Maoist Internationalist Movement

The Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM) was a clandestine revolutionary communist organization based primarily in the United States. MIM claimed to adhere to a radical ideology that some now call a Maoist Third-Worldist ideology. MIM itself claimed to uphold "MIM Thought". MIM listed a sole PO box in Ann Arbor, Michigan as its mailing address.

History

MIM was founded as the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM) in 1983 from a group called RADACADS (for "RADical ACADemics") at Harvard University.[1][2] Before it became MIM, RADACADS worked with some of the new communist movement organizations that had formed out of the 1969 breakup of Students for a Democratic Society.

The group changed its name to "Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM)" in 1984 after another Maoist organization, the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA (RCP, USA), adopted the name "Revolutionary Internationalist Movement" for its own international organization. In a document titled "MIM History, How It All Began",[3] published by MIM in May 1994 on the occasion of MIM's 10th anniversary, MIM states, "The origins of MIM are inextricably bound up with the phenomenon of the RCP, USA." But at the same time they state that, "MIM's members were never members of the RCP, USA." According to the MIM statement, "Ideological, political and organizational riddles solved themselves simultaneously when a comrade close to the RCP, USA used our document 'Manifesto on the International Situation and Revolution' as an application for membership in the RCP, USA. The comrade explained that if the RCP accepted the comrade on the basis of this document - then the other comrades would also commit to joining. The RCP, USA rejected the application and a decisive break ensued. The issues entailed the nature of vanguard parties, Maoism versus Trotskyism and many smaller matters." According to this MIM statement, it is at this point that MIM formed and began to consider itself the vanguard party in the U.S.

MIM claims that when founded it was composed of a "majority of national minorities and a majority of women."

Theoretical line

MIM listed its cardinal principles as:

  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 Joseph Stalin in 1953; in China, it was after Mao Zedong's death and the overthrow of the "Gang of Four" in 1976.
  2. MIM upholds the Chinese Cultural Revolution as the farthest advance of socialism in human history.
  3. According to MIM, imperialism's extraction of super-profits from the Third World allows oppressor nations to buy off a large portion of their labouring population, which MIM does not view as a 'working class' in the strict sense. MIM argues that these 'workers' bought off by imperialism form a new petty-bourgeoisie called the labor aristocracy. These classes are not the principal vehicles to advance Maoism within those countries because their standards of living depend on imperialism. At this time, according to MIM, imperialist super-profits create this situation in Canada, Quebec, the United States, England, France, Belgium, Germany, Japan, Italy, Switzerland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Israel, Sweden and Denmark.

It is through MIM's unique analysis of the "labor aristocracy" that MIM differentiated itself from other leftist parties in what it terms the imperialist countries. The labor aristocracy today, MIM argued, is that class of workers in imperialist countries that receive more than the value of their labor by sharing in the superprofits extracted from the Third World. MIM saw the principal contradiction in society to be that between imperialism and the oppressed nations and upholds the right to self-determination for oppressed nations. Although it allows that there are "scattered" white proletarians, MIM considers most white workers in the U.S. to be members of a labor aristocracy, meaning that that they benefit so much from the system of imperialism that they are bought off, thus having no revolutionary potential. MIM developed this analysis in part from the book Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat by J. Sakai. MIM thus believes that revolution is impossible in the U.S. without external help of oppressed nations.

MIM states that it serves to build public opinion in favor of anti-imperialist and national liberation struggle.

MIM was one of the first Maoist organizations to explicitly oppose homophobia and heterosexism.

MIM was known for its unusual spellings of many common words, such as womyn (and plural wimmin), persyn, I$rael, Kanada, and united $nakes of ameriKKKa, which reflects MIM's approach to language questions.

MIM also held the unusual position that all sex under patriarchy is rape due to power relations in patriarchal society. They have drawn on the theoretical works of feminist author Catharine MacKinnon in coming to this analysis.

Publications

All of MIM's publications were anonymously written; authors do not sign their names to articles. Instead, writers used the moniker MC[X] (MIM Comrade X), where X is a number. This is reputedly to prevent their members and supporters from being known by the state and also to keep the focus on theoretical line and arguments rather than people and personal relationships.

MIM published a biweekly newspaper, MIM Notes, and had an occasional Spanish-language publication, Notas Rojas. MIM also published a theory journal titled MIM Theory, of which 14 were released up until 2001. MIM also published Maoist Sojourner, 'a monthly publication by and for Third World Maoist exiles,' which according to the MIM website, "died as a publication thanks in part to internal sabotage and quitters."[4]

Demise of MIM

A post on the MIM website titled "Where we are at theoretically at the end", dated February 15, 2008, appears to announce the end of MIM.[5] The post states that there will be no further posts on the MIM website, and announces a postmortem website, MIM Lite.[6] According to the 2/15/2008 post on the MIM website, "There will be no new content here, no more stepping on toes and no defense of political gains if any. 'MIM Lite' will take up the few leftover tasks." While it is not said explicitly that MIM no longer exists as an organization, this is strongly implied and there appears to be no new activity subsequent to the 2/15/2008 post. In May 2008 it was announced[7] that MIM Lite would be retired. In August a new blog was announced,[8] called MIM Defense,[9] with the stated purpose to "defend the leaders of ex-MIM, the Maoist Internationalist Movement, people who continue on the course of the anti-war and anti-imperialist struggles."[10] The founder of RADACADS and MIM, Henry Park, went public in November 2008 after facing a rape accusation from Ann England.[11]

In January 2009, MIM's web host, The ETEXT Archives, ceased operations.[12] The content formerly hosted by The ETEXT Archives, including MIM, is still available at the Maoist Internationalist Ministry of Prisons,[13] and via the Internet Archive.[14] MIM continues to publish articles at Wordpress.com.[15]

MIM founder Henry Park died on May 17, 2011.[16]

Spinoff organizations

The organisation Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist Movement and its website anti-imperialism.com upholds a similar set of politics and cites the Maoist Internationalist Movement as an influence.[17] The Maoist International Ministry of Prisons (MIM-Prisons) continues to organize and maintains its own website.[18]

References

  1. ↑ MIM History
  2. ↑ MIM Notes 88
  3. ↑ MIM History
  4. ↑ Maoist Sojourner
  5. ↑ Where we are at theoretically at the end
  6. ↑ MIM Lite
  7. ↑ Retirement May 19 2008
  8. ↑ (Dead link; most recent version at Internet Archive is too old) What's New?
  9. ↑ MIM Defense
  10. ↑ About MIM Defense
  11. ↑ Statement from Henry Park about going aboveground
  12. ↑ The ETEXT Archives closing announcement
  13. ↑ MIM archive at the Maoist Internationalist Ministry of Prisons
  14. ↑ Internet Archive's archive of The ETEXT Archives
  15. ↑ mimdown
  16. ↑ Henry Park Obituary
  17. ↑ http://anti-imperialism.com/recommended-readings/
  18. ↑ http://prisoncensorship.info/

External links