by International Minister, June 6, 2006
"When imperialism launches a war of aggression against such a country, all its various classes, except for some traitors, can temporarily unite in a national war against imperialism. At such a time, the contradiction between imperialism and the country concerned becomes the principal contradiction, while all the contradictions among the various classes within the country (including what was the principal contradiction, between the feudal system and the great masses of the people) are temporarily relegated to a secondary and subordinate position."--Mao in "On Contradiction"
A Liberal unity project in the West to oppress Iran has swept up public opinion in a very few short months. Reactionary David Horowitz organizations are openly selling t- shirts showing the united $tates detonating nuclear weapons on Iran. Organizations claiming to uphold Mao have gone back on their word to uphold his work. The joint resolutions they signed were worse than a piece of paper, because it is as Marx said, "first time tragedy, second time farce."
The first time we saw betrayals like this, was prior to World War I, when the most radical and well-known parties of the day signed joint resolutions promising to oppose their imperialists if they went to war. When the time came to oppose World War I, the relevant parties betrayed the proletarian cause and revealed themselves to the world as taken over by labor aristocracies. Lenin's party held out against the war and came to power where other European parties failed. Today we face the Maoist version of the same story, with fake followers of Lenin and Mao taking the stand of "neither U.$. imperialism nor Islam" in connection to a country occupied by u.$. troops.
David Horowitz lackey Phyllis Chesler and social-democratic culture warrior Berman speak of a "third force" for the Islamic countries. They are covering for organizations run out of the Pentagon that sometimes claim to be anti-U.$. in deference to public opinion in the Mideast and Central Asia. This is no longer secret. The "Voice of America" openly strategizes over how to influence Islamic wimmin. "Voice of America," the U.S. Government organ has admitted that going to Islamic wimmin with Western values is ineffective. That's why the u.$. imperialists seek to use fake Maoists as tools. These pseudo-feminists are discernible by what they emphasize and what they do not. No matter how righteous their rhetoric about wimmin may appear, they are warmongers.
More than one of these organizations claims to be Maoist--neither Islamic nor U.$. imperialist or so they want us to believe. Chesler is openly touting intelligence work for u.$. imperialism while simultaneously claiming to support the "third force."
No such ideas can be found in Mao's works. In thousands of pages of Mao's writings, the phrase "third force" does not appear once.(1) In use of the phrase "three sides," most usages refer to geographic locations as in surrounding an enemy on the battlefield from north, east and west directions. No where does Mao speak of three-sided battle. When someone echoes Phyllis Chesler in political struggle, that should be enough for anyone to know we are handling a fake. Likewise, those who conciliate with the fakes are either illiterate or bribed.
Anyone familiar with Mao's support for dialectical materialism is not surprised that he did not see three-sided politics. Mao was about the two-sided nature of the national bourgeoisie in semi-colonies, and this is what distinguished him and Stalin from Trotsky.
Genuine Maoist parties have no tolerance for the noise passing itself off as Maoism today. There is no neutral ground on the Iran question now that u.$. troops have landed there. Maoists side with the oppressed nation, period.
Mao made sure that we would know that by explaining the situation not just in a policy paper but in his essays on philosophy describing the principal contradiction and dialectical materialism as a general concept:
When imperialism launches a war of aggression against such a country, all its various classes, except for some traitors, can temporarily unite in a national war against imperialism. At such a time, the contradiction between imperialism and the country concerned becomes the principal contradiction, while all the contradictions among the various classes within the country (including what was the principal contradiction, between the feudal system and the great masses of the people) are temporarily relegated to a secondary and subordinate position.
Instead of Mao's approach, fake Maoists not only do not see the principal contradiction that way, but also they openly denigrate the nationalism of the Iranian people. The difference between what Mao said and what the fakes are saying is like night and day. They are illegally using taxpayer money to spread a false impression of Maoism in the united $tates for their warmongering ends in Iran.
Nor are these fakes doing anything the imperialists have not done before. All the same issues of the veil and repressive theocratic regimes have existed before. In 1921, Lenin's government condemned in no uncertain terms the approach taken by fake communists today.
Real Maoists raising the question of wimmin in Iran ask whether wimmin are allowed to hunt down the U.$. spotter troops and psy-war operatives inside Iran today. Real feminists in Iran do not demand permission to read Nabokov.
If the Islamic regime refuses to allow participation of wimmin in the patriotic war, then it should be exposed for that. If Iranian wimmin are not allowed to participate in politics to the full extent to understand how u.$. imperialism is grabbing for Iranian oil and opposing nuclear energy programs, then the regime should be exposed as unpatriotic. In fact, the regime in Iran is far more active in exposing imperialism than Chiang Kai-shek in China ever was. There is far less reason to be opposing Maoism on Iran than there was in China.
It goes without saying that real communists do not take orders from Bush and Rice on the question of wimmin. Bu$h, Rice, Clinton etc. have never delivered any fundamental change for wimmin anywhere. They only use the issue as a cover for troops landing in Iran--something that has not changed in more than 80 years-- oil, Islam, wimmin, the veil and Liberalism being in the same lethal brew as always. People working in the u.$. military or for the u.$. military are only kidding themselves if they think they are doing any good for Iranian wimmin. We'd suggest that some of MIM's critics shut up quickly and make self-criticism for their involvement in CIA projects.
The repressiveness of the Iranian theocracy is nothing new. Chiang Kai-shek in China was also a lackey-fascist. Yet Mao made the following clear anyway in "On Contradiction":
For instance, in the period of its first co- operation with the Communist Party, the Kuomintang stood in contradiction to foreign imperialism and was therefore anti-imperialist; on the other hand, it stood in contradiction to the great masses of the people within the country-- although in words it promised many benefits to the working people, in fact it gave them little or nothing. In the period when it carried on the anti-Communist war, the Kuomintang collaborated with imperialism and feudalism against the great masses of the people and wiped out all the gains they had won in the revolution, and thereby intensified its contradictions with them. In the present period of the anti- Japanese war, the Kuomintang stands in contradiction to Japanese imperialism and wants co-operation with the Communist Party, without however relaxing its struggle against the Communist Party and the people or its oppression of them.
Those who want to oppose Iranian military preparations and nationalism cannot derive their line from Mao. There is nothing in Mao at all that permits of equating an oppressed nation and imperialism and then saying "neither.[u.$. imperialism] . . nor [Iran]." However, after Lenin died, Trotsky did put forward the line that there is no difference between the bourgeoisie in the colonies and the bourgeoisie of an imperialist state. If the Pentagon wants to send a Spartacist League detachment into Iran, it is quite within its rights, but hands off Maoism!
It is consistent with Trotskyism and comprador service of Western imperialism to deny the "two-sided" character of the national bourgeoisie of the neo-colonies, because Trotsky held that imperialism was still progressive, not decadent and thus no better or worse than the national bourgeoisie in a semi-feudal country.
It is also consistent with denying the extent of super-exploitation and the labor aristocracy to kiss up to u.$. imperialism and hope that it will impose Liberal reforms. That is why Trotskyists are today's neo-conservatives.
These same Trotskyists and imperialist compradors deny that nationalism of the oppressed nations is applied internationalism, because they dream of service to Liberal imperialism. They side with the super-exploiters in denying that oppressed nations nationalism is a political expression of the class struggle against imperialist super-exploitation.
Our reader may ask if it is not dogmatism to quote Mao; yet the question is what has changed since Mao's day. In this particular case, u.$. imperialism is still imperialism; Iran is still an oppressed nation and oil and veil questions are still in the mix. The only thing that has changed is that the Iranian theocrats actually do a much better job exposing u.$. imperialism than Chiang Kai-shek would even dream of. If anything, the case for Maoism on the "two-sided nature" of the Iranian bourgeoisie is stronger than ever.
It would be dogmatism for MIM to quote Mao if conditions had changed. Sometimes conditions change while principles remain the same and we have to reanalyze. In this case, however, Uncle $am is out on yet another Western imperialist mission to prop up patriarchy and speed-up the black market spread of nuclear weapons.
There is no room for any party in Maoism that cannot see the facts on Iran clearly. Parties that need to see the pay stubs and already available and public documentation of CIA ties are too thick-headed to be counted as scientific communists. There is such a thing as having too much proof. Politically astute people, even non-Maoists should be able to see that there is nothing in Mao supporting a "neither, nor" line on Iran. That is an invention of the Pentagon needing a geopolitical cover to operate under in Iran. Requiring too much proof is an indication of a political problem, an incorrect political handling of the substance of the question. It would be unfortunate to have on our side comrades who are here only because of excessive proof. Such comrades lower the quality of scientific communism. If they cannot see a total fraud being perpetrated in the name of Maoism, they are useless.
Over the years, in many parties, a conscious rejection of a proper understanding of the extent of super-exploitation made dropping Mao's teachings on nationalism of the oppressed nations inevitable. Countless parties have long histories of being used to catering to Western labor aristocracies. They are too afraid of offending the Western labor aristocracy and the Liberal imperialists to be any use to the struggle. Not surprisingly, not one of these fake Maoist parties or the Kautskyite conciliators tolerating them issued any statement in favor the the Aztlán national struggle despite the demonstrations of millions these past two months. It was bad enough that these parties did not attend to their allies closest to taking down u.$. imperialism. Yet even now when the millions have marched, they have nothing to say, with the exception of those most bourgeois of fake communist parties calling for assimilation into u.$. imperialism.
There is a huge abyss like the Grand Canyon between the exploited and the exploiter. For many years, MIM has shined the search-light of Marxism-Leninism- Maoism on this abyss. As the U.$. invasion of Iran started, there were some parties on the wrong side of the abyss that started running toward the exploited's side; yet the chasm opened up to swallow them before they could make it to the other side. Down in the abyss below are the parties and leaders dangling from branches, because they did not break with CIA politics until it was too late. These branches in the abyss are called things such as "peaceful imperialism." Can someone throw the people hanging on to Khruschevite props a rope to climb out and are they strong enough to climb out? Even if they do climb out, will they take the short-cut to the exploiters' side of the canyon? That is the grim predicament we find ourselves in at the moment. Bu$h is momentarily talking peace on Iran, but our side of the struggle is not regrouping.
When the wreckage of the communist movement of World War I happened, Lenin dedicated more than one comrade full-time to setting the ship aright. He wrote countless articles going into the fine details of small European political organizations, often splinters of splinters in small countries.
Of course Lenin did not have success right away. Likewise today the vast majority of people calling themselves "Maoist" are fakes or their conciliators. Despite the momentary unpopularity of Maoism in certain places, the basic ideas of "On Contradiction" are bound to have a successful resurgence. No spies, traitors, conciliationists or bribed scum can change that.
Notes:
1. Not surprisingly, Trotsky used the phrase "third force" in reference
to a capitalist country: " But before the competing classes and parties will go
to that extreme-especially in case they dread the interference of third force-
they may feel compelled for quite long time to endure, and even to sanction, a
two-power system. This system will nevertheless inevitably explode. "
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1930-hrr/ch11.htm