Maoist Internationalist Movement - Theoretical Line

Theoretical Line

MIM listed its cardinal principles as:

1. MIM holds that after the proletariat seizes power in socialist revolution, the potential exists for capitalist restoration under the leadership of a new bourgeoisie within the communist party itself. In the case of the USSR, the bourgeoisie seized power after the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953; in China, it was after Mao Zedong's death and the overthrow of the "Gang of Four" in 1976.
2. MIM upholds the Chinese Cultural Revolution as the farthest advance of socialism in human history.
3. According to MIM, imperialism's extraction of super-profits from the Third World allows oppressor nations to buy off a large portion of their labouring population, which MIM does not view as a 'working class' in the strict sense. MIM argues that these 'workers' bought off by imperialism form a new petty-bourgeoisie called the labor aristocracy. These classes are not the principal vehicles to advance Maoism within those countries because their standards of living depend on imperialism. At this time, according to MIM, imperialist super-profits create this situation in Canada, Quebec, the United States, England, France, Belgium, Germany, Japan, Italy, Switzerland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Israel, Sweden and Denmark.

It is through MIM's unique analysis of the "labor aristocracy" that MIM differentiated itself from other leftist parties in what it terms the imperialist countries. The labor aristocracy today, MIM argued, is that class of workers in imperialist countries that receive more than the value of their labor by sharing in the superprofits extracted from the Third World. MIM saw the principal contradiction in society to be that between imperialism and the oppressed nations and upholds the right to self-determination for oppressed nations. Although it allows that there are "scattered" white proletarians, MIM considers most white workers in the U.S. to be members of a labor aristocracy, meaning that that they benefit so much from the system of imperialism that they are bought off, thus having no revolutionary potential. MIM developed this analysis in part from the book Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat by J. Sakai. MIM thus believes that revolution is impossible in the U.S. without external help of oppressed nations.

MIM states that it serves to build public opinion in favor of anti-imperialist and national liberation struggle.

MIM was one of the first Maoist organizations to explicitly oppose homophobia and heterosexism.

MIM's newspaper, MIM Notes, was anonymously written; authors do not sign their names to articles. Instead, MIM Notes writers may use the moniker MCX (MIM Comrade X), where X is a number. This is reputedly to prevent their members and supporters from being known by the state. This also functions to keep the focus on theoretical line and arguments as opposed to personalities.

MIM was known for its unusual spellings of many common words, such as womyn (and plural wimmin), persyn, I$rael, Kanada, and united $nakes of ameriKKKa, which reflects MIM's approach to language questions.

MIM also held the unusual position that all sex under patriarchy is rape due to power relations in patriarchal society. They have drawn on the theoretical works of feminist author Catharine MacKinnon in coming to this analysis.