MIM(Prisons) is a cell of revolutionaries serving the oppressed masses inside U.$. prisons, guided by the communist ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
Under Lock & Key is a news service written by and for prisoners with a focus on what is going on behind bars throughout the United States. Under Lock & Key is available to U.S. prisoners for free through MIM(Prisons)'s Free Political Literature to Prisoners Program, by writing:
MIM(Prisons) PO Box 40799 San Francisco, CA 94140.
MIM(Prisons) adds: We’ve published a paper
by the Dawnland Group discussing the organizations that were behind
the now defunct magazine Kites. As summarized in that essay,
these organizations reject the labor aristocracy thesis and the
importance of national liberation struggles (see What is MIM(Prisons)?
for more on our positions).
In addition, this month we are publishing on our website the final
version of our paper, “Why the International Communist Movement (ICM)
Must Break with the Legacy of the Revolutionary Internationalist
Movement (RIM).” This paper is a critique of the RCP-U$A and the RIM
that it helped lead that put First Worldist and revisionist ideology at
the forefront of the ICM. This paper was inspired in part by the work of
the OCR and the ideas and papers (by Bob Avakian) that they promote.
Part 2 of this review by ROA addresses the section of Kites #8
on the RCP-U$A.]
“The CP, The Sixties, The RCP and the Crying
need for a Communist Vanguard Party Today: Summing up a century of
communist leadership organization, strategy and practice in the United
States so that we can rise to the challenges before us”
by the Organization of Communist Revolutionaries Kites Journal #8
13 March 2023
In this piece put out by the Organization of Communist
Revolutionaries (OCR) they attempt to shed light on two organizations -
The Communist Party-USA (CP-USA) and the Revolutionary Communist Party
USA (RCP-USA). This paper further delves into the 1960’S and the
communist movement in general, particularly within these false U.$.
borders.
As the writers point out little has been written about the RCP-USA so
not much is known for the newer generation of revolutionaries, some of
the members of our organization however have some experience with the
RCP-USA and have debated and struggled with them for a couple of decades
over their neo-colonial line toward Aztlán to no avail. Their failure to
recognize the existence of the Chican@ Nation has led us to label them
as a revisionist party to say the least. So this paper was welcoming and
a way for our comrades to sum up this relic of a distorted past called
the RCP-USA.
The writers list the Socialist Party of America (SP) and the
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) as the forerunners to communist
organization in the United $tates. It should also be noted that white
supremacy and language barriers hindered the recruitment of Chican@s or
other raza, into these organizations. It is interesting that 100 years
later white supremacy continues to affect the line of many
multi-national organizations like the IWW, especially when they attempt
to put our national interests on the back burner while accusing us of
wanting to put our nation first. It is not that we simply want to put
the national struggle to the forefront for some subjective reward, we do
so as revolutionary nationalists because we have determined that the
principle contradiction is between the oppressed nations vs the
oppressor nation. A people cannot be free to determine their future if
they are suffering from oppression.
As noted in this paper the early days of the communist movement in
the United $tates had a proletariat that was “substantially immigrant”,
today we see the same with the proletariat being mainly migrant workers
particularly from Mexico. This seems to make the vanguard’s job easier
organizationally. Back then there was a proletariat of various migrants
from various countries, including many from Europe, so a communist
vanguard role would have been to create agit/prop material in these
various languages in an attempt to raise consciousness in these
populations. We see the Chican@ nations role as key in today’s
environment where the proletariat is largely Mexican@ and from Central
and South America making Aztlán’s job of uniting the Brown exploited
workers under the Chican@ leadership much easier than any other national
organization. The trail of liberation on these shores is Brown.
At one point the issue of Black oppression was addressed in this
paper, noting that the communist movement of this time essentially
dropped the ball and:
“Subjectively, the failure of US communists to prioritize making an
analysis of the Black national question – the oppression of Black People
and how that oppression can be ended through communist revolution and
begin making political interventions in struggles over the oppression of
Black people was a serious, strategic blunder that only compounded the
objective problem.”(1)
Another “strategic blunder” of the time was in not prioritizing an
analysis of Chican@ national oppression – not only back in the early
1900’s but the continued blundering of today when many political
organizations within these false U.$. borders continue to ignore the
very essential Chican@ struggle in their analysis. This also highlights
the continued necessity of single-nation building for Aztlán. After all
if the Chicano nation does not organize for the liberation of Aztlán who
will?
The early 1900’s was prime time for the Chican@ nation in terms of
rebellion, it was just about 50 years since colonization at the hands of
U.$. imperialism but it was also a time of the Plan de San Diego. As our
Chicano Red Book put it:
“During the first decade of the 1900’s a group of unidentified
Mexican@s or Chican@s put out a document calling for armed resistance by
Chican@s. The Plan de San Diego called for Armed Struggle against
Amerika and proclaimed that upon victory the”South West United States”
would become a Chican@ state, New Afrikans would form their own state
and First Nations their own state. This was the first united front of
the oppressed nations on these shores that sought independence for all
oppressed nations upon victory: the Plan demonstrated true
internationalism.”(2)
So although Chican@s have been resisting and organizing for
independence even before U.$. communists began to organize in the SP,
IWW, CP or Communist Labor Party (CLP) none of these so-called
revolutionary orgs developed an analysis on raza or our colonization
during the early 20th century. The RCP-USA still has not supported
Chican@ independence. Marxism taught us historical materialism which we
use to learn from hystory. Hystory has taught us that anytime we have
lifted the boot of the white oppressor nation off our necks it has been
by Chicanos coming together and struggling whether it was against white
terror that las Goras Blancas (the white caps) fought, or Amerikkka
which compelled the Plan de San Diego to develop, we have as a people
always struggled against national oppression from the factories to the
field, from the most significant labor strike in U.$. hystory, which was
a Chican@ strike but which white labor has hijacked and renamed “The
Ludlow Massacre”. During the time that the SP, CP, IWW and CLP were
committing the blunder on the Black nation they likewise committed a
great blunder on the Chican@ nation who was also struggling against
national oppression. Because of this hystory we set out to create the
Republic of Aztlán, the government in waiting for the Chican@ nation.
The writers note the CP’s “foreign language workers clubs” and their
role in organizing non-English speakers. Taking into account the almost
non-existent analysis of the Chican@ struggle by the movement in U.$.
borders, it highlights the need for Raza workers org’s and clubs to help
organize and develop immigrants who suffer exploitation.
This piece sums up the trials and tribulations of CP, their
factionalism and devotion to the unions seemed to drown the internal
semi-colonies of the time. The Comintern and in particular Stalin’s
guidance, led the CP to finally give the Black nation and their
struggles against national oppression some attention. Aztlán was ripe
for development during this time when white labor denied Chican@s as
many other oppressed at the time.
An interesting mention in this piece was on the development of a
“guerilla military force.” In discussing the communist activities of the
1920’s the writers state:
“There is a question of whether Communists could have developed some
type of guerrilla military force to supplement the mass labor struggles
that erupted and to contend with the repression by way of organized
armed defense of strikers where appropriate (some of that happened
spontaneously) and selective assassinations of agents of repression!!”
(3)
Although we do not promote People’s War today, the fact remains that
a vanguard’s role is to be prepared to defend the people, especially
when the capitalist state unleashes the most vile forms of repression.
One has to be prepared for the inevitable, this includes the
understanding that a strike force is a very necessary vehicle for
defense of an oppressed peoples. No nation will ever acquire liberation
without such a mechanism in place. Cadre should grasp this, teach this
and prepare for the time when such a force is necessary. Fanon was clear
in that colonial violence can only be overcome by a greater violence,
the oppressor nation understands no other language. At the same time,
the cadre should accept that such a dialogue is a great sacrifice of the
highest form. Indeed, we cannot study revolution without studying what
such warfare would deliver society to such a transformation. The Black
Liberation Army sliced to the heart of it when they said:
“Bombings, kidnappings, sniping, revolutionary executions, surprise
raids, bank robbery: all of these are rightfully weapons of urban
guerrilla warfare. As we use them we must take care to maintain high
principles and keep in mind that power to the people is more than
just”campaign rhetoric”.” (4)
Although campaign rhetoric may be leading much of the public
discourse, a realistic view to national liberation leads us to develop
plans of attack and self defense even if the plans do not become
operational until after our demise. The future of any socialist
revolution demands this.
Subjectively the part of this writing that hit the hardest to those
of us who organize within the U.$. concentration kamps was the portion
describing the story of the young womyn named Marian Morna, the 18 year
old member of the UCL who describes integrating with the masses to
organize strikes in the fields of California’s Imperial Valley. Her
description was incredibly moving, in her words:
“The years with the fruit pickers became a world within the world, a
microcosm of feelings that never left me, not even when I left them. I
lived with the pickers, ate, slept, and got drunk with them. I helped
bury their men and deliver their babies. We laughed, cried, and talked
endlessly into the night together. And, slowly, some extraordinary
interchange began to take place between us. I taught them how to read,
and they taught me how to think. I taught them how to organize, and they
taught me how to lead. I saw things happening to people I’d never seen
before. I saw them becoming as they never dreamed they could become. Day
by day people were developing, transforming, communicating inarticulate
dreams, discovering a force of being in themselves. Desires, skills,
capacities they didn’t know they had blossomed under the pressure of
active struggle. And the sweetness, the generosity, the pure comradeship
that came flowing out of them as they began to feel themselves! They
were—there’s no other word for it—noble. Powerful in struggle, no longer
sluggish with depression, they became inventive, alive, democratic,
filled with an instinctive sense of responsibility for each other. And
we were all like that, all of us, the spirit touched all of us. It was
my dream of socialism come to life. I saw then what I could be like,
what people could always be like, how good the earth and all things upon
it could be, how sweet to be alive and to feel yourself in everyone
else.”
If one were to replace the words “Fruit pickers” with “lumpen” or
“prisoners” it would be spot on to an organizer’s experiences in the
concentration kamps. I feel it. The connections that develop with the
masses in any environment cannot be manufactured insincerely. Oppressed
people wherever they may be struggling against an oppressor, at some
point develop relations that give us a glimmer of what social
interaction and struggle will feel like as society transforms to a
higher level, we taste it and this sampler compels us forward for
more.
Another glimmer of hope we learn about in this piece was in the
lesson of the Yokinen Show trial in 1931. August Yokinen was a member of
the CP who refused to allow Black folks to enter the Finnish Workers
Club in Harlem and went on to say their place was in Black Harlem. The
reaction to this was the CP having a show trial charging Yokinen with
white chauvinism. It was public and even got coverage in the bourgeois
press with the New York times putting it on the front page. The trial
provided good agit prop for the masses and highlighted the inability of
the capitalist state to address white supremacy and hold white
chauvinism accountable and the CP did. This educated the masses and put
Amerika on blast. This reminded me of our org’s action around a gun
buy-back program by the pigs. We had a comrade announce on the radio
live that there was going to be a gun buy back, where the pigs can turn
in the stolen “hot” guns they had in their trunks that they regularly
planted on people. We announced they can remain anonymous and that we
will not ask for a badge number. Our goal was simply to keep our streets
safe from pig terror. We did this to raise consciousness and although in
our case, we did not get coverage in the bourgeois press we addressed a
real form of repression which was not being addressed and we did it in a
very audacious way which to our knowledge had not been previously
done.
Raising consciousness is our job as communists however because of the
brainwashing that the state does on a mass scale we have to be bold,
creative and audacious in our efforts, all without crossing the line
where the state has ammunition to lock us up. In the end sometimes
they’ll make shit up and lock us up anyways. The Republic of Aztlán has
taken up its responsibility to serve the people by all means necessary
and we overstand the dangers that come with this role!
This piece has many lessons within it, too many to address in our
writing here. The case of the Scottsboro boys is worth a mention though.
It was of course a sad case of injustice and imprisonment but the lesson
was definitely on how communists of the time responded and struggled
with bourgeois liberals on which way that struggle developed. This
struggle reminded me in a small way to the prisoner hunger strike of
2011/2013 in Califas and how a variety of orgs entered the arena of
coalition.
It is always a struggle to at once united with the masses in struggle
while resisting the pull towards reformism which often engulfs mass
struggles. This first part of our review framed the CP and its good and
bad characteristics that we can learn from today. Soviet revisionism
ultimately sank the CP ship. Despite all of its efforts, it continues to
be anchored in the graveyard of bourgeois elections today. This first
part of the review was successful in “burying” the CP for our
organization.
Notes: 1. “The CP, the Sixties, the RCP and the Crying
Need for a Communist Vanguard Party today: Summing up a century of
Communist leadership , organization, strategy and practice in the United
States so that we can rise to the challenges before us.” By Organization
of Communist Revolutionaries 2. Chichan@ Power and the Struggle for
Aztlán by a MIM Prisons Study Group, 2nd Edition 2021, Aztlán Press,
Page 40. 3. Organization of Communist Revolutionaries IBID. 4.
Collected Works of the Black Liberation Army Page 92
The New Communist Party of Canada [(N)CPC] was formed by the Kanadian
communist group Revolutionary Initiative (RI) in early 2024. The RI
announced the (N)CPC through the journal Kites which it
co-publishes alongside the Organization of Communist Revolutionaries
(OCR), a communist group in the United States.
In February 2024 the OCR Issued a “red salute” to the (N)CPC
containing mostly praise. In May 2024, the journal Kites
disbanded, explained with reference to the unique circumstances in
Kanada vs. Amerika as well as unspecified ideological disagreements
between the two organizations.
While unity between the (N)CPC and the OCR may have appeared
unprincipled based upon the latter’s criticism of the former, this
polemic argues that they shared a rejection of two crucial political
lines: the labor aristocracy thesis and the significance of national
liberation struggles. To support these claims, first the Dawnland Group
examines the (N)CPC’s political program followed by the OCR’s response,
each published in Kites.
(N)CPC says natives
should ally with settlers
It is difficult to separate the influence of Trotskyism from its
settler-colonial baggage and the (N)CPC demonstrates this truth well.
The Political Program of the New Communist Party of Canada
opens with the (N)CPC’s two “innately linked” objectives: “a) establish
working class rule in the economic and political spheres of Canada; and
b) Usher in a new, non-colonial, equal and fraternal type of relations
between all nations which today remain forcefully and unequally united
within the Canadian state.”(1)
Alone, the second objective is agreeable. But the (N)CPC clarifies
how these two goals are interlinked, writing that neither “is likely to
be achieved in a lasting, meaningful way without the other.
Working-class power without national liberation and national equality
would have to be built on an illegitimate, coercive basis. National
liberation without working-class power would mean a mere reform of
Canadian law, or else create powerless statelets that would fall prey to
any of the multiple imperialist powers contending for domination and
survival in the world today.”
Despite claiming that equality and national liberation are necessary
for indigenous peoples, the (N)CPC supports this only conditionally,
demanding “working class” power come first. Charitably interpreted, the
(N)CPC can be read as considering the “proletariat” of indigenous
nations to be an important aspect of the Kanadian “working class”. In
any case, considering settlers proletariat as (N)CPC does, this would
make the Kanadian “working class” overwhelmingly settler.
Support of indigenous sovereignty contingent upon prior proletarian
revolution renders this support meaningless. Thus, when the (N)CPC
claims that “the only conceivable way to resolve the separate legal
status of Indigenous people without liquidating Indigenous nations as
legal entities is collective rights under the banner of the full right
to self-determination, up to and including secession” and the necessity
of “upholding of the right to secede by popular referendum for all
component republics of the Multinational Socialist Confederacy;” their
conditions render these rights null until proletarian revolution.
National Liberation is a value as much as a strategy. All peoples
have the right to autonomy and self-determination and these rights must
be supported without regards to the opinions of settlers.
Beyond values there are strategic concerns. This “alliance” is
directly risking the sustained colonization of indigenous groups by
“socialist” settlers. The Israeli Kibbutz movement historically
purchased lands form Arabic landlords, where they would evict
Palestinian tenants in order to create “communes.” Despite Kibbutzniks
being considered “left wing” and “socialist,” their settlements encircle
the Gaza strip and they have been used to condemn the October 7
resistance operation (2), the newest stage of the Palestinian national
liberation war. Here the Israeli “working class” has achieved power and
constitutes the main foot-soldiers of genocide. Demanding working class
power in exchange for indigenous sovereignty also neglects the inverse
possibility that national liberation of colonies will be prerequisite
for overthrowing the bourgeoisie.
As addressed in A
Polemic Against Settler “Maoism”, settlers have an inherently
reactionary class role.(3) While isolated settlers reject this role, the
vast majority occupy indigenous lands, stealing their resources and
cheap labor. The basis of settler-colonialism has never been a deceitful
bourgeoisie but their transparent alliance with settlers:
former-proletariat, offered petty-bourgeois class positions through the
redistribution of land acquired through theft and genocide. The (N)CPC
is wrong that the bourgeoisie is the only force standing in-between the
settler-workers and decolonization, and that through “excluding the
monopoly bourgeoisie from this process entirely,” Kanada can negotiate
more just treaties with the First Nations. Settlers are not deceived
by the capitalists against their better interest – a supposed alliance
with the indigenous masses. Settlers assume such a class role because,
with respect to the capitalist mode of production, it is their best
interest.
Settlers are knowing, willful participants in genocide as part of a
bargain with those capitalists in exchange for a petty-bourgeois class
position.(4) This is their best material interest as a class permitted
to escape proletarian existence through conquest. The bargain between
settlers and their bourgeoisie is not conceived via ignorance or
deception, it is the rational consequence of pursuing one’s material
interest within class society: ascension up class and/or national
hierarchy to positions of greater wealth and culpability in
oppression. Settlers fill niches where the bourgeoisie wishes to
expand private property and commodity production, dispose of surplus
populations and compete with other imperial powers. In exchange for
exterminating the original inhabitants, settlers are allowed free reign
of the land and resources of the dead.
There may be a more subconscious belief involved in apologizing for
settlers and manufacturing their innocence, namely that, although
settlers are indeed rationally pursuing their material interests, this
betrays their human interest to live in a world without
exploitation, and that communists can win over the masses of settlers to
this superior moral position.
As discussed in the Polemic Against Settler “Maoism”, there are
important differences between classes and individuals. It is possible to
successfully appeal to the morals and internationalist sentiments of
certain individuals from each class and nation. This will vary wildly
depending on the individual in question and their background. But at the
macro-level, only oppressed nations and classes have the material
interest in a world without oppression which has historically been
wielded to make revolution. Settlers are oppressors. As Black Liberation
Army soldier Assata Shakur famously says, “Nobody in the world, nobody
in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral
sense of the people who were oppressing them.” The (N)CPC suggests just
that failed strategy.
While morals are required to undertake communist revolution, morals
can never be abstracted from their class context. Settler morals,
including the belief that settlers’ working conditions are more
important than indigenous rights, were created with the rise of
capitalism in Europe whose surplus proletarian population was offered
overseas class roles similar to that of Auschwitz guards. The Nazis’
thirst for lebensraum, which slaughtered millions of Jews and Slavs
during the holocaust, was directly copied from manifest destiny and the
treatment of indigenous peoples on Occupied Turtle Island where between
10 and 15 million were murdered (5).
In their first few paragraphs of published writing the (N)CPC have
downplayed the Kanadian “worker” role in ongoing genocide of First
Nations, manufacturing a myth of innocent, deceived settlers. Further,
they dictate the terms of national liberation to the indigenous
communities of Canada in service of the more important “proletarian
revolution.” This is settler “Marxism” and Trotskyism.
Trotskyists believe that third-world revolutions are doomed to
failure without the aid of the more “advanced” proletariat of the
western nations, that socialism is not possible within one country. The
ideas are best summarized by the man himself, discussing how:
“A backward colonial or semi-colonial country, the proletariat of
which is insufficiently prepared to unite the peasantry and take power,
is thereby incapable of bringing the democratic revolution to its
conclusion. Contrariwise, in a country where the proletariat has power
in its hands as the result of the democratic revolution, the subsequent
fate of the dictatorship and socialism depends in the last analysis not
only and not so much upon the national productive forces as upon the
development of the international socialist revolution.”(6)
Thus, even if a colonial or semi-colonial country managed to seize
state power, it would fail if international “proletarian” revolution did
not quickly follow. This was as true for Trotsky in the USSR as it later
became for him in China, where he argued with extremely poor foresight
that alliance with the Koumintang had defeated the revolution and that
instead “permanent revolution” was necessary to liberate China.(7) To
the Trotskyist, the proletariat of these nations is insufficiently
numerically developed to lead a revolution. They forget the fact that no
(western) European nation – those initially with the greatest industrial
proletariat – has ever waged a successful struggle for state socialism,
and the fact that third-world national liberation struggles have
accomplished the most significant strategic advances towards communism
in history. Finally, as covered below, most of the populations in core
imperialist countries are labor aristocrats who hold petty-bourgeois
class positions despite receiving wages: they won’t be leading
revolution anytime soon.
Trotskyism is pervasive in Amerika and Kanada. Even without reference
to Trotsky, without explicit statements of the inferiority of national
liberation struggles, it is still perfectly possible for
“Marxist-Lenninist” and “Maoist” groups to uphold Trotsky’s ideas
through organizing settlers of an oppressor nation instead of organizing
the oppressed.
As discussed in the Polemic against Settler-Maoism, settler “maoism”
and Trotskyism share certain chronology with regards to national
liberation, another characteristic of belief that proletarian revolution
takes priority. The (N)CPC believes socialist revolution will
precede national autonomy for indigenous peoples:
“The only way to cut the proverbial Gordian knot is for the
Indigenous national struggle to link up with the proletarian struggle
for socialism in overthrowing the extant Canadian State. Once it
is overthrown, new agreements can be reached over the use of land,
resources and their sharing between nations. True sovereignty
can be enshrined in a new, multinational constitution. This sovereignty
can ensure full, distinct national rights without the need for
any”Indian status,” which would be replaced by full citizenship in a
sovereign nation. Full independence can be achieved by those
nations who want it and have the resources needed to sustain
it.” (Bold ours)
There are no legitimate “agreements” between settlers and indigenous
peoples, because the settlers have used genocide and theft to acquire
their negotiating assets. This is why DLG advocates for the Joint
Dictatorship of the Proletariat of the Oppressed Nations, which will
enforce the will of the oppressed nations at the expense of the
imperialist and settler nations, such as the Amerikan and Kanadian
nation, a process involving extensive redistribution of land and
resources as well as peoples’ tribunals for criminals against humanity.
Finally, the notion that settlers can decide if indigenous nations
“want” or are “ready” for independence, has been used by colonial powers
for centuries to continue oppressing their subjects.
There is a related issue throughout the (N)CPC political program of
advocating for a homogeneous Kanadian culture without the consent of the
indigenous peoples. Deciding autonomously on such a path long after
achieving independence and having received back all stolen land and
resources, plus some for interest from the settlers, would be a
consensual decision. Settlers should not be advocating for any such
cultural assimilation today. The (N)CPC writes that:
“The monopoly bourgeoisie and its State willfully confuse the
potential of Canada for its actual reality. Canada really could be a
brand-new type of country, one where national sovereignty is not the
preserve of a small parasitic class but is instead granted to the myriad
national groups that give it its rich cultural mosaic. We really
could all work together to preserve our respective cultures, develop our
economy in sustainable ways which benefit all working people, embrace
cultures and traditions originating from pre-colonial North America,
from Europe and now from the entire world. We could collectively take
everything that is old and make it into something new.” (Bold
ours).
Settlers have no right to advocate for the creation of international
cultures together with their colonial subjects. This reduces to an
argument for cultural integration which, in Kanada and the United
$tates, represents genocide through sterilization, kidnappings,
residential schools, and murder by colonial militias and police. Whether
or not they understand this, their language is overtly colonial,
advocating for assimilation and continued unequal relationships between
oppressed and oppressor nations. They need an explicit, unconditional
recognition of indigenous sovereignty or they are no different than
other settlers seeking to maintain unfair treaties with First Nations
without reparations or sovereignty.
The Dawnland Group (DLG) writes this polemic because the (N)CPC’s
understanding of indigenous sovereignty directly contradicts with DLG’s
support for New Democracy in Occupied Turtle Island. In 1940 Mao argued
that imperialism and feudalism prevented China from directly pursuing
socialism. Rather, New Democracy was required first, a dictatorship of
revolutionary classes over the country in order to liberate it from
outside domination, so that socialism may be constructed thereafter:
“The first step or stage in our revolution is definitely not, and
cannot be, the establishment of a capitalist society under the
dictatorship of the Chinese bourgeoisie, but will result in the
establishment of a new-democratic society under the joint dictatorship
of all the revolutionary classes of China headed by the Chinese
proletariat The revolution will then be carried forward to the second
stage, in which a socialist society will be established in China.”
To liberate China, the Communist Party led a united front with the
peasants, proletariat, petty-bourgeoisie and some national bourgeoisie
who sided with the communists against Japan in the war for national
liberation. Whereas in Europe, feudalism could be overthrown by the
bourgeois-democratic revolution due to the bourgeoisie’s antagonism with
the feudal mode of production, in colonies and oppressed nations,
imperialism is inclined to promote feudalism from without and thus a
broader united front is required. Despite the defeat of the Cultural
Revolution and the capitalist road taken in 1976, the strategy of New
Democracy liberated China from foreign domination.
Here Mao gives context as to how New Democracy applies to Chinese
conditions:
“Being a bourgeoisie in a colonial and semi-colonial country and
oppressed by imperialism, the Chinese national bourgeoisie retains a
certain revolutionary quality at certain periods and to a certain
degree… Since tsarist Russia was a military-feudal imperialism which
carried on aggression against other countries, the Russian bourgeoisie
was entirely lacking in revolutionary quality. There, the task of the
proletariat was to oppose the bourgeoisie, not to unite with it. But
China’s national bourgeoisie has a revolutionary quality at certain
periods and to a certain degree, because China is a colonial and
semi-colonial country which is a victim of aggression. Here, the task of
the proletariat is to form a united front with the national bourgeoisie
against imperialism and the bureaucrat and warlord governments without
overlooking its revolutionary quality.”
DLG views the application of New Democracy in Occupied Turtle Island
to mean that, in the oppressed nations, similarly to China, the
bourgeoisie may be an importantly ally in the national liberation
struggle. In the oppressor nations (Amerika, Kanada), not only is the
bourgeoisie entirely counter-revolutionary but this is true of the
petty-bourgeoisie and labor aristocracy as well due to benefiting from
and carrying out imperialism and settler-colonialism.
Most bourgeoisie and rich peasantry in China were less wealthy than
the petty-bourgeoisie and much of the labor aristocracy today on
Occupied Turtle Island. The petty-bourgeoisie and labor aristocracy of
oppressor nations in OTI have no great interest in being won over to a
communist cause, because most face no national oppression and are
bought-off from imperialist superprofits. Thus, DLG argues that the role
of the Amerikan/Kanadian communist vanguard is to treat these classes as
hostile and instead support the national liberation wars of the internal
semi-colonies and oppressed nations.
By contrast, the (N)CPC writes of the Kanadian situation that “an
Indigenous petty-bourgeoisie and intelligentsia have also been fostered
by the State as part of its counter-revolutionary strategy. The
revolutionary camp will have to cautiously navigate in building a class
alliance that unites the broadest interests of the Indigenous peoples
while isolating and struggling against these new reactionary classes.”
While imperialism promotes neo-colonial sections of each oppressed
nation’s ruling class who collaborate with the oppressor nation, the
(N)CPC is confusing this small segment of the indigenous (petty)
bourgeoisie with its entirety.
The (N)CPC argues the petty-bourgeoisie and bourgeoisie of the First
Nations must be struggled against but the labor aristocracy and
petty-bourgeoisie of the settler nation are important allies to the
revolution. This is a paradoxical reversal of New Democracy, in which it
is inapplicable in the oppressed nations where it was designed
and synthesized successfully, and yet it is applicable in the
core imperialist countries where it has never been employed. Concluding
on their views about national liberation, the (N)CPC recognizes:
“oppressed nations’ right to self-determination up to and including
secession. But we do not content ourselves with this: we recognize that
given the way Canada has been built, total separation between
its various nations is likely to be counterproductive.
Therefore, we intend to build a new form of political and economic
unity, a multinational socialist confederacy whose component parts
are not arbitrarily-drawn provinces, but really-existing peoples and
nations…” (Bold ours)
They provide no explanation for why “separation between various
nations is likely to be counterproductive,” although this is a
convenient platitude for settlers who wish to have an input about when
indigenous people are “ready” for independence, as the (N)CPC indicated
above. It is historically illiterate of the complicity of settlers in
genocide and naive in assuming somehow this time things will be
different and the settler-majority will solve the very contradiction
that their class exists because of.
The (N)CPC pitch must be confusing for First Nations, who have been
systematically slaughtered, expelled and forced onto reservations for
centuries not by capitalists but by settlers pursuing their material
interests. By contrast, a vanguard among the settler nation would be
formed through a revolutionary defeatist position, unequivocally bent
towards the destruction of the settler class role through the
repatriation of land, resources and sovereignty to First Nations via
revolutionary national liberation war.
The small chance of a vanguard position emerging in Kanada and
Amerika will be squandered so long as Trotskyism continues selling
indigenous peoples the promise of new negotiations with the same settler
class that has been occupying their lands and seeing their genocide
through for centuries.
Making proletarians
from labor aristocrats
The (N)CPC writes that,
“comprised of all those deprived of the means to produce and forced
to sell their labour power to survive, the proletariat is the largest
class in society, forming somewhere between 60 and 65% of the
population.”
There are two crucial Trotskyist components involved in viewing
Kanada as 60% proletarian. First is the view discussed above that
settlers can occupy revolutionary class positions; that they can still
be “workers”. Second is the view that labor aristocrats who are paid
above the value of their wages through super-exploitation of the global
south can be proletarian rather than petty-bourgeois. These ideas
closely overlap because the labor aristocracy on Occupied Turtle Island
is mostly settler and the settler nation (Amerika/Kanada) is
overwhelmingly labor aristocratic, save for a tiny minority who fall
into the lumpenproletariat including homeless and prisoners.
Throughout their political program, the (N)CPC rejects the labor
aristocracy thesis. The (N)CPC views the three main contradictions in
the world as
“(a) between the imperialists themselves, which means the struggle
for the re-division of the world is always in motion, albeit to varying
degrees; (b) between imperialist countries and oppressed countries,
which means imperialist exploitation and oppression, and the struggle
for self-determination and independent national development; and (c)
between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat in each country, which means
class struggle and the potential for socialist revolution.”
Contradiction (b), an important mention, is suspect based on their
treatment of oppressed-nation struggles within Kanada as shown above.
Because of their use of the term “countries”, it is unclear if they
believe this imperialist/oppressed dynamic plays out among the nations
internal to settler-colonies. Contradiction (c) however is wholly
incorrect as in Kanada and Amerika, the proletariat is numerically
insignificant. The vast majority are allied to the bourgeoisie as
settlers and/or Labor Aristocrats, making class struggle minimal on
Occupied Turtle Island at the present time.
The (N)CPC disagrees. They write that
“Through the housing market an ever-growing portion of workers’
paycheques are transferred back to the bourgeoisie in the form of rent
or interest. Either enslaved to mortgages or rents, workers are often
one step away from the streets.”
The term slavery is best reserved for slaves, not home owners. The
view that swaths of workers are “enslaved” to their rent via landlords
is subjective, equally so to being “one step away from the streets.”
In Occupied Turtle Island, these terms are overused as much as living
“paycheck to paycheck.” In the imperial core where minimum wages are ten
times that of the global proletariat, where public services provide the
vast majority with water, electricity and transportation, it is
chauvinistic to discuss “slavery” to anything. The global proletariat
often choose between extremely limited and poor quality food and
housing, or earns too little for this choice, subsisting parasitically
or dying prematurely. It should be clear that the (N)CPC is attempting
to minimize the wages of imperialism paid to the labor aristocracy
through super-exploitation of the global south. The Polemic Against
Settler-Maoism and MIM(Prisons)’s
study on the housing market (8) are invaluable demonstrations of the
growth of the labor aristocracy in Occupied Turtle Island
throughout the previous half century.
The (N)CPC’s specific examples of the proletariat exemplify another
Trotskyist approach:
“At its core are those who work in natural resources, manufacturing,
construction, transport, and logistics — labourers at the centre of
capitalist exploitation. They are key to the revolutionary movement
not only by their large number – around 4 million – but
because they are the producers of commodities and wealth… those working
in industries which allow labour-power to reproduce itself over time –
chiefly health care and education – totalling approximately 4 million
workers… those working to facilitate the circulation of capital –
primarily workers in retail and services with about 3 million workers.
Without these workers the bourgeoisie cannot maintain itself in the long
run or realize its profit. Together with the labourers, these sections
of the proletariat, totalling about 11 million people, hold the
potential to establish a new, socialist economy.” (Bold ours)
Here is a typical Trotskyist confusion of the “importance” of a given
trade to the economy for the revolutionary potential of the workers
therein, which the (N)CPC states as the
“principle of workers’ centrality. That is, the principle that the
workers at the centre of production – and found in great concentration,
specifically, the labourers in large-scale industry and the health and
education workers in the major service centres – form the heart of the
proletariat and the main force for socialist revolution in Canada. The
Party must therefore, first and foremost, establish and build itself
within these workplaces.”
As discussed in the Polemic Against Settler-Maoism, this is a
Trotskyist obsession with numbers and a mechanical application of the
conditions of other historical revolutions onto the imperial core,
assuming revolutionary insurrection will play out along similar lines
despite the bargain of the majority with imperialism. This follows
Trotsky’s belief in a quantity of “advanced” “workers” in capitalism as
prerequisite for socialism, a condition missing from “backwards”
(oppressed) nations.
This opportunistic error leads to mass work among a numerically
enormous yet counter-revolutionary base who benefit from imperialism.
This mass-work is ultimately not communist because improving the lot of
labor aristocrats is important to the bourgeoisie. Social democratic
policies greatly expanding the labor aristocracy were implemented during
the 1930s and 1940s across western Europe and Occupied Turtle Island in
order to compete with socialism in the USSR and materially dissuade
workers from communist politics. This strategy succeeded and that’s why
only oppressed nations have led communist vanguards in OTI since; there
is next-to-no more economic exploitation.
OCR “Revolutionary
Salute” to Trotskyism
All should salute the OCR for criticizing a major (former) partner
organization. A complete assessment of OCR line and practice is far
beyond the scope of our discussion – perhaps impossible during a human
lifespan given their volume of writing.
Unfortunately though, they must be criticized for their unity with
the (N)CPC as well as what this demonstrates: deeper held agreements
with a Trotskyist political formation. This should serve as cause for
reflection and struggle for OCR membership and readers.
Lets begin discussing some strengths of the OCR’s Red Salute.(9)
Readers will have noticed the (N)CPC does not even claim to uphold
Maoism as the most advanced science of the proletariat and the OCR is
correct to criticize them for this, although it is strange the latter do
not require Maoism for joint publications with other communist groups.
All the same, their section on the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution
in the Red Salute develops many interesting criticisms of the
(N)CPC not addressed in this polemic.
OCR criticisms of the (N)CPC’s betrayal of the labor aristocracy
thesis and their failure to recognize the class nature of imperialism,
as well as pointing out the ludicrous idea of a 60% proletarian Kanada,
are all strong. We praise their criticisms that college-degree
occupations including teachers and medical workers are petty-bourgeois,
and their criticisms of economism and “worker centrality” are good.
Yet, despite acknowledging that they are not Maoist nor sufficiently
anti-imperialist in their class analysis, the OCR still issues a
revolutionary salute to the (N)CPC. At first this seems odd, given the
significance of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and mention of
labor aristocracy in the OCR Manifesto and within Kites 8.
Ultimately, DLG concludes that the unity of these two groups derived
from a shared lack of ideological commitment to national liberation and
the labor aristocracy thesis.
OCR’s soft Labor Aristocracy
thesis
Regarding the (N)CPC’s view that the labor aristocracy forms a mass
base for revolution, the OCR’s manifesto says those gaining from
imperialism in the United States include:
“the petty-bourgeoisie – people who own and operate small
enterprises or who possess skills and education that enable them to sell
their labor at a higher rate – as well as the labor aristocracy
and bourgeoisified workers, whose work is more proletarian in
character but who make substantial wages above what they need to survive
and have significant job security and health and retirement benefits…
However, among these middle classes and the ideological state
apparatuses and political institutions of the US, there is always
conflict and struggle with the bourgeoisie which at times becomes quite
acute.” (Bold Ours)
This concept is evident within Kites 8, the OCR’s most
significant work, an attempt to summarize all those communist parties
across U.S. history which they consider important. (10) They praise the
Revolutionary Communist Party(USA), saying that the latter “developed a
united-front-level program that addressed the key social faultlines of
the time and could unite, in a broad resistance movement, all those in
political motion who were objectively on the proletariat’s side of those
social faultlines.” Much like the (N)CPC, the OCR is claiming there are
segments of each class that can potentially be united to fight for the
proletariat.
Written by an OCR author named Kenny Lake in Kites #2, the
second article in the “Specter” series’s conception of proletarian
revolution is put similarly. Lake writes that:
“revolutionary civil war can only be initiated after the proletariat,
led by communists, has built up the organized forces for revolution
through a lengthy process of class struggle and creates and takes
advantage of favorable conditions for the launch of an insurrection.
The proletariat cannot do this alone, but must forge an alliance
of classes under its leadership by taking advantage of the conflicts and
struggles between the various middle classes and the bourgeoisie and
within the bourgeoisie’s ideological state apparatuses” (Kites
2, pg 36. Bold ours).
It is crucial to say that the proletariat “cannot do this alone.”
This is quite similar to the (N)CPC’s view of the petty-bourgeoisie, who
they claim is
“neither exploiter nor exploited…For a large part of this class, the
lower petty-bourgeoisie, living conditions are similar to that of much
of the proletariat…stuck between a rock and a hard place, we must win
this class to allying with the proletariat for a better life in
socialism. The proletariat must struggle to win them over under its
leadership in a united front against the bourgeoisie, as they can be
powerful allies, holding much influence in universities, trade unions,
media outlets, religious organizations and other such institutions.”
Thus, one explanation of the OCR’s unity with the (N)CPC despite the
latter rejecting the labor aristocracy thesis outright is because the
former hold a weak version of it. For the OCR, even though the
proletariat is the primary revolutionary class, the petty-bourgeoisie
and “various middle classes” still hold revolutionary contradictions
with the U$ bourgeoisie. As such, it may not matter if a struggle
revolves around the concerns of the proletariat or the petty bourgeoisie
or the labor aristocracy because there are advantageous contradictions
among each group.
It is true that actual oppressed classes and nations at times must
make alliances with others. The potential for progressive alliances
depends heavily on the class or nation in question. The OCR and (N)CPC
are misguided because the “middle classes” in Amerika and Kanada are
direct perpetrators of imperialism and settler-colonialism, and as
classes have conflicts with the bourgeoisie only over dividing
spoils.
National
Liberation and New Democracy on Occupied Turtle Island
As previously indicated, the OCR and (N)CPC “class alliance” theories
are an inverted application of the Maoist idea of New Democracy to the
United $tates / Kanada context, these countries being inundated with
settler-colonialism and labor aristocracy. Settlers have a
counter-revolutionary class position with regards to indigenous peoples,
and labor aristocrats have a counter-revolutionary class position with
regards to their nation’s imperialism.
The application of New Democracy to Occupied Turtle Island means that
revolutionaries in various nations have highly distinct
responsibilities. The Amerikan vanguard is distinct from that of
oppressed nation vanguards. The main role of the Amerikan vanguard is to
promote the formation of a Joint Dictatorship of the Proletariat of the
Oppressed Nations through the national liberation struggles of colonies
and internal semi-colonies on Occupied Turtle Island. Amerikan
revolutionaries will not liberate themselves because they suffer no
oppression or exploitation.
By contrast, labor aristocrats within oppressed nations hold certain
revolutionary contradictions by virtue of experiencing national
oppression. Their class can be organized towards the goal of liberation
for their respective nation. This is true for the petty-bourgeoisie and
some of the bourgeoisie of oppressed nations in Occupied Turtle Island
as well.
The same is untrue in the oppressor/settler nation. The few
revolutionaries who form the oppressor/settler vanguard take a
class-suicidal position, sacrificing and attempting to destroy their
petty-bourgeois class through supporting external national liberation
struggles. While the OCR agrees with us on paper with the attitude labor
aristocrat and settler revolutionaries should have regarding
self-sacrifice, they are incorrect to search for revolutionary
contradictions between these groups and their ally-bourgeoisie. If the
alliance is in each party’s mutual interest, there can be no
contradiction.
As identified in the Polemic Against Settler Maoism, the labor
aristocracy has grown wealthier from the 1960’s until the 2020’s. This
signifies to all settlers as well as those from oppressed nations the
opportunity for petty-bourgeois life through rejecting revolutionary
struggle. As such, only a small portion of people from these groups will
constitute a revolutionary vanguard rejecting their class status, as is
demonstrated by the historical record in the U$ and Kanada which shows a
very small amount of communist revolutionaries. Compare this to China in
which hundreds of millions joined the communist party. The bases for
this difference were national oppression and exploitation in China.
The OCR praise the (N)CPC for having developed a “creative” solution
to national liberation struggles through a “clear analysis.” There are
important examples of the OCR qualifying their belief in the
significance of national liberation struggles such that this praise
accords. In Kites 8, they write that:
“Labeling oppressed nations and nationalities in the US as internal
colonies, while morally justified, does not provide the analytical
foundation for such a strategy and program, instead suggesting separate
struggles to liberate each ‘internal colony’ perhaps linked by
solidarity and a common enemy. The “internal colony” analysis fails to
grasp that there is a multinational proletariat in the US,
disproportionately made up of people of oppressed nation(s) and
nationalities but also including white proletarians, which brings
together people of different nationalities who have a common class
interest and similar but variegated experiences of exploitation and
conditions of life, that is in the strategic position, as a
class, to lead the revolutionary overthrow of US
imperialism.”(11)
Submerging the national struggles of all oppressed nations into the
primary “multinational proletarian” struggle is a recipe for Trotskyism,
especially when combined with the implication that some whites hold
revolutionary class positions. It makes struggling with Trotskyist
groups such as the (N)CPC impossible. Having demoted national liberation
struggles compared to “multinational proletarian revolution”, how could
the OCR disagree that class struggle is more significant?
Despite their affirmation of the right of separate nations to their
own revolutionary organizations, OCR says that this trend
ideologically
“strengthened revolutionary nationalism and weakened the potential
hegemony of the communist world outlook over the growing revolutionary
movement. Practically, it meant that the best of the Sixties generation
were in separate organizational structures rather than combining their
strengths and debating out the crucial questions before the
revolutionary movement within one united democratic centralist
structure.”
This echoes the (N)CPC’s claim that it would likely be
“counterproductive” to have separate vanguards for First Nations,
despite the strong risk that white chauvinism will corrupt the formation
of a vanguard party as the OCR documents having happened to the
Communist Party(USA) and the Revolutionary Communist Party(USA) within
Kites 8.(12)
Towards the end of Kites 8 the OCR writes how US revolution
could hinge on developments in nations like Puerto Rico, the Dominican
Republic, Jamaica, Haiti, other Caribbean nations as well as countries
in Central and South America. They write that
“To maximize potential for revolutionary spillover, a communist
vanguard must carry out political work among the immigrant populations
in the US from the countries in question and link the struggles in their
homelands with the struggle in the diaspora.”
While we agree with the attention necessary towards these oppressed
nations, their value is not about “spillover” but about the necessity of
destroying imperialism before proletarian revolution can happen
on Occupied Turtle Island. Until this time, there will be almost no
proletariat whatsoever, but rather a mass of bought-off labor
aristocrats, even among the oppressed nations. The toppling of
imperialism and settler-colonialism will break the class basis for the
labor aristocracy and shift the tide in the favor of a Joint
Dictatorship of the Proletariat of the Oppressed Nations (JDPON). This
would allow the return of all First Nation lands and resources alongside
reparations for all internal semi-colonies. At such point, Amerika would
no longer be living parasitically from the Third World or oppressed
peoples and the class base of bought-off settlers and labor aristocrats
would disappear.
Conclusion
That the two organizations co-published Kites for over three
years and the disagreements we discuss above go unmentioned by the
(N)CPC raises the question if some aspects of their theoretical line
were discarded during party formation. As much is particularly suggested
by the Spectre series – originally published by Revolutionary
Initiative (RI), precursor to the (N)CPC – where a version of the Labor
Aristocracy thesis is employed to study the United States class
structure and locate the US proletariat.
It is the responsibility of the communist movement, particularly in
the imperial core where socialists far and wide are attempting to win
over the labor aristocracy, to establish firm boundaries of cooperation.
Although there is not a single correct method to determine such
boundaries, those claiming to be vanguard formations owe it to the
global proletariat to establish them transparently. Unity between groups
who supposedly disagree about fundamental principles is irresponsible
and deeply confusing to the masses. Here it raised the questions: how
did the RI and OCR cooperate for years to publish Kites without
struggling out some of these differences? Did the (N)CPC’s formation
include a (faction-based) ideological drift the OCR was not aware of? If
not the labor aristocracy thesis, Maoism or the importance of national
liberation, what is the basis for unity with the OCR?
Ultimately, we can only conclude that neither group considers these
lines dividing. Despite everything worth praise from the OCR and the
journal Kites, they need to develop higher ideological
standards and more explicit ideological lines. Although their recent
disassociation from the (N)CPC may be a positive change, the OCR must
allow no further opportunistic alliances to fester, internal or
external. Finally, they should struggle with DLG ideologically and
engage with the critiques we’ve laid out here.
This polemic focuses on writings and ideas from Revolutionary Marxist
Students (RMS) and Maoist Communist Union (MCU). RMS is a student group
focused primarily on education and organizing around college campuses
and MCU is a pre-party organization with more varied activities. Each
derive from a shared settler “Maoist” ideological tradition in the
United States concentrated on trade unionism and influenced by
Trotskyism. This paper focuses on their misunderstandings of
settler-colonialism, the national question in the United States and the
labor aristocracy. Let it be noted that ideological strengths in their
literature are largely omitted from discussion of these central
issues.
Theses
RMS/MCU ignores the national question in the US and misunderstands
settler-colonialism. This contributes to a pardoning of white settler
workers and acting as though their economic demands will not directly
reinforce imperialism and colonization.
RMS/MCU presents no explicit class analysis identifying and
demarcating the revolutionary from counterrevolutionary forces in
society.
RMS/MCU distort Marx, Engels and Lenin’s understanding of the labor
aristocracy to mean a small privileged upper strata of workers in any
country, rather than the majority of labor having been bourgeoisified
within the imperial core.
Palestine and Settler
Colonialism
The RMS Statement on the Genocide in Palestine is a useful
starting point for investigating the errors of this political
tendency.(1) There is much worthy of praise including rebuttal of some
imperialist propaganda and recognition of, considering Palestine, a
“need to keep up with future development and critically assess the
forces at play. Our primary role in the United States is to understand
and oppose our own state’s involvement in this genocide.”
However, given the importance of opposition to settler colonialism
within the Maoist theoretical lineage, RMS’s adherence to Trotskyist
interpretations of settler labor is unorthodox. In contrast to Mao and
Stalin, Trotsky believed that a socialist government in only one country
would be doomed to failure unless it found rapid new socialist allies
across the world: unless it was accompanied by a global “permanent
revolution.” As Trotsky says himself, “Without direct state support
from the European proletariat, the working class of Russia will not be
able to maintain itself in power and to transform its temporary rule
into a lasting socialist dictatorship. This we cannot doubt for an
instant.”(2)
This was not a view restricted to the specific context of Russia,
however. In the basic postulates beginning Trotsky’s The Permanent
Revolution, written in 1931, he writes that:
“Socialist construction is conceivable only on the foundation of the
class struggle, on a national and international scale. This struggle,
under the conditions of an overwhelming predominance of capitalist
relationships on the world arena, must inevitably lead to explosions,
that is, internally to civil wars and externally to revolutionary wars.
Therein lies the permanent character of the socialist revolution as
such, regardless of whether it is a backward country that is involved,
which only yesterday accomplished its democratic revolution, or an old
capitalist country which already has behind it a long epoch of democracy
and parliamentarism.”
The above-outlined sketch of the development of the world revolution
eliminates the question of countries that are ‘mature’ or ‘immature’ for
socialism in the spirit of that pedantic, lifeless classification given
by the present programme of the Comintern. Insofar as capitalism has
created a world market, a world division of labour and world productive
forces, it has also prepared world economy as a whole for socialist
transformation.
Different countries will go through this process at different tempos.
Backward countries may, under certain conditions, arrive at the
dictatorship of the proletariat sooner than advanced countries, but they
will come later than the latter to socialism. A backward
colonial or semi-colonial country, the proletariat of which is
insufficiently prepared to unite the peasantry and take power, is
thereby incapable of bringing the democratic revolution to its
conclusion. Contrariwise, in a country where the proletariat
has power in its hands as the result of the democratic revolution, the
subsequent fate of the dictatorship and socialism depends in the last
analysis not only and not so much upon the national productive forces as
upon the development of the international socialist revolution.”(3)
[Bold ours]
This Trotskyist conception that workers from the most advanced
capitalist nations must revolt to assist revolutionary struggles in
backwards, feudal and colonized nations is manifested in RMS’s theory on
Palestine. Like their theoretical forerunner, RMS incorrectly identifies
the friends and enemies of the international proletariat, but without
the excuse that the labor aristocracy was embryonic in Trotsky’s
time.
RMS claims to evaluate the “Hamas October 7th attack” – more
accurately, a counter-attack orchestrated by the resistance Joint
Operations Room groups(4) – in relationship to the supposedly more
“diverse strategy” within the Vietnamese, Chinese and Algerian
revolutionary wars. They claim Hamas is wrong to support a two-state
solution, without acknowledging that Hamas only supports the policy as a
temporary strategic measure.(5) RMS prioritizes “Israeli” citizens
through their critique of a two-state solution, claiming that “Only
through the implementation of one secular and democratic state for both
Israelis and Palestinians in place of the religious-fascist state
currently ruling over the region can this brutal apartheid come to an
end.” RMS misunderstands the inherently settler, counterrevolutionary
designation of “Israeli” which must be abolished alongside the zionist
entity in order for Palestine to be free.
Instead of abolishing the settler class role, RMS claims that “in
order to wage any sort of successful national liberation struggle in
Palestine, a significant section of the working Israeli masses would
have to turn against the apartheid state and link up with the
Palestinians” and that “Historical precedent proves the need for such an
alliance of both the colonized and colonizer working classes in ending
Apartheid, as seen in the South African example.” Here the term “working
class” obfuscates settler-colonialism by equating the class interests of
settler and colonized populations, ostensibly because they each receive
wages, ignoring their wages’ dramatically different quantities and the
fact that one group faces national oppression and the other constitutes
an oppressor nation. RMS also cites the numeric majority of “Israelis”
within Palestine to justify the need for an alliance between the two
groups.
Their singular case study with regards to settler workers cooperating
with colonized workers within a successful revolutionary movement is a
multi-national trade union struggle against apartheid in South
Africa.(6) As RMS writes, “historical precedent proves need for an
alliance of the colonized and the colonizer working classes in ending
apartheid. In South Africa, while less than 10% of the population was
white, an alliance with the working class of said population was not
only possible but necessary for the ending of the apartheid regime.”
While the above source which RMS references argues the significance
of the South African Congress of Trade Unions, it omits the
representation of various nations in the formation or the involvement of
white settler labor. Moreover, despite apartheid being “defeated”
national oppression amd segregation endures in South Africa alongside
the revisionism of the African National Congress.
RMS criticizes the Palestinian resistance militarily through
reference to Algeria, China and Vietnam, while the class compositions of
these nations’ struggles against colonialism and imperialism are not
considered. While no two cases are perfectly analogous, successful
liberation movements against colonialism and imperialism have been won
not through drawing from the sympathy of the oppressor nation “workers”
but through organizing the indigenous masses. Although no socialist
states remain today from 20th century revolutionary movements, victories
against imperialism in a multitude of socialist African, Latin American
and Asian governments during the late 20th century were achieved by the
(mostly) guerrilla warfare of the colonized populations, often fighting
in direct contradiction to enemy settler-labor formations. The Chinese
revolution, which Maoists uphold as the most significant advance towards
socialism, didn’t concern itself with the characteristic mineutia of the
enemy class; they opposed the Japanese occupiers – labor and all. What
is particularly alarming about RMS’s analysis of international settler
situations is the transativity of the analysis on occupied Turtle Island
where settler labor has directly led in colonization and genocide,
especially in the United States.(7)
In every revolutionary struggle, there are those who commit class
suicide and join the side of the oppressed despite their origins as
exploiters. Hence, a rejection of an “alliance” between the settler
workers and the oppressed nation workers must not serve as a mechanical
rejection of individual revolutionaries’ ability to transcend their
class origin. As a class however, settlers have never rejected their
class except when forced to migrate out of a colony by the revolting
oppressed.(8) With respect to colonized nations, settlers everywhere
form a reactionary, exploiting class.
Fundamentally, RMS misunderstands the class role of settler labor as
parasitic and antagonistic to the liberation of their country’s
colonized peoples. Settler labor is understood as the labor and
political organizations representing the class interests of the settlers
as workers – more wages, better work conditions, expansion of settler
lands, and access to resources. Class interests and the demands they
beget represent the improvement of the well being or wealth of the
respective strata. This is especially true within capitalism where the
potential of class mobility is present. No strata is without class
demands, and no labor formation is capable of completely shedding the
class demands of its composite strata as the purpose of forming labor
and political advocacy organizations within capitalism is improving the
lot of a given group, usually through struggle with employers or the
state. It is possible for segments of a strata to reject their class
demands but that is not what RMS is advocating for in the case of
settler labor.
What makes settler labor organizations reactionary is that the
settler class material interest is the dispossession of an indigenous
population, by which the settler class is afforded free land, cheap
resources, access to improved citizenship benefits as dividend from the
immense plunder of the settler bourgeoisie and the cheap labor of the
colonized who are relegated to reservations, often little more than
concentration camps. Settler labor organizations will seek to advocate
for greater dividends of the whole stolen wealth of the nation for the
respective spheres of workers for which they advocate. Conflicts between
the settler bourgeoisie and settler petty-bourgeoisie, including all
settlers who receive wages, do not arise because the state can increase
the levers of indigenous dispossession and genocide, creating settler
class positions for sections of the former-proletariat whenever the
possibility of class struggle presents itself.
This plays out in “Israel” as there are no trade unions, much less
nonprofits or “leftist” activist organizations struggling against the
zionist entity as a colonial project. Israel mandates that every
settler, except the ultra-orthodox, serve in the Israeli Occupation
Forces, learning to kill and hate Palestinians. Remaining are isolated
instances of military defectors and other peaceful protesters being
brutalized over even milquetoast objections to the scale or extent of
the occupation or specific massacres, such as those occurring in Gaza
currently. Settler labor as a class, and indeed the entire settler
population of “Israel” has yet to demonstrate revolutionary potential
and it is unfortunate that RMS excludes any criticism of this settler
“left” from their piece despite calling for the Palestinians to unify
with them.
Imperialism and the
National Question
The trade union movement in the US has historically concentrated
significantly on the labor aristocracy, which to quote Zak Cope:
“is that section of the working class which benefits materially from
imperialism and the attendant superexploitation of oppressed-nation
workers. The super-wages received by the labour aristocracy allow for
its accrual of savings and investment in property and business and
thereby “middle-class” status, even if its earnings are, in fact, spent
on luxury personal consumption. Persons who may be compelled to work for
a living but consume profits in excess of the value of labour either
through some form of property ownership or through having established a
political stake in (neo) colonialist society, may be bourgeois without
hiring and exploiting labour-power” (9)
Cope applies the concept globally to argue that within the OECD
working class – 38 European nations, Mexico (a more complicated case in
The Dawnland Group’s opinion), Australia, New Zealand, Israel and Japan
– there is no legal exploitation. Rather, Cope argues the first world
working class is recipient of super-wages comprised of wages for their
labor in addition to wages from the super-exploitation of the third
world which provides them with cheap commodities and shares of
imperialist profits. In particular, Cope notes the exploitative role of
the first world working class, writing that “where workers seek to
retain whatever bourgeois status their occupational income and
conditions of work afford them through alliance with imperialist
political forces, they can be said to actively exploit the proletariat.”
(10)
Cope calculates the value of super-exploitation through two methods,
namely international productivity equivalence, and
international wage differentials, assuming an international
equalized wage rate. Using these two methods Cope finds a combined value
transfer from the non-OECD to OECD countries of $4.9 trillion in the
year 2008 alone.(11) While a renewed study of imperialist value transfer
is necessary for US communists today, that is beyond the scope of this
polemic. It should suffice to observe that wages in gross disproportion
to the productivity of first and third world workers indicate an
exploitative dynamic benefiting one group at the expense of the other.
There may be challenges cultivating revolutionary empathy and culture in
the imperial core if working conditions and wages here cannot be viewed
in a global context and value transfer is not appreciated.
As recognized by Lenin, Marx and Engels, the global proletariat has
nothing to lose but their chains. This is a category of workers afforded
zero or next-to-zero wealth through imperialism. Formations such as MCU
and RMS refuse this definition because it would broaden the
petty-bourgeoisie and labor aristocracy to include most of the
industrial workers who they consider the “revolutionary proletariat” and
dramatically reduce their organizing base within the imperial core.
The most acute struggles in the United States today are national
rather than based on class. The internal nations in the US show the
greatest sites of exploitation, oppression and direct, violent conflict
with the capitalist class. These are the indigenous protesting at
Standing Rock against the Dakota Access Pipeline, movement against the
murderous national oppression carried out through police and prisons,
resistance and labor organizing from migrants forced from their home
countries by imperialism, and rebellion among the literal colonies
retained by the US empire today in Hawaii and Puerto Rico. These
instances of struggle go beyond wishing for middle-class living
standards. Not only have they demonstrated increased levels of militancy
against the state, but the roots of these conflicts are irreparable
antagonisms against the structure of capitalism and imperialism which
necessarily go beyond economic demands and have not been placated
through the dividend of super-profits.
Maoist Communist Union (MCU) writing about politics in the United
States focuses on trade unionism and overlooks national questions.
Despite the manifold contradictions between nations on Turtle Island,
within their theory journals, Notes from a Conversation Among
Comrades on the George Floyd Protests: Lessons for Ourselves and
Beyond discusses the oppression of Black people but does not lay
out a conception of their struggle for national liberation or their
nationhood.(12) No other articles discuss national or even “racial” (a
popular but unscientific concept) oppression on Turtle Island, and their
extensive writing about Maoist formations from the Global South and
trade unionism in the US reveals that they view the US as simply another
country that can carry out revolution domestically by replicating Maoist
strategies from the third world. They are mistaken: different conditions
warrant different strategies.
MCU’s Some General Theses on Communist Work in the Trade
Unions exemplifies this view.(13) Ignoring national oppression, the
article instead finds that “in order to have a socialist revolution in
this country we must first develop a strong Communist (Maoist) Party
capable of leading a powerful trade union movement and of freeing that
movement from the domination of reactionary leadership.”
The chronology is important. If communists must first develop this
“Maoist” trade unionist movement, it means any organizing around the
national – or racial, according to language used by MCU – questions and
colonization are peripheral or secondary to this central cause. It
suggests communists might first unite the trade union movement and
later, if at all, use this militant union formation to liberate
oppressed groups within the country rather than working with these
groups as mutually constitutive of a revolutionary struggle, much less
prioritizing struggles of oppressed nations. In reality, organizing a
bulwark of settler labor will negatively impact national liberation
movements.
Instead of oppressed nations, MCU sees trade union aristocrats as the
US’s revolutionary masses. The core reference to the “labor aristocracy”
in Some General Theses is when the authors claim that “the most
secure and consistent base of the reactionary union leaders is the labor
aristocracy which is only a small subsection of the working class, and
in our day is not equivalent to the trade union membership as a whole.”
Having sidestepped an investigation of the various relationships to the
means of production, they claim that the “vast majority” of US trade
union membership is not a “reactionary base.” MCU overlooks an
investigation of total worker compensation including public and private
benefits, the means by which the labor aristocracy is maintained within
imperial core countries. Luxurious positions at the apex of global
commodity exchange and artificially high wages give labor aristocrats
wealth above the means of subsistence on which the proletariat must
endure, and doled out above the value created through their labor.
Without an investigation of international class relations, wages, wealth
and labor productivity it is impossible to determine where the
proletariat ends and where the labor aristocracy begins and ends, much
less between the proletariat and the petty-bourgeoisie. It is thus
impossible to determine who the revolutionary masses are.
MCU claims that “A Communist Party must necessarily equip itself with
the most advanced revolutionary science, based upon a summation of the
whole of the proletariat’s revolutionary experience up to the moment in
question.” Despite this, MCU presents no historical summation of
“communist” work in US trade unions for the past 80 years that could
support their conclusion of the necessity or even possibility of
building a “Maoist” trade union movement in the US today. In tandem with
a thorough class analysis, a historical account of why an ideology finds
certain groups revolutionary or counterrevolutionary must be
established. If the US trade unions have not taken up any
anti-imperialist politics since before the New Deal era despite
consistent unsuccessful communist infiltration, what has been the source
of these failures?
In their more recent MCU and the Working Class Movement
summarizing the tendency’s recent organizing initiatives, the
aforementioned mistakes are repeated, particularly a failure to analyze
US classes, their only attempt at defining the proletariat being “the
only class that has an interest in communism as a class.” This is not a
definition. MCU does not scientifically demarcate the proletariat from
the non-proletariat. Their interesting commentary about the significance
of creating a “specifically proletarian line” around which all other
classes must be drawn is inapplicable to any context without an
accompanying class analysis.
Because of the labor aristocracy thesis, workers who benefit from
super-exploitation of the third world are not exploited, they are
exploiters. This entails that the economic interests of the vast
majority of imperial core workers are counterrevolutionary. Trade
unions, tenant organizing and other locally “progressive” economic
campaigns threaten to bolster standards of living and strengthen
citizens’ relationship with imperialism. More specifically, the labor
aristocracy thesis suggests there is no antagonism between first world
capitalists and their citizen labor aristocrats to begin with, the two
instead being allied in consuming value from the Global South.
(Mis)Identifying
the Labor Aristocracy and the Proletariat
To examine historical Marxist origins of the term “labor aristocracy”
as distinct from the proletariat, Marx, Engels and Lenin should be
studied. As written in the Maoist Internationalist Movement’s
Imperialism and its Class Structure in 1997:
According to Marx, the portion of society that is parasitic increases
over time: “At the dawn of civilization the productiveness acquired by
labour is small, but so too are the wants which develop with and by the
means of satisfying them. Further, at that early period, the portion of
society that lives on the labour of others is infinitely small compared
with the mass of direct producers. Along with the progress in the
productiveness of labour, that small portion of society increases both
absolutely and relatively.”
Despite the focus given to the labor aristocracy by Lenin, Marx and
Engels were the first to speak of the labor aristocracy of the colonial
countries. Even in Capital, Vol. 1, Marx speaks of “how industrial
revulsions affect even the best-paid, the aristocracy, of the
working-class.”
Engels in particular is famous for some quotes on England. Here we
only point to the quotes from Engels that Lenin also cited favorably in
his book Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. As we shall see,
Lenin’s approval and careful attention to the quotes from Engels on the
labor aristocracy are very important in his own thinking.
One of the clearest quotes from Engels as early as 1858 cited by
Lenin is: “The English proletariat is becoming more and more bourgeois,
so that this most bourgeois of all nations is apparently aiming
ultimately at the possession of a bourgeois aristocracy, and a bourgeois
proletariat as well as a bourgeoisie. For a nation which exploits the
whole world, this is, of course, to a certain extent justifiable.” We
should also point out that from Lenin’s point of view it was a matter of
concern that this had been going on for over 50 years already. Just
before expressing this concern, Lenin says, “Imperialism has the
tendency to create privileged sections also among the workers, and to
detach them from the broad masses of the proletariat.” Writing to the
same Kautsky who later betrayed everything, Engels said, “You ask me
what the English workers think about colonial policy? Well exactly the
same as they think about politics in general. There is no workers’ party
here, there are only Conservatives and Liberal Radicals, and the workers
merrily share the feast of England’s monopoly of the colonies and the
world market.” Spineless Mensheviks internationally regret this blanket
statement by Engels. The more dangerous revisionists of Marxism are only
too gutless to say Engels was wrong while contradicting him at every
chance. The spineless flatterers of the oppressor nation working class
fear the reaction of the oppressor nation workers to being told they are
parasites. Likewise, these spineless social-chauvinists evade the task
before the international proletariat – a historical stage of cleansing
the oppressor nation workers of parasitism. This task cannot be wished
away with clever tactics of niceness.” (15)
Referring back to Some Theses on our Work in the Trade
Unions, MCU writes that “with the development of capitalist
imperialism, Lenin considered it was no longer possible to bribe such a
large section of the working class: ‘It was possible in those days to
bribe and corrupt the working class of one country for decades. This is
now improbable, if not impossible. But on the other hand, every
imperialist ‘Great’ Power can and does bribe smaller strata (than in
England in 1848–68) of the ‘labour aristocracy.’” Lenin’s claim flowed
from the reality that in 1916, imperialist world war had broken out and
large segments of British and German workers were re-proletarianized.
However, the era of inter-imperialist world war has since been
profoundly interrupted by over seventy years of peace in the core
imperialist countries throughout which the labor aristocracy to which
Lenin referred has grown. Lenin’s writing in Imperialism, the
Highest Stage of Capitalism, published in 1917 the year after
Imperialism and the Split in Socialism, should be given
authority.
While MCU are correct to recognize the socialist NGO’s, revisionist
parties and capitalist rulers of most trade unions as class enemies,
these do not comprise the labor aristocracy, which instead is the wide
majority of bourgeoisified workers compensated with super-wages through
imperialism.
MCU writing of their conception of the labor aristocracy says that
“In the US, the ruling class has been able to bribe a minority
subsection of the working class for a long period of time. The height of
this bribery was likely reached during the New Deal era, but especially
since the mid 1970s more and more of the labor aristocracy has seen its
privileges severely eroded. We need to do much more investigation
however to determine more exactly how the labor aristocracy in this
country has changed over time, how large it ever truly got and how large
it is today.”
MCU seems to assume that decreasing wages relative to GDP since the
1970s has meant the decrease of the US labor aristocracy, but GPD does
not reflect global class relations nor wage differentials between
nations: “Through this negative account balance (though not only it),
the US working class is able to consume products which its labour has
not paid for. Global neoliberal restructuring has thus maintained the
privileged position of the core-nation working class relative to the
Third World proletariat, albeit on terms less favourable to the former’s
independent political expression than during the long boom of the 1950s
and 1960s.” (16) The persistence of the labor aristocracy despite
neoliberal reform can be measured through the significant increase of
homeownership,(17) vehicle ownership,(18) higher education(19) and real
weekly wages(20) throughout the country since 1960. Based upon these
statistics, MCU is incorrect to claim that the height of bribery was
during the New Deal era.
Clearly, MCU is using a different definition of the labor aristocracy
than Marx, Engels and Lenin because theirs is not based on bribery,
unequal exchange or surplus exploitation within the domestic “working
class” but entirely restricted to political roles among the
petty-bourgeoisie which exist regardless of the compensation of imperial
core workers in general.
Conclusion:
Impact of Faulty Class Analysis on Mass Work
A closer look at MCU and the Working Class Movement which
summarizes the formation’s recent work demonstrates the effects of their
ideological commitment to the settler labor aristocracy through their
focus on the US “industrial proletariat.”
Discussing some problems they had faced while organizing tenants, MCU
claims they were unable to “find and unite with the resolute fighters
among the working-class, raise consciousness amongst them specifically
and wider masses more broadly, and thereby…build up revolutionary
organization” due to “major ideological difficulties in developing
significant numbers of tenants into communists or even clarifying the
larger nature of the struggle beyond the immediate fight against
gentrification.”
They conceived of their task as creating a “united front of all the
class forces – workers, lumpen, petty-bourgeois – affected by
gentrification.” The following section bears quoting at length:
“In a confused attempt to make the central focus of this united front
still be the working-class, we specifically concentrated first on the
homeless, and then when we realized that was going nowhere we shifted to
tenants in public/subsidized housing – respectively perhaps the most and
second-most pauperized and lumpenized sections of the working-class –
despite the fact that we had studied and criticized the Black Panther
Party’s lumpen-line. We justified this by downplaying the degree of
lumpenization among these segments of the population and arguing,
correctly, that many of these tenants were still working-class. What we
did not consider was which segments and sections of the working-class
are most favorable to organize amongst.”
They discuss this line of work saying that
“Naturally, our efforts among the homeless and tenants bore little
fruit. We basically failed to make strong and lasting links with the
working-class, develop Communists from amongst the masses we were in
contact with, build sustained mass-organization, or sustain any
struggles involving substantial numbers of people.”
All of this led MCU to conclude a need to “proletarianize” their
ranks – through taking up industrial jobs, partly in an attempt to
challenge internal petty-bourgeois class tendencies and partly to make
more connections with “advanced workers.” (Recall Trotsky) Finally, they
list an outpouring of petty-bourgeois students into industrial jobs as
“incredibly promising” because they could numerically bolster a
communist party.
MCU quotes Lenin’s 1897 Task of the Russian Social Democrats
to show how it is necessary for US communists today to focus primarily
on the US “industrial proletariat.” MCU claims Lenin
“clearly puts forward that it was specifically the industrial
proletariat working in the urban factories that was the most advanced,
the ‘most receptive to [Communist] ideas, most intellectually and
politically developed.’ Lenin arrived at this conclusion because,
following in the footsteps of the rest of the European industrial
workers throughout the last several decades, the Russian factory workers
had proven themselves in practice to be the leading section of the class
during the waves of strikes in the 1880s and 1890s in Russia.”
MCU fails to discuss the difference in working conditions, wages, and
wealth between US factory workers and those of semi-feudal Russia.
Despite significantly basing their theory on Lenin they have failed to
consider the key ways workers in 21st century imperial core countries
differ from 20th century peripheral feudal workers; they fail to
adequately study imperialism. MCU’s first theory journal includes an
article titled Lenin’s Five Point Definition of the Economic Aspects
of Capitalist Imperialism and its Relevance Today, during which the
term labor aristocracy is never mentioned.(21)
Although it is later downplayed, MCU’s obsession with industrial
workers is perhaps best explained by this quote:
“Without a firm foundation among the industrial proletariat, and
without winning over the majority of the organized workers to a
revolutionary line, it will be impossible for the Party to direct a
general political strike across key workplaces and industries during a
revolutionary crisis. The general political strike is a key tool by
which can we paralyze the ability of the capitalist class to move goods,
troops, and military equipment. Alongside splitting the repressive
forces, paralyzing the bourgeoisie’s ability to run the economy is
essential for a successful revolution during such a crisis. Doing this
in key military industries – especially if, as is likely, the crisis
arises amid a significant war – undermines the bourgeoisie’s ability to
deploy repressive force to crush the revolution.”
According to this picture of revolution, industrial workers formed
the “leading section of the working class” during recent strike waves
because they have struck in the greatest numbers, to the greatest impact
on the national economy. Whereas US industrial workers overwhelmingly
only struck for a greater share of imperialist plunder in the last
century – such as when the recent “historic” UAW strike in winning mere
wage increases for the union and none else(22) – industrial strikes in
feudal Russia were far more frequently communist. Still, MCU’s strategy
is an essentially mechanical application of insurrectionist revolution,
derived from feudal Russia, to the US context.
The US is not an underdeveloped feudal country with only nascent
capitalism. It is the leading core imperialist country and has been for
over seventy years. It is the wealthiest nation in human history, and
has risen wide swaths of the population into allegiance with imperialism
and, at times, fascism based upon the material benefits of empire.
Revolution will be carried out by a minority-of-a-minority in the
country, not by a strike sweeping all sectors of the working class. Our
situation cannot be compared to that of the Bolsheviks.
Most charitably, MCU’s summation of tenant work can be read as the
belief that their chronology was incorrect: first organizing a communist
trade union movement will make work among tenants, lumpen and oppressed
nations far easier. Yet, this is still a narrow application of Bolshevik
tactics to 21st century US contexts. There are many reasons MCU’s tenant
and homeless mass work may have failed: ideological incoherence, focus
on labor aristocratic tenants, ignorance of the primary contradiction of
national oppression facing the masses, lack of a prior conception of
eventual revolutionary civil war around which to mobilize,
petty-bourgeois sensibilities among cadre, or even simple human error.
It is unreasonable to expect MCU to discuss these factors when they are
preoccupied with a nonexistent industrial proletariat, imposing models
from incomparable historical contexts.
MCU’s errors in mass-work and their shift towards “key industry”
organizing may seem like a simple error of studying one revolutionary
circumstance too much at the expense of others, as failing to apply
Marxism to the US context. While partly true, the better explanation is
a combination of opportunism – increasing numbers at the expense of
revolutionary vision – and a failure to prioritize class analysis.
Focusing on certain industries is important, but it fundamentally cannot
tell you about class within various industries, and it cannot replace
determining who the revolutionary and counterrevolutionary forces in
society are; “who are our friends, and who are our enemies?” to quote
Mao himself.
Focus on workers in specific industries is a strategic
decision likely to be prefigured by an ideological line. MCU has
established a line prioritizing Labor Aristocratic workers that
necessarily rejects the importance of national contradictions to the
revolutionary objectives on Turtle Island, and in doing so promotes
imperialism. RMS falls close behind in promoting an impossible
allegiance of the colonized nations with the settler working class. Each
organization takes part in a prominent tendency of US “Maoist”
organizations to follow Trotskyism despite its contradictions with
Maoism.
These are deeply troublesome trends. To organize the labor
aristocracy, to promote imperialism and Trotskyism is to do the enemy’s
work. The global proletariat is the only force which can make
revolution, and they are held back by settlers and labor aristocrats
alike. The longer communists on occupied Turtle Island fail to embrace
these positions, the further away a Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
Notes: (1)
https://web.archive.org/web/20240227044053/https://marxiststudents.wordpress.com/statements/
(2) Zinoviev,
Gregory Bolshevism or Trotskyism. 1925 (3)
https://web.archive.org/web/20240227044746/https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/tpr/pr10.htm
(4)
https://web.archive.org/web/20240227044944/https://unity-struggle-unity.org/resistance-news-network-media-guide/
(5)
https://web.archive.org/web/20240227045151/https://irp.fas.org/world/para/docs/hamas-2017.pdf
(6)
https://web.archive.org/web/20240227045539/https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/congress-south-african-trade-unions-cosatu
(7) Sakai, J. “Settlers: The mythology of the White proletariat from
mayflower to modern.”(2014). Kersplebedeb. (8) See Haiti,
Vietnam, China, Korea, and even South Africa, where millions of
emigrating whites has driven many to re-settle in Israel (9)
Cope, Zac “Divided World Divided Class” Kersplebedeb 2012, pg. 9
(10) Ibid. pg. 175 (11) Ibid. pg. 200 (12)
https://web.archive.org/web/20240227050314/https://maoistcommunistunion.com/red-pages/issue-3/notes-from-a-conversation-among-comrades-on-the-george-floyd-protests-lessons-for-ourselves-and-beyond/
(13)
https://mcuusa.files.wordpress.com/2023/10/mcu-theses-on-trade-union-work-2.pdf
(14)
https://mcuusa.files.wordpress.com/2023/12/mcu_and_the_working_class_movement-2.pdf
(15)
https://archive.org/details/ImperialismAndItsClassStructureIn1997_254/mode/2up
(16) Cope, Zak “Divided World Divided Class” Kersplebedeb 2012, pg.
9 (17)
https://web.archive.org/web/20240228014852/https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N
(18)
https://web.archive.org/web/20240228015215/https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter8/urban-transport-challenges/household-vehicles-united-states/
(19)
https://web.archive.org/web/20240228015942/https://www.statista.com/statistics/184260/educational-attainment-in-the-us/
(20)
https://web.archive.org/web/20240228015618/https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
(21)
https://web.archive.org/web/20240228020932/https://maoistcommunistunion.com/red-pages/issue-3/lenins-five-point-definition-of-the-economic-aspects-of-capitalist-imperialism-and-its-relevance-today/
(22)
https://www.businessinsider.com/uaw-strike-contract-raises-pay-details-ford-gm-stellantis-2023-10?op=1&r=US&IR=T
We thank Comrade Slaughter for bringing forth these questions, and as Maoist revolutionaries MIM(Prisons) as a cell has the duty to coordinate this line struggle within the United Struggle Within through unity-criticism-unity. One divides into two: a thing that was in a state of unity will have its contradictions and arrive at a point where the two are split. And through criticism and self-criticism and ridding metaphysics and idealism, the two aspects of the contradiction will find unity where one side will overtake the other.
Before we begin with the following quotes of the responders to Comrade Slaughter, we raise the question Mao Zedong asked when ey and eir comrades were beginning a revolutionary people’s war in semi-colonial and semi-feudal China: who are our friends? who are our enemies?
Comrade Jade responds: In regards to Slaughter’s response I would like to point out a few things you may overlook in regards to sex offenders in general.
First, not everyone convicted of a sex crime is a child molester. Are all white males Aryans? Are all Hispanics Cartel? Are all Black males gang bangers? There will always be diversity in all groups we attempt to label or create. It is a proven fact. We all are individuals who are slightly different even under the exact same conditions.
Next, I believe that you need to truly look at what they did or did not do before ostracizing or mistreating them. Do not just judge them by the label corrupt politics fostered on them.
I agree that those who truly rape/molest and prey on underage children are not likely to be rehabilitated or to further the cause. But, how many of the people convicted of sex crimes are the true predators?
I know from personal experience, as a former psychiatric nurse, that females tend to mature sooner and seek out sex earlier. As puberty shifts from the old 12-15 to 8-11 now due to steroids and worse it makes them even more likely to become sexually active by 14. They will seek out partners where they will, including older more experienced men, who in their opinion can please them or teach them. While I do not advocate for them to be sexually active, especially not with grown men, due to early menstruation and physical development some females 14-17 look like grown adults. Then add to that the over-sexualization of our society, they tend to become aggressive in a sexual nature. As a result, some men may not realize their partner is underage. While this is not an excuse, it does happen.
Then you have men whose adult female partner falsely accuses them in revenge to a variety of things. It is not uncommon in a situation like this for the man to be convicted or pressured into a deal.
This does not mean all sex offenders are able to be rehabilitated, though the ones convicted rarely re-offend according to statistical evidence.
To this end we need a viable alternative to prisons and/or death for all offenders who truly cannot be rehabilitated. None of the current approaches are going to work. It will have to be a new idea.
We also must address the over-sexualization of our society. By making sex less of a pass time, less appealing, less mainstream, we can reduce many sex offenses as well.
MIM(Prisons) responds: Comrade Jade reveals an important aspect of the registered sex offenders status – the moral panic and the scapegoat aspect it represents. How many non-registered sex offenders and non-confirmed sex offenders in prisons (who might perhaps gotten in prison for non-sex related crimes such as murder or drugs) will partake in the ultra-leftist crusade against the confirmed ones? For the readers on the outside, that sentence alone might carry a reactionary and apologist undertones, but that is because petty-bourgeois justice oriented revenge killings is a material reality in prison and much less often outside. The life of a lumpen organization member for example is an oppressive and gritty one, and sexual crimes or sexual relations where consent isn’t prioritized aren’t uncommon; yet most lumpen organization members won’t come to prison on sex related crimes but on drug and homicide related crimes.
Subjectivism, ultra-leftism, and individualist oriented justice is another form of opiate of the masses in prison: take that anger out on the confirmed sex offenders says the pig, but us at MIM(Prisons) know that the pigs are laughing all along as this happens because it’s just that much easier to control a violent lumpen class than a cool and collected one – a class in itself vs a class for itself. Drugs aren’t the only form of individualism that is used to placate the imprisoned lumpen, the imprisoned lumpen’s penchent for ultra-leftist violence will also come in handy as a governing tool.
In a socialist society we will ban things like pornography for profit and misogynistic media and media that is predatory towards children. These things are so common under imperialism and reinforce and encourage sexual abuse.
A Colorado Prisoner Responds: I agree with Wiawimawo. I disagree with Slaughter.
A “sex offense” is whatever a legislature defines as one. It can be anything like actual physical rape to someone who is caught peeing on a dumpster in an alley. In my 14 years in a Corruptarado (as we call this state) prison I have met only a couple of people who were actual “rapists.” The vast majority of sex offenders were people who had younger lovers who chose to be with them. But someone, often a jealous want-to-be lover, found out, ratted the two out, and the older partner was arrested and charged.
Now prosecutors adore sex charges. They require no physical evidence, no witnesses. Only an allegation and a “victim” coached by D.A. investigators to say how they were fooled, manipulated, led astray, by that evil older man (almost always a man). And in states like this one without a time limit for filing, a “victim” can say, “20 years ago he took advantage of me” and the D.A. can file a charge and get a conviction.
Slaughter talks about “children.” A child is whatever the legislator says he is. Anyone under 18 is defined a child. Right now it is 18, which is the “age of consent.” Back in 2009, in Colorado, it was 15. And a female of 12, with parental permission, could marry (official papers) anyone.
In Texas, as in most of the South, the legal age for marriage was 12 when I was there. I don’t know what it is now.
The fact is, the religious right bible-wavers do not like sex, and they do not want these pesky kids having any of it. Thus the law, and the pigs (Amerikkka’s version of the Nazi SA) are used to stop it.
The conclusion of this religious fear will be what was done in the Salem-Keizer school district in Oregon. Reported on broadly, on vice.com, “Teachers Forced to Report All Teens Having Sex in Oregon School District.”
At those schools, since Oregon law only allows sex for those 18 or older, anyone under 18 doing the dirty is a criminal. So any school personnel discovering an under 18 having sex is required to report him or her to the police for prosecution.
Hey, if enough “children under law” would be arrested and thrown into prison then unapproved sex could be stopped. Of course, putting older partners in prison is already being done and that does not stop them from re-offending. So it should work with the children also.
Slaughter (what is in a name) wants those sex offenders (ey calls them pedophiles – a term created by prosecutors to inflame) to be punished, and people protected from them. In Colorado there are about 4000 sex offenders in prison (CDOC). The vast majority have indeterminate sentences, which means most will die in prison. That number is a full 25% of the CDOC population. And as you probably know, the giving of indeterminate sentences is an easy way for prosecutors to get a life sentence for defendants that did not kill anyone. Great for the D.A.’s stats when a performance review comes around.
The issue is of life sentences in Amerikkka. Get the article, “The Only Way We Get Out of There is in a Pine Box” in the April 2022 issue of News Inside published by The Marshall Project. It tells of elderly prisoners, convicted of murder or other violent crimes who will die in prison. At great expense to tax payers for all their medical care.
…Make no mistake about it, if the Christians like Pence, DeSantis, etc. take over, a new inquisition, just like the Spanish one in the 18th Century will be instituted. And right at the top of the list, below LGBTQ people, will be the communists. Off to the concentration camps for all.
MIM(Prisons) Responds: A recent report by the Prison Policy Initiative exposes the arbitrary repression of so-called “civil commitments.” In cases where someone is not given a life sentence, they can be civily committed after fulfilling the sentence given by the courts. Most who go to civil commitment will never see the outside world again. At least 6,000 people, mostly men, across the country are in civil commitment after serving their time for sex offenses. Unlike court, the process to be sentenced to civil commitment is largely arbitrary. The following will make you much more likely to be civilly committed: being gay, being transgender, being Black, being disabled.(3)
Under imperialism, well-meaning laws that sound good on paper such as ones surrounding the age of consent (or the anti-mask laws first intended against the Klan protesting while cowardly hiding eir identities, but now used against progressives and oppressed nation youth protesting against police violence) will be abused for the interests of the imperialist-patriarchy. The truth is, law in itself for any given class society has been simply state enforced rules to govern the overall humyn society in accordance with the respective class dictatorships. This is why legalism (in this case referring to the idea that good laws will create good society and bad laws will create bad society) is in no way shape or form a scientific solution against the tragic cases such as rape, molestation, and grooming of children.
Under the imperialist patriarchy that we live in, children have no rights or agency to consent and the rape culture of our world will always harm the most vulnerable. “Good” laws under an imperialist patriarchy will be designed and used for the purposes of maintaining it (the nuclear family, heteronormitivity, youth oppression, etc.) that has children raped in the first place while a socialist society/proletarian dictatorship will give power to the youth to properly protect themselves and prioritize abolishing oppression above all else and especially against prioritizing profits and maintaining a patriarchal culture.
A California Prisoner Responds: I can see this comrade has done a significant amount of revolutionary education. However to truly be a communist means one has to recognize the humanity of others. It is here this comrade’s own hate is still an obstacle in the way. The ONLY path forward for this comrade is to forgive his abuser. This comrade must also recognize that the Known Sex Offenders (KSO’s) on the yard are NOT his abuser, meaning this comrade does NOT know their circumstance.
This comrade separates sex crimes from all other crimes by stating that “all other crimes are political crimes,” as a result of capitalism I presume. Sex crimes are an “illness.” This comrade (let me say comrades) states he is in for murder and that murder is somehow NOT an anti-human crime but only a “political crime.” Furthermore, Comrade Slaughter states that he is rehabilitated by saying he has “learned to be objective towards KSO’s.” He also states it is only possible for all other criminals to rehabilitate by saying “unification with the KSOs is futile because after the revolution the KSO will still need to be dealt with” meaning presumably rehabilitation for sex addiction is somehow not possible for the KSO.
I would like to start with the motion this murderer is not as rehabilitated as ey claim. The statement “after the revolution the KSO will still need to be dealt with” proves Comrade S. is not as rehabilitated as ey thinks. It also proves that Comrade S endorses the puniluation method used by the Nazis to “deal with” 6 million Jews. Comrade S. is obviously proposing the genocide of a whole group of people (KSOs). I think a lot of Jews, Armenians, and Africans would tell Comrade S. that his crime of murder is not political as he claims, but in fact is an anti-people crime. Moreover, most KSOs are more rehabilitated than this murderer.
MIM(Prisons) responds: We would say that the comparison of Slaughter’s comments to the holocaust of Jewish, Gay, Romani, and politically subversive revolutionaries under Nazi Germany to be a bit of an exaggeration. Yet it is true that the fascists will mobilize people around persecuting scapegoats, and currently it is this fanatical connection between pedophilia, transgender people and gender non-conforming people in general that is mobilizing the reactionary forces in the streets.
As we assemble this issue of ULK, a news story dropped about Larry Nassar being stabbed in prison. Nassar was convicted of molesting hundreds of young girls over decades while serving as the doctor for the U.$. Olympic team. Whether it’s to make themselves feel better about themselves, as the California prisoner above proposed, or to take out some anger, or to earn some stripes, the collaborative effort to punish people like Nassar undermines the principal contradiction in prisons. These attacks are generally a collaborative effort between prisoners and staff. Staff who may overlap with the fascist movements on the streets threatening drag story times. And while we would not argue there is never a time to ally with staff, it is a rare occasion, when they actually side with prisoners against the system. In contrast, this type of “outlaw justice” is really state-sanctioned. And it does reinforce the idea that there is some common interest between the oppressed and the oppressor in punishing these crimes considered most heinous.
If we aren’t organizing collectively to transform systems and transform ourselves, then we aren’t working towards justice. Triumphant mentions an example on the streets of FPC addressing open air sex markets in the community. Without knowing the details, this seems like an approach that could actually mobilize the people in a way that reduces sexual abuse of children and teenagers. Within prisons we can point to the example of Men Against Sexism, which successfully eradicated rape in Washington State Prison.(1) So if people are serious about taking action against sexual assault, there are actual effective ways to do this.
The ability to truly rehabilitate people will increase as communists increase their power and influence over society. We agree with this comrade that the current system can’t properly address those who aren’t being rehabilitated. And we look to socialist China’s model for how they rehabilitated people who committed crimes against the people.
Comrade Slaughter is right to bring up the question of how and what the morality of a revolutionary should be implemented and look like. To that we answer that proletarian morality must be based on whatever is best for the whole of society to be rid of oppression in contrast to bourgeois morality which is based on individualism, Liberalism, and profit. We tell Comrade Slaughter, and to all comrades in the revolutionary struggle (especially the imprisoned lumpen) to protect themselves as revolutionaries from individuals with bad intentions, but also to push themselves beyond the subjective trauma that ey has faced as oppressed people. Use mindfulness and other resources made available by this imperialist system and use it to better oneself as a revolutionary to heal the persynal scars to better transform the world around us. Don’t let the imperialists weaponize mindfulness or therapy to numb and placate one’s self.
All crimes are political. Post-modernism (the narrative of non-narrative) recognizes phenomena such as this and says that the persynal is the political. Maoism goes beyond this to say that the narrative of the oppressed must replace the narrative of the oppressor with revolutionary violence (rhetoric alone will solve nothing). Persynal scars are political scars, and recognizing the contradiction between the individual and the oppressive system is recognizing that one must recognize eir own lived experiences isn’t all there is to the world and is an unscientific way for the oppressed nations/internal semi-colonies of the United $tates to understand the material reality around them.
As I understand it, Chicano nationalism draws heavily from Indigenismo – an ideology of the settler colonial Mexican state that says that all the inhabitants of Mexico are indigenous, all are Mestizos, and so on. Such an ideology is fundamentally anti-indigenous as it seeks to indigenize Mexican settlers. The conception of Aztlan is similar – it is a land claim based on the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo – land taken from Mexico during the Mexico-American war. It’s worth noting that the treaty itself distinguishes between Mexican settlers in this territory and Indigenous “savages”.
While it is true that a section of the colonized proletariat of the America is from Mexico, I am convinced that they are not members of an oppressed Chicano nation. They are more often members of Indigenous nations in Mexico displaced from their homelands.
Chicano nationalism is ultimately a form of settler nationalism. It expresses the class interests of mainly Euro-Mexican settlers against Euro-American settlers. It disguises the legitimate claims for decolonization by oppressed indigenous and African nations in Mexico and the American Southwest, by pretending that all Chicanos are descendants of ancient Aztecs. It is extremely unfortunate that this ideology has taken hold in America’s prisons by people who are not connected to Aztec/Nahua people, culture or elders.
I’m not an expert in this, I’m still learning much about it. But I’m just letting you know that the issue is a lot more complicated than it seems from the outset. There’s lots of liberal carry-over on reddit where I see people lumping all POC together and assuming they are revolutionary. Which is just not the case.
Xipe of the Communist Party of Aztlán responds:
On Indigenismo
Chican@ revolutionary nationalism has often been misunderstood. Our belief is that this is due to the Chican@ Nation not meeting its responsibility in addressing a correct political line to the ICM (International Communist Movement) on the one hand and in the ICM’s mostly incorrect analysis of the social forces within these false U.S. borders.
To be clear the CPA does not draw heavily on indigenismo – which is steeped in metaphysical trappings. We draw heavily on materialism. As materialists we recognize that not all inhabitants of Mexico are indigenous – although according to Jack Forbes most are! What’s more We disagree with your understanding that Chicano nationalism believes all are “mestizos” in Mexico, the CPA(MLM) believes that the term Mestizo is actually a label deriving from the colonizers agit/prop that strips Chican@s of many features of nationhood. “Mestizo” is anti-materialist, that as Jack Forbes suggests, is better suited to describe many of the European nations such as Italy, Sicily, etc.
Our analysis overstands that the inhabitants of current day Mexico are a combination of bloodlines that include indigenous, Spanish colonizer, African and others. And yet blood quantum don’t define a nation. We draw from Stalin on the national question for what defines a nation and we thoroughly address this in the book Chican@ Power and the Struggle for Aztlán.
On Land
It seems to many that the political line of some Chican@ cultural nationalists is interpreted as the political line of the entire nation, this is incorrect. Our stance on land does not simply derive from the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, although we certainly cite this treaty in much of our agit/prop surrounding our struggle for national liberation. To rely simply on the colonizers treaty to validate our struggle for national liberation is akin to anti-imperialists within these false U.S. borders simply relying on the U.S. Constitution to validate its anti-imperialism. Although one can use the imperialists’ words and articles against them, we are not reformists who simply want our class enemies to re-word a document or follow its own law. We want a complete transformation of society and to free the tierra! Our lucha for land is for a Chicano Socialist Government not for permission from the colonizer to own acres of land under an imperialist rule.
Those who confuse Chican@ revolutionary nationalism with the settler need to study the development of nations, specifically the book Chican@ Power and the Struggle for Aztlán, which includes the political line of the CPA when it comes to a nation. We ask those who are curious on our line to read the Chican@ Red Book (Chican@ Power and the Struggle for Aztlán).
Even if the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was never written our national liberation movement would be just. Chican@s developed in what is now the “U.$. Southwest” as surely as Africans developed in what is now Haiti to become Haitians. Our line is not anchored in us believing we are descendants of ancient “Aztecs” – although some actually are! We overstand that the term “Aztlán” was used 50+ years ago within the Chican@ movement as a rallying cry and point of unity for Chican@s of the time and we see the relevance of using it in our struggle today.
On 26 December 2022, the Unified Maoist International Conference
(UMIC) announced the founding of the International Communist League
(ICL). The organizations involved see the need to build a new communist
international, building on the legacy of the Comintern and the
Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM). As we’ve explained
elsewhere we disagree with the creation of a new communist international
at this time.(1)
This new ICL is truer to the Comintern than the RIM was, but remains
in the same outdated and revisionist global class analysis as RIM. The
ICL statement clearly upholds MIM’s first 2 dividing line questions,
while failing to address the third directly. MIM’s third point reads in
part:
” imperialism extracts super-profits from the Third World and in part
uses this wealth to buy off whole populations of oppressor nation
so-called workers. These so-called workers bought off by imperialism
form a new petty-bourgeoisie called the labor aristocracy. These classes
are not the principal vehicles to advance Maoism within those countries
because their standards of living depend on imperialism.”(2)
Arguably, this line was somewhat controversial in the mid-1980s, when
MIM struggled against the RIM’s Revolutionary Communist Party(U$A) on
this question. The ICL statement addresses the question in most depth
with the following:
“The economic crisis in 2008 that began as a finance crisis in the
USA was unloaded on the masses in the oppressed countries and even in
the imperialist countries themselves. Thus it has stricken the
proletariat of the imperialist countries, which instigated sharp
struggles for the defense of the achievements they conquered throughout
the 20th Century. The consequences of this crisis were not overcame,
this is why the recovering of employment is at the expense of worse
quality, lower wages and larger working day. The recovering is at the
expense of increasing the over-exploitation of the class.”(3)
We have never heard of “over-exploitation” in the context of humyn
labor before, so defining that term seems important here. The text is
correct to recognize that the crisis of 2008 was mostly pushed off onto
the oppressed countries. The rest is sufficiently vague, while touching
on some common cries of the social fascists. There is no summation
elsewhere in this wordy statement of the class (or nation or gender)
alliances of the populations of the imperialist countries. We are left
with the impression that they are allies, even if they suffer less than
most. To uphold this revisionist class analysis in 2022 is to ignore
some crucial lessons from the experience of the RIM itself.
While upholding the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR),
this statement upholds the very ideas that the GPCR stood to combat –
those of the Theory of the Productive Forces. It is inconsistent to deny
the Theory of the Productive Forces and maintain that people in the top
10% global income bracket are the proletariat. Elsewhere we observe,
“Another lesson that MIM seemed to take from the great reversal in
Peru, was the importance of having a correct global class analysis for
Maoists everywhere. If a revolution based in the non-Spanish speaking
indigenous peoples of the highlands of the Andes mountains and the
Amazon rainforest is infiltrated by agents trained in the United $tates
and divided by a magazine out of London, then we see the real material
impacts of Third World communists seeing the people of the United $tates
and Great Britain as 90% proletarian allies. Not to mention, to not
understand the basic political economy of imperialism today is to lack a
Marxist framework from which to change the world.”(4)
Our disagreement with the formation of an ICL itself is largely
connected to our line on the labor aristocracy. But it also stands as
its own point on strategy in our current conditions.
The RIM criticized Mao for not building a communist international. It
seems the UMIC may agree with this critique based on their actions.
A difference in class/national interests between parties in the UMIC
is one reason we believe it is a faulty strategy. At best, the oppressor
nation parties will slow down the oppressed, at worse they will sabotage
them. Another problem is the mixing of parties engaged in armed struggle
with those that are not. This difference in strategic stage calls for
different approaches based on different interests. Yet the statement
announces that these parties are being held to democratic centralism
with each other through the ICL.
Step Forward on Stalin
One point where we see the UMIC statement disagree with RIM, and in a
good way, is in their assessment of Stalin during World War II and the
overall theory and practice of the united front. Not only does the
statement uphold the line of the Comintern during this period, it puts
the blame squarely on the parties where revisionism took over. This is
better than the RIM line (still upheld by many in the International
Communist Movement (ICM) to this day), which criticizes the Comintern
for rightism in its call for a united front against fascism. But MIM
went even further than the UMIC in disagreeing with this critique of the
Comintern to say that in countries like the United $tates there was no
revolutionary path to take at the time. Even if the CP-U$A had a correct
revolutionary line, there’s nothing they could have done that would have
supported the USSR more than what they did, given their conditions.
Those conditions being a base in the labor aristocracy.
The proliferation of statements and organizations upholding various
tenants of Maoism offers some signs of Maoism being a living science
that would-be revolutionaries are grappling with. Of course, the
practice of People’s War does this a million times more.
Of all the controversies that have been taken up in the ICM in recent
years, we have seen no public debate over the global class analysis. If
you are operating in a Third World country and isolating yourself from
the oppressor nations, then you could get very far without saying much
on the topic of the labor aristocracy in the imperialist countries. But
if you wish to engage in international conferences and you fail to
recognize the class reality on the ground, you mislead and endanger the
revolutionary movement.
A Note on Struggle Sessions
In our previous essay on this topic we
criticized author Joshua Moufawad-Paul and the blog Struggle Sessions
for advocating for a new International. On 2 January 2023, Struggle
Sessions editor deleted all their articles and posted a declaration of
the death of the project. This comes after a series of announcements and
critiques coming from the former Committee for the Reconstitution of the
Communist Party U$A (CRCPUSA), of which Struggle Sessions was
an unofficial theoretical mouthpiece. We hope to further investigate
lessons from the collapse of the CRCPUSA.
It is worth noting to our readers that the outlet publishing the
statement of the UCIM discussed here is a political ally of the CRCPUSA
and continues to support it as a project. They call themselves
Communist International: Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Online
Newspaper and are found at ci-ic.org.
A core aspect of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism is the bond between theory
and practice. For instance, there is a theoretical analysis of the labor
aristocracy in the imperialist countries and the practical application
of that theory is not organizing around labor aristocrat interests.
There is a theoretical analysis of building independent institutions
among the masses; and the practical application of that theory is
building United Struggle Within grievance campaigns, building Maoist
prison study groups, building peace between lumpen organizations through
the United Front for Peace in Prisons, etc. There is a theoretical
analysis of revolution; and the practical application of that theory is
boycotting elections, refusing to use armed struggle as a bargain chip
and instead see it as a necessity, etc. These are just some broad and
simplified examples of the relationship between theory and practice to
paint the picture. Incorrect practice and incorrect theories go hand in
hand: one strengthens the existence of another.
The main purpose of this article is to start a series of articles
akin to the “Ongoing
Discussion on Organizing Strategy” series which started among USW
comrades.(1) The series has been productive on maintaining a two-line
struggle within the USW and the overall prison movement, and delves deep
into the many questions raised in organizing behind bars. We hope to
bring that energy of discussing strategy and tactics of Maoist
organizing behind bars to that of political line both inside and outside
U.$. prisons. These bad ideas aren’t dividing line questions (such as
the labor aristocracy question or the class nature of the Chinese
Communist Party in 2022) that MIM(Prisons) struggle with other communist
organizations through polemics. Rather, these are day-to-day bad ideas
and attitudes that many people take up within the communist movement
(even good comrades). They enforce liberalism during line struggle, and
stunt scientific thinking. Let’s begin.
1.
Defending Revisionism Through One’s Laurels and Clout
One example of this was when Joma
Sison repeatedly refused to acknowledge the national contradiction as
principal in the United $tates, and communists refused and still
refuse to criticize due to his historically integral role in the
People’s War in the Philippines.(2) Communists don’t look at persynal
laurels or prestige when it comes to criticism; everything and everyone
that partakes in bad practice and bad beliefs is targetable for
criticism. If the Sison defenders said “historically and currently, the
United $tates’ principal contradiction has always been class and is
currently class” then perhaps there will be more legitimacy for line
struggle and discussion albeit it still being a chauvinist and
revisionist take. However, what does Joma Sison being a historically
great revolutionary leader that rectified the errors of the Communist
Party of Philippines in the 60s-70s have to do with the fact that the
current United $tates’ society has developed around the oppressed
nations in a historical materialist manner?
Now if a former neo-nazi prisoner who joined the United Struggle
Within brings up how the white workers are the masses, then bringing up
his past identity as a neo-nazi would be more relevant in criticizing
this individual comrade to the correct line from an incorrect one since
his past practice as an Amerikan First World lumpen could influence his
current politcs. Ultimately, bringing up his past errors (or victories
even) is only a small part of criticizing the comrade, and ultimately
it’s the combating of that idea and political practice that will be the
final nail in the coffin of getting rid of that bad line from that
comrade’s thinking and most importantly the overall movement. A part of
this problem contains in identity politics, which leads to the next
point.
2. Incorrect Handling
of Identity Politics
Identity politics has been a hot topic among communists with some
seeing it as non-antagonistic with Marxism and with many joining the
conservative reactionary bandwagon of fascists ranting about “woke”
culture and post-modernism. The classic Amerikan value of pragmatist
empiricism (the idea of the only way to truly know anything is through
directly experiencing it) is antithetical to Maoism, and it is our
stance that post-modernism and identity politics can be looked at it the
same or adjacent manner in terms of philosophy. The Maoist doctrine of
cadres learning from practice and the masses learning revolution through
waging revolution can become Amerikan pragmatism if we aren’t
careful.
Today in 2022, this pragmatist empiricist idea is popular among the
oppressed nations represented in popular day-to-day slogans such as
“don’t speak over (insert a particular oppressed group)” and “stay in
your lane” when a person not belonging to a certain social group
(gender, religion, sexuality, nation, etc.) is talking about issues
pertaining to said certain group since they don’t directly experience
that group’s existence. Some revisionists see no problem with identity
politics and post-modernism, and think that identity politics and
post-modernism must be a good thing because the fascists are complaining
about it and complaining about it must mean one is a fascist. Other
revisionists have straight up adopted national chauvinism. When the
masses criticize the communists with “a lot of communists are racist and
don’t really care about black/brown/indigenous people” these chauvinists
resort to taking up fascist talking points and attitudes against
identity politics and post-modernism.
It is an important Maoist doctrine that post-modernism and
pragmatist-empiricism are both unscientific capitalist garbage that
poisons the masses. It is another Maoist doctrine that the masses under
oppression will go to the current superstructure of the enemy
(capitalist philosophies, capitalist institutions, the capitalist state,
etc.) during times of oppression. When communists have failed the masses
of the United $tates for 400 years by supporting the white workers and
putting the national contradiction beneath white worker interests at
best and attacking oppressed nation masses alongside the white workers
at worst, then perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised when the oppressed
nations go to classical Amerikan pragmatism and post-modernism of
relying on lived experiences and changing discourse instead of
dialectical materialist thinking and revolution. This is especially true
for the case where the oppressed nations are majority labor aristocrat
as well – the class where this ideology grows the most ferociously
amongst.
The communists have failed in Afghanistan with Soviet revisionism, so
the Afghan masses went to the existing superstructures within the
semi-colonial, semi-feudal nation such as Jihad instead of people’s war.
Instead of lambasting the Afghan (or in this case the Chicano, First
Nations, and New Afrikan) masses, perhaps communists should get their
heads out of their asses, and try to appreciate
why Jihad/pragmatist-empiricism as an idea (despite its reactionary
content) is so popular among the masses in the first place.(3)
One interesting thing we see as a Maoist prison cell is that identity
politics tend to be less popular among prisoners which perhaps shows
that the oppressed nation labor aristocracy might go for identity
politics for its liberation far more than the oppressed nation lumpen
who might go for conspiracy theories or capitalist boot-strap mentality
which we see more popular among prisoners and less with the student
activist types that concern themselves more with identity politics. This
leads to the third point.
3.
Hating the Masses for their Reactionary Ideas under Oppression
Identity politics isn’t the only bourgeois idea that the masses hold
from the current capitalist superstructure. There are other ideas such
as patriarchy, homophobia, pulling one-self up by the bootstraps, voting
for the lesser evil, superstition, conspiracy theories, and religion
just for starters. When the masses show these tendencies, many
communists throw them into the enemy camp and treat them as if they were
enemies. For example, a communist student activist type might walk up to
a Black Hebrew Israelite and the topic of anti-semitism could pop up.
The communist university student will call the Black Israelite a fascist
for his views and say the Black Israelite should stay in his lane about
Jewish issues. When Mao said that we want politics in command and
political line is principal, he didn’t mean that our friends and enemies
are determined by their personal beliefs (whether that be politics,
religion, moral principles, cultural traditions, etc.). Mao didn’t say
“any Chinese peasant who participates in foot binding should be
ostracized from the movement.” And we can argue that foot binding is
much more backwards and patriarchal than the common
patriarchal/reactionary cultural values held by oppressed nations masses
in 2022. In fact, Mao’s method of finding out who our friends and
enemies were in China was by looking at a group of people’s relation to
the means of production, relation to consumption, and relations to other
classes; and through this method he concluded that the Chinese peasantry
were friends not enemies despite binding women’s feet so they don’t run
away from their husbands being a popular cultural trend among said
class.
Let’s look at the New Afrikan labor aristocracy as an example. We can
see that the class basically has access to the means of production
through its citizen status much like the Amerikan workers in 2022 (dead
labor of third world proletarians; higher wages gained through
super-exploitation of Africa, Asia, and Latin America; ability to buy
and invest in stocks; etc.) We can also look at how it consumes far more
than the international proletariat of Africa, Asia, and Latin America;
but consistently consume less than its Amerikan counterparts such as how
New Afrikan labor aristocrats are disproportionately more likely to live
under the country’s poverty line compared to Amerikan labor aristocrats.
We can also find out how its relations to the Amerikan labor aristocrat
are far more hostile than friendly as the poorer an Amerikan is the more
likely they are to hold extreme chauvinsit views (i.e. rednecks).
However, as embourgeoisfication of the New Afrikan workers solidified
during the later half of the 20th century, their relation to the migrant
proletarians (and migrants in general) of the Third World became more
hostile as well: previous contradictions which were relatively
non-antagonistic such as that in relation to the
Mexican/Nigerian/Caribbean migrants are more antagonistic in our current
day. So with these factors in mind, we can argue that this class of
people (yes that includes the Black Hebrew Israelite with anti-Semitic
tendencies) have interests for revolution against Amerika but might be
more reserved when it comes to internationalism and involving the class
in it self with other nations’ liberations. This is compared to the
Hindi proletariat who will be far less wishy washy as a class in
involving themselves with the struggle of the Dravidian proletariat when
reaching class consciousness. So in conclusion, with proper political
organizing the New Afrikan labor aristocracy would be a friend of the
revolution.
Instead of this method of finding out who our friends and enemies
are, most communists consider friends as people who have the correct
takes on an xyz issue most people don’t even care about and enemies as
people who hold reactionary views. One source of this ideology is how
Amerikan culture promotes individual thinking and behavior as the mover
of history rather than class struggle. With this mindset, racism is a
problem started by individual Amerikans thinking and behaving racist and
will end when individual Amerikans cease thinking and behaving racist.
The Maoist method on the other hand sees that racism is a problem that
was brought to inception by remnants of feudal European aristocrats (a
class of people) stealing this land at gunpoint and trickery from what
would become the modern First Nations, and enslaving what would become
modern New Afrikans and militaristically invading the Mexican nation’s
land, solidifying what would become modern Chicanos all for the various
Amerikan classes’ interests (whether that be the big capitalist class,
the small business owning capitalist class, or even the common Amerikan
worker).
The Maoist solution is for these national contradictions to be
resolved through the oppressed nations overthrowing Amerika through
revolution. These historical events of Amerikan land conquest, slavery,
and genocide were also crucial in acting as primitive accumulation for
global capitalism-imperialism in general not only for Amerika. There is
no modern day $outh Korea, Japan, Au$trailia, I$rael, $audi Arabia,
Kanada, and so on without Amerikan slavery, Amerikan land conquest, and
Amerikan genocide. Therefore proletarian dictatorship must be
established to resolve this contradiction as well as overthrow of
Amerika. But because of individualist Amerikan culture, national
chauvinism is something treated with tone and etiquette led by student
youth tired of their parents’ old backwards ways. This leads to the
fourth problem.
4. The Sub-Culture Problem
Many newer generation communists have begun their politics through
the internet. The original MIM was one of the first communist parties to
have a website and put credence in the importance of the internet. It
certainly is a politically important tool if it’s a major way youth are
becoming interested in Lenin, and how all the imperialist governments
partake in it in different ways from the FBI surveilling political
internet forums to the Chinese Communist Party banning entire social
media outlets. However, what the old MIM didn’t predict is that
communist groups on social media aren’t the ones that primarily
influence kids to read Mao Zedong and study the Black Panthers.
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.
In day-to-day real life, communism might be becoming less and less
pariah’d in the eyes of the average Amerikan; but communism itself is
becoming more and more revisionist, more and more toothless, more and
more a pop culture joke, and more and more a harmless icon of a once
revolutionary movement that became hijacked by the bourgeoisie after its
death, as Lenin spoke of. We took 20 steps forward and a million steps
back when it comes to fighting against anti-communist culture leftover
from the red scare era. Turns out Amerikan individualism was far more of
an obstacle in making Maoism popular than the legacy of McCarthyism.
We shouldn’t throw away the internet with the bathwater as it indeed
took a certain part in making the oppressor nation Amerikan youth become
interested in revolutionary politics, but we should also be acutely
aware of the sub-culture problem. A single New Afrikan, Chican@, or
Indigenous member of the masses understanding the Maoist concept of
reform and revolution and practicing to boycott the elections while not
calling themselves communist nor wearing red armbands is 100 times more
valuable to us in spreading popular support against imperialism than 300
college students with a Stalin portrait in their dorm rooms who thinks
the white worker is a friend.
Conclusion
Many of these problems can only really be solved through the
development of our movement as a whole. Even writing and publishing this
article in Under Lock & Key can only do so much. Our
dedicated prisoner comrades who read this will certainly be influenced,
and perhaps they will get more insight as to the problems of the
“activist” scene that they will be adjacent with once they get out; but
when it comes to student youth abandoning Liberalism or the masses on
the street taking up scientific thinking, it is up for the MIM (and not
just the prison ministry) to develop and go to the masses as Mao said.
For our readers and supporters outside, we challenge them to set up
geographical MIM cells or work with MIM(Prisons) to develop the modern
MIM. For our readers and supporters inside, we list these problems of
the movement to stay sharp and aware once they get released.
Notes: 1. starting in ULK 73, prisoners write in for a
copy of the full series 2. MIM, Applied internationalism: The
difference between Mao Zedong and Joma Sison. 3. Wiawimawo, January
2016, Islam a Liberation Theology, Under Lock & Key
No. 48.
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.
Recently reformists have been hard at work to once more derail our
movimiento and undermine the efforts of those striving for socialist
revolution for Aztlán. This further highlights the slogan of the
Republic of Aztlán(ROA), which is: “Ideology is key for Aztlán to be
free.”
The last 5 years have witnessed Aztlán develop politically in many
ways. We’ve seen the formulation and participation in political study
groups by not just Chican@ political groups and orgs but by everyday
raza with no political ties or limited consciousness. The now revived
identification of REVOLUTIONARY NATIONALISM which so many have come to
see as the most correct path to liberation for Aztlán. Revolutionary
books and Chican@ revolutionary independent media have added to the
momentum and organizations declaring their efforts to free Aztlán from
the white settler colonial nation’s clutches. This of course is great
and those who are politicized should nurture this in ways that they can
to push the nation forward. Mao foresaw a new bourgeoisie developing
even within the communist party based on observations of the Soviet
Union. Mao recognized this force will work hard to take the people back
down the capitalist road, as happened to Revolutionary Russia and Mao’s
China. Similarly, we must recognize and weed out the bourgeoisie within
our national liberation movement so it doesn’t stop us before we even
get started.
Some have foreseen that within a matter of years Chican@s will be the
majority of the U.$. population. This is not automatically a good thing.
If capitalism wins the battle of ideas, Chican@s would simply be the
majority reactionary force within the United Snakes, a bunch of brown
capitalists. It becomes a great thing when we raise consciousness and
have the largest politicized forces within the empire that can then
affect revolution. Even within the movement itself it’s not a good thing
if the movement produces a million brown Trots or liberal reformists,
because these dead end politics would never acquire a socialist
revolution which frees Aztlán.
This conversation is hard to grasp for those just entering the
movement. To so many raza who have grown up under the white oppressor
nation’s occupation, just hearing a group shout “Viva Aztlán!” is enough
solace to the oppressed to seek out for hope. And as warming as words
are from some of these liberals in revolutionary clothing the need for a
correct political line is essential if we are to leave a lasting effect
on today’s Chican@ Movement for the next generation.
When an organization talks about national liberation but openly
promotes the idea of participating in bourgeois politics, affecting
change via Amerikkka’s ballot box or even holding signs promoting
Amerikkkan Presidential candidates, we should see that there’s nothing
revolutionary about these particular groups. They are simply reformist
at their core.
Those with revolution in their corazón can be easily duped into
spending a life they believe is for La Causa only to be upholding the
occupation and strengthening U.$. Imperialism.
An organization truly serving the raza would work hard at getting you
to understand the illegality of the U.$. bourgeois political system not
luring you deeper into it with dismissive arguments of “let’s be
realistic on how we can affect change today”. Legitimizing the
occupation by participating in it will not resolve the contradictions we
face, rather it will only solidify our oppression.
Understanding ideology allows us to see that only those orgs that not
just dismiss the colonial system but organizes outside of its influence
are truly fighting for our liberation. Numbers do not equate correctness
but political line does. Reformism wants to work within the colonial
system and not overturn it, no matter how many times they shout “Viva La
Raza”. And reformists at the end of the day are enemies of the people
because they practice enemy politics.
This is in reply to the article “An
Ongoing Discussion on Organizing Strategy”, which appeared in
ULK 73. In it, the author labels the following statement as
incorrect and unscientific:
“From an organizers perspective, [struggling for quality-of-life
reforms such as increased phone access] are not battles which we can
effectively push anti-imperialism forward, much less MLM…”
The author cites a failure to apply the materialist dialectic, or the
‘science’ behind scientific socialism, to the situation at hand. When
viewed in isolation and out of its proper context, the conclusion that
they have reached would certainly be a commonsense position to take. And
as they write a little further on:
“How can we then deem that prison struggles aren’t aligned with
anti-imperialism?”
Yet if the quote being critiqued were analyzed in its totality, we
can begin to see more nuance and why such a statement was made in the
first place. So to continue where the partial quote left off:
“…without veering into reformist practices of little tactical or
strategic value. I am aware that arguments of principle can be
mounted to the contrary, but absent a practicable, totalizing
strategy for revolution domestically being put forward by an MLM
organization that is actionable in the here-and-now, we cannot
effectively utilize many of these prison struggles as a proper
springboard to corresponding actions in other areas, actions which do
not translate into long-term pacification which benefits their prison
administration in an objective, cost-to-us, benefit-to-them analysis. If
we cannot muster the resources and external manpower to mount a facility
or state-specific campaign for a tactical reform to push our agenda and
continually imprint firmly in the minds of all incarcerated that we have
their best interests in mind, it may be advisable to abstain from
participation lest credit for the reforms go elsewhere and become
politically-neutered, or, worse yet, the system co-opts the struggle as
its own and touts its successes (ie. The First-Step Act). Otherwise, we
are gaining no more than sporadic traction amongst those we are
attempting to revolutionize, and then only of a transient nature.”
(emphasis added)
As mentioned earlier, there is a nuance to the position I have taken
that is obscured in comrade Triumphant’s approach to mounting an
argument on principle, and that in itself constitutes an incorrect and
unscientific approach to proper discourse. Quoting someone out of
context may buttress a particular argument or agenda, however arguments
begin to lose their strength when quotations are re-situated in their
proper place. You ask, ‘how can we then deem that prison struggles
aren’t aligned with anti-imperialism?’, but who has or where has such a
view been advocated in the first place for this allegation to be made?
As you can see, the position put forth in the original commentary
advocated not an abandonment of revolutionary struggle within prisons
but rather its placement within a more explicitly revolutionary
framework. Refining our approach does not imply an abandonment of all
struggle just to focus on study.
It is agreed that the materialist dialectic can be applied in all
manner of social phenomena, and the Amerikan injustice system and the
struggle between prison staff and the captive population are no
exception. But the real question is, should it be applied in
this particular instance in the manner which the Team One Formation,
K.A.G.E. Universal and others have done thus far – that is, pushing for
minor reforms largely divorced from a wider revolutionary
anti-imperialist agenda resulting in pacification once concessions are
made? I would argue that advocating for these various minor reforms to
address the prison masses immediate needs can be classified as
(presupposing these formations desire revolution or claim communism as
their goal) right opportunist deviations.
Right opportunism is an error in practice that occurs when an
organization attempts to embed itself in the masses and in doing so
gives up a clear revolutionary program in the interest of fighting for
immediate demands. This leads to economism/workerism (or in this case
‘prisonerism’), which is the purview of reformism: solely focusing on
economic demands (economism), or the demands of prisoners.
You write that “quality-of-life reforms are connected to the strategy
of cadre development.” Now can experience be gained in how to train
cadre and organize people while doing this? Sure, but similar things can
be argued about improving one’s marksmanship and related skills acquired
while employed as a cop too. While a rather extreme analogy, what I am
getting at is that productive skills can technically be derived from
incorrect practice. Yet the question for both scenarios remains the
same: Is there a better methodological approach to training cadre?
It is a laudable desire to want to avoid being all ‘study’ and no
struggle, but if ‘struggle’ leads a group to avoiding, obscuring or
watering down their politics in order to attain their demands, then that
is not getting us any closer to our desired results. As MIM(Prisons)
notes:
“We can also say that only focusing on the reformist campaigns,
without the larger goals, is not going to change anything in regards to
ending oppression and injustice.”
It is encouraging to see that in consequence of previous organizing
experience comrade Triumphant has pledged to focus on “reorganizing of
the TX Team One under a clearer program and a better understanding of
what our strategic and tactical goals are.” This statement also aligns
with what this comrade wrote in the November 2020 USW organizing update
in reference to the reformist practice of the Prisoner Human Rights
Movement (PHRM):
“unless anti-imperialist, revolutionary nationalist and/or communists
take hold of this movement and see it as a tactical operation instead of
a be-all end-all and thereby re-center the movement, it may only further
‘Amerikanize’ the (only) vastly-proletarian revolutionary sector of
society we have (lumpen in prison). That could occur if cats become
pacified with all these tokens and reforms that have been struggled
for.”
But just because we re-center a movement along these lines and dress
future demands to the state in sufficiently ‘revolutionary’ language to
avoid the perception of reformism does not mean that we are actually
avoiding these same pitfalls.
Here I will argue that even with an explicitly revolutionary program
guiding us in the struggle for tactical reforms, we can still be
susceptible to a sort of unwitting crypto-reformism if our struggles are
not chosen very carefully and with the correct tactical,
strategic and narrative approach. In the original commentary I wrote
that
“we should not be trying to ‘improve’ Amerikan prisons, much like we
should not be attempting to cut a bigger portion of imperialist profits
from Third World super-exploitation for the lower class, yet still
relatively privileged, citizens of empire.”
This statement meshes with your desire not to have strictly-reformist
campaigns “further ‘Amerikanize’ the (only) vastly-proletarian
revolutionary sector of society we have.” Of course our current approach
differs strategically from the reformists but, noble intentions aside,
it is still having the same overall effect in practice: we are
inadvertently pacifying individuals, making them complacent sleepwalkers
again. You may probably think: ‘Bullshit. We are teaching the masses
not to fall for any old reform, that these are ’tactical
maneuvers’,etc. And you may very well be able to indoctrinate a core of
cadre to hold strong to a political line which promotes this view.
However, if we view matters through a historical lens, when concessions
from the state were achieved via a revolutionary stage of struggle these
victories largely blunted the sympathetic masses desire to seek further
redress by way of revolutionary means. Whether that be (to cite a
non-Maoist, yet anti-capitalist example) during the peak of IWW
organizing a century ago, the transient successes of the
anti-revisionist New Communist Movement era or our current campaigns to
‘Abolish the SHU’ and ‘Release the Kids in Kages.’ Our ‘successes’ end
up serving as a pressure-release for many and creating a ‘kinder,
gentler machine-gun hand’ for our opponents to use against us, akin to
replacing the arrogance and political incorrectness of Trump for the
soothing reassurances of Biden.
From the commentary of the same USW organizing update from November
2020, you write that
“from an anti-imperialist perspective, the PHRM is only a tactic, a
means to an end. That end being, sharpening the contradiction between
oppressed and oppressor nations, and advancing the oppressed aspect of
that contradiction.”
But how do we really expect to sharpen the contradiction between
oppressed and oppressor nations and advance the oppressed aspect of that
contradiction if we are actively participating in the lowering or
resolution of the contradictions which heightened tensions in the first
place? There is a periodic ebb and flow of the revolutionary tide in
this country; why do we by way of our current tactical, strategic and
narrative approach inadvertently help turn an upswing into a downturn?
Of course the inherent contradiction in (note:their) Amerikan
society will never truly go away absent revolution, but we are in the
meantime attempting to apply balm to their societal problems
and in effect delay its arrival.
Circling back to the arguments put forth in ‘An Ongoing Discussion on
Organizing Strategy’, you bring up a good question when you write
that
“the real crux of the issue, as it pertains to linking a totalizing
revolutionary strategy, lies in practical experience gained by the
masses in asserting their collective power. For, how will we seize state
power if the people lack the strategic confidence to assert their
power?”
As my position does not advocate pushing for more quality-of-life
reforms even if there happens to be some positive by-product in cadre
development, my reply to this question is that we should re-orient our
tactics, strategy and narrative approach to the masses by
over-emphasizing self-reliance and independence-mastery on the
road to communist revolution. Therefore we should largely abstain from
trying to prevent erosions of their bourgeois legal rights such as
affirmative action, LGBTQ rights, abortion access, etc. and, if we are
to engage in any tactical reforms to begin with, instead focus on
opposition to proposals to place limits on magazine capacity, bans on
assault rifles and other perceived or actual threats to their 2nd
Amendment and other measures which will aid in our ability to maneuver
and take them down when the time comes. This of course does not
mean that we don’t support LGBTQ rights or abortion access, but fighting
for their (re:Amerika’s) civil liberties and other bourgeois
rights keeps many, including some well-meaning comrades, from seeing the
bigger picture: Let their country go to hell. The Amerikan
government will not become any less imperialist by advocating for more
rights for more people within U.S. borders and it is debatable that we
are contributing to anything more than a temporary weakening of
imperialism domestically. If anything we are contributing to its further
consolidation under the guise of new exploiters with more varied
genders, orientations and skin tones.
Our cadre and the masses will gain practical experience and strategic
confidence in their power by continuing to focus on construction of
independent institutions, not making demands of an illegitimate
government to provide redress. In the prison context, I repeat: “if we
are to engage in any prison organizing, then censorship battles
concerning our political ideology, the UFPP and the Re-Lease on Life
programs should take center stage… As for our comrades who do not have
the luxury of a release date, or have sentences which essentially
translate into the same, their best hope for release lies not in reforms
but with an all-sided MLM revolutionary organization planning their
release through eventual People’s War.”
Bypass the reforms which do not help us either strengthen our
party/cell formations, build independent institutions for the people or
hasten People’s War.
Say ‘NO’ to negotiations; focus on revolutionary-separation and
self-determination.
Wiawimawo of MIM(Prisons) responds: I want to thank
Triumphant and S. Xanastas for their thoughtful articulations on this
topic. And i hope that printing these in ULK are helpful to
others in thinking about how to organize effectively under the United
Struggle from Within banner or on the streets.
In my many years of working on this project i would say this two-line
struggle is really at the heart of what we do. Of course, how we walk
the line between ultra-left and rightism is always at the heart of those
deciding strategy for a communist movement. But these comrades address
this question in our context today in the United $tates and in the
context of organizing the First World lumpen and engaging in
prison-based organizing.
In all contexts, going too far left means isolating ourselves from
the masses and going too far right means tailing the masses and
following them into dead ends. Therefore finding the correct path also
requires determining who are the masses in our conditions. If we did not
agree on who the masses are then we could not have this discussion in a
meaningful way. Since we do agree, this is a two line struggle within
our movement. With that frame I want to quickly address a couple points
brought up here.
First, I think the strength in Triumphant’s argument is not in the
skill-building of the individual cadre leaders as organizers, which
arguably could be found elsewhere, but rather “in practical experience
gained by the masses in asserting their collective power.” Triumphant
also talks about the importance of the tactical battles in “increas[ing]
the collective practical experience of contesting the state as a united
body.”
S. Xanastas’ suggested program echoes closely to what Narobi Äntari’s
calls for comrades to do upon release. And they echo much of
MIM(Prisons) focus, especially in more recent years. Yet, i pose the
question: can building the Re-Lease on Life and University of Maoist
Thought programs mobilize and reach the masses in the same way as the
campaigns making demands from the state?
And one final point, is that MIM always said the principal task was
not just to build independent institutions of the oppressed, but also to
build public opinion against imperialism. Isn’t a campaign exposing the
widespread use of torture in U.$. prisons an undermining of U.$.
imperialism regardless of the maneuvers the various states make to cut
back on or hide their use of long-term isolation? Or should we focus
solely on the Third World neo-colonies and expose U.$. meddling in
Ethiopia, Cuba and Haiti?
