MIM Notes ***

MIM Notes 287 · September 15, 2003 · Page 1

MIM Notes

Sept. 5, 2003, Nº 287

The Official Newsletter of the Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM)

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MIM
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You are not on a mailing list. You will not receive this paper again unless you take action.

MIM recently mailed this letter to

known prison activists.

Dear prison organizer,

As we fight to eliminate the oppression

of all groups of people, the Maoist

Internationalist Movement has

consolidated its efforts to improve the

condition of prisoners in the United $tates

into a nationwide campaign. This

campaign focuses on a particularly

repressive and growing aspect of prisons

in this country: the control units. We need

to expose and fight the brutal conditions

facing so many prisoners across the

country housed in control units. We invite

you to join us in demanding the elimination

of all control units in prisons in the United

$tates. We are circulating the petition

below and asking that prison activist

organizations, as well as anyone who

supports basic humyn rights for prisoners,

to add their signature to it. We will also

be expanding this campaign to gather

information and resources and raise our

voices against control units across the

country. If you would like to get involved

further, please contact us at the address

below.

For justice,

Maoist Internationalist Movement

Shut down all
Control Units

Control Unit prisons confine people to

small cells in isolation for long periods of

time. These prisons were first officially

used in Alcatraz and then in 1972 in

Marion, Illinois to house prisoners who

were "institutional problems" or "too

dangerous." Since then the idea has

spread, and control units have become a

common tool of repression throughout the

Amerikan prison system.

These control units are used for the

political and social control of prisoners

already locked in secure institutions. They

target Black, Latino and indigenous people

who are a disproportionate part of control

Open letter

Shut Down All Control Units!

CALIFORNIA

RECALL: A

FARCE, BUT

NOT UNUSUAL

As the recall vote on Governor Gray

Davis approaches, over 130 people are

in the race as potential replacements

should Davis be voted out. Anyone could

put their name on the ballot with $3,500

and 65 signatures. Candidates could

gather more signatures to pay a smaller

fee.

At the October 7 election a candidate

with even a small percentage of the

overall vote could become Governor as

the ballot question will first ask voters if

they want to recall Davis and then if he

is recalled, who would they like to replace

Davis. If the recall vote passes, whoever

gets the most votes will be governor.

Davis blamed for
failures of capitalism

The recall effort was able to

successfully gather the signatures

needed--equal to 12% of the people who

voted in the election for the person in

question--with financial backing by

prominent Republicans. Petition gatherers

were paid to collect signatures.(1)

Support for candidates like Arnold

Schwarzenegger (who kicked off his

campaign with a one liner that could have

come from one of his movies: "we will

clean them out") suggests that the

opposition to Davis was not about any

specific political goals on the part of the

voters of California. Davis, a Democrat,

served as governor through the recent

years of economic slowdown which hit

the Bay Area particularly hard.

Voters seem unhappy that Davis misled

them about the extent of the budget

deficit. The Financial Times also quoted

complaints about him being "incompetent,

unpopular, boring and indecisive."(2)

Stupid persynality criticism aside, the

reality is that California has suffered an

economic slowdown and voters find it

easy to blame Davis for the stock market

collapse and dot-com failure. Many still

remember the energy crisis of 2000- 2001

which they blame on Davis as well since

Continued on page 4...

Continued on page 8...

Hillary Rodham Clinton
Living History
New York: Simon & Schuster
2003, 562pp. hb

reviewed by MC5

Sometimes in an autobiography like this

one, we learn about virtual secrets of state

or profound matters of economics and

Hillary Rodham Clinton:

Red-baiter and gender bureaucrat

f o r e i g n

affairs. This

book casts

some light on

intra-White

H o u s e

struggles in

the Clinton

administration,

but it has

nothing new in the areas of economics or

foreign affairs.

After the failure of health care reform

that Hillary Clinton tried to lead from 1992

to 1994, she shifted to symbolic roles

typical of first ladies and vice-presidents-

arranging social events and attending

funerals for heads of state and other

famous people. In such a role, it is possible

to visit many countries without getting too

deeply involved in the issues. Living

History seems a little shallow on the issues

of foreign policy, by simply accepting

mainstream imperialist demagoguery in

passing-e.g. the idea that the Sandinistas

did not win legitimate bourgeois elections

in Nicaragua in the 1980s, (p. 312)

Continued on page 6...

MIM Notes 287 · September 15, 2003 · Page 2

What is MIM?

The Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM) is the collection of existing or emerging

Maoist internationalist parties in the English-speaking imperialist countries and their English-

speaking internal semi-colonies, as well as the existing or emerging Maoist Internationalist
parties in Belgium, France and Quebec and the existing or emerging Spanish-speaking
Maoist Internationalist parties of Aztlan, Puerto Rico and other territories of the U.$. Empire.

MIM Notes is the newspaper of MIM. Notas Rojas is the newspaper of the Spanish-speaking
parties or emerging parties of MIM. MIM upholds the revolutionary communist ideology
of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and is an internationalist organization that works from the

vantage point of the Third World proletariat. MIM struggles to end the oppression of all
groups over other groups: classes, genders, nations. MIM knows this is only possibly by
building public opinion to seize power through armed struggle. Revolution is a reality for

North America as the military becomes over-extended in the government's attempts to
maintain world hegemony. MIM differs from other communist parties on three main
questions: (1) MIM holds that after the proletariat seizes power in socialist revolution, the

potential exists for capitalist restoration under the leadership of a new bourgeoisie within
the communist party itself. In the case of the USSR, the bourgeoisie seized power after the
death of Stalin in 1953; in China, it was after Mao's death and the overthrow of the "Gang

of Four" in 1976. (2) MIM upholds the Chinese Cultural Revolution as the farthest advance
of communism in humyn history. (3) As Marx, Engels and Lenin formulated and MIM has
reiterated through materialist analysis, imperialism extracts super-profits from the Third

World and in part uses this wealth to buy off whole populations of oppressor nation so-
called workers. These so-called workers bought off by imperialism form a new petty-
bourgeoisie called the labor aristocracy. These classes are not the principal vehicles to

advance Maoism within those countries because their standards of living depend on
imperialism. At this time, imperialist super-profits create this situation in the Canada, Quebec,
the United $tates, England, France, Belgium, Germany, Japan, Italy, Switzerland,

Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Israel, Sweden and Denmark. MIM accepts people as
members who agree on these basic principles and accept democratic centralism, the system
of majority rule, on other questions of party line.

"The theory of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin is universally applicable. We should

regard it not as dogma, but as a guide to action. Studying it is not merely a matter of
learning terms and phrases, but of learning Marxism-Leninism as the science of revolution."

- Mao Zedong, Selected Works, Vol. II, p. 208.

Editor, MC206; Production, MC12

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and for all, in 174 pages. Articles include MIM

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Send $7.50 to the address below.

MIM Notes

The Official Newsletter of The Maoist Internationalist Movement

ISSN 1540-8817

MIM Notes is the bi-weekly newsletter of the Maoist Internationalist Movement. MIM

Notes is the official Party voice; more complete statements are published in our journal,
MIM Theory. Material in MIM Notes is the Party's position unless noted. MIM Notes
accepts submissions and critiques from anyone. The editors reserve the right to edit
submissions unless permission is specifically denied by the author; submissions are
published anonymously unless authors insist on identification (prisoners are never
identified by name). MIM is an underground party that does not publish the names of its
comrades in order to avoid the state surveillance and repression that have historically
been directed at communist parties and anti-imperialist movements. MCs, MIM comrades,
are members of the Party. The Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist League (RAIL) is an anti-
imperialist mass organization led by MIM (RCs are RAIL Comrades). MIM's ten-point
program is available to anyone who sends in a SASE.

The paper is free to all prisoners, as long as they write to us every 90 days to confirm

their subsciptions. There are no individual subscriptions for people outside prison.

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Lara Croft Tomb

Raider: The Cradle of
Life

Charlie's Angels: Full

Throttle

These summer films deserve to be

reviewed together because they are

basically the same idea: sexy wimmin in

revealing outfits performing outrageous

stunts to fight the bad guys and save

humanity from impending doom. Overall

MIM opposes the pornography that is so

prevalent is this patriarchal capitalist

society. This is not because of some

Christian purism or moral code, but

because we can see that pornographic

portrayals of wimmin in mainstream

culture perpetuate gender oppression and

inequality. Even looking beyond the

pornography there is little redeeming in

either of these films.

The doom that they are saving us from

is reactionary in both movies. Lara Croft

has to stop the opening of Pandora's Box,

and so the plot explains that humyn life

actually did come from some mythic

source, refuting science in the process.

But at least this evil will decimate the

masses of the world and, if it were real,

is worth fighting against. The Angels

have to save the FBI's list of people in

protective custody, not exactly a calamity

for humanity if it gets out and not an

organization MIM would be helping

regardless. But at least Charlie's Angels

had the decency to put a high ranking FBI

member as the cause of all the troubles.

Unfortunately he was just a rogue agent

and the rest of the agency is portrayed

as be beyond reproach.

Lara Croft works for herself, mostly

searching for archeological wonders but

saving the world whenever she comes

across a situation that calls for it. Not

exactly a revolutionary superhero. The

Angels work for Charlie, who

anonymously runs an independent agency

that fights evil, without explaining why

they don't just join up with the cops or

some other government agency. Not

exactly a model of feminism having three

sexy wimmin running to Charlie for

advice and orders. And again, not

revolutionary superheros.

Charlie's Angels plot was pretty sparse,

but at once point they did introduce some

drama by putting a former Angel as the

mastermind behind the for plan to steal

the FBI list. She went to work for herself

so that she won't have to take orders but

instead could give them, as she explained.

She is confronted by Charlie who tells

her that she needs to work for the good

of the group and that there must still be

some good in her. She responds

emotionally, and this, combined with one

of the Angels mentioning that she faced

some severe trauma years before, implies

that this one Angel went bad after

psychological problems.

MIM doesn't care to psychoanalyze

those who are perpetuating harm against

humanity. We look for materialist

reasons, like profit and power. We can

not say what part of individuals'

behavior is attributed to chemical

imbalance as long as we have a

culture influencing them that teaches

and encourages oppression. In

general it is not a psychological

disease that causes people to do

these things, and pretending that it is

only leads people down the wrong

path to end the problems in the world.

In the end the evil Angel wasn't put

in therapy: they killed her, so at least

Charlie's Angels got that right.

MIM recommends sending us your

$20 to help produce revolutionary

feminist action films instead of

spending your money seeing these

Summer softcore porn movies reviewed

Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft.

MIM Notes 287 · September 15, 2003 · Page 3

FILM MISSES THE

POINT OF

IMPORTANT

CHAPTER IN

AMERIKAN

RADICAL HISTORY

The Weather Underground
Directed by Sam Green and Bill
Siegel
2003

This documentary about the radical

group that split from Students for a

Democratic Society (SDS) in 1969 to take

up armed struggle against the U.$.

government includes interviews with

former Weather Underground (WU)

members and clips from the 1960s and

1970s. The footage and interviews

provide useful information but the

perspective of the film is useless at best

and reactionary at times.

For MIM the WU is an example of the

failure of the strategy of focoism. In a

nutshell, the idea behind focoism is that

violent revolutionary acts, carried out by

a few people, will inspire the masses to

join the struggle.(1) In adopting this

strategy, the WU discarded their own

scientific class analysis which explained

why armed struggle in the United $tates

was out of the question then (and now).

Instead, they justified their actions with

a version of Judeo-Christian morality.

That said, there are aspects of the WU

that we like. They were part of a general

movement that correctly broke with the

old-style Communist Party, which they

saw as reformist and irrelevant. The

Weatherman's 1969 line on the Euro-

Amerikan working class was similar to

MIM's, namely that "virtually all of the

white working class has short-ranged

privileges from imperialism, which are not

false privileges but very real ones which

give them an edge of vested interest and

tie them to a certain extent to the

imperialists, especially when the latter are

in a relatively prosperous phase."(2)

This film concludes the WU was a

failure but fails to analyze the reasons

for its failure or discuss the implications

for revolutionary organizing today.

Instead it relies on former SDS president

Todd Gitlin for analytic commentary.

Gitlin criticizes the WU for being

charismatic and then compares their "evil"

to that of, in his words, other great "evil"

people in the world, specifically Hitler,

Stalin and Mao. Gitlin is heavily featured

in the film to provide perspective and

analysis, but in reality he doesn't say much

of any use.(3)

In interviews the audience is introduced

to members of the WU who look back on

their activism with a range of reactions.

Several of the people featured in the film

turned themselves in to the police in the

mid-1970s. They escaped prosecution

when it came out that the FBI had used

illegal methods to collect evidence against

them. MIM is pleased with this outcome,

but we note that this is a clear example of

white privilege. Black Panther Party

leaders were being killed or put in prison

by the same FBI COINTELPRO

program without so much as a peep from

the Amerikan public, while many

members of the white members of the

WU got off free. One former member

commented on this, noting that while the

FBI did harass WU people at home--

hanging one outside a window by his feet,

for example--this was nothing compared

to the murders of Black people going on

at the same time.

Mark Rudd, one of the WU founders

and a former SDS president, now

teaching math at a community college,

says he has mixed emotions about what

he did. He does a good job representing

the atrocities of the Amerikan war in

Vietnam and the compelling need to take

some action to stop the massacre. He puts

the SDS and the WU in the context of

the revolutionary activism of the Black

Panther Party and other groups in the

U.$. and around the world.

Rudd says that during those years there

was not a time when he wasn't thinking

about Vietnam. It may be hard for people

in Amerika to understand this, especially

those who didn't live through the 1960s,

but it was a very radicalizing thing for

people to see Amerika blatantly murdering

hundreds of thousands--eventually

millions--of people in Vietnam. And it

inspired many people to commit their lives

to stopping it however they thought

possible. SDS grew to a group with more

than 100,000 members. The film contains

some graphic footage of Amerikan

Weather Underground pic foggy

CHOMSKY ON 9-11 AND

HOW TO REBUT THOSE

SPEAKING OF MAO'S AND

STALIN'S `CRIMES'

9-11
by Noam Chomsky
NY: NY, Seven Stories Press,
2002, 140 pp. pb

Reviewed by MIM, 5 Aug 2003

In this book we see Noam Chomsky

serve as a talking head after 9-11. The

demand for interviews with him after 9-

11 was great and the number of people

needing to hear a talking head to place

the world in context even greater. In this

book, Chomsky handles really basic

elements of understanding 9-11. As a

result, we are going to pick on some of

the tangents he raised as more interesting

to us at MIM.

Referring to the World Court ruling on

Nicaragua vs. the United States, Noam

Chomsky says that the United $tates

should have honored the World Court

ruling that called Uncle $am "terrorist"

and after 9-11 it should have pursued the

matter the way Nicaragua did in 1985:

"It is worth remembering--particularly

since it has been so uniformly

suppressed--that the U.S. is the only

country that was condemned for

international terrorism by the World Court

and that rejected a Security Council

resolution calling on states to observe

international law.

"The United States continues

international terrorism. There are also

what in comparison are minor examples.

. . .I didn't see anybody point out that

Beirut also looks like Beirut, and part of

the reason is that the Reagan

administration had set off a terrorist

bombing there in 1985 that was very much

like Oklahoma City, a truck bombing

outside a mosque timed to kill the

maximum number of people as they left.

It killed 80 and wounded 250, mostly

women and children, according to a report

in the Washington Post 3 years later. The

terrorist bombing was aimed at a Muslim

cleric whom they didn't like and whom

they missed."(p. 44) With this example,

Chomsky demonstrates a high degree of

internationalism, by telling a whole

nation's people some uncomfortable facts

about themselves that they have to know

if they expect other peoples to get along

Existential `crimes' versus scientific `crime rates'

Continued on page 5...

Continued on page 9...

The Environmental Protection Agency

(EPA) lied when it said the air around

"ground zero" in New York was safe to

breathe, according to a report by EPA

Inspector General Nikki L. Tinsley

released on Aug 21. In fact, the air

contained elevated levels of toxins like

PCBs, soot and dioxin more than six

months after 911.(1) Almost half of the

firemen and clean-up workers who spent

long hours on the site without adequate

protective gear now have respiratory

problems, as do hundreds of workers

cleaning offices and apartments.(2)

The report claimed that the Bush

Administration told the EPA to tone down

its air quality reports to calm public fears.

For example, the administration convinced

the EPA "to omit guidance for cleaning

indoor spaces and tips on potential health

effects from airborne dust containing

asbestos, lead, glass fibers and

concrete."(1)

Marianne L. Horinko, the EPA's acting

administrator, justified the government's

actions, saying that the scientific evidence

was not 100% clear. Rather than confuse

the public with contradictory claims,

Horinko argued, the administration

wanted clear-cut action. "The White

House's role was basically to say, `Look,

we've got data coming in from

everywhere. What benchmarks are we

going to use, how are we going to

communicate this data? We can't have

this Tower of Babel on the data.'"(1)

This is at heart an anti-scientific

argument, which relies on ignorance and

all-Amerikan, father-knows-best

authoritarianism. When talking about

observational studies there is no such

thing as 100% scientific certainty. The

best we can talk about is which of several

hypotheses is best supported by available

data. It may have been 90% likely that

10,000 people would be come ill if no

precautions were taken; it may have been

1% likely that 900,000 people would

become ill. In either case, the risks should

have been weighed seriously, and not

dismissed out of hand because the

consequences were not 100% certain.(3)

Key air measurements were not

available the week after 911, yet rather

than make an informed assessment based

on what we know about the health risks

associated with airborne PCBs, asbestos,

etc.--or even say the matter was under

further study--the EPA announced on

September 18 2001 that the air in New

York was safe to breathe.

The Bush administration is using the

probabilistic nature of risk assessment to

chuck science out the window altogether

and replace it with the will of the leader.

George Bush wanted to do this so damnit

he did it, to hell with all those pencilnecks

and their hemming and hawing. Not

coincidentally, Hitler and Mussolini

promoted such ideas as well.(4)

The Inspector General's recommended

that EPA public announcements reflect

science of the matter--to which MIM

says, "duh, no shit, you think so?" The

fact that the report had to remind the EPA

of this indicates the EPA was not basing

their recommendation on science but on

something else: electoral politics, say, or

the needs of monopoly capital. Of course,

the EPA is not alone in this. Other health

regulatory agencies tweak their

recommendations for the same reasons.

For example, Marion Nestle, who was

Report: EPA misled public on post-911 health risks

Continued on page 8...

MIM Notes 287 · September 15, 2003 · Page 4

Hearts of Iron
http://www.paradoxplaza.com/
hearts.asp
2003

by RC666

HOI is an excellent WWII simulation

for those who wish to understand what

decisions were made leading up to and

during WWII, why they were made, and

if it was possible to make better decisions.

This game is of particular relevance to

MIM because it allows the player to play

a large selection of countries, from fascist

Italy or Germany to "democratic"

America and Britain to the socialist

USSR.

The player can choose to start the game

in 1936, or later in the timeline. Events

proceed as they did historically, except

for the potential changes that you are

responsible for. Starting as the Soviet

Union in 1936 is a challenge because you

start with a very low IC [Industrial

Capacity.] The game has several

measures of your economic/military

capability such as Industrial Capacity,

Coal, Steel, Rubber, Oil, Manpower, and

Diplomatic Points (a score-like

representation of your diplomatic

leverage.)

Players must carefully allocate their

industrial capability. How much goes to

consumer goods, supply production,

technological research, and military

production? Consumer goods are

necessary to satisfy the populace and

therefore stave off rebellion. Fortunately,

in HOI, communist societies require only

half the amount of consumer goods that

other countries do. This industrial

allocation simulation is a small

representation of a command economy.

Technological research is obviously

important, and the player will have to

choose research paths. Are you aiming

for nuclear weapons by 1941 or heavy

tanks by 1940? Or do you concentrate

on ways to synthesize strategic materials

and accelerate production. It is a

balancing act, especially because

technological research is just one area to

allocate resources to.

If you play as Stalin/USSR, you will be

presented with several unique problems/

choices. For example, the game asks you

if you would prefer to support the Spanish

revolution with some of your valuable and

scarce material supplies (as the USSR

did historically) or let the "revisionists"

(as the game puts it!) hang in the wind.

Additionally, the game periodically asks

you if you want to purge officers. If you

do, you lose the services of valuable

officers (following the typical bourgeois

line) but if you don't conduct purges, the

"dissent" in the country rises! (Dissent

leads to revolt) This is accurate since

Stalin was trying to purge traitors, fear-

mongers, and rabble-rousers in order to

prevent large internal strife in the USSR.

You can choose to accept or refuse the

Stalin/Hitler pact. Accepting it is

advantageous because of the relatively

easy territorial gains it allows. Being

ideologically/morally "pure" will hurt you

materially.

Besides use of the military to conquer

countries (this aspect of the game

resembles a `triphibious' version of Risk

and you can assign leaders such as

Zhukov to particular units), there is a wide

variety of diplomatic methods that the

player can use to take over countries. The

player can stage a coup to replace a hostile

government with a friendly government,

you can ask for military access, you can

install puppet governments, make

alliances, and perform other such actions.

Besides international politics, the player

will have to deal with all sorts of shadow

cabinets and political opposition.

Altogether, these features interestingly

portray the backroom political and

diplomatic maneuvers that can be as

deadly and effective as a military

conquest.

This game is potentially a tool for

combating idealism or stupid views

regarding the history of the USSR in the

WWII period. It shows the difficult

decisions that the Soviet Union had to

make. Perhaps the player would like to

not conduct purges and forego the rapid

industrialization. Then she could fight

Hitler's mechanized divisions with calvary

units while Trots stir up trouble behind

the lines. (At 60% dissent, the government

can be overthrown and replaced with a

new type.)

Unfortunately, this reviewer had a

buggy version of the game and no ability

to patch it. I have only been able to

explore some of the complexities of the

game and there are probably more

interesting finds inside. Anyone interested

in this game should pick up a copy and

add to what I've learned from the game.

Video game review: Hearts of Iron

he was in office at the time.

This is the narrow mentality of the

bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie under

capitalism. They want to change leaders

in response to economic downturns rather

than using science to understand that

under capitalism economic cycles are

inevitable. Without centralized planning

there will always be overproduction and

speculation on un-needed goods. And this

leads to economic crises. A planned

economy does not leave room for the

waste of overproduction by taking the

guesswork out of the system: goods are

only produced to fill needs.

Pornography in the press

The race is being mocked by domestic

and international press as a circus, in part

because entrants include a porn king, a

womyn selling thong underwear from her

web site,(3) former TV star Gary

Coleman, and many other similarly

unlikely candidates. MIM sees the focus

on the California election as something

of a failure on the part of capitalist

reporters. Sure, the California recall is a

decadent farce, but is that so different

from the "serious" national elections?

Readers will recall that for much of the

last Presidential election Al Gore's

wardrobe was a major issue. In fact, the

California recall elections are slightly

more democratic, as the state will pay

for a campaign booklet that goes to 11

million households in the state. Each

candidate can publish a 250-word

statement in the booklet, including a link

to their website. One candidate is using

CALIFORNIA RECALL: A FARCE, BUT NOT UNUSUAL

his website to agitate for lower student

fees for California universities and

colleges, acknowledging this agitation is

his main goal, as he has no chance of

winning.(4)

Class and nation key to
politics in Amerika

Schwarzenegger, famous actor most

known for his role in the Terminator

movies, entered the race for California

governor and within a few days emerged

as the front runner. He is a staunch

Republican and an old friend of George

Bush Senior. Schwarzenegger is just one

of several millionaires who joined the race,

where money will be a major factor as

people like Davis have not been amassing

campaign budgets and will not have the

usual financial advantage of long-term

politicians. The fame Ah-nold enjoys from

his acting career has given him prominent

media attention. Fame and wealth can

buy political offices in Amerika.

Schwarzenegger is also just one of

several foreign born candidates. Born

and raised in Austria, he moved to

Amerika 35 years ago and has emerged

as a financially and politically powerful

republican. That the voters in California

would support propositions like 187 (on

behalf of which Schwarzenegger actively

campaigned) barring illegal immigrants

from receiving state services, but support

foreign born candidates like

Schwarzenegger proves what MIM has

been saying about national oppression.

Foreign born white people can enjoy the

privileges of Amerikan life without

difficulties, while those from oppressed

Continued from page 1...

nations can count of discrimination,

oppression and imprisonment.

Even with so many candidates MIM is

confident this election will not result in

any improvement for the condition of the

majority of the world's people. Governors

are a part of the imperialist system,

specifically helping to perpetuate and prop

up that system at the state level. Anyone

who genuinely works to undermine

imperialism can not succeed within that

system.

Notes:
1. Sacramento Bee, August 11, 2003
2. Financial Times, August 11, 2003
3. Guardian, August 4, 2003
4. http://www.wattsforgovernor.com/index.asp

Schwarzenegger as Conan the Barbarian

MIM Notes 287 · September 15, 2003 · Page 5

The following is taken from MIM's

new SDS history page, http://

www.etext.info/Politics/MIM/sds/

index.html.

The Students for a Democratic Society

(SDS) was the pre-eminent student

movement organization of U.$. history.

Active from the mid-1960s to early 1970s,

the problem with the SDS is that its history

is increasingly dominated by social-

democrats who did not like its increasing

radicalization throughout the 1960s.

Joining the social-democrats who never

agreed with SDS are certain less

important members of SDS who have

since sold out and also many SDS leaders

themselves who got jobs and families and

now sing a different tune.

SDS did not start out by deeply

antagonizing the existing propagandists of

the status quo. In retrospect, many more

conservative elements are rather fond of

the "Port Huron Statement" toward the

beginning of SDS history. In contrast,

MIM puts more emphasis on the high tide

reached in 1969, with the two years

before and after 1969 the most interesting

to us.

In a very few years SDS "moved far

left." There were three main factors in

the background that led to the

radicalization of SDS proved by surveys

that showed one million students

considered themselves "revolutionary."

1) The Vietnam War left anti-

communists ranging from Michael

Harrington and to his right defending a

war of genocide. Much as in World War

I, the events of war left the bourgeois

respectable elements talking about

"socialism" behind in the dust as far as

people concerned with basic justice

including internationalism were

concerned.

2) Mao was preparing the grounds

ideologically by opposing Khruschev's

"peaceful coexistence" and "peaceful

road" to power. By 1962, Mao was

successful in getting the Progressive

Labor Party (PLP) to break away from

the Communist Party USA. Likewise,

Mao was meeting with individual Blacks

including Robert Williams.

3) A stirring among Black people in

general that resulted in the civil rights and

Black Power movements.

By 1966, the PLP was infiltrating the

SDS. Huey Newton was haranguing

students to buy Mao's books and the

Vietnam War was only sending more and

more body bags back.

Perhaps even more important than

observations [about political trends within

SDS] are some of the practical facts of

life of the SDS. One, students have to

realize that it may be easier to be

revolutionary in college when thousands

of other students are nearby, at least some

of which are wondering about the same

things. Instead of putting all their energy

into denouncing other students who do

not share their views, student

revolutionaries should think hard about the

future, how they are going to sustain their

revolutionary politics after college. SDS

did not sustain itself. The parties formed

out of its midst are pitiful in comparison

to the original SDS in size and energy.

Two, as SDS proves, trying to evade

struggles over principle can at most put

off a split a couple years. Rather than

putting off struggles over profound

questions in the name of a false unity,

students should fight as hard as they can

for everyone to advance their thinking as

much as possible and hope that the most

correct position garners the most

supporters.

There is no one history of SDS that

MIM is happy with. When MIM

predecessors were active in the anti-

apartheid movement at Harvard

University, the SDS posters were still up

in the offices we used. We were able to

piece together some of the relics of the

movement ourselves, and former SDS

organizers worked with us from the very

beginning by attending our events and

tabling for their causes, but we invite

others to help us turn our SDS web page

into a complete archive of history and

analysis. In this regard, we do not expect

all material in this archive to have the

hard-edge Maoism of the vast majority

of the late SDS. We do not seek to

suppress the non-Maoist aspects of the

SDS history. Along these lines, we can

expect that MIM will eventually review

all the books connected to SDS already

existing. If anyone would like to put

forward memories of SDS as testimonials

for our archive, we welcome them.

Obviously we are interested in the

questions of sustaining revolutionary

commitment and how people thought they

were going to preserve unity and their

success or failure, but other topics are

welcome.

MIM starts Students for a Democratic Society history project

Contributions invited!

massacres in Vietnam as well as the

murder of Fred Hampton, doing the

service of presenting this history of

Amerika.

The WU members believed that white

people needed to step up to fight Amerika

and put themselves at risk the same way

Black people were. They saw the SDS

stance as too pacifist and wanted to "bring

the war home". And they believed that a

revolution was possible in Amerika, so

they determined to contribute to it by

attacking Amerikan institutions with

bombs. They were careful to never kill

any people, but they bombed two dozen

buildings during the few years they were

active, including the Pentagon.

The WU demonstrated very clearly that

focoist violence does not succeed. As

time went on the WU became more and

more isolated rather than gaining more

mass support. Even Fred Hampton of the

Black Panther Party publicly condemned

the actions of the WU saying that they

may be well intentioned but their strategy

was all wrong. In the end they succeeded

in bring down greater FBI surveillance

and repression and removing their ability

to do effective educational work amongst

the people.

The movie also touches on another

lesson we can learn from the WU: in 1969

shortly after they formed they spent a

summer going out in the cities amongst

the working youth with the theory that

these people would be more revolutionary

than the student youth. This theory clearly

comes from the revisionist idea that the

workers in Amerika are proletarian and

Weather Underground pic foggy

so have great revolutionary potential.

They gave up this work quickly but the

movie doesn't bother to explore why.

MIM hopes people who see this will draw

the correct conclusion that the white

workers in Amerika are petty bourgeois

and as a class have little interest in

revolution--a conclusion the WU also

adopted for a time.

One former WU member, Brian

Flanagan, who now owns a bar, provides

the most reactionary perspective on their

history. He seems unclear why he joined

the WU, but he is very clear that he thinks

what they did was wrong. He compares

the WU actions to the 911 attack on the

World Trade Center and the Okalahoma

City bombing (ignoring the fact that the

WU never even killed anyone).

Naomi Jaffe, on the other hand,

provides some good perspective on the

actions of the WU saying "We felt that

doing nothing in a period of repressive

violence was itself a form of violence.

That's really the part I think is hardest

for people to understand." This is correct,

and she goes on to say that if she had the

chance again she would do it again but

try to correct mistakes. (Unfortunately the

film does not go into what she considers

those mistakes to be.) She later qualifies

her commitment by saying she would do

it again if she didn't have kids and a

family, inadvertently pointing out one

reason why white