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The Organization for the Liberation of Oppressed Peoples (LOOP) is republishing a selection of documents from the Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM), an anti-imperialist Maoist organization that emerged from prisoner solidarity and internationalist anti-apartheid work in the 1980s, going on to operate for over twenty years in the belly of the beast.

MIM’s theoretical innovations were a significant contribution to the political economy of imperialism – and the development of a communist political practice based on that analysis. Against the settler stream of the American left, MIM’s politics were based on a commitment to the liberation of oppressed nations within and without the United States. MIM did not flinch from analyzing the white working class in the American settler colony as a settler working class – the working class of the oppressor nation – and its existence as a privileged labor aristocracy distinct from the proletariat and oppressed peoples of the world. Distinguishing themselves from virtually all Marxist organizations seeking a “decolonization” only on settler terms, MIM not only upheld the right of Native nations to self-determination, but also the right of the colonized to expel the colonizer from their homelands.

Despite its importance and insight, much of MIM’s body of work remains understudied. While LOOP does not agree with every jot or tittle in these essays, they remain – even decades later – a cut above the staid and delusory writings of the First Worldist left.

In selecting what articles to include, LOOP did not include pieces from the reformatted versions of MIM Theory 1 and 2/3, or from the various Study Packs available on the MIM(Prisons) website, all of which are essential reading. In a certain sense, this collection is a personal one – these are articles that we have found significant to our own political development and organizing experience. We hope our republication of these essays helps them find a wider audience, bringing to them more of the attention they deserve, and that their insights are brought to bear on the burning questions of our movement.

MIM’s prisoner support work is now continued by the Maoist Internationalist Ministry of Prisons. MIM(Prisons) has also produced a substantial body of essential writing. You can find more information about MIM(Prisons) at https://www.prisoncensorship.info/.

MIM(Prisons) maintains the archive of MIM’s former website, the source used for the text of these essays, which can be found at https://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/.