MIM Notes #226    January 15, 2001

Advances, security and sub-reformism challenges for PIRAO

by PIRAO chief

December 16, 2000

Advances in PIRAO work

In November, MIM and PIRAO (the People's Internationalist Rear-
Area Organization) had a little internal struggle regarding work 
going forward. These past two months have marked a medium-scale 
victory of a mediocre sort for the PIRAO in achieving goals. The 
worst element of the PIRAO situation was turned from a very bad 
thing into a mediocre thing. As a result, PIRAO has managed to 
step up its infrastructural support of the party considerably. We 
have reached a new strategic equilibrium in the balance of forces, 
at a lower level than planned, but nonetheless an advance.

Specifically, the PIRAO was able to work with the masses and 
actually implement their dreams of supporting people's 
institutions and getting their money back from their investments. 
We hope the people who participated are as happy as we are. PIRAO 
is happy to report that as of now every single persyn who has ever 
participated with PIRAO in supporting independent institutions of 
the oppressed has succeeded in getting repaid just like in any 
other bourgeois institution.

The setbacks in the work

While PIRAO projects have succeeded broadly-speaking, the struggle 
was not without failures. MIM tries to avoid triumphalist 
metaphysics by always presenting the struggle involved, by 
presenting the "other side" if necessary.

In fact, PIRAO work brought to light several weaknesses in the 
party. As the party goes from a group of individuals previously 
involved purely in public opinion work, we find that skills and, 
more importantly, desires of party members often lag behind what 
is needed to lay down infrastructural support. We can say that 
several comrades fell down on the job.

The following is a discussion of the tempering of the party and 
its circles that occurs because of PIRAO work.

We need to tighten up security about HC status.

Specifically, I don't want HCs to have access to party paperwork 
or personal computers, only mass organizations and public legal 
work. It's not right to be working on highly secure matters in 
front of HCs. Lock up your stuff and make sure the HCs and masses 
have their own stuff to work on.

MCs should not be sharing their persynal work space with HCs or 
RAIL people. If a wrecker is going to infiltrate our ranks, then 
the wrecker should be working very hard for the proletariat for 
the right to wreck. Distinguishing between petty-bourgeois panic 
and wrecking is difficult, but that again is the beauty of the HC 
position. It allows people to contribute to the movement to the 
degree of their unity while frustrating infiltrators.

From the point of view of the infiltrator, the goal is to obtain 
as much info and wreck as much as possible with as little 
attention drawn as possible. Infiltrators at the HC level should 
be prevented from doing much damage by their position.

Ideologically, it is hard to separate petty-bourgeois Liberalism 
and its corrosive individualism from infiltration. The goal of the 
infiltrator like the ones who said Huey Newton became gay in 
prison is to sow dissension on lifestyle points that the oppressor 
does not care about. How much would it differ to have such an 
infiltrator or a petty-bourgeois Liberal line in the party?

Regarding those who are spreading sub-reformism in the party -- 
I'm tired of being on the defensive. Let's put the question to 
them: "How would you want a party to decide if someone is an 
infiltrator or just a persyn with the 'pure' line using it as an 
excuse to wreck work? You think a cop can't come in and fake the 
'pure' line? You think it hasn't been done? If the party is a 
lifestyle purification device as far as you are concerned, then 
you aren't going to be happy in a Maoist party. The party's goal 
is to seize power for groups of people, not fix people one at a 
time. Fixing people one at a time as the principal task is for the 
New Agers and anarchists."

In the case of Comrade X, PIRAO and the party are working together 
to determine the causes of failure that nearly turned into a very 
bad thing in a PIRAO project. What is the reason for the lack of 
enthusiasm for PIRAO projects? Is it that we have made public 
opinion work a kind of entertainment and PIRAO work is boring in 
comparison--something we have been afraid of from the beginning of 
PIRAO's existence? If so, public opinion work benefits from 
parasitic bases in society--not that we are going to complain if 
the public opinion work is proletarian. That's dialectics falling 
our way.

Do we dislike the PIRAO discipline which is more strict than the 
party's? Several comrades have said after failures in PIRAO work 
that they do not "trust" the PIRAO chief. Yet that's not how we 
proceed around here. We do not piss on everything that has ever 
worked. We prove something better first and complain afterwards. 
To complain first, wreck work that is already going on and never 
do anything better to support infrastructural work -- that is 
Trotskyism, nihilism and bourgeois cafe politics. Critics should 
raise a billion dollars first and then tell MIM it is wrong to 
stay in its rut, because there is a new way to proceed.

Unfortunately, the issues that Comrade X raised with the PIRAO 
chief can only come from one of two sources: The state or a pre-
capitalist ideas. It is too much credit to say that Comrade X fell 
away from the job for bourgeois reasons. These reasons have to do 
with semi-feudal ideas or other completely irrational ideas even 
worse than bourgeois ideas. This comrade held PIRAO-favored 
institutions to standards that s/he would not hold other 
capitalist institutions to. This comrade worked for capitalist 
institutions both favored and not favored by PIRAO. In the 
capitalist institutions not favored by PIRAO, did the comrade make 
lifestyle practice of the bosses a demarcation issue? And if so, 
why did the comrade manage to find lifestyle problems more severe 
in PIRAO favored institutions than other ones? What double 
standard was involved? To say that the petty-bourgeois line is the 
reason for opposing PIRAO work is not correct. The reaction to 
PIRAO may be phrased in petty-bourgeois concerns, but the reaction 
ended up in a political place beyond bourgeois rationality. The 
PIRAO favored institutions were not bad business propositions. 
Patriarchy hides in pre-capitalist places. So do other mystical 
sources of reaction.

Comrade X has raised lifestyle issues with the PIRAO chief. Yet a 
few hours lapse in the HC's work cost the PIRAO a five digit sum 
of money. This persyn had chances to make good on it at several 
points over three months and did not. People who do not follow the 
Party Congress line on sub-reformism are setting back the action 
of the party.

We can say frankly that these lifestyle issues of the PIRAO chief 
do not justify the collapse of Comrade X's persynal practice or 
the failure to follow PIRAO discipline which has cost the party to 
the point of being at a lower level of insfrastructural support. 
In fact, it is a kind of tempering in itself to know the flaws of 
individual leaders in the revolution. If people have to have pure 
leaders leading them, that should be an indication of idealism at 
work. The Hoxhaites disagree and want us to go to great lengths to 
cover up leadership flaws. It's something to consider, but at this 
time, MIM does not agree. We have to defend leaders, but we do not 
want people to think leaders are perfect.

What is correct about Hoxhaite anti-dialectical metaphysics is 
that lifestyle issues need to be de-emphasized, and covering them 
up is one way. In contrast, we want people to understand the 
struggle in the proletarian way. For example, the Workers 
Experiment Organization in England recently wrote to emphasize the 
role of "spectacle" in destroying revolutionary work. We need to 
be clear that pornography is not what the bourgeoisie defines as 
pornography. "Spectacle" created in connection to leisure-time 
life is pornography. If a leisure-time lifestyle issue is 
interfering with proletarian work, then the creation of that 
lifestyle issue is pornography. The pseudo-feminists and pseudo-
environmentalists especially need to consider the proletarian 
definition of pornography and what it really does in society.

We ask the sub-reformists raising these kinds of issues: supposing 
you did want to raise a two-line struggle within the party against 
its corrupt, lifestyle-decadent leadership or its leadership and 
rank-and-file, do you think you bring credit to the line that says 
we can purify people one at a time when you are the one allowing 
non-lifestyle infrastructural work be destroyed? How would we 
separate that kind of disruption of work from police infiltration 
using the sub-reformist line? Cannot any police informer join the 
party and raise divisive lifestyle issues claiming a "holier than 
thou" position and bring work to a standstill? Action toward power 
for the oppressed and exploited has to be principal over lifestyle 
work and even individual ideological remolding. Since the 
beginning, MIM's principal task has been to "create public opinion 
and the independent institutions of the oppressed to seize power." 
Even building the party as only one of those institutions is a 
matter of building the connections, ties and roots in relation to 
the masses of oppressed and exploited, and that includes 
infrastructural work requiring money and various skills. Anybody 
who tries to conceive of party-building as more narrow than that, 
as something putting people through lifestyle purification devices 
-- such a persyn is not going to build the party. "Practice" is 
not lifestyle. We are concerned with PROLETARIAN practice, a class 
practice. In the United $tates it's easy to miss it, since the 
existence of the proletariat is no where to be found in many 
realms, but there is such a thing as a practice that is not 
lifestyle. In fact, practice is not lifestyle.

Our principal task does not mention lifestyles, building just the 
party in some narrow fashion or ideological remolding. The party 
has a shortage of intellectuals to lead public opinion work, 
because we actually have a constant stream of people volunteering 
to do this bit or that bit of work but we lack people who are able 
to lead those who are able to do bits of work. That's not even to 
mention the revolutionary intellectuals we already know who could 
do the work if they had the infrastructure to support them! PIRAO 
hopes to see the party find many more intellectuals, but if we 
allow people to wallow in their own intellectualisms or criticize 
existing infrastructure work to a standstill, we will fail to 
recruit even the intellectuals we need.

In any case, we have raised a set of advanced issues that came up 
in the process of PIRAO tempering work. The culture of discussion 
of these issues has been absent in the United $tates since the 
late 1960s when it was largely in the air. The discussion is a lot 
to digest and can itself be an excuse for detached 
intellectualism. That is why the HC role is a place of honor, and 
a fine solution for the problems of our day, forging unity around 
the first three cardinal principles while allowing the door open 
to development of democratic-centralism. Steady HC work that the 
comrades enjoy is a good thing.