MIM Notes 228                   February 15, 2001

Overheard on the Internet: the text for a recommendation of the 
MIM web site

ITAL The following is a stupendous effort by someone who does not 
speak English as a native language and why they recommended the 
MIM web site. We corrected a number of grammatical errors. END

I would like to make a quick reply to all those who wrote and 
asked why they should relinquish capitalist ideals when they see 
that capitalist societies have a much greater standard of living. 
Here is a little insight. The reason why those of you privileged 
few who live in 1st world nations enjoy such a high standard of 
living can be answered with one word. Imperialism. No, I am not an 
educated person, but I realize that Lenin's Principle of 
Imperialism holds true. It is the highest stage of capitalism by 
which affluent countries exploit the natural resources and labour 
from other poorer nations to bolster living standards at home. 
This is why those of you who live in capitalist nations are so 
rich. It is not because you are ethical, but because you have no 
qualms about exploiting poorer people in other nations. There is 
an infinite number of examples but for lack of time I'll only name 
a couple. Multinational corporations like Nike, and other huge 
companies go into third world nations, open up factories and pay 
these works virtually nothing. They are wage slaves at the hands 
of their imperialist masters i.e. the US and ALL other 1st World 
Nations. 

I strictly mean imperialism in the Leninist context. That is, like 
I said before: It is the highest stage of capitalism whereby a 
capitalist nation must exploit the natural resources and labour 
power of other countries to bolster living standards at home. This 
explicitly fits the current US mode. It can be explained strictly 
in ecological terms. When all the ecologically productive land of 
the earth is added up and divided amongst the entire population, 
each person should be allotted 1.5 hectares of land. This is the 
amount of land which can sustain one person indefinitely. This is 
where the ecological footprint comes in. The ecological footprint 
is a measure of all the ecologically productive land required to 
sustain a specified population indefinitely. Thus, the EF measures 
not just a population's surrounding land, but all the land 
required to support her/his lifestyle, be it the arable land from 
other countries where exploited peasant farmers produce cheap food 
for affluent countries or not. Therefore it directly measures the 
amount of land being used in a global context. Given this fact, it 
has been calculated that the Ecological footprint of Amerikans is 
5.5 hectares/person (remember, the fair earthshare is only 1.5 
hec/person). Therefore, the decadent lifestyle of Amerikans is 
directly co-opting land from poorer nations. Thus Lenin's point 
holds true. Amerika has reached the highest stage of capitalism 
that they must expand to maintain their high standards of living, 
regardless if that means stealing land from other countries and 
making the poor poorer.

And you ask why do communist countries not enjoy the luxuries 
which 1st world nations enjoy? Its because we do not exploit other 
countries. In the Maoist era, there was no Chinese corporations 
invading other countries to make greater profit. The only Chinese 
intervention there was in other countries i.e: Africa, Vietnam, 
Korea was in the form of aid to combat the exploitive hegemony of 
U.S. capitalism. Socialist programs such as medicare, foodbanks 
etc. were a hallmark of the Maoist era not to mention other 
communist states. Once again, the only reason why communism has 
failed on its first attempt is because they did not believe in 
exploiting other countries. There humanitarianism was their 
downfall. They were overpowered by capitalist nations, namely the 
United States. Yes, I bet the United States is a great place to 
live. But considering the fact that the only reason why it is such 
a good place to live, that is, feeding off the labour power of 
other nations rendering half of the world in an utter state of 
poverty, then I just don't understand why how living or 
propagating capitalist ideals can be justified. DOWN WITH U$ 
IMPERIALISM! LONG LIVE DEMOCRACY!

Chinese writer overheard on the Internet

--April 24, 2000

MIM responds: MIM is much heartened by its Chinese readership. We 
are definitely making some headway.

The amazing thing is that most of those calling themselves 
"Marxist" are abandoning the labor theory of value, especially how 
labor flows from place to place and how parasitism functions. The 
number of parties in the world willing to uphold the labor theory 
of value and admit fully that the U.S. living standard--even of 
so-called workers-- comes from the Third World is a tiny minority. 
Readers can check the list of parties willing and unwilling to 
sign the W.E.B. Du Bois declaration we started circulating at the 
end of 2000 for his birthday commemoration in February 2001. 
People wanting to oppose parasitism as a means of getting rich and 
the built in world war that goes along with that should circle the 
wagons with MIM. If everybody got rich the same way the United 
$tates did, we would all be dead for sure; hence the U.$. model 
fails as a principle for internationalism. The U.$. model is a 
model of war and genocide. Despite the collapse of much 
revisionism in the last 10 years, this question is still squelched 
and avoided by the revisionists.

Just as it once fell for Soviet revisionism that led to the 
collapse of the Soviet Union and outright restoration of 
capitalism, the majority calling itself communist prefers to take 
a beating on the question of living standards rather than 
acknowledge the labor theory of value. The reason for this is that 
the leaders who have taken over the communist movement even in 
most Third World countries, but especially in the imperialist 
countries--most of these leaders do not know and do not care what 
the labor theory of value is despite proclaiming to be Marxist! 
They throw about terms like "mass line," "ultraleft" and 
"sectarian" and such as if they know the real meaning of these 
words, but these words are completely empty when unconnected to 
underlying economic realities of classes. These classes exist 
independently of their observers and will not respect any of the 
labeling of the honestly ignorant, the hysterically chauvinist or 
the otherwise pre-scientific. 

MIM would prefer that the chauvinist majority calling itself 
Marxist in the imperialist countries call itself "social- 
democrats" instead. They should also have the honesty to admit 
they no longer uphold the labor theory of value and Marx's 
theories of wealth accumulation.