From: Maoist Internationalist Movement <mim3-AT-blythe.org>
Subject: MIM reply to SC & WEL: was Jesus/Buddha thread
Date: Thu, 29 Aug 1996 11:12:21 -0400 (EDT)


>From owner-marxism  Wed Aug 28 20:38:13 1996
From: cwellen <cwellen-AT-pen.k12.va.us>
Subject: Are Jesus, Buddha & Company Enemies of the People?
_____________________
Greetings to all comrades from Wei En Lin

I wanted to express agreement with the ideas contained in the post by
Siddharth Chatterjee. 

'The views expressed by the modern-day Marxists in this forum condemning
ALL religious people to be devils in sheep's clothing is STRIKINGLY
similar to MIM's position that the ENTIRE 'white' working class is
non-revolutionary and reactionary and to the Trotskyite concept of the
WHOLE national bourgeoise to be traitors (although many of the national
bourgeoise in third word countries earn in a year what an ordinary western
worker makes in a few weeks). This is due to a deep ignorance of the
subject at hand and an absence of the dialectical viewpoint. 
***********************************
MIM replies: This is an astute observation that MIM expected
to hear about a year ago and never did. 

The national bourgeoisie and the labor aristocracy are indeed
the two pivotal classes to consider in Marxist integration of the 
national question. Without careful attention to both, we become
guilty of crude reductionism of an undialectical sort. The 
oppressor nation labor aristocracy is the key reason why an
integrationist Marxist approach has failed. If in the place
of the oppressor nation labor aristocracy we had a real
white proletariat, MIM's strategy would be entirely different.

The Trotskyists are guilty of always prioritizing one class
struggle, in words, the one on an international scale
between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. In practice,
it usually boils down to Trotskyist cheerleading of wage struggles
in their own country, struggles that don't even count as
class struggles by Lenin's definition.

Yet, in the case of Turkey for instance, Trotsky, Lenin and Stalin all
signed on to a COMINTERN statement that said in Turkey's conditions ALL
the classes could unite against foreign oppression. That includes uniting
Turkey's most reactionary classes. Later Trotsky abandoned his previous
position in order to set up an opportunist's difference with Stalin and
have some basis for claiming state power from Stalin. Trotsky was relying
on enticing oppressor nation industrial workers and youth into simplifying
class struggle such that the national question disappeared. 

In any case, the idea that certain class struggles
could be prioritized and should be prioritized over others
goes back to the early COMINTERN. Like so much in the Marxist science
this point has been lost by successive generations of 
opportunists and revisionists.

>From MIM's perspective, if you can't get the class structure
right for a society, it is not likely you are going to lead
a class struggle correctly if at all. The RCP-USA has taught
everyone to look down on the Indian comrades for debating
and splitting over questions of class structure and the
national question, and of course, by crypto-Trotskyist
assumption, as opposed to investigation, there can be no
national questions in the Indian subcontinent except 
the one national question against u.s. imperialism.
However, we can say forthrightly that even if the RCP
presentation of the state of affairs in India is correct,
the Indian comrades are still a step ahead of us here. Here in the
imperialist countries Avakian assumes a unity around
a vague conception of class structure. When MIM puts
forward the original Marxist and Leninist conception
of classes for imperialist countries, we here in the West
hardly know that we should be having a similar debate
about class structure.

Although the observations of comrades SC and WEL
are astute, they are not factually accurate.
In the first place, MIM has placed the oppressed nation
labor aristocracy in a different bag than the
oppressor nation labor aristocracy in conformance
with both Lenin and Mao. That is our first step to
break down the labor aristocracy's alliance with
imperialism.

The second step is to appeal to the oppressor nation
labor aristocracy along certain lines--age, gender
and anarchy of production. We have said several times
on this list already that we do intend to rip some
people away with this method. Furthermore, we have
already answered J. Flanders' question about "industrial
experience" on this list. In fact, we have had 
as if in stereotypical propaganda, oppressor nation
autoworkers step up to MIM and make big contributions.
It is only the intellectuals with their spinelessness
and passivity who make up excuses for why they won't
criticize the labor aristocracy. A recent example
is that Proyect tells us we cannot use the words
"revolutionary" or "socialism" when talking to the
masses. Others like Henwood tell us that the
workers are thin-skinned and can't take criticism
as a class.

MIM finds contrary. The workers can take the criticism
of reactionary interests of its class. The advanced
workers in fact are looking for answers as to why
the majority of unionized workers voted for Reagan.
To be an advanced worker is to wonder in the imperialist
countries how this situation got to be this way.

MIM has the same methods as Mao. He believed in wartime
that even a portion of compradors could be
won over or at least utilized. If the Japanese
lackeys are threatening the lackeys of British
and Amerikan imperialism, why not tell the
Anglo-Amerikan lackeys in China to coordinate
attacks on the Japanese? However, this did not
mean that Mao accepted the CLASS demands of the
compradors. On the whole he rejected them and
appealed to them only on ONE basis. MIM is
doing the same with the labor aristocracy
except that we are appealing to it on 
several bases, NONE of which can end
in bringing the workers back to the imperialist
yoke as any purely wage struggle of the
oppressor nation labor aristocracy inevitably does.

As Lenin said, any struggle that does not
target employers as a CLASS and not just one
individual and any struggle that does not
target the STATE on behalf of its class demands,
is NOT a class struggle. Within that, for
the chauvinists on this list, there are class
struggles we should not support. Le Pen
targets his audience as a class and he has
a cohesive political agenda for the oppressor
nation labor aristocracy against the foreign workers
by using the state. That does not make his struggle
a class struggle that is proletarian. It is a labor
aristocracy class struggle that Le Pen has unleashed.
We oppose it while many of the people on this list
are busy unleashing it.




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