MIM(Prisons) Practices Deception by Leaving Out Other Side of Debate

Thank you for the September/October issue of Under Lock & Key(ULK). As you know, ULK readers are literally a “captive audience.” You also know that their confinement seriously limits their ability to access and study the vast body of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist literature you claim to uphold, and also other writings you’ve given your own interpretations to: which you either claim to embrace or otherwise criticize.

In this latest ULK you critiqued my own recent article “Answering A Revisionist Line on the Labor Aristocracy”. Point is, for your readers to weigh the credibility of your interpretations and arguments against what others have written pro and con, they must be able to read not just what you have had to say, but what the other side has said as well.

In your response to my article you said you promote honesty, and clarity in polemics, however you appear yourself to practice deception by omission by publishing only your side of the discussion for your audience to read. And I daresay, your arguments do not accurately represent, and puts your own spin on and omits, a great deal of what I wrote in my article.

Whenever our Party engages in and publishes our polemics with others, we publish both sides’ arguments, or if resources don’t allow, we try to make the other side’s arguments available to our readers. That’s called being all-sided and practicing democracy. It’s also called being dialectical, which Mao promoted. MIM(Prisons) doesn’t do this. And it’s not that you don’t recognize the need to do so.

Back in 2006 when your parent organization (the Maoist Internationalist Movement) first began its efforts to influence us to embrace its line, especially on the labor aristocracy question, we invited you to publish our debates. MIM’s reply was they lacked space in its media – then MIM Notes – and it no longer published its theoretical journal, MIM Theory.

Apparently you’ve now found space to publish your side of the discussion. Certainly you also have space to publish my own article that you were critiquing and my forthcoming reply to that. I critically invite you to do so, and ask that you print this letter in your next ULK.

Dare to Struggle Dare to Win!
Rashid, MOD

MIM(Prisons) responds: The general point that printing both sides of a polemic is a helpful way to educate the masses is a good one. Yet we regularly read Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Mao talking about some revisionist we don’t know anything about, and we learn from these essays. And in the case of the article being criticized, we linked to Rashid’s article for our online readers and have sent a copy to everyone in prison who has requested one. We also included some direct quotes in our response. That’s more than we can say of Rashid who did not print any of our writings alongside his critique, or even cite our materials where readers could find out more about our position. To our knowledge the NABPP-PC has never published anything we’ve written.

Like the recent debate with Turning the Tide, we wouldn’t have published this critique of Rashid if h had not written h article criticizing us first. And we don’t have space to spare in Under Lock & Key for articles that are so off the mark. Every issue we have good content that does not make the cut. We are currently pushing USW comrades to raise the bar for donations to expand the amount of content we can fit into ULK for this very reason. For theoretical study we distribute numerous books and have numerous study packs on this question including our newly released introductory pack on the labor aristocracy. We also distribute a couple study packs by Rashid hself, on topics where we have unity. Finally, we distribute the classics by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao. So if our readers fail to grasp the essence of this issue it is not for our lack of making materials available.

As the original review stated, we were underwhelmed by Rashid’s piece, which was mostly empty rhetoric. We only responded because we know our readers are influenced by the writings of the NABPP-PC. Rashid promises a reply, which will hopefully enlighten us as to how we misrepresented their line. Certainly we will print any corrections if we published something incorrect. But it seems the NABPP-PC line on the labor aristocracy is just as wrong today as it was in 2006, as they make the same tired arguments the revisionists have made for decades.