The form of the Joint Dictatorship of the Proletariat of Oppressed Nations
(monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com)
[These are slightly edited excerpts of IRTR posts made by comrades in April and September of 2006. MSH is republishing this to encourage readers to think about the kinds of measures that are needed to impose socialism on imperialist nations where the vast majority of the populations are hardcore class enemies. MSH agrees with Lenin's discussion of proletarian "Jacobinism":
The Jacobins of contemporary Social-Democracy -- the Bolsheviks, the Vperyodovtsi, Syezdovtsi, Proletartsi, or whatever we may call them -- wish by their slogans to raise the revolutionary and republican petty bourgeoisie, and especially the peasantry, to the level of the consistent democratic centralism of the proletariat, which fully retains its individuality as a class. They want the people, i.e. the proletariat and the peasantry, to settle accounts with the monarchy and the aristocracy in the "plebeian way," ruthlessly destroying the enemies of liberty , crushing their resistance by force, making no concessions whatever... (From Two Tactics of Social Democracy, written in the period of the 1905 revolution in Russia. Quoted in Chen Boda's Notes on Mao Tse-tung's "Report of an Investigation into the Peasant Movement in Hunan", Foreign Language Press. 1954. pp 34)
First Nations activist Russell Means addressed the white so-called "socialists," the "Girondists" of so-called "social democracy," the phony allies of the oppressed nations and international proletariat:
You can’t judge the real nature of a European revolutionary doctrine on the basis on the changes it proposes to make within the European power structure and society. You can only judge it by the effects it will have on non-Europeans. (RC Polemic II First Nations and the Environment, MIM Theory 12. 1997. pp 29)
MSH advocates a proletarian "Jacobin" settling of accounts with the imperialist nations. Maoism seeks to smash the entire First World, especially White, power structure to dust and place power in the hands of the oppressed nations.]
Serve The People wrote on IRTR on April 22 of 2006:
I have proposed, in the past, that the JDPON should disperse the Amerikkkans throughout the Third World instead of allowing them to remain in occupied North America. Here are some of my reasons:
1) A geographic concentration of Amerikkkans would facilitate counterrevolution. It would also be difficult to exercise proletarian dictatorship over hundreds of millions of enemies: we would need to import a huge unproductive sector of police and such from the Third World. As a practical matter, it would be better to thin the Amerikkkans out, making them minorities in the Third World, where they could easily be controlled and supervised by the international proletariat.
2) Amerikkkans will need to undergo re-education. It would be very difficult to re-educate them in their own kkkountry. They need to be in a proletarian environment where they can learn from the masses.
3) There are land claims to settle, mainly for the First Nations, but also for Aztlán [occupied Mexico -- MSH) and perhaps the Black nation. Conceivably some other nations could be moved to North America if they wished to be, such as Nauru or the small nations in Ghana whose land has been ruined by imperialist corporations. Amerikkkans are going to have to move out of much of North America and make room for other nations.
4) Amerikkkan kkkulture is almost totally reactionary. There is little worth saving in Amerikkkan kkkulture. It would be better to force Amerikkkans to assimilate to the more culturally and politically advanced peoples of the Third World. There is also historic justice in forcing Amerikkkans to assimilate, just as they destroyed so many other nations and cultures.
5) In the early stages of socialism, the Third World will require skilled workers and technicians of various kinds, including medical personnel. These persyns are disproportionately concentrated in the First World. Moving them to the Third World will be a practical way to address an urgent need.
6) The Third World is also owed big reparations. An excellent way to make those reparations is to put Amerikkkans to work building infrastructure in the Third World: roads, housing, water supplies, sewage, electricity, telecommunications, schools. Amerikkkans can also work in Third World factories and fields to expand production for the benefit of the Third World.
7) Part of the process of civilizing and proletarianizing Amerikkkans will be putting them to productive work--for a change. Amerikkka has so little productive capacity that there may not be many ways to put all those people to work in occupied North America. They may have to go to the factories and fields of the Third World.
8 ) Amerikkkans will need to be reduced to a Third World standard of living. If they stay in occupied North Amerikkka, they will benefit from the vastly better infrastructure and all the stolen wealth that they currently hold. It would be better to move them to the Third World as a way of accelerating the process of re-education.
9) There are historical precedents for relocating large numbers of enemies. Millions of Germans were forced to move after the Soviet victory over fascism in World War II. Even enemies like the united $nakes and the "united" KKKingdom agreed that it was necessary to move Germans off land that was needed for Poles, Czechs, and others. Again, this is related to the national question of the First Nations, Aztlán [occupied Mexico -- MSH], and the Black nation.
Is this a good idea? What are its advantages and disadvantages? How can we improve upon it?
Prairie Fire wrote on IRTR on September 13, 2006:
Marx wrote in the Manifesto how the bourgeoisie was horrified when confronted by communism. It’s no surprise that the labor aristocracy finds socialism “over the top.” The labor aristocracy of the first world thinks the same thing of Stalin and Mao, not to mention Lenin. Is that not the kind of language we hear from crypto-Trotskyists in their attacks on the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution? That it was too extreme and “one sided” and so on. There is nothing as radical as reality itself as Lenin said; class war has always been radical, extreme.
The dispersion plan is extreme, but revolution itself is extreme. Once you get a sense about the degree of parasitism, you’ll see that any solution to parasitism will be extreme. And, it will be nightmarish in the eyes of the exploiters. As Mao said, “A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.” For those who oppose the dispersion plan, the question is: how do we overthrow the reactionary classes for a prolonged period of time in the First World where the vast majority of the population are hardcore class enemies?
I enjoyed reading your thoughts on the JDPON. I agree that there will have to be a resettlement of U$ citizens. Marx considered the redistribution of population between the cities and rural areas to be an important task of communism. The labor aristrocacy will attack these plans as anti-democratic, anti-american, and so forth, so that it will never have popular support. The new culture should hold up positive examples like John Brown as role models for the current white supremacists in the U$. For the white supremacists in the U$, only betrayal to your race and your country consitute loyalty to the oppressed.
This plan is really just elaborating on what socialist societies have done in the past. Class enemies, among others, were often sent among the masses for reeducation. Since there are entire nations of class enemies in the global cities, it makes sense to send these populations down to the global countryside for ideological remoulding.
I accept that the majority of white westerners benefit from the exploitation of the Third World. I accept that the colonisation of America played a big role in the creation of the white, western labour aristocracy in the US and Europe. (Emigration to land seized from Native Americans raised real wages in Europe in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. As immigrants to the US always had access to land they never constituted a proletariat in the Marxist sense, as Marx specifies that people must be dispossessed of land and other property before becoming a proletariat.)
However, your proposals are impractical. America has nuclear weapons. Americans are not just going to let Mexico or other countries, invade them and disperse them to the 3rd world.
This does not mean their empire cannot fall. Empires in the past have fallen without the populations being dispersed by those they have previously oppressed. Empires can be defeated economically, as much as militarily.
You may argue that your proposals are ‘just’ but marxism is about science and objective reality. ‘Justice’ is an ideological construction in marxism, its not very marxist to base our programs on subjective notions of justice.
I think you’re trying to draw up blueprints for the future society. Again, this is not terribly marxist. Your thinking too far into the future. Marxists tend to only come up with detailed economic programs for the immediate future. This is because these can have some scientific basis, wheras blueprints for the distant future tend to be based on subjective desires and dreams. This leads to the errors of utopian socialism.
Of course, you are Marxists and revolutionaries. That goes without saying but I think some of your ideas will lead you to a dead end.
Joseph Ball
Joseph Ball,
MSH has never said that this is the only way of dealing with the White (Amerikan and Klanadian) population of class enemies. If you recall, IRTR spoke of other scenarios too. For example, IRTR spoke of scenarios where the Third World de-linked from the imperialist economies and eventually caused a proletarization of the First World populations. Another example, some kind of ecological catastrophe could cause a proletarization of the White “working class.” We are not prophets, we can’t know for sure how revolution will play out in every detail. The Third World invasion scenario is the one that we find most likely. It is a scenario that has a historical precedent, i.e. the Soviet occupation of Nazi Germany. In addition, The Plan of San Diego of 1915, associated with Magonista uprisings, advocated a no quarter policy to adult White males. This wasn’t some abstract fantasy, but a Plan associated with a real uprising in Texas. The Plan advocated a Mexican-Black-Asian-First Nations united effort against the Whites.
There are important demographic shifts occurring in the occupied territories of northern Mexico. White fascists like Pat Buchanan and Samuel Huntington have nightmares about the Reconquista — and they should. MSH hopes that a people’s war in southern Mexico spreads into the occupied territories. Mexican Maoists in the 1970s endorsed this theory. Using nukes on Mexico will not go over well with the Mexican populations, which will soon be a majority everywhere in the “South West.” MSH believes that the Mexico-centered strategy to be the best bet at present to bring about socialism within the fake-borders of the U$.
Mao didn’t cower like Khrushchev in the face of Amerikan nukes. Lin Biao wrote in Long Live the Victory of People’s War!:
MSH rejects the Theory of Productive Forces in all spheres. This lesson, the humyn factor is more important than technology, is one that the imperialists always fail to grasp. It is a lesson that they have been taught many times, and are being taught once again in Iraq and Afghanistan.
We are not utopians, we are revolutionary scientists.
‘If you recall, IRTR spoke of other scenarios too. For example, IRTR spoke of scenarios where the Third World de-linked from the imperialist economies and eventually caused a proletarization of the First World populations.’
I think this is the most likely scenario.
You’re talking in your latest commment about the liberation of PART of the US by Mexicans. I don’t know enough about what you are talking about here to comment on this.
I was talking about your belief that 3rd world peoples will conquer the whole of the US and deport its people. This really is not viable. The re-proletarianization scenario is much more sensible.
The Ottoman Empire collapsed without the Turkish people being deported. The Chinese Empire collapsed without its people being deported. The Russian Empire collapsed without its people being deported. The Soviet Union collapsed as a world power in 1990, despite having nuclear weapons-but its people were not deported by the Central Asians (and its arguable whether they were really exploited by the Russians anyway). Empires can fall for economic reasons and that’s really all that needs to happen. Your ‘deportation thesis’ really adds nothing of value to your core ideology. Why not drop it?
Joseph Ball,
The scenario that you think is most likely to occur is more in line with Maoist views of the late 1960s, we could even call it the traditional Lin Biao view. Such a view is perfectly compatible with the points listed on the About MSH page and is compatible with our criteria for fraternal recognition. We do not count the view that you currently hold on this point as outside the Maoist camp.
On the analogies and dis-analogies between the White Nation and various fallen empires:
Firstly, the White Nation (Amerikkka and Klanada) is made up almost entirely of class enemies. The fallen empires that you list were not.
Secondly, the fallen empires that you list were not settler societies where the imperial populations gained by waging the largest genocide in history, stealing a continent of land and exterminating a continent of people. Obviously, these are important differences.
Thirdly, if you wish to draw on relevant historical precedents, then Nazi Germany is the obvious place to start drawing parallels, not the Ottoman empire. As we have already pointed out, Germany had a labor aristocracy that benefited from imperialism and Germany aimed at creating a settler land empire to the East. As was previously mentioned, Nazi Germany was occupied by the armies of the proletariat, made to pay reparations and partially dismembered. This is a place to start, but there are important differences even here.
On dispersion:
MSH has not made the claim that class enemies in every imperialist nation should be deported to the Third World. However, such a question is an interesting one that we should not be afraid to ask. MSH has recommended such a dispersion policy for the White Nation. Besides the no quarter policy of the Plan of San Diego of 1915, MSH sees dispersion to the global countryside as the only realistic way to deal with the White population as it currently exists and will exist in the foreseeable future. MSH gives our class enemies a chance to change, so we lean toward the dispersion plan over the Plan of San Diego. Mao was an optimist about people and their potential for change, so are we. If there was a proletarization of the White population, then there would be more of a reason to rethink our positions on these issues. However, even if there was a proletarization, there are many land and reparation issues that need to be settled.
As anyone with a brain knows, there is no proletarization of the White Nation on the horizon. However, the situation in Mexico and the occupied territories is dynamic. Orienting ourselves toward the White Nation, even a future proletarized White fantasyland, is a mistake based on wishful thinking. We need to shape our strategy and tactics around the current reality and the trends that we see, not the trends we wish were there. If the choice is to err on the side of not offending, appeasing, one or two potential White allies who are with us overall but think the dispersion plan is “over the top” or settling land claims of occupied exploited and oppressed nations in North America, MSH will “err” on the latter side. We hope the wafflers come to see the logic in this.
It is true that we communists, as the great Marx said, do not write recipes for the cookbooks of the future. No one has said that Amerikkka will certainly be invaded and conquered by the united proletariat of the Third World. That is merely the most likely possibility at this time. Even if reproletarianization occurs in the First World after the Third World de-links itself from imperialism and starts managing production around its own needs rather than those of imperialist labor aristocracies, won’t occupation and re-education be necessary in order to prevent recidivism and crush fascist tendencies? Labor aristocrats will not gracefully slide into the proletariat; they will fight like hell to keep from losing their privileged position. They will form an enormous fascist army hundreds of millions strong. The Minutemen, “Buy Amerikkkan,” and other reactionary movements popular among the Amerikkkan labor aristocracy already presage a fascist movement of unprecedented scale.
By the way, it isn’t true that the Turks were not deported during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. They were, for the most part, driven out of the territories occupied by Turkey. You don’t find significant numbers of Turks today in Albania or Algeria.