Under Lock & Key

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.}

In the United $tates, prisons mean war against the oppressed nations. In occupied Palestine, war means prison for the Palestinians. Two sides of the same blood-stained coin which built the richest empire in hystory. Imperialism considers war to be a legal method of resolving issues, in deeds if not in words.

The struggle for Palestine is a national liberation struggle. The only consistently revolutionary class that may overthrow the bourgeoisie is the proletariat, but imperial domination can unite a whole nation against their occupiers for the establishment of independence. If independence is a precondition for the dictatorship of the proletariat, then Palestine’s struggle is revolutionary and progressive. If I$rael is an arm of imperialism, then the Palestinian struggle against them is revolutionary and progressive. Leadership of the proletariat in that struggle would intensify its revolutionary character, but it is revolutionary even without the proletariat in the vanguard. When Palestinian communists align themselves with all revolutionary forces against I$rael in a united front, that is a correct policy. We have a clear hystory on this subject, and this practice is what led to the victory of the Chinese people in creating the most advanced socialism yet.

We in the United $tates face the strongest enemy in humyn hystory, and I$rael is an arm of the United $tates in the Middle East. Everything which weakens I$rael weakens the United $tates, which puts us in a stronger position. Our comrades fighting in Gaza today are putting us in a position of advantage for the final victory of the oppressed in Occupied Turtle Island. To oppose the struggle in Palestine is to oppose that which objectively weakens our enemy, to leave behind real friends who are fighting real enemies.

“Leftist” support for I$rael in this war is often concealed by a position against Hamas. This anti-Hamas, but allegedly pro-Palestine, sentiment is often based on the supposedly inhuman crimes that have been committed. On top of this being a complete deflection from the primary question of imperialism, the claims surrounding such crimes as the decapitation of infants have zero evidence behind them. Even bourgeois press has shown that the claims are based on videos which show no beheadings, only IDF soldiers claiming that the events occurred.(1) Media campaigns in support of imperialist interventions can go much further and be many times more difficult to uncover than what we are dealing with here. This is a particularly obvious example of an imperialist lie, and the propaganda will not always be so easy to see through. Therefore, in addition to exposing blatant falsehoods, we also need to be able to separate what makes a movement an ally or enemy and what doesn’t, and be able to understand what line the media is attempting to push when they tell a particular story.

The media will tell us that Hamas is committing heinous crimes, killing babies and civilians. We need to ask why they are deflecting from the principal contradiction in the world today. We need to ask who weakens empire, and critically support those who do. We need to ask who strengthens empire, and make ourselves their enemy. That is what it means to understand what is principal and what is secondary. Contrary to popular belief, the moral position of communists is not to do with concepts like eternal justice and true liberty. Communists have one moral position: we are for those actions which strengthen the international proletariat. We understand that the work of Hamas as a whole strengthens the international proletariat. Therefore we understand that they are the allies of the oppressed and we align ourselves alongside them.

From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free

1. https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/10/12/40-israeli-babies-beheaded-by-hamas/

The October 7th attack that was launched by Palestine in the war for national liberation is but a response to their colonization from the hands of the settler colonialist Israel. For decades the Palestinians have maintained a consistent push for freedom to live without the threat of genocide at their doorstep. The Chicano nation overstands the need to struggle under the brute heel of colonization, our occupied territories – like the Palestinians – will not be free until the oppressor nation is overthrown point blank period! For this reason Aztlán stands with the Palestinian people in their freedom struggle.

According to the Gaza Health Ministry since 7 October 2023, 2,670 Palestinians have been killed [as we go to press that number has doubled] and Israel has continued to spread its disinformation in regards to the cause of the savagery unleashed by Israel. The truth is the Israeli war on Palestine has the full backing by Chief Colonizer in the World – the United Snakes. The U.$. completely ignores the decades of war crimes Israel has unleashed on Palestine, from white phosphorous cluster bombs to terrorizing generations of Palestinians with death and psychological warfare.

Today the U.$. propaganda “news outlets” snivel about 20 alleged U.$. citizens being supposedly held in Gaza. [By the time this article went live, Hamas had released two elderly prisoners who reported being handled “gently” and seemingly treated better than many prisoners who read Under Lock & Key in the United $tates.] Once again the people here in these occupied territories are being fed snake oil in preparation for U.$. Special Ops to enter Gaza and provide full technical and logistical support for its settler brethren. For this reason we hear a lot about allegations of violence from groups within Palestine. But how about the Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah who was murdered on Friday the 13th of October 2023 after Israel unleashed a brutal shelling on Palestine?

The Chicano nation stands with Palestine and welcomes the wrath of resistance that oppression harvests.

Viva Palestine! Viva Aztlán! Free Palestine! Free Aztlán!

For all it’s self-proclaimed enlightened ways, U.$. imperialism continues to uphold the myth of race in everything it does. Enter the Supreme Court with their historic decision to end affirmative action in higher education. While the “race-conscious” policy did benefit (some in the) oppressed nations, the framework of race, created by the oppressor, continues to setback the progress of the oppressed.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority position, “Many universities have for too long… concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin… Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.”

We are not in the game of integrating oppressed people into the oppressor nation, but affirmative action based on “race” did prove an effective way to do that. Ending it will mean less oppressed nation people in higher education as recent history in California has shown.(1)

However, the racial statistics used to tout the success of affirmative action can be misleading. Because “race” and not income, or zip code, or cultural background are used in many of these statistics, what looks like perfect representation by skin color may be doing nothing to benefit the New Afrikan masses. Extrapolating from some broad statistics, one author estimates that maybe 7 or 8 of 154 “Black” freshman (5%) at Harvard in 2020 were from families defined in the U.$. as impoverished. Whereas, in the general population, 30% of New Afrikan youth are from impoverished households. This article also cites anecdotes saying the vast majority of black faces at Harvard are from bourgeois African families or had one Euro-Amerikan parent. Again, indicating affirmative action was not really benefiting the New Afrikan nation at Harvard anyway.(2)

The passage of the U.$. Civil Rights Act in 1964, which preceded the “affirmative action” practices we know today, was a comprehensive act to outlaw discrimination in what had been a segregated country. This was not just a result of the organizing of the oppressed within U.$. borders, but the pressure from the Soviet Union (though at that time they’d taken up the capitalist road) and China and the broader national liberation movement taking place across Africa, Asia and Latin America. And while progressive changes took place in the United $tates in the 1960s it did not quell the upsurge of national liberation struggles within U.$. borders because it never addressed the national question like the Soviet Union and China did. Rather it continued to institutionalize the concept of race through the new civil rights laws being passed.

By never addressing the national question, things like affirmative action, or Under Lock & Key can be attacked by the imperialist state as “racist.” To the imperialists the oppressed nations don’t exist, so when we talk about New Afrikans or Chican@s or Euro-Amerikans, they censor our literature for “racism.”

We must identify the principal contradiction to keep our eyes on the prize and not get distracted into dead-end politics. The principal contradiction we see under imperialism is nation, as well within the United $tates we say it is nation. This does not mean everyone from an oppressed nation is an ally. We must think in terms of percentages, not in black and white.

In discussing racism in political repression, Triumphant talks about the neo-colonial era. And we echo this sentiment that “skinfolk ain’t necessarily kinfolk.” That Black bourgeoisie are often playing significant enemy roles, in defense of U.$. imperialism.

However, just because neo-colonialism exists, it does not mean that nation is erased and class is all that matters. Neo-colonialism is still national oppression, it’s just a smarter form.

In reality, not seeing race at all is impossible for us in this racist society. Even when speaking of nations, we use phenotypes to classify people; we are still stuck in this model handed down by the European settlers who created “whiteness.” We must develop a political analysis to guide us that is beyond the myth of race and bloodlines, that instead operates in the material reality of nation, which J.V. Stalin defined as " a historically evolved, stable community of language, territory, economic life, and psychological make up manifested in a community of culture."

Comrade USW36 wrote on this topic:

i too, no longer use “Black” and “White” to define people. i’m a “New Afrikan”, Black is “created” by European settlers to enforce their new “white” identity rule. i hope all Rev Nats study Fanon (and Yaki’s “Meditations”), New Afrika, Native Amerika, and New Aztlan can be freed. We can be united and create a true North Amerikan Revolutionary Nationalist United Front to decolonize and delink from this imperialist juggernaut. Black and White identities won’t help us free any of the NA nations (i’d like also to salute New Asian Pacific Islanders).

If Amerika is the “prison house of nations”, if our aim is to weaken it from the inside, if revolutionary nationalism is viable then this isn’t just a path for New Afrikans it’s for us all, even European-settlers if they commit class-suicide. New Afrika isn’t just descendants of Afrika. It’s a scattered and potentially solidified nation with all sorts of “ethnicities”, and too, anyone can be a New Afrikan; shaming people ’cause they’re not “Black” enough or not at all is bourgeois bullshit. Someone like the Euro-Amerikan teacher Rachel Dolezal shouldn’t have been discarded like trash if she lied about her ethnicity; that could be corrected by self-criticism but if she consciously was willing to fight for the liberation of “New Afrika” then she’s a “New Afrikan” it’s that fucken simple. But we all need to wrestle with these contradictions here in the heart of empire.

A better example than Rachel Dolezal is Yuri Kochiyama, who was actually a citizen of the Republic of New Afrika (RNA), joining at its founding in 1968 along with a 17 year-old Mutulu Shakur. Kochiyama was a close comrade of el Hajj Malik el-Shabazz (Malcolm X when they met). As a child of Japanese descent she spent years in a U.$. concentration camp during WWII. The RNA continues to serve as a model for how to address oppression from within the empire. Armed with Maoism, revolutionary nationalism within the belly of the beast can lead us to a world with out racism.

<sup>Notes:
1. Nina Totenberg, 29 June 2023, Supreme Court guts affirmative action, effectively ending race-conscious admissions, NPR.
2. Bertrand Cooper, 19 June 2023, The Failure of Affirmative Action, The Atlantic.</sup>

For the past 30 years of my life I thought that I was somewhat assimilated into the urban culture simply because I vibe to rap music and grew up around Black folks.

But reality has hit me. I’m a racist white male. I’ve unconsciously struggled thru life with a white privilege card. And honestly, I’m disgusted with not only myself but also my white racist peers.

There is NO EXCUSE that it took me 30 years to realize the reality that I’m racist. But now that I have become conscious of my racist tendencies within me. I have reached out to multiple prison support groups/organizations (i.e. ATL/ABC,blackbird publishing, MIM, etc.) to educate myself and have been very fortunate to run into a revolutionary prisoner who makes it his duty to edify the ignorant racist white prisoners.

I know that right now a lot of people are scratching their head saying “is this dude serious”? But YES I’m serious and until we can admit our faults we cannot call ourselves revolutionaries. Just because you’re not screaming racist words or in some Aryan cult doesn’t mean you’re not racist. There are different kinds of racism.

• You have AVERSIVE racism, which means that even though you might not ‘hate’ black folks you still have tendencies to avoid black folks due to your uneasiness, fear, and disgust of them.

• You also have MODERN racism, that means you ignore that racism is even real. You’re so comfortable with the way the ‘ruling class’ wants to segregate us that you just go with the flow and became ignorant to the fact that humans just like us are being abused and oppressed just because of their skin color. I have to admit, this is what happened to me. Taking the easy way out in life.

Admitting to being racist is a bitter pill to swallow. Everything I thought I stood for stands on a shaky foundation. It’s hard to even look myself in the eye in my mirror now. I’ll break down knowing that I’ve allowed corruption and brainwashing to make me think I’m better than other humans just because of my skin color.

I speak to my fellow racist white peers, it dwells deep within you. It’s there. And embrace that. It’s time to start over and relearn the history you thought you knew, it’s artificial to hide the truth. That you’re not superior to NO ONE. It’s time to embrace the struggle. Because it’s time to truly struggle with ourselves.

Don’t just READ but STUDY revolutionary material and other books that have been written by people of color. Try to visualize the world as they see it and even though it is not humanly possible for a white person to feel the pain and the oppression that black folks have been subjected to for over 400 years. Try to feel their pain. I do it daily now. And one day I will not be racist. But it’s a hard road to travel. Trust me, cuz I’m on it. I won’t stop. I can’t stop. Too much blood has been shed due to this way of thinking. NO MORE EASY WAY OUT!

MIM(Prisons) responds: We welcome this self-criticism from a new subscriber. It is true that we must constantly be examining ourselves and how the oppressive system impacts the way we think and believe. As materialists, we understand we are products of our material conditions. As such, we should refrain from becoming self-flagellating in our examination of self (a religious approach to one’s faults that focuses on the self). It can be a painful and shocking experience as this comrade describes. But the resolution comes through better revolutionary practice in the anti-imperialist movement. We focus inward to better focus and act outward.

A USW comrade in New York sent a critique of the claim in Power to New Afrika that Malcolm X was not killed by racism:

“Is it then a coincidence that Blacks who seek Black power are killed/imprisoned by said”corrupt power structure" at a disproportionate rate than any other race… If white people kill/imprison Black people who seek Black power for themselves in order to maintain white power for themselves, what could this pattern be symbolic to other than anything but racism?"

Triumphant of United Struggle from Within responds:

No, it is not a coincidence, but neither is “racism” an exact description of the actual social, political, and economic components of Our national oppression. The State/power is going to kill/imprison, disproportionately, any and all threats or perceived threats, or perceived disposable populations. This is to preserve power, self-preservation of the status quote. In the period you’re speaking on when a large amount of Blacks who were imprisoned were politically active or politicized, the Black colony was the most actively radical populace in the empire. Therefore, its numbers in prison reflected such. In more recent times, and without the guidance of mass social-political movements, this would-be active elements have largely succumbed to criminality and gangsterism, a common thread in colonized population groups around the world. So to answer the second half of your above question, the other thing that the pattern could symbolize is common and routine government oppression, the wielding of power. It is what empire does to any historically oppressed and dynamic social force.

History shows that New Afrikans have been the key to opening social, economic, and political doors that have been shut in various times of Amerikan history. By being suppressed at the bottom of the social ladder, Our advancement, in its various forms, has always led to the advancement of the society as a whole, and due to the law of contradictions those advances that we often take for granted these days, have and will always come at a severe price. It will always come at a sacrifice, of mass struggle, and each time we’ve advanced despite it. It is the power structure’s role to maintain as much power and resources in its hands as possible, only conceding when forced or coerced to do so. That is another explanation of the phenomena you’ve mentioned.

Should oppressive exploitative power be evenly distributed against all and not disproportionately to one group? The power, again, represses those who resist, or threaten its power. This is irregardless of color. Case in point, during the high tide of revolutionary struggle, what made it a high tide? The same thing that has made recent years noteworthy, because all colors have been involved in struggle, one way or another. In the 1960s-70s era, there were a more or less proportionate number of PP/POW to the rate of participation by nationality. There were fewer Amerikan comrades, because Amerikans are the oppressor nation and not oppressed. However, all the groups that were active in the ways that most advanced Black revolutionaries were active were attacked and repressed the same. Many of them were co-defendants of each other.

I’m talking about: Marilyn Buck, Susan Rosenberg, Tim Blunk, Barbara and Jaan Laaman, David Gilbert, Richard Williams, Silvia Baraldini, Carol and Tom Manning, Oscar Lopez-Rivera, Alan Berkman, Jaime Delgado, Raymond Levasseur, Linda Evans, Laura Whitehorn, and many others.

We hurt ourselves by not sharing the full stories of those times. The BPP, BLA, RNA, SNCC, RAM, and others were not attacked and repressed because they were Black organizations. It wasn’t because they were Black political organizations. They were attacked because of the type of Black politics they organized around. The proof of this statement lies in the fact of people they worked with (Black, white, brown, male, female, heterosexual, non-heterosexual). These weren’t racial movements in the strict sense, and their actions show that for those who have eyes to see. Take an incident that gets a lot of hype, like Assata Shakur’s escape. The BLA did not liberate alone. In fact, those alleged to have been involved with it were majority non-Black. And they and their organizations were attacked, imprisoned, along with the Black revolutionaries they were in solidarity with.

My point? When people choose the revolutionary path and act it out, they become targets for repression and extinction, irregardless of color.

…Your notion that “white people imprison/kill Black people at disproportionate rates” is flawed and not in accordance with reality. Why? Because it is not white people who imprison/kill. In most cases it is representatives of the system (police, prosecutors, judges, jurors, C.O.s, etc) and in other cases it isn’t system reps at all. In fact, studies show we lose more Black lives to self-destruction than anything else. And since the early 1970s, colonialism has transitioned into neo-colonialism (mass integration into the social, political,economic and cultural apparatus of USA). So now when we talk about the system, or power structure, and other politicians are helping to invest in police forces in places like New York, Chicago, Houston, and elsewhere. Therefore the old notion of a simplistic black/white; white power/Black power worldview is overly simplistic and keeps us missing the mark in our analysis and in our subsequent practice in our organizing.

…You correctly say, “political power in all societal cases will always be the most efficient first step on a pathway to freedom for any race or people,” and because the power structure knows and agrees with this is why Malcolm and others were killed and/or jailed. And as far as you saying the power structure, despite their intentions “effected racism, by oppressing, exploiting and killing the futures and politics of the predominantly Black supporters he represented.” Now here is why we must really deconstruct “race” as a useful social construct in our spaces, because it confuses us as a people. What we’ve been bred to refer to as races are in actuality nations and nationalities of people who’ve developed organically and historically within the social realities of 400 years in North America. The assassination wasn’t merely to win the war for ideologies as you said, but to win, before it even began in earnest, the full scale actual war (of national liberation). These weren’t acts of racism, but much more! These were acts of national oppression, acts of warfare designed to do as you said, oppress, exploit, and kill the future of our politics. What is that then? Genocide? Colonial suppression/domination? National oppression designed to keep an oppressed and colonized social group in its place. This isn’t racism and calling it that limits our actions in correcting it. This is Warfare, the same war that began Black August 1619. It has always, despite intentions on either side, had the effect of national oppression. They implement the continued political, economic, social, and cultural inability to develop independently, or without being dictated to by the empire. Therefore, national liberation, is to enforce the opposite relationship, to dictate our own affairs. In other words, it isn’t a white/black thing, it’s a power struggle, hence the title, Power to New Afrika.

Re-Build

^Power to New Afrika is available for $3 to prisoners, or work trade through our Free Political Books Program, and free on our website.^