MIM Notes 303 · June 1, 2004 · Page 1
MIM Notes
JUne 1, 2004, Nº 303
The Official Newsletter of the Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM)
Free
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Uncle $am undertook a series of
dizzying moves to confuse the public
about Iraq in mid-May. Of course there
are the prison torture cover-up tactics,
with 1600 photos including murder and
rape not released, but here we want to
talk about how the government is trying
to pacify the public by leading it toward
its own fondest illusions.
The first move was by imperialist Colin
Powell, the Secretary of State, who said
that if the new Iraqi stooge regime coming
in on July 1 wants, U$ troops will leave.
Powell also said that he was sure they
would not leave,(1) but only some papers
and outlets covered that aspect.
Powell admitted that the new regime
of July 1, 2004 will be a U.$-lackey
regime: "Well, I think we have some say
in who should be receiving governmental
authority. We now have governmental
authority under the Coalition Provisional
Authority. Before we yield that, we have
to have some level of confidence of the
individuals to whom we are giving the
country back are prepared to act in the
best interest of the Iraqi people."(2) That
is not to mention that U$ military forces
will continue to operate, arrest people and
award contracts. It's such a dismal area
that even the U.$. Government
propaganda radio program admits that
Iraqi sovereignty will have flaws.(3)
Powell also acknowledged that 82% of
Iraqis want U$ troops to leave now.(2)
Moreover, Powell admitted that his UN
speech with photos of supposed WMD
sites in Iraq in 2003 was a load of manure:
"`When I made that presentation in
February 2003, it was based on the best
information that the Central Intelligence
Agency made available to me,' Powell
said yesterday on NBC's `Meet the
Press.'
"`It turned out that the sourcing was
inaccurate and wrong and, in some cases,
deliberately misleading. And for that, I am
disappointed, and I regret it,' he said."(4)
The CIA and military intelligence are also
taking a beating on the Iraqi prison torture,
so this is a question of which of these
factions of butchers is going to claim
successfully to be innocent angels.
Colin Powell admitted that the Iraqi
torture photos reminded him of the My
Lai massacre in Vietnam. On 16 March
1968, Amerikan soldiers massacred 300
unarmed Vietnamese civilians, most of
them women, children and elderly.
Yet after conciliatory statements by
Bush and Powell and after some cosmetic
orders to stop torturing prisoners, the truth
still came out: U$ troops are to stay in
Iraq "indefinitely," according to Assistant
Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz. He
Bay Area activists have pledged to shut
down the Biotechnology Convention
scheduled for June 6-9 in San Francisco.
The slogan of the protest is: "No War on
Iraq, No War on the Commons!" Many
anti-war organizations, such as Direct
Action to Stop the War, are taking
leadership roles in this protest. According
to their press release, "Organizers define
the commons as everything needed to
support healthy life on earth; from air,
water, and food, to public spaces, culture,
and genes."(1)
MIM supports organizing that prioritizes
basic survival rights--such as the right
FOX, CNN, NBC,
ETC. SHOULD
BE TRIED AS
CRIMINALS
Amerikan "Freedom
of Press" overrated
Amerikans claim they support invasions
like the Iraq war to foster "freedom"--
yet they turn a blind eye to the absence
of basic survival rights like healthy food
and clean water for billions of people.
These backwards concerns prioritize
individualist "freedoms," despite the fact
that the U$ press is only "free" relative
to the excessively repressive regimes that
Amerika supports around the globe.
Two years following the September 11th
attacks and 6 months after the recent
invasion of Iraq, 7 in 10 Amerikans still
believed that the ousted Iraqi leader
Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11.(1)
Even though the Bush administration had
long admitted that it had no evidence for
claims of a connection, the government
fed media did such a good job propagating
such lies that the idea easily stuck in the
racist Amerikan mindset. After the United
$tates declared victory in Iraq and after
almost two months of searching for
Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs)
in a U$ occupied land to no avail, 9 out of
10 people still believed Saddam had or
was close to having WMDs.(2)
The fact is, while many Amerikans
openly acknowledge that the war is good
in that it will bring cheaper oil to the
United $tates, it would have been
impossible to gather majority support
without linking an attack on the United
$tates or at least the threat of a future
attack by Saddam. The U$ chose the safe
route and utilized both. As a result over
10,000 people have died, hundreds of
thousands have become refugees and the
U$ has a new colony.(3)
The propagation of false threats and
lies about current events in order to stir
up support for militarism is a crime against
the people of the world. The Soviet Union
recognized this, passing a law after WWII
making it a serious crime to promote
militarism.(4) The people behind Fox,
NBC, CNN and all major media outlets
in the United $tates would have been put
on trial based on the crimes that they
U.$. admits troops to stay in Iraq, again
Charles Graner, an Army reservist who works as a guard at SCI-Greene Supermax prison
in Pennsylania when he's not torturing overseas, shown with the body of an Iraqi
prisoner murdered at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. We exposed torture at SCI-Greene in
1998, including naked beatings videotaped by guards, all while Graner was working
there (see MIM Notes 302).
Activists attack biotech convention
to healthy food and basic medicines--
over the "right" to profit. Science should
not be bought and sold by the imperialists.
It should serve the people.
The anti-biotech activists appropriately
link the biotech companies to the war on
Iraq. They start off strong: "From the
beginning of the anti-war movement,
Direct Action to Stop the War has targeted
the corporate interests behind the war --
that's why we shut down the San
Continued on page 4...
Continued on page 8...
Continued on page 8...
MIM Notes 303 · June 1, 2004 · 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
Letters
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
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accepts submissions and critiques from anyone. The editors reserve the right to edit
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Dear MIM Notes:
The unions got together this year and
held a single demo for May Day in
Montreal. The overwhelmingly white
crowd (I saw few Black faces and not a
single recognizably East Asian or Native
American one) must have been in the low
five figures. Very little literature was to
be found: only one group had a table, and
two or three others were handing out
leaflets.
The focus of the rally (and the subject
of the only leaflets that I received) was
clearly the Charest government, whose
planned cuts in social services in Québec
are unpopular. Issues of importance to
people other than the local labor
aristocracy were hardly represented at
all. A number of people did carry signs
calling for the removal of Kanadian troops
from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Palestine, but
well over 99% of the signs were about
the demands of bourgeoisified workers
in Québec.
Tailing the thousands of labor
aristocrats--figuratively but also literally
tailing them, at the very end of the
parade!--were the various self-styled
communists and socialists, none of them
especially red: the World Socialist Web
Site (Trotskyite), the Parti communiste du
Québec (something like the CP=U$A),
the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-
Leninist) (ditto), the Parti marxiste-
léniniste du Québec (apparently a local
branch of the CPCML), and some
organization that supports Cuba and Che
Guevara. I had wanted to talk with the
Parti communiste révolutionnaire
(comités d'organisation), which calls itself
Maoist and which seems to be the closest
thing to MIM in Canada--the best of a
bad lot, shall we say. They must have
been present, as they had announced their
intentions to show up and had spray-
painted "Let's embrace communism!" in
French on the sidewalk, but I didn't see
them. Pity. I had wanted to engage them
on the subject of the imperialist-country
working class, which they regard as
proletarian (and exploited) while admitting
here and there in their program that these
"proletarians" are in the main strongly
allied with the imperialists that supposedly
"exploit" them.
I had hoped to get enough material for
an article. Too bad there's so little of
political interest to report.
--Comrade in Montreal,
1 May 2004
MIM received a copy of this letter
along with a petition containing
signatures calling for shutting down
the SHU control units. Information and
copies of this petition can be
downloaded from MIM's website at
www.etext.info/Politics/MIM/agitation/
prisons.
Dear Governor Schwarzenegger:
I have never written to anyone in your
position before. This is my first time. But
I feel you may be able to help this situation
or at least you need to be aware of some
very awful problems in our prison system
in California.
Our son unfortunately is in Corcoran
State Prison SHU confinement. He has
been trying to tell us in letters about how
awful they are treated, however, when
he does write, he is punished even more
by the guards there. He has been locked
up like this for over 1 year, in a small cell
23 hours a day, no contact with anyone,
no phone calls, food is slid thru the door,
no exercise, it has caused him to recently
be hospitalized with a mental breakdown.
We just went to visit him (no contact) 1
hour over a phone and we drove 6 hours
to get there. He said that he is sure they
have been poisoning his food, he said that
after he would eat, he would lose his
breath and could not breath right, then
feel real funny in his head. He has stopped
eating anything with gravy in it.
I have been looking on the internet and
reading some very very disturbing things
about SHU in the prisons, these letters
are from other family members and also
from former inmates. These facts are
true I now believe my son. If you just
type in California Prison SHU on the
search engine, you will see what I mean.
Is there anything you can do? Please,
this is cruel and inhuman punishment.
With all that is going on in Iraq with
prisoners there, our own sons and
daughters have worse punishment here!
Please help!
--Sincerely,
Mr & Mrs [name removed]
San Marcos, CA
May 11, 2004
Report from Montreal May Day
Parents describe son's treatment in California prison
MIM Notes 303 · June 1, 2004 · Page 3
The British monopoly capitalist
newspaper Independent reported that
progress toward UN goals set at the year
2000 Millenium Summit has been much
slower than planned. 40 experts working
for the World Economic Forum (WEF)
gave world leaders a score of between 3
and 4 out of 10 for progress since 2000.
MIM is not surprised, because global
capitalism is not organized to meet
planning goals--even those of a bourgeois
organization like the UN. Capitalist
development does not work for the
exploited, who make up 90% of the
world's population; capitalist charity also
does not work.
"The proportion of hungry people is
likely to increase in the Middle East, sub-
Saharan Africa and south Asia by 2015.
A `devastating' 800 million people go
regularly without food around the world,
including a third of pre-school age children
in developing nations, the WEF said.
More than half the world's countries will
fail to provide universal primary education
by 2015, following a shortfall in the
financial donations required to hit the
target.
"The HIV/Aids epidemic is
`outstripping the bubonic plague of
medieval Europe as the most deadly
pandemic in history.' The first report by
the WEF's Global Governance Initiative
also warned that there was little evidence
that the world was making a `serious
effort' to cut greenhouse gas
emissions,"(1) the Independent said. The
Independent should have added, "so much
for the victory of global capitalism and
the notion that capitalism works."
The Amerikan public has a seriously
skewed view of how much "aid" it is
giving the world. Most of the "aid" is
simply military purchases for foreign
governments and military-related
contracts for Amerikan corporations
relabeled as aid.
What aid that does get through destroys
Third World agriculture. Even in
education, non-profit organization Oxfam
has pointed out that the United $tates gives
a total of a paltry $300 million for
education aid in the Third World where
education is most lacking. In contrast, the
United $tates approved $87 billion for the
Iraq War.(2)
The World Bank has joined in the
criticism of the rich countries, as an effort
to remake its image of oppression and
restriction of Third World economies: "`I
suggested humorously the other day that
if you spend $900 billion on development
you probably wouldn't need to spend more
than $50 billion on defense,'"(2) said the
World Bank president James Wolfensohn.
He was alluding to the global $900 billion
spent on the military each year, half by
the United $tates.
The original goals set in 2000 aimed "to
halve world poverty by 2015 through
education, empowerment of women, a
reduction in child mortality and beating
HIV/AIDS and other diseases."(2) In this
process, the World Bank is now taking
up the pose of acting as the global
Keynesian: capitalist pump primer.
The UN asked for 0.7 percent of the
national income of the richest countries
for UN goals, but only five countries
answered.(2) In point of fact, even this
approach will fail, because corruption and
politics enter at two stages. The aid-givers
turn it into contracts for their own
countries' businesses. The U.$. puppet
regimes that are the aid-receivers siphon
off the money into Swiss bank accounts.
Only socialist revolution ending
exploitation can bring humyn
development. If the imperialist country
people could get their governments off
the backs of the Third World people, there
would be no need for charity.
Notes:
1. http://news.independent.co.uk/world/
politics/story.jsp?story=513620
2. http://www.reuters.com/locales/
newsArticle.jsp?type=businessNews&locale=en_IN&storyID=4931205
In April 2004, France closed its last coal
mine where 400 workers had been
working. At their peak, French coal mines
employed 300,000 people.(1) As
capitalism matured and turned into
imperialism, such work was no longer
necessary.
The BBC pointed out that historically
there was a strong socialist and
UN development goals are fading, as usual
communist influence in the mines. Miners
were also active in the resistance war
against Nazi occupation. All that is the
past. Karl Marx considered miners part
of the "productive sector" of workers
producing "surplus-value" that underlies
all profits, interest and rent (this last one
as conceived by economists). The
closing of France's last coal mines means
that is one less source of profits for the
French imperialists as pointed to by Marx.
Today, the French government has
pensioned off those who worked 20 or
more years in coal mines. According to
Marx, such pensions and various paper-
shuffling jobs without a basis in the
productive sector would eat into profits
and cause economic crisis. Imperialism
can meet this crisis either by expanding
through war into the Third World to
further exploit people there or by a self-
destructive process in the home country
involving war and repression.
The existence of a mere 400 coal miners
also proves that even if these workers
had not been overpaid, there is insufficient
France closes its last coal mine
Continued on page 5...
As usual, the United $tates is supporting
backward rulers in a Third World country.
The New York Times admitted on April
25th that Uncle $am has provided $22
million in military aid to the King of Nepal
to combat the People's War underway
there.
King Gyanendra dismissed Nepal's
prime minister--another schemer--19
months ago. The Maoists are demanding
a republican form of government. The
king has also promised to restore civilian
rule in a year while saying that past
political leaders in parliament were too
corrupt and inept to rule.
Lately the New York Times and BBC
have been agitated about what is
happening in Nepal. The BBC seemed
to threaten openly that England would pull
out its support if the king did not
modernize the government to be a
republic.
Like the bizarre cult around the Dalai
Lama in Tibet, the king is now the
beneficiary of religious beliefs. The Hindu
god Vishnu is supposedly incarnated in
Nepal's king. King Gyanendra came to
power because of the June 2001 suicide-
massacre of the rest of his family,
including the previous king. This massacre
is a mystery to the people, as described
in previous MIM Notes issues (e.g.
MN288).
The New York Times is also talking
about the son of the current king. "Crown
Prince Paras," says the Times, "is widely
distrusted. A notorious drinker, he was
known for carousing in Katmandu
nightclubs and for being involved in four
fatal hit-and-run accidents, including one
that killed a popular singer. In 2000,
500,000 Nepalis signed a petition
demanding that he be prosecuted. It was
never acted upon."(1)
The Great Powers are so nervous that
the New York Times quoted a senior
Indian diplomat saying even the
diplomats do not know what King
Gyanendra wants.(1) Apparently the
imperialists are afraid to kill off King
Gyanendra and have the Crown Prince
come to power. The imperialists are also
afraid the Maoists would advance if the
king's bond with his military is broken.
On April 22nd, the king made overtures
to other sectors of the ruling class in
Nepal embittered by his sacking of the
prime minister in 2002. The imperialists
hope to see all the semi-feudal and
bourgeois elements of Nepal working
together against the Maoists, but the
economic organization of semi-feudalism
and dependent capitalism is never broad
enough to support a general alliance of
exploiters.
Both the Amerikan and British
imperialist press are admitting that their
stooges in power in Nepal are in a bind
and that it's hard to see how Nepal can
go forward. MIM can supply the answer
they lack: the mode of production needs
to advance in Nepal. The Maoists are
right, and that's why the political
alternatives seem so ludicrous. For
unnamed geopolitical reasons, the British
have said that it is impossible for a
resolution of the People's War by violence
by either the regime's side or the people's
side. The U$ State Department has said
the same thing and has also called for a
better "human-rights" record for the king
and military. This is all just rhetoric
disguising the fact that Uncle $am always
sides with the most backward and corrupt
people that can be found and then attempts
to meddle in every Third World country.
We hope that the Greens and others
mythologizing exotic Eastern kingdoms
come down from their hobby-horses to
look at reality in Nepal. The educated
people and the peasants seeking land
reform do not want the theocracy
anymore. The Greens should not be
resisting Maoism, supporting Uncle $am
and forcing Nepal's people to live a
backward life just to suit the spiritual
longings of hippies and grubby yuppies
covering for their career professionalism
and lack of political thoroughness.
The Greens recently republished the
1957 book by Leopold Kohr titled "The
Breakdown of Nations," which says
repeatedly that Nepal is so wonderful
because, like many other countries, it is
small, and that is why it never gets aid
from Washington. The book reappeared
in 2001 and by 2002 proved false. Nepal
receives military aid from Uncle $am. In
the year 2000, I$rael and 29 countries from
the ex-Soviet bloc and Third World
received $5.2 billion in military aid (3)
designed to give Uncle $am lucrative
supply contracts and influence with
various lackeys. Contrary to the Green
political image, most of those countries
are very small, with Egypt and the
Philippines being the largest.
It is very possible that the imperialists
are considering dumping King Gyanendra
to find a better stooge. Yet, we at MIM
would point out to any lackeys-in-waiting
the record of supply and demand for
lackeys by U$ imperialism. U$
Maoism is the only modern road forward in Nepal
Continued on page 4...
MIM Notes 303 · June 1, 2004 · Page 4
Francisco financial district the day after
the invasion. Now that Americans are
getting a true and terrible glimpse of US
tyranny in Iraq, while Halliburton,
Bechtel, Chevron, and others skim millions
from this brutal occupation, it's time to
connect the dots and expose how
unchecked corporate power is the real
culprit -- working through groups like the
G8, they usurp democracy, oppress people,
and appropriate the commons both at
home and abroad."(1)
Still, this statement fails to name the
"real culprit," Amerikan imperialism. By
talking about "unchecked corporate
power" instead of monopoly capitalism
and imperialism, the organizers coddle the
illusions that imperialism can be reformed,
that it's possible to go back to the "good
old days" of free-market capitalism. As
we describe in our review of Greens
Ralph Nader and Leopold Kohr in this
issue, even if it were possible to go back
to those mythical days, small-scale "local"
capitalism inevitably leads to
concentration and monopoly. Only
socialism can end capitalist exploitation,
devastation of the environment and
degradation of humyn health. Only the
dictatorship of the proletariat can protect
survival rights from those who think they
have the "right" to profit from denying
others those survival rights.
Some who oppose biotechnology do so
from the Luddite perspective that all
technology is bad. There appears to be a
strong tendency towards this in the
"Reclaim the Commons" movement,
which openly proclaims that we must
"resist biotech." For Marxists, technology
is not inherently bad. The issue is who
controls technology. Under capitalism, the
development and implementation of
Activists attack biotech convention
technology is driven by profit, not humyn
needs. That's why a half-dozen Viagra
knock-offs have appeared on the market
in the last year, while less than 1% of
medicines developed over the last 25
years were for diseases like malaria,
sleeping sickness, and tuberculosis, which
mostly affect poor people in oppressed
countries.(4)
This campaign around the biotech
summit is an example where we Maoists
are tactically on the same side as the
Luddites. In terms of their protest's main
message--placing people before
profits--the Luddites are correct relative
to the Monsantos of the world. However,
pre-scientific back-to-nature mysticism
cannot defeat imperialism in the long run.
In some cases, this neo-Luddism glorifies
backwards economic conditions in the
oppressed nations--at the same time
taking the material wealth of the
imperialist countries for granted, as if that
wealth appeared out of thin air, instead
of being created by the toil and sweat of
oppressed-nation workers.(5)
Rather than opposing science and
technology per se, MIM accuses
Monsanto and the like of being props in a
system that prevents the masses from
becoming scientists.
Monsanto and similar biotech
companies are actively working to ensure
profit at the expensive of survival. Delta
& Pine Land Company and the U$
Department of Agriculture secured a
patent for "a genetic engineering
technique that disables a seed's capacity
to germinate when planted." Obviously
companies are interested in such
technology to force farmers to buy seeds
each year.
Capitalists have little interest in
calculating long-term risks and benefits.
So what if we might cause a massive
famine in fifty years, they think, we'll
make huge profits in the next five years!
Already, weed resistance strategies
backfire by producing and spreading
genes that make weeds tougher to
control. From the point of view of the
multinational corporation, having to buy
new technologies to deal with the problem
just created guarantees a constant flow
of business.(2) The anarchy of production
also makes it difficult for capitalists to plan
for the long-term consequences of their
new technology, if they wanted to.
Ultimately the "Reclaim the Commons"
movement is stuck in petty-bourgeois
politics. Their goal is to demonstrate
alternatives to biotechnology under
capitalism: "we want to teach and
demonstrate sustainable, life-affirming
alternatives to biotechnology and
corporate power in general: organic food,
community gardens, water reclamation,
urban transformation, a gift economy, and
so much more." They are promoting
individualist solutions to a systemic
problem: "We need to get off the
corporate grid, exercise democracy
outside of party-driven, corporate-funded
electoral machines, live sustainable lives,
and create just and thriving communities
amid the corporate-controlled world!"(3)
Promoting ecologically sound practices
is good, but the Reclaim the Commons
movement openly rejects all biotechnology
while offering no sound strategy for
getting the world to a place where
ecologically sound practice is possible for
the majority of the world's people.
MIM differs with this movement in two
ways. First, we do not oppose
biotechnology on principle. We oppose
corporate control of biotechnology, but we
support proletarian use of biotechnology
for the good of the world's people. We
might favor genetic modifications. We
only oppose the process by which some
who gain much more from the risks decide
for the rest of us how much is an
acceptable risk. Change is permanent and
any course of action or inaction involves
risks.
Second, unlike the petty-bourgeois
activists who want to offer Amerikans a
chance to eat organic food and set up
community gardens, and "get off the
corporate grid," MIM sees that the only
way to feed the world's people is to
overthrow capitalism which perpetuates
an uneven distribution of resources.
There is enough food in the world to feed
all of the people, yet still people starve to
death. This is very clear uneven
distribution, and the biotech corporations
work with the imperialists to maintain this
profitable situation, at the expense of
millions of deaths every year from
malnutrition.
The malnourished people of the world
do not have the luxury of living
sustainable lives. Their only option is
revolutionary struggle against the
imperialists.
Notes:
1. Reclaim the Commons press
statement, May 19, 2004.
2. MIM's review of the book
Farmageddon by Brewster Kneen,
available at our web site: http://
www.etext.info/Politics/MIM/bookstore/
books/enviro/kneen.html
3. Reclaim the Commons web site:
h t t p : / / r e c l a i m t h e c o m m o n s . n e t /
article.php?list=type&type=6 Also very
relevant is our review of the Rice Genome
project in MIM Notes 261.
4. "Doctors Without Borders fight for
Access to Essential Medicines," MIM
Notes 264, 15 Aug 2002.
5. Witness the "really free market"
celebration, where activists plan to give
things away, ranging from food to
"smiles." They consider this "really free
market" to be a template for alternate
economic organization. Where the food,
clothes etc. they plan to give away come
from--or whether people can live on
"art" and "smiles" alone--they do not
say.
imperialism bought off Saddam Hussein
and then killed off his sons and imprisoned
him. The CIA put Panama's Noriega on
payroll and now he sits in U$ prison.
Osama Bin Laden received every military
training and resource he could get and
now Amerikans chase him around the
globe. Countless other Amerikan lackeys
have died ignominious deaths. The truth
is that Amerika has nothing to offer
Nepal. Getting involved with Uncle $am
politically and militarily brings nothing but
grief to a country.
Notes: 1. http://www.nytimes.com/
2 0 0 4 / 0 4 / 2 5 / i n t e r n a t i o n a l / a s i a /
25NEPA.html?pagewanted=2
2. http://www.reuters.com/locales/
newsArticle.jsp?type=topNews&locale=en_IN&storyID=4911360
3. Statistical Abstract of the United
States 2002, p. 792.
Maoism is the only
modern road forward
in Nepal
Continued from page 3...
Continued from page 1...
MIM Notes 303 · June 1, 2004 · Page 5
This is the last in a series of articles
on subjectivism. The first (in MN301)
covered drugs, music and art; the
second (MN302) discussed love, sex
and friends. This series was excerpted
from a longer article that can be found
on our website, at: http://
www.etext.info/Politics/MIM/faq/
subjectivismI.html.
I'm going to talk about subjectivism and
its relationship to our communist goals by
giving a bunch of examples of
subjectivism--the belief that what one
feels or likes is true or supreme. What's
most important is not the individual evils
of subjectivism, but understanding the
overall approach that we as Maoist
scientists apply to everything.
In all likelihood, the revolution will be
successful only through the efforts of
"hypocrites" envisioning future
generations growing up with better social
influences than they had. Understanding
this is part of understanding materialism,
as when Lenin said revolution is always
made with the imperfect social material
at hand, not by divine perfection of humyn
consciousness first.
We have to come up with a list of bad
things, but our attack has to be on the
causes, not the bearers of those bad
lifestyles. With these warnings, we turn
to the last of several examples of
subjectivism discussed in these articles.
VII. Tone
Many times MIM has been taken to
task for its tone, many saying we are
"infantile" or childish. This takes us to
the next question--if you don't like liking
some things produced by imperialism,
what should we like instead? In the
imperialist countries, but also in the Third
World, at least partially dominated by the
same imperialist superstructure, we grow
up bombarded with false messages. Yes,
it starts as a child.
Janet Jackson revealed her breast on
TV during the football game called the
Super Bowl. This outraged stable
bourgeois family people everywhere and
caused a furor of call-ins and letters, but
a CNN poll also showed that Amerikans
know that violence should be our first
priority not porn. Where are all these
parents complaining about the cartoons
their kids watch on television and the video
games they play, where living creatures
and people easily get shot down 50 in a
minute? What cave do they live in that
they don't know about violence on
television? Maybe in some countries
Nipplegate would be the worst thing on
TV. It's a sign of how screwed up things
are that it's far, far from true in the United
$tates. People who like certain cartoons
and video games need to learn that the
sources of that liking are profiteering
militarists. MIM has pissed off countless
teenagers for dissing their video games.
So what MIM does is substitute new
emotions for old ones. We seek to get
people to go back to the things they
believed as children and make sure that
they all make sense. Good and bad have
been confounded such that people
somehow hate it when someone "anti-
patriotic" says that Iraqi people should
not die for the gasoline in the SUV. The
people saying these things often times
have a seventh grade level education--
and we are not even attacking them when
we say that. We are pointing out that we
in the imperialist countries--above all the
U$A of course--can see that the
emotions at the simplest levels are wrong.
Speaking in an even tone and language
fit for graduate school seminars is not
going to help counteract basic
brainwashing problems.
This is also related to the question of
the stage of our revolution. It never does
any good to avoid the truth except in
tactical situations where the enemy is in
hot pursuit. If a cop is chasing you down
the alley and a senior citizen volunteers
that you "went that way" when you really
went this way, that's a good lie. On the
other hand, we cannot lie about tone or
exploitation issues in public.
When Mao said that "without a People's
Army the people have nothing," he wasn't
kidding. He also wasn't kidding when he
said imperialist countries would have to
go through long periods of time without
armed struggle. In other words, he
expected in ordinary times for people in
the imperialist countries to have nothing.
No armed struggle against imperialism,
therefore, nothing.
So when people call us "childish,"
because we use a tone hostile to
bourgeois ideology, we say, "thank you,
can I please have another." Children are
oppressed and our greatest hope. We
Preparing for the all-round dictatorship of the proletariat
Combating subjectivism in all arenas
have a press here and the example of
that in history is still Engels in Germany.
It's an aim at some kind of influence.
Because our press is not connected with
our own armed struggle, wild success
might attract a kind of diluting influence
as seen in Engels's circles when he died.
If our tone or the rareness of our line
alienates some people, so be it. We have
a number of problems in trying to have
people associate anger with the
appropriate targets.
It's important to understand that the
white man in particular has no reference
point as an animal putting his emotions in
line with the international proletariat. We
have no armed struggles to teach us the
militant anger and determination that goes
with opposing the enemy. If we do not
use tone in the proper context, we are
handing over the determination of anger,
sadness and pleasure to the bourgeoisie.
If we do use the proper tone in contexts
that children may encounter, we may in
fact teach those children something. If
some people are too ideologically old to
relearn when to be angry, sardonic,
dismissive, etc. and when not to be, then
we have to write them off.
Note:
1. Leon Trotsky, "Communist Policy
Toward Art," http://www.marxists.org/
archive/trotsky/works/1923/tia23.htm
2. Leon Trotsky, Revolution Betrayed,
1936, http://www.marxists.org/archive/
trotsky/works/1936-rev/ch07.htm
3. www.2changetheworld.info/docs/
art-03-en.php
material basis for the formation of a
French proletariat. There is not enough
of the kind of people left of the type Marx
was talking about to even talk about a
French proletariat. As it stands, the
French minimum wage places all of legally
working France in the top 10% of income
in the world. Coal miners did even better
than that.
Since more than 80% of France's
electricity comes from nuclear power,