[Below we have excerpted sections from a letter by a USW comrade sent to
Turning the Tide. While the comrade does a good job responding
to this gross misrepresentation of MIM line, we have added comments in
brackets to clarify a few points.]
I was surprised by your latest issue of Turning the Tide (TTT).
More specifically, Michael Novick’s article entitled “PART’s
Perspective: On Contradiction and the Correct Handling of Contradictions
Among the People.” Quite a brazen title by the way, as the point of the
original
essay penned by Mao was to point out the correct way for the Chinese
Communist Party to help resolve contradictions among the people, and
between the party and the people in light of the incidents in Hungary;
as well as a critique of Stalin’s shortcomings with that matter and to
help forge unity with the masses.
I’ll just give you a review of the entire article, in which Mr. Novick
attempts to illuminate the prisyn masses with regards to the differences
between TTT’s political line and that of the MIM camp currently
represented by MIM(Prisons), United Struggle from Within (a
MIM(Prisons)-led anti-imperialist mass organization for prisyners), the
Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist Movement and the Leading Light Communist
Organization.
To begin with, i hold MIM(Prisons) in very high regard, not just because
they hold the correct political line on everything politically
meaningful under the sun, but because i owe my own political development
to them.
My first point of contention with Mr. Novick’s article is when he
erroneously makes the statement that MIM’s position concerning the labor
aristocracy is that it is a permanent labor aristocracy. That is a false
statement. MIM has never made the statement that the Amerikan labor
aristocracy is a permanent labor aristocracy. Not only is that statement
metaphysical and anti-dialectical but in complete contradistinction to
the hystorical process and MIM line. Yes, the so-called Amerikan
“worker” is indeed part of the labor aristocracy, and not proletarian as
revisionists of varying stripes would contend. The Amerikan “worker”
forms a part of the labor aristocracy; a sub-stratum of the petty
bourgeoisie. Whenever they addressed this issue MIM continuously made it
a point to say that the imperialist country working classes were (and
still are) a pro-imperialist labor aristocracy at this time.
Furthermore, the concept of the labor aristocracy goes all the way back
to Engels when he described to Marx how the English proletariat was
becoming more and more bourgeois. Lenin, as well as other Bolsheviks,
also formulated on what basis this labor aristocracy was formed, which
is of course super-profits stolen from the colonies. It seems to me
however that those who continue to negate the existence of a labor
aristocracy, and instead dogmatically cling to the hope of an Amerikan
proletariat, do so either out of sheer ignorance or, more dangerously,
for the purpose of revisionism. To continue to advocate this false
thesis in the imperialist countries is to, as a “logical conclusion,”
advocate for multi-national/class unity in the fashion of Trotsky and
his successors, i.e. the erroneous line that leads one to lean on and
wait for the white working class to wake up and come to the oppressed
nations’ rescue.
Novick is also incorrect in his statement that “MIM sees women and
prisoners as elements of US society where there is prospect for
revolutionary development.” Well, half wrong anyway. The MIM never saw,
nor does it today see, First World wimmin as elements of U.$. society in
which there is any real group oppression to speak of which would provide
a prospect for revolution. The MIM recognizes First World wimmin,
primarily white wimmin, as gender-privileged. They are not at all part
of the revolutionary vehicle precisely because being privileged
economically (among other things) makes them gender privileged in
relation to Third World wimmin. Or in MIM’s own words: “After looking
around MIM came to the conclusion that like First World labor, First
World women are mainly oppressors, not oppressed people.”
We must also disagree with Mr. Novick’s assertion that exploitation
exists within the First World outside the realm of commodity production
in which waged labor “produces” surplus value. Exploitation is defined
as producing something and not being paid for the value of what you
produce.
[MIM(Prisons) interjects: MIM line has consistently
held that the white nation is not economically exploited. Later this
line was expanded to assert that there is no exploitation occurring in
the United $tates except within migrant and prisoner populations. To
talk about “exploitation” of the planet, as Novick does, is to redefine
the term that we use in a Marxist context. He does this in order to
falsely imply that we have no concern for ecological destruction, one of
many examples where Novick is misleading to dirty our name.]
Mr. Novick is further wrong in his contention that we, i.e. the MIM
camp, “assume privilege and oppression are absolute phenomona,
unchanging and mutually exclusive.” Quite the contrary, as dialectical
materialists we certainly know that nothing is absolute (except for the
struggle of opposites) or unchanging, as motion itself is an expression
of change and particular to the law of development. If such an absurdity
of which Novick here speaks of were true then MIM(Prisons) wouldn’t be
taking the time to help develop the imprisyned lumpen of which the rest
of society has long since cast off into the abyss.
We furthermore recognize that there is indeed an obvious intersection in
nation and class contradictions within the United $tates. In a sense
this is what MIM(Prisons)’s work is all about; working with the
oppressed nation lumpen, in particular so that we may not only build
towards liberating our people, but so that we may liberate our class.
This will be our contribution to the International Communist Movement
and oppressed people of the world. So, contrary to Novick’s statements,
we do in fact recognize and acknowledge that the interpenetration of
opposites is particular to the law of development. However, there is a
dialectical process, and as such a process of stages of which phenomena
must go thru before change is complete; a lengthy process at that.
Mutually exclusive phenomena do not just magically transcend from one
stage to another. If only Mr. Novick would take the time to read MIM
literature more carefully then he would know this.
The First and the Third World are currently locked in struggle. This
struggle is representative of two mutually exclusive classes: the
bourgeoisie and the proletariat. This is the fundamental contradiction
on a world scale. Furthermore, this contradiction has manifested itself
into antagonistic form, which has manifested into the principal
contradiction on a world scale, which is oppressor versus the oppressed
nations. Now, objectively speaking, what side of this contradiction are
we on?
First World “workers” and Third World labor are two exclusive phenomena,
not just because the former feeds off the latter, but because both hold
two totally different positions with respect to the global relations of
production and to the worldwide means of production as well. What
Mr. Novick presupposes to explain with his chauvinist use of dialectics
is that the First World labor aristocracy and Third World proletariat
are essentially the same no matter the imperialist powers and the
populations they serve. Mr. Novick says that privilege and oppression
exist throughout class society, even among the exploited and oppressed,
and that there is no perfectly oppressed class or sector whose hands are
clean.
[MIM(Prisons) adds: We should point out that we see the
oppressed nation lumpen in the United $tates as a middle force in that
it has interests both opposed to and in support of imperialism. Novick
seems to want to define everyone in this way, as potentially supporting
or opposing imperialism. But we see the vast majority of Amerikans as
clearly on the side of imperialism.]
In addition to the above, Mr. Novick then uses the argument that there
is currently a “class fall” being experienced by many in the United
$tates and Europe, and that U.$. whites with less than a high school
education are experiencing the loss of more than five years life
expectancy is proof positive that the labor aristocracy is in all
actuality going thru the re-proletarianization process. Funny, Trotsky
had similar things to say during the Comintern of 1916 in his defense of
Western Europe’s newly rising labor aristocracy and his racist refusal
that the revolutionary ebb was moving to the east. Unfortunate to say
that we’re not really surprised to hear such nonsense, as the
TTT position on inter-communalism is the theory of Trotsky
himself.
[MIM(Prisons) adds: Novick seems to slightly exaggerate
a recent study that showed a 5-year decline in life expectancy for white
wimmin without a high school diploma, but only a 3-year decline for men
in that group. The average decline for all whites without a high school
diploma was around 4 years.(2) Certainly a significant and unusual
decline. But let’s look at this population closer.]
Again, what Mr. Novick keeps willingly blinding himself to here is that
there is a qualitative difference between the First World and the Third,
not just in wage differentials, but living standards and government
services, all of which are representative of real life material
interests which chain the supposed First World “proletariat” to the
imperialist fatherland. This is why a dialectical outlook, as well as a
concrete class analysis, is of crucial importance to the revolutionary
movement. Only by maintaining the first and conducting the second will
we be able to discern real friend from real foe, something Novick and
company are apparently unable to do and so have aligned with both nation
and class enemies to the internal semi-colonies and Third World
proletariat and peasantry.
The next paragraph in question is just so utterly ridiculous that i was
initially taken slightly aback when reading it. Seriously, “MIM isolates
prisons from the social contradictions they enforce”?! Please,
Mr. Novick or any other associate of TTT, if you’re gonna go
into the “differences” between the MIM camp and yourselves, do us all a
favor and inform yourselves properly on that which you seek to
criticize. It’s just so hard for me to believe that someone as
politically educated as Mr. Novick professes to be (or should be,
rather) is going about spewing straight up lies.
The Maoist Internationalist Movement and its spin-off organization have
long since held that the massive Amerikkkan prisyn system largely
developed as a form of social control to maintain in check the
superfluous lumpen populations of the Black, Brown and First Nations
following the failed national liberation struggles of the 60s and 70s.
What Novick is saying is nothing but BS! MIM(Prisons) is the only
organization in the United $tates that is actively working to
politically develop the oppressed nation lumpen so that we may become
the subjective motivating force for the liberation and
self-determination of the oppressed internal semi-colonies that are New
Afrika, Aztlán, Boriqua and the various First Nations that are corralled
onto the reservations! They, and they alone, have been doing this for
many years now. And where, pray tell, has the rest of the Amerikan left
been in the middle of all this? As Mao taught us, there must be a
constant leadership with the masses in an endless spiral of perceptual
knowledge to rational knowledge and revolutionary practice, so on and so
forth. Or simply put, “from the masses to the masses.”
Another outright lie presented by Novick is his statement that MIM’s
view obscures class and colonial contradictions in the U.$. Likewise,
Novick’s statement that U.$. society is turning into a carceral state is
itself misleading in more than one way. Ironically enough, this sweet
one-liner itself obscures class and colonial contradictions by making it
sound as if we’re all in this together (read, white, Black,
Brown etc. “working class” unite!) Trust us, for those of us from
barrios and ghettos of Amerika, the prisyn-like methods of daily life
are nothing new. Furthermore, they don’t represent any “new stage in the
basic colonial nature of the state and society” but are instead a part
of the foundational building blocks of Amerika and the white
settler-state that has made its home here; they are essential to the
imperialists and we resent the fact that Mr. Novick wants us to believe
that the white settler is somehow now on the receiving end of this
oppression.
As if all this wasn’t enough, Novick once again shows us his Trotskyist
colors when he criticizes “cross-class” alliances, in particular the
United Front method of organization. You know, the same method that
brought us such victories as the defeat of fascism in WWII and the
liberation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. Leave it to the
Trotskyists to damn to hell all unholy alliances not deemed morally pure
enough for their pie in the sky ideals. Furthermore, Novick makes it
appear as if the struggle in South Africa was a People’s War waged for
national liberation, somehow influenced by MIM. The disaster in South
Africa had nothing to do with a communist-vanguard-led United Front, but
rather, everything to do with its lack thereof.
[MIM(Prisons) adds: As we wrote in ULK 30:
Ironically, MIM was on the front line of the movement in the U.$. in the
1980s supporting the revolutionary forces in South Africa that opposed
the neo-colonial solution.]
Please refrain from making such false remarks about MIM, cause they
ain’t gone nowhere but to the belly of the beast from where they’ll help
destroy Amerikan imperialism.
Long Live the Legacies of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao!
Long
Live MIM!
MIM(Prisons) concludes: Of the sections we left out, there were
some accusations that would not be principled to make in a public forum
like ULK. But we must agree with the USW comrade that Novick
deliberately misrepresented MIM line in this article in order to attack
our movement. MIM has never feared criticism, and that has not changed.
If Novick had actually addressed something that we wrote or published,
rather than these straw men and lies, then we could all learn from such
an exchange. Instead Novick has muddied the water. And that does not
serve the anti-imperialist movement, whatever your political line.
Years ago we lamented the inability of many of our readers to
distinguish
our line from those of other “radical” and even reformist
organizations of all sorts. This is knowledge that the masses must
have at some level before we can build a strong movement. We’re glad to
hear that someone wrote to Turning the Tide to ask how they
differ from MIM, but as we can see, that is not always the most fruitful
approach. Comrades should be studying literature from various sources,
especially sources that they think sound good to them. You should
compare and contrast these sources to better understand their
differences. MIM(Prisons) is very clear what
our dividing line points
are, but most groups aren’t so clear. And they can often be
deceptive. If you want our perspective on a certain organization, go
ahead and ask. We do have reviews of a number of them. One thing that
the original MIM published and promoted widely was a pamphlet entitled,
“What’s
Your Line?” which identified the various political lines in the
communist movement and what groups fell into what categories. To expand
that project to the prison movement and the contemporary organizations
that exist today would be a great step in expanding everyone’s
understanding of politics and where they stand. So we encourage comrades
to send in their reviews and struggles like this that they have with
other groups so that we can expand these resources in the future.
