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

"The creative class" in Yuppie towns

An immigrant to the united $tates told MIM that she had never seen any racism and that political correctness culture would punish anyone guilty of insulting Blacks for instance--that the United $tates was much more enlightened than other countries. It turns out she had only lived in three places, all of them college towns, bastions of upper- middle-class professionals and pc.

If you live in Berkeley, CA, the Bay Area generally, Eugene, OR, Seattle, Austin, TX, Boulder, CO, Minneapolis, Madison, Ann Arbor, Evanston, IL, Oberlin, OH, Cambridge, MA, Silver Springs, MD, the research triangle surrounding Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Gainesville, Florida--there is a good chance you do not understand the united $tates as a whole. These are liberal towns, more likely to have active Greens and communists than activist Republicans. This can lead some people to think that there is even a mass of Amerikans ready to rise for revolution. Even New York City is not representative, because though it is ethnically diverse, it has a locally-run welfare state unlike any other in the country.

Black Panther George Jackson said that so-called workers in the united $tates are not revolutionaries and he had better luck among upper- middle-class professionals. George Jackson was right and the reason for that is that the united $tates is a huge exploiter nation, almost entirely dominated by the petty-bourgeoisie; hence, contrasts of political consciousness come from within the petty-bourgeoisie. There is no proletariat among people with legal working rights.

Yuppie towns with their research universities have the intellectuals to think for themselves and they also have the money to feel that it is not so desperately necessary to oppose every tax increase or every new foreigner who moves in as a matter of life-and-death. The petty issues most beloved by the labor aristocracy--envisioning the immigrant who cost him a job or the Black who squeezed him out of a college admission via affirmative action--recede somewhat; even though, the petty-bourgeois existence of a place like Ann Arbor, Michigan depends on the super-exploitation of the Third World. The political detachment of the upper-middle-class relative to other exploiter classes stems from not being old money set in its ways and also being comfortable enough to have a generosity of spirit--a potential for taking on big projects.

The vast majority of the united $tates is nothing like any of the towns listed above. Most of the organizations falsely calling themselves Marxist will say that is a good thing, but they are talking about pitting the labor aristocracy against the intellectuals, or possibly the lower-middle-class against the upper-middle- class. It was Lenin who taught that the labor aristocracy fights for imperialism more desperately than any other class, because of a psychology of being just above water and gasping for breath. This is not to be confused with the proletarian psychology of "having nothing to lose." The labor aristocracy has that job and sense of entitlement of having "just made it."

MIM has put this page in the FAQ, because it has frequent reason to tell people what is typical of Amerika and what is not. It is not true that a campaign launched in Berkeley, California can then launch into other towns in the united $tates. Being from a yuppie town does not make one right or wrong, but we should know that the general way of life in such towns cannot be duplicated universally.