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MIM Notes 315 · March 1, 2005 · Page 1

MIM Notes

March 1 2005, Nº 315

The Official Newsletter of the Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM)

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By a contributor

February 17, 2005

Many "socialists" and even

"communists" in the united $nakes have

been strangely silent about Ward

Churchill, which is an expression of the

fact that their lines are really bourgeois.

But some who have opened their mouths

to "defend" him have seen fit to

undermine him with the other hand.

Certain so-called leftists and socialists

have been contributing to Ward

Churchill's detractors' distortion of his

ideas, while claiming to support Churchill

in his struggle with the Colorado governor

and legislators, and the Colorado

University regents. Not content with

making simplistic Liberal arguments in

defense of Churchill's Constitutional

"free speech" rights, some have gone as

far as calling Churchill's arguments

"reactionary," presumably to distance

themselves from Churchill's unpopular

ideas. Yet, they claim to be supporting

Churchill as a matter of principle.

But these "leftists" aren't just trying to

distance themselves from Churchill's

Support Ward Churchill

Don't slander him all over again

ideas; many actually mean what they say.

This is a recent example from the World

Socialist Web Site:

"This [Churchill's argument about the

"technocratic corps" as being little

Eichmanns] is a wrongheaded and deeply

reactionary argument, whether it refers

to top officials of investment firms or

immigrant maintenance workers. The

crimes of US imperialism are manifold,

and seen from the perspective of a Native

American, American history must appear

a particularly bloody spectacle.

Nonetheless, to identify the American

people, from whom virtually all

knowledge about the consequences of the

Persian Gulf war and sanctions has been

withheld, with the US war machine is a

terrible political mistake and writes off

the possibility of profound social change

in America. Moreover, the essential

callousness of Churchill's response to the

bombings works in the opposite direction

of cultivating humanitarian and generous

impulses in the population." (David Walsh,

For fliers and a petition, see http://

www.etext.info/Politics/MIM/mn/

sept112001/

THE

`COLLECTIVE

RESPONSIBILITY'

MOVEMENT

Western white man's greatest

accomplishment in the 20th century

The whole Ward Churchill furor about

"little Eichmanns" and the huge

propaganda blitz surrounding the taking

of U.$. hostages in Iraq point up the

urgent need to understand the collective

responsibility of the white man in the

industrialized imperialist countries. In

particular, it is appropriate at this moment

to point out the greatest accomplishment

of the white man of the Western

industrialized countries in the 20th

century. The award goes to the German

communists who for a time ran the

government of Germany with the theme

of "collective responsibility" for the

crimes of Nazi Germany. Without that

movement for "collective responsibility,"

the white man would have that much less

basis for peace with the rest of the world.

The first official statement of the

communist party (KPD) once legalized

after World War II said:

"`Not only Hitler is guilty of the crimes

that have befallen humanity! Ten million

Germans also bear part of the guilt, those

who in 1932 in free elections voted for

Hitler although we communists warned:

`Whoever votes for Hitler votes for war!'

"Part of the guilt is also borne by those

German men and women who, spineless

and without resistance, watched Hitler

grab power, watched how he destroyed

all democratic organizations, especially

those of the labor movement, and locked

up, tortured, and murdered the best

Germans.

"Guilty are all those Germans who saw

in the armaments build up a `Greater

Germany' and perceived in bestial

militarism, in marches and exercises, the

sole sanctifying redemption of the nation."

Then, as now, there were those who

wanted to whitewash countless

oppressive actions carried out by ordinary

On February 18, 2005, the glorious red

banner of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism

was hoisted over northern North America

with the establishment of MIP-Kanada,

a Maoist Internationalist Party. MIP-

Kanada works closely with its fraternal

parties in the other imperialist countries

and maintains ties with its fraternal parties

in the developing countries.

Kanada has plenty of parties calling

themselves "socialist" or "communist"

that cater to the demands of Kanadians,

but MIP-Kanada is the only party that

upholds MIM's correct and scientific

Announcing MIP-Kanada

The Kanadian vanguard party

view of Kanada as a country dominated

by a labour aristocracy that supports

imperialism because it has been bought

off with a share of imperialist superprofits

extracted from the Third World. White

Kanadians, like their Amerikan

counterparts, constitute an oppressor

nation that subjugates its internal semi-

colonies, principally the First Nations. We

spell "Canada" and "Canadian" with a

"K" to symbolize the decadent, backward,

pro-imperialist nature of Kanada's non-

proletarian working class.

MIP-Kanada upholds MIM's positions

on the

K a n a d i a n

n a t i o n a l

q u e s t i o n .

A l t h o u g h

Q u é b e c ' s

struggle for

s o v e r e i g n t y

gets the most

attention in the

K a n a d i a n

media, MIP-Kanada sees the struggle of

the First Nations for self-determination

as the primary national struggle in Kanada

and the only one that gets our support at

this time. While recognizing Québec as a

nation, we join our First Nations comrades

in opposing Québec's independence as a

move that would set back the

independence of the First Nations and

play into the hands of U$ imperialism. We

will support any First Nations that demand

their indepedence from Kanada and will

offer them our assistance in establishing

their own Maoist parties.

In addition, MIP-Kanada agrees with

the majority of Kanadians that Kanada

does not have a distinct culture or a

national identity. Anglophone Kanada in

particular is merely an extension of the

United $tates. Unlike the Kanadian-

chauvinist parties calling themselves

Marxist that exaggerate Kanada's

distinctness for opportunist ends, MIP-

Continued on page 4...

Continued on page 5...

Continued on page 9...

MIM Notes 315 · March 1, 2005 · 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.

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Two weeks ago King Gyanendra of

Nepal fired all his puppets and took full

and open control of the political regime.(1)

He imposed a total communications

blackout, only now being somewhat

relieved.

At the same time, the king ordered the

arrest of bourgeois politicians planning

demonstrations. Hundreds have been

detained. As a result, Denmark has

ceased its aid operations to Nepal and

other countries are threatening to follow

suit.

Currently, the United $tates, India and

the European Union are making a show

of slapping the king on the wrist for totally

moving away from "democracy." In

actuality, they are letting King Gyanendra

do their dirty work.

Without bourgeois political

interlocutors, the monarchy's army in

Nepal is now openly speaking for itself

as upholding "human rights" despite fears

about what such an openly monarchist

regime might intend.(2) As MIM reported

previously, at least some bourgeois

analysts believe that King Gyanendra is

the only one with political capital with the

military sufficient to launch any attacks

on the Maoist rebels carrying out People's

War. Otherwise, we might expect that the

imperialists would have assassinated the

king long ago and installed a new stooge.

As usual, the military strategy of an

unpopular regime is to rely on higher

technology weaponry than what the rebels

have. King Gyanendra wasted no time

by launching air strikes on his own

people(3) after disposing of his own

previous puppet government. Yet it is

inevitable that in a Maoist People's War,

the people will learn to adjust to new

weapons and seize new ones of their

own.

Thanks to the secret nature of

bourgeois diplomacy we can only

speculate that the king did all this with

the green light from U.$. imperialism. It's

only too cute that after the united $tates

and others delivered their military aid to

the monarchy, they criticized him slightly

and withdrew ambassadors "for

consultation," a somewhat severe

diplomatic move by diplomatic standards.

This allows the imperialists to pretend to

wash their hands of what follows.

Again, the king's move only proves

what MIM was saying before about the

nature of u.$. allies in Nepal and globally.

As usual, Uncle $am finds the most

bizarre and backward people to prop

up--anybody as long as they are not

communist.

In this case, the imperialists have

picked their typical lackey, someone on

the wrong side of history. It is also the

case that the petty-bourgeoisie of

Amerika deserves some criticism for

supporting god-kings like King Gyanendra

in Nepal, when they themselves would

never consent to living under a god-king.

The crunchy, feel-good granola-eaters

of Amerika fantasize about lands distant

and spiritually pure. They fantasize that

the slave-owning Dalai Lama would have

ruled better than Mao.

Now we see the result. For all who

have praised the Dalai Lama, here is your

comeuppance. You should now be in

praise of King Gyanendra. Here is your

chance to show that theocrats in countries

that supposedly never want to change are

King makes his move

Nepal reaches critical point

better than Maoists. The Hindu god

Vishnu is supposedly incarnated in

Nepal's king.

As MIM said in MIM Notes 303, "the

mode of production needs to advance in

Nepal. The Maoists are right, and that's

why the political alternatives seem so

ludicrous." It's obvious that no one can

modernize Nepal except the Maoists.

Notes:

1. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/

south_asia/4226039.stm

2. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/

south_asia/4269787

3. http://www.boston.com/news/world/

a s i a / a r t i c l e s / 2 0 0 5 / 0 2 / 0 8 /

nepali_army_launches_air_strikes_against_rebels/

MIM Notes 315 · March 1, 2005 · Page 3

On February 16, the professional U.$.

hockey league called "National Hockey

League" (NHL) announced the

cancellation of the season. The players

and owners could not agree on salary caps

per team, with players wanting $49 million

per team and owners wanting it to be $6.5

million less.

Even on NBC television, the disgruntled

fans led the announcer to point out how

"big business" has made itself unpopular

in this context. Fans spoke on TV about

how they wanted the game played for its

own sake.

MIM refers to this conflict as one of

leisure-time dynamics. Although salaries

make it possible to have professional

sports, the public somehow still wants in

the back of its mind that sports have

intrinsic value, apart from money.

Sports for their own sake and sex for

its own sake are similar agenda items

when it comes to capitalism. In fact, with

the existence of capitalism it is not

possible to know when people have sex

for its own sake and it is not possible to

know who would be the champions in

sports without the influence of having to

entertain for money. As the professional

basketball player Dennis Rodman

explained, even he does not believe the

NBA is about who is the best player or

team. Instead it's about who the owners

believe they should promote because of

their capability to sell tickets and boost

TV ratings.

In this particular conflict over hockey,

the fans with a refined sense of leisure

time gain some insight into the fight

against capitalism. They realize that

capitalism is destroying something they

value external to money.

In most circumstances, people with a

refined sense of leisure are contributing

Capitalism ruins sports: NHL cancels season

to capitalism's stability. We call these

people "gender aristocracy." People who

might otherwise be discontented find

themselves entertained into apathy.

Statistics on newspaper readership and TV

viewing make it clear that such people are

increasingly important while "hard news"

reporting by MIM or the New York Times

is less and less important in the majority-

exploiter countries.

Another interesting point about the

hockey season cancellation (and at the

very least, the NHL has missed most of

its season to negotiations thus far) is the

salaries of the players, who average $1.8

million a year in salary. There are many

foolish or deceptive "Marxists" who say

that income does not matter and that

hockey players are "proletariat," because

they receive a paycheck and do not own

the stadiums.

In contrast, genuine Marxists believe

that income derives from access to the

means of production. High income

generally comes from access to the

means of production. In this case, high

income is so high it is access to the means

of production itself. $1.8 million is not the

means of subsistence. It is an amount to

save in the form of access to the means

of production--stocks, bonds and savings

accounts. The annual interest from $1.8

million in an account somewhere is

sufficient to live on-- proof that the

average hockey player is not just petty-

bourgeois but outright bourgeois. What

matters is not who owns the skating rink

but the fact that players are partners to

the TV rights-access to the means of

production in general, not particular

lockerrooms or gyms.

Note: http://www.940news.com/

news.php?cat=9&id=n0216110A

By a comrade

A Texas prisoner has sent us a copy of

his "Rational Self-Analysis" (RSA)

worksheet. RSA is a simplistic

psychological method used by quack

business consultants and other charlatans

trying to make an easy buck off of

people's insecurity. The method is

designed to get people to disassociate

themselves from things they "cannot"

change and instead focus on the effects

of their own actions. Like horoscopes, at

a high enough level of generality these

ideas may appear correct. For example,

we should avoid ultraleft idealism, or the

idea that we can take revolutionary action

as if material conditions have already

changed in the direction we want them

to. But we do not say that we "cannot"

change material conditions -- just that

we need to understand how much they

have actually changed, and be scientific

about how much change we can effect

in a certain time period.

In this Texas prison, the counselor

applying the RSA program is clearly just

trying to get the prisoner to stop worrying

about other prisoners' conditions, to

prevent the development of collective

identity. Clearly, "an injury to one is an

injury to all" would constitute a violation

of the reprogramming the counselor is

trying to impose.

The worksheet below says, "the way

to change our feelings is not to change

reality (this is impossible!) but to change

our trouble causing patterns of thinking."

We agree that what we think and feel

reflects the interaction of external events

and our own consciousness and reaction

to them. However, we must insist that

our reactions in turn influence external

events. If that were not the case, society

would never change. The counselor wants

to break the dialectical connection

between consciousness and conditions,

to insist that the only correct approach

for the prisoner is to accept all material

conditions as unchanging "reality" and

settle for adapting his behavior to survival

within these conditions. We would agree

that revolutionary prisoners need to put

a very high priority on their own survival,

and that idealism about the ability to affect

conditions can lead to costly mistakes.

But we reject the underlying philosophy

in general and the shameless attempt to

depoliticize this prisoner in particular.

We would like to see other examples

of this or similar programs from other

prisoners, so that we may expose them

to prisoners and their supporters outside

the walls.

Below is the excerpted text of the

worksheet, with the prisoner's responses

as written shown in italics. The

counselor's "corrections," marked in red

pen, appear in [brackets].

Rational Self-Analysis

The A-B-C Model:

If we look at our lives, most of what is

going on in our heads is focused on

situations or events of some kind.

Thousands of events are occurring all of

the time but only certain ones get our

attention. These events are called

Activating Events. We often think that

these cause us to feel a certain way and

we believe we cannot help feeling the

way we do because they "made" us feel

that way. We believe that our feelings/

behaviors are the consequences of the

event. But if that were true, then everyone

would react to the same event the same

way. However, the Consequences of the

event, our feelings and behaviors, are

really caused by the Beliefs we hold about

the event. The way to change our feelings

is not to change reality (this is impossible!)

but to change our trouble causing patterns

of thinking. We need to create helpful,

worthwhile, encouraging and useful

Rational Responses that will help us feel

and behave in healthy ways!

Worksheet

Rational Self-Analysis: A guide to

help you challenge your self-talk

[Across the top, in red, the prison

counselor has written, "Please try again!"]

A - Activating Event (Something

happens):

Prisoner: Officer did not feed

another offender at chow.

B - Beliefs, thoughts, self-talk (I tell

myself something about "A"):

Prisoner: The officer did this as a

form of punishment but only because

be believes he can get away with it.

C - Consequences (I feel and do

something):

Emotions (I feel):

Prisoner: Anger

Behaviors (I do): I question the officer

as to why he didn't feed the offender.

D - Dispute (Challenge) the above

Beliefs by answering the following

questions about each thought you listed

above. If your answer is no, explain why.

A-live? Does this thought keep me

safe?

Prisoner: No. It lets the officer know

that I did not like what he did.

F-eel? Does this thought help me feel

the way I want to feel?

Prisoner: Yes

[Counselor's red pen: Please refer to

"B" and "C"]

R-eal? Is this though true? Is it based

on objective reality?

Prisoner: Yes.

O-thers? Does this thought keep me

out of trouble with others?

Prisoner: No. It places me in threat

of retaliation.

G-oals? Does this help me reach my

goals?

Prisoner: Yes.

[Counselor's red pen: Please refer to

"B" and "C". It is the responsibility of

the other offender to deal with this

problem. By becoming involved in another

offender's problem, you *make* it *your*

problem.]

Create a Rational Response (New self-

talk that is worthwhile, encouraging,

useful, and helps you reach your goals):

Prisoner: Instead of questioning

officer about the incident, simply file

a complaint against him.

Abolish the oppressor's tool called `psychology'

Texas prisoners face professional brainwashing

MIM Notes 315 · March 1, 2005 · Page 4

"The new McCarthyism: the witch-

hunting of Ward Churchill," http://

www.wsws.org/articles/2005/feb2005/

chur-f11.shtml)

What this particular example shows is

that Trotskyists are worse than nothing.

They are also worse than Liberals, like

the ACLU, who do not claim to be

socialist, yet still manage to support Ward

Churchill without strongly attacking him

with the other hand. David Walsh

conflates the "technocratic corps" with

the "American people" and repeats the

vague bullshit about Churchill being

"callous" toward the Trade Center victims

(without mentioning how callous Madeline

Albright was). And he deliberately

misreads Ward Churchill as saying there

is no opportunity for any Amerikans to

change, when Churchill clearly

acknowledges the existence of a minority

of Amerikans (albeit tiny) who opposed

the Iraq sanctions in more effective ways

than those who either did nothing or too

little to oppose the sanctions.

David Walsh also attributes Churchill's

observations on Amerikan genocide to

Churchill's being an American Indian:

"seen from the perspective of a Native

American, American history must appear

a particularly bloody spectacle."

However, it is David Walsh and other

Trotskyists who practice identity politics

by quickly opposing any line that locates

the bulk of the revolutionary forces outside

the "American people." Also, David

Walsh lies about Amerikans not knowing

the effects of the sanctions before 9/11.

It's as if David Walsh did not even read

Churchill's essay. As Churchill points out,

Madeline Albright herself admitted on 60

Minutes in 1996 that half a million children

died as a result of the sanctions. Peer-

reviewed research on the child mortality

effects of the sanctions appeared as early

as 1992. David Walsh's obnoxious

nihilism with regard to what the Amerikan

population could have known about the

sanctions is exactly what Ward Churchill

is talking about. And what could the

Amerikan population have known, a

decade before 9/11? Just looking at the

Iraq sanctions:

On November 4, 1992, The Atlanta

Journal and Constitution reported James

Grant as saying Iraqi "children are in the

greatest crisis, and 3 million people suffer

from U.N. sanctions. He spoke of raw

sewage and broken pumps, malnutrition

and deaths from measles in a situation he

called `very fragile'." On September 24,

1992, The Toronto Star (Reuters)

reported: "An international team of

researchers estimated 46,900 children

under age 5 died in Iraq between January

and August, 1991, as an indirect effect of

the bombing, civilian uprisings and a U.N.

ordered economic embargo." On

September 24, 1992, USA TODAY

reported: "Air attacks on Iraq during the

Persian Gulf war, and subsequent trade

sanctions, increased by threefold the

number of war-related infant and child

deaths, a postwar study suggests." On

December 23, 1991, a St. Louis Post-

Dispatch (Missouri) editorial reported:

"The sanctions have indeed been choking

Iraqis to death. According to surveys, food

prices in Iraq have risen more than 2,000

percent, per capita calorie intake has

dropped to 1,500 calories from 3,000

before the war; cholera, typhoid,

meningitis and diarrhea are epidemic;

infant morality has quadrupled and

118,000 children are at risk of death."

On November 25, 1991, The

Washington Post reported: "After more

than a year of U.N.-imposed economic

sanctions, Iraqis are accustomed to such

shortages. But in what diplomats here

say could become a major obstacle to U.S.

efforts to sway Iraqi public opinion and

influence government policy, Iraqis are

expressing growing anger and resentment

toward the United States for maintaining

the economic blockade, now that Iraqi

forces are out of Kuwait. . . . [Ayad

Ramadhani, surgeon in Mosul, Iraq, said]

`Your country is punishing our people.

What the United States is doing is starving

our children and depriving people of drugs

and telling them to overthrow the

government. This is torture, inhumane

torture'." On November 5, 1991, a St.

Petersburg Times (Florida) editorial

reported "George Bush repeatedly said

we had no quarrel with the people of Iraq,

but they are suffering from the continued

economic sanctions imposed on them by

the West and from the consequences of

the air war. Eighty-eight thousand tons

of bombs were dropped on the country,

causing devastation that imperils the lives

of thousands of children. . . . A group of

Harvard doctors and public health

workers visited Iraq last month and

brought back harrowing statistics. After

visiting 9,034 households in every region

in Iraq, the team reached these

conclusions: 900,000 Iraqi children are

malnourished. The mortality rate for

children is 380 percent greater than it was

before the war."

On December 19, 1990, The Herald

Sun (Reuters) reported: "Iraq claimed

today UN sanctions had killed 2042 Iraqi

children under the age of five years since

August because of shortages of food and

medicine." On the same day, The

Christian Science Monitor (Boston, MA)

(Reuters) reported the same thing.

There are hundred of other examples

like these (not only before September

2001, but before 1996!), and these

reactionary jokers like David Walsh have

the nerve to claim the "American people"

could not know have known anything

about the consequences of the sanctions

long before 9/11?

Robert Jensen, in an essay ("Ward

Churchill: Right to Speak Out; Right

About 9/11," http://

w w w . c o u n t e r p u n c h . c o m /

jensen02142005.html) posted in several

places on the Internet, also misrepresents

the content of Ward Churchill's "Some

People Push Back" essay. This may be

even more damaging than the foul WSWS

trash because Robert Jensen, unlike David

Walsh, purports to give Ward Churchill's

main argument "firm" support.

What Robert Jensen does which is so

devastating is to interpret Churchill as

supporting the Trade Center attacks as a

matter of strategy, when Churchill is only

counseling readers on how to avoid similar

attacks in the future. Robert Jensen: "It's

hard to read that as anything other than

an endorsement of the use of deadly force

against all those involved in "the mighty

engine of profit' to which the military

dimension of U.S. policy has always been

enslaved," apparently at the level of stock

traders and above." Jensen proceeds to

discuss why "the attacks of 9/11 don't

meet the test" of necessary and justified

violence. However, Ward Churchill never

said the attacks were effective. On the

contrary, Churchill said: "For it to have

been otherwise, a far higher quality of

character and intellect would have to

prevail among average Americans than

is actually the case. . . . it's becoming

increasingly apparent that the dosage of

medicine administered was entirely

insufficient to accomplish its purpose.

Although there are undoubtedly

exceptions, Americans for the most part

still don't get it."

Also, Churchill only said the "little

Eichmanns" had it coming morally from

the viewpoint of those who carried out

the Trade Center attacks (thus Churchill's

use of the word "penalty," which has a

punitive connotation), and in the sense that

it was predictable based on a long history

of Amerikan militarism and genocide.

How much clearer can it get? Churchill

said: "This might be seen as merely a

matter of `vengeance' or `retribution,'

and, unquestionably, America has earned

it, even if it were to add up only to

something so ultimately petty." Read that

again: "petty."

Petty

Petty, like Robert Jensen's pathetic

attempts to fabricate distinctions between

stock traders on the exchange floor and

higher-up brokers and portfolio managers,

as if these people weren't all parasites,

as well as cogs in the machine, and didn't

have similar career goals and political

aims. Petty, like Jensen's claim that

"high-level traders" bear more

responsibility simply because their actions

have more powerful immediate financial

consequences. It's as if Jensen were

holding the high-level employees to a

higher standard--perhaps because they

are aware of the evil they are perpetrating

(which reduces responsibility to a matter

of subjective intentions). Jensen's whole

point about differing levels of responsibility

covers up the fact that the low-level stock

traders are also parasites and easily had

the leisure time to participate in the

revolutionary anti-imperialist struggle. It

obscures the fact that the low-level stock

traders were just as aware of the

consequences of the Iraq sanctions for

Iraqi children, or did they not read

newspapers or watch the news on TV?

The bourgeoisie themselves were talking

and worried about the consequences,

more for pragmatic reasons, but still.

Straight up, executives do not have

more responsibility than lower-level

employees. On the contrary, the exploited

and oppressed cannot rely on the most

powerful, and therefore most

"responsible" parasites, like executives

and the best-paid professionals, for

change. The fact that the less

"responsible" labor aristocracy who

aren't executives haven't overthrown

capitalism is an indictment on its own, but

with a material basis in the labor

aristocracy's role in parasitism. Jensen is

wrong to distance not only the Amerikan

labor aristocracy, but also the stock

traders, from "collective responsibility."

Totaled up, the labor aristocracy may

have even more responsibility than the

executives. To say they have less

responsibility in comparison to parasites

higher on the ladder is misleading. There

is no end to this kind of logic. Eventually,

we would just be holding a handful of

individuals in the White House

responsible. Even within the dominator's

own logic about "democracy" and

elections, the people in the White House

are the choice of the Amerikans.

Ward Churchill is right; the Amerikan

population as a whole (but particularly the

white oppressor nation) has had more

than enough opportunity to be informed

about imperialism, and more than enough

opportunity to act, but they have not acted.

Granted, many are too busy being

decadent to be very well-informed. Yet,

most were aware of the Iraq sanctions,

for instance, but did absolutely nothing

about them. For Jensen to speak of

degree of responsibility here is ridiculous

because Amerikan parasites hardly

exhibit degrees of action in the first place.

What it comes down to is that Jensen,

under the pretext of "disagreeing" with

Churchill's writing in order to

"demonstrate [true] solidarity," portrays

Churchill as having an unrefined

terroristic mentality incapable of

discriminating between different

Amerikan parasites. But Churchill was

not proposing terrorism as a strategy in

the first place, so Jensen's "disagreement"

is just the same slander about Churchill's

supposed ulterior motives.

Support Ward Churchill

From page 1...

MIM Notes 315 · March 1, 2005 · Page 5

Germans during World War II--actions

that in no way could ever generate humyn

harmony. The guises for this were many.

Some called them "exploited workers."

Others clung to "Aryan superiority." The

various politicians in Germany after the

war vied to evade the truth, the unpopular

truth. It could be no other way, because

parliamentary politicians win through

flattery of the majority, so at those times

when something absolutely unflattering

has to be said about the majority, only a

communist dictatorship guided by

scientific principles has a chance of

moving forward.

Aside from MIP-Amerika, MIP-

Kanada, the Ghetto Liberation Political

Party, the Russian Maoist Party and the

movement to put the ALKQN on the

Maoist road there are no organizations in

the imperialist countries with a correct

line to fight the propaganda of Bu$h's

"war on terror." There is no way to fight

back against the propaganda without the

ideology of collective responsibility. The

terrorist attacks on ordinary Amerikans

will appear as out-of-the-blue, unless we

understand the oppressive actions of

ordinary Amerikans costing millions of

innocent civilian lives since World War

II.

THE `COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY' MOVEMENT

Eventually, the understanding of

"collective responsibility" in Germany fell

by the wayside. In the meantime, at least

a partial purge of Nazis from responsible

positions had occurred, a difficult struggle

considering how many ordinary Germans

had enthusiastically participated in Nazi

oppression. In eastern Germany, various

citizens of other Sovietized countries had

to run the administration while Germans

could not do it for themselves. At the time,

there was no systematic theory for why

the Germans could not do it themselves,

only a political reality of Nazi history, a

fact too obvious to evade, theory or no

theory.

Soon after the end of World War II,

Stalin died in 1953 and the political path

of capitalist-roader Khruschev was clear.

There was never to be a summation of

the German experience guided by

revolutionary science. It is only with 50

years hindsight, and the principles

developed in MIM's line, that we can now

say that the "collective responsibility"

movement of Germany in 1945 and 1946

was the greatest political advance of the

Western white man in the 20th century.

Ironically, today, Ward Churchill finds

himself criticized by many consciously and

unconsciously influenced by Marx writing

about early capitalism. Yet it has been

almost 160 years since Marx wrote the

"Communist Manifesto" and over 80

years since Lenin explained why

imperialist wealth may delay the

revolution in the most industrialized

countries. That means that we are

overdue for a correct summation of

history.

The award for the greatest

accomplishment of the Western white

can not go to the rebels of Paris in 1968,

because there was no follow-up. The

rebels had the physical opportunity to take

power, but did not because of a lack of

mission that the German comrades

demonstrated in 1945 and 1946. The

German comrades too had many flaws,

but the one thing that they managed to

do is still unparalleled elsewhere--

provide political meaning to a majority on

why it had been wrong.

The German communist example in

1945 continues to shine a brilliant light

today. The German communists were not

"terrorists" or "terrorist sympathizers" for

talking about "collective responsibility"

and that is something that even the

ordinary Amerikan can understand, if

political activists unite behind the MIM

line to put forward the explanation

necessary. Just as today the various

minorites scapegoated by the allies of the

Bu$h administration had nothing to do

with 911, because it was Reagan and

Bu$h who armed and trained Al-Qaeda,

so too the German comrades were

involved with no terrorist armed actions

while putting forward the "collective

responsibility" line that advanced global

peace. Certainly the ordinary Germans

did suffer during and after World War II,

but the German comrades held firm and

did not try to evade their own

responsibility for their own plight.

The German communist example also

lights the path, because it proves that in