Maoist Internationalist Movement

On the USENET conferences, it appears that the main objection many people have to Maoism centers around the use of violence and human-rights. Chunde Shi and Jim Dyer have both said the Sendero Luminoso in Peru should not use violence to achieve its goals.

In the reasoning of many pacifists and "human-rights" activists, there is some middle ground between the oppressive status quo in Third World countries on the one hand and revolution on the other hand. One recent critic told us s/he criticizes "both" the Peruvian regime and the Sendero Luminoso just like the Amnesty International group does.

These critics of the People's War in Peru and elsewhere have middle-class illusions. They point to the capitalist and feudal ruling class's violence in mock disgust and also object when the oppressed try to stop the violence against them. Somehow both sides must be wrong reasons the middle-class activist.

These pacifists and human-rights activists think that the people in Peru are not smart enough to try "compromise" and "negotiation." The middle-class activists and phony leftists wish these Maoists had the superior moral reasoning of "human- rights."

These negotiators also unconsciously believe that the right to food, shelter, clothing and medical care is somehow negotiable, but they are only correct to the extent that people who die no longer complain about food and shelter much less "free speech." Such "negotiation" is in fact delay and cooperation with genocide and it does resolve conflict, the same way Hitler's "final solution" for the Jews did. From time to time when the inevitable Warsaw Ghetto uprising happens, the pacifists and human-rights activists condemn the oppressed for using violence. It seems to them there is "new" violence, because they had always overlooked and collaborated with the much greater violence of the oppressor, as long as it did not visibly involve prisons or guns, except by the law, which in most countries is a law upholding the right to private property but not the right to eat.

Amnesty International and the like have never shown anyone in the modern industrial world a country where human-rights exist in reality. Amnesty International does not give the oppressed the actual option of LIVING somewhere that has real human- rights. Even those blind to the actions of history's number one oppressor of people's everywhere --U.S. imperialism-- do not offer the Third World masses a chance to live inside that fabled paradise of "freedom"--the United States. Indeed, recently, even Amnesty International has had an occasional word about political prisoners in the United States.

The Third World masses are not stupid. Although they rise up in revolution in Peru, Bolivia, the Philippines, Azania, Eritrea, Palestine etc., the oppressed would gladly quit the revolution and walk right into the kingdom of human-rights the day it actually existed anywhere but the minds of fence- sitting middle-classes. Set up an Amnesty International human- rights zone in Peru, and the masses would walk right in. There is no question that the oppressed want to live in a world free of political repression and violence.

Unfortunately, the pacifists and human-rights activists have no connection to a reality of human-rights or non-violence. They are instead apologists for the imperialists' violence. The choice is no where between violence and non-violence. The choice is between starving and bleeding to death on the one hand or fighting to live on the other hand. We at MIM believe the pacifists, so-called human-rights activists and others have no business telling the oppressed not to defend themselves when they are starving to death or dying from preventable diseases. Self-defense is one of the most basic of human-rights. (The New York Times just admitted that 40,000 Third World children die every day from preventable diseases. 9/17/92, p. a24)

Even the World Bank recognizes that in Peru for instance, available food can only feed 90% of the population. This is despite the fact that revolutionary China fed its people with a much smaller economy on a per capita basis.

If the pacifists and "human-rights" activists want to preach, let them preach the following:

1. Third World landlords: surrender your land peacefully in land reform. The human-right to eat is not negotiable.

2. Imperialists: withdraw your military aid to landlords and bureaucrat capitalists around the world. Withdraw your occupation forces in Korea, the Philippines etc. The right to self-determination and freedom from military violence is not negotiable.

3. Multinational companies: surrender your operations to the oppressed peoples. The food, drugs and clothing production you control involve the inviolable rights of the people to live.

It is only where the oppressors resist the human-rights of the oppressed that there is violence. Where the middle-class preaches non-violence to the oppressed, the ruling class is pleased. The ruling class knows that as long as it monopolizes the use of force, pacifism is a good thing. Let everyone else be a pacifist and human-rights believer as long as the ruling- class stays in power reasons the bourgeoisie, which from time to time gives an award to these middle-class puritans.

Related readings:

Ask for articles on Mao and Gandhi, the Great Leap Forward, and violence in the Third World. Also see Christopher Caudwell, Studies and Further Studies in a Dying Culture.