Note on organization and science
2008 January
MIWS doesn't have an e-mail address. There are few links to MIWS, partly because MIWS hasn't requested any. MIWS's pages can be found with search engines. If MIWS appears aloof in some ways, it is because of MIWS's thought-out attitude toward organizing on the Internet, not because MIWS doesn't have different levels and types of unity with various forces, including some not claiming to be revolutionary. On the other hand, MIWS doesn't represent itself as other than a Web site with which direct communication is impossible; so, any unity would have to be limited in nature and scope.
MIWS doesn't see the Internet struggle in engaging with random personalities and Web pages that appear on the Internet, nor in increasing the number of Web pages and bloggers claiming to agree with MIWS's positions. That is MIWS's line. MIWS is not keen to see Web pages rapidly appear imitating its language, because it knows that most wouldn't have independent scientific ability and would by definition be dependent and set a bad example for others or worse. Also, the assumption that science in the First World can advance only by talking with other people is Liberal. That science is social is true in a particular, big-picture way; surrounded by exploiters clinging steadfastly to bourgeois ideology, the relationship between science and class is present, but proceeds in a way that is particular to the situation at hand. Line struggle becomes relevant when there is already a group practice in which people have comparable scientific knowledge and ability, and one divides into two mostly in regard to new questions -- a situation that may be common in the Third World, but not in the First World or on the Internet. There is no such thing as line struggle in a setting where there is already a huge buildup of unevenness. MIWS does not progress in its work by talking with outside people. As meager as MIWS's infrequent contributions are, MIWS is still making advances -- which is not to take away from anyone's initiative. MIWS hopes that math- and logic-oriented readers with access to a library will undertake their own studies and investigation and just draw from MIWS for ideas until they no longer have use for MIWS.
MIWS may address a particular writer's writing only to illustrate an argument, as it did with Paul Cockshott's "Against Anti-imperialism," for example. MIWS has known about that article for years; it's not that MIWS is trying to carry out line struggle with Cockshott to recruit or organize him. If MIWS ever discusses an individual's or relatively unknown organization's writing in another context, it would be because MIWS needed to address a substantive document lest it be guilty of nihilism or holding back science in some other way.
Hopefully, that should clear up any mistaken notions inexperienced visitors to MIWS may have about unity or disunity. MIWS actually wrote a rather lengthy article dealing with just this question, but put that aside, because it was afraid not many people would be able to understand it. If publishing the article becomes necessary, MIWS will do it, but MIWS has already discussed many of its positions related to this in previous documents.
While MIWS is on the topic of nihilism, MIWS doesn't have any disagreements with "Applied internationalism: The difference between Mao Zedong and Joma Sison" (http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/countries/phil/jomavsmao.html) or "The real lessons of the Chicano Moratorium and the high treason against Maoism today" (http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/countries/aztlan/chicano092506.html). MIWS also sees nothing wrong with http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/im/imupdate101206.html, on the "Russian Maoist Party," and IRTR.INFO documents about "Islamo-fascism" and PsyOps against Iran. None of that is new. Anyone who puts forward the one working class idea globally, including the u.$. working class, while promoting chauvinist prejudice about the location or extent of parasitism, or the one working class idea for the united $tates, while denying and obscuring the national question inside u.$. borders and derailing the Occupied Mexico and Aztlán struggle, isn't practicing Maoism. Rejection of the concept of the principal contradiction or the united front also isn't Maoist. Maoism is a science, not some brand name that anyone can slap on whatever they want. Moreover, investigation of the Communist Party of the Philippines' current documents will show that the basic ideas attributed to Sison in the documents mentioned are clearly represented in the CPP's current line. Directing people on the Internet who are interested in Maoist science to the CPP isn't united front work; it just confuses people in their learning and is inappropriate. Anyone who wants to encourage struggle within or surrounding the CPP or do united front work regarding the Philippines should not do so in a context where revisionism may be confused with Maoism. United front work doesn't have to be done from a "Maoist" Web site, and most effective agitation and united front work isn't.
Unequal exchange and scientific advancement
To reiterate something MIWS has already said, MIWS focuses on putting forward its own line, not on asserting what organizations and Web pages it agrees and disagrees with. Instead, MIWS identifies specific ideas it agrees and disagrees with, and identifies specific whole documents it agrees and disagrees with to a lesser extent. MIWS could not make this any more clear. Rather than identify particular individual or organizational authors, MIWS will point out the following:
Arghiri Emmanuel's unequal exchange theory has nothing whatsoever to do with the crypto-Trotskyist Comintern-wannabe society called "RIM." Anyone who suggests otherwise is uninformed at best. Arghiri Emmanuel's theory ties price distortions to wages in a very specific way. So, to attribute the theory to RIM, just for saying that super-profits are a factor in the political situation in imperialist countries, is simply to give RIM credibility where it deserves none. True, there are liars and philistines who openly deny that there is any relationship between international economic relations and class structures in different countries, but the concept of a relationship between super-profits and the political conditions in an imperialist country should just be a baseline for a concrete analysis of parasitism and class forces. That baseline comes from Lenin (usually -- if not Engels). To attribute it Arghiri Emmanuel is to simultaneously muddle the specificity of Emmanuel's theory while laying the groundwork for attacking Lenin in an indirect way. Also, it is indicative of the extent to which phony Leninism and phony Maoism are divorced from an interest in understanding parasitism. People who find themselves writing pages about Lenin's Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism without saying anything about parasitism or opportunism should abandon any pretension of using or studying Lenin's book for scientific purposes.
Where MIWS has raised questions about the limitations of Lenin's Imperialism in the context of some very specific questions, MIWS has done so in a principled way and addressed Imperialism directly. Imperialism isn't just some random writing; ideas regarding that book are a common factor in people's thinking, and MIWS has to explicitly relate what it is saying to previous theory. In regard to the practice of attacking one writer as a way of attack another writer, readers need to become aware of the ways in which Arghiri Emmanuel is criticized as a way of attacking the whole unequal exchange idea and suppressing scientific advance. MIWS sees people basically raising disagreements with Emmanuel's specific theory just to piss on the whole unequal exchange idea while promoting David Harvey or the likes of Hardt and Negri. At the same time, they offer no concrete analysis of parasitism. The line becomes chauvinist or social-democratic by default. MIWS has previously mentioned that there are a variety of unequal exchange theories, most of which allow for the theoretical possibility of massive super-profits, enough to make a majority of First World people net-exploiters. For that matter, the truth of the labor aristocracy thesis is not a question of any particular author. MIWS has demonstrated the international origins of the thesis. Nobody can excuse not accepting the labor aristocracy thesis because they don't live in an English-speaking imperialist country. There are translations of Arghiri Emmanuel's work in several non-English languages.
If MIWS were to choose only one document by one of Lenin's contemporaries to supplement Lenin's Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism on economic questions, it would be Bukharin's Imperialism and World Economy. Imperialism and World Economy is arguably a precursor to unequal exchange theories in that it directly raises the ideas of: production relations' underlying international exchange relations, in general; international value; the world-social character of any labor that produces for the world economy; the relationship between wage equalization (and stratification, implicitly) and migration that Lenin also wrote about; the relationship between surplus value realization and wage increases; international labor and value transfers and their relationship with the very structure of production, as opposed to government policies; the distribution of global surplus value; and the importance of international economic relations, rather than just intra-national economic relations, specifically in explaining opportunism and social-imperialism. Bukharin also opposes the Luxemburgist idea that an economic reproduction problem in the home imperialist county is principally behind the international economic relations of imperialism, rather than the pursuit of higher profit. MIWS should deal with Bukharin's book in a separate document at some point, but would like to point out that unequal exchange theories inspired by Bukharin's book or Lenin's concrete analysis in Imperialism may put more emphasis on the role of monopolies in unequal exchange than Arghiri Emmanuel does. This doesn't present a problem for MIWS's analysis so far, since MIWS's definition of unequal exchange is more specific than non-equivalent exchange in general, but still broad. Arghiri Emmanuel would define unequal exchange even more strictly as related to wage differences. In any case, the point is that if one has an insurmountable difficulty with Emmanuel's theory, there are alternatives that need to be considered before dropping the unequal exchange idea. For example, if one believes Emmanuel doesn't pay enough attention to intra-national class differences, there is Ranjit Sau's theory. MIWS has disagreements with Ranjit Sau's unequal exchange book, but brings it up anyway on the chance that there is actually a real line struggle over Emmanuel's theory on the Internet. That MIWS has to raise arguments against itself is indicative of the lack of line struggle on certain questions and why communist science is mostly an independent pursuit in the First World at this time. MIWS emphasizes science, because concepts in scientific communism need to have a scientific foundation. There are sincere pre-scientific, non-Marxist and religious reasons for believing that the First World majority is counterrevolutionary, parasitic, bourgeois or decadent, but the proper place for those in the First World is in a united front setting outside a scientific communist party. MIWS is not saying that not having a concept of international value, for instance, necessarily means that one is not a scientific communist, but if one cannot describe a theory that corresponds to the labor aristocracy thesis, one should wonder whether there is actually any substance behind one's positions.
As MIWS has begun to explain elsewhere, the quantification of unequal exchange can conceptually be separated from the causal explanation of unequal exchange. Once one has a concept of international value and has calculated the value of exports, it is possible to quantify unequal exchange in a broad sense without explaining it. MIWS left enough loose ends in its draft on the export of capital, unequal exchange, and Latin American trade, that one could write a lengthy critical or supplementary response, presenting a revised calculation using input-output matrices, for example. If one has a problem with MIWS's presentation or Emmanuel's arguments, one should either present an alternative calculation or theory or address the underlying concepts. If one is going to reject the concept of international value or the concept of unequal exchange, one should do that explicitly, not equate Emmanuel's theory with those concepts and raise a criticism of Emmanuel's theory to evade the underlying questions. Also, any criticisms should address previous countercriticisms and supplementary ideas. The criticisms of Emmanuel's theory raised today aren't original and aren't new. Unequal exchange debates have not had a satisfactory resolution, as reviewers have admitted, yet the original criticisms that were raised decades ago when Emmanuel's unequal exchange book was first published still appear, in unaugmented form, in the writing of people who do a half-assed job of studying theory. The reason for that has to do with a nihilist orientation with respect to science.
Concerning the question of labor mobility, the fact remains that there has not been a global equalization of wages, and that national boundaries continue to obstruct the global equalization of wages. There may be various ways to cast doubt on the explanation of wage differences in terms of labor immobility, but the relative importance of any counterclaims and hypothesized counteracting tendencies should be assessed. It is possible to raise various shortcomings of a particular theory and concepts, often contradicting each other, against that theory, but unless there is a concrete analysis of some kind, those concepts add up to nothing -- nihilism. Because no scientific goal is pursued, those making such criticisms will gravitate toward revisionism or postmodernism by default or habit simply because revisionism or postmodernism exists and predominates. There is a difference between science and throwing around concepts as rhetoric while undermining scientific communist practice.
MIWS's means these statements here to apply to people who claim to be communist or writing in a Marxist tradition. MIWS wants readers to know what they should expect of people discussing unequal exchange. To any readers who are interested in unequal exchange but don't claim to be communist or Marxist and have their own reservations about Marxist trade and imperialism theory, MIWS would like to say that it doesn't want to set expectations, with documents like this, so high as to discourage interest and thinking. MIWS guesses that people who are new to Marxism who start with studying the big theoretical questions raised by Arghiri Emmanuel and others, while studying Marx's Capital concurrently, will end up in Maoism more so than people who have been stuck in a pre-scientific groove for too long and haven't experienced much failure in trying to reach their goals.
Organizational priorities and the breakdown of scientific-educative tasks appropriate to the Internet
So, it is one thing if someone on the Asia Times site wants to link to MIWS on unequal exchange to get people to contemplate alternatives to orthodox theories. It is another thing is someone claiming to be communist links to both MIWS and revisionist or nihilist material in a context where there could be confusion. Asia Times does not represent itself as revolutionary, and there is no reason why anyone should assume that there is some unity between the various sites that Asia Times writers might link to other than a Liberal unity.
For its part, if MIWS were to link to other sites, it might link to The Jus Semper Global Alliance (http://www.jussemper.org/). The Jus Semper Global Alliance doesn't claim to be revolutionary, but some of its publications contain interesting ideas about wages and productivity. Other TJSGA publications contain white nationalist social-democratic ideas that MIWS disagrees with. It's not that MIWS would be engaging in line struggle in TJSGA.
The question might arise, what is MIWS doing, if not doing line struggle. As MIWS has explained extensively in early documents, MIWS's function is scientific and educative. MIWS's participation in any line struggle is subordinate to that. What MIWS is doing may best be described as distance education, but without one-on-one interaction. That should be the principal function of any Web site calling itself "Maoist." Other kinds of sites are suitable for other work. When the activity of a Web site is broader or different than that, one starts seeing a combination of Liberalism and sectarianism and organizational dynamics that do not belong on the Internet. The conditions for attempted line struggle to be productive do not exist for the most part on the Internet. What would take place instead are Liberalism and pressure to follow this or that Web site or author.
MIWS is not expecting anyone to follow it into battle or any struggle where people may not have complete information. Quite the contrary, MIWS as a conspicuously First World entity fully expects to be in the same boat, figuratively and literally, as other First Worlders when the joint dictatorship of the proletariat of the oppressed nations forms, and there needs to be an example of a "First World" Web site saying that. MIWS is not going to be able to whip out some "revolutionary" résumé, listing MIWS's experiences and accomplishments, to show the international proletariat and expect to be treated as other than a spy trying to exploit Liberalism. This issue is completely different than the question of how advanced MIWS's line is.
If MIWS is wrong about the role of First Worlders behind enemy lines in the concrete situation that exist today, it would be because of the historical example of the Black Panther Party. The validity of that example today needs to be proved, not asserted, and changes in conditions since the BPP was founded need to be taken into account. The history of oppressor persyn collaboration with the oppressed during oppressed occupations and regimes may be more instructive. MIWS is studying the question. Nonetheless, the fact remains that people should not be following MIWS with the notion that MIWS is their leader for specific struggles, and MIWS sees no reason why people should be congealing, as "communist" followers, around any specifically communist organization in the First World as if there were a revolutionary situation requiring numerical growth of a proletarian pole. Of course, there no analogous situation on the Internet.
MIWS's attitude to line struggle and organization on the Internet is comparable to its attitude to the mass line in that both are related to a concrete understanding of conditions. It's not that MIWS doesn't see the merits of the mass line. The mass line should be carried with the real masses. In practice, in the First World, the mass line is mostly carried out during united front work with oppressed people. The mass line becomes most important when an organization potentially has power in relation to the masses or is going to be making decisions that may affect the masses and cause contradictions. An action to discourage military recruiting in an oppressed nation community should be planned with its residents. The process may result in a change in the communist organization's line, but the mass line as carried out locally doesn't lead to scientific advances except in the area of concrete analysis of local conditions, which may or may not generalize to conditions in the nation as a whole. MIWS would not go to a meeting about military recruiting to talk about unequal exchange or any contemporary line struggle question where scientific advancement at the margin is involved. It would be ridiculously sectarian. MIWS wouldn't do that with random oppressed nationals either. The proletarian party's role in developing a proletarian-led united front in that context is primarily to oppose neo-colonialism and prevent vacillation on the military recruiting questions.
The vast majority of current discussion of mass line on the Internet is taking place within a bourgeois camp and is premised on the social-imperialist assumption that a majority of u.$. people should receive more super-profits. However, MIWS is not sure there isn't a potential line struggle among those claiming to agree with the labor aristocracy thesis. Now, MIWS has detected dishonest or willfully ignorant efforts to attribute the labor aristocracy thesis to RIM line in a played-out half-it-both-ways practice, but that is not what MIWS is referring to here; although, MIWS refers to a few different non-RIM organizations. MIWS has to raise this point in case readers are wondering why there aren't different versions of this site for different nationalities and reading abilities, why MIWS has French content but no pages for people who speak non-English but aren't as proficient in English, etc. The crux of the issue is that mass line may be carried out in such an unthinking way that it is equated simplistically in the First World with interaction to support party-building among oppressed nationals, whereas implementation of the mass line actually encompasses much more than party-building in various stages of struggle.
There continue to be large inequalities in both undergraduate and graduate admissions in the united $tates and graduation rates, but there are millions of college-educated oppressed nationals in the united $tates, including bilingual English speakers. The notion that a white or multinational communist entity needs to carry out mass line with oppressed nation masses in "the hood" as if oppressed nation intellectuals could be passed by is increasingly chauvinist, because the education difference that might justify such a practice has diminished since Huey Newton went to college. Today, there are more potential oppressed nation scientific communist leaders.
There are many oppressed nation intellectuals, in both imperialist countries and Third World countries, who are in the proletarian camp, but not Maoist. Some intellectuals in the First World who are migrants can be counted as part of the masses. Part of the mass line is letting the masses make up their own minds at a natural pace that corresponds to where they are at in their struggle for their demands. Sometimes that means getting out of the way of potential leaders, not standing in their way, not resenting them for potentially being more advanced in the future, and in fact not struggling with them too intensely until contradictions arise and the continued development of the revolutionary struggle requires it. At the same time, communists need to put forth correct lines and criticisms of deviations and revisionism in a general way.
To get back to MIWS's specific situation, MIWS is not here commanding the masses or making pronouncements of an authoritative nature. In fact, often it seems that MIWS is doing the vast majority of the listening and learning, even when it is among the oppressed, not just because it is presumably surrounded by exploiters. It has to do with what is appropriate at this time behind enemy lines. The big theory and strategy questions that MIWS deals with are actually connected with learning from the masses in some ways, but the ways in which MIWS as a Maoist Web site supports the masses' struggle does not require a tight feedback loop with a specific group of oppressed people. MIWS could make claims about its experiences to validate many of the things it says in this note, but when one considers the function of MIWS and what it is doing, any idea that MIWS should be carrying out the mass line via the Internet is completely stupid, which is to say it has nothing to do with taking communist science and its concepts seriously.
MIWS acknowledges the obvious decline in its agitation-related work on the news page. That is also related to mass line. MIWS is not designed to carry out day-to-day struggles, which would require mass line, and even a weekly or monthly publication without a party would give a wrong impression of what is needed of a Maoist Web site.
If MIWS isolated, it is isolated only in the sense that it is failing to reach its goals. So, perhaps MIWS could organize or present information in a better way, to make it more comprehensible without sacrificing content. That could be a completely valid criticism of MIWS, but that would have nothing to do with making MIWS more accessible to non-intellectuals or specific nationalities. Nothing MIWS is saying is really beyond smart youth either, who in fact may already be vanguard material. Smart people with the motivation and math skills need to figure out who they are and leave Liberalism, postmodernism, patriotism and "commie" lifestyle/subculture people behind.
Organizational dynamics and appropriate tasks
In regard to organizational dynamics, MIWS is unreliable for anything other than line. MIWS should not be treated as if it had the characteristics of individuals or an organization. So, MIWS is highly reflective, and if MIWS seems to come out of nowhere, it is because MIWS is a reflection of some lengthy and compressed experiences and struggles. Things are accelerated for other reasons. MIWS is able to do some things others may not be able to do. MIWS would not exist if that weren't true. So, that is the most that anyone could really say about MIWS apart from its specific line. If MIWS were treated in a different way as individuals or an organization, contradictions would be inevitable, because of differences between expectations and reality.
This will be difficult for Liberals to understand, but there is never going to be a biography or history of MIWS. There is not going to be some future book about the former First World, talking about what happened on this thing called "the Internet," saying "first there was X, then Y, then Z individual(s), and then there was MIWS," as in an individualist recounting of history. Among other things, that implies that it would difficult for MIWS as individuals to regain control of the Web site, this particular technical structure, if it were lost. So, it is important, as MIWS has explained before, to scrutinize MIWS's line for unexplained vacillations and inconsistencies that could be a sign of spying and also not assume that the same persyn/people is/are always at MIWS. MIWS does not make such assumptions about other sites. Material on MIWS may even be changed without MIWS's knowing about it, because of hackers etc. People should also keep an eye out for stupidity, dishonesty, nihilism, bad security practices and non-practices, unverifiable claims about things that people can't see for themselves, and discussions that go in circles without progress. At the same time, ways of struggling that aren't piecemeal need to be learned. MIWS will address their ideas, but will not address particular authors unless they are saying something that is particularly new or illustrative. MIWS does not want to discourage people from generalizing.
If the above about MIWS's losing control of the site seems far-fetched, MIWS has another way of discussing the issues involved. MIWS knows of a Web site claiming to agree with the labor aristocracy thesis that months ago was ridiculing it and doing other things that MIWS won't mention. Lines can change, and MIWS would give people the benefit of the doubt when periods of years are involved with supporting practices. In this particular case, things were done in such a way that MIWS has to suspect state activity, and there continue to be things on the site that should raise flags for discerning people. It would be pointless for MIWS to discuss the specifics. People need to learn how to study without using such information as a heuristic. Knowing who is a pig is not going to help anyone's learning unless they have figured that out for themselves. What MIWS would like to impart to readers is why a focus on organizing on the Internet is wrong and how it could lead to a twisted outcome. MIWS does not spend its time attacking specific sites and organizations, because it will just validate the whole organization- rather than science-centered approach and drive people who are in a follower mode to other revisionists and to the state and undercover spies/state assets that MIWS does not know about.
MIWS reflects a sharp divergence from patterns connected to priorities with a heavy emphasis on organization or tapping into an unscientific thought process or energy. Except for the red bar near the bottom of each page, MIWS does not really have an aesthetic. Everything is meant to be functional with the lowest common denominator in mind. Also, as MIWS has said, it doesn't use e-mail. This cuts off COINTELPRO-style provocations involving bogus letter writing. It simply is not possible for MIWS to receive messages. Those who accept messages for organizational reasons necessarily accept the risks that come with that. MIWS's communication isolation also makes it clear that MIWS wants people to be independent. In other ways, MIWS represents an utter break with tendencies on the Internet that MIWS believes are harmful to the communist movement in the long run.
Intense activities are going on that have the effect of getting gregarious, lonely, non-independent and follower-type people to expose themselves and communicate. It seems some people are doing things just to see how much they can get away with. The state should not be allowed to think it can create a site, put up a few uncreative articles, even brazenly copy and paste material without crediting it, and be taken seriously enough to be contacted or recognized. But the fact is, the so-called "communist" movement allows it, because it views exposed people as a pool of potential recruits. Only MIWS and some others have put forward a line related to that issue, because the vast majority of the so-called "communist" movement on the Internet is one decadent unscientific mass, while others adopt bad practices without thinking.
Concerning not concentrating too much on specific organizations and not trying to influence specific organizations, to the extent that individual sites and organizations correct their previous errors or whatever, it does not affect MIWS's practice unless there is something particularly new. To the extent that individual organizations don't correct their errors or regress, it also doesn't affect MIWS's practice, because MIWS addresses ideas in a general way. There is no question at the margin involving just one individual or even organization. MIWS is not obligated to take a stand publicly for or against a particular organization, unless it is striking blows against imperialism and readers need to understand why for learning purposes, which of course presupposes that MIWS can explain why, or is visibly undermining Maoism in a unique, complicated way that is best addressed directly. MIWS does not involve itself in struggles of one dividing into two organizationally, only ideologically and theoretically. There are organizations with enemy lines, and the communist movement is infiltrated by enemy ideas, but the unit in MIWS's struggle is not the organization or individual persyn. There is no real process of one dividing into two organizationally on the Internet that is somehow separate from ideology and theory. The state, its "Left" allies, and others interested in making provocations or seeing contradictions develop, only want people to think there is. It is unfortunate that sincere people fall for that and have to extricate themselves.
When organization is the priority, science suffers, what little line struggle there is left suffers, and other things emerge. Organizational dynamics are disruptive to science. The conditions for there to be a link between organizational dynamics and science do not exist in the First World at this time without a revolutionary upsurge. The '60s and '70s are over, and there is obviously no cultural revolution or war situation as there was in China.
MIWS's struggle is qualitatively different than the struggles of those who are preoccupied with organizing through the Internet, instead of remotely, indirectly promoting the development of independent leaders who will do their own work and organize and carry out the mass line in appropriate settings, and the struggles of those who think that scientific advancement comes with talking with random people on the Internet claiming to agree with a set of positions. There should be papers, not just talk, which is useful only in demonstrating a reasoning process and becomes a substitute or cover for various things outside of that. Either people and organizations in the First World, with access to widely available information and statistics, are capable of making scientific advances independently over the long run, or they are not. It does not magically come from some synergy. In Third World countries with exploited majorities, scientific advancement involves the same universal questions and additional questions pertaining to local struggles that do require more intensive application of the mass line.
To sum up, MIWS will say something in general about the relationship between science and organization on the Internet. MIWS does not see the struggle on the Internet as recruiting specific individuals or organizing Internet-connected people into groups. Leaders will arise on their own in the First World after reading and studying, assist the masses in pursuing their goals, from a distance, and the masses will sweep revisionism and all enemy ideology away in the course of struggle. In a way, nothing on the Internet really matters. Enemy ideology will predominate on the Internet, including so-called revolutionary Web sites, for the foreseeable future until imperialism is destroyed. MIWS's contribution is at the margin, connecting capable people who are motivated to science without communicating or struggling with individuals. MIWS does not see a winnable struggle in trying to guide people on the Internet without intellectual skills toward Maoism.
This note happens to indirectly take care of various organizational questions. For example, when it comes to any question of using e-mail or Web pages to foster the development of pre-party forces in specific countries, MIWS's categorical position is that there is no question. That is not something that a Web site should be doing. There is no dilemma for MIWS where it sees promising people who need to be steered in the right direction. MIWS also sees no reason why each nation's vanguard party should have a Web site. MIWS draws from the Internet for examples, but the notion that the Internet can be a reliable guide to what exists organizationally is rooted in a harmful organizational dynamic responsible for climates that are useful for the state and potentially disruptive of science and the party-building task that is appropriate to the Internet, the one that MIWS has discussed, involving remote, non-interactive education. The mentality that if Google doesn't link to it, mainstream newspapers don't report it, or Angus & Robertson/Barnes & Noble/Chapters/Eason's/Waterstone's/Whitcoulls doesn't carry it, it doesn't exist, is also responsible for such stupidity as promoting works by Hoxhaites, but not Arghiri Emmanuel and H. W. Edwards. People who do not have access to a college or big public library, or are too lazy to visit one, should change that as soon as they are able to.
Except for the point about the BPP and its example, which MIWS needs to develop, MIWS will consider this document definitive, articulating the most advanced expression of Maoist line on Internet tasks, unless there is a substantive response dealing thoroughly with this document and related documents. It will eventually be seen who is really interested in advancing science on these questions and who is not, to put it quaintly. MIWS has explained its reasoning at extraordinary length for readers' benefit in studying various Web pages. Hopefully, MIWS will not have to say anything about these sorts of things for quite some time. MIWS's ideas are also being put the test. Readers will witness the consequences of ignoring what MIWS is talking about and the contradictions that will inevitably arise when things are done in an opposite way. Then, they will recall this document and realize the power of the scientific method and the need for a radically different way of doing things such as what MIWS has identified.