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.

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

Nasrallah and the International Communist Movement:

Everybody wants to be Zhou Enlai

*See also, "I$rael lost"

The victory of Hezbollah in Lebanon's war with I$rael--even if it is only one war--has the whole world buzzing about the leader of Hezbollah, Hasan Nasrallah. A recent alleged interview with Nasrallah sets the standard for anti-imperialism in many important ways--a bar. We won't say it is raising the bar or lowering the bar, because MIM has not talked about it before, but we will say it is now the bar, whether the interview is fraudulent or not. Whether that particular interview is fraudulent or not, it is not so far off from what Saddam Hussein or Osama Bin Laden said, and we can take it as a composite view of the anti-imperialist national bourgeoisie.

Problems with the media

The U.$. media of what Lenin would call the "Swamp," and what MIM might consider the official voice of the left-wing of white nationalism is called "Counterpunch." As the title indicates, it's meant to hit back at the right-wing of parasitism. Counterpunch published the Nasrallah interview, which is a good thing.

Without any evidence, some bloggers said that the Nasrallah interview is a fraud, because it sounds too secular. (Readers can do a Google search of "+Nasrallah +interview" )Actually this whole debate is important not for what its participants are saying, but because it is proof of the difficulty of hearing the voices of oppressed nations.

Great proof of the problem is the entry by an Internet encyclopedia called Wikipedia on Hezbollah, which is filled with the U.$. & I$raeli imperialist military and security establishment view of Hezbollah. Meanwhile, on the day that MIM tested the Wikipedia article, there was not one single working link to an actual Hezbollah website. We are supposed to drown in fears whipped up by the imperialist security media instead of getting a chance to read what Hezbollah is about. Meanwhile, the I$raeli military has said "Nasrallah must die."

It's been a week and we still do not have definitive proof that the interview is a fraud. On the other hand, since we are not allowed to know what's on Hezbollah's TV station, Al-Manar, we cannot say we saw the interview claimed for Hezbollah either.

The U.S. Government does collect up all these statements by Hezbollah, but a week has passed and there has been no attempt by the government to set the record straight or provide the documents that citizens need to make informed judgments. Of course, we would prefer that there just be an Al-Manar in English allowed to broadcast on U.$. television. Much confusion would clear up immediately, but this is not how the world works right now. The Third World leader typically gets an inch of quotation in the New York Times for every 30 inches of imperialists and their hired analysts. Recently the U.S. Government admitting to having over 100,000 spies. Their views are much more common in discussion than those of the actual participants in conflicts.

The problem for our Maoist movement

The reason MIM would like to talk about the Nasrallah interview is that it sets the bar for what the anti-imperialist wing of the national bourgeoisie can do. What really struck MIM about the Nasrallah interview is how little so many organizations calling themselves communist say anything more controversial than what Nasrallah did.

We see it all there. There is respect for other participants in the united front against imperialism. There is a correct political handling of culture versus nationality. There is criticism of U.$. imperialism and Nasrallah even gets the relationship of the Amerikans to I$raelis right, with I$raelis as U.$. "contractors," not the tail that wags the dog the way the flabby Arab bourgeoisie likes to talk. In fact, Nasrallah's statement is more advanced in that single point than the "Leningrad Declaration" set up by Ludo Martens and numerous alleged communist parties.

Some allegedly communist or even Maoist parties are state-run. We cannot be surprised if these do not catch the communist lingo any better than the Nasrallah interview. It's a tough job state agents have faking their way through politics.

Other parties should take note: Not everyone should be Zhou Enlai, the prime minister of China. Zhou Enlai took the less political job of pleasing the public, often by detecting minute complaints below amorphous political surfaces and addressing them.

In the division of labor between Mao and Zhou, Mao had the job of coming up with the ideology, the job of "one divides into two" in particular. It was natural that Zhou Enlai conciliated with the wing of revisionism that came to be known as Deng Xiaoping revisionism. In a sense, it was built into Zhou Enlai's job as head of diplomacy including united front with the world's national bourgeoisie struggling in the face of imperialism. After seeing the desperate struggles of Hamas, Hezbollah, Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden, we cannot deny that there is a national bourgeoisie of importance to anti-imperialism.

In our international communist movement today, we need to look out for statements that are anti-imperialist but bourgeois coming from communists. These statements typically take the conciliatory road and are so generic, that they could have come from a section of a Nasrallah interview. Even Osama Bin Laden, once we clear away references to Islam and Jews allegedly controlling the united $tates is apt to make more controversial statements than our communists. His letters to the Amerikan people are a case in point. We can use his statements and Saddam Hussein's statements: if communists are not saying anything more than what these people said, then we have failed in "one divides into two," because Nasrallah, Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden do not claim to be proletarian leaders.

Yet it is we communists who are the underdogs. There is no socialism and we need communism to conquer the whole world, so we cannot be the ones who content ourselves with unity. We cannot all be Zhou Enlais.

On the question of imperialism, people avoiding the exploiter versus exploited divide and not naming the imperialist countries as repositories of most of the bourgeoisie are examples of avoiding "one divides into two." On questions of current international politics, people always talking about laws, treaties, diplomacy and anti-imperialism the way Nasrallah does or less radically--these are also examples of national bourgeoisie, no matter what else they might claim.

Lastly, let us not settle for less than Wang Ming either! Wang Ming dedicated himself to learning the rhetoric of Lenin and Stalin and eventually Mao's leadership made Wang Ming look like a disgrace. Yet, Wang Ming was better than many we see today, because at least Wang Ming and his era of people were in live contact with Stalin. What shall we say about people who unite based on history such as Khruschev and the Cultural Revolution, but never apply anything in a controversial "one divides into two" way for current questions of today? These people are worse than Wang Ming. We cannot make Khruschev and the Cultural Revolution the basis of our "real unity," and use that as an excuse to import the labor aristocracy or the national bourgeoisie, since both Khruschev and the Cultural Revolution are long gone. Even Wang Ming and other Moscow Bolshevik contenders for leadership in the Chinese Communist Party were not that bad because they at least claimed to be carrying out the wishes of people who were alive--a Trotsky, Bukharin, Zinoviev or Stalin.

There are organizational ways of handling this problem. One obvious way is to make the prime minister or prime-minister-in-waiting in charge of united front and the party in charge of the united front but also "one divides into two." This latter point is lacking globally. Instead of everyone always worried about the united front, someone in every communist party needs to be given the job, the task of "one divides into two." It is we the proletarian side on the bottom and we must struggle to advance. Mao provided the biting ideological and scientific statements that could at least quicken the class consciousness of the party and its immediate circles. Perhaps at first, some parties will need to appoint Maos at a lower level to see how they carry out their duties. Somehow or another they must be produced. If we simply unite with what we have right now, it won't be good enough to win. We have to work on distinguishing from the bourgeoisie.