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.
Many people are caught up in the line that millions are enslaved in
this country, and that the main motivating factor behind the prison boom
of recent decades is to put prisoners to work to make money for
corporations or the government. MIM(Prisons) has clearly shown that
U.S.
prisons are not primarily (or even significantly) used to exploit
labor, and that they are a great cost financially to the
imperialists, not a source of profit.(1)
“Indeed, at peak use around 2002, fewer than 5,000 inmates were employed
by private firms, amounting to one-quarter of one per cent of the
carceral population. As for the roughly 8% of convicts who toil for
state and federal industries under lock, they are ‘employed’ at a loss
to correctional authorities in spite of massive subsidies, guaranteed
sales to a captive market of public administrations, and exceedingly low
wages (averaging well under a dollar an hour).”(2)
Instead, we argue that there is a system of population control
(including all the elements of the international definition of genocide)
that utilizes methods of torture on mostly New Afrikan and Latino men,
with a hugely disproportionate representation of First Nation men as
well, across this country on a daily basis. As the new prison movement
grows and gains attention in the mainstream, it is of utmost importance
that we maintain the focus on this truth and not let the white
nationalists define what is ultimately a struggle of the oppressed
nations.
To analyze why the term “prison industrial complex” (“PIC”) is
inaccurate and misleading, let’s look at some common slogans of the
social democrats, who dominate the white nationalist left. First let’s
address the slogan “Welfare not Warfare.” This slogan is a false
dichotomy, where the sloganeer lacks an understanding of imperialism and
militarism.
It is no coincidence that the biggest “welfare states” in the world
today are imperialist countries. Imperialism brings home more profits by
going to war to steal resources, discipline labor, and force economic
policies and business contracts on other nations. And militarism is the
cultural and political product of that fact. The “military industrial
complex” was created when private industry teamed up with the U.$.
government to meet their mutual interests as imperialists. Industry got
the contracts from the government, with guaranteed profits built in, and
the government got the weapons they needed to keep money flowing into
the United $tates by oppressing other nations. This concentration of
wealth produces the high wages and advanced infrastructure that the
Amerikan people benefit from, not to mention the tax money that is made
available for welfare programs. So it is ignorant for activists to claim
that they are being impoverished by the imperialists’ wars as is implied
by the false dichotomy of welfare vs. warfare.
Another slogan of the social democrats which speaks to why they are so
eager to condemn the “PIC” is “Schools not Jails.” This slogan
highlights that there is only so much tax money in a state available to
fund either schools, jails, or something else. There is a limited amount
of money because extracting more taxes would increase class conflict
between the state and the labor aristocracy. This battle is real, and it
is a battle between different public service unions of the labor
aristocracy. The “Schools not Jails” slogan is the rallying cry of one
side of that battle among the labor aristocrats.
Unlike militarism, there is not an imperialist profit interest behind
favoring jails over schools. This is precisely why the concept of a
“PIC” is a fantasy. While the U.$. economy would likely collapse without
the spending that goes into weapons-related industries, Loïc Wacquant
points out that the soft drink industry in the United $tates is almost
twice as big as prison industries, and prison industries are a mere 0.5%
of the gross domestic product.(2) Compared to the military industrial
complex, which is 10% of U.$. GDP, the prison system is obviously not a
“complex” combining state and private interests that cannot be
dismantled without dire consequences to imperialism.(3) And of course,
even those pushing the “PIC” line must admit that over 95% of prisons in
this country are publicly owned and run.(4)
Federal agencies using the prison system to control social elements that
they see as a threat to imperialism is the motivating factor for the
injustice system, not an imperialist drive for profits. Yet the system
is largely decentralized and built on the
interests
of the majority of Amerikans at the local level, and not just the
labor unions and small businesses that benefit directly from spending on
prisons. We would likely not have the imprisonment rates that we have
today without pressure from the so-called “middle class.”
Some in the white nationalist left at times appears to dissent from
other Amerikans on the need for more prisons and more cops. At the root
of both sides’ line is the belief that the majority of Amerikans are
exploited by the system, while the greedy corporations benefit. With
this line, it is easy to accept that prisons are about profit, just like
everything else, and the prison boom can be blamed on the corporations’
greed.
In reality the prison boom is directly related to the demands of the
Amerikan people for “tough on crime” politicians. Amerikans have forced
the criminal injustice system to become the tool of white hysteria. The
imperialists have made great strides in integrating the internal
semi-colonies financially, yet the white nation demands that these
populations be controlled and excluded from their national heritage.
There are many examples of the government trying to shut down prisons
and other cost-saving measures that would have shrunk the prison system,
where labor unions fought them tooth and nail.(1) It is this continued
legacy of national oppression, exposed in great detail in the book
The
New Jim Crow, that is covered up by the term “Prison Industrial
Complex.” The cover-up continues no matter how much these
pseudo-Marxists lament the great injustices suffered by Black and Brown
people at the hands of the “PIC.”
This unfortunate term has been popularized in the Amerikan left by a
number of pseudo-Marxist theorists who are behind some of the popular
prison activist groups on the outside. By explicitly rejecting this
term, we are drawing a clear line between us and the organizations these
activists are behind, many of whom we’ve worked with in one way or
another. For the most part, the organizations themselves do not claim
any Marxist influence or even a particular class analysis, but the
leaders of these groups are very aware of where they disagree with MIM
Thought. It is important that the masses are aware of this disagreement
as well.
It is for these reasons that MIM(Prisons) passed the following policy at
our 2012 congress:
The term “Prison Industrial Complex (PIC)” will not generally be used in
Under Lock & Key because the term conflicts with
MIM(Prisons)’s line on the economic and national make up of the U.$.
prison system. It will only be printed in a context where the meaning of
the term is stated by the author, and either criticized by them or by
us.
My writing will not analyze Black Nationalism per se, rather it aims to
address the “national question” itself. My position comes from a Chicano
perspective, which I hope adds to the theoretical sauce surrounding the
idea of national liberation and the development of the oppressed nations
ideologically, whether they be from the Brown, Black or Red Nations here
in the United $tates. In the contemporary prisoner, one sees an
awakening to truth and meaning amidst a state offensive to deprive
millions of humyn dignity and freedom. The roundups, ICE raids and
fascist laws (reinforced with putting the data of millions of oppressed
across the U.$. into the state intelligence files preparing for future
revolt and repression) has added to the swirl of these times for people
to become politicized, and prisoners are no exception.
The struggle in the ideological arena is just as vital as that with the
rifle, and perhaps more difficult. Out in society – where people have
more social influences – ideas, experiences and thought can bring more
diverse views into the sphere of theory. Often times the prison
environment, in its concentrated form and social makeup, has more
limited ideological influences. This is a trap that prisoners should
guard against in developing a political line. There will always be
ideological “yes people” in prisons, especially amongst one’s own circle
of friends or comrades. This could also be said of the limited contacts
in the outside world that most prisoners have.
The “national question” is one that is not exclusive to the Black
Nation; it is something that Raza and others are wrangling with as well.
My critiques here are related to the national question in the United
$tates in general, and not specific to the Black Belt Thesis (BBT) that
Rashid addresses in his article.
In the section titled “The Black Belt Thesis and the New Class
Configuration of the New Afrikan Nation,” Rashid describes comrade J.V.
Stalin on the national question as follows:
The [Black Belt Thesis] was based on comrade J.V. Stalin’s analysis of
the national question as essentially a peasant question. Unlike the
analysis put forward by Lenin, and more fully developed by Mao, Stalin’s
analysis limited the national question to essentially a peasantry’s
struggle for the land they labored on geographically defined by their
having a common language, history, culture and economic life together.
Hence the slogan “Free the Land!” and “Land to the Tiller!”
Just to be clear, J.V. Stalin defined a “nation” as follows:
A nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people,
formed on the basis of language, territory, economic life, and
psychological make-up manifested in a common culture.”(1)
This definition continues to stand as what defines a nation today and to
deny this is simply a deviation. Comrade Lenin was not alive to see the
development of the anti-colonial struggles and thus in his view
oppressed nations could not be victorious on their own accord, but
Stalin taught us differently. At the same time Stalin also stated that
should a people no longer meet any of these criteria of a nation then
they are no longer a nation.
In this section, Rashid refers to a “Great Migration” of Blacks out of
the rural south and across the United $tates, which he uses, or seems to
use, as justification for not having “need of pursuing a struggle to
achieve a New Afrikan nation state, we have achieved the historical
results of bourgeois democracy…” Just because a people migrate across
the continent does not negate a national territory so long as a large
concentration remains in the national territory. For example, if the
Mohawk nation continues to reside in the northeast but a significant
portion of their population spread out “across America” and become urban
dwellers, their nation remains in the Northeast no matter how much they
wish to be Oregonians or Alaskans. But what really seemed grating in
this section was the last paragraph, which reads:
To complete the liberal democratic revolution and move forward to
socialist reconstruction the proletariat must lead the struggle which is
stifled by the increasingly anti-democratic, fascistic and reactionary
bourgeoisie. The bourgeois are no longer capable of playing a
progressive role in history.
First, the proletariat in its original sense for the most part does not
exist in the United $tates. In addition, the Trotskyite approach of
relying on the Amerikan “working class” is a waste of time. Amerikan
workers are not a revolutionary vehicle - they are not exploited when
they are amongst the highest paid workers in the world. How can those
seeking higher pay for more or bigger plasma TVs and SUVs be relied upon
to give all that up for “socialist construction”? And my view does not
come unsupported by the ideological framework that Rashid claims to
represent. Engels wrote to Marx in 1858:
The English proletariat is actually 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
alongside the bourgeoisie. For a nation which exploits the whole world
this is of course to a certain extent justifiable.(2)
So even back in Marx and Engels’s day the English proletariat was
already bourgeoisified. Imperialism has developed far more since 1858,
further concentrating the wealth disparity between the oppressor and
oppressed nations globally.
In the section titled “The Revolutionary Advantages of Our Proletarian
National Character,” the idea is put forth of “building a multi-ethnic,
multi-racial socialist America.” Although I am not opposed to
multi-ethnic organizing, I also don’t negate the usefulness of
single-nation parties. One has to analyze the concrete conditions in the
United $tates. The historical development of the social forces may not
agree with this approach, and just because it may have worked in some
countries it may not apply to this country. It obviously didn’t apply to
South Africa, another settler state. In Azania the Pan Africanist
Congress seemed to forward the struggle more than other groups, in
particular the integrationist African National Congress that took power
and changed little for Azanians. Huey Newton himself understood this,
thus the
Black
Panther Party was a single nationality party, with internationalist
politics. Of course, at some point things will change, but the
advancement of imperialism and a long lineage of white supremacy and
privilege remains a hurdle still too huge for real multi-ethnic
organizing advancements at this time in the United $tates.
In the section “Separation, Integration or Revolution,” what is put
forward for liberation is to overthrow “imperialism and play a leading
role in the global proletarian revolution and socialist reconstruction.”
This, Rashid states, is “our path to liberation.” This smacks of First
World chauvinism. The International Communist Movement (ICM) will always
be led by the Third World proletariat. The ICM is dominated by the Third
World and our voice in the First World is just that, a voice, that will
help advance the global struggle, not lead. The idea of First World
leadership of the ICM is classic Trotskyism.
In the section “Reassessing the National Liberation Question,” in
speaking of past national liberation struggles, Rashid points to them
having an “unattainable” goal. Yet countries like Vietnam, northern
Korea, as well as Cuba come to mind as being successful in their
national liberation struggles. [China is the prime example of liberating
itself from imperialism and capitalism through socialist revolution. Of
course, Huey Newton himself eventually dismissed China’s achieving of
true national liberation in his theory of “intercommunalism” that the
NABPP-PC upholds - Editor]
Rashid goes on to say, “Even if we did manage to reconstitute ourselves
as a territorial nation in the”Black Belt,” we would only join the ranks
of imperialist dominated Third World nations – and with the imperialist
U.S. right on our border.” Here it seems the idealist proposition is
being put forward that an oppressed nation could possibly liberate
itself to the point of secession while U.$. imperialism is still
breathing. So long as U.$. imperialism is still in power, no internal
oppressed nation will emancipate itself. So the thought of the
imperialists being on one’s border will not be a problem as at that
point in the struggle for national liberation imperialism will be on no
one’s border.
In this same section, Rashid quotes Amilcar Cabral, who posed the
question of whether national liberation was an imperialist creation in
many African countries. Now we should understand that the imperialists
will use any country, ideology or leader if allowed (Ghadaffi found this
out the hard way most recently) but we should not believe that the
people are not smart enough to free themselves when oppressed. The white
supremacists put forward a line that Jews are in an international
conspiracy creating revolution and communism. These conspiracy theorists
look for any reason to suggest that the people cannot come to the
conclusion to decolonize themselves.
Later in this section the question is asked if the “proponents of the
BBT expect whites in the ‘Black Belt’ to passively concede the territory
and leave?”
I’m not a proponent of the Black Belt Thesis, but speaking in regard to
national liberation I can answer this question quite clearly. As this
writer alludes to, there may be a “white backlash.” But in any national
liberation struggle anywhere on the planet there is always a backlash
from those whose interests are threatened. When the oppressed nations
decide to liberate themselves in the United $tates the objective
position of the reactionaries will be to fight to uphold their white
privilege. This privilege relies heavily on the state and the culture of
white supremacy in Amerika. So their choice will be to support the
national liberation struggles, as real white revolutionaries will do, or
to side with imperialism. But there will be no sympathy for oppressors
in any national liberation struggle.
Asking the question of what do we expect whites to do is akin to asking
the revolutionary post-Civil War, when many were cut off from
parasitism, “well do you expect the people to stop exploiting ‘their’
field workers?” Do you expect Amerikan workers to stop being paid high
wages gained through the exploitation of the Third World? Do you expect
the pimp to stop pimping the prostitute? Do you expect the oppressor
nation to give up their national privilege? To all of the above I say if
it’s what the people decide, then YES!
Real white comrades not only will support the oppressed to obtain
liberation in a future revolution, but most do so in their work today,
even though they are a small minority compared to the larger Amerikan
population. By that time in the distant future hopefully more people
will have been educated and converted.
It is the task of conscious prisoners to develop a political line that
propels the imprisoned masses forward via concrete analysis, not just of
prison conditions, but of conditions outside these concentration camps
as well. Oppression in imperialism is a three-legged stool that includes
class, nation and gender. Thus we must develop our political line
according to these concrete conditions. Our line should be grounded in
reality. Our society is still very much segregated along class and
national lines, particularly in the fields of housing, education and
freedom.
Indeed, over half the people living within two miles of a hazardous
waste facility are Brown, Black or First Nations.(3) In many high
schools in the inner city Brown and Black youth are forced to share one
textbook for 3 or 4 students, while their parents are jailed
when they attempt to enroll their children in “better off” schools which
unsurprisingly are predominantly white.(4) The prisons are no different,
nor the “justice system.” Of the 700,000 who were reported to have been
stopped and frisked in New York City last year, 87% were Latinos and
Blacks even though whites make up 44% of New York City’s population.
When we develop a political line we must challenge it on a materialist
foundation in order to sharpen things up in a positive way, but it must
not be detached from reality. Only in this way will we identify what is
palpable in the realm of national liberation.
As Lenin said, “it is fine, it is necessary and important, to dream of
another or radically different and better world – while at the same time
we must infuse and inform our dreams with the most consistent,
systematic and comprehensive scientific outlook and method, communism,
and on that basis fight to bring those dreams into reality.”
MIM(Prisons) adds: The original article by Rashid is in response
to the New Afrikan Maoist Party and cites the Maoist Internationalist
Movement as another party promoting the Black Belt Thesis. While MIM
certainly never denounced the Black Belt Thesis, they recognized the
crumbling material basis for seeing it through in the post-Comintern
years that Rashid points to in his article. It is worth noting that more
recent statistics show the New Afrikan population since 1990 has
increased most in the South, where 55% of New Afrikans live today and
that in the Black Belt states a much higher percentage of the population
is New Afrikan than in the rest of the country.(5) MIM did publish an
interesting discussion of the
land
question for New Afrika as an example of a two line struggle in
2004. Ultimately the land question must be determined by two conditions
which we do not currently have: 1) a Black nation that has liberated
itself from imperialism, and 2) a forum for negotiating land division in
North America with other internal semi-colonies free from imperialist
intervention.
In his article, Rashid responds to our critique of his liquidating the
nationalist struggle in the book
Defying
the Tomb. In doing so he speaks of a Pan-Afrikan Nation, which is an
oxymoron completely liquidating the meaning of both terms.
Pan-Afrikanism is a recognition of the common interests of the various
oppressed nations of Africa, often extended to the African diaspora. You
cannot apply the Stalin quote given above to New Afrika and Pan
Afrikanism and consistently call both a nation.
But ultimately, as the USW comrade criticizes above, the liquidationism
is strongest in the NABPP-PC line on the progressive nature of the
Amerikan nation. It is this dividing line that makes it impossible for
our camps to see eye-to-eye and carry out a real two line struggle on
the question of New Afrikan land.
Among those in the United $tates who have consistently upheld the right
to self-determination of the internal semi-colonies, there has been some
questioning of the MIM line that the principal contradiction within the
United $tates is nation. With the degree of integration and buying off
of the oppressed nations that has occurred since the Black/Brown/Red
Power era some have questioned if the lumpen underclass are the only
real revolutionary force left in the internal semi-colonies. Others have
pointed to the level of wealth in the United $tates to dismiss the
potential for national liberation struggles within U.$. borders without
offering a new thesis on the principal contradiction. MIM(Prisons) has
entertained the integration question and the possibility of a growing
class contradiction across nation and will address both in more detail
in an upcoming book.
In this issue of Under Lock & Key we feature a number of
articles that demonstrate the dominant role that nationality plays in
how our world develops and changes. The history of MIM’s work with
prisoners comes from its understanding of the principal contradiction in
this country being between the oppressor white/Amerikan nation and the
oppressed internal semi-colonies (New Afrika, Aztlán, Boricua, countless
First Nations, etc.). It is through that work that it became clear that
the quickly expanding prison system of the time was the front lines of
the national struggle.
USW C-4 gets at this in h
review
of MIM Theory 11 where s/he discusses the need to launch “the new
prison movement in connection with the national liberation struggles
which have been repressed and stagnated by the oppressors with mass
incarceration.” Progress in our struggle against the injustice system is
progress towards re-establishing the powerful national liberation
struggles that it served to destroy in the first place. Any prison
movement not based politically in the right to self-determination of the
nations locked up cannot complete the process of ending the oppression
that we are combatting in the United $tates.
MIM(Prisons) focuses our mission around the imprisoned lumpen in general
whose material interests are united by class, even though the injustice
system is primarily about national oppression. Within the imprisoned
class, we see the white prison population having more to offer than the
white population in general for revolutionary organizing. Even
non-revolutionary white prisoners are potential allies in the material
struggles that we should be taking up today around issues like
censorship, long-term isolation, the right to associate/organize, access
to educational programs, a meaningful grievance process and
accountability of government employees in charge of over 2 million
imprisoned lives. Just as we must be looking to recruit oppressed nation
lumpen to the side of the world’s people to prevent them from playing
the role of the fascist foot soldier, this concern is even greater among
the white lumpen and is a question we should take seriously as our
comrade
in Oregon discusses inside.
In this issue we have the typical reports from both Black and Latino
comrades being labelled gang members and validated for their political
and cultural beliefs. This is nothing less than institutionalized
national oppression, which is at the heart of the
proposed
changes in the California validation system that are somehow
supposed to be a response to the complaints of the thousands of
prisoners who have been periodically going on food strike over the last
year.
While we support the day-to-day struggles that unite as many prisoners
as possible, we are clear that these are only short-term struggles and
stepping stones to our greater goals. The most advanced work comrades
can be doing is directly supporting and promoting revolutionary
nationalism and communism within disciplined organizations based in
scientific theory and practice. An example of a more advanced project is
a current USW study cell that is developing educational and agitational
materials around Chicano national liberation. Meanwhile, the United
Front for Peace in Prisons, while focused on mass organizations, is
laying the groundwork for the type of cross-nation unity that will be
needed to implement the Joint Dictatorship of the Proletariat of the
Oppressed Nations required to truly end imperialist oppression and
exploitation (see our 6
Points).
It is no coincidence that the word fascism comes up a number of
times in this issue focused on national struggles. In terms of the
principal contradiction between imperialist nations and the oppressed
nations they exploit, fascism is the imperialist nation’s reaction to
successful struggles of the oppressed nations; when the oppressed have
created a real crisis for imperialism; when Liberalism no longer works.
While fascism is defined by imperialism, being guided by imperialist
interests, it is the labor aristocracy in the imperialist countries that
form the main force for fascism.(1) Again, this breaks down to the
national question where oppressor nations and oppressed nations take up
opposite sides of the principal contradiction that defines the United
$tates as a phenomenon.
Rashid of the NABPP-PC suggests in his book
Defying
the Tomb, that “right-wing militias, survivalists and military
hobbyists” are “potential allies” who “have a serious beef with
imperialist monopoly capitalism.” In contrast, we recognize that the
principal contradiction that defines the imperialist system is between
the imperialist nations and the oppressed nations they exploit.
Amerikans calling for closed borders to preserve white power are the
epitome of what imperialism is about, despite their rhetoric against the
“bankers.” It is the same rhetoric that was used to rally the struggling
petty bourgeoisie around the Nazi party to preserve the German nation.
It is the same rhetoric that makes the anti-globalization and “99%”
movements potential breeding grounds for a new Amerikan fascism.
Recent events in Greece, France and elsewhere in Europe have shown this
to be the case in other imperialist countries, which are also dependent
on the exploitation of the Third World. While Greece, where the European
crisis is currently centered, cannot be described as an imperialist
power on its own, its close ties to Europe have the Greek people
convinced that they can regain prosperity without overthrowing
imperialism. Social democrats are gaining political power in the face of
austerity measures across Europe, while fascist parties are also gaining
popular support in those countries. Together they represent two sides of
the same coin, struggling to maintain their nation’s wealth at the
expense of others, which is why the Comintern called the social
democrats of their time “social fascists.” Austerity measures are the
problems of the labor aristocracy, not the proletariat who consistently
must live in austere conditions until they throw the yoke of imperialism
off of their necks.
The fragility of the European Union along national lines reinforces the
truth of Stalin’s definition of nation, and supports the thesis that
bourgeois internationalism bringing peace to the world is a pipe dream,
as MIM has pointed out.(2) On the contrary, the proletariat has an
interest in true internationalism. For the oppressed nations in the
United $tates bribery by the imperialists, both real and imagined, will
create more barriers to unity of the oppressed. So we have our work cut
out for us.
Looking to the Third World,
the
struggle of the Tuareg people in West Africa parallels in some ways
the questions we face in the United States around Aztlán, the Black Belt
and other national territories, in that their land does not correspond
with the boundaries of the nation-state that they find themselves in as
a result of their colonization. And the greater context of this struggle
and the relation of the Tuareg people to Ghaddafi’s Libya demonstrates
the potentially progressive nature of the national bourgeoisie, as
Ghaddafi was an enemy to U.$. imperialism primarily due to his efforts
at supporting Pan-Afrikanism within a capitalist framework.
Nationalism of the oppressed is the antithesis to the imperialist system
that depends on the control and exploitation of the oppressed. It is for
that reason that nationalism in the Third World, as well as nationalism
in the internal semi-colonies of the United $tates, are the primary
focus of anti-imperialist organizing. As long as we have imperialism, we
will have full prisons and trigger-happy police at home, and bloody wars
and brutal exploitation abroad. Countering Amerikan nationalism with
nationalism of the oppressed is the difference between entering a new
period of fascism and liberating humynity from imperialism.
It’s not for nothing that MIM dubbed the Amerikkkan prison system “the
primary tool of oppressor nation repression in the united $tate$,” and a
review of
MIM
Theory 11: Amerikkkan Prisons On Trial makes this point ever so
clear. Though this particular MIM Theory journal is dated
(1996), like all MTs its message is not. It still serves as a
good introduction to the Amerikan injustice system just as Lenin’s
Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism continues to serve
as an introductory foundation in political economy for those wanting to
study the thinly veiled intricacies of modern-day imperialism. One read
and you’ll see why Amerika, that “shining city on a hill,” is in all
actuality the prisonhouse of nations.
MT 11 is a must-read, not just for the political- and
class-conscious prisoner, but for all prisoners as a stepping stone on
the road to liberation and sure footing to understanding the exact
context of our imprisonment.
Beginning with the essay “Amerikan Fascism & Prisons,” MIM lays out
the only real fascist aspect in Amerikan society - the Amerikan prison
system. This work is indeed of exceptional relevance as MIM points to
the economic motivation behind fascism as well as to the white
petit-bourgeois element that breathes life into this most barbaric
expression of capitalist production and its anti-revolutionary mission
statement.
The article “Capital & State Join Hands In Private Prisons” further
elaborates on the thesis that fascism is not just alive and well within
the Amerikkkan prison system, but that it has been expanding since the
1980s in the private prison phenomenon, which is but the melding of
capital and the state in the growing war against the oppressed nations,
with the prerequisite and additional benefit of continuing to win over
the middle classes to their side by ensuring them an always available
form of employment.
“Prison Labor: Profits, Slavery & the State” then explains how the
possibility of open slavery can come back full force thru the
institution of the prisons as it was once manifested pre-Civil War. This
article also speaks of the important political functions the prison
system serves repressing in the national liberation movements and the
further indoctrination of the labor aristocracy with fascist ideology.
Nothing however drives home the colonial relation between Amerika and
the oppressed nations like the articles “Political Prisoners Revisited,”
“Political Prisoners & the Anti-Imperialist Struggle” and “Who Are
the Political Prisoners?”
“Political Prisoners Revisited” is a good example of the Maoist tenet of
unity-criticism-unity in which MIM explains the basics of their line
concerning prisoners in Amerika in a dialogue with the New Afrikan
Independence Movement. MIM argues that the term “political prisoners”
shouldn’t just be reserved for individuals such as Mumia Abu-Jamal or
Leonard Peltier, but is more appropriately and powerfully applied to all
prisoners. All prisoners currently incarcerated under the dictatorship
of the bourgeoisie are rightly so political prisoners because the “laws”
that we supposedly broke were laws specifically designed for the backing
of the backward illegitimate political agenda of the superstructure and
the settler state which it serves. To ignore or refute this point with
respect to the entire imprisoned population and instead deflect the
political aspect of this oppression to just a few individuals is not
just a victory for the bourgeoisie but is itself bourgeois in essence!
“Political Prisoners & the Anti-Imperialist Struggle” centers on the
antagonistic contradiction of Amerika vs. the oppressed nations that is
reflected thru the prison system. It focuses on the material basis
objectively present in the form of the gulag, and the material forces
already present therein. MIM discusses the dire need for leadership to
further help develop these potentially revolutionary forces to their
logical conclusion, or in MIM’s words: “to unite all who can be united
to smash imperialism and all its tools of oppression…”
MIM understood the process of rapid radicalization of “common criminals”
as a profoundly political one and in their agitation they emphasized
that process as reflecting the material basis for revolution as does
MIM(Prisons) and USW. Unity on this point is therefore essential to
re-launching the new prison movement in connection with the national
liberation struggles which have been repressed and stagnated by the
oppressors with mass incarceration.
Finally, “Who Are the Political Prisoners?” is a New York prisoner’s
contribution and advancement to the MIM line on political prisoners in
which s/he expounds MIM’s line in detail and in such a way as to leave
no doubt that the growth of the prison system within U.$. borders is not
just a boil, but a cancer on the oppressed nation internal semi-colonies
that needs to be mercilessly removed!
MT 11 also contains, among other things, an essay on Malcolm
X’s progressive development, a critique of Gandhi’s so-called
“non-violence” and pacifist strategy and tactics, as well as some good
theoretical works and revolutionary poetry.
For all these reasons combined, MIM Theory 11: Amerikkkan Prisons on
Trial gets four out of four red stars.
And so with that i end this review the same way the New York prisoner
ended his article:
Death and Destruction to the U.$. Empire! Birth and Construction to
the Prison Revolutionary Movement!
The Essential Stalin: Major Theoretical Writings, 1905-52 Edited with
an introduction by Bruce Franklin
“…Stalin is clearly one of the three most important historical figures
of our century, his thought and deeds still affecting our daily lives,
considered by hundreds of millions today as one of the leading political
theorists of any time, his very name a strongly emotional household name
throughout the world.” - Bruce Franklin
These above mentioned words are as true today as they were when they
were first written 40 years ago. The importance and relevance of
Stalin’s great theoretical works were at the core of the international
communist movement for damn near 90 years and should serve as a
rock-hard foundation for any persyn serious about wanting to re-ignite
the socialist fire that was ablaze for the greater part of the last
century.
As successful as the imperialists have been in vilifying not just the
world revolutionary movement but it’s once main proponent, they can
never completely succeed in wiping the memory or more importantly the
teachings and practice of J.V. Stalin from the minds of countless people
around the globe. Yet the imperialists and their quisling lackeys such
as Bob Avakian of
RCP=U$A
fame continue to desiccate Josef Stalin be it by “new”, “conclusive”,
“secret archive” evidence or by the “new synthesis” method of attack.
Therefore it is the duty of all the real revolutionaries to defend and
uphold the practice of Stalin not just because it is integral to the
successful practice of revolution as the people of Korea, Vietnam and
Peru can attest to but because to attack Stalin is to attack the theory
of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Mao as well; and the only way of doing this
is to (a) study Stalin’s works and (b) put it into practice! and we will
find that (c) without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary
movement as practice gropes in the dark unless it’s path is illuminated
by the most advanced revolutionary theory.
In my mission to learn the science of revolution I requested “The
Essential Stalin” from MIM Distributors and must say with great
certainty that my grasp of Marxism-Leniism-Maoism has been increased
ten-fold thanks to my acquiring and diligent study of this most valuable
Marxist-Leninist weapon of liberation. From the most intriguing
introduction which is packed with such hysterical data that reads like
the most vivid novel to “Marxism and the National Question”, J.V.
Stalin’s first major theoretical contribution to the oppressed people of
the world and to which any self-proclaimed revolutionary nationalist
would be remiss not to study, to the “Foundations of Leninism” in which
Stalin always the teacher clearly lays out not just the hysterical roots
of the first truly successful revolutionary ideology based on Marx &
Engels formulations which led to the worlds first socialist society, but
in which he clearly relayed to the Soviet Union that they would stay the
course set by Lenin; to “Dialectical and Historical Materialism” in
which he explained the rudiments of Marxist philosophy and which was
once considered required reading for all members of the Chinese
Communist Party or “Marxism and Linguistics” where Stalin in replying to
young communists properly put forward the place of language in the
revolutionary movement while simultaneously critiquing the dominant
Soviet “authorities,” i.e. revisionists, or “Economic Problems of
Socialism in the USSR”, Stalin’s criticism of “two extreme tendencies in
Soviet political economy, mechanical determinism and voluntarism” which
were propagated by the new bourgeois in the party who wished to cause
the disappearing of man in socialist production.
Surely after leading this communist jewel you will find as did I why it
was Mao himself who described Stalin as “the greatest genius of our
time” and labeled himself as disciple of Stalin.
Studying Stalin however isn’t always the easiest task and requires deep
thought. Rest assured however that by completely immersing yourself in
Stalin’s work and undertaking a painstaking study of it you will be
illuminated by the shining path put forward by comrade Stalin, and while
he wasn’t always the perfect communist for the Soviet Union, he was the
best they had and as a result the International Communist Movement
flourished.
MIM(Prisons) has six
cardinal principles, all of which we believe the Leading Light
Communist Organization (LLCO) upholds to the degree that we consider
them fraternal. As such, we distribute some of their better work, which
is likely why you are reading this review. LLCO is one of very few who
work within the legacy of the MIM to a significant degree.
This is our first review of the Leading Light Communist Organization by
that name, but the theoretical journal Monkey Smashes Heaven predates
the LLCO. We reviewed them in 2009 in
Maoism
Around Us and addressed them later that year in
What
is sectarianism?
The latter article criticized MSH’s nihilist approach to the struggles
that comrades from the Maoist Internationalist Party - Amerika went
through in their last days. Unfortunately, their sectarianism has only
increased since forming LLCO. In their 10 criteria set forth in the
beginning of MSH 1 for who they consider to be a communist, the
number one point is you must uphold their ideology called “Maoism-Third
Worldism”, now “Leading Light Communism.” This amounts to saying, “we
see you as fraternal if you think exactly like us.” Cardinal principles
should be a handful of the most important issues of the day that define
the communist movement. The expectation that the only correct political
organizations are those that share identical ideologies leads quickly to
the Trotskyist requirement that revolution must be led by a single
global organization imposing its will on all countries.
As we addressed already in “Maoism Around Us”, we do not recognize an
advancement of revolutionary science beyond Maoism as MSH claims Leading
Light Communism is. After reviewing MSH 1 and MSH 2,
MIM(Prisons) still fails to see the unique contributions that MSH/LLCO
claim to have made to constitute a new stage of revolutionary science.
They state this repeatedly in their journals, without explaining what
exactly distinguishes Leading Light Communism from Maoism.
The one partial explanation they do provide on p. 51 of MSH 1
is that they were the first to scientifically explain that there “is no
significant revolutionary class or socioeconomic group in the First
World.” MIM was the first to put together a lot of the theories on the
labor aristocracy into a coherent class analysis of the First World. Yet
even they acknowledged that the main points were not new to Lenin, and
even Engels had talked about the buying off of whole nations. LLCO has
written some interesting new articles on the subject, but has not
advanced the theoretical concepts in any way. Where LLCO disagrees with
MIM is on the question of internal semi-colonies being potentially
revolutionary in the First World. The buying off of internal
semi-colonies was most thoroughly addressed in MIM’s “On the Internal
Class Structure of the Internal Semi-Colonies” and recognized as early
as 1992 in MIM Theory 1. We have yet to see LLCO address this issue in
any detail. We have yet to see them explain the revolutionary
nationalism of just a couple generations ago and why it could not happen
again, or even surpass previous experiences. They simply dismiss the
possibility with no analysis or explanation.
While opportunistically presenting as the heir apparent to MIM on
Wikipedia, they almost never cite MIM or use MIM language except to
criticize MIM. In reading the first two print editions of their journal
LLCO takes similar approaches to the theoretical contributions of Marx,
Lenin and Mao. This takes their sectarianism to another level of
knocking down all of their predecessors as inadequate in the face of
their supposedly advanced analysis.
Finally, their sectarian thinking leads to a cultish approach to
organizing, rather than teaching people how to think and solve problems.
While always being sure to hype LLCO as the most advanced, they rarely
explain why. It is the job of the vanguard to raise the scientific
understanding of others through struggle, not to simply encourage them
to follow the leading light.
We won’t list all the things we agree with in the first two issues of
MSH here. The articles from MSH that we choose to distribute in our own
study packs can speak for themselves in how correct they are. We
generally agree with the content of those articles except for the points
above, and we distribute them because they add new insight into the
topics of study.
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander 2010, The New Press, New York
As a whole, this is a very useful book for anyone interested in
understanding the criminal injustice system. It is an excellent
aggregation of facts about every aspect of the system - incarceration,
policing, the drug war, the courts - making a scientific case that this
is really a system for social control of oppressed nations within U.$.
borders. Where Alexander falls short is in her analysis of how this fits
into society in the broader context. She doesn’t actually name national
oppression, though certainly this book is clear evidence for the
existence of something more than just an attitude of racism. She doesn’t
take on the question of why Amerikan capitalism would want such an
extensive system of prison social control. As a result, her solutions
are reformist at best.
Prisons as a Tool of National Oppression
Starting with the history of Amerikan prisons, Alexander explains how
the relatively low and stable incarceration rate in this country changed
after the civil rights movement which the government labeled criminal
and used as an excuse to “get tough on crime” and increase
incarceration.(p. 41) It was actually the revolutionary nationalist
movements of the 60s and 70s, most notably the Black Panther Party,
which terrified the Amerikan government and led to mass incarceration,
murder, brutality and infiltration to try to destroy these revolutionary
groups. Alexander’s failure to mention these movements is symptomatic of
a missing piece throughout the book - an understanding of the importance
of revolutionary nationalism.
This book does an excellent job exposing the war on drugs as a farce
that is only really concerned with social control. Although studies show
that the majority of drug users are white, 3/4 of people locked up for
drug crimes are Black or Latino.(p. 96) Further, statistics show that
violent crime rates are unrelated to imprisonment rates.(p. 99) So when
people say they are locking up “criminals” what they mean is they are
locking up people who Amerikan society has decided are “criminals” just
because of their nation of birth.
To her credit, Alexander does call out Nixon and his cronies for their
appeal to the white working class in the name of racism, under the guise
of law and order, because this group felt their privileges were
threatened.(p. 45) And she recognizes this underlying current of white
support for the criminal injustice system for a variety of reasons
related to what we call national privilege. But this book doesn’t spend
much time on the historical relations between the privileged white
nation and the oppressed nations. J. Sakai’s book Settlers: The
Mythology of the White Proletariat does a much better job of that.
Alexander argues that Amerikans, for the most part, oppose overt racial
bias. But instead we have developed a culture of covert bias that
substitutes words like “criminal” for “Black” and then discriminates
freely. This bias is what fuels the unequal policing, sentencing rates,
prison treatment, and life after release for Blacks and Latinos in
Amerika. Studies have shown that Amerikans (both Black and white) when
asked to identify or imagine a drug criminal overwhelmingly picture a
Black person.(p. 104) So although this is statistically inaccurate (they
should be picturing a white youth), this is the culture Amerika
condones. Even this thin veil over outright racism is a relatively new
development in Amerika’s long history as a pioneer in the ideology of
racism. (see
Labor
Aristocracy, Mass Base of Social Democracy by H.W. Edwards)
“More African American adults are under correctional control today - in
prison or jail, on probation or parole - than were enslaved in 1850, a
decade before the Civil War began.”(p. 175) It is this national
oppression that leads Alexander to draw the parallel that is the source
of the book’s title: prisons are the new Jim Crow. She recognizes that
prisons are not slavery, but that instead prisons are a legal way to
systematically oppress whole groups of people. While she focuses on
Blacks in this book she does note that the same conditions apply to
Latinos in this country.
The Role of the Police
Alexander addresses each aspect of the criminal injustice system,
demonstrating how it has developed into a tool to lock up Black and
Brown people. Starting with the police system she notes that the courts
have virtually eliminated Fourth Amendment protections against random
police searches, which has led to scatter shot searches. By sheer volume
yield some arrests.(p. 67) These searches are done at the discretion of
the police, who are free to discriminate in the neighborhoods they
choose to terrorize. This discretion has led to systematic searches of
people living in ghettos but no harassment of frat parties or suburban
homes and schools where statistics show the cops would actually have an
even better chance of finding drugs. In reality, when drug arrests
increase it is not a sign of increased drug activity, just an increase
in police activity.(p. 76)
Law enforcement agencies were encouraged to participate in the drug war
with huge financial incentives from the federal government as well as
equipment and training. This led to the militarization of the police in
the 1990s.(p. 74) Federal funding is directly linked to the number of
drug arrests that are made, and police were granted the right to keep
cash and assets seized in the drug war.(p. 77) These two factors
strongly rewarded police departments for their participation.
Asset seizure laws emphasize the lack of interest by the government and
police in imprisoning drug dealers or kingpins, despite drug war
propaganda claims to the contrary. Those with assets are allowed to buy
their freedom while small time users with few assets to trade are
subjected to lengthy prison terms. Alexander cites examples of payments
of $50k cutting an average of 6.3 years from a sentence in
Massachusetts.(p. 78)
Bias in the Courts
Taking on the court system, Alexander points out that most people are
not represented by adequate legal council, if they have a lawyer at all,
since the war on drugs has focused on poor people. And as a result, most
people end up pleading out rather than going to trial. The prosecution
is granted broad authority to charge people with whatever crimes they
like, and so they can make the list of charges appear to carry a long
sentence suggesting that someone would do well to accept a “lesser” plea
bargained deal, even if the likelihood of getting a conviction on some
of the charges is very low.
“The critical point is that thousands of people are swept into the
criminal justice system every year pursuant to the drug war without much
regard for their guilt or innocence. The police are allowed by the
courts to conduct fishing expeditions for drugs on streets and freeways
based on nothing more than a hunch. Homes may be searched for drugs
based on a tip from an unreliable, confidential informant who is trading
the information for money or to escape prison time. And once swept
inside the system, people are often denied attorneys or meaningful
representation and pressured into plea bargains by the threat of
unbelievably harsh sentences - sentences for minor drug crimes that are
higher than many countries impose on convicted murderers.”(p. 88)
After allowing discretion in areas that ensure biased arrests, trials
and sentences, the courts shut off any ability for people to challenge
inherent racial bias in the system. The Supreme Court ruled that there
must be overt statements by the prosecutor or jury to consider racial
bias under the constitution. But prosecutorial discretion leads to
disproportionate treatment of cases by race.
Further discretion in dismissing jurors, selective policing, and
sentencing all lead to systematically different treatment for Blacks and
Latinos relative to whites. This can be demonstrated easily enough with
a look at the numbers. Sophisticated studies controlling for all other
possible variables consistently show this bias. But a 2001 Supreme Court
ruling determined that racial profiling cases can only be initiated by
the government. “The legal rules adopted by the Supreme Court guarantee
that those who find themselves locked up and permanently locked out due
to the drug war are overwhelmingly black and brown.”(p. 136)
Release from Prison but a Lifetime of Oppression
This book goes beyond the system of incarceration to look at the impact
on prisoners who are released as well as on their families and
communities. Alexander paints a picture that is fundamentally
devastating to the Black community.
She outlines how housing discrimination against former felons prevents
them from getting Section 8 housing when this is a group most likely to
be in need of housing assistance. Public housing can reject applicants
based on arrests even if there was no conviction. This lack of
subsidized or publicly funded housing is compounded by the
unavailability of jobs to people convicted of crimes, as a common
question on job applications is used to reject these folks. “Nearly
one-third of young black men in the United States today are out of work.
The jobless rate for young black male dropouts, including those
incarcerated, is a staggering 65 percent.”(p. 149)
“Nationwide, nearly seven out of eight people living in high-poverty
urban areas are members of a minority group.”(p. 191) A standard
condition of parole is a promise not to associate with felons, a virtual
impossibility when released back into a community that is riddled with
former felons.
“Today a criminal freed from prison has scarcely more rights, and
arguably less respect, than a freed slave or a black person living
‘free’ in Mississippi at the height of Jim Crow. Those released from
prison on parole can be stopped and searched by the police for any
reason - or no reason at all - and returned to prison for the most minor
of infractions, such as failing to attend a meeting with a parole
officer. Even when released from the system’s formal control, the stigma
of criminality lingers. Police supervision, monitoring, and harassment
are facts of life not only for those labeled criminals, but for all
those who ‘look like’ criminals. Lynch mobs may be long gone, but the
threat of police violence is ever present…The ‘whites only’ signs may be
gone, but new signs have gone up - notices placed in job applications,
rental agreements, loan applications, forms for welfare benefits, school
applications, and petitions for licenses, informing the general public
that ‘felons’ are not wanted here. A criminal record today authorizes
precisely the forms of discrimination we supposedly left behind -
discrimination in employment, housing, education, public benefits, and
jury service. Those labeled criminals can even be denied the right to
vote.”(p. 138)
Alexander devotes a number of pages to the issue of voting and the
prohibition in all but two states on prisoners voting while incarcerated
for a felony offense, and the further denial of the vote to prisoners
released on parole. Some states even take away prisoners’ right to vote
for life. She is right that this is a fundamental point of
disenfranchisement, but Alexander suggests that “a large number of close
elections would have come out differently if felons had been allowed to
vote…”(p. 156) This may be true, but those differences would not have
had a significant impact on the politics in Amerika. This is because
elections
in an imperialist country are just an exercise in choosing between
figureheads. The supposedly more liberal Democrats like Clinton and
Obama
were the ones who expanded the criminal injustice system the most. So a
different imperialist winning an election would not change the system.
Oppressed Nation Culture
On the Amerikan culture and treatment of oppressed peoples Alexander
asks: “…are we wiling to demonize a population, declare a war against
them, and then stand back and heap shame and contempt upon them for
failing to behave like model citizens while under attack?”(p. 165) She
argues that the culture of the oppressed is an inevitable result of the
conditions faced by the oppressed. And in fact the creation of lumpen
organizations for support is a reasonable outcome.
“So herein lies the paradox and predicament of young black men labeled
criminals. A war has been declared on them, and they have been rounded
up for engaging in precisely the same crimes that go largely ignored in
middle and upper class white communities - possession and sale of
illegal drugs. For those residing in ghetto communities, employment is
scarce - often nonexistent. Schools located in ghetto communities more
closely resemble prisons than places of learning, creativity, or moral
development. …many fathers are in prison, and those who are ‘free’ bear
the prison label. They are often unable to provide for, or meaningfully
contribute to, a family. And we wonder, then, that many youth embrace
their stigmatized identity as a means of survival in this new caste
system? Should we be shocked when they turn to gangs or fellow inmates
for support when no viable family support structure exists? After all,
in many respects, they are simply doing what black people did during the
Jim Crow era - they are turning to each other for support and solace in
a society that despises them.
“Yet when these young people do what all severely stigmatized groups do
- try to cope by turning to each other and embracing their stigma in a
desperate effort to regain some measure of self esteem - we, as a
society, heap more shame and contempt upon them. We tell them their
friends are ‘no good’, that they will ‘amount to nothing,’ that they are
‘wasting their lives,’ and that ‘they’re nothing but criminals.’ We
condemn their baggy pants (a fashion trend that mimics prison-issue
pants) and the music that glorifies a life many feel they cannot avoid.
When we are done shaming them, we throw up our hands and then turn out
backs as they are carted off to jail.”(p167)
National Oppression
Alexander would do well to consider the difference between racism, an
attitude, and national oppression, a system inherent to imperialist
economics. Essentially she is describing national oppression when she
talks about systematic racism. But by missing this key concept,
Alexander is able to sidestep a discussion about national liberation
from imperialism.
“When the system of mass incarceration collapses (and if history is any
guide, it will), historians will undoubtedly look back and marvel that
such an extraordinarily comprehensive system of racialized social
control existed in the United States. How fascinating, they will likely
say, that a drug war was waged almost exclusively against poor people of
color - people already trapped in ghettos that lacked jobs and decent
schools. They were rounded up by the millions, packed away in prisons,
and when released they were stigmatized for life, denied the right to
vote, and ushered into a world of discrimination. Legally barred from
employment, housing, and welfare benefits - and saddled with thousands
of dollars of debt - the people were shamed and condemned for failing to
hold together their families. They were chastised for succumbing to
depression and anger, and blamed for landing back in prison. Historians
will likely wonder how we could describe the new caste system as a
system of crime control, when it is difficult to imagine a system better
designed to create - rather than prevent - crime.”(p. 170)
Alexander does an excellent job describing the system of national
oppression in the United $tates. She notes “One way of understanding our
current system of mass incarceration is to think of it as a birdcage
with a locked door. It is a set of structural arrangements that locks a
racially distinct group into a subordinate political, social and
economic position, effectively creating a second-class citizenship.
Those trapped within the system are not merely disadvantaged, in the
sense that they are competing on an unequal playing field or face
additional hurdles to political or economic success; rather, the system
itself is structured to lock them into a subordinate position.”(p. 180)
The book explains that the arrest and lock up of a few whites is just
part of the latest system of national oppression or “the New Jim Crow”:
“[T]he inclusion of some whites in the system of control is essential to
preserving the image of a colorblind criminal justice system and
maintaining our self-image as fair and unbiased people.”(p. 199)
One interesting conclusion by Alexander is the potential for mass
genocide inherent in the Amerikan prison system. There really is no need
for the poor Black workers in factories in this country any longer so
this population has truly become disposable and can be locked away en
masse without any negative impact to the capitalists (in fact there are
some positive impacts to these government subsidized
industries).(p. 208) It’s not a big leap from here to genocide.
Economics for Blacks have worsened even as they improved for whites. “As
unemployment rates sank to historically low levels in the late 1990s for
the general population, joblessness rates among non-college black men in
their twenties rose to their highest levels ever, propelled by
skyrocketing incarceration rates.”(p. 216) She points out poverty and
unemployment stats do not include people in prison. This could
underestimate the true jobless rate by as much as 24% for less-educated
black men.(p. 216)
Unfortunately, in her discussion of what she calls “structural racism”
Alexander falls short. She recognizes white privilege and the
reactionary attitudes of the white nation, acknowledging that “working
class” whites support both current and past racism, but she does not
investigate why this is so. Attempting to explain the systematic racism
in Amerikan society Alexander ignores national oppression and ends up
with a less than clear picture of the history and material basis of
white nation privilege and oppressed nation oppression within U.$.
borders. National oppression is the reason why these oppressive
institutions of slavery, Jim Crow, and imprisonment keep coming back in
different forms in the U.$., and national liberation is the only
solution.
How to Change the System
Alexander highlights the economic consequences of cutting prisons which
show the strong financial investment that Amerikans have overall in this
system: “If four out of five people were released from prison, far more
than a million people could lose their jobs.”(p. 218) This estimation
doesn’t include the private sector: private prisons, manufacturers of
police and guard weapons, etc.
To her credit, Alexander understands that small reformist attacks on the
criminal injustice system won’t put an end to the systematic oppression:
“A civil war had to be waged to end slavery; a mass movement was
necessary to bring a formal end to Jim Crow. Those who imagine that far
less is required to dismantle mass incarceration and build a new,
egalitarian racial consensus reflecting a compassionate rather than
punitive impulse towards poor people of color fail to appreciate the
distance between Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream and the ongoing racial
nightmare for those locked up and locked out of American
society.”(p. 223)
The problem with this analysis is that it fails to extrapolate what’s
really necessary to make change sufficient to create an egalitarian
society. In fact, these very examples demonstrate the ability of the
Amerikan imperialists to adapt and change their approach to national
oppression: slavery, Jim Crow, mass incarceration. Alexander seems to
see this when she talks about what will happen if the movement to end
mass incarceration doesn’t address race: “Inevitably a new system of
racialized social control will emerge - one that we cannot foresee, just
as the current system of mass incarceration was not predicted by anyone
thirty years ago.”(p. 245) But she stops short of offering any useful
solutions to “address race” in this fight.
Alexander argues that affirmative action and the token advancement of a
few Blacks has served as a racial bribe rather than progress, getting
them to abandon more radical change.(p. 232) She concludes that the
Black middle class is a product of affirmative action and would
disappear without it.(p. 234) “Whereas black success stories undermined
the logic of Jim Crow, they actually reinforce the system of mass
incarceration. Mass incarceration depends for its legitimacy on the
widespread belief that all those who appear trapped at the bottom
actually chose their fate.”(p. 235)
This is a good point: successful reformism often ends with a few token
bribes in an attempt to stop a movement from making greater demands. And
this is not really success. But short of revolution, there is no way to
successfully end national oppression. And so Alexander’s book concludes
on a weak note as she tries to effect a bold and radical tone and
suggest drastic steps are needed but offers no concrete suggestions
about what these steps should be. She ends up criticizing everything
from affirmative action to Obama but then pulling back and apologizing
for these same institutions and individuals. This is the hole that
reformists are stuck in once they see the mess that is the imperialist
Amerikan system.
It’s not impossible to imagine circumstances under which the Amerikan
imperialists would want to integrate the oppressed nations within U.$.
borders into white nation privilege. This could be advantageous to keep
the home country population entirely pacified and allow the imperialists
to focus on plunder and terrorism in the Third World. But we would not
consider this a success for the oppressed peoples of the world.
A progressive movement against national oppression within U.$. borders
must fight alongside the oppressed nations of the world who face even
worse conditions at the hands of Amerikan imperialism. These Third World
peoples may not face mass incarceration, but they suffer from short
lifespans due to hunger and preventable diseases as well as the
ever-present threat of death at the hands of Amerikan militarism making
the world safe for capitalist plunder.
Henry Park, a revolutionary leader and member of the Maoist
Internationalist Movement (MIM), died on May 17 2011. His death is a
loss to the communist movement. We take this opportunity to remember
MIM’s important contributions to revolutionary thought.
MIM was an underground party, whose members were careful about anonymity
and security and so did not identify themselves publicly by name. Henry
Park went public with his identity several years ago in an attempt to
defend himself from significant repression by the Amerikan government.
He did this after MIM broke into cells and the central organization
ceased to exist. The article
Maoism
Around Us discusses this question of cell structure in more detail
and explains that MIM(Prisons) built itself on the legacy of the MIM
Prison Ministry.
After the dissolution of the central MIM organization, Park continued to
write prolifically and uphold the original MIM at the etext.org hosted
website. As efforts to silence him grew, the etext.org domain was shut
down without explanation after hosting radical writings for about a
decade. This was a serious blow to the spread of Maoist theory and
analysis on the internet. In
2007,
“Among all self-labeled ‘communist’ organizations in the world, MIM
[was] second, behind only the People’s Daily in China [in internet
readers].” This remains a lesson for those who are afraid to draw hard
political lines in the sand in fear of losing recruits. MIM never
claimed to be bigger than other “communist” groups in the United $tates,
only to have much more influence than them.
Henry Park, along with the other members of MIM, was in the vanguard
starting back in the 1980s in correctly identifying the labor
aristocracy in imperialist countries as fundamentally counter
revolutionary, and doing the difficult work of spreading this unpopular
position which was rejected by so many revisionist parties falsely
claiming the mantel of communism. MIM also correctly identified China
after Mao’s death and the Soviet Union after the death of Stalin as
state capitalist countries, no longer on the revolutionary path, while
so many other self-proclaimed communists continued to follow these
countries down the path of capitalist degeneration. Park published some
important research on both countries’ regression to capitalism that are
available on our
resources page.
Along with the view that the Chinese Cultural Revolution was the
furthest advance towards communism in humyn history, these principles
were the foundation of
MIM(Prisons)’s cardinal
points.
There are some who will falsely claim the legacy of Henry Park or who
will attack him with persynal or ad hominem claims, now that he is not
alive to defend himself. We encourage all revolutionaries to carefully
study tough theoretical questions for themselves rather than just taking
the word of an individual or organization. One of the reasons MIM did
not use names was to avoid a cult of persynality that so often arises
around public figures, leading followers to avoid doing the important
work of studying theory, instead just taking the word of the individual
on trust. This cult also exists within organizations where members
accept the word of their party rather than thinking critically. Even
with MIM’s semi-underground, anonymous approach, Henry Park was brought
into the light by recurring persynal attacks on his character. One of
the things MIM taught so many of us so well was how not to think in
pre-scientific ways, where rumors, subjective feelings and individuals
are more important to people than the concrete outcome of your actions
on the group level.
Park’s life is notable for his unending commitment to fighting for the
rights of the world’s people, even at great persynal sacrifice in the
face of state repression. Many who take up revolutionary struggle in
their youth give it up when they gain some bourgeois comforts, trading
revolutionary organizing for a well paying job and a nice house. Park
never wavered in his work for the people, and in his vision of a
communist world where no group of people would have the power to oppress
others. Mao Zedong said “To die for the people is weightier than Mount
Tai.” Park’s death is weightier than Mount Tai and his work lives on
through the continued application of MIM Thought.
[Read thousands of articles by the original MIM in our
etext.org
archive]
RCP=U$A chair Bob Avakian once again sets his sails towards billowy
clouds in the May 29, 2011 issue of ‘Revolution’ newspaper, the official
mouthpiece of the rcp=u$a, in which the party leader once more makes the
case for a socialist revolution in the U.$. with the labor aristocracy
at the helm. He puts forth this idea in a talk broken down into series
of articles titled: “Birds cannot give birth to crocodiles, but humanity
can soar beyond the horizon.” He states that: “…in imperialist countries
in particular it is only with major qualitative change in the situation
- that is, the eruption of a revolutionary crisis and the emergence of a
revolutionary people in the millions and millions - that it becomes
possible to wage the all out struggle for the seizure of power…”
To begin with, it is important that we point out that socialist
revolution will not reach the bastions of imperialism until the Third
World proletariat and peasantry rises in the billions to first eject the
imperialists, subsequently defeating the compradors and then mobilizing
itself to smash the imperialists on their home turf with the help of the
oppressed nation lumpen of the internal semi-colonies. These oppressed
nation lumpen who are currently situated within the internal
semi-colonies, i.e. barrios/ghettos/reservations of amerika and it’s
prisons, are the only people in the U.$. with any kind of revolutionary
potential whatsoever!
So we don’t know where all these “millions of millions” of revolutionary
people that Avakian loves to harp about will be drawn from, unless he’s
counting on the labor aristocracy to take up arms and call itself
“comrade.”
Something else worth nothing here in the chairman’s flawed war thesis,
if you could even call it that, is that this economist/opportunist
deviation is not just owed to the RCP’s failure to acknowledge the
outcome of a proper class analysis, but also, because of their erroneous
line on the self-determination rights of the oppressed nations. The
rcp-u$a’s line is that all nationalism is bourgeoisie, hence
reactionary. More pointedly they don’t think there’s any nations within
the United $tates that need liberating, with a
possible
exception for the Black Nation.
The party leader goes on to talk about how important it is for the
struggle not to settle into “protractedness” because according to
Avakian “that would very much be a recipe for defeat.” The chairman then
makes some completely ludicrous and out of context comparisons when he
describes how the Maoist concept of a protracted Peoples War is no
longer a viable solution in the Third World and certainly is not suited
for U.$. conditions. Well, he’s certainly right that in regards to the
United $tates this is not a viable solution. However, with respect to
the former, Avakian attributes this to a lack of “finiteness” in the
struggle, instead, pushing for one big decisive battle. I assume here
that Mr. Avakian is referring to the now defunct Maoist struggles of
Nepal and Tamil of which the rcp=u$a has been very critical.
The fact that the rcp=u$a would denigrate various revolutionary Third
World struggles as “too much of things unto themselves” (which is also a
common rcp-u$a criticism of the Chinese Cultural Revolution) is a
straight up disrespect to the Third World masses dying daily at the
hands of imperialism and it’s comprador cartels, as well as
delegitimizing to the real science of revolutions: M-L-M.
No Mr. Avakian, the fact that the Nepalese and Tamil struggle has not
brought the proletariat victory has nothing to do with the failure of
the Maoist concept of a protracted peoples war, rather failure in these
struggles can be directly linked to revisionist leadership of the
rcp-u$a sort!
Continuing with this bourgeois-centric analysis, the party leader then
goes into some detail concerning the crucialness of public opinion
building and cultural work in general when it comes to preparing the
“masses” for revolution. However, and this is where you have to watch
him, he gets sneaky and besides already counting the labor aristocracy
as proletariat, he attempts to smuggle broad sections of the
petit-bourgeoisie into the revolution and eventually the dictatorship,
thereby killing the dictatorship of the proletariat before it’s ever
even born. This is what he says: “there is also, very importantly, the
problem of the development of the necessary political and ideological
conditions for the initiation of this struggle for the seizure of power
- and the organized expression of the political and ideological
influence of the vanguard - among the basic masses but also, to the
greatest degree possible at every point along the way, among other
strata of the people as well, in order to have the best possible basis
for carrying forward the struggle for power once it has been launched
and not, in fact to be contained and crushed, but to have the best
possible basis to ‘break out of encirclement.’”
It is true, historically speaking, that once socialist revolutions had
begun and proletarian victory was within reach, hoards of the enemy
class have come over to the side of the revolution. However, it has
never been the intent of the vanguard to focus their efforts so
ferociously on the enticement of parasites as Afakian and the rcp-u$a so
incessantly advocate for. It was however and remains so the principal
task of the revolutionaries, to unite all who can be united, i.e. the
truly oppressed and exploited.
If sections of the bourgeoisie so wish to either, (a) commit class
suicide and join the revolution or (b) see that victory is inevitable
for the proletariat and it’s allies and decide it better to be on the
winning side of the war, then so much the better. But neither Marx nor
Engels, Lenin, Stalin or Mao ever sought to actively recruit pigs who
were not dedicated to the revolution and neither should we.
If anything, the “middle” and “broad strata” would only be too happy to
swell the ranks of the imperialists armed forces and smash the internal
semi-colonies to pieces; they know which side their bread is buttered
on.
Indeed, seasoned readers of Kautsky’s, I mean Afakian and the RCP’s vile
distortions of M-L-M have come to understand that whenever Avakian and
company casually, indirectly or directly throw out the terms “middle”
and “broad strata” what they’re really trying to emphasize is the
reliance and inclusion of the bought off traitorous sections of the
population into and with the revolution. Notice how they consciously
exclude the true element of change from the equation the Third World
masses.
The rest of the chairman’s article basically rehashes some of the points
already made such as work in the cultural sphere prior to and during the
seizure of power, the importance of the “one, two, knockout blow” to the
bourgeoisie which serves to counteract the problem of “finiteness.” And
of course, he can’t emphasize enough the reliance of the revolution on
the “middle” and “broad strata”. And oh yea his deep lamentations that
white people have been turned against the oppressed by way of
propaganda, and all that’s needed for their return to the side of the
revolution is arduous public opinion building.
It is fitting that Bob Avakian’s piece is concluded by his making
companions between Mao’s China, pre-liberation and the United $tates
today, drawing parallels between the middle strata of the revolutionary
base areas in the Chinese countryside (the better off peasants) and the
decadent labor aristocracy which the rcp-u$a knows and loves today.
Truly, Bob Avakian is delusional.
MIM(Prisons) adds: For more on this topic check out other
articles on the
rcp=u$a and our analysis of the
labor
aristocracy in the First World.
Meditations on Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth: New Afrikan
Revolutionary Writings by James Yaki Sayles Kersplebedeb and Spear
& Shield Publications 2010
Available for $20 + shipping/handling from:
Kersplebedeb CP
63560, CCCP Van Horne Montreal, Quebec Canada H3W 3H8
“THE BOOK IS ABOUT HOW THE”WRETCHED” can transform themselves into the
ENLIGHTENED and the SELF-GOVERNING!! If you don’t take anything else
away with your reading of [The Wretched of the Earth], you must take
this.”(p.381)
Like many of the books reviewed in Under Lock & Key,
Meditations On Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth is written
by someone who spent most of his adult life in a U.$. prison. That there
are so many such books these days speaks to the growing plague of the
mass incarceration experiment that is the U.$. injustice system. The
content of many of these books speaks to the development of the
consciousness of this growing class of people in the belly of the beast.
While of the lumpen class, they differ from the subjects of Fanon’s
The Wretched of the Earth in both their incarceration and their
First World status. And while great thinkers are among them, their ideas
are reflected in the general prison population superficially at best.
The need for the development of mass consciousness (one based in
revolutionary nationalism, and an understanding of how to think, not
what to think) and the project of oppressed people taking their
destinies in their own hands make up the main theme of this book.
Wretched has greatly influenced many in our circles, and is
itself a book highly recommended by MIM(Prisons). It is of particular
interest in being perhaps the most complete and accurate discussion of
the lumpen-proletariat that we’ve read to date. While not completely
applicable to conditions in the United $tates, it is even more relevant
to the growing numbers of displaced Third World people living in slums
and refugee camps than when it was first written. For the most part,
Yaki discusses Wretched as it applies to the oppressed nations
of the United $tates, in particular New Afrika.
The four-part meditations on Wretched make up the bulk of the
book. The introduction to this section is an attempt to break down
The Wretched of the Earth for a modern young audience. In it
the author stresses the importance of rereading theoretical books to
fully grasp them. He also stresses that the process of studying and then
understanding the original and complex form of such works (as opposed to
a summary or cheat sheet) is itself transformative in developing one’s
confidence and abilities. At no stage of revolutionary transformation
are there shortcuts. The only way to defend the struggle from
counter-revolutionaries is to thoroughly raise the consciousness of the
masses as a whole. “Get away from the idea that only certain people or
groups can be ‘intellectual,’ and think about everyone as
‘intellectual.’”(p.192) And as he concludes in part two of the
Meditations, We often forget that our whole job here is to
transform humyn beings.
The National Question
As part four of the meditations trails off into unfinished notes due to
Yaki’s untimely death, he is discussing the need for national culture
and history. He echoes Fanon’s assertion that national culture must be
living and evolving, and not what the Panthers criticized as “pork chop
nationalism.” He discusses the relevance of pre-colonial histories, as
well as the struggles of oppressed nations during the early years of
colonization, to counter the Euro-Amerikan story that starts with them
rescuing the oppressed nation from barbarity. These histories are
important, but they are history. Sitting around dressed in Egyptian
clothing or speaking Nahuatl aren’t helping the nation. It is idealism
to skip over more recent history of struggles for self-reliance and
self-determination in defiance of imperialism.
We don’t even need to go back to ancient times to identify histories
that have been lost and hidden; many of us don’t even know our recent
past. Recording the little-known history of the “wretched” of the
richest country in the world is the first step to understanding how we
got here and how we can move forward. We are working on this with a
number of comrades as an important step to developing national (and
class) consciousness.(1)
Yaki agrees with the MIM line that nation is the most important
contradiction today, while presenting a good understanding of the class
contradictions that underlay and overlap with nation. Recently, debates
in another prison-based journal, 4StruggleMag, have questioned
the relevance of nationalism as the basis of revolutionary organizing;
taking an essentially Trotskyist view, but justifying it via “new”
conditions of globalization.(2) Really the theory of globalization is
just one aspect of Lenin’s theory of imperialism. The author, critiquing
nationalism, discusses that nations themselves were a modern concept
that united many groups that were once separated by culture and land.
This was true for the nation-states of europe that united internally and
the nations of the colonial world that were united by their common
oppression under european domination. It was in this colonial
relationship, and specifically with the demands of imperialism, that
nations solidified in dialectical relationship to each other: oppressor
vs. oppressed.
Yaki disagrees with the reading of history that sees nations as a modern
construct. He stresses the importance of recognizing that oppressed
nations existed as people with rich cultures before europeans drew up
national boundaries based on colonial land claims (ie. Egypt, China,
Maya). While true, talking about “nations” that predate capitalism is
similar to talking about the “imperialism” of the Roman empire. For
followers of Lenin, empire does not equal imperialism. Imperialism is
the highest stage of capitalism; an economic system forced by the
extreme accumulation of capital that requires its export to other people
(nations) to maintain profit rates, without which capitalism will not
continue to produce (one of its inherent contradictions and flaws).
When we talk about nations, we are talking about imperialist class
relations; the relations of production and distribution under the
economic system of imperialism (which is not more than a couple hundred
years old). More specifically, we are talking about a system where whole
nations oppress and exploit other nations. While different classes exist
within each nation, these questions are secondary to the global class
analysis in the period of imperialism. To answer the anti-nationalist
author in 4StruggleMag who claims nationalism never led to
liberation, or to internationalism, we refer to socialist China, the
most advanced movement for the liberation of people from capitalism to
date in humyn history. Even within the confines of this imperialist
country, the most advanced movement took nationalist form in the
Black
Panther Party.
Any theoretical questioning of the relevance of the nation to
revolutionary anti-capitalism must address the nature of imperialism.
Within the United $tates the lines between oppressor and oppressed
nation have weakened, particularly on the question of exploitation. This
provides a material basis for questioning the relevance of nationalism
within our movements here. As Yaki wrote, “here, in the seat of empire,
even the ‘slaves’ are ‘petty-bourgeois,’ and our poverty is not what it
would be if We didn’t in a thousand ways also benefit from the spoils of
the exploitation of peoples throughout the world. Our passivity wouldn’t
be what it is if not for our thinking that We have something to
lose…”(p.188) But globally, the contradictions between nations continue
to heighten, and there is no basis for debate over whether nation
remains the principal contradiction.
As we said, nations, like all things in the world, are dialectical in
nature. That means they constantly change. There is nothing to say that
nations will not expand as implied by the globalization argument, but
this will not eliminate the distinction between exploiter and exploited
nations.
While we won’t try to address the relevance of revolutionary nationalism
within the United $tates definitively here, Yaki is very adamant about
the need for an understanding of the internal class structure of the
internal semi-colonies. And as different as conditions were in
revolutionary Algeria, many of the concepts from Wretched apply
here as Yaki demonstrates. “[D]on’t We evidence a positive negation of
common sense as We, too, try to persuade ourselves that colonialism and
capitalist exploitation and alienation don’t exist? Don’t We, too, grab
hold of a belief in fatality (very common among young people these
days)? And, what about OUR myths, spirits and magical/metaphysical
superstructure? In our context, We employ conspiracy theories, the
zodiac and numerology, Kente cloth and phrases from ancient languages;
We invoke the power of a diet and the taboo of certain animals as food
products.”
Those studying the class structure within the oppressed nations, New
Afrikan or not, within the United $tates will find much value in Yaki’s
writings. Even in the introduction, the editors remind us that, at the
very least, revolutionary nationalism was a powerful force in our recent
history. For example, in 1969 Newsweek found that 27% of northern Black
youth under 30 “would like a separate Black nation.”(p.19) And in the
1960s communist teens from the Black Disciples organized comrades from
various gangs to defend Black homes in other parts of Illinois from
drive-by shootings by the White Citizens Council and their backers in
local police departments.(p.16) In the same period, when Malcolm X was
alive and pushing a no-compromise revolutionary nationalist line on its
behalf, the Nation of Islam had reached over 200,000 members.(p.18)
Shortly thereafter, a majority of Blacks in the United $tates felt that
the Black Panther Party represented their interests. When we look around
today and ask whether New Afrikan nationalism has any revolutionary
basis, we cannot ignore these recent memories.
Class, then Back to Nation
In his essay, On Transforming the Colonial and “Criminal”
Mentality, Yaki addresses George Jackson’s discussion of the
potential in the lumpen versus their actual consciousness, which
parallel’s Marx’s point about humyns consciously determining their own
conditions and Lenin’s definition of the masses as the conscious
minority of the larger proletariat, which as a class is a potentially
revolutionary force.(3) He quotes a critique of Eldridge Cleaver’s line
on the lumpen, which glorified organized crime. The critique argues that
organized crime has its interests in the current system, and it is a
carrot provided to the internal semi-colonies by imperialism.
MIM(Prisons) looks to organized crime to find an independent national
bourgeoisie (such as Larry Hoover, whose targeting by the state is
mentioned in the book’s introduction), but many are compradors as well,
working with the imperialists to control the oppressed for them. This is
even more true where the state has more influence (i.e. prison
colonies).
While Yaki’s focus on consciousness is consistent with Maoism, we have
some differences with his application. Yaki, and his ideological camp,
disagree with George Jackson and the MIM line that all prisoners are
political. The state is a political organization, serving a certain
class interest. We say all prisoners are political to break the common
misperception people have that they are in prison because they did
something wrong. Yaki’s point about the lumpen is that if they don’t
turn around, understand the conditions that brought them there and then
work to transform those conditions, then they are no use to the
liberation struggle, and they are therefore not worthy of the term
“political prisoner.” He argues that to allow those with bourgeois ideas
to call themselves a “political prisoner” dilutes the term. His camp
uses “captive colonial” to refer to the New Afrikan imprisoned by
Amerika regardless of one’s ideology. That is a fine term, but by
redefining the commonly used “political prisoner” from its narrow petty
bourgeois definition, we push the ideological struggle forward by
reclaiming popular language. In our view, “political prisoner” does not
represent a group with a coherent ideology, just as “proletariat” does
not.
Yaki puts a lot of weight on ideology when he defines nation as a “new
unity” as well by saying, “[t]o me, being a ‘New Afrikan’ is not about
the color of one’s skin, but about one’s thought and practice.”(p.275)
While skin color is an unscientific way to categorize people, we would
caution that there are in fact material factors that define a nation;
it’s not just how we identify as individuals. Saying it is only about
thought and practice leaves open the possibility of forming nations
along lines of sexual preference, colors, favorite sports teams - lines
that divide neighbors in the same community facing the same conditions.
On the flip side, it creates space for the white-washing of national
liberation movements by denying the group level oppression that the
oppressor nation practices against the oppressed. To say that nations
are fluid, ever-changing things is not to say that we can define them
based purely on ideas in our heads and have them be meaningful.
Yaki Offers Much Knowledge
The use of the term “meditations” in the title is indicative of Yaki’s
approach, which clearly promotes a deep study of the material as well as
making connections that lead to applying concepts to current situations.
It is not a study guide in the traditional style of review questions and
summaries. It does provide a critical analysis of the race-based
interpretations of Fanon, such as that in Fanon for Beginners,
which make it a valuable counter-measure to such bourgeois work.
His stress on hard work to build a solid foundation leads him to an
agreeable line on armed struggle in contrast to others we have studied
from the same ideological camp. On the back of the book,
Sanyika
Shakur quotes the author as saying, “i’d rather have one cadre free
than 100 ak-47’s” after Shakur was imprisoned again, related to
possession of an assault rifle. Shakur writes, “t took me years to
overstand & appreciate that one sentence.” Discipline is something
the revolutionary lumpen must develop, and taking a serious, meditative
approach to study can help do just that.
In his essay, Malcolm X: Model of Personal Transformation, Yaki
concludes, “We can go through the motions of changing our lives… but the
test of the truth comes when the prison doors are opened, or, when
otherwise We’re confronted with situations which test our characters.”
(p.118)
Yaki was a New Afrikan revolutionary and a Prisoner of War. As part of
the post-Panther era, Yaki reflects realistically on security questions,
pointing out that it’s too late to start instituting security measures
after Martial Law has been enacted. From reading this book, everything
you can gather about Yaki builds an impression of seriousness and
commitment to our cause. In this way, this book is more than just a
useful study guide for understanding and applying Fanon’s ideas; it is
an exemplary model for revolutionaries to help develop their own
practice.