The four quadrants of struggle and the joint dictatorship of the proletariat April 25, 2004 When it comes to the struggle against revisionism, the worst material conditions for success are found in the imperialist countries. Here we will talk about why the struggle against revisionism has advanced the least in the imperialist countries in the last 20 years. The bad 'ole 1980s When MIM formed in the 1980s, we had to adopt positions against Soviet and Chinese revisionism and for protracted People's Wars that were unpopular globally. We can say that in Peru at the same time the masses were just taking up the question of People's War, but in most of the Third World, the kind of line MIM was putting forward was yet to become an issue for the masses. The victories against colonialism were too fresh historically as were the devastating lessons of revisionism in China. It seemed a round of People's Wars was bubbling up as a possibility, but not as anything definite and well-organized. On the question of Soviet revisionism, again the MIM position was unpopular. We even heard intellectuals refuse to break with Soviet revisionism on the basis that we could not oppose revisionism as long as Reagan denounced the Soviet Union. Such people sacrificed the long-run goals of the international communist movement for short-term comfort. Today, we hear more or less the same thing from the intelligentsia saying we must echo the Democrats and social-democrats on the conditions of the "workers," who are in fact bought-off labor aristocrats whose demands lead only to justification for predatory wars. Nor can it be said that the influence of Soviet revisionism was only in its homeland and the u$a. Brezhnev revisionism influenced all armed struggles throughout the world. Even in the Philippines, where the people are well-aware of the similarities of their conditions to the situation in rural China, thoughts about dependency on Soviet aid and urban insurrection distorted the process of the people's struggle. The international situation for anti-revisionism today That was the 1980s, an ugly decade in many ways. Today there is People's War in Nepal, India, Turkey, the Philippines and Peru-- and maybe more places that we are uncertain of. Excluding China because it's in another quadrant of the struggle, the masses have already brought forward the issue in the countries comprising the majority or close to the majority of the Third World. The conscious forces for People's War are well on their way to spreading the fire throughout the oppressed nations and they stand in a place of relative strength compared with the other quadrants of struggle for the international proletariat. The death of the social-imperialist Soviet Union cleared the way for progress to reach the revisionist-led quadrant. It is sad to say that many Maoists and would-be Maoists had to see this happen before they took up Maoism. Today we are facing a similar situation in the imperialist countries, where many are waiting to see what happens instead of lending far-sighted ideological aid where it is needed in the struggle against revisionism. The material facts of life have led to a process of evaluation and re- evaluation of Soviet history. Despite the wishes of the imperialists, it is inevitable that a proletarian pole will again arise in the revisionist-led quadrant. Already Maoist texts in the Russian language have been furnished by the Russian Maoist Party and comrades in Yugoslavia distribute "Is Yugoslavia a Socialist Country," also by Mao. All of this has to do with clarifying when there was and was not a socialist camp. With the examples of Lenin, Stalin, Mao and the "Gang of Four" concretely existing in those countries, it's only a matter of time before the youth turn their attention to subjects that were "uncool" in the Brezhnev era. Stalin and Mao also told us a large question matter globally for the communists was handling the contradiction among imperialist powers correctly. This indeed is a troublesome area, because with the collapse of the Soviet bloc, there is an appearance of imperialist unity under one u.$. leader. Yet even on this question, the proletariat is in relatively good shape, because the imperialists themselves are ad-libbing as they go along, as the case of Iraq and the "coalition" led by the united $tates proves. Contrary to Hardt and Negri who wrote Empire, we do not believe that the united $tates succeeded in making itself the global culture with one completely interlocking network of imperialism. Questions regarding the European Union, China and Russia are still hot on both the imperialist and proletarian agendas. The national question and ideologies such as Pan-Africanism are going to become more important with time, not less, because of how super-profits are shaping the political boundaries of the world. There is a reason that the imperialist countries are now the place where the struggle against revisionism is at the greatest relative disadvantage. As Mao pointed out, the semi-feudal, semi-colonial countries are more or less in a permanent state of conditions suitable for revolution. As de- colonization recedes in time, we see another round of People's Wars arising, this time with even more precise consciousness than the de-colonization struggle. Likewise, on the question of Soviet revisionism, the entire country collapsed. There could hardly be a better basis for defeating revisionism and when it comes to the European Union, China and Russia, the international proletariat is only equally in the dark with the imperialists themselves how the new intra- imperialist struggles are going to shape up to the advantage of the proletariat. Hence, although MIM is now on more favorable international ground than when it formed in the 1980s, still many people who joined in the 1980s quit MIM circles: they degenerated. Numerically there were a lot fewer degenerates than from the 1960s, but nonetheless, we have seen people willing to take on the Reagan-Bush years fall away from struggle. We said there was a bourgeoisie in the party in the Soviet Union and that it faced cyclical crisis. We quickly proved right when the bourgeoisie in the party restored outright capitalism in the Soviet Union and Albania. We said an intense level of class conflict is going on in the Third World and the new round of People's Wars arose. Yet despite being right about these facts, people who joined the MIM-led struggle during more difficult times have quit our struggle! This is something not so important in numbers to the international proletariat, but more as an illustration of something more general about social-democracy, revisionism and outright apolitical consumerism in the imperialist countries. There is a reason for that degeneration process we still see in the imperialist countries. While many conditions internationally are more favorable to us at MIM, especially given our long-held stances, parasitism has further increased since the 1980s. There was nothing like the collapse of the Soviet Union to directly affect the imperialist country petty-bourgeoisie. We can thank Deng Xiaoping for handing over massive surplus-value to the imperialists to keep them alive another generation. While death-blows to revisionism continue to rain down in the ex- Soviet bloc and the Third World, 90% of those calling themselves "Marxist" in the imperialist countries still do not show any sense of the changes in the last two decades. They remain unaware for instance that the industrial workers in China's export sector aimed at imperialist countries alone are much more numerous and producing more surplus-value than any imperialist country. Request for ideological assistance in the struggle against revisionism Today we face a point where it makes much more sense for the People's Wars in the Third World to lend ideological aid to the struggle against revisionism in the imperialist countries than vice-versa. History shows that we Maoists cannot surrender a quadrant of the struggle without consequences to the other quadrants. The failure to generalize the MIM line to the international level has the most consequences in our struggle with the ex-Soviet people, the Chinese people, the national bourgeoisie and the educated members of the Third World. These groups are all special targets of imperialism shooting sugar-coated bullets via consumerism. The ex- Soviet people must be made aware of the facts of political economy, that the failure of consumerist bourgeois Liberalism in the ex-Soviet Union and Soviet Union is not an accident. Economic development occurred in the imperialist countries thanks to generations of genocidal militarism against First Nations and Blacks followed by countless wars on the Third World. These facts generated super-profits and a decadent consumerism, but it is not possible for the whole world to do what the world's elite 10% has done. It is not that early capitalism produced such decadent wealth. It was the imperialism that made these capitalist countries rich. These countries accumulated their old wealth that way and more than half of what they consume today comes from the Third World. Without accurate knowledge of surplus-value flows as indicated by the MIM line, intra-proletarian fighting is apt to break out across the world as in ex-Yugoslavia. It is often the case that a slightly different average economic position coincides with ethnicity. In many places, it is even possible to find a 10% national minority that is better off than the rest of the proletariat in a country. That minority often finds itself the target of a violent struggle; even though that minority is not mostly exploiters. The true picture of imperialist exploitation and the sources of global poverty and uneven economic development must be known and that means a decisive struggle against imperialist country revisionism. A failure to grasp this question can even give rise to bourgeois humynism in the Third World People's Wars. By this reasoning, and counter to Peking Review under Mao, we should lie about the class structure in the united $tates and count the petty-bourgeoisie allied with imperialism as "brothers and sisters" of the international proletariat. Doing this we will make excuses for the more than 90% of Amerika that actively favors ongoing armed action against Afghanistan's liberation fighters. Supporting bourgeois humynism is helpful to the bourgeoisie, because it minimizes the support we can gain for the People's Wars by paralyzing the so-called Marxists who have to attack the labor aristocracy as part of the revolution against active enemies. What is more--should a party come to power in the Third World using People's War, but without getting the labor aristocracy question straight, such a party will become the new comprador prop of social-democratic leaders of imperialism. The labor aristocracy or petty-bourgeoisie allied with imperialism is merely another doorway to imperialism. This brings us to why we have to have a joint dictatorship of the oppressed nations over imperialism including the legally-working population of imperialism. The exploiters have to stop exploiting before they are ready to join in the dictatorship of the proletariat. For that reason, there is a task that has to be completed before we can establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. As Lenin said, without distinguishing from the labor aristocracy, dictatorship of the proletariat is impossible. The general facts should be known to the Third World comrades. In 1980, a majority of whites in the u$a became white collar for the first time. Trends toward the white-collar sector developed to make the unproductive sector 75% or 80% of the population in the majority-exploiter imperialist countries. These two facts alone are sufficient to justify all of MIM Thought formulated for most of the imperialist countries. All the rest of the complaints against MIM stem from our critics' hatred of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao. Some representatives of the labor aristocracy babble on about "workers" exploited by producing above the value of their labor-power with miraculous powers of productivity granted by a rejuvenating and ever-powerful imperialism and its technology. However, Lenin had already settled this question: white-collar workers are not proletarians. They are less revolutionary according to Lenin and Stalin than the agrarian petty-bourgeoisie known as peasants. The party that does not know this is not aiming at dictatorship of the proletariat or is not lending ideological aid to the struggle in the imperialist countries. For the foreseeable future, there is no material basis for thinking that a proletarian party can seize power in the united $tates and continue to overpower the ex-imperialist country petty-bourgeoisie by itself. All those oppressed nations with an interest in the overthrow of imperialism must see to the job themselves as the multinational Red Army of the oppressed and exploited did in Germany with the aid of a minority of German comrades. International comrades! It is time to check yourselves! We need your help in the struggle against revisionism. Are you going to help us in the imperialist countries? Did MIM give you the wrong information about the extent of white-collar employment in the United $tates, England, France etc? Did you intend to revise the definition of "proletarian" and "dictatorship of the proletariat" to be counter to Lenin? Did you fall for generations of gradual revisionism from Amerikans and social-democracy from Europeans? If not, then how can any party oppose the MIM line for the imperialist countries?