MIM Notes No. 197	 December 1, 1999

Appalachians debate MIM on exploitation and democratic centralism

MIM received many responses to our book review of Cynthia Duncan's 
Worlds Apart: Why Poverty Persists in Rural America in MIM Notes 194 
(September 15). Below we print two of the most interesting along with 
our responses.

Coal miner's daughter responds to MIM

The following appeared on USENET's alt.appalachian in October: 

"American workers have greatly improved their lot by using the American 
system; Forming unions, collective bargaining, class action law suits to 
rectify wrongs, and lobbying their elected officials to introduce 
legislation to the workers benefit. Sometimes the system works very 
slowly, but it does work. In my own family, we've gone from my 
grandfather being exploited in the coal mines, me being somewhat 
exploited as a nurse, to my children being the employers. Under 
communism, we'd all still be working in the mines! I'm not a flag waver, 
but my children have succeeded through hard work and taking advantage of 
the many opportunities open to even the poorest Americans."

mim3@mim.org responds for MIM: We actually agree with this as 
representative of Appalachians. What we disagree with is how it fits 
into the world.

People around the world are looking to the people of the Appalachians 
and wondering why whites in particular are not anti-imperialist. I think 
you provide the answer, but we still disagree with you, because even 
though people do get ahead, the system they get ahead through is only 
possible because of the super-exploitation of poor countries abroad. 
Such a situation will generate war until it is resolved and such war 
even threatens the people of the Appalachians.

Appalachian Cherokee responds to MIM

An Appalachian of Cherokee descent wrote the following:

I did peruse some of your misguided literature. The idea of Democratic 
Centralism is scary. You take advantage of the freedoms afforded by our 
current government to allow you to protest its structure and 
foundations, but if you ever come to power you would suppress all 
opposition in the name of the revolution! Lovely.

After reading several books about the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, I 
can't think of any reason a thinking person would support such a 
structure. And before you lambast me about the authors of the books I am 
reading, the current book is written by a Russian and the one before it 
was written during 1918 by an Englishman who was very sympathetic to the 
"Revolution".

I am also offended by a statement in your article on Democratic 
Centralism. "Black, Latino and First Nation peoples in this country are 
not free to pursue 'the Amerikan dream.'" As a Cherokee I am very 
offended.

Assuming that you mean American Indian when you say First Nation 
peoples. I have been fully able to pursue the American Dream. The last 4 
generations of my family have all faired better than the one before. I 
have chosen not to use my heritage as an excuse for failure. I am 
disgusted, sickened, enraged, by groups like yourselves that will take 
advantage of a group to further your own political agenda. Minority 
groups in this country can, and do, succeed when they make the effort to 
do so. I came from a poor area in Appalachia, which in my opinion is 
more problematic than Race in this country. I was able to study, work 
hard, and acquire a good education. I worked my way through college. I 
graduated with honors. I found a good job. I then received an advanced 
degree. Do you see a pattern here? "I" am responsible for my success and 
my failure. You are trying to convince people that they are not 
responsible for their own success. There is some "unseen, unknown, 
capitalist pig" that is personally pushing them down. This is 
outrageous.

I am not interested in living in a country run by a party dictatorship, 
otherwise known as Democratic Centralism.

mim3@mim.org replies: Our critic is correct that we favor dictatorship 
of the proletariat. If people still lived in tribes that Marx studied 
and called "primitive communism," it would not be necessary. That's 
where he got the idea of communism and the possibility that some day 
there would be no government at all.

The reason organized force is necessary right now is that people's 
survival needs are not guaranteed under the current system where the 
right to make profit is guaranteed by law but not the right to eat, have 
shelter and live in a good environment free of war and pollution.

We already have a good local example of why this is true--the history of 
the U.$. Civil War and the period after it called "Reconstruction." Here 
it is straight from the capitalist encyclopedia at www.encyclopedia.com

"Reconstruction in U.S. history, period (1865-77) of readjustment 
following the CIVIL WAR. When the war ended the defeated South was a 
ruined land, and its old social and economic order had collapsed. Pres. 
Andrew JOHNSON tried to shift political control in the South from the 
old planter aristocracy to small farmers and artisans by 
disenfranchising all former Confederate officers and making certain 
property liable to confiscation. Under the provisional governors he 
appointed, most Southern states abolished slavery and ratified the 
Thirteenth Amendment (1865), guaranteeing freedom for African Americans. 
However, they also enacted laws severely limiting the civil rights of 
African Americans (the Black Codes) and elected disenfranchised 
Confederate leaders to state and federal offices. Radical Republicans in 
Congress, led by Thaddeus STEVENS, refused to seat Southern 
representatives and passed various Reconstruction acts, which were 
designed to protect African Americans, over the president's vetoes. 
African-American civil rights were incorporated in the Fourteenth 
Amendment (1868). Radical congressmen enacted the Reconstruction Act of 
1867 that set up five military districts in the South and made army 
authority supreme. When Johnson continued to oppose the radical leaders 
and defied the TENURE OF OFFICE ACT, Congress impeached him; he was not 
convicted, but his program was scuttled. After the Fifteenth Amendment 
(1870) had guaranteed African Americans the right to vote, terrorist 
groups such as the KU KLUX KLAN kept them from voting. Eventually, 
radical Republican governments were overthrown and white rule was 
restored. Reconstruction officially ended in 1877, when all federal 
troops were withdrawn from the South. Its legacy was the one-party solid 
South and a lasting racial bitterness."

mim3@mim.org continues: You see, it was necessary to use force to 
disenfranchise some planters and soldiers in the South. That is an act 
of dictatorship. Yet such dictatorship is necessary when someone won't 
respect the survival rights of other people.

If you didn't catch that, read it again. It says people were 
disenfranchised and property was confiscated. That's about what has to 
be done again until people stop putting profit above humyn needs. It's 
no great mystery. It's been done before in U.$. history. It's 
unfortunate, but ending slavery took organized violence--dictatorship--
and so will ending the regime putting profit above humyn needs. When 
there is no threat to anyone's life, as in the advanced stages of 
communism, then there will be no cause for war and war's peacetime form 
known as dictatorship. Anyone who claims we do not live in a 
dictatorship before the underlying issue of war is settled is a liar.

Now with regard to the Amerikan Dream, you raise a good point. We should 
have said some people do follow it. You will notice I already agreed 
with the coal-miner's daughter on this thread about why people don't 
take up Marxism.

If you read our stuff more carefully, you will find that we say even 
most Black people are bought off by the system. Plus, it's obvious that 
some people leave the reservations and join the mainstream Amerikan 
society. They might not be part of their nations anymore. The First 
Nations have arguments over who to count and who to exclude. In some 
Iroqois nations we have observed, if you leave the reservation and get 
educated by the white man and then get a non-native wife etc., you won't 
be counted anymore.

Nonetheless, when we say a group of people can't pursue the Amerikan 
dream, you shouldn't take it persynally. Vincent Chin could not pursue 
the Amerikan Dream. A Wampanoag man named David Hendricks could not live 
the Amerikan Dream, because police killed him in connection to a traffic 
violation. See,

http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/mn/mn.php?issue=079 
http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/mn/mn.php?issue=091

Hopefully I don't have to list too many more. The point is Marxists do 
this, and we aren't the only ones--other philosophies looking at society 
do it too--we talk about groups of people in general. These things 
happen to Third World-descended and First Nation peoples, but not every 
single one. So don't take it persynally.