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In the movie "Matrix," fans will recall that people are farmed as batteries for machines tending them. While they are on the farms the people dream of life on Earth in order that the machines can keep them quiescent to give off the maximum energy to be exploited by the machines. The "Matrix" is a good example, especially if we start from the military side.
There is a military science behind how the people in the "Matrix" fight. The basic problem is that the awakened fighters are a tiny minority of the population. The military science flows from the political and economic situation.
In the dream world of the Earth that everyone functions in in the "Matrix," it is possible if one wanted, to have ideological discussion with the majority of people. Then agents from the machines would come and kill any rebels. The ideological discussion is possible, but fatal.
The traitor character, Mr. Reagan, tells the hero "when you see an agent, you run," which is just the summation of the struggle up to that point. The fact is that agents can take over the bodies of any unawakened persyn on the Earth and then kill the awakened humyns, who before finding Neo, never had anyone fast enough to fight the agents.
So the problem is that on a one-on-one basis, and even a ten-humyns-against-one- agent basis, the agents have military superiority. In that situation, for Mr. Reagan or any normal humyns to "stand their ground" and fight the agents is suicidal. No impassioned appeals to the alleged "masses" would work. The only people who would "stand their ground" before Neo appeared would be suicidal and suicide in such a circumstance is just an ultra-left version of capitulationism, an ideological fault. Eldridge Cleaver had to be persuaded by Huey Newton to stay out of ultra-left capitulationism. He wanted to die in a gun battle and be done. This was called "Custerism." According to the movie, "Reds," John Reed eventually succumbed to the same idea when he volunteered for a military situation when he had no health to sustain it.
The capitulationism takes two forms--taking futile stands and getting slaughtered or taking no fight at all because it is "impossible" in the right- wing version of capitulationism. Either way is suicide for the species and either way is capitulationism; yet, such capitulationism characterizes over 90% of the organizations calling themselves communist or socialist in the imperialist countries today. Right-wing capitulationism slides into reformism.
At the beginning of Mao's struggle, there was both right-wing and ultra-left capitulationism. Some wanted suicidal insurrectional battles in the cities and others believed it was impossible to overcome the landlords, Japan and the United $tates, because the Chinese were drug-addled and weak. Even many decades later, there is considerable argument over how Mao won. "Nobody knows" is one thing we still hear about Mao's military miracles. Exaggerated tales of the Soviet role are now surfacing. The problem is that there is still a vast majority of people unable to handle any social science, even when it is right under their nose.
It is democratic prejudice to believe that we must always believe in the majority in any situation-- the boardroom, a stockholders' meeting, country clubs and golf courses included. The key to fighting today is understanding that the "Matrix" is an accurate presentation of imperialist countries. The vast majority of people are only potential enemies to be taken over by the agents. Arguing with them is generally useless and potentially fatal. (They can read MIM's press or website if they want.) The people have to be materially detached from their machines before they can think straight. It is not only ideological brainwashing at work. There is a real material force that makes the vast majority of people in the "Matrix" enemies.
So this is the difference science makes. One either has an accurate assessment of the people on the "Matrix" world or one does not. The liberators do have an accurate assessment, which is why they use a submarine and only risk themselves in the Earth simulation for specific goals, not to have random discussions with people passing by. The lives of the liberators depend on using untapped phone lines for transport whenever possible. Secrecy is the rule in a hostile environment.
To a lesser degree, the same is true in "Men in Black." The real rulers of the planet view themselves as saving the people from themselves, not that they think the people are all that bad, just not trustworthy. Whenever the rulers have some difficulty, they just "flash" the people and the people go back to being stupefied and forgetting morons. It's a hilarious commentary on the U.$. people, but even in that case, the process is quite material, because something is going on with the flashbulbs the rulers use. It's not just a process of ideological persuasion, though the result looks much the same. "Men in Black" can only recruit from normal people and then put those normal people through training. That is also a correct model for our struggle. And people who leave the MIM struggle go back to being untrained just as some "Men in Black" go back to the attractions of stupefied middle class life after flashing themselves.
Various species that are quite powerful land on earth in "Men in Black" and if one were to stand around trying to persuade people ideologically about the flim- flam of the rulers while the rulers were using flash technology, one would quickly be devoured by some insect-type creature from space. Instead, one has to know that the people are useless and which weapons can handle what intruder species. If one were to vary from that, there would be nothing but failure.
MIM's critics are like people who would try to persuade the people in the "Matrix" or "Men in Black" that they are "oppressed" and "exploited" through verbal means. Quite the contrary is true. People have to be ripped from the "Matrix" by force before they can think. That is our situation in the imperialist countries and we can either face it or lose.
Now some people are confused by the various forms capitulationism takes. Though agents are militarily superior and enemies outnumber them, Morpheus and his crew still fought on as an outpowered minority, before they found Neo. The key is that Morpheus did not capitulate. He had to learn to adapt his tactics and strategy to survive and he had to realize he could not liberate everyone in one all-out battle with agents, at least not before he found Neo and started working with that level of force.
There are some people who are so bourgeois democratic and so used to Menshevism that they say that even telling the truth about the U.$. class structure is capitulationist. Upholding science means in contrast, that there is never a correct time to cover up the overall social forces at work. Doing so will always be wrong, an ideological compromise of science. This is the mistake of substituting ideology for science. It results in both right opportunist and ultra-left errors and only errors.
The majority of people active and calling themselves "communist" are in fact capitulationist because pre-scientific. Capitulationism comes from two directions, but the majority of activists seek to substitute ideological preferences for scientific knowledge. So if these people lived in the "Matrix" world, they would be taking their bullhorns out to rally the "masses" while waiting for the agents to show up and kill them. The only difference is that in the imperialist countries, maybe no agents will show up to kill them, just waste their lives away in futility, which is the same thing.
We also get the capitulationism from another direction. Recently we had someone from an unexpected quarter give us a hand, because this persyn had seen MIM put the smack-down on the enemy. So when people see that the struggle is "possible," people who thought of themselves as "practical" or even "conservative" can change their minds. It depends on being able to see how the world works.
That's the optimistic side. We also have the pre-scientific communists with us who when the power struggle is right under their nose, they cannot perceive it. Gradually it is possible to lose people who do not perceive how to fight to outright capitulationism.
On the subject of anonymous reasoning, the whole search for Neo was by a process of anonymous reasoning. Morpheus knew he needed to accomplish something in the battle against the machines and he kept his science secret from the enemy. He is quite concerned that the enemy would figure out who Neo is and kill him before he can be freed from the farm. Instead, Morpheus gets Neo and rips him out of the machine. So it was important to keep Neo's identity secret from the enemy.
Neo himself is of course a man of various characteristics. We do not know anything about his childhood, his love life before the Matrix and what sort of music he would listen to if he were free. All of those characteristics were irrelevant. Morpheus only knew that Neo's reflex characteristics were what he needed to deal with agents. If Morpheus had equated everything in an equal way with the need for that characteristic, he might not have picked Neo to free and he would have set back the struggle, because he needed to win a military struggle to free bodies from machines, not a music battle of the bands in the Earth simulation. People unable to stand in Morpheus's situation and figure out priorities are liable to be pre-scientific (overdeterminationist) communists.
In today's imperialist countries, there is no task-oriented go-to-itness of Morpheus's sort, because the left-wing of parasitism has convinced people that there is nothing that can be accomplished except more right-wing capitulationism and oinking. Mass manufactured mediocrity is the rule, so Morpheus would be stuck in pc training classes and remedial classes after he decided that his objective was to liberate one white man he happened to need.
People who cannot work with anonymous reasoning are not scientific yet. Truth does not arrive because an authority said so or because someone has surveyed the literature on a subject and selected the golden mean. Science is not people dependent, not dependent on single authorities or some kind of averaging process.
Recently we had a couple wannabe imperialist country reformists in the Philippines raise their doubts about MIM's anonymous reasoning. It was put in their face that the Communist Party of the Philippines had no contribution to the struggle over party-building in Iran. The RIM had just put forward articles threatening Iran's people with military action--and quoting Judith Miller of all people to do it. The RIM had built a rally to bash Iran a year ago on International Wimmin's Day--and the CPP found the NDF international office taking a position to the right of the National Organization of Women in the united $tates. And in the face of all this argument, the Filipinos could only ask "why is MIM anonymous?"
Now we want to say that since the bourgeois revolution is still on the agenda in the Philippines, we have to expect that most people in the united front for the new democratic stage of revolution are not capable of anonymous reasoning yet. They reason on the basis of picking favorite bourgeois authorities. It's just disappointing to see a whole party without anyone able to see what is what and why.
So what we see here is that in the face of a disconcerting situation, one involving many spies including spy recruiters in the open on the Iran question, we have people who become uncomfortable and retreat to questions of authority. What the hell difference is it going to make if MIM is anonymous or not? How is that going to make quoting Judith Miller and distributing CIA articles correct? If we came in contact with such people at MIM, responding that way in a struggle, we would keep them away from the party. We're not denying the new democratic tasks in the Philippines, but at the same time, the vanguard party has to be protected as a reservoir of science or potential gains will not be possible to realize including in the new democratic stage. There were countless people trying to drag down Mao to their level of mediocrity in the pre-1949 period. If we allow it, even in a situation like Mao's where the majority is exploited, the result cannot be good. Quite the contrary, even people like Zhou Enlai realized that Mao had to be protected, because there were too many capitulationists about who would drag down all of China with them. What Mao was saying was not the "golden mean" or in accord with previous authorities and people all around seemed weak, defense-less and drugged up, but Mao was still correct.
In the imperialist countries, the "Matrix" situation applies fully. We do not want to see Morpheus show up and say, "hi I'm Morpheus; love me; trust me; here I am; come and get me." Even if Morpheus is already partly exposed, still we do not teach people to capitulate in the security struggle. The agents knew they were seeking Morpheus. They just could not get their hands on Morpheus exactly in the situation they needed. We set the stage correctly for the training of future Morpheuses, that they should use anonymous reasoning and fight the anonymous battle in the imperialist countries. Whatever hits to the enemy can be delivered should be delivered with secrecy if possible.
One reason we know that the anonymous struggle is correct is by looking at intra-bourgeois power struggle and how it is not our model. Anonymous reasoning is inherently dangerous to the bourgeoisie, because it comes with the dialectic of scientific advance. Most bourgeois politics takes the individual form and stands or falls on individual credibility and connections. Oral sex in Clinton's White House is the substance of bourgeois politics. Recruiting people to the party who deeply understand and demarcate against intra-bourgeois politics is crucial to the international proletariat. We need to measure people by how far they are willing to go to prevent the bourgeois model of politics in the party's thinking.
As we said about the University of Colorado's bureaucracy firing Ward Churchill, there is a huge background of ad hominem attack on Ward Churchill. Even in the academic points in the committee's report, we can see that ad hominem political attack dovetails nicely with Anglo-Saxon historical "methods." The historian on the kangaroo committee knows there is something wrong with reducing the Dawes Act controversy down to finding the individual who first had a documented statement on indigenous bloodlines. She says Ward Churchill "got the better" of the argument, but does not really spell out why. What we really need in teaching is people who bring down the hammer on ad hominem reasoning and its support structures. This was not possible, because it would mean pitching Anglo-Saxon individualism and bourgeois history as it is written now.
Ward Churchill has had intense scrutiny of his academic work by people looking for an excuse to fire him after his comments on 9/11 outraged the 300 million crackers of Amerikkkka. We hear the whole range of stupid things that the Fox News crowd listens to--that Ward Churchill is white, that his high school football team had a losing record and some of his ex-girlfriends don't like him --all of which was known before he received his life-time contract at the University of Colorado.
Going to an historically documented individual on the Dawes Act controversy shows exactly what is wrong in the whole approach to Ward Churchill. It is the academic equivalent of the dishonesty connected with the persynal attacks on Ward Churchill. The bourgeois method drills down to the individual and seeks to divine motivations of that individual and when the University of Colorado found an irrelevant individual in the history of the bloodline controversy, the University of Colorado bureaucracy--despite having no credentials in the field--declared some sympathy for the baying wolves of Colorado using the ad hominem approach. That is, the University of Colorado kangaroo committee decided there was no connection between the Dawes Act and the bloodline controversy Ward Churchill was raising: it decided so and then did an unconvincing take-back in which it said in passing that Ward Churchill got the better of the argument. It is the very nature of the argument against Ward Churchill that reveals the politics of the white mob: the identity of the individual first recorded to make bloodline statements about native blood in North America is simply not terribly relevant. It is typical of these Anglos to want to do a police line-up, put an individual in the line-up and then declare the Dawes Act innocent. It's a total non sequitor common to the reasoning of Ward Churchill's opponents. It was a failure in the educational system that the kangaroo committee even had to consider the point being raised on the Dawes Act. The controversy arose because previous teachers have failed to bring down a hammer hard on ad hominem pseudo-reasoning. When the Maoist party accumulates critical mass, and establishes the joint dictatorship of the proletariat, it will be able to straighten out education by teaching anonymous reasoning. It will be a horrific process of remolding for Euro-Amerikans to learn social cues, social reality.