May 28 2007
We've had a number of interesting criticisms these past few months. We urge people to keep it up. It shows that people are thinking hard and independently.
On the one hand, we have an alarmingly large right-opportunist wing, including those feds who disguise themselves as "Maoist" telling us to behave. They're calling us ultra- left and could be correct sometimes. There also those on the other side opposing the party principle.
To the right-opportunists we want to say that we've had to elevate the struggle, because of an escalation of attacks on the party especially relative to security. It does not mean MIM cannot "simmer down" into the previous mode of operation. Our right-opportunists are correct to note the shift in tactics and strategy since the crucial evidence of CIA infiltration of the international communist movement emerged in 2006 on the Iran question. Since that time, we have shifted toward teaching on the question of spy infiltration. It's not that MIM planned such a shift, but rather the enemy showed us capability we were unaware of. Now we have had to show people how to fight for an anti-imperialist orientation and specifically how to recognize spies politically. Some people are unprepared for how far blown out of the water the proletariat has allowed itself to be, so MIM's strategic shift seems out-of-character.
Obviously MIM's security struggle had been inadequate and probably could not be adequate with parasitism's more-or-less permanent shift of resources toward spying, guarding and repression. On the other hand, often times what slips through our Security Minister's fingers can be caught at the backstop of politics.
Doubtless, some struggles for security have not gone as well as we would have wished, but the important thing is to shift resources and tactical focus and try to catch up with the new realities of parasitism. The degree of MIM's public clarity about these points could lead to charges of "ultra-leftism," but at least we are done with the days when people said there are no tactics or tactical struggles they can see. MIM has spelled them out and now we are getting criticism for being ultra-left for so doing. It has to do with whether or not our own ranks know how to shut up the left-wing of parasitism when it comes to us with its dumb Liberal line and its inability on how to fight as a minority.
From the other side, we had some ultra-left criticism. Some have opposed the party principle in questions of public opinion. Yet we contend that organizing as individuals does not eradicate any of the problems that parties have. The right-wing of parasitism in particular is going to attack at the ad hominem level no matter what, party or not. What some people have yet to work through is the full implications of the Internet advance in the productive forces, the need for pseudonyms in scientific struggle. So not everything can be done covertly as if individuals would not be attacked for doing so.
Part of the question here is the balance between teaching and effectiveness. The most effective struggle would be totally covert. MIM things would happen without a MIM or a website or any party institution. That occurs when people are much more advanced. That is not to say we believe at MIM that we are going to teach a majority. The majority does not pay attention to begin with. On the other hand, we should admit that even among readers of the MIM website, it's not clear that a majority are going to benefit from teaching in a proletarian way. If we are going to have public teaching, then getting over the authoritarian hump with people used to thinking about sources is not any easier with individuals than with parties.
We also face natural criticism from the ultra-left wing on Ron Paul. MIM is not campaigning for Ron Paul, but we find it tactically expedient to mention him along with Ward Churchill. It has to do with making a certain subject speakable in the united $tates--the question of U.$. oppression of Arab peoples. Whether Ron Paul makes it as a Republican candidate or not is secondary.
In that connection, we should also deal with another level of ad hominem. At least one of the larger self-described "socialist" organizations says Ward Churchill is a CIA agent. The goal could be to collect intelligence from those who favored 9/11 or the goal could be to change the climate of discussion to allow discussion of the Middle East without people going into a McCarthyite frenzy. The CIA may reason that it needed Howard Dean to raise the "Patriot Act" and Iraq War and it needed Ron Paul to change the international image of Amerikan public opinion. We are going all-out to stop the purge of Ward Churchill, but if we fail, it will be a great boon for us to have the international proletariat see that, and also a great boon for us to continue fighting after he gets fired if he does get fired or suspended.
This is one of those questions, of course because there are so many spies, the oppressed do not really know if MIM or Ward Churchill is CIA or maybe both anti-Churchill and pro-Churchill forces are CIA. Most of the time, when one sees an Amerikan talking about international politics in an authoritative way (not while drinking a beer or judging the Miss World contest), "spy" is a good guess. Yet the question remains whether we are going to lie down and die when it becomes taboo to blame Amerikans for terrorist incidents that happen to them. CIA or not, there are only two sides to whether we want a certain kind of atmosphere in connection to 9/11. One does NOT get to choose WHO one fights with, only one's side. This is also evident if we think through questions tactically. If one were to shift the SUBSTANCE of one's stand, because of WHO is taking it, then all the CIA has to do is assign an agent to take a certain stand and the proletariat would mistakenly shift its position in response. So there is no substitute for an internal compass that works regardless of WHO questions. The good thing is that this is actually a reason our authoritarian opponents are destined to lose. We have the problem of the internal compass, but they have the problem even moreso. For many of the right-wing of authoritarianism, if MIM were to start taking a stand for pro-life politics, they'd be signing up with NOW for the first time. So this is a problem for the other side too.
We said the same thing about Adolfo Olaechea. There are long-standing questions about him because of his class background, but when the imperialists come to arrest him for "terrorist"-sympathizing, then one has no choice but to stand with him as actively as possible.
Now a certain CIA front is a different question. After the public long ago concluded there were no weapons of mass destruction to be found in Iraq, the CIA front boosted a CIA agent on the question of weapons of mass destruction, including a non-Marxist line on the causes of the appearance of weapons of mass destruction and a backhanded justification for war on countries that do have weapons of mass destruction.
To MIM's knowledge, we are never on the CIA's side; although we may sometimes come to the same factual conclusions. But if Bush and Clinton's version of 9/11 being sacrosanct puts us on the same side as the CIA, Lyndon LaRouche etc., then so be it. There is the question of the FBI and CIA altering the line, sometimes long-standing of proletarian internationalists, through use of power. There is also the question if one has determined that a stand has to be taken, and the CIA shows up in the same place, it is important to swallow any difficulties and not vacillate just because of WHOM we are rubbing shoulders with. Such vacillation is always Liberal. It is Liberals and authoritarian reactionaries looking for individual distinctions based on WHO questions. We proletarian scientists look at the two sides of a question as a matter of class struggle. That's two sides, not three sides, eight sides or five billion sides.
As one last illustration, if we had a situation where the exploited were really in such a well-organized position that they were ready to dispense with both the Islamic theocrats and imperialists in a country --a factual assumption incorrectly held by many ultra-leftists in the world at this very moment, usually taking a Trotskyist or anarchist position--then of course the exploited and oppressed would not be harmed much by taking in the piddly Islamic theocrats under their wing. So there would never need to be three sides: it would never happen dialectically-speaking, like it or not. If reality, not the ghosts in the minds of deluded idealists, if reality is such that the exploited and oppressed are in a powerful position ready for socialist revolution in a country, then many of the Islamic theocrats will be on rooftops grabbing for the U.$. helicopters to take them to safety as in the end of the Vietnam War when the upper classes fled along with U.$. troops. At that time, the Islamic theocrats would not be physically fighting imperialists but in fact clamoring for space on the helicopters. Our idealists are so deluded that they cannot see even that Hezbollah is fighting the imperialists and they hold their noses up even where Maoists are not conducting armed struggle themselves. These kinds of scum have clearly turned to the imperialist camp outright. Then there are the vacillators who continue to cry over spilled milk. They simply cannot believe that a portion of parties formerly calling themselves "Maoist" have departed for outright imperialist politics. So these people put their heads in the sand and give sanction to these social-chauvinists.
We Maoists are interested in WHO questions only as in the WHO of two camps--not a hell of a lot of detail. With wiretapping, mail-opening and email collection, the feds can pretend to be anyone, so that is their specialty and our side makes mistakes on WHO questions, as when Mao chose Lin Biao. That is not reason to give up struggle, just to recognize where the emphasis has to go--doing what the logic of the situation requires, not trying to outdo the bourgeoisie on who questions. Mostly we want to know WHAT do people stand for, what do they do and WHERE do they want to go.
At the moment, we are going to pause the Ward Churchill struggle to see what happens with the faculty and regents. We have given indications that undercover federal forces are involved and the mud involved with that. If the regents punish Ward Churchill, the struggle is only just getting started.