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.
Maoist Internationalist Movement

Imperialists see Maoists coming

Middle-class parties form obstacle course:

Imperialists acknowledge real source of military recruiting problems

August 24 2007

See also our Aztlán page

The imperialists have figured out before the middle-class parties did that MIM is correct about the national question and the military. Separate August 2007 articles in the New York Times and Washington Post have verified an article by MIM on the national question as it intersects with anti-militarism.(1)

MIM pointed out that by looking at the "coalition of the willing" in Afghanistan and Iraq, it was clear that Uncle $am was better off with more Latinos inside U.$. borders than outside. The reason for that is that military recruiting is more effective inside u.$. borders than through coalitions of "the willing."

The dumb-as-rocks-but-less-useful parties talking about a "single working class" in the imperialist countries are obscuring the crucial political facts of our time. Stalin said that language and land were factors that had to be accounted for somewhat apart from class structure. Stalin's famous quote goes as follows:

"A nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of the common possession of four principal characteristics, namely: a common language, a common territory, a common economic life, and a common psychological make-up manifested in common specific features of national culture."

Now the Washington Post has proved Stalin and MIM correct. In Puerto Rico (Boricua), recruiting for the military has dropped off. Leading the charge are pro-independence forces. In normal times, a large perhaps majority section of Puerto Rico wants to be the 51st state if asked. Yet when push comes to shove on beauty contests, sports leagues and now military recruiting, Boricuans think of themselves separately. The Iraq War is putting the pedal to the metal in the national consciousness of Boricuans.

"Bill Carr, deputy undersecretary of defense for military personnel policy, acknowledged that the counter-recruiting campaigns are having an impact. 'We're drawing less than the national average' in Puerto Rico, he said.

"In the 2003-06 period, 4,947 Puerto Rican men and women enlisted in the Army or Reserves, or approximately 123 people per 100,000 residents, according to Pentagon data. That is below the average contribution of U.S. states, and far below the numbers in states such as Alabama, Kansas, Montana and Oklahoma, each of which enlists more than 200 men and women per 100,000, according to Army data.

"'We're not taking more than our share from Puerto Rico,' Carr said. 'We're taking less than our share, because that's what they'll give us.' Carr said he suspects that opt-out rates for states in the continental United States rarely break beyond 10 percent -- a far cry from the nearly 60 percent on the island."(1)

Even more impressive, according to Major Ricardo Sierra in the Washington Post, Boricua only furnishes about 22 high school students on average per year,(1) because language is a barrier until college, with Boricuans growing up with Spanish. There could hardly be better proof of the approach of Stalin and MIM.

The New York Times followed up on the alarm sounded by the Washington Post:

"And while blacks continue to account for a larger share of the existing troop level than their share of the general population, as has been the case throughout the 34 years of the all- volunteer force, that margin is shrinking.

"The sharpest decline in black recruitment has been experienced by the Army, which has the most troops deployed in Iraq; black recruits dropped to 13 percent of the Army’s total in 2006 from 23 percent in 2001. In the Marines, with the second-largest force in Iraq, the share of black recruits decreased to 8 percent from 12 percent in the same period. There were also declines in the Navy and the Air Force, though not as great as those in the two other services."(2)

In reality, that means that Blacks are below their share of recruitable age population, because of the demographic structure of the Black nation. Even scarier, the New York Times even used that word "margin."

The New York Times correctly linked the situation to politics and class:

"In a recent CBS News telephone poll, 83 percent of the blacks surveyed said the United States should have stayed out of Iraq; only 14 percent said it had done the right thing in taking military action. Whites, by contrast, were closely divided: 48 percent said military action had been right, and 46 percent said the United States should have stayed out. The poll was conducted Aug. 8-12 with 1,214 adults nationwide and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points."(2)
Politically challenged people should read that carefully. It says that to this day whites are at best vacillating on the Iraq War. When we see those big poll numbers against the war, those numbers are on account of the oppressed nationalities inside U.$. borders. Despite that fact, MIM's counterrevolutionary opponents calling themselves "Marxist" still want to make oppressed nationalities more like the Euro-Amerikan majority inside U.$. borders, instead of accentuating their national consciousness.

The situation with recruiting of Black cannon fodder is especially interesting, because it shows that nation trumps alleged class. The imperialists are jacking up their recruiting bonuses for the all- mercenary military and they have lowered their educational requirements to fill their slots in Iraq. However, the usual drive to get the poor to die is backfiring in the case of Blacks, because of Black national consciousness, not because Blacks need money less than Euro-Amerikans. This goes to show that going to the military with a class angle is wrong.

Thankfully, the imperialists themselves get what is happening, but they cannot explain it to their labor aristocracy partners. The Minutemen have already scared some people out of migrating to the united $tates and have set back the economy. In the long run they will also deprive the U.$. military. If the Minutemen do not, then MIM will with proletarian internationalism.

The dumb-as-rocks integrationist Trotskyists, Progressive Labor Party & RCP=U$A are working to build Uncle $am's military as the shock troops of globalization. They do so directly.

Then there are the Hoxhaites and some Deng Xiaopingers who pay lip- service to the national question by spouting Stalin's definition, and then turn to Martin Luther King politics of integrationism anyway. There is no better example of this confusion than the Deng Xiaopingers who worked in Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition with their all. So there is knowing Stalin's definition of nation and then there is a matter of actually applying it. For all practical purposes, these others paying lip-service to Stalin belong in the dumb-as-rocks crowd. The best that they accomplish is to make the military more sensitive to ethnicity questions.

By now, we should be in a post-MIM era, because MIM has been at it a quarter century. Unfortunately a number of parties calling themselves "Marxist" have not used any brain cells since the 1960s and they are still clogging up the political plumbing.

A few thousand imperialist country phony Marxists believe the key attributes of class struggle should be an ability to oink and feel good about the richest 10% of people in the world. MIM would say choosing cheerleaders for their looks and acrobatic abilities is much to be preferred.

Serious anti-militarists are on board with MIM. What has happened with Blacks and Boricuans shows already very clearly that Iraq fortells global revolution along the lines MIM has long pointed to.

The same is true of the Aztlán question. We have language and territory with a common economic interaction going on. We should use it to deprive the Yankee military, not to build white so-called worker pipe- dreams. The Aztlán reason is sufficient by itself to junk the so-called class analyses of other parties.

In Pakistan, India, Uganda and South Africa, MIM has more comrades than inside imperialist country borders. There are some comrades internationally who know exploitation and oppressed nations when they see them. We have no use for any alleged Maoists who cannot apply Stalin on the Boricua, Aztlán and other oppressed nation questions. There are some calling themselves "Maoist" who pay lip-service to Stalin and denouncing Khruschev but are no where to be found in applying Stalin's teachings for concrete questions of 2007. To hell with them: they are obstacles to the revolution.

Notes:
1. http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/agitation/milit/mexicantroops.html
2. Paul Lewis, "Recruiting for Iraq War Undercut in Puerto Rico," Washington Post, 18Aug07.
3. SARAH ABRUZZESE, "Iraq War Brings Drop in Black Enlistees," New York Times, 22Aug07.

The Maoists are coming for Guantanamo Bay

In a lengthy television interview, the Navy lawyer named Charles Swift who represented Osama Bin Laden's driver being held in Guantanamo Bay prison directly acknowledged Maoists as the reason to give the driver a real criminal trial and not a kangaroo hearing with a predetermined sentence. (1) According to Swift, all U.$. military people end up studying Mao and they know that Maoists know how to defeat fascists and monarchists.

There are also rumblings in the State Department and ex-State Department and CIA on how the Maoists are coming. Colin Powell said he would close Guantanamo Bay that day if it were up to him: "And by the way, America, unfortunately, has too many people in jail, all of whom had lawyers and access to writs of habeas corpus."(2) The bourgeois internationalists in these government units are complaining about the polls. The bourgeois polling agency for Pew figured out that the global anti-Amerikan strategy is working, thanks in part to talk about freedom used as a guise for war. The labor aristocracy majority inside U.$. borders does not want to give the Guantanamo Bay prisoners a fair shake. There is only slight cost of that politically inside u.$. borders, but outside U.$. borders is a different question.

For most purposes, the labor aristocracy partner works well for the imperialists. Yet there are times where we are able to make the imperialists pay for their partner's inflexibility on questions ranging from migration to the underpinnings of a Liberal state. The faster and more severe the crises, the more certain we can be that the imperialists will never be able to steer soccer-mom-in-the-suburbs quick enough to meet the onslaught of the international proletariat.

The more Maoists press the anti-Amerikan strategy, the more the imperialists need their bourgeois internationalism to counter MIM line. However, with improvements in communications via Internet and widespread education, the imperialists' labor aristocracy partner simply won't let the imperialists veer very far from the national unity for exploitation path. The imperialists are like the boyfriend who takes his girlfriend to a party with hopes of group sex only to find her unwilling. The imperialists need higher regard for people outside imperialist country borders, but their labor aristocracy partner is the stay-at-home-on-the-couch conventional sort. It's as Mao said, we can show the imperialists our gameplan, but they cannot do anything about it.

Notes:
1. http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/331.html
2. http://thinkprogress.org/2007/06/10/powell-gitmo/