MIM(Prisons) is a cell of revolutionaries serving the oppressed masses inside U.$. prisons, guided by the communist ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
Under Lock & Key is a news service written by and for prisoners with a focus on what is going on behind bars throughout the United States. Under Lock & Key is available to U.S. prisoners for free through MIM(Prisons)'s Free Political Literature to Prisoners Program, by writing:
MIM(Prisons) PO Box 40799 San Francisco, CA 94140.
Many people are caught up in the line that millions are enslaved in
this country, and that the main motivating factor behind the prison boom
of recent decades is to put prisoners to work to make money for
corporations or the government. MIM(Prisons) has clearly shown that
U.S.
prisons are not primarily (or even significantly) used to exploit
labor, and that they are a great cost financially to the
imperialists, not a source of profit.(1)
“Indeed, at peak use around 2002, fewer than 5,000 inmates were employed
by private firms, amounting to one-quarter of one per cent of the
carceral population. As for the roughly 8% of convicts who toil for
state and federal industries under lock, they are ‘employed’ at a loss
to correctional authorities in spite of massive subsidies, guaranteed
sales to a captive market of public administrations, and exceedingly low
wages (averaging well under a dollar an hour).”(2)
Instead, we argue that there is a system of population control
(including all the elements of the international definition of genocide)
that utilizes methods of torture on mostly New Afrikan and Latino men,
with a hugely disproportionate representation of First Nation men as
well, across this country on a daily basis. As the new prison movement
grows and gains attention in the mainstream, it is of utmost importance
that we maintain the focus on this truth and not let the white
nationalists define what is ultimately a struggle of the oppressed
nations.
To analyze why the term “prison industrial complex” (“PIC”) is
inaccurate and misleading, let’s look at some common slogans of the
social democrats, who dominate the white nationalist left. First let’s
address the slogan “Welfare not Warfare.” This slogan is a false
dichotomy, where the sloganeer lacks an understanding of imperialism and
militarism.
It is no coincidence that the biggest “welfare states” in the world
today are imperialist countries. Imperialism brings home more profits by
going to war to steal resources, discipline labor, and force economic
policies and business contracts on other nations. And militarism is the
cultural and political product of that fact. The “military industrial
complex” was created when private industry teamed up with the U.$.
government to meet their mutual interests as imperialists. Industry got
the contracts from the government, with guaranteed profits built in, and
the government got the weapons they needed to keep money flowing into
the United $tates by oppressing other nations. This concentration of
wealth produces the high wages and advanced infrastructure that the
Amerikan people benefit from, not to mention the tax money that is made
available for welfare programs. So it is ignorant for activists to claim
that they are being impoverished by the imperialists’ wars as is implied
by the false dichotomy of welfare vs. warfare.
Another slogan of the social democrats which speaks to why they are so
eager to condemn the “PIC” is “Schools not Jails.” This slogan
highlights that there is only so much tax money in a state available to
fund either schools, jails, or something else. There is a limited amount
of money because extracting more taxes would increase class conflict
between the state and the labor aristocracy. This battle is real, and it
is a battle between different public service unions of the labor
aristocracy. The “Schools not Jails” slogan is the rallying cry of one
side of that battle among the labor aristocrats.
Unlike militarism, there is not an imperialist profit interest behind
favoring jails over schools. This is precisely why the concept of a
“PIC” is a fantasy. While the U.$. economy would likely collapse without
the spending that goes into weapons-related industries, Loïc Wacquant
points out that the soft drink industry in the United $tates is almost
twice as big as prison industries, and prison industries are a mere 0.5%
of the gross domestic product.(2) Compared to the military industrial
complex, which is 10% of U.$. GDP, the prison system is obviously not a
“complex” combining state and private interests that cannot be
dismantled without dire consequences to imperialism.(3) And of course,
even those pushing the “PIC” line must admit that over 95% of prisons in
this country are publicly owned and run.(4)
Federal agencies using the prison system to control social elements that
they see as a threat to imperialism is the motivating factor for the
injustice system, not an imperialist drive for profits. Yet the system
is largely decentralized and built on the
interests
of the majority of Amerikans at the local level, and not just the
labor unions and small businesses that benefit directly from spending on
prisons. We would likely not have the imprisonment rates that we have
today without pressure from the so-called “middle class.”
Some in the white nationalist left at times appears to dissent from
other Amerikans on the need for more prisons and more cops. At the root
of both sides’ line is the belief that the majority of Amerikans are
exploited by the system, while the greedy corporations benefit. With
this line, it is easy to accept that prisons are about profit, just like
everything else, and the prison boom can be blamed on the corporations’
greed.
In reality the prison boom is directly related to the demands of the
Amerikan people for “tough on crime” politicians. Amerikans have forced
the criminal injustice system to become the tool of white hysteria. The
imperialists have made great strides in integrating the internal
semi-colonies financially, yet the white nation demands that these
populations be controlled and excluded from their national heritage.
There are many examples of the government trying to shut down prisons
and other cost-saving measures that would have shrunk the prison system,
where labor unions fought them tooth and nail.(1) It is this continued
legacy of national oppression, exposed in great detail in the book
The
New Jim Crow, that is covered up by the term “Prison Industrial
Complex.” The cover-up continues no matter how much these
pseudo-Marxists lament the great injustices suffered by Black and Brown
people at the hands of the “PIC.”
This unfortunate term has been popularized in the Amerikan left by a
number of pseudo-Marxist theorists who are behind some of the popular
prison activist groups on the outside. By explicitly rejecting this
term, we are drawing a clear line between us and the organizations these
activists are behind, many of whom we’ve worked with in one way or
another. For the most part, the organizations themselves do not claim
any Marxist influence or even a particular class analysis, but the
leaders of these groups are very aware of where they disagree with MIM
Thought. It is important that the masses are aware of this disagreement
as well.
It is for these reasons that MIM(Prisons) passed the following policy at
our 2012 congress:
The term “Prison Industrial Complex (PIC)” will not generally be used in
Under Lock & Key because the term conflicts with
MIM(Prisons)’s line on the economic and national make up of the U.$.
prison system. It will only be printed in a context where the meaning of
the term is stated by the author, and either criticized by them or by
us.
On 17 April, 2012 the Associated Press reported on the election of the
New United Snakes president of the World Bank.(1) This article
demonstrates the control that the U.$. has in the bureaucracy of this
agency which serves as an administrator of neo-colonial economic
policies within the Third World. Jill Yong Kim, a Korean-born U.$.
citizen was elected by the 25 member executive board after he was
challenged by the neo-colonial nations, which the author describes as
“developing countries.” His selection extends the tradition of Amerikans
leading the World Bank dating back to the institution’s founding in
1944.
The neo-colonial nations contend they need a greater voice in the World
Bank.(1) This is evidence that the UN dominated bureaucracy does not
take these “Developing” countries interests seriously. Underdeveloped
nations struggle for positions of power within these agencies to better
influence the policies which are geared to (under)develop their
economies. They are bureaucratically smothered by the developed nations
(led by the UN) because more developed nations equals less super profits
for the imperialists. Hence, the World Bank is founded on the need for
underdeveloped countries. In reality, these other countries are only
given a voice in the UN to the extent that they can’t use it to change
the status quo.
The associated press reports: “The World Bank raises money from its
member nations and borrows from investors to provide low cost loans to
developing countries.”(1) This bourgeoisified spin of propaganda
purposely hides the fact these loans to the “developing” countries
intensify under-development by systematically refusing to fund serious
industrialization programs.(2) Instead, these loans are granted for
purchase of surplus food from the imperialist nations home markets
attached with obligations to pay the money back with interest. If the
U.$. controlled World Bank was truly interested in providing “aid” to
underdeveloped countries they would grant loans that are geared towards
developing agricultural industry which is aimed at consumption needs for
the population and to establishing institutions within these countries
that produce native modern technicians and engineers who were free to
use their expertise within their own respective nations.
Without programs like these, “aid” to a neo-colonized state is merely a
revolving credit, paid by the neocolonial master, passing through the
neo-colonized state and returning the the neocolonial master in the form
of increased profits.(3) Over half the century of the World Bank
developmental “aid” to the Third World has accomplished nothing more
than creating a comprador class of native exploiters who rely on
imperialist agencies and forces to keep the oppressed nations in their
place while robbing the national treasuries for their own wealth and
privilege. Together the comprador class and imperialists work to exploit
the oppressed nations with institutions such as the U.$. run World Bank
which in its pure form is an imperialist front to finance oppression in
the Third World.
MIM(Prisons) adds: For an example of World Bank economic
practices that keep countries under the imperialist thumb, see our
article on
the
Middle East and North Africa.
Recent demonstrations in U.$. cities have claimed to represent “the 99%”
opposed to the greed of the richest 1%. MIM(Prisons) supports a more
equitable distribution of the world’s resources. What most Amerikans
don’t realize is that a true redistribution of wealth would mean less
for them as they are all part of the richest 13%.
In 1970 an action similar in form to Occupy Wall Street! (OWS!) occurred
in response to the assassination of students at Kent State University.
In response, a local union rampaged through the street beating the
students and attacking state offices. Reflecting on this event, a radio
host implied OWS! was evidence of progress, measured by the union
support it has received.
The material conditions of the U.$. invasion of Vietnam forced Amerikan
youth at that time to take a more progressive position than today,
leading them to come at odds with white nationalist unions. The OWS!
actions are even more within the realm of white nationalism than the
so-called “Battle in Seattle” in 1999 where anarchists and
environmentalists linked arms with unions to oppose the World Trade
Organization. Only the likes of MIM and
J.
Sakai recognized the reactionary white nationalism that anti-WTO
sentiments were being focused into within the Amerikan context. Yet, at
least the anarchists had a healthy dose of internationalism motivating
them back then.
With OWS! the principal cry is “defend the Amerikan middle class.” While
anarchists are attracted to the form (spokes councils and consensus open
to “the people”) the content is hopelessly white nationalist. It is the
exact type of rhetoric that the social democrats of post-depression
Europe spit that led to the rise of fascism in many countries.(1) When
the privileged nations of the world feel their privilege is threatened
they become uncharacteristically politicized in their demands for more.
They attack the ultra-rich in order to create the illusion that they are
poor in comparison. But facts are stubborn things, and the interests of
Amerikans lead them to cry for the ultra-rich to defend Amerikan jobs
and back the massive lines of credit they have taken out. Both demands
are incompatible with the struggle for migrant rights, which has been in
vogue among the white nationalist left in recent years.
MIM always said if real economic hard times hit the imperialist
countries, we would see a rise of
fascism
more than an interest in Maoism. We say this not to instill fear and
arouse emotions but to promote a realistic assessment of conditions.
Amerikan youth are the ones who put their bodies on the line in Seattle
and now in New York and elsewhere. Because of the decades of life they
have ahead of them, young people have more interest than their parents
in transforming this world to a more equitable one. But to do so they
must see things for what they are and get behind the real forces for
progressive change.
A popular story in the bourgeois press this week gave an interesting
side-by-side comparison of the lumpen in the United $tates to the Third
World proletariat. The story came on the heels of new repressive
practices targeting Latinos in the state of Georgia with immigration
laws beginning July 1 of this year. For fear of deportation and
imprisonment, both of which restrict their ability to work, migrant
labor crews made up of Mexicans and Guatemalans are steering clear of
Georgia. As a result fruit is rotting in the fields.(1) The story
exposes the extreme parasitism of this country that cannot even harvest
its own food. Amerikans are so rich and spoiled that the labor market
cannot fill jobs paying above minimum wage if the work is too hard. If
the labor market were free and open the jobs would fill up instantly,
but Amerikans oppose this vehemently as they cannot maintain
exploiter-level incomes without closed borders. In these times of
economic crisis many of these parasites would have you believe that they
are “struggling to put food on the table.” As they let food literally
rot in the fields, we see that just is not true.
To solve the relative labor shortage, the governor of Georgia turned to
the population that sits somewhere between the foreign-born and the
Amerikan in terms of citizenship rights – prisoners and the formerly
incarcerated. Generally defined as the permanently unemployed, excluded
from what Marxism calls the “relations of production,” the lumpen class
includes most prisoners by definition. There is a degree of continuity
between the lumpen on the street and the imprisoned lumpen, but many get
out of prison to join the petty bourgeois class that dominates this
country.
One article cites the Georgia Department of Corrections as claiming that
unemployment for all probationers in the state is only 15%, but the
Governor’s office reports that it is 25%.(2) While much higher than the
overall rate of 10% in Georgia, this is still lower than most estimates
for young Black male unemployment, and therefore suspiciously low
considering that most job applications in the United $tates require you
to declare whether you have been imprisoned or convicted of a felony,
and this information is used against the applicant. Just looking at the
25% number might suggest that 75% of Georgia probationers have a greater
continuity with the (employed) petty bourgeoisie than with a lumpen
underclass. Yet recidivism rates in this country over 50% indicate that
many of the alleged 75% with jobs will not be staying in the workforce
for long. The majority of parolees will not remain in the workforce, but
will cycle in and out of jail, prison, rehab, hustling and short-term
employment.
While many former prisoners of the United $tates will never live the
Amerikan dream, their ideology reflects that culture more than that of
the working people of the world. One farmer in Georgia did a
side-by-side comparison with a crew of probationers and a crew of
migrant laborers and the migrants picked almost 6 times as many
cucumbers.(1) Apparently the probationers didn’t even bring gloves, and
we assume most had no experience with this type of work, so there was
certainly room for improvement. But the whole crew didn’t even last a
full day before quitting. The reports are vague about how many
probationers actually lasted more than one day of work, but it was
evidently a minority in this small sample.
In response to recruitment efforts for these jobs among U.$. citizens,
one Black womyn in Georgia was reported to say, “The only people that
would even think about doing that are people who have nothing else left…
An educated black person does not have time for that. They didn’t go to
school to work on a farm, and they’re not going to do it.”(3) We call
those “who have nothing else left” the proletariat, and those who
“[don’t] have time [for hard work]” a parasitic class living off the
labor of the proletariat. By virtue of living in the United $tates
alone, even the lumpen have access to many resources through the highly
developed infrastructure in this country: welfare programs, religious
and charity organizations, and just living off of the excess and waste
of the general population. Overall they are not driven to take the
hardest jobs, and U.$. capitalists must look to the Third World for
labor, even for production that is tied to U.$. soil and therefore pays
exploiter-level wages. (Legally the jobs start at the minimum wage of
$7.25, while piecework incentives allow the fastest pickers to make $20
an hour at one cucumber farm.(1) Of course, when only migrants without
papers are working and the press isn’t around it is common for
agricultural work to pay well below the legal minimum wage.)
During the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR), in a country
where a professor or shop owner was far poorer than the unemployed
Amerikan, the Chinese had to actively combat the type of thinking
epitomized in the petty-bourgeois womyn quoted above. Millions of
petty-bourgeois Chinese went to the countryside to work and be
re-educated. Many youth went happily, excited about building a new
China, while many cried the whole time and went on to write books about
it to explain to Amerikans why the GPCR was so horrible.
There are righteous reasons why a population of unemployed Blacks would
be resistant to working at hard, lower-paying jobs while Amerikans
around them are making much more for sitting around in air conditioning
pushing paper, and we don’t expect that to change under capitalism. That
is why all U.$ citizens will require re-education to become productive
members of society, from the poorest lumpen who despises working for the
white man to the richest CEO whose income could support a large village.
On May 23, 2011, the U$ Supreme Court announced its decision issuing an
order to the California government to release 48,000 prisoners from
various California prisons. The Supreme Court’s decision came after a
long time demand to alleviate the prison crisis in the state of
California. Many in CA maintain that the prisons there are overcrowded,
also that taxpayers cannot afford the high cost of housing that many
prisoners.
The Supreme Court did not allude to the multiple class action lawsuits,
in CA and across the country, the prisoners, their families, and public
filed in the Supreme Court as well as in federal courts across the USA,
regarding wrongful imprisonments, political imprisonment to activists
and whistle-blowers-on-corruption, and regarding over-sentencing on
petty charges! In other words, the Supreme Court ignored the urgent need
for judicial reform, to fight corruption in the judicial system, and law
enforcement reform, to weed out corruption in the police force(s),
across the USA.
The decision came about by votes: 5 justices in favor to 4 justices
opposed, really as a convenience as CA ran out of money, and the feds
too, with a national debt hitting the ceiling of $14.3 trillion! It
wasn’t to alleviate oppression and free the falsely imprisoned. In fact,
neither CA judges nor the US-supreme Court’s judges want to admit that
there is anyone who is falsely imprisoned, due to retaliations, due to
whistle blowing on corruption, or due to a ‘trivial’ reason. No one
among judges, attorneys, or the media ever talks about corruption behind
the prison crisis, anywhere across the USA! Judges and the media, across
the board, pretend that the system is perfect; they presume that all the
judges in the USA and the police officers are completely honest,
upright, and perfect!
The US-Supreme Court did not respond to my/our class action lawsuit
regarding Bill Richardson (former governor of NM) and his scheme with
Joe Williams/GEO to establish the prison industry in NM and demonize the
generations to perpetuate his scheme of profiting from prisons, along
with GEO! The US Supreme Court did not respond to a more than 50 class
action lawsuits, from all across the USA, with more than 200,000
litigants (prisoners, their families and tax payers) who passionately
are asking for a judicial reform and law enforcement reform to weed out
corruption, bribery, racketeering extortion(s), persecution of
minorities, and the treasonous acts of false imprisonments. Instead, the
SC acted on its own and announced its decision, to release the 48,000,
without any detail as to who are those, who are qualified for the
release.(see article on
how
population reduction is taking place)
For example, in our Class Action lawsuit, Public of the State of New
Mexico vs. Bill Richardson, Joe Williams et al, we made it clear to
justice John Roberts that our primary interest in the lawsuit is to
indict and convict Bill Richardson for his multi-scheme of pay-to-play,
or bribery, which includes the prison scheme with Joe Williams/GEO.
Judge John Roberts didn’t respond even though more than 100,000
litigants from NM passionately asked for the indictment and conviction
of Bill Richardson due to his treasonous acts against public of the
state of NM, and public of the USA in general. J. Roberts, as we
believe, did not want to face any embarrassment before President Obama
is shielding and protecting Bill Richardson, for some reason. So it is
all about politics, not justice.
Our primary goal, also, in the above referenced class action lawsuit, is
to release all the wrongfully imprisoned across the USA, in the
following 3 categories: A. We are asking for releasing all the
innocents/falsely imprisoned, first (there are hundreds and thousands of
them, across the USA, despite the judges’ denial of existence of such
category of prisoners). B. We are asking for releasing all the political
prisoners, who were imprisoned as a retaliation because they blew the
whistle on corruption. C. We are asking for releasing all the prisoners
whose charges are benign/trivial, then the non-violent offenders.
MIM(Prisons) responds: This prisoner calls out a good point, that
the imperialist courts do not call for release of prisoners to address
legitimate grievances, but only when finances make it impossible to hold
more. However, we go much further than to call for release of prisoners
in the three categories described above. We see that all prisoners in
the Amerikan criminal injustice system are political prisoners. The
entire system from the police to the courts to the prisons is political.
And we need to put an end to the overall injustice, not just release a
few prisoners.
[Leaders] realize that the success of the struggle presupposes clear
objectives, a definite methodology and above all the need for the mass
of the people to realize that their unorganized efforts can only be a
temporary dynamic. You can hold out for three days – maybe even for
three months – on the strength of the admixture of sheer resentment
contained in the mass of the people; but you won’t win a national war,
you’ll never overthrow the terrible enemy machine, and you won’t change
human beings if you forget to raise the standard of consciousness of the
rank-and-file. Neither stubborn courage nor fine slogans are enough. -
Frantz Fanon, Wretched of the Earth, p. 136, chap. 2, paragraph 57.
Starting in Tunisia on December 17, and spreading across the region in
January and February, the people of north Africa and the Middle East are
taking to the streets to fight brutal dictatorships in their respective
countries. Taken by surprise by the force and longevity of these protest
movements, the various imperialist-backed regimes are working hard to
come up with changes that will pacify the people without fundamentally
changing the system. These just struggles of the people are primarily
targeting the figureheads in government, but the real problem lies in
the system itself and at this stage we are only seeing some shuffling of
the leadership.
Protests are sweeping across the region as the people are emboldened and
inspired by the actions and results of those in neighboring countries,
even moving further south into other parts of Africa. As this article is
being written, there are reports of people’s uprisings in Bahrain,
Libya, Iran, Yemen, Iraq, Kuwait, Algeria, Djibouti, Syria, Morocco and
Jordan. In other parts of Africa, less visible in the media, popular
revolts are also happening in Sudan, Gabon and Ethiopia.(1) Protesters
are facing violent repression by the governments in most of these
countries.
The response in the United $tates has been strong condemnation of
Mubarak and other leaders targeted by protests (among those paying
attention). Arabs may falsely look to Amerikans as friends in their
current struggles. But where was this Amerikan “support” for the last
thirty years as their country bank-rolled Mubarak with billions of
dollars? In reality, their reaction is a sick reminder of what went down
in Iraq. The same seething opposition to Mubarak was aimed at Saddam
Hussein, resulting in the deaths of millions of Iraqis and the
destruction of one of the most developed Arab countries. Iraq is just
one example to demonstrate how Amerikan racism quickly lends itself to
popular support for militarism, the savior of post-WWII U.$. global
dominance.
Economics of the People’s Struggles
There are many differences between these mostly Arabic-speaking
countries, but the one common enemy of the people there is the enemy of
the people throughout the world: imperialism. Capitalism is a system
that is defined by the ownership of the means of production (factories,
farms, etc.) by the wealthy few who we call the bourgeoisie, and who
exploit the majority of the people (the workers, also called the
proletariat) to generate profit for the owners. Imperialism is the
global stage of capitalism where the territories of the world have been
divided up and exploited for profit. Under imperialism, the economy in
each country no longer operates independently, and what happens in one
country has repercussions around the world. Because of this global
interdependence, events in the Middle East and north Africa are very
significant to the Amerikan and European capitalists, and are related to
events in the global economy.
The question of real change hinges on whether the exploited countries
that are now mobilizing stay within the U.$.-dominated economic
structure, or whether they look to each other and turn their back on the
exploiter nations. While militarily and politically controlled by the
United $tates, their economic relationship to imperialism is dominated
by the European Union who was responsible for 50% of trade for countries
in the southern Mediterranean region in 1998. A mere 3% of their trade
was with each other that year.(2) In 2009, these percentages had not
changed, despite the lofty promises of the Euro-Mediterranean Free Trade
Area to develop trade between Arab countries.(3) Tunisia, where the
first spark was lit, had 78% of its exports and 72% of its imports with
the European Union. Compare these numbers to the ASEAN and MERCOSUR
regional trade groups, also made up of predominately Third World
countries, which had about 25% of their trade internally.(4)
The problem with Europe dominating trade in the region is based in the
theories of “unequal exchange” that lead trade between imperialist and
exploited countries to be inherently exploitative. Part of this is
because the north African countries mostly produce agricultural goods
and textiles, which they trade for manufactured goods from Europe. The
former are more susceptible to manipulations in commodities markets
that, of course, are controlled by the imperialist finance capitalists.
The latter are priced high enough to pay European wages, resulting in a
transfer of surplus value from the north African nations to the European
workers.
In order to develop industries for the European market, these countries
have been forced to accept Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) from
the various world banking systems (World Bank, International Monetary
Fund). This has further tied the governments to imperialist interests
over the years, as SAPs have many strings attached. The loans
themselves, which are larger in this region than for the average Third
World country (5), serve to transfer vast amounts of wealth from the
debtor nations to the lender nations in the form of interest payments.
Countries in the Middle East and north Africa generally have greater
relative wealth compared with Third World countries in the rest of
Africa, Asia and Latin America. As a result the people in these
countries enjoy higher levels of education, better health and fewer
people living in poverty.(see World Bank, World Health Organization and
CIA statistics) General trends since WWII are a growing middle class
with an emigrant population that expanded and benefited from European
reconstruction up to the 1980s. Since then immigration restrictions have
increased in the European countries, particularly connected to
“security” concerns after 9/11. The north African countries relate to
the European Union similar to how Mexico does to the United $tates, but
Mexico remains more economically independent by comparison. These
uprisings are certainly connected to the growing population and the
shrinking job market with slower migration to the EU.
Locally, there are economic differences within the region that are
important as well. Other than the stick of oppressive regimes, some
governments in the region have been able to use their oil revenues as a
carrot to slow proletarian unity. Even so, extreme international debt,
increasing unemployment with decreasing migration opportunities and the
overall levels of poverty indicate that these countries are part of the
global proletariat.
The recent economic crisis demonstrates the tenuous hold the governments
of the Middle East and north African countries had on their people.
Because imperialism is a global system with money, raw material and
consumer goods produced and exchanged on a global market, economic
crises happen on a global scale. The economic crisis of the past few
years has affected the economy of this region with rising cost of living
and increased unemployment rates. In particular food prices have reached
unprecedented highs in the past few months.(6) One might think this
would help the large agricultural sectors in these countries. However,
food prices affect the Third World disproportionately because of the
portion of their income spent on food and the form their food is
consumed in. On top of this, all of these countries have come to import
much of their cereal staples as their economies have been structured to
produce for European consumption.
Reliable economic statistics are difficult to find for this region.
Estimates of unemployment in any country can range from under 10% up to
40% and even higher, and there is similar variability in estimates of
the portion of the population living below the poverty level. But all
agree that both unemployment and poverty have been on the rise in the
past two years. We suspect this trend dates back further with the
decrease in migration opportunities mentioned above.
In Egypt about two-thirds of the population is under age 30 and more
than 85% of these youth are unemployed. About 40% of Egypt’s population
lives on less than $2 a day.(7)
The middle class in these countries, who enjoy some economic advantages,
are sliding further into poverty. This group is particularly large in
Tunisia and Egypt compared to many other countries in the region.(8) In
Egypt the middle class increased from 10% to 30% of the population in
the second half of the 20th century, with half of those people being
“upper” middle class.(9) This class has been closely linked to the rise
of NGOs encouraged by the European-led Euro-Mediterranean Free Trade
Area. They know that it is possible for them to have a better standard
of living and enjoy more political freedom without a complete overthrow
of the capitalist system. And so we saw many of the leaders and
participants in the recent protests demand better conditions for
themselves, but generally leave out the demands of the proletariat.
In fact, some middle class leaders, like Wael Ghonim (an Egyptian Google
employee who was a vocal leader in the fight against Mubarak), are
calling for striking workers to go back to work now that Mubarak has
stepped down, effectively opposing the demands and struggles of the
Egyptian proletariat. Without the leadership of the proletariat, who
have never had significant benefits from imperialism, these protests end
up representing middle class demands to shuffle the capitalist deck and
put another imperialist-lackey government in place. The result might be
a slight improvement in middle class conditions but the proletariat ends
up right back where they started.
In Tunisia and Egypt, where the uprisings started, the leadership and
many of the activists were from the educated middle class youth.(10) In
Tunisia people were inspired to act after the suicide of Mohammed
Bouazizi, an impoverished young vegetable street seller supporting an
extended family of eight. He set himself on fire in a public place on
December 17 after the police confiscated his produce because he would
not pay a bribe. Like many youth in Tunisia, Bouazizi was unable to find
a job after school. He completed the equivalent of Amerikan high school,
but there are many Tunisian youth who graduate from college and are
still unable to find work.
The relative calm in the heavy oil producing region that includes Saudi
Arabia, UAE, Oman and Qatar underscores the key role of economics and
class in these events. These countries enjoy a much higher economic
level than the rest of the region, as a direct result of the consumerist
First World’s dependence on their natural resources. Only Libya joins
these countries in having a Gross National Income (GNI) per capita above
$5000, while all others in the region are below that level.(11) That’s
compared to a GNI in the U.$ of $46,730.(12)
One economic factor that has not made the news much and which does not
seem to be a focus of the protesters so far, is the importing of foreign
labor to do the worst jobs in the wealthy oil-producing countries. In
the Gulf Cooperation Council (consisting of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the
UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait and the Sultanate of Oman) there are an estimated
10 million foreign workers and 3 million of their family members living
in these countries.(13) This was used as a carrot to the proletariat who
were losing opportunities to work in the European Union. Egypt in
particular encouraged this emigration of workers.
Revolutions or Unrest?
To belittle the just struggles of people around the world, typical
imperialist media is referring to the recent uprisings as “unrest,” as
if the people just need to be calmed down to bring things back to
normal. On the other side, many protesters and their supporters are
calling these movements revolutions. For communists, the label
“revolution” is used to describe movements fighting for fundamental
change in the economic structure. In the world today, that means
fighting to overthrow imperialism and for the establishment of socialism
so that we can implement a system where the people control the means of
production, taking that power and wealth out of the hands of just a few
people.
The global system of imperialism puts the nations of the Middle East and
north Africa on the side of the oppressed. These nations have comprador
leaders running their governments, who get rich by working for
imperialist masters. Yet these struggles are very focused on the
governments in power in each country without making these broader
connections. Until the people make a break with imperialist control,
changes in local governments won’t lead to liberation of the people.
Further, we have heard much from both organizers and the press about
social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) as a tool of the revolution.
These tools are celebrated as a replacement for leadership. It is true
that the internet is a useful tool for sharing information and
organizing, and decentralization makes it harder to repress a movement.
But the lack of ideological unity leads to the lowest common
denominator, and very few real demands from the people. No doubt
“Mubarak out” is not all the Egyptian people can rally around, but
without centralized leadership it is hard for the people to come
together to generate other demands.
Related to the use of social media, it is worth underscoring the value
of information that came from
Wikileaks
to help galvanize the people to action in these countries; the
corruption and opulence of the leaders described in cables leaked at the
end of 2010 no doubt helped inspire the struggles.(14)
Egypt provides a good example of why we would not call these protest
movements “revolutions.” The Egyptian people forced President Mubarak
out of the country, but accepted his replacement with the Supreme
Council of the Military - essentially one military dictatorship was
replaced by another. One of the key members of this Council is Sueliman,
the CIA point man in the country and head of the Egyptian general
intelligence service. He ran secret prisons for the United $tates and
persynally participated in the torturing of those prisoners.
Tunisia is also a good example of the lack of fundamental revolutionary
change. Tunisia’s president of 23 years, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali,
stepped down on January 14 and fled to Saudi Arabia. But members of Ben
Ali’s corrupt party remained in positions of power throughout the
government and protests continue.
In State and Revolution Lenin wrote that the revolution must
set a goal “not of improving the state machine, but of smashing and
destroying it.” The protests and peoples’ struggles in the Middle East
and Africa reinforce the importance of this message as we see the
sacrifice of life in so many countries resulting in only cosmetic
changes in governments.
What is the United $tates interest?
The United $tates is the biggest imperialist power in the world today;
it controls the largest number and most wealth-producing territories in
the world. Just as the economic crises of imperialism affect the rest of
the world, political uprisings around the world affect the United
$tates. The capitalist corporations who have factories and investments
in this region have a strong financial interest in stability and a
government that will allow them to continue to exploit the resources and
labor. And with capitalism’s constant need to expand, any shrinking of
the imperialist sphere of influence will help trigger future crises
faster.
The Amerikan military interest in this region relies on having some
strong puppet governments as allies to defend the interests of Amerikan
imperialism and hold off the independent aspirations of the regional
capitalists. This includes managing the planet’s largest oil reserves,
which is important for U.$. control of the European Union, and defending
their #1 lackey - Israel.
Tunisia is a long-standing ally of the United $tates, cooperating with
Amerikan “anti-terrorism” to maintain Amerikan imperialist power in the
region. Other imperialist powers also have a strong interest in the
dictatorships in Tunisia including France whose government shipped tear
gas grenades to Tunis on January 12 to help Ben Ali fight the
protesters.(15)
Bahrain is a close U.$. ally, home to the U.$. Navy’s Fifth Fleet.(16)
Egypt has been second only to Israel in the amount of U.$. aid it gets
since 1979, at about $2 billion a year. The majority of this money,
about $1.3 billion a year, goes to the Egyptian military.(17) Further,
the United $tates trains the Egyptian military each year in combined
military exercises and deployments of U.$. troops to Egypt.(18) So for
Amerika, the Supreme Council of the Military taking power in Egypt is a
perfectly acceptable “change.” To shore up the new regime and its
relationship with the United $tates, Secretary of State Clinton
announced on February 18 that the United $tates would give $150 million
in aid to Egypt to help with economic problems and “ensure an orderly,
democratic transition.” In exchange, the Council has already pledged to
uphold the 1979 peace accords with Israel. Prior to 1979, much of the
Arab world was engaged in long periods of wars with the settler state.
United $tates aid to countries in this region is centered around Israel.
The countries closest geographically to Israel are the biggest
recipients of Amerikan money, a good way to keep control of the area
surrounding the biggest Amerikan ally. In addition to Egypt and Israel,
Jordan ($843 million) and Lebanon ($238 million) received sizable
economic and military aid packages in 2010.(19) Compared to these
numbers, “aid” to the rest of the region is significantly smaller with
notable recipients including Yemen ($67M), Morocco ($35M), Bahrain
($21M) and Tunisia ($19M). The United $tates gives “aid” in exchange for
economic, military and political influence.
Is Wisconsin the Amerikan Tunisia?
The global economic crisis clearly affects imperialist countries like
the United $tates just like it does other countries of the world, but we
don’t see the people in this country rising up to take over Washington,
DC and demanding a change in government. Like the Middle East, the youth
of Amerika are having a harder time finding jobs after graduation from
college. But unlike their counterparts in the Middle East, Amerikan
youth and their families do not face starvation when this happens.
Some people are drawing comparisons between the widespread protests by
labor unions in Wisconsin and the events in Tunisia and Egypt. These
events do give us a good basis for comparison to underscore the
differences between imperialist countries and the Third World. Amerikan
wealth is so much greater than the rest of the world (U.$. GDP per
capita = $46,436); even compared to oil-rich countries like Saudi Arabia
(GDP = $24,200). GDP does not account for the distribution of wealth,
but in the United $tates the median household income in 2008 was
$52,029. This number is not inflated by the extreme wealth of a few
individuals, it represents the middle point in income for households in
this country.
On the surface, unemployment statistics for the United $tates appear
similar to some numbers for countries in the Middle East and north
Africa. In 2008, 13.2% of the population was unemployed in the United
$tates based on the latest census data.(20) However, with income levels
so much higher in Amerika, unemployment doesn’t mean an immediate plunge
into poverty and starvation. For youth in this country, there is the
safety net of moving back in with parents if there is no immediate
post-college job.
Similarly, U.$. poverty statistics appear quite high, comparable to
rates in the Middle East and north Africa, at 14.3% in 2009. But this
poverty rate uses chauvinistic standards of poverty for Amerikans. The
U.$. census bureau puts the poverty level of a single individual with no
dependents at $11,161.(21) Much higher than the statistics that look at
the portion of the population living at $2 or $1.25 per day (adjusted
for differences in purchasing power). Wisconsin public teachers average
salaries of about $48k per year.
The Leading Light Communist Organization produced some clear economic
comparisons between Egypt and the U.$.: “The bottom 90% of income
earners in Egypt make only half as much (roughly $5,000 USD annually) as
the bottom 10% of income earners in the U.$. (roughly [$]10,000), per
capita distribution. Depending on the figures used, an egalitarian
distribution of the global social product is anywhere between $6,000 and
$11,000 per capita annually. This does not even account for other
inequalities between an exploiter country and an exploited country, such
as infrastructure, housing, productive forces, quality and diversity of
consumer goods, etc.”(22)
In the United $tates it is possible for the elite to enjoy their
millionaire lifestyles while the majority of the workers are kept in
relative luxury with salaries that exceed the value of their labor. This
is possible because other countries, like those in the Middle East and
Africa, are supplying the exploited workforce that generates profits to
be brought home and shared with Amerikan workers. Even Amerikan workers
who are unemployed and struggling to pay bills are not rallying for an
end to the economic system of capitalism. They are just demanding more
corporate taxes and less CEO bonuses. In other words they want a bigger
piece of the imperialist pie: money that comes at the expense of the
Third World workers. These same Amerikan workers rally behind their
government in wars of aggression around the world, overwhelmingly
supporting the fight against the Al-Qaeda boogeyman in Arab clothing.
Down with Amerikanism, Long Live Pan-Arabism
Whether in Madison or Cairo, signs implying that Wisconsin is the
Tunisia of north Amerika are examples of what we call “false
internationalism” on both sides of the divide between rich and poor
nations. Combating false internationalism, which is inherent in any
pro-Amerikanism in the Third World, is part of the fight against
revisionism in general.
What no one can deny is the connection between the mass mobilizations
across the Arab world. That this represents a reawakening of pan-Arabism
is both clear and promising for the anti-imperialist struggle. Even
non-Arab groups in north Africa that have felt marginalized will benefit
from the greater internationalist consciousness and inherent
anti-imperialism with an Arabic-speaking world united against First
World exploitation and interference.
Of course, Palestine also stands to benefit from these movements. The
colonial dominance of Palestine has long been a lightning rod issue for
the Arab world, that only the U.$. puppet regimes (particularly in
Egypt) have been able to repress.
Everyone wants to know what’s next. While the media can create hype
about the “successful revolutions” in Tunisia and Egypt, this is just
the beginning if there is to be any real change. Regional unity needs to
lead to more economic cooperation and self-sufficiency and to unlink the
economies of the Arab countries from U.$. and European imperialism.
Without that, the wealth continues to flow out of the region to the
First World.
As Frantz Fanon discussed extensively in writing about colonial Algeria,
the spontaneous violence of the masses must be transformed into an
organized, conscious, national violence to rid the colony of the
colonizer. Unfortunately, his vision was not realized in the
revolutionary upsurge that he lived through in north Africa and
neo-colonialism became the rule across the continent. Today, the masses
know that imperialism in Brown/Black face is no better. As fast as the
protests spread, they must continue to spread to the masses of the Arab
world before we will see an independent and self-determined people.
This is a response to the article “PART’s Perspective: The Missing
Ingredient” by Michael Novick in the Jan-March 2011 issue of
Turning the Tide - Journal of
the Anti-Racist Action Research & Education.
The article begins by asking the question, “What is the recipe for a
revolutionary transformation of this society?” and then goes on to cite
a litany of “evidence” for its need including melting glaciers, massive
high school drop out rates, declining housing market and other
social-economic problems.
The author then asks, speaking about these obvious problems and
oppressive realities faced by the people on a daily basis, “…if the
evidence is so clear, why is the population so docile?…what happened, in
the US, to the in-the-streets anti-war movement, or the
anti-globalization movement before it?”
The answer to these questions is clear when we do a revolutionary
analysis of class society: the so-called “working-class” in the United
$tates has been bought off by the capitalist class and become a labor
aristocracy, especially the white working class. This class has
absolutely no material interest in revolution. In fact, before they
would join the anti-imperialist movement, we’ll see them in fascist
revolution. That’s what the Tea Party and neo-confederates represent.
Without a doubt or contradiction, since the election of the neo-colonial
President Obama, there has been an increase in hate crimes and
membership in neo-nazi organizations. However, these must be challenged
with counter-forces equal to or stronger than theirs. And, this can’t be
done by appeals to moralism, focoism or adventurism, but by organizing
the people on a realistic basis to confront this problem with strength,
intelligence and diligence, lest we fool ourselves: again!
The only people who truly have a material interest in revolutionizing
this society are prisoners, undocumented workers and the youth (who’ll
be called upon in later years to fight, kill and die for imperialism or
who will suffer from a fucked up environment.) These forces must unite
with the international proletariat in the Third World who face the worst
of imperialism on a daily basis. In our current situation the principal
political task is organizing of the oppressed around a solid political
line in order to build and construct our own independent institutions.
While the overall meaning behind “The Missing Ingredient” is progressive
and agitational, it seems to me that the author was trying to moralize
to the very social parasites who benefit so greatly from imperialism.
Rest assured that they recognize their privileged status in relation to
the rest of the world and are not gonna give it up without a bloody
fight.
MIM(Prisons) adds: We agree with this assessment of Michael
Novick’s article. Like the revolutionary bourgeois nationalists,
Anti-Racist Action has a similar historical assessment of U.$.
imperialism to Maoism, leading to a strong criticism of settlers, and
privileged white people. And while their recognition of the need for
self-determination of internal semi-colonies makes them worthy allies,
they too end up dreaming of a
Socialist
Republic of North America based in bridging the divide of class
unity with white workers.
This comrade’s warning should not be taken lightly. As imperialist
crisis is likely to worsen in the near future, these wavering allies
will want more and more to see a revolutionary upsurge in the richest,
most reactionary nation on the planet. Instead, we must follow the
example of the Third International in World War II, who ditched the
“social-fascists” who wavered in the face of war and crisis. Drawing
hard lines on who are our friends and who are our enemies is a question
of life and death for countless people in the future.
Defying the Tomb: Selected Prison Writings and Art of Kevin “Rashid”
Johnson, Featuring Exchanges with an Outlaw by Kevin “Rashid”
Johnson, Minister of Defense, New Afrikan Black Panther Party- Prison
Chapter December
2010 Kersplebedeb CP
63560, CCCP Van Horne Montreal, Quebec Canada H3W 3H8
also available from: AK Press 674-A 23rd Street Oakland, CA
94612
This book centers around the political dialogue between two
revolutionary New Afrikan prisoners. The content is very familiar to
MIM(Prisons) and will be to our readers. It is well-written, concise and
mostly correct. Therefore it is well worth studying.
Rashid’s book is also worth studying alongside this review to better
distinguish the revisionist line of the New Afrikan Black Panther Party
- Prison Chapter (NABPP-PC) with the MIM line. While claiming to
represent a dialectal materialist assessment of the world we live in,
the camp that includes the NABPP-PC, and Tom Big Warrior’s (TBW) Red
Heart Warrior Society have dogmatically stuck to positions on the
oppression and exploitation of Amerikans that have no basis in reality.
We will take some space to address this question at the end, as it has
not been thoroughly addressed in public to our knowledge.
Coming Up
Both Rashid and Outlaw preface their letters with their own
autobiographies. Rashid’s in particular is an impressive, almost
idealized story of lumpen turned proletarian revolutionary. The simple
principle that guides him through prison life is standing up to the pigs
every time they violate a prisoner. At times he has inspired those
around him to the point that the pigs can’t get away with anything. The
problem, he later points out, is the others are inspired by him as an
individual. So when he was moved, or sent to a control unit, their unity
crumbled.
At first, control units seemed an effective tool to control his
resistance. But it is then that he found revolutionary theory. Rather
than stay focused on combating minor behavior issues of the COs, he
began to learn about societies that didn’t have cops and prisons, and
societies where the people rose up to transform the whole economic
system. It is through ideology that you can build lasting unity that
can’t be destroyed by transfers and censorship.
Both Rashid and Outlaw conclude their autobiographies saying they have
nothing to lose. They are two examples of the extreme repression felt by
the lumpen of the oppressed nations. As a result, state terrorism no
longer works to intimidate them, leaving them free to serve the people.
Democratically Centralized Organizing
In the foreword, Russell “Maroon” Shoats says his reason for not joining
the NABPP-PC was that it claimed to operate under democratic centralism,
which he believes is impossible for prisoners. We agree with his
assessment, which is why we do not invite prisoners to join MIM(Prisons)
even when their work and ideological development would otherwise warrant
it. The benefits of having a tight cadre organization are lost when its
inner workings are wide open to the pigs. Maroon points out that certain
leaders will end up with absolute power (with the pigs determining who
leads, we might add), and much resources are wasted just trying to
maintain the group.
For the most part, there is nothing a comrade could do within prison as
a member of MIM(Prisons) that they can’t do as a member of USW. There is
much work to be done to develop this mass organization, and we need
experienced and ideologically trained comrades to lead it. When the
situation develops to the point of having local cadre level
organizations within a prison, then we would promote the cell structure,
where democratic centralism can occur at a local level, just as we do on
the outside.
In the last essay of the book, Rashid finally answers Maroon by saying
that the NABPP-PC is a pre-party that will become real (along with its
democratic centralism) outside of prisons.
The Original Black Panther Party
The main criticism of the original
Black
Panther Party (BPP) in Rashid’s essay on organizational structure is
their failure to distinguish between the vanguard party and the mass
organization. Connected to this was a failure to practice democratic
centralism. How could they when they were signing up members fresh off
the street? These new recruits shouldn’t have the same say as Huey
Newton, but neither should Huey Newton alone dictate what the party
does. We agree with Rashid that the weakness of the BPP came from these
internal contradictions, which allowed the FBI to destroy it so
quickly.(p. 353)
It’s not clear how this assessment relates to an earlier section where
he implies that an armed mass base and better counterintelligence would
have protected the BPP. Rashid criticizes MIM’s line, as he sees it,
that a Black revolutionary party cannot operate above ground in the
United $tates today.(p. 133) Inexplicably, 15 pages later he seems to
agree with MIM by stating that Farrakhan would have to go underground or
be killed the next day if he opposed capitalism and promoted real New
Afrikan independence.
He also criticizes MIM on armed struggle and their assessment of George
Jackson’s foco theory.
Mao
applied Sun Tzu’s Art of War to the imperialist countries
to say that revolutionaries should not engage in armed struggle until
their governments are truly helpless. Rashid says that he agrees with
MIM’s criticism of the Cuban model that lacked a mass base for
revolution. But he supports George Jackson’s “variant of urban-based
focos, emphasiz[ing] that a principal purpose of revolutionary armed
struggle is to not only destroy the enemy’s forces, but to protect the
political work and workers…”(p.134) He goes on to criticize MIM for a
“let’s wait” line that ends up promoting a bloodless revolution in his
view.
He complains that the U.$. military was already overextended (in 2004)
and MIM was “still just talking.” But Mao defined the point to switch
strategies as when “the bourgeoisie becomes really helpless, [and] the
majority of the proletariat are determined to rise in arms and fight…”
MIM(Prisons) agrees with Mao’s military strategy, and one would have to
be in a dream world to imply that either of these conditions have been
reached, despite the level of U.$. military involvement abroad. Rashid
is saying that we need armed struggle regardless of conditions to defend
our political wing. Despite his successes with using force to defend the
masses in prison, we do not think this translates to conditions in
general society. Guerrilla theory that tells us to only fight battles we
know we can win also says not to take up defensive positions around
targets that we can’t defend.
Another criticism made by Rashid is that the BPP didn’t enforce a policy
of members committing class suicide, and he seems to criticize their
self-identification as a “lumpen” party in 1970 and 1971. Interestingly,
he foresees a “working-class-conscious petty bourgeois” leading the New
Afrikan liberation struggle.(p.232) He comes down left of the current
New
Afrikan Maoist Party (NAMP) line by condemning the call for
independent Black capitalism as unrealistic, and requiring the petty
bourgeoisie to commit class suicide as well.(p.177) Whether the vanguard
is more petty bourgeois or lumpen in origin is a minor point, but we
mention all this to ask why all the class suicide if all Amerikans are
so exploited and oppressed as he claims elsewhere (see below)?
Tom Big Warrior
In contrast to Rashid, except for some superficial mentions of Maoist
terminology, we don’t have much agreement with Tom Big Warrior (TBW) in
his introduction or his afterword to this book. In both, he states that
the principal contradiction in the world is internal to the U.$. empire,
and it is between its need to consolidate hegemony and the chaos it
creates. This implies a theory where imperialism is collapsing
internally, and will be taken down by chaos rather than the conscious
rising of the oppressed nations as MIM(Prisons) believes. He speaks
favorably of intercommunalism, as has Rashid who once wrote that “the
old definitions of nationalism no longer apply.” We see intercommunalism
as an ultra-left line that undermines the approach of national
liberation struggles.
Speaking for the NABPP-PC on page 380, TBW states that they want a
Comintern to direct revolutionaries around the world. We oppose a new
Comintern, following in the footsteps of MIM, Mao and Stalin. In the
past, TBW has taken up other erroneous lines of the rcp=u$a such as
accusing Third World nations of “Muslim fascism.” He also talks out of
both sides of his mouth like Bob Avakian about Amerikan workers
benefiting from imperialism, but also being victims of it. He has openly
attacked the MIM line as being “crazy,” while admitting to have never
studied it. This is the definition of idealism, when one condemns
theories based on what one desires to be the truth.
Wait, Are Whites Revolutionary?
After reading this book, you might ask yourself that question. Comrades
have already asked this question of NABPP-PC and TBW in the past and
received a clear answer of “yes.” This debate is old. The former Maoist
Internationalist Movement (MIM) had it with the so-called “Revolutionary
Communist Party (USA)” (rcp=u$a), among others, for decades before
denouncing them as a CIA front. Interestingly, Rashid and TBW both like
to quote Bob Avakian but fail to provide an assessment or criticism of
the rcp=u$a line in this 386 page volume.
Most of these writings predate the formation of the NABPP-PC, but are
presented in a book with the NABPP-PC’s name on it, so we will take it
as representative of their line. The history of struggle with the MIM
camp dates back to the original writing of much of the material
presented in this book. Comrades in the MIM camp, including United
Struggle from Within, the emerging NAMP, and a comrade who went on to
help found MIM(Prisons) engaged in debates with all of the leading
members of the party, as well as TBW, shortly after their formation.
The point is that not only had at least two of the NABPP-PC’s leaders
studied MIM line prior to forming their own, but they openly opposed
this line following their formation. While not addressed directly, it
seems that the only line dividing the NABPP-PC from joining the rcp=u$a
is its belief in the need for a separate vanguard for the New Afrikan
nation.
Contradictory Class Analyses: Economics
On pages 205-6 Outlaw asks Rashid:
“But from your analysis of these classes who do you consider to be the
most revolutionary, considering the majority of workers in empire are
complacent to some degree or another, due to the international class
relationships of empire to the Third World nations, and the conveniences
proletarians, and even lumpen-proletarians, are afforded as a result of
that international situation and relationship?”
Rashid responds on pages 208-9 by stating that our class analysis is
“mandatory for waging any successful resistance” but
that he is only able to give a general analysis due to his lack of
access to information. He does say:
“[T]he US is neither a majority peasant nor proletarian society. It is
principally petty bourgeoisie. It has an over 80% service-based economy…
So the US proletarian class is small and growing increasingly so, while
the world proletariat is growing and becoming increasingly
multi-ethnic.”
On page 122 he also upholds this line that all non-productive workers
are petty bourgeois, and not exploited proletarians. On page 232 he
expands this analysis to explain the relationship between the
imperialist nations, who are predominantly petty bourgeois, and the
Third World that is mostly exploited. But in a footnote he takes it all
back saying, “modern technological advances have broadened the scope of
the working class” and clearly states, “[t]he predominantly service
sector US working class is in actuality part of the proletarian class.”
He justifies this by saying that the income of these service workers is
no different than the industrial proletariat. Yet he takes an obviously
chauvinist approach of only comparing incomes of Amerikans. The real
industrial proletariat is in the Third World and makes a small fraction
of what Amerikan so-called “workers” do.
We agree that it is dogmatic to say this persyn is proletariat because
she makes the tools and this persyn is not because she cleans the
factory. But this is a minor point. The real issue is that whole
countries, such as the United $tates, are not self-sustainable, but are
living on the labor and resources of other nations. A country that is
made up of mostly service workers cannot continue to pay all its people
without exploiting wealth from somewhere else, since only the productive
labor creates value.
A less disputed line put forth by Rashid and TBW is that U.$. prisoners
are exploited. We have put forth our
thesis
debunking the exploitation myth, and exposing the prison system as an
example of the parasitic “service” economy built on the sweat and blood
of the Third World.(see
ULK 8) More
outrageously, in an article on the 13th Amendment, Rashid says that over
1/2 of Amerikans are currently “enslaved” by capitalism. This article
contains some unrealistic claims, such as that no one could possibly
enjoy working in the imperialist countries, and that these workers do
not have freedom of mobility. Over half of Amerikans own homes. Not only
are these alleged “slaves” landowners, but in the modern imperialist
economy real estate has become more closely related to finance capital
in a way that super-profits are gained by owning
real
estate in the First World. (see
ULK 17)
Both Rashid and Outlaw demonstrate an understanding of the relationship
between imperialist countries and the Third World, with Rashid going so
far to say that reparations to New Afrika outside of a war against
imperialism would mean more exploitation of the proletariat. While
contradictory, Rashid’s economic analysis in the original letters is
more correct than not. In his treatment of history we will see more
confusion, and perhaps some reasons why he ended up finding the
“multi-national working class” to be the necessary vehicle for
revolution in the United $tates despite his focus on single-nation
organizing.
Contradictory Class Analyses: History
While repeatedly recalling the history of poor whites becoming slave
catchers, marking the first consolidation of the white nation, Rashid
lists “join[ing] their struggle up with the Israeli working class” as
one of the strategies that would have led to greater success for
Hamas.(p.50) This schizophrenic approach to the settler nations is
present throughout the book. He echoes J. Sakai on Bacon’s Rebellion,
but then discards the overall lessons of Sakai’s book
Settlers: The
Mythology of the White Proletariat. While Sakai argued that these
poor, former indentured servants had joined the oppressor nation in
1676, Rashid argues that modern-day Israelis and Amerikans, most of whom
are in the top 10% income bracket globally, are exploited proletarians
and allies in the struggle for a communist future.
Later in the book he goes so far as to say that white “right-wing
militias, survivalists and military hobbyists” are “potential allies”
who “have a serious beef with imperialist monopoly capitalism.” This
issue came to the forefront with the “anti-globalization” movement in
the later 1990s. Both
MIM
and J. Sakai(1) led the struggle to criticize the anti-imperialist
anarchists for following the lead of the white nationalist organizations
calling for Amerikan protectionism. These groups are the making of a
fascist movement in the United $tates which is why the distinction
between exploited and exploiter nations is so important.
In the discussion of the Republic of New Afrika (RNA) we gain some
insight into Rashid’s contradictory lines on who our friends and enemies
are. Here he correctly explains that European countries bought off their
domestic populations with wealth from the Third World, to turn those
working classes against the Third World workers and peasants. But his
turn from the MIM line takes place in attempting to address the strategy
of the RNA. He sees a strong danger of neo-colonialism in the RNA
struggle for national liberation, as happened in the numerous liberation
struggles in Africa itself. So he talks about how ultimately we want a
world without nations, so let’s put class first to solve this problem
(and he assumes most white Amerikans are proletariat). This is an
ultraleft error of getting ahead of conditions. He goes on to say that
the imperialists would easily turn the white population against a
minority New Afrikan liberation movement trying to seize the Black Belt
South. Here you have a rightist justification for pragmatism.
This is not to dismiss either of those concerns, which are very real.
But his solution in both cases is based in a faulty class analysis. This
book paraphrases Mao to point out that your class analysis is your
starting point, and that your political line determines your success.
Liquidating a New Afrikan revolutionary movement into a white class
struggle over superprofits will not succeed in achieving his stated
goals of a world without oppression. While the
original
Black Panthers themselves put forth different class analyses of Amerika
at various points, they proved in practice that developing strong
Black nationalism will bring out those sectors of the white population
who are sympathetic. We must not cater to the majority of white people,
but to the world’s majority of people.
Dangers of Revisionism
The danger of revisionism is that it works to lead good potential
recruits away from the revolutionary cause, both setting back the
movement and discouraging others. The fact that Rashid sounds like MIM
half the time in this book makes it more likely he will attract those
with more scientific outlooks. We think those familiar with MIM
Theory, or who have at least read this review could find this book
both useful and interesting. However, the NABPP-PC and TBW are actively
promoting a number of incorrect lines under the Panther banner, to the
very people who need the Panthers’ correct example of Maoism the most.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure and it is far beyond
time that we bring these criticisms into the open to advance the
ideological understanding of the whole movement.
Recently the Governor of California lowered the excessive and
unnecessary amount of money that federal capitalist workers received. I
don’t know the intimate details, I just know that instead of being payed
$20 and $35 an hour, they were paid the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an
hour. Outrage and hiss fits all around. You can’t do that Governador,
how will we overeat, overspend and hoard. Now there’s a problem.
I remember a few years back an uneducated, because I’m a guard and
you’re a prisoner, bourgeois pig was debating me over how he should
treat prisoners. His main argument is what they all believe, “you did
what you did to get yourself in prison.” I wouldn’t be in prison if I
and people similarly situated like me had opportunities to strive to be
my best, instead of being oppressed and repressed and suppressed at
every turn and door I (we) enter. The so-called crime or activity which
got me in prison, would not be a crime in a socialist society because I
would not have to seek other alternatives of financial gain to survive.
That would be my counterargument.
Then this defender of capitalist mentality, “dog eat dog,” comes with
“you should get a job, even if it’s at a fast food restaurant.” They
only pay minimum wage. That’s not enough to survive on, to educate
myself, to save for my future children’s survival. I’m only working to
get up to work all over, with nothing to show for what I’ve done. It’s
like an artist selling his paintings, her art, her time, skill and
energy, his life sweat and blood, just to be able to pay for the
supplies that was used to produce the painting, the art. “Working for
minimum wage is better than nothing” was his curtain call.
Now a few years later when the shoe is on the other foot, now minimum
wage is not better than nothing. Now it’s a slap in their face. It’s
alright for the lower working class, it’s enough for the proletariat to
be paid and have to survive off of minimum wage, but not the middle
class. It’s too small, not enough for the bourgeois. That’s one of the
many faces of capitalism. Rise, rebel, revolt, revolution. All power to
the people.
MIM(Prisons) responds: This article correctly points out the
dual standards of the petty-bourgeoisie but we do not agree with the
author that workers earning minimum wage in Amerika are part of the
proletariat. Even minimum wage is more than the value of the labor
Amerikan workers expend. We will not deny that jobs like those in fast
food restaurants are alienating and they do not provide opportunities to
advance. And in a consumerist economy where what you own is who you are,
they also make it very hard for Amerikans to compete with the wealthier
petty bourgeoisie.
The proposal by Schwarzenegger (which surprise, surprise, never
happened) would have taken the average California state worker from the
top 0.88% richest people in the world to the top 12.23% richest
(ignoring that they would actually be reimbursed the difference later
under the proposal). As MIM demonstrated with extensive research and
publications like MIM Theory 1 and 10, Amerikan citizens are part of the
global petty bourgeoisie and so do not have an economic interest in
ending imperialism. Even those working minimum wage jobs might protest
and demand more money, but that’s because they see that they can expect
more because most of their peers in Amerika are getting it.
The basis for unity among lumpen is class. The lumpen are the
disenfranchised who derive from the economically depressed areas - the
Barrios and ghetto projects - and are for the most part oppressed
nations people. The lumpen are known to the oppressor nation as the
‘criminal element’ which is code word for persyn of color. The lumpen
usually come from a lumpen organization that the oppressors call a
‘gang,’ or survive as some type of parasitic hustler. Although we do
make choices, often times in imperialist society our choice to engage in
crime is a logical one due to the national oppression we endure.
As communists it is our job to fully understand the laws of social
development, and the lumpen are an essential part of these laws today,
especially here in the imperialist stronghold. In Marx’s theory of
‘social relations of production’ lies the question of ownership, that is
what ‘class’ owns the tools and what ‘class’ uses the tools. In this
imperialist society the lumpen neither own nor use the tools. We are
excluded from production and live under the heel of capitalist relations
of production. The propertied class has monopolized the productive
forces. The lumpen play a crucial role in Amerika in the creation of new
productive forces that will come into contradiction with the decaying
social relations of production. The current economic crisis is helping
to streamline this process.
The lumpen is a class, regardless of what nationality one comes from; we
all have similar relations to the tools of society and the distribution
of society’s wealth. It is a group that experiences the same oppression
and is fighting the same imperialist monster.
It is understood that as national oppression exists it is thus only
natural for there to also be national liberation struggles to combat the
unevenness in this society, and for revolutionary national struggles to
work to bring safety to the people who live in a constant police state
in areas of the oppressed nations. This is the correct stance in the
face of any oppression. But we can’t get caught playing the same
dog-eat-dog game that the imperialists play on us and our fellow lumpen.
We need an Aztlán Liberation Front that is in unity with the lumpen.
The lumpen in Amerika must begin to realize that we are a class and
lumpen fighting lumpen does nothing to liberate any oppressed nation. On
the contrary, lumpen-on-lumpen crime will only strengthen the
imperialist vice grip on our necks! This is why unity amongst the lumpen
is the first step to liberation of all oppressed nations in the United
$tates. We don’t have to agree on everything, but we must have unity and
work together with the full realization that we are up against not just
the same monster but one that happens to run the world militarily.
It is essential for the lumpen to come together in a united front in
order for liberation to ever be a reality on these shores. Without the
critical element of the united front, liberation struggles of any kind
are simply idle talk and will not produce. The function of the united
front for the oppressed nations and ULK should be 1) to
practice peoples’ power within the prison system and thoroughly
politicize the U.$. prison system, and 2) to practice peoples’ power
within the Barrios and ghetto projects out in society and thoroughly
politicize these oppressed nation areas. These functions should be done
with the idea of preparing these grounds for future insurrection.
Lumpen Unite with the International Proletariat!
The basis for unity between the lumpen and the international proletariat
is again class-based. The lumpen are connected to the international
proletariat by their common oppression by the imperialists and their
popular resistance to this oppression. What we must keep in mind is the
imperialists think and act on a global scale so we must do the same.
Just as many have used the saying “don’t show up at a gun battle with a
knife,” we don’t want to show up with a “not in my backyard” mentality
when the imperialists show up with an international colonization
mentality. We must think of the big picture and on a grand scale of
things. Of course we must first work in a particular area, as
MIM(Prisons) works primarily with the prison population, to start from
one area and eventually expand to include larger or multiple fronts of
struggle. All our efforts should be with the intention of chipping away
at imperialism.
Regardless of one’s oppressed nation, it really is the same struggle
against the same opponent. Currently this is seen unabashed by the
imperialists’ mega-prison system housing millions of Brown, Black, Red
and Yellow people. It is seen in people of color hunted down in urban
communities by the police and shot dead as if there were safaris in the
inner cities. It is seen in the unequal treatment that has been
festering in Amerika for over 500 years, the lynching of the body and
the lynching of the mind. Therefore, it is not just understandable or
justified but damn right necessary for these oppressed peoples to
struggle for national liberation. Until New Democracy is achieved, as
Mao
spoke of, and we finally achieve equality for all in all aspects,
the oppressed nations should continue to struggle for
self-determination.
As communists we should always maintain focus on our goal of
international communism rather than degenerating to simply Brown
capitalism or Black capitalism, etc. This is why our unity must be with
the international proletariat in mind as this will be our moral compass.
Some may say or think “If I can liberate my people in this or
that country why would I care about countries in another part of the
world?” Well, as I’ve said before, we are all up against the same
monster that cannot be defeated by one group of people, and even if one
could somehow liberate one group of people, the imperialists worldwide
would smash this isolated nation. We saw it happen in Grenada.
When Marx and Engels put together the theory of communism, it was with
internationalism in mind as they saw even back then that the bourgeoisie
would not sit back and allow the people to begin liberating themselves.
We must always work in unity with the international proletariat in order
to rise from lumpen to true revolutionary. Only then will we liberate
our people.
La Lucha Continua!
MIM(Prisons) responds: This comrade did a good job of stressing
the importance of internationalism in the united front, and in
particular pointing out that the international proletariat must be our
moral compass. The question we need to ask though is to what degree the
imperialist country lumpen’s interests are united with the international
proletariat, and therefore how they fit into the united front as a
class. What this comrade wrote about the need to support everyone’s
national liberation is true for any oppressed nation in the world, but
we face particular challenges due to our material conditions.
MIM(Prisons) sees the lumpen in the United $tates as a bourgeoisified
lumpen, in that the whole country benefits from imperialism in the form
of basic needs like food, clean water, electricity, etc. as well as in
the form of cheap consumer goods. The latter allows the lumpen to own
small amounts of capital, creating a spectrum of wealth where a minority
in the lumpen organizations are at the level of national bourgeoisie due
to their relations to production, distribution and ownership. Even for
the relatively poor majority of the lumpen class, a combination of state
welfare and the drug game have allowed for access to the material
benefits of imperialism the proletariat do not have.
We are watching closely the efforts of the white nation to take away
welfare and
local
drug markets from the lumpen, as well as
jobs
from the undocumented. Even if these trends are successful, we see
compradors among the lumpen and a popular desire for and belief in the
Amerikan dream. While the lumpen are a class forced into criminality,
there is a class consciousness and culture that derives from this
criminality that is individualistic and parasitic. As this comrade
alludes to, there is a transformation that must occur to replace the
lumpen mentality (in particular its capitalistic elements) with a
proletarian one. No national liberation struggles can succeed in this
country without tackling this great challenge.
In addition, a growing lumpen class due to imperialist crisis will also
touch the white nation. As we wrote about in
ULK
14, a declassed white population is the makings of fascist foot
soldiers. History has shown this to be the case for oppressor nations.
So we agree with the author’s alternating use of lumpen and oppressed
nations in most cases, but disagree when s/he says the lumpen have the
same interests regardless of nationality. Only if the oppressor nation
lets go of its white privilege would this be true. This is an even
stronger reason why a thesis that the lumpen in general in the U.$. are
a progressive force does not hold true.