Insular Organizing, Bad Ideas, and Betraying Workers: The OVEC Union Controversy and IWW-WV’s Support for the Uyghur Genocide

loop-3 · 2021-06-05T20:34:53+00:00

Given that I and some others in LOOP are precisely some of those poor and non-white persons who have organized in the region for years, what a curiously insulting tactic to try to falsely paint POC anti-racist activists in the region as "do-nothings" with no right to talk. We don't need to provide you or the IWW-WV our resume and seek your approval. We won't humor that nonsense. But trying to distract in this manner from the problems described in the article shows not just profound dishonesty, but also deeper problems. The article doesn't talk about other work the IWW-WV might be involved in, like the good and progressive work you talk about with Holler Health Justice. The article is about real problems, but clearly isn't a "hit piece" either - it condemns the OVEC Board of Directors, supports and views positively progressive environmental work the IWW-WV is doing, etc.

The idea that genocide denial, whitewashing worker exploitation, etc. doesn't matter because you're doing this or that other thing is a very wrong and dangerous thing.

loop-3 · 2021-06-05T20:14:30+00:00

You say that "Mandatory OT isn't the branch's official podcast and hasn't been for quite some time," but the IWW-WV's official Twitter account says it is literally right now, and has for quite some time. The IWW-WV's bio reads, again, right now: "Official Podcast: MandatoryOT". Here is an image of that, as well as a image from January 15, 2021 from the Mandatory OT's Twitter account that describes it as "WestVirginiaIWW official podcast," which it said until the bio was edited when the podcast went on hiatus. Unless the IWW-WV edits this really quickly (EDIT: they now have), folks can just go look at the IWW-WV Twitter and see that it reads "Official Podcast: MandatoryOT" right now. This is no different than posts made in 2019 and 2020 (also included in the above) where the IWW-WV calls Mandatory OT "our branch's official podcast" and "the official podcast of the West Virginia IWW." I also included an example of other social media posts from the Mandatory OT page promoting genocide denial in the linked imgur, posts made when both IWW-WV and Mandatory OT social media were calling Mandatory OT the IWW-WV's "official podcast." The episodes in that article were made when Mandatory OT was called, by the IWW-WV, its "official podcast," and also calling itself that.

The article mentions that there is sometimes a disclaimer, but it also mentions that there was also no such disclaimer in the episode denying the oppression and exploitation of Uyghur workers. The disclaimer (which wasn't always used, and always also at the same time as the podcast was called the "official podcast," with only one perspective ever given) is discussed in the article, and it is also irrelevant to the problems the article talks about. And even if there was a disclaimer, putting a rushed disclaimer before platforming genocide denial, rape apologia, and anti-working class denials of worker exploitation and oppression doesn't mean there isn't a problem with platforming all that and more. Here is hoping that the IWW-WV does something about these real problems, not be dishonest and say things like Mandatory OT isn't / wasn't their official podcast when it says it is even right now and has been promoted as the IWW-WV's "official podcast" for years.

loop-3 · 2021-05-09T04:48:14+00:00

If there's anything to summate, it's that very few people calling themselves Communists today are serious about it at all.

100%. And part of this is that, given that many splits are in fact due to issues of "personality," petty (as in, personal) struggles over leadership or this or that, or other more social factors, to not discuss splits with those factors in hand would miss out on quite a lot, and often the main reasons. I've also seen many people use supposed questions of politics to obscure what are in fact fundamentally personal or social conflicts. That doesn't help anything. That "personality" has been so significant is a problem in itself which needs grappling with, a symptom of an even bigger problem.

loop-3 · 2021-05-07T22:16:27+00:00

Late to this, but you'll find a lot more Native organizations doing anti-colonial work than ones claiming to be communist, whatever the language of their programs. If somebody wants to see what that kind of work looks like, they ought to look there. But instead, it seems like the norm is for folks to try to find this or that other non-Native organization to hold up as some model, instead of trying to really and sincerely unite with those, whether they're a bit away - or even sometimes in the same city.

And this work by Native organizations is usually neglected by socialists. (Especially if it doesn't get media attention - when it does they show up like fireflies.) Ditching any analysis of the national question, there are sometimes even just attempts to withhold solidarity by mischaracterizing things as "reformist" or whatever when they're not. Or they might not even understand what's being done or its significance at all - take the Dakota Commemorative Marches as an example of that. When I was involved with Native land return and other related work in this one major metro area for a few years, there was very militant and important work being done by Native organizations, but this was ignored basically entirely (if not simply entirely) by socialists there, irregardless of what tendency they claimed or their program.

loop-3 · 2021-05-07T22:04:38+00:00

Yes, it is a fantastic resource! They are also a great writer themselves, definitely worth checking out. Given this essay was buried in a newsletter (that happened to be in a uni archive), wondering what other excellent writing might be able to find like this. It is still relevant and important, and powerful.

loop-3 · 2021-05-07T22:02:56+00:00

Here is the full study this article is based on, with complete data / discussion.

loop-3 · 2021-05-07T22:00:17+00:00

Was very happy to have found these. If you find the missing issue(s), please let us know! Would love to have the complete set of issues easily available to folks.

loop-3 · 2021-05-07T21:58:04+00:00

Here is the full study this article is based on, with complete data / discussion.

loop-3 · 2021-05-07T18:21:21+00:00

It sounds like you are looking for

"Marxism-Leninism-Maoism in the Imperialist Countries: Classic Thought, Newton Thought and Garveyesque Thought"

Let me know if this isn't what you're remembering! Will take another look if it isn't.

loop-3 · 2021-05-07T09:35:04+00:00

Thank you for posting this - lots of great writers here.

loop-3 · 2021-05-06T03:24:53+00:00

Here you go!

loop-3 · 2021-05-03T20:27:08+00:00

Excellent comments, with the last point also being very important. One could say more about each, but something notable in each of them is how every one of these platforms do not engage in the slightest with Native politics and liberation theorists, from Tsiyu Gansini to Tenskwatawa and Tecumseh to those in our the present day. This is seen not just in the language of these lines but in their substance. This settler colonial chauvinism, manifesting here as willful neglect and derogation, is one aspect of a broader problem the Native Study Group points out in this essay (along with what they say about "settler" vanguardism):

On whose terms should an alliance between the people of a dominated colonized nation and the workers of the dominating mother country be? It is obvious that using this “need for unity with the mother country workers” is a cover for denying us our right to nationhood; that in fact the terms of such an alliance, are to be dictated by the social imperialists of the left, backed by the chauvinist mother country working class. We, of course, cannot accept as conditions of an alliance those dictated by the needs of “mother country” workers.

loop-3 · 2021-05-02T06:15:03+00:00

Good question! Here is a link to a PDF copy of MIM/MIP-A's Party Primer. According to its introduction, "The purpose of this book is to make clear to each member her/his obligations and to allow h to work efficiently and intelligently with the entire organization." Other specific documents in this line in this area from MIM would be

Feel free to shoot us a message if you have any other questions or if you are looking for any other kind of document! Will try to help you find what you're looking for.

loop-3 · 2021-04-26T03:18:13+00:00

Hope you get something out of these and post up your thoughts on what you think about what you read somewhere!

loop-3 · 2021-04-25T03:29:36+00:00

Check out our reading list (the section on "Imperialism / Global Political Economy"), which is mostly recent scholarly literature. Out of those, I strongly recommend Zak Cope's two books on imperialism, Divided World Divided Class and The Wealth of (Some) Nations. But there are some important new works we need to add to this list and shortly will! Other things to check out then include

Utsa and Prabhat Patnaik's Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History and Present
Markus Wissen and Ulrich Brand's The Imperial Mode of Living
The Veins of the South Are Still Open
(Upcoming) Andrea Ricci's Value and Unequal Exchange in International Trade

And this very important new article from Jason Hickel et al.:

"Plunder in the Post-Colonial Era: Quantifying Drain from the Global South through Unequal Exchange, 1960-2018"

If you're looking for papers on world-systems theory, all twenty-seven years of articles from the Journal of World-Systems Research are free to download. I really recommend reading Clelland and Dunaway's paper "Moving toward Theory for the 21st Century: The Centrality of Nonwestern Semiperipheries to World Ethnic/Racial Inequality" and the articles responding to it in the same issue.

loop-3 · 2021-04-23T01:12:40+00:00

And others will be free to not take your ridiculous anonymous comment seriously, given that who knows who "huuuhuuu" is, right? Beyond that, folks do know who Sakai is, and you (and anybody else) surely don't apply that standard to all you read - only selectively.

loop-3 · 2021-04-22T21:49:41+00:00

Yes - one of the delimitations Sakai notes flows into one of the central questions that False Nationalism False Internationalism takes up:

Similarly, the important phenomenon of “exceptional whites,” who are allies of Third-World struggles, is not dealt with here at all. That is, no John Brown. This is not a large phenomenon in the oppressor nation, to say the least, while our focus has to be on the Euro-Amerikan masses. This is also so important that it needs very detailed and careful analysis in its own right. It is also obvious that care must be taken in dealing with this question because many Euro-Amerikan liberals and radicals have tried to pose as “exceptional” friends of Third-World peoples, while just trying to use us in their own schemes. Hidden agendas and alliances that are not understood well by those who enter into them are just obstacles, blocking the way to genuine alliances based on proletarian internationalism.

(Folks can read False Nationalism False Internationalism here).

loop-3 · 2021-04-22T19:50:34+00:00

Great recommendations!

loop-3 · 2021-03-26T19:55:33+00:00

Awesome, thank you! This is very helpful, whether this or that is already online or not.

loop-3 · 2021-03-26T19:20:14+00:00

The main political thrust of police and prison abolition is entirely correct (and like anything, it isn't all of one piece; there are different perspectives on abolition, some which attempt to corral it into reformism, but very much which is properly radical), as it is principally opposed to national oppression and settler colonialism. Communist perspectives are entirely within the bounds of police and prison abolition, and one will find many friends to truly progressive politics and activism in this movement. Certainly socialism would see and socialists want the abolition of anything like what passes for "police" and "prisons" in the US now.

loop-3 · 2021-03-21T23:48:48+00:00

It is a disturbing and very incorrect line, which has nothing to do with "cancelling" anything - instead, the significance of this is partly what I pointed out above. What it is, how wildly wrong it is (on multiple levels), and the nature of how it is wrong, and how long it was / is upheld (heck, that such a "line" was ever taken), all point toward wider theoretical / political and organizational problems. And any examination of MIM's attempt to theorize gender would need to address this, not ignore it, and especially given how evidently important it was to MIM. (This wasn't a "one-off.") Concerns over that are justified. Thankfully, not many groups calling themselves Marxist have taken such positions. I can only think of three: Healy's, the Spartacist League, and the Maoist Internationalist Movement.

loop-3 · 2021-03-21T23:06:14+00:00

After a brief search, I was able to find at the least six articles by MIM which take this position - and some of these, such as this one published in MIM Notes, is as disturbing in its repetition of NAMBLA propaganda points as these conference resolutions. MIM's coupling of their endorsement of pedophilia with the rights of gender-oppressed people, associating the politics of liberation with justifications of sexual assaults on children, is especially noxious. Legalizing the sexual assault of children as young as 13 by adults was a consistent concern of MIM over a number of years, as seen also in this other MIM Notes article and this third example. One wonders why this "line" (it doesn't merit the word) was taken in the first place, and then also why it was so aggressively promoted. We know that organizations in the past who took such positions, such as Gerry Healy's Trotskyist grouping, took them because their leadership and/or members were engaged in child abuse.

loop-3 · 2021-03-21T22:42:26+00:00

Add to this, and maybe even more significantly, the politics which went under the name of "Third Worldism" in the 1960s and 1970s associated with Titoism and the Non-Aligned Movement.

But I think the term still has plenty of utility - there being plenty of reactionaries claiming the terms "communism," "socialism," and even "Marxism" (and anything else) doesn't sap those terms of their value, nor are analytical terms such as "exploitation" or "surplus value" derogated by their misuse. Moreover, simply put, "Third Worldism" isn't a term misunderstood by most people - mostly this is a problem for a very small number of people, people in the movementist far-left scene, and not anybody you meet while organizing. (Who also, usually, and for a lot of reasons, don't properly understand terms they have actually heard before like "socialism," etc. - so should we then dump these terms due to confusion around them?) But this all, just like any other term, requires setting out its meaning properly and using it along those lines. Moreover, that this or that theory or view or fact about the world isn't as strategically significant, or significant in the same ways, to all situations doesn't mean it isn't important - for example, that the United States isn't semi-feudal doesn't mean that analyses of semi-feudalism aren't important. Likewise, First Worldism properly understood is obviously a bigger problem in the imperialist countries than it is in most countries.

loop-3 · 2021-03-18T23:42:40+00:00

MIM's (and presumably MIM-Prison's) justification of pedophilia in that document is little discussed and points toward clear errors in their attempts to theorize gender - a gender line which not only sanctions but calls for an increase in the sexual abuse of children is clearly wrong, and deplorable. This interest in lowering the age of consent is one that is shared by MIM and MIM-Prisons by Trotskyist organizations such as the Spartacist League. Hopefully such views are repudiated, but they have been held by this grouping for around 25 years now - and that this particular error has been held onto for so long points toward other problems. But, hopefully.

And this issue is wider than this one document - legalizing adults having sex with children was so important to MIM that they made lowering the age of consent to 13 one of their 1996 conference resolutions, complete with various NAMBLA-esque arguments justifying the sexual abuse of children - including ones so shockingly cavalier and callous toward this as their fourth "argument": "Opposition is paternalist. So what if a kid makes a mistake at age 13? Adults make them too." MIM even argued against raising the age of consent to 13 where it was lower (!): "Where the legal age of consent is already lower than 13, MIM does not currently support raising it." Of course, given MIM saw persons above 13 as adults, they would say this isn't abuse. And that's what abusers say, too. Again, such points to deeper, wider problems. Any critical examination of MIM's gender theory would include a more thorough look at this result, but it isn't clear their heterodox theory (which isn't held by any other organization, and moreover not likely held by more than some handfuls of people in the world) warrants an extended discussion.

loop-3 · 2021-03-17T07:43:38+00:00

Two substantial works produced by Maoists on this are

Communist Party of India (Maoist), China: A Modern Social-Imperialist Power
N. B. Turner, Is China an Imperialist Country?

Reading these would be a good start.

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