The Lumpen Show Relative Progress Compared to Amerikkkans
[The following letter is from a prisoner in New York who generally
likes what MIM Notes has to say. It is an example of what communists are
up against in terms of uniting the oppressed within u$ borders against
imperialism. Most of the criticisms in the letter are answered in the
original article, and some answers are repeated in brackets within the
letter. Below we discuss this letter in the context of the greater
public opinion battle among the lumpen class.]
I am writing in response to an article that was featured in the April
2007 issue of MIM Notes (#343) entitled, “War Criminals Kill Saddam
Hussein.” I was shocked and disappointed by the author’s description of
the executed reactionary dictator Hussein as “… a martyr for Third World
independence.” The author went on to assert that “He [i.e.. Saddam
Hussein] followed his two sons… and grandson… to the grave in the fight
for Iraqi independence.” Although I found other statements in the
article to be both accurate and poignant (such as the author’s reasoning
that Hussein could not be put on trial for the bulk of the slaughter he
performed “…because the evidence for U.$. and British complicity would
have come out…”), the aforementioned eulogy of Saddam cannot be deemed
as anything except ridiculous, the product of ignorance, and a slap to
the face of all oppressed “Third World” peoples who are suffering under
and standing against U$-supported lackey regimes like that of former
Iraqi resident Saddam Hussein.
[MIM: In the second sentence of the article, “War Criminals Kill
Saddam Hussein”, MIM mentions that Hussein killed thousands of
communist-minded Iraqis before stating that he put his life on the line
for an oppressed nation. So the reader’s claim that the author is not
aware of Iraqi history is clearly due to h own poor attention to the
original article. Yes, Hussein killed thousands of communists and he
died in the struggle for national liberation. We said it again. MIM is
also part of the tiny minority in the united $tates who actually cared
that the united $tates was funding the Baath regime before the
imperialists turned on it. Meanwhile, the vast majority of amerikkkans
did nothing to stop their government from funding the slaughter of Iraqi
communists in the 1960s nor from their own people going to Iraq today to
slaughter Muslims, which no one can claim ignorance of. So for
amerikkkans to turn around and use the fact that he was u$-funded
against Hussein after he died defying u$ occupation of Iraq is
ludicrous.]
The author makes mention of the “stupid liberals on NPR,” but at least
NPR has been intelligent enough to recognize and report (quite
vigorously) on the U$ all-out support for Saddam and his Baathist regime
before their “foxy-proxy” relationship went sour- or the atrocities that
grew from and were enabled by that support - on programs such as Amy
Goodman’s “Democracy NOW!”
[MIM: What we were criticizing the stupid liberals for was failing
to recognize that Arabs ranked Hussein as the fourth most respected
world leader, tied with bin Laden. A fact our reader also chooses to
ignore from the original article being critiqued.]
Hussein’s decision not to flee Iraq during the invasion was hardly one
based upon any revolutionary principles (incidentally, he did flee Iraq
once early in his political career following a botched assassination
attempt of a political opponent). He was a power monger/ mega-parasite
who was unable to even imagine living without the ability or means to
impose his will upon others. Moreover, he had created so many enemies
throughout the planet and from every class of society that surely he
knew that he could not have survived for long outside of Iraq.
Addressing the Second National Congress of Workers and Peasants
Representatives in 1934,
Chairman
Mao stated: “I earnestly suggest to the congress that we pay close
attention to the well-being of the masses, from the problems of land and
labour to those of fuel, rice, cooking oil and salt.” Neither Saddam
Hussein, his profligate and vicious sons, nor anyone else who comprised
the brutal cadre that commanded the pseudo-socialist democratic Baathist
regime’s government (the history of which the author is invited to
research in depth) ever upheld or intended to uphold such a critical and
revolutionary ideal - not during the time of U$ patronage, not during or
after the Gulf War, not during the embargo, and not at any time during
the U$ invasion and current occupation.
[MIM: Clearly our reader has not done much research into the current
conditions in Iraq, nor compared them to Iraq in the past. Things like
“fuel, rice, cooking oil and salt” are no longer readily available in
Iraq as they were during the Baath Party rule. Remember how the u$
bombed water treatment facilities and knocked out the power grid upon
its invasion? Not only have the u$ occupiers taken away the basic
necessities of the people, but they have more than doubled the number of
unnecessary deaths in the country, while bringing in u$-style prison
operations. (1) Since we last reported on these facts, the bourgeois
press has reported a 50% increase in the number of Iraqis held in u$
prisons over a six month period. (2) However, these numbers ignore the
majority of prisoners who are in Iraqi-run jails, making it hard to know
how close they are to achieving amerikkkan-level imprisonment rates. But
reports from a Big Noise Films reporter indicate that in parts of Anbar
province “everyone” is in prison, leaving only children and the elderly
in the streets begging u$ military persynal to return their families. So
while we don’t have the complete numbers, the trend is clear: lock up
the oppressed. According to U$ General Petraeus, supervising this
growing prison population was one reason for the increase in troops
needed this year. (3) Perhaps amerikkkan prison guard unions will push
to increase the troop and imprisonment surge in Iraq.]
Chairman Mao stated: “The bourgeoisie, as a rule, conceals the problem
of class status and carries out its one-class dictatorship under
the”national” label.” Hussein and his henchmen were pure petty
bourgeoisie- and truly traitors to the Iraqi people in allowing the
Iraqi nation to be used by the U$ as a proxy serving it’s own
imperialist/ neocolonialist interests in the middle east.
Chairman Mao said:
“All men must die, but death can vary in its significance… To die for
the people is weightier than Mount Tai, but to work for the fascists and
die for the exploiters and oppressors is lighter than a feather.”
Saddam Hussein, who was an Arab Fascist at best, who exploited the
ethnic and racial divisions and the resources of the Iraqi people to
consolidate and augment his own power and status, who oppressed the
Iraqi people with the aid and at the insistence of his
neocolonial/imperialist masters, died a humiliating death at the hands
of these very same masters that was lighter than the feather of a
humming bird.
MIM discusses this further: The lumpen in the
united $tates are struggling to get a scientific hold on the principal
contradiction. On the one hand you have people rapping about the
Taliban, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden as being hard, rebels
against the white power structure. You have Muslim wimmin speaking out
in favor of modesty to beat back the war cries of the white nationalists
using Islam’s gender line as a justification for invasions for more
superprofits. And you have those who see the fighters in Iraq and
Afghanistan as being on the righteous side of a holy jihad.
On the other hand you got people rapping about Bush and bin Laden being
“two separate parts of the same seven headed dragon.” You got people
putting religion as principal, and as an absolute tool of the oppressor.
And you’ve got people pushing a purity line, as the reader above, who
will not make strategic alliances with someone who has done things they
disagree with.
We can see we have more of the former here among the lumpen than we do
among the u$ population in general, and that is something. Integration
may have bought off and brainwashed many, but not all. What makes the
struggle more interesting is that it is those who identify as
revolutionaries that are more likely to stumble on the petty bourgeois
obstacles to unity of the oppressed nations. It is people who are
rapping about sex and drugs half the time that are saying, “al Qaeda be
Black men’s best friend” and ” I’m half Saddam, half bin Laden, that
equals full time ridin.” It seems to be those who pick up the Koran
instead of the New York Times that are more likely to recognize that the
Iraqi fighters are contributing the most to overthrow the very system
that is responsible for this war and so much suffering thru economic
deprivation.
When the Nation of Gods and Earths (NOGE) came out with a statement
proclaiming their right to affiliate and practice their beliefs in
prisons they attempted to draw a clear line between themselves and
“religious” Islam that is associated with “terrorism” in the minds of
the oppressors. While righteously calling amerika out for alleging to
support religious freedom in Afghanistan while persecuting Five
Percenters, they deem the liberation fighters in that country
terrorists. Their statement reads, “The fact that the Father fought for
this country in the Korean War showed that he was a true patriot. To go
to war for your homeland on foreign soil is the greatest sacrifice a man
can make.” The Father of this group took up arms against socialism and
self-determination of the Korean people.
This caught the attention of one God who responded to a struggle among
members over this article by saying:
“How are you going to encourage Black men and womyn to fight in
Amerika’s army to ‘protect freedom and democracy’ and against oppressed
nations fighting for liberation? See point 6 in the Black Panther 10
point program and contrast with what Born King Allah espouses. How are
you going to distance yourself and Black people from the liberation
struggles in the Middle East, labeling the Arab Muslims ‘terrorists who
worship a spook God’- to which I say, so what! The Arab, spook God
worshipping Muslims have done more in 6 years to undermine and overthrow
imperialism than the NOGE has done in its 40 plus years of existence!
How are you going to tell our people that the greatest sacrifice one can
make is to give one’s life for this country? this is madness!”
The sad thing is we don’t even need to go to the Panthers to find a
better line on this question, we can go to the guy who self-proclaimed
revolutionary MC Immortal Technique claims to be part of the “same seven
headed dragon” as George W. Bush: Osama bin Laden. On the sixth
anniversary of 9/11, bin Laden issued a statement in which he once again
placed responsibility for the genocide in Iraq and Afghanistan on the
amerikkkan people. He even went so far to put capitalism at the root of
the problems in the world today. He has done more to unite the oppressed
against u$ imperialism than a million amerikkkans and their lackeys
chanting “No to Bush, No to Islam.”
Now some comrades are having a problem because they are struggling
against the idealism of NOI or NOGE style Islam at home within the
greater context of the imperialist war targeting Muslim’s globally.
There is a need for Maoists to distinguish ourselves from the Nation of
Islam, the Nation of Gods and Earths and other cultural nationalist
groups. We all make claims to liberating the Black nation. One of us has
a better plan than the others. But now is not the time for broad attacks
on religion. In a feudal kingdom, such broad attacks would be
progressive. But it is questionable whether they will be useful to the
oppressed again in a modern capitalist state. As long as we are
combatting religious ideas among the oppressed then we are dealing with
contradictions among the people. These must be dealt with from the
standpoint of unity-struggle-unity, not from the standpoint of defeating
an enemy.
One revolutionary hip hop group has a song about jokes that says, “I’d
like to see a boxing match between them all, Colin vs. bin Laden and
Bush vs. Saddam, rig a pound of dynamite to the ring and kill ’em all.”
Despite incorrectly equating Saddam and bin Laden to Bush and Powell,
they get it right in a later joke that goes, “An atheist and a Catholic
priest on top of a building. Well there used to be a Muslim, but they
ganged up on him and pushed him.” See it ain’t even about religion, it’s
about white people teaming up on the oppressed.
We don’t pretend that we don’t wish there was a communist party playing
the role that bin Laden is playing right now. That would mean we were
probably closer to putting an end to imperialism and oppression. But
that is a subjective wish, and our actions can only be based on
objective facts. Anyone who reads us for more than a minute will know
that we differ from the Islamic fundamentalists, even though we are on
the same side. Those who are attacking Islamic fundamentalism in the
name of communism right now are dividing the oppressed and uniting the
oppressors.
Throughout history Marxists have dialogued with and critiqued many
political trends. Often times those criticized were those deemed most
close to the Marxist perspective. In the era of the dictatorship of the
proletariat, ushered in with Lenin in 1917, revisionism soon became the
primary target. Once the people had been largely won over by socialism,
it was only the wolf in sheep’s clothing who could stand a chance in
challenging communist ideology. Similarly today, it is often those who
appear closest to us, usually the revisionists, who we must criticize
most to raise the consciousness of the masses. For all the times people
have asked MIM how we are different from the rcp=u$a, I don’t think
anyone has ever asked how we are different from the Baath regime in
Iraq. And despite his condemnation of capitalism and support for the
liberation of the oppressed nations, people don’t confuse MIM with Osama
bin Laden.
So not only are the fake Maoists on the wrong side of the principal
contradiction, while bin Laden and Hussein are/were on the right side.
The fake Maoists also serve to create more confusion among the oppressed
by preaching idealism in communist rhetoric, rather than an openly
religious philosophy as bin Laden does.
To respond to the reader above in kind, let us quote Mao as well,
“The middle bourgeoisie constitutes the national bourgeoisie as distinct
from the comprador class, i.e., from the big bourgeoisie. Although it
has its class contradictions with the workers and does not approve of
the independence of the working class, it still wants to resist Japan
and, moreover, would like to grasp political power for itself, because
it is oppressed by the Japanese imperialists in the occupied areas and
kept down by the big landlords and big bourgeoisie in the Kuomintang
areas. When it comes to resisting Japan, it is in favor of united
resistance; when it comes to winning political power, it is in favor of
the movement for constitutional government and tries to exploit the
contradictions between the progressives and the die-hards for its own
ends.” (from Current Problems of Tactics in the Anti-Japanese United
Front)
You see, we never claimed that Hussein’s decision not to flee Iraq was
based on revolutionary principles. We don’t know or care about his
persynal motivations. (In fact, we have no way to claim to know the
psychology of Hussein as the reader claims to know). As the reader
stated, there were many material reasons that may have caused Hussein to
stay in Iraq. But these motivations do not change the fact that he stood
up to u$ imperialism and died as a martyr for Iraqi liberation. In the
quote above, Mao distinguishes between the national bourgeoisie and the
comprador class. Hussein was a comprador of u$ imperialism for many
years. Not a home-grown Arab Fascist as the reader suggests, but an arm
of u$ fascism. That is the thing about fascism in the Third World, when
finance capital pulls out the whole thing changes. We go so far to say
without finance capital, there is no fascism. And a former puppet of
fascism suddenly finds himself in the national bourgeoisie again,
fighting against his former puppet-master side-by-side with the masses
of his nation.
Lenin always insisted that change does not occur in straight lines,
despite our wishes. And like all Marxists, he stressed historical
materialism, which means that ideas come from material reality and not
vice versa. We can imagine the world we want and wish it into existence,
but that will not make it so. What Marxists do is look at the
contradictions in humyn society and study the forces that make them up
in order to understand how to resolve them. It is in the resolution of
contradictions that we can reach goals like peace and putting an end to
hunger and oppression.
notes:
(1) MC5. Which one is worse for Iraq? A comparison of
G.W. Bush & Saddam Hussein.
http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/agitation/iraq/bushvshussein.html
(2)
Shanker, Thom. With Troop Rise, Iraqi Detainees Soar in Number. New York
Times, August 25, 2007.
Also of note in this article. Of the 24,500
detainees, 280 are from outside Iraq and none are Iranian despite claims
of active agents and intervention by Iran from the u$ state
department.
(3) Pincus, Walter. U.S. Expects Iraq Prison Growth.
Washington Post. March 14, 2007.
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