MIM Notes 210                   May 15, 2000

In the Belly of the Beast

by Dar Zhutayev

I came to California to deliver a keynote speech at the conference 
on Communities Confronting Capitalist Globalization at the 
University of California at Santa Barbara, April 14 - 15. As I got 
down from the plane at Los Angeles International, the MIM comrade 
that was meeting me at the airport came up to me, shook my hand 
and said: "Let me officially welcome you in the belly of the 
beast!" Well, to use a very clumsy metaphor, the beast sure has a 
very pretty face. And it is extremely easy for a foreigner or for 
a non-thinking Amerikan to be fooled by that face and think the 
beast is no beast at all, but a beauty. That is especially true of 
foreigners coming from a country like mine -- relatively poor and 
having serious problems with the bourgeois "civil society". In 
fact, the only persyn at the conference who spoke more or less 
conscientiously in favor of "globalization" (i. e. imperialism) 
was, judging by her accent, a student from Russia. Of course, as I 
had plenty of chances to learn while staying in Amerika, the 
oppressed nations within the u.$. borders and the anti-imperialist 
activists here know better. The beast has many faces and the one 
it shows ITAL them END is anything but a pretty one.

There are the obvious things. The material abundance. The ideal 
conditions for study and work on campus. I have never lived in 
such personal comfort as I did at the Faculty Club (a hotel for 
visiting scholars). A somewhat trivial fact about the campus for 
some reason greatly struck me: the student dorms are clean. I 
mean, real ITAL clean END. No dormitories in Russia and even few 
hotels are that clean. Then, probably because of my being a white 
persyn and more or less a visiting academic, I haven't had any 
hassles with the authorities, I haven't even ITAL seen END the 
authorities much. The ubiquitous presence of cops ready to pounce 
on you on the slightest provocation we have in Russia, especially 
in Moscow, under fascist pig Mayor Luzhkov, is not there in 
Amerika -- at least, not for a white educated foreigner like 
myself.

Then, there are the less obvious things. The phony 
"multiculturalism" much trumpeted by the u.$. government produces 
some superficially favorable impressions -- at least in comparison 
to the more conservative Russian society. A neighborhood I saw in 
LA has many Koreans and people from Central America and I was 
surprised to see that the majority of street signs are in Spanish 
or Korean, that all the employees in stores and banks speak these 
languages and all the notices are translated into them, that there 
are a lot of Korean- and Spanish-language newspapers, books and 
CDs for sale, etc. Such things would be impossible in Central 
Russia, where all business is transacted strictly in Russian and 
you would look in vain for a street sign in Yiddish, Tatar or 
Chechen.

The Amerikan academic system, judging by what I saw at UCSB, is 
refreshingly free from the scholasticism and conservatism of its 
Russian counterpart. "Multiculturalism" has (superficially) 
transformed that too, so the University has a "Multicultural 
Center" and people from the oppressed nations can specialize in 
such subjects as "Black Studies" and "Asian-American Studies". The 
students have much more freedom in choosing what subjects to study 
and you can meet someone specializing in, say, "Asian-American 
Studies" and biology simultaneously. In Russia, you go to the 
Department of Biology, or History, or Mathematics and study 
strictly that. The Amerikan university system's emphasis on 
"multiculturalism", pluralism, the interdisciplinary approach, has 
some genuinely good side-effects, like the conference I attended. 
You cannot imagine, e. g., the University of St. Petersburg 
officially holding an academic conference where the keynote 
speakers would be, say, a Situationist activist like Dmitry Model 
or Oleg Kireyev (both have been repeatedly arrested, subjected to 
police beatings and threatened with psychiatric persecution), a 
MIM comrade from the $tates and a Chechen guerilla leader.

That is the face of the beast. But there is the beast itself -- 
the Amerikkkan imperialist system. All the things I've mentioned 
are just pretty wrappings for something really ugly. The material 
abundance is, of course, the result of the superexploitation of 
the Third World and the majority of the world's population are 
toiling and starving or near-starving so that Amerikans might 
enjoy this obscene affluence. The conditions for study and 
concentration on campus are, as I said, perfect, but the whole 
University framework struck me as something aimed at creating a 
safe secluded oasis, far from the maddening crowd, so that the 
students and professors might pursue their quest of "timeless 
truths" in isolation from disturbing social realities. Besides, as 
some University people told me, the real emphasis at UCSB is not 
humanities but physics, computer research and other applied 
science and much of the research done there is for the u.$. 
military-industrial complex -- so the fancy "multicultural" and 
postmodern stuff is an attractive façade for what is basically an 
institution serving the needs of Amerikan militarism. Speaking 
about "multiculturalism" itself, what that covers up is the 
ruthless oppression and sometimes genocide of the non-white-
oppressor-nation minorities. That's a thing we in Russia are not 
fully aware of - many Russian people believe that the u.$. Blacks, 
for instance, have become fully integrated by now and actually 
enjoy a privileged position! But the stories I heard at the 
Conference from Black, Puerto Rican, Chicano and Filipino 
activists were eloquent enough.

My most favorable impression, both of the conference and of the 
North American political scene in general, is that anti-
imperialism and Left radicalism is very much alive here. I was 
absolutely - and pleasantly - surprised by their sheer scope and 
variety. I discovered a lot of political organizations and forms 
of protest I had never suspected existed. An encouraging thing is 
that the greatest impetus seems to come from the oppressed 
nations. I was especially impressed by two Black liberation 
groups: the MOVE organization (the heroic Ramona Africa was 
another keynote speaker at the conference) and the All-African 
People's Revolutionary Party (A-APRP). Although both in the 
clutches of religious mysticism and somewhat vague about their 
political economy, these have a pretty accurate perspective on who 
the enemy of the oppressed nations round the world really is: u.$. 
imperialism. They hold the correct view that the only way to stop 
globalization/imperialism is social revolution, although they may 
not have a scientific understanding of how to bring it about. I 
had a chance to speak to activists struggling for the interests of 
many other oppressed nations as well.

The third keynote speaker, Dr. Amory Starr, presented an overview 
of the "anti-globalization" struggles going on around the world, 
with a special emphasis on the imperialist countries and the 
specific techniques and tactics of protest used. Much of what she 
described seemed to me either Situationist clowning or strictly 
lifestyle politics (like Dr. Starr's own emphasis on people 
growing their own food as a way to put an end to multinational 
corporations in the food industry!), but it is refreshing to see 
young people from the imperialist countries stirring up and 
beginning to call the ITAL status quo END into question - even in 
somewhat bizarre and politically immature forms. It was also 
encouraging to have a firsthand experience of Amerikans committing 
class and national suicide and taking up the side of the oppressed 
against their own material interests. On campus, I met an 
enthusiastic RAIL student activist, who told me that his father 
earns $100,000 per year!

Another favorable impression I had of the North American scene was 
the political outspokenness and sheer quality of the 
counterculture happening here. During the conference, I had a 
chance to listen to an LA-based Chicano punk band, Lost Identity, 
which impressed me by the explicitness of its politics and the 
visceral energy of the music. I also discovered two cool hiphop 
groups, the Dead Prez and the Coup, both totally unknown in 
Russia. The Dead Prez is first-rate agitprop. Models like this are 
not even remotely approached by anything in the ex-USSR, where the 
best we have is either singers like Alexander Nepomnyashchy ("If a 
cop is beating you up, you've got the right to kill the cop!") and 
Yegor Letov ("Kill the State inside yourself!") - vague, 
existentialist, individualistic, vacillating between Leftist 
politics and fascism - or strictly Situationist acts, like the 
band from Kazakhstan, the Adaptatsiya.

The most important flaw of modern North American anti- imperialism 
is, in my opinion, idealism. With the exception of the Maoist 
vanguard, MIM, virtually all the genuine anti-imperialists I met 
here do not think in the materialist terms of socio-economic 
formations and social classes, do not understand the crucial link 
between capitalism, imperialism and (neo)colonialism, harbor 
strong individualist delusions (e. g. MOVE, with its stress on 
"starting with yourself") and are much too soft on religion -- the 
A-APRP actually says revolution and religion are identical! I had 
to challenge Ramona Africa and Dr. Starr on some of these issues 
during the panel discussion, when the three of us were sitting at 
the table answering questions form the audience, and tried to 
bring out the correct, historical materialist, approach.

In the meanwhile, the majority of ITAL soi-disant END Marxists in 
Amerika -- Trotskyists, like the Spartacist League, or pseudo-
Maoists, like the RCP-USA (I met activists from both at the 
Conference) -- with their standpoint that the layout of class 
forces is the same everywhere in the world and with their total 
disregard for national liberation struggles, are, to my mind, no 
anti-imperialists at all. At one point in the history of the 
Russian revolutionary movement, Lenin said that the principal task 
of the moment was "making the connection between Marxism and the 
workers' movement". Well, it's hard for a foreigner to give 
recipes for revolutionary strategies in North America, but my 
guess is that the principal task of the day here is parallel:  
making the connection between Marxism (true Marxism!) and the 
anti-imperialist movement.

I extend the fraternal greetings of the emerging Maoist forces in 
Russia to the Maoist Internationalist Movement and with my whole 
heart wish it success in its task of building a proletarian-led 
united front within u.$. borders. I express our solidarity with 
the struggles of the oppressed nations within u.$ borders. It is 
my heartfelt desire that these forces embrace the correct, 
Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, world outlook and clearly see their 
struggles as inextricably linked to the struggle of the world 
proletariat for socialism and communism -- the sole approach that 
can guarantee them victory. I wish all of you, North American 
Leftists and anti-imperialists, prosperity and success in your 
resistance to the Amerikkkan empire from the inside, in your very 
special fight -- in the belly of the beast.

¡Venceremos!

Yours in freedom,

Dar