MIM Notes 230                   March 15, 2001

Anti-imperialism, internationalism: Good
"Anti-authoritarian" and "armed struggle now" demagoguery: Bad

Kuwasi Balagoon: a Soldier's Story: writings by a revolutionary 
New Afrikan anarchist
http://www.kersplebedeb.com
Kersplebedeb, CP 63560, CCCP Van Horne, Montreal, Quebec, CANADA 
H3W 3H8

January 2001

reviewed by International Minister

This pamphlet comes from the better section of anarchists. We have 
the political prisoners from the Black Liberation Army -- e.g. the 
Panther 21 -- and people like J. Sakai writing supplementary 
material to the material Balagoon wrote. Although this posthumous 
booklet of a New Afrikan soldier who died in 1986 is firmly anti-
imperialist and strongly internationalist, we will not recommend 
it.

Armed struggle now?

The Balagoon attack on our line would be that we oppose armed 
struggle at this time. Balagoon ended up in prison for the last 
time for expropriating (robbing from the bourgeois point of view) 
a Brinks truck in which two cops and a security guard resisted and 
ended up dead.

Balagoon correctly points out that Stalin robbed banks. However, 
armed struggle is a scientific matter not simply a moral duty. It 
is not expedient in all times and places although its necessity is 
universal. The conditions for Stalin to rob banks were much better 
than those faced now. The U.$. capitalists pay the state much 
better now to track down the bank robbers. Transportation and 
communication is also improved. We follow Mao on this question--
that it does not make sense to attack the imperialists frontally 
where they have great forces, speed and communication. In 
contrast, in many areas of the world, the revolutionaries can base 
themselves somewhere far from the reach of the central government 
or powerful local police forces.

This does not mean we in MIM believe we have no obligations toward 
the armed struggle simply because we reside in North America. 
First Nations still have armed struggle to defend their territory 
and others find themselves in self-defense situations. 
Geographically people in North Amerika generally face powerful 
ruling classes still able to rule; yet the people inside the 
imperialist countries also have high technology and legal ways of 
making money open to them more easily than anywhere else. 
Furthermore, the comrades across the globe complain about the 
Amerikan propaganda machine and we are in a unique position to do 
something about that as well. Hence, in the international division 
of labor, the comrades of the imperialist countries should be 
supporting armed struggles, just not where they have the highest 
chance of being defeated. Mao wrote several books on military 
science and we find no reference to military science in this 
collection.

Authoritarianism

In addition to the question of armed struggle, we favor 
disciplined vanguard organization and hence qualify as 
"authoritarian" in the books of these anarchists. We will address 
this theoretically and practically.

In theory, Balagoon says on the back cover, "the foundation of the 
revolution must rest upon the bones of the oppressors." That is a 
correct statement to make and it is Balagoon's. We certainly agree 
with him that the violence of revolution is nothing compared with 
the violence inherent to the system. That is the first and perhaps 
most important scientific point to understand and nothing else is 
worth talking about until that fact is clear. Balagoon and MIM 
reached the same scientific conclusion on this. Hence it is not a 
matter of putting these words in his mouth, and defining anarchism 
for the anarchists, but the fact is that his statement implies 
"hierarchy."

It becomes a semantic quibble to talk about violent revolution 
without hierarchy. Violence is intimately wound up with hierarchy. 
To stand on someone's else's bones is a matter of hierarchy. We 
cannot think of anything involving more hierarchy than that. It 
means saying you are above someone else. For MIM it is not 
something ever to think except in respect to a well-defined enemy 
in a well-defined plan of People's War led by a Maoist party. 
Those "anti-authoritarians" and "anarchists" in favor of violent 
revolution are lost in semantics. A state is nothing but organized 
force used by one group over another. To stand on the bones of the 
oppressor means a state whether the anarchists are responsible 
enough to call it that or not. The only consistent anarchism of 
the internationalist sort is pacifist-anarchism. The better 
anarchism for organized violence is simply an unconscious and 
hence unaccountable form of bastard Marxism.

Hence, we stress that we are not putting words in Balagoon's 
mouth. We are addressing the contradiction in what he thought, no 
doubt because we have covered the same ground. This is our 
theoretical point, that to be both for organized violence and no 
hierarchy is a contradiction in terms. Anarchy is only achievable 
as the last stage of communism where violence is no longer 
necessary.

This brings us to applying this theory in practice. The basic 
difference between us and the better anarchists is that we at MIM 
are accountable and less authoritarian than they are. While in 
words we make clear what authority exists and has to exist in the 
revolutionary movement, in practice we achieve less 
authoritarianism than the "anarchists" and "anti-authoritarians" 
do. The fact is that Balagoon was an authoritarian whether he said 
so or not.

Even the publication of this booklet serves as a demonstration. 
MIM has misgivings about it because it makes clear that Balagoon 
was bisexual, when we at MIM --despite being in on the lingo -- 
cannot tell for sure that Balagoon would have wanted that. Having 
spent so much time in prison was it really Balagoon's choice? 
Would Balagoon have covered the subject the same way his 
publishers did? MIM does not know. We do not know who has the 
authority to publish this booklet.

The reason MIM does not know what Balagoon would have wanted is 
that even though he wrote quite a bit, he did not belong to or 
support a party with a worked out position. He even admitted at 
the end of life shortened by AIDS that he found himself working 
without any comrades of his pole of thought, something that should 
have caused him to realize the fallacies of his science. If 
Balagoon had been more accountable, we could go to what he said or 
a certain section of the party's work, read it and know what he 
would have wanted. Instead, what happened is that Balagoon opposed 
hierarchy. Perhaps he would have regarded the publication of his 
work by people who well could have been his political antagonists 
as a kind of theft. MIM does not know and the masses cannot tell 
either.

For that matter, the organization distributing this book 
"kersplebedeb" claims that it is authorized to xerox Sakai's book 
and we are not supposed to xerox it. This is fascinating on two 
levels. First, kersplebedeb was able to say "authorized." 
Secondly, it means there is someone with authority to do something 
and someone who does not have authority to do it. Thirdly, this is 
a fascinating question, because as "kersplebedeb" surely knows, 
they are thousands of miles from the last place we obtained our 
"authorized" purchase of Sakai's book. How are we to know Sakai 
really authorized this? Could a cop set up shop and tell us the 
same thing? Heck yes. Hence, the "anti-authoritarian" line as it 
is practiced everywhere we have seen it is in fact not "anti-
authoritarian." The "anti-authoritarian" line is in fact a cover 
for unaccountable power, one easily manipulated by the capitalists 
in a time of upsurge by the oppressed and exploited.

The troubling thing about the better anarchists is that their line 
is the best cover-up for degeneration that there is--a purely 
verbal criticism of those of us who are accountable authoritarians 
as opposed to unaccountable authoritarians like the "anarchists" 
and "anti-authoritarians." The true choice is between pacifist-
anarchism--a purely mental construct yet to exist in the world--
and Marxism, the science concerned with what gets implemented.

On this point, we have to complain that Balagoon put some words in 
the mouths of us Marxists. Of us Maoists he says, "This is key 
because this is what separates anarchist revolutionaries from 
Maoist, socialist and nationalist revolutionaries who from the 
onset do not embrace complete revolution. They cannot envision a 
truly free and equalitarian society."(p. 72) The problem is not 
that we cannot envision it; the problem is that we cannot 
implement it. Those are two separate questions and Balagoon's 
critique of us is idealist in the same fashion as Trotskyism. If 
it were just a problem of vision, then why haven't the Trotskyists 
or anarchists implemented what they are talking about while we 
Maoists so lack in vision?

Mao Zedong rammed through the communist program by kicking out the 
Japanese and U.$. imperialists and putting national health care in 
place. This by itself reduced violence against Chinese people by 
the millions of people each year. That is what it means for that 
cold statistic called "life expectancy" to double in a generation. 
That life expectancy statistic says a lot about the degree of 
hierarchy, more than Balagoon's whole booklet, because no one 
voluntarily and cooperatively gives up life unless there is an 
enemy lording it over them. That's not to mention how Mao altered 
the global balance of power on behalf of the colonized.

It is important not to let semantics, talk of "humyn rights" or 
"free speech" or "right to choice" or anything else get in the way 
of understanding the real situation: no one chooses to die without 
underlying compulsion, so when the capitalists say a country is 
"free" and even the people vote now and then for the Yankee lackey 
candidate, but their life expectancy would be better under 
socialism, we have to say "bullshit" both to the imperialists and 
even the people when they vote for those lackeys.

Likewise, we have to say bullshit to Balagoon when he runs down 
Maoism and then offers us what--the ability "to envision a truly 
free and equalitarian society"? Words and even dreams are not a 
substitute for a real life, no matter what the churches or 
television would say. The failure of a drug to cure AIDS--and even 
in 2001 none have completely cured it--does not mean it is right 
to give up those drugs and start taking chicken soup instead. 
Giving up Maoism for anarchism is liking taking chicken soup for 
AIDS: it's pre-scientific.

An essayist in the booklet named Freddy Perlman offers us the 
following instead of the advances in China and the USSR: "i think 
that the building of revolutionary collectives and forming of 
federations of collectives is the most practical and righteously 
rewarding process of preserving and enhancing life and developing 
the character of all nations."(p. 80) Balagoon said the same thing 
over and over: "Making the most of everything is exemplified 
pretty well by working in a collective setting and living in a co-
op, and it seems like it would be an easy thing to found an 
anarchist food co-op somewhere like Toronto."(p. 110)

How is that these anarchists fail to compare the degeneration of 
co-ops into capitalist institutions while they run down the 
advances under Mao? Countless co-ops have become simple unabashed 
capitalist institutions within the United $tates, and that's 
leaving aside that they are all capitalist institutions, with 
anarchist management or not. Balagoon envisions it this way: "If a 
collective chooses to recycle and accumulate capital for a co-op 
of sorts, people will see people working together."(p. 112) We 
notice he said "capital," but apparently he thought that small 
groups of individuals could rise above the laws of capitalist 
economics in oases of anarchist lifestyle. It is not far from 
there to saying there are only free individuals and no classes. If 
some anarchists put together a community to support strikes, 
recycling etc., Balagoon says the masses "will see what's 
happening with their support and more importantly they will have 
access to a new way of living."(p. 113) The belief in dreamy 
lifestyles doing things that millions have tried without 
generating anarchism or less violence is a sure sign of pre-
scientific thinking.

There is no monopoly on degeneration that Maoism has; quite the 
contrary, the anarchists in China started with a massive headstart 
over the Maoists. Even university presidents supported the 
anarchist movement, but while quantitatively ahead in both members 
and resources at their disposal, the anarchists just had no 
scientific process of thought and fell behind as the struggle of 
the 1900s wore on in China. The most thorough anarchists ended up 
as monarchists, snitches and top leaders in the Kuomintang regime 
in Taiwan, buried with full honors by Chiang Kai-shek. See Peter 
Zarrow's, "Anarchism and Chinese Political Culture" available in 
our reviewed section of the MIM online bookstore. So even on the 
question of degeneration at the organizational level, spouting 
words against hierarchy does not prevent degeneration. Maoism's 
accomplishments exceed those of anarchism's: cooperatives went 
much farther in the People's Republic than in any anarchist 
federation in any country. That is what is important, not the 
poetry or dreams of activists--and yes, shall we say 
unfortunately?--Balagoon was a poet. Perhaps that explains his 
outlook toward revolutionary science.

Agreements with Balagoon: gems in his writing

Having defended Maoism on the question of armed struggle in 
imperialist countries and "anti-authoritarianism," we turn to 
agreements with Balagoon. Of course he was right that the New 
Afrikan and anti-imperialist fighters are not "terrorists" the way 
the state says, even if they are "terrorists" in the way that 
Lenin said--and he knew because his brother died as one. Balagoon 
favored attacks on the state and people that attacked the 
revolutionaries and he opposed attacks on the people, so the 
manipulations of the ruling class to try him with a secret jury 
were simply propaganda by the state. Here we just want to point 
out some of the best things Balagoon said in the booklet.

*"Lech Walesa didn't do half the time that Jerry Gaines, Shaheem 
Jabbar, Yaasmyn Fula or Asha Thornton has, and they are still in, 
because America is a hypocritical empire."(pp. 34-5)

*"This constitutional set up has resulted in a white person never 
having been legally executed for the murder of a Black person, in 
the history of the United States."(p. 36) "Not one, in all of the 
fifty states or colonies before them, during 400 years, is an 
incredible statistic."(p. 68) The reviewer finds this astonishing 
too, and cannot vouch for its truthfulness in 1983. We can say 
that Amnesty International found that in 500 executions from 1977 
to 1998 Blacks killing whites were 11 times more likely to get the 
death penalty than whites killing Blacks. Once convicted of 
murder, Blacks get more death sentences than white convicts. Then 
there is the actual carrying out of death sentences after a death 
penalty sentence. As we see from President Clinton's pardons, the 
rich get pardoned.

Calculations on super-profits

In that wing of the North Amerikan movement originated in the 
1960s called "anti-imperialist" and for armed struggle, the 
question of super-exploitation has always been the sharpest--
though even so not sharp enough. Balagoon calculated in 1983 that 
super-profits in 1947 obtained from Black workers were $4 
billion.(p. 43)

Balagoon erred in a nationalist direction on just this one point--
calling Blacks the largest source of super-profits for U.$. 
imperialism.(p. 42) MIM holds that the Blacks within U.$. borders-
-as a group--are oppressed but not exploited because of the inflow 
of super-profits from abroad which Balagoon underestimates.

It is not to say he was a narrow nationalist--far from it. "It is 
clear to anyone that Native peoples are repressed more so than 
anyone else, that genocide has been practiced against them more so 
than any people still exist as a people."(p. 108)

Having accepted Sakai's book "Settlers," Balagoon did not draw the 
correct conclusion. The fact that such a nation of parasites 
exists that killed the First Nation peoples and enslaved the 
Blacks means that "the working class" Balagoon continually refers 
to is in fact a petty-bourgeoisie, and ally of imperialism. There 
is no "people" here that can spontaneously go for anarchism. We 
cannot rely on anarchist good will to generate an anarchist 
society in the United $tates. The first step toward anarchy will 
have to be de-lousing. Forcing a country of parasites to give up 
their super-profit soaked lifestyles cannot be accomplished by New 
Age individualist rhetoric anymore than it ended slavery. 
Organized force--an international state--needs to settle the 
question of U.$. imperialism. For this reason alone, anarchism can 
never have the most thorough internationalist credentials. 
Reparations need to be paid in an organized way and the class 
structure changed before the peoples of North Amerika can see eye-
to-eye with the international proletariat. Ironically, while the 
anarchists are the ones to realize that white workers are bought-
off in the imperialist countries, they are the last to draw the 
conclusion of what will be necessary to change that situation--a 
dictatorship of the international proletariat, principally of the 
oppressed nations outside North America.

Note: http://www.amnesty-usa.org/news/1999/usa05181999.html