted on a different approach for decades. This is all a MIM invention. [mim3@mim.org replies: Lies and off the point.] MIM invents whole dialogues with language like "The RCP seemed to soften this view at times, while honestly asking us: 'How can you expose U.S. imperialism while simultaneously attacking Soviet revisionism?'" Where did the RCP ask you anything?! [mim3@mim.org replies: Lies and off the point.] A particularly bizarre charge is the claim that the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM) (formed in 1984) "stole" its name from MIM's earlier organization. Talk about illusions of grandeur! The idea that the leaders of the world maoist parties plotted to spite MIM by "stealing" its name is both silly and ridiculous. None of them had ever heard of MIM's earlier incarnation because it was of no weight or importance (then or now). [mim3@mim.org replies: Blatant lies and off the point.] I could go on -- but the point is that MIM consistently invents dialogues that don't exist and sees itself as the center of a storm that doesn't exist. As the saying goes "they are a legend in their own mind." Any passing conversation with anyone they even *think* is an RCP supporter becomes treated (in their press and inflated histories) as "The RCP told us this and it thinks that." [mim3@mim.org replies for MIM: With regards to Mazenov's posts, they were often irrelevant "RCP"=u$A articles. They were criticized as such. To differentiate that from "RCP"=u$A line when it was practiced the same exact way by the "RCP"=U$A on its own website is metaphysical. But again, if there is anything Mazenov said that you disown, don't be opportunist: disown it. Otherwise, let the rest of us continue to rebut the stuff Mazenov quoted from the "RCP" as "RCP" line.] It is a method to inflate their importance, and (more importantly) to invent a history that treates a reactionary, infantile and frankly suspicious outfit as a credible party. Be warned. Last edited by kasama on Wed Oct 01, 2003 4:49 am; edited 3 times in total _________________ "We have fed you all for a thousand years... And here we are still unfed." (From an old revolutionary song) Back to top *************************************************** Andrei Mazenov Comrade Joined: 09 Dec 2002 Posts: 277 Posted: Wed Oct 01, 2003 2:47 am Post subject: some more thoughts for MIM to think over, when they accuse the American working class of being reactionary: Do you realize that the top 10% in the U.S. make more than the top 10% in ? Pretty scary, huh? Okay, so I'll admit that workers in imperialist nations do benefit from living where they do- but does that mean they have absolutely no interests in revolution? Homeless people in America are better off than homeless people in Nigeria. Does that mean that the homeless man in America is "privileged" and somehow oppresses the homeless man in Nigeria? No!!! [mim3@mim.org interjects for MIM: Anyone who reads MIM's newspaper knows MIM believes there is a lumpen in the U$A. That is not the same as saying there is a white proletariat. Prisoners, drug addicts, homeless, prostitutes--there are white ones. They do not add up to a proletariat.] People in New York City and Chicago get beaten up by the pigs and are sent to better hospitals than those who are beaten by the pigs in Lima and Ayacucho. Does this mean that these American police brutality victims are exploiting their brethren in Peru? No!!! [mim3@mim.org replies for MIM: Again, you wish to substitute a few cases for the general truth. 99.9% of u.$. worker strikes and conflicts are non-violent, including with no police intervention. That's not true where there is a real proletariat, as in most of the world. Again, do you ever feel obliged to back up what you are saying with a general factual statement that is true instead of a few cases in a country of 290 million people? Why not look into it a little more deeply?] There are people that are DYING in American coal mines and factories, and they must endure terrible working conditions despite the fact that they have pickup trucks and televisions. What about the fact that the majority of people on welfare are white workers? The whites that live in the Appalachian mining towns that suffer from third world malnutrition? [mim3@mim.org replies for MIM: Here, try some facts on Appalachia instead of myths for once. http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/bookstore/books/whitenation/duncan.html ] It seems to me that from all these examples, there IS an American working class that has something to benefit from revolution, and that a line opposing the U.S. proletariat (and, in a sense, the international proletariat) is unrealistic, pessimisstic, reactionary, and moralistic. [mim3@mim.org replies for MIM: As already stated by MIM much earlier in the thread, even slaveowners benefitted from the end of slavery, according to progressive people. That does not mean we cater to slaveowner demands. Marx treated them as enemy. Classes like slaveowners or imperialist exploiter labor aristocrats do not perceive the long-term future but act according to the class interest typical of their mode of production. If this were not true, we would not need class analysis at all, only a utopian appeal written in flowery language. Again, what role does class analysis, surplus-value play in your line? None.] I got more to say on this, but I'll leave it here for now. _________________ Comrade Andrei Kuznets Support the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement! ************************************************* Joined: 08 Dec 2002 Posts: 613 Location: Kiev Ukraine Posted: Wed Oct 01, 2003 11:27 am Post subject: My thoughts/agreement with the problems in the communist movement in the United States are as follows: Quote: America is like a healthy body and its resistance is threefold: its patriotism, its morality, and its spiritual life. If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within." - Joseph Stalin America is indeed a healthy body for the bourgeoisie... as it was intended with its founding principles.. does this alienate or deny the MAJORITY of Americans who are indeed oppressed by capitalism the right to organize and have revolution? Does this notion seem 'utopian' in the given circumstances? I think not. America is welded together by patriotism, morality and spiritual life and if we take a good look at the situation today the later two are starting to show cracks.. especially spiritual life. All of this can only be recognized by a fifth column rising in the United States and this fifth column is indeed a progressive force. Remember revolutionary struggle comes in phases and when conservatives complain about the 'liberalization of the world' they are indeed complaining about an evident fact. The Citizens of the United States are indeed becoming more liberal. Think of a republican or a democrat today and think of a republican/democrat from 50 years ago that is where the difference is. Is liberalism revolutionary? Well lets look at it in a less metaphysical way... progression is oppressive, oppression is progress.... Meaning that with every move forward for progress there will be an at LEAST equal attempt to oppress this progress which shall generate a larger awareness of the class struggle which shall then liberate the herd of the American Masses into revolutionary thinking and ideals. Of course we shouldn't support more oppression to have more awareness.. that is why we are fighting the uphill struggle in America.. because we don't want this oppression but it is unfortunate that only through the direct taste of oppression that people will react to the nature of oppression.. in other words progress is reactionary to oppression and oppression is reactionary to progress. These are the facts of the American movement and can be concluded as true by the fact that Bush's popularity rating fell like a rock when his abuses become more blatantly obviouse. [mim3@mim.org interjects for MIM: Only because Bush has failed in getting what he wanted and because Iraqis treated Amerikkkans (and not just imperialists) as ENEMY, as is in the interests of the global 90% of the population.] Also on another point. What is this third world you keep mentioning... there is no third world in a revolutionary sense... there is only the bourgeoisie term of a third world. Is it in those terms which you are referring to the third world? _________________ **************************************************** Koba Comrade Joined: 08 Dec 2002 Posts: 613 Location: Kiev Ukraine Posted: Wed Oct 01, 2003 11:42 am Post subject: On National Culture, Rights to self determination and Autonomy: Hispanics in the United States do indeed constitute a majority in areas of the United States and of course where there is a majority of peoples their interests for self government should indeed be granted. Would this go as far as creating a nation state within a nation state? No by all means necessary it should not be. But I think we all agree that the right to self determination is the right to seceed and I also think that the only way we can remove cultural and national antagonisms is to uphold the right to seceede. The answer to the national question regarding consolidations of nationalities and cultures in the united states is to permit them to govern themselves in federation with the Centralized state with the right to seceede at any time.. regardless of their geographical location if they feel the central government is no longer in their interests. The same also goes for Kanada, but in todays world.. the world of bourgeoisie classes and bourgeoisie nation states, Kanada has to be dealt with differently. Of course we should welcome centralization with them, but at the time being we are not centralized with them so therefore we must support their independence and the independence of their people, including any desires French Kanadians may have for secession of Kanada. The Revolutionary Americans role in regards to Kanada is to fight the usurption of Kanadian independence by the American Imperialists who are certainly assimulating Kanada into American Imperialism via 'parenting'. I say parenting because Kanada is surely becoming a child of the United States.. Kanada relies upon the United States military and economically far too much to retain any true independence. [mim3@mim.org replies for MIM: OK then, but make sure this line is implemented. What the "RCP"=U$A is implementing is not consistent treatment of Aztlan and Kanada.] _________________ ************************************************* kasama Comrade Joined: 03 May 2003 Posts: 94 Location: in the belly of the beast Posted: Wed Oct 01, 2003 4:20 pm Post subject: The place once known as the USA I agree with much of what you wrote, koba. The U.S. today is a complex multinational country with many internal nations and nationalities. The stand of genuine communists is that a central part and goal of any revolution is ending the national oppression of those peoples (including Black people, Native peoples, Chicano people, immigrant nationalities, and, of course, the colonized country of Puerto Rico.) Against Mechanical Thinking and the Denial of Proletarian Unity There is a trend in the left (within the U.S.) that thinks the only way to end oppression is to separate -- and so it advocates independence (an independent country) for each of the various nationalities. There are several problems with this approach. First, such a mechanical solution underestimates the importance of liberating and unifying as much territory as possible for a future unified socialist state. History teaches us much about the difficulties of imperialist invasion and encirclement after revolutions. Second, this approach assumes (on many levels) in a nationalist way, that the oppressed of different nationalities cannot unite in a single movement, cannot build a common socialist state, and cannot work together to end national oppression and build a liberated society. It is a deeply pessimistic view, and it is sometimes tied to a counterrevolutionary analysis that there is no proletariat (at all!) in the u.s., and the view that all white people (regardless of their class) are inherently reactionary and pro-imperialist (and so the only solution for the people of other nationalities is to separate from them.) This analysis is factually mistaken, and it is politically anti- revolutionary. Third, this approach completely overlooks the complexity of the national questoin within the territory now known as "USA." Many of the oppressed natoinalities within the u.s. cannot form functioning independent states. [mim3@mim.org replies for MIM: This is the root of it, the Trotskyist disdain for non-white, non-Western peoples. Look up the term "strategic confidence" from Mao.] As Stalin pointed out, one necessary basis for any realistic discussion of "self-determination" (i.e. possible independence) has to include a distinct territory large enough for a national market (otherwise what meaning would "independence" have?) For example, the hundreds of separate Native peoples do not have territories or populations that can be the basis for independent states -- and the practical solution for ending their centuries of oppression involve forms of autonomy within a larger socialist state. Indian people have long demanded recognision of important sovereign rights -- and it is a just demand. But without returning to hunting, gathering and village agriculture it would simply be impossible for form INDEPENDENT states on small patches of land inhabited by a few thousand people. Clearly forms of autonomy, restitution of important stolen lands -- but also the right to migrate to cities - - all remain part of ending the bitter oppression of Native peoples. [mim3@mim.org replies for MIM: The white nation should OFFER the most internationalist integration it can, but real liberation requires nationhood in the given economic context.] On the other hand, Puerto Rico is clearly a colonized and annexed nation -- held within the U.S. by armed force and extreme economic dependence. And any revolution in the U.S. would set Puerto Rico free from mainland control (if the people there had not done so on their own already!) Black people have a long history as an oppressed nation of people -- concentrated within the former plantation areas of the Deep South. This area, a band of rich farmlands called "the Black Belt" is the historic homeland of African-American people. Though they have since been dispersed from that territory. one possible solution to their liberation could involve forming an independent Black Republic there. This is (however) an unlikely solution -- since Black people now mainly live in the urban areas throughout the U.S., would inevitably be playing central and leading roles in the revolutionary process there, and might very well see their best chance for liberation to take ALL of the U.S. through struggle and form as large a unified socialist state as possible. The Chicano National Question The Chicano question is an interesting and challenging one for revolutionaries. Some people, mechanically, simply assume that all Latino people in the U.S. (or in the Southwest) are a single people. But any serious study reveals that it is more complicated. There are Chicano people -- who are U.S. born people of Mexican descent, and whose families have sometimes been in the southwestern U.S. even before the Anglo-Americans arrives. They form a distinct people within the U.S. There are large and growing numbers of Mexican immigrant people in the U.S., and especially in the Southwest. And also immigrant people of other nationalities -- including from Central America. And in addition, there are people who trace their history to the Spanish land grants of New Mexico, who consider themselves Spanish (not Mexican) and who have important historic rights to land (similar to the struggles of Native Peoples for treaty rights.)
[mim3@mim.org replies:
The fact that there are a variety of people originating in "In wars of national liberation patriotism is applied internationalism." Quotations of Chairman Mao, chapter 18 or "The Role of the Chinese Communist Party in the National War," October 1938, Selected Works, Vol. II, p. 196. The real question here is why does the "RCP"=U$A think that the dominator nation of the U$A has a better chance of handling these complexities mentioned above when it has the largest portion of labor aristocracy? Why would not the Aztlan nation minus the dominator labor aristocracy have an easier time of it? A moment's reflection answers which is more likely to work things out on a proletarian basis and a further moment's reflection answers why MIM wants a stage for the dominator nation to go through on the receiving end of dictatorship before we give it credit for "socialist construction." Again, Nazi Germany is the most relevant historical experience that "RCP"=U$A avoids like the plague, as if Amerikkkans have not been rampaging more and longer with more booty gained than Nazi Germans.] The national question of the south west U.S. is made more complicated by several factors: First there is a real chance of revolution in mexico moving north and triggering uprisings in the u.s. In other words, revolutionary change in the u.s. can take the form of a "spillover" from an important upsurge from the south.
[mim3@mim.org replies for MIM: Second, there are conflicting claims at times between the history and demands of Native People and those of Spanish descended people. (There are also conflicting land claims between Native Peoples like Hopi and Navaho, that have been inflamed by the operations of U.S. domination) [mim3@mim.org replies for MIM: The white nation has a long history of dividing oppressed nation peoples. In this stage of struggle, the oppressed nations have a much better chance of seeing through friendly answers to these questions than some still-white-dominated nation. To believe otherwise is to deny the existence of super-profits.] Third, there are many millions of oppressed people in the southwest who are not Latino, or Mexican descended -- including millions of proletarian people from South Asia, east Asia, and the many Pacific islands, and of course significant populations of African American proletarians. For that reason, one sentence of your post needs to be reevaluated. The Question of "HIspanic" You wrote Quote: Hispanics in the United States do indeed constitute a majority in areas of the United States and of course where there is a majority of peoples their interests for self government should indeed be granted. I think you can see that there are several problems with that. First, there is no nationality called "Hispanic" -- Hispanic is a term developed by bourgeois sociology that treates immigrants and descendants from a dozen DIFFERENT nations as part of a single bloc. But Mexican people are not Salvadorans, and are not Chicanos, and are not Cubans or Puerto Ricans -- as you can quickly find out if you ask them, or live in their communities.
[mim3@mim.org replies for MIM: Second, while clearly Latin American people form majorities in some parts of the U.S. (in many urban area neighborhoods and barrios, in the whole city of LA, in important california farm areas etc.) they do not form a single contiguous areas of majority rule anywhere where the basis exists for the unified national market needed to maintain an independent state. This could change of course -- as a result of movements of people, or as a result of revolution. [mim3@mim.org replies for MIM: This above is true in a lot of places in the world. A nation breaks through in one spot first. That's the nature of uneven development but not the nature of Trotskyist theories of simultaneous insurrection. Of course, the above is also talking about a static majority of whites. It does not account for the real contours of battle as it is going to shape up--namely that imperialist borders will not be respected and what is a majority will not always be.] These are theoretical issues with a rich history. I think you are right to uphold the right to autonomy in major areas of concentration. At the same time, Lenin in his famous polemics with the Austrian Marxists, made an important argument against the simplistic notion of "cultural autonomy" in multinational states -- casually and automatically accepting the divisions among working people among different nationalities in areas where their lives and histories are clearly entwined. [mim3@mim.org replies for MIM: Divisions should be based on super-profits. Amerikkkans are exploiters not exploited. The exploited of many nations can work things out. If they try to integrate with the parasites, they will fail and end in disunity.] The Southwestern Parts of the current "U.S." I think it is important to see that the southwest of the current "U.S." is not some single already- existing "Azatlan nation" waiting to secede. The Southwest of the U.S. does not look like Puerto Rico (which is such a nation waiting for independence). The land of the southwest was stolen from Mexico in a great crime of invasion and annexation. This is an event that frames the whole history and present of this area -- and the economy of that region (and the U.S. as a whole) draws heavily from the historic and ongoing exploitation of Mexican immigrants (and Mexico itself). History (and imperialism) have created a complex, vibrant multinational society in the Southwest of the U.S. drawing oppressed people from all over the world. This is the reality now. There is no Azatlan -- and the creation of an indepdendent Azatlan out of the complex MULTINATIONAL society that NOW exists in the southwest is not a good solution promising liberation and equality for all the peoples who now live together within that region. [mim3@mim.org replies for MIM: Look again how s/he sees multinational unity of the oppressed and exploited as impossible while s/he does see multinational unity with white exploiters possible. Listening to Kasama, one would have thought that China, Russia/USSR, etc. were single-nation revolutions. They were multinational efforts. The liberation of imperialist Germany in 1945 by the Red Army was also a multinational effort in the interests of the international proletariat. It is the "RCP"=U$A opposing that multinational effort's significance and example.] The actual forms and modes of national liberation there are not obvious, and will inevitably be influenced by how revolution develops. But the best assessment of communists who have studied these questions are that this will involve an important struggle for multinational proletarian unity for socialist revolution, and forms of rule (after the revolution) that involve restitution of land, forms of autonomy and a systematic shattering of the larger aparatus of white supremacy. The goal is socialist revolution on as large a territory as possible -- without in anyway taking the current borders of the U.S. as something permanent, legitimate or fixed. And it is also to find the ways (through revolutionary unity and struggle) to finally end the oppression of all the various nationalities within the u.s. using the many possible forms of new power and new organization that revolution make possible. And finally, the goal is to create a new society in north america that no longer robs and oppresses the rest of the world -- especially those areas that are popularly called "the third world" (and that in MLM's scientific language would be called "the colonial, semi-colonial/semi-feudal and dominated countries"). Summation As you can see these are complex and real world problems. The solutions are not mechanical and infantile rhetoric -- or cookiecutter proposals (like mechanically insisting that all nationalities need their own independent territories.) Each nationality within the current U.S. has a distinct history, and each has unique characteristics and demographics. The task for revolutionary communists is to develop programmatic approaches that actually end the oppression of each of these people IN THE REAL WORLD, and forshadow policies that help consolidate a victorious socialist state (or states), build deep proletarin internationalist unity among the oppressed and change the world. _________________ "We have fed you all for a thousand years... And here we are still unfed." (From an old revolutionary song) ************************************************** Koba Comrade Joined: 08 Dec 2002 Posts: 613 Location: Kiev Ukraine Posted: Wed Oct 01, 2003 5:19 pm Post subject: I agree that the thinking trend calling for secession isnt the best solution but I think in the current situation in the United States where the State is very xenephobic in any initial action there will be a congress of nationalities so to speak. I think in todays world national movements often preceed social movements (Black Panthers, Rainbow Push Coalition ). Although they are civil rights organizations they represent 'Black America' 'Muslim America', 'Spanish America' and so on and so forth. I think the key to unifying the social movement in the united states lies in the national movements to recognize the struggle of each other, which they already do to an extent. These organizations are the labour unions of culture and nationality which need to be higher organized within the party so to speak instead of remaining fractured and organizing in solitary. Quote: First, such a mechanical solution underestimates the importance of liberating and unifying as much territory as possible for a future unified socialist state. Let us look at the example of the formation of the Soviet Union.. I think it was very critical to first have completely independent Ukraine, Russia and Georgia rather than Centralized Soviet Union. Why? Because the republics were already welded together by Russian Imperialism and without first recognizing the complete independence of the Republics there would be no guarantee of independence.. There wouldn't be comradery between republics and national antagonisms would have existed. In the United States I think it would be similiar where all local territories would need to be given complete independence (puerto rico, guam, sipan and a few dozen other places) in order to have complete and unbiased centralization. On the second point: Perhaps I worded something poorly or I was mis understood.. I dont think its an issue of not being able to unite as one.. I think instead that in order to unite there must first be liberation. Even in the event of a perfect revolution where the state was completely vanquished and replaced it would be essential to first recognize the independence of the colonies to ensure that one imperial power isnt replacing another. I think that if you were to invite an independent puerto rico and saipan as equals in a centralised state they would accept with open arms. As far as areas within the 50 States... I wasnt advocating that they should be split up into independent nation states.. I was saying that majority rule should be common practice and my reference to hispanics was in reference to common language. Third, this approach completely overlooks the complexity of the national questoin within the territory now known as "USA." Many of the oppressed natoinalities within the u.s. cannot form functioning independent states. Quote: ...one necessary basis for any realistic discussion of "self-determination" ... has to include a distinct territory large enough for a national market ... Well if you look at Chechnya and Abkhazia (especially Abkhazia) They themselves are too small for a national market. Perhaps you disagree with me but even if these territories were rebuilt from scratch they really couldnt persue a quality of life agenda in economics... or even albania for example when they abandoned the warsaw pact... even though socialism did improve albania greatly.. Albania in itself was too small to have a 'national market' .. or a market that can provide for its citizens. But back on point... you are right that a state shouldnt be carved up at anyones will and should be done so with purpose and reason... but who is to decide this reasoning and who is to judge what is right? The only logical solution would be to let peoples seceed if they want.. and as lenin said.. any socialist nation would favor centralization over solitary national independence. So my answer to this is that people will go to the side that has the greener grass. I agree with you on the point about the Natives... there were countless amounts of tribes and to console all of them would be impossible. Regarding Puerto Rico, I know many Puerto Ricans that want PR to be a state. Which would be great if thats what they want to do as it creates a stronger centralized state and an equal PR. I agree that I spoke too fast regarding the term 'Hispanic' I really should have stated it as spanish speaking peoples have a right to govern themselves in their spoken language and be educated in their spoken language. regarding southwest USA.. it appears conservatives are afraid they will become the victims of their own tactics.... Bourgeoisie move to texas and decide to become independent.. and now (mostly mexicans) in the south west come in for a piece of the american pie... _________________ ******************************************** kasama Comrade Joined: 03 May 2003 Posts: 94 Location: in the belly of the beast Posted: Wed Oct 01, 2003 6:00 pm Post subject: To free the people we need unity based on equality Koba thanks for your thoughtful reply. My first point: all of these issues are discussed in some detail in the Draft Programme of the RCP,USA -- and it is worth reading and considering their points on this: http://rwor.org/margorp/a- nat.htm Now, let me touch on your points one by one, and hopefully we can achieve some unity. Koba writes: "I agree that the thinking trend calling for secession isnt the best solution but I think in the current situation in the United States where the State is very xenephobic in any initial action there will be a congress of nationalities so to speak. We agree that mechanically calling for secession by everyone isn't the best solution. It is not serious, not practical, and in the real world, it won't actually solve the oppression of the people in many cases. I think there is much to learn from the historic approach of Leninism. Lenin suggested (for the multinational state of Russian Empire) that the way to build the unity for a large unified socialist state is to uphold the *right* of secession, while hoping to win oppressed nationalities (especially the proletarians) to agree to stay and build a common state. [mim3@mim.org replies for MIM: Russia in 1917 was a vast majority of exploited toilers, mostly peasants. That is not much applicable today in almost all the imperialist countries. Germany in 1945 is applicable.] In other words, the right of secession (called "the right of self-determination") is not the same as calling for secession. It is saying "we uphold the right of the oppressed people themselves to decide whether to stay or go, and we will fight to win over the proletrians of other nationalities to supporting that right." It is compared to the right to divorce. We uphold the right of divorce (since women can't be equal without the right to leave a marriage) but that doesn't mean we uphold divorce in all cases! In fact, the right of divorce (and the freedom to leave) often creates better conditions for fighting through toward a marriage that is not oppressive. Historically (and i think correctly) MLM has argued that external colonises (indochina, zaire, puerto rico) need independence from their colonizers in order to be liberated. While INTERNALLY oppressed nations (like Black people in the U.S. or the Basque people in Spain, or dozens of nations within the Russian empire) should have the *right* of secession -- but may not need to exercise it. Koba writes: "I think in todays world national movements often preceed social movements (Black Panthers, Rainbow Push Coalition ). Although they are civil rights organizations they represent 'Black America' 'Muslim America', 'Spanish America' and so on and so forth. I think the key to unifying the social movement in the united states lies in the national movements to recognize the struggle of each other, which they already do to an extent." Left to themselves, as divided social movements of different nationalities, these struggles cannot end national oppression. "The Key" is to develop a unified revolutionary movement under the leadership of the multinational proletariat -- that takes as a central task and goal solving national oppression under a socialist society. The revolution in the u.s. is (as Mao said) the merger of two great currents: the struggle for proletarian revolution and the struggle for national liberation of internally oppressed peoples. I think it is worth pointing out that national movements also have a class character. PUSH is a bourgeois movement that is not particularly progressive and certainly not revolutionary. The Panthers by contrast were heavily proletarian and deeply revolutionary -- with some early communist and Maoist currents within their ranks and approach -- they were also eager to work with revolutionaries of all nationalities to build a united movement that could actually defeat the system. The Panthers (by the way) never called for the secession of Black people from the U.S. -- and seemed to envision systems of autonomy for Black and Latino communities within a larger Socialist state. I agree with you that all the oppressed people of the U.S. (including here proletarians who are white) need to "recognize" and support the struggles of other peoples, and embrace them as their own. this is a key to victory, and is a responsibility of communists to work on. Koba says "These organizations are the labour unions of culture and nationality which need to be higher organized within the party so to speak instead of remaining fractured and organizing in solitary." I think we may agree here -- tho i'm not sure exactly what i means. If you mean uniting the many diverse struggles and currents fighting for change, under a unified proletarian revolutionary vanguard leadership -- then we agree. Koba writes: "Let us look at the example of the formation of the Soviet Union.. I think it was very critical to first have completely independent Ukraine, Russia and Georgia rather than Centralized Soviet Union. Because the republics were already welded together by Russian Imperialism and without first recognizing the complete independence of the Republics there would be no guarantee of independence.. There wouldn't be comradery between republics and national antagonisms would have existed." The bolshevik approach was to uphold the *right* of secession for the Ukraine, while (at the same time) arguing that *exercising* this right would not be the best solution for the larger revolution. After all: Without the Ukraine, the socialist revolution in Petrograd and Moscow etc could not have survived. Without the socialist revolution in Russia, the revolutionary workers of the Ukrainian Donbass mining region would have been crushed. Again, it is like divorce: women need the right (i.e. the power, the socially recognised choice) to leave abusive husbands. That doesn't mean every wife needs to leave every husband before they can "work things out." Koba writes: In the United States I think it would be similiar where all local territories would need to be given complete independence (puerto rico, guam, sipan and a few dozen other places) in order to have complete and unbiased centralization. If you think through the actual dynamics of a real world revolution -- this is highly impractical. If the society is divided during the revolution -- with separate parties, separate struggles to form separate states and separate armies -- the revolutonary energy is dispersed in a mechanical exercise. Just like if the Ukraine had gone independent during the Russian civil war (build its own party, state, army, institutions, foreign policy etc.) the larger revolutionary struggle would have been diverted and weakened, and (in fact) the Wrangel/Denikin forces would have had a base area to consolidate and stage their attack on the red centers of Moscow and Petrograd. Koba writes: "I think that if you were to invite an independent puerto rico and saipan as equals in a centralised state they would accept with open arms." I think the people of Puerto Rico would chose to be independent. Koba writes: "As far as areas within the 50 States... I wasnt advocating that they should be split up into independent nation states.. I was saying that majority rule should be common practice and my reference to hispanics was in reference to common language." We agree and both understand that no one is talking about splitting up the 50 states. (These internal "provinces" do not correspond to nationality in the U.S. -- while in some countries like Spain or France the provinces are sometimes different nationalities like basque, catalonian, Corsicans etc.) I agree that in areas where oppressed people are a majority they need forms of autonomy. And Spanish needs to be treated as an equal language, especially where spanish speaking is a majority, but also more widely throughout society. BTW: Hispanics are defined as people with "spanish surnames" -- many Hispanics (including most Chicanos and many Puerto Ricans in the U.S.) do not speak Spanish as their main language. Koba writes: "Well if you look at Chechnya and Abkhazia (especially Abkhazia) They themselves are too small for a national market. Perhaps you disagree with me but even if these territories were rebuilt from scratch they really couldnt persue a quality of life agenda in economics... or even albania for example when they abandoned the warsaw pact... even though socialism did improve albania greatly.. Albania in itself was too small to have a 'national market' .. or a market that can provide for its citizens." I do not know enough about Chechnya to say. But clearly Albania is a nation in the sense of Stalin's five criteria, and just as clearly they had and formed a national market and functioned as a small, but successful independent state. Clearly it is harder to be independent when you are small -- and clearly it is important to understand that socialist revolutions need to strive for the largest territories and populations possible (to withstand encirclement). But I think Albania IS an example of a nation in the full Marxist sense of the word. Koba writes: "you are right that a state shouldnt be carved up at anyones will and should be done so with purpose and reason... but who is to decide this reasoning and who is to judge what is right? The only logical solution would be to let peoples seceed if they want." I agreee. First that secession should be undertaken with great care. And also that it is oppressed nations themselves who need the right to decide (the right of self-determination). And having that right, makes the possibility of voluntary unity and federation more possible. Koba writes: "So my answer to this is that people will go to the side that has the greener grass." I'm not sure what that means -- but this is worth noting: oppressed nations have different classes within them. And the different classes will judge "what is greener?" differently. Koba writes: "I agree with you on the point about the Natives... there were countless amounts of tribes and to console all of them would be impossible." I want to be clear here: the whole point is exactly to "console all of them" -- i.e. the point of revolution is to end people's oppression, end their mistreatment, work hard to resolve their historic demands. I don't think it is impossible to meet the needs of all the native people (marxists rarely use the sociological word "tribes"). However, my point was that meeting these needs means the path of "significant autonomy and sovereignty within the framework of a larger socialist state." I don't think we should ever say "these are small peoples" so lets not worry about "consoling them" -- if we did that, we would not be revolutionary and would not be meeting our responsibilities. My guess is that you didn't mean that remark the way it sounded. right? Koba writes: "I agree that I spoke too fast regarding the term 'Hispanic' I really should have stated it as spanish speaking peoples have a right to govern themselves in their spoken language and be educated in their spoken language." We agree on the importance of equality of language, especially spanish in the u.s., and the right of people to be educated in their own language. I also think it is important for anglo- americans to learn spanish, and become bilingual as an expression of internationalism and an effort to form a common socialist future together. These are interesting and important questions. And i look forward to more debate on this. _________________ "We have fed you all for a thousand years... And here we are still unfed." (From an old revolutionary song) **************************************************** Koba Comrade Joined: 08 Dec 2002 Posts: 613 Location: Kiev Ukraine Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2003 12:46 am Post subject: about the natives... I didnt mean to have it sound like that.. I meant it as consoling every tribe individually which would be impossible (some of this for apache some of that for sioux more of this four lakota and then try to figure out unknown tribes) But yes.. consoling the natives collectively as a whole is very practical and deserved. It's interesting your thoughts on Puerto Rico.. Almost all the Puerto Ricans I know want PR to be a state... but then again they live in the United States so for them its a bond of unity with their friends and their families. (kinda like little cuba in miami isnt a reliable source on Cuba since obviously they left for a reason). [mim3@mim.org replies for MIM: Koba, you have noticed something, but it is reactionary. The Boricuans who want statehood tend to want so for reasons of super-profit pie. When it comes to language, sports teams, beauty contests, Olympics--they want all separate. The revolutionary nationalists are the ones most uniting with the oppressed and exploited of the world. Again, the U$A should offer statehood and the best integration that they know how to do, but the reality of the class struggle is that Puerto Rico is a place where the split in the working class is still playing itself out, and is mostly decided in favor of parasitic integration.] As far as Ukraine is concerned I consider Ukraine to have been independent after the Bolshevik revolution since for the first time in a long time it was self administrated and Russias grip on the nation had been relieved and therefore Ukraine had freedom of choice. Which they chose to support the Bolshevik Revolution. I also agree that PUSH is a bourgeoisie movement, but its a bourgeoisie movement that wishes to replace the current ruling authority. I view these organizations to be more or less Mensheviks with the exception they dont claim to be revolutionary wheras the Mensheviks did. Marx stated that with every step forward a portion of the revolutionary movement will be content with the new achievements and wish to maintain at that position.. I believe PUSH and several civil rights or cultural organizations are an example of this and they will surely lag behind in the earlier stages.. But none the less they take part in a portion of our fight (anti war movement for example) and when they take part gives us more opportunity to work towards a united movement. ANSWER for example is mostly an opportunist movement but because a lot of its volunteers are socialists it does a great service to amassing and organizing the communist movement as it has worked as a recruiting tool in a sense. (I dont mean ANSWER is a communist movement I mean that people who take part with ANSWER find themselves in association with communist volunteers) Quote: If you mean uniting the many diverse struggles and currents fighting for change, under a unified proletarian revolutionary vanguard leadership -- then we agree. More or less I meant what I said in the last paragraph... the United States seems to be a haven for what I call focus groups who really dont have an idealogy they just stick to one issue and work at that. I think these organizations are what fractures a lot of the workers movement since there's a lot to chose from, but then again like I said, many communists take part in these organizations so it works as an introductory service to socialism for a lot of liberal minded people and thus higher organization (unity) is in the works. Quote: If the society is divided during the revolution -- with separate parties, separate struggles to form separate states and separate armies -- the revolutonary energy is dispersed in a mechanical exercise. You do have a valid point but if a socialist state were to be constructed and it were to say to all 50 states "We are now a centralized socialist state and you all have the right to self determination" wouldnt that in short be an invitation to join the centralized state even though a centralized state would have already been declared? Eventhough the centralized state did indeed exist beforehand, the states didnt have any choice until the right to self determination came about and at the very instance the right to self determination comes about... every state will make clear their intentions to take part or seceede. Thus it would seem impossible to maintain the right to self determination without an invitation to the centralised state Albania: Albania was indeed a nation state and while they did have a national market.. was this market maintainable without selling out national independence? After The USSR and China went borgeoisie Albania attempted for unilateral self sufficiency which unfortunately they were failing in.. I dont mean to sound like a Trot but I believe socialism in one state has to work without any dependence on bourgeoisie nations which Titos Yugoslavia proved what relying on the enemy does (dependence not assistance, trading with the enemy is often a necessary evil providing it doesnt sell away your dependence.) Quote: So my answer to this is that people will go to the side that has the greener grass When the question of secession or centralization comes the states will take whichever side that is in their best interests. Which of course a centralized state has huge advantages over solitary independence but these advantages are easily washed away through colonialism and social imperialism.. or as lenin said "It's the duty of the larger state to recgognize the self determination of the smaller states and its the duty of the smaller states to centralize with the larger states" Concluding on Spanish language (I gotta organize my replies better ;) ) Yes.. I think having Spanish language on my passport is not nearly enough.. I have no idea how many public schools in the United States offer education in Spanish but its clearly not enough... I saw a few victims in my middle school.. They were native spanish speakers who had to learn in english while they were being taught English.. then when they graduate guess what... They dont know nearly as much as they should because the system screwed them over. Ideally they could have easily been taught in spanish and then learn English as an elective. _________________ ****************************************************** Andrei Mazenov Comrade Joined: 09 Dec 2002 Posts: 277 Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2003 2:51 am Post subject: I think we need to go back to the main question that MIM had: Who are the 90% that we must unite alongside, both nationally and internationally? Who are the 10% that we must struggle to overthrow? Something to consider: a rich landowner in Thailand makes only about $500 a year, yet imperialism and capitalism are in his interests, aren't they? [mim3@mim.org replies for MIM: This is the most honest thing your side has said in this whole struggle. Thank you. At least you Mazenov seem to have worked through the implications of your own line. I'm betting not many internationalists will agree with you. It's exactly the kind of thing that makes the bloodletting in ex-Yugoslavia or Rwanda possible. When your neighbor gets a whole $500 a year and you get $75, you figure the neighbor is the problem unless there is a proletarian internationalist party there to lead the way to seeing where poverty really stems from--imperialism.] Many workers in America only make $10,000-20,000 in a year, yet they still cannot provide proper food a clothing to their kids despite making much more than the Thai landlord, because the American worker is forced to live in a heavily commodified society (unlike the semi- feudal countries). [mim3@mim.org replies for MIM: Again, I've already addressed this. Not being commodified means that surplus-value is being sucked out by the imperialists invisibly. It is the job of Marxists to expose it politically, not fantasize how it means people are BETTER off than people making more money on jobs created from that invisible super-exploitation. This is a much more developed topic. It needs more attention than you have given it. A good answer to this question requires deep study. I will offer two angles toward a rough commonsense approach though. One angle is to look at these people making the $500 a year you are talking about in Thailand. Far from enjoying so many benefits there, these people would trade their money and non-commodity benefits for $500 money inside the u$A, if immigration rules would allow it. A second angle is to look at how many Amerikkkans go to the Third World to enjoy the non-commodity benefits you are talking about if it's really so much better. I will even help your cause by confiding that I have thought of doing it persynally, but my reasons would be vastly different than most people's. If you talk to most people who think about migrating, you will find that they actually spend $10,000 or even $20,000 to sneak into the u$A illegally and not vice-versa as much. That should be a clue about how great the benefits of not living in a "heavily commodified" society are. There are things like massive public transport, drinkable water and roads in the united $tates that many Third World people have nothing of, commodified or otherwise. The bottom line is that the general social benefits of the Third World living close the gap absolutely (but not relatively) in some ways while falling behind in other ways. The absolute gap between the imperialist petty-bourgeoisie and the Third World petty-bourgeoisie can appear to shrink, depending on what you adjust for, but the ranking of the world's top 10% economic elite will not change much. Again, this subject deserves profound study and I just offer you this one commonsense piece of evidence.]
[mim3@mim.org September 4, 2004 postscript: Only 12 cities out of 125 surveyed have costs of living less than 80 percent of that in New York. Bombay and New Delhi, India are the most important of these, ranking in at 76 percent of New York City costs. Another three cities in that category are from Canada, which is an indication that the difference in costs of living internationally is not radical." This again points to how stereotyped factual thinking backs a comfortable parasitic position for Amerikans who believe that somehow prices must be lower in the Third World which is why it can have the same percentage (10%) of enemies as the imperialist countries. Source: USA Today International Edition 9June1995, p. 2a.] Remember that top 10% of the U.S. and the top 10% of Nigeria? They make vastly different amounts of money, but both have the same basic interests in capitalism, imperialism, and exploitation. And these are but a few examples that make up the millions of oppressed workers in imperialist nations and oppressive capitalists in oppressed nations. So what can we learn from these examples? That determining the two 90/10's by simple income is mechanical and confused. It cannot properly analyze how the bourgeoisie and the proletariat are divided. It cannot bring about a proper Communist analysis. If MIM wants to truly take up the path of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, they need to drop this mechanical analysis of income and wealth as the deciding factor in what TRULY divides the world into the two 90/10's. [mim3@mim.org replies for MIM: What's mechanical is seeing every country whether U$A or Nigeria contributing 10% of its population as enemy. That's Trot, not uneven development. This formula of taking 10% from every country guarantees that the majority of the people "RCP"=U$A sees as "enemy" is Third World, because the Third World constitutes 80% of the world population. 8 out of 10 percentage points constituting enemy will be Third World by "RCP"=U$A reckoning while 9 out of 10 people making over $10,300 a year are considered "friends" by the "RCP"=U$A. Such an approach does not square with calling the principal contradiction "between oppressed nations and imperialism." The "RCP"=U$A is seeing 80% of the enemy in the oppressed nations. It's not surprising, because the "RCP"=U$A was slow to take up the principal contradiction and as always it's even slower to implement it. ] I'd like to add some more quotes by Bob Avakian, if you guys don't mind: Quote: In the battle against the heightening repression and in the overall struggle against the imperialist juggernaut, both the importance and the acute contradictoriness within our "two 90/10s" orientation stand out very sharply. As put forth in our Party's Draft Programme , the "two 90/10s" refers to the strategic orientation of seeking "to win over the `90 percent,' whose fundamental interests ultimately lie with the proletarian revolution, against the `10 percent'-- the ruling class and its die-hard supporters-- within the U.S. while doing this in unity with the `90 percent' internationally , the great majority of the people of the world who suffer exploitation and oppression under the domination of imperialism and its allies and puppets." To win people to apply this orientation, and maintain it through all the twists and turns, will of course be a struggle -- and this will be true not only in the broader movement but within the ranks of our Party as well. I have seen some reports concerning discussions within the Party, for example, where it has been raised: "How can we really carry out our two 90/10s orientation when we see that in this situation so many people are waving flags or supporting the government?" Or the question is directly raised: "Does this show that our two 90/10s orientation is not correct, or at least that we're not going to be able to carry it out?" Well, it's good these questions are being raised, but it's important to emphasize that, if you go back and read how this is characterized in the Draft Programme , it never presents this--and it would be wrong to present it --as if this is a straight-line, linear process and at every point you're going to have 90 percent of the people with you or that 90 percent can be very easily mobilized around your banner. On the contrary, it is recognized, and emphasized, that this is an acutely contradictory process because, considering things just within the U.S. itself, there are ways in which many people, significant forces in society, are spontaneously and in the short run pulled in the wrong direction; and, as pointed out in the Draft Programme , there is the very acute contradiction between maintaining a bedrock position and activity based on proletarian internationalism and still seeking to unite the broadest number possible and strategically maintaining an orientation of uniting with the 90 percent in the U.S. itself. [mim3@mim.org replies: It's a problem for Avakian, because he wants to vacillate. The answer is simple: U.$. and most imperialist country strategy derives principally from the interests of the global 90%. We fight for principle whether we will be in the minority or not. If we deem the nation fascist and cannot voice the proletarian internationalist truth, then as Mao said, only armed struggle will allow public opinion to advance again in that context. As usual, the "RCP"=U$A gets 90% of its disagreement with MIM from trashing Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao. Only 10% stems from the fact that MIM uses the definitions and methods laid down by MELSM to update analyses of conditions. As we see in this debate, the "RCP"=U$A has almost nothing to say about actual super-profits and how they are distributed today. Lenin and Stalin already torched Avakian's above line perfectly constructed to have things both ways, the way any petty-bourgeoisie does, instead of taking the interests of the global 90% as principal. Lenin and Stalin referred to Avakian's line as indicative of the "servitors of the bourgeoisie."] So what these events are bringing out is precisely the profound correctness and farsightedness of what's said in the Draft Programme about the two 90/10s.
There are two excellent essays by Bob Avakian
concerning the two 90/10's and how to properly
apply this theory: I'd also like to contribute a little something from Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung (The Red Book): Quote: What kind of spirit is this that makes a foreigner selflessly adopt the cause of the Chinese people's liberation as his own? It is the spirit of internationalism, the spirit of communism, from which every Chinese Communist must learn. . . . We must unite with the proletariat of all the capitalist countries, with the proletariat of Japan, Britain, the United States, Germany, Italy and all other capitalist countries, for this is the only way to overthrow imperialism, to liberate our nation and people and to liberate the other nations and peoples of the world. This is our internationalism, the internationalism with which we oppose both narrow nationalism and narrow patriotism. "In Memory of Norman Bethune" (December 21, 1939), Selected Works, Vol. 2, p. 337.* [mim3@mim.org replies for MIM: Egads, 1939. But anyway, there were proletariats within the boundaries of all those places. Again, you should not worship boundaries as if they were nations.] In short, the evidence above (and the evidence mentioned in my earlier post) seem to point to the fact that MIM is mistaken when they claim that there is no U.S. proletariat and that the workers in the United States are somehow to be classed as having interests in imperialism simply because they receive a high income. I'd like to hear your thoughts, mimcomrade2, as well as Koba's and Kasama's. [mim3@mim.org replies: As Mao stressed in his struggles against the Moscow-trained "Bolsheviks," strategy can only derive from study of one's own conditions, not by quotation of great leaders of other countries and times. You quote classics against us without answering the question of surplus-value. That is not Marxist or Maoist.] _________________ Comrade Andrei Kuznets Support the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement! ************************************************* kasama Comrade Joined: 03 May 2003 Posts: 94 Location: in the belly of the beast Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2003 5:01 pm Post subject: the various sides Andrei: There are some points that your post raises: 1) I think that it is worth pointing out that the working class in a country like the U.S. is HIGHLY stratified. there are tens of millions of people who form a section that can be called "the real proletariat" (i.e. it literally corresponds to Marx's words "has nothing to lose but its chains" -- is often unemployed, desperate, poor, alienated etc.) There are tens of millions of workers who are "relatively stable" but still clearly exploited as workers, and have interests in overthrowing imperialism. And there are sections of the working class in the U.S. (and a rather significant chunk) that really are "labor aristocrats" and have a position that is tied to imperialism (and internal racism) and know it. (i.e. Even if they objectively would benefit from a new socialist society, their ties to this system are strong and rooted in corrupting arrangements like white racist exclusion of Black people from building trades etc.) So in arguing against the reactionary "Mickey Maos" position that "there is no proletariat in the U.S." -- let's not lose sight of the complexity of the real life class structure, or the fact that living in the heartland of imperialism does influence many people (both materially and ideologically). 2) The approach of two 90/10s does not mean that 90 percent of the people will be won to the revolutin (and certainly it is not a fantasy that 90 percent are ALREADY won). It is a view that says it is OBJECTIVELY in the interests of the vast majority to have a new society (even including strata that in some ways live well under imperialism, but suffer other madness -- eco destruction, rape and oppression as women, and all the rest). It is not a view that says "we need to have the vast majority for a revolution before we start." It is simply an assessment that socialism is in the interests of the majority (objectively). [mim3@mim.org replies for MIM: You have not shown any objective interests for revolution. You have quoted dead people, not shown the relations of exploitation. You have not done your homework on super-profits. That is more than evident this far into the discussion. If I were you, I'd heed Mao: "no investigation, no right to speak." You are an embarassment giving Maoism a dogmatic and scatter--brained reputation. Your approach is just like the Moscow-trained "Bolsheviks" Mao had to take control from.] Now there is a huge difference between objective interests and subjective political consciousness. (This is a point the "Mickey Maos" don't even try to grasp. Real maoism sees a complex dialectical relationship between ideas and matter -- with ideas often lagging far behind matter. In particular, the vast machinery of bourgeois ideology PLUS the divide-and-conquer realities of capitalist life -- train people to hate each other, and scramble in the here-and-now. [mim3@mim.org interjects for MIM: Quite the contrary, MIM, Sakai and others have done comparative studies of false consciousness. It's not the same in the united $tates and the rest of the world. There is a big difference between rallying behind a bourgeois like Saddam Hussein in Iraq because you are an Iraqi proletarian opposed to U.$. imperialism's invasion on the one hand (Iraqi case) and favoring the attack on Iraq on the other hand (Amerikkkan case) because you are going to put gas in the SUV. The first is false consciousness but not enemy consciousness. The second is enemy consciousness proved in action over and over again. That action contributes to the formation of the u.$. class structure itself. It makes Amerikkkans benefit from plunder internationally. It is consciousness backed with action with results of plunder--real material results. The proletarian with false consciousness in Iraq is not altering his/her class position by taking action to oust U.$. invaders. S/he is engaged in class struggle against exploiters rightly suspected of wanting to control oil. Historically the "working class" in the united $tates raised itself to petty-bourgeoisie through actions that the "RCP"=U$A calls "ideas lagging far behind matter." Well guess what "RCP"=U$A? Ideas can have consequences in actions and those actions can change matter. That's what sealed the deal and made the Amerikkkans exploiters, not exploited.] But grasping that socialism is in the interests of the vast majority of humanity (including the vast majority even within the U.S.) -- is a way to set an orietation for revolutionaries in the U.S. on how to talk to and how to talk about the people (even those section that CURRENTLY are against the revolution and are rather backward.) [mim3@mim.org replies: Translate as evident at ISF and elsewhere: befriend fascists, wait for them. Do not struggle based on principle, because it might offend "RCP" "friends" mis-labelled "exploited."] One of the big problems of MIM's approach is that they look at what is (including backward ideas among the masses) and in a very very mechanical way announce that a) these ideas are in the objective interests of those people and b) this proves that those masses have objective reactionary interests against the revolution and c) they will never be won over to socialism or revolution except by force. It is philosophically wrong to confuse "what is" for "what is possible." Because the world is dynamic, "what is" is always changing -- and becoming "what is possible." [mim3@mim.org replies: You just contradicted yourself in two sentences. Change is part of "what is." There is no need for utopianism feeding white nationalism.] Especially for revolutionaries: you have to grasp what is unseen- but-possible within what-exists-but-is- transforming. Otherwise you get sunk in a swamp of pessimism in non-revolutionary times (which is exactly where the "mickey maos" have put themselves. [mim3@mim.org replies for MIM: MIM is not pessimistic. We have what Mao called "strategic confidence" in the world's exploited and oppressed-- the five billion. What Kasama is saying is that the "RCP"=U$A would be pessimistic if it had MIM's line, because "RCP"=U$A does not have confidence in the real masses and advises lying to the public as if such lies could alter the class structure, anymore than telling slave-owners how they would benefit from the end of slavery worked then. BTW, such lies we can see now DELAYED the abolition of slavery by spreading pacifist illusions, illusions about how the enemy class could be talked into changing within their own mode of production.] 3) The two 90/10s say "socialism is in the objective interests of the vast majority of humanity." And i deeply agree with you that it is cartoonish and simple-minded to then make a chart of "who earns how much" and decided (from that) that the "top ten percent of earners" is the reactionary core on a world scale. First oppression and interests are not defined by simple income. (One of the major differences between BOURGEOIS sociology and Marxism -- is that bourgeois sociology denies class, and defines "strata" by income -- making up vague and obscuring categories like middle class, underclass, upper class etc.)
[mim3@mim.org interjects for MIM: The above is also anti-Marxist and self-contradicting by Kasama who also uses the term "middle class." MIM showed the "RCP"=U$A that it's line on this is anti-Marxist several times now, but it still can't get it straight. Marx himself used the term "middle class" right in the "Communist Manifesto" and it's certainly appropriate when discussing the petty-bourgeoisie. It's typical how the "RCP"=U$A seeks to toss MLM on definitions and methods while quoting them from decades ago on the conditions that exist as if the conditions still existed. In this article, we will see Kasama quote Mao from 1963 on conditions in the U$A in 2003 and above we see Andrei do it from 1939 as if the conditions were the same. This is exactly upside down and backwards. The definitions of classes under imperialism and the methods of studying them are the same, but the classes themselves and their conditions change over time. The correct context for comments like Kasama's above is when someone genuinely proletarian refers to h/hself as "middle class." That would be false consciousness. Such a necessary struggle does not mean there is no value to the commonsense of "middle classes." And finally, look at Kasama say MIM is "vague." MIM provides an instrument to provide anyone with a sense of where they are at, and Kasama provides NO comparable listing of the 10% of enemies and Kasama calls MIM vague. Over at "RCP"=u$A they don't teach basic materialism. It's not appropriate to piss as if from Heaven on those of us actually doing things in the real world. You have to get your hands dirty with data too. Then you'll find it's not so easy to shoot down MIM line like pissing in a pot.] More important, as you point out, a major oppressor in a third world country may be entirely tied to imperialism -- yet make less than a skilled worker in the u.s. But that oppressor in the third world may have houses full of servants, and boats etc. The countries are so different, and [mim3@mim.org interjects: Rowboats don't count in this sort of discussion, Kasama, but if you have proof that the Third World bourgeoisie is so big and wealthy, and could constitute the 10% of the global enemy, why don't you bring some of that evidence instead of shooting off your mouth, or should I say pee-shooter? Let me help you. I found this quote from a yacht-owners' club: "Marine industry statistics indicate that the typical working couple uses their boat between 2 to 4 weeks a year, due to time constraints. Yet the recurring monthly costs such as mortgage payments, dockage/storage, insurance and maintenance is a 12 month per year commitment." Apparently this web page was written by an "RCP"=U$A comrade given how similar the lines are: http://www.floridayacht.com/whats_new.htm No wonder these folks can't "pay the bills" as the "RCP"=U$A is always oinking.] the costs of living so different, that it is unscientific (and frankly childish) to make a global chart of incomes and assume it is all comparable. [mim3@mim.org interjects for MIM: Anyone with any real long experience with looking at the economic conditions of this world with a view toward Marxism already knows that it is childish to think the income list is much different than the list of those deriving surplus-value from the exploited in a global context. "RCP"=U$A nitpicks MIM facts without providing alternative ones. We give all people a way to know very precisely where they stand on income. "RCP"=U$A can't provide anything even remotely substitutable, because it would expose their line from top to bottom. There is no fact that even approximately supports their absurd line. Let's be clear what NOT using the MIM line means. It means that the "RCP"=U$A is taking people with less than $10,300 a year in income and making them the MAJORITY of the world's enemy, what we are both calling the global 10%. Andrei was honest enough to admit it in clear English. Kasama is not. Meanwhile, "RCP"=U$A is saying that a majority (90%) of people making over $10,300 a year are objectively FRIENDS. Not surprisingly then, with this backward and upside-down understanding, they make friends with everyone on Internet instead of laying down difference of principle.] One final point: I think people need to get out and look. Go check out farmworkers, or white working class kids in Iowa packing plants, or the life of black women in housing projects. I mean just look at such a single women: You can't look at the check of someone on welfare and say "she makes more than most people in the world, she must objectively have interests in supporting imperialism." how embarassingly mechanical and absurd is that? And more, what a hostile and cynical view of the people that is. She often can't clothe or feed her kids, she has no job and no future, her kids get dragged into danger and maddness (what are their choices? illegal activity, flipping burgers, prostitution, jail, killed by some pig or gang madness?) Who can't see that such a woman, and her kids, are a bedrock social force for radical change? Potentially. Perhaps not at the moment, perhaps not tomorrow, but potentially such people have every interest in joining hte struggle for a new world -- in their millions. [mim3@mim.org replies for MIM: MIM has said not just millions, but tens of millions inside U.$. borders. If Kasama thinks there are only millions of oppressed and exploited within U.$. borders, I'll send him/her a MIM membership card next week. You see Kasama, there are 290 million in the united $tates. Your party does not seem able to address that. A majority of 290 million is 145 million. 90% is closer to 270 million people you claim has an objective interest in revolution. Go ahead and try to find any economic facts that support your real views--not facts that support MIM's. Your party has not for decades. It cannot. It has to lie, divert and distract.] _________________ "We have fed you all for a thousand years... And here we are still unfed." (From an old revolutionary song) ************************************************** kasama Comrade Joined: 03 May 2003 Posts: 94 Location: in the belly of the beast Posted: Sat Oct 04, 2003 9:40 pm Post subject: being fair to stalin Koba... you posted this "quote": Quote: America is like a healthy body and its resistance is threefold: its patriotism, its morality, and its spiritual life. If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within." - Joseph Stalin To be fair to stalin, i don't think this is a quote from him at all. It does not jibe with his line and ideology. Rightwingers in the U.S. has whole catalogues of made up quotes that they use (and reuse) in their anticommunist propaganda. This "quote" seems like exactly one of those rightwing slanders. Perhaps i'm wrong. Perhaps you have seen a citation for it. But i doubt it. I'm sure you didn't intend to circulate a false quote, but i think you posted it by accident. _________________ "We have fed you all for a thousand years... And here we are still unfed." (From an old revolutionary song) *************************************************** Kolby Comrade Joined: 05 Oct 2003 Posts: 1 Posted: Sun Oct 05, 2003 12:41 am Post subject: Re: Mao Exposes MIM kasama wrote: Andrei: Your two citations from Mao revealed an important point: MIM is not maoist. "It would be expedient, perhaps, to emphasise more strongly and to express more vividly in our programme the prominence of the handful of the richest imperialist countries which prosper parasitically by robbing colonies and weaker nations . . . . To a certain extent it facilitates the rise of powerful revolutionary movements in countries that are subjected to imperialist plunder, and are in danger of being crushed and partitioned by the giant imperialists (such as Russia), and on the other hand, tends to a certain extent to prevent the rise of profound revolutionary movements in the countries that plunder, by imperialist methods, many colonies and foreign lands, and thus make a very large (comparatively) portion of their population participants in the division of the imperialist loot." ("Revision of the Party Programme," http://www.marx2mao.org/Lenin/RPP17.html, p. 168) Lenin makes a point of saying that the social- chauvinist "defence of the fatherland" slogan is used "to maintain the privileged position of citizens of rich nations which make enormous profits by pillaging colonies and weak nations" ( p. 169). Compare this to the corresponding section in "Materials Relating to the Revision" (http://www.marx2mao.org/Lenin/MRPP17.html, p. 460) which mentions only the bourgeoisie. Lenin clearly is trying to include bourgeoisified strata in the category of citizens. Furthermore, "the export of capital, one of the most essential economic bases of imperialism, still more completely isolates the rentiers from production and sets the seal of parasitism on the whole country that lives by exploiting the labour of several overseas countries and colonies" (http://www.marx2mao.org/Lenin/IMP16.html, p. 120). So, where Lenin emphasizes the parasitism of whole oppressor nation peoples, RCP minimizes the parasitism, confining it to the "die-hard supporters" of the imperialists and turning parasitism into a matter of class position, of a subjective force, rather than the objective fact of bribery with superprofits. Where Lenin emphasizes the need for "immediate, systematic, extensive and open struggle waged against this stratum" (http://www.marx2mao.org/Lenin/TSCI20.html), the labor aristrocracy in imperialist countries, RCP minimizes the need and flatters the labor aristrocracy with opportunist rhetoric, obscuring and excusing their parasitism. I believe that neither Lenin nor Mao made a sufficiently detailed investigation of the particular class structure of the United States. But at least in its emphasis of the comparative reactionary inclination of oppressor nation peoples, what Lenin said in 1916 and 1917 is more correct for the present day (and I suspect based on historical manufacturing earnings and standard of living data, for the decades since Lenin wrote Imperialism) than what Mao said in 1967 in regard to "the reactionary ruling circles" of the U.S. being the sole oppressors of the Third World. In order to better evalulate the prospects for revolution in the U.S., it is up to us to assess the extent to which white workers actually participate in parasitism. There are two ways to approach this question. The first is to admit that Mao might have underestimated U.S. white worker parasitism and proceed, as MIM has done, to calculate the amount and distribution of superprofit received by the workers. The second is to quote Mao (or Lenin) as if one were quoting the bible truth of scripture and substituting it for a true investigation of the U.S. white worker's relationship with oppressed nations. To make it worse, quote Mao on something that might be unrelated to the issue at hand. Where Mao says that "it is only the reactionary ruling circles who oppress the black people," he is not saying that only the big bourgeoisie benefit from imperialist oppression. He is saying only that most Whites don't actively perpetrate a particular internal national oppression. Most Whites might still benefit from imperialist oppression of nations outside U.S. borders. In fact, Mao leaves open this possibility when he speaks of imperialists "and their supporters, the reactionaries . . . committing aggression against and menacing the overwhelming majority of the nations and peoples of the world." He is not focused on answering the slightly different question of who the effective beneficiaries of imperialist oppression are. He is not looking who is getting the superprofits or the implications of being a recipient of such income. kasama wrote: The claim that there is no proletriat in the U.S. is completely untrue (as you have pointed out, Andrei, in various ways), it is also anti-maoist (as your quotes show) MIM's position here is that the Euro-American nation has no exploited working class, no mass of exploited workers, that U.S. white workers normally are not exploited when they are employed. MIM's position is not that there are absolutely no individual White proletarians, much less that there is no proletariat within U.S. borders. MIM recognizes that internal oppressed nationalities form proletariats. It is the RCP who denies the existence of these proletariats, saying that they only form one multinational proletariat. Thus, they can say that there is a "U.S." proletariat. The RCP hopes nobody will notice that they've slipped the White labor aristocracy into this imaginary formation. This is confusing to people new to MLM who might not know that there are oppressed nations inside U.S. borders. When MIM says that there is no White proletariat, it is presumed that they mean that there is no proletariat within the U.S. because whiteness is (not incorrectly) associated with the U.S. RCP takes advantage of this ignorance and encourages it by sloppily associating White workers and oppressed nationality workers. Arguing that there is a multinational proletariat is one thing. But Kasama, the way you equate the U.S. with the Euro- American nation, and the Euro- American working class with the international working class to say that MIM is anti-working class, is simply disingenuous. It is also dishonest to suggest that MIM is subjective simply because it holds a minority view that doesn't sell well in the imperialist marketplace of ideas. In imperialist countries, MLM as a whole is "subjective" compared to Trotskyism. It is interesting to see the "objective" company that RCP keeps in its denial of U.S. white worker parasitism and its effective repudiation of national struggle within the U.S. "White workers accept racist ideas not because it is in their interests to do so . . . . At most what white workers receive is the imaginary solace of being members of the superior race, which helps to blind them as to where their real interests lie." (Alex Callinicos, Race and Class, p. 44)[/i]
************************************************* kasama Comrade Joined: 03 May 2003 Posts: 94 Location: in the belly of the beast Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2003 9:58 pm Post subject: I will try to get to the heart of this without wasting everyone's time. In a previous post, I made the point that MIM's line is not Maoist. Marx, Lenin and Mao all described the working class in the U.S. as a potentially revolutionary class. And Lenin and Mao writing within the twentieth century both pointed out that the U.S. was an imperialist and parasitic country, but also that the working class within the U.S. was (to the large part) a powerful potential force for revolutionary change. Kolby (defending MIM) responded by saying: "I believe that neither Lenin nor Mao made a sufficiently detailed investigation of the particular class structure of the United States." [/b/He then specifically says he does not agree with "what Mao said in 1967 in regard to [b]"the reactionary ruling circles" of the U.S. being the sole oppressors of the Third World." OK. Kolby proves one of my points: He and MIM oppose the views of Lenin and Mao on the revolutionary potential of workers in the U.S. And, not surprisingly, MIM also disagrees with every other known Maoist party, organization, theoretician and leader in the world on this point. Kolby and MIM are welcome to their views -- but they can't pretend to be Maoist. Then Kolby tries to claim that Lenin and Mao were acting out of ignorance. Let me point out some things: Lenin lived much of his political life in Western Europe. He was deeply involved with the line questions of the movements wherever he was in exile (London, Paris, Switzerland, Germany etc.) He analyzed the imperialism of those countries, studied the movements of those countries, and saw firsthand how the masses in those countries lived and worked. And Lenin did not agree with MIM that those workers were just a bunch of parasites and labor aristocrats. Lenin correctly analyzed that imperialism produced a SPLIT in the imperialist country working classes -- by creating a high degree of stratification. The economic split is the basis for a political split. Mao was known for intense and detailed analysis of any question of importance. He did not publish his analysis of the U.S. working class (for various reasons that we can guess) -- and so we can't read what he had studied and summed up. But he did write his conclusions (which I quoted earlier). Kolby writes: "Where Mao says that "it is only the reactionary ruling circles who oppress the black people," he is not saying that only the big bourgeoisie benefit from imperialist oppression. He is saying only that most Whites don't actively perpetrate a particular internal national oppression. Most Whites might still benefit from imperialist oppression of nations outside U.S. borders. In fact, Mao leaves open this possibility when he speaks of imperialists 'and their supporters, the reactionaries . . . committing aggression against and menacing the overwhelming majority of the nations and peoples of the world.'" This is dishonest. Mao was very clear (as kolby knows) that he thought that the masses of white workers in the U.S. are not oppressors.
[mim3@mim.org replies for MIM: Mao thought and said that they are part of the class forces that will end imperialism, and overthrow forever the oppression of Black people in the U.S. In Maoist China the line of the Communist Party there (and of its leader Mao Tsetung) was that the masses of working people in imperialist countries (including white workers in the U.S.) were not oppressors, and were potentially revolutionary. This is clear in Mao's writings, in the public writings of Peking Review in the Maoist years. Etc. I want you to notice a revealing "sleight of hand" here: Kolby writes: "Most Whites might still benefit from imperialist oppression of nations outside U.S. borders." Everyone knows that living within the U.S. means that life is not as hard as it is in the third world. A kid going to be hungry in a housing project in Chicago has a better chance of surviving than a kid going to bed hungry in rural India. If a homeless guy in Washington DC has better garbage to pick than someone homeless in Ethiopia -- does that mean that IT IS IN THE INTERESTS OF THAT HOMELESS GUY IN D.C. to keep the people of Ethipia dominated by U.S. imperialism? No.
[mim3@mim.org replies: Saying that "most whites might still benefit from imperialist oppression of nations" (in some small way) does not mean that capitalism is suddenly in the interests of most whites. It is a sleight of hand. In fact, there are petty advantages to being oppressed in an imperialist country -- but it is still oppression. And it doesn't make you permanently and fundamentally into some "parasitic collaborator" in imperialism's corrupt brutalizing of the world. MIM and Kolby have every "right" to embrace wrong (or even silly) ideas. But they must not get away with calling themselves "Maoists" when they promote counterrevolutionary and incorrect views on the working class. Kolby writes: "MIM's position here is that the Euro-American nation has no exploited working class, no mass of exploited workers, that U.S. white workers normally are not exploited when they are employed." There is a multinational working class in the U.S. -- meaning that the people who are workers in the U.S. come from different nationalities. And they form a single (if diverse and stratified) class. If you go to an autoplant and talk to a white worker and a Black worker slaving side by side -- you have to be on a complete dogmatic fantasy trip to argue that these two people belong to *different* classes. They are from different nationalities (meaning that Black people and Euro- American people form distinct historic communities) -- but capitalism has brought them together and exploits them together, as members of a single class. [mim3@mim.org interjects: One will be the supervisor, the other production. One will be white collar, the other blue-collar. One will have assets at home to live off for years if need be. The other won't. One will be the first to be laid off. It's not so simple that the workplace overrides nation, but if it does, then Kasama, you have yet to explain why Kanadians are not also part of the multinational proletariat you speak of. They work at U.$.-owned plants in an economy contiguous with the Amerikkkan one. Your line is multinational Trot line--old, old, old and useless now as then. The Black people have a qualitatively higher sympathy than whites do for the international proletariat and especially oppressed nations because of history. The Black labor aristocracy is not the same thing as the white labor aristocracy, and the Black Panther Party already proved that. It's related to why the bourgeoisie in an imperialist country is not the same thing as a bourgeoisie in an oppressed nation. "RCP"=U$A would like to reduce the question to the one of the workplace as if the Black people and whites were equal economically and had a common history. In this way, the "RCP"=u$A creates an integrationist wedge between Blacks and the world's oppressed and exploited. In contrast, MIM would like to play up whatever differences relative or absolute that the Black petty-bourgeoisie has with the dominator nation and maximize the Black petty-bourgeoisie's vacillations toward the Third World masses. We would also like to see Pan-African sympathy for the Haitian and other immigrants inside u.$. borders working for sub-minimum wages. That's the multinational unity we want to see, not multinational unity with exploiters.] The proletariat is an international class. And the proletarians within the U.S. form a single multinational class there. And large sections of it (not all, but much of that class) has profound interests in seeing and making revolution. But if you read their line closely, you can see MIM also thinks that Black workers with steady jobs are also likely to be parasites. [mim3@mim.org replies: Thank you. So why did you pull the above? And why should African immigrants working for sub-minimum be counted the same way or do you know of no Haitians for instance?] In the 2changetheworld.info discussion, a MIM supporter even implied that WELFARE recipients were beneficiaries of imperialism -- not victims of the system. Judge for yourself. Let me quote some of their explanations: "We believe that the imperialist-country working classes are primarily a pro-imperialist labor aristocracy at this time. Likewise, we believe that the biological-wimmin of the imperialist countries are primarily a gender aristocracy. Thus, while we recruit individuals from these and other reactionary groups to work against their class, national and gender interests, we do not seek strategic unity with them..... We believe that socialism in the imperialist countries will require the dictatorship of the international proletariat and that the imperialist- country working-classes will need to be on the receiving end of this dictatorship." http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/wim/program.html
[mim3@mim.org replies: Again, if Kasama's only objection to MIM line is that it says "working classes" in the program instead of petty-bourgeoisie or labor aristocracy, then I'll be sending Kasama a membership card. It's a cheap shot that anyone who knows how Lenin spoke of the question understands. Historically working class, but not proletarian anymore. Imperialism did not start out buying everyone off its first day of life. Parasitism grew steadily as Marx, Lenin and Mao all predicted if socialist revolution did not carry the day. Imperialism had to get people from the working class to expand parasite ranks.] [Notice: here in MIM's program they don't say that white workers are "labor aristocracy" they say "the imperialist country working classes" (plural) meaning the white workers, but also black workers etc.) What kind of "marxist" thinks the workers are all a bunch of overpaid slobs? Isn't that a theory that belongs to conservatives? What kind of a "marxist" thinks the working class needs to be on the "receiving end" of dictatorship? Aren't they ALREADY on the receiving end of the murderous police and the whole aparatus of bourgeois class dictatorship? [mim3@mim.org replies for MIM: Oppressed and exploited people ARE on the receiving end of police oppression. 99.9% of worker conflicts in Amerikkka are not. There are STATS on that, but I know, your party is against all polls, stats etc. as Lenin warned all philistines would be.] So all of this is reactionary and anti-marxist. And deeply anti-Maoist! Perhaps in the place of the Maoist slogan "serve the people", MIM should raise an ugly banner that says "Fuck the people!" ********************************************************* mim3@mim.org replies for MIM: They had their chance and they posted a lot of off-topic stuff, those "RCP"=U$A supporters above, but there are a number of subjects you will see they did not touch. 1. How did they conclude that Iraqi fighters are correct while Amerikkkan ones are not if the "RCP"=U$A is just trying to avoid a "split in the international working class"? Why are they not pacifists with their line? MIM line sees no "split in the international working class" when it comes to Iraq warfare. We see enemy attacking exploited and oppressed people, period. That's what's been going on around the world from Afghanistan to Libya to Korea to Cuba. 2. Andrei mentioned a World Bank report on profits, but did not cite it. Kasama did even less to address super-profits. No where do the "RCP"=U$A supporters address how much the super-profits of imperialism are and where they go. No where do they show how surplus-value arrives in the united $tates from the Third World and to what extent. They say they are against facts regarding income and even assets, but they just generally ignore an analysis of surplus-value. 3. You will not hear the "RCP"=U$A explain why if they are proletarian internationalists they cannot take the MIM line and say that the interests of the global 90% of the population is principal in determining strategy within U.$. borders. It is not for them, because they are imperialist country nationalists.
To raise the level of debate, we suggest that people read all the links on the following pages: We welcome all additions to this article that anyone wants to send on the subject of nation and class in the imperialist countries that address the MIM line. We will tack them on here. We are not afraid of any criticism. Send them to mim3@mim.org ********************************************************* kasama Comrade [Note we received an email and as promised we tack it on here. The email purports to be from the Kasama above--mim3@mim.org] There is an error on the "Monkeygrape" page of your MIM site. You mistakenly say that Kasama speaks for the RCP,USA. In fact I do not speak for (and have never spoken for) the RCP. The views I express are my own (as are any errors I may make). Please fix the error on your site -- since it is no small thing to falsely associate someone as a spokesperson for a political organization. *************************************************************** mim3@mim.org replies: The point remains that if the "RCP"=U$A wanted to answer the questions about surplus-value or disown anything by Kasama or Andrei, it could. The fact that it is typical for RCPers or RCP fans to stress who is in charge people-wise is also Trotskyist. Lenin criticized Trotsky for people-managing instead of line-managing. So chalk up this little indignant Kasama/Andrei routine about not speaking for RCP=U$A to RCP=U$A's Trotskyist character. At RCP=U$A they typically engage in entire polemics to win over a persyn or handful of people--not to address class issues in principle. The non-answer to the question of classes and surplus-value in global context above is typical of "RCP"=U$A supporters and the "RCP"=U$A. We can also partly judge the "RCP"=U$A by the supporters it attracts, people who cannot discern what is cardinal and what is not-- because the training provided by the "RCP"=U$A is that poor, and for a reason: it cannot afford to detail the real nature of super-exploitation and super-profits or be exposed.
People who read the below will see that the "RCP" and its supporters all defend themselves
in the same way as Andrei and Kasama, without facts, with irrelevant articles. I also find it interesting that this Kasama who claims to know enough about MIM history back in the early 1980s and posted above on it to distract attention from the cardinal question of separating from labor aristocracy enemies now claims he does not speak for the "RCP"=U$A. In other words, Kasama made up that shit above concerning MIM's interactions with "RCP"=U$A members--nice ad-libbing, Kasama. It says a lot about your lack of integrity Kasama. Come back and write us a letter to tack on here when you really have something to say-- about separating from the labor aristocracy enemy. ***************** mim3@mim.org adds regarding "RCP"=U$A
Defense of the Fatherland and the "RCP"=U$A Repzent for the "RCP"=U$A said referring to the liberation of imperialist Germany in 1945 June 4th 2003: "So it is complicated:" in boldface.
Kasama above said: Obviously Kasama and Area Man are hopeless social-democratic types. They remind us why Lenin said: "All philistines and all stupid and ignorant yokels argue in the same way as the renegade Kautskyites, Longuetites, Turatis and Co.: 'The enemy has invaded my country, I don't care about anything else.'" (Lenin, The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, p. 79, (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1965)) Repzent is more vacillating and is in fact more representative of Avakian-Kautsky line than Area Man and Kasama. He has absorbed just enough MIM line to be able to vacillate exactly as Lenin described in his chapter on internationalism in the above book. Repzent admits of the situation in Germany and Poland (and notice how crudely he doesn't separate advanced capitalist Germany from relatively backward Poland): "There were mass socialist movements in postwar Eastern Germany and Poland (and other countries) that participated in the attempts at socialist transformations that rested on the Red Army. But ultimately, and fundamentally, they never succeeded in being the engine of revolutionary social change." What is missing from Repzent's comments is why in Germany the labor aristocracy was able to stifle change and why revolution had to come from outside despite the huge blows of the Red Army totally disorganizing the German state. Repzent seems to know there is some kind of proletarian issue there, but he can't spit it out. He's got to vacillate by "RCP"=U$A orders. Repzent, Area Man and Kasama are going to squirm and worm out of what they said, and make this conversation unproductive, so let's talk about what Avakian said instead. In 1984, Avakian recognized one half of what Lenin said about invasions and wars and he got that half right: "He said, in opposition to the social-chauvinists of that time, if Paris or St. Petersburg were to be occupied by the 'enemy' troops, i.e., Germany in both cases, would that change the nature of the war? Absolutely not. He didn't mean if they came across one inch of French or Russian territory and thereby literally made an invasion; he meant a serious invasion and actual occupation." (Revolution, Spring 1984, p. 13--a magazine by the way, where Avakian is still using the term "Marxist-Leninist" not in reference to times before Mao and the Cultural Revolution but in general for now. See p. 24.) In the same article, Avakian goes on to condemn Stalin for appealing to the Western labor aristocracy to view the USSR favorably from a labor aristocracy point of view--namely from the point of view of their self-interests as tied to non-German imperialism. Why Avakian expected Stalin to appeal to labor aristocracies on a basis of proletarian ideology as if the English or the French were about to make a revolution when both were having a hard time deciding which country to make a war on is left out. More importantly, why that is even relevant since Stalin abolished the Comintern in 1943 is also left out. The proletariat of Western Europe if it had revolutionary leaders had its chance and there should be no Stalin-as-bogeyman theory for why revolution did not occur there--unless of course we take the line that Stalin should have kept going across the German borders into Western Europe. If Avakian wants the line that the English or French or even worse, the Spanish were about to jump up for revolution based on their internal forces, then their failure cannot be blamed on Stalin. Here is what the "RCP"=U$A said in 1978: "A Soviet drive through Germany into France would have been disastrous."(p. 67, "The Communist, vol. 2, no. 2) MIM agrees for that particular moment, but not as a matter of principle opposing all invasions like Area Man or Kasama. In the same article, the "RCP"=U$A does call subsequent advances in Eastern Europe "socialism," (p. 77) something that "RCP" would flip-flop on later thanks to the essential problem of not getting a grip on the labor aristocracy question in imperialist countries above all. That's why Repzent said on June 4 2003, "The RCP's Chairman Avakian has analyzed that, despite attempts and experiments, there was never really a full socialist transition in Eastern Europe." So how did Lenin look at this question? "The Socialist, the revolutionary proletarian, the internationalist, argues differently. He says: "The character of the war (whether it is reactionary or revolutionary) does not depend on who the attacker was, or in whose country the 'enemy' is stationed; it depends on what class is waging the war, and of what politics this war is a continuation. . . . That is the ABC that Kautsky has forgotten." (Lenin, The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, p. 79, (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1965)) So we see, Lenin sees that a war's character depends on the class waging it. Imperialist wars are bad everywhere and not because of where the imperialists sit at a particular phase of the war. On the other hand, there can be no equating Stalin's Red Army invasion of Germany with imperialist war. In "Conquer the World, the Proletariat Must and Will" in 1981, Avakian dragged the banner of Stalin through the mud. Yes, there were many problems during and after World War II. Echoing the Cold War rhetoric about Stalin as all-powerful bogeyman is not the way to address those problems. Contrary to Avakian and Trots, Stalin did put forward that the war was inter-imperialist from 1939 to 1941. He did ask for support from 1941 to 1943. After 1943 he abolished the Comintern. Blame-the-bogeyman should have stopped right there in 1943, at least until after the labor aristocracy had been fully accounted for. Had Avakian done a detailed study of how the labor aristocracy made life difficult in the West for Soviet revolution, had Avakian really grasped how the Amerikkkan failure to have proletarian revolution affected the contours of World War II--had he done those things, then we could blame Stalin at most for some ideological errors that would have affected comrades abroad. Stalin did not make history. History is made through class struggle and the labor aristocracy showed us in Germany something we communists did not want to see. Our response can be one of two things: 1) We can pretend we did not see it and continue on with utopian and voluntarist calls to the labor aristocracy while blaming Stalin for whatever happened. 2) We can attribute what happened accurately to the labor aristocracy. The occupation of Germany was the most progressive move possible. It should be learned from and its example extended. Instead, what "RCP"=U$A offers is the following, which really shows you what they plan on doing in any political crisis: "Didn't May 1968 erupt like a thunder clap in France, and echo the revolutions of the third world (and the Cultural Revolution in China)?" (Repzent, June 6 2002) Let's be clear that Repzent is right. May 1968 did "echo" the revolutions of the Third World--to use them, just the way "RCP"=U$A does. Workers seized factories; employers granted huge double-digit raises and the whole thing was over quicker than you could spell "petty-bourgeois vacillation" and the French population immediately voted in the most right-wing candidate for president to boot. That's exactly what the "RCP"=U$A sees as a success to extend instead of an exception that proves the parasitic rule. If we had seen a follow-up the way 1917 followed 1905 in Russia, we could evaluate it differently. Instead, the 1968 revolutionaries chose NOT to wage a war to draw off forces from Vietnam and Lenin warned us about choices like that. The point is that that generation is dead or too old for a follow-up. That generation got what it wanted--more super-profit pie. That is why the most revolutionary example in the advanced capitalist countries remains Germany in 1945. Even revisionist-led change in Azania is more significant than France in 1968 and "South Africa" is more a representative microcosm of the world's principal contradiction. *************************************** mim3@mim.org on Bob Avakian and Black Panthers
Here is some more Bob Avakian: "Panthers Turn Against Marxism . . . Avakian: they were right. You were wrong. You never understood that labor aristocracy is enemy and that the lumpen was the best thing available to work with and that the national petty-bourgeoisie could be made to vacillate in a progressive direction the way the Panthers did make it vacillate toward the proletarian camp. You only became more wrong with time. One year after your speech, we learned the united $tates became a majority white-collar workers according to the Census of 1980. The proof of whose class analysis was right is what you have done in the last 30 years inside u.$. borders compared to what the Panthers did in 3. Your "working-class" has never stirred in any way in any comparable way to the way Black people stirred under Black Panther leadership--not in the 1960s and not any time since. To this day, the Black petty-bourgeoisie responds in a more revolutionary way to the Black Panthers' legacy than the white petty-bourgeoisie you call workers responds to all the combined "RCP"=U$A and Trotskyist and "CP"=U$A calls now or in the past as legacy--and let's not forget there are a lot more white "workers" to work with than Blacks. We've read enough of the Panthers to know that they tried to explain some of it to you and did so correctly and that your characterization of their line is as false and objectively white nationalist as the line your "RCP"=U$A and some supporters raise against us today. You concluded that "in the final analysis, the reason for the destruction of the Black Panther Party as a revolutionary organization did not lie outside of it but inside of it." Even if this were true, we can still compare results. The 1960s are over. There is not going to be a 1917 to follow a 1905. That is safe to say 35 years after 1968. What we should learn from the 1960s is that a minority of whites can awaken to proletarian consciousness, but the white "working class" does not budge--except when treated as enemy. You've had your chance to prove otherwise and the truth remains on the Panthers' side. Instead of pushing forward with the same line contrary to facts, you should be man enough to admit it despite your attempts otherwise. In this way you can educate younger people and tell them of your failed efforts to prove the Panthers wrong. No effort is ever wasted if summed up scientifically and objectively. And all in all, no we cannot accept your line on the Black Panthers being internally to blame for their own revolutionary demise. We who hold the line opposing the labor aristocracy can say so, but you who uphold the revolutionary nature of the white "working" class cannot say so. Why? Because had the white "working" class stirred half as much as Blacks in the late 1960s instead of being the last to oppose the Vietnam War, we do not know that the Black Panthers would have turned to drugs or suffered the losses that they did. It's not just the state to blame for repression of the Panthers. It is the white "workers" who are to blame and you justify those white "workers" who stood aside or even favored the Vietnam War in the late 1960s by saying it was the Black Panthers' fault that they did not do more for white "worker" demands. (In other words, by not offering white "workers" more super-profits, the Black Panthers were responsible for their own demise according to you.) However, the whole reason you looked to the Black Panthers to address white "worker" demands is that the white "workers" could not do it themselves in a revolutionary way. Had they, not you and not anyone else can guarantee that the Black Panthers would have had a demise like they did. So it's a question of summing up blame and laying it on the correct class forces. Stalin was not responsible for having to invade Nazi Germany: the German labor aristocracy was. The Black Panthers were responsible for their own ideological collapse, but only after we have FULLY accounted for the material factors like the white labor aristocracy. And even so, the Black Panthers are the highest height the communists have reached here inside U.$. borders. It is metaphysical to compare your utopian and voluntarist hopes for whites with the reality of Black Panther success. Your conclusions about the Black Panthers are the perfect proof that your white "worker" voluntarism and utopianism adding up to nationalism are not benign. It is not just a question of being "optimistic" about white "workers." It's how your "optimism" about white "workers" distorts your depiction of history and the tasks in front of genuine Marxist-Leninist-Maoists. ************************************ |