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About
About https://github.com/pinotes/pinotes.github.io, site of Proletarian Internationalist Notes—news, reviews and analysis from a Maoist global perspective
About this site
Revised March 12, 2016
Proletarian Internationalist Notes (PINotes) offers news, reviews and analysis from a Maoist global perspective. It is hoped that PINotes will inform a broad variety of people ultimately, because of what is unique about its content. Beyond that, this page contains what might seem like extraneous information that is nonetheless important and will go here initially.
This is one of those website areas where if readers aren’t careful, they can easily let a new website “wave the red flag to oppose the red flag.” Visitors shouldn’t put too much weight on this page, but should read and scrutinize everything MIM-Orchid publishes over a period of time. Check your own security, and be on the look out for security errors, Comintern-type errors interfering with anti-imperialism and the development of leadership in oppressed nations, Wang Ming errors (search engine query: site:prisoncensorship.info Wang Ming), lack of concrete analysis, First World worker identity politics, social-democratic ideas, pseudo-feminism, subjectivism, petty-bourgeoisie-oriented opportunism, revisionism (including Trotskyism and crypto-Trotskyism), amalgamation with bourgeois or petty-bourgeois ideas, poetry and hair-splitting in the place of science and dialectical materialism, and many other things. Get whatever you can out of the articles on this website, but don’t take any site too seriously as a “Maoist” site until you study Marxism-Leninism-Maoism (M-L-M) yourself. A good starting point is the resources listed on the homepage. MIM-Orchid means no disrespect to any organization in particular in saying all of this. MIM-Orchid has to say what it thinks is the principled thing to say on a webpage like this in 2016.
The content of this website is produced by MIM-Orchid, a cell of the Maoist Internationalist Movement. Its mission is the digital distribution of news and other public opinion material from a Maoist standpoint. MIM-Orchid aims to build public opinion for the proletariat to seize power through armed struggle. There are three strands of oppression, class, gender (distinct from class oppression/systems and located in leisure-time), and nation.(1) Each of these strands encompasses all countries. The world has become profoundly polarized, with enormous practical consequences. People who are simultaneously exploiters, and oppressors in gender and nation, are the vast majority of people in the First World regardless of identity. Revolution becomes possible in First World imperialist countries as their militaries become overextended and a largely external multinational proletariat moves closer to invading and installing a dictatorship supported by the masses of actually exploited workers in exploited-majority countries. This is the joint dictatorship of the proletariat of the oppressed nations. The communist movement that will bring this dictatorship about will not be led by any organization in the First World. The job of First World communists is to divide the imperialist country exploiters in various ways now and prepare the population to accept or not oppose the international proletariat’s policies. The goal of MIM-Orchid is to create and build public opinion in imperialist countries to make the international proletariat’s seizure of power and the tasks of dictatorship and revolution easier. MIM-Orchid doesn’t seek to produce conditions for itself or any First World organization to seize power. Seizure of power by any First World party is likely to result in fascism. MIM-Orchid is guided by Marxism-Leninism-Maoism in its economic and political analysis and strategic and tactical thinking. MIM-Orchid works in the public opinion arena to contribute to the elimination of all class, gender, national and group oppression and the prevention of its restoration. This is a long and tortuous struggle. At the present time, the principal contradiction in the world is between imperialism and the oppressed nations. Many oppressed nations seek an international united front against U.$. imperialism.
With PINotes, MIM-Orchid intends to influence public opinion, not build a communist party or build for a party. PINotes is associated with “Maoism” openly, and because of that many will have trouble distinguishing MIM-Orchid’s work from some type of party-building though MIM influence shows up, is helpful, and then disappears or submerges, in places where nobody is thinking about a communist party or communism as a topic. Even “Proletarian Internationalist” has a sectarian connotation. This is a complex issue with opportunist errors on both sides of whether to call a news publication “Maoist.” Failing to identify as MIM when it is necessary to do so, though, could negatively impact public opinion work.
Why “Proletarian Internationalist?”
Proletarian internationalism is the internationalism of billions of people struggling to eliminate exploitation and overthrow capitalism throughout the world. It is the internationalism of the proletariat, as opposed to bourgeois internationalism, which seeks a unity of exploiters in different countries and the preservation of exploitation. It is against imperialism. It is against nationalism aimed at an oppressed nation. It against privilege for one country’s workers at the expense of workers in other countries. Its view of capital and labor, profit and wages, and productivity and technology, is global while recognizing that capitalism and colonialism have produced different conditions in different countries often with crucial consequences.
PINotes offers writing from the viewpoint of the proletariat as a whole. For example, imperialism often uses chauvinist pseudo-feminism to get people to cooperate for its goals and attacks on the oppressed. PINotes counters by providing accurate information about what is going on in gender as a system that spans all countries. Gender groups have their own motions that may be important to consider. At the same time, differences are sometimes related to imperialism and to inequality in which the vast majority of people in the First World are bourgeois or bourgeoisified. Pursuing the interests of classes in the First World and encouraging delusions generally leads to unity with imperialism, war, repression, fascism, and bringing the species closer to ruin. Some war will happen nevertheless, despite the efforts of various opponents of war, but it is hoped that PINotes will contribute: to influencing imperialist country exploiters such that the proletariat, oppressed nations and internal semi-colonies can more easily reach their goals weakening imperialism, to the eventual elimination of patriarchy in all its manifestations, to preparing public opinion for reparations to the Third World (prioritized above improving living standards in the First World, in which most people are exploiters), and to avoiding political and economic dead ends related to not addressing important realities of class structure and international economy.
Others who claim to be proletarian internationalists think that means viewing the world as if there were no major unevenness between countries, assuming the same trajectory of development exists everywhere, believing First World workers are more productive and advanced and should be supported in efforts to get more super-profit, opposing anti-imperialist united fronts and genuine anti-fascist united fronts, getting caught up in imperialist country labor/liberal/social-democratic party politics, siding with imperialism against Third World governments under attack, assisting imperialist country intelligence agencies in international operations, having a centralized world communist movement based in an imperialist country, portraying the patriotism and nationalism of imperialist country parasites as superior to the nationalism of oppressed nation workers, participating in pseudo-feminist attacks on Third World peasants and workers, or going to the Third World as missionaries or political tourists. MIM-Orchid disagrees with such “proletarian internationalism” that is actually pro-imperialism, or pro-patriotism or pro-nationalism for imperialist nations.
Why “orchid?”
MIM-Orchid likes flowers. Please send some (joking, kind of).
Orchids are the patriotic flowers of many exploited-majority countries, on different continents. MIM-Orchid understands that most of these countries have neocolonial governments, and that some have minorities. MIM-Orchid hopes it does not imply by its name that the anti-imperialist united fronts in these countries don’t need to be stronger. MIM-Orchid doesn’t purport to know the specific struggles in these countries better than any genuine Maoists in them so “orchid” may be disagreeable in some contexts. This website is more for imperialist country people anyway. Orchids are found on every continent regardless of what governments do with it.
The Manchukuo puppet emperor had the spring orchid as an emblem (a crest in Japanese style) unfortunately, but for what it’s worth Pu Yi eventually made self-criticism.
The main reason for a hyphenated name is that it serves to distinguish MIM-Orchid from other cells. MIM-Orchid isn’t the Maoist Internationalist Movement as a whole or a replacement for any central MIM organization, but proclaims to be only a cell of the MIM. MIM-Orchid hopes to contribute to the aggregate work of the movement as a whole with this website, but MIM-Orchid speaks for MIM-Orchid only.
This shouldn’t be an example to Third World movements necessarily. A stage of struggle might come in which it would be inappropriate to have cells as the main type of organization, or to distinguish cells by their own names, or to use any name whatsoever. This website has to have some kind of designation, though, even if it’s just a web address. It’s true that not all sites need to be accessible to the public so the question of whether to call a cell “MIM” or not, with or without an additional identifier, might not arise as much with a back office or infrastructure operation.
There are multiple reasons of principle for appending “-Orchid” (or whatever), rather than making the name just “MIM” or something else entirely.
[30K of text cut from here so we can focus on public opinion]
What’s up with your tragically low-key Web 1.0 website?
MIM-Orchid prefers an understated style. The way to stand out over time and have the desired impact is to regularly publish accurate, substantive and unique information that is well-organized, easy to browse and quick-loading on various devices and networks. Another reason for the web design is security as many things used for interaction and social media present security issues.
The underlying files of this website are meant to be browsable on github.com (https://github.com/pinotes/pinotes.github.io) with an experience similar to what’s offered with https://pinotes.github.io. GitHub’s Markdown language and viewer don’t allow much in the way of original dynamic or complex content. GitHub is used as a kind of social media platform, but PINotes isn’t on GitHub for that. GitHub offers more security than other hosts in certain areas.
Most of what’s on the Internet and on social media in particular is about style, the visual, the feel of things, and endless associations for people to explore. The early Web may have had more information content because then graphics and video were more costly, and there was less emphasis on being part of a network of similar identities or shades of identity.
The Web is not going to go back to being what it was in the early 1990s, but MIM-Orchid has found that combining writing of substance with the latest Web trends is not necessarily a winner and can actually distract from the content.
Notes:
1. “Clarity on what gender is,” 1998. http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/wim/cong/gender98b.html
2. “What is a cardinal principle?” 1998. http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/classics/cardinal.txt
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