MIM(Prisons) is a cell of revolutionaries serving the oppressed masses inside U.$. prisons, guided by the communist ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
Under Lock & Key is a news service written by and for prisoners with a focus on what is going on behind bars throughout the United States. Under Lock & Key is available to U.S. prisoners for free through MIM(Prisons)'s Free Political Literature to Prisoners Program, by writing:
MIM(Prisons) PO Box 40799 San Francisco, CA 94140.
I’m responding to ULK 29,
“Less
Complaints, More Agitation and Perspective.” While most of the
position is on point, I believe that important considerations were left
out by both this comrade and MIM(Prisons)’s response.
I agree with the broad definition of political prisoners as announced in
MIM Theory 11: Amerikan Prisons on Trial (article “Political
Prisoners Revisited”) precisely because courts are maintained as a tool
of political oppression and inseparable from political oppression. Thus
the political component is inseparable from those who become further
oppressed by imprisonment. The hierarchy of society, cops, courts and
state is one of a functioning cadre in this country.
I also understand the distinctions this comrade makes between inmates,
convicts and the rest – an inmate is the prison version of the “sleeping
masses,” but whether or not these people recognize their oppression does
not determine whether they are oppressed. And we can’t forget that
distinctions such as inmate, convict, POW, PPOW, PP, PS, GP are
meaningless outside of the prison context, rendering these issues
inapplicable to society.
In terms of the bigger fight for prison revolutionaries, these labels
are also somewhat moot outside of a strategic context as well; everyone
will get the benefits brought about by revolutionary action or they will
simply be “washed away when the dam breaks.”
What was missed is part of a larger problem (largely analytical).
Whether one is or is not a political prisoner speaks directly to the
conditions which led to one becoming a member of their class (under the
broad definition), but not the class perception and what it means, nor
what to do as a member of that class. The political conditions of our
confinement being a given, our focus, especially insofar as making
revolution is concerned, should not be on whether or not one is a
political prisoner, but rather if one, as a prisoner, is political
(i.e. moved to political action). If we must distinguish between members
of the same class (i.e. prisoners), and to a certain extent we must in
order to accurately assess conditions on the ground, then let it be a
functional distinction which advances the revolution as a whole.
Subcategories of class must be used in such a way that it produces
knowledge, not conjecture. Even an “inmate” can be turned to use.
Further, people change and there’s no way to know the moment of
awakening of political consciousness in others without objective
observation. By assigning static labels and categories, we limit our
objectivity.
I wholeheartedly agree with this comrade: there are many tactics which
can be tailored to circumstance but the labor of these tactics is
necessarily dispersed to many people of differing skill sets and levels
of political awareness; some are dupes, others are not, some are
soldiers, others are tacticians and printers.
Finally, I believe a common mistake we all make as revolutionaries is to
become solipsistic. We forget that not everyone wants change or
revolution; some are satisfied with their condition. In prison or out,
this distinguishes one as counter-revolutionary. This distinction is
functional and applies to society without getting bogged down in
specific labels. It is part of the equation we must, as revolutionaries,
deal with, but in the end, revolution depends on maximizing our
resources, exploiting the weaknesses of our enemy and most important,
unification of the people.
Exodus And Reconstruction: Working-Class Women at the Heart Of
Globalization by Bromma Kersplebedeb, 2012
Available for $3 + shipping/handling from:
kersplebedeb CP
63560, CCCP Van Horne Montreal, Quebec Canada H3W 3H8
This zine is in the tradition of
Night
Vision by Butch Lee and Red Rover and other similar works from
the same publisher on class, gender and nation. Exodus and
Reconstruction: Working-Class Women at the Heart of Globalization
is short and by necessity speaks in generalizations, some of which are
more evidently true than others. It is definitely a worthwhile read for
anyone serious about global class analysis.
The main thesis of the essay is that starting around the 1990s there has
been a major upheaval of the countryside in the economic periphery that
has particularly affected biological wimmin, pushing them to migrate and
join the ranks of the urban proletariat. This reality has major
implications for the trajectory of imperialism as well as class
struggle. As the author points out, the backwards modes of production in
much of the world has provided a ready source of surplus value (s) due
to the low capital investment (c) and high labor component (v) of
production, the latter of which is the source of all profit. The
implication is that while providing a short-term benefit to imperialism
by bringing these large populations online in industry, this is
undercutting the rate of profit (expressed in the equation s/(c + v) ).
Not only that, but the domestic and agricultural labor that often falls
on the shoulders of wimmin is important in allowing for
super-exploitation of the historically male workers by allowing the
capitalists to pay less than they would need to pay single workers to
feed, clothe and house themselves. Without the masses living in
semi-feudal conditions, continued super-exploitation will threaten the
reproduction of the proletariat. In other words, more people will die of
starvation and lack of basic needs or wages will need to increase
reducing the superprofits enjoyed by people in the First World.
Another component of this phenomenon not mentioned by Bromma is that a
large portion of these workers being displaced from their land are from
formerly socialist China which had protected its people from capitalist
exploitation for decades. So in multiple ways, this is a new influx of
surplus value into the global system that prevented larger crisis from
the 1980s until recently.
The difference between MIM Thought and the ideology that is presented by
Bromma, Lee, Rover and others, is primarily in what strands of
oppression we recognize and how they separate out. Their line is a
version of class reductionism wrapped in gender. While others in this
camp (Sakai, Tani, Sera) focus on nation, they tend to agree with
Bromma’s ultra-left tendencies of putting class over nation. Their
approach stems from a righteous criticism of the neo-colonialism that
followed the national liberation struggles of the middle of the
twentieth century. But we do not see new conditions that have nullified
the Maoist theory of United Front between different class interests. It
is true that anti-imperialism cannot succeed in liberating a nation, and
will likely fall into old patriarchal ways, if there is not proletarian
leadership of this United Front and Maoism has always recognized that.
Yet
Mao
did not criticize Vietnamese revisionism during the U.$. invasion of
southeast Asia to preserve the United Front.(1) For anti-imperialists in
the militarist countries it is similarly important that we do not
cheerlead
the Condaleeza Rice/ Hillary Clinton gender line on occupied
Afghanistan. This is an explicit application of putting nation as
principal above gender. This does not mean that gender is not addressed
until after the socialist revolution as the rightest class reductionists
would say. Whether rightist or ultra-left, class reductionism divides
the united front against imperialism.
While Bromma puts class above nation, h also fails to distinguish
between gender and class as separate strands of oppression.(2)
Specifically, h definition of what is exploited labor is too broad in
that it mixes gender oppression with exploitation, based in class. The
whole thesis wants to replace the proletariat with wimmin, and
substantiate this through economics. While the “feminization” of work is
a real phenomenon with real implications, it does not make class and
gender interchangeable. And where this leads Bromma is to being very
divisive within the exploited nations along class and gender lines.
MIM Thought recognizes two fundamental contradictions in humyn society,
which divide along the lines of labor time (class) and leisure time
(gender).(3) We also recognize a third strand of oppression, nation,
which evolves from class and the globalization of capitalism. Bromma
argues that wimmin provide most of the world’s exploited labor, listing
sweatshops, agricultural work, birthing and raising children, housework
and caring for the sick and elderly. But working does not equal
exploitation. Exploitation is where capitalists extract surplus value
from the workers performing labor. There is no surplus value in caring
for the elderly, for example. In the rich countries this is a service
that one pays for but still there is no extraction of surplus value. The
distinction between service work and productive work is based on whether
surplus value is produced or not, not a moral judgement of whether the
work is important. The economic fact is that no surplus value is
exploited from a nurse working for a wage in the United $tates, just as
it is not exploited from a peasant caring for her family members in the
Third World. The Third World service workers are still part of the
proletariat, the exploited class, but they serve a supporting role in
the realization of surplus value in the service sector.
We think Bromma has reduced a diverse group of activities to exploited
labor time. Caring for the sick and elderly has no value to capitalism,
so there is no argument to be made for that being exploited labor. A
certain amount of housework and child raising must be performed to
reproduce the proletariat, so Marx would include this in the value of
labor power. The actual birthing of children is something that falls in
the realm of biology and not labor time. Economically, this would be
something that the capitalist must pay for (i.e. proper nutrition and
care for the pregnant womyn) rather than something that the capitalist
gains surplus value from. While MIM dismissed much of the biological
determinism based in child-birthing capability in gender oppression on
the basis of modern technology and society, we would still put this in
the gender realm and not class.(3)
In reducing all these activities to exploited labor, Bromma is
overstating the importance of housewives as sources of wealth for
capitalists. If anything the drive to move Third World wimmin into the
industrial proletariat indicates that more value is gained from wimmin
by having them play more traditional male roles in production in the
short term, ignoring the medium-term problem that this undercuts
super-exploitation as mentioned above.
The work of raising food and ensuring children survive are part of the
reproduction of the proletariat, which under normal conditions is payed
for by the capitalist through wages. When wages aren’t high enough to
feed a family and the womyn must do labor intensive food production to
subsidize the capitalist’s low wages, then we see super-exploitation of
the proletariat, where the whole family unit is part of that class even
if only the men go to the factories to work. So unremunerated labor
within the proletariat, even if it is divided up along gender lines, is
part of class. In extreme situations we might say that those forced to
stay home and do all the housework are slaves if they can’t leave. In
other situations we might see a whole segment of peasants that are
subsidizing a class of proletarian factory workers outside of the family
structure. Bromma generally implies that gender is an antagonistic class
contradiction. While there are contradictions there, h goes too far in
dividing the exploited masses who have the same basic class interests
opposing imperialism.
Like Bromma does, we too have addressed the situation we find ourselves
in where more reactionary, criminal, religious and patriarchal groups
are on the front lines of the anti-imperialist movement. Bromma explains
this as a result of class and gender interests of these groups. An
analysis that is parallel to our own of the rise of fascism in Germany
and Italy. Yet we cannot ignore the brutal repression of communism and
the promotion of ideologies like Islamic fundamentalism by the
imperialists in shaping our current reality. Egypt is a prime example
where brutal U.$. dictatorship repressed any socialist leaning political
organizing for decades while allowing for the formation of the Muslim
Brotherhood who then end up being the only viable option for a new
government when the people decide the old puppet Mubarak needed to get
out. The role of U.$. imperialism is principal here in forming the new
puppet regime and not the class or gender interests of those who won the
lottery of being chosen as the new puppets. You can find a minority in
any social group who can be bought off to work against their own group
without needing to explain it by class interests. On the other hand you
have bin Laden’s Al Qaeda, who also received CIA favoritism in opposing
social-imperialism and communism, but remained a principled
anti-imperialist force when the Amerikans took their stab at controlling
the Middle East. The Bromma line would have us lump these groups
together in the enemy camp of the bourgeoisie, while Maoists
differentiate between the compradors in Egypt and the bourgeois
nationalists who take up arms against the occupiers.
No movement is perfect. But Maoism did more to address gender oppression
than any other humyn practice since the emergence of the patriarchy.
Bromma fails to recognize these advancements in h condemnation of the
national liberation struggles that degenerated into neo-colonial and
patriarchal states. To fail to emulate and build upon the feminist
practice of socialism is a great disservice to the cause of gender
liberation.
Harry E. Vanden and Mark Becker editors and translators José Carlos
Mariátegui: an Anthology (Monthly Review Press, 2011), 480 pgs, $29.95
paperback
The recent growth spurt among the various Latin@ nations here in the
United $tates has begun to turn the spotlight on the various peoples and
movements within these nations. Although the Chican@ nation has long
resisted Amerikan occupation in various ways, the left wing of white
nationalism has, until recently, pretty much neglected any
acknowledgement of the Chican@ nation. Recently, with the help of an
upsurge in the war on Chican@s, with the state of Arizona spearheading
this war, some in the Amerikan left circles have begun to rediscover the
communist theory and struggles that have been coming out of Latin
America for about a hundred years. The new book José Carlos
Mariátegui: An Anthology adds to this budding interest in
revolutionary Latin@s. This book is a compilation of Mariátegui’s
writings.
José Carlos Mariátegui’s Life
Mariátegui was a Peruvian communist who upheld revolutionary nationalism
within the context of Marxist theory, but not in a mechanical way. He
developed a line based on the material conditions of Peru, and thus
Latin America, as most of Latin America was feudal or semi-feudal and
developing at roughly the same pace. And like Mao would later come to
say, Mariátegui believed Marxist thought should be undogmatic. In fact,
Mao was known to have read Mariátegui as well.
In a time when Marxists believed the peasantry to be a potential
revolutionary force, before Mao proved this theory to be true,
Mariátegui developed a groundbreaking theory of the role of peasants in
the revolution.
Mariátegui was born in the small town of Moguera, Peru on 14 July 1894.
Born in poverty and crippled as a child, Mariátegui began life in an
uphill battle. Like most people in Latin America, school was a luxury
Mariátegui could not afford and so he had to work with an elementary
school education in order to help contribute financially to his family.
At 15 he began work at La Prensa newspaper. He advanced from
copy boy to writing and editing. He soon learned to make a living as a
journalist while at the same time using this journalistic talent for
propaganda work.
Starting as a teenager, Mariátegui began to develop socialist ideas and
began writing about student rights and labor struggles. He and a friend
even founded two short-lived newspapers as teenagers, one called
Nuestra Epoca (Our Epoch) and La Razón (The Fault).
Although at this time Mariátegui had not developed the deep Marxist
theory he was later known for, it does show his early consciousness and
the beginning of his revolutionary thought in his articles. So much so
that in his early 20s he was sent in exile to Europe by the Peruvian
government and charged by the Peruvian dictator Agusto B. Luguia as an
“information agent.” This reminded me of how, in the United $tates, once
prisoners begin to develop and define their revolutionary thought, they
too are placed in “exile” – Security Housing Units.
It was while Mariátegui was in Europe that his study and thought
deepened and became socialist. His four years in Italy and France were
spent amidst the different communist groups active there at the time.
This was where he met many people who helped shape his growth. By the
time he returned to Peru in 1923 he had developed his political line
significantly.
One of the things that stands out about Mariátegui in reading his
anthology is that although he had a formal education only up to 8th
grade, he developed into a self-educated intellectual, but an
intellectual in sync with the most oppressed, an intellectual for the
people in contradiction to the bourgeois intellectuals. I thought this
was similar to many prisoners who, like Mariátegui, are often without a
“formal” education. I myself have never attended a high school and
instead educated myself in prison as an adult, seeing the importance of
education, especially in the realm of advancing my nation, as well as
the international communist movement more broadly. So I found this small
but significant aspect of Mariátegui really inspiring and I think other
prisoners will as well.
Mariátegui was confined to a wheelchair most of his adult life due to
illness. This “disability” was a hinderance to his goals of making
socialist revolution in Peru, but he endured; he overcame this burden
and found ways to continue onward. This too relates to the conditions of
the prisoner, as many may see being in prison as a hinderance to those
seeking to transform their nation, to advancing society. In a way it is,
however we must find ways to continue onward despite our challenges.
Back in Peru, Mariátegui launched the theoretical journal
Amauta. He then founded the biweekly periodical Labor
which sought to politicize the Peruvian working class, but was shut down
within a year by the Peruvian government. He also published two books in
his life and published numerous articles in many Peruvian periodicals.
One book, La Escena Contemporánea (The Contemporary Scene), was
a collection of articles he wrote for two Peruvian magazines. These
articles dealt with racism, socialism and events in Peru. While in his
second book, Siete Ensayos de Interpretación (Seven
Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality), he applied a Marxist analysis
to the social reality of Peru and thus Latin America.
Mariátegui’s theory and quantitative development soon turned to
qualitative development and practice and in 1928 he formed the Peruvian
Socialist Party (PSP), which was the forerunner of the Peruvian
Communist Party (PCP), which led a heroic people’s war in the 1980s and
1990s. Mariátegui was the first Secretary General of the PSP, which
would form a Marxist trade union and would participate in Communist
International-sponsored meetings. But Mariátegui’s above ground party
building actions were not exclusive to ‘legal organizing,’ he was also
involved in the Peruvian underground movement. Indeed he was a sharp
thorn in the side of the Peruvian government, having organized communist
cells throughout Peru. The government labeled him “subversive” and threw
him in prison many times – often with no charges though each time they
eventually released him. He faced political repression most of his
political life; surveilled and harassed by the state.
Much of his later organizing was in opposition to the U.$.-owned copper
mine at “Cerro de Pasco” where he often agitated strikes around working
conditions. Mariátegui died at age thirty six due to poor health.
Mariátegui’s Political Line
In Mariátegui’s piece “The Land Problem,” he gets at something that is
essential to any struggle, which is getting to the heart of a struggle,
to the kernel of contradiction. He states, in part in reference to the
contradictions surrounding Peru’s indigenous peoples:
“We are not content with demanding the Indian’s right to education,
culture, progress, love and heaven. We start by categorically demanding
their rights to land.”(pg 69)
This demand for land cuts to the heart of a people’s right. This is what
separates those seeking a “reformist approach” from those seeking a more
revolutionary approach. The same lesson can be gleaned by prisoners who,
in many parts of the United $tates, come to this crossroad where in any
struggle for prisoners’ rights those actively pushing the prison
movement forward MUST choose between reforms or real revolutionary
demands. In Mariátegui’s case he chose the more revolutionary approach –
the struggle to free the land.
This demand continues in all parts of the world in contradiction to the
capitalist practices of private ownership, monopolizing the land and
outright stealing of land from oppressed nations. To the people of the
world it is being established that Amerika’s right to colonize and
oppress has expired! The iron hold of capitalist tradition has been
broken in the minds of many of the oppressed and time is running out for
the imperialists!
In “The Land Problem,” Mariátegui describes the error that most people
fell into in analyzing Peru in his time. Most mechanically attempted to
apply methods used in a capitalist society to Peru’s semi-feudal
economy. As he describes, Peru during this time was a “gamonalism”
society, which was a share cropper society where the indigenous of Peru
would work the land of a large land owner in return for a portion of the
harvest. But due to the abuse of the colonizers, the Incan peoples saw
gamonalism as a punishment, and so methods of building the
infrastructure were also seen as forms of gamonalism even though
pre-colonial Incans always have collectively worked on building roads or
waterways. This was once a duty, simply a part of life, but under the
semi-feudal existence these projects were seen by the Incan people as
more abuse brought on by gamonalism and this goes to the heart of
Mariátegui’s line on how Peruvians cannot mechanically apply the Marxist
analysis that paved the way in Europe to Peru or Latin America for that
matter, as social conditions were much different and so a Marxist
analysis had to be created that was specific to Latin America.(pg 115)
Peru experienced the destruction of social forms through the
colonization process. But this colonialism fertilized the birth of a
nation. The development of the new economic relation breathed new life
into the people’s resistance. This new development was behind Peru’s
independence revolution with Spain, it was a natural development that
can be seen worldwide. It simply validates the laws of contradiction.
Mariátegui saw the distinct concrete conditions in Latin America but he
understood that the peoples victory in Latin America was but a step
toward a bigger picture. He wrote:
“In this America of small revolutions, the same word, revolution,
frequently lends itself to misunderstanding. We have to reclaim it
rigorously and intransigently. We have to restore its strict and exact
meaning. The Latin American revolution will be nothing more and nothing
less than a stage, a phase of the world revolution. It will simply and
clearly be a socialist revolution. Add all the adjectives you want to
this word according to a particular case: ‘anti-imperialist’,
‘agrarian’, ‘national-revolutionary,’ socialism supposes, precedes and
includes all of them.”(pg 128)
And so although Mariátegui fought for and developed a line for his
nation he still kept the broader movement for world revolution as his
compass. This is very important for those of us of the internal
semi-colonies to understand that it is not just ok but necessary for us
to struggle for and develop a political line for our distinct conditions
living here in the belly of the beast and under the heel of the
super-parasite. But at the same time we must keep the bigger picture in
mind, the world movement as a compass, and grasp that liberating our
nations is only the first stage in what we are ultimately struggling
for.
On nationalism Mariátegui writes:
“The nationalism of the European nations … is reactionary and
anti-socialist. But the nationalism of the colonial peoples – yes,
economically colonial, although they boast of their political autonomy –
has a totally different origin and impulse. In these people, nationalism
is revolutionary and therefore ends in socialism.”(pg 175)
Mariátegui wrote these words in 1927 so this was even before Mao wrote,
“thus in wars of national liberation patriotism is applied
internationalism”(1) in 1938. And just like Mao, Mariátegui believed
that nationalism from the oppressed nations was revolutionary and true
internationalism. But the Amerikan crypto-Trotskyites today disagree
with Mao and Mariátegui on this, mainly because agreeing with them on
this would undermine the white privilege enjoyed by them and their
allies.
Mariátegui was in fact not just aware but correctly analyzed what was
taking place around the world during this time, particularly in China.
Indeed, he criticized the Chinese Kuomingtang and upheld “Chinese
socialism” during this time, which was the budding movement that Mao was
involved with. In a polemic on China he wrote:
“And I will be content with advising him that he direct his gaze to
China where the nationalist movement of the Kuomingtang gets its most
vigorous impulse from Chinese socialism.”(pg 175)
It is refreshing to see Mariátegui, from the Third World and under
intense state repression, was able to grasp the concrete conditions and
political development taking place internationally, especially in China
when he had already seen Mao’s camp as the correct line even before
Mao’s line was victorious in liberating China.
Disagreements with Mariátegui
One problem of line is what Mariátegui calls “Inca socialism.” In his
analysis the ancient Incas lived in what he describes as Inca socialism.
There are many things wrong with this. For one, the Incas, like the
other pre-Columbian societies of what is referred to as “Latin America,”
such as the more widely known societies like the Aztecs and Mayans,
lived in communal societies. But these societies had many facets of
privilege and even caste-like systems with everything from kings,
priests, priestesses, laborers and slaves. Indeed, most of these larger
societies like the Aztec, Mayan and Inca’s operated on tribute systems
where essentially the surrounding tribes that were dominated by these
larger groups basically payed rent to these groups, they were taxed or
they were slaughtered. So this was in no way “socialism.” Sprinkled
throughout his writings Mariátegui refers to a pre-Columbian “Inca
Socialism” and even declares its previous existence in the Peruvian
Socialist Party’s 9 point programs – which he himself drafted. Point 6
states:
“Socialism finds the same elements of a solution to the land question in
the livelihoods of communities, as it does in large agricultural
enterprises. In areas where the presence of the yanaconazco(2)
sharecropping system or small landholdings require keeping individual
management, the solution will be the exploitation of land by small
farmers, while at the same time moving toward the collective management
of agriculture in areas where this type of exploitation prevails. But
this, like the stimulation that freely provides for the resurgence of
indigenous peoples, the creative manifestation of its forces and native
spirit does not mean at all a romantic and anti-historical trend of
reconstructing or resurrecting Inca socialism which corresponded to
historical conditions completely by passed, and which remains only as a
favorable factor in a perfectly scientific production technique, that is
the habits of cooperation and socialism of indigenous peasants.
Socialism presupposes the technique, the science, the capitalist stage.
It cannot permit any setbacks in the realization of the achievements of
modern civilization but on the contrary it must methodically accelerate
the incorporation of these achievements into national life.”
We must be grounded in materialism and approach reality how it is, not
how we wish it to be. To refer to pre-Columbian societies in Latin
America as “socialist” is an ultra-left deviation and thus our line
becomes contaminated along with our potential for victory. The fact that
Mariátegui wrote this in his party’s program reveals how much he
believed this to be true, and so there was some error in his line.
Furthermore, Mariátegui attempts to weld events in Europe with events in
the Americas and says in a university lecture: “A period of revolution
in Europe will be a period of revolution in the Americas.”(pg 297) Of
course world events spark arousal in the international communist
movement, but to assume or claim revolution will mirror Europe or
anywhere else despite material conditions is to succumb to pragmatism.
Anyone interested in the birth of Marxism in Latin America will find
this book fulfilling. It takes you from Peru’s indigenous anti-colonial
uprisings to an analysis of indigenous peoples in Peru, to early
proletarian organizing, the Peruvian pre-party, propaganda work, the
creation of the first socialist party, and the creation of workers
federations. It gives a complete picture of the ideas of Mariátegui, who
declared himself a Marxist-Leninist, and had he lived to see the
advances of Maoism would no doubt have raised its banner in Peru as
well.
The class and nation interests of prison guards lead them to mistreat
and not value the lives of prisoners in the United $tates.
A paper published this week challenges the psychological conception of
“conformity bias” that evolved from the Stanford Prison Experiment by
Zimbardo and the Teacher/Learner experiment by Milgram.(1) The paper
makes connections to recent work on the oppression carried out by Nazis
in Hitler’s Germany, and generally concludes that people’s willingness
to hurt or oppress others in such situations is “less about people
blindly conforming to orders than about getting people to believe in the
importance of what they are doing.”
In the Stanford Prison Experiment (1971) students were assigned roles as
guards and prisoners in a simulation, and soon both groups took on the
typical behaviors of those roles, with the guards treating the prisoners
so harshly that the experiment was stopped early. MIM(Prisons) has used
this as an example that oppression is systematic and that we can’t fix
things by hiring the right guards, rather we must change the system. In
ULK 19, another comrade referred to it in a discussion of how
people
are conditioned to behave in prisons.(2) The more deterministic
conclusion that people take from this is that people will behave badly
in order to conform to expectations. The Milgram experiment (1963)
involved participants who were the “teacher” being strongly encouraged
to apply faked electric shocks to “learners” who answered questions
incorrectly. The conclusion here was that humyns will follow orders
blindly rather than think for themselves about whether what they are
doing is right.
“This may have been the defense they relied upon when seeking to
minimize their culpability [31], but evidence suggests that
functionaries like Eichmann had a very good understanding of what they
were doing and took pride in the energy and application that they
brought to their work.(1)
The analysis in this recent paper is more amenable to a class analysis
of society. As the authors point out, it is well-established that
Germans, like Adolf Eichmann, enthusiastically participated in the Nazi
regime, and it is MIM(Prisons)’s assessment that there is a class and
nation perspective that allowed Germans to see what they were doing as
good for them and their people.
While our analysis of the Stanford Prison Experiment has lent itself to
promoting the need for systematic change, the psychology that came out
of it did not. The “conformity bias” concept backs up the great leader
theory of history where figures like Hitler and Stalin were all-powerful
and all-knowing and the millions of people who supported them were
mindless robots. This theory obviously discourages an analysis of
conditions and the social forces interacting in and changing those
conditions. In contrast, we see the more recent psychological theory in
this paper as friendly to a sociological analysis that includes class
and nation.
As most of our readers will be quick to recognize, prison guards in real
life often do their thing with great enthusiasm. And those guards who
don’t believe prisoners need to be beaten to create order don’t treat
them poorly. Clearly the different behaviors are a conscious choice
based on the individual’s beliefs, as the authors of this paper would
likely agree. There is a strong national and class component to who goes
to prison and who works in prisons, and this helps justify the more
oppressive approach in the minds of prison staff. Despite being superior
to the original conclusions made, this recent paper is limited within
the realm of psychology itself and therefore fails to provide an
explanation for behaviors of groups of people with different standings
in society.
We also should not limit our analysis to prison guards and cops who are
just the obvious examples of the problem of the oppressor nation. Ward
Churchill recalled the name of Eichmann in his infamous piece on the
2001 attack on the World Trade Center to reference those who worked in
the twin towers. Like those Amerikans, Adolf Eichmann wasn’t an
assassin, but a bureaucrat, who was willing to make decisions that led
to the deaths of millions of people. Churchill wrote:
“Recourse to ‘ignorance’ – a derivative, after all, of the word ‘ignore’
– counts as less than an excuse among this relatively well-educated
elite. To the extent that any of them were unaware of the costs and
consequences to others of what they were involved in – and in many cases
excelling at – it was because of their absolute refusal to see.”(3)
The authors of the recent paper stress that the carrying out of
something like the Nazis did in Germany required passionate creativity
to excel and to recruit others who believed in what they were doing. It
is what we call the subjective factor in social change. Germany was
facing objective conditions of economic hardship due to having lost
their colonies in WWI, but it took the subjective developments of
National Socialism to create the movement that transformed much of the
world. That’s why our comrade who wrote on psychology and conditioning
was correct to stress knowledge to counteract the institutionalized
oppression prisoners face.(2) Transforming the subjective factor, the
consciousness of humyn beings, is much more complicated than an inherent
need to conform or obey orders. Periods of great change in history help
demonstrate the dynamic element of group consciousness that is much more
flexible than deterministic psychology would have us believe. This is
why psychology can never really predict humyn behavior. It is by
studying class, nation, gender and other group interests that we can
both predict and shift the course of history.
It is with great pleasure that we announce a new release that
MIM(Prisons) is adding to the labor aristocracy section of our must-read
list. Divided World Divided Class by Zak Cope contributes
up-to-date economic analysis and new historical analysis to the MIM line
on the labor aristocracy. I actually flipped through the bibliography
before reading the book and was instantly intrigued at the works cited,
which included all of the classic sources that MIM has discussed in the
past as well as newer material MIM(Prisons) has been reviewing for our
own work.
The Labor Aristocracy Canon
Before addressing this new book, let me first put it in the context of
our existing must-read materials on the labor aristocracy, which has
long been the issue that the Maoist Internationalist Movement
differentiated itself on. MIM(Prisons) recently assembled an
introductory study pack on this topic, featuring material from
MIM
Theory 1: A White Proletariat? (1992) and
Monkey
Smashes Heaven #1 (2011). We still recommend this pack as the
starting point for most prisoners, as it is both cheaper to acquire and
easier to understand than Cope’s book and other material on the list.
Settlers:
The Mythology of the White Proletariat by J. Sakai is a classic
book documenting the history of Amerika as an oppressor nation whose
class nature has always been bourgeois. It is for those interested in
Amerikan history in more detail, and particularly the history of the
national contradiction in the United $tates. While acknowledging Sakai’s
thesis, Cope actually expands the analysis to a global scale, which
leads to a greater focus on Britain in much of the book as the leading
imperialist power, later surpassed by Amerika. This complete picture is
developed by Cope in a theory-rich analysis, weaving many sources
together to present his thesis. HW Edwards’s
Labor
Aristocracy: Mass Base of Social Democracy is a less cohesive
attempt at a similar approach that is almost half a century old. Edwards
is wishy-washy on the role of First World “workers,” where Cope is not.
Edwards provides a number of good statistics and examples of his thesis,
but it is presented in a more haphazard way. That said, Labor
Aristocracy is still on our must-read list and we distribute it
with a study guide.
MIM went back to the labor aristocracy question in
MIM
Theory 10: The Labor Aristocracy. This issue built on MT
1 some, but primarily focuses on an in-depth look at the global
class analysis under imperialism by the COMINTERN. The importance of
this issue during WWII is often overlooked, and this essay gets deep
into the two-line struggle within the communist movement at the time. We
have a study pack on this piece as well.
The last work that we include in the canon is
Imperialism
and its Class Structure in 1997(ICS) by MC5 of the Maoist
Internationalist Movement. This book is most similar to Cope’s work,
with Cope seeming to borrow specific ideas and sources without ever
acknowledging MC5’s work. Since Cope is very generous in acknowledging
ideas he got from others, one suspects that there is a political
motivation behind ignoring the number one proponent of the position he
is trying to defend in his book. We think MC5 would see Cope’s work as a
compliment and a step forward for the scientific analysis, particularly
since Cope does not bring in anything to oppose the MIM line or to
confuse the issue. Cope’s book is very well researched and put together
as an original work, and we have no interest in defending intellectual
property.
The major new contribution in Cope’s book is the historical analysis of
the labor aristocracy in the context of the global system of
imperialism. He also does some original calculations to measure
superexploitation. His analysis of class, nation and modern events is
all found in contemporary Maoism. Cope seems to be walking a line of
upholding MIM Thought, while not dirtying his reputation with the MIM
name. This is seen in his discussion of nationalism, which is often a
dividing line between MIM Thought and the social democrats of academia.
Cope gives a very agreeable definition of nation, and even more
importantly, an analysis of its role and importance in the imperialist
system related to class divisions. Yet, he fails to cite Stalin in doing
so, while Maoists are honest about Stalin’s contributions on the
national question. So what we have is an excellent book on the labor
aristocracy that avoids other issues that are difficult for the
left-wing white nationalists to handle. In a way, this sanitized version
of what is already a very bitter pill for readers in the First World may
be useful to make this theory more available in an academic context. But
no serious communist can just ignore important questions around Stalin
and even the smaller, yet groundbreaking work of MIM itself.
MC5 or Cope?
For the rest of this review I will discuss Divided World in
relation to Imperialism and its Class Structure (ICS)
as they are parallel works. The above-mentioned sanitizing is evident in
the two books’ different approaches and definitions. Both attempt to
present the basics, before getting into some intense analysis later on.
Yet Cope sticks to discussing mostly Marx, with a healthy dose of
Lenin’s theory of imperialism without too much mention of the Soviet
Union, while MC5 cites the practice of Stalin and Mao as leaders of
socialist countries, as well as the contemporary pseudo-Maoists. It is a
connection to communist practice that makes ICS the better book
politically.
Cope’s work, by default, has the benefit of having more recent
statistics to use in part II for his economic analysis, though his
approach is very different from MC5’s anyway. Part III, which focuses on
debunking the myths promoted by the pseudo-Marxist apologists for high
wages in the First World, also has fresh statistics to use. MC5
addresses many ideological opponents throughout h book, but Cope’s
approach leaves us with a more concise reference in the way it lists the
main myths promoted by our opponents and then knocks them down with
basic facts.
MC5 spends more time addressing the ideas of specific authors who oppose
the MIM thesis, while Cope tends to stick to the general arguments
except when addressing authors such as Emmanuel who is an early
trail-blazer of MIM Thought, but said some things that Cope correctly
criticizes. Overall this provides for a more readable book, as the
reader can get lost trying to figure out what position MC5 is arguing
against when s/he refers to authors the reader has not read.
The model of imperialism that you get from each book is basically the
same. Both address unequal exchange and capital export as mechanisms for
transferring wealth to the First World. Both stress the structural basis
of these mechanisms in militarized borders, death squads, monopoly and
much higher concentrations of capital in the First World due to
primitive accumulation and reinforced by the mechanisms of continued
superexploitation.
While both authors take us through a series of numbers and calculations
to estimate the transfer of value in imperialism, MC5 does so in a way
that makes the class structure arguments more clearly. By focusing on
the proportions, MC5 leaves the revisionists looking silly trying to
explain how greater production per wage dollar in the Third World
coexists with supposedly lower rates of exploitation in the Third World.
Or how the larger unproductive sector in the First World can make
similar wages to the productive sector, while the productive sector in
the First World allegedly produces all the value to pay both sectors,
and profit rates and capital concentration between sectors remain equal.
Or if they acknowledge a great transfer of wealth from the Third World
to the First World, and it is not going to 99% of the population as they
claim, why is it not showing up in capital accumulation in those
countries? As MC5 points out, remembering these structural questions is
more important than the numbers.
Cope takes a numbers approach that ends with a transfer of $6.5 trillion
from the non-OECD countries to the OECD in 2009 when OECD profits were
$6.8 trillion. This leaves a small margin of theoretical exploitation of
the First World. He points out that using these numbers gives $500 of
profits per year per OECD worker compared to $18,571 per non-OECD
worker. So even that is pretty damning. But he goes on to explain why
the idea that OECD workers are exploited at all is pretty ridiculous by
talking about the percentage of unproductive labor in the First World,
an idea that MC5 stresses. Both authors make assumptions in their
calculations that are very generous to the First Worldist line, yet come
up with numbers showing huge transfers of wealth from the Third World to
the First World “workers.” Cope even uses OECD membership as the
dividing line, leading him to include countries like Mexico on the
exploiter side of the calculation. MC5, while a little less orthodox in
h calculations, came up with $6.8 trillion in superprofits going to the
non-capitalist class in the First World in 1993 (compared to Cope’s $0.3
trillion in surplus being exploited from them in 2009). As both authors
point out, they make the best of data that is not designed to answer
these kinds of questions as they try to tease out hidden transfers of
value.
Implications to our Practice
If Cope’s book helps bring acceptance to the reality of the labor
aristocracy in economic terms, there is still a major battle over what
it all means for revolutionaries. In MIM’s decades of struggle with the
revisionists on this question we have already seen parties move away
from a flat out rejection of the labor aristocracy thesis. Cope’s
conclusions on the labor aristocracy and fascism are well within the
lines of MIM Thought. But already Cope’s conclusions have been
criticized:
As mentioned in an earlier post, this kind of “third worldism”
represents the very chauvinism it claims to reject. To accept that there
is no point in making revolution at the centres of capitalism, and thus
to wait for the peripheries to make revolution for all of us, is to
abdicate revolutionary responsibility–it is to demand that people living
in the most exploited social contexts (as Cope’s theory proves) should
do the revolutionary work for the rest of us. (2)
Some see MIM Thought as ultra-leftist, and just plain old depressing for
its lack of populism. Practitioners of revolutionary science do not get
depressed when reality does not correspond to their wishes, but are
inspired by the power of the scientific method to understand and shape
phenomenon. But there is truth in this critique of Cope’s book due to
its disconnection from practice. A seemingly intentional approach to
appeal to academia has the result of tending towards defeatism.
When it comes to practice in the United $tates, the question of the
internal semi-colonies has always been primary for the revolutionary
struggle. Yet today, there is a much greater level of integration.
Cope’s conclusions have some interesting implications for this question.
On the one hand there is no anti-imperialist class struggle here “since
economic betterment for people in the rich countries is today
intrinsically dependent on imperialism”. (Cope, p. 304) Yet
assimilation is still prevented by the need for white supremacism to
rally Amerikans around defending imperialist oppression of other
peoples. Since national oppression will always translate into some
relative economic disadvantage, we may be witnessing the closest real
world example of national oppression that is independent of class. And
Cope argues that this will continue within U.$. borders because you
can’t educate racism away, you must destroy the social relations that
create it. (Cope, p. 6)
While Cope is explicitly non-partisan, MC5 provides a bit more guidance
in terms of what this all means for imposing a dictatorship of the
proletariat in a majority exploiter country, and how class struggle will
be affected after that dictatorship is imposed. MIM also gives the
explicit instruction that we do not support inter-imperialist rivalry or
protectionism. This becomes a bigger challenge to promote and enforce
among our allies in the united front against imperialism. Certainly,
promoting these books and other literature on the topic is one part of
that battle, but we will need other approaches to reach the masses who
are taken in by the social democrats who dominate our political arena as
well as their own potential material interests.
As long as would-be anti-imperialists in the First World ignore the
labor aristocracy question, they will keep banging their heads against
brick walls. It is only by accepting and studying it that we can begin
to make breakthroughs, and this is even true, though less immediately
so, in the Third World as Cope acknowledges (Cope, p. 214). Despite
works dating back over a hundred years discussing this theory of class
under imperialism, we are in the early stages of applying it to the
polarized conditions of advanced imperialism with the environmental
crisis and other contradictions that it brings with it.
For the past few decades California has been increasingly using control
units in the form of security housing units (SHUs) as a method of
control. These deprivation chambers are a major part of the state’s war
on the Chicano nation. Where prisons are used to enforce a slow genocide
on La Raza, to disrupt the family unit and implement an internment camp
by “legal” means, within prisons also lies the SHU which is equivalent
to the chopping block where rebellious slaves who resisted or escaped
would get limbs amputated as 1) punishment for resisting the oppressor
nation, 2) preventing the slave from making future attempts, and 3) to
inflict a psychological blow terrorizing the larger population to what
will happen to them should they choose the same path of resistance. So
too are the SHUs used in this manner on revolutionary or rebellious
prisoner who resist the state, for this opposition to the state we are
met with SHU which restricts our ability to resist and punishes us for
our refusal to obey our oppressor thus instilling a grave warning to the
prison masses of what will happen to them should they take the path of
resistance. This oppression has gone on for decades and has grown to
horrific proportions in recent years. Here in Pelican Bay SHU over a
thousand are tortured with solitary confinement alone. The living
conditions here have gone past punishment to the most vile cruelty
depriving us of the most basic human rights, it is a place where
sunlight is denied and health care is often used to extort incriminating
information from those being tortured in this house of horrors. It is a
place where prisoners have faced the most horrendous abuses like being
boiled in tubs of scalding water to being stripped down in underwear and
locked in an iron cage outside in the freezing raining winter morning.
These stories would be unbelievable had they not been documented in
court transcripts for all to see.
Chicanos are overwhelmingly the majority of those sent to SHU, it is the
identification of this war on Aztlán, this silent offensive that you
won’t read about in the bourgeois press or see on the corporate news
outlets but which we see, live and have analyzed for all to understand.
These developments led to the formation of the Chicano Prisoners
Revolutionary Committee (CPRC) in late 2011 here in Pelican Bay SHU. The
CPRC was created initially for the efforts taking place surrounding the
hunger strikes that swept U.$. prisons in 2011. It was within this
effort to analyze and lend a revolutionary perspective to the
developments surrounding human rights in prisons that CPRC gave birth to
the Brown Berets - prison chapter (BB-PC) on June 1, 2012.
The BB-PC was inspired by the original Brown Berets that arose in the
1960s and led the Chicano movement in harnessing the people in the
barrios with their many independent institutions from free health
clinics, child care, free food programs, schools, newspapers etc. We
draw from this legacy of serving the people and dig deeper in the
theoretical realm.
We do not answer to any other chapter nor does any other existing
chapter answer to us, we are an autonomous chapter which due to the
extreme repression in Amerikkka’s history operates underground within
U.$. prisons. Currently we are the first and only prison chapter in
Amerika but we expect many more chapters to develop in many other
prisons and states as Chican@s develop politically. We do not publish
the names of the BB-PC cadre; our chapter resides in Pelican Bay State
Prison.
The BB-PC is the Chicano cadre in U.$. prisons that works to transform
these pintas and our nation from our vantage point. We are taking the
concepts of community organizing and applying them to the pinta, thus
these concrete conditions we experience are very different than they are
for a chapter out in society and although our efforts are mostly prison
based and revolve around contradictions prisoners face on a daily basis
our main thrust of course lies in the Aztlán liberation movement. Our
ten point program guides us in that direction and allows us to remain in
active service of Chicano independence.
We welcome all imprisoned Latinos to partake in the Chicano struggle as
a liberated Aztlán will be a place where all Latinos are welcome to be
free from oppression.
The following is the BB-PC Ten Point Program:
We are Maoists We believe as Mao taught that class
struggle continues even under socialism, as a new bourgeoisie develops
as happened in the USSR after the death of Stalin in 1953 and after
Mao’s death in 1976. Mao advanced communism the furthest thus far in
world history and it will be through a Maoist program that we liberate
Aztlán.
We are an autonomous chapter We are a self governing
chapter that practices democratic centralism. We understand that because
of state repression we are more efficient as an autonomous chapter and
that as new chapters arise in other prisons across Amerika that they too
will be autonomous in each individual prison.
We want to build public opinion in prisons At this
stage the only struggle in Amerika is in the realm of ideas, we seek to
politicize the imprisoned Chicano nation through educating our gente on
all aspects of la lucha.
We want Raza unity As the largest Raza population in
Amerikan prisons the Chicano nation understands its responsibility to
maintain Pan-Latino unity and to educate all Raza on the current
repression we face. In the prisons within Aztlán, Raza endure
institutional oppression where Raza are overwhelmingly held in SHUs and
control units far more than any other of the oppressed. This offensive
is meant to neutralize us physically but particularly mentally. We will
stand with imprisoned Latinos and resist the oppressor nation as we have
done for 500 years and support the Boricua in their march toward
independence free from neocolonialism.
We stand in solidarity with all oppressed and Third World
prisoners. Today’s prisons are meant to dehumanize the
people and break our will to resist. The internal semi-colonies that are
captured and held in these concentration camps face much of the same
repression from the state, we understand that to better our living
conditions as prisoners it will depend on a united front of oppressed
prisoners for legal battles and other effort to obtain human rights in
prisons and we will cultivate this collaboration.
We are revolutionary nationalists We understand that
true internationalism is only possible when each nation is fully
liberated. We identify oppression in Amerika revolving around nation,
class and gender which enables imperialism to uphold power and we combat
these forms of oppression in our long march to national liberation.
Close the control units The SHUs and similar models
are designed to unleash population regroupment on the imprisoned Chicano
nation. It is well known that the most revolutionary elements of the
Chicano prison population are plucked from general population prisons
and sent to the SHU or other control units in an effort to isolate the
revolutionary vanguard from the prison masses, this isolation is then
used to torture Chicanos en masse through solitary confinement
and other psychological methods for years and decades.
We understand that this is done primarily to prevent the captive Chicano
revolutionaries from mobilizing our mass prison base. We see the control
units in Amerika as modern day concentration camps as we are sent to
those camps not for physical acts but for thought crimes, beliefs or
supposed beliefs that oppose the state. We work to overturn the use of
control units in every prison in Amerika.
Stop prisoner abuse. We are against oppression in
all it’s forms within prisons. This includes prisoners preying on
prisoners, abuse from the hands of guards, patriarchy or any abuse
physically or psychologically. In Amerika prisons are tools of
imperialism used to inflict terror on the internal semi-colonies out in
society and stifle any resistance to their war on poor people, having
experienced and identified the full onslaught of this offensive we take
it head on to combat all forms of abuse from the state or otherwise and
this includes combatting the state propaganda and tactics of pitting
prisoner against prisoner by political education so that prisoners
understand who the oppressor is.
Free all political prisoners. We not only see
political prisoners as those who were politically conscious out in
society and came to prison for acts of the movement, we go past that in
our analysis and also see SHU prisoners as overwhelmingly political
prisoners who are systematically tortured for their ideas or alleged
thoughts. We also see most prisoners in U.$. prisons as political
prisoners because living in imperialist amerika many of the “Crimes” and
criminal injustice system that we face is nothing more than national
oppression that is exercised in order to uphold the capitalist relations
of production and we work toward freeing the people.
We want a liberated socialist Aztlán. Our aim is
communism but we understand it will take many years for this to become
reality. At this stage we are working for Aztlán independence which will
only occur after the defeat of imperialism. We work toward a socialist
Aztlán where the peoples’ needs are met; things like land, bread,
education, health care and many more needs will be met and peoples’
power will be exercised in order to transform not just society but
prisons as well, to a more vibrant and just environment where all will
have an opportunity to grasp revolution and promote production. We will
transform these prisons ideologically in order to prepare the ground for
these developments as we serve the people.
Occupied America: A History of Chicanos 7th Edition by Rodolfo F
Acuña
A well read book in its 7th edition, “Occupied America” is a history
book for the Chican@ nation. This book has been a leading text for
Chican@ studies for decades. It is an in depth analysis of Chican@
history. It is also important to note that Occupied America was
one of the books banned in 2012 in Arizona and has since been a hot item
for the libro trafficantes (book traffickers) who have been defying
Arizona and smuggling this book back into Arizona and into the hands of
Chican@ youth.
It’s clear uncut content about Amerika’s treatment of Chican@s along
with accurate history of Chican@s rising up in resistance has Amerika
scrambling to censor this work.
Occupied America was first published in 1972, emerging from a
peak in national liberation struggles in the United $tates. In 1981 the
second edition was released and Acuña wrote in the preface:
The first edition of Occupied America followed the current
of the times, adopting the internal colonial model that was popular
during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The works of Frantz Fanon greatly
influenced the tone and direction of the book. Since then, just like the
Chicano movement itself, I have undergone dramatic changes. I have
reevaluated the internal colonial model and set it aside as a useful
paradigm relevant to the nineteenth century but not to the twentieth. …I
decided to return to the basics and collect historical data.
This quote would lead us to believe that we would have more unity with
the political line put forth in the first edition. Though more recent
editions will have more updated information, and would likely be more
valuable references for that reason. It seems that the changes between
editions 2 through 7 are mostly in factual content, with an attempt to
avoid polemics.
So what gets the white supremacists so disturbed about Occupied
America? I chose to find out and decided to read it again.
Acuña starts the 7th edition of his book in the pre-Columbian times when
civilization first started on this continent going back 50,000 years.
One learns of the Aztecs, Olmecs, Zapotecs, Mayans, Incas and other
natives. This naturally leads to the European invaders and the
beginnings of the forging of the Mexican and then the Chican@ nation.
With the Spanish occupation and genocide that soon followed their
arrival in North America, Acuña takes you through the social relations
of the natives at the hands of the church.
The quest for more gold and silver and thus the mines soon led to a
decimation of the native population and with this process came the
resistance. But there was development as well in the economic arena. In
the states that comprised “northern New Spain” at the time, like
California, the Spaniards had Mestizos and natives working and so these
oppressed peoples were, as Acuña explains on pg 33, the “vaqueros, soap
makers, tanners, shoemakers, carpenters, blacksmiths, bakers, cooks,
servants, pages, fishermen, farmers as well as a host of other
occupations.”
And so on the one hand the people were worked sometimes to death but on
the other hand they developed economically across the region, which is a
precursor to nationhood.
Acuña takes us into the Mexican revolution of 1810 when Mexico won its
independence from Spain which was a great event but didn’t bring
socialism to Mexican@s and so the exploitation would soon return. Acuña
explains the theft of Texas which was spearheaded by the white
supremacist Stephen Austin starting in the 1820s. This is where the 2nd
edition of the book opens up, leaving out the history above.
The myth of the Alamo is cleared up by Acuña on pg 41 where he states:
“Probably the most widely circulated story was that of the last stand of
the aging Davy Crocket, who fell ‘fighting like a tiger’ killing
Mexicans with his bare hands. The truth: seven of the defenders
surrendered, and Crockett was among them. The Mexican force executed
them, and, one man, Louis Rose, escaped.”
This book explains the myth of the oppressor nation propaganda that
consumes the “history books” we read in public schools.
The U.$. war on Mexico of 1848 is explained very well and one sees the
birth of the Chican@ nation in these pages. Along with this birth the
layers of state propaganda are peeled back and Acuña highlights the
resistance in the Chican@ nation, people like Juan “Cheno” Cantina,
Francisco “Chico” Barela and Gregorio Cortez are discussed and one sees
how they rose up in militias as revolutionary groups to fight yankee
imperialism.
Groups like Las Gorras Blancas (the white caps) came together to defend
the people with arms from white supremacy and oppression. In
Occupied America we read of the early Chican@ proletariat and
the militant Chican@-Mexican@ labor struggles. The ‘Plan of San Diego’
is discussed which was the basis of a revolutionary group that fought
the U.$. government in Texas around 1915 with the goal of establishing
an independent Chican@ nation, Black nation and First Nations upon
victory.
We also learn of how the Treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo was signed and
Amerika stole what is now called the “Southwest.” We learn that “the
depression” for Amerika was normal program for Chican@-Mexican@s. Our conditions did not change
and when the “New Deal” came post-depression and Amerikans were put to
work on public work projects, because Chican@-Mexican@s were not allowed to
participate in the “New Deal.” At the time of the New Deal, the
Communist International was criticizing social democracy in Europe as
social fascism for appealing to the labor aristocracy interests in line
with the rising fascist powers. In North America the fascist forces were
not well developed, but social democracy still served to benefit the
labor aristocracy to the exclusion of the oppressed nations.
The book explains the 1960s and the eruption of a new generation of
Chican@s that brought the Chican@ movement on the scene. All the Chican@
groups are discussed: Masa, Mecha, Brown Berets, Black Berets, Mayo,
Umas, Alianza, Crusade for Justice and many more. These fiery groups
along with the many Chican@ publications that are mentioned show the
times of this period and the heightened political consciousness in
Aztlan.
The “teatro campesino,” plays and improvised theater by and for
farmworkers out in the fields, showed that Chican@-Mexican@s taking on agribusiness added
to the times and Chican@ culture.
Although he provides tons of data and information on the entire history
of Chican@s, the colonization process, the early development of Chican@s
as a nation, and Chican@s resistance, where Acuña falls short is in this
book is in failing to point out a correct path forward on how Chican@s
should liberate ourselves. Oddly he only provides a short paragraph on
communism and only to discuss how the state blamed communists for
Chican@ activism. And so Acuña leads Chican@s to the edge of the cliff
but does not tell the people how to proceed and what will liberate us.
Aztlan will only be liberated in a socialist society, when socialist
revolution arrives we will finally taste freedoms. Any struggles short
of this will only lead to a bourgeois revolution and a continuation of
oppression, only under a new management, as happened to Mexico after the
Mexican revolution.
Learning one’s history is a necessary step towards liberation but once
we are conscious we must then grasp how to move forward and Occupied
America leaves this most important element out of the book.
Occupied America has been required reading in Chicano studies college
courses in many schools across the United $tates for many decades and
will continue in most schools for some time, it has a wealth of
information that will continue to awaken and educate Chican@ youth and
as a Chican@ historian Acuña has helped the nation in learning our
history. Anyone else who wants to learn about the development of
Chican@s will also enjoy this book. It is clear why the oppressor nation
is so scared of this book - because it’s truth!
This issue is going to production on the heels of the first countrywide
action engaged in by a yet-unknown number of members of the United Front
for Peace in Prisons (UFPP), representing many political, religious and
lumpen organizations and hailing from the prison systems of Nevada,
North Carolina, Florida, New York, California, Texas, Missouri,
Pennsylvania and the Federal system. Initially called for by UFPP
signatory SAMAEL, MIM(Prisons) promoted the call for the Day of
Solidarity on September 9 in our last issue of Under Lock &
Key as something we felt embodied what the united front is about.
In this issue we summarize what we know so far, but we expect to learn
more in the coming weeks and will continue to report on this important
action.
For our part, MIM(Prisons) made a strong effort back in July to directly
contact all other prison rights organizations and activists on the
outside to let them know about the Day of Solidarity. We also promoted
it generally online and handed out fliers with the five principles of
the UFPP on them at many events related to prisons and peace on the
streets. Other media outlets that promoted the call included the San
Francisco BayView Newspaper, anti-imperialism.com and NorthBay Uprising
Radio (89.5 KZCT in Vallejo, CA), which did an extensive interview with
a comrade about the day of solidarity, the united front and the prison
struggle in general. Other articles in this issue discuss some of the
repression
faced by prisoners and
MIM(Prisons)
leading up to the action.
All that said, the primary focus of the day was the organizing of
prisoners. To facilitate this we distributed updates to everyone
involved about the plans of other groups participating, similar to what
we did during the California strikes. One story we distributed from New
York was from a handwritten kite a comrade passed to another brother at
his facility: “Bro. - Please pay close attention to the article ‘Call
for Solidarity Demonstration September 9’ on page 3. Let me know what
you think. I’ve decided to fast on Sept 9th.” The response was written
on the same paper: “Yes I will fast on that day, it looks better when we
all go to chow but we just don’t eat. Thanks for that information.”
(This was what the 800 Attica comrades did on that day in 1971 in honor
of George Jackson’s murder.) The original organizers got this report and
adjusted their own plans to go to chow and dispose of meals as outlined
in their cheat sheet (see <a href=““Solidarity”>“Solidarity and
Peace Demonstration Builds, Guards Retaliate”). This cheat sheet was
passed on to the comrades in Florida whose report appears below, who
also adopted the tactic:
On 9 September 2012, at Everglades Correctional Institution in Florida,
individual members of The Blood Nation honored the soldiers of Attica by
doing one or more of the following: fasting, boycotting the
canteen/commissary, accepting chow hall trays and dumping them, and
explaining why. Also participating individually were one or more members
of the following groups (in alphabetical order): Black Gangsta
Disciples, Crip Nation, Insane Gangsta Disciples, Almighty Latin King
Queen Nation, Nation of Islam, Spanish Cobras, Shi’a Muslim Community,
and Sufi Community. My apologies to anyone I missed. It was a small step
at a spot with no history of unity, but even a single drop of water in a
dry glass makes it wet. Respect to those who made the sacrifice, those
who joined us midday, and those who expressed interest the day after.
I’m as human as anyone, but let’s TRY to remember who the enemy is!
Good work comrades! Seems like organizations in Florida are open to
solidarity as another comrade from that state reports: “Being that today
is September 9 and a day of solidarity and peace, all sorts of nations
(organizations) got together here in the rec yard and had a jailhouse
BBQ and lived in peace just for the day here at Cross City, Florida.”
Many of our supporters are suffering in long-term isolation, so the
opportunity for mass organizing is greatly limited. A report from
Missouri read:
Today is September 9, 2012. My comrade (my celly) and I are
participating in the mass stoppage of work and fast for our comrades who
fell in Attica. Although we are in Ad-Seg we have chosen to sacrifice:
no food, no [petty stuff], no arguing out the door, only working out
four times for one hour each time, reading, studying and talking
politics. For me fasting is something I do once a month, but today is
the first time I’ve worked out during my fast. My comrade is pushing me
and I’m not stopping. From midnight to midnight is how we’re moving.
This white comrade also reported that he received ULK 27
announcing the Day of Solidarity, while his Black comrade’s was
censored. They report this is a common form of discrimination in
Missouri.
Another great success occurred in Nevada where SAMAEL led the organizing
of a good cross-section of prisoners representing about 30% of the
population. Even if we get no other reports on the September 9 action,
we’d say it was a success just from these examples. But we know from the
list of states above that the day had much broader participation.
The progress represented by prisoners across the country acting in
solidarity as a class took place in the context of the many other
strikes and mass actions prisoners have led in the past year or more
that have built off of each other as
cipactli
writes about in “Prisoner Uprisings Foretell Growing Movement”. This
progress is exciting on the subjective level. And we can look at periods
of mass uprising to see what happens when times are “exciting.” They
tend to be crazy as well. People are confused, trying to figure things
out and the enemy is working hard to confuse them more and divide them.
So it is of the utmost importance that as the new prison movement
emerges that we take time to study questions of security and correct
leadership.
There is the question of security at the individual level, and how we
judge someone by putting politics in command, as discussed by PTT in
relation to
Richard
Aoki. In the belly of the beast, where there is so much wealth and
privilege, security at the group level is very tied up with our class
analysis. As our
Nevada
comrade points out in “Fighting Enemies in the Prison Movement”,
most people in this country will actively support imperialism without
directly getting a paycheck for it, and this is true for a portion of
the prison population as well.
One thing that sets communists apart from other revolutionary trends is
our stress on the importance of correct ideological leadership. Putting
politics in command can guide us in dealing with all challenges we face,
not just security. We recognize that the truth will come from mass
struggle, but that it will not always be recognized by the masses when
they see it because everyone needs to learn to think in a scientific way
first. In order to pick the best leadership, we must all be well-studied
to think scientifically about both history and our current conditions.
As we point out to the
comrade
who suspects we might be CIA, you should be able to judge the
correctness of ULK and to struggle with us where you think we
are wrong to decide whether the risk of subscribing is worth it.
Our comrade in
BORO
puts the September 9 Day of Solidarity in this context well when
s/he writes: “Through the lens of a dialectical-materialist, we must see
history as a never-ending stream of past events that gave and constantly
give birth to present realities. This chain of historical events is
constantly moving us forward into the ocean of endless possibilities. We
must use this view of a ‘living history’ as a source of defining who we
are and the direction we’re heading as a people.” (See “Black August and
Bloody September: Stand Up and Remember on September 9.”)
This September protest wasn’t just to spend a day sitting quietly
honoring the past; it was a time to learn from the past and apply
lessons to address our current conditions. The day was a success, but it
was only one step in developing a class-conscious prison movement that
can change conditions. In the coming weeks, we look forward to hearing
of more successes and accomplishments that organizers achieved on
September 9.
We hope that some of the articles in this issue can push forward among
the masses the question of recognizing correct leadership to avoid the
traps of the state and its sympathizers. For those who want to learn,
MIM(Prisons)’s
Serve the People Free Political Literature to Prisoners Program and
correspondence study groups operate year round, not just in August.
The “diversity” of the Olympics highlights the unity of imperialist
nations, while hiding their predatory role in other nations.
The 2012 London Olympics are almost upon us and the world waits, holds
their breath even, in anticipation of this most glorious of events which
will surely decide what country can lay claim to the best athletes bar
none.
But take a closer look and you’ll see that the Olympics are in all
actuality nothing more than bourgeois propaganda; a multifaceted
cultural and ideological weapon of the international bourgeoisie in
which they pretend that the world isn’t divided into oppressor and
oppressed nations. Through the institution of the Olympics the
international bourgeoisie seeks to make us believe that the entire humyn
species is all living in harmony as equal members of one big happy
family, and that the nations of the world co-exist peacefully as if all
are members of one big “global village” with the exception of some
“rogue states.” Nothing however could be further form the truth! Part of
that truth being that the Olympics are really just another synonym for
this “global village” construct, a construct used to white-wash reality.
The term and concept of what the petty-bourgeoisie ideologues have
deemed “global village” and what the big bourgeoisie have in turn
labeled more correctly as “globalization” can be more appropriately
elaborated and defined as “…a supra class, supranational and
universalist process of irresistible all around homogenization of the
world under the auspices of monopoly capitalism, through the
multilateral agencies (United Nations (UN), International Monetary Fund
(IMF), World Bank (WB/IBRD) and World Trade Organization (WTO)) and the
multinational or transnational firms and banks.”(1)
But this ain’t no nit-wit critique of the process of globalization per
the mythical “99%,” who aren’t 99% of anything but more like part of the
top 13% of the richest people in the world!(2) No, this is a critique of
the “global village” construct which has its origin rooted in
petty-bourgeois ideology just like the “99%,” and which is but a
rephrasing of that same process of “globalization” from the
international bourgeoisie, as if both the exploiters and exploited are
all in the global struggle for humynity together! But we communists know
this construct and its material reality by its original name:
imperialism!
As previously stated, the Olympics don’t just serve to gloss over
national and class contradictions on a global scale. They also serve as
an extension and propagation of bourgeois ideology a la “human nature,”
i.e. that always inherent drive to compete.
Indeed, the Olympics serve to keep both the masses of the world and the
more progressive wing of the enemy population distracted from the harsh
reality of imperialist society (as do professional sports in general).
The reality is that the imperialists are on a global rampage in which
they’re voraciously and ruthlessly raping and plundering the oppressed
people of the world and their national territories, i.e. Latin America,
Africa and Asia (the Third World). The lie that is the concept of the
“global village” exaggerates “…the coherence of the world capitalist
system to the point of glossing over the distinction of national modes
of production”(1) and its main proponents are in the oppressor states:
the industrialized and ethnologically developed countries, the First
World, principally the United $tates.
Furthermore, “globalization”/imperialism pretends that the dismantling
of national barriers to the operation of capital markets and finance
capital brings progress to the Third World or “developing economies”
whilst the idealistic and naive petty-bourgeoisie of both the
imperialist countries and the Third World believe it. But the truth of
the matter is that the “…counterproductive character of neocolonialism
is the result of imperialist financing for the overproduction of raw
materials and some manufactures for the consumption of the capitalist
countries and the upper classes in the underdeveloped countries since
the 70s.”(1)
On top of this, the popularization of the global village concept isn’t
just done by the bourgeoisie. This fake global concept is even
propagated by so-called “communists” principally in the First World thru
the guise of revisionist trickery!
On the one hand we have the barefaced bourgeoisie who uses these
concepts to deny Lenin’s formulation of imperialism and proletarian
revolution, saying that it belongs to the past and that the current
neocolonial system is a “post-imperialist phenomenon,” as if imperialism
and all its tools of oppression and exploitation have all but withered
away!
On the other hand we have the so-called and sometimes self-proclaimed
“Maoists” in the First World who are really nothing but
crypto-Trotskyists that spread the false notion, correctly criticized by
MIM, that “…the world proletarian revolution can only be the result of a
simplified struggle between a globally united monopoly bourgeoisie and
the world proletariat and that the total collapse of the unified
imperialism is impending despite the current state of the subjective
forces of the revolution in the world.”(1)
We must take the time to study and analyze the world around us and its
history thru the historical materialist perspective and from the point
of view of the oppressed and exploited Third World masses. We need to
look at the two great socialist projects of the 20th century. The first
was born from the First World War and strong proletarian leadership, and
the second was born of the Second World War and strong peasant backing
which gave further credence and elaboration to the importance of
national liberation and the correct theory that socialism can only be
accomplished one country at a time, of which the establishment of the
USSR should have proved to the muddle-headed. This study makes clear
that the global village/globalization concept that the bourgeoisie uses
to deceive the masses and the world is the same theory the revisionists
use to accomplish the aims of their bourgeois brethren.
So when you’re watching the Olympics this summer remember two things: 1)
The world isn’t one big happy family. It is divided into oppressor and
oppressed nations. This is the principal contradiction on a world scale,
while the fundamental contradiction on a world scale is the bourgeoisie
vs. the proletariat. The Olympics are nothing but the vain attempts of
the international bourgeoisie, and imperialist states to whom they are
bound, to cover up national and class contradictions and to white-wash
reality so that we will confuse the true prize of national liberation,
self-determination and complete emancipation from the imperialists for
gold medals. 2) Just as the global village construct of the
petty-bourgeoisie that dominates that class is a myth and a lie, so is
the global village thesis of the crypto-Trotskyists (simultaneous world
revolution) which they’ve specifically tailored to their purposes. It is
an ideological weapon of the revisionists used to fool the oppressed
nations within U.$. borders into believing that we need not seek
national liberation and self-determination for ourselves because
according to them all nationalism is bourgeois in essence and “the whole
world comes first!”
Lenin, Stalin and Mao all took clear positions on the national question
which was liberty at its core; so why can’t the First World
“communists”? Ask yourself this, go into deep thought, study the
question and you will be enlightened ten-fold.
As we convene our third congress, we approach our five year anniversary
as an organization. While members of MIM(Prisons) – and even more so USW
– have been in the prison movement for longer, we find this an opportune
milestone to reflect back on where the prison movement is at and how it
has developed.
In 2011 a series of hunger strikes in California made a great impact
countrywide. Many activists, from crypto-trots to anarchists to
reformists, rallied around this movement and continue to focus on prison
work as a result. While our predecessors in MIM saw the importance of
the prison movement decades ago, their foresight is proving more true
today as we begin to reach a critical mass of activity. It is now a hot
issue within the left wing of white nationalism, which is significant
because whites are not affected by the system extensively enough to call
it a true material interest.
This gradual development has been the result of two things: agitation
around the facts of the U.$. injustice system on the outside, and
prisoner organizing on the inside, both of which MIM and USW have been
diligently working on for decades. In the last year and a half, prisoner
organizing came to a head with the Georgia strike and the
California
hunger strikes, which were both coordinated on a statewide level.
While getting some mainstream and international attention, these events
rang particularly loud among the imprisoned, with a series of similar
actions still developing across the country (recently in Virginia,
Ohio,
Texas,
Illinois,
the federal supermax ADX, Limon in Colorado and a follow-up hunger
strike in Georgia).
Meanwhile, the agitational side of things came to a bit of a head with
the release of the book
The
New Jim Crow last year. This book has continued to get lots of play
from many different sectors of the political spectrum. And while in most
cases those promoting the book are amenable to the lackluster
conclusions, the organization of these facts into a book stand for
themselves. It requires a very biased viewpoint to read this book and
then turn around and deny the national oppression faced by the internal
semi-colonies through the U.$. injustice system. Therefore we think the
overall effect of this book will be both progressive and significant,
despite its limitations.
It is for these reasons that we see this as a moment to seize. When we
started five years ago we had the great fortune of building on the
legacy and existing prisoner support programs of MIM. The ideological
foundation that MIM gave us allowed us to focus our energies on more
practical questions of launching a new prison publication, building
support programs for comrades that are released, developing
correspondence political study programs, and launching a new website
that features the most comprehensive information on censorship, mail
rules, and abuses in prisons across this country.
With our infrastructure built and steadily running, we need to look at
ways to take advantage of the relative consciousness of prisoners right
now and the relative attention the U.$. population has on the prison
system. We have always said that without prisoners organized there is no
prison movement, so we see that as the principal prong of attack. Thus,
we are taking steps to improve the structure of United Struggle from
Within (USW), the mass organization for prisoners that was founded by
MIM and is now led by MIM(Prisons). Building on suggestions from some
leaders in USW, we have enacted a plan to form councils in states where
there are multiple active USW cells. Below we further explain an
organizational structure for our movement, so comrades know where they
fit in and how they should be relating to others.
As we saw during the California strikes, censorship increases, as do
other repressive measures, when organization expands. So as we step up
our efforts, we can expect the state to step up theirs. We will need
more support than ever from volunteers on the outside to do legal and
agitational work to keep the state faithful to their own laws and
regulations.
As big as those challenges are, the internal challenges will be even
greater hurdles for us to jump in the coming years. The recent large
mobilizations have begun to reveal what these challenges will be. And
there is much work to be done to identify, analyze and work to resolve
the contradictions within the prisoner population that allows for the
current conditions where the state dictates how these vast populations
of oppressed people interact with each other and live out their lives.
The prison movement that arose before the great prison boom that began
in the 1980s was a product of the national liberation struggles
occurring at the time. Today, the prison population is ten times as big,
while the political leadership on the outside is scarce. The prison
masses must guard against the great number of misleaders out there
opportunistically grabbing on to the issue of the day to promote
political goals that do not serve the oppressed people of the world.
Prisoners may need to step up to play the leading role this time around,
which will require looking inward. We must not only learn from the past,
but also build independent education programs to develop the skills of
comrades today to conduct their own analysis of the conditions that they
face. On top of that we must promote and develop an internationalist
worldview, to find answers and alliances in the oppressed nations around
the world, and remove the blinders that keep us only focused on Amerika.
There is no liberation to be found in Amerikanism. That Amerikans have
created a prison system that dwarfs all others in humyn history is just
one example of why.
So it is with cautious optimism that we approved the resolution below at
our recent congress. We think this plan addresses proposals submitted by
some USW leaders, and hope you all will work with us to make this an
effective structure.
Congress Resolution on USW Structure
MIM(Prisons) is initiating the creation of statewide councils within
United Struggle from Within (USW), the anti-imperialist mass
organization for prisoners. A council will be sanctioned when two or
more cells exist within a state that are recognized as active and
abiding by the standards of USW. MIM(Prisons) will facilitate these
councils, where the focus is on practical organizing around the needs of
the imprisoned lumpen in that state. As the U.$. prison system is
primarily organized by state, the councils will serve to develop and
address the specific needs and conditions within each state.
In the case where cells have identities other than “USW” we do not
require them to use that name. For example, the
Black
Order Revolutionary Organization, which self-identifies as a “New
Afrikan revolutionary movement,” may be invited to participate in a USW
statewide council. While USW itself does not favor the struggles of any
oppressed nation over another, as a movement we recognize the usefulness
and importance of nation-specific organizing. In the prison environment
there may be lines that cannot be crossed in current conditions which
limit the membership of a group. As long as these cells exhibit true
internationalism and anti-imperialism they may possess dual membership
in USW by joining a statewide council.
With this proposal we are expanding the structure of our movement. We
recognize two main pillars to the ideological leadership of our movement
at this time. One being the MIM(Prisons) cell, and the other being the
Under Lock & Key writers group, which is made up of USW
members and led by and facilitated by MIM(Prisons). The statewide
councils should look to these two groups for ideological guidance in
their organizing work, mainly through the pages of Under Lock &
Key. In contrast, the councils’ main function will be in practical
work directly serving the interests of the imprisoned lumpen. They will
serve to coordinate the organizing work of scattered USW cells in a more
unified way across the state.
MIM(Prisons) will be initiating the California Council immediately, with
others to follow as conditions allow.