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This is an archive of the former website of the Maoist Internationalist Movement, which was run by the now defunct Maoist Internationalist Party - Amerika. The MIM now consists of many independent cells, many of which have their own indendendent organs both online and off. MIM(Prisons) serves these documents as a service to and reference for the anti-imperialist movement worldwide.
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PLP nitwits defame Stalin on white privilegeIn the recent issues of the Progressive Labor Party newspaper "Challenge," a number of articles have attacked the political line speaking of "white skin privilege." The idiocy reaches its height in the June 9th, 2004 issue, when on page one PLP points out that U.$. Blacks make 62% what whites make as of their latest 2001 figures, (not much more than the 54% of 1950) and then on page 7 PLP specifically denies "that white workers are privileged or benefit from racism." The PLP argument goes that "the highest levels of the ruling class have decided to fund white skin privilege ideology." This is wrong on logical and historical grounds. The argument connected to it is also wrong in substance. Logic The question of whether or not whites benefit from their national chauvinism and racism is not connected to who funds what line. Things like the "Anti-Racism Training Institute" may be funded by the capitalist class. That does not change whether or not white workers benefit from their actions as chauvinist enemies of the international proletariat. The error made is called "ad hominem" criticism. Who funds what is interesting in knowing who might be a cop or infiltrator, but even the cops, KKK and Nazis are correct when they say "2+2=4." A statement about white privilege is either true or not, and it would not be valid for MIM to go show all the ruling class foundations funding the PLP's Martin Luther King line on multiracial unity. It would not prove a point. That's the substance of the logical error PLP made, one indicating a lack of scientific method at the PLP. History The other error is that PLP is white-ifying history. The Mott foundation started in 1926, but most of this talk of "white skin privilege" is recent. Nonetheless, it is not the case that Mott started this discussion. It would be much more correct to say that it was Lenin, W.E.B. DuBois, Zinoviev, Harry Haywood, and Stalin who started the "white privilege" discussion as we know it now. Stalin even sent Russians to talk to Amerikans about their lack of understanding on this point. In 1932, the Communist Party of the USA in its correct, pro-Stalin phase said this after getting numerous instructions from Stalin and the Comintern on the Black nation thesis: "It is correct to speak of the labor aristocracy as the special bearers of white chauvinism among the workers, because this aristocracy finds a material interest in Negro subjection."(1) Now what is PLP going to do, go back and find that Lenin, Zinoviev, Stalin, Nasanov, Haywood etc. were all a Mott foundation conspiracy? PLP claims to uphold Stalin and says the CP-USA went revisionist after 1932; yet today it is PLP attacking the 1932 line --in complete synch with the Trotskyists. BTW, in the same June 9 2004 Challenge a PLP comrade had to write in to Challenge to correct its editors for saying the three main events of communist history excluded China, because PLP comrades generally speak of Stalin as worthy of upholding but not Mao. MIM is not surprised because the whole general line of the PLP attracts labor aristocracy trash who will be more comfortable with Stalin, by envisioning him as white and modern in contrast with Mao. Harry Haywood refers to his conversion by Stalin- appointed Nasanov from the PLP line of today and the CP-USA line of before the Comintern theses on the Black nation this way: "To call the matter a race question, they said, was to fall into the bourgeois liberal trap of regarding the fight for equality as primarily a fight against racial prejudices of whites."(2) That liberal trap is exactly the Martin Luther King type line the PLP is following today. In fact, the Stalin era CP-USA published Harry Haywood at length after his return from the Comintern meetings in which he converted to the Stalin line. "Unable to win the masses for its predatory policy by purely ideological means, the ruling classes of the oppressing nations through bribing the upper strata of the petty bourgeoisie and the labor aristocracy with portions of the super profits extracted from the exploitation of subject peoples, created for itself a social basis among the masses of its own nation. . . . "Thus in France, the French bourgeoisie utilized the French workers against national minorities represented in this case by the Italian, Spanish and colonial immigrants. In addition to sustained chauvinist propaganda among the French workers, the bourgeoisie plays upon the petty bourgeois moods of the latter. By holding out to them greater opportunities to rise to the position of foremen, labor aristocrats, etc., it succeeds for a time to keep up the bar between them. In this manner the French bourgeoisie are enabled to receive a relative super-profit from the special exploitation of the immigrant workers. "However, the United States offers us the most classic example of this policy. Here the labor aristocrats led by the A.F. of L., fully cognizant of the fact that their privileged position can only be preserved at the price of the exploitation of the split up, unorganized and unqualified workers, composed chiefly of immigrants and Negroes, actively aid the bourgeoisie in perpetuating the position of the latter. This fact was already noted by Engels in a letter to Herman Schluter, dated March 30 1892. "The working class (the native-born American workers; H.H.) has developed and organized mainly in trade unions. But according to the position it occupies it is an aristocrat, which has the possibility to leave the simple and badly paid occupations for the emigrants. From the emigrants only a small part enter the aristocratic trade unions, they are sub-divided into nationalities, which in the majority of cases do not know the local language."(3) MIM would only add that if we stick with the definitions of "proletariat" used by Lenin, Nasanov, Stalin, Haywood and the Comintern generally, we would see that the vast majority of Amerikans are labor aristocracy today. None of the above Marxists considered office workers proletarians for starters. Since the early 1930s, the united $tates has changed from having many farmers and industrial workers to a more thoroughly parasitic class structure composed mostly of assistants to the capitalists seeking to achieve surplus-value in its monetary form--security, sales, management & administration. Marx, Engels & Lenin all told us that the portion of capitalist society that is parasitic grows over time unless there is socialist revolution. So in fact, since 1930, what has changed is that there are fewer socialist countries and imperialists have had a chance to carry out their exploitive plans. We have to update the facts on the extent of the labor aristocracy but by using the definitions laid down by Marx, Engels & Lenin and used by Dutt, Stalin, etc. Substance The PLP's fight against racism is a fraud undertaken to cover its ass when it broke with Mao on the national question and others. The fact that PLP has Black members means nothing in this except to those guilty of post-modernist, Liberal and ad hominem mistakes. As Haywood said in identical circumstances in 1930 in the battle against the liberal anti-racist line, "the fact that there exists a 'practical' alliance between the chauvinist elements and some of our Negro comrades, should not be the occasion for wonder. It merely confirms the Bolshevik axiom that there is no difference in substance between open opportunism covered by 'left' phrases, in this case represented respectively by the chauvinist tendencies among white comrades and the 'left' social democratic tendencies among Negroes."(4) If the people at PLP were serious they would have taken their 62% number and done something with it with the labor theory of value and the super- profits. Namely they would have used it to see that by discrimination profits alone, the capitalist class of the united $tates can survive and the white workers would not be exploited. We won't bother PLP with the productive versus unproductive labor distinction, because Marxism is well beyond PLP and it would take decades for PLP to figure out that whites are disproportionately unproductive sector, but PLP claims to be anti- racist so let's hoist PLP strictly on its own alleged "anti-racist" petard. For this we will even talk as PLP does as if surplus-value from the neo-colonies do not flood the united $tates from Asia, Africa and Latin America. In this liberal PLP type view there is only whites and the races of the people of color in the united $tates. From MIM's calculations, white workers do a tiny minority share of the productive sector labor that goes into the GNP of $11 trillion. However, let's humor PLP. Let's say that white workers are 70% of the workers, since Black and Latino are 25% and we have assorted other First Nation, Asian and immigrant workers. 70% of $11 trillion in the united $tates is $7.7 trillion. 30% is the rest, $3.3 trillion in GNP coming from races that PLP calls discriminated against. If workers received everything and nothing were saved for next year's production, workers would get that $11 trillion a year in GNP. That's not true, because capitalists skim off some for doing nothing but owning stock. However, PLP in claiming to be "anti-racist" claims to recognize that the capitalists do not pay according to work. So in fact, with the 30% of the labor done by "minorities," the capitalists obtain what PLP calls a super-profit: "the hard reality is that the capitalists' profits depend on their ability to super-exploit certain groups of workers," PLP says. Let's use PLP's 62% number to calculate that super-profit. Let's assume that white workers have exactly a 0 exploitation rate. The reason we have to do that is that we want to see how much profit capitalists would get just from super-profits off minorities to test how realistic it is to say that BOTH white workers and minorities are exploited. If minorities were receiving 62% of a non- exploiting wage, then capitalists would be skimming off (.38)($3.3 trillion) just from that. That's $1.25 trillion a year in super-profits connected to racism. The problem for the PLP is that there is no record of corporate profits that is going to justify saying there is $1.25 trillion in super-profits from minorities. Profits to the capitalist class are much closer to the $500 billion a year range. We've gone into that in great detail before in MIM Theory. Hence, if we use just PLP's own analysis of super-profits by race, we find that approximately $725 billion a year go from "minorities" to people other than capitalists. Those people are disproportionately white petty-bourgeoisie. The white workers benefit from being lifted out of worker status by the super-profits that even PLP says exist. Now suppose you change the calculation and say white workers are exploited too. Let's say that white workers turn over 10% of their labor to the capitalists. That's another $770 billion to account for. In addition, since white workers are exploited, the 62% figure PLP uses implies that racism super-profits are even greater than $1.25 trillion--(1 - (.9)(.62))($3.3 trillion) =$1.4586 trillion. Thus, even according to PLP, the more we say white workers are exploited, the more we say "minority" workers are exploited. The problem for PLP is that we have to find evidence that the capitalist class actually grows its wealth like that. In truth, white workers are not exploited, and the proof is that we would never find evidence of both the surplus-value produced by "minorities" and neo-colonies--not to mention evidence of exploitation of better-paid white workers as well. This becomes clear once we think about reparations to the neo-colonies. It's not that capitalists are raking in $3 trillion in profits a year. Rather, what profits do exist are owed back to the neo- colonies. This is important, because what PLP does is justify not returning those decades of profits to the neo-colonies by telling tales of white worker exploitation. In the same issue of Challenge, PLP refuses to delegitimize the spelling of the "United States." Yet it did delegitimize the spelling of "Giuliani" to be "Ghouliani." We say that smacks suspiciously of Arab-baiting or Iranian-baiting Giuliani and we're not surprised, because PLP stands on the side of the 911 World Trade Center victims as "exploited workers," who happen to be in the midst of a lawsuit against the Arab bourgeoisie. Contrary to MIM, the PLP comrade also advised Challenge that it was wrong to publish the photo of Lynndie England: we're not surprised because PLP is all about covering up the role of ordinary whites in ACTION propping up imperialism. While some may say PLP did not intend Arab-baiting of Giuliani it's apparent that it holds him responsible for not exposing Arab ties to the CIA etc. In other articles, PLP has gone out of its way to criticize Indian revisionism (in a paper distributed in the united $tates) for not seeking U.$. level wages in India as a concession to concerns of U.$. "workers" about outsourcing to India. Thus, PLP's liberal line on national and race questions leads inexorably to tailing after chauvinists opposed to exporting "our jobs." It is PLP's present and future to become the politically correct perfume for those anxious about "outsourcing our jobs," instead of seeing the proletariat as the class with "nothing to lose but its chains." Yet it is not only PLP that talks about "white skin privilege" theory as if it were a recent invention. Stalin is so dead to RCP=U$A circles that one circle that has since broken away from the RCP=U$A thought it was MIM making up the line on white-skinned workers to begin with. On the other hand, no stupid error goes unpunished without an equally stupid and opposite one, so there are those who mistake the RCP=U$A, PLP etc. as true defenders of Stalin. In the same article, Black anarchist Lorenzo Komboa Ervin both denounces white-skin privilege and Stalin! There is always one ideology happy to see the Western "workers" given their due while downplaying their role as labor aristocracy-- Trotskyism. With Trotsky's "West is Best" line, we see the real source of the attacks on the national question, super-profit corruption and Lenin's theory of imperialism underlying both. Hard-core Trotskyists like the Spartacist League are true to their Cold Warrior mentor Trotsky in likewise denouncing the correct line on the labor aristocracy and white skin privilege. Lately they have even endured splits of groups(5) taking up a MIM line on the white working class without calling it that. These splinters do not yet see the ideological origins of Trotskyism and how it is connected together by Trotsky's rejection of Lenin's theory of imperialism which stresses the decadence of parasitism of imperialism and its workers, not the most "advanced" nature of those workers. We at MIM propose that those splinters see the light that Trotsky provides nothing but antagonism to oppressed nations seeking liberation against imperialism, while we in exchange will hand over PLP and RCP=U$A to the Trotskyists' Fourth International.
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