International Minister
October 20 2006
Comrades, at our 1999 Congress we had no way of imagining the temporary difficulties our Maoist movement is now having. We had no way of imagining how Bush would unleash a terrible propaganda assault on a particular section of the international proletariat--especially its most religious sector absorbed in Islam. Now Bush has sent troops to Afghanistan and Iraq and allowed I$rael to send them to Lebanon. Initial troop raids have started in Iran as well. It is well known that Bush established an outright colonial regime in Iraq until handing off to a lackey which still cannot manage his own security.
Bush focussed his attack on a section of the international proletariat that happens to sit on the most oil. Then he took advantage of intra-proletarian divisions on that basis. He pointed to killings of Hindus by Islamic fundamentalists; even though these killings were going on before 9/11 and he was silent then. Then Bush came up with the term "Islamo-fascism" to drive the wedge further and deeper into the international proletariat. To aim specifically at our leaders, he alternately threatened and bribed them. He put some of our most promising organizations on the "Foreign Terrorist Organization" list and said he would cut off their access to banking, just as he has done to the entire Palestinian people. He went to the EU and pressured it to reopen an exile rights case of a Filipino leader. In many cases, Bush covered for organizations pretending to have an anti-U.$. stance and so the "war on terror" is a fraud of geopolitical manipulations and secret service agencies justifying military budgets and campaign trail rhetoric by pointing to threats of their own creation.
Comrades, Bush took advantage of the weaknesses of our class and our oppressed nations. We were fighting among ourselves before 9/11. Bush saw that and pounced. Today again he is stressing he is in battle against an ideology and not a country.
Even while Bush's closest advisers speak in elite circles of "Islammunism," an alliance of labor aristocracy and Brahmin parties took the Bush bait. The leader of this alliance referred to Hezbollah as "obsolete" and welcomed the imperialist attack on our backward section of the international proletariat. His comrades in Iran openly propagandize for defeat of Iran by U.$. invasion. In Afghanistan, organizations exist with known links to the Pentagon operating in the name of Maoism. Though they maintain a verbal anti-U.$. cover, they have no known history of action against U.$. interests, run fund-raising out of the DC area and openly oppose united front as did Trotsky. We must learn to put all our alleged comrades to the political test to sort out security threats from genuine Maoists.
Years ago, the International Ministry advised the Russian Maoist Party that it should take down its support for the Afghan Liberation Organization (ALO). RMP disagreed, but we kept a public unity. Although RMP viewed ALO as "fraternal," MIM did not. We saw the Red Wedge-Belarus, the Partija Rada (ex-Yugoslavia), Russian Maoist Party, the Communist Party of the Philippines and Luis Arce Borja as legitimate, but we have not supported the ALO for many years. MIM conducted an investigation into ALO financing in the Washington DC area. Admittedly, MIM has not detailed that, but the important thing is to put these ALO and other Afghan comrades to the political test. In fact ALO comrades have been unreachable for a number of years.
We sympathized with the Russian Maoist Party's predicament, because MIM does not doubt that Afghan Liberation Organization(ALO) martyrs landed blows against Soviet social-imperialism. For this reason, we did not break with the Russian Maoist Party before now. We have to get out of sentimentally living in the past. There are new tasks at hand more reminiscent of the Lin Biao era than the era of supporting anti-Soviet fighters. At this moment, there is no Afghan organization of communists upholding genuine Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
In South Asia, the "Islamo-fascist" wedge has worked another geopolitical miracle. Pointing to Liberal imperialists F.D.R. and Churchill during World War II, the South Asian parties are allying with Bush against "Islamo-fascism." Left aside is the fact that there is no socialist bloc to defend and no inter- imperialist conflict against fascist imperialists. Nor does it appear that the people called "Islamo-fascists" have any option of being the puppets of U.$. imperialism anywhere--only national bourgeois under attack by imperialism in Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan and Iraq. They are even starving Palestinians to death for voting for Hamas. In contrast, Bush has proved able to work with both BJP and Congress type puppets in India. Thus equating all Islamic fundamentalism and all Hindu fundamentalism is politically wrong--class-wise wrong. Ties to finance capital are key. Some Indian comrades are covering up the ties of their fundamentalists to finance capital by pointing to Islamists as equal when they do not have ties to finance capital. If MIM is wrong about that, that is what they should address and set us straight or maybe MIM is a little bit more aware of Indian politics than it appears!
In this question there were three additional judgment calls. First, MIM itself might be inclined to buy the ages-old argument about Hindu "tolerance." That is why there are no Hindu terrorist organizations on the "Foreign Terrorist Organization" list. Alternatively, we could reason that it is Hindu terrorists with ties to finance capital and that is why they are not on the list while the Islamic ones are on the list. Bottom line--look at how imperialists treat Hamas compared with the mainstream parties in India.
Secondly, in the decision to name Bush a "fascist," the proletarian leaders offered the imperialists an alliance especially if they would put forward their Democratic Party face to oppose "Islamo-fascism." As a matter of fact, for the first time yet, as of October 19 2006, H. Rodham Clinton leads both Giuliani and McCain in the polls for president in 2008. With a little fund-raising, the imperialists may decide that Clinton is best to prosecute their international wars, especially to tone down the anti-communism and play up the anti-fascism, by which they mean "choice," Nabokov and other pornography.
The South Asian leaders also decided it was in the interest of the proletariat in Nepal to negotiate at the expense of supporting the idea that a Maoist party could be for U.$. invasion. This may show that leaders in Nepal plan for no radical change in upcoming years where imperialists could come up with such an idea.
It cannot be that all the moving arguments are on MIM's side. The appeal to Nepal is to attempt to squeak through a period of u.$. imperialist history, perhaps getting over semi-feudalism while imperialism is busy with Islam. The appeal of Liberal secularism, opposing united front and "Islamo-fascism" is even more obvious in India--these arguments being sheerly geopolitical and unconnected to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
And so comrades, there developed an unexpected conflict between our goals discussed at the 1999 Congress and our 2002 Congress and MIM is upholding the 2002 Congress. Even those who point to our 1999 Congress now said nothing against the 2002 Congress, and so they should ask themselves why they are surrendering Lenin's definition of imperialism and the Dimitrov/Stalin era definition of fascism---if it is not just geopolitical pressure from the intelligence agencies.
The weak and vacillating who cannot see the temporary difficulties of the international communist movement and why MIM must choose its priorities at this time are free to leave MIM circles. The door is open. That goes for MCs, RAIL members, RAIL chapters--anyone unwilling to "go against the tide" to uphold the MIM Central Committee decision. It is already unfortunate that MIM has had to explain this to this degree. We remind our comrades that Lenin said our "first duty" is to oppose our own imperialists.
We have a bad security situation, because in addition to penetration of our own ranks there is also a situation of deals and alliances with Western intelligence agencies. These agencies are outraged that MIM has exposed their corruption of Maoism, that we were the first in the world to take up. Because we know what our own ideology is and because we can tell a fake when we see it, our intelligence agencies are concerned about their own activities and MIM's knowledge of the imperialists' inner-workings. They are fixing for the political moment to retaliate against MIM.
In this struggle for a genuine Maoist line that can inspire the peoples seeking independence, security does not benefit from having weak rah-rah types around. Khruschev, Brezhnev, Gorbachev, Hoxha, Deng Xiaoping--these all carried the red flag. So two generations ago our class had too many "rah-rah" "salute the flag" types and not enough scientists to see through the enemy. We must learn not to do the same thing again.
There are good comrades in the Philippines, Nepal & India. We are sure that the majority of the people of those countries did not want to see a Maoist party form to aid the u.$. imperialists' attack on Iran. People from large countries like India should also think what such a line means to small countries like the Dominican Republic. Maybe in a country the size of India, a U.$. invasion would take quite some time and become quite bogged down, but a fake Maoist party appearing in Grenada and inviting invasion could garner "success" in days. It is also right for comrades internationally to be nervous about the implications of this line for Palestine. We must be resolute in opposing fakes for international security. Even if we cannot win a military battle if Uncle $am decides to take over a small country in the name of Maoism, the revolutionaries there can still do their share if they maintain their own security. With the combined effort of Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries it is even possible that comrades in small countries who hold the line and maintain their security against fakes will prevail at the military level as well, all because Uncle $am loves to drop rocks on his own feet in succession. We hail the Iraqi people for forcing the imperialists to compare them to the Tet Offensive as we write this! The Tet Offensive was the military offensive in Vietnam that broke the imperialists' back! That offensive combined with imperialist indecision on which country to focus on--Iraq, Korea or Iran-- means that we must stay focussed on the possibilities of new wars against countries seeking independence.
MIM is leading the attack on the Trotskyist line opposing united front in the name of a centralized world party. We are upholding Lin Biao's "Long Live the Victory of People's War" in its entirety. In this period of temporary difficulties, we see no blame for Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. There is also no inter-imperialist conflict and we see rather less use for the model of Zhou Enlai's foreign policy concerning U.$. and Soviet imperialism at the moment. Inter-imperialist conflict is far onto the backburner, and so the Lin Biao period of the Cultural Revolution is the one to model ourselves on, even if we are still arguing over Lin Biao's biography.
In this period of temporary difficulties, we believe that the Turkish comrades conducting People's War are with us and we are sure that 90% of the Turkish people are also with us in not wanting Maoism to be used to attack Iran in concert with U.$. imperialism.
From past experience, we know that it will take some months and even a few years to know who is in the revolutionary camp. We must guard the banner of Marxism- Leninism-Maoism and seek to bring it to new places and peoples.