Under Lock & Key

The latest issue of ULK (#75) was very informative. The article on Afghanistan was a good review of many of the issues.

One you did not mention and that is one of the reasons that China is sending money is that of the mineral resources of the country.

About 8 years ago I had a teacher who applied to work as an analyst for the CIA. As part of his application he did a report on Afghanistan. He found out why the U.$. invaded the country. There are large deposits of copper and lithium ore. The U.$. soldiers were to protect the Chinese workers who were building the railway that would transport the ore into China for processing.

Just like Spain, France, etc. in the 16th and 17th centuries, the U.$. government was in another country to steal its natural resources.

MIM(Prisons) responds: Certainly, natural resources continue to be a major impetus for imperialist foreign policy and war. The gas lines through the Caspian Sea were also a key concern in the region at the time.

Your description of the roles of the Amerikans and Chinese in Afghanistan is emblematic of the relationship between the two countries ever since the capitalist roaders took over in China in 1976. Today contradictions have heightened as Chinese capital has become more developed and therefore needs to exert its interests independent of the United $tates. Meanwhile the Amerikans have begun looking at bringing production and supply chains of basic goods a little closer to home after becoming dependent on the labor of Chinese proletarians. These contradictions playing out demonstrate why inter-imperialist conflict is the rule.

A comrade responded to the article “Oh So You Woke” in ULK 73:

“In this article the author criticizes the likes of Angela Davis and John Lewis. neither Ms. Davis nor Mr. Lewis were agents of propaganda for the bourgeois as the author implies, but rather they were committed to the struggle and spent many years on the front lines. As far as penetrating the police and other arms of state imperialism/control, someone is going to fill those roles. Is it better us or them? WE must attack the status quo from multiple fronts – from the inside as well as the outside. WE need more Angela Davises and John Lewises.”

I do agree with the comrade that WE do need to attack the status quo from multiple fronts but when one of our own lumpen falls into the lines of reformism and revisionism while on the road of revolution or liberation, instead of being a die hard non-compromising, non-settling, give-me-death-if-I-can’t-have-real-life-liberation revolutionary like Fred Hampton, Bunchy Carter and the many fore Fathers and fore Mothers of our lumpen communities, who died and were imprisoned so that the eternal fire of Freedom, Justice and Equality will never lose its light and intensity in the surviving generations and their children. So they can fight on until that day comes in entirety. Then one has to ask the question … who do you work for?

If WE as a First World lumpen and Third World proletarian revolutionaries have more individuals like Angela Davis & John Lewis, We’ll never fulfill the S.O.P.’s of the UFPP. We’ll be in a state of Reformism and Revisionism, being closely intertwined with imperialism/capitalism instead of overthrowing it.

First and foremost Angela Davis is a major reformist, she was a part of the Communist Party, U$A, where the CPU$A was about that Real Life revolution before the 1940’s but by the 1960’s all their members that took inspiration from Mao Zedong had left the party. After the attempt of Jonathan Jackson of freeing his older brother George Jackson, Fleeta Drumgo and John Clutchette (Soledad Brothers) at Marin County Courthouse in San Rafael, CA, was then Angela Davis charged with aiding the attempted escape and placed on the FBI’s most wanted list due to her close correspondence with George Jackson. She was found not guilty after her case was severed from the other defendants like Ruchell “Cinque” Magee who is still locked up in these Koncentration Kamps, while the rally call of the masses at the time was “Free Angela Davis and ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS!” Then in 1973 she founded the CP front the National Alliance Against Racism and Political Repression that REFUSED to come defend Black Liberation Army members facing prison time.

Later on in her “revolutionary” life she got back into academia while still being a huge influence for the CPU$A, where she ran twice for Vice President of the U$A. She supported Democratic presidential candidates, like Joe Biden, to pressure them when in office to the CPU$A’s Khrushchevite peaceful transition into socialism agenda or the Pac-Man politics (biting away at imperialism until it collapses on itself). She also co-founded the Committees of Correspondence with a moniker that points to the CPU$A’s notion that “Communism is 20th Century Americanism.” In her writings and university lectures in the academic realm, she promoted the CPU$A’s reformism and postmodern politics, the basis of this day and age concept of “Abolition,” and not the dire need of armed revolution.

John Lewis is basically the same in the sense with the Pac-Man politics, Abolition reformist movement and post-modernism. Also one of the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement and a leader in the peaceful nonviolent strategy of protest and civil unrest. The “Woke” U.$. leftists, who are the petty-bourgeoisie, praises Angela Davis and John Lewis as saints and the imperialist aided in placing them on those pedestals to be praised by the masses, because they knew with the ideologies and concepts that these two individuals promote will do no real harm to their oppressive establishment. Point proven in the last summer series of protest after the murder of George Floyd and many others.

What real change came from that civil unrest in a real revolutionary way? It’s because of Angela Davis and John Lewis that We have to re-educate and un-brainwash the masses from the concepts and ideologies of Reformism, Revisionism, Postmodernism and the Pac-Man politics with the concepts and ideologies of Marxism, Leninism and Maoism to gain liberation from imperialism through armed resistance and revolution. Reason why it was stated that they are agents of the imperialist propaganda in the article “Oh, So You Woke.” Whether it was intentional or not they step out of the realm of being First World lumpen to the realm of the petty-bourgeoisie and benefited from the transition also. It pays to be famous and in the limelight of the pop culture revolutionary contest, right? Even after being on the front lines where they witness first hand so many of our souljas and leaders lose their lives, placed in exile and/or imprisoned, they settled for positions of comfort for self and appeared to be in the struggle still, instead of being ten toes down in the mud with WE overthrowing imperialism/capitalism to establish socialism, and later communism, nation- and world-wide.

DON’T FALL FOR THE POP CULTURE REVOLUTIONARY HYPE COMRADES.

The San Francisco BayView newspaper has outed their former editor Keith Washington as an informant and a manipulator. Previous editor Mary Ratcliff has reasonably posed that this could have been an FBI operation to undermine the BayView. Yet, Washington’s brief stint as editor after being released from prison, followed by relapse into addiction and violence also seems consistent with someone who has jumped from group to group driven by eir own self-interest.

Keith Washington, aka Comrade Malik, was a politically eclectic, self-promoting prison activist. It is for those reasons that his passions often did not overlap with the program of MIM(Prisons), despite being in close contact for many years. During eir time in prison, Washington was a regular reader of ULK, MIM Theory and other literature we distribute on the Black Panthers and Maoism in general. For years ey could not receive ULK because of TDCJ censors, so we had to mail em select articles separately.

We are not saying we did not work with Washington, for we published dozens of articles and reports by em while ey was in prison. Most were reports on conditions in Texas prisons. For a quick minute, ey was even part of the the USW Council, but was quickly removed for openly disagreeing with MIM(Prisons)’s 6 main points. The reason they were even considered for the position was that it was hard to pin down eir political line.

Washington seemed to work tirelessly to expose the corruption and abuses within the Texas Department of Criminal Justice(TDCJ) – though ey often did so from an angle that seemed to believe in the system. This approach conflicted with eir initial focoist tendencies when we first encountered Washington and ey seemed to believe that we were too hesitant to use arms. Later eir politics hinted at patriotism. For much of the time ey worked with USW ey also was working with the New Afrikan Black Panther Party - Prison Chapter, ideologically led by Tom Big Warrior and Kevin “Rashid” Johnson at the time. At one point Washington was the Deputy Chairman of NABPP, but ey never was consistent at upholding NABPP line. Ey went back and forth on the labor aristocracy question in an opportunist way that seemed to be attempting to please MIM(Prisons) with one message and Rashid with another. But communication with Rashid was much more difficult than with us, so ey seemed to lean towards us at times; another example of opportunism over political line. This also showed there was no effective democratic centralism within the NABPP. This is why we say you cannot be part of a democratic centralist formation while encapsulated by the state, except perhaps in an organization within a prison where you can freely interact with other members of the formation.

While Washington pledged eir allegiance to MIM and the NABPP, overtime ey branched out into other forums and organizations, always promoting the persona of “Comrade Malik”. Despite all the articles we did print by em, there were many more we did not, or we had to cut down significantly due to the self-promotion.

We must learn to recognize political opportunism. We should not be surprised that someone with such a history would also opportunistically lie to the pigs to earn favors.

At best, political eclecticism is a sign of immaturity; an immaturity that cannot be trusted with leadership. This is not to say we do not work with younger people or people who are still learning, far from it. We just must recognize their role. But when someone has spent a decade or more studying revolutionary literature, and they are still putting forth eclecticism, or just straight reformism, then it is clear they are not a revolutionary, and perhaps they can play a role better somewhere else. If we cannot convince such people to follow our leadership, then we must work harder to prove our effectiveness.

Eclecticism is always connected to forms of subjectivity and idealism. They are thinking about what feels good to them or feels right to them. Combine this with the self-promotion of “Comrade Malik” and you have a risky individual who will probably bounce from one group to another, one line to another to serve eir own self-interests, leaving havoc in eir wake. This is no longer immaturity, but a conscious self-interest.

In our introductory study course we go over the question of how to implement an effective security program for your organization. This example of Washington is a good demonstration of how political line was applied by MIM(Prisons) to keep a potential wrecker from playing a more damaging role. We would say the work Washington contributed to the pages of ULK served the people, as it was done under our leadership. We did not allow Washington’s self-promotion or right opportunism to take away from the mission of ULK or United Struggle from Within. For organizations that look for the charismatic individuals to promote, this is a danger.

We must also recognize that addiction to chemical substances, violence and criminal behavior plagues the lumpen. The transformation of the lumpen into proletarian revolutionaries is an arduous and life-long task. Even those who have seemed to overcome for years while imprisoned, will often relapse with the dramatic changes and pressures of being released to the free world. That is why we have developed a Revolutionary 12 Step Program that takes the proven techniques of the steps, as applied by the lumpen masses in California, and reframes them to include the transformation to the proletarian mentality. It is the constant struggle to submit our self-interest to the interests of the Third World proletariat that can solidify our own transformation from addiction to action that changes society. Imperialism has addicted us all, especially in this consumerist society in the United $tates.

Our leaders must be forged in a disciplined revolutionary organization built on democratic centralism. They must exhibit self-sacrifice and embody the interests of the Third World proletariat. We cannot follow the bourgeois individualist approach to leadership that decides elections and celebrity in this country. We must put politics in command when developing relationships with new comrades and bringing them into our circles. Some people may never exceed a supporter role, and that is okay, we welcome their support. Being around longer, having connections or resources, or being energetic is not enough to qualify comrades to lead. A consistent practice that upholds the correct line is how we must judge who is to be trusted with responsibilities and leadership roles.

^{note: Nube Brown, 3 November 2021, Was the Bay View Infiltrated by a ‘rock star’ informant?}

Revolutionary salutations to all Texas USW comrades, leaders, supporters, and those reading this wonderful newspaper for the first time. In issue #75 there was some dialogue regarding the BP 3.91 and i would like to speak to some things.

Comrades, as you all read in the last issue, Allred RHU went on hunger strike in protest not only against B.P.-3.91, but also the illegal use of solitary confinement as practiced via RHU, and we also fought for other pressing issues. Due to this action, on September 8th i was pulled off the outside rec yard, and brought to a cage; this cage is very similar to the one illustrated by the comrade in the last issue. Me and another New Afrikan brother were the only two of all the strikers who went through this. After standing in the cage for about 30 mins to an hour I was informed by an inmate worker that “they takin all yo shit.” By this i assumed he meant food/beverage items of which i only possessed empty condiment bottles so I had no worries. Half an hour later, the property officer and a lieutenant come to escort me. They tell me i will have to send property, particularly books, home; i have too many and they may not be given to another prisoner. As they say this i have heated words with the property officer, and have to be escorted by a major and some others. They bring me to the office and outside my property (all of it including state property) is slung everywhere. I’m irate to say the least.

It is at that time that i entered an office with regional director David Blackwell, along with three unit wardens. Here is a brief overview of what was said pertaining to the B.P.-3.91 policy.

So this policy was supposedly pushed for by these “family groups”. He mentioned Texas Inmate Families Association(TIFA) as the main culprit. Supposedly one of the TIFA members has a brother who’s a sex offender(S.O.), and she learned that he was allowed to write pen pals who sent her brother sexually charged letters. Further investigation led the sister in question to observe that he could also view/receive pictures of women as long as the female wasn’t showing her “parts”. This woman was immediately concerned that her brother was not being allowed the proper environment to rehabilitate his behavior, and this is what led to the rule change.

In case you don’t know, every week, like clock work, TIFA and other family groups like the Families for Air Conditioning in TDCJ, have phone/zoom conferences with the executive director and other top personnel. In these conferences these groups are having influence on policy changes and other things that affect us here in prison. The issue is that these groups are not in contact with the masses, which in this case is US, the captives. TIFA has a $25 membership fee yearly, and imprisoned people can join. However, imprisoned voices are a minority, and are/will be over rode by the petty-bourgeois/labor aristocrat elements which dominate this terrain and don’t allow prisoners to practice any level of self-determination. Even worse is that these groups (TIFA in particular) do not even reply to inquiries from prisoners. The pigs mentioned above provided me with their info to contact and begin dialogue. I’ve wrote, I’ve e-mailed, I’ve DM’d, and have gotten no response. This is on trend as we of TX TEAM ONE have repeatedly contacted them in the past during our previous 3 hunger strikes in the last 4 years, not including this year’s. Never have we received any reply. So what does this tell us?

It tells us that the class divide is very profound in the TX prison movement, even on the “left”. It tells us that at this present juncture we can not collaborate with such reformers in any concrete way. Our movement MUST be prisoner-led.

Speaking specifically to the BP-3.91 issue, from observation one can see that these pigs are picking and choosing when/where to enforce this rule. THE RULE DID PASS! Initially we were told that it hadn’t, that’s not the case. Not only did this Director tell us so, but as i scribe this, Allred Unit has been under rolling lock down and the pigs (from what We in RHU are being told) are solely focused on pics, mags, etc. We in RHU haven’t been hit yet. Last week the ACA came to the unit. An audit. The pigs were verbally reprimanded (the wardens were) by ACA personnel for even operating the lockdown/shake down while they are/were still supposed to be under COVID protocol. This is a violation of CDC guidelines, which is one of the things we called attention to during the strike. The ACA demanded the wardens to cease the shake down. They did so for the week the ACA was here, yet today (9 November 2021) We’ve heard that they’ve resumed on the ECB building, and are to be coming here next. U.S. weekly and Cosmopolitan have been denied here.

The legal standing they’re trying to stand on with this move is that if they were to target specifically sex offenders with this rule while not applying it to the masses of the prison population who are not S.O.s then they open themselves up for suit by the S.O.s for discrimination. What it boils down to is We’re gonna have to come together and fight this through litigation. Simple.

We encourage others who are SERIOUS about litigating this issue to contact us. While our writers within TEAM ONE are busy challenging RHU confinement, We can possibly put all Our heads together to formulate a way forward. All those who’ve filed step 1 & 2, and look to move forward towards litigation should reach out to us: Tx TeamOne/ 113 Stockhom, #1A/ Brooklyn, NY 11221

It is not uncommon knowledge; given you have internet access; that the South-Eastern Correctional Center (herein after referred to as ‘South-Eastern’ Plantation or SECC) is by far a reflection of the “Survival of the Fittest”, mentality; (distorted interpretation of Charles Darwin’s theory dubbed ‘Social Darwinism’) that the fascist pigs who run this country maintain, and it’s core beliefs was founded upon. Theodore Roosevelt in the preface to Vernon Kellogs, a German intellectual, book “Headquarters Night”, stated that “The man who reads Kellog’s sketch and yet fails to see why we are at war, and why we must accept no peace save that of overwhelming victory; is neither a good American nor a true lover of mankind”. Remind you, this is a book where Vernon Kellog states “The creed of the Allmacht of a natural selection based on violent and fatal competition is the gospel of the German intellectuals; all else is illusion and anathema”. Scary to think that our President at the time shared the same core beliefs that kindled the Holocaust!! Individual self-seeking in hopes to promote the good of society only breeds contempt and enmity amongst social-classes by separating that which is “We the people” into “they the people”, “We a people”, “There’s some more people”.

Staff-on-Inmate to Inmate-on-Staff ratio for assaults is mind-boggling. In a last minute attempt, due to a 5 min riot in February where 3-7 C/Os were hospitalized, one in critical condition and one in a coma, SECC and Plantation Master Bill Stange issued sham pretext investigations on over 67% of the facility to target, arbitrarily and artfully punish offenders who the administration has a certain disliking for. Individuals who were in no way shape or form involved in said riot; in order to obtain order and security of the facility, more commonly known and acknowledged as oppression and submission of the offender population. On top of violating Constitutional rights, protected liberty interests, and adhering to corporal punishments, the South-Eastern Plantation in retaliatory effort has cut the camp population by over 50% and have re-administered long-term Administrative Segregation confinement(Ad-Seg). Two individuals have killed themselves this year, and 5 different hunger strikes have been done, in an attempt to obtain that which is our Constitutional right(s). The struggle against Ad-Seg isolation here continues.

The inhumane conditions, injustice, and complete disregard for policy and federal law here at the South-Eastern Plantation is amongst the worst in the state of “Misery”(MO). Particularly those who work here at the South-Eastern Plantation; with the blatant approval or blind-eye of Jeff Norman, Anne Precythe, Alana Boyles (Directors of MDOC); pigs here have taken to various different modes of divide and conquer tactics as a stratagem to warfare. One particular incident occurred on November 2nd, 2021 when COI PIG Ms. Reed rolled an offenders door without cuffing him upon request, and stepped aside so in the Ad-Seg. Unit he could stab a cuffed offender exiting from the shower. PIG Ms. Reed then directly thereafter allowed retaliation of another offender who too was handcuffed and shackled to the door. She is now on investigation along with the COI PIG Hood who before payed for an LGBTQIA+ trans woman to be assaulted by another offender.

Minimized food rations, one state bar of soap a week in Seg, rec once a week, mice infested houses, free cases and beatings; SECC is in need of some serious outside attention. Us comrades here continue to fight Capitalism-Imperialism with our dying breath. We will not stop until we bring conscious awareness of the proletarian state and the science of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. We seek a world without chains, slavery, and oppression.

I have done it again. I have earned myself a mental health referral from a C.O. for the 2nd time in 1 year. Both times for simply speaking the truth. Apparently, C.O.s are so blinded by lies that they interpret the truth as some sort of mental illness.

So last week I was being escorted to medical by a C.O. and do not remember the topic of conversation but I remember the statement I made that earned me a mental health referral. I said to the C.O., “Out of all the 1000s of inmates at this prison, not one of them has ever kidnapped a person and held them in a cage for a whole lifetime. That is real evil and only the government is guilty of that kind of evil.”

Of course, he had no reply. One week passes and I get a ducket yesterday for mental health(M.H.). My first thought is, “what is this, I have not submitted any request?” But then I look at the date of referral on the ducket (last Wednesday) and I remember the only thing that happened last Wednesday is my statement of blame to said C.O. and now it is clear why I have this mental health referral.

This is the 2nd time I have earned a M.H. referral under this circumstance. Earlier this year there was a campaign to remove me from 5 Block. Some of the C.O.s there were bringing drugs in for 1 of the inmates. This inmate did not trust me because he knew I do not agree with that lifestyle, and so he was asking the C.O.s to kick me out of the Block. I did not snitch; really I couldn’t care less about what corrupt C.O.s and gangbangers do, but they were afraid of my honest lifestyle choice, and so they tried their hardest to remove me, and they failed in that.

Well, one day as I was entering the Block the tower cop stopped me and asked me why some of the C.O.s had such a problem with me. I simply told him the truth. I said, “No, I am not doing anything wrong but if some C.O.s are collaborating with gangsters then that is something that should be looked at, so stop looking at me as though I am the problem.” The following week I received a ducket for mental health. The truth was interpreted as a mental illness, so I have discovered that when C.O.s are confronted with truth, they tend to attack it. I think this phenomenon is because they feel the guilt of their own actions. They are taught from a young age to have blind faith in someone else’s interpretation of what is right and wrong; so completely blinded by lies that when I remove the blindfold, and reveal the simple truth, it is interpreted as mental illness.

There was a 3rd time I hit a C.O. with the truth, but I did not get a M.H. referral that time. Again, as I was entering 5 Block, a tower cop stopped me and asked me why I was having such conflict with the C.O. that is bringing the drugs in. I replied that “I don’t like (greensuits) because I am doing a life sentence for a crime I did not do.” She was taken aback momentarily by this, but she recovered quickly and shot back that, “It is not my fault, it is the court that did that to you.” A classic little Eichmann.

I did not continue to argue with that C.O. because I have a lil respect for her straight forward approach as evidenced by the fact she did not give me a M.H. referral. Rather, I gave her all the time she needs for the truth to sink in that she is the one that pushes the button to either open or close the door on my cage.

Her own greensuit makes her directly responsible for my imprisonment. It is irrelevant that she has good looks or that she has qualities that I admire such as an honest straight forward approach, or that she is blinded by lies of what is right or wrong. All that matters is that tower cop is directly responsible for depriving an innocent man of his freedom. She is directly responsible for holding guilty men in a cage far longer than anyone should be detained.

MLK said that “when confronted with truth, we have an obligation to stand up for what is right.” The only thing greensuits stand up for is a dirty paycheck. We all must remove the blindfold of faith and see ourselves, truth!!

First, on B.P.-391 in Texas, there are units that are fighting this policy, yet here on Connally Unit they are taking and denying everything they can and they are not allowing us to appeal anything. We’ve written a bunch of grievances and they all got returned saying that the issue is not grievable, and when we file step 2’s, they are all getting thrown away. We have no wins here on Connally.

Second, we’ve contacted the TDCJ ombudsman on multiple ranking officers and regular officers. In doing that we are getting retaliated on and harassed. They are cell searching and destroying our property, tearing our pics, denying us our privilege of commissary, rec or day room. We’ve sent multiple grievances on these officers and they never come back. The wardens are letting them retaliate on us and not doing anything about it! The Connally Unit is steadily short staff only on their Fridays and payday. Right now we’re short staffed and when we asked a question about what’s going on, they put us on 23-hour lockdown – for asking a question. They are playing with peoples’ lives and freedoms here on Connally Unit. We can’t grieve officers because they always come back saying “this isn’t grievable.” We’re in a no-win situation here!

MIM(Prisons) responds: If they won’t let you grieve, then it’s time to come together with all who can be united there and get creative. We’ve been fighting the grievance battle for years. It is only a tactic. It will never solve comrades’ problems overall because the rules are only applied when they want them to be.

My organization’s name is Black Mighty Loyal Soldiers/All Black Loyalty. I am the founder of B.M.L.S. and Comrade Ziggy is the founder of A.B.L. He is housed at Bland Correctional Center. He would love a copy of your newsletter as well. He should be coming home.

The united front principles mean a lot to my organization, because I have been brought up on these principles since early 2011. With needless conflicts amongst ourselves, we could be making a lot of progress towards our goals. Oppressing each other only keeps us back economically, educationally, and weak.

I try very hard to unite those facing the same struggle as me, so they can see what’s been going on with us and communication is a must to expose imperialism and capitalism. Unity can and will have us at the finish line.

I love Growth, because “We don’t go through life, we go through life.” We have to continue to educate ourselves on financial literature, health, and our history to understand our identity. I love to teach people the “Ten Wealth Principles.”

We can’t fight against oppression if we support any form of it. It’s insanity, people should learn about internationalism (all oppressed people). To see that policy is how it should be, we all move as one fighting for the same goal.

The more independent we are, the better we are as a whole, that’s how I can relate.

I am going to send copies of my organization protocol, and principles.

Ten comrades in Texas’s William G. McConnell Unit signed and submitted a petition to Mrs. Emma Guerra, Investigator II with the Texas Department of Corrections and Justice (TDCJ) on 25 October 2021. The letter does a good job of citing grievances that have not been responded to as well as retaliatory actions by staff for filing said grievances. They also cite the relevant policy from the TDCJ grievance procedures and inmate handbook.

We have not succeeded in organizing a statewide coordinated campaign around the grievance system in Texas, but it remains an important campaign at the local level for pushing back against abuses and organizing others around a common cause as these comrades have done at McConnell. With their well-documented petition, perhaps they have a vision for how to unite others across the state for this common cause.

In a recent online debate between two random “Marxist-Leninists” and two fascists, one of the self-described “Marxist-Leninists” stated that every country in the last 100 years has been socialist. The fascists are happy to parade such meaningless dribble as “Marxism” so that they can make Marxism look bad. With Obama’s election, white nationalist fear became expressed in many derogatory words, including “communism” and “Marxism,” with no sense of irony that they were accusing the number one enemy of the world’s people of being a communist.

What is common among “Marxists” in the First World is saying every country is socialist that says it is and has some form of state intervention in the economy. This superficial analysis has also helped muddy the water of what socialism is. And it allows the fascists to say that they share many of the goals and ideals of the self-described Marxists. In particular they both look to China as a positive model of how to run a country and they both think Amerikans and various First World European nations are being victimized by the current world system. The fact that many of these fascists have chauvinist anti-Chinese views and wish war against the social-imperialist CPC is of no matter. For MIM, the question of whether today’s China is socialist or social-imperialist is a dividing line question.

To understand what socialism is, MIM has long recommended The Chinese Road to Socialism by Wheelright and MacFarlane. For the history of the coup that overthrew socialism in China MIM distributed The Capitalist Roaders Are Still on The Capitalist Road. In 1986, MIM cadre Henry Park published “Postrevolutionary China and the Soviet NEP” comparing state capitalism in the early days of the Russian revolution to state capitalism after the coup in China. In 1988, Park published “The Political Economy of Counterrevolution in China: 1976-88”, which tied all of these subjects together through a Maoist framework and analyzes the failures of state capitalism in post-Maoist China.

Pao-Yu Ching’s From Victory to Defeat serves as a more up-to-date introduction to the topic of the differences between socialism and capitalism in the last 100 years of Chinese history. It is written as a sort of FAQ and provides a broad overview, while explaining the key concepts that allow us to differentiate between the two economic systems. As such, MIM(Prisons) recommends Pao-Yu Ching’s work as a solid starting place when exploring this topic. The topic of “What is socialism?” must be fully grasped by all communists.

It seems that Pao-Yu may disagree with the Maoist class analysis. In eir introduction ey states, “Today the living conditions of the working masses in imperialist countries have grown increasingly difficult.”(p.9) Ey then alludes to rising prices, rising debt and precarious work, none of which necessarily reflect worsening objective conditions. Without a recognition that these populations are parasitic on the working classes, this line leads to the politics of the fascists and social-fascist “Marxist-Leninists” mentioned above. It is also relevant to the question of revisionism in the formerly socialist countries who looked to emulate the lifestyles of Amerikans. Since this point is not taken up in the rest of the book we will not dwell on it here, but it remains the biggest problem with this work.

What is Socialism?

Many of our readers and those who are interested in what we have to say in general are still confused as to what socialism is for the reasons mentioned above. Ultimately it is defined differently by different people, and it is used politically rather than scientifically. Pao-Yu outlines what the most advanced example of socialism looked like quite nicely in eir short book, so we will just mention some key points here to help clarify things.

Socializing industry first required that the state took control of the means of production in the form of factories, supply lines, raw materials, etc. This is where many stop with their definition of socialism. Some other key things that Pao-Yu points out is that success was no longer measured in the surplus produced but rather on improvements in the production and overall running of the enterprise.(p.20) This recognizes that some will be more profitable in a capitalist sense, but that the nation benefits more when all enterprises are improving, not just the profitable ones. Another key point is that laborers were guaranteed a job that was paid by the state at a standard rate.(p.28) This eliminated labor as a commodity that you must sell on the open market. Commodities are at the heart of capitalism. Socialism is the the transition away from commodities, starting with the most important commodity of humyn labor.

The above only applied to a minority of the country, as the vast majority of China was a peasant population. It is only in recent years that the peasantry is now less than half the population. It is in the countryside where the capitalist roaders and the Maoists disagreed the most. Pao-Yu walks us through the different phases of the transition to socialism and how the principal contradiction shifted in each phase. Ey explains the contradiction amongst the countryside, where production was not owned collectively by the whole population, and the cities where it was. The disagreement with the capitalist roaders was a disagreement over the principal contradiction at the time, which they thought was the advanced social system (of socialism) with the backward productive forces (of small scale farming by peasants). To resolve this contradiction the capitalist roaders thought they must accelerate production, industrialize agriculture, and feed the industrialized cities with the surplus of that agricultural production. This focus on production is one of the key defining lines of revisionism.

While Marx taught us that the productive forces are the economic base that define humyn history and the superstructure, he also said the contradiction with the relations of production is what leads to revolutionary transformations of society. As Pao-Yu points out, learning from Mao Zedong, during these revolutionary periods is when the relations of production become primary, in order to unleash the productive forces that have become stagnant under the previous mode of production.(p.30) In other words peasants living under semi-feudalism in China pre-liberation were not improving their conditions. They needed to revolutionize how they related to each other, how they were organized, specifically the class relations, in order to move towards a new mode of production (socialism) that could meet their needs much better. Therefore Mao focused on education, theory, class struggle, culture, the people, instead of focusing on production, profitability, surplus, and wage incentives, as the capitalist roaders did. The Maoist path took the Chinese peasants through a gradual process of increasing collectivization through communes, which was quickly dismantled after the coup in 1976.

What is Democracy?

Another question those living in bourgeois democracies often ask is how you can have democracy with only one party, where people are purged for having the wrong political line? Pao-Yu makes the point well by explaining that in established bourgeois democracies you can have many parties and many candidates, because they all represent the same class.(p.48) This is the case because these countries are stable in their mode of production (capitalism). In the transition to a new economic system the political struggle is between two classes. In the case of capitalism transitioning to socialism, it is between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat (and their class allies on each side).

The bourgeoisie by definition is always competing amongst itself, so it cannot have one party represent all of their interests, except in extreme crises when fascism becomes viable. In the United $tates today, the left-wing of the bourgeoisie are represented by the democrats while the right-wing flock to the republicans. Even amongst these parties are different bourgeois factions fighting amongst each other. The proletariat however is united in it’s class interest, so there will be no need for multiple proletarian parties. There are many books that outline the components of socialist democracy where people select their representatives at each level of administration, where free speech and criticism are encouraged, where education is universal and free and where everyone is involved in studying theory and practice to shape the decisions that affect their day-to-day lives. It does not require having multiple political parties to choose from as bourgeois democracies do in their electoral farce.

What is China?

Pao-Yu covered China before, during, and after socialism so that the reader can better understand the differences. As such the book is a good introduction to the explanation of why China has not been on the socialist road since 1976. Ey touches on the loss of the guaranteed job, with the introduction of temporary workers, the ending of the right to strike and free expression among the workers, the ability of managers to start keeping the profits from the enterprises they oversee, the loss of universal medical care, and the focus on production for other nations, while importing the pollution of those consumer nations. Ey briefly documents the struggles of the workers to maintain control of the enterprises they once owned collectively. China is now a capitalist hell hole for the majority objectively and it does not matter whether the CPC has millions of cadre who believe the opposite subjectively.

The Global Economy

One point Pao-Yu makes that we have also stressed as being important, is the role of the proletarianization of the Chinese masses in saving global imperialism from crisis. When the imperialist economies were facing economic crisis in the 1970s, one third of the world’s population was not available to be exploited by the imperialist system. One of the laws of capitalism is its need to always expand. When China went capitalist, it opened up a vast population to exploitation and super-exploitation for the imperialists. This labor was the source of value that the imperialist system thrived off of by the mid 1980s until just recently.

Interestingly, Pao-Yu says that almost 30% of the Chinese population is petty bourgeoisie, owning (often multiple) investment properties and traveling around the world.(p.111) In a previous article we explained that we saw China as a proletarian country still despite its imperialist activities. We referred to Bromma’s research that stated China’s “middle class” was 12-15% of the population some years prior. It is interesting to hear that the Chinese petty bourgeoisie has reached the same size in absolute numbers as the Amerikan one. It would be interesting to compare the wealth of these two groups, we presume the Amerikans remain wealthier. Of course, China is still majority proletariat, while Amerika is almost completely bourgeoisified, so the class interests of these nations overall remain opposed to one another. But we will rarely hear the proletarian voices from China until a new proletarian party rises there.

The housing market is one example of how China has emulated the United $tates. Investing in properties has become an important way for the new petty bourgeoisie in China to accumulate wealth without working. Just last week, the Chinese investment firm Evergrande made headlines when it became public knowledge that they would not be able to pay the billions of dollars they owe. Evergrande has significant backing from Amerikan finance capital, as is true for the Chinese economy in general. Therefore the collapse of the Chinese housing market could have real ripple effects in the global economy.

The fact that real estate investment firms exist in China, and that they are defaulting on hundreds of billions of dollars owed, is really all you need to know to see that the economy is oriented towards profit and not people. Things like inflation and bubbles and stock markets and speculation just didn’t exist during the Maoist era. The reintroduction of these things for the last four decades destroyed the progress in class struggle in China long ago.