Under Lock & Key

I have been trying to follow the Palestinian liberation struggle for some time now, well at least in the best ways I can behind enemy lines: piecing bits and pieces of information together from the various media sources that make it in here.

What strikes me the most at this juncture is the dialectic between New Afrikan youth and Palestinian youth. Over here in the Amerikkkan empire, New Afrikan youth, particularly New Afrikan male youth occupy very unfortunate spaces in the Amerikkkan oppressor nation’s mental. These youth dwell in the danger zone, spaces that are purely a figment of the “white” imagination. This criminal Black youth label. This “hyper-reality” is no more real than the emperor’s new clothes, analogous to the rapist who takes the mentally ill patient back to the scene of the crime, back to the moment of trauma, when the delusions began. It is within the dark interiority of this lived nightmare, the womb of the unforgiving chattel slavery regime enclosed within old style colonialism that the New Afrikan male youth was conceived. This is critical and informative for understanding mass imprisonment in New Afrika.

This process of marking New Afrikan youth as criminal prisoners essential to the functioning of mass incarceration is a mechanism of social control operative under national oppression. For this repressive institution to succeed, New Afrikan youth must be branded as criminal before they are formally subject to this mechanism of control. This is essential, for forms of explicit colonial control are not only prohibited but are widely condemned. Capitalism evolved.

Both New Afrikan and Palestinian people are entrenched beneath the boot of their colonizers without a state that is theirs to foster, nurture, and facilitate their respective national liberation struggles to actualize control over their destiny. Both face the repressive arm of mass imprisonment to undermine and destroy their resistance efforts and thus fine comb their national oppression nightmare.

The I$raeli colonial project is a direct extension of U.$. imperialism. The U.$. penal system being the first and largest experiment in humyn bondage, it is only fitting that this institution of social control finds its way into the Palestinian lived experience under I$raeli occupation.

Palestinian youth are the only youth that are formally subject to a “military” court/detention system. Palestinian youth are not privy to a civil court; that means when they go before a judge they are not entitled to a lawyer, nor a translator even though the entire court proceedings are in Hebrew – a non-Arabic language. And if they remain silent, that means they plead guilty. So no civilian proceedings for any Palestinian youth at all.

Many of these oppressed youth are taken during night raids from their parents or adult supervisors to further facilitate intimidating interrogation techniques. These parallel a lot of New Afrikan juvenile situations as the school-to-prison pipeline. The harsh penalties for simple offenses that are the rule, just the whole criminalization process of entire neighborhoods/locations mirror U.$. law enforcement imposition of gang injunctions/occupational patrolling of predominantly New Afrikan neighborhoods in the United $tates of Amerikkka.

The I$raeli settler occupation project parallels Amerikkkan national oppression of New Afrika with the language and practical application of the tried and tired excuse of blaming the so-called “savages” for provoking the “reasonable” and “peace loving” settlers into defending themselves and the land “God ordained” them to have thus dehumanizing and criminalizing a whole nation. The zionist regime’s actions against Palestinian youth are nothing short of genocidal.

In the current news, it is important to note the essential role played by the Palestinian youth, mostly under 18. The resistance movement there is mobilizing their youth to stand up and struggle forward. This is very important to glean lessons from, particularly within the historical and contemporary social dynamics encircling settler colonialism and national oppression in Occupied Palestine. This is good for an application to the Amerikan empire. As ULK aptly notes: the Black Panthers were mostly teenagers.

The New Communist Party of Canada [(N)CPC] was formed by the Kanadian communist group Revolutionary Initiative (RI) in early 2024. The RI announced the (N)CPC through the journal Kites which it co-publishes alongside the Organization of Communist Revolutionaries (OCR), a communist group in the United States.

In February 2024 the OCR Issued a “red salute” to the (N)CPC containing mostly praise. In May 2024, the journal Kites disbanded, explained with reference to the unique circumstances in Kanada vs. Amerika as well as unspecified ideological disagreements between the two organizations.

While unity between the (N)CPC and the OCR may have appeared unprincipled based upon the latter’s criticism of the former, this polemic argues that they shared a rejection of two crucial political lines: the labor aristocracy thesis and the significance of national liberation struggles. To support these claims, first the Dawnland Group examines the (N)CPC’s political program followed by the OCR’s response, each published in Kites.

(N)CPC says natives should ally with settlers

It is difficult to separate the influence of Trotskyism from its settler-colonial baggage and the (N)CPC demonstrates this truth well. The Political Program of the New Communist Party of Canada opens with the (N)CPC’s two “innately linked” objectives: “a) establish working class rule in the economic and political spheres of Canada; and b) Usher in a new, non-colonial, equal and fraternal type of relations between all nations which today remain forcefully and unequally united within the Canadian state.”(1)

Alone, the second objective is agreeable. But the (N)CPC clarifies how these two goals are interlinked, writing that neither “is likely to be achieved in a lasting, meaningful way without the other. Working-class power without national liberation and national equality would have to be built on an illegitimate, coercive basis. National liberation without working-class power would mean a mere reform of Canadian law, or else create powerless statelets that would fall prey to any of the multiple imperialist powers contending for domination and survival in the world today.”

Despite claiming that equality and national liberation are necessary for indigenous peoples, the (N)CPC supports this only conditionally, demanding “working class” power come first. Charitably interpreted, the (N)CPC can be read as considering the “proletariat” of indigenous nations to be an important aspect of the Kanadian “working class”. In any case, considering settlers proletariat as (N)CPC does, this would make the Kanadian “working class” overwhelmingly settler.

Support of indigenous sovereignty contingent upon prior proletarian revolution renders this support meaningless. Thus, when the (N)CPC claims that “the only conceivable way to resolve the separate legal status of Indigenous people without liquidating Indigenous nations as legal entities is collective rights under the banner of the full right to self-determination, up to and including secession” and the necessity of “upholding of the right to secede by popular referendum for all component republics of the Multinational Socialist Confederacy;” their conditions render these rights null until proletarian revolution.

National Liberation is a value as much as a strategy. All peoples have the right to autonomy and self-determination and these rights must be supported without regards to the opinions of settlers.

Beyond values there are strategic concerns. This “alliance” is directly risking the sustained colonization of indigenous groups by “socialist” settlers. The Israeli Kibbutz movement historically purchased lands form Arabic landlords, where they would evict Palestinian tenants in order to create “communes.” Despite Kibbutzniks being considered “left wing” and “socialist,” their settlements encircle the Gaza strip and they have been used to condemn the October 7 resistance operation (2), the newest stage of the Palestinian national liberation war. Here the Israeli “working class” has achieved power and constitutes the main foot-soldiers of genocide. Demanding working class power in exchange for indigenous sovereignty also neglects the inverse possibility that national liberation of colonies will be prerequisite for overthrowing the bourgeoisie.

As addressed in A Polemic Against Settler “Maoism”, settlers have an inherently reactionary class role.(3) While isolated settlers reject this role, the vast majority occupy indigenous lands, stealing their resources and cheap labor. The basis of settler-colonialism has never been a deceitful bourgeoisie but their transparent alliance with settlers: former-proletariat, offered petty-bourgeois class positions through the redistribution of land acquired through theft and genocide. The (N)CPC is wrong that the bourgeoisie is the only force standing in-between the settler-workers and decolonization, and that through “excluding the monopoly bourgeoisie from this process entirely,” Kanada can negotiate more just treaties with the First Nations. Settlers are not deceived by the capitalists against their better interest – a supposed alliance with the indigenous masses. Settlers assume such a class role because, with respect to the capitalist mode of production, it is their best interest.

Settlers are knowing, willful participants in genocide as part of a bargain with those capitalists in exchange for a petty-bourgeois class position.(4) This is their best material interest as a class permitted to escape proletarian existence through conquest. The bargain between settlers and their bourgeoisie is not conceived via ignorance or deception, it is the rational consequence of pursuing one’s material interest within class society: ascension up class and/or national hierarchy to positions of greater wealth and culpability in oppression. Settlers fill niches where the bourgeoisie wishes to expand private property and commodity production, dispose of surplus populations and compete with other imperial powers. In exchange for exterminating the original inhabitants, settlers are allowed free reign of the land and resources of the dead.

There may be a more subconscious belief involved in apologizing for settlers and manufacturing their innocence, namely that, although settlers are indeed rationally pursuing their material interests, this betrays their human interest to live in a world without exploitation, and that communists can win over the masses of settlers to this superior moral position.

As discussed in the Polemic Against Settler “Maoism”, there are important differences between classes and individuals. It is possible to successfully appeal to the morals and internationalist sentiments of certain individuals from each class and nation. This will vary wildly depending on the individual in question and their background. But at the macro-level, only oppressed nations and classes have the material interest in a world without oppression which has historically been wielded to make revolution. Settlers are oppressors. As Black Liberation Army soldier Assata Shakur famously says, “Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.” The (N)CPC suggests just that failed strategy.

While morals are required to undertake communist revolution, morals can never be abstracted from their class context. Settler morals, including the belief that settlers’ working conditions are more important than indigenous rights, were created with the rise of capitalism in Europe whose surplus proletarian population was offered overseas class roles similar to that of Auschwitz guards. The Nazis’ thirst for lebensraum, which slaughtered millions of Jews and Slavs during the holocaust, was directly copied from manifest destiny and the treatment of indigenous peoples on Occupied Turtle Island where between 10 and 15 million were murdered (5).

In their first few paragraphs of published writing the (N)CPC have downplayed the Kanadian “worker” role in ongoing genocide of First Nations, manufacturing a myth of innocent, deceived settlers. Further, they dictate the terms of national liberation to the indigenous communities of Canada in service of the more important “proletarian revolution.” This is settler “Marxism” and Trotskyism.

Trotskyists believe that third-world revolutions are doomed to failure without the aid of the more “advanced” proletariat of the western nations, that socialism is not possible within one country. The ideas are best summarized by the man himself, discussing how:

“A backward colonial or semi-colonial country, the proletariat of which is insufficiently prepared to unite the peasantry and take power, is thereby incapable of bringing the democratic revolution to its conclusion. Contrariwise, in a country where the proletariat has power in its hands as the result of the democratic revolution, the subsequent fate of the dictatorship and socialism depends in the last analysis not only and not so much upon the national productive forces as upon the development of the international socialist revolution.”(6)

Thus, even if a colonial or semi-colonial country managed to seize state power, it would fail if international “proletarian” revolution did not quickly follow. This was as true for Trotsky in the USSR as it later became for him in China, where he argued with extremely poor foresight that alliance with the Koumintang had defeated the revolution and that instead “permanent revolution” was necessary to liberate China.(7) To the Trotskyist, the proletariat of these nations is insufficiently numerically developed to lead a revolution. They forget the fact that no (western) European nation – those initially with the greatest industrial proletariat – has ever waged a successful struggle for state socialism, and the fact that third-world national liberation struggles have accomplished the most significant strategic advances towards communism in history. Finally, as covered below, most of the populations in core imperialist countries are labor aristocrats who hold petty-bourgeois class positions despite receiving wages: they won’t be leading revolution anytime soon.

Trotskyism is pervasive in Amerika and Kanada. Even without reference to Trotsky, without explicit statements of the inferiority of national liberation struggles, it is still perfectly possible for “Marxist-Lenninist” and “Maoist” groups to uphold Trotsky’s ideas through organizing settlers of an oppressor nation instead of organizing the oppressed.

As discussed in the Polemic against Settler-Maoism, settler “maoism” and Trotskyism share certain chronology with regards to national liberation, another characteristic of belief that proletarian revolution takes priority. The (N)CPC believes socialist revolution will precede national autonomy for indigenous peoples:

“The only way to cut the proverbial Gordian knot is for the Indigenous national struggle to link up with the proletarian struggle for socialism in overthrowing the extant Canadian State. Once it is overthrown, new agreements can be reached over the use of land, resources and their sharing between nations. True sovereignty can be enshrined in a new, multinational constitution. This sovereignty can ensure full, distinct national rights without the need for any”Indian status,” which would be replaced by full citizenship in a sovereign nation. Full independence can be achieved by those nations who want it and have the resources needed to sustain it.” (Bold ours)

There are no legitimate “agreements” between settlers and indigenous peoples, because the settlers have used genocide and theft to acquire their negotiating assets. This is why DLG advocates for the Joint Dictatorship of the Proletariat of the Oppressed Nations, which will enforce the will of the oppressed nations at the expense of the imperialist and settler nations, such as the Amerikan and Kanadian nation, a process involving extensive redistribution of land and resources as well as peoples’ tribunals for criminals against humanity. Finally, the notion that settlers can decide if indigenous nations “want” or are “ready” for independence, has been used by colonial powers for centuries to continue oppressing their subjects.

There is a related issue throughout the (N)CPC political program of advocating for a homogeneous Kanadian culture without the consent of the indigenous peoples. Deciding autonomously on such a path long after achieving independence and having received back all stolen land and resources, plus some for interest from the settlers, would be a consensual decision. Settlers should not be advocating for any such cultural assimilation today. The (N)CPC writes that:

“The monopoly bourgeoisie and its State willfully confuse the potential of Canada for its actual reality. Canada really could be a brand-new type of country, one where national sovereignty is not the preserve of a small parasitic class but is instead granted to the myriad national groups that give it its rich cultural mosaic. We really could all work together to preserve our respective cultures, develop our economy in sustainable ways which benefit all working people, embrace cultures and traditions originating from pre-colonial North America, from Europe and now from the entire world. We could collectively take everything that is old and make it into something new.” (Bold ours).

Settlers have no right to advocate for the creation of international cultures together with their colonial subjects. This reduces to an argument for cultural integration which, in Kanada and the United $tates, represents genocide through sterilization, kidnappings, residential schools, and murder by colonial militias and police. Whether or not they understand this, their language is overtly colonial, advocating for assimilation and continued unequal relationships between oppressed and oppressor nations. They need an explicit, unconditional recognition of indigenous sovereignty or they are no different than other settlers seeking to maintain unfair treaties with First Nations without reparations or sovereignty.

The Dawnland Group (DLG) writes this polemic because the (N)CPC’s understanding of indigenous sovereignty directly contradicts with DLG’s support for New Democracy in Occupied Turtle Island. In 1940 Mao argued that imperialism and feudalism prevented China from directly pursuing socialism. Rather, New Democracy was required first, a dictatorship of revolutionary classes over the country in order to liberate it from outside domination, so that socialism may be constructed thereafter:

“The first step or stage in our revolution is definitely not, and cannot be, the establishment of a capitalist society under the dictatorship of the Chinese bourgeoisie, but will result in the establishment of a new-democratic society under the joint dictatorship of all the revolutionary classes of China headed by the Chinese proletariat The revolution will then be carried forward to the second stage, in which a socialist society will be established in China.”

To liberate China, the Communist Party led a united front with the peasants, proletariat, petty-bourgeoisie and some national bourgeoisie who sided with the communists against Japan in the war for national liberation. Whereas in Europe, feudalism could be overthrown by the bourgeois-democratic revolution due to the bourgeoisie’s antagonism with the feudal mode of production, in colonies and oppressed nations, imperialism is inclined to promote feudalism from without and thus a broader united front is required. Despite the defeat of the Cultural Revolution and the capitalist road taken in 1976, the strategy of New Democracy liberated China from foreign domination.

Here Mao gives context as to how New Democracy applies to Chinese conditions:

“Being a bourgeoisie in a colonial and semi-colonial country and oppressed by imperialism, the Chinese national bourgeoisie retains a certain revolutionary quality at certain periods and to a certain degree… Since tsarist Russia was a military-feudal imperialism which carried on aggression against other countries, the Russian bourgeoisie was entirely lacking in revolutionary quality. There, the task of the proletariat was to oppose the bourgeoisie, not to unite with it. But China’s national bourgeoisie has a revolutionary quality at certain periods and to a certain degree, because China is a colonial and semi-colonial country which is a victim of aggression. Here, the task of the proletariat is to form a united front with the national bourgeoisie against imperialism and the bureaucrat and warlord governments without overlooking its revolutionary quality.”

DLG views the application of New Democracy in Occupied Turtle Island to mean that, in the oppressed nations, similarly to China, the bourgeoisie may be an importantly ally in the national liberation struggle. In the oppressor nations (Amerika, Kanada), not only is the bourgeoisie entirely counter-revolutionary but this is true of the petty-bourgeoisie and labor aristocracy as well due to benefiting from and carrying out imperialism and settler-colonialism.

Most bourgeoisie and rich peasantry in China were less wealthy than the petty-bourgeoisie and much of the labor aristocracy today on Occupied Turtle Island. The petty-bourgeoisie and labor aristocracy of oppressor nations in OTI have no great interest in being won over to a communist cause, because most face no national oppression and are bought-off from imperialist superprofits. Thus, DLG argues that the role of the Amerikan/Kanadian communist vanguard is to treat these classes as hostile and instead support the national liberation wars of the internal semi-colonies and oppressed nations.

By contrast, the (N)CPC writes of the Kanadian situation that “an Indigenous petty-bourgeoisie and intelligentsia have also been fostered by the State as part of its counter-revolutionary strategy. The revolutionary camp will have to cautiously navigate in building a class alliance that unites the broadest interests of the Indigenous peoples while isolating and struggling against these new reactionary classes.” While imperialism promotes neo-colonial sections of each oppressed nation’s ruling class who collaborate with the oppressor nation, the (N)CPC is confusing this small segment of the indigenous (petty) bourgeoisie with its entirety.

The (N)CPC argues the petty-bourgeoisie and bourgeoisie of the First Nations must be struggled against but the labor aristocracy and petty-bourgeoisie of the settler nation are important allies to the revolution. This is a paradoxical reversal of New Democracy, in which it is inapplicable in the oppressed nations where it was designed and synthesized successfully, and yet it is applicable in the core imperialist countries where it has never been employed. Concluding on their views about national liberation, the (N)CPC recognizes:

“oppressed nations’ right to self-determination up to and including secession. But we do not content ourselves with this: we recognize that given the way Canada has been built, total separation between its various nations is likely to be counterproductive. Therefore, we intend to build a new form of political and economic unity, a multinational socialist confederacy whose component parts are not arbitrarily-drawn provinces, but really-existing peoples and nations…” (Bold ours)

They provide no explanation for why “separation between various nations is likely to be counterproductive,” although this is a convenient platitude for settlers who wish to have an input about when indigenous people are “ready” for independence, as the (N)CPC indicated above. It is historically illiterate of the complicity of settlers in genocide and naive in assuming somehow this time things will be different and the settler-majority will solve the very contradiction that their class exists because of.

The (N)CPC pitch must be confusing for First Nations, who have been systematically slaughtered, expelled and forced onto reservations for centuries not by capitalists but by settlers pursuing their material interests. By contrast, a vanguard among the settler nation would be formed through a revolutionary defeatist position, unequivocally bent towards the destruction of the settler class role through the repatriation of land, resources and sovereignty to First Nations via revolutionary national liberation war.

The small chance of a vanguard position emerging in Kanada and Amerika will be squandered so long as Trotskyism continues selling indigenous peoples the promise of new negotiations with the same settler class that has been occupying their lands and seeing their genocide through for centuries.

Making proletarians from labor aristocrats

The (N)CPC writes that,

“comprised of all those deprived of the means to produce and forced to sell their labour power to survive, the proletariat is the largest class in society, forming somewhere between 60 and 65% of the population.”

There are two crucial Trotskyist components involved in viewing Kanada as 60% proletarian. First is the view discussed above that settlers can occupy revolutionary class positions; that they can still be “workers”. Second is the view that labor aristocrats who are paid above the value of their wages through super-exploitation of the global south can be proletarian rather than petty-bourgeois. These ideas closely overlap because the labor aristocracy on Occupied Turtle Island is mostly settler and the settler nation (Amerika/Kanada) is overwhelmingly labor aristocratic, save for a tiny minority who fall into the lumpenproletariat including homeless and prisoners.

Throughout their political program, the (N)CPC rejects the labor aristocracy thesis. The (N)CPC views the three main contradictions in the world as

“(a) between the imperialists themselves, which means the struggle for the re-division of the world is always in motion, albeit to varying degrees; (b) between imperialist countries and oppressed countries, which means imperialist exploitation and oppression, and the struggle for self-determination and independent national development; and (c) between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat in each country, which means class struggle and the potential for socialist revolution.”

Contradiction (b), an important mention, is suspect based on their treatment of oppressed-nation struggles within Kanada as shown above. Because of their use of the term “countries”, it is unclear if they believe this imperialist/oppressed dynamic plays out among the nations internal to settler-colonies. Contradiction (c) however is wholly incorrect as in Kanada and Amerika, the proletariat is numerically insignificant. The vast majority are allied to the bourgeoisie as settlers and/or Labor Aristocrats, making class struggle minimal on Occupied Turtle Island at the present time.

The (N)CPC disagrees. They write that

“Through the housing market an ever-growing portion of workers’ paycheques are transferred back to the bourgeoisie in the form of rent or interest. Either enslaved to mortgages or rents, workers are often one step away from the streets.”

The term slavery is best reserved for slaves, not home owners. The view that swaths of workers are “enslaved” to their rent via landlords is subjective, equally so to being “one step away from the streets.”

In Occupied Turtle Island, these terms are overused as much as living “paycheck to paycheck.” In the imperial core where minimum wages are ten times that of the global proletariat, where public services provide the vast majority with water, electricity and transportation, it is chauvinistic to discuss “slavery” to anything. The global proletariat often choose between extremely limited and poor quality food and housing, or earns too little for this choice, subsisting parasitically or dying prematurely. It should be clear that the (N)CPC is attempting to minimize the wages of imperialism paid to the labor aristocracy through super-exploitation of the global south. The Polemic Against Settler-Maoism and MIM(Prisons)’s study on the housing market (8) are invaluable demonstrations of the growth of the labor aristocracy in Occupied Turtle Island throughout the previous half century.

The (N)CPC’s specific examples of the proletariat exemplify another Trotskyist approach:

“At its core are those who work in natural resources, manufacturing, construction, transport, and logistics — labourers at the centre of capitalist exploitation. They are key to the revolutionary movement not only by their large number – around 4 million – but because they are the producers of commodities and wealth… those working in industries which allow labour-power to reproduce itself over time – chiefly health care and education – totalling approximately 4 million workers… those working to facilitate the circulation of capital – primarily workers in retail and services with about 3 million workers. Without these workers the bourgeoisie cannot maintain itself in the long run or realize its profit. Together with the labourers, these sections of the proletariat, totalling about 11 million people, hold the potential to establish a new, socialist economy.” (Bold ours)

Here is a typical Trotskyist confusion of the “importance” of a given trade to the economy for the revolutionary potential of the workers therein, which the (N)CPC states as the

“principle of workers’ centrality. That is, the principle that the workers at the centre of production – and found in great concentration, specifically, the labourers in large-scale industry and the health and education workers in the major service centres – form the heart of the proletariat and the main force for socialist revolution in Canada. The Party must therefore, first and foremost, establish and build itself within these workplaces.”

As discussed in the Polemic Against Settler-Maoism, this is a Trotskyist obsession with numbers and a mechanical application of the conditions of other historical revolutions onto the imperial core, assuming revolutionary insurrection will play out along similar lines despite the bargain of the majority with imperialism. This follows Trotsky’s belief in a quantity of “advanced” “workers” in capitalism as prerequisite for socialism, a condition missing from “backwards” (oppressed) nations.

This opportunistic error leads to mass work among a numerically enormous yet counter-revolutionary base who benefit from imperialism. This mass-work is ultimately not communist because improving the lot of labor aristocrats is important to the bourgeoisie. Social democratic policies greatly expanding the labor aristocracy were implemented during the 1930s and 1940s across western Europe and Occupied Turtle Island in order to compete with socialism in the USSR and materially dissuade workers from communist politics. This strategy succeeded and that’s why only oppressed nations have led communist vanguards in OTI since; there is next-to-no more economic exploitation.

OCR “Revolutionary Salute” to Trotskyism

All should salute the OCR for criticizing a major (former) partner organization. A complete assessment of OCR line and practice is far beyond the scope of our discussion – perhaps impossible during a human lifespan given their volume of writing.

Unfortunately though, they must be criticized for their unity with the (N)CPC as well as what this demonstrates: deeper held agreements with a Trotskyist political formation. This should serve as cause for reflection and struggle for OCR membership and readers.

Lets begin discussing some strengths of the OCR’s Red Salute.(9)

Readers will have noticed the (N)CPC does not even claim to uphold Maoism as the most advanced science of the proletariat and the OCR is correct to criticize them for this, although it is strange the latter do not require Maoism for joint publications with other communist groups. All the same, their section on the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in the Red Salute develops many interesting criticisms of the (N)CPC not addressed in this polemic.

OCR criticisms of the (N)CPC’s betrayal of the labor aristocracy thesis and their failure to recognize the class nature of imperialism, as well as pointing out the ludicrous idea of a 60% proletarian Kanada, are all strong. We praise their criticisms that college-degree occupations including teachers and medical workers are petty-bourgeois, and their criticisms of economism and “worker centrality” are good.

Yet, despite acknowledging that they are not Maoist nor sufficiently anti-imperialist in their class analysis, the OCR still issues a revolutionary salute to the (N)CPC. At first this seems odd, given the significance of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and mention of labor aristocracy in the OCR Manifesto and within Kites 8. Ultimately, DLG concludes that the unity of these two groups derived from a shared lack of ideological commitment to national liberation and the labor aristocracy thesis.

OCR’s soft Labor Aristocracy thesis

Regarding the (N)CPC’s view that the labor aristocracy forms a mass base for revolution, the OCR’s manifesto says those gaining from imperialism in the United States include:

“the petty-bourgeoisie – people who own and operate small enterprises or who possess skills and education that enable them to sell their labor at a higher rate – as well as the labor aristocracy and bourgeoisified workers, whose work is more proletarian in character but who make substantial wages above what they need to survive and have significant job security and health and retirement benefits… However, among these middle classes and the ideological state apparatuses and political institutions of the US, there is always conflict and struggle with the bourgeoisie which at times becomes quite acute.” (Bold Ours)

This concept is evident within Kites 8, the OCR’s most significant work, an attempt to summarize all those communist parties across U.S. history which they consider important. (10) They praise the Revolutionary Communist Party(USA), saying that the latter “developed a united-front-level program that addressed the key social faultlines of the time and could unite, in a broad resistance movement, all those in political motion who were objectively on the proletariat’s side of those social faultlines.” Much like the (N)CPC, the OCR is claiming there are segments of each class that can potentially be united to fight for the proletariat.

Written by an OCR author named Kenny Lake in Kites #2, the second article in the “Specter” series’s conception of proletarian revolution is put similarly. Lake writes that:

“revolutionary civil war can only be initiated after the proletariat, led by communists, has built up the organized forces for revolution through a lengthy process of class struggle and creates and takes advantage of favorable conditions for the launch of an insurrection. The proletariat cannot do this alone, but must forge an alliance of classes under its leadership by taking advantage of the conflicts and struggles between the various middle classes and the bourgeoisie and within the bourgeoisie’s ideological state apparatuses” (Kites 2, pg 36. Bold ours).

It is crucial to say that the proletariat “cannot do this alone.” This is quite similar to the (N)CPC’s view of the petty-bourgeoisie, who they claim is

“neither exploiter nor exploited…For a large part of this class, the lower petty-bourgeoisie, living conditions are similar to that of much of the proletariat…stuck between a rock and a hard place, we must win this class to allying with the proletariat for a better life in socialism. The proletariat must struggle to win them over under its leadership in a united front against the bourgeoisie, as they can be powerful allies, holding much influence in universities, trade unions, media outlets, religious organizations and other such institutions.”

Thus, one explanation of the OCR’s unity with the (N)CPC despite the latter rejecting the labor aristocracy thesis outright is because the former hold a weak version of it. For the OCR, even though the proletariat is the primary revolutionary class, the petty-bourgeoisie and “various middle classes” still hold revolutionary contradictions with the U$ bourgeoisie. As such, it may not matter if a struggle revolves around the concerns of the proletariat or the petty bourgeoisie or the labor aristocracy because there are advantageous contradictions among each group.

It is true that actual oppressed classes and nations at times must make alliances with others. The potential for progressive alliances depends heavily on the class or nation in question. The OCR and (N)CPC are misguided because the “middle classes” in Amerika and Kanada are direct perpetrators of imperialism and settler-colonialism, and as classes have conflicts with the bourgeoisie only over dividing spoils.

National Liberation and New Democracy on Occupied Turtle Island

As previously indicated, the OCR and (N)CPC “class alliance” theories are an inverted application of the Maoist idea of New Democracy to the United $tates / Kanada context, these countries being inundated with settler-colonialism and labor aristocracy. Settlers have a counter-revolutionary class position with regards to indigenous peoples, and labor aristocrats have a counter-revolutionary class position with regards to their nation’s imperialism.

The application of New Democracy to Occupied Turtle Island means that revolutionaries in various nations have highly distinct responsibilities. The Amerikan vanguard is distinct from that of oppressed nation vanguards. The main role of the Amerikan vanguard is to promote the formation of a Joint Dictatorship of the Proletariat of the Oppressed Nations through the national liberation struggles of colonies and internal semi-colonies on Occupied Turtle Island. Amerikan revolutionaries will not liberate themselves because they suffer no oppression or exploitation.

By contrast, labor aristocrats within oppressed nations hold certain revolutionary contradictions by virtue of experiencing national oppression. Their class can be organized towards the goal of liberation for their respective nation. This is true for the petty-bourgeoisie and some of the bourgeoisie of oppressed nations in Occupied Turtle Island as well.

The same is untrue in the oppressor/settler nation. The few revolutionaries who form the oppressor/settler vanguard take a class-suicidal position, sacrificing and attempting to destroy their petty-bourgeois class through supporting external national liberation struggles. While the OCR agrees with us on paper with the attitude labor aristocrat and settler revolutionaries should have regarding self-sacrifice, they are incorrect to search for revolutionary contradictions between these groups and their ally-bourgeoisie. If the alliance is in each party’s mutual interest, there can be no contradiction.

As identified in the Polemic Against Settler Maoism, the labor aristocracy has grown wealthier from the 1960’s until the 2020’s. This signifies to all settlers as well as those from oppressed nations the opportunity for petty-bourgeois life through rejecting revolutionary struggle. As such, only a small portion of people from these groups will constitute a revolutionary vanguard rejecting their class status, as is demonstrated by the historical record in the U$ and Kanada which shows a very small amount of communist revolutionaries. Compare this to China in which hundreds of millions joined the communist party. The bases for this difference were national oppression and exploitation in China.

The OCR praise the (N)CPC for having developed a “creative” solution to national liberation struggles through a “clear analysis.” There are important examples of the OCR qualifying their belief in the significance of national liberation struggles such that this praise accords. In Kites 8, they write that:

“Labeling oppressed nations and nationalities in the US as internal colonies, while morally justified, does not provide the analytical foundation for such a strategy and program, instead suggesting separate struggles to liberate each ‘internal colony’ perhaps linked by solidarity and a common enemy. The “internal colony” analysis fails to grasp that there is a multinational proletariat in the US, disproportionately made up of people of oppressed nation(s) and nationalities but also including white proletarians, which brings together people of different nationalities who have a common class interest and similar but variegated experiences of exploitation and conditions of life, that is in the strategic position, as a class, to lead the revolutionary overthrow of US imperialism.”(11)

Submerging the national struggles of all oppressed nations into the primary “multinational proletarian” struggle is a recipe for Trotskyism, especially when combined with the implication that some whites hold revolutionary class positions. It makes struggling with Trotskyist groups such as the (N)CPC impossible. Having demoted national liberation struggles compared to “multinational proletarian revolution”, how could the OCR disagree that class struggle is more significant?

Despite their affirmation of the right of separate nations to their own revolutionary organizations, OCR says that this trend ideologically

“strengthened revolutionary nationalism and weakened the potential hegemony of the communist world outlook over the growing revolutionary movement. Practically, it meant that the best of the Sixties generation were in separate organizational structures rather than combining their strengths and debating out the crucial questions before the revolutionary movement within one united democratic centralist structure.”

This echoes the (N)CPC’s claim that it would likely be “counterproductive” to have separate vanguards for First Nations, despite the strong risk that white chauvinism will corrupt the formation of a vanguard party as the OCR documents having happened to the Communist Party(USA) and the Revolutionary Communist Party(USA) within Kites 8.(12)

Towards the end of Kites 8 the OCR writes how US revolution could hinge on developments in nations like Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Haiti, other Caribbean nations as well as countries in Central and South America. They write that

“To maximize potential for revolutionary spillover, a communist vanguard must carry out political work among the immigrant populations in the US from the countries in question and link the struggles in their homelands with the struggle in the diaspora.”

While we agree with the attention necessary towards these oppressed nations, their value is not about “spillover” but about the necessity of destroying imperialism before proletarian revolution can happen on Occupied Turtle Island. Until this time, there will be almost no proletariat whatsoever, but rather a mass of bought-off labor aristocrats, even among the oppressed nations. The toppling of imperialism and settler-colonialism will break the class basis for the labor aristocracy and shift the tide in the favor of a Joint Dictatorship of the Proletariat of the Oppressed Nations (JDPON). This would allow the return of all First Nation lands and resources alongside reparations for all internal semi-colonies. At such point, Amerika would no longer be living parasitically from the Third World or oppressed peoples and the class base of bought-off settlers and labor aristocrats would disappear.

Conclusion

That the two organizations co-published Kites for over three years and the disagreements we discuss above go unmentioned by the (N)CPC raises the question if some aspects of their theoretical line were discarded during party formation. As much is particularly suggested by the Spectre series – originally published by Revolutionary Initiative (RI), precursor to the (N)CPC – where a version of the Labor Aristocracy thesis is employed to study the United States class structure and locate the US proletariat.

It is the responsibility of the communist movement, particularly in the imperial core where socialists far and wide are attempting to win over the labor aristocracy, to establish firm boundaries of cooperation. Although there is not a single correct method to determine such boundaries, those claiming to be vanguard formations owe it to the global proletariat to establish them transparently. Unity between groups who supposedly disagree about fundamental principles is irresponsible and deeply confusing to the masses. Here it raised the questions: how did the RI and OCR cooperate for years to publish Kites without struggling out some of these differences? Did the (N)CPC’s formation include a (faction-based) ideological drift the OCR was not aware of? If not the labor aristocracy thesis, Maoism or the importance of national liberation, what is the basis for unity with the OCR?

Ultimately, we can only conclude that neither group considers these lines dividing. Despite everything worth praise from the OCR and the journal Kites, they need to develop higher ideological standards and more explicit ideological lines. Although their recent disassociation from the (N)CPC may be a positive change, the OCR must allow no further opportunistic alliances to fester, internal or external. Finally, they should struggle with DLG ideologically and engage with the critiques we’ve laid out here.

<sup>Notes: 1. (New)Communist Party of Canada, “The Political Program of the New Communist Party of Canada” Kites, January 2024.
2. Joshua Berlinger, CNN “What is the Kibbutz? A brief history of the communes targeted in the Hamas terror attack.” Oct 11, 2023.
3. The Dawnland Group, “A Polemic against Settler Maoism” MIM (Prisons) website, June 2024.
4. Sakai, J. “Settlers: The mythology of the White proletariat from mayflower to modern.”(2014). Kersplebedeb.
5. David Cochran, Oct 7 2020. “How Hitler Found His Blueprint for a German Empire by looking to the American West.” Waging Nonviolence, Oct 7, 2020.
6. Leon Trotsky, “The Permanent Revolution” Marxist Internet Archive, 1931.
7. Leon Trotsky, “The Chinese Revolution” Marxist Internet Archive, 1938.
8. MIM (Prisons), “Building United-Front surrounded by Enemies: Case Study of the Declining U$ Housing Market” Aug 2010
9. Organization of Communist Revolutionaries, “Red Salute on the Formation of the Communist Party of Canada and the publication of its Program.” Kites, 2023.
10. Interestingly, Kites 8 gives no mention of the Maoist Internationalist Movement despite them having regularly struggled with RCP and that this was often reciprocated publicly.
11. Organization of Communist Revolutionaries, Kites 8, pg 325.
12. While the OCR claims the two were each temporarily communist vanguards, we would disagree, especially regarding the RCP.</sup>

In the West Bank, I$rael has killed at least 502 Palestinians since 7 October 2023, the day Operation Al Aqsa Flood commenced by the Palestinian resistance. At least 4,950 people were injured, 3,985 people were displaced, 8,088 people were arrested and 648 structures were demolished.(1) All of this is not even mentioning the recent declaration by I$raeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich that 800 hectares (1,977 acres) in occupied West Bank are now state land for I$raeli settlements.(2) As we know, the I$raeli war has focused on Gaza, where official estimates put the death toll at 38,000, while public health experts estimate that number could be as high as 186,000.(2.5)

These figures alone are abstract, so to paint a better picture of accounts from those living in the West Bank now, contextualizing history and statistics will be provided. It is estimated that 3.25 million people live in the West Bank, meaning that just from the above statistics 0.54% (17525 affected / 3.25 million population) of people were directly affected with countless more affected indirectly from the intensified settler terror in just 6-7 months. The amount of deaths has been three times as high as 2022 already. The lack of infrastructure to collect accurate data also makes this statistic likely an underestimate of the severity, with it only getting worse on the ground as we speak.

The aim of this article is to historicize the initial I$raeli response in the West Bank to the Al Aqsa Flood before the prisoner exchange and temporary “end” (which was constantly violated by I$rael) of hostilities in Gaza. It will be the first part of a series of articles that cover the occupation of the West Bank. Together, Gaza and the West Bank make up the “occupied territories” of Palestine that have not yet been seized by I$rael.

Operation Al Aqsa Flood, settlers panic in West Bank

The very existence of settlers are premised on the displacement of the native people and colonial occupation of entire nations or sections of nations. This is on top of the exploitation of land and labor of the colonized to feed an ever-growing parasitic strata. The I$raeli colonial projects on the border of Gaza were challenged on October 7th, with resistance seizing their land back from the settlers by force. The sense of control from having some of the best surveillance methods and technologies in the world, while being backed by the most powerful imperialist power, was shattered. The carefully crafted methods to maintain and further colonization to feed I$raeli settlers while helping their Amerikan overseers to pacify the entire region under its boot was challenged. The I$raeli project floats on nothing, it produces nothing for the world beyond feeding the hunger of settlers and their imperialist allies off the backs of the colonized. Desperately, it sought to reduce its reliance on those it displaced and colonized, knowing full well what that’d mean. I$rael sought out Third World labor, begged for a share of profits from its imperialist overseers and tried to become more “self-sufficient”. Ultimately it failed in its endeavors, finding itself reliant on imperialist backers to sustain itself against militant resistance from all sides. Once that runs dry, I$rael is doomed and its dream will be ruined, with a victory for the resistance and the liberation of Palestine!

On 11 October 2023, a lock down on West Bank was declared, shutting down more than 500 checkpoints and the only major international border crossing, which is with Jordan, at Allenby Bridge.(3) The I$raeli settlers were faced with a war on two fronts, resorting to extreme measures in fear of losing control of their occupation. Their fears were further confirmed with the death of General Leon Bar, a senior officer of the West Bank Division of the I$raeli Offensive Forces (IOF) on 12 October 2023.(4) Alarms were set off in both “Beitar Illit”, near Bethlehem, and “Ma’ale Efraim”, near Ramallah, due to fears of resistance infiltration on 13 October 2023. On the same day, raids were conducted in Nablus, Aqabat, Jaber camp, Areeha, and Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem. The IOF began an invasion of the city of Nablus and clashes continued in Jenin as resistance fighters confronted the invasion. Hamas’s brigades, the Izz al Din al-Qassem Brigades, were one of the known resistance factions who fended off the IOF invasion, while also fighting in the Ain Al-Sultan and Aqabat Jabr camps in Areeha.(5)

As of October 14th, 842 acts of resistance were carried out in the West Bank in just a week. Of those confirmed, there were 241 shooting operations, 30 qualitative operations, one settlement infiltration, 570 confrontations in various forms, and 98 demonstrations and marches. Twenty two IOF injures were confirmed, a number were killed, and there were 56 martyrs on the side of the resistance. The confrontations took place in 254 areas, including Nablus (45), Al-Quds (38), Ramallah (38), Al-Khalil (33), Jenin (27), Tulkarem (19), Bethlehem (17), Qalqilya (13), Areeha (11), Salfit (9), and Tubas(4).(6) Just a week since Operation Al Aqsa Flood, the resistance was stiff against I$raeli attempts to subdue the West Bank under its grasp. A resistance to settler-colonialism and national oppression within the United $tates must adopt similar discipline, rejecting integration for self-determination for oppressed nations in solidarity with the struggle against imperialism across the world.

The resistance in the West Bank continued, with the al-Nasser Salah al-Deen Brigades, which are the military wing of Popular Resistance Committees, targeting the Belt Furik checkpoint and the IOF post established on “Mount Gerizim” on 15 October 2023. The IOF by this time had abducted more than 500 in the West Bank and Al-Quds.(7) On 17 October 2023, protestors in the occupied West Bank demanded the fall of president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, a neocolonial puppet entity ruling over West Bank. The response was repression, with tear gas and stun grenades used to disperse the protestors.(8) Amidst the protests, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, which are military wing of Fatah, were able to successfully target zionist occupation checkpoints and clashed with them on the same day.(9)

Sheikh Hassan Yousef, co-founder of Hamas, was abducted by the IOF in his home in Ramallah after giving a speech there on 18 October 2023. This was part of a larger campaign of abductions by the IOF which expanded that day.(10) Confrontations further escalated within the West Bank, with a victory for the resistance occurring with the Saraya Al-Quds, which is the militant wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), part of the Tulkarm Brigade carried out numerous strikes, offensive operations, ambushes, explosive detonations, and ambush executions. It was a 28 hour battle, which led to the IOF completely withdrawing from the Nour Shams camp.(11) The cowardly settlers retaliated the next day at the Al-Ansar mosque, believing that Hamas and PIJ used it as a headquarters. This resulted in the death of two, and the arrest of dozens who were suspected to work with the Jenin Brigade or other resistance groups.(12) On the same day, Zionist special forces stormed the Askar camp in Nablus, clashing with the resistance.(13) Just four days later, on 26 October 2023, the IOF carried out a massive arrest campaign across the West Bank with armed clashes breaking out.(14) This preludes the rise of resistance in the West Bank the next day, with violent confrontation in the Al-Aroub camp, against the “Nitzani Oz” checkpoint, the “Dotan” checkpoint, Jabal Al-Tur and Abu Dis on 27 October 2023.(15)

I$raeli invasion of Gaza, settler counter-offensive

The invasion of Gaza officially began on 28 October 2023. On this day, many cities in the West Bank went on strike in support of the resistance in Gaza.(16) A specialized hospital in Nablus was targetted in the West Bank due to the IOF’s suspicion of the resistance groups there.(17) On 2 November 2023, armed clashes broke out across various cities in the West Bank following a wide campaign of arrests.(18) On 4 November 2023, the resistant youth in the West Bank threw Moltov cocktails at settlers’ vehicles near Marda and at zionist forces in Al-Aroub camp. In addition, they threw stones at settlers near Hizma and Route 443.(19) The important part to note here is the role of the youth and how a large section of the Palestinian people are under 18. The resistance’s mobilization of the youth to fight is important to learn from, especially in contexts of settler-colonialism and national oppression, for application to the United $tates. The Black Panthers were mostly teenagers.

The armed clashes continued between resistance fighters and zionist forces in Qalqilya, following raids on cities and a large campaign of abductions.(20) The Lion’s Den, a Palestinian resistance group in the West Bank, claimed responsibility for conducting shooting operations near “Itamar” which was successful on 8 November 2023.(21) In Jenin, a day afterward, the Al-Qassam fighters and all resistance formations in the Jenin camp engaged in armed clashes with the IOF. Reinforcements were sent toward the Balata camp by the IOF after the resistance discovered a special zionist force. In the end, the battle resulted in a victory for the resistance after two hours, with the IOF withdrawing without being able to abduct resistance fighters or occupy the area.(22) The Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, militant wing of the PFLP, were able to target the occupation forces in Jenin with explosive devices on 11 November 2023. The same day, resistance fighters open fired on the “Belt Hefer” settlement and “Nitzanei Oz” checkpoint in Tulkarem. It ended successfully, with a safe return for the resistance forces and heavy damage to the targeted areas.(23)

The Al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigades, part of the Tulkarem Brigade, announced a general mobilization in the West Bank and Al-Quds on 12 November 2023.(24) The Al-Qassam Brigades – West Bank, announced responsibility for storming the Tunnel Checkpoint in the south of occupied Al-Quds in the morning. Here the resistance was able to attack enemy forces at the military checkpoint separating northern Bethlehem and southern occupied Al-Quds.(25) On 20 November 2023, the Mujahideen Brigades were victorious in firing upon an incursion of IOF soldiers in Jenin, clashing with special forces in Tubas, and shooting a jeep in Tubas.(26) On November 21st, an IOF drone targeted a site in Tulkarem camp, continuing to prevent ambulances from reaching the site. Afterward the IOF stormed the Thabet Thabet Hospital to prevent the ambulances from working.(27) Only a few days later on November 23rd, a wave of widespread arrests were carried out, clashing with the resistance and locals in Balata refugee camp, Al-Arroub, Dura, Beit Liqya, and Qalandiya refugee camp.(28) On November 24th, the Mujahideen Brigades, succeeded in bombing the “Dotan” military checkpoint southwest of Jenin.(29)

Conclusion

The resistance in the West Bank face similar conditions to the nationally oppressed in the United $tates. One key difference is the proximity to imperialism with integrationist pull that pacifies resistance. Aside from that, both are firmly occupied under the boot of the colonizers with no state of their own and both face mass incarceration to destroy resistance and further colonization. The resistance’s capability to form a united front to fight back and coordinate in conditions of immense surveillance and repression is important to note. I$rael used all of its capabilities, controlling the supply of food, water, medicine, internal movement, and etc… but it still failed in face of resistance. A strategy within the United $tates will have to encompass these factors and surpass them, coordinating not only internally but externally with the Third World against forces of imperialism and colonialism.

In the next part, there will be a discussion of the prisoner exchange and temporary “end” of hostilities, at the least, along the beginning of I$rael’s advance in Rafah along with the emboldened colonization which I$rael embarked on in the West Bank. Specifically, declaring more than 800 hectares of land as part of I$rael, aiming to fully annex the West Bank.

From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!

من النهر إلى البحر / فلسطين ستتحرر

Notes:

(1) Israel kills more than 500 Palestinians in the West Bank since October 7, May 16th, 2024

2. Israel seizes 800 hectares of Palestinian land in occupied West Bank, March 22st, 2024

(2.5) Sharon Zhang, 8 July 2024, Researchers Estimate True Gaza Death Toll at 186,000 or More, Truthout.

3. Palestinians in occupied West Bank are under Israeli lockdown, October 11th, 2023

4. Israel: Another High-Ranking Officer Killed in Gaza Resistance Operation, October 13th, 2023

5. Resistance News Network, October 13th, 2023

6. Resistance News Network, October 14th, 2023

7. Resistance News Network, October 15th, 2023

8. PA forces fire tear gas at West Bank protesters after Gaza hospital strike, October 10th, 2023

9. Resistance News Network, October 17th, 2023

10. Resistance News Network, October 18th, 2023

11. A new massacre in Nour Shams camp, Tulkarm, October 22, 2023

12. Israel strikes mosque in occupied West Bank refugee camp. October wwth, 2024

13. Resistance News Network, October 22st, 2023

14. Resistance News Network, October 26th, 2023

15. Resistance News Network, October 27th, 2023

16. Resistance News Network, October 28th, 2023

17. Resistance News Network, October 30th, 2023

18. Resistance News Network, November 2nd, 2023

19. Resistance News Network, November 4th, 2023

20. Resistance News Network, November 7th, 2023

21. Resistance News Network, November 8th, 2023

22. Resistance News Network, November 9th, 2023

23. Resistance News Network, November 11th, 2023

24. Resistance News Network, November 12th, 2023

25. Resistance News Network, November 16th, 2023

26. Resistance News Network, November 20th, 2023

27. Resistance News Network, November 21st, 2023

28. Resistance News Network, November 23rd, 2023

29. Resistance News Network, November 24th, 2023

“I held my gun so that the generations after me could hold a sickle…” -Palestinian song, Ahd Allah Ma Nerhal (By God We Won’t Leave)

“… [W]e have hope because we know, now more than ever, that these horrors in the name of upholding a racist settler-colonial occupation are not going to last forever. Anyone who ever thought it would will be astounded in hindsight.” -Rawan Masri, “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood Was An Act of Decolonization”

I, like most of Our comrades who contribute to and/or read ULK and organize behind the gulag walls, have been following the ongoing genocide carried out by the Zionist entity upon the people of Palestine with varied mixtures of feelings, with the number one emotion being unadulterated rage alongside an equal amount of awe at the steadfast courage of the Palestinian resistance and their allies throughout the Middle East.

You might think that the rage stems from the atrocious conduct that sadly has been par for the course of the Zionists since at least 1947 in the beginnings of what would become the Nakba carried out by the various Zionist terror organizations such as the Haganah, Irgun and LEHI who most infamously were responsible for the April 9, 1948 Deir Yassin massacre in which 250 defenseless Palestinians were slaughtered, including 100 wimmin and children, and then the village was looted and plundered. While I cannot deny that the daily depredations of the Zionist occupation forces raises my ire profoundly, the rage actually stems more from the stunning ignorance of the so-called “friends and supporters” of I$rael who voice their profoundly inaccurate, and most of the time entirely false statements, “history lessons on the so-called ‘conflict’,” (non)interpretations of the international law, and most importantly their insistence on not calling the Zionist entity’s actions and policies what they’ve been since the start of the ethnic cleansing under Plan Dalet beginning in April 1948: genocidal. Many of these people are probably of the opinion as well that the vast majority of other settler-colonist projects (such as the United $nakes, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, etc.) were also not genocidal from their beginnings, likely using the age old excuses of blaming the so-called “savages” for provoking the “reasonable” and “peace loving” settlers into defending themselves and the land they mistakenly believe they didn’t steal thanks to their belief that God gifted or promised it to them in perpetuity because “he’s God” and “what he says goes.”(1) These “friends and supporters” of I$rael will do absolutely no research into the validity of their statements, instead choosing to equate the Palestinian struggle to liberate all of the historic Palestine and finally be free to return to their lands with a genocidal Arab conspiracy to wipe out the Jews.

So in the interests of correcting the misinformation and lies, and cutting through the Zionist propaganda it stems from and in full solidarity with Our comrades across historic Palestine, in the diaspora, on campuses and in the streets, this article will attempt to deconstruct some of the most common discourse that is parroted in the mainstream media which has fueled this latest round of anti-Arab hysteria and Islamophobia and crucially, the pattern of Amerikan rejectionism to Palestinian Liberation and indifference to the crimes of its client state.

As communists or anarchists (as many of Our comrades who read ULK identify as), it behooves Us to study history, and studying the histories of what has become known as the Palestinian-I$raeli conflict and the principal actors and organizations is not an exception to this rule.

So in that context, I will begin with one of the Zionists’ more devious lies; the so-called I$raeli “purity of arms” and its common usage, that I$rael never targets civilians or civilian infrastructure. Although any cursory observation of I$rael’s conduct from the 1948 Nakba to the present day would prove otherwise, We can look to none other than Zionist hero and first prime minister David Ben-Gurion for the proof. In his Independence War Diary, he set down on paper the military doctrine that would become standard protocol throughout the history of the Zionist project.

There is no question as to whether a reaction is necessary or not. The question is only time and place. Blowing up a house is not enough. What is necessary is cruel strong reactions. We need precision in time place and causalities. If we know the family – [we must] strike mercilessly, women and children included. Otherwise the reaction is inefficient. At the place of action there is no need to distinguish between guilty and innocent.(2)

This specific entry was written on January 1, 1948, one day after the Haganah occupied the Palestinian village of Balad al-Shaykh, the burial place of Shaykh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam (one of Palestine’s most revered resistance leaders of the 1920’s and 30’s), massacring over 60 Palestinian civilians, men, wimmin, and children, most while they were asleep in their homes. This massacring of civilians in their sleep over 75 years ago lines up exactly with the countless stories told by survivors of today’s indiscriminate bombings to the doctors that have been working nonstop within the largely destroyed remains of Gaza’s hospitals.(3)

Let us also remember that when Ben-Gurion wrote those words, the Zionist leadership at the time was working on “Plan Dalet”, finalized on March 10, 1948, which was the military blueprint for the ethnic cleansing of historic Palestine.(4)

To illustrate before moving on to the next topic, lets look back at two of the lesser known massacres during the initial Nakba; “Lydda and Ramla” and “Safsah.”

On a blistering hot Ramadan day in July 1948, a Haganah general named Yitzhak Rabin (who would later become ambassador to Washington D.C., then I$raeli Prime Minister, then sign the Oslo accords on the White House lawn, then be assassinated for it by I$raeli reactionaries) descended upon the Palestinian towns of Lydda and Ramla with his unit and violently expelled approximately 50,000 men, wimmin and children.

In Lydda, dozens of Palestinians were gathered and detained in the Dahmash mosque and church premises, all unarmed, and were subsequently gunned down. Afterwards the Zionists gathered an additional 20 to 50 Palestinians to clean up the mosque and bury all of the bodies. After they had placed the bodies in their graves, they themselves were slot into the open graves and left there to bleed out and die. In total between 250 to 400 Palestinians were massacred in Lydda. An additional 350 more died after being expected and forced to march to the frontlines of the Arab armies in what would become known as the Lydda Death March.(5)

As a sidenote, the events that occurred at Lydda and the subsequent death march after, were a formative event in the life of a young George Habash, who was from Lydda, and in 1948 at age 19 left the American University in Beirut, Lebanon where he was a medical student and returned to Lydda during the war to help his family. The Haganah attacked the town soon after, and in the subsequent death march, without water or food, during Ramadan no less, his sister died before they reached the Arab army’s frontlines. This could possibly be one of the reasons which fed his uncompromising leadership and opposition to the Zionist regime as a pivotal leader of first the Harakat al-Qawmiyyin al-Arab (Arab Nationalist Movement) and then of the Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

Lastly, we come to the massacre at Safsaf during the initial Nakba. Though this is one of the lesser known atrocities of the Nakba, it is vital to the overall understanding, as a quarter of the 12 well documented instances of rape by the Zionists were recorded here (though many more may have occurred, lost to history but not to the long memory of the people and the land of Palestine).

The Zionists started by cleansing the town by using their “patented” strategy of surrounding the town on 3 sides, firing into the air and into the sides of buildings in the hopes of driving the population out of the fourth, open side of the town. Then they entered the town, gathering up all of those who still remained in their homes, initially shooting and killing 12 young men. The remaining 52 men were caught, then tied together and thrown into a pit the Zionists dug, then subsequently shot and killed. Seeing this, the remaining wimmin of the town came and asked the Zionists for mercy. The Zionists, not being satisfied with the massacre they had just committed, told several of the wimmin to go and fetch water to the town. Once they moved away from the others, they were followed by the militiamen and raped, two of the wimmin being killed in the process. The womyn who survived was a child of fourteen years old.(6) These are just a few of the massacres of civilians by the Zionists during the initial Nakba. If we line them up alongside others, for instance, the October 1953 massacre in the West Bank village of Qibya by Ariel Sharon’s (another past war criminal made prime minister) infamous unit 101 of the I$raeli Defense Forces (IDF) special forces, the October 1956 Kafr Qasim massacre, the full IDF support given during the 1982 Lebanon war to their proxies, the Christian Phalangist and Maronite militias, to massacre 2,000 civilians in the Palestinian refugee camps Sabra and Shatila (which in hindsight was probably the last time there was mass protests within I$rael by Jews over their regime’s crimes against Palestinians), to the more recent wars, like today’s war, but also ones such as during “Operations Cast Lead” in 2008-09 which the UN’s fact finding report (Goldstone report) called a “deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate, and terrorize a civilian population”, a certain pattern starts to emerge; one of the ethnic cleansing and genocide, funded and with political cover by Amerika.

Genocide & Denial

Genocide, the word as well as the action hangs heavy over Amerika and I$rael, so much so that it has stopped many from speaking out and acknowledging the Zionist regime’s actions against Palestine as genocidal.

A comrade over at Slingshot Collective in Berkeley, CA wrote an article for their latest newspaper issue, trying to elaborate on the reasons behind the silence during an active genocide, and though I agree with many of their conclusions (not wanting to sound “anti-Semitic”, general Amerikan apathy and indifference to the suffering of others and not wanting to split the Democratic Party base leading to a Trump victory this election year), I think there are other, deeper explanations for this, as well as outright genocide denial.(7)

When most Amerikans and I$raelis think about the word genocide, it is inevitable that they will first think of the Holocaust. The mass shootings carried out by the Einstatzgruppen and the gassing and immolation of millions of Ashkenazi Jews are rightfully called genocide; and yet many of these same Amerikans and I$raelis forget the genocide of approximately half of the 2 million Sinti and Romani peoples (Gypsies) of German occupied Europe known as the Porrajmos in the Romani language, nor do they seem to remember the systematic massacres of Slavic, gay, and disabled peoples along with many political dissidents during the same time period by Nazi Germany.(8) And so, the benchmark for both countries for some act to count as genocide is something which looks like the Holocaust; a massive extermination of people in a relatively short amount of time.

And yet, the Nazi genocide and Zionist genocide do not resemble each other structurally or in any other meaningful way.

Like the settler colonial regimes of the United $nakes, Canada, New Zealand and Australia among others, the genocides that took place upon the indigenous First Nations have taken place over many decades, a small act here, a large act there, and this is what the genocide of the Palestinian Arab people by the Zionist regime has looked like and continues to look like to this day.(9)

As this practice of genocide continues against the people of Palestine, so too does Amerika continue this practice upon the internal semi-colonies of New Afrikans, Chican@s, and the First Nations here on occupied Turtle Island. Amerika also has a very interesting, as well as appalling, history relating to the UN Convention of the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide that bears mentioning.

After its founding convention in San Francisco in 1945, the United Nations set about sponsoring the creation of an international legal instrument for the prevention and punishment of genocide. The job for drafting this document was handed down to the Economic and Social Council of the UN General Assembly (GA) which retained several international legal consultants foremost among them Dr. Raphael Lemkin; an exiled Polish-Jewish jurist who had in 1944 coined the term ‘genocide’ in his work “Axis Rule in Occupied Europe.” Lemkin, who authored most of the draft, submitted it in June 1947, and a month later it was rejected by several member states of the General Assembly, foremost among them the United $nakes, because of “important philosophical disagreements.” It was edited and then finally adopted by the GA on December 9, 1948. By 1951 enough countries had ratified it to afford it the status of binding international law; except for a partial ratification (with conditions and edits) in 1988 by the Reagan Administration, the U.$. has still not ratified the convention in its entirety.(10)

First off, lets look at what parts of Lemkin’s draft were so “philosophically disagreeable” to the United $tates. Lemkin was extremely thorough in the draft document, where he included linguistic and political groups under currently protected groups of racial, national, and religious groups. Also importantly, he included in the list of punishable acts (enumerated in Article 3 of the current convention) engaging in a number of “preparatory” acts such as developing techniques of genocide and setting up installations for the purpose of committing genocide.

Already we can see that if the above made it into the final draft, both Amerika and I$rael would have been in the ‘hot seat’, so to speak.

Lemkin also included preventing the “preservation or development” of the above groups as a punishable act as well as policies that would bring about the disintegration of the political, social, or economic structure of a group or nation (author’s note: Settlers & Neocolonialists Beware!).

Lastly and most crucially, Lemkin detailed 3 distinct and specific forms of genocide: physical, biological, and cultural. For physical genocide he included “slow death” measures such as the “subjection to conditions of life which, owing to lack of proper housing, clothing, food, hygiene and medical care… are likely to result in debilitation or death of individuals”, as well as “deprivation of all means of livelihood by confiscation of property, looting, curtailment of work, and denial of housing and supplies otherwise available to the other inhabitants of the territory concerned.” Biological genocide, apart from compulsory abortion and sterilization, included segregation of the sexes and obstacles to marriage. Cultural genocide included forced and systematic exile of individuals representing the culture of a group, as well as the destruction of a groups historical or religious monuments and the destruction of a group’s historical, artistic, and religious documents or objects.(11)

If one looks to the UN Genocide Convention today, it would be entirely accurate to say it no longer resembles in any meaningful way the original intentions of the author(s).

One might ask what the consequences of this are, and though there are many, I’ll only go into one.

Consequently, it has continued to further obfuscate what constitutes genocide, further allowing imperialist and reactionary regimes to continue policies of genocidal oppression, domestically as well as in the Global South. Yet as a direct result of this in the case of I$rael, many countries in the Global South have had enough of the genocidal Zionist regime. Most importantly South Africa (where the Zionists supported the apartheid regime before its collapse) charged the Zionist entity with genocide at the ICC in the Hague. Many Central and South American countries, like Chile and Honduras, who both had to deal with genocidal reactionary regimes propped up by the support of both Amerika and I$rael, have both said enough is enough, and recalled their ambassadors to I$rael over the Amerikan funded genocide.(12) And also extremely important, and as a great way to segue into my last topic of this article, it has set off an explosion of support for Palestine from within the belly of the imperialist beast, in the U.$. but also all across Europe; vital to this effort has been Our comrades on college campuses across Turtle Island.

Student Activism and U.$. Attempts to “Silence the Intifada”

When the first encampments and building occupations were setup, from Columbia University to campuses across Turtle Island all the way to UC Berkeley, though I wasn’t surprised, (and forgive me for my emotional subjectiveness) tears of joy and pride sprang to my eyes as I watched the moving images on CNN move across the screen. Not since the Vietnam War and organizations like Student for a Democratic Society (SDS) have we seen the anti-war movement, nor the BDS movement since South African apartheid, consolidate into such a huge outpouring of love, rage, and solidarity on college campuses.

I was sadly also not surprised when the Pro-Zionist reactionaries sent the pigs in to silence the movement, nor have I been surprised at the Zionist propaganda campaign attempting to label the entire Palestinian solidarity movement “anti-Semitic” and “violent”, even going so far (a la Stop Cop City activists) as calling all protesting for Palestine “terrorists” and “supporters of terrorists”. Here in the Bay Area, there have been lies spread saying that the BDS strategy is no longer viable or legally possible for UC Board of Regents to boycott/divest from the Zionist entity, which has been uncovered as a lie to get Our comrades at Berkeley to abandon their camp and goals. Whether divestment is possible, we can look to the success of the BDS movement in 1986 at Berkeley to finally pressure the UC to divest $3.1 billion from companies doing business with apartheid South Africa.(13) Aside from this it’s also been insane to watch the bipartisan effort, from genocide Joe to the outer reaches of the far right, to attempt to get the masses concerned with some of the alleged rhetoric of individuals on campus and the violence (which from numerous sources have been proven to be incited by Zionist counter-demonstrators and the pigs) at the encampments, to try to get everyone to somehow forget his “ironclad” support of I$raeli genocide. Sadly for Genocide Joe and his Pro-Zionist rabble in Congress, students on campuses across Turtle Island have dug in and refused the false images the imperialists and their media have tried to paint of them, and have let the imperialists know 3 things: We are NOT going anywhere, We will NOT be silenced, and PALESTINE WILL BE FREE!

As the college term wraps up for the summer and many in the Palestine Solidarity Movement, on and off campus, set their sights this summer on an explosive confrontation at the Democratic National Convention alongside many other avenues for protest and action, I’d like to give one bit of advice if any students or other outside comrades may be reading: I think aside from the also important avenues of protest and actions here in the belly of the imperialist beast, it would be extremely beneficial to send as many comrades (students or otherwise) to the West Bank this summer, to live and learn among the Palestinian people themselves. Mao himself called attention numerous times to the importance of this, as did Huey P. Newton which led him to visit revolutionary China. SDS and what would become the Weather Underground Organization (WU) also saw the importance of this in the 60’s and early 70’s meeting with revolutionaries from Cuba, Vietnam, and other countries to learn about them, their life and their struggle from their own points of view and in their own voices.

As the Zionists have only continued the ramping up of repression in the West Bank since operation Al-Aqsa Flood, you could also play an integral role in getting the stories of Palestinians there back to the masses here in the U.$. as well as help in the already ongoing humanitarian efforts going on there. Just something to think about as we move into the summer.

In case you weren’t aware, We behind the gulag walls admire your unshakable and uncompromising support for Palestine’s liberation, and your unwavering courage in the face of wave after wave of attacks by Zionist reactionaries and their pig helpers. You inspire us behind the wall and We can’t wait to see what you do next.

From the river to the sea,
Palestine will be Free!

MIM(Prisons) responds: Wimmin and children have fought bravely in the resistance to Zionist occupation. There is something concrete to seeing the murder of children as more egregious in terms of the immiseration of a people via genocide by destroying its capacity to produce for the nation and build the future. But to treat wimmin’s lives as more precious or needing additional protection feeds into the patriarchal thinking that lets I$rael use myths of rape to rally support for bombing thousands of more Palestinians. To the extent that it is true that grown men are doing more of the fighting for Palestine, this only demonstrates the value their lives have for the nation.

MIM talked about genocide as one of a number of forms of “absolute immiseration” today:

“there is a sociology discourse claiming that Marx’s ideas of”absolute deprivation” are incorrect, because supposedly absolute immiseration of the proletariat has not happened under capitalism since Marx’s time. …To avoid talking about [examples of absolute immiseration like] militarism, the environment and prison, the bourgeois social scientists talk about “relative deprivation” …Genocide is a matter of absolute immiseration. There can be nothing worse.”

It is no mystery that Palestine is a key contradiction in the imperialist system today. It is not because Palestinians play an important role in value production, but because of the absolute immiseration they face at the hands of U.$. imperialism in its attempt to maintain a foothold in the part of the world they happen to inhabit.

<sup>Notes: 1. Patrick Wolfe, December 2006, “Settler Colonialism and the elimination of the native”, Journal of Genocide Research, 814
2. Noam Chomsky, “The Fateful Triangle – The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians, ( Haymarket Books, 2014), pp. 200
3. Irfan Galaria, February 23, 2024,”Doctor in Gaza sees only annihilation”, San Jose Mercury News
4. Noam Chomsky & Ilan Pappe, “Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on the U.S. Israeli War on the Palestinians” (Haymarket Books, 2013), pp.69
5. Nur Masalha, “The Palestinian Nakba: Decolonizing History, Narrating the Subaltern, Reclaiming Memory” (Zed Books, 2012), pp. 86
6. Adel Manna, “Nakba and Survival: The Story of Palestinians who Remained inn Haifa and the Galilee, 1948-1956” (University of California Press, (2022), pp. 75-80
7. Kermit, “Watching and Waiting?: On Speaking Out & Being Silent During Genocide”, Slingshot Issue 140 Summer 2024, pp. 2-3
8. Ward Churchill, “A little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas 1492 to the Present” (City Lights Books, 1997), pp. 36-49
9. Patrick Wolfe, December 2006, “Settler Colonialism and the elimination of the native”, Journal of Genocide Research, 814
10. Ward Churchill, pp. 363-364
11. Ward Churchill, pp. 265-366
12. FP Explainers, 3 May 2024, After Colombia, now Turkey: Which other nations have cut ties with Israel over Gaza war?, FirstPost.com
13. DD, “Resisting the Neoliberal University & Unethical Investment”, Slingshot Issue 140 Summer 2024, pp. 5
14. MC5, March 1999, On the Internal Class Structure of the Internal Semi-Colonies, MIM Theory 14: United Front, p.57-58.</sup>

Months after rebellions began in Kanaky (aka New Caledonia), fighting continues against the French militias and colonial forces. In New Caledonia, voting is restricted to families who have been living there since 1998.(1) This is in order to establish the dominance of the natives over the settlers in the voting system. On 2 April 2024, the French Senate voted for an amendment to the rule which would allow voting for anyone who has lived in New Caledonia for a continuous ten years, on a rolling basis.(2) This triggered the resistance of the people, as one Kanaky source recently reported:

“The toll of the riots since May 13 is very heavy: Nine people were killed and hundreds of others injured, 200 houses burned or looted and nearly 900 businesses closed. A first estimation raises the “damage” to 1.5 billion euros. More than 3,000 soldiers, gendarmes and police were deployed there by the colonial State. Great victory for the Kanak people: hundreds of French families made the decision to pack their bags and leave the colony for good.”(3)

However, the struggle over voting rights itself has cooled as parliamentary crisis struck France, and French President Macron announced on 12 June 2024 the suspension of the proposed changes in voting rights in New Caledonia. France is now focused on an emergency election at home to try to prevent a sharp rightward turn in the parliament and presidency.

[UPDATE: 7 July 2024 - Voters succeeded in preventing a victory of the anti-immigrant Le Pen, but results leave uncertainty in France as there was no clear majority.]

Background on Kanaky

For our readers to understand New Caledonia (home of the Kanak), we might use a shortcut of thinking about Puerto Rico (home of the Boricua). New Caledonia is an island near Australia and Aotearoa (aka New Zealand) claimed by France with a history of brutal colonization and imperialist domination. Europeans arrived in Kanaky in the late 18th century, beginning the colonial period in which the natives (Kanak people) were enslaved, sold, exposed to European disease, displaced from their land and placed on reservations. After France gained control of the area, nickel was discovered in the territory and the French government began sending prisoners to extract the resource and settle on the land. Ever since that time settlement has continued, though the Kanak people remain the largest group.(4) The Kanak people have been struggling for independence and liberation for generations, with recent events reflecting the latest upsurge of resistance. In recent years, the liberation movement has engaged in violent resistance to the sale of their nickel mines.

As mentioned above, New Caledonia hit news headlines after France proposed allowing all immigrants, including newer settlers, to vote in elections on the island. On 15 April, tens of thousands protested the bill, and on that same day the French National Assembly voted in favor of it, moving it one step further towards being passed. In May, violent protests of Kanak people were responded to with the arrest of hundreds and the French deploying their armed forces to suppress the movement. This deployment of forces starkly reveals the absurdity of a “free choice” to be independent. As MIM said about Puerto Rico in 1998:

“The Puerto Ricans have tried for decades”to persuade” the United States to leave, but only dictatorship (organized force) will settle the question. Without the freedom to keep the Yankees out, the elections only show what the Puerto Rican people will say with their arms twisted behind their backs.”(5)

One of the major arenas of struggle has been the independence referendum. There have been three of these in the past 4 years; in the first two the option to remain a territory of France narrowly won (56.6% and 53.2%), and nationality played a major role in the decision. Kanaks generally voted for independence while the other minorities generally voted for dependence. In the third, the independence movement boycotted the referendum, resulting in a 97% victory for dependence, but the turnout was only 43.9%, throwing its validity into question.(6) The protests and riots in May led to the declaration of a state of emergency (lifted after May 31) and the deployment of reinforcements from France. Barricades were set up by independence protesters and, in earlier reports, the clashes led to the death of two French Armed Forces personnel and injury of over 54 police officers.(7)

The struggle for an independent New Caledonia is a revolutionary struggle against imperialism. New Caledonians fight France, Palestinians fight I$rael, and the oppressed here in Occupied Turtle Island fight the United $tates, all in a united struggle against a common enemy. The struggle in Puerto Rico against the corrupt government of Ricardo Rosselló is no different. Puerto Rico was acquired by the United $tates in the bloody wars of its ascendancy into an imperialist power.

Imperialism is the number one enemy of the self-determination of nations, reaching its hands across the globe to squeeze every last drop of profit it can find. The struggle of the oppressed nations, wherever they are, is the number one weapon against this imperialist system, and that weapon is ever more powerful the more the oppressed nations ally with each other and fight imperialism as one. Puerto Rico has a history of independence movements being co-opted by leaders trying to get a slice of the imperialist pie. The movement for statehood represents this tendency, while the independence movement is the movement for national self-determination against imperialism. In both New Caledonia and Puerto Rico, the referendums have shown the majority of the population voting to remain a part of their imperialist occupiers in order to access certain benefits, whereas the independence movement represents the revolutionary opposition to national oppression and the upholding of self-determination.

Kanaky Will Be Free! Palestine Will Be Free! Puerto Rico Will Be Free!

<sup>Notes:
1. Giorgio Leali, 16 May 2024, Nickle, guns and foreign powers: How France’s New Caledonia reached the bring of ‘civil war’, Politico.
2. Explainer: What sparked New Caledonia’s Deadly civil unrest?, RNZ.
3. F.W. 20 June 2024, France: Kanaky (New Caledonia): The flame of revolt is not extinguished, CAuse du Peuple - tranlation by redherald.org
4. CIA World Fact Book, 2024
5. MC5, 22 March 1998, Puerto Rico’s relationship to U.$. imperialism and Puerto Rico’s class struggle, MIM Theory 14: United Front, 2001, Page 49.
6. AP, 13 December 2021, New Caledonia votes to stay with France, but it’s a hollow victory that will only ratchet up tensions, The Conversation.
7. AP, 14 May 2024, France imposes curfew in New Caledonia to quell independence-driven unrest.</sup>

Outline: Introduction

This polemic focuses on writings and ideas from Revolutionary Marxist Students (RMS) and Maoist Communist Union (MCU). RMS is a student group focused primarily on education and organizing around college campuses and MCU is a pre-party organization with more varied activities. Each derive from a shared settler “Maoist” ideological tradition in the United States concentrated on trade unionism and influenced by Trotskyism. This paper focuses on their misunderstandings of settler-colonialism, the national question in the United States and the labor aristocracy. Let it be noted that ideological strengths in their literature are largely omitted from discussion of these central issues.

Theses

1. RMS/MCU ignores the national question in the US and misunderstands settler-colonialism. This contributes to a pardoning of white settler workers and acting as though their economic demands will not directly reinforce imperialism and colonization.
2. RMS/MCU presents no explicit class analysis identifying and demarcating the revolutionary from counterrevolutionary forces in society.
3. RMS/MCU distort Marx, Engels and Lenin’s understanding of the labor aristocracy to mean a small privileged upper strata of workers in any country, rather than the majority of labor having been bourgeoisified within the imperial core.

Palestine and Settler Colonialism

The RMS Statement on the Genocide in Palestine is a useful starting point for investigating the errors of this political tendency.(1) There is much worthy of praise including rebuttal of some imperialist propaganda and recognition of, considering Palestine, a “need to keep up with future development and critically assess the forces at play. Our primary role in the United States is to understand and oppose our own state’s involvement in this genocide.”

However, given the importance of opposition to settler colonialism within the Maoist theoretical lineage, RMS’s adherence to Trotskyist interpretations of settler labor is unorthodox. In contrast to Mao and Stalin, Trotsky believed that a socialist government in only one country would be doomed to failure unless it found rapid new socialist allies across the world: unless it was accompanied by a global “permanent revolution.” As Trotsky says himself, “Without direct state support from the European proletariat, the working class of Russia will not be able to maintain itself in power and to transform its temporary rule into a lasting socialist dictatorship. This we cannot doubt for an instant.”(2)

This was not a view restricted to the specific context of Russia, however. In the basic postulates beginning Trotsky’s The Permanent Revolution, written in 1931, he writes that:

“Socialist construction is conceivable only on the foundation of the class struggle, on a national and international scale. This struggle, under the conditions of an overwhelming predominance of capitalist relationships on the world arena, must inevitably lead to explosions, that is, internally to civil wars and externally to revolutionary wars. Therein lies the permanent character of the socialist revolution as such, regardless of whether it is a backward country that is involved, which only yesterday accomplished its democratic revolution, or an old capitalist country which already has behind it a long epoch of democracy and parliamentarism.”

The above-outlined sketch of the development of the world revolution eliminates the question of countries that are ‘mature’ or ‘immature’ for socialism in the spirit of that pedantic, lifeless classification given by the present programme of the Comintern. Insofar as capitalism has created a world market, a world division of labour and world productive forces, it has also prepared world economy as a whole for socialist transformation.

Different countries will go through this process at different tempos. Backward countries may, under certain conditions, arrive at the dictatorship of the proletariat sooner than advanced countries, but they will come later than the latter to socialism. A backward colonial or semi-colonial country, the proletariat of which is insufficiently prepared to unite the peasantry and take power, is thereby incapable of bringing the democratic revolution to its conclusion. Contrariwise, in a country where the proletariat has power in its hands as the result of the democratic revolution, the subsequent fate of the dictatorship and socialism depends in the last analysis not only and not so much upon the national productive forces as upon the development of the international socialist revolution.”(3) [Bold ours]

This Trotskyist conception that workers from the most advanced capitalist nations must revolt to assist revolutionary struggles in backwards, feudal and colonized nations is manifested in RMS’s theory on Palestine. Like their theoretical forerunner, RMS incorrectly identifies the friends and enemies of the international proletariat, but without the excuse that the labor aristocracy was embryonic in Trotsky’s time.

RMS claims to evaluate the “Hamas October 7th attack” – more accurately, a counter-attack orchestrated by the resistance Joint Operations Room groups(4) – in relationship to the supposedly more “diverse strategy” within the Vietnamese, Chinese and Algerian revolutionary wars. They claim Hamas is wrong to support a two-state solution, without acknowledging that Hamas only supports the policy as a temporary strategic measure.(5) RMS prioritizes “Israeli” citizens through their critique of a two-state solution, claiming that “Only through the implementation of one secular and democratic state for both Israelis and Palestinians in place of the religious-fascist state currently ruling over the region can this brutal apartheid come to an end.” RMS misunderstands the inherently settler, counterrevolutionary designation of “Israeli” which must be abolished alongside the zionist entity in order for Palestine to be free.

Instead of abolishing the settler class role, RMS claims that “in order to wage any sort of successful national liberation struggle in Palestine, a significant section of the working Israeli masses would have to turn against the apartheid state and link up with the Palestinians” and that “Historical precedent proves the need for such an alliance of both the colonized and colonizer working classes in ending Apartheid, as seen in the South African example.” Here the term “working class” obfuscates settler-colonialism by equating the class interests of settler and colonized populations, ostensibly because they each receive wages, ignoring their wages’ dramatically different quantities and the fact that one group faces national oppression and the other constitutes an oppressor nation. RMS also cites the numeric majority of “Israelis” within Palestine to justify the need for an alliance between the two groups.

Their singular case study with regards to settler workers cooperating with colonized workers within a successful revolutionary movement is a multi-national trade union struggle against apartheid in South Africa.(6) As RMS writes, “historical precedent proves need for an alliance of the colonized and the colonizer working classes in ending apartheid. In South Africa, while less than 10% of the population was white, an alliance with the working class of said population was not only possible but necessary for the ending of the apartheid regime.”

While the above source which RMS references argues the significance of the South African Congress of Trade Unions, it omits the representation of various nations in the formation or the involvement of white settler labor. Moreover, despite apartheid being “defeated” national oppression amd segregation endures in South Africa alongside the revisionism of the African National Congress.

RMS criticizes the Palestinian resistance militarily through reference to Algeria, China and Vietnam, while the class compositions of these nations’ struggles against colonialism and imperialism are not considered. While no two cases are perfectly analogous, successful liberation movements against colonialism and imperialism have been won not through drawing from the sympathy of the oppressor nation “workers” but through organizing the indigenous masses. Although no socialist states remain today from 20th century revolutionary movements, victories against imperialism in a multitude of socialist African, Latin American and Asian governments during the late 20th century were achieved by the (mostly) guerrilla warfare of the colonized populations, often fighting in direct contradiction to enemy settler-labor formations. The Chinese revolution, which Maoists uphold as the most significant advance towards socialism, didn’t concern itself with the characteristic mineutia of the enemy class; they opposed the Japanese occupiers – labor and all. What is particularly alarming about RMS’s analysis of international settler situations is the transativity of the analysis on occupied Turtle Island where settler labor has directly led in colonization and genocide, especially in the United States.(7)

In every revolutionary struggle, there are those who commit class suicide and join the side of the oppressed despite their origins as exploiters. Hence, a rejection of an “alliance” between the settler workers and the oppressed nation workers must not serve as a mechanical rejection of individual revolutionaries’ ability to transcend their class origin. As a class however, settlers have never rejected their class except when forced to migrate out of a colony by the revolting oppressed.(8) With respect to colonized nations, settlers everywhere form a reactionary, exploiting class.

Fundamentally, RMS misunderstands the class role of settler labor as parasitic and antagonistic to the liberation of their country’s colonized peoples. Settler labor is understood as the labor and political organizations representing the class interests of the settlers as workers – more wages, better work conditions, expansion of settler lands, and access to resources. Class interests and the demands they beget represent the improvement of the well being or wealth of the respective strata. This is especially true within capitalism where the potential of class mobility is present. No strata is without class demands, and no labor formation is capable of completely shedding the class demands of its composite strata as the purpose of forming labor and political advocacy organizations within capitalism is improving the lot of a given group, usually through struggle with employers or the state. It is possible for segments of a strata to reject their class demands but that is not what RMS is advocating for in the case of settler labor.

What makes settler labor organizations reactionary is that the settler class material interest is the dispossession of an indigenous population, by which the settler class is afforded free land, cheap resources, access to improved citizenship benefits as dividend from the immense plunder of the settler bourgeoisie and the cheap labor of the colonized who are relegated to reservations, often little more than concentration camps. Settler labor organizations will seek to advocate for greater dividends of the whole stolen wealth of the nation for the respective spheres of workers for which they advocate. Conflicts between the settler bourgeoisie and settler petty-bourgeoisie, including all settlers who receive wages, do not arise because the state can increase the levers of indigenous dispossession and genocide, creating settler class positions for sections of the former-proletariat whenever the possibility of class struggle presents itself.

This plays out in “Israel” as there are no trade unions, much less nonprofits or “leftist” activist organizations struggling against the zionist entity as a colonial project. Israel mandates that every settler, except the ultra-orthodox, serve in the Israeli Occupation Forces, learning to kill and hate Palestinians. Remaining are isolated instances of military defectors and other peaceful protesters being brutalized over even milquetoast objections to the scale or extent of the occupation or specific massacres, such as those occurring in Gaza currently. Settler labor as a class, and indeed the entire settler population of “Israel” has yet to demonstrate revolutionary potential and it is unfortunate that RMS excludes any criticism of this settler “left” from their piece despite calling for the Palestinians to unify with them.

Imperialism and the National Question

The trade union movement in the US has historically concentrated significantly on the labor aristocracy, which to quote Zak Cope:

“is that section of the working class which benefits materially from imperialism and the attendant superexploitation of oppressed-nation workers. The super-wages received by the labour aristocracy allow for its accrual of savings and investment in property and business and thereby “middle-class” status, even if its earnings are, in fact, spent on luxury personal consumption. Persons who may be compelled to work for a living but consume profits in excess of the value of labour either through some form of property ownership or through having established a political stake in (neo) colonialist society, may be bourgeois without hiring and exploiting labour-power” (9)

Cope applies the concept globally to argue that within the OECD working class – 38 European nations, Mexico (a more complicated case in The Dawnland Group’s opinion), Australia, New Zealand, Israel and Japan – there is no legal exploitation. Rather, Cope argues the first world working class is recipient of super-wages comprised of wages for their labor in addition to wages from the super-exploitation of the third world which provides them with cheap commodities and shares of imperialist profits. In particular, Cope notes the exploitative role of the first world working class, writing that “where workers seek to retain whatever bourgeois status their occupational income and conditions of work afford them through alliance with imperialist political forces, they can be said to actively exploit the proletariat.” (10)

Cope calculates the value of super-exploitation through two methods, namely international productivity equivalence, and international wage differentials, assuming an international equalized wage rate. Using these two methods Cope finds a combined value transfer from the non-OECD to OECD countries of $4.9 trillion in the year 2008 alone.(11) While a renewed study of imperialist value transfer is necessary for US communists today, that is beyond the scope of this polemic. It should suffice to observe that wages in gross disproportion to the productivity of first and third world workers indicate an exploitative dynamic benefiting one group at the expense of the other. There may be challenges cultivating revolutionary empathy and culture in the imperial core if working conditions and wages here cannot be viewed in a global context and value transfer is not appreciated.

As recognized by Lenin, Marx and Engels, the global proletariat has nothing to lose but their chains. This is a category of workers afforded zero or next-to-zero wealth through imperialism. Formations such as MCU and RMS refuse this definition because it would broaden the petty-bourgeoisie and labor aristocracy to include most of the industrial workers who they consider the “revolutionary proletariat” and dramatically reduce their organizing base within the imperial core.

The most acute struggles in the United States today are national rather than based on class. The internal nations in the US show the greatest sites of exploitation, oppression and direct, violent conflict with the capitalist class. These are the indigenous protesting at Standing Rock against the Dakota Access Pipeline, movement against the murderous national oppression carried out through police and prisons, resistance and labor organizing from migrants forced from their home countries by imperialism, and rebellion among the literal colonies retained by the US empire today in Hawaii and Puerto Rico. These instances of struggle go beyond wishing for middle-class living standards. Not only have they demonstrated increased levels of militancy against the state, but the roots of these conflicts are irreparable antagonisms against the structure of capitalism and imperialism which necessarily go beyond economic demands and have not been placated through the dividend of super-profits.

Maoist Communist Union (MCU) writing about politics in the United States focuses on trade unionism and overlooks national questions. Despite the manifold contradictions between nations on Turtle Island, within their theory journals, Notes from a Conversation Among Comrades on the George Floyd Protests: Lessons for Ourselves and Beyond discusses the oppression of Black people but does not lay out a conception of their struggle for national liberation or their nationhood.(12) No other articles discuss national or even “racial” (a popular but unscientific concept) oppression on Turtle Island, and their extensive writing about Maoist formations from the Global South and trade unionism in the US reveals that they view the US as simply another country that can carry out revolution domestically by replicating Maoist strategies from the third world. They are mistaken: different conditions warrant different strategies.

MCU’s Some General Theses on Communist Work in the Trade Unions exemplifies this view.(13) Ignoring national oppression, the article instead finds that “in order to have a socialist revolution in this country we must first develop a strong Communist (Maoist) Party capable of leading a powerful trade union movement and of freeing that movement from the domination of reactionary leadership.”

The chronology is important. If communists must first develop this “Maoist” trade unionist movement, it means any organizing around the national – or racial, according to language used by MCU – questions and colonization are peripheral or secondary to this central cause. It suggests communists might first unite the trade union movement and later, if at all, use this militant union formation to liberate oppressed groups within the country rather than working with these groups as mutually constitutive of a revolutionary struggle, much less prioritizing struggles of oppressed nations. In reality, organizing a bulwark of settler labor will negatively impact national liberation movements.

Instead of oppressed nations, MCU sees trade union aristocrats as the US’s revolutionary masses. The core reference to the “labor aristocracy” in Some General Theses is when the authors claim that “the most secure and consistent base of the reactionary union leaders is the labor aristocracy which is only a small subsection of the working class, and in our day is not equivalent to the trade union membership as a whole.” Having sidestepped an investigation of the various relationships to the means of production, they claim that the “vast majority” of US trade union membership is not a “reactionary base.” MCU overlooks an investigation of total worker compensation including public and private benefits, the means by which the labor aristocracy is maintained within imperial core countries. Luxurious positions at the apex of global commodity exchange and artificially high wages give labor aristocrats wealth above the means of subsistence on which the proletariat must endure, and doled out above the value created through their labor. Without an investigation of international class relations, wages, wealth and labor productivity it is impossible to determine where the proletariat ends and where the labor aristocracy begins and ends, much less between the proletariat and the petty-bourgeoisie. It is thus impossible to determine who the revolutionary masses are.

MCU claims that “A Communist Party must necessarily equip itself with the most advanced revolutionary science, based upon a summation of the whole of the proletariat’s revolutionary experience up to the moment in question.” Despite this, MCU presents no historical summation of “communist” work in US trade unions for the past 80 years that could support their conclusion of the necessity or even possibility of building a “Maoist” trade union movement in the US today. In tandem with a thorough class analysis, a historical account of why an ideology finds certain groups revolutionary or counterrevolutionary must be established. If the US trade unions have not taken up any anti-imperialist politics since before the New Deal era despite consistent unsuccessful communist infiltration, what has been the source of these failures?

In their more recent MCU and the Working Class Movement summarizing the tendency’s recent organizing initiatives, the aforementioned mistakes are repeated, particularly a failure to analyze US classes, their only attempt at defining the proletariat being “the only class that has an interest in communism as a class.” This is not a definition. MCU does not scientifically demarcate the proletariat from the non-proletariat. Their interesting commentary about the significance of creating a “specifically proletarian line” around which all other classes must be drawn is inapplicable to any context without an accompanying class analysis.

Because of the labor aristocracy thesis, workers who benefit from super-exploitation of the third world are not exploited, they are exploiters. This entails that the economic interests of the vast majority of imperial core workers are counterrevolutionary. Trade unions, tenant organizing and other locally “progressive” economic campaigns threaten to bolster standards of living and strengthen citizens’ relationship with imperialism. More specifically, the labor aristocracy thesis suggests there is no antagonism between first world capitalists and their citizen labor aristocrats to begin with, the two instead being allied in consuming value from the Global South.

(Mis)Identifying the Labor Aristocracy and the Proletariat

To examine historical Marxist origins of the term “labor aristocracy” as distinct from the proletariat, Marx, Engels and Lenin should be studied. As written in the Maoist Internationalist Movement’s Imperialism and its Class Structure in 1997:

According to Marx, the portion of society that is parasitic increases over time: “At the dawn of civilization the productiveness acquired by labour is small, but so too are the wants which develop with and by the means of satisfying them. Further, at that early period, the portion of society that lives on the labour of others is infinitely small compared with the mass of direct producers. Along with the progress in the productiveness of labour, that small portion of society increases both absolutely and relatively.”

Despite the focus given to the labor aristocracy by Lenin, Marx and Engels were the first to speak of the labor aristocracy of the colonial countries. Even in Capital, Vol. 1, Marx speaks of “how industrial revulsions affect even the best-paid, the aristocracy, of the working-class.”

Engels in particular is famous for some quotes on England. Here we only point to the quotes from Engels that Lenin also cited favorably in his book Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. As we shall see, Lenin’s approval and careful attention to the quotes from Engels on the labor aristocracy are very important in his own thinking.

One of the clearest quotes from Engels as early as 1858 cited by Lenin is: “The English proletariat is becoming more and more bourgeois, so that this most bourgeois of all nations is apparently aiming ultimately at the possession of a bourgeois aristocracy, and a bourgeois proletariat as well as a bourgeoisie. For a nation which exploits the whole world, this is, of course, to a certain extent justifiable.” We should also point out that from Lenin’s point of view it was a matter of concern that this had been going on for over 50 years already. Just before expressing this concern, Lenin says, “Imperialism has the tendency to create privileged sections also among the workers, and to detach them from the broad masses of the proletariat.” Writing to the same Kautsky who later betrayed everything, Engels said, “You ask me what the English workers think about colonial policy? Well exactly the same as they think about politics in general. There is no workers’ party here, there are only Conservatives and Liberal Radicals, and the workers merrily share the feast of England’s monopoly of the colonies and the world market.” Spineless Mensheviks internationally regret this blanket statement by Engels. The more dangerous revisionists of Marxism are only too gutless to say Engels was wrong while contradicting him at every chance. The spineless flatterers of the oppressor nation working class fear the reaction of the oppressor nation workers to being told they are parasites. Likewise, these spineless social-chauvinists evade the task before the international proletariat – a historical stage of cleansing the oppressor nation workers of parasitism. This task cannot be wished away with clever tactics of niceness.” (15)

Referring back to Some Theses on our Work in the Trade Unions, MCU writes that “with the development of capitalist imperialism, Lenin considered it was no longer possible to bribe such a large section of the working class: ‘It was possible in those days to bribe and corrupt the working class of one country for decades. This is now improbable, if not impossible. But on the other hand, every imperialist ‘Great’ Power can and does bribe smaller strata (than in England in 1848–68) of the ‘labour aristocracy.’” Lenin’s claim flowed from the reality that in 1916, imperialist world war had broken out and large segments of British and German workers were re-proletarianized. However, the era of inter-imperialist world war has since been profoundly interrupted by over seventy years of peace in the core imperialist countries throughout which the labor aristocracy to which Lenin referred has grown. Lenin’s writing in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, published in 1917 the year after Imperialism and the Split in Socialism, should be given authority.

While MCU are correct to recognize the socialist NGO’s, revisionist parties and capitalist rulers of most trade unions as class enemies, these do not comprise the labor aristocracy, which instead is the wide majority of bourgeoisified workers compensated with super-wages through imperialism.

MCU writing of their conception of the labor aristocracy says that “In the US, the ruling class has been able to bribe a minority subsection of the working class for a long period of time. The height of this bribery was likely reached during the New Deal era, but especially since the mid 1970s more and more of the labor aristocracy has seen its privileges severely eroded. We need to do much more investigation however to determine more exactly how the labor aristocracy in this country has changed over time, how large it ever truly got and how large it is today.”

MCU seems to assume that decreasing wages relative to GDP since the 1970s has meant the decrease of the US labor aristocracy, but GPD does not reflect global class relations nor wage differentials between nations: “Through this negative account balance (though not only it), the US working class is able to consume products which its labour has not paid for. Global neoliberal restructuring has thus maintained the privileged position of the core-nation working class relative to the Third World proletariat, albeit on terms less favourable to the former’s independent political expression than during the long boom of the 1950s and 1960s.” (16) The persistence of the labor aristocracy despite neoliberal reform can be measured through the significant increase of homeownership,(17) vehicle ownership,(18) higher education(19) and real weekly wages(20) throughout the country since 1960. Based upon these statistics, MCU is incorrect to claim that the height of bribery was during the New Deal era.

Clearly, MCU is using a different definition of the labor aristocracy than Marx, Engels and Lenin because theirs is not based on bribery, unequal exchange or surplus exploitation within the domestic “working class” but entirely restricted to political roles among the petty-bourgeoisie which exist regardless of the compensation of imperial core workers in general.

Conclusion: Impact of Faulty Class Analysis on Mass Work

A closer look at MCU and the Working Class Movement which summarizes the formation’s recent work demonstrates the effects of their ideological commitment to the settler labor aristocracy through their focus on the US “industrial proletariat.”

Discussing some problems they had faced while organizing tenants, MCU claims they were unable to “find and unite with the resolute fighters among the working-class, raise consciousness amongst them specifically and wider masses more broadly, and thereby…build up revolutionary organization” due to “major ideological difficulties in developing significant numbers of tenants into communists or even clarifying the larger nature of the struggle beyond the immediate fight against gentrification.”

They conceived of their task as creating a “united front of all the class forces – workers, lumpen, petty-bourgeois – affected by gentrification.” The following section bears quoting at length:

“In a confused attempt to make the central focus of this united front still be the working-class, we specifically concentrated first on the homeless, and then when we realized that was going nowhere we shifted to tenants in public/subsidized housing – respectively perhaps the most and second-most pauperized and lumpenized sections of the working-class – despite the fact that we had studied and criticized the Black Panther Party’s lumpen-line. We justified this by downplaying the degree of lumpenization among these segments of the population and arguing, correctly, that many of these tenants were still working-class. What we did not consider was which segments and sections of the working-class are most favorable to organize amongst.”

They discuss this line of work saying that

“Naturally, our efforts among the homeless and tenants bore little fruit. We basically failed to make strong and lasting links with the working-class, develop Communists from amongst the masses we were in contact with, build sustained mass-organization, or sustain any struggles involving substantial numbers of people.”

All of this led MCU to conclude a need to “proletarianize” their ranks – through taking up industrial jobs, partly in an attempt to challenge internal petty-bourgeois class tendencies and partly to make more connections with “advanced workers.” (Recall Trotsky) Finally, they list an outpouring of petty-bourgeois students into industrial jobs as “incredibly promising” because they could numerically bolster a communist party.

MCU quotes Lenin’s 1897 Task of the Russian Social Democrats to show how it is necessary for US communists today to focus primarily on the US “industrial proletariat.” MCU claims Lenin

“clearly puts forward that it was specifically the industrial proletariat working in the urban factories that was the most advanced, the ‘most receptive to [Communist] ideas, most intellectually and politically developed.’ Lenin arrived at this conclusion because, following in the footsteps of the rest of the European industrial workers throughout the last several decades, the Russian factory workers had proven themselves in practice to be the leading section of the class during the waves of strikes in the 1880s and 1890s in Russia.”

MCU fails to discuss the difference in working conditions, wages, and wealth between US factory workers and those of semi-feudal Russia. Despite significantly basing their theory on Lenin they have failed to consider the key ways workers in 21st century imperial core countries differ from 20th century peripheral feudal workers; they fail to adequately study imperialism. MCU’s first theory journal includes an article titled Lenin’s Five Point Definition of the Economic Aspects of Capitalist Imperialism and its Relevance Today, during which the term labor aristocracy is never mentioned.(21)

Although it is later downplayed, MCU’s obsession with industrial workers is perhaps best explained by this quote:

“Without a firm foundation among the industrial proletariat, and without winning over the majority of the organized workers to a revolutionary line, it will be impossible for the Party to direct a general political strike across key workplaces and industries during a revolutionary crisis. The general political strike is a key tool by which can we paralyze the ability of the capitalist class to move goods, troops, and military equipment. Alongside splitting the repressive forces, paralyzing the bourgeoisie’s ability to run the economy is essential for a successful revolution during such a crisis. Doing this in key military industries – especially if, as is likely, the crisis arises amid a significant war – undermines the bourgeoisie’s ability to deploy repressive force to crush the revolution.”

According to this picture of revolution, industrial workers formed the “leading section of the working class” during recent strike waves because they have struck in the greatest numbers, to the greatest impact on the national economy. Whereas US industrial workers overwhelmingly only struck for a greater share of imperialist plunder in the last century – such as when the recent “historic” UAW strike in winning mere wage increases for the union and none else(22) – industrial strikes in feudal Russia were far more frequently communist. Still, MCU’s strategy is an essentially mechanical application of insurrectionist revolution, derived from feudal Russia, to the US context.

The US is not an underdeveloped feudal country with only nascent capitalism. It is the leading core imperialist country and has been for over seventy years. It is the wealthiest nation in human history, and has risen wide swaths of the population into allegiance with imperialism and, at times, fascism based upon the material benefits of empire. Revolution will be carried out by a minority-of-a-minority in the country, not by a strike sweeping all sectors of the working class. Our situation cannot be compared to that of the Bolsheviks.

Most charitably, MCU’s summation of tenant work can be read as the belief that their chronology was incorrect: first organizing a communist trade union movement will make work among tenants, lumpen and oppressed nations far easier. Yet, this is still a narrow application of Bolshevik tactics to 21st century US contexts. There are many reasons MCU’s tenant and homeless mass work may have failed: ideological incoherence, focus on labor aristocratic tenants, ignorance of the primary contradiction of national oppression facing the masses, lack of a prior conception of eventual revolutionary civil war around which to mobilize, petty-bourgeois sensibilities among cadre, or even simple human error. It is unreasonable to expect MCU to discuss these factors when they are preoccupied with a nonexistent industrial proletariat, imposing models from incomparable historical contexts.

MCU’s errors in mass-work and their shift towards “key industry” organizing may seem like a simple error of studying one revolutionary circumstance too much at the expense of others, as failing to apply Marxism to the US context. While partly true, the better explanation is a combination of opportunism – increasing numbers at the expense of revolutionary vision – and a failure to prioritize class analysis. Focusing on certain industries is important, but it fundamentally cannot tell you about class within various industries, and it cannot replace determining who the revolutionary and counterrevolutionary forces in society are; “who are our friends, and who are our enemies?” to quote Mao himself.

Focus on workers in specific industries is a strategic decision likely to be prefigured by an ideological line. MCU has established a line prioritizing Labor Aristocratic workers that necessarily rejects the importance of national contradictions to the revolutionary objectives on Turtle Island, and in doing so promotes imperialism. RMS falls close behind in promoting an impossible allegiance of the colonized nations with the settler working class. Each organization takes part in a prominent tendency of US “Maoist” organizations to follow Trotskyism despite its contradictions with Maoism.

These are deeply troublesome trends. To organize the labor aristocracy, to promote imperialism and Trotskyism is to do the enemy’s work. The global proletariat is the only force which can make revolution, and they are held back by settlers and labor aristocrats alike. The longer communists on occupied Turtle Island fail to embrace these positions, the further away a Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

^{Notes:
(1) https://web.archive.org/web/20240227044053/https://marxiststudents.wordpress.com/statements/
(2) Zinoviev, Gregory Bolshevism or Trotskyism. 1925
(3) https://web.archive.org/web/20240227044746/https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/tpr/pr10.htm
(4) https://web.archive.org/web/20240227044944/https://unity-struggle-unity.org/resistance-news-network-media-guide/
(5) https://web.archive.org/web/20240227045151/https://irp.fas.org/world/para/docs/hamas-2017.pdf
(6) https://web.archive.org/web/20240227045539/https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/congress-south-african-trade-unions-cosatu
(7) Sakai, J. “Settlers: The mythology of the White proletariat from mayflower to modern.”(2014). Kersplebedeb.
(8) See Haiti, Vietnam, China, Korea, and even South Africa, where millions of emigrating whites has driven many to re-settle in Israel
(9) Cope, Zac “Divided World Divided Class” Kersplebedeb 2012, pg. 9
(10) Ibid. pg. 175
(11) Ibid. pg. 200
(12) https://web.archive.org/web/20240227050314/https://maoistcommunistunion.com/red-pages/issue-3/notes-from-a-conversation-among-comrades-on-the-george-floyd-protests-lessons-for-ourselves-and-beyond/
(13) https://mcuusa.files.wordpress.com/2023/10/mcu-theses-on-trade-union-work-2.pdf
(14) https://mcuusa.files.wordpress.com/2023/12/mcu_and_the_working_class_movement-2.pdf
(15) https://archive.org/details/ImperialismAndItsClassStructureIn1997_254/mode/2up
(16) Cope, Zak “Divided World Divided Class” Kersplebedeb 2012, pg. 9
(17) https://web.archive.org/web/20240228014852/https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N
(18) https://web.archive.org/web/20240228015215/https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter8/urban-transport-challenges/household-vehicles-united-states/
(19) https://web.archive.org/web/20240228015942/https://www.statista.com/statistics/184260/educational-attainment-in-the-us/
(20) https://web.archive.org/web/20240228015618/https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
(21) https://web.archive.org/web/20240228020932/https://maoistcommunistunion.com/red-pages/issue-3/lenins-five-point-definition-of-the-economic-aspects-of-capitalist-imperialism-and-its-relevance-today/
(22) https://www.businessinsider.com/uaw-strike-contract-raises-pay-details-ford-gm-stellantis-2023-10?op=1&r=US&IR=T}

i want to begin this writing by expressing sincere solidarity to the surge of student activism in support of the Palestinian people and against amerikan and israeli militarism and imperialism. If i could tell the students who’re facing or will face charges in the empire’s courts, i would tell them to keep in constant memory that no matter what they, the empire, says or does you are not a criminal. i would tell them that be careful to remember the righteousness of our cause and to remember that they are not alone.

In every mass movement and organization there are varying levels of socio-political consciousness and radicalism. Those who are neophytes to the struggle should pay careful attention to the machinations of the institutions of the empire. One’s experiences with the empire’s institutions usually increase one’s level of radicalism and consciousness. While we enter struggle usually because of various sympathies we hold, We continue and elevate our activism usually because we realize that our theories and sympathies only barely touched the surface of the ugliness of the empire.

Allow the experience you will have going through the motions of the empire’s institutional shuffles to harden you, to motivate you. Understand that your sacrifices are worth it, and that while we face certain levels of sacrifices, the people who’ve inspired us so much, the people whose stiff resistance is the reason i am even writing this missive, those people are making sacrifices and facing down levels of repression that most humans will never know. Be proud of the trials the oppressors put you through, and also be vigilant in order to learn lessons to apply to your future work in the struggle.

Advice for those inside facing charges for fighting for Palestine, my best advice would be to not let the repression to stop you from organizing in furthering the cause. Continue your work on the inside. My experience on the inside in recent months is that there are a lot of patriotic, amerikanized prisoners. More than we often realize. And they are louder than those of us who support the self-determination of Palestine, and the divestment of amerikan institutions from israel. Your voice, your commitment is needed just as much inside as it is outside. Captivity is not the time for self-defeat. The struggle must continue.

Palestine’s struggle has and is being analyzed in various ways. But for the record the Palestinian struggle is a nationalist, anti-colonial struggle. There are many connections to other nationalist, anti-neocoloinal struggles within the united $tates. In north amerika the empire has succeeded in stamping out the struggle, the culture, and much of the existence of the Indigenous people, New Afrikan people, Chican@ People, and Puerto Rican people. They have already done to us what israel is attempting to do to Palestine now. amerika looks different and is softer with its policies of social control only because they’re further along in their experiment of empire building and settler-colonialism. As a captive New Afrikan revolutionary nationalist i am extremely proud of, and inspired by, the Palestinian struggle for national independence. Their struggle provides a measuring stick to other nationalist movements. i hope we take note and begin to organize more in earnest.

Because there are many students who’ve been drawn into this movement by the extremes of the Palestinian situation, some may not be aware that there are revolutionary nationalist movements here in their backyards itching to mobilize enough people to raise the level of contradiction to the point that the Palestinian struggle is already at. Because there are connections between these nationalist movements we hope that you will be able to identify them and connect yourselves to these revolutionary nationalist struggles. In Our effort to smash the tentacles of amerikan militarism and imperialism in Palestine and elsewhere, We have to raise our level of struggle here. We have to raise our capacity here within the nationalist movements, and i believe the student movement is a key part of doing that. As such the best we in the prison movement and those of you in the student movement can do is to build connections with each other, help each other, and help the world’s oppressed and exploited people.

i hope this letter is received well, and that you, the reader continue to struggle ceaselessly until victory is won.

From The River To THE SEA, Free The Land!

I$rael’s war on Palestine is without a doubt a genocide.

There has been a groundswell of support from people around the world that conclude that the settler state of I$rael needs to be brought to justice and that Amerika has given the “greenlight” for the genocide to ensue.

At a recent protest over I$rael bombing an Iranian consulate in Syria, killing several Iranian military intelligence personnel, Hamas responded with a statement saying among other things that Amerika has given the green light for this bombing by not denouncing it. We would agree and go further by stating that Amerika has green-lit genocide since it first arrived here in Turtle Island over 500 years ago.

It strikes us as odd that the world would be shocked about Amerika standing by in the face of the genocide happening to Palestine when Chican@s, First Nations and New Afrikans know first hand that the United $tates is not only a client but a pathfinder in the realm of genocidal settlerism. We should remember it was Amerika who inspired the likes of Hitler in honing his genocidal craft, an evaluation of evidence supports our point.

In the mire of the oppression being rained down on Palestine, especially with I$rael assassinating those it has targeted even in other countries – or in embassies! – we just glean what lessons are available as the world gets a bold example of what colonization looks like today.

If we are in fact at the conclusion that Amerika – who gives I$rael billions of aid each year – is giving a wink and a nod to assassinating government officials of sovereign countries, it poses the question: how might revolutionaries here in the imperialist center of the world prepare and respond?

We should start by understanding that in today’s world genocide arrives via stages of development by the imperialist agencies. These stages are 1) Intelligence. 2) Analysis. 3) Logistics and 4) Operations. What we are seeing happen is war plans, whether we are talking about the streets of Gaza or the barrios of Califaztlan it all starts with intel.

The oppressor nation identifies its threats and its assets – on the ground or online. Because we are in the stage of building public opinion here in the United $tates we can be vulnerable to data mining that is employed by agencies globally. Search bots that are known as “spiders” search the internet 24/7 mining through open source material and all public records to find any links to revolutionary data, i.e. people, groups or theory. They snatch everything: Facebook posts, chat rooms, blogs, news stories, financial records, visa applications, etc… which can all be harvested quickly on a daily basis, programs like starlight or spire can then sift, cross reference and separate non-essential material while then targeting links that lead back to intended targeted people or groups within the movement. In this way the state is able to closely monitor not only a movement’s vanguard but anything that metastasizes out of the movement as well, that is everything in its realm of influence. Once data is compromised with the help of programs like Analyst Notebook, it reveals the internal structure of an organization and its international links as well. All of this intel helps the oppressor nation develop its genocidal programs which not only furthers its own interests but the interests of its allies like the settler state of I$rael.

Here in the occupied territories that some call Amerika, the internal semi-colonies have long known about Amerika’s stance on genocide. Chican@s and other oppressed nations who languish in the prisons, in the control units, and on Death Row overstand that Amerika green-lights genocide. The Brown and Black people, gunned down every day by Amerikan police know this as well. The Chican@ nation and other oppressed know because our land and resources are occupied and controlled by the capitalists who neutralize us when we threaten the occupation.

End The Genocide!

“What makes you think you DESERVE to celebrate Black History Month”- SIS Officer at USP Tucson

These were the words that were spoken to me a few years ago, here at United States Penitentiary - Tucson, shortly before I was illegally put in the SHU (Special Housing Unit) for 40 days.

Before this incident, i was the Secretary of the Black History Month Committee here for three consecutive years, and had more experience in the committee than anyone else over the last five years. But on this particular year, as I reflect back on this, the Education Department did absolutely nothing for us in preparing for Black History Month. We were promised the resources, but as we worked from November of the previous year to February of that next year, we found that when it was time to promote Black History Month, there was nothing set aside for us to carry out any of the activities promised.

We had nothing.

I am writing this now, in February 2024, and I am again at the realization that USP Tucson, from the Warden on down, refuses to allow us to celebrate our history. Not one memo, not one event, nothing is scheduled to celebrate our history, and I can’t help but reflect back to that day where a Caucasian SIS officer (Special Investigative Services) had the audacity to tell me, to my face, “What makes you think you DESERVE to celebrate Black History Month”?

What we are seeing is a stripping not only of Black History, but of identity as well. Prisons are mandated to help rehabilitate people, and one way to do that is to reinforce their identity. There is a certain level of pride that each individual gets when he or she knows that they are part of a greater group of people. I speak as an African American, but this also applies to every other nationality, from Native Americans to Mexican Americans to even Caucasians. When prisons strip us of an identity, it makes them similar to how slaves were treated in our American history.

The slaves brought to America came with nothing, and were systematically stripped of everything they once were, and degraded to a level of inhumanity that surely is an abomination to God. Has much changed in 2024, when prisons continue to practice slave tactics?

In that year we didn’t have Black History Month, I was upset at this, and began to do what I always do… write. I wrote essays about how staff deliberately sabotaged Black History Month, and intended to mail them to the outside world.

But a Caucasian staff member in Education read my works, and refused to allow me to have them back, after I had printed them. She called them “inappropriate.” I questioned her as to why I cannot have my works, which actually I have a right to have.

Her first answer was, “Well, I was with (the staff member), and you don’t know what you’re talking about”-

Wait! I am the SECRETARY of the Black History Month Committee!! I keep ALL the notes! How is this Caucasian woman going to tell me that I don’t know what I’m talking about?? At this point, I was already getting angry at how I am being challenged of my First Amendment right about MY history.

Her second excuse was that I can’t have it back because I made multiple copies. This too, was bogus, because even though the general body of the letter was the same, it was very clear at the top of each copy who I was sending it to. Her argument was based on that you could not make exact, identical copies at the same time – I had every right to make three copies if they are going to three different entities.

Her third argument was, “If you want to write a grievance, you can get a BP”. This also was a lie, and what she now was doing was curbing my right to the First Amendment, shifting me to use a VERY flawed grievance procedure. What she was doing was quite illegal.

So, upset, I went back and wrote a new essay, “Is (staff member) Breaking The Law?”. I used Federal Bureau of Prisons policies, legal cases and other resources to prove, without a doubt, that this Caucasian officer was intentionally blocking me from sending these letters out.

When she read my essay, she called for backup, and the SIS officer came, took me out to the hallway and threatened to put me in the SHU (Special Housing Unit). He said, “I know how to play this game”, and then, as I tried to make my case, he said the quote I started this essay with.

My answer to this Caucasian man… “I don’t think a white man can tell a Black man, who has been the Secretary of the Black History Month Committee the last three years anything about his history”.

To this man, and to many Caucasian officers here at USP Tucson, we don’t “deserve” to celebrate our history; we don’t “deserve” to have an identity. Yet, they are quick to take vacation on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s Birthday.

The last several years here at USP Tucson, the Warden has blocked attempts for us to celebrate our history. Even now, as we came off a malicious and retaliatory 36-day lockdown, after refusing to give us stamps to mail our loved ones, after filthy showers, after feeding us spoiled peanut butter, after limiting our phone calls to a single five minute call a day, after at least three deaths due to medical neglect, and as many homicides – staff here at USP Tucson will not relent in their treatment of human beings in this prison.

It’s not just Black History they are stripping from us . . . it’s humanity they are stripping from everyone. When prisons refuse to acknowledge the captives as human beings, when they ignore the simple basics of human kindness, when they condone illegal acts done by staff, and do nothing about it, they have transported the entire environment backwards two hundred years.

It’s funny, that incident with the Caucasian officer in Education and the SIS officer happened, as I write this, about 5 years ago… those officers still work here. They were never punished in any shape or form for their prejudiced views. I however, was put in the SHU for 40 days, then found guilty of a bogus charge. It took me at least six months to appeal to eventually have that charge expunged, based off simple information that, if the Caucasian Disciplinary Officer had read, she would have thrown the charge out. But after my appeal to her during my hearing, she said to me:

“I just don’t believe she would lie to me”.

So, because I’m Black, and a prisoner, I lose the argument simply because my opponent is a Caucasian female that is a staff member. My level of equality as a human being is stripped, because my status as an prisoner is inferior.

We won’t celebrate Black History Month here at USP Tucson, because staff apparently don’t believe we “deserve” it. So, I’ll celebrate it for everyone here, and refuse to let this prison strip me of my humanity. That makes them less of a human than me.

MIM(Prisons) responds:Understanding history is about understanding where we came from and where we are going. This is the real power of history that the oppressor has tried to keep from the oppressed for hundreds of years. The system is happy to promote an identity for prisoners – one of people who are not deserving, of people with less rights, of people who are less intelligent. There are many identities we can take on, positive and negative. We do not promote a “white identity” because that is the identity of an oppressor. As communists we identify with the Third World proletariat – that is the revolutionary class of people under imperialism that offers solutions and a path from oppression.

There is a duality in regards to the existence of the victimization in the New Afrikan nation and generally among oppressed people. The duality expresses itself when oppressed people avoid struggle, avoid acknowledgment of their colonization and oppression, because of a psychosocial tendency to align one’s self with strength, victory, privilege, excess, and power. This tendency is deeply rooted in one of the characteristics of the “colonial mentality,” which is a lack of dignity, pride, and self-worth. In this case of identity crisis and pathology, the oppressed chooses to derive its pride, dignity, self-worth (and perceived social, political, and economic interests) from the upper echelons of empire, from the imperialist power structure.

There is another side of this duality which thrives, not on its own victimhood per se, but more aptly on its ability to resist, thwart, and overcome the complexities of the colonial-imperial oppression. These are “the people,” so often refereed to in radical discourse, “the people’s” collective will in movement fighting, struggling ceaselessly.

The basic truth is that in every contradiction there are winners and losers. Losers, by default, die victims. Winners are victimizers. The issue, from my humble point of view, only arises when We have a social group, or a broad mass within a social group after long periods of oppression, become content with their own status as victims. So content in fact that they themselves have rendered all resistance and tactical victories among themselves as illegitimate expressions of the oppressed experience. This is indeed an issue because war has a sole purpose to destroy the will and/or ability for the opposition to resist our advancement.

“War is nothing but a duel on an extensive scale. If we would conceive as a unit the countless number of duels which make up a war, we shall do so best by supposing to ourselves two wrestlers. Each strives by physical force to compel the other to submit to his will: his first object is to throw his adversary, and thus to render him incapable of further resistance… Violence arms itself with the inventions of Art and Science [cognitive, neuro sciences, behavioral sciences] in order to contend against violence.”(1)

The inherent danger and crippling effect of the pathology of New Afrikan Victimization can be seen in many instances, but i will highlight one in particular.

i am speaking here of the case of Brother Othal “Ozone” Wallace, a New Afrikan man in Florida currently fighting against the State’s death penalty. Ozone is a father and was an active participant in the efforts of liberation for New Afrikan and other oppressed people. Prior to his current captivity Ozone was active in search and rescue missions of suspected human trafficking victims. As a craftsman by trade he helped rebuild communities damaged by hurricane disasters. Ozone was also on the front lines of armed demonstrations advocating armed self defense and armed struggle against the oppression of New Afrikans.

In June 2021, Ozone was exiting his vehicle while in a residential area, when he was approached by a Daytona Beach Police officer who asked a question common to colonial and oppressed subjects globally, “Where are you going? Do you live here?” Body cam footage shows the officer repeat, “Do you live here? Yes or no?” While he grabbed Ozone by the shoulders. At that point the footage becomes shaky and blurry, but it should be understood that this entire incident, from the Police’s observation as someone “unwelcome”, “suspect”, “threatening”, is a textbook chain of events in the efforts of occupation and counter-insurgent forces. This “regular” treatment of New Afrikans is contrary to the U.$. constitution’s Fourth Amendment right to protection from illegal search and seizure, but its regularity showcases that New Afrikans are still a colonized population whose existence is situated outside the general legalities of the empire.

Somehow during the physical struggle, initiated by the officer’s arrogant choice to grab Ozone, the officer ended up shot in his face, while Ozone escaped the scene. He was captured days later, in a wooded area in Georgia, where state agents also allege to have found multiple flash bangs, rifle plates, body armor, two rifles, two handguns, and several boxes of ammunition.

In the ensuing “legal” drama, once the officer died in a hospital as a result of his wounds in August of 2021, Prosecutors began seeking the death penalty, the family of the officer filed a civil suit, suing Ozone for $5 million, specifically the money accumulated by Ozone’s criminal defense fundraiser page. Prosecutors have sought to have his GoFundMe account shutdown. In short, Ozone was and remains under attack, and his experience is synonymous with New Afrikan liberation in general.

My reason for highlighting Ozone’s experience is that i see it as an example and a dividing line question among “the left” and New Afrikans particularly and Black liberationists (of many stripes) generally. My question to the movement(s), to Our People, why is Ozone not as known as Michael Brown or George Floyd? Why is he not garnering support and attention from the Black and radical press? Why is he virtually unknown to the common persyn of the street? The simple answer is that New Afrikans, generally speaking, even within so-called radical circles, have become infected with that colonial pathology that i call New Afrikan Victimization. Some of us are too content with Our imagery and association with victimhood. Others delude themselves into behaving as if this victimization doesn’t exist on an institutional and systemic level. Instead opting for the “boot straps” mentality which is also a socio-pathology.

Too many of us have failed to acknowledge that We are at war, that we’re subjects, not free and liberated citizens of a free democratic society. We’ve failed to realize the there are no “rights” only power struggles, and those who dictate power subsequently dictate what “rights” are respected or discarded. Most important, We’ve failed to realize the implications of these failures. Thus We have Ozone, and other Political Prisoners of War lost in captivity without support or even acknowledgment from even elements of Movement(s) that are supposed to be supporting Political Prisoners of War. Such groups, generally, have forgotten the current epoch of struggle, that there are Political Prisoners being captured almost daily. That yesteryears “Black Nationalist hate group” designation that fueled COINTELPRO and PRISACTS has been replaced by today’s “Black Identity Extremist” designation that is fueling present day surveillance, sabotage, and imprisonment of movement activists. While we should never forget or relinquish support of BPP/BLA Political Prisoners or others from earlier eras of struggle, We also should not exclude or ignore those currently active in the streets (even if We do not agree with their political line).

Free Ozone and All Political Prisoners

^{Notes: 1. Carl von Clausewitz, 1832, On War.}