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.
In an article titled “Revolutionary Nationalism and the Afro-American
Student,” published in January 1965, Max Stanford argued that Black
students of the “warbaby” generation embodied several contradictions at
once – contradictions that could lead them to embrace capitalism and
white values, check out altogether, or join the revolutionary movement.
What I like about this idea from Max Stanford is many of us Black
lumpens scream and protest about oppression and unjustice. But as soon
as we’re pacified with promises of more jobs and wage growth we tend to
get amnesia on how capitalism is creating the oppression and injustices.
Sometimes I question organizations that scream that we need to be free
and equal but still want to hold on to petit-bourgeois ideas. I can
agree with Max Stanford about the warbaby generation that wants
oppression to end but will embrace capitalism as if that system will
truly liberate them from oppression. I see this happening today; what we
should be protesting about is bringing in a new economic system which
can give us control of the means of production. Rather than riot and
protest and beg these imperialists for more oppression and injustice in
order to satisfy our material desires.
Another point I want to express is the embracing of white values. When
we hear the term white values what is Max Stanford getting at?
Well he must mean how Blacks will adopt lifestyles and ideology that
most capitalist whites have. Now I assume Max Stanford was envisioning a
future in which New Afrikans would sell out the revolution for material
wealth in supporting a system which creates class divisions in Amerikkka
and abroad. A lot of revolutionaries of the past used self-censorship in
order to support capitalism and gave up on the struggle for the fear of
being isolated targets of the imperialist masters. We have even gone so
far as denying self-determination. So I agree with Max Stanford’s
statement that Black revolutionaries would embrace white values.
MIM(Prisons) responds: This writer raises a very relevant point
about the potential for oppressed nation people to be pacified with
material wealth. We have seen a movement towards integration and buying
off oppressed nations within U.$. borders, as a part of a dual-pronged
strategy from the government since the revolutionary movements of the
60s and 70s: dramatic incarceration rates combined with significant
movement towards integration. We still see sufficient national
oppression that we continue to have distinct nations within U.$.
borders, but as with other nations in the past, Amerika could decide to
fully integrate its oppressed nations to focus its energy on the
exploitation of the Third World. Already superprofits are being shared
with the Chican@ and New Afrikan nations so that even while facing
national oppression they are enjoying an economic benefit from their
Amerikan citizenship. And this promise of material benefit does lead
revolutionaries to give up the struggle, as this author points out.
So we have to ask, what should revolutionaries do with these material
conditions? This issue of ULK is about movement tactics, and it
is an analysis of our conditions that should lead us to determine what
are appropriate tactics and strategy for our organizing work. At this
point in time we still believe that the principal contradiction within
U.$. borders is between the oppressor nation and oppressed nations. It’s
even possible we will see this contradiction heighten as the white
supremacists gain a stronger foothold in open roles in the government.
So for now it is our job to educate and organize the revolutionaries,
with a focus on the oppressed nations. But we are not fighting for the
economic advancement of oppressed nation workers, who are already
benefiting from imperialism. Our message must be clear: we are
internationalists, fighting to end all national oppression, not just
gain a bigger piece of the pie for internal oppressed nations while the
pie is baked with the labor of exploited Third World workers.
Lumpen: The Autobiography of Ed Mead Kersplebedeb,
2015
Available for $20 + shipping/handling from: kersplebedeb
CP 63560, CCCP Van Horne Montreal, Quebec Canada H3W 3H8
As anti-imperialists and prison activists, we can recommend Ed Mead’s
recent autobiography as a useful read. There are a couple
inconsistencies with the form and the line promoted in the book,
however. While Mead critiques anarchism and reformism in the book, at
the end is a list of a number of organizations that struggle for
prisoners’ rights, and they are all reformist/mass organizations with a
couple anarchist groups thrown in. Mead stresses that he does not
believe communists should hide their beliefs. Yet it is odd that he
finds no communist prison support groups to be worthy of mention.
Moreso, it seems that for much of Mead’s life ey couldn’t find a
communist organization to be a part of and support.
We also must question the form of an autobiography. Our culture promotes
the idea of writing one’s own story. While this author has been told to
write an autobiography multiple times, having lived much less of my life
than Ed Mead, i don’t plan to ever do so. I hope that if i do live as
long as Mead i’m too busy fulfilling my tasks in a communist cadre org
(or hopefully state by then) to spend a bunch of time writing about
myself. Certainly there is some value in terms of the building of humyn
knowledge of documenting the conditions of the time and places that Mead
experienced. But it does not seem a high priority for communists. It was
probably for this reason that i found the first chapters of the book
tiring to read. I didn’t really need to know all about Mead’s family
growing up to learn some lessons about how to organize with prisoners
effectively. But perhaps that was my own problem as that was never a
stated purpose of this book.
The foremost stated purpose of the book by Mead is to “extend an
invitation to sections of the lumpenproletariat to join the
international working class.” While not a bad goal, it does hint at
differences we have with Mead and other communists within California
Prison Focus (CPF) regarding whether nation or class is the principal
contradiction. This has led to divisions in our work to shut down
Security Housing Units in California. In the 2000s, MIM was part of the
United
Front to Abolish the SHU, which was dominated by parties and
organizations struggling for national liberation. While CPF was
nominally a member, their difference on this issue led to a lack of
working together. This was despite the fact that the United Front
explicitly allowed for organizational independence in terms of political
line outside of our agreement on shutting down the SHU. In the 2010s,
CPF was part of the leadership that created the Prisoner Hunger Strike
Solidarity coalition. Mead was perhaps the only one who tried to include
MIM(Prisons) in that effort. But the coalition structure forced us to
the outside this time as MIM(Prisons) refused to subsume our politics to
the coalition.
While recognizing whites as obviously having advantages over others,
Mead does believe there is a significant white nation working class in
this country. While citing Mao favorably multiple times, Mead points out
Mao’s failure to put class first as a point of disagreement.(p. 164)
Mead’s line is also reflected in an off-hand comment saying Stalin was
wrong to condemn the German social-democrats as social-fascists. We
think Stalin and the Comintern correctly saw the class nature and
interest of the social democrats as being labor aristocracy and petty
bourgeois, who wavered towards fascism, paving its way to power.(1)
Mead talks about “white skin privilege” and uses it as an agitational
point to push people to join the class war while discussing eir
participation in the militant George Jackson Brigade. Mead admits that
eir decision to use revolutionary violence was a direct result of the
lack of mass support for abused prisoners.(p. 181) At the same time ey
mentions other groups at the time doing similar things and believing
that small bands carrying out armed struggle would spread across the
country. Mead does not conclude anywhere in the book that it was a
mistake to take up this line even though comrades died, while the rest
spent the prime of their lives in prison. As we discussed in a recent
article on the Black
Panthers, it was both common and understandable to conclude that
armed struggle would become a reality in the United $tates at that
time.(2) Yet, not only are conditions less advanced today, history also
proved that armed struggle in the United $tates was premature in the
conditions of 1966-72.
From what we know about Mead in real life and from reading the book, it
is clear that ey was good at and focused on uniting all who could be
united. And while we say it is better for communists to work within
cadre organizations than mass organizations, as Mead did much of eir
life, ey certainly did so in a principled way according to the book. And
most of those principles are ones that we too support.
As mentioned, i came to this book in search of some lessons on
anti-imperialist organizing in prisons. And while some of the stories
are very abbreviated, the book is not short on examples of Mead’s
efforts, pitfalls and successes. Mead talks about the importance of
determining the principal contradiction at each prison ey organized in.
While in most cases ey sait it was related to nation, ey said it was
related to sexism in Walla Walla, which led to the formation of
Men
Against Sexism.(3) Interestingly, Mead takes the position that while
nation is principal inside prisons, it does not make sense to build a
Black-only prison movement (at least on a large scale).(p. 280) We are
sympathetic to this view and spend a lot of time calling for unity
between nationalities in prison, while promoting national liberation as
a strategy for the oppressed nations overall. A couple of good lessons
are well-put in Mead’s own words:
“…if the immediate demands address prisoners’ rights and living
conditions, then the backwards elements will either be won over or
neutralized by the growing consciousness of the rest of the
population.”(p. 305) This was one of the most inspiring parts of Mead’s
story. In a situation where the prison system was dominated by one
lumpen organization (LO) that was guided by self-interest, Mead had the
revolutionary fearlessness to organize those victimized by the LO to
build a mass movement that the whole population came to identify with.
“An organization that depends upon one person for direction is doomed to
fail; each level of cadre should be able to take the place of a fallen
or transferred comrade, even if that person occupies a leadership
position.”(p. 306) Mead learned this from experience, both in situations
where ey was that sole leader and others where ey was surrounded by a
dedicated cadre. Inspiring stories include the first strike ever at
McNeil Island, which had 100% participation.(p. 139) While many of the
challenges of prison organizing are still the same decades later, you’ll
find many other inspiring stories in this book as well. It demonstrates
both the importance of the prison movement as part of the overall
movement for liberation and against imperialism, while showing the
limitations of a prison movement that is not complemented by strong
movements on the outside. As the current struggle focused on police
murders continues to ferment, we work to build a prison movement, and
they will feed each other as we move towards the next revolutionary
period in history.
Book Review: Marxism, Orientalism, Cosmopolitanism Gilbert
Achcar Haymarket Books 2013
In part one of this review i addressed the author’s apparent
disdain
for the anti-imperialist Islamic movement. In this concluding
article i will expose the author’s First World chauvinism as being at
the root of his reactionary perspective by explaining how he uses the
Christian liberation vs. Islamic fundamentalist concept in religion and
politics today from a Marxian perspective, so as to better prepare the
reader for his ideas on “internationalism” and “ultra-nationalism” by
which he really means revolutionary nationalism. As such, it would seem
that the entire premise of this book was not intended as a supplemental
analysis of anti-imperialist politics in the Middle East today, but so
that the author can push his crypto-Trotskyist agenda. Crypto-Trotskyism
is a term used to refer to organizations that exhibit Trotskyist
tendencies, but which don’t admit to being Trotskyist. Most
significantly they suffer from the same great nation chauvinism as the
other Trots: over-emphasizing the role of the oppressor nation working
classes, and under-emphasizing the role of liberation struggles of the
oppressed nations.(1)
The author begins the final essay of this book titled “Marxism and
Cosmopolitanism” by tracing the very hystory of the word
cosmopolitanism. He discusses how it went thru many twists and
turns, from its beginning in ancient Greek civilization thru the Middle
Ages and up until today; at one point progressive, while regressive at
another. Hence, we learn that the terms cosmopolitan and globalization
are connected in this regard. We also learn that Marx and Engels shared
Achcar’s disdain at one point or another for any and all national
movements, in particular for those centered in the capitalist periphery,
preferring, instead to champion the cause of the global proletariat,
which in their lifetimes meant focusing on European workers. As a
result, Marx and Engels contributed to popularizing the concept of
cosmopolitanism as interchangeable with international proletariat, which
to many communists of the time was preferable to mentioning by name the
plight of English or German workers because of the obvious connotations
to nationalism. Such connotations were seen by most as giving legitimacy
to nationalist struggles, which at the time were driven by the national
bourgeoisie.
Within this context nationalism was viewed as backward and reactionary
for the proletariat, as the national bourgeoisie was using this concept
to their advantage by inciting the proletariat to kill and be killed by
workers of other countries, for the bourgeoisie’s goal of world
domination. The communists on the other hand rejected nationalism,
considering themselves staunch internationalists; champions of the world
proletariat, whose hystoric mission it was to usher in the socialist
stage of communist development. This being the accepted theory of the
time, well before Mao posited that in the age of imperialism,
nationalism of the oppressed nations is internationalism.
All this is important to remember when assessing the text as it pertains
to the whole reason why Achcar even wrote this book. More so, it is
important to remember because in the following pages the author uses
much of this information to attack the practice and political line of
Joseph Stalin. And while it is undeniable that Marx and Engels at one
point agreed with many of the ideas that Achcar propagates, it is also
undeniable that as reality progressed, so did Marx and Engels’ thinking,
which is more than we can say for Mr. Achcar. So if we want to learn the
genuine Marxist stance on nations and nationalism then we should not
limit ourselves to what the founders of scientific socialism had to say
on these topics early on in their revolutionary careers. Rather, we
should study and learn what they advocated and stood for later in their
lives once they became full-fledged Marxists. As such, the line that
Achcar is pushing is a disingenuous one in which he proclaims that all
nationalism, just like all variants of revolutionary Islam, are
inherently bad, when in reality it is the nationalism of the oppressor
nations and the Western privilege that comes with it that he upholds. As
such, Gilbert Achcar should just come out and say what he really thinks;
which is that the nationalism of the oppressed is what he believes to be
backward and reactionary, while oppressor nation nationalism is
inherently progressive due to its linkage to Europeans, their culture
and tradition. Thus, just as the author correctly pointed out in
“Religion and Politics today from a Marxian Perspective,” that Islamic
fundamentalism is a concept that can be divided into one that is
collaborationist with Western interests and one that is hostile to
Western interests, so is nationalism a concept that can be divided into
one that is bourgeois and reactionary, and one that is revolutionary and
forward looking.
“Cosmopolitanism” as Anathema: the Stalinist Perversion
Trotskyists of various stripes have always hated on Stalin for a
multiplicity of reasons, primarily however for his theory of socialist
development. As Stalin’s line on socialist development progressed it
eventually came to stand for the national liberation struggles of the
oppressed nations, not only within Europe but outside the continent as
well. He correctly saw the revolutionary character of the
anti-imperialist movement in the colonies as both hostile to Western
interests and potentially pro-Soviet. Trotsky on the other hand had
nothing but contempt for Asians, Africans and Latin@ Americans,
believing them too backward and weak to ever launch successful
liberation struggles and/or engage in socialist construction absent the
immediate help of the European working classes, a theory that was proven
incorrect when an onslaught of colonial countries broke free of the
imperialist framework following the end of World War II. And so it is
within the context of “globalization” and anti-imperialist struggles in
the 21st century that Gilbert Achcar now attempts to rehabilitate
Trotsky’s theory of the world revolution led by the so-called
proletariat of the advanced capitalist countries vis-a-vis the
rehabilitation of cosmopolitanism; vis-a-vis his criticisms of Joseph
Stalin. To accomplish this however, Achcar must go in depth into the
hystory of the Soviet Union, in particular into the propaganda campaigns
against cosmopolitanism which Stalin had initiated at the end of World
War II, as well as to the campaigns in favor of Soviet patriotism which
Stalin also had initiated to prepare the Soviet masses for the Nazi
invasion.
According to Mr. Achcar these campaigns were nothing more than a cover
for Stalin’s anti-Semitism. Yet interestingly enough, in making these
accusations the author inadvertently puts forth a plausible explanation
for the oppression of notable Jews during this period in the Soviet
Union; thereby paving the way for a materialist explanation of these
actions and the clearing of Stalin’s name as far as anti-Semitism goes.
Achcar like so many anti-communists before him cannot contain his
contempt for the progress made under Stalin and so he jumps on the
bourgeois bandwagon of blaming Stalin for the so-called Jewish pogroms
that were said to have taken place beginning in 1949 alongside the
further elaboration and popularization of Soviet patriotism as a concept
over that of cosmopolitanism. In addition, the author also contends that
these campaigns were one and the same as the so-called anti-Marxist
movement which supposedly took place during this period. What these
campaigns actually represented however were struggles in the realm of
ideas between revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries battling for
the “hearts and minds” of the Soviet masses, and indeed the future of
the revolution.
According to Achcar, the cosmopolitans appear to have been something
like a Trotskyist sect operating inside the USSR, who were agitating
around the need for openness with the West and glorifying the West. Now
remember, this is 1949 and the Cold War is cracking, all of the Soviet
Union’s wartime imperialist allies have retrained their guns on the
communists. And although the author certainly doesn’t say it, the
Communist Party under Stalin certainly believed that these
“cosmopolitans” were in the service of Amerikan imperialism carrying out
intelligence gathering activities and engaging in building public
opinion for counter-revolution and coup d’etat, just like the types of
activities that CIA sponsored groups carry out in Third World countries
with anti-western governments. It would seem then these cosmopolitans
and other so-called “Marxists” were actually involved in sabotaging
socialism from within with actions which thoroughly alarmed the Soviet
government. But according to Achcar these were the real “Marxists,” the
real “internationalists” because they followed the teachings of the
young Marx; but when did Marx ever speak of colluding against a
socialist state?
Furthermore, the author states that in analyzing Stalin’s anti-Semitism
we cannot afford to begin in the post-war period, but must start with
the publication of Marxism and the National Question, which
Achcar describes as “a superficial and dogmatic essay on this most
complex of questions.”(2) Stalin denies the existence of a Jewish nation
within Europe’s borders, based on the Jewish people’s lack of a common
territory. Apparently Gilbert Achcar disagrees with the Marxist
definition of nations preferring instead Otto Bauer’s The Question
of Nationalities and Social Democracy, which clearly defines Jews
as a nation based solely on their “common cultures” by which they should
really just say religion. The author further claims that it is in this
hystorical period that Stalin began his first anti-Marxist campaigns in
which he sought to squelch all opposition and secure his position of
power. Achcar goes on to argue that Stalin’s ideas on internationalism
reflected only a narrow and selfish outlook which took into account only
the internationalism of the “pan-Tsarist” Russia organization of the
Russian Social Democratic Labour Party when, in Marxism and the
National Question, he mentioned the principle that the party strove
to “unite locally the workers of all nationalities of Russia into
single, integral collective bodies, to unite their collective bodies
into a single party.”(3) In defending this principle Achcar states,
“Stalin launched a fierce attack on nationalism, putting Great Russian
chauvinism on equal footing with the nationalism that was expanding
among oppressed nationalities in the USSR - in a definitely non-Leninist
fashion.”(2) However, this is an extreme misrepresentation of Stalin’s
line on Achcar’s part. Stalin criticized the national chauvinism that
was beginning to develop among some of the more reactionary sectors of
the oppressed nations in the Tsarist empire and certainly not the
nationalism of the oppressed themselves. Apparently, the author believes
that national chauvinism should only be criticized when it originates
with the oppressors and by people of the offending nation themselves and
not by anyone else. In other words, only Russians can criticize Great
Russian chauvinism and only the oppressed nations can criticize any
chauvinism that originates within their own nations. This is certainly
an ironic point that those who have actually read Marxism and the
National Question will note. But Stalin was right to criticize the
chauvinism of the oppressed nations in the old Russian empire,
especially when that chauvinism has the potential to foment violence
amongst the oppressed. Chauvinism is chauvinism no matter who propagates
it.
Later on Mr. Achcar comes out with an ass-backwards refutation of
Stalin’s theory of socialism in one country first, attempting to tie it
back to Stalin’s “anti-Semitism” (Achcar’s term for his denial of a
Jewish nation) and Soviet patriotism. The line goes as follows:
“Socialism in one country: this theoretical innovation central to
Stalinism actually laid the groundwork for a Soviet patriotism, coupled
with a sui generis internationalism that amounted in fact to the
internationalism of Soviet patriotism. Communist members of ‘bourgeois
nations’ had a duty to identify with the thriving ‘fatherland of
socialism.’ Indeed, their Soviet patriotic duty could very well have
taken as its motto ‘our country, right or wrong!’”(4)
The following paragraphs is where accusations of Jewish repression and
anti-Marxism by Stalin really gets interesting.
To give some real context to these accusations, which Achcar himself
provides, I will say that prior to the beginning of the Second World War
an expansive campaign was begun in the Soviet Union to create and
solidify a hegemonic Soviet patriotism for the explicit purpose of
strengthening the bonds and common interests of the Soviet Republics
against the impending threat of fascism. Stalin was well aware that not
only the German fascists, but the soon to be imperialist allies were all
working hard to divide the Soviet people from within on the basis of old
national grievances which were common under the Tsar. And, as stated
earlier, there were counter-revolutionaries inside the USSR consciously
working against the Soviet masses. These were the cosmopolitans who by
and large were composed of “real Marxists.” The struggle between the two
opposing forces is recounted and explained by Achcar:
“The patriotic mutation was brought to completion after the Soviet Union
entered the Second World War, engaging in what the Stalinist regime
called the ‘Great Patriotic War.’ This went along with the
rehabilitation of the Greek Orthodox Church and the resurrection of
Slavophilism.”Soviet Patriotism” became a highly praised virtue in the
Soviet Union and in the world communist movement while Stalin’s brand of
‘internationalism’ reached its logical conclusion in the 1943
dissolution of the Comintern.
“Soviet patriotism mutated into full-fledged chauvinism after Moscow
emerged victorious from the war, especially when the Soviet Union faced
renewed ostracism with the start of the Cold War. It is against this
historical background that the campaign against ‘cosmopolitanism’
unfolded.”(5)
We agree with the decision to disband the Comintern, which was done
because
“it became increasingly clear that, to the extent that the internal as
well as the international situation of individual countries became more
complicated, the solution of the problems of the labor movement of each
individual country through the medium of some international centre would
meet with insuperable obstacles.”(6)
Leszek Kolakowski is then cited favorably by Achcar as giving the
Trotskyist perspective of these events:
“In 1949 the Soviet press launched a campaign against ‘cosmopolitanism’,
a vice that was not defined but evidently entailed being anti-patriotic
and glorifying the West. As the campaign developed, it was intimated
more and more clearly that a cosmopolitan was much the same thing as a
Jew. When individuals were pilloried and had previously borne Jewish
sounding names, these were generally mentioned. ‘Soviet patriotism’ was
indistinguishable from Russian chauvinism and became an official mania.
Propaganda declared incessantly that all important technical inventions
and discoveries had been made by Russians, and to mention foreigners in
this context was to be guilty of cosmopolitanism and kowtowing to the
West.”(5)
Achcar then describes how, according to Isaac Deutscher, Stalin ordered
a crackdown on Jews in the Soviet Union following “massive
demonstrations of sympathy by Russian Jews who in 1948-49 greeted Golda
Meir the first ambassador to Moscow of the newborn state of Israel…”(7)
According to Deutscher the crackdown was in response not only to this
unauthorized public display of support by Soviet citizens, but because
Israel “stunned” Stalin by siding with the West in the cold war. Yet the
author would have us believe that “unauthorized public displays of
support” for a foreign head of state invited to Russia by Stalin would
take precedence in this “crackdown” over that of the machinations of
cosmopolitans and their collusion with a tool of Western imperialism, as
is the sub-text that lies hidden beneath these events. Indeed, just a
paragraph down from this Achcar says that Soviet authorities began to
close down Jewish theaters, periodicals and publishing houses while
purging personnel and arresting various Rabbis and other Jewish public
figures soon thereafter. But aren’t these institutions that which have
been traditionally used by the imperialists to agitate for
counter-revolution in anti-imperialist nations? If Jewish pogroms really
took place, then why is it that only certain people and institutions
were being repressed and not Jewish people as a whole? Clearly these
were political moves with a basis in national security that were
happening and not oppression based on nationality (or religious beliefs)
as Achcar would have us believe. As a matter of fact, when we turn the
page of this book we find a much more coherent and realistic assessment
of these campaigns as detailed by F. Chernov in his article: “Bourgeois
Cosmopolitanism and it’s reactionary role” as published and featured in
Bolshevik, the theoretical and political magazine of the central
committee of the All Union Communist Party (Bolshevik). It begins by
reporting that Soviet newspapers
“unmasked an unpatriotic group of theatre critics of rootless
cosmopolitans, who came out against Soviet patriotism, against the great
cultural achievements of the Russian people and other people in our
country.”
Chernov’s article then states:
“Cosmopolitanism is the negation of patriotism, its opposite. It
advocates absolute apathy towards the fate of the Motherland.
Cosmopolitanism denies the existence of any moral or civil obligations
of people to their nation and Motherland…”
“Present day bourgeois cosmopolitanism with its call for the repudiation
of national sovereignty, with its notions of ‘one-world government,’ the
creation of the ‘United States of Europe,’ etc. is an ideological
‘basis’ and ‘consecration’ of the assembling under the aegis of American
imperialism of the union of imperialists in the name of the struggle
against the toiling masses, against the Soviet Union and peoples
democracies, against the irresistible growth over the entire world of
the forces of socialism and democracy.
“The party unmasked the anti-patriotic, bourgeois-cosmopolitan essence
of servility before the capitalist West. It revealed that this cringing
before foreign countries inevitably leads to national treason and
betrayal of the interests of the Soviet people and the socialist
fatherland. The unmasking of unpatriotic groups of bourgeois
cosmopolitans, the struggle against the ideology of bourgeois
cosmopolitanism, is a striking expression of the concern of the
Bolshevik Party about the education of the toiling masses of our country
in the spirit of life-giving, Soviet patriotism.”(8)
This portion of the essay and the book then end with the statements
that: “With the start of ‘de-Stalinization’ in Kruschev’s Soviet Union,
the eyes of many communists were opened; more accurately, their mouths
were opened, as it is difficult to believe that they had not been aware
of the realities they denounced when the green light finally came from
Moscow…”(9)
“With the end of the Stalinist campaign, ‘cosmopolitanism’ faded away as
a major issue in communist circles, as well as in the public debate in
general…”(10)
Of course it did, but only because the cosmopolitans and other
revisionists were now in power and the Soviet Union was starting on the
capitalist road. The final pages of this book then shift back to
Trotskyist political line as Gilbert Achcar outlines how Marx, Engels
and Lenin thought cosmopolitanism, i.e. proletarian internationalism
charts the course towards communism, i.e. “socialist globalization” and
how national liberation struggles in the Third World “can fit perfectly
in the cosmopolitan struggle for global transformation as necessary
moments of this struggle, as components of the global struggle…”(11)
But when the oppressed nations finally rise up in revolt against
imperialism these national liberation struggles won’t just be “necessary
moments” or “mere components” of the global struggle: but instead will
mark the beginning of a long stage of socialist transition and
development in which the people of Africa, Asia and Latin@ America will
band together in a Joint Dictatorship of the Proletariat of the
Oppressed Nations against the former oppressing and exploiting nations.
In summation, the author opens this book with the chauvinist First World
belief that Western domination of the world brought progress to the
hordes of uncivilized savages and barbarians thru the spread of
Christianity. Apparently, revolution, progress and development are
phenomena inherent only to white people and deliverable in the future
only thru a multi-nation working class approach, led of course by the
workers of the core capitalist countries.
This is why he views with such disgust the success that revolutionary
Islam is having in repelling Western forces, because in those movements
he sees the reactionary and backward Islamic fundamentalists doing what
he says they cannot; engage and win against the imperialists. Likewise,
this is why he cannot stand Stalin and must tear him down, because in
his practice and political line he sees the backward national liberation
and self-determination movements of the oppressed nations as they came
to fruition all throughout the 20th century by using revolutionary
nationalism to establish socialism in their countries and then
vigorously defending it. While the only thing that Trotskyists could do
was complain and criticize that the Soviet Union was moving contrary to
what the young Marx and Engels had envisioned in their early years. Such
is the hallmark of Trotskyism which holds that socialism is impossible
in countries of the Third World before the imperialist countries have
had revolutions. Such is the hallmark of Trotskyism which needs but to
depart from the reality of material conditions and enter the jungle of
idealism to carry out the lofty goals of the white worker elite.
Book Review: Marxism, Orientalism, Cosmopolitanism Gilbert
Achcar Haymarket Books 2013
“Thus, as in all idealist interpretations of history, historical
phenomena are fundamentally explained as cultural outcomes, as the
results of the ideology upheld by their actors, in full disregard of the
vast array of social, economic and political circumstances that led to
the emergence and prevalence of this or that version of an ideology
among particular social groups.” (p. 77)
Not too long ago the author of this book appeared on the political news
show Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman. During this appearance
Achcar made the statement that the people who are joining groups like
ISIS and al-Qaeda in 2015 share the same socio-economic background and
social alienation from the prevailing system as the people who joined
the various Marxist-led movements in North Africa and the Middle East
during that region’s de-colonization process. The author went on to
state that it was the oppressed classes’ material existence under
colonialism that pushed them towards the communist movement then, and
that it is this new generation’s similar oppression that has them taking
up arms once again, and not some mistaken sense of cultural-religious
doom at the hands of the Christian West, no matter what some within the
revolutionary Islamist movement might subjectively think.(1) In other
words, what we have been seeing happening today within the majority
Muslim countries is not Muslim resistance to what some have erroneously
labeled a “Holy War” or cultural imperialism as seen thru the rubric of
globalization. Rather, what the author says we are seeing is nothing
more than the continuation of the class struggle in its religious form.
And while at first glance this might seem like a breath of fresh air
within an atmosphere dominated by the imperialist media, upon closer
inspection what the author puts forward in this book is in fact just a
more detailed and eloquent version of Bob Avakian’s proposition of the
“theory of the two outmodeds”(2); a dogmatic and disingenuous, First
Worldist, chauvinist re-phrasing of Engels’ negation of the negation.(3)
This book is a collection of four essays which the author describes as a
comparative Marxist assessment of the role of religion today, as well as
of the continuing development of religious ideology within the class
struggle. The author also attempts to provide the reader with a Marxist
materialist assessment of Christian liberation theology and Islamic
fundamentalism not only in regards to each other but with respect to
bourgeois cosmopolitanism and “revolutionary internationalism.” The
focus of this review however will be on the first and last essays. Where
the former offers an incisive look into the topics discussed above, the
latter is an in depth and baseless attack of Stalin, in need of its own
analysis which I will deal with in part 2 of this review. The following
is part 1.
Religion and Politics Today from a Marxian Perspective
In this first essay Achcar introduces us to the general theme of the
book: The chauvinist First World belief that Western domination of the
world has brought not only progress to the Third World, but created a
better overall society compared to what “Orientalism” had to offer.
Orientalism is just old terminology used to describe everything east of
Europe. It is also used to describe Middle Eastern and Asian societies
prior to the rise of Western European colonialism, and liberation
thereof. Lastly, the term and concept of Orientalism was also used to
describe the re-emergence of Muslim dominance in politics and culture
immediately preceding liberation in what we today call the Middle East.
Definitions aside, this book is very much inconsistent on a Marxian
level as Achcar does a good job of advocating ideas long since refuted
and proven incorrect by Marxist scientists, not only in the realm of
theory, but in the social laboratory as well. Paradoxically however,
this book has a strong dialectical thrust to it as the author uses
dialectical analysis to both inform eir position and present eir thesis;
yet ey fails to balance out this dialectical analysis with Marxist
materialism, thus presenting us with subjective findings. Therefore,
while the author takes a correct dialectical approach to the development
of religion vis-a-vis the class struggle, Achcar simultaneously negates
the reality of world politics in the “Orient” which of course leads em
to the wrong conclusions.
This criticism of Achcar is also applicable to eir failure to locate and
define the principal contradiction in the world once imperialism
developed. Part and parcel to Achcar’s biased position with respect to
the progress of the West is eir comparison of Christian liberation
theology to Islamic fundamentalism as a philosophy of praxis
categorizing both as “combative ideologies arising out of the class
struggle” but thru the dominant humyn ideology (religion). However, the
author incorrectly posits that the former is inherently progressive due
to its origins with the oppressed and poverty stricken followers of
Jesus, while the latter is inherently backward and reactionary because
of its early beginnings with the Arab merchant classes of
proto-feudalism. By comparing these two religions Achcar tries to have
us draw parallels between the “communistic tendencies” of early
Christianity and the propertied character of early Islam, thereby
attempting to produce a divergence in the reader’s mind as to what is
inherently progressive and what is not.
While an argument can be made to support the thesis of revolutionary
Islam as the path forward for those Muslims oppressed by imperialism,
less can be said of the social democratic turn that the proponents of
Christian liberation theology have taken. Achcar attempts to frame the
issue by hypothesizing that the world of today is the inevitable outcome
of Christian liberation struggles in Medieval Europe which served as
early models for bourgeois democracy through the equalization of power
through armed struggle. To prove this the author finds it useful to
point to various revolts and peasant struggles in the Middle Ages in
which the class struggle began to take on religious overtones with the
Protestant Reformation. Prior to this however, Achcar praises liberation
theology as the embodiment of what ey refers to as the “elective
affinity” in Christianity that can lead the world to communism. In other
words, what Achcar is trying to say is that liberation theology is the
positive aspect in Christianity which can also play the principal role
in bridging together religion with the cause of communism. Furthermore,
the author says that this elective affinity draws together the “legacy
of original Christianity – a legacy that faded away, allowing
Christianity to turn into the institutionalized ideology of social
domination – and communistic utopianism.”(p. 17)
When pointing out examples of more contemporary struggles the author
states:
“It is this same elective affinity between original Christianity and
communistic utopianism that explains why the worldwide wave of left-wing
political radicalisation that started in the 1960s (not exactly
religious times) could partly take on a Christian dimension - especially
in Christian majority areas in ‘peripheral’ countries where the bulk of
the people were poor and downtrodden…”(p. 23)
When speaking of Islam’s “inherently” reactionary character today Achcar
attributes it primarily to what ey describes as
“the tenacity of various survivals of pre-capitalist social formations
in large areas of the regions concerned; the fact that Islam was from
its inception very much a political and judicial system; the fact that
Western colonial-capitalist powers did not want to upset the area’s
historical survivals and religious ideology, for they made use of them
and were also keen on avoiding anything that would make it easier to
stir up popular revolts against their domination; the fact that,
nevertheless, the obvious contrast between the religion of the foreign
colonial power and the locally prevailing religion made the latter a
handy instrument for anti-colonial rebellion; the fact that the
nationalist bourgeois and petit bourgeois rebellions against Western
domination (and against the indigenous ruling classes upon which this
domination relied) did not confront the religion of Islam, for the
reason just given as well as out of sheer opportunism…”(p. 24)
The author then goes on to say that Islamic fundamentalism grew on the
decomposing body of Arab nationalism, citing it as “a tremendously
regressive historic turn”(p.25). In reality any ideology that is based
on mysticism and idealism will never be enough to defeat imperialism
once and for all whether that be Christian liberation theology or
Islamic fundamentalism. That said, as materialists we must still make
the assessment of what movement is currently doing the most to challenge
imperialism today. Is it the Islamic fighters who are engaged in a
series of anti-imperialist struggles? I am reminded of something the
Maoist Internationalist Movement once said in an article on pan
ideologies:
“The measure of any ethnic ideology is whether it focuses its fire on
imperialism as the enemy. If the pan serves to fry imperialism then it
is progressive. If the pan fries non-imperialist nations, then it is
reactionary and should be thrown out.”(4)
But things aren’t always so clear cut as we might want them to be, which
is probably why later in that same article MIM said:
“It is only the struggle against imperialism as defined by Lenin that
can really bring global peace. Other wars can bring no net gains to the
international proletariat, just more or less dead exploited people. The
plunder of the imperialists is much greater than that conducted by any
oppressed nation’s neighbors.”(4)
These statements are liberating because they free us from all the
imperialist clap-trap about the evils of Islam. We are hence reminded
that there is no evil above that of imperialism and so long as these
movements keep their sights trained on the imperialists then they will
remain “inherently” progressive.
On that same note, not everything in the book is bad, and we should at
least give Achcar some credit for pointing out that even Islamic
fundamentalism can be divided into separate entities, instead of simply
painting all Islamic fighters with a single brush as most Western
intellectuals tend to do:
“Thus two main brands of Islamic fundamentalism came to co-exist across
the vast geographical spread of Muslim majority countries: one that is
collaborationist with Western interests, and one that is hostile to
Western interests. The stronghold of the former is the Saudi Kingdom,
the most fundamental, obscurantist of all Islamic states. The stronghold
of the anti-Western camp within Shi’ism is the Islamic Republic of Iran,
while its present spearhead among the Sunnis is al-Qa’ida.”(p. 25)
Conclusions
As student-practitioners of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism we would be wise to
keep in mind that Marxist philosophy and methodology is based on the
most radical rejections of philosophical idealism with emphasis on
revolutionary practice. Therefore our criticisms of religion and
religious ideology should remain within the scope of critiquing certain
ideological props as used by the imperialists to justify and support
capitalism-imperialism along with all of its oppressive structures which
made up the world today, for the explicit purposes of changing the world
today and certainly not to critique religious believers or religion per
se. In addition, organizations like those coming out of Islamic
fundamentalism should be viewed by revolutionaries as developing out of
the principal contradiction filling the voids left by the Marxists and
revolutionary nationalists when those movements were either smashed or
capitulated. Rather than denigrating these combative ideologies the way
that Achcar does, bemoaning the day that revolutionary Islam stepped in
to fill Marxism’s shoes, we should instead champion their victories
against imperialism while simultaneously criticizing where they fail to
represent the true interests of the Muslim people.
As Achcar correctly states, the hystory of Islam in combating Western
interference in the Orient is but the natural dialectical progression of
the anti-imperialist struggle absent a strong communist movement.
However, it is Western nihilist politics in command which fails to
appreciate the positive role that Islamic fundamentalism plays in the
anti-imperialist fight. Much in the same way that Christian liberation
theology did in countries like Nicaragua and El Salvador. While the
author raises a lot of good points in this book ey still fails to arrive
at the correct conclusions. Real internationalists will not hesitate to
celebrate every blow struck against the imperialists when it comes from
the oppressed, whereas First World chauvinists hiding under the cloak of
communism will continuously cringe at the barbarity of the oppressed for
fighting back the only way they can. Achcar admittedly criticizes
Islam’s inherently “reactionary” character while simultaneously putting
forth the concept of “cosmopolitanism” under the guise of anti-Stalin
vitriol and so-called “internationalism” reducing revolutionary
nationalism as inherently reactionary much in the same way ey does
Islam. These final topics will be dealt with at length upon the
second
half of this review.
The Syrian civil war, the biggest conflict in the Middle East if not the
world, has many wondering what the outcome will be. The United $tates
has backed a group in the Kurdish area that has called for the expulsion
of Arabs (1) and has armed fundamentalist religious forces that threaten
the Syrian government, headed by Bashar al-Assad. Meanwhile, the
government-controlled capital of Syria, Damascus, has been a place where
Muslims, Christians, and Jews are allowed to co-exist, united by the
same desire to save their nation from the forces that be. The Syrian
Constitution is based in the mission of Pan-Arabism and specifically
prevents the formation of political parties “on the basis of religious,
sectarian, tribal, regional, class-based, professional, or on
discrimination based on gender, origin, race or color.”(2)
The Assad government opposes becoming a puppet to U.$. imperialism and
was never for the creation of I$rael and its occupation of Palestine. As
history has shown, with a policy like that comes economic, if not
military, aggression. The East and the West are in a tug-of-war over
influence in the Middle East and it’s only going to get worse. The
so-called U.$.-type of “democracy” has proven again and again that it
does not work; imperialist pseudo-democracy will not work in Syria just
like it hasn’t worked in Afghanistan or Iraq.
The pro-West bourgeois media claims Assad rules with an iron fist, but
the West has backed the destruction of secularism and political
pluralism in the region. Syria is more democratic than Saudi Arabia, a
U.$. ally and the biggest dictatorship in the region. If the United
$tates is really so concerned about iron fists, maybe the capitalists
should look past the petroleum barrels and look at Saudi Arabia, the
anti-democratic Sunni dictatorship that is nominally leading a
repressive war in Yemen and was involved in the brutal repression of
recent revolts in Bahrain.
For centuries Sunni influence has dominated the sectarian Muslim world,
but now the table has turned and the Shia militias have taken up more
territory than they’ve had in centuries, which has the Saudis in an
ideological war with Iran. Assad is blamed for all the casualties in the
war but even the foreign aggressors can’t deny that it’s their coalition
planes dropping the barrel bombs on innocent civilians, threatening the
Syrian government with war if they intervene.
The United $tates has spent $5 million on a Pentagon-sponsored training
program to arm the Syrian opposition forces, but four years later there
is still no success in their campaign. The Pentagon has admitted that
the program was a failure. From the beginning of the war the U.$. State
Department’s policy towards Syria was “Assad must go now.” But since
it’s looking like this is not going to happen any time soon Obama said
Assad doesn’t have to leave right away, there can be a transition of
power. What bureaucratic bullshit.
All this has to do with Russia and Iran’s strong presence in Syria and
their strong stance on supporting Assad. The Iran-backed Shia militias
are doing most of the fighting on Iraq’s border with Syria, and they
have made it clear that as soon as they’ve dealt with the Islamic State
they’re prepared to fight the real enemy: U.$. imperialism. Russia has
recently opened up an airbase in western Syria, the biggest Russian base
ever built outside the old Soviet territory. Just recently they’ve
started conducting their own airstrikes against the Syrian opposition
forces in eastern Syria, far from Islamic State-held territory.(5) Now
the United $tates sees how determined Russia and Iran are in making sure
the Syrian government doesn’t collapse. Both sides are willing to sit
down for talks on how to avoid each other on the battlefield but can’t
decide how the war should end. One thing is for sure: if Assad leaves,
the war still won’t end.
The real victims of this ideological, semi-colonial war are the innocent
people of Syria. Since the beginning of the war, 250,000 people have
died and more than 9 million people have left their homes. According to
the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 3,000
to 6,000 people leave Syria every day. So now because of the war the
biggest refugee crisis since WWII is happening with no end in sight.
Other major casualties are happening among the Kurdish people, who have
been fighting for freedom since before the war and have suffered much
death and destruction because of the war. I’m not talking about the
comprador landlord class that sold out to imperialism. I’m talking about
the exploited who were suffering way before the war, and do not have
interests aligned with imperialism, despite their misleaders.
As anti-imperialists we oppose U.$. aggression in Syria as well as
anywhere in the world. Chairman Mao said “political power comes out of
the barrel of a gun.” So as long as there is exploitation there will
always be war. As materialists we must use scientific theory to educate
one another on the importance of solidarity with the Third World and
opposition to the bourgeois warmongers.
MIM(Prisons) adds: This comrade is correct that our principal
contribution here should be in making it hard for the United $tates to
stay involved in Syria and elsewhere. And while we cannot determine the
forces on the ground elsewhere, we can see who is in the
anti-imperialist united front and who is with the imperialists. In that
light, we have a couple comments related to some popular narratives on
this conflict.
First, there is a myth promoted in the Western media that violence in
the Middle East is due to centuries-old religious conflict. This myth
paints the current war(s) in an ahistorical way; they have always
existed, and may continue to exist unless the imperialists can somehow
tame and modernize these backwards peoples.
The reality is that these are some of the most religiously diverse
countries because they are close to the birthplaces of so many of the
world’s most popular religions. Countries like Iraq and Syria not only
were quite diverse and harmonious, but were relatively well-developed;
not the bombed-out desert caves we see in the media.
The narrative that focuses on religion does so to hide the real politics
and economics behind the conflict. In particular, hiding imperialist
meddling. It also attempts to convince the West, from atheist to
Christian, of the barbarity of these “foreign” cultures. It is important
to remember that the principal contradiction on the international scale
is imperialism vs. the oppressed nations, and not between religions or
genders.
Many have used the role of wimmin in the Islamic State in contrast to
the Kurdish regions to justify support for the Kurds. As Frantz Fanon
noted in his study of the Algerian revolution, the conditions of armed
struggle forced the involvement of wimmin in military operations,
regardless of cultural beliefs to the contrary. In other words, the
national struggle, if genuinely aimed at liberation from imperialism,
will force the gender contradiction forward with it. The converse is not
true, which is how we know which contradiction should be prioritized. It
is true that more wimmin holding guns can be a good sign of the
progressiveness of the organization, but even in the Third World this is
not always the case.
This leads us to another myth that we want to clarify for our readers,
which is that the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) is a Marxist, or even a
Maoist organization. While having Marxist-Leninist roots, the PKK fully
capitulated to the Turkish state after the capture of their leader
Abdullah Ocalan in a joint U.$.-Turkish operation in 1999. He officially
changed the leading ideology of the PKK to a libertarian “Democratic
Confederalism” in 2005. But as early as 1998 Ocalan was denouncing
communism, and promoting the route of U.$. development for the oppressed
nations.(6)
The PKK has its roots in Turkey, which has a long history of Maoist
activity that continues to this day. Yet none of the Kurdish-controlled
areas are currently run by anti-imperialist organizations. The
U.$.-backed Erdogan regime in Turkey does have a complex relationship to
the PKK and other Kurdish forces. While they have provided support to
Kurds fighting the Islamic State, in recent months, they resumed violent
attacks on the PKK within Turkey. For this reason and many others, the
current alliance of Kurdish forces with the U.$. empire is not an
optimistic choice for the Kurdish people.
In recent years we’ve seen the consolidation of the movement to end
long-term isolation in U.$. prisons. This has been an issue the Maoist
Internationalist Movement, and others, have focused on for decades
because they determined that it was an important contradiction between
the oppressors and the oppressed in the United $tates. It’s taken some
time, but that analysis seems to be proving true as the movement is
gaining traction.
Another issue that we have reported on over the years has been that of
police brutality, and in particular police killings. In recent years,
this too has emerged as a flashpoint issue. After many incidents that
provoked local and ongoing responses, Ferguson took it to another level,
and now Baltimore has further pushed the issue and begun to draw lines
in the sand.
Just as the state attacked the anti-SHU movement for being a bunch of
gangbangers just looking out for themselves, the question of oppressed
nation unity across lumpen organizations has come to the forefront in
Ferguson and Baltimore. In Baltimore, the Nation of Islam held a press
conference with members of Blood and Crip organizations that led to a
lot of press coverage. During the uprising, those organizations were on
the streets protecting New Afrikan-owned businesses and community
members. As they attempted to show their ability to do for their
community what the police claimed but failed to do, the state tried to
paint them as a bunch of cop killers in the media.
A controversial hypothesis that we have put forth is that we should look
to the oppressed nation lumpen and lumpen organizations to find a mass
base for revolutionary organizing in the United $tates. We see the
social forces involved in the struggles against long-term isolation and
police killing as providing evidence in support of this hypothesis. We
have looked at this question in depth and think there is enough evidence
to support this as a valid scientific theory. One source of confirmation
we get from this is the support we get from the oppressed nation lumpen.
One comrade from Baltimore wrote to us further illuminating the
connection between our prison work and the anti-police movement today:
“I am a former eminent member of the 5-Deuce Hoover Crips in the
Northeast region of Baltimore city. Currently, I am serving out a long
prison sentence in Maryland. I am writing to you in regards to the riots
and the looting and the unorganized protest that took place 27 April
2015. I can’t say that I’m surprised, nor can I say I seen it coming;
but you must know that if the melee on April 27 didn’t happen when it
did, it still would have taken place somewhere further down the line. Do
I condone the actions of misled, poorly-educated youth and mindless
adults during the date of Freddie Gray’s burial? No, I do not!
“I knew Freddie personally so know his death is agonizing and he’ll be
missed. It is such a crying shame it took the misplaced anger and rage
of Baltimore’s youth to get the governor, mayor, city’s councilpeople,
etc. off their hindparts to ‘work actively’ with the protestors and
conduct an investigation of Freddie Gray’s death. Every big shot wants
to say how good of a city Baltimore is, yet the justice system is
corrupt, and our ‘city leaders’ are corrupt…
“There is good in Balti but those ghettos around the realm of the city
are truculent. Not because there’s direct destruction, but because right
now it is the blind leading the blind. Those same misled youth who
rioted April 27 will soon grow to be adults who will be misleading the
next generation. Baltimore city needs help, in its ghettos and its
prisons. In short, legislation has to make some changes with its
shielding of police who break the law and violate the rights of the
civilians.”
Certainly there is much to be done in all areas where there is mass
opposition to police brutality. And we do not see any possible solution
from a state whose interests the police are serving. The struggle to
transform spontaneous uprisings into long-term organizing is one that
the movement has faced for decades. The increase in frequency and size
of such uprisings is the quantitative change in this contradiction
between the oppressed nations and the imperialist state. The
transformation from spontaneous to organized, concerted movements is the
qualitative change that must happen to keep the struggle advancing. And
the lumpen organizations themselves must transform in order to play an
effective leadership role in that process.
Some in the oppressed nations are frustrated with the slow pace of
change. No doubt there have been a lot of peace treaties and calls from
lumpen organizations to be forces for the community that have not always
panned out to be all that we had hoped for. But just as there were
countless uprisings to overthrow slavery before enough quantitative
change had occurred in society to be successful, we are now in a stage
where we see many efforts to form national unity in New Afrika and to
politicize lumpen organizations. These efforts are part of the
quantitative change that has not yet made a qualitative leap to a new
stage of struggle. This is a process that faces setbacks from state
interference, but also responds to state interference with further
radicalization and mobilization.
Another sign that the movement is advancing is that lines are being
drawn between enemies and friends. It is becoming clear that many who
claim to oppose racism and police brutality actually care more about
private property and business as usual. So the progressive facade of
these forces is being torn off as they come face-to-face with the
unrefined reality of mass uprisings. But just as those false friends
become alienated from the struggle against police killings, the masses
who have a real interest in change will become energized by a movement
as it becomes more real and relatable.
Becoming more real requires having an analysis of the situation that is
based in materialism; that is real. The more our analysis reflects
reality and is able to harness the forces of change that are present,
the more support we will gain from those forces of change. Many people
are still stuck in metaphysical ways of thinking. They think this is
just the way things are and they will never change. Such people conclude
that the best thing to do is to try to avoid conflict with the
oppressor, keep your head down and just try to get by.
The dominant Amerikan analysis is also metaphysical and misleads the
masses who might otherwise be supportive of dialectical materialist
analysis. Racism is a metaphysical view of sociology. Using an
individualist approach to sociological questions, or replacing
psychology for sociology, is also metaphysical. Sociology studies groups
of humyns and can be used to predict how they will behave; psychology
studies individual humyns and attempts to predict how they will behave.
The metaphysical line goes that there are bad cops and there are bad
people who go to the protests. These bad people must be rooted out and
punished. As sociologists, we disagree, as this does not address the
source of the conflict.
The racist version is that these looters are thugs who have nothing to
do with Gray. If we look at history, these types of occurrences in
similar communities in the United $tates are almost always in the
response to the killing of New Afrikans by the U.$. state. This would
lead the scientific mind to develop a hypothesis that there is some
connection between the two. To test this hypothesis we could search
history for incidents when large groups of people loot stores when there
wasn’t a New Afrikan killed. If we find few-to-no examples of this, and
find many examples of the first situation, we might raise our hypothesis
to a theory, that can be used as a predictive tool.
In contrast, Amerikans say the people in Baltimore who looted stores are
opportunists, using the protests as an excuse to act out their real
goals. Like getting some free Doritos is a higher priority for them than
getting justice for the countless New Afrikans who have faced abuse and
murder under Amerikan occupation. Such a nihilistic view is almost
laughable. But let’s entertain it a little further. If we are to oppose
this position, we should propose a better explanation for the behavior
of many of the youth in Baltimore recently. As our comrade wrote, it is
a blind leading the blind problem, but why is that? Are New Afrikans
just not smart enough to figure out how to respond effectively? He
further wrote:
“I am a 25 year old Black man who taught myself how to read while
incarcerated. After being sent to prison a third time I learned my true
calling. There’s so much more to life, I am trying my hardest to be an
activist behind the prison walls and when I make it out on the streets.
I know first hand how it feels to be those Black children who’ve been
mis-educated and unheard, so the only way to express your emotions is
through lashing out because you don’t know any other way. The police
used to beat and harass me every single day because of my position in
the Crips, because I wasn’t properly educated, and because they had the
power. I’m no saint, but a lot of things I went through and/or other
Black children endured with police brutality often times was uncalled
for.
“If the shoe was on the other foot and someone killed a police officer,
there wouldn’t be a waiting period or an investigation to lock the
person up. The police might even go as far as persecution (execution
style) of the person themselves. The video clips taken during the
occurrence of Freddie Gray’s death should render enough information for
all of those cops involved to be taken into custody (without bail) until
a trial date is arranged.”
Let’s analyze this a little further. We live in a capitalist society,
where the primary motivator that keeps things moving is profit. Our
country is an imperialist country, that has always used force to kill
and steal from people to increase its wealth. When New Afrikans walk
around with $ signs hanging from their necks, and big portraits of
Benjamin Franklin on the back of their jeans, is there any doubt that
they are reflecting the dominant ideology of capitalism? On the other
hand, whenever a New Afrikan movement has arisen that promotes
socialism, communism, cooperative economics or anything of the sort,
they have faced repression. People who led New Afrikan youth against
capitalism have been imprisoned and killed. Could these be explanations
of why New Afrikan youth today are often caught up in fetishizing money
and wealth? Because they’ve been terrorized into it? The individualist
will pretend these things don’t matter and that it’s up to the
individual to make the right decisions, even when the individual does
not have all the information or knowledge they would need to do so
because that information has been purposely and systematically kept from
them. It amounts to blaming the victim.
Of course, a real Amerikan patriot supports the First Amendment, so they
will say “I support the protesters, but I oppose the looters.” The petty
bourgeois class interest is not hard to see in this dominant narrative.
People are literally putting more weight on private property than a New
Afrikan’s life. They might respond, that to put it such a way is a false
dichotomy, because it was not a situation where we either break some
windows and save Gray’s life or let Gray die at the hands of police. But
this again is based on their individualist worldview. In their view,
each incident is unique and isolated between the individuals involved
and must be assessed as such. There is no consideration of the
possibility of the mass uprising in Baltimore leading to a surge in
organizing, that then contributes to a new revolutionary movement that
30 years from now has put an end to imperialism in this country so that
New Afrikans’ lives are no longer threatened by police.
The more we look at the big picture, the worse things are for the
defenders of capitalism. When we look at the big picture we see things
like 80% of the world’s people have a material interest opposed to
capitalism because their basic needs are not being met. And that
capitalism has only been around for a few hundred years, a blip on the
timeline of humyn history. And that all systems change, all empires
fall. This constant change is a part of the dialectical worldview. This is why Mao talked about science being on the side of the
oppressed. Injustice is an objective fact. And the solutions to the
problems our society faces today are found in a thorough analysis of
that society.
We commend our comrade from Baltimore for taking the journey of teaching
himself to become an activist to serve the people. But how does one go
about learning in an effective way? There is so much information out
there, so many books and groups and so little time. Making effective use
of the collective knowledge of humynkind requires using the correct
scientific methods, and comparing different practices to see which ones
have worked. We hope this issue of ULK gives our readers some
guidance in this process of judging truth and knowledge. As always, we
have study materials that go more deeply into this than we can here in
ULK where we try to focus on news and agitation. Issue 45 of
ULK will focus on the practical side of how to organize study
groups in prison, and the question of how do we teach basic skills like
literacy. We hope those of you with experience will contribute to that
issue and help build the quantitative change that must come from the
oppressed masses themselves for any systematic change to take place.
The above diagram summarizes MIM(Prisons)’s class analysis of the First
World with relative flows of wealth and relative sizes of each class.
The Worker Elite: Notes on the “Labor Aristocracy” by
Bromma Kersplebedeb, 2014
Available for $10 + shipping/handling from:
kersplebedeb CP
63560, CCCP Van Horne Montreal, Quebec Canada H3W 3H8
As with our
previous
review of Bromma’s writings, we find h new book to be a good read,
based in an analysis that is close to our own. Yet, once again we find h
putting class as principal and mentioning gender as an important
component of class. In contrast, MIM(Prisons) sees the principal
contradiction under imperialism as being along the lines of nation, in
particular between the imperialist nations that exploit and those
nations that are exploited. While all three strands interact with each
other, we see gender as its own strand of oppression, distinct from
class. While Bromma has much to say on class that is agreeable, one
thread that emerges in this text that we take issue with is that of the
First World labor aristocracy losing out due to “globalization.”
Bromma opens with some definitions and a valid criticism of the term
“working class.” While using many Marxist terms, h connection to a
Marxist framework is not made clear. S/he consciously writes about the
“worker elite,” while disposing of the term “labor aristocracy” with no
explanation. In the opening s/he rhetorically asks whether the “working
class” includes all wage earners, or all manual laborers. While
dismissing the term “working class” as too general, Bromma does not
address these questions in h discussion of the worker elite. Yet,
throughout the book s/he addresses various forms of productive labor in
h examples of worker elite. S/he says that the worker elite is just one
of many groups that make up the so-called “middle class.” But it is not
clear how Bromma distinguishes the worker elite from the other middle
classes, except that they are found in “working class jobs.” Halfway
through the book it is mentioned that s/he does not consider
“professionals, shopkeepers, administrators, small farmers,
businesspeople, intellectuals, etc.” to be workers.(p.32)
We prefer the term “labor aristocracy” over “worker elite,” and we may
use it more broadly than Bromma’s worker elite in that the type of work
is not so important so much as the pay and benefits. Bromma, while
putting the worker elite in the “middle class,” simultaneously puts it
into the “working class” along with the proletariat and the lumpen
working class. We put the labor aristocracy in the First World within
the petty bourgeoisie, which may be a rough equivalent of what Bromma
calls the “middle class.” Of course, the petty bourgeoisie has
historically been looked at as a wavering force between the bourgeoisie
and the proletariat. Yet, in the case of the oppressor nation labor
aristocracy, they have proven to be a solidly pro-imperialist class.
This analysis, central to MIM Thought, is particular to the imperialist
countries.
Despite these questions and confusions, overall we agree with the global
class analysis as it is presented in the beginning of this book in terms
of who are our friends and who are our enemies.
One good point made throughout this book is the idea that the “worker
elite” is not defined merely by an income cut off. While not denying the
central role of income, Bromma defines this class position as a whole
package of benefits, material (health care, infrastructure), social
(family life, leisure activities) and political (lack of repression,
voice in politics). At one point s/he brings up the migrant farm workers
in the U.$., who can earn similar amounts to the autoworkers in Mexico
who s/he argues make up an established worker elite. In contrast, the
migrant farm workers suffer the abuses of the proletariat at the bottom
rung of U.$. society, and in reality many make far less than Mexican
autoworkers. We agree with Bromma’s implication here that the migrant
workers make up a proletarian class within the United $tates.
While criticizing previous attempts to set an “exploitation line” in
income, Bromma brings in PPP to improve this analysis. The book provides
a helpful table of the income levels in Purchasing Power Parities (PPP)
for various groups. PPP defines income levels relative to a basket of
goods to account for varying prices across countries/regions. Bromma
concludes that “a global middle class annual income probably starts
somewhere between PPP $10,000 and $15,000”, meaning that a single worker
(man) could comfortably support a family on this amount. This is similar
to the estimates others have done and we have used elsewhere.
One of the key characteristics of this income level is that they have
gone beyond covering basic needs and become consumers. Bromma lists one
of the three main roles of the worker elite as being a consumer class.
This is something we have stressed when people ask incredulously why the
capitalists would pay people more than the value that they are
producing. Bromma cites a source discussing the Chinese planned
capitalist economy and how they have goals for expanding their consumer
class as they recognize that their increasing production will soon not
be absorbed by consumption abroad. This is typical capitalist logic.
Rather than seeing what the Chinese people need, and produce based on
those needs as they did under a socialist planned economy, today they
first produce a lot of the most profitable goods and then try to find
(or create) a market to sell them to.
Where we disagree greatest with this book is that it takes up a line
akin to Huey P. Newton’s intercommunalism theory, later named
globalization theory in Amerikan academia. It claims a trend towards
equalization of classes internationally, reducing the national
contradictions that defined the 20th century. Bromma provides little
evidence of this happening besides anecdotal examples of jobs moving
oversees. Yet s/he claims, “Among ‘white’ workers,
real
wages are stagnant, unemployment is high, unions are dwindling, and
social benefits and protective regulations are evaporating.”(p.43) These
are all common cries of white nationalists that the MIM camp and others
have been debating for decades.(1) The fact that wages are not going up
as fast as inflation has little importance to the consumer class who
knows that their wealth is far above the world’s majority and whose
buying power has increased greatly in recent decades.(2) Unemployment in
the United $tates averaged 5.9% in April 2014 when this book came out,
which means the white unemployment rate was even lower than that.(3)
That is on the low side of average over the last 40 years and there is
no upward trend in unemployment in the United $tates, so that claim is
just factually incorrect. High unemployment rates would be 35% in
Afghanistan, or 46% in Nepal. The author implies that unions are smaller
because of some kind of violent repression, rather than because of
structural changes in the economy and the privileged conditions of the
labor aristocracy.
The strongest evidence given for a rise in the worker elite is in China.
One report cited claims that China is rivaling the U.$. to have the
largest “middle class” soon.(p.38) Yet this middle class is not as
wealthy as the Amerikan one, and is currently only 12-15% of the
population.(p.32) It’s important to distinguish that China is an
emerging imperialist power, not just any old Third World country.
Another example given is Brazil, which also has a growing finance
capital export sector according to this book, a defining characteristic
of imperialism. The importance of nation in the imperialist system is
therefore demonstrated here in the rise of the labor aristocracy in
these countries. And it should be noted that there is a finite amount of
labor power to exploit in the world. The surplus value that Chinese and
Brazilian finance capital is finding abroad, and using partly to fund
their own emerging consumer classes, will eat into the surplus value
currently taken in by the First World countries. In this way we see
imperialist competition, and of course proletarian revolution, playing
bigger roles in threatening the current privileges of the First World,
rather than the globalization of finance capital that Bromma points to.
As Zak Cope wrote in a recent paper, “Understanding how the ‘labour
aristocracy’ is formed means understanding imperialism, and
conversely.”(4) It is not the U.$. imperialists building up the labor
aristocracy in China and Brazil. South Korea, another country discussed,
is another story, that benefits as a token of U.$. imperialism in a
half-century long battle against the Korean peoples’ struggle for
independence from imperialism and exploitation. While Bromma brings
together some interesting information, we don’t agree with h conclusion
that imperialism is “gradually detaching itself from the model of
privileged ‘home countries’ altogether.”(p.40) We would interpret it as
evidence of emerging imperialist nations and existing powers imposing
strategic influence. Cope, building on Arghiri Emmanuel’s work,
discusses the dialectical relationship between increasing wages and
increasing the productive forces within a nation.(2,5) Applying their
theories, for Chinese finance capital to lead China to become a powerful
imperialist country, we would expect to see the development of a labor
aristocracy there as Bromma indicates is happening. This is a distinct
phenomenon from the imperialists buying off sections of workers in other
countries to divide the proletariat. That’s not to say this does not
happen, but we would expect to see this on a more tactical level that
would not produce large shifts in the global balance of forces.
Finance capital wants to be free to dominate the whole world. As such it
appears to be transnational. Yet, it requires a home base, a state, with
strong military might to back it up. How else could it keep accumulating
all the wealth around the world as the majority of the people suffer?
Chinese finance capital is at a disadvantage, as it must fight much
harder than the more established imperialist powers to get what it
perceives to be its fair share. And while its development is due in no
small part to cooperation with Amerikan finance capital, this is
secondary to their competitive relationship. This is why we see Amerika
in both China’s and Russia’s back yards making territorial threats in
recent days (in the South China Sea and Ukraine respectively). At first,
just getting access to Chinese labor after crushing socialism in 1976
was a great boon to the Amerikan imperialists. But they are not going to
stop there. Russia and China encompass a vast segment of the globe where
the Amerikans and their partners do not have control. As Lenin said one
hundred years ago, imperialism marks the age of a divided world based on
monopolies. Those divisions will shift, but throughout this period the
whole world will be divided between different imperialist camps (and
socialist camps as they emerge). And as Cope stresses, this leads to a
divided “international working class.”
While there is probably a labor aristocracy in all countries, its role
and importance varies greatly. MIM line on the labor aristocracy has
been developed for the imperialist countries, where the labor
aristocracy encompasses the wage-earning citizens as a whole. While the
term may appropriately be used in Third World countries, we would not
equate the two groups. The wage earners of the world have been so
divided that MIM began referring to those in the First World as
so-called “workers.” So we do not put the labor aristocracy of the First
World within the proletarian class as Bromma does.
We caution against going too far with applying our class definitions and
analysis globally. In recent years, we have distinguished the First
World lumpen class from that of the lumpen-proletariat of the Third
World. In defining the lumpen, Bromma “includes working class people
recruited into the repressive apparatus of the state – police,
informants, prison guards, career soldiers, mercenaries, etc.”(p.5) This
statement rings more true in the Third World, yet even there a
government job would by definition exclude you from being in the
lumpen-proletariat. In the imperialist countries, police, prison guards,
military and any other government employee are clearly members of the
labor aristocracy. This is a point we will explore in much greater
detail in future work.
The principal contradiction within imperialism is between exploiter and
exploited nations. Arghiri Emmanuel wrote about the national interest,
criticizing those who still view nationalism as a bourgeois phenomenon
as stuck in the past. After WWII the world saw nationalism rise as an
anti-colonial force. In Algeria, Emmanuel points out, the national
bourgeoisie and Algerian labor aristocracy had nothing to lose in the
independence struggle as long as it did not go socialist. In contrast,
it was the French settlers in Algeria that violently opposed the
liberation struggle as they had everything to lose.(6) In other words
there was a qualitative difference between the Algerian labor
aristocracy and the French settler labor aristocracy.
It is the responsibility of people on the ground to do a concrete
analysis of their own conditions. We’ve already mentioned our use of the
term “First World lumpen” to distinguish it from the lumpen of the Third
World, which is a subclass of the proletariat. To an extent, all classes
are different between the First and Third World. We rarely talk of the
labor aristocracy in the Third World, because globally it is
insignificant. It is up to comrades in Third World nations to assess the
labor aristocracy in their country, which in many cases will not be made
up of net-exploiters. Bromma highlights examples of exploiter workers in
Mexico and South Korea. These are interesting exceptions to the rule
that should be acknowledged and assessed, but we think Bromma goes too
far in generalizing these examples as signs of a shift in the overall
global class structure. While we consider Mexico to be a Third World
exploited nation, it is a relatively wealthy country that Cope includes
on the exploiter side, based on OECD data, in his major calculations.
Everything will not always fit into neat little boxes. But the
scientific method is based on applying empirically tested laws,
generalizations, percentages and probability. The world is not simple.
In order to change it we must understand it the best we can. To
understand it we must both base ourselves in the laws proven by those
who came before us and assess the changes in our current situation to
adjust our analysis accordingly.
After taking some time off from writing insightful editorials from a
first worldist perspective for Turning the Tide, A Journal of
Inter-communal Solidarity, Michael Novick once again assumes the
mantle of vociferous defender of the Amerikan labor aristocracy as
revolutionary vehicle pre-eminent in
his
review of Divided World, Divided Class by Dr. Zak Cope.
While we can appreciate his endorsement of this valuable text as
“required reading for would-be revolutionaries,” our differences are
unfortunately as vast as the property-less petty-bourgeoisie is corrupt.
The MIM camp recommends this book for its global class analsyis, based
in Marxist economics, that explains the class divide between the First
World core and the Third World periphery.
Interestingly, it has been noted that Turning The Tide has taken on
something of a Third Worldist veneer ever since some searing
criticisms
of Novick and his assessment of the Maoist Internationalist Movement
by a USW comrade last year.(2) Despite TTT’s recent focus on the New
Afrikan nation and their expressed support for the struggles of the
oppressed worldwide, it is the underlying political line of Novick and
company that we must really examine to see where we have unity. We
understand that to the untrained eye, as well as to those new to
revolutionary politics, the difference between the Maoist
Internationalist Movement and the Amerikan left are less than apparent,
so we will draw them out here for educational purposes as well as to
defend against opportunists and social chauvinists of varying stripes;
as without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.
Novick calls on fans of egalitarian politics to take up critical
thinking when it comes to the topic of global political economy and the
stratification of labor under capitalism. However, he attacks and
undermines Marxist political-economic analysis, the most critical and on
point analysis of capitalism itself, without proposing anything in its
place. He does this in the first few paragraphs of his article when he
states that Dr. Cope comes to his conclusion that the First World labor
aristocracy is bought off via “underlying Marxist assumptions of the
labor theory of value”(1) and “through sometimes hypothetical
formulations of what the value and price of that value ‘should’ be…”(1)
He then states that Cope says, “the only workers who are ‘exploited’ are
those who directly produce ‘surplus value’ in agricultural and
industrial production of commodities.”(1) These lines imply a critique
of Cope’s (and Marx’s) methods, but he does not say so outright or offer
an alternative framework for such an analysis.(2) This is nihilism, and
leads to subjectivism. Without an objective analysis as our guide we
just let the masses do what feels right. We agree with Novick that to
lame apologists of First World workers “Cope’s book is a very difficult
read…”(1), but not because of the so-called “long sections of abstract
mathematical calculations”(1) as Mr. Novick puts it, rather because
bitter pills are always hard to swallow.
For those who are unaware, Novick claims to use dialectical materialism
as a tool to analyze social phenomenon, yet this has not led him to the
conclusion that the principal contradiction in the United $tates, or the
world for that matter, is imperialism vs. the oppressed nations.
Instead, Novick believes that capitalism never developed past its
competitive phase, therefore it is his assessment that the principal
contradiction on a world scale is still that of the bourgeoisie vs. the
proletariat, or rather one between the so-called 1% and supposed 99% –
itself a non-sensical and anti-scientific assessment. As such, Novick
doesn’t believe that there are any oppressing or oppressed nations, only
oppressed and oppressing classes; yet he denounces our “petrified
defense of the principal contradiction.”(3)
Michael Novick also complains that “Cope essentially liquidates or
obliterates class contradictions within both core and peripheral
states”(1), but what Cope really obliterates is the First World’s
romanticization of the labor aristocracy as anything but revolutionary
with his scathing class analysis of First World workers. Novick also
makes an empiricist error when he asserts that Dr. Cope’s analysis is no
good to us in the United $tates because “his orientation and experience
is primarily European”(1) hence his “understanding of settler
colonialism and the existence of oppressed and colonized peoples within
so-called ‘core’ countries as the US, Canada, etc. is limited.”(1) It is
quite odd that Novick complains that Cope does not give us a complete
class analysis of who are our friends and who are our enemies within the
United $tates. Despite the fact that this book is about global
imperialism, and written by a non-Amerikan, it spends a good amount of
time explaining class and nation and the development of racism within
the context of U.$. society, as it is today the heart of imperialism.
Novick does not address the points made by Cope, only complains that it
is too general. In addressing the discrimination and oppression faced by
the disadvantaged in First World countries, Cope states that “economic
betterment for people in the rich countries is today intrinsically
dependent on imperialism.”(4) And that’s the rub right there.
Whatever contradictions exist within imperialist society, apologists for
the labor aristocracy like Novick must come to terms with that reality,
or risk fanning the flames of militarism and even fascism.
A little further down Novick states that “classes and class
relationships are based on material reality…”(1). This much is true,
however, Novick takes us deeper into the jungle of idealism when he
writes, “… but these are social phenomenon based on the element of
consciousness and practice as well,”(1) emphasis on the element of
consciousness. However, Marxist philosophy teaches us that in general it
is social being that determines social consciousness, and not the other
way around as Novick implies. He has a hard time reconciling the
existence of revolutionaries in the United $tates and an analysis that
labels the U.$. an exploiter country. For a dialectical materialist,
this is no mystery. A more succinct explanation to the phenomenon and
structure of class is given by Cope below:
“The term ‘class’ does not only refer to a social group’s relation to
the means of production - that is, to property ownership or it’s absence
and nor does it simply refer to any category relating purely to the
technical division of labor at the societal or workplace level. Rather,
class denotes a dynamic social relationship corresponding to the system
of ownership, the organization of labour and the distribution of
material wealth as mediated by ideological, cultural and political
institutions and practices. Above all, class is the product of political
practices, with the relationship between the state and class struggle
revolving around the issue of class domination.”(4)
Not surprisingly it is always the ideological that is principal in
matters of revolution when it comes to Amerikan “left” circles. And with
that Novick ends his weak attempt to disprove the scientifically proven
correctness of Zak Cope’s book. What then proceeds in his review is more
existentialist questioning of both nation and class contradictions in
the United $tates and the world when the answers are already readily
apparent. Novick offers his persynal musings as proof positive to his
readers that the class contradiction in the world is more important than
the one of nation. But in order to deliver the people’s consciousness
you can’t just answer the tough questions with more questions. Rather,
you must deliver the people’s consciousness with revolutionary practice
summed up in rational knowledge; as without revolutionary practice
theory is meaningless. As such, Novick inadvertently proves the
principal contradiction correct with his confused explanation of class
contradictions in Amerika.
Something else that was disappointing in his review of Divided
World was the complete omission of Cope’s thesis on how the First
World petty-bourgeoisie, the labor aristocracy in particular, is a huge
reservoir and potential breeding ground for fascism drawing from within
the dispossessed petty-bourgeois class an army to smash the national
liberation and socialist movements. This is odd since the majority of
Anti-Racist Action’s work has previously been fighting the various
neo-Nazi organizations currently attempting to re-organize on a massive
scale. Perhaps we can surmise that Novick saw something else in Cope’s
book that is damning and detrimental to First World “revolutionary and
socialist” movements? Perhaps another bitter pill to swallow?
We highly recommend Divided World, Divided Class to up and
coming revolutionaries and communist youth looking to get a firm grasp
of First World labor and it’s dialectical relation to the real
proletariat centered in the periphery.(5) Divided World, Divided
Class does an excellent job of explaining the parasitic nature, as
well as the fascist tendencies of the First World labor aristocracy.
In the April 2013 issue of Turning the
Tide (TTT), the editor, MN (who we assume is Michael
Novick, the author of the original article in question), responded to
a
letter that a United Struggle from Within comrade wrote criticizing
an article in the previous TTT issue which misrepresented the
MIM political line in a critique of MIM(Prisons). The editor claims that
they are happy that this article provoked quite a few responses and that
they want to promote debate because “this is a contradiction among the
people.” This is a correct attitude, which unfortunately is not backed
up by the TTT editor’s response, which is embarrassing in its
blatant misrepresentation and misinformation about the MIM line. It is
very difficult to carry out debate to resolve contradictions among the
people, if the people involved are not serious about political study.
The first critique the editor makes of the MIM line this time around is
“in its staunch defense of the significance of the contradiction between
oppressor and oppressed nations, and its doctrinaire reliance on its
version of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, it petrifies all other
contradictions and the flow of history.” The MIM line in question, which
MIM(Prisons)
upholds, holds that the oppressor vs. oppressed nations
contradiction is principal at this point in history, but not that it
will always be so. And further, the MIM line puts much work into
illuminating the gender and class contradictions. In fact, it has pushed
forward the political understanding of class more than any other
contemporary revolutionary organization by noting that the changing
class nature of the imperialist country population has resulted in a
primarily petty bourgeois population. The TTT editor writes
about workers: “we have stakes and ties in the very system that
oppresses and exploits us” a line s/he claims comes from Lenin, denying
that anything might have changed since Lenin’s day. On this point it is
actually TTT that is dogmatic in its view of contradictions and
the flow of history by refusing to study the true nature of the
imperialist country working class.
The TTT editor goes on to misrepresent the MIM line writing
“…by classifying all working people within the US as ‘oppressor nation
petty-bourgeois labor aristocrats’ [MIM] disarms those who have the
capacity to break both their chains and their identification with and
links to the Empire.” This is such a blatant mistake we have to assume
TTT has not bothered to read any of the
MIM theory on
nation. MIM line is very clear that “oppressor nation
petty-bourgeois” are just that: white nation people. There is also a
sizable oppressed nation petty-bourgeois population within U.$. borders,
and we see their class interest as tied with imperialism, but we
identify their national interests as anti-imperialist. And this national
contradiction is internal to imperialism.
Finally the TTT editor goes into some convolutions to try to
explain how the majority of the U.$. population is exploited but maybe
just not super-exploited because “no private employer hires a worker
unless they’re pretty damn sure the work that worker does will make the
boss more money than the boss has to pay for the work.” By this
definition, we can assume that the top layers of management of huge
corporations are exploited in their six figure salaries (or even 7
figure salaries!). TTT doesn’t even attempt to make a
scientific analysis of where to draw the line on who is exploited, and
since MIM(Prisons) and MIM before us has done extensive work on this we
will not bother to explain it again here. We refer serious readers to
our
publications
on the labor aristocracy.
In the contortions to justify calling the Amerikan population exploited,
the TTT editor asks “If the domestic population is totally
bribed and benefiting from Empire to the exclusion of any contradiction”
then why are gulags necessary? That’s a fine straw-persyn argument, but
it’s not a line that MIM(Prisons) takes. We have written extensively
about the role of prisons in the U.$. population as a tool of social
control of the oppressed nations, highlighting internal contradictions
that include nation among others. Again, it seems TTT has not
bothered to read even the
single-page description
of MIM(Prisons) that we publish in every issue of Under Lock
& Key.
The TTT editor concludes by asking a myriad of very good
questions about nations and their inter-relations, all of which the MIM
line has addressed in a consistent way, and for the most part a way that
it seems the TTT editor would agree with, if s/he had bothered
to read up on that line. The supposed rigid and dogmatic line of
MIM/MIM(Prisons) is all in the heads of the TTT writers and
editors who seem to think our line comes from just a few slogans. We
agree that “Revolutionary strategy must be based on a concrete analysis
of concrete conditions, not arbitrary, fixed categories, to determine
friends and enemies.” And we challenge TTT to take up this concrete
analysis. Read our work on the labor aristocracy and on nations, and
tell us specifically where you find our concrete analysis lacking or in
error. We welcome such dialogue, but the revolutionary movement doesn’t
have time for slander and false accusations in the guise of political
debate.
The last point we will make here is related to a letter TTT
published in this same issue, from a prisoner who goes by “Ruin.” Ruin
wrote to say that s/he shares the TTT views about
MIM(Prisons)’s ideological shortcomings and is upset because s/he was
kicked out of our study group. We are happy that Ruin has found an
organization with which s/he has unity. In fact in previous letters to
h, where we pointed out our theoretical disagreements, we suggested
other organizations that might be more closely aligned with h views. We
run study groups for prisoners who want to work with MIM(Prisons) in
both political study and organizing. We stand by the letter we sent to
Ruin (which TTT printed) where we explain that it is not a good
use of our time to include people in our advanced study groups who
disagree with us on many fundamental issues. Ruin told us the first
study group was a waste of h time, and that s/he doesn’t agree with us
on many things, so we’re not even sure why Ruin would take issue with
our decision that s/he should not continue into the advanced study
group. We did not suggest that we would discontinue Ruin’s free
subscription to ULK or that we would stop responding to h
letters, it was Ruin who chose to sever all ties and discussion with
MIM(Prisons) after receiving our letter about the study group.
Criticism is hard to take, but it is something we in the revolutionary
movement must handle in a direct manner, without letting persynal
feelings get in the way. It is also important to know when two lines
have diverged significantly enough that those lines should be in
separate organizations. History will tell which political line is
correct.
[Below we have excerpted sections from a letter by a USW comrade sent to
Turning the Tide. While the comrade does a good job responding
to this gross misrepresentation of MIM line, we have added comments in
brackets to clarify a few points.]
I was surprised by your latest issue of Turning the Tide (TTT).
More specifically, Michael Novick’s article entitled “PART’s
Perspective: On Contradiction and the Correct Handling of Contradictions
Among the People.” Quite a brazen title by the way, as the point of the
original
essay penned by Mao was to point out the correct way for the Chinese
Communist Party to help resolve contradictions among the people, and
between the party and the people in light of the incidents in Hungary;
as well as a critique of Stalin’s shortcomings with that matter and to
help forge unity with the masses.
I’ll just give you a review of the entire article, in which Mr. Novick
attempts to illuminate the prisyn masses with regards to the differences
between TTT’s political line and that of the MIM camp currently
represented by MIM(Prisons), United Struggle from Within (a
MIM(Prisons)-led anti-imperialist mass organization for prisyners), the
Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist Movement and the Leading Light Communist
Organization.
To begin with, i hold MIM(Prisons) in very high regard, not just because
they hold the correct political line on everything politically
meaningful under the sun, but because i owe my own political development
to them.
My first point of contention with Mr. Novick’s article is when he
erroneously makes the statement that MIM’s position concerning the labor
aristocracy is that it is a permanent labor aristocracy. That is a false
statement. MIM has never made the statement that the Amerikan labor
aristocracy is a permanent labor aristocracy. Not only is that statement
metaphysical and anti-dialectical but in complete contradistinction to
the hystorical process and MIM line. Yes, the so-called Amerikan
“worker” is indeed part of the labor aristocracy, and not proletarian as
revisionists of varying stripes would contend. The Amerikan “worker”
forms a part of the labor aristocracy; a sub-stratum of the petty
bourgeoisie. Whenever they addressed this issue MIM continuously made it
a point to say that the imperialist country working classes were (and
still are) a pro-imperialist labor aristocracy at this time.
Furthermore, the concept of the labor aristocracy goes all the way back
to Engels when he described to Marx how the English proletariat was
becoming more and more bourgeois. Lenin, as well as other Bolsheviks,
also formulated on what basis this labor aristocracy was formed, which
is of course super-profits stolen from the colonies. It seems to me
however that those who continue to negate the existence of a labor
aristocracy, and instead dogmatically cling to the hope of an Amerikan
proletariat, do so either out of sheer ignorance or, more dangerously,
for the purpose of revisionism. To continue to advocate this false
thesis in the imperialist countries is to, as a “logical conclusion,”
advocate for multi-national/class unity in the fashion of Trotsky and
his successors, i.e. the erroneous line that leads one to lean on and
wait for the white working class to wake up and come to the oppressed
nations’ rescue.
Novick is also incorrect in his statement that “MIM sees women and
prisoners as elements of US society where there is prospect for
revolutionary development.” Well, half wrong anyway. The MIM never saw,
nor does it today see, First World wimmin as elements of U.$. society in
which there is any real group oppression to speak of which would provide
a prospect for revolution. The MIM recognizes First World wimmin,
primarily white wimmin, as gender-privileged. They are not at all part
of the revolutionary vehicle precisely because being privileged
economically (among other things) makes them gender privileged in
relation to Third World wimmin. Or in MIM’s own words: “After looking
around MIM came to the conclusion that like First World labor, First
World women are mainly oppressors, not oppressed people.”
We must also disagree with Mr. Novick’s assertion that exploitation
exists within the First World outside the realm of commodity production
in which waged labor “produces” surplus value. Exploitation is defined
as producing something and not being paid for the value of what you
produce.
[MIM(Prisons) interjects: MIM line has consistently
held that the white nation is not economically exploited. Later this
line was expanded to assert that there is no exploitation occurring in
the United $tates except within migrant and prisoner populations. To
talk about “exploitation” of the planet, as Novick does, is to redefine
the term that we use in a Marxist context. He does this in order to
falsely imply that we have no concern for ecological destruction, one of
many examples where Novick is misleading to dirty our name.]
Mr. Novick is further wrong in his contention that we, i.e. the MIM
camp, “assume privilege and oppression are absolute phenomona,
unchanging and mutually exclusive.” Quite the contrary, as dialectical
materialists we certainly know that nothing is absolute (except for the
struggle of opposites) or unchanging, as motion itself is an expression
of change and particular to the law of development. If such an absurdity
of which Novick here speaks of were true then MIM(Prisons) wouldn’t be
taking the time to help develop the imprisyned lumpen of which the rest
of society has long since cast off into the abyss.
We furthermore recognize that there is indeed an obvious intersection in
nation and class contradictions within the United $tates. In a sense
this is what MIM(Prisons)’s work is all about; working with the
oppressed nation lumpen, in particular so that we may not only build
towards liberating our people, but so that we may liberate our class.
This will be our contribution to the International Communist Movement
and oppressed people of the world. So, contrary to Novick’s statements,
we do in fact recognize and acknowledge that the interpenetration of
opposites is particular to the law of development. However, there is a
dialectical process, and as such a process of stages of which phenomena
must go thru before change is complete; a lengthy process at that.
Mutually exclusive phenomena do not just magically transcend from one
stage to another. If only Mr. Novick would take the time to read MIM
literature more carefully then he would know this.
The First and the Third World are currently locked in struggle. This
struggle is representative of two mutually exclusive classes: the
bourgeoisie and the proletariat. This is the fundamental contradiction
on a world scale. Furthermore, this contradiction has manifested itself
into antagonistic form, which has manifested into the principal
contradiction on a world scale, which is oppressor versus the oppressed
nations. Now, objectively speaking, what side of this contradiction are
we on?
First World “workers” and Third World labor are two exclusive phenomena,
not just because the former feeds off the latter, but because both hold
two totally different positions with respect to the global relations of
production and to the worldwide means of production as well. What
Mr. Novick presupposes to explain with his chauvinist use of dialectics
is that the First World labor aristocracy and Third World proletariat
are essentially the same no matter the imperialist powers and the
populations they serve. Mr. Novick says that privilege and oppression
exist throughout class society, even among the exploited and oppressed,
and that there is no perfectly oppressed class or sector whose hands are
clean.
[MIM(Prisons) adds: We should point out that we see the
oppressed nation lumpen in the United $tates as a middle force in that
it has interests both opposed to and in support of imperialism. Novick
seems to want to define everyone in this way, as potentially supporting
or opposing imperialism. But we see the vast majority of Amerikans as
clearly on the side of imperialism.]
In addition to the above, Mr. Novick then uses the argument that there
is currently a “class fall” being experienced by many in the United
$tates and Europe, and that U.$. whites with less than a high school
education are experiencing the loss of more than five years life
expectancy is proof positive that the labor aristocracy is in all
actuality going thru the re-proletarianization process. Funny, Trotsky
had similar things to say during the Comintern of 1916 in his defense of
Western Europe’s newly rising labor aristocracy and his racist refusal
that the revolutionary ebb was moving to the east. Unfortunate to say
that we’re not really surprised to hear such nonsense, as the
TTT position on inter-communalism is the theory of Trotsky
himself.
[MIM(Prisons) adds: Novick seems to slightly exaggerate
a recent study that showed a 5-year decline in life expectancy for white
wimmin without a high school diploma, but only a 3-year decline for men
in that group. The average decline for all whites without a high school
diploma was around 4 years.(2) Certainly a significant and unusual
decline. But let’s look at this population closer.]
Again, what Mr. Novick keeps willingly blinding himself to here is that
there is a qualitative difference between the First World and the Third,
not just in wage differentials, but living standards and government
services, all of which are representative of real life material
interests which chain the supposed First World “proletariat” to the
imperialist fatherland. This is why a dialectical outlook, as well as a
concrete class analysis, is of crucial importance to the revolutionary
movement. Only by maintaining the first and conducting the second will
we be able to discern real friend from real foe, something Novick and
company are apparently unable to do and so have aligned with both nation
and class enemies to the internal semi-colonies and Third World
proletariat and peasantry.
The next paragraph in question is just so utterly ridiculous that i was
initially taken slightly aback when reading it. Seriously, “MIM isolates
prisons from the social contradictions they enforce”?! Please,
Mr. Novick or any other associate of TTT, if you’re gonna go
into the “differences” between the MIM camp and yourselves, do us all a
favor and inform yourselves properly on that which you seek to
criticize. It’s just so hard for me to believe that someone as
politically educated as Mr. Novick professes to be (or should be,
rather) is going about spewing straight up lies.
The Maoist Internationalist Movement and its spin-off organization have
long since held that the massive Amerikkkan prisyn system largely
developed as a form of social control to maintain in check the
superfluous lumpen populations of the Black, Brown and First Nations
following the failed national liberation struggles of the 60s and 70s.
What Novick is saying is nothing but BS! MIM(Prisons) is the only
organization in the United $tates that is actively working to
politically develop the oppressed nation lumpen so that we may become
the subjective motivating force for the liberation and
self-determination of the oppressed internal semi-colonies that are New
Afrika, Aztlán, Boriqua and the various First Nations that are corralled
onto the reservations! They, and they alone, have been doing this for
many years now. And where, pray tell, has the rest of the Amerikan left
been in the middle of all this? As Mao taught us, there must be a
constant leadership with the masses in an endless spiral of perceptual
knowledge to rational knowledge and revolutionary practice, so on and so
forth. Or simply put, “from the masses to the masses.”
Another outright lie presented by Novick is his statement that MIM’s
view obscures class and colonial contradictions in the U.$. Likewise,
Novick’s statement that U.$. society is turning into a carceral state is
itself misleading in more than one way. Ironically enough, this sweet
one-liner itself obscures class and colonial contradictions by making it
sound as if we’re all in this together (read, white, Black,
Brown etc. “working class” unite!) Trust us, for those of us from
barrios and ghettos of Amerika, the prisyn-like methods of daily life
are nothing new. Furthermore, they don’t represent any “new stage in the
basic colonial nature of the state and society” but are instead a part
of the foundational building blocks of Amerika and the white
settler-state that has made its home here; they are essential to the
imperialists and we resent the fact that Mr. Novick wants us to believe
that the white settler is somehow now on the receiving end of this
oppression.
As if all this wasn’t enough, Novick once again shows us his Trotskyist
colors when he criticizes “cross-class” alliances, in particular the
United Front method of organization. You know, the same method that
brought us such victories as the defeat of fascism in WWII and the
liberation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. Leave it to the
Trotskyists to damn to hell all unholy alliances not deemed morally pure
enough for their pie in the sky ideals. Furthermore, Novick makes it
appear as if the struggle in South Africa was a People’s War waged for
national liberation, somehow influenced by MIM. The disaster in South
Africa had nothing to do with a communist-vanguard-led United Front, but
rather, everything to do with its lack thereof.
[MIM(Prisons) adds: As we wrote in ULK 30:
Ironically, MIM was on the front line of the movement in the U.$. in the
1980s supporting the revolutionary forces in South Africa that opposed
the neo-colonial solution.]
Please refrain from making such false remarks about MIM, cause they
ain’t gone nowhere but to the belly of the beast from where they’ll help
destroy Amerikan imperialism.
Long Live the Legacies of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao! Long
Live MIM!
MIM(Prisons) concludes: Of the sections we left out, there were
some accusations that would not be principled to make in a public forum
like ULK. But we must agree with the USW comrade that Novick
deliberately misrepresented MIM line in this article in order to attack
our movement. MIM has never feared criticism, and that has not changed.
If Novick had actually addressed something that we wrote or published,
rather than these straw men and lies, then we could all learn from such
an exchange. Instead Novick has muddied the water. And that does not
serve the anti-imperialist movement, whatever your political line.
Years ago we lamented the inability of many of our readers to
distinguish
our line from those of other “radical” and even reformist
organizations of all sorts. This is knowledge that the masses must
have at some level before we can build a strong movement. We’re glad to
hear that someone wrote to Turning the Tide to ask how they
differ from MIM, but as we can see, that is not always the most fruitful
approach. Comrades should be studying literature from various sources,
especially sources that they think sound good to them. You should
compare and contrast these sources to better understand their
differences. MIM(Prisons) is very clear what
our dividing line points
are, but most groups aren’t so clear. And they can often be
deceptive. If you want our perspective on a certain organization, go
ahead and ask. We do have reviews of a number of them. One thing that
the original MIM published and promoted widely was a pamphlet entitled,
“What’s
Your Line?” which identified the various political lines in the
communist movement and what groups fell into what categories. To expand
that project to the prison movement and the contemporary organizations
that exist today would be a great step in expanding everyone’s
understanding of politics and where they stand. So we encourage comrades
to send in their reviews and struggles like this that they have with
other groups so that we can expand these resources in the future.