[Pro-RCP writer "Morpheus" in the "Liberating Oppressed Nationalities, Ending Racism" section August 24 2002 is quoted first criticizing Aftersorrowcomesjoy who was unofficially defending MIM. MIM comments interspersed in brackets.] Aftersorrowcomesjoy writes: “this doesnt even make sense. in fact they DO side with the imperialists whether you want to admit that or not- MIM didnt say that they should. but the implications of their opinions expressed in polls- shows that they side with the imperialists. You may call this "false consiousness" but we in the materialist camp say that this shows something. (not this alone- but this also)” The reason that my previous post doesn’t make sense to you is that you are applying a mechanical method, looking just where things are at and not their motion and how things can change. What does the fact that the polls show that the majority side with the imperialists in the US’s current “war on terror” tell you in the so-called “materialist camp”? My guess from reading your previous posts is that you think that this is an indication that the majority in the US has a fundamental interest in supporting US imperialism in the current situation. Leaving aside the question of polls and what they do and do not show, we in the dialectical materialist camp think that the most important thing is not where the masses are at at any particular time but what is the potential to transform this. This is a crucial point that RCP Chairman Bob Avakian makes in Part 1 of his interview with Carl Dix: “And I think it's very important that when you look at--this is the experience that we've had for example from Vietnam. It's also, as people have pointed out, the experience in the early civil rights movement. It's wrong to look at what line- up the ruling class, with all of its organs of power and public opinion and influence, is able to create at any given time and look at that as if that's the limits of what you can do. The point I'm making is that our objective has to be to transform the political terrain and transform the outlook of many, many people on it and therefore the way they act in relation to it. The Vietnam War didn't start out as sometimes people think, with massive opposition to that war. It started out with smaller scale opposition mainly based on the campuses, (although not only), and then it developed partly as the war itself ran into the difficulties that the U.S. imperialists had in their inability to defeat the Vietnamese in that war, but also as people carried forward work to build opposition to that war. “So the question is not "What's the political terrain like at a given time and what is the alignment, so to speak, and what people think about this war and are doing about it now," but "What's the potential?" What are the ways in which that can be--the current terrain and the climate and the political alignment and the forces who are active can be--radically changed? And that begins with people who have an understanding of the need to resist rallying together as forcefully as possible, bringing forward open manifestations of opposition as some are already doing, but also bringing that together on an even more powerful level and putting it out openly, and openly taking a stance, as we've said, "No, Not In Our Name"-- we're going to stand up and oppose this. We're going to draw a line and say that this cannot be done in our name and in fact we don't accept it being done at all, and we're going to rally forth the opposition to it and we're going to change people's minds through education but also through mobilizing people openly to oppose this so that people can see that there are other people out there who are opposing it.” My point (again) is that your line (and MIM’s line), by denying any potential of transforming the current situation ends up supporting imperialism. You say that MIM doesn’t say that the people in the US should support the war. Perhaps it is true that in some sort of abstract moral sense you don’t think that people in this country should support the war, but in reality you think that it is in the fundamental interest of the vast majority of the people in this country to stand with GW when he says “United We Stand.” The interests of the international proletariat demand that revolutionaries here, in the belly of the beast do all we can to bring together a powerful force that will say powerfully and clearly “NOT IN OUR NAME!” Morpheus [mim3@mim.org replies for MIM: The Bob Avakian view of the Vietnam War protests was that some principled white people started out small and held on despite "false consciousness." Then consciousness started to rise. If that were true, we would have seen a lot more success the last 30 years in the anti-war movement, but instead, the anti-war movement has never surpassed the Vietnam War level, and in fact, often just echoes it faintly, with existing anti-war movements leaching off the Vietnam War successes. The reason for that is that in the Vietnam War, the international proletariat targeted Amerikkkans and sent them home in more than 50,000 body bags. It was ONLY in those conditions where Amerikkkans were treated as enemy that consciousness rose. Avakian is here proving our point by pointing to the Vietnam War and how that movement was much stronger than the movement to stop the bombing of Libya, the movement to end the Iranian hostage crisis, the movement to kick I$rael out of Palestine, the 1991 Persian Gulf War etc. If an anti-militarist or anti-imperialist movement succeeds today amongst whites, it will be on account of the successes of the international proletariat outside u.$. borders. The successes that did happen in the 1960s occurred on account of the MIM line on political economy that was vaguely in the air. We refer to RYM I, Malcolm X, Robert Williams and the Black Panthers just as they were being crushed. The basic problem is that Avakian and crew have no way to distinguish a bourgeoisie from a proletariat--in political behavior. They have no way to check on the clarity of their class analysis. They are trying to make excuses for the parasites who are ACTIVELY doing things like signing petitions in the thousands to keep their local school's teams to bring back the name "The Braves." The "RCP-USA" does not have any class analysis of what the labor aristocracy's own class struggle looks like. They do not see that their anti-NAFTA struggle was to protect "their jobs." They do not see the independent labor aristocracy interest in hate crimes, in killing Vincent Chin, in sending home immigrants and even closing off business for airplane travelers who look too dark. And no, the imperialists on the whole did not come up with that part of the superstructure: the labor aristocracy did, and in a way much more powerful than the few fringe imperialists like Perot and Buchanan have so far. As of now, bourgeois internationalist are in firm control and they have no intention of shutting down global business or trade to keep the yahoos from seeing dark faces in airports. Serving the international proletariat means playing enemies off and using whatever advantage may arise from the difference between the labor aristocracy and the imperialists. Specifically that means not opposing "free trade" in the name of racism, and becoming the tail on the labor aristocracy and fascist dog. So the key is to ask the "RCP-USA" what the labor aristocracy does. For them, the labor aristocracy and proletariat are passive objects that hold onto the imperialist superstructure in their brains. The "RCP-USA" ignores when the enemy attacks and chalks it up to imperialists, because in fact the "RCP-USA" intends to hand political power over to the political equivalent of the World Trade Center victims' relatives suing to force the U.$. government to nationalize Saudi Arabia. Yet there is a big difference between an ignorant but exploited peasant who mistakenly attacks the communists and the WTC victims' taking a shot at more than $1 trillion through chauvinist posturing and war-mongering. The most brutal but misguided attack of the exploited peasant against communists in no way matches the WTC victims' consciously trying to re-order the national question to gain a lifetime's leisure. The only equivalent in the Third World occurs when the CIA comes with bags of money to recruit informants and entire military units. The difference is that CIA sugar-coated bullets are not administered by the CIA within U.$. borders: it's just part of the whole system. The proletariat generally knows what to do about the CIA in the Third World. Thanks to people like Bob Avakian, the international proletariat is having much difficulty with seeing the labor aristocracy in the imperialist countries. In Nepal there is a proletariat and exploited peasantry. The signs of combat are obvious as are the signs of false consciousness. The raw fighting ability and the false consciousness like the support for the CPI(UML) are both there. That's not the situation here. There is nothing you can point to that says, "ah, here is 140+ million people fighting, just not with the right tools. They haven't figured it all out yet, but they are rowing the boat to shore as Stalin said." No matter what the U.$. population does, Avakian & Crew are going to say, "things can change." Well, yeah, things can change. Ask Hitler and the more than 90% of Germany that supported him till the end. Saying "things can change" can include anything. The point of class analysis is to separate the various interests, figure what alignments have to be made and divide enemies. The point of class analysis is not to make excuses for the labor aristocracy and it is not to soft-pedal the huge transformations that Amerikkkans face. We do not tell them we can easily rename Amerikkkans into a proletariat that can seize power. Lies about their economic life prevent real efforts to raise consciousness to get along in a proletarian- dominated world and those lies also prolong and intensify the violence that change will require.]