MIM(Prisons) is a cell of revolutionaries serving the oppressed masses inside U.$. prisons, guided by the communist ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
Under Lock & Key is a news service written by and for prisoners with a focus on what is going on behind bars throughout the United States. Under Lock & Key is available to U.S. prisoners for free through MIM(Prisons)'s Free Political Literature to Prisoners Program, by writing:
MIM(Prisons) PO Box 40799 San Francisco, CA 94140.
Hyping up the threat of dangerous gangs of “super-predators.” Using
confidential informants, tattoos, and appearance to label people “gang
members.” Using that gang
affiliation to imprison and torture people. These draconian methods
are familiar to readers of ULK, and to those who’ve spent time
in U.$. prisons in general. The Trump regime has made this headline news
for the whole country.
In recent weeks, hundreds of Venezuelans have been deported from the
United $tates to a supermax prison in El Salvador. The Trump regime
justified this with the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, which allows for the
deportation of non-citizens during wartime, and was last used during
WWII to deport Germans and Italians and roundup Japanese in internment
camps, seizing their assets for Euro-Amerikans. Trump claimed these
people were part of a gang conducting “irregular warfare” in the United
$tates, but there seems to be no evidence that Tren de Aragua is even a
widely functioning organization here. In February, the U.$. State
Department designated Tren de Aragua, Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), and a
list of Mexican drug cartels as “foreign terrorist organizations.”
A federal court has ordered a halt to the deportations, but the
Department of Justice is defying the order. A legal battle continues,
while the executive branch continues to defy the courts.
Venezuela
has been a consistent target of U.$. imperialism since the rise of
Hugo Chavez to power in 1999.(1) As a result almost 600,000 Venezuelans
have been accepted into the United $tates with Temporary Protected
Status (TPS). Trump attempted to cancel TPS for Venezuelans, but a
federal court has deemed the move illegal. Without TPS, many from
Venezuela, Haiti, Ukraine, Sudan, Afghanistan and elsewhere could no
longer legally work in the United $tates and could be legally
deported.
Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia is getting special attention as the
Trump administration admitted eir deportation was a mistake, and that
they can’t get em back from Salvadorean custody. This is despite a court
order that prevented em from being sent back to El Salvador, where ey
had fled gang violence as a youth. Abrego Garcia has no criminal
charges, for what that’s worth, but was labelled a member of MS-13 by a
pig citing a “confidential informant” during a round up of day laborers
some years ago. As a result, Abrego Garcia has been disappeared from eir
family and sent to a torture unit in the very country ey fled for safety
reasons.(2)
The ACLU obtained a copy of the “Alien Enemy Validation Guide” being
used to deport people.(3) Once establishing someone is over 14 years
old, of Venezuelan origin and without U.$. citizenship, a point system
is used to “validate” gang members. A “TdA” tattoo gets you 4 points
while 8 points are required to qualify as validated. The Homeland
Security guide lists photos of tattoos like crowns and stars that are
“TdA”. In addition, wearing Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan athletic
wear are listed. When was the last time you saw someone with Air Jordans
on and a star tattoo?
Student Activists Targeted
Educational institutions from Columbia University in New York to the
University of California system are enforcing the fascist repression on
their campuses, from expelling students during Biden’s Presidency, to
disappearing them off the streets and from their homes under the Trump
regime. Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk is being detained for
writing an article criticizing the U.$.-I$rael genocide in Palestine.
Mahmoud Khalil, who was a respected negotiator between Columbia
University and the pro-Palestine student encampment last year, told eir
story in a recent statement from 18 March 2025:
“My name is Mahmoud Khalil and I am a political prisoner. I am
writing to you from a detention facility in Louisiana… On March 8, I was
taken by DHS agents who refused to provide a warrant, and accosted my
wife and me as we returned from dinner. …
“My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to free
speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in
Gaza, which resumed in full force Monday night. With January’s ceasefire
now broken, parents in Gaza are once again cradling too-small shrouds,
and families are forced to weigh starvation and displacement against
bombs. It is our moral imperative to persist in the struggle for their
complete freedom.”
“… Columbia [University] targeted me for my activism, creating a new
authoritarian disciplinary office to bypass due process and silence
students criticizing Israel. Columbia surrendered to federal pressure by
disclosing student records to Congress and yielding to the Trump
administration’s latest threats. My arrest, the expulsion or suspension
of at least 22 Columbia students – some stripped of their B.A. degrees
just weeks before graduation – and the expulsion of SWC President Grant
Miner on the eve of contract negotiations, are clear examples.
“If anything, my detention is a testament to the strength of the
student movement in shifting public opinion toward Palestinian
liberation. …”(4)
Other targeted students have gone into hiding. At the same time,
students across the country are coming together to stand with and defend
those who may be targeted next. We commend the solidarity being shown.
Schools and prisons are somewhat unique in our society due to the
collective identities of their populations and their abilities to
organize. With the recent announcements from the Trump regime that they
will be deporting U.$. citizens with criminal records to the Terrorism
Confinement Center in El Salvador, prisoners need to be prepared to
stand together as students are learning to do. While there are many
recent examples to the contrary, there is a long history of U.$.
prisoners standing up for one another due to the group consciousness
that comes with facing a common oppressor every day.
Fascism Coming Home
The United
$tates has been using long-term solitary confinement for decades on a
scale not seen elsewhere in humyn history. Physicians for Human
Rights released a report in 2024 exposing the use of solitary
confinement in ICE detention centers contrary to government directives
to limit its use to absolute necessity. They documented at least 14,000
cases of people being put in solitary confinement by ICE from 2018 to
2023. Durations in solitary averaged 27 days, with 42 cases lasting over
a year. At the time, in 2024, ICE held over 35,000 people, making it the
world’s largest immigration detention system.(5)
Conditions are likely worse for those sent to El Salvador, where
President Bukele has stated that the only way gang members will leave
the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) ey built in 2023 is in a
coffin. With a capacity of over 40,000, there are 65 to 70 prisoners
held per cell. “CECOT prisoners do not receive visits and are never
allowed outdoors. The prison does not offer workshops or educational
programs to prepare them to return to society after their sentences.”(6)
Bukele has been promoting images of shaved gang members, dressed all in
white, being warehoused and man-handled by masked prison guards online
since the prison opened. This propaganda campaign has appealed to the
pro-fascist elements of Amerika. And with that support, Trump is
incorporating this prison into the Amerikan international prison system
and sending hundreds of people there from the United $tates. This is a
shift closer to home from the network of dark sites, and infamous
prisons like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, that were used to torture
and hold without trial oppressed people across the Muslim world.
Most press sources are reporting the Amerikans paid $6 million for
238 prisoners to be held in CECOT, which some point out is much less
than what it would cost to imprison them in the United $tates. But it is
an amount that will greatly help El Salvador to fund their monstrosity
of a prison. It doesn’t make sense that the imperialists are paying to
have these prisoners held, but then claim they cannot return people like
Abrego Garcia back to their families.
In the 1980s, U.$.-sponsored death squads, trained at the School of
the Americas in Georgia, killed
and displaced countless people across Central America that were
fighting for socialism and to remove imperialism from their
countries.(7) Many children of this war in El Salvador were displaced to
Los Angeles where they joined Barrio 18 or formed the new Mara
Salvatrucha (MS-13), were persecuted by the state, and then exported
back to El Salvador. We’ve reported on efforts at peace
between these groups in 2013, which coincided with investment by
USAID and the building of new U.$.-inspired prisons in El Salvador.(8)
But conditions for the people of El Salvador did not improve, and they
voted for President
Nayib Bukele who both utilized the lumpen organizations in eir
political organizing and later turned on them as a scapegoat for the
ills of the country in a fascist repression campaign.(9)
The struggle against fascism in this country relies on the coming
together of people to defend migrant populations and students currently
under attack. As fascism rises, we see the campaigns of groups like the
ACLU coming closer to those of MIM(Prisons). As important legal battles
are taking place, we also see the spreading recognition that we can’t
rely on the courts to save us. We must have a plan B. We must build our
plan B.
Greetings Revolutionaries, activists, thugs, radical students, pimps,
hustlers, players, strippers, sex workers, and all the thoroughbred
Runaway Slaves in the First World; this is strictly addressed to the
First World Lumpen. Marxism has taught us how to operate and harness the
laws of the universe in the interests of those systematically locked out
of the production process, those who finance-monopoly capitalism
continue to dehumanize in its relentless, dogged, determined pursuit of
endless profits.
Fascism is the word of the current movement. Trump’s election
represents a certain heightening of contradictions. This is a sign of
the imperialists recognizing their need for that strong persyn to move
this space into its more authoritarian direction, into its more
authoritarian disposition.
We have to be vigilantly on the prowl for the emergence of fascism.
Social commentary should center primarily on building public opinion in
this direction. Even in its embryonic stages, fascism doesn’t miss out
on any opportunities to undermine the working-class revolution and smash
working class organizations; First World and Third World.
It is time to crack open the history books and practically apply the
dialectical-materialist analysis of history. There is nothing else at
the moment that warrants any more attention. Period. 2020, though a
moment, a flash point in social development, like I said previously in
some past article was not in any way contradictory to the U.$. empire;
nor was there any easing of tensions between law enforcement and those
of us trapped in the ghettos that pockmark this landscape.
In 2022, actual U.$. military expenditure exceeded $1.52 trillion –
more than twice the officially acknowledged level of $766 billion.
Overall military spending are not included in the empire’s “defense
budget” strategically. To estimate actual U.$. military spending,
dialectical materialist methodological approaches must be utilized. I
recommend publications like Monthly Review.
Nothing will be gained at the expense of the Third World because of
our lack of genuine effort to combat our First Worldist dispositions. We
in the ameriKKKan heartland must sit down and focus on studying fascism.
We most definitely have the leisure time because of the labor
aristocratic essence of the working class demographic in these parts.
The class of people in the First World who are excluded from the
productive process, by virtue of living in the First World, on average
receive more material benefits from imperialism than the global
proletariat. This is the First World lumpen. But the radical student
movement is now with us, thanks to the gunshots let off on 7 October
2023 in Palestine and its people’s struggle to free their land from
i$raeli and ameriKKKan aggression.
We have to have a completely scientific understanding of the concrete
reality of our situation. George Jackson once spoke of this. I believe
his classic work Blood In My Eye must be resurfaced and
consulted for the best, most in-depth theoretical analysis of the
current moment. Fascism and its historical significance was the point of
his whole philosophy on politics, and its extension, war.
George posited how corporate-fascism’s nature advanced world-wide
socialist consciousness after WW2. U.$. imperialism emerged after the
Western powers had already divided up most of the most important markets
in the world. The aftermath of WW2 left those same Western powers
severely weakened, the U.$. became head honcho.
Social development continues to march ahead towards its logical
conclusion – via stages of course. All the forces of reaction and
counterrevolution have localized themselves and continue to radiate
their oppressive energy in the now emerging ameriKKKan corporate-fascist
state. Despite the presence of political parties, corporate politics is
all that truly matters here. Corporate personhood command all state
power.
We hear about the corporate political maneuvering of entities like
Amazon, IBM, Facebook, Samsung, Apple, and many more. The modern chip
industry speaks to the authority large private corporations have over
state bodies. Just as steel a century ago was the essential commodity
for economic development, the chip is the 21st century repeat. Chips are
central to the technology pivotal to the present order. I say that to
say that possibly by 2030, China’s chip industry could rival Silicon
Valley’s influence; so this means something, the implications are beyond
disruption of U.$. tech firms and trade flows, we are talking about a
reset of the balance of military power.
Huawei has been at the center of all sorts of geopolitics in recent
years. I think it’s time USW comrades study Huawei, and learn what makes
this entity’s political maneuvering such a nightmare for Western
imperialists, and sidestep amerikkka’s “Russian threat” distraction with
the whole bogus fabricated Uhuru 3 persecution.
The African People’s Socialist Party are posing a very serious
question that all revolutionaries active at the moment should sit down
and reflect and ponder over: Did the FBI conspire with Russian
intelligence to frame up Black activists in the United $tates?
The Uhuru 3 free speech trial has positioned me as an historical
singularity, as that historical singularity who sees all angles, all
sides, who sees the furthest ahead and who more than anyone at the
moment understands the line of march the New Afrikan liberation movement
should be taking, as fascism continues to kick its boots at our doors in
the First World.
I will be waiting to hear your thoughts soon. In the meantime, all
efforts on our boycott campaign should center on Securus. No
opportunities to vilify Securus between December 6 and December 13
should be missed.
We agree with the author that the re-election of Trump indicates that
the imperialists are looking to reshape things. In 2019, we wrote about
how the absence of a real proletarian threat makes fascism unnecessary
and unlikely. The threat that has emerged since then is the Palestine
heightening it’s war of national liberation, which has forced all
parties involved in the region to make their positions clear. In
addition to this shakeup in the Middle East, there has been the Russian
invasion of Ukraine and its affects across Europe. What seems likely is
the imperialists are seeing cracks in the previous world order and signs
of economic crisis that require a shift in strategy.
Trump remains erratic in eir speeches, and we have no great
predictions for how this next term will go at this time. What is clear
is that the need to build a strong movement against imperialism and
fascism is now. There are opportunities on the horizon, and we hope you
will join us in preparing for them.
Notes: 1. MIM(Prisons), April 2019, “Fascism,
Imperialism, and Amerika in 2019”, Under Lock & Key 67. 2.
Wiawimawo of MIM(Prisons), November 2016, The Strategic Significance of
Defining Fascism, Under Lock & Key 53.
In the early hours of Wednesday, December 4th, a masked gunman shot
the CEO of United $tates insurance company UnitedHealthcare, Brian
Thompson, to death in the bustling streets of New York City. By midday,
CCTV footage of the act had gone viral across the internet and
traditional news media, spawning endless narratives and theories.
Simultaneously, the high-profile nature of the shooting prompted a
national manhunt to search for the suspect. The shooter evaded capture
for five days, but ey was eventually arrested after a tip was called in
by a McDonald’s employee in rural Pennsylvania.
As communists operating in the United $tates, how are we to
understand this event? What does the event itself and its resulting
fallout tell us about the political landscape we work within? If we wish
to live up to the title of being Marxists, the only answer to these
questions is that we must conduct a, as Lenin put it, “concrete analysis
of concrete conditions.” Let us begin with the facts of the case.
The Facts
The name of the alleged shooter is Luigi Mangione. As laid out in eir
so-called ‘manifesto’, Luigi’s motivation for the shooting is a disdain
for U.$. healthcare insurance companies in general and UnitedHealthcare
in particular. The origin of this disdain likely lies in a combination
of Luigi’s persynal interactions with health insurance companies through
eir struggles with back pain as well as the more widespread antagonism
between the U.$. population and health insurance companies.
Luigi comes from a well-connected family which has its roots in the
suburbs of Baltimore, Maryland. Eir grandfather ran several successful
business ventures which guaranteed employment and prosperity for the
next generations of the Mangione family as they have now taken the reins
on the family businesses. Luigi emself attended a private high school
before attending the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania where ey got
eir degree in computer science in 2020. According to Luigi’s family and
friends, ey ceased all communication with them in July 2024. Presumably,
Luigi spent the time between then and December planning the shooting,
which we will now focus on.
As mentioned, the shooting itself took place on the morning of 4
December 2024. Interestingly, Luigi employed a 3D-printed firearm to
commit the shooting, which marks the first time such a weapon has been
used in such a high-profile case. Immediately after, Luigi evaded the
swarms of police by traveling via foot, cab, and e-bike before boarding
a train towards Philadelphia. Not much else is known about Luigi’s
whereabouts and travels during the 5 days between the shooting and eir
arrest in Altoona, Pennsylvania.
The biggest takeaway here is how easily Luigi evaded both the NYPD
and the FBI for an extended period of time. If Luigi had continued
traveling, discarded the evidence ey carried on em, or put any effort
into changing eir appearance, it’s likely that ey would have never been
caught. But this is simply speculation on our parts. Let us now turn
from the objective facts of the case to the realm of ideology.
Luigi’s Ideology
To understand why Luigi Mangione shot Brian Thompson, we must first
understand eir ideology. The only clues we have towards this
understanding are scattered social media posts as well as the
aforementioned “manifesto” Luigi had on em when ey was arrested. While
we’ll primarily focus on the “manifesto”, we will first highlight one of
Luigi’s social media posts where ey reviews the writings of Ted
Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber. In this review, Luigi highlights
how Kaczynski was “rightfully imprisoned” because ey “maimed innocent
people” but that these were the actions of an “extreme political
revolutionary.” Luigi’s review finishes by quoting multiple paragraphs
from a Reddit comment expounding how violence is the only method we have
at our disposal to fight back against “our overlords.”
Now, turning to the “manifesto”, we wish to give our readers the
fullest picture possible, so we have included below a full copy of the
writing that was recovered when Luigi was arrested:
“To the Feds, I’ll keep this short, because I do respect what you do
for our country. To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly
that I wasn’t working with anyone. This was fairly trivial: some
elementary social engineering, basic CAD, a lot of patience. The spiral
notebook, if present, has some straggling notes and To Do lists that
illuminate the gist of it. My tech is pretty locked down because I work
in engineering so probably not much info there. I do apologize for any
strife of traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply
had it coming. A reminder: the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare
system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy. United
is the [indecipherable] largest company in the US by market cap, behind
only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but as [sic] our
life expectancy? No the reality is, these [indecipherable] have simply
gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense
profit because the American public has allwed [sic] them to get away
with it. Obviously the problem is more complex, but I do not have space,
and frankly I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out
the full argument. But many have illuminated the corruption and greed
(e.g.: Rosenthal, Moore), decades ago and the problems simply remain. It
is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at
play. Evidently I am the first to face it with such brutal
honesty.”(1)
Let us take a closer look at this writing. Luigi begins with
saying:
“To the Feds, I’ll keep this short, because I do respect what you do
for our country.”
To those who proclaim Luigi is spreading “class consciousness” or
that ey is a revolutionary, this single sentence should shatter all
illusions. If an ally of yours said ey respects federal agents (of the
FBI, CIA, etc.) for what they “do for our country,” would you be on eir
side? Our answer to this question is a resounding Fuck
No.
What else does Luigi write about? Ey brings up some rudimentary
statistics about life expectancy in the United $tates and market
capitalization before asserting that U.$. corporations have “gotten too
powerful” and “they continue to abuse our country for immense profit
because the American public has allwed [sic] them to get away with it.”
This strikes us as similar to the proposition that the Amerikkkan public
is “brainwashed” (how? by whom? why?) into merely passively accepting
the capitalist-imperialist world-system. This stands in opposition to
our political line which is that Euro-Amerikans actively embrace
imperialism (consciously or not) as the primary source of their wealth
via super-profits extracted from the Third World proletariat.
Luigi ends eir writing by admitting that ey is not “the most
qualified person to lay out the full argument” for the issues of the
U.$. health insurance system but assures us that ey is, “evidently […]
the first to face it with such brutal honesty.”
How high and mighty! Luigi is “evidently” the first to break through
the veil of ignorance which plagues the rest of us. Though we would
contend that there are perhaps a few people who have come before
Mr. Mangione who have faced the “corruption and greed” of the healthcare
industry (which is only a particular form of capitalist industry in
general) with “such brutal honesty.” Off the top of our heads, we can
think of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Fred Hampton, Malcolm X, or
Huey Newton, just to name a few. These are of course only the most
popular figureheads of past communist movements. In reality, there are
millions who have stood their ground against the imperialist-bourgeoisie
and lost their lives for it. But no matter their sacrifice, for we have
been blessed with the gift of the wealthy Euro-Amerikan from Maryland
showing us the path forward!
So where does all this leave us? Is Luigi really a Marxist
revolutionary who has been sent down from the Heavens to end the
oppression of the masses? Of course not. Luigi’s writings and musings
are nothing more than regurgitations of the same social fascist populism
that is reminiscent of the messaging around Bernie
Sander’s presidential campaigns combined with an impetus towards
political violence. Discontent with the healthcare insurance industry is
normal everyday politics for people living in the United $tates. All
Luigi did was elevate this discontent from the level of complaining on
the internet or attending protests to killing a CEO. An escalation of
force, to be sure, but not one that is qualitatively different in its
nature.
The Public’s Reaction
However critical we may be of Luigi Mangione, ey is only an
individual. It would be an error to narrowly focus on the individual
agents of hystory rather than the political trends and their material
causes which compel individuals to act the way they do. So what trend
underlies the actions of Luigi? And how has this been reflected in the
public’s reaction to the killing?
Broadly, reactions to the shooting can be grouped into one of two
camps: condemnations of Luigi’s actions or celebrations of them.
Those who condemn Luigi tend to do so from a position of superficial
pacifism wherein you must be totally against violence in all situations
– unless it benefits yourself or your nation. A vast majority of U.$.
politicians fall into this group as well as a sizable portion of the
U.$. citizenry. Typically hailing from the upper strata of U.$. society,
these individuals are largely hypocritical and uninteresting for our
purposes here. After all, even a child can identify the contradiction
that’s present when one mourns the death of a single CEO while
simultaneously advocating for imperialist armies to indiscriminately
murder the oppressed.
On the other side, there are large swaths of people who view Luigi as
a “folk hero” or a “savior” and exist somewhere on the spectrum between
sympathizing with or admiring Luigi. Typically viewed as part of the
Amerikan “left” (though we have observed both Democrats and Republicans
expressing these views), this group wishes for healthcare reform in
order to ease up on the contradictions intrinsic to the capitalist
system. More specifically, these individuals fall into the same category
of social fascist labor aristocrats as Luigi. Their class status as
labor aristocrats is being threatened by the “greedy” capitalists of the
health insurance corporations who want to take away their hard-earned
wealth (i.e. superprofits from the Third World) and Luigi’s actions are
simply one response to this threat. So long as their aim is narrowly
limited on what can be done to improve the lives of Amerikans rather
than taking a revolutionary approach to understand what can be done to
improve the lives of all humyns, they remain enemies of the
international proletariat.
This graph helps illustrate the demographics of either group as well
as the proportions of the U.$. population that fall into either side. We
also must wonder if the 20% support for Luigi Mangione among Amerikans
would translate to support for retribution for the killing of Robert
Brooks by New York prison guards and the slow genocide of New
Afrikan men in U.$. prisons? We probably all know the answer to this
question.
Though there is a real ideological divide between the two
aforementioned groups, it would be wrong to overstate the width of this
divide. Both groups are merely two factions of the white supremacist
Amerikkkan establishment which exploits the Third World in order to
secure their own prosperity.
Our Thoughts
Where do we lie in this divide? You certainly won’t find us shedding
tears over a dead CEO, disavowing violence, or proclaiming pacifism, but
you also will not see us celebrating Luigi Mangione as some sort of hero
of the oppressed. Instead, we view Luigi as merely the latest
manifestation of labor aristocracy angst towards the imperialist leaders
of the United $tates. If either of Luigi’s actions or political line
were rooted in revolutionary politics, we’d be a bit more sympathetic to
em. But as it stands, Luigi’s lone wolf killing is both tactically inept
and ideologically confused.
More broadly, we understand the struggle of people in the United
$tates for more comprehensive healthcare. But rather than trying to
secure healthcare for Amerikans only, why don’t we set our sights on
securing healthcare for all people? Why should we advocate for petty
reforms like getting earlier colonoscopies for middle-aged Amerikans
when millions die each year in the Third World from easily-preventable
diseases because of imperialist wealth extraction? or when U.$. weapons
are used to murder doctors and bomb hospitals in Gaza? This is a topic
comrades have written
on before in relation to the Affordable Care Act(3), and it clearly
remains relevant today. Even if we limit our scope to be within U.$.
borders, the lack of healthcare that’s available for prisoners is a much
more pressing issue than the reforms which the social fascists are
seeking. It’s well documented how healthcare,
and lack thereof, is used as a tool to punish and torture
prisoners(4) rather than being recognized as a constitutional
right.
Circling back to the central topic of this article, the question
still stands: will this shooting actually change anything about the
healthcare industry? Almost certainly not. But it has provided an
opportunity for the fascism of the labor aristocracy to rear its head in
a particularly brazen fashion through the actions of Luigi Mangione. As
the U.$. labor aristocracy is faced with political chaos both at-home
and abroad, they will resist the ever-looming threat of
proletarianization. Will they recover and maintain their position in the
imperialist world system? Will the U.$. population come face-to-face
with proletarianization as global inter-imperialist conflicts intensify?
We cannot say which is the case. The only thing we are sure of is that
the actions of Luigi Mangione have provided a unique insight into the
political terrain we operate in within U.$. borders. As communists, we
must harness this insight and use it to guide our political action so
that we may empower the international proletariat in their struggle
against capitalist-imperialism. The only path forward is revolution.
We just wrapped up our Fourth of You-Lie annual fundraiser. The
results so far aren’t great. We’ve only received about a third of the
number of donations we got from comrades inside for all of 2023, and
less than a third in the amount received. That means we need to get
twice as many donations in the next 6 months as we got in the first 6
months of this year to maintain where we were. And ideally, we want to
be increasing the percent of funding that comes from donations from
prisoners. The amount of donations we receive from prisoners is one way
we measure mass support for our work and whether we should keep doing
it.
Our education programs continue to develop. We’ve mailed out the
first group response to our University of Maoist Thought study group on
the Collected Works of the Black Liberation Army. We’ve
completed an update to our study guide for The Fundamentals of
Political Economy, a must-read text. Comrades on the outside also
completed a study of MIM Theory 14: United Front that is
reflected in the content of this issue. We will likely continue this
theme in ULK 87, looking at the united front in Palestine more
and printing your reports on building united front for the September 9th
Day of Peace and Solidarity.
We are also entering Black August as this issue hits the cell blocks.
And soon after that, the September 9th Day of Peace and Solidarity.
Besides the Runaway
Slaves Coalition statement on the United Front for Peace in Prisons,
we did not get any submissions on these topics. But as always we have
our September 9th Organizing Pack that prisoners can request to get more
information on the history of this day, and countless books and
pamphlets on the Black liberation struggle that you can get from our
Free Books to Prisoners Program in exchange for political work.
The week of December 6-13 has been marked as a week of solidarity by
Jailhouse Lawyers Speak. Over the years comrades have suggested a
boycott of any activities that financially benefit the prison system.
This is the tactic being implemented in December, with the campaign
focusing on ending prison slavery and overall abolition of prisons in
general. Our next issue will be out in early November. So if you are
organizing for this week of solidarity, send in art or articles to share
for ULK 87.
This issue features content produced by United Struggle from Within
comrades as part of our campaign to connect the prison struggle to the
student movement for Palestine. Some of these materials were also used
in a pamphlet
put together and distributed on the streets, to get these messages into
the hands of students and outside supporters.
As we finalize the content for this issue, reports are coming in of
the disproportionate deaths of prisoners in the recent heat waves.
Prisoners and prisons are being excluded from new worker protection laws
dealing with heat. This June was the hottest on record. And yet the
imperialists still aren’t getting serious about reducing CO2 emissions
to slow global warming. We welcome your reports on heat and climate
change, especially organizing efforts and how to build a united front
around these campaigns, for the next issue of ULK.
Amerikan Elections
Finally, i thought we should say a few words on the upcoming U.$.
presidential election. For those that don’t know, our slogan is, “Don’t
Vote, Organize!” We aren’t too interested in who becomes president
because there is no anti-imperialist option.
As has become the trend, the Democratic Party wing have been
campaigning hard to “stop fascism”. Our line has not changed since 2016,
when we argued that Trump was not instituting fascism as president
then either. But that does not mean we should not be vigilantly looking
for the emergence of fascism and opportunities to combat it.
Comrades in Texas have reported on lumpen gangs being used by the
state as enforcers in Coffield
Unit and Allred
Unit. Another reader in Allred more recently reported that staff
using drugs to bribe prisoners has continued:
“The prison administration here at Allred Unit have been getting away
with killing prisoners for so long with the help of these so-called gang
members that they fear not the possibility of accountability.”
The use of gangs to police prisoners is not new in Texas history.
However, in the past this role was filled by the euro-Amerikan prisoners
who enjoyed privileges in exchange for enforcing discipline on the
oppressed nation prisoners.(see Robert T. Chase’s book We Are Not
Slaves) While we have written extensively on the revolutionary
potential of the First World lumpen, and even lumpen organizations,
these organizations also have this reactionary potential, making them an
unreliable ally of the proletariat.
In fact, it is quite damning that these L.O.s are consciously working
for the imperialists to violently repress other oppressed nationals. We
address this further in this issue with the ongoing campaign (and
debate) around “Stop Collaborating!” Of course we see the same thing in
Third World countries around the world where the imperialist have built
death squads by bribing various lumpen and military men. And we do
recognize such death squads as a form of exported fascism with no real
base in the Third World itself.
Here in the heart of empire it is more typical to see the
euro-Amerikan petty bourgeoisie play the role of fascist foot soldiers.
We saw a glimpse of this in the attacks of bands of young white men on
the UCLA encampment for Palestine as cops idly stood by. And we’ve seen
it in various street clashes over the last decade with groups like the
Proud Boys attacking radical left demonstrators or gender-non-conforming
events.
But these remain fringe events. While Trump represents a certain
heightening of contradictions in this country, the U.$. state is still
very stable. No one can become president of the United $tates without
support from the imperialists. The current support of the ultra-rich for
another Trump presidency has been pinned largely on the possibility of
Trump era tax cuts expiring if Biden wins a second term. So this is
hardly a sign of the imperialists recognizing the need for a strong man
to move this country into a more authoritarian direction. On the
contrary, it is a sign of a further eating away at the stability of the
United $tates by undercutting state funding through neo-Liberalism. Yes,
the contradictions are heightening, no it is not time to join in united
front with Joe Biden, Kamala Harris or whoever ends up being the more
status quo option they give us in November.
In May of this year, Texas governor greg abbott pardoned a man named
daniel perry. Some of you may remember the incident in which daniel was
convicted of murder. Recall the summer of 2020. The hope, optimism and
liberty many felt as they bum-rushed the streets in protest in cities
worldwide decrying anti-blackness.
In the midst of this surge of proactive and progressive human energy
after the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor, was
a tag team, husband and wife duo in Austin, Texas. Austin, the state
capital, was the most active and longstanding protest site in the state
during that summer. In the eye of this storm was Garrett Foster and eir
wife, Whitney Mitchell. Mitchell, who was confined to a wheelchair,
wanted to be involved in the ground swelling movement of humynity, and
would not let being confined to a wheel-chair detour em. Garrett was eir
guide and aid.
Garrett and eir wife attended many of the protests that summer,
mostly centered around the police headquarters and state capital in
downtown Austin. Garrett, a u.$. air force veteran, routinely adorned
fatigues and carried a rifle which ey was legally permitted to possess
by the laws of the state. In July of 2020, while walking and escorting
eir wife Whitney down Congress Avenue, Garrett and daniel got into a
verbal altercation. daniel was an Uber driver and was on the job. daniel
was also legally armed. daniel, behind the protection of an Uber
vehicle, began revving eir engine up in order to intimidate protesters.
Mr. Foster addressed this behavior verbally and after doing so, daniel
rolled down the window and shot Garrett Foster multiple times, killing
em.
During the pre-trial proceedings, this case, along with the case of
kyle rittenhouse, received a swarm of media attention on conservative
networks. The neo-confederates believed that the two white supremacists’
acts of murder had struck a blow for all of them (them being the white
settler amerikans, particularly the neo-confederacy).
At that time in 2020, greg abbott appeared on the tucker carlson show
and vowed that in the event of guilt ey would pardon daniel perry. In
May, abbott made good on this vow and pardoned daniel perry, stating
that ey “stood his ground”.
i hope this news upsets the reader. At the very least i hope this
news brings you in on the not so little secret my comrades and i have
long known. You wanna know what that secret is? Sure, i’ll tell you.
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS LAW, ONLY POWER STRUGGLES.
The good, if i can even call it that, is that some will see this and
finally realize the illegitimacy of law in Texas and amerikan society.
To understand why this was such a thrust and showcase of reactionary
power, we have to understand the history of the pardon and commutation
in Texas. Briefly, in the 1980’s the legislature passed measures to
limit the power of the governor to pardon and commute sentences. What
they passed made sure that in the case of pardons, at least 10 of 18
members of the Pardons and Parole Board, all of which are appointed by
the governor, would have to recommend a pardon. All 18 members
recommended the pardon of daniel perry. A spit in the face of bourgeois
democracy and the bourgeois legal process. So now We can see that it’s
okay not to play by the rules, this will free us of some of our
handicapping hang-ups. Will you step up and commit to wrestling power
out of the hands of tyranny? We All Have A Choice To Make; Power to the
People! Power to New Afrika!
The Biden/Harris campaign released the above image criticizing some
language coming from recent Donald Trump campaign speeches for the 2024
U.$. Presidential election. Meanwhile Trump continues to lead by a
landslide for the Republican ticket, which is not surprising, as Hitler
viewed the Amerikan project with envy.
The United $tates has been milking it’s alliance with the Soviet
Union to fight fascism for over 75 years now. If it were not for the
sacrifices of the Soviet people, over 20 million of whom died in the war
fighting fascism, and if it were not for the strategic leadership of the
Comintern in building alliances with some imperialist powers to fight
others, we might not have had 75 years of self-righteousness to have
leaned on by U.$. leaders.
Usually U.$. officials would raise the “Hitler” comparisons when it
was time to expand imperialist wars against another Third World country,
such as Iraq or Panama. But today the leading Democratic presidential
candidate is using it against the leading Republican candidate at the
same time that the Democrat is facing legal charges for enabling
genocide emself. It seems the mask is coming off.
The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) filed a complaint in
federal court in November on behalf of Palestinians that is seeking
recognition of the ongoing genocide in Palestine and the requirement for
President Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken to do all they can
to prevent Israel’s genocidal acts.(1)
While the occupation of Palestine by I$rael and their imposition of
an apartheid state has long been genocidal, the war has reached
unprecedented levels since the Hamas-led attack against I$rael on 7
October 2023. By mid-December, a whopping 85% of the population of Gaza
has been displaced from their homes and 1% of the population has been
killed by the I$raeli onslaught. At least 8 of the murdered and around
100 of those injured were at the hands of “civilian” settlers.(2) Large
numbers of the displaced have no access to food or clean water.
Whether the Amerikan courts will recognize what is happening to the
Palestinians in Gaza as genocide is questionable according to legal
experts. But legal filings continue to be submitted to bolster the
case.
The “We Declare Genocide” tribunal held within U.$. borders last year
already found the United $tates guilty of genocide against the internal
semi-colonies who are facing an ongoing low-intensity warfare.(3) Of
course, this finding does not have official legal standing by the United
$tates government itself. The CCR suit is attempting to get that for
Palestine, and further brings attention to the genocidal acts of U.$.
imperialism around the globe.
The United $tates has single-handedly prevented the United Nations
Security Council from implementing a ceasefire in Palestine. The United
$tates picks and chooses who is allowed to commit war crimes and who is
not, and the UN is toothless to stop it.
During the second inter-imperialist war, the United $tates was in a
position to play the good guy because of rival interests with the
fascist countries and the opportunity it allowed them to exert power
over Europe as a whole. I$rael on the other hand is the #1 U.$. client
state, receiving far more funding from the Amerikans than any other
country since World War II. As Biden said, if I$rael didn’t already
exist they would have to create it. This puts the U.$. in a position
where it is impossible for them to oppose the genocide in Gaza.
The settler state is by definition a genocidal state. Stalin helped
give the United $tates a fig leaf to cover that legacy in the form of
supporting the Soviet defeat of Hitler. That fig leaf is drying up and
falling off. And the legitimacy of U.$.-run international institutions
like the UN and the United $tates itself are coming more and more into
question by global public opinion.
On 4 August 2023, 8,000 military troops and police were deployed in
the countryside province of Cabanas, El Salvador in part of the campaign
to crack down on the MS-13 and Barrio 18 lumpen organizations (L.O.s) –
many of whom have fled to the region from the cities.(1) One thousand
police and 7,000 soldiers were deployed to set checkpoints blocking all
roads leading in and out of the area.(2) The congress of El Salvador
added new criminal codes as part of President Nayib Bukele’s war on the
two organizations that will enact mass trials based on what area they
lived in and which organization controlled that particular territory.(3)
These actions are merely an expression of Salvadoran President Nayib
Bukele’s war on lumpen organizations operating in El Salvador.
The Anti-Gang
Campaign Waged by the President
Bukele’s anti-gang campaign is best characterized as a set of “mano
dura” (“iron fist”, i.e. tough-on-crime) policies. Said policies reflect
an overall seven-phase plan offered to combat lumpen organizations known
as the “Territorial Control Plan”. As of 1 August 2023, only five of the
seven phases have made its way into the daily existence of Salvadoran
society. Those five phases are outlined as follows:
Preparation: Increased military and police presence in
municipalities with high degrees of L.O. presence.
Opportunity: Providing alternative opportunities to Salvadoran youth
(e.g. legal labor) to sway said youth from joining L.O.s.
Modernization: Modernizing (or rather, militarizing) the national
police.
Incursion: “Modernized” rehash of phase one.
Extraction: “Extracting” the remaining L.O. members continuing L.O.
activities.(4)
While Bukele spits out anti-establishment rhetoric – painting emself
as neither left nor right, criticizing both the dominant so-called left
and right wing parties of El Salvador to do so, and claiming to offer
“innovative” nonpartisan solutions that will take care of the societal
ills plaguing the masses – eir politics and so-called solutions do
nothing but feed into the development of a militarized far-right
state.(5) In fascist fashion, Bukele exploited the concerns of the
masses, offered them a scapegoat, and targeted symptoms rather than root
cause to the contradictions that produce violence in Salvadoran society.
Interestingly enough, Bukele seems to be fully aware of this and
seemingly embraces it in an ironic fashion by self-appointing emself as
the “World’s Coolest Dictator” on Twitter.(6)
One thing to make note is that the fascism of the Third World is
imported from the First World. Bukele has had big rise through eir
business career as a comprador-bourgeois businessman, and is now in the
comprador-bourgeois state itself. The crisis of these lumpen
organizations in El Salvador has shown that imperialism’s neo-colony of
El Salvador cannot rule the way it did before, and therefore a comprador
fascist movement has been exported onto it. While Bukele’s political
support was far less overt and hands on than the likes of Pinochet of
Chile and Syngman Rhee of southern Korea, the regime’s close ties to the
Trump administration shows this trend. Bukele’s regime is now rejected
by the left-wing imperialist faction of the U$A, the Biden
administration.
The Old Ideas of Nuevas
Ideas
We define fascism as the open terroristic violence of finance capital
during a time of crisis when the bourgeois state cannot govern itself in
the way it did before. Despite the constant police/military occupation
of the ghettos, barrios, and reservations (alongside the great reversals
of abortion rights); in the context of the United $tates, this has been
the standard method of strategy exert rule onto the oppressed nations
and uphold imperialist-patriarchy. Mass imprisonment, police/military
occupation, and protracted low-intensity genocide are not the exception,
rather the rule. We believe that when global political-economic crisis
threatens U.$. imperialism, U.$. imperialism will start to crack out the
real tests of open terrorism. It is out of that reasoning that the U$A
cannot be considered fascist at this time.
On the other hand, it is arguable that the bourgeois state of El
Salvador (due to the existing crisis of the two dominant L.O.’s: MS-13
and Barrio18) cannot rule itself the way it once did before, and with
that – Bukele’s rise could be considered a fascist movement. In El
Salvador (like many third world neo-colonies) the objective conditions
of the bourgeois state is much weaker than in the U.$. The fact
horizontal-structured L.O.s such as MS-13/Barrio18 are capable of
causing intense crisis exposes this. Another big difference is the
qualitatively different anti-people nature of the lumpen-proletariat
class of the Third World compared to the First World lumpen. In this
sense, Bukele’s political movement can be considered more fascist than
Trump’s on the crisis aspect – although Trump’s mass base of imperialist
country labor aristocracy is a much stronger fuel for a fascist movement
than the crisis-jaded proletariat and petite-bourgeoisie of El Salvador
who long for a single day where ultra-violent anti-people activities are
no longer an expectation of daily existence.
Despite the strongman militarization and self-identification as the
“world’s coolest dictator,” Bukele and eir government held secret
meetings with the leaders of these organizations to lower the crime
rates. The U.$. department of treasury states:
“In 2020, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s (Bukele) administration
provided financial incentives to Salvadoran gangs MS-13 and 18th Street
Gang (Barrio 18) to ensure that incidents of gang violence and the
number of confirmed homicides remained low. Over the course of these
negotiations with Luna and Marroquin, gang leadership also agreed to
provide political support to the Nuevas Ideas political party in
upcoming elections. Nuevas Ideas is the President’s political party and
won a two-thirds super majority in legislative elections in 2021. The
Bukele administration was represented in such transactions by Luna, the
Chief of the Salvadoran Penal System and Vice Minister of Justice and
Public Security, and Marroquin, Chairman of the Social Fabric
Reconstruction Unit. In addition to Salvadoran government financial
allocations in 2020, the gangs also received privileges for gang
leadership incarcerated in Salvadoran prisons, such as the provision of
mobile phones and prostitutes.
Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, Luna also negotiated an agreement with
gang leaders from MS-13 and Barrio 18 for the gangs’ support of
President Bukele’s national quarantine in gang-controlled areas.
Separately, Luna participated in a scheme to steal and re-sell
government purchased staple goods that were originally destined for
COVID-19 pandemic relief. These items were transferred to private
companies and then resold on the private market or back to the
government. Luna’s mother, Alma Yanira Meza Olivares (Meza), acted as
the negotiator in some of these transactions. Additionally, Luna and
Meza developed a scheme to embezzle millions of dollars from El
Salvador’s prison commissary system. They also created fraudulent job
positions within the prison system, in which supposed “employees” would
receive monthly paychecks and return most of the earnings back to Luna
and Meza.”(7)
Despite all the comprador-bourgeois fascism that came with Bukele’s
military strongman strategy to get rid of the crisis of
lumpen-proletariat violence in eir country, the independent leadership
of these anti-people L.O.s was an indispensable and unavoidable class
force in lowering the death rates. With all the talks about the
pragmatist “tough on crime” and “round them all up” narratives expressed
by the imperialist and comprador press, Bukele’s government gives money
and political immunity in exchange for political support and cooperation
of gangs. MIM(Prisons) will not be surprised if there are opportunist
and anti-people MS-13/Barrio18 members in the undemocratic injustice
system of El Salvador today who sees Bukele as their political-economic
patron and sponsor.
The facts presented above provide a case against Bukele’s
tough-on-crime policies as ineffective, yet bourgeois propaganda is a
powerful tool and these policies, due to their perceived success, may
find new homes abroad in Honduras and Guatemala.(8)(9) This sets
potential precedents for a new-wave of mano dura “solutions” throughout
Latin America.
As mentioned above, these policies (however popular and effective or
ineffective they may be) are aimed towards symptoms, not causes. However
qualitatively different the First World and Third World lumpen may be,
it is in this that there is a unifying struggle against the real cause
of their oppression – namely, imperialism. Bourgeois propaganda may be
powerful, but concrete conditions are concrete conditions and concrete
conditions require concrete solutions, not old ideas.
In social media, which Bukele’s regime has utilized greatly for
public image, whenever news reports of the humyn rights abuses in
Salvadorian prisons overcrowded with L.O. members were shown, the
comments were flooded with Amerikan chauvinists and Trump supporters
saying similar actions should be done against the oppressed nation
lumpen organizations in the United $tates. The truth is, U.$.
imperialism already often breaks their own bourgeois democratic values
when it comes to imprisoning and lumpenizing their oppressed nations.
Guilty by association policies has been a long standing practice against
Black and Latin@ masses to the point that merely being family related to
a lumpen organization member can get you labeled as part of that
organization by the pigs. The settlers/Amerikans will jeer at the
oppressed nations telling them that they don’t have it as bad as the
victims of Third World fascism while hoping and wishing for the day that
Third World fascist policies can one day become a reality within U.$.
borders. This issue’s topic of “Prisons Are War” seeks to highlight this
message and tell our readers that low
intensity genocide is already happening to them.
Oliver Anthony’s “Rich Men North of Richmond” is an overnight viral hit, accumulating millions of listens and ranking as the most streamed song on iTunes in Amerika and right now 28 million views on Youtube plus over a million likes. With that catchy southern twang, and a message speaking to workers directly, it is clearly resonating with a lot of people – but what does this mean?
Let’s look first at the lyrics to get a sense of what this song is all about. There’s two main parts of the song that i think really get to the root of what Anthony’s trying to convey. Ey points out:
“Lord, we got folks in the street, ain’t got nothin’ to eat And the obese milkin’ welfare Well, God, if you’re 5-foot-3 and you’re 300 pounds Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds Young men are puttin’ themselves six feet in the ground ‘Cause all this damn country does is keep on kickin’ them down.”
So there’s two matters here: one is the issue of fat people milking welfare, and the other is the plight of the Amerikan workers. Welfare is no doubt a gift of imperialist parasitism paid with super-profits, and MIM pointed out a long time ago how Amerikan minds and bodies are rotting on imperialist parasitism, highlighting the contrast between affluent imperialist countries and the poor exploited countries.
MIM said basically that overcoming imperialism is the only way to reshape food production and consumption, to address the disparity in obesity rates with an equitable distribution of resources to effectively tackle the issue. But so long as imperialism remains, so does parasitism which always fattens up the unproductive of the empire and feeds on the hard working poor of the world. So now here’s the other issue, that question of the plight of the Amerikan workers. Factually, the U.$. government safeguards its labor aristocracy (most of whom are unproductive workers in the service industry) through a multifaceted approach, utilizing OSHA guidelines, mandating minimum wage laws, regulating maximum working hours, and ensuring collective bargaining rights. This is all ensured with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the Department of Labor (DOL), and so on.
In terms of safety, the U.$ is among the safer of countries for workers as it pertains to workplace fatality – still far from perfect. Our most dangerous industry is agriculture, forestry, and fishing with a fatal injury rate at 20 deaths per 100,000 full-time workers. Migrants from south of the U.$./Mexico border make up around 75% of U.$. farm workers so it is no surprise that the most dangerous industry affects Amerikans the least.
But back to the song. The refrain goes:
“These rich men north of Richmond Lord knows they all just wanna have total control Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do And they don’t think you know, but I know that you do ’Cause your dollar ain’t shit and it’s taxed to no end ’Cause of rich men north of Richmond.”
These are your typical Amerikan’s grievances with the system: the government is too big, and the feds won’t keep their greedy hands off your money. Considering Biden’s new plan for 87,000 new IRS agents and his incessant drive to intervene in the affairs of crypto currency companies and his promotion of a new IRS rule to require anyone who earned over $600 on payment apps (like Paypal, Venmo, etc.) to file a 1099-K form to ensure taxation is being paid by lower classes – yeah, maybe this resentment is understandable. But really, Amerika is ranked 32nd out of 38 OECD countries in terms of the tax-to-GDP ratio.(1) Belgium (42.8%), Germany (39.9%), Denmark (38.9%), etc. pay higher taxes, and also receive better social programs. Even the tax rate in Hungary (35%) is higher than in the United $tates (16.4%), which is just above i$rael (15.5%). Since the top 25% of earners pay 89% of all income taxes, and since virtually all Amerikans make more than 90% of the rest of the world in income, is the dollar really worth shit, are Amerikans really taxed to no end, as Anthony claims? [editor note: Not to mention U.$. dollar values being propped up by interest rate hikes that are decimating the value of currencies in exploited countries that must pay debts in U$D.]
No, so what are Amerikans complaining about? Taxes in the U.$. contribute to funding programs such as education, healthcare, social security, unemployment benefits, housing assistance, food assistance, veterans’ services, infrastructure projects, environmental protection, and public transportation; Amerikans have access to clean water, electricity, smartphones, cars, internet connectivity, modern healthcare, education, reliable infrastructure, well-stocked supermarkets, and recreational facilities, which are often unavailable to many in the third world.
So again, what are Amerikans complaining about? Typical Amerikkkan tears over the incompetence of their imperialist leaders who are unable to share the super-profits from the neo-colonies effectively. This is why we rely on science, not frog-in-the-well subjectivism, to inform us about the world.
Frustration
In recent years the labor aristocracy has been shook. The 2016 and 2020 elections show deep-going upset in different segments of the population, which is leading to strange ideological currents among the youth (including a return to religious dogma on the one end and a clinging to nihilism on the other). Some people have just given up on society, so a kind of Kaczynskian primitivism is also making a come-back.
We’re seeing some class problems blow up too, with unions taking more action across the board (with the rail workers, the baristas, and now the script writers and actors in recent months). The crypto-Trotskyite “left” is capitalizing on these grievances to pick up speed and organize, especially among students and younger workers who want a bigger piece of the Amerikan-bloodsuckin’ pie.
Inflation has driven up prices and this month it was revealed how Amerikans have racked up more than $1 trillion of credit card debt.(2) While high credit card debt in general is an indicator of high access to consumption, the recent increases seem to be linked to higher prices. The student debt crisis is also haunting the Amerikan consumption rate, because Amerikans own $1.77 trillion in federal and private student loan debt as of the second quarter of 2023. That’s serious, and students have gotten to the point of just saying “hell no, we ain’t paying that.”
The government, or at least some forces in it, are responsive to that, with the Biden regime talking about “student loan forgiveness.” But it hasn’t been successful. The first time, the Supreme Court ruled that the Secretary of Education did not have the power to waive student loans under the HEROES Act. So Biden is now trying the Higher Education Act of 1965 to justify it, and ey just recently was able to perform an IDR Account Adjustment for 800,000 borrowers. This still doesn’t make the youth all that happy, and a large percentage of the older generations opposed the attempt at debt forgiveness.
Aside from class issues, there’s still heat picking up with the abortion issue and the question of censorship, and other things regarding your typical sex and drug issues. There’s a clear polarization between the youth and the old when it comes to how they approach this and see the world, the former seemingly liberal and the latter seemingly conservative. Generational disputes are all too common a sight now, each generation blaming the other for all the problems we face in the world today.
There is clearly a LOT of frustration, a LOT of unease and anger too – but is that really enough for a revolution? We will have to see the historical forces that the youth (especially the oppressor nation youth movement in the 1960s) and how to discipline this force for non-adventurist and scientific forms of resistance than individualist hedonism.
Proletarianization?
The proletariat’s more than the working-class, it’s defined by a more precise relationship to the ownership of the means of production, consumption, and relations to other classes. It’s the class that is not only dispossessed (without private property), it’s the class with nothing to lose but its chains. Do Amerikans now got nothing to lose but their chains?
Let us look at it from the standpoint of material comfort. Homes built in the last 6 years are 74% larger than those built in the 1910s, an increase of a little over 1,000 square feet – the average new home in the United $tates now spreads over 2,430 square feet.(3) The Biden regime is claiming that the bourgeoisie added 236,000 jobs in March(4) and a solid 187,000 jobs in July(5), and that the unemployment rate has fallen to just 3.5%, matching the lowest level in half a century. They’re claiming also that wages are rising faster than inflation. These claims would indicate that the situation for Amerikans isn’t really all that bad.
In 2019, MIM(Prisons) explained in “Economic Update: Amerikkkans Prospering in 2019” that amerikans are prospering with a stable economy and low unemployment, increased average wages and leisure time, more homeownership and accumulated wealth, etc., all kinds of indications of economic prosperity. There were some issues in 2020-2021 because of the pandemic and surely an economic crisis of big proportions is bound to crop up, but right now the tides seem to have stemmed – at least temporarily.
There is really no sign of proletarianization on the horizon. Maybe it will happen soon, but Comrade Mao said “Marxists are not fortune-tellers.”(6) To speak of lumpenization is perhaps more accurate than predicting proletarianization, i think both are possibilities with the decline of Amerikan capitalism.
While the contradictions described in MIM(Prisons)’s article on the expected recession in 2023 have not been resolved, the crisis has still not hit here in the heart of empire. The self-destructive nature of capitalism-imperialism will lead to wars and other man-made tragedies where these parasitic economic privileges we have will eventually end. Some examples of “fortune-telling” by Mao would be what time, date, and year a recession starts or an imperialist-war breaks out. Maoists do not concern ourselves with this type of prophecy – it is actually the labor aristocrat and petty-bourgeoisie movements of fascism that loves conspiracies and finding prophecies (such as the fascist nonsense promoted in the Elders of the Protocols of Zion and the reactionary QAnon Movement that seems to love Anthony’s song).
Right/Left Divide
In Amerika, the left of capital and the right of capital divide themselves on the issues of culture war but functionally have the same vested political interests in maintaining the status quo of capitalism-imperialism. Occasionally some of these people on the left wing of parasitism present themselves as radicals, anarchists, even sometimes Maoists, but the truth of it is that these are not communists.
The digital landscape’s been churning out a lot of these personalities in recent years. MIM(Prisons) has commented on some of these trends in Some Discussions on Bad Ideas (ULK 79), with attention to how
“communist groups are far outshadowed online by memes, twitch streamers, tik tok spheres, instagram pages, internet forums, and the likes when it comes to converting kids to communism than communist organization internet presence. This has given rise to the problem of communism becoming more akin to a sub-culture talked about on social media sites like twitter and reddit than a political movement. Different political stances from Maoism, Trotskyism, all the way to Stirnerite Anarchism cease to become guides to action, but a thing to put on your bio. Various people’s wars and nations at war become more akin to fandoms for TV shows to obsess and argue over rather than a movement to popularize and create awareness for. Political line ceases to become a belief and action that one takes, but a take one has so they can get on the algorithm. Line struggle turn into flame wars with no purpose of uniting with others, but exist only to express one’s individual self for the cathartic feeling of having the correct line.”
One of these recent digital trends has been known as “MAGA Communism,” with notable support from the likes of people named Haz Al-Din and Jackson Hinkle. This camp has positioned itself against the left and the right, opposing liberalism but also conservatism, taking bits from both sides. [MIM(Prisons) previously referred to Haz in the intro to our review of Pao-Yu Ching’s *From Victory to Defeat for eir meaningless definition of socialism, saying that every country in the last 100 years has been socialist.]
When it comes to songs like this one, it is seen as a message of class struggle by this camp. Haz claims “this song about class struggle by @aintgottadollar, a working class Virginian has gone viral overnight with millions of views from ordinary Americans. The masses are far ahead of the current right wing and leftist grifter ideologists who benefit from dividing the people!”(7)
Similar sentiment from a like-minded camp, calling itself “Patriotic Socialism,” is echoing much the same; you will find this view all over social media, especially the cesspool of Twitter where these ideological currents permeate. Opportunistically, they’re all invoking class struggle.
Well yes, the song is about class struggle but what kind of class struggle? Comrade Mao pointed out “this question of `for whom?’ is fundamental; it is a question of principle.”(8) i don’t see any real concern for the international proletariat in this song, i don’t see any mention of how this dying empire treats the rest of the world with diseases, bombs, sanctions, subversion, and other ways to bring death and destruction to fatten up the Amerikan ticks. So who does this song serve?
Comrade Mao said “all literature and art belong to definite classes and are geared to definite political lines.” That’s why when analyzing literature and art, ey said, “the first problem is: literature and art for whom?”(9) This song is serving the interests of the labor aristocracy, albeit a disaffected branch of the labor aristocracy that has elements of both the right and left-wing of white nationalism.
Anthony eyself has said that “both sides serve the same master – and that master is not someone of any good to the people of this country.” This is conveniently being ignored by the MAGA right, who have taken Anthony as their savior and prophet. For example, here is what the right is saying:
“Rich Men North of Richmond is a key example of the populist-nationalist vs establishment paradigm. The anti-establishment message is gaining traction right now, and explains the dynamic we see in the GOP primary where career politicians are struggling against outsiders.” – Jack Posobiec (10)
“You might notice a theme there… [speaking of both Oliver Anthony’s “Rich Men North of Richmond” & Jason Aldean’s “Try that in a Small Town”] People are starved for music that speaks to them about today’s problems.” – Rogan O’Handley (11)
“Oliver Anthony is a star […] inside of the hearts of the people […] millions of us, with whom he has touched with his music, as somebody who is just desperately searching for a better world in a place that has been strip mined by our elites, and we are angry about it.” – Benny Johnson (12)
Ben Shapiro also praised the song, calling it “the cry of a lot of people in the United States” who feel “there are too many people who have their hand in their pocket, particularly elites in the federal government.”(13) So why ain’t the mainstream left vibing with it? Well a main reason is the song’s attack on the fat people (which they’re calling “fatphobic”) and Anthony’s denunciations of the “welfare state,” but i also think a contributing role is the general anti-southern chauvinism that is characteristic of the liberal-subjectivists in our country. Anthony is from the rural Appalachians, specifically North Carolina.
MIM(Prisons) notes that “there are various groups of people in the United States who share the physical misery of these rural masses – American Indians, Chicano farm laborers, Black tenant farmers in the South, the dispossessed whites of Appalachia. But most of these groups are scattered and weak, living on the fringes of capitalist society, away from its vital centers.”(14)
While the urban petty bourgeoisie’s reaction to Oliver Anthony is partly based in a disdain for southerners, the question is, how do we transform the thinking of those with gripes against the system? How do we get them to drop their vested material interests in parasitism, militarism, and conservatism? That requires more investigation, more practice. To speak of Anthony as this enlightening Buddha of the century is not scientific, his thinking is still backwards and merely reflects some tussles between the labor aristocracy and the imperialist bourgeoisie, but it is not great enough a leap to really consider this some kind of revitalization of Joe Hill or Woody Gutherie.
I think the most important thing to grasp in light of this song is that imperialism is basically in crisis and there’s a lot of discontent at home, and this is fueling contradictions of all kinds. Comrade Mao made it extremely clear that “there is nothing that does not contain contradiction; without contradiction nothing would exist.”(16) The question we need to deal with is how to tackle and wrangle with these contradictions.
The key to contradictions and their resolution is practice. Comrade Mao conceived of it in this way: Practice, knowledge, again practice, and again knowledge. Stepping up practice is a big leap along the way of figuring out problems and having our thinking correspond to really-existing laws that govern society. As fascism and social-fascism step up to the plate and imperialism crashes into deeper peril, advancing our work as Maoists is key to ensuring our survival and our ability to meet the challenges that come ahead.
The challenges ahead are gonna be difficult but we are taught not to fear hardships or sacrifices, not even death. Focusing on ideological unity, strengthening our organizational bond, digging deeper, and keeping at it, more answers will reveal themselves about the nature of what’s going on and what we need to do. More practice is what we need. That lofty criterion of practice is our compass to success and our life-blood.
With practice, we gain insight, we gain consciousness, we gain unity, and we gain struggle and pain too. It ain’t supposed to be easy. We are up against a big ass labor aristocracy serving a strong imperial empire and its representative drones in the White House. But they won’t win. That’s what strategic confidence is all about. This is all a paper tiger, and practice proves that empire ain’t all that.
So long as the proletariat of the Third World is revolutionizing, and the empire is dying, the situation is excellent in my eyes. Our day is coming, don’t let the grifters, tricksters and swindlers fool ‘ya.
The task of a revolutionary, regardless of ones political/ideological
or cultural leanings, is to make revolution. Revolution is all about
change. The biggest change that a revolutionary must undertake is the
equivalent to in the religion of Islam what is called Jihad. Jihad is
not limited to what most Western religious enthusiasts have been led to
believe, the meaning of Jihad goes much deeper than the concept of
crusades or mere bombings. The biggest Jihad or battle that one can have
is the battle for control over oneself.(als see MIM(Prisons)’s study
pack on religion) To the revolutionary, this task is important because
he/she has to become the change they wish to produce to the world.
A constant improving of one’s character with the righteousness of
ideals that have went through the rigors of tests to be found or rather
proved to be correct for the overall ordeal of advancement. Once again
before this can be felt by the untapped but potential revolutionary or
the dumb, deaf & blind brother/sister clinging to a culture intended
to kill them, the revolutionary must make this change (revolution)
within his/her own personal character. This is what should be used to
provide an example for others of whom we are trying to reach. This also
however leads us to the conclusion that people no matter the fact that
we come from common ways of living & thinking, are still each
different.
This statement doesn’t mean that I subscribe to individualism,
because true revolutionaries think from the communal mindset. However,
since we are far removed from that concept, we must find ways that are
productive to lead one to the communal mindset that already exists in us
naturally. The idea of individualism is one of the main obstacles to
overall community change, because we’re not acting as organisms moving
together for the betterment of the body (society). But that doesn’t mean
that all aspects of individualism are wrong, for example, “each
according to ability.” So while some may think of us all developing the
mind of the commune will lead us all to thinking like the Borg from Star
Trek (everyone thinking the same thing), I see it more like the Smurfs.
Yes the Smurfs. They had a unified community, accompanied with everyone
playing a specific role. This way shouldn’t just be relegated to one’s
own political vanguard or the military brigade. We have to find some
means of communicating these ideals to everyone. Since we all share a
common enemy, all of our efforts have to revolve around crushing that
threat.
If we relegate ourselves to constantly battling over which of the
communal methods hold the stronger validity, we’ll all end up moving in
our own directions & probably never initializing the changes that we
are the basis of our citizenship within these groups. We’ll more than
likely continue to develop the mentalities they would like for us to
develop, which will ultimately reduce us to caricature. All opinions are
not equal & there is such a thing as counter-productive revisionism.
Our vanguard elements are going to have to develop the use of Democratic
Centralism. This process however must be done without the bitterness
& rancor that can only come from egoism. In fact egoism must be
crushed, because great man personalities have no place in revolution.
Revolution, whether politically or through armed struggle, is all about
the altering of a society that is crushing the life force out of all of
us, this is not an individual problem, once again it is communal!
Dialectical materialism is all about examining things within their
total sequence & seeing the pros & cons in the struggles of the
past. The obvious reason is to better equip ourselves from suffering the
same fate as a result of the same failures of our previous brave
brothers/sisters engaged at trying to crush the outside enemy culture
& to utilize whatever methods may be useful to strengthen what we
already have. A constant improvisation still needs to be done, but this
doesn’t mean that we should stop studying people’s war. We have to study
the principles of people’s war & learn to interpret them to fit our
overall situation here. Most wars of liberation took place in the
countryside of their respective lands. Our situation is different in
that Amerikan settler-colonialism is modernized & at least 80-90% of
Amerika is industrialized, so the nerve centers of this nation are
indeed the cities. This means that hip shooting cops are all around us,
thus making them easier to reach.
In the opening phases of our struggle for liberation, I feel just as
Comrade Jackson felt, that the military proper must be kept hidden &
separate from the political front. You see the role of a political
revolutionary is totally different than the military who are engaged in
armed struggle against macabre freaks. The guerrilla chief is tasked
with communicating to his soldiers that they must protect their
political peoples at their work. If we let our “voices” die to machine
gun fire, no knock invasions, the anonymous tip, political incarceration
& even the work of agent provocateurs & class defectors, then
our dream of eventual freedom will more than likely die with those brave
brothers/sisters. The guerrilla chief however must also have a thorough
understanding of the true nature of fascism, the modern industrial
state, the economic landscape etc. The reason is that if one group dies
or is not as effective the guerrilla chief & his band of
revolutionaries can still keep the revolution alive.
As of now our main problem is the fact that our vanguard &
military groups have shifted their focus from revolution to clinging to
the culture of anti-people crimes. The settler-colonial strategy is law
& order which ultimately means prison – our tactic is perfect
disorder which leads to the proletariat & the lumpen creating mass
disorder to work against the beast (cops) & their vigilante
supporters. In 1969, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover declared that “there
will no longer be a Black Panther Party in the U.S.” The Black Panther
Party was not the only revolutionary group & in spite of popular
belief, they were not just a group working exclusively in the interest
of Blacks. The Black Panther Party like almost every other revolutionary
group, was a communist organization that utilized the principles they
learned from successful communist victories, from examples such as Mao
Zedong and his Red Book. They formed alliances with many other
revolutionary groups and because the Black situation stood out more
(& still does) they were thought to be the overall vanguard party to
even other political & military vanguards. So the goal wasn’t to
just fix conditions in the Black community. That was their primary
objective, but they understood that if you just focused exclusively on
the black conditions and fixing only our areas, we would have to
ghettoize other segments of society that would equal Mexicans, Chican@s,
First Nations, etc.
To stop the progressive elements of unity among different
cultural/revolutionary groups, the establishment caused the leaders of
these groups to distrust their own members. This was done by the
government from planting spies in these groups, along with wiretaps,
surveillance, to out sending letters to leaders that were supposed to
have come other leaders declaring war between the groups. The goals the
establishment used largely worked and eventually several key leaders
either went into hiding, left the country, or were even assassinated
while the political prisoners suffered death legally and
quasi-legally.
Of course progressive thinking was still held as an ideal in some
people’s minds and this led to groups that eventually turned against the
community even further by becoming gangs. Community Revolution in
Progress became the goal for Raymond Washington and Stanley “Tookie”
Williams or Brotherly Love Overriding Oppression & Destruction
became the acronym for Blood. These were good ideas and could’ve worked
if we had received the freedom first. The freedom I’m referring to must
come first in the form of a free-dome because our situation was more
psychological than physical. This means that our minds were created for
the sole purpose of getting us to act against our even better interests.
This shouldn’t be understated since the mindsets that we have now didn’t
exist in communal Africa. These mindsets is what led us to
industrializing this country which ultimately our labor was used as the
down payment on the system of economics that determines one’s status in
this country.
Without the mindsets that we adopted (through long usage) we would’ve
long been better equipped at resisting. But since chattel slavery lasted
for 400 years and we haven’t been free 200 years, how can we hope to win
freedom, especially since once again we are still clinging to the ideas
that created our mindsets in the first place? Since it is our design
that gave beauty to the world, which should be easy to see since others
are quick to pick up on our culture, even sometimes more readily than we
are, we must go back to our own design. This could work for the
betterment of not only us as a group however, this could be used as a
basis to show others righteous examples that could ultimately lead to a
change. But it must begin now. For us to delay what must be done today
is like asking someone else to undertake to aid us in a liberation
effort that must be engaged in by our own efforts.
Another problem working against us is our inability to understand the
difference between reform and change. Largely the only righteous peoples
who were working for us are the people who were attacked by the outside
enemy culture. Anyone else was used because their stance wasn’t
revolutionary. I’m not dismissing people like Martin Luther King Jr.,
Rosa Parks etc, but I know that the main reason why they are mentioned
over people such as Malcolm X or Huey Newton is their view against the
necessity not only of violence and the correct usage of armed struggle,
but it also mainly rests with them telling us to escape from the culture
that we embrace. Malcolm X’s image is only now used because at the end
of his life he was said to have accepted whites. Part of that was true,
but he never said they weren’t devils just because he converted to
orthodox Islam. What he said was that in his view the devil (white man)
could only be redeemed in his opinion through Islam because Christianity
has not redeemed them from not only killing us, but also starting wars
with other whites.
So people like Martin, through his practice of pacifism and his
refusal to go against the culture of Amerikanism, resulted in him
winning a few reforms which are only offered to us as tokens, these
tokens however are not change. Change is why we are no longer looked at
as second class citizens in a world where some are held above others
based on racial & economic reasons. His Imperial Majesty who heavily
inspired Bob Marley to later embrace Rastafarianism, said that “until
the philosophy that the color of one’s skin is as less significant as
the color of one’s eyes there will always be war.” The road to freedom
means freedom, justice & equality for all regardless of one’s
ethnicity, political views, religions, spirituality etc.
We will have this freedom even at the cost of total war. We come to
the conclusion that violence to us may be the only recourse. This
violence shouldn’t be tied to romanticism, it’s about us altering the
conditions that are restricting our passage to freedom. I humbly and
passionately respect all the sincere people who gave their life and
ideas to produce men like me whose goal is to move further than when
they left off and that’s even for those of whom I disagree with. I
recognize that passion leads to different outcomes and different
results, as long as they were intended to benefit us as a whole than
whether I disagree or not I still have the fact that their life force
was used to alter the conditions that is for the betterment of our lives
as a whole. My stance as a whole is rooted around us globally enjoying
freedom, justice & equality. I realize the imperial process is only
complete if the parent imperial nation - USA - is strong so I’m all for
bringing Amerika down to her knees. Anyone who sincerely has that as a
goal I embrace, white or Black I embrace, but it must begin now.
Long Live Guerrilla Chief George Jackson!
Long Live All those Who Don’t Fear Freedom!
Plastick of MIM(Prisons) responds:This comrade here
has given us a core learning element of leading the masses by example –
a new socialist world and a new human being will have to constantly
remove the old world’s reactionary culture and habits.
One thing this comrade has mentioned that we are in disagreement is
in regards to fascism. Originally, the comrade has spoke of fascist
Amerika which has been changed to settler-colonial Amerika by this
responder. We define fascism as a new strategy by the bourgeois
dictatorship when it can no longer rule the way it has ruled before. We
believe that Amerika is likely to turn fascist through a
political-economic crisis which is integral to capitalism-imperialism.
However, we believe that the current state of methods such as police
killings, imprisonment, and exploiting the majority of the world for
superprofits and high level of consumption has always been the way that
Amerika has ruled. When this social-democratic strategy of sharing the
piece of the imperialist pie to the oppressor nation (Amerikans) ceases
to work due to an ever deepening of the crisis, then fascism will indeed
come. Up until now, Amerika has maintained relative strength, and Sun
Tzu taught us to attack when the enemy is helpless.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, MIM(Prisons)
has not published any analysis of the war, nor have we participated in
any organizing around the war. Our position is that our movement should
be looking to counter and prevent Amerikan war-mongering against Russia,
or any other country.
Unfortunately, most opposition to the Russian invasion in the United
$tates is being led by the State Department and is fanning Amerikan
support for war with Russia and promoting the overthrow of Russian
President Vladimir Putin. As we go to press, things have continued to
heat up and the threat of inter-imperialist war seems greater than it’s
been in decades.
Imperialists are stealing from other imperialists. The U.$. Treasury
Department has already seized $1 billion worth of boats and planes and
hundreds of millions of dollars in bank accounts. The House of
Representatives passed a bill to liquidate these assets and use them to
rebuild Ukraine. In addition, the U.$. imperialist bloc has frozen $600
billion of Russia’s central bank foreign reserve fund, which they are
also considering using to rebuild Ukraine.(1) They are taking the stolen
wealth of other imperialists and using it to rebuild Ukraine to serve
U.$. imperialism instead of Russia. This greatly adds to the original
military threat Russia had felt from NATO encircling them, making the
escalation to all-out inter-imperialist war more likely.
The U.$/IMF/World Bank will of course sink their teeth deeper into
Ukraine through loans, which have already begun during the war period.
As they do to oppressed nations around the world, these loans become
means by which they control their policies and structure their economies
as neo-colonies. Perhaps they will even use assets stolen from Russia to
loan to Ukraine.
As this issue of Under Lock & Key reaches ours
subscribers, we will be approaching the anniversary of the victory over
Nazi Germany (May 8-9). In the Russian-allied Donetsk and Luhansk
Peoples’ Republics they are restoring statues of V.I. Lenin and hanging
red flags as they prepare to celebrate, while the Azov neo-Nazis
threatened to attack victory parades.(2) The memories of World War II
run deep. While there is no socialist camp engaged in the current war,
we can see how the crisis is pushing people to look for answers. In
addition to being morally abhorrent, the fascists cannot address the
contradictions of capitalism that are playing out today. It is only a
new economy that is driven by universal humyn need and not profit that
can solve the problems of war, environmental destruction and economic
booms and busts that capitalism brings.
What
sort of sanctions is Russia under? What will the effect be?
Russia was banned from SWIFT, a component of the global payments
processing system. Many other sanctions have been placed on the Russian
economy, including obstacles to outside investment and bans on the sale
of anything that could conceivably have a military use (which is a lot
of stuff). Oil and gas, as of this writing, are still being bought from
Russia by most European countries, but this might change soon even
though Europe has no other reliable supply of natural gas to rely on
currently. Germany, for example, ships weapons to Ukraine that are used
against Russian troops and pays Russia for its natural gas at the same
time.
The effects of the sanctions aren’t clear yet. If Russia loses access
to the European market for its oil and gas its export earnings will
collapse. China cannot replace the lost demand, and sanctions will play
havoc on Russian industry’s supply chains.
What
will the effects of the war be on the Ukrainian economy?
One of the major battles, around the town of Mariupol in the
southeast, is unfolding in Azovstal, an enormous Soviet-era steel mill.
The complex has mostly been destroyed. This serves as a symbol of what
the rest of Ukraine will look like once all this is over. Following the
war there are likely to be fewer and worse jobs, a large refugee
population abroad, environmental devastation and a radical polarization
of Ukrainian society. There is talk of forgiving some of Ukraine’s
foreign debt, and maybe there will be aid for reconstruction, but the
rest of the world’s charity is not likely to make up for what’s being
lost now, and its also likely to come with strings attached.
Are there Nazis in Ukraine?
Yes. The Azov battalion, which is based in southeast Ukraine and has
been fighting Russian separatists in the Donbass region since 2014, is a
far-right military formation with white supremacist leadership and
ideals. They’re responsible for numerous attacks on Roma encampments,
LGBT people and leftists in Ukraine since their founding, as well as
attacks on civilians and war crimes during the battles against
separatists in the east. Many of their leaders, including founder Andriy
Biletsky, used to openly promote race war against
“untermenschen”[define?] and Jewish people, but have dialed back such
talk in public in recent years.
Their logo features the Wolfsangel and the Sonnenrad, both
indisputable Nazi SS symbols, and the constant appearance of these logos
in sympathetic coverage of the Ukrainian military has been a PR headache
for the government. The Azov battalion is just one part of a larger
fascist Azov movement coming from the Western part of Ukraine. U.$. news
media has helpfully downplayed the significance of an openly fascist,
highly armed and well-organized formation at the heart of Ukrainian
politics by claiming that the symbols and years of fascist rhetoric and
actions either don’t mean anything or are in the organization’s past.
The limited presence of explicit far-right figures in the Ukrainian
parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, belies their ability to organize outside
parliament and the impunity with which they do so.
The popularity of Stepan Bandera is another aspect of fascism in
Ukraine. Bandera was the head of the Organization of Ukranian
Nationalists, and worked with the Nazis during their occupation of
Ukraine, including participating in the Holocaust and in ethnic
cleansing in southeastern Poland. He is admired by the far right and
those influenced by them, but not by the rest of the country – the Rada
refused to award him the title of Hero of Ukraine when this was proposed
in 2019. So it’s wrong to say that Ukraine is a Neo-Nazi dictatorship,
just as it’s wrong to say that fascists have no influence and are not a
serious issue in Ukranian society. Of course, Putin has his own fascists
and couldn’t care less about Nazi rhetoric among his own forces, so he
can’t use that as a pretext for an invasion.
Are war crimes being
committed in Ukraine?
The biggest war crime is starting one, so Russia is undoubtedly
guilty on that score. In addition, indiscriminate shelling of civilian
areas in Ukraine by Russia has led to probably thousands of casualties
so far, though confirmed counts are much lower. During early April, when
Russian forces retreated from the area surrounding Kiev, Ukranian forces
reoccupying the town of Bucha found hundreds of bodies of civilians on
the streets. The brutality of the invading forces is clear.
The Ukranian side has also engaged in war crimes, like the
kneecapping of prisoners of war. That happened on video, so who knows
what’s going on when phones aren’t pulled out. War is hell.
Are there
diplomatic efforts to stop the war underway?
Ukraine and Russia started talking almost immediately, and the
demands have shifted with the battle. When it looked like Russia was
about to capture Kiev immediately in the early days of the war, Russia’s
demands were significant. But now that Russia has withdrawn from the
area around Kiev and suffered significant casualties, things are
different. The discoveries in Bucha as well as the radicalizing effect
of war in general, might make negotiations break down completely in the
future.
The key issues in the talks are Ukraine’s diplomatic relationship
with the EU and NATO, and territory in Ukraine. Russia wants Ukraine to
stay out of NATO, and wants its territorial acquisitions, including
Donetsk and Luhansk in the east and the Crimean peninsula in the south,
to be confirmed.
Does
Putin support the Soviet Union and its recreation?
The Soviet Union was formed on a voluntary basis by independent
nations. Most of those who joined the Soviet Union had been part of the
Russian Empire in the past. As an imperialist, Putin may be aspiring to
something closer to the Russian Empire. However, stated motivations for
the invasion of Ukraine are immediate concerns about defending Russia
from NATO.
In a recent speech Putin denounced Lenin and the Bolsheviks for the
creation of Ukraine, because Lenin recognized the right of all nations
to secede. In ULK 36 we wrote about the emblematic image of the
toppling
of the statue of Lenin in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev in 2013.
This was done by supporters of the right-wing populist party of
Svodoba.
Both sides of the current war in Ukraine are openly and virulently
opposed to Bolshevism and the ideas of Lenin and Stalin.
Should
we support sanctions as a way to peacefully pressure Russia to stop the
war?
The sanctions being implemented by the U.$.-led imperialist bloc are
not peaceful as they come along with large military support being sent
into Ukraine to prolong the war and the fighting.
Sanctions are economic warfare. They can be a softer way to pressure
other powers than military conflict, but given time they can also have
more damaging effects.
In a few days the U.$. imperialists achieved more than the movement
to boycott, sanction and divest from I$rael has achieved in years. The
illegal occupation of Palestine and daily oppression of the Palestinian
people does not get the support of many of the multinational
corporations and organizations that jumped to ban Russia or pull their
operations from Russia.
As the sanctioning of Russia happened more quickly and successfully,
it is that much more dangerous. The increase in economic boundaries
between imperialist camps marks the shift from a stage of relative peace
between imperialist powers to one of more violent competition. Tariffs,
sanctions, market control, dividing up of the world’s colonies,
resources and markets, were what led up to the first and second
inter-imperialist wars.
Supporting sanctions on Russia right now is further isolating an
imperialist power and increasing the chances of military escalation
between the imperialists, which increases the chance of nuclear war.
None of this is in the interests of humynity as a whole.
Is
siding with the Amerikans and against the Russians the profitable option
for the capitalists?
For the last century the United $tates has led the most prosperous
path for international finance capital. As a result many of the big
names are loyal to the Amerikans. But there are also many exceptions,
companies who are not volunteering to stop business in Russia. And
others who are looking to capitalize on others leaving. One financial
company made a bold statement saying that if they were to ban a country
from their services for invading a sovereign people, they’d start with
banning the Amerikans.(3)
Different capitalists are going to have different interests, and
their interests are going to conflict with those of their competitors.
While the big finance capitalists benefit from and support stability,
other capitalist interests will fund and fuel escalating conflict
between the imperialist camps. Meanwhile, weapons manufacturers always
benefit from militarism and are very powerful and influential in
imperialist circles of power. The mutual interests that created the
military-industrial complex has posed a great threat to the world since
WWII.
What is a
multipolar world, and is it a good thing?
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United $tates of Amerika
has been the sole dominant superpower in the world. Before then,
countries who opposed U.$. interests could find support from the other
imperialist pole of the Soviet Union.
Since WWII, Europe has been subsumed by Amerikan imperialism. If you
look at a map of those imposing sanctions on Russia today it is occupied
Turtle Island (the United $tates and Klanada), Western Europe, Australia
and Japan. This has been the alliance of imperialist powers that has
dominated the world, operating under U.$. military and economic
leadership, for 70 years.
China left the socialist path in 1976, and has continued to rise as
an economic superpower since then. When the Soviet Union took the
capitalist path it led to collapse 35 years later as the bourgeoisie was
divided, carving out their own fiefdoms from which to extract wealth.
China’s new bourgeoisie however has remained united in a plan to exploit
its own proletariat, and is now seen as the biggest threat to U.$.
dominance almost 50 years after taking the capitalist road. Of course,
the people of China and the former Soviet Union were the losers in both
cases.
China and Russia remain politically separate from the U.$.-dominated
imperialist pole, despite China’s deep integration with the U.$.
economy. Their socialist past is one reason for this separation.
Together Russia and China control most of the Eurasian land mass, and as
neighbors have shared interests in promoting trade in the region. The
media has been buzzing about the new Russia/China pole as the
geopolitics of the invasion of Ukraine play out. Some dissident media
outlets cheer this prospect as a counterbalance to U.$./European
imperialism, or what is often referred to as “Western” imperialism.
We look at the invasion of Ukraine with the outlook of “it’s
terrible, but it’s fine.” An invasion by an imperialist country is
always terrible, with Ukrainians and Russian soldiers dying and 100,000s
of Ukrainians being displaced. Communists should never aid an
imperialist invasion.
Ultimately, it is imperialist conflict that creates space for the
proletariat to organize, and to play the imperialists against each other
in order to win victories for the people. In that sense, the increase in
disorder in the world “is fine.” It is the inevitable result of the
contradictions within the capitalist system. These conflicts will come
sooner or later, we cannot prevent them in the short term, but we can
seize the opportunities they create to put an end to this system to
prevent chaos in the long-term.
Prior to WWI, Britain was the leading imperialist power, and
maintained its dominance in part by keeping continental Europe divided.
Today the Amerikans play the leading role, but are working with the
British to prevent closer relations between Germany and Russia. This has
been their strategy since the 1930s when the imperialists feared Germany
would join the socialist camp.
In recent years, the United $tates has been threatening sanctions to
stop the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that would pipe natural gas directly
from Russia to Germany through the Baltic Sea. Germany is already
Russia’s biggest gas customer, and Nord Stream 2 would strengthen that
relationship. The Amerikans oppose this as they see this tying German
and Russian interests closer. In recent negotiations around sanctions
against Russia, Germany proved reluctant but ultimately joined the NATO
consensus to impose them. Germany even gave in on shipping arms to
Ukraine after refusing at first.
Among the imperialists there are disagreements about this. Henry
Kissinger famously opposed NATO inclusion of Ukraine, promoting a policy
of integrating Russia into the U.$.-led sphere. Kissinger warned of the
consequences of trying to break the back of Russia.
Nord Stream 2 provides an alternate route to transport gas to Germany
than the other primary route through Ukraine.
Petro Dollars and Reserve
Currencies
Following WWII, the U.$. was the least damaged imperialist power and
was booming from the wartime economy. Profits were high, exploitation of
the Third World was transferring wealth to the rising U.$. empire that
financed the rebuilding of Europe. This allowed Europe to be built in
the way the Amerikans saw fit. One thing this allowed for was they
positioned the dollar to become the global reserve currency, or the
currency that other countries held and conducted international trade in.
Oil was set to trade exclusively in exchange for the “petro dollar.”
This arrangement has allowed the U.$. to have a growing trade deficit
for decades without the value of their currency dropping. When Third
World countries have trouble paying their debts, their currencies can
become worthless overnight. A replacement of the U.$. dollar as the
global reserve currency makes the United $tates more economically
vulnerable.
“According to the IMF, the share of reserves held in U.S. dollars by
central banks has dropped by 12 percentage points since the turn of the
century, from 71 percent in 1999 to 59 percent in 2021. But this fall
has been matched by a rise in the share of what the IMF calls
‘non-traditional reserve currencies’, defined as currencies other than
the ‘big four’ of the US dollar, euro, Japanese yen and British pound
sterling, namely such as the Australian dollar, Canadian dollar, Chinese
renminbi, Korean won, Singapore dollar, and Swedish krona.”(4)
Currently Russia is saying ‘unfriendly countries’ must begin to pay
them for gas in Russian rubles. Hungary, which is part of the European
Union, but also friendly with Russia has already agreed to pay with
rubles. But the European Union(E.U.) has said the deal was to pay in
euros and dollars and they would not change. This is an effort by Russia
to stabilize their currency using their vast gas trade with Europe to
force others to buy rubles. While the value of the ruble initially
dropped about 50% after invading Ukraine, it has since recovered close
to pre-war levels.
Poland, Germany and Bulgaria have refused to pay Russia for natural
gas in rubles instead of euros as they are demanding. On 27 April 2022,
Russia halted natural gas flows to Poland and Bulgaria after their
deadline for paying in rubles was not met. About 40% of Europe’s gas
consumption is supplied by Russia. The region is talking about
tightening up its consumption. While good for the planet, this will lead
to a further constriction of the economy, applying more pressure to the
imperialists who must always expand their markets to circulate more
capital. However, it is reported that some undisclosed purchasers are
going ahead and buying with rubles, despite it being a violation of EU
sanctions.(5)
Would
joining the European Union benefit Ukranians economically?
As we discussed in ULK 36, GDP in Ukraine after the
dissolution of the Soviet Union was 1/3 what it was just before. Though
the Soviet Union had already been operating a capitalist economy for 35
years at that time, the complete opening up of the region to the West,
the complete Liberalization of policies, and the resultant chaos and
uncertainty led to a precipitous drop in material wealth in the
country.
Leading up to and following the 2014 coup in Ukraine, the GDP fell
and had not recovered pre-coup highs before the current war.(6) The coup
installed a U.$.-backed, EU/NATO friendly government that introduced
International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans to the country, which are used
around the world to extract wealth from the exploited countries to the
finance capitalists. As we predicted in ULK 37 these IMF
loans contributed to decreasing wealth in Ukraine.
Before 2014, the Russian-speaking areas of Ukraine in the East and
South were much more productive and prosperous. People in those regions
have lost significant income. Meanwhile, the rest of the country that
was somewhat ignored by Russian imperialism, has not seen material
improvements by cozying up to the West.(7)
To join the E.U. is a logical option for many in Ukraine who see the
wealth in those countries and the incomes they can earn migrating to
even the eastern E.U.. Yet the spoils of imperialism are limited, and
experience in the last 8 years in Ukraine show the limitations of this
option.
Ukraine and Russia remain largely proletarian countries, with
material interests opposed to imperialism. While there does not appear
to be a strong anti-imperialist current in Ukraine at this time, this
can change quickly as this crisis has brought much disruption and
displacement in the country.
