MIM Notes 210                   May 15, 2000

PIRAO marks some milestones

by PIRAO chief

In April, the party-led military-style organization called PIRAO 
paid off three people's loans in the four and five digit amounts. 
Three separate people had loaned money for the purpose of building 
independent institutions.

The effort to make such a loan instead of depositing it in an 
imperialist bank takes some progressive courage. It is easier 
simply by habit to do business with the imperialist institutions.

The PIRAO projects to build independent institutions have created 
valuable experience in the financial and business areas. As 
reported in our book review of the Sword and the Shield, the so-
called Communist Party (U$A) obtained most of its budget from the 
Soviet Union.

The other common source of money for movement organizations in the 
United $tates is dues. Environmentalist organizations take in 10 
digit figures each year from middle-class people contributing from 
their salaries. Such a figure in one year dwarfs all the monetary 
contributions of the Soviet Union to various U.$. political 
organizations in its whole history.

PIRAO has attempted to go beyond hand-outs from socialist 
countries that do not exist and dues collection. It is wrong to 
believe that at this stage of the struggle-- primitive though it 
may be--all tasks are public opinion creation. The PIRAO is a part 
of the party's two-pronged strategy to create both public opinion 
and the independent institutions of the oppressed.

Without a worked out party line, the effort to build independent 
institutions for the oppressed usually founders in charity work 
without direction. Yet, without practical people doing the mundane 
work of infrastructure, public opinion creation can be "empty 
talk" -- parlor chatter and just another form of imperialist 
country entertainment. Even an effective newspaper needs extensive 
infrastructure to be effective and not just a small xerox sheet.

A strong leader such as Huey Newton of the Black Panther Party 
once was can bring together people who would otherwise be social 
workers or chattering intellectuals. The key is putting 
proletarian thought in command in a society where the people will 
inevitably come from parasitic backgrounds and where all 
spontaneous thought is parasitic.

Even when seized with the idea of making revolution, the people of 
the imperialist countries are apt to think it comes from the sky. 
The reason for this is that super-profits do come from the sky in 
the imperialist countries and the people become used to doing only 
those things that somehow take advantage of Third World labor 
brought to the imperialist countries without being seen. Money and 
other resources for the revolution do not appear from Heaven.