This is an archive of the former website of the Maoist Internationalist Movement, which was run by the now defunct Maoist Internationalist Party - Amerika. The MIM now consists of many independent cells, many of which have their own indendendent organs both online and off. MIM(Prisons) serves these documents as a service to and reference for the anti-imperialist movement worldwide.
Maoist Internationalist Movement

Then why is everyone trying to get to the United $tates?

We often hear that communism must be inferior to capitalism because people from the Soviet bloc (when it existed), Cuba, China or Vietnam flee to the United $tates. However, it is a logical fallacy to argue that because people attempt to migrate to the United $tates, therefore it's system must be superior to others.

The first Bolshevik revolution was in 1917. Long before that, people migrated from other capitalist countries to the United $tates, by the millions each year. Therefore, it cannot be said to be the economic ownership system that caused the migration. It cannot be said that communism caused that migration. In both the places sending immigrants and the places receiving them, there was legalized private property. The difference in the 1700s and 1800s was that in the United $tates it was legal to obtain a piece of land stolen from the Indians.
Today the situation is the same. People come to the United $tates for a chance at its ill-gotten wealth, not because of any difference in economic system.

The logical fallacy involved is clearly and correctly explained in the following link: http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/ignoring-a-common-cause.html

This fallacy has the following general structure:

1.A and B are regularly connected (but no third, common cause is looked for).
2.Therefore A is the cause of B.

When Christopher Columbus arrived, there was no capitalist system in place in North America. In this case, land stolen from Indians got the capitalist system jumpstarted and it also provided a reason for immigrants to come. Hence, the original role of genocide and theft is the common cause of both the capitalist system and immigration to North Amerika. With the importation of slaves, the wealthy were really able to accumulate some capital and the system was well on its way to becoming the premier capitalist system in the 20th century. Genocide, theft, slavery, robbing of colonies, propping up death-squad regimes in the neo-colonies today to hold down wages to 50 cents an hour--these are the reasons for wealth in some capitalist countries and not others.

For a history of the immigration process we recommend the book Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat, but almost any non-Nazi bourgeois book on immigration will also show that there was large-scale immigration to the United $tates long before there was any communism.

This fallacy regarding communism and immigration is also connected to another fallacy. The fallacy runs that because the Soviet Union and China did not become as wealthy as the United $tates and the other richest capitalist countries, therefore socialism is an inferior system. This ignores the fact that the United $tates and other richest capitalist countries were richer than China and the Soviet Union before those places had revolutions. In fact, revolutions helped those countries surpass the majority of poor capitalist countries, that had been better off than China and Russia before their revolutions.


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