MIM(Prisons) is a cell of revolutionaries serving the oppressed masses inside U.$. prisons, guided by the communist ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
Under Lock & Key is a news service written by and for prisoners with a focus on what is going on behind bars throughout the United States. Under Lock & Key is available to U.S. prisoners for free through MIM(Prisons)'s Free Political Literature to Prisoners Program, by writing:
MIM(Prisons) PO Box 40799 San Francisco, CA 94140.
The San Francisco BayView newspaper has outed their former
editor Keith Washington as an informant and a manipulator. Previous
editor Mary Ratcliff has reasonably posed that this could have been an
FBI operation to undermine the BayView. Yet, Washington’s brief
stint as editor after being released from prison, followed by relapse
into addiction and violence also seems consistent with someone who has
jumped from group to group driven by eir own self-interest.
Keith Washington, aka Comrade Malik, was a politically eclectic,
self-promoting prison activist. It is for those reasons that his
passions often did not overlap with the program of MIM(Prisons), despite
being in close contact for many years. During eir time in prison,
Washington was a regular reader of ULK, MIM Theory and
other literature we distribute on the Black Panthers and Maoism in
general. For years ey could not receive ULK because of TDCJ
censors, so we had to mail em select articles separately.
We are not saying we did not work with Washington, for we published
dozens of articles and reports by em while ey was in prison. Most were
reports on conditions in Texas prisons. For a quick minute, ey was even
part of the the USW Council, but was quickly removed for openly
disagreeing with MIM(Prisons)’s 6 main points. The reason they were even
considered for the position was that it was hard to pin down eir
political line.
Washington seemed to work tirelessly to expose the corruption and
abuses within the Texas Department of Criminal Justice(TDCJ) – though ey
often did so from an angle that seemed to believe in the system. This
approach conflicted with eir initial focoist tendencies when we first
encountered Washington and ey seemed to believe that we were too
hesitant to use arms. Later eir politics hinted at patriotism. For much
of the time ey worked with USW ey also was working with the New Afrikan
Black Panther Party - Prison Chapter, ideologically led by Tom Big
Warrior and Kevin “Rashid” Johnson at the time. At one point Washington
was the Deputy Chairman of NABPP, but ey never was consistent at
upholding NABPP line. Ey went back and forth on the labor aristocracy
question in an opportunist way that seemed to be attempting to please
MIM(Prisons) with one message and Rashid with another. But communication
with Rashid was much more difficult than with us, so ey seemed to lean
towards us at times; another example of opportunism over political line.
This also showed there was no effective democratic centralism within the
NABPP. This is why we say you cannot be part of a democratic centralist
formation while encapsulated by the state, except perhaps in an
organization within a prison where you can freely interact with other
members of the formation.
While Washington pledged eir allegiance to MIM and the NABPP,
overtime ey branched out into other forums and organizations, always
promoting the persona of “Comrade Malik”. Despite all the articles we
did print by em, there were many more we did not, or we had to cut down
significantly due to the self-promotion.
We must learn to recognize political opportunism. We should not be
surprised that someone with such a history would also opportunistically
lie to the pigs to earn favors.
At best, political eclecticism is a sign of immaturity; an immaturity
that cannot be trusted with leadership. This is not to say we do not
work with younger people or people who are still learning, far from it.
We just must recognize their role. But when someone has spent a decade
or more studying revolutionary literature, and they are still putting
forth eclecticism, or just straight reformism, then it is clear they are
not a revolutionary, and perhaps they can play a role better somewhere
else. If we cannot convince such people to follow our leadership, then
we must work harder to prove our effectiveness.
Eclecticism is always connected to forms of subjectivity and
idealism. They are thinking about what feels good to them or
feels right to them. Combine this with the self-promotion of
“Comrade Malik” and you have a risky individual who will probably bounce
from one group to another, one line to another to serve eir own
self-interests, leaving havoc in eir wake. This is no longer immaturity,
but a conscious self-interest.
In our introductory study course we go over the question of how to
implement an effective security program for your organization. This
example of Washington is a good demonstration of how political line was
applied by MIM(Prisons) to keep a potential wrecker from playing a more
damaging role. We would say the work Washington contributed to the pages
of ULK served the people, as it was done under our leadership.
We did not allow Washington’s self-promotion or right opportunism to
take away from the mission of ULK or United Struggle from
Within. For organizations that look for the charismatic individuals to
promote, this is a danger.
We must also recognize that addiction to chemical substances,
violence and criminal behavior plagues the lumpen. The transformation of
the lumpen into proletarian revolutionaries is an arduous and life-long
task. Even those who have seemed to overcome for years while imprisoned,
will often relapse with the dramatic changes and pressures of being
released to the free world. That is why we have developed a
Revolutionary 12 Step Program that takes the proven techniques
of the steps, as applied by the lumpen masses in California, and
reframes them to include the transformation to the proletarian
mentality. It is the constant struggle to submit our self-interest to
the interests of the Third World proletariat that can solidify our own
transformation from addiction to action that changes society.
Imperialism has addicted us all, especially in this consumerist society
in the United $tates.
Our leaders must be forged in a disciplined revolutionary
organization built on democratic centralism. They must exhibit
self-sacrifice and embody the interests of the Third World proletariat.
We cannot follow the bourgeois individualist approach to leadership that
decides elections and celebrity in this country. We must put politics in
command when developing relationships with new comrades and bringing
them into our circles. Some people may never exceed a supporter role,
and that is okay, we welcome their support. Being around longer, having
connections or resources, or being energetic is not enough to qualify
comrades to lead. A consistent practice that upholds the correct line is
how we must judge who is to be trusted with responsibilities and
leadership roles.
Ten comrades in Texas’s William G. McConnell Unit signed and
submitted a petition to Mrs. Emma Guerra, Investigator II with the Texas
Department of Corrections and Justice (TDCJ) on 25 October 2021. The
letter does a good job of citing grievances that have not been responded
to as well as retaliatory actions by staff for filing said grievances.
They also cite the relevant policy from the TDCJ grievance procedures
and inmate handbook.
We have not succeeded in organizing a statewide coordinated campaign
around the grievance system in Texas, but it remains an important
campaign at the local level for pushing back against abuses and
organizing others around a common cause as these comrades have done at
McConnell. With their well-documented petition, perhaps they have a
vision for how to unite others across the state for this common
cause.
From Victory to Defeat: China’s Socialist Road
and Capitalist Reversal
by Pao-Yu Ching
Foreign Languages Press
2019
In a recent online debate between two random “Marxist-Leninists” and
two fascists, one of the self-described “Marxist-Leninists” stated that
every country in the last 100 years has been socialist. The fascists are
happy to parade such meaningless dribble as “Marxism” so that they can
make Marxism look bad. With Obama’s election, white nationalist fear
became expressed in many derogatory words, including “communism” and
“Marxism,” with no sense of irony that they were accusing the number one
enemy of the world’s people of being a communist.
What is common among “Marxists” in the First World is saying every
country is socialist that says it is and has some form of state
intervention in the economy. This superficial analysis has also helped
muddy the water of what socialism is. And it allows the fascists to say
that they share many of the goals and ideals of the self-described
Marxists. In particular they both look to China as a positive model of
how to run a country and they both think Amerikans and various First
World European nations are being victimized by the current world system.
The fact that many of these fascists have chauvinist anti-Chinese views
and wish war against the social-imperialist CPC is of no matter. For
MIM, the question of whether today’s China is socialist or
social-imperialist is a dividing line question.
To understand what socialism is, MIM has long recommended The
Chinese Road to Socialism by Wheelright and MacFarlane. For the
history of the coup that overthrew socialism in China MIM distributed
The Capitalist Roaders Are Still on The Capitalist Road. In
1986, MIM cadre Henry Park published “Postrevolutionary China and the
Soviet NEP” comparing state capitalism in the early days of the Russian
revolution to state capitalism after the coup in China. In 1988, Park
published “The Political Economy of Counterrevolution in China:
1976-88”, which tied all of these subjects together through a Maoist
framework and analyzes the failures of state capitalism in post-Maoist
China.
Pao-Yu Ching’s From Victory to Defeat serves as a more
up-to-date introduction to the topic of the differences between
socialism and capitalism in the last 100 years of Chinese history. It is
written as a sort of FAQ and provides a broad overview, while explaining
the key concepts that allow us to differentiate between the two economic
systems. As such, MIM(Prisons) recommends Pao-Yu Ching’s work as a solid
starting place when exploring this topic. The topic of “What is
socialism?” must be fully grasped by all communists.
It seems that Pao-Yu may disagree with the Maoist class analysis. In
eir introduction ey states, “Today the living conditions of the working
masses in imperialist countries have grown increasingly difficult.”(p.9)
Ey then alludes to rising prices, rising debt and precarious work, none
of which necessarily reflect worsening objective conditions. Without a
recognition that these populations are parasitic on the working classes,
this line leads to the politics of the fascists and social-fascist
“Marxist-Leninists” mentioned above. It is also relevant to the question
of revisionism in the formerly socialist countries who looked to emulate
the lifestyles of Amerikans. Since this point is not taken up in the
rest of the book we will not dwell on it here, but it remains the
biggest problem with this work.
What is Socialism?
Many of our readers and those who are interested in what we have to
say in general are still confused as to what socialism is for the
reasons mentioned above. Ultimately it is defined differently by
different people, and it is used politically rather than scientifically.
Pao-Yu outlines what the most advanced example of socialism looked like
quite nicely in eir short book, so we will just mention some key points
here to help clarify things.
Socializing industry first required that the state took control of
the means of production in the form of factories, supply lines, raw
materials, etc. This is where many stop with their definition of
socialism. Some other key things that Pao-Yu points out is that success
was no longer measured in the surplus produced but rather on
improvements in the production and overall running of the
enterprise.(p.20) This recognizes that some will be more profitable in a
capitalist sense, but that the nation benefits more when all enterprises
are improving, not just the profitable ones. Another key point is that
laborers were guaranteed a job that was paid by the state at a standard
rate.(p.28) This eliminated labor as a commodity that you must sell on
the open market. Commodities are at the heart of capitalism. Socialism
is the the transition away from commodities, starting with the most
important commodity of humyn labor.
The above only applied to a minority of the country, as the vast
majority of China was a peasant population. It is only in recent years
that the peasantry is now less than half the population. It is in the
countryside where the capitalist roaders and the Maoists disagreed the
most. Pao-Yu walks us through the different phases of the transition to
socialism and how the principal contradiction shifted in each phase. Ey
explains the contradiction amongst the countryside, where production was
not owned collectively by the whole population, and the cities where it
was. The disagreement with the capitalist roaders was a disagreement
over the principal contradiction at the time, which they thought was the
advanced social system (of socialism) with the backward productive
forces (of small scale farming by peasants). To resolve this
contradiction the capitalist roaders thought they must accelerate
production, industrialize agriculture, and feed the industrialized
cities with the surplus of that agricultural production. This focus on
production is one of the key defining lines of revisionism.
While Marx taught us that the productive forces are the economic base
that define humyn history and the superstructure, he also said the
contradiction with the relations of production is what leads to
revolutionary transformations of society. As Pao-Yu points out, learning
from Mao Zedong, during these revolutionary periods is when the
relations of production become primary, in order to unleash the
productive forces that have become stagnant under the previous mode of
production.(p.30) In other words peasants living under semi-feudalism in
China pre-liberation were not improving their conditions. They needed to
revolutionize how they related to each other, how they were organized,
specifically the class relations, in order to move towards a new mode of
production (socialism) that could meet their needs much better.
Therefore Mao focused on education, theory, class struggle, culture, the
people, instead of focusing on production, profitability, surplus, and
wage incentives, as the capitalist roaders did. The Maoist path took the
Chinese peasants through a gradual process of increasing
collectivization through communes, which was quickly dismantled after
the coup in 1976.
What is Democracy?
Another question those living in bourgeois democracies often ask is
how you can have democracy with only one party, where people are purged
for having the wrong political line? Pao-Yu makes the point well by
explaining that in established bourgeois democracies you can have many
parties and many candidates, because they all represent the same
class.(p.48) This is the case because these countries are stable in
their mode of production (capitalism). In the transition to a new
economic system the political struggle is between two classes. In the
case of capitalism transitioning to socialism, it is between the
bourgeoisie and the proletariat (and their class allies on each
side).
The bourgeoisie by definition is always competing amongst itself, so
it cannot have one party represent all of their interests, except in
extreme crises when fascism becomes viable. In the United $tates today,
the left-wing of the bourgeoisie are represented by the democrats while
the right-wing flock to the republicans. Even amongst these parties are
different bourgeois factions fighting amongst each other. The
proletariat however is united in it’s class interest, so there will be
no need for multiple proletarian parties. There are many books that
outline the components of socialist democracy where people select their
representatives at each level of administration, where free speech and
criticism are encouraged, where education is universal and free and
where everyone is involved in studying theory and practice to shape the
decisions that affect their day-to-day lives. It does not require having
multiple political parties to choose from as bourgeois democracies do in
their electoral farce.
What is China?
Pao-Yu covered China before, during, and after socialism so that the
reader can better understand the differences. As such the book is a good
introduction to the explanation of why China has not been on the
socialist road since 1976. Ey touches on the loss of the guaranteed job,
with the introduction of temporary workers, the ending of the right to
strike and free expression among the workers, the ability of managers to
start keeping the profits from the enterprises they oversee, the loss of
universal medical care, and the focus on production for other nations,
while importing the pollution of those consumer nations. Ey briefly
documents the struggles of the workers to maintain control of the
enterprises they once owned collectively. China is now a capitalist hell
hole for the majority objectively and it does not matter whether the CPC
has millions of cadre who believe the opposite subjectively.
The Global Economy
One point Pao-Yu makes that we have also stressed as being important,
is the role of the proletarianization of the Chinese masses in saving
global imperialism from crisis. When the imperialist economies were
facing economic crisis in the 1970s, one third of the world’s population
was not available to be exploited by the imperialist system. One of the
laws of capitalism is its need to always expand. When China went
capitalist, it opened up a vast population to exploitation and
super-exploitation for the imperialists. This labor was the source of
value that the imperialist system thrived off of by the mid 1980s until
just recently.
Interestingly, Pao-Yu says that almost 30% of the Chinese population
is petty bourgeoisie, owning (often multiple) investment properties and
traveling around the world.(p.111) In a previous article we explained
that we saw China
as a proletarian country still despite its imperialist activities.
We referred to Bromma’s
research that stated China’s “middle class” was 12-15% of the
population some years prior. It is interesting to hear that the
Chinese petty bourgeoisie has reached the same size in absolute numbers
as the Amerikan one. It would be interesting to compare the wealth of
these two groups, we presume the Amerikans remain wealthier. Of course,
China is still majority proletariat, while Amerika is almost completely
bourgeoisified, so the class interests of these nations overall remain
opposed to one another. But we will rarely hear the proletarian voices
from China until a new proletarian party rises there.
The housing market is one example of how China has emulated the
United $tates. Investing in properties has become an important way for
the new petty bourgeoisie in China to accumulate wealth without working.
Just last week, the Chinese investment firm Evergrande made headlines
when it became public knowledge that they would not be able to pay the
billions of dollars they owe. Evergrande has significant backing from
Amerikan finance capital, as is true for the Chinese economy in general.
Therefore the collapse of the Chinese housing market could have real
ripple effects in the global economy.
The fact that real estate investment firms exist in China, and that
they are defaulting on hundreds of billions of dollars owed, is really
all you need to know to see that the economy is oriented towards profit
and not people. Things like inflation and bubbles and stock markets and
speculation just didn’t exist during the Maoist era. The reintroduction
of these things for the last four decades destroyed the progress in
class struggle in China long ago.
On Thursday, 12 August 2021, CNN reported that Afghanistan’s capital
of Kabul would fall into the hands of the Taliban in 30 to 60 days.(1)
On Sunday the 15th (only 3 days later!) the Taliban took control of
Kabul. One day after that, the chief comprador leader of the Islamic
Republic, Ashraf Ghani, fled the country on an airplane.
As thousands stormed the capital’s airport to flee the country from
the Taliban takeover, U.$. soldiers escorting Amerikan personnel shot
and killed two Afghanis on the tarmac of Kabul International Airport.(2)
Video footage captured citizens hanging onto the side of the airplane
and falling off mid-departure.
In regards to the humiliating end note of their 20 years war, the
National $ecurity Advisor pig Jake Sullivian said the following:
“Despite the fact that we spent 20 years and tens of billions of
dollars to give the best equipment, the best training and the best
capacity to the Afghan security forces, we could not give them the will
and they ultimately decided that they would not fight for Kabul and they
would not fight for the country.”(3)
U.$. imperialism and the “democracy” they claim to spread around the
world propped up the extremely reactionary government of the now fallen
Islamic Republic. Despite wimmin’s rights having been a focal excuse for
the imperialists to invade Afghanistan, their puppets in the Islamic
Republic had no meaningful difference in wimmin’s rights in
Afghanistan.
To the U.$. imperialists, their defeat (while surprising in how
quickly Kabul fell) did not come as shock. On Saturday, 29 February
2020, (around a year and half before the fall of Kabul) the United
$tates and the Taliban met in a five star hotel in Qatar and signed
agreements to end the 20 years war.(4) One of the primary points of the
agreements was complete withdrawal of U.$. troops within 14 months.(5)
It seems that this is one of the rare agreements in which Amerikans made
a promise and actually kept it with an oppressed nation. Other
agreements included Taliban’s refusal to “terrorist groups” such as
Al-Qaeda to use Afghanistan’s territory as operation grounds, and
lifting of U.$. sanctions on the country.
The Sober Taliban?
In the Amerikan press, there were two big talking points around their
defeat in Afghanistan. One was the would-be refugees trying to flee
Afghanistan into the arms of Amerika, which nicely reinforces the story
that Amerikans were the saviors in the country after all. The second was
how wimmin would fair when the Taliban took over again. This reinforces
the justification for invading Afghanistan to have been to liberate
wimmin from gender oppression, a point that continues to serve U.$.
militarism even after a failed 20 year war. A point that had nothing to
do at all with why the U.$. invaded.
The Taliban is not unaware of these perceptions, leading to their
representatives at the peace negotiations to suggest for less backwards
treatment of wimmin under their rule.(6) Zabihullah Mujahid has claimed
that they will “honor women’s rights,” and the “independence of private
media” (journalists, news organizations, etc.).(7)
Mujahid’s comment highlights an important part of the Taliban’s new
look (and most importantly, their class character). As rising from the
bourgeois nationalist position, they were part of a country-wide Islamic
movement to usurp warlord factions which ruled Afghanistan. The warlords
themselves rose with western aid to usurp Soviet social-imperialist
compradors led by Mohammad Najibullah. Mohammad Najibullah also started
out with bourgeois nationalist tendencies usurping monarchist
compradors.
After coming to power in the 1990s, the Taliban were overthrown by
the U.$. imperialists themselves in the early 2000s after seeking to
bite the hand that fed them decades before. Now, in 2021, they have
risen to the seat again in Kabul. In order to maintain legitimacy, they
must seek acceptability to new potential imperialist sponsors. If that
means talking the talk to become the neo-colonial semi-feudal comprador
state that the puppet regime beforehand never lived up to, then they
must do it out of tactical necessity. Despite this tricky position that
they have found themselves in, the United $tates’ do not seem to be the
number one contender as Afghanistan’s neo-colonial ruler.
Upon the line of which class interest is at the helm of Afghanistan’s
liberation from the United $tates’, we should also emphasize that under
the leadership of the national bourgeois there was also the
petty-bourgeoisie, the peasantry, and the agricultural proletariat
within the Taliban movement. This character of Afghanistan’s national
liberation gives time and space for the Afghan masses to breathe and
provide necessary conditions for discussions on the country’s past,
present, and future: what is to be done? What were the historical
conditions that led up to colonial exploitations and humiliation? What
does our liberation from the U.$. imperialists mean today? These
questions will be further asked during the transformation of subjective
and objective forces by revolutionaries.
The
Social-Imperialist Road to Afghanistan
China was one of the first major imperialist countries to recognize
the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan and the Islamic
Emirate of Afghanistan as a legitimate country.(8) It is nothing new for
social-imperialism (not only in Afghanistan but for the whole world) to
hijack bourgeois nationalist movements and turn them into satellite
states. The number one tactic of Soviet social-imperialism was through
neo-colonial aid, and China seems to be using the same tactic. China’s
foreign minister Wang Yi said on September 8th, only a few weeks after
the Taliban’s victory, that they will be providing the Taliban
government $31 million dollars equivalent in food and aid.(9)
While publicly declaring their $31 million dollar deal with the
Taliban, Wang Yi has also expressed calls for the Taliban to combat and
remove the Uyghar jihadist movements of Xinjiang province – primarily
the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP). Where China borders Afghanistan, the
Xinjiang province is where most Uyghars reside (a majority Muslim
national minority group of China facing oppression). The Turkestan
Islamic Party – which has had historical alliances with the Taliban of
Afghanistan – poses a major threat to the stability of capitalist China
alongside the general Uyghar minority group. As a group who once
declared liberation for the Muslim world, the Taliban will now have to
be in a position of being the agents for Chinese social-imperialism
against fellow Muslim nations/organizations. This is the limit to
Jihadism as an anti-imperialist force (and other bourgeois nationalist
anti-imperialisms) and the poisonous consequences of social-imperialism.
Without Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, liberated countries will only fall back
to colonialism.
Long Live Afghanistan
The United $tates’ defeat in Afghanistan, and the Taliban’s victory
is a victory for the Afghan people. For the first time, Afghanistan
could have a chance of being an independent nation state in our modern
capitalist era. However, foreign meddling by the Amerikans, Chinese and
others continue to threaten the development of Afghanistan’s
self-determination. It is only by continuing down the road of
independence that questions of economics, gender and the urban/rural
divide in the country can be adequately addressed. The Taliban has
served as a historically important and necessary opponent of foreign
occupation, but the Afghan people need more than that to continue to
address the contradictions they face as a nation. Revolutionaries here
in the United $tates must continue to oppose our government’s
interference in that progress.
Long Live Afghanistan!
Down with world imperialism!
Notes
1. Barbara Starr, “Intelligence assessments warn Afghan
capital could be cut off and collapse in coming months,” CNN, 12 August
2021.
2. Rebecca Klapper, “U.S. Military Fatally Shoots 2 at Kabul
Airport as Biden Orders in 1,000 Additional Troops,” Newsweek, 12 August
12, 2021.
3. Ibid.
4. Saphora Smith, “U.S.-Taliban sign landmark agreement in
bid to end America’s longest war,” MSNBC, 29 February
2020.
5. Ibid.
6. Amanda Thub, “Why the Taliban’s Repression of Women May
Be More Tactical Than Ideological,” The New York Times, 4 October
2021.
7. Associated Press, “The Taliban Claim They’ll Respect
Women’s Rights — With Their Reading Of Islamic Law,” NPR, August 12,
2021
8. Memri, “During September, China-Taliban Relations
Continued To Strengthen,” 5 October 2021.
9. Helen Reagan, “China to provide Afghanistan with $31
million worth of food and Covid vaccines,” CNN, 9 September
2021.
On 12 August 2021, staff member Karber at Ionia Correctional Facility
in Michigan censored Under Lock & Key 74 for the reason:
“Pages 8 & 9 calling for Prisoners to organize for uprising for an
up coming date.” These pages featured our center spread on Black August
and the September 9th Day of Peace and Solidarity. It is interesting
that the oppressor sees prisoners coming together for peace and unity as
an “uprising” and something that is deemed a threat to security (which
would be necessary to lawfully censor any reading material in the United
$tates).
On 7 September 2021, the staff in the mailroom at SCI Frackville in
Pennsylvania disliked the same pages and censored ULK 74 for
“Information on Page 8 Calls for Action (September 9).” In Amerikan
prisons people do not enjoy the civil rights many Amerikans hold so
dear. Their right to grieve or in this case to take an “action” is
deemed illegal and punished. Banning peaceful protest and other such
actions in prisons leads to violence.
Meanwhile a USW comrade in California reported,
“C.O. Solerio [a white female] emailed a Mental Health/Death Doctor a
referral against me for displaying erratic behavior. I was exercising
and calling cadence out loud ?? As is my custom, I commemorate Black
August by demonstrating physical fitness and oratory skills, loud and
proud, wherever I be. This year’s action continues to be opposed by
C.O.s obsessed with social control.”
This comrade was in quarantine isolation, where ey could not organize
eir normal group activities for Black August.
While the President offers up Juneteenth and Indigenous People’s Day
as sanctioned celebrations, the imperialists simultaneously repress
those trying to commemorate holidays that represent resistance to
oppression. In case anyone was fooled into thinking that we’re all equal
now.
14 October 2021 – Fifty five people were arrested for occupying the
Bureau of Indian Affairs(BIA) with demands that the Bureau be abolished,
that blood quantum be abolished and that the United $tates stop
extracting fossil fuels from native land. Siqiñiq Maupin explained the
purpose of the action on Democracy Now:
“The BIA was created to erase Indigenous people. It has always been
against us. And today, or yesterday, and every day, we demand that it be
abolished. We do not need a blood quantum to say how Indigenous we are
or to qualify that. We know our Indigenous ways to protect this land,
this Earth, this water. And we understand that the Earth is unbalanced.
And we do not have time for negotiations, for compromises. We need to
take this serious and take action now.”(1)
Indian Country Today reported:
Tobacco ties hung on locked doors. No one could get inside or
outside. Everyone outside of the building looked through the windows of
the doors to see what was happening inside and could hear demonstrators
yelling.
Some security personnel were injured and one officer was taken to a
hospital, according to an Interior spokesperson.(2)
In Washington D.C. the week of Indigenous People’s Day has been
marked by indigenous-led civil disobedience actions, calling on
President Biden to declare a climate emergency and stop approving fossil
fuel projects. It began on Monday with the slogan “expect us” being
written on the statue of Andrew Jackson in the U.$. capital. Over 530
climate activists have been arrested so far.(1)
This is occurring after President Biden issued the first presidential
proclamation of Indigenous Peoples’ Day on October 8th, along with an
announcement to preserve lands important to native people.
In 2017, President Trump re-opened up a number of recently created
national monuments for resource extraction, cutting the size of the
Bears Ears National Monument by 85%. Biden reversed Trump’s move,
reestablishing the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante monuments in
southern Utah, more than 3.2 million acres – an area nearly the size of
Connecticut.(3)
While President Trump declared genocidal Andrew Jackson to be his
favorite president, President Biden was the first president to recognize
Indigenous Peoples’ Day. This symbolizes the conflict within the
Amerikan ruling class, and the white nation as well, in how to deal with
the oppressed internal semi-colonies today. Biden’s multi-culturalism is
friendlier, and even makes real concessions like preserving land
important to native people. But as Biden himself said, it was the
easiest thing he’s done as president. And it was just as easy for Trump
to undo those designations during his tenure, leaving native people at
the whims of the white man again.
As communists we strive for the resolution of this national
contradiction via the project of liberation for all oppressed nations
and their land once and for all, not waiting and hoping for one slightly
friendlier sector of the oppressor to win out. The ongoing struggle for
First Nation land liberation is tied to the struggle of all oppressed
people for liberation. It is not surprising that the nation that
ultimately waged a settler war for hundreds of years to seize this land
is now the primary force keeping oppressed people down around the world.
We have seen the limits of euro-Amerikan peace offerings.
On 6 September 2021, 6 Palestinian prisoners of war have escaped an
I$raeli maximum security prison known as Gilboa by digging a tunnel with
plates and panhandles.(1) The tunnel was 72 meters long, and the I$raeli
Security Agency has suspected that the excavation had started around
November of 2020.(2) This incident is being talked of as the most
significant prison break in the history of Palestine.
The 6 Palestinian prisoners were members of Palestinian nationalist
organizations (The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and the al-Quds Brigades)
which have resisted the I$raeli occupation.(3) Out of the 6, four of the
escaped freedom fighters were serving life sentences.(4)
In response to the prison break, the I$raeli Prison Service (IPS),
launched a lockdown on Palestinian prisoners: break time has been cut to
one hour a day; prison canteen has been closed; and the number of
captives able to walk in the yard has been decreased. 400 prisoners, who
have been deemed “Jihadist” and a threat to the security of the prisons,
have been separated from one another as well. On top of this, family
visits have been completely taken away by the pigs.(5) For our readers
on the inside, these tactics by the I$raeli prison pigs to punish all
for the actions of some sound similar as the United $tates and I$rael
are very similar in character. Both are settler-colonial states, and
both trade and exchange tactics/information used to better repress their
respective oppressed nations.
The Day of Rage
In response to this crackdown, I$raeli prisons faced strikes and
riots. In Katziot prison, seven cells were set on fire by Palestinian
prisoners and hunger strikes have been set to begin in Gilboa on Friday,
17 Septemebr 2021.(6) The Palestinian Prisoners Affairs Commission has
declared that 1,380 prisoners have joined the hunger strikes.(7)
Outside of the prison walls, the nationalist organization Hamas has
declared a “Day of Rage” on the Friday of September 10th.(8) At the
al-Aqsa mosque, supporters of the escaped freedom fighters have
organized a sit in protest after the end of prayer. The I$raeli forces
stormed the mosque in response to the protest and killed one man and
arrested another. The man killed was a Palestinian doctor named Hazem
al-Jolani.(9)
About a week after the escape, the 6 prisoners were recaptured into
imprisonment. One of the freedom fighters, Yaqoub Mahmoud Qadri, was put
in solitary confinement with nothing but a blanket and was subjected to
physical and psychological torture.(10) All other prisoners involved in
the escape were sent to separate high security prisons as well.(11)
Internationalism in the
Prison Movement
While studying Engels’ writings on the bourgeois state, Lenin said
the following:
“Engels elucidates the concept of the ‘power’ which is called the
state, a power which arose from society but places itself above it and
alienates itself more and more from it. What does this power mainly
consist of? It consists of special bodies of armed men having prisons,
etc., at their command.”(12)
As Lenin explains, prisons serve a class purpose in maintaining power
in class society. In the world we live in today, the bourgeois class
utilizes prisons to control their “unruly” populations under their
command. Under socialism and proletarian dictatorship, prisons will
exist as well (albeit under principles of rectification and
rehabilitation learned from the past socialist experiences rather than
punishment for punishment’s sake). For the case of not only the 6
prisoners of war who escaped Gilboa, but also for all prisoners in
Palestine and all prisoners in the United $tates, their facilities are a
material form of capitalist-imperialist power locking them up in their
every move. Here in the United $tates, we have had historic moments of
prisoners fighting against the repression and seeking for redemption and
liberation through class struggle. The Attica uprising of 9 September
1971 is a prime example of that class struggle. With Attica as the
battle cry of the revolutionary prison movement in the United $tates, we
hope to reach that cry across the oceans and to Palestine itself.
From Attica 2 Gilboa!
Down with the I$raeli Prison Service! Down with the Department of
Corrections!
Bibliography1. Toi Staff, September 14,
2021, “Jailbreak probe said to find 11 Gilboa prisoners started tunnel
dig in November.” Times of Israel2.
Ibid.3. The Palestine Chronicle, September 6, 2021,
“Six Palestinian Prisoners Break out of Gilboa Prison after Digging
Tunnel”4. Ibid.5. Middle East
Eye, September 10, 2021, “Palestinian killed during ‘day of rage’
solidarity protests for prison escapees”6. Khaled
Abu Tomaeh, September 14, 2021, “Palestinian prisoners to begin hunger
strike Friday,” The Jerusalem Post.7.
Ibid.8. Ibid.9.
Ibid.10.Yeni Safak, September 16, 2021,
“Palestinian prison escapee to keep fighting for freedom.”11. Middle East Eye, October 1, 2021, “Israel: Recaptured
Palestinian jailbreakers transferred to solitary confinement”12. Vladimir Lenin, August 1917, “State and
Revolution.”
On 11 September 2021, Chairman Gonzalo has been reported to be dead
by the Peruvian prison service and the Peruvian government.(1) The
president of Peru, Pedro Castillo, has tweeted in regards to Gonzalo’s
death:
“The terrorist ringleader Abimael Guzmán, responsible for the loss of
countless lives of our compatriots, has died. Our stance of condemning
terrorism is firm and unwavering.”
Born as Abimael Guzmán, Chairman Gonzalo was the leader of the
Partido Comunista del Perú(PCP) also known as the Sendero Luminoso
(Shining Path in English). The PCP initiated People’s War in Peru in
1980, and waged a righteous struggle against the U.$.-backed regimes in
Peru until the capture of its leadership in 1992. Arguably the first
communist leader to explain Maoism as the next stage of communism,
Gonzalo was instrumental in pushing these ideas within the international
communist movement.
At age 86, Gonzalo had lived in complete isolation in a Peruvian
prison for 29 years. Long-term solitary confinement is a form of torture
used around the world to combat political dissent. It is used most
extensively within the United $tates, where in recent years over 100,000 people
languished in such conditions.
Religious Idealism Barks
Gonzalo was an infamous figure in Peruvian society. The revolutionary
violence of the PCP sparked hostile reactions especially from the petty
bourgeoisie, the middle-peasants, and the likes within Peru. One
outspoken figure which repeated these sentiments condemning Gonzalo on
his death day was Archbishop Eguren of the Catholic Church in Peru.
During a mass on September 12, a day after Gonzalo’s death, Eguren said
this referring to the Maoist ideology and the Maoists of Peru:
“Along with him fell the principal members of his communist,
terrorist, genocidal, and murderous gang, which caused the massacres of
entire communities of poor inhabitants of our Andes and jungle regions
in the 1980s and 1990s.”(2)
The Archbishop continued:
“The day Guzmán was captured was also one year after the start of the
campaign ‘Peace in Peru is well worth a Rosary.’ This campaign was
conceived and promoted by Bishop Ricardo Durand Flórez S.J., a great
Peruvian bishop who, throughout his life and ministry, worked hard for
the poor according to the Gospel.”(3)
After condemning Marxism through the usual Christian idealism,
Archbishop Eguren replaces the anti-capitalist vacuum with the Catholic
church’s historical response to poverty and capitalist ills:
distribution of wealth and charity to the poor. We Maoists do not
believe in the metaphysical notion that “the poor will always be with
us,” nor that walking across a homeless person on the street is a test
by god to prove ourselves of our good heart and soul. We believe poverty
– and the impoverished proletariat along with the rich bourgeoisie –
comes out of material phenomena: rise of capitalism through revolution,
class struggle, and change of production relations. Thus, the
elimination of poverty and capitalist ills will be done through the
proletarian revolution against capitalism, class struggle, and change of
production relations as well; not through wealth redistribution nor
through charity.
Along with condemning Marxism, Eguren used this chance to call for
the elimination of the politicians and bureaucrats of the current
Peruvian government who had historical ties to the Maoist movement:
“We Peruvians should not forget, for an instant what this
intrinsically perverse ideology embodies, as well as the immense
suffering it has caused in the recent history of our country, much less
allow it today to be able to seize total power. Therefore:
Mr. President, clean up your cabinet!”(4)
Reformism Barks
Chairman Gonzalo and the PCP’s legacy in Peru is often associated
with the “violent left.” So it is appropriate that one of the most
popular opportunist and reformist newsletters, Jacobin,
condemned Gonzalo by saying that Peru’s left is finally free to “move
forward.”(5)
In the article, “The Shining Path’s Abimael Guzmán Helped Keep Peru
in the Past,” Jacobin news cited the Lucanamarca massacre and the
violence of the PCP against the indigenous masses as one of the main
arguments against the PCP. The Communist Party of Peru (PCP) has
mentioned in their writings the attacks against the masses by the
masses, and how the state security used the differing class levels of
the peasantry against itself (poor peasants, middle peasants, rich
peasants). These tactics to divide the masses are used against the
communists of India as well. In the remote and countryside regions under
the leadership of the Communist Party of India (CPI-Maoist), the
capitalist lapdogs in India find it much more useful to use local
reactionaries against the guerrillas than using the army. If not the
local police, it is the paramilitary organizations of rich peasants,
middle peasants, lumpen-bourgeoisie, lumpen-proletariat, etc. that is
attacking the Maoists. In Peru, the majority of the PCP guerrillas were
indigenous themselves as the main population base in the communists’
base areas were indigenous.
When judging the legacy of a People’s War and a revolutionary party,
communists should know when to throw away the baby with the bathwater
and when to still keep it. Before the capitalist roaders overthrew
socialism in the Soviet Union, many of the errors of what would become
the capitalist line (commandism and economism) has been planted by
Stalin as well and other comrades. This did not cause Mao to throw away
Stalin’s legacy. In the same breath, when Fidel Castro liberated Cuba
from imperialism and semi-feudalism, his merits were part of a worldwide
movement for national liberation of the colonies at the time – it isn’t
until Castro’s selling out of the entire island to the Soviet
social-imperialists as a sugar factory that Maoists should throw Castro
away.
Heavier Than Mount Tai
It is well within the realms of material reality that the PCP’s
legacy among the general Peruvian society lies not only in the Peruvian
comprador bourgeoisie who propagate the ideas of the PCP as bloodthirsty
terrorists, but also within the bad lines and practices of the PCP as
well. It is an often repeated idea we hear that if the revolution fails,
it is the fault of the revolutionaries. In the same light, it’s the
internal characteristics not the external of a communist movement that
will ultimately decide its success and failures.
We must draw a clear line between us and those who condemn the PCP
because they waged People’s War. Whatever internal contradictions led to
the collapse of the Peruvian revolution, it was a shining example in
theory by leading the world to the concrete ideas of Maoism and in
practice in mobilizing the Peruvian people to control a majority of Peru
before their fall.
Communists should learn their lessons from their errors in history.
For the enemy to say, “Denounce Gonzalo!” is for them to also say “Don’t
learn your lessons! Give up revolution!” Nevertheless, no matter what
the Catholic idealists or the writers of Jacobin wish, the PCP
and Chairman Gonzalo’s legacy will not go away as easily as they
wish.
Long Live Chairman Gonzalo – Death Heavier than Mount Tai.
Notes1. RPP, September 11th, 2021,
“Murió Abimael Guzmán, el sanguinario cabecilla del grupo terrorista
Sendero Luminoso.”
2. David Ramos, September 13th, 2021, “Archbishop calls on
Peruvian president to rid his administration of ties to Shining Path.”
Catholic News Agency.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Miguel La Serna, September 15, 2021, “The Shining Path’s
Abimael Guzmán Helped Keep Peru in the Past.” Jacobin.
As we prepare this issue of Under Lock & Key (ULK) we
tallied results of our first annual fundraiser. We have chose the Fourth
of You Lie as a time to ask you to donate to this independent media
institution of the oppressed. Without prisoners’ support and
contributions this newsletter ceases to exist.
Our fundraiser had some successes in that we raised the second most
donations in a month from prisoners in years; the highest amount being
in March 2021. So we are on the upswing this year. We got an even bigger
donation from an anonymous outside supporter, which are much less
common. Our goal is to establish regular contributions from more people,
both inside and out. Whether you send donations monthly or annually, we
want to know we can count on you.
Compared to the previous 2 month period we reported on last time, our
donations from prisoners were less than half in amount and also less in
the number of people donating. The number of donators these past 2
months was about average for recent years, and far less than years past
when we had more subscribers. And once again, the vast majority
of the total amount we received from prisoners came from established USW
leaders. So we did not see much of a response to the fundraiser from our
general subscriber list.
Of course, it’s never too late to donate, and you can still send in
your 7 stamps to cover your 2021 subscription to ULK. Or 14 to
cover someone who is indigent as well. As always, ULK is
available free to U.$. prisoners, and we know that many do not have
access to funds. If that’s you, recommend ULK to friends inside
and out to build support.
This issue is coming out a little later than planned because of a few
setbacks. With more supporters on the outside working on ULK we
can make this independent institution a more resilient one. So please
get involved if you can.
by Wiawimawo of MIM(Prisons) August 2021 permalink
Nancy Pelosi promotes child tax credits to Chican@s in Califaztlan, but
is another pay out the answer to the oppression of youth? Photo by:
Mario Tama
One thing we heard from those saddened by the
police murder of 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant was that she didn’t get
to have a childhood.(1) While nation is most certainly the primary
factor that led to the cop, Nicholas Reardon, shooting Bryant, we think
gender oppression, and in particular youth oppression, had a lot to do
with Bryant ending up where she did on that fateful day.
When people speak of being able to have a childhood, we may think of
a time of fun, carefree play, no work, no oppression, etc. Of course
most people in the world don’t have much of a childhood in this sense.
But in the United $tates many do. So already we see there is some
hierarchy involved in this idea of having a childhood, at least under
imperialism. We see this hierarchy as the realm of gender because it is
a question of leisure time and not labor time, which is the subject of
class (see Clarity
on What Gender is). But there is also the question of why we must
separate our lives into periods of fun and play and periods of work and
oppression? And why do we have oppression at all? And how did work
become a bad thing?
To answer these question briefly, the relations of production under
capitalism are what alienates people from their labor today, so that
they feel their labor time is not their time. But as “adults,” most must
spend the majority of their waking hours in labor time. While some
people want those like Bryant to have the purist, most care-free
childhood as possible, we are working towards a whole life that is
enjoyable and fulfilling. And we doubt that is possible without a
healthy dose of productive labor. The exclusion of children from work
for over 100 years in the United $tates has left them with no productive
role to play in society, leading to alienation and lack of worth.(2)
This alienation and lack of self-worth is reinforced by abuse, and leads
to destructive behavior.
As Greyhound points out in eir article
on Ma’Khia Bryant, the Soviet Union provided family for orphaned
youth through the productive life of the commune. The communes did not
work kids to the bone to squeeze out the maximum profits as the
capitalists once did in the United $tates, and still do in most of the
world. Below we look at some attempts by capitalist Amerika to provide
for youth and why they cannot get at the source of youth oppression as
well as socialist experiments that have.
Child Credits Pay the
Patriarch
With sheltering-in-place during the pandemic and no in-persyn
schooling for most children, the question of childcare has received much
attention in the United $tates. The answer from the bourgeoisie came in
the form of child credits. Amerikan families began receiving these
payments in mid-July 2021, for a total of $3000-3600 per family over the
next 6 months.
These credits are a market-based attempt to address the problem of
adults in the nuclear family spending large sums of money to have their
children cared for when they are working or otherwise occupied. These
credits put more power in the hands of the adults who get the money over
the lives of the children who qualify them for these payments. Money for
those who struggle to make ends meet can certainly mean less stressful
conditions for their children. The logic makes sense, it is just a
backwards, half-ass approach. By the 1960s in socialist China, all
children had guaranteed care that was collectively run and offered ways
for youth to voice their concerns and avoid abusive situations. This was
in a country where a decade or two earlier children were basically sold
into slavery. This is the kind of radical change the youth need, that a
profit-based system can’t provide.
Punishing Sex
Offenders to Save the Family
It is very evident that affection, support and trust in our lives as
young people have significant effects on our health throughout our
lives.(3) Lack of positive social relationships and experiences has been
linked to drug addiction and correlates strongly with imprisonment.
Therefore this is a topic very dear to the hearts of many of our
readers.
One way we see this manifest in a more reactionary politic of the
imprisoned masses is in the strong, often violent attitudes towards sex
offenders in prison culture. This sentiment exists outside prison of
course, but became part of the prison culture because of the
concentration of convicted sex offenders there. As we’ve addressed in
the past, this reactionary politic is problematic on the one hand in
that it is allowing
the state to decide who our enemies are, that in many cases the
actions that led to these cases are mild compared to many
non-sex-offender charges and in some cases the people are completely
innocent.(4) In the United $tates, white males and females, as a group,
have treated the Black male as a sexual animal that must be controlled,
sometimes by fake rape charges and imprisonment. In other words, some
who are convicted as sex offenders are actually the victims of gender
oppression, as well as national oppression.
A second reason we say the anti-sex offender politic is reactionary
is that it doesn’t offer any real solutions to the problem of the sexual
abuse of children. It is an example of why MIM always opposed the slogan
“Think global, act local.” If you think globally about this problem of
child abuse, and act locally by ostracizing or even attacking those you
come in contact with who have (or who you believe have) abused children,
you haven’t changed anything if the patriarchy remains. You can confirm
this with crime statistics, or just the fact that we live in a society
where we know this problem is still prevalent.
Addressing child abuse requires systemic change as the Chinese
instituted during their experiment in socialism. Young people need a
different system that supports them with things we know people need to
grow up healthy; mentally and physically. These things can not be
offered on conditions or the whims of one or two adults who control the
child’s life. As they say, “it takes a village to raise a child.” And
people who are serious about reducing child abuse need to work to build
those villages and build them in ways that give young people full access
to information, a wide variety of adult support people, including those
in power, and access to other youth without the interference of adults.
The village should also give repercussions to youth for “bad behavior.”
These repercussions should be consistent in order to provide the youth
with social guidance and never be used by individual adults to get what
they want from children or to take out their frustrations from a bad
day. The oversight of a more village-based model must prevent adults
from doing such things.
Different Models
What the bourgeoisie offers in place of the village is more cash to
the patriarch. These cash incentives make single-parent homes more
viable. But single-parent homes are some of the easiest places for
adults to molest and abuse children.
The reactionary approach to child abuse (imprisonment and violence)
also reinforces the patriarchy, where strong adult men must protect
youth from other adult men by physical assault. One critique of this
line points out how it views the rights of children the same as the
rights of animals in that they must be granted and enforced from the
outside.
“pseudo feminists… [accept a] zoological implication that child abuse
is going to go on forever, as if… child abuse were inherent in the humyn
species, and at the same time external to humyn social relations, like
animals.”(5)
The Maoist counter-point then is that child abuse is a humyn
relationship that is found within the patriarchal family structure. It
is part of the central problem of oppression of groups of people by
other groups that we aim to resolve through ongoing revolutionary
struggle under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Rather than
punishing sex offenders to save the family and “protect our children”,
we must replace the nuclear family with communal child-rearing, and
empower young people to criticize others in order to stop those who
might try to abuse children.
Putting child care in the public sphere will do a lot to undermine
the conditions of child abuse. But it does not eliminate the biases of
the adult population, especially those that grew up in the old
capitalist ways, from miseducating or mistreating youth as a group. And
we know that institutional living like group homes and prisons, where
many adults are involved in “care” for the youth, are rife with abuse.
For these reasons youth must have ways of coming together as a group and
voicing their interests as a group, even enforcing their interests as a
group in contradiction to the adults that they depend on. l Ruth Sidel
produced an in-depth report on Women and Childcare in China as
well as in the Soviet Union and the kibbutz in I$rael. In one Chinese
school, when asked what you’d do if you found a sick child on the
street, a 6-year-old child responded: “i’d bring them medicine and
water.” Sidel was surprised the child would not find an authority figure
first.(6) What a striking difference in world views between socialist
children and how most of us grew up in this country. These children
still spent most of their days singing and playing and doing things that
we all did in school. Yet, they were taught differently, taught to act
and be self-empowered as soon as they were able to physically complete
the tasks that might be demanded of them, like bringing another child
water, or possibly organizing resistance to an abusive adult.
Some reading this will find the youth helping other youth not so
strange because they raised their siblings at a young age. This is
another way that peoples’ “childhoods are lost” in our culture; having
to take care of other children as a child. It is not that care for those
younger than you is inappropriate to carry out as a child, but that you
need the support of a community to do so in a way that is not oppressive
to your own life and most supportive to those you help care for.
According to the story from Ma’Khia Bryant’s grandmother, the
conflict that had occurred among two groups of foster children was over
perceived disrespect to the foster mother due to the lack of chores
getting done. Most likely the situation was more complicated. But we see
how there can be a disagreement over the labor responsibilities of
members of a family that leads to violent conflict. This would be very
unlikely when people have clear responsibilities, clear and consistent
consequences that are enforced by the group for not meeting those
responsibilities, and ways to communicate up front with both adults and
youth about the roles and treatment of others.
The Roles of Youth in
Society
In discussing Ma’khia Bryant’s childhood, we must address the fact
that she was 16 years old when she was murdered by a cop because of this
conflict. Other 16-year-olds in the area could have banded together to
take revenge on Reardon for shooting her. Most members of the Black
Panther Party joined in their teens. Bobby Hutton was murdered by the
pigs emself at age 17 while on an armed patrol of the police. Sixteen is
much more physically developed than six, and would mostly only be
limited by legal restrictions like being able to drive or purchase fire
arms.
Fifteen was the age when members of the Fuerzas Armadas
Revolucionarias de Colombia - Ejército del Pueblo(FARC-EP) could engage
in armed actions.(7) As the struggle of the Eritrean People’s Liberation
Front(EPLF) advanced, they established the Fitewerari to train male
youth 14 to 16 years old and females of all ages. They found that
training the adult females separate from adult males helped in both
groups overcoming the traditional gender roles they had been inculcated
with. The youth did not have these challenges, at least not to the same
degree.
“In addition to literacy education, political and military training,
and running their daily affairs, they participate in production,
adhering to the EPLF’s correct revolutionary principle of ‘integrating
education with production.’ They practice criticism and self-criticism
to rectify mistakes, develop work and strengthen comradely solidarity.
Upon finishing training, they are assigned to the different EPLF units
and departments to carry on the struggle on all fronts.”(8)
Much has been put into the idea that a humyn’s prefrontal cortex is
growing rapidly up until about age 25. The implication being that you
can’t quite trust the judgement of those under 25. But this is only one
data point, of a biological phenomenon we still barely understand. And
along with this data point comes some implications in how younger people
are willing to go against the status quo and can change their ways
faster. We look to history, to see the transformative power of youth
movements, rather than follow current trends in biological determinism
based in preliminary studies of the brain.
Towards a World Without
Oppression
When Maoists talk about gender, we are talking about a system of
power in the realm of leisure time; the patriarchy. In that system,
youth are generally part of the gender-oppressed. Though in the
imperialist countries, they are likely part of a gender aristocracy, a
child aristocracy, particularly those who have access to the idealized
carefree childhood.
Similar to the wimmin in bourgeois society, the bourgeois children
are relegated outside of labor and exclusively to leisure time. This
leisure time is meanwhile structured to serve the pleasure of the man
and the interests of capitalism overall. These groups being relegated to
leisure time reinforces the divide between leisure time and labor time
in society mentioned above. This is one reason why it is hard to imagine
undoing gender hierarchy without first undoing capitalism, which would
eliminate the sharp divide between labor time and leisure time. Through
this process, gender will cease to be so separate from class struggle as
it is in the bourgeoisified First World countries. Then our lives as
individuals will be more complete, as will our communities.
Youth liberation is part of and dependent on the struggle to end
capitalism and imperialism. Youth don’t need more paternalism, they need
a supportive village to learn from and the freedom to self-actualize
themselves without the fetters of oppression that shape our lives
today.
