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

Neo-Trotskyists

Trotskyists with at least a little connection to reality begin to realize that effective reformists accomplish reforms; effective bourgeois politicians get elected and Maoists carry out People's Wars and seize power. However, Trotskyists have done none of these things in the last 75 years on a global scale, so inevitably there is pressure on them to take up reformist theses or to abandon select Trotskyist tenets. That's not to mention the intense competition amongst their organizations all vying for basically the same social material. When it comes to the on-the-street activist in Amerika, you will find his/her heart in neo-Trotskyism, one of the groups below. It's a situation found only in the imperialist countries, where the petty-bourgeoisie pines for a "perfect" socialism or none at all (which in practice means none at all), and thus declaims Stalin as much or more than Bush.

Socialist Workers Party

The Militant
410 West St.
New York, NY 10014

$3 per 12 weeks

Also publishes Young Socialist.

Self-Description: Support Castroite liberation groups. Publish Cuban speeches. Claims to prefer Lenin to Trotsky where the two disagree.

Comments: Historically, SWP was Amerikan Trotskyism, but we agree with the more hardline Trotskyists that SWP changed too much to stay in the same category, so we call it "neo-Trotskyist." SWP practice is consistent with orthodox Trotskyism except where Trotskyist orthodoxy would prevent SWP from tailing a national struggle which SWP sees fit to support. Extreme opportunists. Competes with DSA and social democracy. The SWP varies from year to year in its degree of reformism. Since Castro and others supported by SWP are not Trotskyist, the SWP feels less pressure to become fully materialist or responsible for its own actions. A number of organizations have followed the SWP example to support Castro in order to avoid supporting Stalin and Mao while gaining Castro's credentials for successful armed struggle. For much of the 1980s, we judged this to be the largest group on this list. In 2003 it has likely ceded its position.

  • See the SWP paper here
  • A review of the SWP candidate for president in 2004

    Workers World Party

    Workers World
    55 W. 17th Street
    New York, NY 10010


    Comments: Very similar to SWP, while SWP only attempts to co-opt support for non-communist national struggles. Extreme opportunists, Sam Marcy said that the "Gang of Four" was the progressive choice in China in 1976. Like the SWP, WWP counts on its members not being able to tell that the global struggles it cheerleads for are not Trotskyist, and hence inconsistent with WWP's underlying ideology, which itself is an eclectic grab bag.

    One of the larger organizations calling itself socialist, it leads the "International Action Center," IAC and A.N.S.W.E.R. to oppose the war in Afghanistan. We are often asked why these are not called Brezhnevites, but WWP remains true to its Trotskyist roots based on its continuing description of Stalin. WWP seeks to ape all Brezhnevite foreign policy while retaining positive outlooks on Trotsky and negative ones on Stalin.
    * Sam Marcy taking the Trotskyist line on the Hitler-Stalin Pact
    * Workers World glossary denouncing Stalin and upholding Trotsky
    *"The evolution of the USSR under Stalin certainly could give one grounds for questioning the class character of the USSR." --Sam Marcy, "Some Errors of the Chinese Communist Party," June 2, 1976 here for full article

    The Workers World Party line is also an exposure of Ludo Martens in Belgium who claims to be pro-Stalin, because his party (PTB discussed under "Stalinists") supports the Workers World Party and gives it frequent publicity (while also consciously ignoring MIM). It does not surprise MIM, because the root of PTB's line is in geopolitical considerations, not Marxist science.

    Further Info: "Workers World: Inconsistent Socialists or Consistent Opportunists?" MT4 ($6); "More Accounting on the Labor Aristocracy," MT10 ($6).

    Campaign for a Labor Party

    Labor Militant
    PO Box 39462
    Chicago, Illinois 60639

    Self-Description: For a British-style Labor party to "fight for the end of domination of big business over U.S. society through nationalization of the commanding heights of the economy."

    Comments: Slightly left of the democrats.


    Solidarity

    Against the Current
    Left Turn
    7012 Michigan Ave.
    Detroit, MI 48210

    Self-Description: Founded in 1986, "unconditional defenders of Polish Solidarnosc," revolutionary socialists who are democratic, feminist, anti-racist and stand for "socialism from below."

    Comments: Join mass organizations to recruit members. Not open about origins in Trotskyism or about socialist politics when working in mass orgs. Possibly merging with Democratic Socialists of America and the Committees of Correspondence.

    Further Info: "Open Letter to Solidarity" and "On the Origins of the Democratic Socialists of America," MT10, $6.


    International Socialist Organization

    Socialist Worker
    PO Box 16085
    Chicago, IL 60616

    Self-Description: Consider ex-USSR state-capitalist. 2003: "The International Socialist Organization (ISO) stands in the revolutionary tradition of Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky."

    Comments: Leans heavily towards social-democracy. 2003 comments: This is the newspaper of the International Socialist Organization. ISO has prospered greatly since the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is the most "neo" of the "neo-Trotskyists" since it was really the first of the "neo" groupings. The ISO now seems to have swung back into a more orthodox position, with open assertion of Lenin & Trotsky.