Under Lock & Key

Today is the first day of Prison Banned Books Week 2024 (PBBW). This year the campaign will be focusing on how companies selling tablet services to the state have exacerbated the problem of censorship in prisons. MIM(Prisons) is one of dozens of organizations participating in PBBW. You can view the full list at prisonbannedbooksweek.org, where you can send letters to your legislators and letters to the editor to call on prisons to allow donated books from organizations like ours, as well as free digital books through local libraries. Also look for #prisonbannedbooksweek on various social media platforms this week.

Each day this week we will be publishing stories related to censorship in prisons, and we ask our supporters to share them with your networks using the hashtag #prisonbannedbooksweek. Censorship in prisons has been at the heart of what we do since day one and is a daily struggle for us and for our readers, as we must fight for our First Amendment rights in this country. We will give you an overview of what this looks like in this first installment for PBBW.

We hope this campaign encourages people to support our Free Political Books to Prisoners Program with donations, to engage in activism and legal advocacy in support of prisoners receiving a variety of reading materials, and that it spreads awareness about the growing control of information that these state/corporate partnerships are bringing to our lives.

Our Books Program

While the MIM Free Political Books to Prisoners Program actually began in 1988, our organization formed in late 2007, taking over the duties of the MIM Prison Ministry. This work involves publishing a regular newsletter for prisoners and corresponding with prisoners through the mail, in addition to sending other forms of literature.

As we celebrate 17 years of existence, we approach the 200,000 mark for the number of pieces of mail we have sent to prisoners over those years. For all that mail our overall confirmed censorship rate is only 6%. However, 73% of our mail is never confirmed received or censored. This is some combination of prisoners never writing us back, mail being illegally censored and mail just being lost. While the percentages of each are certainly in that order, we have no way of knowing what the actual breakdown is of the fate of that 73% of mail we send out. For the 27% of mail that we can confirm, 4 out of 5 items do make it to their recipients.

About 40,000 pieces of mail we’ve sent are letters to prisoners, while over 6000 are books and zines by other authors. The remaining almost 150,000 pieces of mail are literature that we publish, the majority of it being our newsletter Under Lock & Key, but this also includes many MIM Theory journals, Chican@ Power and the Struggle for Aztlán and various other pamphlets and study packs.

Interestingly it is the other books and zines that are censored at a higher rate (8.2%) than our own literature and letters (both less than 6%). The fact is that books and magazines do face a higher level of scrutiny than newspapers and letters, and are often censored for superficial reasons like the condition of the book or the publisher of the book not matching the sender, etc.

Anyone can browse through the incidents of censorship of our mail on our website. Numerically, Under Lock & Key accounts for most of our censorship, since that is most of the mail we send to prisoners. After ULK, you’ll see that some of our most censored pieces of literature in the last couple years are: Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt by Orisanmi Burton, Power to New Afrika by Triumphant, Revolutionary 12 Step Program by a USW comrade and our very own Fundamental Political Line of the Maoist Internationalist Movement. You’ll note that most of the reasons given for these books are clearly politically motivated, claiming the literature will cause disruptions and riots, even the 12 Step Program, as we reported in ULK 78.

Another common appearance on the list is, ironically, our Guide to Fighting Censorship in Prisons, which we send to any prisoner facing censorship at their facility.

You’ll also see in the list of censorship the occasional overturned decision. This is due to the persistence of our comrades inside as well as our volunteers on the outside who appeal as much of the unreasonable censorship as they can. This is one of many tasks that we could use your help with.

Prison and jail systems across the country continue to move to digitize letters to read on tablets, and restrict books from more and more sources, under the guise of fighting drugs. While drugs have not decreased, our problems getting mail to prisoners has increased, as you’ll read in the series of articles we’ll be publishing this week.

[We print this on September 9th, the anniversary of the Attica rebellion and the Day of Peace and Solidarity for members of the United Front for Peace in Prisons across the United $tates.]

Last year myself and various comrades within the anti-prison movement came under heightened political repression during Black August and Bloody September well into October. The Palestinian National Liberation after Operation Al Aqsa Flood seemed to keep the war games intact against us prisoners/revolutionaries.

The Stop Cop City activists and myself have been branded as domestic terrorists by the U.$. empire and are facing the new type of political persecution greenlit after September 11, 2001. I quote Obama: “We do not use drone strikes to punish people but to eliminate those who pose a continuing and imminent threat to the American people.” It was said in a cleverly written and well executed speech, and also layered very carefully.

The Supreme Court says the only question to ask to a case like this is whether the speech “transcends the bounds of freedom of speech which the constitution protects.”

How far can the phrase “imminent threat” be stretched? We are the domestic guinea pigs. Security Threat Group (STG) units all over the empire have war plans that move into operation mode in Bloody September, prison activists and deemed leaders will be hid inside the various control units that pockmark the penal landscape. Get ready.

This is that season again. There is no need for Congress or state legislature approval. The authorization for use of military force is a unilateral decision by executive power. Beware the drone strike for rebels and those in their reach. Beware the raid for rebels and those in their reach. Beware the heightened political prosecution/assassination of the Republic of New Afrika. This is a defense of the state’s right to wage war against New Afrika.

i wanted to take this opportunity to lend my voice to this ongoing discussion around so-called “snitching”, as this is a serious topic of principle and ideology which affects Our ability to succeed in Our tactical and strategic approaches.

As MIM(Prisons) pointed out, this question was originally raised due to captives organizing around police terrorism inside prisons and other captives refusal to participate in the paper trail aspect of the resistance. However, the issue raised in ULK 83’s article putting forth the slogan “Stop Collaborating” and the response in ULK 86, “Stop Snitching on Pigs”, need to be discussed as they all derive from the same source and it needs to be spelled out.

The California Prisoner in ULK 86 opens by saying “Let’s look at this from a practical perspective and not from an ideological one.” Then says “Snitching is telling on people. It’s giving information on someone else to a higher authority to act on it. We can all agree on that definition.”

i begin by stating: NO! We cannot all agree on that. It is a fallacy that telling on someone and snitching is always the same. See, snitching necessitates that We’ve had some sort of prior bond, or understanding. If your co-defendant “snitches on you” it is different from the old church lady down the street “telling on you.” It may produce the same result, but these are two different things. And it is indeed an ideological question, We can’t get around that. The co-defendant has an understanding with you, usually an unspoken one that each of you are equally committed to the morals and principles of the criminal subculture, which means no cooperation with law enforcement even if it means saving your own skin. When the co-defendant goes against that they have snitched on you, not only because they told but because they violated your trust by going against a principle each of you swore to uphold. The presence of the betrayal factor and the deceit, the inability to honor a commitment, these are the key factors that represent the phenomenon We call snitching. These are indeed universal principles that virtually no one likes when people go against. Regardless of walk of life, We as humyns want to have assurance that commitments will be honored, that sacrifices will be made, and that trustworthiness will be present in those We associate with. It is for this reason real snitching is universally frowned upon.

However, when We bring the old church lady into the equation, she, while frowning upon the Judas in her bible and those who exhibit those same traits in her world, will tell on you for whatever perceived slight or transgression you’ve committed against her. She hasn’t swore to any principles of the criminal subculture, she has no bond with you other than being a community member, and that bond was broken by you in your antisocial act against her. So she cannot possibly “snitch” on you, even while proceeding to tell on you. There is a significant difference, and We cannot hold people to standards that they have never acknowledged.

As MIM(Prisons) said, abuses must be exposed by so-called authorities and this goes towards undermining the legitimacy of their authority.

A crooked cop is not an ally to a revolutionary prisoner simply because they are crooked or they bring something in. This question has to really be worked out on a case-by-case basis, but i’ll just say that in most cases the crooked cop isn’t an ally and the situation is just transactional, there’s no understanding either way of the intentions behind either the taking or bringing of illicit things: it’s only a transactional relationship like most in a capitalist society. So, to say the pig (the profit-driven crooked cop) is my ally because they bring me phones and dope is to say that i am allowing myself to be bought off by these items. As a NARN i stand on the principles put forth in the FROLINAN Handbook for REVNAT Cadres: Standards 5: “Potential members must have outgrown the lust for coveting things or material goods.” And from the Codes of Conduct 4: “No member of the revolutionary cadre organization will place any material commodity above or before the organization, the people, or the NAIM.” 6: “No member of the revolutionary cadre organization is permitted to use, produce, distribute, process, fund, or take part in the sale of heroin, cocaine (in any form), LSD, PCP, or any hard drug, nor will they take any pill for the purpose of getting high and no member will distribute such pills or take part in the sale of such pills or other illegal drugs.”

i share to illustrate the standards and codes of conduct We should be upholding, even when no one else is, or even when it benefits Us to do otherwise. So if We follow this as spelled out it would limit Our dealings with that crooked pig anyway. We have a mandate to liberate political prisoners and if they believe in the principles of the revolutionary movement, then maybe that rare individual is an ally. But We all know there aren’t many who are willing to put their life and freedom on the line to liberate Us, even if they’re willing to help Us saturate the pen with distractions. So this says “i am willing, as a crooked pig who is profit driven, to help you distract yourself and others while in prison, but i am not willing to help you get out of prison.” i don’t think that’s a real ally and it’s because of the profit motive itself.

This brings me to my next point. The California Prisoner uses the terminology that We all use. “Our struggle.” But i think We need to define exactly what “Our struggle” means to us, because it doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone at all times. Some think the struggle is for power and influence within the prison, some think it’s to tear down all prisons right now, some think it’s to reform the criminal mentality in order to produce good law abiding citizens of the corporate states of amerika and all these and other trends coexist to make up what Our struggle objectively is, but what is Our struggle subjectively, to Us? The Dragon pointed out the best when it was said, that the whole point of the prison movement, the underlying motive for all the actions is to develop the capacity to field a People’s Army. i am paraphrasing. So in my experience, and something i lament to cats around although i can’t speak for cats here or elsewhere, but those who have “plugs” are not using them for any sort of dissent activities. Those who have plugs and dope are usually those policing the cats doing the dissident actions, whether those actions are paper trial related or organizing direct action.

Rarely is it the cats who have plugs and dope doing anything for the movement, and even when these are comrades with knowledge and experience and proven track records of struggle, while they have access to those plugs and dope their activism and commitment to it either ceases or severely lessens. Why? Because these are not only distractions but are corrupting influences. It is no coincidence that usually the prisons with the least amount of “motion” are those with the highest level of rebel activity and ideological training going on. So although plugs could theoretically be used for a lot of good they are by and large not being used in that way. [MIM(Prisons) adds: This is our experience as well.]

So, while I would agree with the Cali Prisoner about not throwing the baby out with the bath water, i do so largely because We cannot do so anyway. The prison system creates its black market economy through its laws of prohibition. Therefore there will always be some pig somewhere itching to take advantage of the unique economic opportunity to provide distractions and corrupting influences to those that want them and want to provide them. i am not advocating telling on crooked cops, but let me be clear they’re not allies to revolutionary prisoners, unless they themselves support the revolutionary principles We uphold. Let me also be clear that those who decide to tell on these crooked cops, here meaning specifically those who are driven by profit, those acts are not snitching, even though they are telling as explained at the top of this writing.

The two main things that hold the revolutionary prison movement back are gangs/gang mentalities and the drug trade. Therefore, anyone who perpetuates the latter is holding back the movement. On the gang question, there are those who are solid revs and come from this cloth, i am one of them. However, this doesn’t change the fact that the introduction of and expansion of gangs, particularly street gangs inside prison, at least in the case of Texas, coincides with the downward slope of revolutionary consciousness and commitment within the walls.

Gone are the days where L.O.’s are built upon revolutionary and progressive principles. Gone are the days of traditional groups spreading knowledge and going at the system. They’re only spreading dope, gangsterism, and discord amongst each other. The exceptions to this rule become obsolete within their groups, and the revolutionary prisoners who really stand on revolutionary bizzness are not the cool cats with all the luxuries, they’re usually the ones outcast, not liked, shunned, isolated, because everyone wants to be crime bosses in here. In order to bring the proper orientation and programs back to the prisons, revolutionary and progressive prisoners have to make allies and build up institutions to help those who need and want it. It won’t be too many who want it, and that’s just the sad and true reality we’re in these days. Capitalism + dope = genocide.

These MF’ers are preventing us from building the People’s Army and We are talking about protecting them and their interests and that they are allies? Come on homie, what wrong with that picture!?

In the history of the prison movement the most effective tactic of changing conditions has been inmate litigation. In order to litigate you must create a paper trail. How can we do that if we are not filing any complaints? i encourage comrades, those who live by revolutionary codes of conduct to be mindful of exactly how you implore the enemy institutions. Not because it is or isn’t snitching, but because, again, Our point is to build a People’s Army and We still have to do that even though We complain about the reactionary notions a lot of Our peers have, these are still the peers We have to organize with and among, and therefore like any shrewd politician We must be mindful of the landscape and the dominant ideologies and ideals, even those we disagree with, and navigate the terrain in a way that doesn’t neutralize Our effectiveness at organizing people under Our umbrella. We won’t be able to build the army if they all distrust Us because they think we are snitches. We won’t even have the time or space to argue otherwise because credibility has been lost.

For this reason, it is not politically correct to tell internal affairs on the crooked pig about profit driven acts, whereas documenting acts of pig brutality where people can see and understand the negative intentions behind the pig’s actions and therefore are less likely to side with the pig against you either directly or ideologically, that is an action that is politically correct. Be mindful comrades, and stay focused on the ultimate objective. Don’t snitch, and i mean really snitch (betray you honor and commitments) and don’t collaborate with the state.

Freedom is never voluntarily granted by the oppressors. It must be demanded by the oppressed at all costs. The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of convenience, but where he stands in moments of challenge, moments of grand crisis and controversy. Freedom is never given to anybody. Privileged classes never give up their privileges without strong persistence. Colonialism was made for domination and exploitation. Often the path to freedom will carry you to your death or to prison. As oppressed people we have experiences when the light of day vanishes, leaving us in a desolate midnight, moments when our highest hopes are brought to shambles of despair, when we are victims of terrible exploitation. During such moments our spirits are almost overcome by gloom and despair and we feel there is no light anywhere. But again and again we discover that there is another spirit which shines even in the darkness, and frustration becomes a beam of light. There are those who write history, those who make history, and those who experience history.

The New Communist Party of Canada [(N)CPC] was formed by the Kanadian communist group Revolutionary Initiative (RI) in early 2024. The RI announced the (N)CPC through the journal Kites which it co-publishes alongside the Organization of Communist Revolutionaries (OCR), a communist group in the United States.

In February 2024 the OCR Issued a “red salute” to the (N)CPC containing mostly praise. In May 2024, the journal Kites disbanded, explained with reference to the unique circumstances in Kanada vs. Amerika as well as unspecified ideological disagreements between the two organizations.

While unity between the (N)CPC and the OCR may have appeared unprincipled based upon the latter’s criticism of the former, this polemic argues that they shared a rejection of two crucial political lines: the labor aristocracy thesis and the significance of national liberation struggles. To support these claims, first the Dawnland Group examines the (N)CPC’s political program followed by the OCR’s response, each published in Kites.

(N)CPC says natives should ally with settlers

It is difficult to separate the influence of Trotskyism from its settler-colonial baggage and the (N)CPC demonstrates this truth well. The Political Program of the New Communist Party of Canada opens with the (N)CPC’s two “innately linked” objectives: “a) establish working class rule in the economic and political spheres of Canada; and b) Usher in a new, non-colonial, equal and fraternal type of relations between all nations which today remain forcefully and unequally united within the Canadian state.”(1)

Alone, the second objective is agreeable. But the (N)CPC clarifies how these two goals are interlinked, writing that neither “is likely to be achieved in a lasting, meaningful way without the other. Working-class power without national liberation and national equality would have to be built on an illegitimate, coercive basis. National liberation without working-class power would mean a mere reform of Canadian law, or else create powerless statelets that would fall prey to any of the multiple imperialist powers contending for domination and survival in the world today.”

Despite claiming that equality and national liberation are necessary for indigenous peoples, the (N)CPC supports this only conditionally, demanding “working class” power come first. Charitably interpreted, the (N)CPC can be read as considering the “proletariat” of indigenous nations to be an important aspect of the Kanadian “working class”. In any case, considering settlers proletariat as (N)CPC does, this would make the Kanadian “working class” overwhelmingly settler.

Support of indigenous sovereignty contingent upon prior proletarian revolution renders this support meaningless. Thus, when the (N)CPC claims that “the only conceivable way to resolve the separate legal status of Indigenous people without liquidating Indigenous nations as legal entities is collective rights under the banner of the full right to self-determination, up to and including secession” and the necessity of “upholding of the right to secede by popular referendum for all component republics of the Multinational Socialist Confederacy;” their conditions render these rights null until proletarian revolution.

National Liberation is a value as much as a strategy. All peoples have the right to autonomy and self-determination and these rights must be supported without regards to the opinions of settlers.

Beyond values there are strategic concerns. This “alliance” is directly risking the sustained colonization of indigenous groups by “socialist” settlers. The Israeli Kibbutz movement historically purchased lands form Arabic landlords, where they would evict Palestinian tenants in order to create “communes.” Despite Kibbutzniks being considered “left wing” and “socialist,” their settlements encircle the Gaza strip and they have been used to condemn the October 7 resistance operation (2), the newest stage of the Palestinian national liberation war. Here the Israeli “working class” has achieved power and constitutes the main foot-soldiers of genocide. Demanding working class power in exchange for indigenous sovereignty also neglects the inverse possibility that national liberation of colonies will be prerequisite for overthrowing the bourgeoisie.

As addressed in A Polemic Against Settler “Maoism”, settlers have an inherently reactionary class role.(3) While isolated settlers reject this role, the vast majority occupy indigenous lands, stealing their resources and cheap labor. The basis of settler-colonialism has never been a deceitful bourgeoisie but their transparent alliance with settlers: former-proletariat, offered petty-bourgeois class positions through the redistribution of land acquired through theft and genocide. The (N)CPC is wrong that the bourgeoisie is the only force standing in-between the settler-workers and decolonization, and that through “excluding the monopoly bourgeoisie from this process entirely,” Kanada can negotiate more just treaties with the First Nations. Settlers are not deceived by the capitalists against their better interest – a supposed alliance with the indigenous masses. Settlers assume such a class role because, with respect to the capitalist mode of production, it is their best interest.

Settlers are knowing, willful participants in genocide as part of a bargain with those capitalists in exchange for a petty-bourgeois class position.(4) This is their best material interest as a class permitted to escape proletarian existence through conquest. The bargain between settlers and their bourgeoisie is not conceived via ignorance or deception, it is the rational consequence of pursuing one’s material interest within class society: ascension up class and/or national hierarchy to positions of greater wealth and culpability in oppression. Settlers fill niches where the bourgeoisie wishes to expand private property and commodity production, dispose of surplus populations and compete with other imperial powers. In exchange for exterminating the original inhabitants, settlers are allowed free reign of the land and resources of the dead.

There may be a more subconscious belief involved in apologizing for settlers and manufacturing their innocence, namely that, although settlers are indeed rationally pursuing their material interests, this betrays their human interest to live in a world without exploitation, and that communists can win over the masses of settlers to this superior moral position.

As discussed in the Polemic Against Settler “Maoism”, there are important differences between classes and individuals. It is possible to successfully appeal to the morals and internationalist sentiments of certain individuals from each class and nation. This will vary wildly depending on the individual in question and their background. But at the macro-level, only oppressed nations and classes have the material interest in a world without oppression which has historically been wielded to make revolution. Settlers are oppressors. As Black Liberation Army soldier Assata Shakur famously says, “Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.” The (N)CPC suggests just that failed strategy.

While morals are required to undertake communist revolution, morals can never be abstracted from their class context. Settler morals, including the belief that settlers’ working conditions are more important than indigenous rights, were created with the rise of capitalism in Europe whose surplus proletarian population was offered overseas class roles similar to that of Auschwitz guards. The Nazis’ thirst for lebensraum, which slaughtered millions of Jews and Slavs during the holocaust, was directly copied from manifest destiny and the treatment of indigenous peoples on Occupied Turtle Island where between 10 and 15 million were murdered (5).

In their first few paragraphs of published writing the (N)CPC have downplayed the Kanadian “worker” role in ongoing genocide of First Nations, manufacturing a myth of innocent, deceived settlers. Further, they dictate the terms of national liberation to the indigenous communities of Canada in service of the more important “proletarian revolution.” This is settler “Marxism” and Trotskyism.

Trotskyists believe that third-world revolutions are doomed to failure without the aid of the more “advanced” proletariat of the western nations, that socialism is not possible within one country. The ideas are best summarized by the man himself, discussing how:

“A backward colonial or semi-colonial country, the proletariat of which is insufficiently prepared to unite the peasantry and take power, is thereby incapable of bringing the democratic revolution to its conclusion. Contrariwise, in a country where the proletariat has power in its hands as the result of the democratic revolution, the subsequent fate of the dictatorship and socialism depends in the last analysis not only and not so much upon the national productive forces as upon the development of the international socialist revolution.”(6)

Thus, even if a colonial or semi-colonial country managed to seize state power, it would fail if international “proletarian” revolution did not quickly follow. This was as true for Trotsky in the USSR as it later became for him in China, where he argued with extremely poor foresight that alliance with the Koumintang had defeated the revolution and that instead “permanent revolution” was necessary to liberate China.(7) To the Trotskyist, the proletariat of these nations is insufficiently numerically developed to lead a revolution. They forget the fact that no (western) European nation – those initially with the greatest industrial proletariat – has ever waged a successful struggle for state socialism, and the fact that third-world national liberation struggles have accomplished the most significant strategic advances towards communism in history. Finally, as covered below, most of the populations in core imperialist countries are labor aristocrats who hold petty-bourgeois class positions despite receiving wages: they won’t be leading revolution anytime soon.

Trotskyism is pervasive in Amerika and Kanada. Even without reference to Trotsky, without explicit statements of the inferiority of national liberation struggles, it is still perfectly possible for “Marxist-Lenninist” and “Maoist” groups to uphold Trotsky’s ideas through organizing settlers of an oppressor nation instead of organizing the oppressed.

As discussed in the Polemic against Settler-Maoism, settler “maoism” and Trotskyism share certain chronology with regards to national liberation, another characteristic of belief that proletarian revolution takes priority. The (N)CPC believes socialist revolution will precede national autonomy for indigenous peoples:

“The only way to cut the proverbial Gordian knot is for the Indigenous national struggle to link up with the proletarian struggle for socialism in overthrowing the extant Canadian State. Once it is overthrown, new agreements can be reached over the use of land, resources and their sharing between nations. True sovereignty can be enshrined in a new, multinational constitution. This sovereignty can ensure full, distinct national rights without the need for any”Indian status,” which would be replaced by full citizenship in a sovereign nation. Full independence can be achieved by those nations who want it and have the resources needed to sustain it.” (Bold ours)

There are no legitimate “agreements” between settlers and indigenous peoples, because the settlers have used genocide and theft to acquire their negotiating assets. This is why DLG advocates for the Joint Dictatorship of the Proletariat of the Oppressed Nations, which will enforce the will of the oppressed nations at the expense of the imperialist and settler nations, such as the Amerikan and Kanadian nation, a process involving extensive redistribution of land and resources as well as peoples’ tribunals for criminals against humanity. Finally, the notion that settlers can decide if indigenous nations “want” or are “ready” for independence, has been used by colonial powers for centuries to continue oppressing their subjects.

There is a related issue throughout the (N)CPC political program of advocating for a homogeneous Kanadian culture without the consent of the indigenous peoples. Deciding autonomously on such a path long after achieving independence and having received back all stolen land and resources, plus some for interest from the settlers, would be a consensual decision. Settlers should not be advocating for any such cultural assimilation today. The (N)CPC writes that:

“The monopoly bourgeoisie and its State willfully confuse the potential of Canada for its actual reality. Canada really could be a brand-new type of country, one where national sovereignty is not the preserve of a small parasitic class but is instead granted to the myriad national groups that give it its rich cultural mosaic. We really could all work together to preserve our respective cultures, develop our economy in sustainable ways which benefit all working people, embrace cultures and traditions originating from pre-colonial North America, from Europe and now from the entire world. We could collectively take everything that is old and make it into something new.” (Bold ours).

Settlers have no right to advocate for the creation of international cultures together with their colonial subjects. This reduces to an argument for cultural integration which, in Kanada and the United $tates, represents genocide through sterilization, kidnappings, residential schools, and murder by colonial militias and police. Whether or not they understand this, their language is overtly colonial, advocating for assimilation and continued unequal relationships between oppressed and oppressor nations. They need an explicit, unconditional recognition of indigenous sovereignty or they are no different than other settlers seeking to maintain unfair treaties with First Nations without reparations or sovereignty.

The Dawnland Group (DLG) writes this polemic because the (N)CPC’s understanding of indigenous sovereignty directly contradicts with DLG’s support for New Democracy in Occupied Turtle Island. In 1940 Mao argued that imperialism and feudalism prevented China from directly pursuing socialism. Rather, New Democracy was required first, a dictatorship of revolutionary classes over the country in order to liberate it from outside domination, so that socialism may be constructed thereafter:

“The first step or stage in our revolution is definitely not, and cannot be, the establishment of a capitalist society under the dictatorship of the Chinese bourgeoisie, but will result in the establishment of a new-democratic society under the joint dictatorship of all the revolutionary classes of China headed by the Chinese proletariat The revolution will then be carried forward to the second stage, in which a socialist society will be established in China.”

To liberate China, the Communist Party led a united front with the peasants, proletariat, petty-bourgeoisie and some national bourgeoisie who sided with the communists against Japan in the war for national liberation. Whereas in Europe, feudalism could be overthrown by the bourgeois-democratic revolution due to the bourgeoisie’s antagonism with the feudal mode of production, in colonies and oppressed nations, imperialism is inclined to promote feudalism from without and thus a broader united front is required. Despite the defeat of the Cultural Revolution and the capitalist road taken in 1976, the strategy of New Democracy liberated China from foreign domination.

Here Mao gives context as to how New Democracy applies to Chinese conditions:

“Being a bourgeoisie in a colonial and semi-colonial country and oppressed by imperialism, the Chinese national bourgeoisie retains a certain revolutionary quality at certain periods and to a certain degree… Since tsarist Russia was a military-feudal imperialism which carried on aggression against other countries, the Russian bourgeoisie was entirely lacking in revolutionary quality. There, the task of the proletariat was to oppose the bourgeoisie, not to unite with it. But China’s national bourgeoisie has a revolutionary quality at certain periods and to a certain degree, because China is a colonial and semi-colonial country which is a victim of aggression. Here, the task of the proletariat is to form a united front with the national bourgeoisie against imperialism and the bureaucrat and warlord governments without overlooking its revolutionary quality.”

DLG views the application of New Democracy in Occupied Turtle Island to mean that, in the oppressed nations, similarly to China, the bourgeoisie may be an importantly ally in the national liberation struggle. In the oppressor nations (Amerika, Kanada), not only is the bourgeoisie entirely counter-revolutionary but this is true of the petty-bourgeoisie and labor aristocracy as well due to benefiting from and carrying out imperialism and settler-colonialism.

Most bourgeoisie and rich peasantry in China were less wealthy than the petty-bourgeoisie and much of the labor aristocracy today on Occupied Turtle Island. The petty-bourgeoisie and labor aristocracy of oppressor nations in OTI have no great interest in being won over to a communist cause, because most face no national oppression and are bought-off from imperialist superprofits. Thus, DLG argues that the role of the Amerikan/Kanadian communist vanguard is to treat these classes as hostile and instead support the national liberation wars of the internal semi-colonies and oppressed nations.

By contrast, the (N)CPC writes of the Kanadian situation that “an Indigenous petty-bourgeoisie and intelligentsia have also been fostered by the State as part of its counter-revolutionary strategy. The revolutionary camp will have to cautiously navigate in building a class alliance that unites the broadest interests of the Indigenous peoples while isolating and struggling against these new reactionary classes.” While imperialism promotes neo-colonial sections of each oppressed nation’s ruling class who collaborate with the oppressor nation, the (N)CPC is confusing this small segment of the indigenous (petty) bourgeoisie with its entirety.

The (N)CPC argues the petty-bourgeoisie and bourgeoisie of the First Nations must be struggled against but the labor aristocracy and petty-bourgeoisie of the settler nation are important allies to the revolution. This is a paradoxical reversal of New Democracy, in which it is inapplicable in the oppressed nations where it was designed and synthesized successfully, and yet it is applicable in the core imperialist countries where it has never been employed. Concluding on their views about national liberation, the (N)CPC recognizes:

“oppressed nations’ right to self-determination up to and including secession. But we do not content ourselves with this: we recognize that given the way Canada has been built, total separation between its various nations is likely to be counterproductive. Therefore, we intend to build a new form of political and economic unity, a multinational socialist confederacy whose component parts are not arbitrarily-drawn provinces, but really-existing peoples and nations…” (Bold ours)

They provide no explanation for why “separation between various nations is likely to be counterproductive,” although this is a convenient platitude for settlers who wish to have an input about when indigenous people are “ready” for independence, as the (N)CPC indicated above. It is historically illiterate of the complicity of settlers in genocide and naive in assuming somehow this time things will be different and the settler-majority will solve the very contradiction that their class exists because of.

The (N)CPC pitch must be confusing for First Nations, who have been systematically slaughtered, expelled and forced onto reservations for centuries not by capitalists but by settlers pursuing their material interests. By contrast, a vanguard among the settler nation would be formed through a revolutionary defeatist position, unequivocally bent towards the destruction of the settler class role through the repatriation of land, resources and sovereignty to First Nations via revolutionary national liberation war.

The small chance of a vanguard position emerging in Kanada and Amerika will be squandered so long as Trotskyism continues selling indigenous peoples the promise of new negotiations with the same settler class that has been occupying their lands and seeing their genocide through for centuries.

Making proletarians from labor aristocrats

The (N)CPC writes that,

“comprised of all those deprived of the means to produce and forced to sell their labour power to survive, the proletariat is the largest class in society, forming somewhere between 60 and 65% of the population.”

There are two crucial Trotskyist components involved in viewing Kanada as 60% proletarian. First is the view discussed above that settlers can occupy revolutionary class positions; that they can still be “workers”. Second is the view that labor aristocrats who are paid above the value of their wages through super-exploitation of the global south can be proletarian rather than petty-bourgeois. These ideas closely overlap because the labor aristocracy on Occupied Turtle Island is mostly settler and the settler nation (Amerika/Kanada) is overwhelmingly labor aristocratic, save for a tiny minority who fall into the lumpenproletariat including homeless and prisoners.

Throughout their political program, the (N)CPC rejects the labor aristocracy thesis. The (N)CPC views the three main contradictions in the world as

“(a) between the imperialists themselves, which means the struggle for the re-division of the world is always in motion, albeit to varying degrees; (b) between imperialist countries and oppressed countries, which means imperialist exploitation and oppression, and the struggle for self-determination and independent national development; and (c) between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat in each country, which means class struggle and the potential for socialist revolution.”

Contradiction (b), an important mention, is suspect based on their treatment of oppressed-nation struggles within Kanada as shown above. Because of their use of the term “countries”, it is unclear if they believe this imperialist/oppressed dynamic plays out among the nations internal to settler-colonies. Contradiction (c) however is wholly incorrect as in Kanada and Amerika, the proletariat is numerically insignificant. The vast majority are allied to the bourgeoisie as settlers and/or Labor Aristocrats, making class struggle minimal on Occupied Turtle Island at the present time.

The (N)CPC disagrees. They write that

“Through the housing market an ever-growing portion of workers’ paycheques are transferred back to the bourgeoisie in the form of rent or interest. Either enslaved to mortgages or rents, workers are often one step away from the streets.”

The term slavery is best reserved for slaves, not home owners. The view that swaths of workers are “enslaved” to their rent via landlords is subjective, equally so to being “one step away from the streets.”

In Occupied Turtle Island, these terms are overused as much as living “paycheck to paycheck.” In the imperial core where minimum wages are ten times that of the global proletariat, where public services provide the vast majority with water, electricity and transportation, it is chauvinistic to discuss “slavery” to anything. The global proletariat often choose between extremely limited and poor quality food and housing, or earns too little for this choice, subsisting parasitically or dying prematurely. It should be clear that the (N)CPC is attempting to minimize the wages of imperialism paid to the labor aristocracy through super-exploitation of the global south. The Polemic Against Settler-Maoism and MIM(Prisons)’s study on the housing market (8) are invaluable demonstrations of the growth of the labor aristocracy in Occupied Turtle Island throughout the previous half century.

The (N)CPC’s specific examples of the proletariat exemplify another Trotskyist approach:

“At its core are those who work in natural resources, manufacturing, construction, transport, and logistics — labourers at the centre of capitalist exploitation. They are key to the revolutionary movement not only by their large number – around 4 million – but because they are the producers of commodities and wealth… those working in industries which allow labour-power to reproduce itself over time – chiefly health care and education – totalling approximately 4 million workers… those working to facilitate the circulation of capital – primarily workers in retail and services with about 3 million workers. Without these workers the bourgeoisie cannot maintain itself in the long run or realize its profit. Together with the labourers, these sections of the proletariat, totalling about 11 million people, hold the potential to establish a new, socialist economy.” (Bold ours)

Here is a typical Trotskyist confusion of the “importance” of a given trade to the economy for the revolutionary potential of the workers therein, which the (N)CPC states as the

“principle of workers’ centrality. That is, the principle that the workers at the centre of production – and found in great concentration, specifically, the labourers in large-scale industry and the health and education workers in the major service centres – form the heart of the proletariat and the main force for socialist revolution in Canada. The Party must therefore, first and foremost, establish and build itself within these workplaces.”

As discussed in the Polemic Against Settler-Maoism, this is a Trotskyist obsession with numbers and a mechanical application of the conditions of other historical revolutions onto the imperial core, assuming revolutionary insurrection will play out along similar lines despite the bargain of the majority with imperialism. This follows Trotsky’s belief in a quantity of “advanced” “workers” in capitalism as prerequisite for socialism, a condition missing from “backwards” (oppressed) nations.

This opportunistic error leads to mass work among a numerically enormous yet counter-revolutionary base who benefit from imperialism. This mass-work is ultimately not communist because improving the lot of labor aristocrats is important to the bourgeoisie. Social democratic policies greatly expanding the labor aristocracy were implemented during the 1930s and 1940s across western Europe and Occupied Turtle Island in order to compete with socialism in the USSR and materially dissuade workers from communist politics. This strategy succeeded and that’s why only oppressed nations have led communist vanguards in OTI since; there is next-to-no more economic exploitation.

OCR “Revolutionary Salute” to Trotskyism

All should salute the OCR for criticizing a major (former) partner organization. A complete assessment of OCR line and practice is far beyond the scope of our discussion – perhaps impossible during a human lifespan given their volume of writing.

Unfortunately though, they must be criticized for their unity with the (N)CPC as well as what this demonstrates: deeper held agreements with a Trotskyist political formation. This should serve as cause for reflection and struggle for OCR membership and readers.

Lets begin discussing some strengths of the OCR’s Red Salute.(9)

Readers will have noticed the (N)CPC does not even claim to uphold Maoism as the most advanced science of the proletariat and the OCR is correct to criticize them for this, although it is strange the latter do not require Maoism for joint publications with other communist groups. All the same, their section on the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in the Red Salute develops many interesting criticisms of the (N)CPC not addressed in this polemic.

OCR criticisms of the (N)CPC’s betrayal of the labor aristocracy thesis and their failure to recognize the class nature of imperialism, as well as pointing out the ludicrous idea of a 60% proletarian Kanada, are all strong. We praise their criticisms that college-degree occupations including teachers and medical workers are petty-bourgeois, and their criticisms of economism and “worker centrality” are good.

Yet, despite acknowledging that they are not Maoist nor sufficiently anti-imperialist in their class analysis, the OCR still issues a revolutionary salute to the (N)CPC. At first this seems odd, given the significance of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and mention of labor aristocracy in the OCR Manifesto and within Kites 8. Ultimately, DLG concludes that the unity of these two groups derived from a shared lack of ideological commitment to national liberation and the labor aristocracy thesis.

OCR’s soft Labor Aristocracy thesis

Regarding the (N)CPC’s view that the labor aristocracy forms a mass base for revolution, the OCR’s manifesto says those gaining from imperialism in the United States include:

“the petty-bourgeoisie – people who own and operate small enterprises or who possess skills and education that enable them to sell their labor at a higher rate – as well as the labor aristocracy and bourgeoisified workers, whose work is more proletarian in character but who make substantial wages above what they need to survive and have significant job security and health and retirement benefits… However, among these middle classes and the ideological state apparatuses and political institutions of the US, there is always conflict and struggle with the bourgeoisie which at times becomes quite acute.” (Bold Ours)

This concept is evident within Kites 8, the OCR’s most significant work, an attempt to summarize all those communist parties across U.S. history which they consider important. (10) They praise the Revolutionary Communist Party(USA), saying that the latter “developed a united-front-level program that addressed the key social faultlines of the time and could unite, in a broad resistance movement, all those in political motion who were objectively on the proletariat’s side of those social faultlines.” Much like the (N)CPC, the OCR is claiming there are segments of each class that can potentially be united to fight for the proletariat.

Written by an OCR author named Kenny Lake in Kites #2, the second article in the “Specter” series’s conception of proletarian revolution is put similarly. Lake writes that:

“revolutionary civil war can only be initiated after the proletariat, led by communists, has built up the organized forces for revolution through a lengthy process of class struggle and creates and takes advantage of favorable conditions for the launch of an insurrection. The proletariat cannot do this alone, but must forge an alliance of classes under its leadership by taking advantage of the conflicts and struggles between the various middle classes and the bourgeoisie and within the bourgeoisie’s ideological state apparatuses” (Kites 2, pg 36. Bold ours).

It is crucial to say that the proletariat “cannot do this alone.” This is quite similar to the (N)CPC’s view of the petty-bourgeoisie, who they claim is

“neither exploiter nor exploited…For a large part of this class, the lower petty-bourgeoisie, living conditions are similar to that of much of the proletariat…stuck between a rock and a hard place, we must win this class to allying with the proletariat for a better life in socialism. The proletariat must struggle to win them over under its leadership in a united front against the bourgeoisie, as they can be powerful allies, holding much influence in universities, trade unions, media outlets, religious organizations and other such institutions.”

Thus, one explanation of the OCR’s unity with the (N)CPC despite the latter rejecting the labor aristocracy thesis outright is because the former hold a weak version of it. For the OCR, even though the proletariat is the primary revolutionary class, the petty-bourgeoisie and “various middle classes” still hold revolutionary contradictions with the U$ bourgeoisie. As such, it may not matter if a struggle revolves around the concerns of the proletariat or the petty bourgeoisie or the labor aristocracy because there are advantageous contradictions among each group.

It is true that actual oppressed classes and nations at times must make alliances with others. The potential for progressive alliances depends heavily on the class or nation in question. The OCR and (N)CPC are misguided because the “middle classes” in Amerika and Kanada are direct perpetrators of imperialism and settler-colonialism, and as classes have conflicts with the bourgeoisie only over dividing spoils.

National Liberation and New Democracy on Occupied Turtle Island

As previously indicated, the OCR and (N)CPC “class alliance” theories are an inverted application of the Maoist idea of New Democracy to the United $tates / Kanada context, these countries being inundated with settler-colonialism and labor aristocracy. Settlers have a counter-revolutionary class position with regards to indigenous peoples, and labor aristocrats have a counter-revolutionary class position with regards to their nation’s imperialism.

The application of New Democracy to Occupied Turtle Island means that revolutionaries in various nations have highly distinct responsibilities. The Amerikan vanguard is distinct from that of oppressed nation vanguards. The main role of the Amerikan vanguard is to promote the formation of a Joint Dictatorship of the Proletariat of the Oppressed Nations through the national liberation struggles of colonies and internal semi-colonies on Occupied Turtle Island. Amerikan revolutionaries will not liberate themselves because they suffer no oppression or exploitation.

By contrast, labor aristocrats within oppressed nations hold certain revolutionary contradictions by virtue of experiencing national oppression. Their class can be organized towards the goal of liberation for their respective nation. This is true for the petty-bourgeoisie and some of the bourgeoisie of oppressed nations in Occupied Turtle Island as well.

The same is untrue in the oppressor/settler nation. The few revolutionaries who form the oppressor/settler vanguard take a class-suicidal position, sacrificing and attempting to destroy their petty-bourgeois class through supporting external national liberation struggles. While the OCR agrees with us on paper with the attitude labor aristocrat and settler revolutionaries should have regarding self-sacrifice, they are incorrect to search for revolutionary contradictions between these groups and their ally-bourgeoisie. If the alliance is in each party’s mutual interest, there can be no contradiction.

As identified in the Polemic Against Settler Maoism, the labor aristocracy has grown wealthier from the 1960’s until the 2020’s. This signifies to all settlers as well as those from oppressed nations the opportunity for petty-bourgeois life through rejecting revolutionary struggle. As such, only a small portion of people from these groups will constitute a revolutionary vanguard rejecting their class status, as is demonstrated by the historical record in the U$ and Kanada which shows a very small amount of communist revolutionaries. Compare this to China in which hundreds of millions joined the communist party. The bases for this difference were national oppression and exploitation in China.

The OCR praise the (N)CPC for having developed a “creative” solution to national liberation struggles through a “clear analysis.” There are important examples of the OCR qualifying their belief in the significance of national liberation struggles such that this praise accords. In Kites 8, they write that:

“Labeling oppressed nations and nationalities in the US as internal colonies, while morally justified, does not provide the analytical foundation for such a strategy and program, instead suggesting separate struggles to liberate each ‘internal colony’ perhaps linked by solidarity and a common enemy. The “internal colony” analysis fails to grasp that there is a multinational proletariat in the US, disproportionately made up of people of oppressed nation(s) and nationalities but also including white proletarians, which brings together people of different nationalities who have a common class interest and similar but variegated experiences of exploitation and conditions of life, that is in the strategic position, as a class, to lead the revolutionary overthrow of US imperialism.”(11)

Submerging the national struggles of all oppressed nations into the primary “multinational proletarian” struggle is a recipe for Trotskyism, especially when combined with the implication that some whites hold revolutionary class positions. It makes struggling with Trotskyist groups such as the (N)CPC impossible. Having demoted national liberation struggles compared to “multinational proletarian revolution”, how could the OCR disagree that class struggle is more significant?

Despite their affirmation of the right of separate nations to their own revolutionary organizations, OCR says that this trend ideologically

“strengthened revolutionary nationalism and weakened the potential hegemony of the communist world outlook over the growing revolutionary movement. Practically, it meant that the best of the Sixties generation were in separate organizational structures rather than combining their strengths and debating out the crucial questions before the revolutionary movement within one united democratic centralist structure.”

This echoes the (N)CPC’s claim that it would likely be “counterproductive” to have separate vanguards for First Nations, despite the strong risk that white chauvinism will corrupt the formation of a vanguard party as the OCR documents having happened to the Communist Party(USA) and the Revolutionary Communist Party(USA) within Kites 8.(12)

Towards the end of Kites 8 the OCR writes how US revolution could hinge on developments in nations like Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Haiti, other Caribbean nations as well as countries in Central and South America. They write that

“To maximize potential for revolutionary spillover, a communist vanguard must carry out political work among the immigrant populations in the US from the countries in question and link the struggles in their homelands with the struggle in the diaspora.”

While we agree with the attention necessary towards these oppressed nations, their value is not about “spillover” but about the necessity of destroying imperialism before proletarian revolution can happen on Occupied Turtle Island. Until this time, there will be almost no proletariat whatsoever, but rather a mass of bought-off labor aristocrats, even among the oppressed nations. The toppling of imperialism and settler-colonialism will break the class basis for the labor aristocracy and shift the tide in the favor of a Joint Dictatorship of the Proletariat of the Oppressed Nations (JDPON). This would allow the return of all First Nation lands and resources alongside reparations for all internal semi-colonies. At such point, Amerika would no longer be living parasitically from the Third World or oppressed peoples and the class base of bought-off settlers and labor aristocrats would disappear.

Conclusion

That the two organizations co-published Kites for over three years and the disagreements we discuss above go unmentioned by the (N)CPC raises the question if some aspects of their theoretical line were discarded during party formation. As much is particularly suggested by the Spectre series – originally published by Revolutionary Initiative (RI), precursor to the (N)CPC – where a version of the Labor Aristocracy thesis is employed to study the United States class structure and locate the US proletariat.

It is the responsibility of the communist movement, particularly in the imperial core where socialists far and wide are attempting to win over the labor aristocracy, to establish firm boundaries of cooperation. Although there is not a single correct method to determine such boundaries, those claiming to be vanguard formations owe it to the global proletariat to establish them transparently. Unity between groups who supposedly disagree about fundamental principles is irresponsible and deeply confusing to the masses. Here it raised the questions: how did the RI and OCR cooperate for years to publish Kites without struggling out some of these differences? Did the (N)CPC’s formation include a (faction-based) ideological drift the OCR was not aware of? If not the labor aristocracy thesis, Maoism or the importance of national liberation, what is the basis for unity with the OCR?

Ultimately, we can only conclude that neither group considers these lines dividing. Despite everything worth praise from the OCR and the journal Kites, they need to develop higher ideological standards and more explicit ideological lines. Although their recent disassociation from the (N)CPC may be a positive change, the OCR must allow no further opportunistic alliances to fester, internal or external. Finally, they should struggle with DLG ideologically and engage with the critiques we’ve laid out here.

<sup>Notes: 1. (New)Communist Party of Canada, “The Political Program of the New Communist Party of Canada” Kites, January 2024.
2. Joshua Berlinger, CNN “What is the Kibbutz? A brief history of the communes targeted in the Hamas terror attack.” Oct 11, 2023.
3. The Dawnland Group, “A Polemic against Settler Maoism” MIM (Prisons) website, June 2024.
4. Sakai, J. “Settlers: The mythology of the White proletariat from mayflower to modern.”(2014). Kersplebedeb.
5. David Cochran, Oct 7 2020. “How Hitler Found His Blueprint for a German Empire by looking to the American West.” Waging Nonviolence, Oct 7, 2020.
6. Leon Trotsky, “The Permanent Revolution” Marxist Internet Archive, 1931.
7. Leon Trotsky, “The Chinese Revolution” Marxist Internet Archive, 1938.
8. MIM (Prisons), “Building United-Front surrounded by Enemies: Case Study of the Declining U$ Housing Market” Aug 2010
9. Organization of Communist Revolutionaries, “Red Salute on the Formation of the Communist Party of Canada and the publication of its Program.” Kites, 2023.
10. Interestingly, Kites 8 gives no mention of the Maoist Internationalist Movement despite them having regularly struggled with RCP and that this was often reciprocated publicly.
11. Organization of Communist Revolutionaries, Kites 8, pg 325.
12. While the OCR claims the two were each temporarily communist vanguards, we would disagree, especially regarding the RCP.</sup>

The student movement for a free Palestine must correct the following errors: capitulation, the First World obsession with “mutual aid”, refusal to learn from history, blind fumbling in the interest of “doing something”, hastiness to condemn (rather than critique) the struggle here and abroad, surface level third-worldism as a justification for inaction, and the fetish for determining who’s making “real communist revolution” in place of a dialectical-materialist analysis of history.

1: The Liberal Trend, The Capitulationists, The Refusal to Stand IN OPPOSITION to Empire

The first trend I will critique consists of centering one’s own pro-Palestine political action around things that in fact stop short of anything that aids the fight for a free Palestine and an end to i$rael. People following this trend do not fight for things such as divestment from (or destruction of) weapons manufacturers or rejecting politicians who support i$rael in words, policy, or money. Rather, these people and groups focus on things such as organizing donations for individual Palestinian families, securing scholarships for Palestinian refugees and diaspora, or, in a more specific and truly condemnable example, the schools who capitulated and abandoned their encampment for paltry promises such as a house for Arab and Muslim students.

People rush to defend these forms of “resistance” with “we’re centering Palestinian voices”, while not recognizing that none of the things they’re fighting for (NGO-style refugee aid, more Palestinian-diaspora petty-bourgeois in elite ideological institutions of the amerikkkan state) are in any way actually opposed to the amerikkkan empire or contribute in any way to a future in which Palestine and its people are free from i$raeli and amerikkkan aggression. We saw the protests in 2020 end in symbolic gains that were not in any way contradictory to the U.$. empire, nor did they bring true freedom from the brutality of kkkops in the ghetto. Today, this trend threatens an unpleasant end for the currently-still-radical Palestinian liberation movement – a ceasefire on i$rael’s terms, maybe two states, more scholarships for the Palestinians who survived and were wealthy enough to get to the United $tates, and everyone who was uncomfortable chanting anything besides “ceasefire now” (the big brother of “defund the police”) gets to feel good about “playing their part”.

In the past, people have been harsh on MIM(Prisons) for refusing to capitulate to accepting any concessions for the First World that come at the expense of the Third World, or even concessions that don’t necessarily come at the expense of the Third World but serve to pacify the First World. Most notably, this is expressed in how angry people get about the analysis proving that prisoners, while no doubt an oppressed class and a hotbed for potential for organizing, are not exploited, so MIM(Prisons) doesn’t generally promote the fight for better wages for prisoners. To self-criticize, even I myself originally was upset about MIM(Prisons)’s stated intentions not to fight for healthcare for transgender prisoners, interpreting this as latent transmisogyny rather than a recognition that healthcare for trans prisoners (as important a battle as I believe it to be) is not a struggle in the interest of the global proletariat. Incidents like the capitulation of student encampments at Northwestern University, Vassar College, and other elite universities display clearly how radical a line that really is.

Going forward, two things are going to have to happen in order for further protests for Palestine of this form to yield meaningful results: first, protesters are going to have to recognize that everything they do in protest should be in the actual, direct interest of the oppressed people of Palestine, not in the interest of “anti-racism” or “solidarity” or any bullshit half-measures. Second, protesters will have to prepare to be faced with violence and with the full force of state repression. Here’s a little logic-puzzle version of what happens when you say “we’re staying here, we’re causing trouble, and we’re not moving until you (divest/get rid of your dual degree program/get this politician out of our town/whatever)”: there are three options. Option one: you give in, you leave there, you stop causing trouble, you get your House or your scholarships or your vote-in-six-months. Option two: they give in, they accept your demands and nothing less. Option three: they break out the tear gas, the riot batons, the robot dogs, the big-ass battering-ram pigmobiles. And here’s the truth of it all: if you let it be option one, you’re worthless, you’ve sold out the people of Palestine. If you don’t let it be option one, if you make The Man choose between option two and option three. Well, if he doesn’t have a really good goddamn reason to choose option two, it’s gonna be option three. That’s the unfortunate truth, so you better be ready, and start doing wrist and shoulder stretches, because plastic flexicuffs hurt worse than the metal ones, what’s up with that.

2. The Dogmatic Trend and its Flaws

What I just laid out describes the main current that I see “on the ground” in so-called pro-Palestine “activism” that does nothing at all for Palestine itself. I doubt I’m telling you guys anything new here, besides confirming that such things are happening and making the particulars clear. On the flip side of activism-theater, refusal to study history, and “wins” for the First World, I also have noticed that there is a trend to be unbelievably reductive and flippant when it comes to what one’s orientation towards Third World liberation groups engaged in armed struggle should be, what course of action should be taken in the First World, and a refusal to engage in good-faith conversation about either of those subjects without dogmatism.

I am speaking in particular about people who will say (correctly) “fundraising and mutual aid and liberal-left protests don’t do anything for Palestine”, but then follow that statement up with “the ONLY thing that will ACTUALLY free Palestine is communist revolution”. Though the last month has only strengthened my convictions that communism (in the form laid out by Marx, Lenin, and Mao, and practiced in the USSR and China) is correct, and true, and the only pathway to the permanent liberation of all the oppressed peoples of the world, it seems disgustingly chauvinistic to imply that the thing that a First-Worlder can do that has the most material impact on the people of Palestine is to focus on one’s home country, on some idea of “making revolution”.

Notably, other than MIM(Prisons) and another group I am working with who I shall not name, I have noticed that people who say such things don’t ever enjoy discussing what “making revolution” looks like, in this day, in this country, beyond platitudes. I see this trend frequently among communists who I know offline, but also among certain prominent users of popular “anti-revisionist” communist online discussion boards (I say this not to gossip or shit-talk, but rather because I believe it behooves one to recognize that even spaces that portray themselves as “anti-chauvinist” or “anti-revisionist” do not by default take Third World liberation and the contradictions that it would entail seriously. Judging by former discussions I’ve seen on the Maoist forums, this warping of the idea of “revisionism” to defend inaction isn’t a new trend per se).

This correct rejection of mutual aid and petit-bourgeois identity politics, followed by the proclamation of the vulgar line of “nothing you do has an impact for the people of Palestine if you aren’t making communist revolution in your home country”, seems to me to be a disguised version of the same sentiment that leads to disgusting and chauvinistic lines such as “well, we should critically support Hamas, but they aren’t communist, so the most important thing is to be critical of them”. Did Torkil Lauesen believe that the most important thing that a First-Worlder could do was “make revolution”, and that in the absence of a clear path forward, one should sit on their heels and wait for one to appear? did Ulrike Meinhoff? Would any of the people who say, whether behind their screens or out on the streets or in the encampment, “the only thing you can do for the people of Palestine is make communist revolution”, genuinely try and claim that they’re doing more for Palestinian liberation than Hamas, Lauesen, or Meinhoff? Of course I don’t intend to advocate adventurism, I don’t believe that we in the First World should be taking up the gun or robbing banks, but I do believe that a refusal to engage with the question of what a liberated Palestine (and, if Cuba and South Africa, for example, are any precedent, not necessarily a communist Palestine) would look like beyond First World radical academics’ ideas of “building revolution” is just a flipside of the chauvinism displayed in the “well, at least we’re doing SOMETHING” rhetoric of mutual aid and peaceful protest.

No matter whether they distort Marxism, Maoism, or third-worldism, they inevitably find their way to the same conclusion: none of the groups currently debating and fighting and sacrificing for the Palestinian cause are worthy of my time; they’re all revisionist, bourgeois, labor-aristocrats; students are all postmodernist bourgeois-wannabes risking their educations and sometimes their lives for the bit; protesters are all shills for the DNC; thank goodness I don’t have to feel bad about my inaction. The dogmatists, the “do-nothing”-ists, imply, in essence, the same thing that the first type of chauvinists implicitly believe. The job of a First-Worlder is to fundraise, or to go to art builds, or to read and daydream about the day a revolution free of contradictions springs from the soil, while the job of a Third-Worlder is to die.

3. Both Are Worse

As I’ve already said, my central point is thus: both trends, more than anything else, serve as a justification for the ostensibly class-conscious First-Worlder to not do anything that would compromise their comfortable lives, a veritable “class-suicide hotline.”

“no, First Worlder, don’t go beyond liberalism and bourgeois legality, don’t commit your valuable free time to reading and study, don’t risk getting expelled – parade-type protests, symbolic encampments, and mutual aid funds are totally sufficient and just as important! You have so much to chant for, you have so many tech jobs to land!”

“no, First-Worlder, don’t get involved, don’t join any groups, don’t talk to the lower and deeper masses, don’t learn from resistance movements of the past – you haven’t fought with enough other First Worlders online or in your book clubs, god forbid you accidentally make a mistake and learn from practice!”

These are the two trends that we must combat in the struggle for a free Palestine here in the belly of the beast, where all the funding and weapons for the ongoing genocide continue to flow from.

We just wrapped up our Fourth of You-Lie annual fundraiser. The results so far aren’t great. We’ve only received about a third of the number of donations we got from comrades inside for all of 2023, and less than a third in the amount received. That means we need to get twice as many donations in the next 6 months as we got in the first 6 months of this year to maintain where we were. And ideally, we want to be increasing the percent of funding that comes from donations from prisoners. The amount of donations we receive from prisoners is one way we measure mass support for our work and whether we should keep doing it.

Our education programs continue to develop. We’ve mailed out the first group response to our University of Maoist Thought study group on the Collected Works of the Black Liberation Army. We’ve completed an update to our study guide for The Fundamentals of Political Economy, a must-read text. Comrades on the outside also completed a study of MIM Theory 14: United Front that is reflected in the content of this issue. We will likely continue this theme in ULK 87, looking at the united front in Palestine more and printing your reports on building united front for the September 9th Day of Peace and Solidarity.

We are also entering Black August as this issue hits the cell blocks. And soon after that, the September 9th Day of Peace and Solidarity. Besides the Runaway Slaves Coalition statement on the United Front for Peace in Prisons, we did not get any submissions on these topics. But as always we have our September 9th Organizing Pack that prisoners can request to get more information on the history of this day, and countless books and pamphlets on the Black liberation struggle that you can get from our Free Books to Prisoners Program in exchange for political work.

The week of December 6-13 has been marked as a week of solidarity by Jailhouse Lawyers Speak. Over the years comrades have suggested a boycott of any activities that financially benefit the prison system. This is the tactic being implemented in December, with the campaign focusing on ending prison slavery and overall abolition of prisons in general. Our next issue will be out in early November. So if you are organizing for this week of solidarity, send in art or articles to share for ULK 87.

This issue features content produced by United Struggle from Within comrades as part of our campaign to connect the prison struggle to the student movement for Palestine. Some of these materials were also used in a pamphlet put together and distributed on the streets, to get these messages into the hands of students and outside supporters.

As we finalize the content for this issue, reports are coming in of the disproportionate deaths of prisoners in the recent heat waves. Prisoners and prisons are being excluded from new worker protection laws dealing with heat. This June was the hottest on record. And yet the imperialists still aren’t getting serious about reducing CO2 emissions to slow global warming. We welcome your reports on heat and climate change, especially organizing efforts and how to build a united front around these campaigns, for the next issue of ULK.

Amerikan Elections

Finally, i thought we should say a few words on the upcoming U.$. presidential election. For those that don’t know, our slogan is, “Don’t Vote, Organize!” We aren’t too interested in who becomes president because there is no anti-imperialist option.

As has become the trend, the Democratic Party wing have been campaigning hard to “stop fascism”. Our line has not changed since 2016, when we argued that Trump was not instituting fascism as president then either. But that does not mean we should not be vigilantly looking for the emergence of fascism and opportunities to combat it.

Comrades in Texas have reported on lumpen gangs being used by the state as enforcers in Coffield Unit and Allred Unit. Another reader in Allred more recently reported that staff using drugs to bribe prisoners has continued:

“The prison administration here at Allred Unit have been getting away with killing prisoners for so long with the help of these so-called gang members that they fear not the possibility of accountability.”

The use of gangs to police prisoners is not new in Texas history. However, in the past this role was filled by the euro-Amerikan prisoners who enjoyed privileges in exchange for enforcing discipline on the oppressed nation prisoners.(see Robert T. Chase’s book We Are Not Slaves) While we have written extensively on the revolutionary potential of the First World lumpen, and even lumpen organizations, these organizations also have this reactionary potential, making them an unreliable ally of the proletariat.

In fact, it is quite damning that these L.O.s are consciously working for the imperialists to violently repress other oppressed nationals. We address this further in this issue with the ongoing campaign (and debate) around “Stop Collaborating!” Of course we see the same thing in Third World countries around the world where the imperialist have built death squads by bribing various lumpen and military men. And we do recognize such death squads as a form of exported fascism with no real base in the Third World itself.

Here in the heart of empire it is more typical to see the euro-Amerikan petty bourgeoisie play the role of fascist foot soldiers. We saw a glimpse of this in the attacks of bands of young white men on the UCLA encampment for Palestine as cops idly stood by. And we’ve seen it in various street clashes over the last decade with groups like the Proud Boys attacking radical left demonstrators or gender-non-conforming events.

But these remain fringe events. While Trump represents a certain heightening of contradictions in this country, the U.$. state is still very stable. No one can become president of the United $tates without support from the imperialists. The current support of the ultra-rich for another Trump presidency has been pinned largely on the possibility of Trump era tax cuts expiring if Biden wins a second term. So this is hardly a sign of the imperialists recognizing the need for a strong man to move this country into a more authoritarian direction. On the contrary, it is a sign of a further eating away at the stability of the United $tates by undercutting state funding through neo-Liberalism. Yes, the contradictions are heightening, no it is not time to join in united front with Joe Biden, Kamala Harris or whoever ends up being the more status quo option they give us in November.

This topic keeps coming up again and again and now I see it listed in the USW campaign list. Let’s look at this from a practical perspective and not from an ideological one.

Snitching is telling on people. It’s giving information on someone else to a higher authority to act on it. We can all agree on that definition. The more important question is to what INTENTION is someone snitching, and this is what we should analyze as it pertains to our struggle.

I’ve been reading in ULK about these “comrades” who snitch on other prisoners because they claim it’s for the good of our struggle. I call Bullshit. If you really care so much about the health of the population, become a drug counselor or start a campaign to fight drug addiction. But you’re not doing any of those things, which actually involve WORK. Instead you sit in your cell and file these papers to internal affairs or whoever using the same system you claim to be opposing, and then you beg them to protect you. Disgusting.

The cops you are snitching on are not part of some larger conspiracy to keep inmates addicted to drugs or control the population. That’s absurd. These cops are actually our allies, and though they may be motivated by profit, they are still facing the same risk and fate we now find ourselves in. If it weren’t for these allies, we would never have phones in prison which allow us to contribute to the struggle in ways we otherwise could never do, not to mention the obvious connections with our loved ones without police invasion of our privacy.

I understand you who snitch probably can’t afford a phone, and this makes you angry and spiteful so you wish to do your “public service,” right? Or maybe you are simply envious of the power and influence of those who have the plugs. Sorry for that; prison is rough. But don’t sit here and claim you do it because you just care about us all so much.

That being said, are drugs beneficial to the population? No, but unfortunately sometimes that comes with it and we should spend our efforts to make sure the right things are coming in and not the wrong things. We don’t need to throw out the whole baby with the bathwater. In fact, a lot of marijuana comes in too and personally this helps a lot with my service-related PTSD. Shame on you or anyone trying to shut down these precious lifelines using the guise of our struggle. Getting more people locked in prison because of your personal misery does not help the movement. You are not fooling me or any of the real ones out there.

MIM(Prisons) responds: This comrade is largely responding to an article in ULK 84, CA Silences Reports of Drug Trade in Prisons. We can acknowledge the added nuance in this situation. However, most of the articles we’ve printed on this topic are comrades trying to get people to file grievances against political repression or physical abuse by staff, and other prisoners refusing because they “don’t snitch.” Such cases are cut and dry. While we can’t rely on the imperialist state to police itself, grievances and lawsuits are tactics that contribute to building power. We must expose abuses of the state to combat them. So to say “Stop snitching on pigs” as this comrade does is truly a reactionary statement equivalent to saying “don’t resist oppression”.

What the comrade above says about running programs to fight drug addiction is right on. Just reporting things to the imperialists is never gonna change things on its own. We must build our own power and our own independent institutions of the oppressed. That is when the imperialists will really start to make moves to out compete us by reforming their own institutions. As far as the state conspiring to spread drugs, we need to understand the levels at which such things happen. Just because every C.O. didn’t come together and discuss these plans doesn’t mean it’s not intentional. To put it another way, if the state wanted to stop drug use in prisons they could. It wouldn’t even be that hard. Whether prescription meds or illicit ones, we know this is a common tool of pacification in prisons, as is digital media as the comrade from Pennsylvania discusses.

We discussed with this comrade the loosening of old hierarchies, staff shortages, and the opening of opportunities in prisons today. Some of the old ways are going away. Mostly this has led to negative things like more drugs and neglect so far. But it does create new possibilities. And that is why we are printing this response. We do want comrades to be trying to understand the changes where they are imprisoned and thinking about how our goals can expand and work within the existing motions of change. United fronts and temporary alliances are necessary strategic tools.