I N T E R N E T ' S  M A O I S T  BI-M O N T H L Y

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         THE MAOIST INTERNATIONALIST MOVEMENT

     MIM Notes 134              MARCH 15, 1997



MIM Notes speaks to and from the viewpoint of the 
world's oppressed majority, and against the 
imperialist-patriarchy. Pick it up and wield it in 
the service of the people. support it, struggle 
with it and write for it.

IN THIS ISSUE:

1.  STRAWBERRY WORKERS FIGHT IMPERIALISM IN
    CALIFORNIA
2.  D.C. PIGS ESCALATE WAR AGAINST THE OPPRESSED
3.  LETTERS TO MIM
4.  MAOIST SOJOURNER WINS SUSTAINERS: WHEN WILL MIM
    NOTES?
5.  HOMES NOT JAILS ACTION IN BOSTON
6.  AMERIKANS: A PEOPLE ON PSYCHOLOGICAL DRUGS
    ROTTING THEIR MINDS
7.  ALBANIAN ECONOMIC FAILURES DEMONSTRATE FAILURE
    OF STATE CAPITALISM
8.  THE MASSES DON'T MOURN THE DEATH OF SOCIAL
    FASCIST DENG XIAOPING
9.  TOKEN REVISION OF REPRESSIVE LAWS DOESN'T CUT
    IT FOR SOUTH KOREAN MASSES
10. SCHOOL AID FOR STUDENTS INCREASES
11. WILD PIG WIELDING BATON EXONERATED BY FELLOW
    PIGS
12. UMASS PROFESSOR SERVES BOURGEOISIE
13. FILM REVIEWS: ROSEWOOD AND LARRY FLYNT
14. UNDER LOCK & KEY: NEWS FROM PRISONERS AND
    PRISONS


* * *


WHAT IS MIM?

The Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM) is a 
revolutionary communist party that upholds Marxism-
Leninism-Maoism, comprising the collection of 
existing or emerging Maoist internationalist 
parties in the English-speaking imperialist 
countries and their English-speaking internal semi-
colonies, as well as the existing or emerging 
Spanish-speaking Maoist internationalist parties of 
Aztlan, Puerto Rico and other territories of the 
U.S. Empire. MIM Notes is the newspaper of MIM. 
Notas Rojas is the newspaper of the Spanish-
speaking parties or emerging parties of MIM.

MIM is an internationalist organization that works 
from the vantage point of the Third World 
proletariat; thus, its members are not Amerikans, 
but world citizens.

MIM struggles to end the oppression of all groups 
over other groups: classes, genders, nations.  MIM 
knows this is only possible by building public 
opinion to seize power through armed struggle.

Revolution is a reality for North America as the 
military becomes over-extended in the government's 
attempts to maintain world hegemony.

MIM differs from other communist parties on three 
main questions: (1) MIM holds that after the 
proletariat seizes power in socialist revolution, 
the potential exists for capitalist restoration 
under the leadership of a new bourgeoisie within 
the communist party itself. In the case of the 
USSR, the bourgeoisie seized power after the death 
of Stalin in 1953; in China, it was after Mao's 
death and the overthrow of the "Gang of Four" in 
1976. (2) MIM upholds the Chinese Cultural 
Revolution as the farthest advance of communism in 
human history. (3) MIM believes the North American 
white-working-class is primarily a non-
revolutionary worker-elite at this time; thus, it 
is not the principal vehicle to advance Maoism in 
this country.

MIM accepts people as members who agree on these 
basic principles and accept democratic centralism, 
the system of majority rule, on other questions of 
party line.

"The theory of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin is 
universally applicable. We should regard it not as 
dogma, but as a guide to action. Studying it is not 
merely a matter of learning terms and phrases, but 
of learning Marxism-Leninism as the science of 
revolution."
-- Mao Zedong, Selected Works, Vol. II, p. 208




* * *


STRAWBERRY WORKERS FIGHT IMPERIALISM IN CALIFORNIA


Class warfare is an unending phenomenon of the 
capitalist system and the recent struggles of the 
strawberry workers in California illustrate the 
situation of the proletariat, the evils of 
imperialism, and the differences between the labor 
aristocracy and the proletariat.

The recent conflict is between the United Farm 
Workers (UFW) union and the farm owners and 
corporations involved in cooling the strawberries. 
As with other farm workers in the United Snakes, 
the strawberries workers are predominantly Latino, 
escaping oppression and exploitation in their own 
countries to seek a better life in the wealthy U$. 
While workers in Mexico receive $4 a day on the 
farms, farmworkers in California earn $8,000 per 
year which is a slight improvement.(1) But neither 
is a reasonable wage, especially for stoop labor, 6 
days a week, 12 hours a day, that is impossible to 
sustain beyond age 30 and which involves work in 
fields with dangerous pesticides and unsanitary 
conditions.

There are about 20,000 strawberry workers in 
California and they have no job security, no health 
insurance, and frequently face sexual harassment 
and arbitrary firing. Many growers, to further 
exploit the workers, turn to sharecropping 
arrangements which are feudal landlord 
relationships where the workers are given a piece 
of land on which they work and from which they must 
return most, if not all, of the berries produced to 
the landlord. Up to half of the state's pickers are 
sharecroppers and these people often end up further 
in debt at the end of each season.(2)

Farmworkers in the U$ are among the few exploited 
professions in this country. While the average 
Amerikan worker receives more than the value of his 
or her labor as a part of the imperialists work to 
buy the support of their home country workers, 
farmworkers are not part of the labor aristocracy. 
The fact that these workers are mostly Latino 
underscores the national oppression within US 
borders.(3)

One of the most commonly used pesticides on 
strawberry crops is methyl bromide. Because of its 
environmental impact and toxicity, it was scheduled 
to be banned in 1996. But after heavy lobbying, the 
California legislature allowed Governor Pete Wilson 
to delay the ban. Agribusiness has paid for this 
favor:  they gave hundreds of thousands of dollars 
to Wilson and the Western Growers Association, 
strongly tied to the industry, gave more than 
$30,000 to Wilson's campaign fund in 1994.(2)

As a result of methyl bromide and other pesticides 
along with the unhealthy stoop labor and unsanitary 
conditions, the life expectancy for a Latino field 
workers is 49, more than two decades less than for 
a typical Amerikan.(2)

In their January 23rd press release the Strawberry 
Workers & Farmers Alliance (SW&FA, an organization 
of growers and their supporters) stated that the 
workers are treated well, and thus are in no need 
of a union. Even the state recognizes the absurdity 
of the SW&FA. The Division of Occupational Safety 
and Health found that "about half of the growers 
fall short of some state sanitation requirements, 
including those calling for accessible toilets and 
clean drinking water."(1)

When the farmworkers started organizing themselves 
into the United Farm Workers union the companies 
fought back. They fired employees who supported the 
union and when whole farms voted to be represented 
by the union the farm owners would plow under the 
fields and take their business elsewhere.

At B&J Farms near Watsonville, the company promised 
to pay workers $500,000 in back wages seven years 
ago. They still owe half that in spite of a court 
order to pay. The company was cited in April of 
1996 for child labor law violations and maintains 
filthy and inadequate portable restrooms and dumps 
them into the fields. B&J denies workers drinking 
water for as long as five hours at a time and 
forces them to eat green, unripe strawberries that 
they pick by mistake. More than a dozen workers 
were recently fired for complaining when their 
paychecks bounced.(4)

In one of its few progressive ventures, the AFL-CIO 
recently began helping the UFW organize, giving 
funds and resources to the effort. The AFL-CIA 
generally represents the better off white workers 
in Amerika in their demands for a bigger piece of 
the imperialist pie. In a country where most 
workers are earning more than the value of their 
labor, the AFL-CIA is not having an easy time 
sustaining growth and their move to support the UFW 
may be at least partially pragmatic:  these 
farmworkers represent a potentially large addition 
to their union and size helps the union maintain 
labor aristocracy privileges for its workers.

The UFW is asking for a 5 cent rise in the price of 
a pint of berries which would be used to boost 
workers' piece rate pay by 50 percent. Studies have 
shown that this price increase would pay for the 
wage increase. But MIM asks why the proletariat 
should not demand that the imperialists take the 
money out of their own pockets to give to the 
workers.

While asking the wealthy Amerikans to pay more for 
their fruit in order to compensate the workers who 
are exploited to produce that fruit is not 
unreasonable, the proletariat should focus its fire 
on the main enemy:  imperialism. The farm owners 
and the strawberry cooling corporations that 
control the industry are making huge profits off of 
the suffering of the Latino immigrant workers. The 
UFW is giving tacit support to capitalism by making 
this demand which would allow the imperialists to 
keep making the same profits. The idea that the 
capitalists need to raise the price of strawberries 
in order to afford to pay the exploited workers 
more is ridiculous. But this pragmatism makes sense 
if the UFW has accepted that they will never change 
the capitalist system. MIM, on the other hand, is 
fighting to overthrow imperialism so that the 
proletariat can take control of production and 
force the imperialists to work along side everyone 
else.


WHAT IS A LIVING WAGE?


As a part of the UFW organizing campaign, they have 
put forward the demands for five basic rights:

# A living wage

# Protection from arbitrary firings and rewards for 
their years of loyalty

# Clean drinking water and bathrooms in the fields

# Health insurance

# An end to sexual harassment in the fields.

The UFW demand for a living wage should be 
considered by all champions of the labor 
aristocracy who throw around this demand when 
talking about workers who earn more than three 
times what the strawberry pickers earn. If doubling 
the piece rate pay of strawberry workers would give 
them a livable wage, it should be clear that the 
vast majority of workers in this country already 
have such a wage. True internationalists should be 
outraged that the AFL-CIO can endorse such 
inequality without mention of these vast 
differences in workers pay.

The demand for clean drinking water and bathrooms 
in the fields is similarly revealing. For those in 
the labor aristocracy who lament the lack of a 
convenient smoking area as a hardship, it would be 
good for them to consider the conditions that the 
majority of the world's workers suffer under. MIM 
does not begrudge anyone sanitary conditions but we 
push well-off workers in the United Snakes to take 
up an internationalist perspective and understand 
that their high wages come off the backs of the 
international proletariat.

The international proletariat is leading the fight 
against imperialist around the world while the 
labor aristocracy in the imperialist countries 
continues to support imperialism. MIM calls on all 
internationalists to support the organizing of the 
farmworkers in the U$ and to take their battle one 
step further and take on the imperialists by 
fighting for revolution.

NOTES:
1. Los Angeles Times. 20 December 1996.
2. http://www.latinoweb.com/ufw/paper.htm
3. For more information on MIM's analysis of the 
labor aristocracy in the U$ order MIM Theory #1, "A 
White Proletariat"($3) or MIM Theory #10 "Coming to 
grips with the labor aristocracy"($6).
4.  http://www.latinoweb.com/ufw/reports.htm


* * *


D.C. PIGS ESCALATE WAR AGAINST THE OPPRESSED

by Otis

10 Febuary -- "Describing the streets of the 
nation's capital as a war zone where residents 
should fear for their safety, the head of the 
District of Columbia police union called on the 
Federal Government today to take over the Police 
Department and provide hundreds of millions of 
dollars to improve it....'Washington, D.C. is 
unique, it is the symbol for the entire 
country.'"(1) Indeed, the entire country is slowly 
becoming more and more Orwellian. The military is 
drastically and sadistically massive and the 
streets are now 'protected' by these same pigs.

In keeping with their superhuman gang mentality, 
the D.C. pigs are rallying around the murder of 
their fellow pig Brian T. Gibson. Senator 
Hutchinson stated:  "We cannot and will not 
tolerate a situation in which officers of the law 
in our nation's capital can be callously slain 
while protecting the rest of us."(1)  The rest of 
us? A pig's starting salary is $30,000-32,000. What 
Hutchinson meant to say was: the rest of us white 
folks with power and money. (Although Gibson was 
Black, he was working to enforce and protect the 
white nation power structure and had sold out his 
nation to work for the pigs.) "Detective Renee 
Holden said fear among officers had grown so 
palpable that if she were to stop a car at night 
for a traffic violation, she would approach it only 
with her gun drawn."(2) Amerikkka - 'land of the 
free' - living life in the shadow of the state's 
many military machinations.

Ron Robertson, president of the Fraternal Order of 
Pigs aptly stated:  "We're in a war here."(2) 
Imperialist business interests, manifested in 
racist and violent police forces are attempting to 
wipe out the Black and Latino nations that are 
imprisoned in amerikan society. If it is a war, 
then the death of state sanctioned murderers can 
not be considered a crime, but a step in the right 
direction. While MIM does not call on people to 
carry out these focoist acts of violence in an 
imperialist country where we are not ready to 
engage in armed struggle, we recognize that this 
murderous system of imperialism will only be 
defeated with force.

Robertson went on to say:  "We have a third-rate 
Police Department operating in what has become a 
third-world city."(2) Amerikkka is a military 
backed imperialist state in which the oppressed 
nations are exploited, beaten, imprisoned, or 
killed at an alarming rate -- much like the Third 
World. The D.C. mayor made an ironically 
intelligent statement:  "We have the power and the 
brainpower to tackle these problems ourselves."(2) 
The people say we have the power to rise up and 
destroy the sadistic amerikan empire. We have the 
power to govern ourselves without fascist pigs.

NOTES:
1. Congressional Press Release 10 February 1997.
2. The New York Times. 8 February 1997.


* * * 


LETTERS TO MIM

PRISONER DISAPPOINTED TO HEAR OF SEALE SELLOUT

This letter is in concern with the Black Panther 
Party article in the MIM Notes, #126, Nov. 15, 
1996.
As a Black Panther follower, I am very disappointed 
with this article. It would seem that Mr. Seale has 
joined forces with the oppressors. I have looked up 
to the Black Panthers for 28 years. Didn't know 
what happened to them all. Knew that some were in 
prison somewhere.

I have always believed in what the Panthers stood 
for: helping the people in the community, [and] 
putting a stop to police brutality. Outside of Mr. 
Malcolm X., the Panthers were the only forces that 
people of dark color could look to for guidance. 
These were the people we turned to....
Sincerely in the Struggle,
-- A Texas Prisoner, January 1997

MIM RESPONDS: We agree with your assessment that 
Seale has joined forces with the oppressors. But 
this does not mean you should give up on the legacy 
of the Black Panther Party. What they stood for was 
correct and MIM, as a Maoist party, holds the Black 
Panther Party up as the best historical example of 
revolutionary Maoist organizing in this country.

You're right that some Panthers were put in prison. 
In fact, a lot of the Panthers were either 
imprisoned or killed by the FBI's COINTELPRO work 
which was aimed at destroying the very effective 
organizing of the BPP. From this we have learned 
that revolutionary activists need to organize 
underground as much as possible, and when doing 
above ground organizing we must be careful not to 
give out information that would make the FBI's work 
easier.

While the BPP was the leadership of the 
revolutionary movement in the 1960 and 70s, MIM is 
the leadership of the revolutionary movement in the 
1990s and we encourage all people interested in 
continuing the legacy of the Black Panther Party to 
work with MIM.


RAIL COMRADE DISCUSSES SERVE THE PEOPLE PROGRAMS


Comrades, I've enclosed a check for $1200 to 
fulfill a pledge I made more than one year ago. Not 
too long ago I sent $300 in an attempt to make good 
on what I promised. ... A RAIL comrade was critical 
of MIM's Serve the People Food Program, questioning 
the program's timeliness, "too soon." In 
discussion, I expressed my thoughts that MIM has 
continuously raised the BPP as the best example of 
a revolutionary Party in Amerika and that many have 
challenged MIM to "do something," and now it's 
being done. The comrades had the courage to do the 
right thing despite whatever shortcomings the 
program may have. Self-criticism and continuous 
struggle will improve it. The comrade believes we 
should possibly work locally with Food Not Bombs. 
The only way I can agree with doing this, and the 
comrade agrees, is if we can sell or distribute MIM 
Notes and RAIL lit.

Please let us know what you think about this. 
Should we continue to consolidate our forces here 
until we feel strong enough to begin our own serve 
the people programs? If we do, I think we should 
pick an area of concentration (lumpenproletariat; 
nationally oppressed people) where we've 
established a presence.

A recent letter suggested that we drop MIM Notes at 
housing projects. This is an excellent idea, except 
that we need to (and are in the process of) 
establishing a credible reputation at certain areas 
before we just come in cold and expect people to 
take our paper. That's why the serve the people 
programs are so exciting. "Theory and Practice." 
The people take you more seriously when theory is 
put into practice.

Until next time,

A RAIL Comrade

MIM RESPONDS:  It is because of committed 
revolutionaries like this one that we are able to 
fund many of the important projects that MIM 
undertakes. We encourage this comrade and everyone 
else interested in helping out sustain our work 
financially to check out the article in this issue 
about financial development and longer term 
sustainable projects.
On the question of serve the people programs, it is 
first important to recognize that MIM Notes is a 
serve the people project. Education is as important 
a project as food and housing. And so comrades 
should take the paper to the people with the 
confidence that we are doing a service by providing 
important anti-imperialist news and analysis.

With that said, it is valuable for us to expand our 
work into many areas, and this includes things like 
the food for the people program. When we engage in 
these projects, it is important to keep proletarian 
leadership in command. If working with Food Not 
Bombs means that a bunch of RAIL comrades go to FNB 
events to help hand out food, that would be 
subjugating the revolutionary line of RAIL to the 
level of a charity type program and you correctly 
point out that this would not be acceptable when 
there is such a need to educate and organize people 
around a revolutionary anti-imperialist program.

MIM does not believe in going into other 
organizations and taking over and to turn the FNB 
work into something led by the proletariat, you 
would have to take over the leadership. Instead, 
we'd rather set up our own serve the people 
programs that are led by RAIL but which certainly 
have room for working with groups like FNB and 
others.

Food programs are not the only serve the people 
project that you can engage in. There are many 
important projects that we can take up. Already 
your RAIL branch has carried out important work 
serving the people fighting police brutality. It is 
possible to extend our work in many areas and we 
will follow this letter with some more specifics 
about possible projects you may want to take up in 
your city.


PRISONER SUPPORTS "BLACK"


***(The following is an excerpt from a prisoner's 
letter to MIM, and our response. -ed)***

In the August issue I have [MN119, August 1, 1996] 
you present a subject of words, and their 
association with what they mean as to gender an or 
race because of society and what slavery depicted 
as to thing or believe. In this August issue you 
seem to try to explain the reason that Black is 
less than perfect for its people title. We need to 
understand first what is "Black." It is a substance 
in this universe that always was here and will 
continue to be here. Just like its people they have 
always been here and always will be here, so don't 
go saying that it not a perfect title for "Black" 
people because it is what it is - us!!! the 
original people and since all things arrive from 
that which was and is first there is no other name 
under the sun to call us!!! the originals, only 
Black, Black because we are strong, Black because 
we are potent, and Black because we are from 
everlasting to everlasting, no by help of no other 
force but us!!! the originals, Black man. Also 
Black people with knowledge of self do not think of 
their skin color, it is only the purest form of 
existence.

MIM RESPONDS: In the article you mention, we said, 
"The term 'Black' is less than perfect because it 
implies that we are talking about a group because 
of its skin color, but it is the best definition of 
the nation within Amerika. The capital 'B' helps to 
contrast this legitimate nation with the 'white' 
fascist settler nation."

We disagree when you say that Black people have 
always been here, and that "Black" is an essential 
part of their existence, because we know that 
social identities are social in origin:  they come 
out of social conditions and events, and they 
develop in social ways. Africans were the Homo 
sapiens, but it was not important that they had 
dark or black skin color until they had contact 
with people who didn't. The importance of 
"Blackness" was largely imposed by Arabs from 
northern Africa and Europeans, who seized on 
Blackness as the difference between themselves and 
sub-Saharan Africans. You correctly say that skin 
color is not the most important thing in Black 
identity, but if it were not for skin color, 
"Black" would not be part of that identity. That is 
why we stress "Black" as a national identity, but 
we don't pretend that it doesn't have a problematic 
origin in racial thinking.

When you say Black is "a substance in this universe 
that's always was here and will continue to be 
here," we agree. But as long as there has been 
light there has also been whiteness as well, and 
there "always" will be. Rather than those few 
constants in time, dialectical materialists such as 
Maoists pay most attention to that which is 
changing: the meaning of Black and white in 
society, the developing oppression and liberation 
of nations, classes, and genders, etc.

For us what matters about "Black" is the nation, 
its oppression, its conscious expression, and its 
liberation as part of the struggle for a world 
without oppression: a communist world. For that 
reason, we know that the Black nation does not now 
include all Africans and the whole African 
Diaspora. In time separate nations have developed 
as different groups formed economic, cultural, 
linguistic and territorial bonds. We must 
understand the real life of social groups if we are 
to develop the best way forward to national and 
human liberation.

So, our disagreement with you is philosophical:  we 
consider your view to be cultural nationalism, 
which has a religious or idealistic aspect in its 
description of Blackness as permanent, original, 
and unchanging.

Black Panther Party founder Huey Newton warned that 
cultural nationalism can lead to mistakes such as 
supporting Black comprador dictators such as the 
Duvaliers in Haiti. Malcolm X also warned us that 
Black leaders may be wrong despite their Blackness. 
When we treat Blackness as an essential part of 
people, it is hard to have such a materialist 
analysis.

How does this affect our work together? There is no 
reason why cultural nationalists cannot work 
together with Maoists -- revolutionary communists 
attempting to develop revolutionary nationalist 
struggles -- in many ways at this point. We agree 
on the national oppression of the Black nation and 
other nations. We agree on the need for anti-
imperialist struggle for national liberation. We 
may even agree on the goal of a communist world 
with no oppression of groups by other groups. In 
the course of our movement in that direction, we 
all need all the allies we can get without 
undermining our cause. Specifically, Maoists argue 
for the formation of United Fronts, uniting people 
of various classes and nations against imperialism 
under the leadership of a vanguard party. This is 
the best way for the oppressed to combine forces 
against common enemies under imperialism.

So we hope you will take our disagreement with your 
position as part of a progressive process of 
struggle leading to higher unity. As we said in the 
article you mention, we want to hear from 
progressive people who agree and disagree with us 
on language issues and all other important 
questions (our use of "Black" itself came out of 
correspondence and debate with revolutionary 
nationalists). Let's keep struggling as we work 
toward the best way out of the cesspool of 
imperialism.


* * *


MIM NEWS

MAOIST SOJOURNER WINS SUSTAINERS: WHEN WILL MIM 
NOTES?

Three people close to the party but not members of 
the party have stepped forward to be financial 
sustainers of the Maoist Sojourner. Together they 
will put forward resources sufficient to print and 
distribute the MIM-led publication for Third World 
exiled Maoists.

The agreement in principle by three ordinary 
people, including one person in the bottom 20 
percent financially, one person on a fixed income 
and one person of the ordinary middle-class 
represents a stunning achievement of the party's 
work with the people. We salute Maoist Sojourner's 
three sustainers for their commitment to 
internationalism.

The arrangement for the Maoist Sojourner leaves one 
question and demonstrates some major points about 
building the revolutionary movement in the 
imperialist countries.

The first question it raises is when will more 
people step forward to support other MIM 
publications and institutions of the oppressed? 
Already the progress in this area and the MIM Re-
Lease Program (see ad on this page) has been faster 
than the party can keep up with. We expect however 
that we will work through these details in the 
upcoming year with more major achievements. We bid 
our readers and future sustainers to be patient 
while the party works out details and launches 
projects one at a time with the masses' support.

The work of people outside the party to support 
Maoist Sojourner has always been exemplary. The 
fact that MIM is aware of at least three separate 
circles of people across the continent who believe 
it should be imitated is the profoundest flattery. 
Undoubtedly the recognition by the three sustainers 
that MIM "gets the job done" while upholding 
principle -- like other vanguard organizations in 
the tradition of Lenin, Stalin and Mao -- was a 
factor in why Maoist Sojourner is moving forward 
and many others are still only talking about 
filling the niche Maoist Sojourner fills.

The three sustainers have defeated the notion that 
one must be a millionaire to support professional 
institutions of the oppressed. Many in the 
imperialist countries are unduly paralyzed by the 
fear of going up against the professional bourgeois 
newspapers. With the support of the people, MIM has 
already proved that it is possible to put forward 
ever better and more widely distributed newspaper 
media.

The contribution of our sustainers is also notable 
in the specific internationalist duties of the 
revolutionary-minded in the imperialist countries. 
We believe that while it is as yet inappropriate 
for most of us in North America to launch armed 
struggle, there is no reason we cannot be the legal 
rear areas of base support for the armed struggle 
raging in Peru, the Philippines, Turkey, Korea etc.

It is the party's contribution not just to maintain 
an internationalist line and "prime the pump" by 
having started the Maoist Sojourner, but also it is 
the party's responsibility to fashion the specific 
arrangements necessary to allow the maximum 
effective participation of the masses. The masses 
did not step forward with a contract to MIM signed 
saying, "we sustain the Maoist Sojourner." Rather 
the party's task was to find the non-military 
weapons that made it possible for three people to 
play their maximum role.

The masses are what give the force to the efforts 
of the party, without which the party will be 
nothing. In the imperialist countries, the portion 
of masses that will contribute to the revolutionary 
struggle is very small, but we still have much work 
to do to tap the revolutionary energies of our 
masses. Concretely, as the masses sustain the MIM 
publications, more money will be freed up to 
publicize the hard work MIM does in public forums 
in conjunction with such fine organizations as the 
Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist League. In this way, 
the masses will draw attention to themselves and 
build their own movement's visibility.

For those still wishing to make some contribution 
to Maoist Sojourner in particular because of the 
work it does for Third World exile writers, it's 
not too late. It can always use more distribution 
and advertising funding. Others who would like to 
learn how to become Maoist Sojourner sustainers 
should step forward.


* * * 


MIM RE-LEASE PROGRAM

MIM doesn't have a Re-Lease program, but you are 
the one who is going to make that change. Help ex-
prisoners get a new lease on life. Mao said we in 
the imperialist countries would have to fight long-
-dare we say it?--tedious legal battles in the 
imperialist countries. MIM channels the anger of 
the oppressed into revolutionary politics. 

We aim to set up independent business institutions 
of the oppressed so that prisoners can make a 
living in this rotten system--legally--while 
staying true to the revolutionary cause. Find out 
how you can participate with no financial loss to 
yourself.
Contact MIM.


* * *


HOMES NOT JAILS ACTION IN BOSTON

February 22 -- Homes Not Jails, Boston (HNJ) held a 
building takeover, their second one this year. 
These actions dramatize the homelessness problem in 
Boston and the need for affordable housing rather 
than prisons.

These takeovers include a rally in downtown Boston 
and then a march to an abandoned residential unit. 
Homes Not Jails members have already cut the lock 
on the designated building and replaced it with 
their own lock. When the rally arrives at the 
vacant property, some people enter the building, 
pry off the boards from the windows and hang 
banners while the crowd chants and makes noise 
until the cops come and arrest the people occupying 
the building for trespassing.

While HNJ's goal is to convert these empty units 
into homes for the homeless, the police will never 
allow such blatant and illegal anti-capitalism and 
no one is under the illusion that these actions 
will end with anything but arrests.

Over 200 people, mostly youth, attended the 
February action, many people playing drums and 
other instruments. The crowd was very receptive to 
anti-imperialist politics and MIM and RAIL gathered 
many petition signatures to shut down control units 
in the Massachusetts prisons and distributed many 
newspapers. Homes Not Jails, Boston makes an 
important point that with 6000 homeless people, it 
makes no sense that there are 23,000 empty housing 
units in this city (almost 9% of the city housing 
stock).

It is this irrational use of resources that is 
symptomatic of capitalism. As long as the housing 
industry is regarded as a system for profit and not 
for fulfilling needs, there will be homelessness in 
cities with many empty and usable housing units.

A Homes Not Jails flyer points out that "The 
President's proposed 1998 budget cuts $300 million 
from the 1995 funding level for Homeless Assistance 
Programs, while the nation spends $26.8 billion 
annually to jail 1.5 million persons."
But we would have liked to see more of a focus on 
prisons at the rally, drawing the connection 
between the building of 3000 new prison beds in 
Massachusetts and the plight of the homeless in the 
city. In fact, many prisoners become homeless when 
they are released because they can not find a job 
and have no money to afford housing. This 
connection between prisons and homelessness is 
important part of what we emphasized in our 
discussions with people at the action.

Because of the value in exposing the criminal 
injustice system when talking about homelessness, 
we were disappointed that RAIL's offer of a speaker 
for the rally, was not taken up by the organizers. 
We will continue push for more discussion of the 
connections between homelessness and the criminal 
injustice system in future HNJ actions. And we 
invite everyone interested in getting involved in 
fighting the criminal injustice system and drawing 
connections to the irrational and inhuman nature of 
imperialism to get involved with RAIL's prison 
activism group. We address prison injustice on many 
fronts and have a wide variety of projects going on 
that range from organizing a benefit concert for 
books for prisoners to holding a speaker series at 
local law schools and we need much help with this 
important work. If you are interested in getting 
involved, write to mim124@mim.org or the address on 
page two.


* * *

AMERIKANS: A PEOPLE ON PSYCHOLOGICAL DRUGS ROTTING 
THEIR MINDS

by MC5

A study shows that 25 percent of people will invent 
memories two weeks after receiving the suggestion 
of a memory to invent. In other words, 25 percent 
of people lied to themselves about their childhood 
when given cues to do so and forgot they had 
invented the memory.

Furthermore, fully 50 percent will invent at least 
some memories when asked in certain contexts 
according to a study. A researcher named Henry 
Roediger reveals exactly what MIM has been saying 
about the psychiatry-crazed culture of the united 
states:  "Our memory can bend and distort ... the 
past," and Roediger adds in typical fashion of our 
day, "Maybe it allows us to live happier lives."(1)

Meanwhile, January, 1997 brought the news -- as 
predicted by MIM -- that the United $tates is back 
in first place for number of people incarcerated 
per 1000.(2) Russia had surpassed the United $tates 
briefly while Russia was in its state of emergency 
under Boris Yeltsin. However, contrary to the Cold 
War image of the united states as the free country, 
in reality, at no time in the Cold War did the 
Soviet Union have as high an incarceration rate as 
the United $tates. If we look at Black 
incarceration rates, we would have to look at 
Stalin during war time to have anything to compare 
it with.

In a previous article in MIM Notes, we showed in 
crime enactment studies that large portions of 
society will point to a person in a police lineup 
to accuse that person of a crime even when none of 
the people in the lineup were the real criminal. 
Although all peoples in all countries have some 
degree of unreliability in eye-witnesses, in the 
United $tates, the haziness of the peoples is the 
vicious sort that explains why the United $tates is 
the leading prison state in the world and will have 
to have progress imposed on it from outside.

People inside the United $tates have a proven hard 
time keeping a grip on reality and the blasé 
approach to being the world's leading prison state 
is one sign. Here in MIM Notes we will go past the 
news and statistics and explain why this is the 
case.


CAUSES OF PUBLIC FANTASY:  PSYCHIATRY INDUSTRY ONLY 
THE LEADING EDGE


The study cited above brings to mind sensational 
stories of child molestation and their recall under 
hypnosis or other methods of psychiatry and social 
work. Such are the kind of stories that sell 
newspapers and encourage copy-cat behavior; 
however, what is more important than these 
sensational tabloid stories is the general impact 
of psychiatry that gains a mystique from probing 
childhood experiences.

Psychiatry is a multi-billion dollar industry which 
in its increasingly aimless and consumerist form is 
a kind of entertainment. Psychiatrists get paid to 
make people "feel good." Those analysts engaging 
their patients in sex are only more honest than the 
majority that won't admit that the profession is a 
systematic factor opposing what used to be called 
"integrity" -- the willingness to adhere to the 
truth at the cost of personal discomfort.

Being depressed about rotten imperialist reality 
has become unthinkable and medications are heaped 
on the patient -- "the pursuit of happiness" being 
the all-Amerikan thing to do. Did your parents make 
you unhappy? Bring out the inner child they 
crushed; exorcise them; accuse them of molestation; 
spend years in "anger control" therapy etc., but do 
something to re-arrange your memories. Whatever you 
do, don't get angry or unhappy and fight to 
transform society including the family. No, that 
would be political and you must be mentally ill if 
you would become political -- so goes the reasoning 
of our whining culture.

The patriarchal system cannot bring about healthful 
family relationships, and in fact, we in the 
imperialist oppressor nations are not even capable 
of knowing what a healthful family relationship is 
on our own. Neither the oppressive parents nor the 
children raised by such flawed people can set the 
system straight from within, especially through 
lifestyle practices.

Did teachers damage your self-esteem? Sue them, 
skip their classes, beat them or take more 
entertaining classes that make you "feel good," 
such is the conscious and unconscious prescription 
of those worshipping at the altar of self-esteem 
propped up by a nation of middle-class people 
obsessed with the individualism of their private 
property complete with two cars, individual lawn-
mower, individual snow-blower and better than 
anybody else's -- cable dish antenna.


REALITYISM: A RADICAL IDEA


In contrast with our feel-goodist culture, MIM will 
lead a government and education system where self-
esteem is not a goal, because it means seeking 
approval from others or lying to boost one's self-
image. An excellent early exercise for young 
children should be arithmetic puzzles. Students 
should see often and early that they themselves and 
their peers make mistakes while doing their 
exercises; hence, they and others should hold to 
the truth about arithmetic regardless of the 
opinions of others. In some situations doing things 
quickly under pressure or by hand, even teachers 
will make mistakes. The student should learn that 
being correct is more important than seeking the 
praise of either peers or teachers.

At a later age, if we still have a romance culture, 
when young people are smitten by the love bug, they 
should again learn to hold on to the truth. If a 
young person develops a one-sided crush on someone 
else, there should be no pressure to become 
vindictive or to invent false flaws in the person 
in order to escape the pain of a one-sided crush. 
Many pressures exist in this "feel good" culture to 
come up with some reason not to feel pain about 
unrequited love. However, it is at the exact point 
where a person feels the most pain that a person 
can grow his or her capacity for the truth of pain 
in this world riddled with class, national and 
gender domination.

The real combat against the romance culture should 
occur at the social level, not at the "feel-good-
forget-the-pain" level of the individual. When a 
romantic relationship breaks up, severe is the 
pressure to claim that you were the one to break it 
up instead of admitting the truth if you were on 
the suffering side of the breakup. That is part of 
the eroticization of power that makes inflicting 
suffering on others sexy and mainstream. People 
tempted to lie or forget certain things 
conveniently should write them down while they can 
still keep a grip on the truth. Then when pressure 
arises to rearrange uncomfortable memories, one can 
return to one's diaries.

As a young person leaves these sources of pressure 
behind in school and courtship, new pressures arise 
at work. In this parasitic culture where no 
oppressor nation people work like Azanian coal-
miners or Florida orange-pickers or California 
migrant farmers, there is much bragging and lying 
about accomplishment where there is none. It's to 
the point now where surgeons of all kinds carry out 
unnecessary surgeries and emergency services let 
people die on the streets while they argue over who 
has jurisdiction and hence the almighty dollar from 
the taxpayer to tend to the emergency. In 
socialism, these financial and job-security 
pressures on the truth will be eliminated. People 
who are basically paper or electron-shufflers fill 
themselves with stories all day how they work so 
hard and deserve their wealth while others starve. 
The starving will have to impose their will against 
the coalition of oppressor nation people opposing 
the right to eat.

When they get home from work, the oppressor nation 
people watch fictional cop shows on television, but 
they cannot tell the difference between truth and 
fiction anymore, because they turn around and vote 
for the politician who sounds most like a 
vigilante. Voting for Reagan who made them feel 
good, seeing the psychiatrist who made them feel 
good, doing some cocaine to feel good and taking 
anti-depressant medications, getting steamed up by 
pornographic television shows and then picking up 
the telephone for something called phone sex -- 
even though there is no sex in phone sex -- the 
Amerikans typical of all the latest trends lie to 
themselves to such an extent it is hard to be angry 
with them anymore. They don't know any better. We 
who live this culture and know that we live a lie 
long for the transformation that a proletarian 
agenda can bring, a real sense of forward-looking 
purpose that we do not have.

NOTES:
1. USA Today 17 February 1997, p. 1.
2. USA Today 20 January 1997, p. 5a.


* * * 


ALBANIAN ECONOMIC FAILURES DEMONSTRATE FAILURE OF 
STATE CAPITALISM

by MC45

Albania made Amerikan newspaper headlines through 
much of February as Albanians protested their 
government's inaction in response to some collapsed 
pyramid savings schemes that have been stripping 
Albanians of their life savings. On February 16, 
there were 3,000 demonstrators on the streets of 
the southern port city Vlore.(1) Several of the 
protests have ended in violence between police and 
protesters, but even the police are hesitant to use 
force because many of them have been ripped off too 
and sympathize with the protesters.

MIM doesn't know the class composition of these 
demonstrations, although clearly protesting about a 
failed capitalist investment scheme is not a 
proletarian pursuit. It does seem that most people 
who were taken in by these scams had less money 
than the petty bourgeoisie as many of them worked 
abroad to send money home. Some had the equivalent 
of a few thousand dollars invested, or sold homes 
to invest, those investors may be petty bourgeois 
in Albania. MIM welcomes any additional information 
readers have on this.

Albania was socialist at least from 1944-1976 when 
Mao died. The Albania of Enver Hoxha, leader of the 
socialist Party of Labour of Albania (PLA), had 
been firmly in the Maoist camp of the Sino-Soviet 
split until Mao died in 1976 and China cut aid to 
Albania in 1978, but MIM believes the mistakes 
Hoxha made in his lifetime were honest socialist 
ones. Hoxha's successor in the PLA, Ramiz Alia, was 
a capitalist roader and made Albania state-
capitalist until open elections in 1992 when an 
opposition party came into power.

This most recent financial fiasco has given the 
state capitalists another chance to discredit 
socialism. The Western bourgeois press has pointed 
the finger for the current mess at Albania's post-
state capitalist economic disorientation. MIM 
agrees that the state-capitalists left the Albanian 
economy in poor condition for the masses and that 
the current government is clearly not doing very 
well by the people, but we disagree with the 
bourgeoisie's implication that living under 
capitalism all these years would have been better 
for the Albanian people. 

Albania is one of the poorest countries in Europe, 
but during the socialist years it did better at 
providing for its people than under any other 
social system in recent history. State capitalism 
had the chance to set many of the country's 
advances back between 1985 and 1992 but this 
doesn't discredit the benefits to the Albanian 
people of living under socialism for decades. 


MASS DISSATISFACTION WITH STATE-CAPITALIST RULE


More than one of the recent protests has led to 
violence between protesters and police. In Vlore, 
four people died and 150 were injured during the 
weekend of February 15-16.(2) But some police said 
they did not intend to use violence on the 
protesters. "You won't find a man among us who 
hasn't been ruined by these pyramid schemes," says 
a policemen who asks not to be named. "We have been 
cheated ourselves--that's why we are letting them 
protest."(3) 

The government has also decided to take it easier 
on the protesters. Rather than attempt to end the 
protests through further repression, which is 
bringing much publicity and little result, in the 
middle of February the government adopted the 
tactic of allowing the protests to happen while 
trying to isolate the protesters. Everywhere except 
in the capital, Tirana, police allowed protests to 
happen without opposition; police did set up road 
blocks between two of the big time protesting 
cities though, so that protesters could not 
communicate with each other so easily.(4)


LOUSY ECONOMY, LOUSY GOVERNMENT


The pyramid schemes--scams by a few individuals who 
get rich by running small scams on lots of other 
people--found fertile ground in the Albanian 
economy. Many of the people who were ripped off by 
the schemes had earned their money working 
illegally around the European Union.(4) According 
to the CIA World Factbook from 1995, 20% of 
Albanians worked abroad that year.(5)

The Albanian economy is looking pretty bad. 
President Sali Berisha has seen several factories 
in Vlore close down since March 1992, and seen 
other manufacturing companies and one "well-known 
international tour company" decide not to build 
factories there because of the lack of basic 
infrastructure like good roads and airports.(2) 

Citizens of Fier, one of the cities which has seen 
a lot of protests, say more than 80 percent of the 
population has no regular work while most of those 
who do work are in the service industry--working in 
the city's cafes and bars. Few children in Fier 
attend school regularly, and instead loiter, beg 
for money or sell produce at roadside stands.(3) 

Berisha, who acknowledged that people had been made 
homeless by the schemes, pled the government's 
naivete and its newness to democracy and capitalism 
as an excuse for not having prevented the scams. 
The government has refused to take responsibility 
for individuals' financial problems that result 
from these schemes.(4) 


PHONY SOCIALISTS TRY TO MAKE GOOD ON MASSES' MISERY


The opposition Socialist Party (no relation to the 
PLA as far as MIM knows) is calling for new 
elections and a new constitution and using the 
masses' protests as a springboard for these 
demands.(2) But the Socialist Party is also 
appealing to the United $nakes and European Union 
countries to interfere in Albania, trying to win 
Western imperialist support by pointing out the 
likely increased "instability" in Southern Europe 
if there is no intervention.

MIM has no beef with using the imperialists for 
socialist aims, but this does not appear to be the 
Socialist Party's program at all. Calling for 
elections and a new constitution is no way to 
increase justice for the masses. Albania is under 
capitalist rule and no amount of reforming is going 
to bring genuine socialism back to the country. In 
this light, calling on the imperialists for 
intervention is opportunism. Taking cheap illegal 
labor from Albania does not mark the EU states as 
the friends of the Albanian people but rather as so 
many more blood suckers ready to exploit the 
people. 

Even though the P.S. newspaper, Zeri i Popullit, 
wrote that "the current crisis requires a 
political, not a military solution," the warning 
about "instability" is a good indicator that the 
P.S. is not after genuinely peaceful and 
progressive goals. Instability is generally a 
buzzword for all the things capitalists try to stay 
away from: civil war, revolution, bad investment 
risks all around. So P.S. calling on the 
imperialists to help keep things in Albania stable 
is akin to offering cooperation with Western 
imperialism in exchange for the imperialists 
upsetting Berisha's rule.

The P.S. went on in its statement flattering the 
Western imperialists saying that it "particularly 
appreciates the statements by the U.S. State 
Department and the governments of the E.U. member 
states, and appeals to them to intervene urgently 
to prevent the total destabilization of Albania and 
the region."(6)


ALBANIA WAS ON THE MAOIST ROAD


From 1944 until March of 1992, the Party of Labour 
of Albania (PLA) was in power. From 1944 until 
1976, it was genuinely socialist and led tremendous 
advances in the conditions of the Albanian people. 
Following the Sino-Soviet split in 1960, Albania 
was the only socialist state to side firmly with 
the Chinese Maoists in criticizing Soviet 
revisionism and supporting the Great Proletarian 
Cultural Revolution in China. Albania defeated 
Hitler militarily independently of the Soviet 
Union, partly by organizing 6,000 wimmin into the 
anti-fascist armed forces. This in a country where 
previously only a few hundred wimmin had worked 
outside their homes. In 1978, wimmin were 33.3% of 
deputies in the People's Assembly, Albania's 
highest governing body, and 41.2% of the leaders of 
mass organizations. Albanian wimmin were also 26% 
of the Supreme Court and 25% of the members of the 
PLA, while Amerikan wimmin were 1% of the United 
States Congress.(7) So clearly socialism worked 
well for Albania and socialism was not the cause of 
Albania's current problems.

But after Mao died in 1976 and by-then-revisionist 
China withdrew aid from Albania in 1978, Hoxha 
retracted his support of Mao's theory of a new 
bourgeoisie arising from within the Communist 
party. Hoxha also said at that time that China's 
revolution had never been socialist but was only 
bourgeois--criticizing both the Chinese socialist 
revolution of 1949 and the GPCR. While it was a 
very difficult time for Albania after Mao died, and 
while MIM believes that these errors on Hoxha's 
part were honest and not outright revisionist, 
these errors and the failure to have a cultural 
revolution did open the door for state-capitalism 
in Albania. 

Hoxhaites (named after late-PLA leader Hoxha) like 
to say Mao was liberal for not shooting people like 
the recently departed Chinese revisionist Deng 
Xiaoping, and instead letting them expose 
themselves and their revisionist line to the 
masses' scrutiny. But the principal thrust of Mao's 
theory of a new bourgeoisie emerging from within 
the communist party is that the masses will need to 
face such individuals and groups and oppose them to 
fully rout all forms of capitalism from socialist 
society. Attempting to kill off the emerging state-
capitalist bourgeoisie as Stalin did and as the 
Hoxhaites advocate does nothing to prevent future 
individuals from taking up the bourgeois line 
because it fails to recognize the material basis 
for capitalism in the Communist Party's 
relationship to the means of production.(8) 

In Albania the result of this incorrect line is 
visible today: the bourgeoisie was never thoroughly 
uprooted from within the PLA, it forced the PLA off 
the socialist road and today has been replaced with 
open Western-style capitalism.

NOTES:
1. Agence France Presse 16 Feb, 1997.
2. Ibid.
3. Reuter 16 Feb., 1997.
4. Reuter 15 Feb., 1997.
5. 
http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/95fact/al.html
6. Zeri i Popullit, Tirana, in Albanian 12 Feb. 
1997, printed in British Broadcasting Corporation 
wire service 14 Feb., 1997. 7. MIM Theory 2/3: 
Gender and Revolutionary Feminism, p. 20.
8. MIM Notes 44 1 Sept., 1990, p. 3.
Other MIM sources on Albania: MIM Notes 52 May 
1991, p. 7, MT2/3, p. 4, MA Pack 6 August 1990.


* * * 


THE MASSES DON'T MOURN THE DEATH OF SOCIAL-FASCIST 
DENG XIAOPING

***"All men must die, but death can vary in its 
significance.... To die for the people is weightier 
than Mount Tai, but to work for the fascists and 
die for the exploiters and oppressors is lighter 
than a feather."***
--Comrade Mao Zedong, "Serve the People," 8 
September 1944


On 20 February, the so-called paramount leader of 
the social-fascist Chinese regime, and key 
architect of capitalist restoration in China, Deng 
Xiaoping, died at the age of 92. Deng Xiaoping's 
life and death are indeed lighter than a feather.

At the start of the Great Proletarian Cultural 
Revolution, Deng Xiaoping was identified as a 
"leading person in authority taking the capitalist 
road" and was attacked as the number two target of 
the Cultural Revolution. Overthrown by the masses 
in the late 1960s, he was allowed to make a self-
criticism and was restored to leading posts in 
1973.

No sooner was Deng returned to office than he again 
exposed his reactionary line of prioritizing profit 
over politics and abandoning economic self-reliance 
in favor of importing technology from imperialist 
countries. The Maoists emphasized the political 
factor as being the key in unleashing the potential 
of the people, not an undialectical reliance on 
technology.

After the death of Chou Enlai in January 1976, Deng 
Xiaoping turned the April memorial rally into a 
counter-revolutionary riot in Tiananmen Square and 
was removed from his posts by Mao shortly before 
Mao's own death in September.

In October, Hua Guofeng led a military coup against 
the Maoists, the so-called "Gang of Four". Still 
officially disgraced, Deng stayed in the 
background. Even before Deng could be rehabilitated 
and restored to his posts in July 1977, the 
counter-revolutionary content of Hau's coup was 
shown through swift changes towards the very same 
capitalist line that was under attack during the 
Cultural Revolution. 

MIM can't say for certain how involved Deng as an 
individual was in planning the coup against the 
"Gang of Four", but it is quite clear that the 
bourgeois political line for which he was the 
leading proponent during the later stages of the 
Cultural Revolution was the prime impetus for the 
coup.
Within two years of the coup, Hua was eased out of 
the top posts, and replaced with Deng. Deng oversaw 
the further gutting of the gains of socialism and 
the Cultural Revolution.


DENG'S LEGACY SINCE HIS RETURN TO POWER


***"It doesn't matter if a cat is black or white, 
as long as it catches mice."***
--Deng Xiaoping

Deng's famous phrase that politics and methods 
don't matter as long as results are achieved has 
led the restoration of capitalism in China. Such 
short sighted development has lead to some 
bourgeois defined progress, and the New York Times 
has triumphantly printed graphs of "Gross National 
Product per capita" rising skyward as if this 
represents an increase in the people's wages. With 
huge profits being reaped by foreign companies and 
the capitalist class, there isn't much to be had 
for the majority of the population. Nor do such 
graphs account for huge income disparities between 
city and countryside. (Note also that almost all 
Western interviews with Chinese people about their 
views on Deng have been with the minority in the 
cities.) Much like an already ill person who sells 
an organ is "rich", so is China for the moment as 
it sells everything to the imperialists.

When Deng became the leader of China, the process 
of dismantling the progress of the socialist period 
accelerated. Guarantees of income to the ill or the 
elderly were abolished. "To get rich is glorious" 
and "A few must get rich first" were Deng's 
slogans, but so far that "few" has only been a few.

Time Magazine's cover story on Deng's life reports 
only a few grim statistics in a black box:  
"Criminal gangs have reappeared, as have 
prostitution, child labor, drugs and the selling of 
women into bondage.... Shortage of water and arable 
land are mounting, while the rapid, unchecked 
increase in industry contributes to a degradation 
of the country's environment. A floating population 
of 100 million people cruises from region to region 
looking for work."(1)

The people rose up against Deng. In 1984 and 1989, 
Beijing students demanded more political freedoms. 
Deng responded with repression. In the 1989 
incident, hundreds or thousands of people were 
killed.

Such fear of the masses and willingness to use 
force is nothing new for Deng. During the Cultural 
Revolution, Deng also repressed the student 
movement which criticized him. In 1966 Mao 
declared:  "it is anti-Marxist for communists to 
fear the student movement.... The Central Committee 
of the Youth League should stand on the side of the 
student movement. But instead it stands on the side 
of suppression of the student movement."(2)

Mao's June 1968 criticism of Deng clearly exposes 
Deng and his methods in the capitalist camp:  "To 
protect or to suppress the broad masses of the 
people -- that is the fundamental distinction 
between the Communist Party and the Guomindang, 
between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, and 
between the dictatorship of the proletariat and the 
dictatorship of the bourgeoisie."

Deng was always one to suppress, because his 
political line was one of oppression and the people 
recognized this.

The Amerikan bourgeoisie's praise for Deng knows no 
limits. Clinton said of Deng: "He spurred China's 
historic economic reform program, which greatly 
improved living standards in China and modernized 
much of the nation." In a congratulatory tone, Time 
Magazine named Deng Xiaoping "Man of the Year" 
twice. The first time was in 1978, recognizing that 
Deng's rise to power and "Four Modernizations" 
program made further consolidation of capitalism 
inevitable.

The bourgeoisie likes Deng because they see through 
the ever-thinning socialist rhetoric to the 
capitalist reality. Clinton isn't concerned about 
increasing inequality or the 1989 massacre in 
Tiananmen Square because oppression and 
exploitation are the concerns only of the 
proletarian masses. As long as the capitalists and 
their system are defended, neither Clinton nor Deng 
are too concerned how high the price is for the 
rest of society.

The bourgeoisie makes some muted criticisms of Deng 
that while economic freedoms were granted, there 
was no political freedom in Deng's China. The 
bourgeoisie sees this as a temporary contradiction; 
MIM sees it as a textbook example of fascism.


THE FUTURE OF SOCIALISM IN CHINA?


In 1962, at the Tenth Plenum of the Eighth Central 
Committee, Mao warned of the potential for 
capitalist restoration, but also predicted that 
such setbacks can only be temporary: "If our 
children's generation go in for revisionism and 
move towards their opposite, so that although they 
still nominally have socialism it is in fact 
capitalism, then our grandsons will certainly rise 
up in revolt and overthrow their fathers, because 
the masses will not be satisfied."(3)

In the cities of China, there is a growing middle 
class of young people who no doubt support 
capitalism. But when the process begun by Deng of 
selling China to the highest bidder ends with China 
being firmly under the thumb of foreign companies, 
the boom of Chinese growth will look more like 
sweets given to control an unruly horse on an 
auction block. In the countryside, revolutionaries 
will not need to wait for a third generation, as 
the people have already had enough of Deng's 
capitalist reforms that have cut yields and raised 
taxes and expenses for the laboring masses.

While many Chinese supporters of Mao, the Cultural 
Revolution, and the "Gang of Four" have been 
repressed or given up the struggle, many supporters 
and activists still exist. Deng's fascism has also 
breed new resistance amongst the student movement, 
some of who have taken up true Marxism in response 
to Deng's "socialism in words, fascism in deeds."
Despite some fears expressed by bourgeois pundits, 
thanks to Deng's policies over the last 20 years, 
no new leader within the government will be able to 
reverse political course and restore socialism. The 
stage for a new Communist Revolution against 
bureaucrat capitalism has been set. The future is 
bright for China. The people of China will rise up 
again.

NOTES:
1. Time Magazine. 3 March 1997, p. 54-55.
2. Stuart Schram ed., Chairman Mao Talks to the 
People (New York: Pantheon Books, 1974), p. 253.
3. Ibid., p. 190.


* * *


TOKEN REVISION OF REPRESSIVE LAWS DOESN'T CUT IT 
FOR SOUTH KOREAN MASSES

by RCZ10

25 February 1997 -- President Kim Young Sam's New 
Korea Party and the United Liberal Democrats 
presented joint bills to merely revise repressive 
labor legislation which the New Korea Party rammed 
through the south Korean parliament late 
December.(1)

Mass demonstrations and the first nationwide labor 
strike since the establishment of the Republic of 
Korea lasted longer than one month and pressured 
President Kim Young Sam to reopen the National 
Assembly to revise the legislation.(2) Revision 
rather than a complete withdrawal of the repressive 
mechanisms disregards the demands of the Korean 
Confederation of Trade Unions(KCTU) and the 
Federation of Korean Trade Unions(FKTU). The scale 
of the strike has been the largest in the country's 
history:  1.7 million workers in these unions and 
millions of south Korean masses who demonstrated in 
support of the nationwide labor strike demand the 
labor laws and the National Security Planning 
Agency Act be repealed completely.

Some revisions concern recognizing multiple 
umbrella unions and the issues of workers' lay-
offs. Politically repressive parts of the 
legislation were not mentioned -- specifically 
restrictions of involvement in labor disputes to 
"umbrella organizations of employers and trade 
unions" and "persons whose assistance is requested 
by trade unions and employers and of whom the Labor 
Minister is notified". This means that any 
political organization or party that becomes 
involved in a labor dispute has to notify a south 
Korean government official. This is an anti-Red 
law, as well as an anti-any political group the 
south Korean government doesn't like law.

Kim's revisions do not repeal the National Security 
Agency Planning Act passed at the same illegally 
convened 26 December session. The act gave more 
power to the south Korean Department of 
Intelligence (popularly known as the Korean CIA) to 
investigate progressives in the alleged search for 
communist spies. Increased power has spawned 
political repression against activists such as 
police raids and arrest warrants (See MIM Notes 
#131.) The agency now has the legal license to 
resume its old tactics of torture to thwart the 
protests of students, workers and political 
activists.

In a feeble attempt to re-channel domestic popular 
discontent and international attention away from 
his corrupt, fascist legislative maneuvers of 
December 26th and the Hanbo corruption scandal, 
u.s.-lackey Kim Young Sam has been trying to whip 
up anti-communist and anti-North Korean sentiments. 
Government officials attempt to justify these 
measures saying that there are 40,000 north Korean 
agents in south Korea influencing students and 
activists to use violence to further their 
cause.(3)

The overwhelming support for the general strike, 
the economic and political rights of south Korean 
workers and re-unification is not a problem u.s.-
lackey Kim Young Sam can eliminate with weak token 
revisions or further repression from the Korean 
CIA.

The Korean trade-union leadership announced in mid-
January that the third stage of the general strike 
would continue with one-day strikes once a week. On 
January 22nd, the KCTU reported that 180,000 
workers downed their tools and walked out for the 
day.(4) On January 26th, 300,000 workers 
demonstrated across south Korea demanding that the 
repressive labor legislation be scrapped and that 
the government resign. In Seoul, 50,000 people 
rallied that day.(5)

Kim Keumsoo, president of the Korean Labour and 
Society Institute said, "This general strike raises 
political empowerment as an imminent task for the 
Korean labor movement. Through this opportunity, 
the Korean labor movement is setting up the 
following objectives as its strategic targets:  to 
overcome the class contradiction and to accomplish 
national independence, democracy, reunification and 
the people's demands for their socio-economic 
rights."(6)

President Kim's apology on January 16th for the 
secret session resulting in repressive legislation 
and now the token revisions submitted show only 
that the Korean government is interested in 
stopping the strike and resuming business as usual. 
The Korean government is not concerned with the 
interests of the masses. We support the struggles 
of the Korean masses to repeal the legislation and 
to end the reign of the current u.s.-Kim regime. 
Maoism has proven to be the most successful cure 
for imperialist domination and comprador repression 
and will also be the most successful path for the 
Korean masses to achieve true representation of the 
people.

NOTES:
1. The Korea Herald, 25 February 1997.
2. The Los Angeles Times, 22 January 1997.
3. The New York Times, 25 February 1997, p. A3.
4. Agence France Presse, 22 January 1997.
5. Deutsche Presse-Agentur, 26 January 1997
6. http://kpd.sing-kr.org/strike/index-e.html


* * * 


SCHOOL AID FOR STUDENTS INCREASES

Talk in the air is that education in the united 
states will receive a funding increase, and the 
initiative is coming from the ruling class, not the 
students themselves. Already, in 1996 Congress made 
sure to give Clinton $700 million more than he 
requested for the federal education budget.

Clinton himself campaigned all through 1991 and 
1992 arguing for tuition tax credits. As president 
he is delivering on his promises to push that 
agenda:  he is asking Congress for a $10,000 tax 
deduction on college tuition.

There is an important and growing faction of the 
bourgeoisie that seeks an industrial and post-
industrial policy for running the economy. Fewer 
and fewer capitalists doubt that computers and 
software are necessary investments for the economy. 
Some now go the extra step saying that brain power 
is more important in the so-called post-industrial 
economy. Clinton is part of that ascendant faction 
of the bourgeoisie that seeks to make an investment 
in brain power.

In addition to asking for a huge tax deduction 
worth $2000 or $3000 a year, Clinton is asking for 
scholarship funding to make "two years of post-
secondary education universal." His position gives 
lie to the social-democratic and revisionist 
position that the G7 imperialists have a 
coordinated plan of cutbacks in government spending 
on social programs. The old social-democratic view 
especially prevalent in Europe and Quebec in 
organizations like Mobilisation is that there is a 
class war between the students of generally working 
class background and the government over how much 
to fund their education.

The fight for student aid is not an inherently 
progressive struggle in the imperialist countries. 
It is only progressive when the struggle is used 
and channeled the correct way. The social-democrats 
and revisionists are making themselves the 
appendage of the Clinton-style imperialists and 
their view of the post-industrial future. In 
contrast, MIM is not surprised to see Clinton put 
forward these demands for the bourgeoisified 
workers of the oppressor nations. He is fine-tuning 
the alliance between the labor aristocracy and 
petty-bourgeoisie with the imperialists. We don't 
want to help students oink louder for more gravy. 
They get enough of that training already.

The struggle for student aid has potential for 
proletarian content through two avenues. One is 
that student leaders must learn to make full-use of 
the fact that their college administrators need 
them to lobby for student aid, both in state houses 
for public universities and Congress for public and 
private universities. If necessary student leaders 
must threaten to lobby against research money for 
their universities unless they obtain freedom of 
operation on their campuses.

On too many college campuses, the student 
newspapers are under administration control;  cops 
have guns and arrest students;  people are not 
allowed to hand out literature;  there is no place 
to pick up literature;  so-called outsiders are not 
allowed to speak to students on campus and getting 
a few bucks for a book or magazine is called 
"soliciting" in these wondrous paradises of 
academic freedom.

Students will find that they have more than enough 
power to put their administrators in line, when 
students choose to do so. The mere threat of 
opposing research moneys or placing a few ads that 
would damage college recruiting should be enough to 
bring most sensible college administrators to heal. 
Right now administrators take students for granted, 
unlike in the 1960s and early 1970s, but that can 
change with a few examples made of a few 
universities that get out of line. The 
revolutionary and progressive students should find 
the academic bourgeoisie tractable and an easy 
mark, because of the contradictory interests of the 
academic bourgeoisie.

The other avenue for a progressive agenda is in 
public universities where the main competitor for 
state funding is prison construction and 
maintenance. It's about time these college 
administrators and student leaders start 
complaining how the united states is the number one 
prison state in the world. Once again it cuts right 
to the issue of "freedom" and how empty that 
"freedom" is.

NOTE: USA Today 6 February 1997, p. D1.


* * *


WILD PIG WIELDING BATON EXONERATED BY FELLOW PIGS

by an RC

Police in Portland, Oregon, came to a settlement in 
a lawsuit against police brutality, paying the 
victim $126,000. Joseph Bernatche, a postal worker 
in Portland, was beaten with a "full force" baton 
and thrown from the steps by police, both times 
while he was handcuffed from the back.

Bernatche was in a club, when he climbed the cage 
next to the dance floor, as a joke. The security 
guard, off-duty police officer Gary Hutcheson, 
decided to arrest Bernatche.
Bernatche was laying on the ground, outside, 
handcuffed when officer James Sweatt leapt from his 
patrol car and struck him across the head with a 
baton.

Sweatt then unleashed pepper spray on the crowd of 
onlookers. Members of the crowd, whom Sweatt 
sprayed, were arrested for "failing to disperse." 
Later those charges were dropped and the victims 
were paid a total of $8,000.

Bernatche was arrested, for among other things, 
resisting arrest. Bleeding from the head, with 
large cuts above his eyes, he was taken to the 
police station to be booked. When it became obvious 
that he needed medical attention, Sweatt started to 
take him to the hospital. When he went outside, 
Sweatt threw him from the top of the concrete 
steps. Bernatche lost more teeth and his face was 
further cut up.
Despite more than five witnesses willing to testify 
in the civil case that Sweatt used the baton while 
Bernatche was handcuffed, and dispite another 
witness who saw Sweatt throw the handcuffed 
Bernatche from the steps of the police station, 
"Portland Police Chief Michael Chitwood called the 
settlement 'unfortunate' and said he continues to 
support Sweatt and Gary Hutcheson."(1)

Chitwood issued an investigation into the beating. 
Police, policing themselves (an oxymoron), came up 
with a 2,000 page report that interviewed 66 
people. The report itself was never released and 
its results should be questioned. One of the key 
witnesses, Reid Jones who saw Bernatche throne from 
the steps of the police station, was interviewed 
over the telephone "for less than 10 minutes."(1) 
When asked why Jones wasn't interviewed until the 
end of the investigation, Chitwood replied that 
Jones had "ducked" the police. Even if this were 
the case, it seems understandable why he would.
The police can not be held accountable to 
themselves. This investigation was held by the 
police, looking into one of their own. All it did 
was find further reasons to justify the police 
officers obviously wrong actions. From this report, 
Sweatt was exonerated. To be exonerated, the police 
had to not believe the five witnesses that saw 
Sweatt use his baton to Bernatches head, a clear 
violation of the police's own regulations.

The exoneration also came despite Sweatt's history 
of brutality. Sweatt had a pattern of using force 
to cause head injuries, according to internal 
police records released in a prior civil case 
against Sweatt. Prior to arriving at the club, 
Sweatt hit a man, Perry Durgin, in the eye with his 
baton. Sweatt didn't arrested Durgin at that time, 
but Durgin decided not to sue.

The regulations that Sweatt broke are meaningless, 
they are only enforced when public pressure makes 
them enforce it. In most cases, the police can and 
do break their own regulations and are rarely 
reprimanded for it. In this case, the Chief of 
Police for Portland still, after all the witnesses 
and physical evidence, supported the police 
officers. Even if the pigs follow their own rules, 
the imperialist Amerikan system gives them the 
legal power to enforce systematic national 
oppression as evidenced by disproportionate 
imprisonment rates for members of the internal 
colonies.

As MIM has said before, criminality is defined by 
those who are in power. As long as the police are 
in power, their repressive actions will never be 
considered criminal except by the masses. Until the 
police are striped of their repressive powers, 
until the people take back their streets from the 
repressive authorities, the people can't be safe.

NOTE: Portland Press Herald. 15 February 1997, p. 
A1.


* * * 


UMASS PROFESSOR SERVES BOURGEOISIE

by a RAIL comrade

A UMass political science professor teaching 
"American Politics Through Film" quickly revealed 
his alliance with imperialism and the bourgeoisie 
when his class started this semester. In his 
syllabus he calls movies "simple and 
reductionist...never [able] to capture fully the 
richness of politics." Mao would definitely 
disagree and combat such a reductionist 
diversionary argument with the dialectical nature 
of dominant class ideologies and the way they 
penetrate into every aspect of popular culture. 
(See Breaking with Old Ideas article in this 
month's issue of RAIL Notes).

He also says that "The course ... makes no pretense 
of being a complete history of American politics. 
That is the business of historians." By segmenting 
history, knowledge and politics into separate 
entities, the professor easily diverts peoples 
attention away from historical consciousness, the 
intertwined ways politics play a role in our 
everyday lives and easily reduces political action, 
such as the Vietnam war, to a matter of personal 
opinion and isolated incidence.

During the second class, the Professor revealed 
even further his nationally oppressive ideologies 
by comparing the Irish to "over populating" rabbits 
that because of sheer numbers destroyed the English 
democracy, and the wave of immigration that brought 
those "that looked different [cringe on the Prof's 
face], the Africans with their dark skin [yet 
another cringe], the Asians, the Poles, the Native 
Americans ... they were different and studied 
different religions, with different languages, 
there were Jews [sneer]..."

Despite the his obviously incorrect view of the 
First Nations and their "place" as immigrants, it's 
easy to assert such things when one ignores 
history. Seeing such ideologies expressed at an 
Amerikan institution isn't so surprising 
considering the imperialist rule Amerika holds over 
the rest of the world. And when the 99% white 
student classroom just laughed along with his white 
chauvinist "jokes" it became deeply apparent how 
far leader worship has embedded itself in Amerikan 
culture.

It is materially profitable to ignore history, to 
separate out politics from daily life and to 
condemn all those that are physically or 
spiritually different from oneself, especially when 
you have the imperialist majority in Amerika on 
your side. The professor proved his alliance to the 
bourgeoisie and the material benefits it gains from 
being oppressors and collectors of Third World 
super-profits.

The students followed the professor's imperialist 
leadership:  possibly a sign of choosing the road 
to complacence for imperialist stolen material 
concessions. However, MIM and RAIL see white youth 
as a potentially revolutionary force who can give 
up their socialized power in order to fight for 
proletarian revolution and a more sustainable world 
without oppression of people. Youth are not yet 
tied to imperialism with a comfy job that gives 
them an interest in maintaining the system. And 
youth feel the alienating effects of capitalism and 
can see the long term devastation of imperialism. 
But still it's a lot easier to laugh along with 
racist jokes and agree with imperialist propaganda 
than to challenge it, especially when it comes from 
people with power over you. We challenge all 
students to think critically about the "facts" you 
are being taught and the perspective that is being 
represented. MIM and RAIL call to all white youth 
to commit class, nation and gender suicide in order 
to struggle against their imperialist driven power 
positions and to work with us to destroy 
imperialist oppression here and abroad.

DOWN WITH THE AMERIKKKAN EDUCATION SYSTEM!
BUILD AN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM THAT SERVES THE NEEDS 
OF THE PEOPLE!


* * * 


AMERIKAN CULTURE
ROSEWOOD: TRUTH OF SOUTHERN LYNCHING

Based on the true story of a 1923 massacre of a 
small Black town in Florida by a neighboring white 
town-turned-lynch-mob, the film Rosewood well 
portrays how and why lynchings happened in early 
20th century Amerikkka. Singleton adopts the line 
held by Ida B. Wells-Barnett, the leading turn-of-
the century anti-lynching activist, that lynching 
was principally a tool of terror to keep Blacks 
from advancing economically in the post-slavery 
economy. Also showing that the lynchings were often 
instigated by white wimmin claiming sexual assault 
by Black men.(1)

In the film, Rosewood is an anomaly, a town 
populated exclusively by Blacks (with the exception 
of one white shopkeeper and his family) who own 
their own land and businesses, and who are 
economically better off than the neighboring poor 
white town of Sumner. Many of the Rosewood 
residents work for whites in Sumner where the class 
and gender contradictions are at their absolute 
boiling point. 

The South was just then beginning to move toward a 
"progressive" society based more on the rule of law 
than by the lynch mobs prevalent in the 1880-1920 
period. Rosewood residents walked a fine line 
between subservient postures and outright defiance 
of their white neighbors. The local sheriff 
embodies the rule of law side of white society, and 
Singleton portrays that without a shred of 
sentimentality. (The sheriff is, in other words, no 
better than the lynch mobs he purports to oppose.)

Rosewood shows the structure of power and 
oppression, set up between a newly arrived Black 
stranger (a fictional creation of Singleton's) and 
an established white store owner's struggle for a 
piece of land on the market. The story explodes 
when a white womyn comforts herself after her lover 
beats her up by claiming that "a nigger did it." 
Within a couple of days, that lie results in the 
savage massacre of nearly the entire population of 
Rosewood.

When "Fannie Taylor" claimed that a Black man raped 
and beat her, the citizens of Sumner mobilized in 
minutes to systematically murder the men, wimmin 
and children of Rosewood, and burn their property 
(again demonstrating the truth of Wells-Barnett's 
claim that economics underlie lynching, even if 
rape was the rallying cry).

Singleton has a good line on gender. Fannie Taylor 
may have been less powerful than her male lover who 
beat her, but she had and used her gender privilege 
to murder an entire town. White wimmin in 
Amerikkka, though less powerful then their white 
male counterparts, gain a powered position over the 
rest of the world through class and nation 
privilege, in essence making white wimmin, as a 
group, gendered male over the rest of the world. 
Singleton further revealed this truth of gender 
oppression, as Wells-Barnett did, that the real 
"interracial" sex going on was when white men raped 
Black wimmin.

Finally Singleton puts forth a very progressive 
line on youth. He shows the Black children as 
strong and courageous, and the white children as 
needing to be taught to hate Blacks. Throughout the 
film, a leading lynch mobster teaches his young son 
how to tie a proper noose and shoot Blacks in order 
to "be a man." His efforts ultimately fail, as the 
boy runs away telling his father he hates him, 
thereby showing the revolutionary potential of 
youth. (The movie credits reveal that one white 
witness testified before the Florida legislature in 
1993 when Rosewood survivors were granted 
reparations for the killings -- and it was likely 
because of the testimony of this child.(2)) Other 
white parents force their children to watch as they 
chop off the ears and testicles of lynched Blacks, 
some of whom are still alive.

The film Rosewood may have taken some historical 
liberties, such as introducing a character that was 
never there, but all in all it is a good exposure 
of Amerikan history of this period and of 
intertwined contradictions within current society.

NOTES:
1. Ida B. Wells-Barnett, "Southern Horrors." On 
Lynchings. Ayer Company: Salem, New Hampshire. 
Reprint edition, 1990.
2. See MIM Notes 88 (May 1994) for coverage of the 
Rosewood reparations.


* * *


FLYNT MOVIE CENSORS HISTORY OF PATRIARCHY

The People Vs. Larry Flynt documented the life of 
Hustler magazine porn-tycoon Larry Flynt. Instead 
of a hoped for feminist critique of Flynt's rise to 
fame, the movie instead, was no more then a 
celebration of male supremacy and imperialist 
exploitation. Devoid of the truth of social power 
structures, ideas of rights are just another tool 
to continue patriarchal oppression. The portrayed 
idolization of Flynt's rise to wealth is an 
outright acceptance of national oppression, sexual 
mutilation and domination, and Third World 
exploitation.

Flynt's initial flop as a strip club owner quickly 
materialized into a multi-million dollar company 
once he started publishing the porn magazine 
Hustler. As millions started rolling in, Flynt 
found himself in various bouts with the law and 
Christian rightists on obscenity and defamation of 
name charges. In and out of court, Flynt paraded 
around with the Amerikan flag on as a diaper, 
holding press conferences upholding each citizens 
"right" to free speech. Rather than expose Flynt as 
the patriarchal pig who gained millions from Third 
World exploitation and female subordination that he 
truly was, the film idolizes him as a hero fighting 
against "fascist" censorship.

What the movie ignores is that pornography is 
itself censorship. The pictures of wimmin going 
through meat grinders and laying between sandwich 
buns naked with sauce don't get criticized. Instead 
the magazine issue is shown as the number one 
selling Hustler issue, as though we should worship 
such a "success". To make Flynt out to be a hero, 
the film had to white wash history by eliminating 
the most sexist and racist parts of Hustler. The 
film would have us believe that all that's in 
Hustler is some tasteless pictures of wimmin 
spread-legged and a few cartoons about Santa Claus. 
This white washing of the patriarchy only helps 
reinforce the power of patriarchal institutions of 
pornography.

Female objectification is accepted as a social 
norm, and female sexuality is, like Flynt put it 
when taking a picture of Courtny Love's vagina 
spread wide, "the way men like it!" The only voice 
of "liberating" wimmin is a fake one that came from 
a religious womyn who tells Flynt she wants to get 
rid of "sexual repression" by counseling wives with 
marital problems to put on make-up and dress 
themselves up a bit. The same womyn looked at porn 
as a liberating experience for wimmin because it 
allowed sexuality to be an openly accepted 
practice, thereby doing away with sexual 
repression. She also believed that porn allowed 
consenting wimmin to profit off of "their" sex. 
What she and "consenting" females ignore is the 
patriarchal society that creates sexuality and the 
role pornography plays in perpetuating male 
dominance.

The explicit subordination to male domination never 
makes it way into the courtroom either. Instead the 
most famous case of Gerry Falwell suing Flynt for a 
cartoon depicting Falwell fucking his mother in an 
outhouse goes to supreme court on charges of name 
defamation. Wimmin's voices and bodies locked up in 
male determined patriarchal norms never makes a 
case for the courtrooms or the movie, and never 
will under patriarchy. Catherine MacKinnon put it 
well when she said, "...pornography 
institutionalizes the sexuality of male supremacy, 
which fuses the erotization of dominance and 
submission with the social construction of male and 
female"(1).And "To expose [this] absence of a 
critique of gender in this area of law is to 
expose...the enforced silence of women"(2). But 
under a patriarchal injustice system, this critique 
is put aside for acceptance of male supremacy.

While upholding Flynt as the First Amendment Right 
hero, the film also chooses to ignore just where 
Flynt's millions actually come from. By the end of 
the film Flynt is a millionaire who will do 
anything to save his wife's life from AIDS, saying 
money is no object. His bank account presumably 
originated out of savvy business sense, creativity, 
and giving the Amerikan man what he wants. What the 
film ignores is just where Amerikan "wealth" 
actually comes from, Third World exploitation. 
Amerika gets rich from stealing labor and resources 
from the Third World. The movie never even mentions 
the Third World, nor the rampant child prostitution 
existing around Amerikan army bases because most 
Third World families have no other means of 
survival. So the Amerikan businessman and soldier 
who can't fulfill their sexual desire with the next 
issue of Hustler can just go around the colonized 
corner and rent out a peasant girl for an hour -- 
all right in fashion with Flynt's magazine.

The material reality of this literal and monetary 
rape of the Third World and its pictorial 
embodiment in Hustler with Asian wimmin hanging 
naked from trees a-la-lynching, Lester the Molester 
cartoons showing young girls being lured into 
molestation by an old man, and Flynt being 
prosecuted by his daughters for sexual abuse,never 
make the movie. Only the story that the Amerikan 
imperialist male wants told is shown by the movie, 
leaving the rest of the truth of the world silent.

The only way to let the oppressed of the world be 
heard is through feminist, nationalist, 
proletarian, revolutionary practice and ideology 
aimed at destroying the current power structure and 
relations. The imperialists will use all the 
weapons they have, from guns to patriarchy, to 
dominate the world's people. If you want to end 
oppression and ensure power to all those oppressed, 
you must meet the imperialist head on with 
revolutionary practice. Work with RAIL and MIM and 
release the power of the people.

NOTES:
1. Catherine MacKinnon, Feminism Unmodified. 
Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1987, p.148.
2. Ibid, p.146.


* * * 


UNDER LOCK & KEY

PRISONERS DEBATE THE QUESTION OF UNITY

***The following letters address prisoner unity and 
several were written responses to a letter in the 
Under Lock and Key section of MIM Notes #126, 
titled "Prisoner Unity in Michigan Questioned." MIM 
considers prisoners a tremendous potential 
revolutionary force. Prisoners feel the brunt of 
abuse from imperialism which often causes them to 
organize to end the brutal system. One purpose of a 
discussion on unity is to identify the obstacles 
that prevent prisoner unity and determine 
strategies to overcome these obstacles. Another 
important element is to assess who should be 
unified by clarifying who are friends and enemies 
in struggle. The letters below demonstrate the high 
level of consciousness and dedication to the 
struggle of our comrades behind the walls.***

"i am STANDING with You!"


Revolutionary Greetings; Clenched-fist Salute & 
Power Forward!

My Dear Michigan Comrade:

i read your article entitled: "Prisoner unity in 
Michigan Questioned," and thought obliged to 
respond to you. i am also a prisoner within one of 
Michigan's death kkkamps and have experienced the 
same frustrations as you. In fact, i am able to 
identify with you 100% which is way i am 
responding.

Though i am not in one of the Max death kkkamps and 
therefore cannot speak on the "non-unity" you have 
there, i can say that from the Level 2 death 
kkkamps i have been at the same problem exist. But 
we don't have comrades that are struggling and 
suffering for political/revolutionary change. In 
fact, right here within the death kkkamps of 
Michigan is a movement called: Political Prisoners 
of War Vanguard Coalition (PPWVC), that has been in 
existence for a little while, that i am very much a 
part of and instrumental in creating.

Due to the security necessary to protect myself and 
other comrades, we are not prone to do a lot of 
above ground work. Primarily because (as you so 
eloquently described) there are prisoners within 
the system that will do all they can to attack you, 
bring you down, snitch on you and even murder you 
because you attack the system. They (these lack dog 
prisoners) have the tendency to think that if 
someone like you or i attacks the system it will 
cause them more hardship in their doing time. They 
want to do "sissy" time. They want to live under 
the illusion that they have it good and don't want 
you and i to upset the balance of things. So we 
work below the surface and work daily and hard.

Not long ago i was the subject of an attack by a 
prisoner at the Egeler Correctional Facility. MIM 
knows of this for i told them and others. The 
attack was done because one prisoner (who is truly 
misguided) took the word of a pig over mine and 
...well you know how it goes. The sad part about 
that incident is that this prisoner was doing 
nothing as far as political/revolutionary struggle, 
but i was and am.
So i know your frustrations and disappointments, 
but "WE" cannot allow the inactivity of one or many 
to deter "OUR" duty. And our DUTY is to expose, 
agitate (when possible), de-program and re-educated 
these brothas and sistas within these death 
kkkamps.

Our DUTY is to de-program and re-educate our family 
and loved ones. Our DUTY is to NEVER GIVE IN when 
the pressure is upon us and to always STAND OUR 
GROUND.

For years i have toiled and struggled against this 
oppressive/repressive nazi regime and many times i 
have stood alone in these battles, because i 
couldn't find anyone unafraid to stand with me 
against the full weight of the MDOC. However, i 
stood and that's what's important. It is important 
for you to continue to STAND and not BEND no matter 
what comes at you.

No matter what you have to face. STAND because i am 
STANDING with You!

i am (and many others) are STANDING and the time 
will come when we will be in "masses power" to do 
what we need to do and what hasn't been done, in 
Michigan's death kkkamp system in history. See what 
I'm saying? But to move on that type of scale it is 
going to take true sacrifice, time, study, 
education and commitment. We (you and i) can and 
will get there but i need soldiers like you not to 
stop fighting and to continue moving...for in move-
ment comes progress.
i am not going to suggest to you to stop your solo 
act. Solo acts are good, but don't make any solo 
moves that could cause you harm without anybody 
knowing how to speak on what happened to you and so 
forth. Comrade, i am extending my hand and my love 
out to you. If you'd like please contact me and i 
will stay in serious contact with you and let you 
know (more personally) what you can do and what i 
and the PPWVC are doing. If you want this then 
contact me through MIM...

As to my other Michigan comrade who wrote the 
article, "Prisoners must wait hours for the 
bathroom, while pigs go in the food" dated Aug. 26, 
1996 [MIM Notes#126]. Dig comrade, the same thing i 
mentioned to our brotha also applies to you. Do not 
give up. You can contact me also. As for the pig 
pissing in the food...i have no doubts over what 
you said because I know of pigs committing MURDER, 
which I wrote about in MIM Notes, i also know of 
pigs beating a womyn at the Scotts Wimmin facility 
into a coma and of pigs doing all sorts of acts. 
But what i want to say to you is this...there is 
redress....

In the trenches,

A PPWVC Michigan Prisoner, 3 Dec. 96

MIM ADDS:  We agree that prisoners should be 
educating and organizing themselves and others; and 
exposing the atrocities of imperialism. While the 
pigs are able to buy off some prisoners, remember 
the pigs and imperialists are the principal enemy 
not the misguided prisoner. It is good that this 
prisoner has been able to find other prisoners to 
work with and found an effective way to minimize 
the pigs' destructive influences. We hope that 
Under Lock and Key provides many comrades behind 
bars with connections to others engaged in the 
struggle, both inside and on the outside.


"WAKE UP AND UNITE TO THE REVOLUTION OF THE PEOPLE 
OF ALL SHADES"


Hello Comrades, ...I liked most of what I read in 
as far as your general attitude toward imperialism 
and the fascist capitalists, however, I felt that 
you are attacking a group of people instead of a 
type of people. Allow me to explain where I am 
coming from then perhaps what I am saying will make 
more sense to you.

I was born a white of the proletariat class. As I 
was growing up, we had little to nothing. I never 
had shoes or clothes without holes and patches. I 
was looked down upon because I was not of the 
bourgeoisie class. I became anti-establishment and 
have remained such all my life. It was when I 
finally got a break and got to go to college that I 
began to learn of all the real truths and lies of 
this imperialistic/capitalistic regime I live in.

During my two semesters of Russian history, I heard 
of and began to learn of and about Carl Marx and 
Lenin. The more I studied about them the more I 
began to appreciate the fact that there is a better 
way out there. I began to learn the truth about 
socialism and communism. I could then see the lies 
and unfair propaganda this imperialistic/capitalist 
establishment has spread about socialism in their 
attempt to stifle the growth of power to the 
people. I believe the key term here is THE PEOPLE.

I believe that before a successful revolution 
against the establishment, 
(imperialistic/capitalistic fascist police state) 
we must stop behaving in the like manner, not as 
races, as we are all of the human race. It must be 
a state of mind not a state of culture. Who knows, 
just maybe we can even undo some of the 
brainwashing of the bourgeoisie done by the 
aristocracy that makes up this fascist police state 
establishment. Remember the bourgeoisie are also 
oppressed and repressed, they just refuse to 
recognize it or admit to the truth of the matter.

...I am an overt socialist communist. I am a 
student of Marxist/Leninist socialism. I mention 
this because I too run into the same adversity as 
the comrade from Michigan. In the Under Lock and 
Key section of the MIM Notes "Prisoner Unity in 
Michigan Questioned." Well I just want to say that 
Michigan is not the only state in which this 
disunity exists.
I am doing a life bit in a maximum security 
facility in Wisconsin and the Inmates here are more 
worried about their tv's and gym shoes than they 
are about their human rights. When one of us 
litigators tries to do something to protect their 
rights, we are met with opposition or apathy. It is 
literally bucking the establishment alone.

This little fascist regime here does all they can 
to keep us litigators segregated from one another. 
If we attempt to pass a petition around, anyone and 
everyone connected goes to the hole. And it is the 
inmates helping the establishment [who] keep us 
convicts with heart from organizing any form of 
revolutionary resistance against this fascist 
regime.

Most of the inmates simply want to sit by passively 
as the establishment strips them of every human 
quality they once had. They are content to lay back 
passively watching their tvs as the establishment 
strips them of their human dignities. They also 
fall into this far too wide spread of racism which 
the establishment strives to keep stirred up. They 
do not get it, as long as the establishment has the 
races at each other's throats we are too busy 
resisting each other to resist their fascism.

Isn't it time we all woke up and unite to the 
revolution of the PEOPLE OF ALL SHADES?

I would be very interested in your response to my 
views, as I too am always open to good constructive 
criticism.

A Wisconsin Prisoner, 1 December 1996

MIM RESPONDS: MIM agrees that prisoners should not 
fight each other and instead should work together 
against the imperialist establishment. We also 
agree that the pigs benefit from the disunity of 
prisoners and are the number one cause of disunity 
of prisoners. While some prisoners may be passive 
or work against revolution, prisoners are not the 
main force keeping "convicts with heart from 
organizing any form of revolutionary resistance 
against this fascist regime." Please keep in mind 
that the pigs are causing the distrust between 
prisoners. It is the pigs who bribe and pay other 
inmates to sell out the revolution. And as you 
yourself demonstrate, many prisoners are not 
passive and cannot be bought. Check out last 
month's MIM Notes (No. 133) where a prisoner who 
was paid to kill another instead signed a statement 
against the pigs. [ULK article "South Carolina 
Prisoner Collects Evidence on Injustice System"]. 
Please remember your comrades who know it is 
revolution not television that best serves their 
interests. You and all the authors published in 
Under Lock and Key are proof of that many prisoners 
will not stand by and let pigs take their humanity.

On the question of skin color, MIM does not buy 
into identity politics, i.e., because you are white 
you cannot be revolutionary or because you are 
Black you are automatically revolutionary. MIM does 
recognize that Amerikkka is made up of many 
nations:  hundreds of indigenous nations, the Black 
nation, several Latino nations, and the white 
nation, along with other national minorities who do 
not yet make up coherent nations. While MIM does 
not discount individuals from the white nation, MIM 
has determined that the white nation as a whole is 
not a revolutionary force. The white nation, 
working class included, has benefited from the 
spoils of genocide, slavery and the extraction of 
wealth off the backs of most of the world. So while 
you as an individual are a friend of the 
revolution, the white nation as a whole has an 
interest in supporting imperialism.


A UNITY OF SMARTNESS NOT IGNORANCE


Dear MIM, In response to the November 15th, Under 
Lock and Key, by a comrade who claims to find no 
unity amongst prisoners. In part it could be agreed 
to [that there is no unity], when you try placing 
yourself as being one who wishes to judge his 
fellow man as not on equal footing as oneself.
I have come to an upper prison here in michigan, 14 
months ago. And I have found quite a few comrades 
who have had enough of the corruptive behavior by 
administrative pigs by letting these sacrificial 
pigs do as they please. [We are] beginning to start 
a campaign to put an end to it by working with an 
outside force, as well as inside.

Going into my 15th year [of being political], one 
must be conscious of what's going on around him, 
cause not just anyone can become a part of a 
unified body who seeks to go up against this well 
organized, corrupted group of the MDOC [Michigan 
Department of Corrections].

We will not be amongst those who fall apart from 
the inside. If you are a worthy comrade who 
believes as we do and have learned there are no big 
i's and little u's, then you are welcome amongst a 
strong group of brothers who will seek your 
assistance. No longer will our plans make it to the 
officials before acted upon.

Comrade you must not think that because one does 
not jump up and act when someone else decides that 
because of a happening, it's time to tear things 
up.

It is not a unity of ignorance, stupidity or 
foolishness. It is smartness that we practice today 
because we will not be defeated. We will be 
organized. Destroying objects is not the practice 
we uphold.

My words to you comrades, who think there is no 
unity, you better wake up before you are left 
behind. Because those who are left behind are the 
ones who have to accept their conditions. Although 
there are those who are weak and can't make the 
stand we are your allies and are standing for you, 
as we are standing for ourselves.

Remember just as they (the pigs) stand together, so 
must we if they are to be defeated.

No more putting your comrade down because he is not 
like you.

No more fighting and arguing amongst yourselves. 
And definitely stop alienating people because of 
race, because we are all in it together if change 
is to be made...

Sincere in the Struggle,

A Michigan Prisoner, 26 Dec. 96

MIM ADDS: This letter asks a good question, "Do you 
as a revolutionary, consider yourself on equal 
footing with your fellow prisoners, or do you think 
you are above them?" It is good to consider that 
one may be feeling isolated because s/he has put 
him/herself above his/her peers. It is important 
not to discount prisoners who may not be doing 
revolutionary work. As the PPWVC comrade above said 
it is our duty to educate and organize for 
revolution.

Another important point addressed in this letter 
is, What are we organizing to do? This comrade is 
sharing his strategies on how to successfully 
organize, without pig infiltration, to make changes 
toward revolution. The letter writer and MIM do not 
advocate random acts of violence or destroying 
things, but a planned strategy to organize and 
fight winnable battles.


"WHAT CAN I DO?"

Revolutionary Greetings, ...Your papers offer me 
enlightening information on injustices nationwide 
and how to strategically alleviate and rebel 
against these inequities.

My only problem is extending this knowledge amongst 
my peers, who are zealously devoted to helping each 
other fall face down without any practiced tactics 
to put the oppressor on their back.

I feel abandoned in a vacant state of helplessness 
when I witness my fellow brothas fight each other 
over trivial matters and engage in meaningless 
disputes.
These potential warriors misdirect their energy, 
thus becoming lifeless when sparks fly from 
sporadic revolutionary performances.

I've tried and tried again to united the masses and 
illustrate to my brothers that it is essential that 
we rise up against oppression. However, my attempts 
are futile. What can I do?

Much Love,

A Wisconsin Prisoner, 10 December 1996

MIM RESPONDS:  Comrade, you are not alone. The 
words of you and your comrades printed in Under 
Lock and Key are just a small testimony to that 
fact. It is true that "potential warriors misdirect 
their energy" and engage in trivial disputes, at 
times. MIM would suggest trying to engage other 
prisoners in political debates. Often times sharing 
MIM Notes can often generate discussion of 
political ideas. Organize a study group to discuss 
MIM Notes so that you can have the opportunity to 
struggle with people about these ideas. And in the 
mean time, don't lose heart if your organizing 
efforts don't pay off right away. You are fighting 
alongside many comrades in other prisons and on the 
outside and there are many contributions you can 
make to the revolution from behind bars.


RESPONSES OF SUPPORT TO TEXAS WOMYN'S SEXUAL ABUSE


***In accordance with this discussion of unity. The 
following letters were written in support of the 
Texas prisoner whose letter, titled "Unwanted 
Sexual Advances Behind Texas Prison Walls" was 
printed in MIM Notes issue #128.***


KEEP YOUR HEAD UP HIGH AND STAY STRONG

Dear MIM, ...I'm the RHU [Restricted Housing Unit] 
for 90 days . . . I was on the gate talking to my 
neighbor and he gave me your paper to read. The 
issue he gave me was MIM Note, #128, December 15, 
1996. On page 8 I say an article about a lady in 
prisoner in Texas, dated October 12th. She wrote 
you guys saying she was sexually assaulted.

Well I think that the captain that did this to her 
should be found and sent to prison so he can see 
what it's like on the other side, meaning being 
locked down. He probably would get his ass beat for 
doing what he did, because word gets around behind 
these walls. I could imagine what this lady is 
going through. I bet it's hard for her to get 
letters out to people and places. I just wanted to 
say I believe they will find this pervert and make 
him pay for what he has done to this lady's mind 
and life.

If you're reading this letter, "Mrs. Texas", hang 
in there. Keep your head up high and stay strong. I 
know it's hard for you, but they will get this 
captain and he will pay for what he has done to 
you. Stay strong.

Your friend and first time reader of MIM,

A Pennsylvania Prisoner, 4 January 1997


JAILHOUSE LAWYER OFFERS ASSISTANCE TO TEXAS COMRADE


Dear MIM, ...I'm concerned about the lady who wrote 
the "Unwanted Sexual Advances Behind Texas Prison 
Walls" article in the December 15, 1996 portion of 
MIM Notes' Under Lock and Key. I am concerned 
because she is proceeding Pro Se without any real 
knowledge of Federal Procedure. It is clear that 
she has been damaged and I would hate to see her 
lose her action simply because she is 
unknowledgeable in the law.

Although she has a de facto claim, it is another 
story all together to be able to put those facts on 
paper so as to state a prima facie cause of action. 
I noticed that the lady stated that she was 
concerned that the defendants may be entitled to 
"qualified immunity" because they were action under 
color of state law.

This in and of itself, demonstrates to me that she 
has most likely failed to state facts in support of 
her claims that would entitle her to relief. If the 
facts are properly alleged in black and white, the 
defendant would not be entitled to "qualified 
immunity" under any set of circumstances because he 
was acting outside of his job duties and violated 
clearly established law.

In connection, if the other defendant acted in 
concert to cover-up the sexual assault, she may 
have a claim under Title 18 U.S.C. 241 and 242, as 
well as 1983 of Title 42. The Title 18 claim is 
criminal conspiracy charges which carries ten years 
each. At any rate it is very possible that she 
could collect damages as well as seek several 
different types of criminal action.

It is unusual that I get involved in other people's 
claims because I have so many of my own to keep me 
occupied. However, I could not allow myself to sit 
back and allow this lady to proceed Pro Se by 
herself. While sexual assaults are not my 
specialty, I would like to assist in any way I can. 
Normally the issues of law concerning the 
defendants "affirmative defenses" are boiler plate 
and would apply to her case as well.... 
Additionally, I have numerous concerned citizens on 
the outside, that may help in finding the 
defendants location for service if they have not 
yet been served....

A South Carolina Prisoner, 8 January 1997

***WHAT NON-PRISONERS CAN DO TO SUPPORT 
PRISONERS***

*1. Struggle with, work with, finance and join MIM. 
The best way to support prisoners is to overthrow 
the system under which capitalists profit from the 
exploitation of prisoners. History shows that the 
best way to do this is to build a Marxist-Leninist-
Maoist party. The oppressors will not give up their 
power without a fight.
*2. Finance MIM's prison work. Our biggest bill 
each month is postage. Most of the prison comrades 
who read MIM Notes have no way of paying for it. So 
if you have money, send what you can afford. Every 
cent helps, and stamps are as good as cash to us.
*3. Distribute MIM Notes and Notas Rojas. Bring the 
voices of prisoners and their supporters to as 
large and wide an audience of people as possible. 
Contact MIM for bulk rates and distribution tips.
*4. Start or join a prison support group. MIM can 
provide advice and resources to help you build 
public opinion for prisoners and their struggles.
*5. Fight censorship, beatings, torture and other 
fascist outrages. Under Lock and Key often features 
the addresses of prisoners' friends and enemies. 
Work with the friends and let the enemies know 
you're watching. (Don't expect to win the fascists 
to the side of humanity, however. See #1 in this 
list).
*6. Stay in touch. Keep us informed of pro-prisoner 
work you do. Our readers might find it educational 
or inspirational.