MIM(Prisons) is a cell of revolutionaries serving the oppressed masses inside U.$. prisons, guided by the communist ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
Under Lock & Key is a news service written by and for prisoners with a focus on what is going on behind bars throughout the United States. Under Lock & Key is available to U.S. prisoners for free through MIM(Prisons)'s Free Political Literature to Prisoners Program, by writing:
MIM(Prisons) PO Box 40799 San Francisco, CA 94140.
In Texa$ we have received more reports from prisoners about the
worsening conditions overall behind bars. Multiple reports of increased
repression regarding food quality, medical care, lack of respite for
Ad-Seg and increased censorship. Much of the staff is not following any
regulations laid out for it regarding the grievance process. Many
writers have reported guards throwing out grievances. One report from
Clements Unit mentions 100% denial of grievances.
The reports from Clements show some of the worse conditions prisoners
face in Texas, with people in isolation suffering worsening health
conditions and mental health. From Choper’s
report:
“In protest fires burn daily on each of the Ad-Seg lines. Prisoners
burn any and all items that will burn. So many so often they don’t even
react or bother to put them out, consequently we have no mattresses.
Waiting list over 18 months to get a mattress. We sleep on steel and
concrete. There are no radios for sale on commissary.”
There is some unity in action going on, but without intentional
organizing efforts to facilitate further education in proletarian
ideology and connecting the masses behind bars to the oppressed nations
in and out of the United Snakes, it may fizzle out due to lack of
organization. Tactics such as setting fires can also bring about more
repression from guards while taking away energy and materials for
organizing. We will continue to fight the censorship and prepare for
increased repression, and continue to grow USW inside Texa$ prisons.
We’ve also recently gotten a report of a new SPD (Security Precaution
Designate) of Self Harm which is a measure the state is likely taking in
response to organizing efforts and legal action against solitary. We are
still awaiting updates from the court on the Anti-RHU
lawsuit Dillard v. Davis, et al. Civil Action
No. 7:19-cv-00081-M-BPs.
The most censored units are Allred and Hughes units. Censorship rates
for ULK in TX have been increasing. Censorship rates for the last four
issues of Under Lock & Key are as follows:
These are confirmed censorships while many are unconfirmed as
received at the moment, so rates are likely much higher.
Much of this is in response to increased pushback from the prisoner
population regarding the conditions already prevalent across Texa$ and
organizing efforts such as the Juneteenth
Freedom Initiative which initiated a wave of censorship which has
been ongoing since June.
One comrade has been pushing a censorship lawsuit Owolabi v. TDCJ
Allred Unit, et al., 7;22-cv-00094-0 which could have massive
implication on facilitating further organizing efforts inside Texa$
prisons, however there have been issues with the Courts trying to
dismiss the case on payments grounds despite payment being made for
legal documents, that has been resolved for now but it goes to show how
unwilling the Texas Department of Criminal Injustice is to follow in own
procedure if prisoners use it to further progressive interests in making
Texas$ prisons into liberation schools.
Regarding the BP 3.91 case Martinez,
ET AL. vs. Members of the TExas Board of Criminal Justice, ET AL.
#3:21-CV-00337, it is currently pending and the Judge had sided
with the defendants and denied to issue summons to the TDCJ board
members and director, however further action is being taken, its not
over yet. More proof that this system is completely biased towards the
oppressor and we cannot let up on any fronts.
On December 16, 13 comrades have unified in the Michael Unit to stop
eating in response to ignored grievances, which both step 1 and 2’s have
been filed, and hazardous conditions inside the isolation cells, where
we’ve gotten a report where an entire row got sick due to improper
ventilation. As with some other units, chow is being left out for hours
at a time before being served, and people aren’t being let out to
shower. We stand with these comrades and encourage other prisoners to
find unity through these worsening conditions.
North Texas AIPS has been established and will be working in
coordination with other groups such as Texas T.E.A.M. O.N.E. to ramp up
more outside support and awareness of the struggle behind bars, and
spreading MIM line in and outside of prisons in Texa$. We will continue
to expand our efforts in order to bring awareness and strategize on
combating the increased repression Texa$ prisoners have been facing
One project we will be working with a number of jailhouse lawyers on
is updating the Texas Campaign Pack to include anything we can find to
update the grievance information as well as information regarding the
new independent Ombudsman for Texa$. Please send us your edits and
changes for the Texas Pack so we can make the next edition as complete
as possible.
The struggle in Texa$ is growing, as is state repression, our goals
to establish institutions of the oppressed nation and facilitate the
study of Maoism and peoples war is our path forward. Stand up for your
right, don’t give up the fight.
In early December of last year a hunger strike was called at Ely
State Prison, joined by at least 39 prisoners at the start and
fluctuating over the following weeks. A prison advocacy group, Return
Strong, represented the prisoners’ demands as follows:
End the continued and extended use of solitary confinement,
lockdowns, modified lockdowns, and de facto solitary confinement.
End correctional abuse.
End group punishment and administrative abuse.
Address due process interference and violation in the grievance
process.
Provide adequate and nutritious food.
Address health and safety concerns in all Nevada facilities and
provide resolution status to them.
In response, the Nevada Department of Corrections (NDOC) ignored
several of the demands, calling them “false,” (2) but addressed some of
the concerns related to food and administrative handling of punishments.
Lower-level sanctions that result in loss of privileges will now run
concurrently instead of consecutively, and Aramark, the food vendor, is
being questioned about the portion sizes. Even the head of the local
prison guards union mentioned that they’d noticed the portions shrinking
recently.(1) Aramark has faced repeated legal challenges regarding its
poor food from prisons across the country (3), so the fact that it’s now
squeezing portion sizes in Nevada doesn’t come as too much of a
surprise.
Some of the more serious allegations NDOC ignored include food being
stolen from prisoners by staff, the existence of no-camera “beat-up
rooms,” collective punishment and indefinite 23-hour lockdowns excused
by laying the blame on “staffing issues,” and the de facto suspension of
programming for many prisoners.(4)
Prisoners at Ely State Prison voluntarily suspended the strike after
four weeks and the adjustment of some of the handling of administrative
sanctions were addressed.(5) We didn’t receive any info from inside or
outside coordinators about how/why the strike ended, just that it did.
If any of our readers can provide insight we’d appreciate it.
Texas prisoners face some of the harshest conditions in the kkkountry
mainly due to neglect from prison staff, and disregard for prisoners’
health, safety and rights. For example recently in Estelle High Security
we had received a report from one of our readers on dialysis, and a copy
of eir grievance,
On 15 August 22 at 5:45PM-7:10PM 11 Dialysis patients were put in a
van with NO Rear A/C. We got to the rear gate of high security at 6:10pm
our officer driving the van told Lt. Phillips:
“Hey there’s Dialysis in the van and it’s hot for them.”
Lt. Phillips said ,“I don’t give a fuck, I’m crossing my kitchen crew
to the main building. They can fucken wait.”
It was about 90 outside. Our officer driving the van told her again,
“They just got off dialysis.”
Lt Phillips said, “They’ll be fine.”
Their report describes a fellow prisoner who had passed out after
they were left in there for an hour. This is not the only heat related
incident, as heat waves were going on for weeks, many units went without
A/C or adequate ice or respite as reported on from the Luther Unit.
Meanwhile, Stiles
Unit spent much of September in lockdown during the heat with no showers
and limited food. Heat exhaustion and health issues are being
exacerbated by lack of respite, this all being against directive A.D.
1064 requiring access to ice during times of elevated heat. The
oppressors at this unit deny this happening of course, and show their
own unwillingness to follow their own laws, which gives light to the
real purpose of prisons of course being national and political
oppression. Unity and mass action is the only way to address this, such
as TX T.E.A.M. O.N.E.’s mass petition to mail to the U.$. Department of
Justice as mentioned in ULK 78Juneteenth
Freedom Initiative (J.F.I.) Phase 2.
This year has seen an increase in reports (at least 135 recorded by
Texas Dept. of Criminal Injustice (TDCJ)) of censorship of mail from
MIM(Prisons) across Texas, since the start of the J.F.I. As stated in
the last 2 issues of ULK, the J.F.I. is simply organizing for
prisoners’ legal rights as stated by the imperialist’s own laws
(peacefully advocating for legal rights is not inciting a disturbance).
Massive censorship continues in the Allred and Hughes Units, among many
others, where conditions are some of the worst in the state. The reason
behind this as stated before is to prevent organizing and political
education from prisoners, and to limit their knowledge of their legal
rights. The state’s interest are of population control, and torture
(Restricted housing for decades is unconstitutional torture) along with
the many cases of neglect beyond what’s referenced here.
“MIM Distributors and our subscribers within the TDCJ have exhausted
all administrative remedies with our appeals, letters and grievances.
The TDCJ is not interested in following the law on it’s own accord.
Therefore we have begun to step up outside pressure on two fronts.
the legal front by filing a lawsuit
the public opinion front via our postcard campaign”
“A prisoner’s administrative remedies are exhausted when prison
officials fail to timely respond to a properly filed grievance.”
(Haight v. Thompson 763 F. 3d 554 (6th Cir 2014)) According to
this, if they do not respond to our grievances we can go on to a §1983
Civil Action.
Anti-imperialist Prisoner support (AIPS) has been hitting the streets
with ULK, J.F.I. Flyers, and postcards to be mailed to TDCJ’s
Director’s Review Committee office and Jimmy Smith’s (Warden of Allred)
office, collecting donations and educating those on the outside. We can
always use more feet on the ground, and legal funds from those on the
outside, more support in general.
This short summary of some of the conditions recently faced by Texas
prisoners is a call to unite against all oppression, primarily against
the United Snakes of Amerikkka, and to unify under the common banner of
Anti-imperialism. Don’t let the divide and conquer tactics work as
intended, this political oppression cannot and will not go unanswered.
We need the people on the outside to support those on the inside in
their efforts to further organize, rehabilitate, and educate in the
United Struggle from Within in Texas. We need public opinion to shift,
so keep on the pressure from both sides. The more they censor and
oppress, bigger our fight gets!
Since Monday, 26 September 2022, Alabama has struggled to keep its
prisons operating as prisoners across the state have not been performing
work in their facilities until their demands for reform of the parole
system, sentencing, and oversight are met. Organizing around this
campaign began back in June among prisoners and their families, after
years of protests and litigation over the escalating brutality of the
Alabama Department of Corrections failed to make the state budge.
In the state of Alabama, prisoners manufacture license plates,
furniture, clothing, while maintain the prisons themselves by working in
the kitchen, laundry, or doing yard and road work. Without this work the
prisons are dramatically short-staffed and can barely even keep
prisoners fed. Meals being served to prisoners in recent weeks are
basically slices of bread and cheese, a powerful indication of the
willingness of the state and its employees to run the basic
infrastructure prisoners need to survive.
The prisoners’ demands are not centered on overcrowding or the fact
that Alabama doesn’t pay its prisoners anything for their labor, or
specific acts of brutality by correctional officers, as galling as all
of that is. Instead, they are targeted at the parole and sentencing
systems, which have led to “more people coming out in body bags than on
parole,” in the words of outside organizer Diyawn Caldwell of prisoner
advocacy group Both Sides of the Wall.(1) The prisoner’s demands
are:
Repeal the Habitual Offender Law immediately.
Make the presumptive sentencing standards retroactive
immediately.
Repeal the drive-by shooting statute.
Create a statewide conviction integrity unit.
Mandatory parole criteria that will guarantee parole to all eligible
persons who meet the criteria.
Streamlined review process for medical furloughs and review of
elderly incarcerated individuals for immediate release.
Reduction of the 30 year maximum for juvenile offenders to no more
than 15 years before they are eligible for parole.
Do away with life without parole.(2)
The sentencing and parole systems in Alabama have always been bad and
have been getting worse in recent years. In mid-October while prisoners
in some facilities were still refusing to work, the Alabama parole board
granted two paroles out of 124 cases, a rate barely above one percent.
Whether this was conscious retaliation or just the day-to-day brutality
of the system is unknown at this time.
Supporters Rally outside Capitol
An investigation initiated by the Justice Department under the Trump
administration identified horrific overcrowding (182% of capacity) and
neglect that has led to some of the highest rates of homicide and rape
among prisoners in the country.(3) Following this investigation, the
Justice Department then took the extraordinary step of suing the state
of Alabama over the conditions of its men’s prisons.(4) According to
prison organizers, nothing has changed in the almost two years since the
lawsuit.
Because of the prisoner participation across the state, the
government wasn’t able to ignore it like they normally prefer. Governor
Kay Ivey called the demands ‘unreasonable’ while also admitting that the
building of two new mens’ prisons (with misappropriated COVID-19 relief
funds) would meet the DOJ’s demands to end overcrowding.(5) Regarding
parole and the basic fact that the state is putting more and more people
inside with longer and longer sentences with no end in sight, she had
nothing substantial to say.
The warehousing of predominately oppressed nation men, with no
opportunities for rehabilitation or release is why we charge
genocide against the U.$. criminal injustice system. Alabama is part
of the Black Belt south, with 26% of it’s overall population being
Black/New Afrikan. Yet, 54% of prisoners were New Afrikan across the
state in 2010!(6) Alabama is in the top 6 states in the United $tates
for overall imprisonment rates, with most of those states being in the
Black Belt.
Caldwell discussed the despair prisoners in Alabama feel because of
the lack of opportunities in Alabama prisons:
They’ve taken all the exit and second chance options away from these
men and women in Alabama. There’s no hope for parole because the parole
board is practically denying everyone and sending them off [with] five
[more] years with no explanation, even though these men and women meet
the set criteria that has been established.
They practically have a living death sentence, if they don’t have an
EOS date, so all the hope is gone. They have nothing to strive for
there, they feel like they’re not worthy of a second chance, they’re not
given a second chance. And no one has any type of trust or hope in them
to come out and reintegrate into society and be a stand-up citizen.
People incarcerated in Alabama face excessive force from correctional
officers, a high risk of death, physical violence and sexual abuse from
other prisoners and are forced to live in unsafe and unsanitary
conditions, according to the DOJ.
The prison authorities have responded to the work refusal by
cancelling all visitation, cutting programming back to nothing, and
serving next to no food. The Alabama Department of Corrections is one of
many prison systems across the country struggling to function without
enough people to run its operations. While prisoners are the primary
people to suffer under these conditions, this also indicates a
contradiction in the United $tates use of prisons to control large
populations that could offer opportunities for change. As Under Lock
& Key goes to print, the prisoners have faced the state of
Alabama down for three weeks. We will continue monitoring the situation
and try to extract lessons for the rest of the country.
UPDATE FOR AUGUST 2022: Now that Juneteenth 2022 has passed,
please use this updated
flyer and these updated
postcards now address the censorship across the state of Texas in
recent months. We need your support to keep increasing the pressure to
fight this censorship of political speech.
Download and print this flyer to hang or hand out.
We are also asking others to join our letter writing and postcard
campaign in support of the rights of MIM Distributors and activists in
Allred to freely communicate. There has been a rise in mail
censorship as organizing has progressed.
download PDF below
print 2-sided on cardstock
cut into 4
add $0.40 stamp (or more)
go to event or public space and ask people to sign their name, city
and state
explain the Junteenth Freedom Initiative to them
hand them a flyer (above) or Under Lock & Key
ask for a donation to pay for postage & printing
drop postcards in mail box (don’t mail them all at once we want a
consistent stream of cards coming in)
In April, we published a piece covering the
killing of Adam Toledo: a 13-year-old Mexican lumpen youth who was a
member of the Mexican/Chican@ neighborhood of Little Village, westside
Chicago. Here we address some of the organizing that has come out of
this tragic death.
The Mexican/Chican@ Youth
Speak
On the day the Chicago city government released the body camera
footage of the way Adam was killed, police abolitionist rallies and
protests were gathered in Chicago and other major cities of the United
$tates. Primarily, these rallies were calls for abolition and reform of
pig forces in the United $tates and were attended by the Mexican and
Chican@ masses – mostly the youth. Despite comprador Mayor Lightfoot and
the Chicago Pig Department’s fearful cries of imminent social unrest and
“riots,” these social rallies were peaceful and non-violent.(1)
During school time, the same youth who might have attended those
non-violent rallies mourning Adam’s death and righteously condemning the
Chicago Police Department (CPD) would have found a bit more safety than
usual due to the lack of pig presence in their schools. Chicago Public
Schools (CPS) officials announced on the 23rd of April – a week after
the release of the body cam footage – that uniformed pigs won’t be on
school campus until the fall semester. This policy however, is only
temporary and will not apply to sergeants who patrol the areas around
CPS schools. On top of that, officers are still assigned to 55 high
schools whose local school councils voted to keep them in.(2)
The murder of a fellow oppressed nation youth has sparked a lot of
righteous resentment against the oppressive police system among
Chicago’s public school students during that month – the CPS population
is comprised of 83% oppressed nation students.(3) Nathaniel Martinez, a
sophomore of Roosevelt High School in Albany Park, made the following
statements:
“The cops are the ones who are holding the gun. They have the power
to choose what will happen, what won’t happen. And what they chose for
Adam was death. And when I saw that, when I realized that, it just made
me scared. But at the end of the day… am I scared of cops? Yes. Am I
scared what one of them will do to me if one of them ends up having a
bad day and they just want to do something crazy? Yes, I always am. …
But right now we’re trying our best to make a difference.”
“We shouldn’t have students being monitored like criminals by cops in
schools,”
Oppressed nation youth like Nathaniel lead movements across the
country to get rid of armed pigs monitoring school halls. Many of these
youth correctly recognize the disparity of how much harsher and more
frequently New Afrikan or Latin@ children would be targeted by school
pigs as compared to their Amerikan peers. Other progressive minded
people have also recognized how the patrolling of schools and youth
(oppressed nation youth in particular) lead to those youths entering the
prison injustice system. In this sense, there is strong solidarity that
should be built among the prison movement and the youth movement.
However, a big weakness, reflecting pre-scientific thinking within these
movements, is reformism and dependency on the imperialist system. These
are ideas communists should be challenging through political education
when deepening their roots into the progressive youth movements.
The Elders Respond
One important voice that has been raised are the ones from the older
migrants. While these elders recognize the tragedy of Adam’s death, they
also supported more pig presence among the Mexican/Chican@ neighborhoods
in fear of violence from lumpen organizations. One Mexican elote
(Mexican street food) vendor aged 74, named Santamaria, had this to
say:
“We are tired of gang violence; it’s sad what happened with the young
boy, but he had a gun with him and his friend had been shooting, so the
officer responded to the threat,”(4)
Many of our reader base will know that the oppressed nation lumpen in
the urban centers of the United $tates have hostile relationships with
their urban petty-bourgeois counterparts. Some of our readers (and also
many communists) might be quick to condemn the above attitude claimed by
Miss Santamaria as coming from a petty-bourgeois street vendor and a
chauvinist attitude against the lumpen class. However, we shouldn’t be
too quick to brush off these sentiments and thoroughly combat the
anti-people aspect of the lumpen class as well. Ideas stem from material
reality after all. The segregated nature of the United $tates will mean
that the bread and butter of oppressed nation lumpen will be other
oppressed nation people: pigs will care less if a gangbanger steals from
a New Afrikan or a Chican@ in the ghettos/barrios than stealing from the
Amerikans. As stated in “Who
is the Lumpen in the United $tates?” by MIM(Prisons), the First
World Lumpen parasitically gets its means of living through other labor
aristocrats, or other lumpen. This examination should lead to their
surrounding petty-bourgeoisie as well. While it is true that in the
United $tates, the First World Lumpen class should be organized to
abandon the road of banditry and follow the road of revolution, it is
also true that to demand respect and sympathy from poor and lower
petty-bourgeois masses while also committing said banditry is idealist
and commandist.
One important point that has been brought up by the youth and the
intellectuals which led many of the mass rallies and discourse
surrounding the murder of Adam was the fact that many of the elders in
the Mexican/Chican@ community bring over conservative cultural attitudes
of the countryside in mother country Mexico to the cities of the United
$tates.(5) Many of these attitudes include the reaction against the
violence of the lumpen proletariat drug lords and the Mexican
bourgeoisie that fund and cooperate with these enemies of the people.
Nine times out of ten, the Mexican drug lord is a gangster and a
comprador capitalist at the same time – if not the running dogs of those
comprador bourgeoisie. In the oppressed nation areas of the United
$tates, most lumpen organizations might just be small-scale collectives
of hustlers, pimps, and drug peddlers who claim blocks and corners and
can’t afford to have the country’s military under their thumbs; in the
Third World, they are war lords who control swaths of land and political
power. This difference should stay in the minds of revolutionaries and
communists who intend to organize not only the first world lumpen, but
also the migrant proletariat who come from the third world oftentimes to
escape from war lord tyranny.
The Campaign Against
ShotSpotter
Several months after Adam was murdered, his family and activists
gathered on the site of his death to protest the ShotSpotter technology
used to detect gunshots in areas where lumpen activities heavily occur.
On the Thursday of July 29th when that rally was held, activists
demanded the cancellation of ShotSpotter’s surveillance presence in
their neighborhoods as the contract the company had with the city of
Chicago only had one month left.(6)
In response to the protests held by the people, ShotSpotter issued
this response:
“All residents who live in communities experiencing persistent
gunfire deserve a rapid police response, which gunshot detection enables
regardless of race or geographic location. Because cities lack
sufficient funds to cover an entire city with gunshot detection
technology, they deploy sensors in neighborhoods suffering the highest
levels of gun violence.”(7)
In classic Amerikan fashion, ShotSpotter disguised its surveillance
and monitoring of the empire’s problem population (the oppressed nation
of urban centers) as a gift and a right that the said population
“deserves.” Maoists recognize that gunshot detectors in ghettos and
barrios aren’t a safety measure. These technologies enable pigs to be
deployed faster to occupy these regions in a more efficient and fruitful
manner. The company also claimed that the technology detects “gunshots
regardless of race or geographic location.” Any sane person should be
able to recognize that this claim means nothing since humyn beings (in
this case Amerikan corporations profiting off of militarized police
occupation) put these technologies in to monitor New Afrikans and
Mexicans/Chican@s geographically located in ghettos and barrios. Like
Mao Zedong taught us, man is principal over machine and weaponry in
warfare.
Adam’s Place
On August 11th, Adam Toledo’s family spoke about the plan of creating
“Adam’s Place”; a non-profit shelter for at risk boys trying to escape
inner-city conditions and lumpen violence. The shelter would be built on
a 70 acre farm in Potosi, Wisconsin and was chosen by the family’s
attorney Joel Hirschorn. The location is 3.5 hours away from Chicago and
2.5 hours away from Milwaukee.(9) The non-profit is claimed to be
modeled after the Christian ministry program “Boys’ Farm.” In a town
hall meeting in Potosi, Wisconsin, Joel Hirschorn announced that the
home will not take in boys already in a lumpen organization. We are not
sure how Adam’s Place will define a child to be “in a gang” (whether
affiliates or individual hustlers will be classified as belonging to a
“gang”); however, we see the fact that Adam Toledo himself would not be
allowed in Adam’s Place as a prime example of liberal NGO tactics.(10)
We hope for stable and safe path for all children who will enter Adam’s
Place, and wish the family members of Adam Toledo for a peace of mind
from the nightmare they must be facing. For attacking the problem at the
root, and for real rehabilitation of lumpen youth, we point our
directions away from NGOism to our readers and towards socialism and
revolution.
Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century:
Globalization, Super-Exploitation, and Capitalism’s Final Crisis
by John Smith
Monthly Review Press
2016
[Editor: The author of this review uses “southern countries” to refer to
what we would call the Third World, exploited or neo-colonial countries,
and “northern countries” to refer to the imperialist, First World,
exploiter countries.]
The dominant trend in capitalism for the last forty or so years has
been the relocation of production from northern to southern countries,
where the vast majority of the global industrial workforce lives. It’s
impossible to ignore the offshore origin of most of the commodities we
interact with in the U.S. every day, and equally impossible to ignore
the wretched conditions and dramatically lower wages that most of these
southern workers deal with. What this means for the present structure
and future of the global economy is less clear, and that’s where this
book comes in.
There’s a lot in this book I won’t talk about that was nonetheless
very interesting – Smith’s discussion of GDP and productivity
measurements, his history of Marxist thinking on imperialism, and his
in-depth discussion of the production of a wide range of specific
commodities.(1) I’ll just focus on his main contribution, the value
theory of imperialism, in which he incorporates and expands on Marx’s
discussion of surplus value and Lenin’s century-old understanding of
imperialism.
Surplus in Marx’s Capital
Smith’s value theory of imperialism begins with value, which is the
amount of labor required to produce a given commodity. A capitalist
producing t-shirts wants to churn out the largest amount of them in a
working day, at the highest possible intensity of work, and with the
latest technology. Out of the sale of the t-shirts he buys equipment,
raw materials, and pays wages. These wages are the monetary expression
of labor power, or what a worker is paid to show up at a specific time
and place and put their energies and abilities at the disposal of the
capitalist. In return, the worker can use the wage they get to buy a
basket of goods to keep themselves alive til the next day. The amount of
labor that goes into the production of this basket the worker needs can
be called the value of labor-power itself, which under capitalism is a
commodity just like clothing, pickups or rifles. The pile of shirts the
capitalist gets to sell at the end of the day can be sold for more money
than the wages he pays for the labor that produced it. To cut a long
story short, Marx investigates this anomaly and discovers that there is
a part of the day where workers produce enough commodities to pay for
their wages, and a part of the day where the labor they expend creates
commodities that just make the capitalist money. The labor that happens
in this second part of the day is surplus labor, and the value of the
commodities produced at this time is surplus value. This magically free
labor is the beating heart of capitalism, and its pursuit and
distribution are the core of all capitalist economic phenomena.
Marx discussed two main ways that capitalists in the 19th century
would attempt to grab more surplus value.(2) The first he called
‘absolute surplus value,’ and it consists of extending the working day
by either making workers work harder for the time they’re at work, or
making them work for longer at the same or similar wages. The second
path to more surplus is making the value of labor power (or the amount
of labor it takes to create enough goods for a worker to survive) less.
Marx called this second form ‘relative surplus value’.
Smith takes this basic account and expands it to an era Marx didn’t
live to see and couldn’t have predicted – the transformation of the
labor-capital relationship into a relationship mostly between northern
capital and southern labor.(3)
North-South
relations in Lenin’s Imperialism
Lenin’s book Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism
describes a world divided into oppressor and oppressed nations, the
competition of monopolies, and the trends inherent in capitalist
development of this era that lead to ever more destructive bouts of
violence. The need for more surplus and more profits drives capitalist
firms beyond the confines of their home market, to seize and exploit
foreign ones. Competition gives way to centralization and large
monopolies, and the increasing integration of these monopolistic
interests into the state makes war over colonies and their resources
more and more likely. At home, the super-profits obtained in the
colonies create a labor aristocracy, the size and influence of which has
been debated basically for the entire hundred years since Lenin’s book
first appeared.
Smith identifies a weakness in Lenin’s work, mainly that he doesn’t
discuss or use value as a concept to explain imperialism.(4) The thing
Smith attempts, after several chapters of setting up the data on the
existence and persistence of wage differentials and trade relationships
between northern firms and southern labor, is a synthesis and update of
Marx and Lenin’s contributions.
Synthesis
Smith’s point is that the outsourcing of production has allowed
capitalist firms to conduct what he calls ‘labor arbitrage,’ or buying
labor power where it is cheap and selling the commodities produced where
they can be sold dear. Thanks to innovations in shipping and
communications technology, firms can seek out the cheapest labor and the
most favorable environmental and labor laws (ideally, they want no
environmental or labor laws) to churn out the most surplus value
possible. This has driven the wage down below the value of labor power –
workers in many countries are not paid enough to survive and have to
make a living through wage-labor in capitalist factories plus something
else, like subsistence farming or stealing. This is an extreme form of
the relative surplus value extraction method that Marx discussed, or
what has also been called superexploitation.
Additionally, the relationship between companies like Foxconn (which
actually makes the iPhone) and companies like Apple (who first create a
design that breaks in three years, then contract the production out and
stamp a logo on it for 300% markup), or ‘arms-length outsourcing’(5),
hides the exploitation and transfer of value from one country to another
behind an apparently innocent market transaction. The vast majority of
the profits, taxes and tariffs from offshored production end up not in
the country where the commodity was produced, but in the country where
the final seller of the commodity is headquartered. This is how Germany,
a country that cannot produce coffee, makes dramatically more from its
re-export than any country where it is actually grown.(6) Marx hints
that this phenomenon, called ‘value capture,’ could exist theoretically,
but Smith demonstrates that it is at the core of relationships between
countries in today’s economy. There is also a lengthy discussion of
‘value chains’ or sequential input-output relationships conducted
between firms that leads to the final commodity. A Zambian copper mine
sells to a wire factory, which sells to a company that makes circuit
boards, which sells to a car company who uses the circuit board to run
an automatic transmission in a hundred thousand dollar pickup. The
conditions of work and the selling price dramatically swell along the
chain, to the point where the worker watching a robot bolt the circuit
board into place makes more in an hour than the copper miner made in a
month. But all labor really is equal. It’s not like swinging a pickaxe
is an entirely different movement in Zambia or America. And it’s not
like the people doing the swinging are any different either.
The Political Economy of
Coffee
Smith provides a lot of concrete examples of how these exploitative
relations between nations lead to permanent conditions of
underdevelopment in southern countries, and vast profits in northern
ones. Maybe the most stark of these examples is his discussion of coffee
from the early part of the book. Coffee is only grown in southern
countries, and it is almost exclusively processed in northern countries,
where the markups can exceed four hundred percent. Wages paid in the
coffee-processing sector, taxes from this business and tariffs on
imports, all contribute to the northern economy in question (Germany,
perversely for a country that can never grow coffee except in a
greenhouse, is the biggest exporter of processed coffee) and rely on
southern countries furnishing the raw material at a reliably low price,
a price that ends up being a tiny fraction of the cost of the final
product. In this case it’s clear not only how unequal the exchange is,
but also how the entire chain of production in the northern country
relies on the exploitation of other workers. Another writer on this
subject, Zak Cope, estimates that the total transfer owing to this
process of hyper-exploitation, markup and re-export, across all
commodities, amounts to sixteen percent of GDP in northern countries
every year.
What makes these conditions permanent is the persistently low price
of the export for the country where the coffee is grown, which will not
allow it to develop or move up the ladder to more capital-intensive
forms of production that might be safer on the global market. An
additional factor is politics, and the careful policing of the ability
of southern countries to raise wages, enforce their own labor laws, hold
northern firms to account when they commit crimes(7), and raise the
price of their exports. In the case of Rwanda (a major coffee producer)
in the early 90s, the political destabilization and genocide that
occurred in the country was partially the result of the collapse of an
international coffee-exporting agreement that attempted to set a (low)
floor on the price of the commodity and provide some stability and
guaranteed income for countries who rely on its export. Northern
countries oppose any agreement that would make their inputs cost more,
or make their value-chains dependent on cheap labor any more expensive.
They can be more or less effective at ensuring this, in cooperation with
the comprador bourgeoisie. A particularly galling example of this, from
the textile sector, unfolded in Haiti in 2009 over the raising of the
minimum wage of 31 cents an hour, which president Rene Preval eventually
backed away from, after opposition from the U.S. Embassy and local
factory owners.(8)
Whose fight, and who’s
fighting?
What Smith doesn’t do is discuss the immediate political consequences
of all this for us. On the last page of the book he says “together with
their sisters and brothers in the imperialist countries, [southern]
workers have the capacity, the mission and the destiny to dig a grave in
which to bury capitalism.”(9) It’s a little too convenient, and maybe in
the future he can discuss the history of this elusive internationalism.
Whether workers in northern countries fight actively or consciously for
this super-exploitation to continue, whether and to what exact extent
different groups of workers in northern countries benefit from this
arrangement of production, whether workers of the world can unite and
what they could accomplish if they could, are all questions Smith
doesn’t answer. MIM would argue that workers in northern countries
clearly benefit from imperialism, and seek those benefits in an alliance
(an alliance that might have some rough spots now and then) with the
bourgeoisie of their own countries, and are thus not a mass base for a
revolutionary movement but instead a labor aristocracy. Changes to all
of these relationships – between northern and southern countries, and
between workers and their bosses, north and south – will drive changes
in the political economy John Smith’s book goes a long way towards
helping us understand.
Notes: 1. pp. 13-34 2. p. 237 3. p. 12 4.
pp. 225-230 5. p. 68 6. p. 31 7. It always helps when the
law in northern countries maintains a fictitious barrier between a
northern firm relying on exploitation and those they exploit. A recent
extreme example is the Supreme Court’s ruling that the slave labor of
children used in harvesting product for Nestle under conditions the
company controlled wasn’t technically the company’s fault. See:
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/17/supreme-court-rules-in-favor-of-nestle-in-child-slavery-case.html
8. Dan
Coughlin and Kim Ives, 1 June 2011, WikiLeaks Haiti: Let Them Live on $3
a Day, The Nation. 9. p. 315
On 20 April 2021, Ma’Khia Bryant – a 16-year-old New Afrikan girl –
was murdered by a pig belonging to the Columbus Division of Police.(1)
As the news of a guilty verdict on killer pig Derek Chauvin was barely
starting to make news on various media, an Amerikan pig killed another
New Afrikan child.(2)
At the time of the murder, Ma’Khia Bryant lived in foster care in the
home of Angela Moore – the foster mother. The incident started as a
conflict between a Tionna Bonner, 22 year old former foster child of
Ms. Moore, and Ma’Khia Bryant and her younger sister Ja’Niah Bryant. The
conflict was originally over housework, and how the former foster child
Tionna Bonner said the Bryant children were not giving Ms. Moore the
respect that was due. The dispute escalated when Ja’Niah called
Ms. Moore who said she was too busy to get involved. Ja’Niah called her
grandmother while Ms. Bonner called another former foster child by the
name of Shai-Onta Craig Watkins. Watkins was 20 years old at this
time.(3)
The biological grandmother of the Bryant children arrived who
described the conflict. She tried protecting her grandchildren who were
being threatened by the older former foster children Ms. Bonner and
Ms. Watkins. By this time, Ms. Bonner had pulled out a knife (according
to Ja’Niah and her grandmother) and Ma’Khia had grabbed a steak knife
from the kitchen. This is when Ja’Niah called 911 to which she claimed
“Angie’s grown girls trying to fight us, trying to stab us, trying to
put her hands on our grandma.”(4)
The police arrived 12 minutes later. Ms. Watkins has left the house
while the Bryant children began to pack up their things. The Bryant
children’s father now arrived at the scene as Ms. Watkins returned with
two more people. While the two groups crossed paths, Ms. Watkins spat
towards the Bryant family. Ja’Niah Bryant later said, “That’s when
everything just went left.”
As Ma’Khia Bryant charged, Ms. Watkins fell to the ground in which
then Ma’Khia’s father tried to kick Watkins. When Ma’Khia raised her
kitchen knife, pig Nicholas Reardon shot Ma’Khia four times. Ma’Khia was
dead.
Many activists and people on Twitter oriented towards the discourse
of Amerika’s police brutality pointed out on social media how the New
Afrikan masses couldn’t get a single second of judicial justice from the
United $tates without having another Amerikan pig take the life away
from another New Afrikan. This murder was closely dated with the release
of the video footage showing the murder of a Mexican lumpen youth Adam
Toledo who was 3 years younger than Ma’Khia Bryant. The liberals and
left-wing imperialists oriented with the Democratic Party seemed too
busy to pat themselves on the back in regards to the guilty verdict on
Derek Chauvin that these two murders of oppressed nation youth seemed to
not stay in their national headlines.
The
Oppressed Nation Youth in the Foster Care System
In 2019, New Afrikan children made up 14% of the total child
population in the United $tates – children ranging from ages 1 to 18 –
while their euro-Amerikan counterparts made up 50%.(5) Despite their
much smaller population size, New Afrikan children made up 23% of the
kids in foster care, much higher than not only Amerikans, but also the
Chican@s, First Nations, and national minorities.(6) The number of New
Afrikan foster children however, has been decreasing steadily for the
past two decades with the year 2000 starting with a 39% and reaching a
stabilization of 23% around 2016 up to 2019.
Throughout the history of the modern imperialist world there have
been problems of vulnerable children; whether they be foster kids,
orphan beggars, or a gang of youth thieves, crisis which inevitably
comes from the capitalist relations of production will strike the youth
populations as well. In the United $tates, one of the many major
external factors of the oppressed nations’ material conditions in the
recent decades have been the drug war. With the turn of the 1980s, the
crack epidemic fueled by the alliance between the CIA and the comprador
drug lords of Latin America has hit New Afrikan and Latin@ communities
like a locust swarm would to a peasant’s rice field. As the drug game
became more and more dangerous, the oppressed nation youth lost the
little stability and the nuclear family structure that they had in the
first place. The associate commissioner of the Children’s Bureau stated
that “most children enter the foster care system, not from physical
abuse, but from neglect.”(7) From this we can gather that the primary
cause of New Afrikan youth entering the foster care system is not
physical and emotionally abusive parents per se, but lack of resources
the family or the community around them has.
Children growing in those lumpenized households and impoverished
labor aristocrat households vulnerable to lumpenization (and most
importantly, surrounded by abysmal living conditions) creates a very
unstable social element for the Amerikans (and even the oppressed nation
masses!). So in that response, the foster system is utilized where
petty-bourgeois households (many of them belonging to the oppressed
nation themselves!) with the time and resource could take care of
children coming from beneath their petty-bourgeois class status. Despite
its well-intended individuals, the foster care system is just as unsafe
from bureaucratic and profit-driven work methods that is embedded in the
capitalist the capitalist superstructure. Abuse, emotional deprivation,
and physical neglect reign amongst children in foster care. Just like
how the police departments of every major city juke statistics and makes
robberies and rapes disappear – and how the school system juke scores
and encourage studying tests instead of studying fields of knowledge –
foster homes oftentimes make their abuse and neglect disappear as well.
Anti-communists claim that no one would work without the profit motive,
and that the profit motive is the main source of good work in any
society. Then how come foster parents who get paid hundreds by the
government every month per child still can’t meet the emotional and
physical requirement for vulnerable youth?
With the crack cocaine epidemic rising in the 1980s and 1990s,
bourgeois nationalist ideas hardening the family structure of oppressed
nations came to popularity. Bourgeois nationalists pointed at the lack
of a nuclear family structure amongst oppressed nations, and rested the
conditions of New Afrikans and Chican@s upon that point.(8) The absentee
father; the drug addicted mother; the so-called “emasculated” gay man;
the gangster who’s “too dumb” to use his parasitic gains to transform
into a legal capitalist; and the participator of “loose sex” were seen
as the reasons why New Afrikan/Chican@ youth were pulled into
lumpenization and the foster care system. Maoists understand that the
superstructure cannot change the economic base, and the idea of
“superstructure first” will be fruitless without the overthrow of
capitalism. Shaming single mothers, persecuting LGBT masses, and
enabling the capitalist instincts of the lumpen class will not only fail
to give us liberation, but will attack the masses even more.
Socialist Handling of
Unattended Youth
In the Soviet Union, revolution, counter-revolution, and world war
left millions of orphans in Russia commonly referred to as
“besprizornye” (literally meaning “unattended”).(9) Most of these
orphans worked as beggars while also looking towards odd jobs such as
selling flowers and cigarettes or hoping to work in restaurants for
scraps. Competition became more fierce, and many of these orphans turned
towards prostitution and thievery.(10) Gangs of orphans as large as
groups of 30 came to being; alcoholism and drug abuse became a common
site; and STDs, physical, and mental illness became common things
associated with the unattended children.(11) From this basis came the
battle for communist transformation of not only the unattended children
but all children under socialism in the USSR. Revolutionary orphanages
were formed, children were provided with necessities such as education
while expected to help with maintaining those independent institutions
and decision making. The primary split between these orphanages under
socialism and capitalism was the agency and self-determination given to
the orphaned youth and the question of adoption: socialist orphanages
didn’t seek to put children in adoption but give them a family through
the productive life of the commune. During the latter half of the 1920s,
the Soviet Union succeeded in the rehabilitation of the unattended
children although the goal of creating revolutionary youth movement for
all youth has not been met.(12)
The murder of Ma’Khia Bryant is overlooked unfortunately by both the
Liberals and the revolutionaries. As a guilty verdict has been placed on
pig Derek Chauvin, liberals are eager to put a book end to the rebellion
that spread across the country from 2020-2021. As Mao Zedong taught us
that the masses must learn revolution through waging revolution, we
emphasize the work on us that must be done in pulling the correct
lessons from the period of rebellion from 2020 to 2021. Many radical
Liberals are heartbroken by such morbid killing of an oppressed nation
youth – a habit Amerikkka is unable to kick – and often times let the
bourgeois moralism alongside catharsis get the better of them. We
emphasize again the importance of learning the essence of the reality
around us and the importance of serving unattended youth while combating
tailist and commandist attitudes.
Bibliography 1. Will Wright, 8 May 2021, “Ma’khia
Bryant’s Journey Through Foster Care Ended With an Officer’s Bullet,”
The New York Times. 2. Ibid. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid. 5. Kids
Count, September 2020, “Child Population by Race in the United States,”
Kids Count. 6. Kids Count, June 2021, “Children in foster care by
race and Hispanic origin in the United States,” Kids Count. 7.
Administration for Children & Families, January 15, 2020 “Child
abuse, neglect data released: 29th edition of the Child Maltreatment
Report,” Administration for Children & Families. 8. The New York
Times, July 31, 1994, “Facing Complaints of Bias, Farrakhan Speaks to
Women Only.” 9. Alan M. Ball, 1994, “And Now My Soul Hardened,”
University of California Press. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid. 12.
Ibid.
On 29 March 2021 around 3:00AM, a 13-year-old lumpen Mexican youth
named Adam Toledo was murdered by the pigs of the Chicago Police
Department. Before the murder, around 2:30 AM, the Chicago Police
Department’s ShotSpotter technology - a privately owned surveillance
system which monitors gunshots primarily in oppressed nation lumpen
areas of Chicago(1) – detected a number of gunshots on the West Side of
Chicago. Specifically, the shots were said to have come from the
predominantly Chicano/Mexican migrant neighborhood of “Little
Village.”(2) Alongside the crime scene was Toledo’s associate Roman
Ruben, and an Amerikan Chicago pig named Eric Stillman who pulled the
trigger at 13 year old Adam.(3) After Adam unarmed himself, the pig
immediately shot Adam in the chest – killing him instantly.
The mayor of Chicago, Lori Lightfoot, and other bureaucrats of the
city government, have played a massive role in covering up this
extrajudicial killing of an oppressed nation youth. The recent uprisings
in regards to the murder of George Floyd and other murders of New
Afrikans by Amerikan pigs seemed to have made quite an impression on the
imperialists and the comprador bourgeoisie of the oppressed nations.
With the lead up to the release of the body cam footage, every pig in
Chicago has had its days off cancelled. The pigs of the CPD has claimed
this has been for the “public safety” of Chicago. Us Maoists know that
what they really want is security, not “public safety.” It will be the
oppressed nation lumpen who will have to take on the responsibilities of
creating safety and most importantly, peace among the masses. The New
Afrikan comprador Mayor Lightfoot has also stated: “Let us not forget
that a mother’s child is dead. Siblings are without their brother. And
this community is again grieving.”(4) It’s ironic how the comprador
reminds the masses that the masses are grieving! The mayor seems to be
saying that political criticisms of oppression and brutality are
inappropriate during times of profound tragedies. With regards to this
attitude, we tell our readers that tragedies don’t exist isolated from
their surroundings, and there are material political-economic reasons as
to why these murders of oppressed nation youth by pigs happen in our
society.
The Pig’s POV and the
Reactionary Apologia
After the deployment of all Chicago pigs – and the cynical concern of
comprador Mayor Lightfoot – the body cam video has been released on
April 15th after calls to release the footage by the Mexican/Chicano
community and the parents of Adam Toledo. The footage shows the pig
running towards Adam yelling at him to stop and to show him his hands.
As Adam raised his hands, the cop immediately fired his weapon and the
bullet hit his chest. Adam drops to the ground and the pigs call for
medical back up stating that shots have been fired by police. (5)
The usual discourse and apologia surrounding cop killings started to
roll in amongst the Amerikans and their reactionary lapdogs: “the cop
was most likely scared”; “the 13 year old had a gun”; and “it’s sad what
happened, but the 21-year-old Roman Ruben who manipulated Adam is the
real villain.”
What Amerikans and their lapdogs forget to remember is this: Amerika
waged war against the oppressed nations. This war might have not been
stated by the president as the war against New Afrikans, Chican@s, and
the oppressed nations in word verbatim but a war has been waged
nevertheless. The thin masking of this war by calling it a war against
“drugs” or war against “crime” is not the issue. So with that being
cleared up, we respond to these apologias with a question: did you
expect your enemies of war to fight with sticks and stones? Of course
the people you waged war against will have a gun. The assumption that
pig Eric Stillman was feeling scared contradicts the claims made against
Adam and Roman as criminals deserving of punishment. Adam probably felt
scared as well running away from one of the most dangerous pig forces in
the United $tates. Adam and Roman surely felt scared growing up in the
West Side of Chicago being of oppressed nation origins. Should every
wrong doing of Adam and Roman be just swept away then? Us Maoists say
that with politicization and rehabilitation, people like Adam and Roman
(oppressed nation lumpen youth) are some of the best positioned to
become revolutionary and overthrow this system that arises violence and
crime in the first place. What historical duties do cops like Eric
Hillman serve? To defend and serve the security of imperialism and
capitalism.
The ALKQN Strikes
Back: Fact or Propaganda?
In the midst of all this, Adam’s affiliation with the Lumpen
Organization (L.O.) the Almighty Latin King/Queen Nation(ALKQN) has
surfaced. Sources from ALKQN associates and other L.O. affiliates’
social media posts have referred to him as “Bvby Diablo” and “Lil
Homicide.”(6) The ALKQN has a long history of revolutionary political
organizing, and even working with Maoists.(7) While transforming the
entire ALKQN to a revolutionary vanguard has been unsuccessful and
ultimately a failure, new projects and dedicated comrades have arose
from the campaign of Latin Kings work with MIM such as the Noble Young
Lords Party.(8)
Days after Adam was killed, the pigs in Chicago issued an “officer
safety alert.” The CPD’s narcotics unit have heard that factions within
the ALKQN on the Southwest side of Chicago have issued an order to their
members to shoot at unmarked Chicago police vehicles.(9) This has raised
another discourse of whether violence is justified, and sparked as ammo
for the reactionaries’ justifying pig Eric Stillman’s crime.
This author believes that the ALKQN is completely capable of making
these threats, and also completely capable of shooting at unmarked
police vehicles. If these threats were made, and the actions carried
out, we only condemn the act of making military offenses at the enemy
while not being able to defend the masses from retaliation by the pigs.
As we stated before, the masses will pay for the adventurist errors of
leaders.(10) What we also want to highlight, however, is that it is just
as much a possibility this information has been disseminated by the pigs
to cause provocation amongst the Chican@/Mexican L.O.s of Chicago. We
advise our readers with a call for discipline during these times when
contradictions heighten. Romantic attacks towards the enemy can only do
so much, and the consequences of raids and military occupation are not
worth the lumpen romance.
Recently, rising Chicago rapper King Von has been shot and killed in
an Atlanta nightclub at the age of 26.(1) Born as David Daquan Bennett,
King Von was associated with the lumpen organization “Black Disciples”
and was close childhood friends with other notable Chicago figures such
as rapper Chief Keef and Lil Durk. While there were rumors that he was
the grandson of David Barksdale, the founder of the Black Disciplies,
there have been no notable proofs confirming this fact.(2) However, he
was given the nickname “Grandson” amongst older B.D. members while he
was in prison due to his demeanor reminding the older prisoners of David
Barksdale.
The shooting happened when King Von and Quando Rondo’s affiliates
started to confront each other in the nightclub. Sooner or later, a
fistfight occurred which resulted in guns being drawn. There was also
two off-duty police officers that were present in the shooting.(3)
Alongside King Von, two other men were killed with many others
injured.(4)
Due to the news and social media’s coverage of this shooting, both
camps – the Georgia L.O.s affiliated with Quando Rondo and the Chicago
L.O.s affiliated with King Von – have publicly threatened each other on
social media. Quando Rondo – who survived the altercation – has had his
concerts canceled while social media gossip has poured fuel into the
fire.
What we aim to do with this article isn’t to take sides on which
party was in the right or wrong. While our articles like to point out
that lumpen organizations have revolutionary potential, we also
emphasize the dual nature of the lumpen class and the reactionary side
of these organizations. “Gang” conflicts have done immense jobs in
sowing divisions among the oppressed. With Hip-Hop music and “Gangster
rap” becoming a nationwide phenomena, the music and culture of the
oppressed nation lumpen have added fuel to the fire. We encourage our
readers to go beyond the diss tracks while also not falling for the trap
of individual survival and apathy – ultimately, they will return the
oppressed back into chaos.
While serving as fuel of lumpen violence, these expressions also show
the righteous resentment to society harbored by the most lowest sections
of the oppressed – especially the youth. The fact that the amerikan
patriarchs are so adamant that mere music infecting white children into
delinquency and drugs shows an interesting trend in youth of all nations
in the U.$. expressing their alienation towards capitalism.
Drill Culture in Inner
Cities
Hip-Hop as a genre started in the east coast cities in the late 70s
and early 80s. It wasn’t just simply a genre of music like the amerikan
music critics would like to believe, but a mass expression of oppressed
nation lumpen youth who dominated the Hip-Hop Scene. From the clothes,
the hairstyles, graffiti, and dance all the way to the rapping has
become a form of expressing the fear, anger, and righteousness that the
Black/Puerto Rican youth who lived in the police state-like conditions
in the inner cities.
What was called “Reality Rap” reflected the early pre-scientific
consciousness of these lumpen youth. The bleak portrayal of amerikan
cities flipped the idea of the amerikan dream and the bourgeois
ubermensch making profit and “getting theirs” on its head. After all, if
the “founding fathers” and the “captains of industry” could become the
revered mega-rich through criminal acts such as slavery and thuggish
exploitation, why can’t the corner boy dealing dope one day become a CEO
of a mega corporation one day? Would it be so much more wrong to sell
drugs to get a head start compared to selling people?
This also sheds light on how the hip-hop industry is a big way for
the lowest section of the masses to become a national bourgeoisie or
even a comprador bourgeoisie in the oppressed nations. Former street
rappers turned CEO of record labels often end up being the one
exploiting the oppressed nation masses in the ghettos and barrios
themselves. In some cases, these musicians will end up exploiting the
international proletariat in the Third World.(5)
While hip-hop in general has been becoming a bureaucratized
multi-million dollar industry for the amerikans, the “drill music” scene
has arisen from urban areas – notably Chicago. Lumpen Organizations in
the country’s murder capital have often used music videos and rap lyrics
to diss their rivals and the dead. The lingo that was used only in
certain blocks and neighborhoods of Southside Chicago can now be heard
from all major cities in the United $tates from Atlanta to Los Angeles.
There is something to be said that social media and the internet has
made the culture of Oppressed Nation diaspora – in this case Lumpen
“drill” culture – more interconnected. New Afrikan L.O.s in Chicago now
have a strong hold in the deep south in cities such as Atlanta and L.O.s
who previously have never made contact with each other might start to
form beefs.
NGO Tactics
VS Building Independent Political Power
Peace treaties, alliances, and betrayals between lumpen organizations
have been going on forever. Organizations from the Nation of Islam to
the countless Non-Governmental Organizations have attempted to build
peace in the ghettos and the barrios. However, building treaties can
only go so far unless the root of the problem is attacked and made aware
by the masses. The conflict of the L.O.s are bigger than individuals and
sets. They are a bloody symptom of amerikan capitalism. Even if every
Blood and Crip individual goes through psychological rehabilitation and
shake hands with each other, more “gangs” will rise with the next
generation. Oftentimes, the “rehabilitated” individuals end up back to
the lumpen life within a year due to the political-economical
instabilities in these areas; and many “peace treaties” are more so
ceasefires to have the dope business in a more stable control.
Despite decades of these peace treaties, we are still in the very
early stages of being able to unite the lumpen masses. Leaders within
prisons working to push the United Front for Peace in Prisons can speak
to this from experience. The story of the state isolating the conscious
leader and the masses returning to oppressed-on-oppressed violence is
all to common. Others have tried to revolutionize their whole L.O., and
failed. While the leadership is there, we have not yet created the
conditions that make this a viable path for the masses as a whole. That
is the challenge we face as we continue to build revolutionary
leadership that has a plan to end capitalism, and find ways to offer
incentives for the masses to abandon the current system and risk their
lives for a new tomorrow.
Notes: 1. Alex Zidel, November 06, 2020, “King Von
Reportedly In Critical Condition After Shoot Out With Quando Rondo’s
Crew,” Hot New Hip Hop. 2.Olivia Olphin, December 01, 2020, “Was
King Von David Barksdale’s grandson? Rumour explained,” The Focus.
3. Emmanuel Camarillo, November 6, 2020, “Chicago Rapper King Von Killed
in Atlanta Shooting,” Chicago Sun Times. 4. Rebekah Riess, November
7, 2020, “Rapper King Von shot and killed outside Atlanta nightclub,”
CNN. 5. Sirin Kale, May 17, 2016, “How Much It Sucks to Be a Sri
Lankan Worker Making Beyoncé’s New Clothing Line,” Vice.
