We have read the U.S. Marxist-Leninist Organization (USMLO) website and the entirety of the print version of
their magazine for the summer of 2004 called the "Special Elections
Supplement." It seems that in recent months,
the USMLO has mastered the art of the lowest common denominator: even MIM does
not so much as disagree with anything in their latest printed publication.
One gathers that USMLO is content to focus on civil rights issues connected
to the 2000 election in Florida. Obviously electoral politics is not MIM's
central concern, but nor do we deny that there is an injustice in "voter
profiling" that occurred in Florida.
We might raise a small gripe of a stylistic nature--that there are no references.
We at MIM can tell our readers that the USMLO publication is factual and correct,
but only because we have read other things first. USMLO did not go to the trouble
to provide references for the totally clueless.
That's it. We have no real gripes against the publication. It could have been
part of our own publications.
That raises the question of unity. It would be better if there were fewer but larger
publications. If USMLO wrote half as many articles but referenced them and then
printed them jointly with the organizations that agreed with them, the
movement would benefit. Printing one magazine in more copies is more cost effective
than having separate magazines.
Reading further on the website we barely gather that USMLO does not
agree with our third cardinal principle on the fact that Amerikans are petty-bourgeois
if they have legal working rights.
There is no mention of Stalin, Hoxha, Mao, the Cultural Revolution etc.
This brings us to our point. There is a whole petty-bourgeois outlook on how to build
a political organization that needs to be defeated. If an organization does not have
any discernible differences with other organizations, then that organization should merge.
It becomes the grossest sort of Amerikan pragmatism not to merge when organizations
have no differences.
From what we see, including USMLO's running of northern Korea reprints, USMLO has no
difference with Workers World Party and their work is very reminiscent of politically aiming
at the lowest common denominator as a party. As historical observers, MIM would have to point
out that USMLO and some other similar organizations are copying the Workers World Party.
In the past Hoxhaites did not reprint revisionist Fidel Castro. Now they do. In USMLO's
case, they do not belong in an anti-revisionist trend anymore. In searching all through 2003
and 2004, I cannot find a single article that Workers World Party would disagree with. We only
list USMLO in the Hoxhaite section for historical reasons, not for any reasons of current political
practice.
Organizations that have no stated differences should not be apart. Creating more organizations
is a waste that stretches resources thin and creates more openings for cops. Those are internal
disadvantages of pointless splitting.
The external disadvantages are that it encourages potential
recruits--the consumers of these publications--to choose organizations to work with
based on inconsequential issues. Such choices will color all future political work and lower
the quality of political work.
When organizations
have no obvious differences and fail to merge it becomes difficult to take those organizations
seriously anymore. Do they exist to express themselves and be self-satisfied or are they
really trying to win--that is what the proletariat looking on this has to wonder.