MIM has always promoted the book "Settlers -- Myth of the White
Proletariat" which sees the world in a nationalist (not marxist)
perspective.
The thesis of Sakai in his book is that there is simply no white proletariat --
and there never has been. (His thesis is not tied to "labor aristocracy"
or super profits or imperialism -- he says even before imperialism there was no
white proletariat).
MIM says there may be "individuals" who are white who are exploited.
But that there are no "white Americans" in the international
proletariat.
And this is simply wrong from every point of view. It is opposed to the facts
and it is opposed to Marxism.
No one argues that the third world has intense conditions. No one argues that
imperialist sucks super profits out of the third world. No one argues that there
isn't a "labor aristocracy" (a corrupted upper tier of the working
class that connects its interests with imperialism.) These issues are not
argued.
All Maoists know that the third world is intensely exploited, and has (as a
result) become a storm center of struggle. And all Maoists know that revolution
in the imperialist countries has been held back (retarded) by the ability of
imperialism to make concessions in its home countries.
But where MIM departs from Maoism, is when they argue that only small parts of
the population in the U.S. (and specifically almost no white people) have any
interest in revolution.
In your own post you discuss: "workers bleeding in the mines, that there
are people stooping over doing back breaking labor in the fields, that there are
single mothers cleaning sewers and scrubbing toilets."
And you ask "But who's doing the work? Is it your average, white middle
class male, who has a high school degree, if not more, and works in a
white-collar environment?"
And all i can answer is: Yes, a lot of the workers bleeding in the mines are
white males -- in fact the large majority are. In the city where i live (Chicago)
almost all the women scrubbing toilets downtown are white women (largely Polish
immigrants).
We all know that at the bottom of the working class, you get a CONCENTRATION of
people of color. Black and Latino people are FORCED into the worst jobs. That is
not debated.
But MIM claims there are NO WHITE WORKERS there in those sections of the working
class. And this is simply and totally not true.
The working class in the U.S. is a complex, stratified, multinational class. It
includes immigrants and non immigrants. And it brings together tens of millions
of workers of a hundred different nationalities (because the U.S. has always
been multinational, and brings immigrants from all over.)
The u.s. does not have a black working class (over here) and a Mexican working
class (over there) and a working class of different Native peoples (in a dozen
other different corners.) That's not how this place works.
People come from different communities and nationalities and home countries, but
they are constantly thrown together and exploited as a common class -- often in
the same factories and mines.
And this is a GREAT STRENGTH of our class! And it is one of the reasons that we
workers will be able to lead the fight against racism, and mutual hatreds, and
especially against inequality!
And people who deny there is a multinational working class, and who think that
the vast majority of people in the U.S. are WELL SERVED AND CORRUPTED by
imperialism -- well such people can't even imagine how a revolution is possible.
They diss the people, then lie about the real situtation, they tell us "if
you are white, then imperialism is a good system for you" and then they
tell us revolution isn't possible (and the U.S. needs an invasion from an
imaginary power.)
Why would any of us want to support that kind of madness?