Indonesian comrades writes



COMRADE!

Hello there! and my respect to all of you! X,from Jakarta/ 
Indonesia here!

With this letter I really want to know lots more about your MIM 
org. because for me MIM is a very great org!

And about the situations in my country everyday always full of 
riots, chaos, racial tension/hatred, and lots more human rights 
violations happen here! As you know Indonesia is a very poor 
country and it's all because the greedy, bastard of our government 
leaders.

I'm so very proud and happy if I can have one/any of M.I.M. t-
shirt and books for me. Because it's so very impossible to find it 
in here, 'cause communism/marxism is an ILLEGAL IDEOLOGY!



--Writer from Indonesia

June, 2000



International Minister replies:

Comrade, thank you for your kind words demonstrating international 
proletarian class consciousness. I'm afraid the party organization 
has no t-shirts or badges.

It is encouraging to see the Maoist movement arising again in 
Indonesia and of course the ongoing struggle in the Philippines 
led by the CPP there. We have a link to their web page on our web 
page.

With regard to the ruling clique of Indonesia, in every country 
there is a minority of people who will sell their country to be 
exploited by imperialists in return for an easy lifestyle. These 
puppets serve as the local faces on U.$. imperialist oppression. 
They accept U.$. weapons and training to carry out their designs 
against their own people. In Indonesia, Mao called these puppets 
compradors. They are indeed holding back the development of 
Indonesia and many other countries. The Yankee imperialists simply 
take advantage of the fact that in every country there is a 
portion of society willing to sell their country short.

Best wishes in struggle.



RAIL comrade writes on capital punishment under socialism



Dear MIM:

Regarding punishment of oppressors I am of the opinion that Mao is 
correct; heads are not like cabbages. When you cut them off they 
do not grow back again. Because of this reason I wish to express 
my absolute opposition to execution of imperialists after the 
revolution. First they might be reformed. Second we may make 
errors. Third we are not barbarians. Finally suppose that there 
would be a state capitalist coup like in China: the revisionists 
would have an example (and a bad one) of the injust act of the 
party to justify their killing.

On the other hand I have no problem with treating scum like scum. 
I just think that it people make mistakes, can learn from them, 
but capitalist restoration could occur and would justify its 
reactionary oppression by a bad action of the party.

Leadership by example is best, perhaps the only, form of 
leadership. If we set a bad example, we have no right to be 
surprised or upset that others copy it. This is why the party's 
line on monogamy (and I presume on drugs - in any event I advocate 
being straight edge) is correct. If we are disciplined and just 
then we have the right to act decisively in the face of decadence 
greed and other vice (I'm not a moral relativist).

I do not know whether this question is a "line" issue, but thought 
that I should express my dissent with this position. I do not see 
an incompatability between my belief and being a member of rail. 
However if I am wrong or if what I think is inconsistent with 
being a member of MIM please let me know.



International Minister replies:

The comrade expresses "absolute opposition to execution of 
imperialists after the revolution." This position is fine for 
RAIL, but it would be revisionism in the party, and it isn't 
allowed there. This position is pre-scientific in the same way 
pacifist-anarchist literature generally is.

(1) We are told that "after the revolution" all is peace. In 
actuality it means that the imperialists will put a lull in the 
war in the hopes of eliciting a disorganized and peaceful response 
from the oppressed. For this reason, the U.$. imperialists stopped 
bombing Vietnam several times before final Vietnamese victory in 
1975--to lull the other side into complacency.

In the pre-scientific view all that matters is iron-clad dogma, 
religious, "human rights" or otherwise. These people do not 
consider history--what actually happens in struggle. The French 
Revolution was horribly violent but it stopped a greater violence 
of feudalism in Europe. Likewise, the U.S. Civil War was the most 
modern and brutal war ever in many regards in history. Yet, 
"after" the Civil War, the KKK arose and lynched Black people for 
100 years.

The KKK arose with impunity because the class dictatorship was a 
bourgeois dictatorship. A few violent massacres of KKK lynch mobs 
would have brought peace for the next 100 years. Children would 
have learned right from wrong, but instead what happened was that 
Blacks were lynched by the KKK dissatisfied with the outcome of 
the U.S. Civil War.

Hence, there is no justification for speaking about an "after" the 
revolution until advanced stages of communism are reached. It is a 
matter of cause and effect, not pious wishes. If a comrade cannot 
recognize that slavery ended because--as a matter of cause and 
effect--because of tremendous violence, then the comrade has no 
business calling him or herself Marxist. We Maoists are scientists 
and have no room for communist-anarchists or communist-Christians 
or communist-pacifists.

(2) Quoting Mao on cabbages in this context shows a lack of 
scientific attention to detail. First, in the same famous passage 
where Mao says people's heads aren't leeks and don't grow back, he 
also affirms the necessity of revolutionary violence. "In future, 
in suppressing counter-revolution in our society we must make 
fewer arrests and carry out fewer executions... ITAL But we should 
not declare that we shall never execute anyone. END We cannot 
abolish the death penalty. If a counter-revolutionary were to 
commit murder or to blow up a factory, do you think he should be 
executed? He most definitely should."(Stuart Schram, ed. ITAL 
Chairman Mao Talks to the People, END p. 78, emphasis added)

Second, Mao was not talking about imperialists. There were no 
imperialists being executed in China. At most there was an 
occasional U.S. spy who might be counted as imperialist.

An imperialist with a record of contributing to the revolution 
should be left alone. An imperialist with a record of blood crimes 
will have to face People's Tribunals under the dictatorship of the 
proletariat--which is the government phase necessary until there 
are no causes of oppressive violence anymore.

The "dictatorship of the proletariat" is not a phrase we will 
allow pre-scientific religious, anarchist, pacifist or human-
rights activists to empty of all meaning. If comrades do not 
understand or agree with the idea of cause and effect for why 
there is an interim dictatorship of the proletariat on the way to 
communism, they do not belong in a Maoist party. We do believe the 
humyn race does make progress, through organized progressive 
violence.



Mao = butcher? Maoism = hot air?



Dear MIM Notes,

I was just reading your paper, and I felt that I needed to 
respond. First of all, using Mao as the ideal for your group is 
not a good idea. He is responsible for the death of millions of 
people. He didn't believe in human rights, and he certainly didn't 
believe in equality. Any group that claims to be in favor of human 
rights and equality should not be named after somebody like him.

Second, the rhetoric that you use is very tired. Imperialist, 
Amerikkkan, and Fascist are all terms you use for the United 
States. America means many things to many people, but it is not a 
fascist country. Mao is closer to being a fascist than George 
Washington, or Bill Clinton, or even Ronald Reagan. Forcing your 
beliefs on other people, and killing or imprisoning them if they 
disagree with you is a fascist thing to do.

Now, I know what you are thinking. "This guy has been 
brainwashed." That isn't true. I actually agree with many 
critiques of the United States. We are sometimes imperialist, we 
do use people for profit, and we do force our beliefs on people. 
In addition, there is a great deal of inequality in this country 
that is based on race and class. It is important to understand 
that these are problems that have faced humans ever since 
communities and states were formed, and they are things that we 
must always strive to correct.

In America, as opposed to the China or the former Soviet Union, it 
is possible to change things through the system. Saying you are 
going to do it through a revolution is the easy way out. If there 
was going to be a communist revolution, it would have happened 
already. I think that trying to get on the ballot and working to 
develop a grass roots political group is much harder than printing 
a newspaper filled with generic rhetoric.

Anyway, the issues are not black and white, and there are many 
factors that you need to explore before making claims about 
fascism or imperialism. I respect your right to your opinion, as I 
hope  you respect the right of everyone else's opinions. Democracy 
needs constant debate on the issues from all different 
perspectives, and   I think that with a different approach, the 
MIM group could contribute something.

Sincerely,



--a student in the Midwest,

12 January, 2000



MIM responds: Thanks for taking the time to write. We hope your 
willingness to write a serious letter critiquing our newspaper 
means that you'll also take the time to stop by one of our public 
events in your city. These are often educational events that begin 
with a documentary film or a lecture; good occasions to get into 
some of the issues you raise in more detail. We also refer you to 
our website which answers all the questions you ask in more detail 
(with sources cited of course) than we do here (Frequently Asked 
Questions list at: www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/faq/). We don't know 
if you are politically active now, but it sounds like you should 
be, with whatever organization is doing the most work to address 
your political concerns. If you are opposed to imperialism (even 
as you think this country is sometimes not imperialist), we 
encourage you to think about working with MIM, if only in a 
limited way, around the issues that we agree.

We'll start our response to your letter by clarifying that talk 
about humyn rights is inseparable from class, nation, and gender 
struggles. These struggles exist (whether one recognizes them or 
not) and influence how one defines humyn rights -- and what one 
does to secure them. Housing, health care, education, employment, 
and food are basic humyn needs, which we believe the masses are 
entitled to. Even today these essentials are not available to the 
majority of people worldwide, because of the so-called property 
rights of a handful: Landlords and capitalists who live off the 
labor of others. With that in mind, we talk about China's record 
under Mao by looking at the extent to which the revolutionary 
struggle against feudalism, capitalism, and imperialism guaranteed 
basic survival rights.

For example, under Mao, China dramatically lowered the infant 
mortality rate. By 1972 fewer infants per thousand born died in 
Shanghai than did in New York in the same year. (source: Ruth 
Sidel, ITAL Women and Childcare in  China END) The percentage of 
children enrolled in primary schools grew from 20% in 1949 (the 
year of the Chinese socialist revolution) to 85% in 1965. (source: 
American Journal of Sociology September, 1997) Socialist China 
addressed the heath needs of the people by training thousands and 
thousands of barefoot doctors, "peasants [who] worked in their 
village to prevent disease and injury, improve sanitation, and 
treat common medical problems." (source: "Myths about Maoism," in 
the pamphlet "What is MIM?")

Moving on. The issue of rhetoric ("Amerikkka" etc.) should be of 
minimal importance to those who agree in substance. The language 
MIM uses reflects the fact that the oppressed are justly angry at 
this system. 

Regarding the specific criticisms raised:

MIM refers to Amerika with a "k" (or with three) to combat the 
idea that "America" is a homogeneous nation, a melting-pot. 
Amerika is an empire, founded on land stolen through genocide and 
with labor stolen through kidnapping and torture.

Imperialism has a specific meaning, defined by Lenin in his book 
of the same name. It refers to the highest stage of capitalism, 
when monopoly capital must expand by investing abroad, when 
competing blocs of monopoly capitalists have divided the whole 
world between them, when monopoly capitalists use military means 
to preserve their rule and weaken their competitors.

As to fascism: MIM considers the prison system to be an example of 
burgeoning fascism in the united $tates. We also point out 
consistently that this country and its military support fascism 
overseas. More specifically, fascism refers to the merging of 
capital with the state, in order to preserve bourgeois rule and 
forcibly extract labor. For all of Bill Clinton's whining about 
Chinese prisons, the united snakes forcibly extracts labor from 
many of its nearly 2 million prisoners. 

Lastly, we want to make clear that revolution is not the easy way 
out, it is the only way out for the oppressed. The imperialists 
are not going to give up their power or put down their guns 
without a fight. It would be infinitely easier if we could get rid 
of this rotten system by running electoral candidates and working 
for reforms. But history has demonstrated the failure of that 
method to make any but the most superficial of changes. 
Revolutionary struggle is far from easy work. The workers and 
peasants waging this battle daily in the Third World face injury 
and death to fight imperialism. But for them the alternative is 
suffering and death at the hands of the imperialists if they do 
not stand up. They may die in the revolutionary struggle but their 
deaths will contribute to a better world for others.



Amnesty International's bourgeois idealism falls short



Dear MIM,

Attention: There is a worldwide organization that is against what 
happened to inmates David Osborn and Reginal Lavergenes. This 
organization also opposes any brutality, electro-shock, ill-
treatment or torture, and the death penalty. They are against 
hostage taking, killings of prisoners, and other arbitrary 
killings. If you write to them they will send the following: a 
questionnaire that is to be filled out as completely as you can, a 
cover letter describing the organization, a report of what they 
have accomplished so far in the USA and an eight page list of 
information resources:



Amnesty International-USA section

322 Eighth Ave

New York, NY 10001-4808



-- a Michigan prisoner, 5 January, 2000



MIM responds: We occasionally print other organizations' contact 
information in our newspaper because we believe that activists 
should not be "geographic opportunists" and work only with 
whatever party or mass organization is convenient. We encourage 
our supporters and detractors to check out other groups and 
compare their line and practice with ours. Amnesty has contributed 
some good research to the world of anti-prisons activism, and its 
advocacy has no doubt made a difference in the lives of some 
individual prisoners. And prisoners in the united snakes generally 
may be able to get useful information from Amnesty. But MIM has 
serious disagreements with Amnesty's approach to organizing, 
particularly to the idealist, supra-class tone of its work.

Amnesty claims to take no political stance, and to work purely in 
the interest of humyn rights. But (as we discuss further in the 
response to the next letter) defining what humyn rights are and 
how to struggle for them is a class, and hence political, issue. 
By refusing to defend prisoners who took up arms (or advocated the 
use of arms) to overthrow reactionary regimes, Amnesty 
illegitimatizes revolutionary armed struggle. At the same time, 
Amnesty legitimizes the right of bourgeois states to use violence 
against the masses (within certain limits, Amnesty would say). 
This limits the oppressed to the electoral struggle, dominated by 
the bourgeoisie, while at the same time sanctioning the 
bourgeoisie's monopoly on organized violence. Ironically, Amnesty 
doesn't even measure up to the standards laid out in the Amerikan 
Declaration of Independence: "[W]hen a long train of abuses and 
usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design 
to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is 
their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new 
guards for their future safety." The authors of that document did 
not limit themselves to parliamentary struggle.

MIM believes any organization working for an end to oppression 
must come forward and state clearly what groups of people are 
oppressed and what groups of people are the oppressors. To speak 
of oppression in moralist, individualist terms only prolongs the 
life of this brutal system. It distracts the masses' attention 
from analyzing their conditions by encouraging them to focus on 
tiny broken parts rather than the entire decrepit machine.