From: Maoist Internationalist Movement <mim3-AT-blythe.org>
Subject: MIM Repost: Detroit Mouthpieces' Strike
Date: Thu, 25 Jul 1996 20:16:11 -0400 (EDT)


>From owner-marxism  Sun Sep 24 00:48:16 1995
Date: Sat, 23 Sep 1995 20:48:16 -0400 (EDT)
From: Maoist Internationalist Movement <mim3-AT-nyxfer.blythe.org>
Subject: Re: Detroit strike



On Fri, 22 Sep 1995, Walter Daum wrote:

> 
> Thanks to Bryan Alexander for forwarding those first-hand reports on the
> Detroit newspaper strike. Much appreciated, and please continue.
> 
> They do raise a question for MIM, I would think. Since most of the strikers
> battling the cops and capitalists seem to be white, does that mean their
> strike is not to be supported? Especially since (as I read elsewhere) that
> the owners have brought in Mexicans as scabs.

MIM replies: This is where anti-MIMerism leads--to attacks on foreign
workers. It's in the line of the anti-GATT and anti-NAFTA CPUSA
and other similar organizations. There are so many things that
journalists could be doing and real Marxists could be doing
to lead the journalists, but instead they go down this path that
INEVITABLY leads to social-chauvinism in the current context,
a fight over the re-division of surplus-value.

If the imperialists brought in maybe 100 million Mexican
and other Third World "scabs," then maybe we could go back
to talking about exploited white workers and unite the working
class and that stuff. Right now, "labor" organizing provides
some of the shocktroops for the restrictions of immigration
being imposed by the imperialists including Clinton who just cut legal
immigration by a third, partly in response to the kind of 
"labor" movement Daum is talking about.

> 
> Either MIM's theory or the class struggle has to give.

"The class struggle" according to Daum is something that
doesn't even target the state. Even if we presume that these
workers are exploited, which they aren't, Engels would say
they have yet to advance class struggle "one iota."

When the various chavinists DO speak out to lead the
workers against the government,
they call for closing the borders, opposing 
GATT and opposing NAFTA, just like the KKK did at a recent rally
by the way.

The other thing to raise is how heated is this conflict? And how typical?
The bourgeoisie has its own in-house fights, but they
never lead anywhere for the proletariat in themselves
except when the bourgeois factions kill each other and leave a
vacuum.

Likewise, 99% of the time the labor aristocracy negotiates
with the imperialists. Another 44 one-hundreds of one percent
of the time, they go to strikes using physical force.
The remainder of situations where the labor aristocracy
actually moves against the state it is not in a
proletarian direction.

Meanwhile, in the Third World, the state imprisons people
for organizing or kills them regularly and the classes
really do engage in class struggle, not class collaboration
or negotiation.

>From time to time the bourgeoisie sends its members to
country-club prisons with regard to its intra-class
fighting--Watergate, Iran-Contra, how to embezzle etc.
How does this Detroit struggle compare with that?



Pat for MIM


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>From owner-marxism  Tue Sep 26 06:21:08 1995
Date: Tue, 26 Sep 1995 02:21:08 -0400 (EDT)
From: Maoist Internationalist Movement <mim3-AT-nyxfer.blythe.org>
Subject: Re: Detroit strike

Some additional comments:

1. Can anyone imagine that a movement that consciously
or unconsciously calls forth prejudices against
foreign workers has any chance of being progressive and
historically durable? We at MIM do not believe it is possible
for the Amerikan workers to proceed in history without the
leadership of the international proletariat more than 80%
located in the Third World.

2. Can anyone doubt that this question is different in an
imperialist country than in an oppressed country?
Do the Filipinos on strike against Dole or the Central
American banana workers or the Kenyan pineapple pickers
on strike against their fruit companies argue against "scabs"?
Maybe. But do some rednecks stand around and call for stopping
all the Yankee scabs from crossing their picket line?
Never, because imperialist country workers who are supposedly
so exploited don't go to the Philippines in search of jobs.

Hence, even if they got a mind to, the Third World workers'
nationalism against imperialist country workers doesn't have quite
the practical impact. Mostly that nationalism will be easily
directed against imperialists alone. Hence, opposing GATT, NAFTA
etc. is great in the Third World. On the other hand, even just
having a strike for working class demands in the imperialist countries
leads in the wrong direction. It can't help having that impact,
because imperialist country workers have the unproductive labor jobs
on the cushy side of the division of labor and they know it.
When they go into political action it is to mandate "buy
American" and to close the borders.

This does not mean that there are no enlightened workers,
only that fighting for the labor aristocracy's demands qua
class demands can lead no where good. We should hit against imperialist
waste/pollution, imperialist war and imperialist decadence in everything 
>from gender relations to production of scientific knowledge.

Pat for MIM



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>From owner-marxism  Mon Sep 25 15:58:00 1995
Date:         Mon, 25 Sep 95 11:58:00 EDT
From: Walter Daum <WGDCC-AT-CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Subject:      Re: detroit strike

[Snip.]

I do have to correct one thing I had read about Mexican workers
being used as scabs. The same report also says:

     Throughout the strike, rumors have circulated that the scabs
     include many Mexican immigrants, and this has produced
     periodic displays of bigotry on the part of the mainly older
     white male strikers. The truth is that the vast majority of
     the scabs are themselves white American males. But that
     didn't stop Conyers, a supposed anti-racist Congressional
     activist, from inflaming the racism and national chauvinism
     that has historically been the key roadblock for the
     American labor movement.


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