MIM(Prisons) is a cell of revolutionaries serving the oppressed masses inside U.$. prisons, guided by the communist ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
Under Lock & Key is a news service written by and for prisoners with a focus on what is going on behind bars throughout the United States. Under Lock & Key is available to U.S. prisoners for free through MIM(Prisons)'s Free Political Literature to Prisoners Program, by writing:
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Organizations in Occupied Turtle Island organizing under the label of
Palestine solidarity take various tactics and ideological positions. A
great portion of these efforts are negative, representing leftist
organization-building and guilt-soothing for populations who benefit
from imperialism.(1)
Still, there is much to be appreciated in Palestine solidarity
organizing. The fact that as a class, U.$. workers are wedded to
imperialism as a labor aristocracy(2) does not mean that select
individuals and segments of the same class, such as youth, immigrants
and members of oppressed nations, don’t have a righteous impulse to
rebel against genocide.(3) Further, drawing the line between practicing
manufactured discontent to gain social capital (for example, peaceful,
permitted and policed “solidarity” marches, or gathering social media
clout) versus genuine rebellion (involving significant self-sacrifice)
can be a difficult strategic question and a complicated moral matter.
It’s the job of communists to answer these questions, drawing those who
can be allied in a united front under the leadership of the global
proletariat.
In the United $tates, only small percentages of the country ever will
protest for progressive causes, and usually only a few thousand people
are liable to turn up at anti-imperialist protests, if we’re lucky. But
even this small size of protest crowds can be confusing. We see large
events put on in the name of helping Palestine and, ignoring the lack of
ideological unity required for such crowds, perceive that there is a
strong movement against genocide here. To move how? Against which
genocide? You’ll find that the larger the event, the less likely it is
for such questions to be answered.
Let’s examine one specific way this numbers game is lost among the
U.$. left. A very common protest narrative goes something like this: X
city/institution is partnering with Israel. That partnership uses funds
which could otherwise be spent “on our community” (healthcare, jobs,
public resources). Therefore, we must divest from Israel and invest back
into “our community”. The messaging behind agitational work tells the
organizers, audience and onlookers at protests the purpose and goals of
the work: they represent the ideology pushing our practice forwards.
Here, this oft-repeated messaging about divestment explains that
everyone should join the cause to reclaim what is theirs from an immoral
misappropriation.
This narrative about redirecting resources away from genocide and
towards “community” can be found in endless settler-left slogans such as
“build more schools, not bombs!” or “money for jobs and education, not
for war and occupation!” All such ideas revolve around the mythos of the
Amerikan “community”: a fictitious multi-national concept in which,
abstracted from the violence at the base of the Amerikan colony and the
national conflicts therein, we can imagine harmonious and communal ways
of life involving sharing our resources. This imagination goes back to
the root of settler consciousness in Occupied Turtle Island which
imagines a “Thanksgiving” where the colonists shared food with the First
Nations rather than poisoning, raping and murdering them by the
millions.
An almost identical narrative is wielded by referencing the “tax
dollars” spent on Palestine-solidarity campaigns’ targets, begging
Amerikans to rise up against a supposed misuse of money which is
otherwise rightfully owed to them. This relies on the same conceptual
basis as a “community.” If we believe this narrative then absent
specific policy mistakes (such as funding Israel) there would exist the
basis for peaceful redistribution of the spoils of genocide and
imperialism, and this would be a righteous redistribution. At the base
of these common yet mistaken ideas are 1) a genuine impulse towards
fascism by U.$. citizens who wish to become even more wealthy compared
to the Third World, and 2) ignorance regarding the source of global
wealth disparity to begin with.
We cannot resolve #1, the fascist impulse among a majority here,
without overturning imperialism and settler-colonialism entirely. To
address #2 however, we can study how “communities” in Occupied Turtle
Island are literally built and sustained off of genocide, slavery and
imperialism, especially regarding the “average jo.” There are two main
groups in the United $tates: the settlers and the oppressed nations.
Euro-Amerikan settlers have been a consistently reactionary group for
the past five centuries as their life here is founded on slavery and
land theft.(4) They are the numeric majority of the U.$. population and
have consistently subjected the First Nations, New Afrika and the
Chican@ nation with oppressive, genocidal campaigns.(5)
These oppressed nations on the other hand vacillate between
progressive and regressive tendencies depending on proximity to the
spoils of imperialism. Independence movements among oppressed nations
represent a progressive impulse wishing to sever connections with U.$.
imperialism, whereas participation in DEI (Diversity, Equity &
Inclusion) initiatives, reforming political parties and redistributing
wealth to the oppressed nations represent an integrationist trend which
serves to either enlarge the (petty-)bourgeoisie of these nations at the
expense of their oppressed masses or incorporate swaths of the nation
into the capitalist-imperialist world system.(6) Overall there are
substantial parts of oppressed nations here who still face genocide
while other portions steadily receive a bit more of the imperial
pie.
To the extent that anyone here enjoys it, the First World lifestyle
includes housing, food, medicine, transportation and extensive
leisure-time bought from the blood of indigenous peoples and
manipulation of global labor prices which under-pay workers in the Third
World and deprives them of basic necessities.(7) An over-accumulation of
profits in the United $tates has led to excess money supply and higher
domestic wages: the surplus available to create a complacent consumer
base beyond the settlers alone.(8) This is why wages here are
approximately 10x normal wages in Palestine. Thus while some U.$.
workers suffer under national oppression, they are almost all economic
oppressors of the Third World.(9)
So if we convince the majority here that they are actually
impoverished through imperialism, or would be enriched through its end,
we are misrepresenting the facts and tarnishing the cause of Palestinian
liberation. When imperialism inevitably falls, internationalist forces
in the imperial core will probably be encircled by fascism: citizens
here attempting to cling to lifestyles and social roles which can no
longer exist, led by whichever elements of the bourgeoisie can rally
them around new extractive outlets to replace old imperialism. The
faster we can pull away from self-interested economic thinking here, the
faster we will eventually construct socialism. The more here who search
for their own best interest through the fall of imperialism, the longer
such a task will take.
United front work in the imperial core on behalf of the global
proletariat will involve grappling deeply with the labor aristocracy and
the settler nation. We must investigate this majority’s interests as
they unfold in street protests, unions, universities and even prisons.
We shouldn’t reject them wholesale: we should condemn their economic
gluttony while simultaneously uniting those who will commit to fighting
on the behalf of the international proletariat. We must educate each and
every Amerikan who will listen about how their wealth comes from
genocide and how their lives will change when imperialism finally
falls.
Having rejected the fantasy of an abstract, multi-national Amerikan
“community,” we could instead support the many progressive causes
belonging to the oppressed nations here who have suffered under genocide
like Palestine. But such campaigns must be specific in their slogans and
selection of organizing base, as well as how to relate to those with
varying proximity to imperialism. Connecting progressive campaigns such
as those against police brutality, which predominantly affects oppressed
nations, to Palestinian sovereignty is a righteous cause. Trying to
connect Palestine to the reactionary dissatisfaction of everyday
Amerikan workers, especially settlers, is a recipe for fascism and
genocide.
Notes: 1. A
Million Tiny Fleas “The Anti-War Movement that Wasn’t” Substack, Jun 13
2023. 2. Cope, Zak “Divided World Divided Class” Kersplebedeb
2012, pg. 9. 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.
Maoist
Internationalist Ministry of Prisons, “Proletarian Feminist
Revolutionary Nationalism” June 2017, pgs 96 – 108. 6. Labor
unions from oppressed nations integrating with settler and imperialist
labor unions is an important historic evidence of this trend. See:
Sakai, J. “Settlers: The mythology of the White proletariat from
mayflower to modern.”(2014). Kersplebedeb, pgs 152 – 174. 7. Jason
Hickel, Christian Dorninger, Hanspeter Wieland, Intan Suwandi,
“Imperialist appropriation in the world economy: Drain from the global
South through unequal exchange, 1990–2015,” Global Environmental Change,
Volume 73, 2022. 8. Cope, Zak “Divided World Divided Class”
Kersplebedeb 2012, pg 200. 9. Undocumented migrants, prisoners,
homeless people, and the chronically unemployed lumpenproletariat are
generally not economic oppressors.
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.
This polemic focuses on writings and ideas from Revolutionary Marxist
Students (RMS) and Maoist Communist Union (MCU). RMS is a student group
focused primarily on education and organizing around college campuses
and MCU is a pre-party organization with more varied activities. Each
derive from a shared settler “Maoist” ideological tradition in the
United States concentrated on trade unionism and influenced by
Trotskyism. This paper focuses on their misunderstandings of
settler-colonialism, the national question in the United States and the
labor aristocracy. Let it be noted that ideological strengths in their
literature are largely omitted from discussion of these central
issues.
Theses
RMS/MCU ignores the national question in the US and misunderstands
settler-colonialism. This contributes to a pardoning of white settler
workers and acting as though their economic demands will not directly
reinforce imperialism and colonization.
RMS/MCU presents no explicit class analysis identifying and
demarcating the revolutionary from counterrevolutionary forces in
society.
RMS/MCU distort Marx, Engels and Lenin’s understanding of the labor
aristocracy to mean a small privileged upper strata of workers in any
country, rather than the majority of labor having been bourgeoisified
within the imperial core.
Palestine and Settler
Colonialism
The RMS Statement on the Genocide in Palestine is a useful
starting point for investigating the errors of this political
tendency.(1) There is much worthy of praise including rebuttal of some
imperialist propaganda and recognition of, considering Palestine, a
“need to keep up with future development and critically assess the
forces at play. Our primary role in the United States is to understand
and oppose our own state’s involvement in this genocide.”
However, given the importance of opposition to settler colonialism
within the Maoist theoretical lineage, RMS’s adherence to Trotskyist
interpretations of settler labor is unorthodox. In contrast to Mao and
Stalin, Trotsky believed that a socialist government in only one country
would be doomed to failure unless it found rapid new socialist allies
across the world: unless it was accompanied by a global “permanent
revolution.” As Trotsky says himself, “Without direct state support
from the European proletariat, the working class of Russia will not be
able to maintain itself in power and to transform its temporary rule
into a lasting socialist dictatorship. This we cannot doubt for an
instant.”(2)
This was not a view restricted to the specific context of Russia,
however. In the basic postulates beginning Trotsky’s The Permanent
Revolution, written in 1931, he writes that:
“Socialist construction is conceivable only on the foundation of the
class struggle, on a national and international scale. This struggle,
under the conditions of an overwhelming predominance of capitalist
relationships on the world arena, must inevitably lead to explosions,
that is, internally to civil wars and externally to revolutionary wars.
Therein lies the permanent character of the socialist revolution as
such, regardless of whether it is a backward country that is involved,
which only yesterday accomplished its democratic revolution, or an old
capitalist country which already has behind it a long epoch of democracy
and parliamentarism.”
The above-outlined sketch of the development of the world revolution
eliminates the question of countries that are ‘mature’ or ‘immature’ for
socialism in the spirit of that pedantic, lifeless classification given
by the present programme of the Comintern. Insofar as capitalism has
created a world market, a world division of labour and world productive
forces, it has also prepared world economy as a whole for socialist
transformation.
Different countries will go through this process at different tempos.
Backward countries may, under certain conditions, arrive at the
dictatorship of the proletariat sooner than advanced countries, but they
will come later than the latter to socialism. 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.”(3)
[Bold ours]
This Trotskyist conception that workers from the most advanced
capitalist nations must revolt to assist revolutionary struggles in
backwards, feudal and colonized nations is manifested in RMS’s theory on
Palestine. Like their theoretical forerunner, RMS incorrectly identifies
the friends and enemies of the international proletariat, but without
the excuse that the labor aristocracy was embryonic in Trotsky’s
time.
RMS claims to evaluate the “Hamas October 7th attack” – more
accurately, a counter-attack orchestrated by the resistance Joint
Operations Room groups(4) – in relationship to the supposedly more
“diverse strategy” within the Vietnamese, Chinese and Algerian
revolutionary wars. They claim Hamas is wrong to support a two-state
solution, without acknowledging that Hamas only supports the policy as a
temporary strategic measure.(5) RMS prioritizes “Israeli” citizens
through their critique of a two-state solution, claiming that “Only
through the implementation of one secular and democratic state for both
Israelis and Palestinians in place of the religious-fascist state
currently ruling over the region can this brutal apartheid come to an
end.” RMS misunderstands the inherently settler, counterrevolutionary
designation of “Israeli” which must be abolished alongside the zionist
entity in order for Palestine to be free.
Instead of abolishing the settler class role, RMS claims that “in
order to wage any sort of successful national liberation struggle in
Palestine, a significant section of the working Israeli masses would
have to turn against the apartheid state and link up with the
Palestinians” and that “Historical precedent proves the need for such an
alliance of both the colonized and colonizer working classes in ending
Apartheid, as seen in the South African example.” Here the term “working
class” obfuscates settler-colonialism by equating the class interests of
settler and colonized populations, ostensibly because they each receive
wages, ignoring their wages’ dramatically different quantities and the
fact that one group faces national oppression and the other constitutes
an oppressor nation. RMS also cites the numeric majority of “Israelis”
within Palestine to justify the need for an alliance between the two
groups.
Their singular case study with regards to settler workers cooperating
with colonized workers within a successful revolutionary movement is a
multi-national trade union struggle against apartheid in South
Africa.(6) As RMS writes, “historical precedent proves need for an
alliance of the colonized and the colonizer working classes in ending
apartheid. In South Africa, while less than 10% of the population was
white, an alliance with the working class of said population was not
only possible but necessary for the ending of the apartheid regime.”
While the above source which RMS references argues the significance
of the South African Congress of Trade Unions, it omits the
representation of various nations in the formation or the involvement of
white settler labor. Moreover, despite apartheid being “defeated”
national oppression amd segregation endures in South Africa alongside
the revisionism of the African National Congress.
RMS criticizes the Palestinian resistance militarily through
reference to Algeria, China and Vietnam, while the class compositions of
these nations’ struggles against colonialism and imperialism are not
considered. While no two cases are perfectly analogous, successful
liberation movements against colonialism and imperialism have been won
not through drawing from the sympathy of the oppressor nation “workers”
but through organizing the indigenous masses. Although no socialist
states remain today from 20th century revolutionary movements, victories
against imperialism in a multitude of socialist African, Latin American
and Asian governments during the late 20th century were achieved by the
(mostly) guerrilla warfare of the colonized populations, often fighting
in direct contradiction to enemy settler-labor formations. The Chinese
revolution, which Maoists uphold as the most significant advance towards
socialism, didn’t concern itself with the characteristic mineutia of the
enemy class; they opposed the Japanese occupiers – labor and all. What
is particularly alarming about RMS’s analysis of international settler
situations is the transativity of the analysis on occupied Turtle Island
where settler labor has directly led in colonization and genocide,
especially in the United States.(7)
In every revolutionary struggle, there are those who commit class
suicide and join the side of the oppressed despite their origins as
exploiters. Hence, a rejection of an “alliance” between the settler
workers and the oppressed nation workers must not serve as a mechanical
rejection of individual revolutionaries’ ability to transcend their
class origin. As a class however, settlers have never rejected their
class except when forced to migrate out of a colony by the revolting
oppressed.(8) With respect to colonized nations, settlers everywhere
form a reactionary, exploiting class.
Fundamentally, RMS misunderstands the class role of settler labor as
parasitic and antagonistic to the liberation of their country’s
colonized peoples. Settler labor is understood as the labor and
political organizations representing the class interests of the settlers
as workers – more wages, better work conditions, expansion of settler
lands, and access to resources. Class interests and the demands they
beget represent the improvement of the well being or wealth of the
respective strata. This is especially true within capitalism where the
potential of class mobility is present. No strata is without class
demands, and no labor formation is capable of completely shedding the
class demands of its composite strata as the purpose of forming labor
and political advocacy organizations within capitalism is improving the
lot of a given group, usually through struggle with employers or the
state. It is possible for segments of a strata to reject their class
demands but that is not what RMS is advocating for in the case of
settler labor.
What makes settler labor organizations reactionary is that the
settler class material interest is the dispossession of an indigenous
population, by which the settler class is afforded free land, cheap
resources, access to improved citizenship benefits as dividend from the
immense plunder of the settler bourgeoisie and the cheap labor of the
colonized who are relegated to reservations, often little more than
concentration camps. Settler labor organizations will seek to advocate
for greater dividends of the whole stolen wealth of the nation for the
respective spheres of workers for which they advocate. Conflicts between
the settler bourgeoisie and settler petty-bourgeoisie, including all
settlers who receive wages, do not arise because the state can increase
the levers of indigenous dispossession and genocide, creating settler
class positions for sections of the former-proletariat whenever the
possibility of class struggle presents itself.
This plays out in “Israel” as there are no trade unions, much less
nonprofits or “leftist” activist organizations struggling against the
zionist entity as a colonial project. Israel mandates that every
settler, except the ultra-orthodox, serve in the Israeli Occupation
Forces, learning to kill and hate Palestinians. Remaining are isolated
instances of military defectors and other peaceful protesters being
brutalized over even milquetoast objections to the scale or extent of
the occupation or specific massacres, such as those occurring in Gaza
currently. Settler labor as a class, and indeed the entire settler
population of “Israel” has yet to demonstrate revolutionary potential
and it is unfortunate that RMS excludes any criticism of this settler
“left” from their piece despite calling for the Palestinians to unify
with them.
Imperialism and the
National Question
The trade union movement in the US has historically concentrated
significantly on the labor aristocracy, which to quote Zak Cope:
“is that section of the working class which benefits materially from
imperialism and the attendant superexploitation of oppressed-nation
workers. The super-wages received by the labour aristocracy allow for
its accrual of savings and investment in property and business and
thereby “middle-class” status, even if its earnings are, in fact, spent
on luxury personal consumption. Persons who may be compelled to work for
a living but consume profits in excess of the value of labour either
through some form of property ownership or through having established a
political stake in (neo) colonialist society, may be bourgeois without
hiring and exploiting labour-power” (9)
Cope applies the concept globally to argue that within the OECD
working class – 38 European nations, Mexico (a more complicated case in
The Dawnland Group’s opinion), Australia, New Zealand, Israel and Japan
– there is no legal exploitation. Rather, Cope argues the first world
working class is recipient of super-wages comprised of wages for their
labor in addition to wages from the super-exploitation of the third
world which provides them with cheap commodities and shares of
imperialist profits. In particular, Cope notes the exploitative role of
the first world working class, writing that “where workers seek to
retain whatever bourgeois status their occupational income and
conditions of work afford them through alliance with imperialist
political forces, they can be said to actively exploit the proletariat.”
(10)
Cope calculates the value of super-exploitation through two methods,
namely international productivity equivalence, and
international wage differentials, assuming an international
equalized wage rate. Using these two methods Cope finds a combined value
transfer from the non-OECD to OECD countries of $4.9 trillion in the
year 2008 alone.(11) While a renewed study of imperialist value transfer
is necessary for US communists today, that is beyond the scope of this
polemic. It should suffice to observe that wages in gross disproportion
to the productivity of first and third world workers indicate an
exploitative dynamic benefiting one group at the expense of the other.
There may be challenges cultivating revolutionary empathy and culture in
the imperial core if working conditions and wages here cannot be viewed
in a global context and value transfer is not appreciated.
As recognized by Lenin, Marx and Engels, the global proletariat has
nothing to lose but their chains. This is a category of workers afforded
zero or next-to-zero wealth through imperialism. Formations such as MCU
and RMS refuse this definition because it would broaden the
petty-bourgeoisie and labor aristocracy to include most of the
industrial workers who they consider the “revolutionary proletariat” and
dramatically reduce their organizing base within the imperial core.
The most acute struggles in the United States today are national
rather than based on class. The internal nations in the US show the
greatest sites of exploitation, oppression and direct, violent conflict
with the capitalist class. These are the indigenous protesting at
Standing Rock against the Dakota Access Pipeline, movement against the
murderous national oppression carried out through police and prisons,
resistance and labor organizing from migrants forced from their home
countries by imperialism, and rebellion among the literal colonies
retained by the US empire today in Hawaii and Puerto Rico. These
instances of struggle go beyond wishing for middle-class living
standards. Not only have they demonstrated increased levels of militancy
against the state, but the roots of these conflicts are irreparable
antagonisms against the structure of capitalism and imperialism which
necessarily go beyond economic demands and have not been placated
through the dividend of super-profits.
Maoist Communist Union (MCU) writing about politics in the United
States focuses on trade unionism and overlooks national questions.
Despite the manifold contradictions between nations on Turtle Island,
within their theory journals, Notes from a Conversation Among
Comrades on the George Floyd Protests: Lessons for Ourselves and
Beyond discusses the oppression of Black people but does not lay
out a conception of their struggle for national liberation or their
nationhood.(12) No other articles discuss national or even “racial” (a
popular but unscientific concept) oppression on Turtle Island, and their
extensive writing about Maoist formations from the Global South and
trade unionism in the US reveals that they view the US as simply another
country that can carry out revolution domestically by replicating Maoist
strategies from the third world. They are mistaken: different conditions
warrant different strategies.
MCU’s Some General Theses on Communist Work in the Trade
Unions exemplifies this view.(13) Ignoring national oppression, the
article instead finds that “in order to have a socialist revolution in
this country we must first develop a strong Communist (Maoist) Party
capable of leading a powerful trade union movement and of freeing that
movement from the domination of reactionary leadership.”
The chronology is important. If communists must first develop this
“Maoist” trade unionist movement, it means any organizing around the
national – or racial, according to language used by MCU – questions and
colonization are peripheral or secondary to this central cause. It
suggests communists might first unite the trade union movement and
later, if at all, use this militant union formation to liberate
oppressed groups within the country rather than working with these
groups as mutually constitutive of a revolutionary struggle, much less
prioritizing struggles of oppressed nations. In reality, organizing a
bulwark of settler labor will negatively impact national liberation
movements.
Instead of oppressed nations, MCU sees trade union aristocrats as the
US’s revolutionary masses. The core reference to the “labor aristocracy”
in Some General Theses is when the authors claim that “the most
secure and consistent base of the reactionary union leaders is the labor
aristocracy which is only a small subsection of the working class, and
in our day is not equivalent to the trade union membership as a whole.”
Having sidestepped an investigation of the various relationships to the
means of production, they claim that the “vast majority” of US trade
union membership is not a “reactionary base.” MCU overlooks an
investigation of total worker compensation including public and private
benefits, the means by which the labor aristocracy is maintained within
imperial core countries. Luxurious positions at the apex of global
commodity exchange and artificially high wages give labor aristocrats
wealth above the means of subsistence on which the proletariat must
endure, and doled out above the value created through their labor.
Without an investigation of international class relations, wages, wealth
and labor productivity it is impossible to determine where the
proletariat ends and where the labor aristocracy begins and ends, much
less between the proletariat and the petty-bourgeoisie. It is thus
impossible to determine who the revolutionary masses are.
MCU claims that “A Communist Party must necessarily equip itself with
the most advanced revolutionary science, based upon a summation of the
whole of the proletariat’s revolutionary experience up to the moment in
question.” Despite this, MCU presents no historical summation of
“communist” work in US trade unions for the past 80 years that could
support their conclusion of the necessity or even possibility of
building a “Maoist” trade union movement in the US today. In tandem with
a thorough class analysis, a historical account of why an ideology finds
certain groups revolutionary or counterrevolutionary must be
established. If the US trade unions have not taken up any
anti-imperialist politics since before the New Deal era despite
consistent unsuccessful communist infiltration, what has been the source
of these failures?
In their more recent MCU and the Working Class Movement
summarizing the tendency’s recent organizing initiatives, the
aforementioned mistakes are repeated, particularly a failure to analyze
US classes, their only attempt at defining the proletariat being “the
only class that has an interest in communism as a class.” This is not a
definition. MCU does not scientifically demarcate the proletariat from
the non-proletariat. Their interesting commentary about the significance
of creating a “specifically proletarian line” around which all other
classes must be drawn is inapplicable to any context without an
accompanying class analysis.
Because of the labor aristocracy thesis, workers who benefit from
super-exploitation of the third world are not exploited, they are
exploiters. This entails that the economic interests of the vast
majority of imperial core workers are counterrevolutionary. Trade
unions, tenant organizing and other locally “progressive” economic
campaigns threaten to bolster standards of living and strengthen
citizens’ relationship with imperialism. More specifically, the labor
aristocracy thesis suggests there is no antagonism between first world
capitalists and their citizen labor aristocrats to begin with, the two
instead being allied in consuming value from the Global South.
(Mis)Identifying
the Labor Aristocracy and the Proletariat
To examine historical Marxist origins of the term “labor aristocracy”
as distinct from the proletariat, Marx, Engels and Lenin should be
studied. As written in the Maoist Internationalist Movement’s
Imperialism and its Class Structure in 1997:
According to Marx, the portion of society that is parasitic increases
over time: “At the dawn of civilization the productiveness acquired by
labour is small, but so too are the wants which develop with and by the
means of satisfying them. Further, at that early period, the portion of
society that lives on the labour of others is infinitely small compared
with the mass of direct producers. Along with the progress in the
productiveness of labour, that small portion of society increases both
absolutely and relatively.”
Despite the focus given to the labor aristocracy by Lenin, Marx and
Engels were the first to speak of the labor aristocracy of the colonial
countries. Even in Capital, Vol. 1, Marx speaks of “how industrial
revulsions affect even the best-paid, the aristocracy, of the
working-class.”
Engels in particular is famous for some quotes on England. Here we
only point to the quotes from Engels that Lenin also cited favorably in
his book Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. As we shall see,
Lenin’s approval and careful attention to the quotes from Engels on the
labor aristocracy are very important in his own thinking.
One of the clearest quotes from Engels as early as 1858 cited by
Lenin is: “The English proletariat is becoming more and more bourgeois,
so that this most bourgeois of all nations is apparently aiming
ultimately at the possession of a bourgeois aristocracy, and a bourgeois
proletariat as well as a bourgeoisie. For a nation which exploits the
whole world, this is, of course, to a certain extent justifiable.” We
should also point out that from Lenin’s point of view it was a matter of
concern that this had been going on for over 50 years already. Just
before expressing this concern, Lenin says, “Imperialism has the
tendency to create privileged sections also among the workers, and to
detach them from the broad masses of the proletariat.” Writing to the
same Kautsky who later betrayed everything, Engels said, “You ask me
what the English workers think about colonial policy? Well exactly the
same as they think about politics in general. There is no workers’ party
here, there are only Conservatives and Liberal Radicals, and the workers
merrily share the feast of England’s monopoly of the colonies and the
world market.” Spineless Mensheviks internationally regret this blanket
statement by Engels. The more dangerous revisionists of Marxism are only
too gutless to say Engels was wrong while contradicting him at every
chance. The spineless flatterers of the oppressor nation working class
fear the reaction of the oppressor nation workers to being told they are
parasites. Likewise, these spineless social-chauvinists evade the task
before the international proletariat – a historical stage of cleansing
the oppressor nation workers of parasitism. This task cannot be wished
away with clever tactics of niceness.” (15)
Referring back to Some Theses on our Work in the Trade
Unions, MCU writes that “with the development of capitalist
imperialism, Lenin considered it was no longer possible to bribe such a
large section of the working class: ‘It was possible in those days to
bribe and corrupt the working class of one country for decades. This is
now improbable, if not impossible. But on the other hand, every
imperialist ‘Great’ Power can and does bribe smaller strata (than in
England in 1848–68) of the ‘labour aristocracy.’” Lenin’s claim flowed
from the reality that in 1916, imperialist world war had broken out and
large segments of British and German workers were re-proletarianized.
However, the era of inter-imperialist world war has since been
profoundly interrupted by over seventy years of peace in the core
imperialist countries throughout which the labor aristocracy to which
Lenin referred has grown. Lenin’s writing in Imperialism, the
Highest Stage of Capitalism, published in 1917 the year after
Imperialism and the Split in Socialism, should be given
authority.
While MCU are correct to recognize the socialist NGO’s, revisionist
parties and capitalist rulers of most trade unions as class enemies,
these do not comprise the labor aristocracy, which instead is the wide
majority of bourgeoisified workers compensated with super-wages through
imperialism.
MCU writing of their conception of the labor aristocracy says that
“In the US, the ruling class has been able to bribe a minority
subsection of the working class for a long period of time. The height of
this bribery was likely reached during the New Deal era, but especially
since the mid 1970s more and more of the labor aristocracy has seen its
privileges severely eroded. We need to do much more investigation
however to determine more exactly how the labor aristocracy in this
country has changed over time, how large it ever truly got and how large
it is today.”
MCU seems to assume that decreasing wages relative to GDP since the
1970s has meant the decrease of the US labor aristocracy, but GPD does
not reflect global class relations nor wage differentials between
nations: “Through this negative account balance (though not only it),
the US working class is able to consume products which its labour has
not paid for. Global neoliberal restructuring has thus maintained the
privileged position of the core-nation working class relative to the
Third World proletariat, albeit on terms less favourable to the former’s
independent political expression than during the long boom of the 1950s
and 1960s.” (16) The persistence of the labor aristocracy despite
neoliberal reform can be measured through the significant increase of
homeownership,(17) vehicle ownership,(18) higher education(19) and real
weekly wages(20) throughout the country since 1960. Based upon these
statistics, MCU is incorrect to claim that the height of bribery was
during the New Deal era.
Clearly, MCU is using a different definition of the labor aristocracy
than Marx, Engels and Lenin because theirs is not based on bribery,
unequal exchange or surplus exploitation within the domestic “working
class” but entirely restricted to political roles among the
petty-bourgeoisie which exist regardless of the compensation of imperial
core workers in general.
Conclusion:
Impact of Faulty Class Analysis on Mass Work
A closer look at MCU and the Working Class Movement which
summarizes the formation’s recent work demonstrates the effects of their
ideological commitment to the settler labor aristocracy through their
focus on the US “industrial proletariat.”
Discussing some problems they had faced while organizing tenants, MCU
claims they were unable to “find and unite with the resolute fighters
among the working-class, raise consciousness amongst them specifically
and wider masses more broadly, and thereby…build up revolutionary
organization” due to “major ideological difficulties in developing
significant numbers of tenants into communists or even clarifying the
larger nature of the struggle beyond the immediate fight against
gentrification.”
They conceived of their task as creating a “united front of all the
class forces – workers, lumpen, petty-bourgeois – affected by
gentrification.” The following section bears quoting at length:
“In a confused attempt to make the central focus of this united front
still be the working-class, we specifically concentrated first on the
homeless, and then when we realized that was going nowhere we shifted to
tenants in public/subsidized housing – respectively perhaps the most and
second-most pauperized and lumpenized sections of the working-class –
despite the fact that we had studied and criticized the Black Panther
Party’s lumpen-line. We justified this by downplaying the degree of
lumpenization among these segments of the population and arguing,
correctly, that many of these tenants were still working-class. What we
did not consider was which segments and sections of the working-class
are most favorable to organize amongst.”
They discuss this line of work saying that
“Naturally, our efforts among the homeless and tenants bore little
fruit. We basically failed to make strong and lasting links with the
working-class, develop Communists from amongst the masses we were in
contact with, build sustained mass-organization, or sustain any
struggles involving substantial numbers of people.”
All of this led MCU to conclude a need to “proletarianize” their
ranks – through taking up industrial jobs, partly in an attempt to
challenge internal petty-bourgeois class tendencies and partly to make
more connections with “advanced workers.” (Recall Trotsky) Finally, they
list an outpouring of petty-bourgeois students into industrial jobs as
“incredibly promising” because they could numerically bolster a
communist party.
MCU quotes Lenin’s 1897 Task of the Russian Social Democrats
to show how it is necessary for US communists today to focus primarily
on the US “industrial proletariat.” MCU claims Lenin
“clearly puts forward that it was specifically the industrial
proletariat working in the urban factories that was the most advanced,
the ‘most receptive to [Communist] ideas, most intellectually and
politically developed.’ Lenin arrived at this conclusion because,
following in the footsteps of the rest of the European industrial
workers throughout the last several decades, the Russian factory workers
had proven themselves in practice to be the leading section of the class
during the waves of strikes in the 1880s and 1890s in Russia.”
MCU fails to discuss the difference in working conditions, wages, and
wealth between US factory workers and those of semi-feudal Russia.
Despite significantly basing their theory on Lenin they have failed to
consider the key ways workers in 21st century imperial core countries
differ from 20th century peripheral feudal workers; they fail to
adequately study imperialism. MCU’s first theory journal includes an
article titled Lenin’s Five Point Definition of the Economic Aspects
of Capitalist Imperialism and its Relevance Today, during which the
term labor aristocracy is never mentioned.(21)
Although it is later downplayed, MCU’s obsession with industrial
workers is perhaps best explained by this quote:
“Without a firm foundation among the industrial proletariat, and
without winning over the majority of the organized workers to a
revolutionary line, it will be impossible for the Party to direct a
general political strike across key workplaces and industries during a
revolutionary crisis. The general political strike is a key tool by
which can we paralyze the ability of the capitalist class to move goods,
troops, and military equipment. Alongside splitting the repressive
forces, paralyzing the bourgeoisie’s ability to run the economy is
essential for a successful revolution during such a crisis. Doing this
in key military industries – especially if, as is likely, the crisis
arises amid a significant war – undermines the bourgeoisie’s ability to
deploy repressive force to crush the revolution.”
According to this picture of revolution, industrial workers formed
the “leading section of the working class” during recent strike waves
because they have struck in the greatest numbers, to the greatest impact
on the national economy. Whereas US industrial workers overwhelmingly
only struck for a greater share of imperialist plunder in the last
century – such as when the recent “historic” UAW strike in winning mere
wage increases for the union and none else(22) – industrial strikes in
feudal Russia were far more frequently communist. Still, MCU’s strategy
is an essentially mechanical application of insurrectionist revolution,
derived from feudal Russia, to the US context.
The US is not an underdeveloped feudal country with only nascent
capitalism. It is the leading core imperialist country and has been for
over seventy years. It is the wealthiest nation in human history, and
has risen wide swaths of the population into allegiance with imperialism
and, at times, fascism based upon the material benefits of empire.
Revolution will be carried out by a minority-of-a-minority in the
country, not by a strike sweeping all sectors of the working class. Our
situation cannot be compared to that of the Bolsheviks.
Most charitably, MCU’s summation of tenant work can be read as the
belief that their chronology was incorrect: first organizing a communist
trade union movement will make work among tenants, lumpen and oppressed
nations far easier. Yet, this is still a narrow application of Bolshevik
tactics to 21st century US contexts. There are many reasons MCU’s tenant
and homeless mass work may have failed: ideological incoherence, focus
on labor aristocratic tenants, ignorance of the primary contradiction of
national oppression facing the masses, lack of a prior conception of
eventual revolutionary civil war around which to mobilize,
petty-bourgeois sensibilities among cadre, or even simple human error.
It is unreasonable to expect MCU to discuss these factors when they are
preoccupied with a nonexistent industrial proletariat, imposing models
from incomparable historical contexts.
MCU’s errors in mass-work and their shift towards “key industry”
organizing may seem like a simple error of studying one revolutionary
circumstance too much at the expense of others, as failing to apply
Marxism to the US context. While partly true, the better explanation is
a combination of opportunism – increasing numbers at the expense of
revolutionary vision – and a failure to prioritize class analysis.
Focusing on certain industries is important, but it fundamentally cannot
tell you about class within various industries, and it cannot replace
determining who the revolutionary and counterrevolutionary forces in
society are; “who are our friends, and who are our enemies?” to quote
Mao himself.
Focus on workers in specific industries is a strategic
decision likely to be prefigured by an ideological line. MCU has
established a line prioritizing Labor Aristocratic workers that
necessarily rejects the importance of national contradictions to the
revolutionary objectives on Turtle Island, and in doing so promotes
imperialism. RMS falls close behind in promoting an impossible
allegiance of the colonized nations with the settler working class. Each
organization takes part in a prominent tendency of US “Maoist”
organizations to follow Trotskyism despite its contradictions with
Maoism.
These are deeply troublesome trends. To organize the labor
aristocracy, to promote imperialism and Trotskyism is to do the enemy’s
work. The global proletariat is the only force which can make
revolution, and they are held back by settlers and labor aristocrats
alike. The longer communists on occupied Turtle Island fail to embrace
these positions, the further away a Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
Notes: (1)
https://web.archive.org/web/20240227044053/https://marxiststudents.wordpress.com/statements/
(2) Zinoviev,
Gregory Bolshevism or Trotskyism. 1925 (3)
https://web.archive.org/web/20240227044746/https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/tpr/pr10.htm
(4)
https://web.archive.org/web/20240227044944/https://unity-struggle-unity.org/resistance-news-network-media-guide/
(5)
https://web.archive.org/web/20240227045151/https://irp.fas.org/world/para/docs/hamas-2017.pdf
(6)
https://web.archive.org/web/20240227045539/https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/congress-south-african-trade-unions-cosatu
(7) Sakai, J. “Settlers: The mythology of the White proletariat from
mayflower to modern.”(2014). Kersplebedeb. (8) See Haiti,
Vietnam, China, Korea, and even South Africa, where millions of
emigrating whites has driven many to re-settle in Israel (9)
Cope, Zac “Divided World Divided Class” Kersplebedeb 2012, pg. 9
(10) Ibid. pg. 175 (11) Ibid. pg. 200 (12)
https://web.archive.org/web/20240227050314/https://maoistcommunistunion.com/red-pages/issue-3/notes-from-a-conversation-among-comrades-on-the-george-floyd-protests-lessons-for-ourselves-and-beyond/
(13)
https://mcuusa.files.wordpress.com/2023/10/mcu-theses-on-trade-union-work-2.pdf
(14)
https://mcuusa.files.wordpress.com/2023/12/mcu_and_the_working_class_movement-2.pdf
(15)
https://archive.org/details/ImperialismAndItsClassStructureIn1997_254/mode/2up
(16) Cope, Zak “Divided World Divided Class” Kersplebedeb 2012, pg.
9 (17)
https://web.archive.org/web/20240228014852/https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N
(18)
https://web.archive.org/web/20240228015215/https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter8/urban-transport-challenges/household-vehicles-united-states/
(19)
https://web.archive.org/web/20240228015942/https://www.statista.com/statistics/184260/educational-attainment-in-the-us/
(20)
https://web.archive.org/web/20240228015618/https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
(21)
https://web.archive.org/web/20240228020932/https://maoistcommunistunion.com/red-pages/issue-3/lenins-five-point-definition-of-the-economic-aspects-of-capitalist-imperialism-and-its-relevance-today/
(22)
https://www.businessinsider.com/uaw-strike-contract-raises-pay-details-ford-gm-stellantis-2023-10?op=1&r=US&IR=T
