Crossposts from MIM's Site

[repost mim on rcp]

[mim3 comments: The following is a ridiculous
piece of philistinism from the RCP=u$A's RosaRL
trying to follow up on our trashing of their line
on the labor aristocracy and the origin of
surplus-value found in the united $tates. It comes
from
awip.proboards23.com/index.cgi?action=displ
ay&board=politix&thread=1080284384&start=0 My
comments come afterwards.]

************************************************
RCP=U$A says:

Modern capitalism has stretched outside national
borders, and major powers exploit (and divide up)
the world.

However this does not mean (and has never meant)
that they don't exploit workers in their "home
countries." And every marxist thinker and leader
in the world (from Lenin to Mao to the leaders of
todays movements) insist on this -- because it is
an important basis of the internationalism between
the workers of the world.

MIM implies that U.S. workers live off of the
labor of people all over the world -- and aren't
exploited themselves. It is true that because the
U.S. is an imperialist nation -- its economy is
more robust, more articulated and rational. The
u.s. no longer has a peasantry that is being
ruined by capitalism, and flooding as desperate
poor into the cities (depressing wages). In the
third world there are the extremes of "super
exploitation" -- where the existance of semi-
feudalism in the countryside allows workers to be
exploited BELOW the value of their labor power.

However none of this means that tens of millions
of workers in the U.S. are not exploited -- (and
scientifically speaking, that they are only paid
around the "value of their labor power" -- meaning
they barely make ends meet.)

It is also not true that most of the profit the
U.S. capitalists get is from outside the U.S. --
or that it is mainly from the third world.

In fact the U.S. ruling class invests about 1.4
trillion overseas every year, and many many times
that much domestically.

If y ou analyze where it invests overseas -- most
of it is in the OTHER IMPERIALIST COUNTRIES. Which
just confirms that there are proletarians in those
countries to exploit. (And huge amounts of
theinvestment of the Japanese, German etc.
imperialists is within the U.S. -- exploiting the
labor of the multinational u.s. working class).

The ratios of this are worth looking at briefly:
This is true for the U.S. ruling class -- their
investment, and the amount of "profit" extracted
within the U.S. is many times more than their
investment overseas. Throughout history they have
brutally exploited working people within the u.s.
-- using the most extreme means (like slavery) and
in modern times working millions of people under
intense conditions for wages that barely keep
body-and-mind together.

Clearly, both today and historically, this has
involved the special exploitation of Black and
Latino people and immigrants -- who are often held
at the bottom of the working class, in castelike
ways.

As imperialism developed in the U.S., there were a
number of parallel economic trends -- associated
with the export of capital to the third world, the
extraction of superprofits from there, and the
ability of the U.S. imperialists to develop all
kinds of operations in the U.S. that were
parasitic (i.e. removed from value creation, like
vast banking and speculation, advertising, etc.)

International exploitation has become vital to
imperialism (for many reasons) -- and expanding
their share of that exploitation is a major goal
of each imperialist class.

However this does not mean (and has never meant)
that they are not ROOTED within a national market,
where the bulk of their surplus value comes from
exploiting the workers there. The notion (in the
current book "Empire" that international capital
is now rootless and "transnational" refers to
important trends and developments, but is
essentially false.

[repost from mim]

And, even when you look at the amount of
investment and profit, the U.S. ruling class does
overseas -- it is mainly concentrated in OTHER
IMPERIALIST COUNTRIES not in the third world.
(I.e. the exploitation of Japanese workers is very
important for the U.S. bourgeoisie -- and is
itself a sign of the existance of an exploited
working class in Japan. And furthermore, many
foreign imperialists put a huge amount of their
investment capital in the U.S., to exploit the
proletariat there.)

If you look at the overseas investment, here are
the figures: all countries: 1,381,674 million

Investments in other imp countries Europe: 727,793
million Canada: 139,031 million Japan: 64,103
million

total: almost a trillion dollars

Investments in the third world Latin am: 269,556
million Africa: 2,063 million Middle East: 12,643
million

total: almost 300 billion dollars.

(Figures are taken form the Department of
Commerce, Survey of Current Business from January
2003. The numbers are all for 2001, and are
measured in millions of dollars. There are figures
there on the INCOME from those investments too,
and so on. Profit income does not correspond
simply and directly to surplus value -- but the
overall ratios are revealing.
www.bea.doc.gov/bea/ARTICLES/2003/01January
/D-Pages/0103DpgG.pdf)

Side note:

This does not mean that the super exploitation in
the third world is not important for imperialism.
Thought it just means that the bulk of surplus
value in the world does not come from exploiting
the workers of the third world.

Exploitation in the third world is important
because the RATE OF EXPLOITATION is extremely high
(because of suppressed wages and other reasons) so
the investments by imperialism in those regions
increase their global competitiveness with their
rivals. (this is a whole discussion, which i have
only touched on.)

*************************************************

mim3 for the Maoist Internationalist Movement:

As usual, to attack the MIM line, the RCP=u$A
completely slaughters Marx. Anyone who has read
Marx on the distribution of surplus-value knows it
is distributed under capitalism according to
ownership shares of capital, but that is
COMPLETELY DIFFERENT FROM THE ORIGIN of the
surplus-value. Surplus-value can come from
anywhere, but capital expects a return wherever it
happens to be. Profit in one place does not mean
surplus-value was extracted in the same place, not
at all, and we would have to have not paid even
the slightest attention to Marx to come up with
the above from the Reactionary Centrist
Philistines.

This is also a massacre of Lenin, because Lenin
pointed out that finance capital dominated under
imperialism. It certainly does not mean that most
surplus-value comes from bank workers. In fact,
not one bit of surplus-value comes from bank
workers according to Marx and Lenin. Following
RosaRL of RCP=U$A's philistine logic, investments
must be made in banks because there is profit
there and therefore surplus-value extracted there.
Although such is an objective standard, it is that
of social-democrats, not Marx and Lenin.

One can open Lenin's "Imperialism" to almost any
page and refute RosaRL. In his section on "Finance
Capital and the Financial Oligarchy," he says in
"Imperialism": "the extraordinarily high rate of
profit obtained from the issue of bonds, which is
one of the principal functions of finance capital,
plays a very important part in the development and
consolidation of the financial oligarchy." Now is
RosaRL seriously going to tell us that when the
imperialists invest in an office building to trade
bonds the profits come from exploiting bond-
traders?!! RCP=U$A should come out openly and
abandon the labor theory of value and be done with
it.

Philistines! The ratio of investments in the
imperialist countries relative to that of the
Third World has to do with the fact that
capitalists own their capital in the imperialist
countries! So what? Ownership of capital is not
exploitation! The stocks and bonds are owned in
the imperialist country, but the work is done in
the Third World. The office buildings are in the
imperialist countries, but the farms, mines and
factories are in the Third World.

According to Lenin in "Imperialism," not only is
ownership of capital not the same thing as
exploitation or an indication of where
exploitation occurs, but also ownership of capital
separates into various aspects: "The ownership of
capital is separated from the application of
capital to production, that money capital is
separated from industrial or productive capital,
and that the rentier who lives entirely on income
obtained from money capital, is separated from the
entrepreneur and from all who are directly
concerned in the management of capital.
Imperialism, or the domination of finance capital,
is that highest stage of capitalism in which this
separation reaches vast proportions." He also said
geographic separation reaches vast proportions.

[repost from mim]

As we have shown before, what RosaRL has done is
called assuming that which is to be proved.
Pointing to the investments and salaries in the
imperialist countries is not proof that the value
in those investments, profits and salaries came
from those imperialist countries. Leaders of
multinational corporations tend to live in
Manhattan, Westchester etc. but the value that
constitutes their salaries, profits and benefits
comes from the Third World. MLPD the German
revisionists introduce the same revision of Marx
as RCP=U$A.

The whole document above proves they at the
RCP=u$A do not study Marx on the difference
between surplus-value extraction and profit
distribution. After production in a factory, only
a portion of the surplus-value goes to the factory
owner. Another portion goes to sales capitalists
and sales workers and yet another portion to banks
and a fourth to landlords. With enough factory,
mining and agricultural workers in other
countries, entire imperialist countries can have
no surplus-value extraction at all.

RCP=U$A ignored what Lenin said in "Imperialism."
Aside from that, it does not occur to these people
at RCP=U$A that when Gucci sells a handbag made in
China, the profit is made in the Amerikan mall,
but the product was not! So this argument that the
RCP=U$A makes is terribly nationalist.

Capitalists invest where they are going to realize
profit, realize surplus-value. Where there are
rich people there is profit to be made. Where
there is a bourgeoisie shopping that is best of
all for retail profits. It does not prove that the
place the bourgeoisie shops is where the
exploitation happens. They don't grow the lettuce
in back of the grocery store. Profit-realization
has never been the same thing as where the
exploitation is going on and Marx carefully
explained how surplus-value is transferred from
the productive sector workers to the unproductive
sector. All of Capital Vol. IV is about that, but
Marx and Engels also published repeatedly on
surplus-value distribution before Marx died as
well.

It's clear enough when we talk about corporate
managers operating in u.$. imperialist
headquarters, but the same logic applies to
everyone living in the u$A with legal working
rights. They are all staff in the imperialist
headquarters. That's why we only get a lumpen and
undocumented exploited people plus some exploited
in prisons. That's why it is possible for the
sales workers and administration to outnumber the
productive sector workers in the united $tates. It
is not possible to explain the ratio of
unproductive sector workers to productive sector
workers in the imperialist countries any other
way.

It's 2004, but MIM already answered this
particular approach in 1997 in several places. The
whole argument was addressed right here, but
"reading comprehension" is not their strong point
over there at the RCP=U$A, if they have a point at
all:

"If we combine financial with trading services, we
have a pretty good idea of what business the
imperialists are doing with each other. Such
cross-border investment does not prove that the
Third World is irrelevant. Since trade and finance
do not produce physical wealth themselves, it only
proves that the activities of the unproductive and
parasitic sectors have been spread around, so that
no one imperialist can enjoy parasitic advantages
over another, as in the old days of colonialism.
"As a percentage of the outward FDI [Foreign
Direct Investment-ed.] stock [which means total
quantity, not the increase per year-ed.] in
services of 11 home countries, the share of
finance-related services ranged from 27 to 84 per
cent in the first half of the 1980s. That of trade
related services for the same countries was, with
three exceptions, between 22 and 42 per cent.
Similarly, as a proportion of inward FDI stock in
services, and both for developed and developing
countries, finance-related services and trade-
related services together typically account for 50
to 90 per cent."
www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/mt/imp97/imp97c1
.html

The imperialists are cross-investing in each
other--making each other business partners. The
movement of such investment, much of it
speculative, in no way says anything about
production. RosaRL's argument is a dream come true
for stock brokers, merchants and bankers who
previous to RosaRL did not understand the role
they played in the economy. RosaRL's line is
opposed to the labor theory of value. Wealth comes
from labor not from the virility of stock brokers
opening offices hither and thither.

Now go back and read RosaRL's argument above. Does
she tell you anywhere, anywhere at all that those
investments are in finance and trade? Does she try
to pass it off like there are all these steel and
auto workers here being exploited? Yes. In other
words she is trying to sneak the banking, stock
trading and merchant "workers" into the
proletariat. That's why she did not tell you
anywhere above that those investments reflect the
DECADENCE of imperialism, the fact that it has no
where to go but more coupon-clipping as Lenin
referred to it.

One last point, after all the answers MIM has
given regarding what the line means practically
speaking, the RCP=U$A still hasn't read any or
rebutted any. Avakian is even on record saying the
question of exploitation is "academic." This goes
to show you exactly what their GOAL is in all
their activity. You can read their comments and
they go on and on about how you can't measure
exploitation; math is no good; statistics is no
good. (Did they even crack open Das Kapital or
"Imperialism"? If so, where did they get all their
hostility to math, facts and statistics?) What it
all means is that they do not intend to abolish
exploitation. It's not part of their goal.

The first point of discussion in revolution has to
be the goal of revolution and then the
movement/strategy to get there. Otherwise we
become Bernstein-style revisionists. It's not
surprising that open Menshevik Redstar2000 ends up
doing the bulk of defending the RCP=U$A line at
awip.proboards23.com.

[repost mim on rcp]

The poor quality of the RCP=U$A response sure does
give credence to Luis Arce Borja when he says
these are cop circles. It's hard to imagine that
revisionists would do such a poor job of trying to
reference Marx. It's much easier to imagine some
cops so distant from Marx that they recently
graduated from Police Academy III and are just
trying to collect information on the
revolutionaries by coming up with this kind of
garbage.

P.S. If you look around at the web site set up by
RCP=U$A fans, you'll see that most of the articles
revolve around the psychological reasons the
Remarkably Clueless Psychologists can't adjust to
the truth. For every fact in there there are 100
ad hominem attacks on MIM and pro-Sakai
anarchists.

We can just see them if they lived when Lenin
wrote "Imperialism." "Oh no, please don't say that
about MY country! It would hurt my feelings SO SO
MUCH.....! We've still got lots of progress to be
made in capitalism, especially with direct
investment in my own country!" These are whiners
who will never amount to much, never be able to
make an objective analysis. They remind me of all
the reasons people don't give up smoking or stay
on their diets or whatever--all psychology, no
facts about smoking.

***********************************************

mim3 for the Maoist Internationalist Movement,
April 20, 2004:

I've been correctly criticized, because the above
is too soft on the RCP=U$A. HC123 points out the
RCP=U$A used the government statistics on
investment, but took an overly narrow view of what
to include even as investment.

"You shouldn't have let them off so easily with
their Really Crappy Politics. Obviously you blew
them away by pointing out, quite correctly, that
the 'investment' between imperialist countries is
mainly a matter of paper-shuffling, an exchange of
assets in the non-productive sector (and even the
little bit that goes into productive-sector
operations such as automobile factories ends up
paying the salaries of non-exploited beneficiaries
of the surplus-value of others). But you could
have argued on their absurd terms as well. Let's
add up the real bill for Third World investment.
To keep the Third World under its thumb, the
United $tates spends $400 billion per year on
armaments. (But, wait! Part of that goes to pay
the salaries of POOR EXPLOITED US soldiers who are
only doing an honest day's workkk in Iraq!) Then
there is "foreign aid." And the UN. And the
Peace Corps. And we're still tallying up only the
United $tates's share. Now, how do those
numbers on 'investment' look?"

I'll just note what HC123 pointed out about the
Pentagon as a PER YEAR investment in
domination. The numbers far dwarf anything RCP=U$A is
talking about. Obviously, the RCP=U$A view is too simple
even in the realm of how imperialist investment really occurs.

[full links]

full doc at:

www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/wim/wyl/crypto/rosarlofrcpusa.txt

mim on rcp and crypto-trotskyism:

www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/wim/wyl/crypto.html

[redstar2000]

mim wrote: It's clear enough when we talk about corporate managers operating in U.$. imperialist headquarters, but the same logic applies to everyone living in the U$A with legal working rights. They are all staff in the imperialist headquarters.

Emphasis added.

So, if you are "serious communists", when are you leaving?

You know, going off to join the "real proletariat" in the "third world".

"Unity of theory and practice", remember?

Of course that may be a presumptuous question on my part; all Leninists agree that I'm just an "armchair theory-spinner". That is my practice.

But what are the practical consequences of your line?

This is a question you constantly avoid...even though you have time and energy for massive postings of economic "analysis".

What is the practice that logically follows from your theory?

What, to coin a phrase, is to be done?

Surely you don't plan to just sit in the U$A and constantly remind us that we're all a bunch of fucking "parasites", do you?

Do you?

Or "Imperialist headquarters staff of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your pets!"?

I'm starting to get a feel for you guys; I think you exhibit a real..."distaste" for the working class. I wonder if you are all not really academics in universities...playing at "revolutionary" politics. I wonder if there's some kind of "middle class guilt" that really motivates you...and, after all, cheerleading distant peasant revolutions doesn't cost anything, does it? It's "risk-free".

mim wrote: It's not surprising that open Menshevik[sic] Redstar2000 ends up doing the bulk of defending the RCP=U$A line...

Yeah, right, and they're late with my check again!

[roman]

redstar says: I'm starting to get a feel for you guys; I think you exhibit a real..."distaste" for the working class. I wonder if you are all not really academics in universities...playing at "revolutionary" politics. I wonder if there's some kind of "middle class guilt" that really motivates you...and, after all, cheerleading distant peasant revolutions doesn't cost anything, does it? It's "risk-free".

Redstar's feel for people is probably as accurate as his hunches on Marx.

This is the second time in recent posts that redstar is baiting people for information. See the end of his last post in the Excerpts On the White Working Class pt 1 thread from April 17th. Sorry Redstar. I don't have to prove my prole cred to anyone on this forum, especially you.

[kasama]

I basically agree Roman.

I think we should approach this question from the high plane of two line struggle.

The old game of making it adhominem (personal) simply avoids the factual and line issues -- and asks "who are you to raise these questoins?"

It is a diversion.

However, in a humorous vein, if you ever explore your "prol credentials" the question has to be "whose standards of proletarian." I bet that if we apply MIMs standards you are an exploiter and a parasite. Just like the guy who picks up your garbage, or the underpaid waitress in the cafeteria, or the poor bastard who got crushed in the nearby mines.

[roman]

Kas takes the high road: I basically agree Roman...I think we should approach this question from the high plane of two line struggle.

Kas takes the low road: However, in a humorous vein, if you ever explore your "prol credentials" the question has to be "whose standards of proletarian." I bet that if we apply MIMs standards you are an exploiter and a parasite. Just like the guy who picks up your garbage, or the underpaid waitress in the cafeteria, or the poor bastard who got crushed in the nearby mines.

Is this your idea of two line struggle? interesting.

Whether in humor or not, you and redstar can speculate and "bet" all you want. Kas is just repeating redstar's baiting jesture, although in a more underhanded way. I am suprised to see such CLUMSY nonsense from Kas.

Oh wait - thanx Kas, in all these years, I had never thought to explore my class status. I'll get on it.

[redstar2000]

roman wrote: Sorry Redstar. I don't have to prove my prole cred to anyone on this forum, especially you.

No, you certainly do not...nor have I asked you to.

I'm talking about the consequences of your theory.

(Well, actually I was talking about the consequences of MIM's theory, but, to the degree you associate yourself with their views...)

It's pretty straightforward: (1) You're not in prison; (2) You're not "lumpen" or an illegal immigrant; [3) therefore, you are indeed a parasite.

At least that's how MIM would "analyze" your "class situation".

Any other details would be superfluous...all they need to know is that you're not a prisoner, not "lumpen", and not an illegal immigrant. (If you were any of those three things, you wouldn't have access to the internet, of course.)

If you have air conditioning, that really puts you in the shithole. You're "practically a bourgeois"!

I raise these points not in terms of an "ad hominem" attack but rather as a "real world" check on some rather "other-worldly" rhetoric.

If you take a particular "line" on a particular question, then, like it or not, you are "stuck" with the full package of implications of that line.

You can't slide by saying "nation of parasites blah blah blah" and then come back and add "but that doesn't include me."

Guy, it does include you!

Here are some more implications of MIM's line to chew on...

1. According to MIM, prisoners, at least, are "not parasites". Yet I have read that poor people in Colombia and other Latin and Central American countries eagerly compete for "jobs" as "mules" -- smugglers of illegal drugs into the U.S. -- because, should the worst happen and they get caught, even life in a federal prison is "better" than life in their "third world" countries.

Does that mean that even prisoners "benefit" from imperialism?

2. According to MIM, illegal immigrants are not "parasites". But "illegals" continue to come here in substantial numbers; even though they are poorly paid by American standards, the money is still well above what they'd earn if they stayed home.

Aren't illegal immigrants also "benefiting" from imperialism?

3. And the "lumpen"? Same thing. Even his "homeless shelter" is far superior to its counterpart in the "third world" (if those countries even have homeless shelters).

Obviously, yet another "beneficiary" of imperialism.

Following MIM's road will lead you to some very strange destinations.

It's really "another world"...although it's not "possible", of course. #nosmileys

[RosaRL]

S2000:

a side note - unemployed and homeless proletarians are not lumpen. In fact many of the homeless do work but simply cant afford to live anywhere but in what shelter they can find. MIM misses the fact that there are many people in the US that work and CANT afford a place to live! Some live in their cars and get a gym membership so they can shower. There are many more who are semi-homeless -- that is living on someone's couch or renting floor space in a corner or even camping in tents.

Lumpen is the 'criminal class' and some lumpen may very well be homeless. Some of the homeless are prisoners who have just been released from prision as well although the majority of prisoners are not lumpen either. The 'lumpen' are those whose defining life activity and world outlook centers on criminal activity and ripping-off other people. They can be very wealthy crime bosses to full time petti criminals.

[roman]

Redstar speculates: I'm talking about the consequences of your theory... It's pretty straightforward: (1) You're not in prison; (2) You're not "lumpen" or an illegal immigrant; [3) therefore, you are indeed a parasite... At least that's how MIM would "analyze" your "class situation".

You don't know a thing about me beyond this forum. Maybe you speculations are just a projection of your own class conditions onto everyone else in the discussion. In any case, it isn't important. This baiting is getting tiresome.

As far as MIM goes, I don't know the details of their line or what they would think of my class situation. And what my class situation or even what MIM thinks of me is absolutely unimportant to the discussion. So why raise it except as a diversion?

I agree with MIM in a general way on parasiticism. And, they provide vastly more scientific and economic data to back up thier case than others who argue against them. I find what they say very convincing. It is amazing to me that people who claim to be communists can't even provide basic economic data of any substantive kind to back up their case. Marx and Lenin weren't afraid of math at all. MIM can point exactly to Marx passages in Capital and other works where Marx gives percise definations of labor power, surplus value, and productive and unproductive labor yet this is just met with blank stares, hunchs, insults, and un-Marxist ideas of LVT, by "RCP" and redstar. Like a Mim-fan said in another post, why not just bag Marx's LVT? Why continue on with the lie?

As to redstar's fantasies about drug mules and mim's line.. I can only speak for my own line. And, I have stated elsewhere that I think there is a small proletariat in North America and it is mostly composed of capitive nation peoples and the lumpen.

[redstar2000]

Here is another, and very disturbing implication of MIM's line.

We all remember, at least vaguely, the political approach of Pol Pot and his Khymer Rouge.

His theory was that all city-dwellers were class enemies of the revolutionary peasantry.

Now, combine that with Lin Pao's idea that the imperialist countries are the "cities" and the colonial and neo-colonial world is the "countryside" and with Mao's idea that the revolution conquers first in the countryside and last in the cities.

The cities are "parasites" on the countryside...and what is the proper fate of parasites after the revolution has conquered?

Does MIM aspire to the status of Khymer Rouge v.2.0?

Think about it.

[redstar2000]

roman wrote: I have stated elsewhere that I think there is a small proletariat in North America and it is mostly composed of captive nation peoples and the lumpen.

Ok. I did not mean to give the impression that you were personally responsible for every morsel of nonsense from MIM.

I merely wished you to consider the implications.

As I do on this quote in which you do make your own view explicit.

What is the revolutionary significance of a "small" proletariat? What can it do and what can't it do?

Perhaps it is just large enough to catapult a "vanguard party" into power...but the result would be a dictatorship over the vast majority of "parasites" and even over the proletariat itself.

And it may be too small to even manage that. So what's left?

Not much, it seems to me.

roman wrote: It is amazing to me that people who claim to be communists can't even provide basic economic data of any substantive kind to back up their case. Marx and Lenin weren't afraid of math at all.

I cannot speak for others, but I've freely admitted on many occasions that I'm not a trained Marxist economist.

My "expertise" (meager as it is) is looking at the political consequences of economic hypotheses. I can't tell you if the labor theory of value is right or partially right or completely wrong. MIM says they can...and you evidently find their arguments convincing.

But I can tell you what the political consequences of their arguments are...and you dismiss them as "fantasies" at your peril.

Their "economic analysis", however formidable it may appear, has a real world consequence...the end of any possibility of proletarian revolution in the "west".

I conclude that there must be something wrong with their math...they've reached an absurd conclusion.

In fact, I think they are the "Marxist" equivalent of those highly-respected late 19th century physicists who "proved" that heavier-than-air aircraft were "mathematically impossible".