The following report was published in 1974, soon after Fred Newman and his followers left Lyndon LaRouche's NCLC to form the International Workers Party. Although theirs was a brief "collaboration," Newman continued to debate LaRouche with ideas perfected while working under his leadership and which, in fact, mimicked NCLC's methodology and practice. To this day, Newman still shares LaRouche's disdain and contempt for idealism, liberalism and minority-controlled organizations, and the theories with which he "proves" this point in Manifesto on Method are the same he currently "practices." More importantly, this paper shows that Newman and company were in fact aware of and acknowledged the possibility of mind control (referred to herein as "brainwashing").

MIDWEST REGIONAL REPORT

IWP Internal Document, Fall 1974

In the coming period of escalating class war, the Midwest region (approximately defined by North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Minnesota, Iowa, and Missouri) is a critical region to control. Its vast agricultural resources must be organized to support working class takeover of the economy. Vital trucking and railway routes pass through the area. Omaha is a key linkup of the transportation system. If we don't control the distribution of food and other commodities during the coming period, then Rockefeller will. Virtually no work has been done throughout the Midwest region by the Labor Committees-which makes it all the more critical for us to make this move at this time.

We are going out there as the Regional Investigating Committee of a continent-wide political union. Presenting ourselves initially as learners will open up doors that would otherwise be closed. Our organizing work for some period of time will largely consist of intelligence gathering: What's going on out there with the LEEA? How are the people reacting to the beginning stages of worldwide economic collapse? What do they think of Nixon, of the SLA, of Rockefeller? The Midwest workers are initially going to feel strange, frightened, out of place. In other words, we are going to be doing a whole lot of blocking-blocking the reality of our common humanity with the portion of the mass class which resides in the Midwest, blocking on aggressively organizing working people out there as class sisters and brothers for seizure of state power; takeover of the economy. The contradiction we face as organizers all the time will be dramatically heightened and made more visible 1,500 miles away from "home." One aspect of the contradiction is objective reality. Objective reality is manifest in the historical process emerging at this time; the heightening antagonistic contradiction between the capitalist class and the working class. Objective reality in this historical period on the one hand presents to the fascists the necessity for imposing total military control over the world-complete with concentration camps, massive brainwashing, concentrated and advanced forms of looting the industrialized sectors of the world economy, and at the same time and to precisely that same extent presents the working class and its vanguard leadership with the opportunity to take over, with the necessity of creating international socialism. The second principal aspect of the contradiction is "subjective" reality, the "world" as "experienced" by human beings. Our work all the time is to bring subjective reality into line with objective reality, is to transform our brainwashed, blocked notions about "reality" into creatively discerning the complex matrix of objective contradictions of which the real world consist, i.e., to deprogram ourselves. This will be an especially critical task for the Midwest regional insofar as the objective reality consists of the necessity of four initially insecure and blocked human beings to create mass revolutionary ferment in the Midwest region within the coming year. We unify objective and subjective reality by engaging in creative organizing, by sensuously engaging the real world and changing it. Initially, our organizing work will be with liberals, progressives, "radicals", professionals, academic people, etc., strata which will be initially responsive but which usually fade out relatively quickly. This is a tactic which will help us to feel our presence in the area-to feel more secure and therefore capable of the larger task of tapping working class ferment in the area. It is an organizing tactic to bring our subjective "blocked" reality into line with objective historical necessity. There are populist currents with strong working-class roots throughout the Midwest area. We must not shy away from the confrontation with and transformation of these (parochial) populist tendencies simply because they have the appearance of being "rightwing."[1] We must organize the right wing in this country if we are to successfully battle Rockefeller.

It is critical to see that we represent an exploratory outthrust of a revolutionary party. We are winning the class war. Our penetration to the Midwest is an attack. We are striking at Rockefeller's throat-we are not shuffling around and maneuvering into position.

We are the vanguard revolutionary party of the world. Our political structure is democratic centralism. Democratic centralism is a dialectical process between leadership and cadre. The leadership (Central Committee) functions to discern historical necessity manifest in the present and to make decisions which creatively engage that process towards the goal of international proletarian revolution. The leadership serves the cadre exactly as the revolutionary party serves the people. It serves the cadre by clearly defining reality-via decisions which enables cadre (the proletariat)-as well as demanding of cadre the fullest expression of their creative potential as revolutionary organizers. What is demanded of cadre is no mere passive acceptance of leadership and their decisions. Following leadership involves creative work. What is demanded is the fully creative act of internalizing those decisions as fully correct (i.e., as literally defining reality), as well as creative, enthusiastic implementation of those decisions. Our model of collective work is not-as the Labor Committees often insists-a banalization of individual creativity. It is not the reduction of the members of the collective to the lowest common denominator. To the extent that that does occur, to that extent we are blocking on the spirit and the power of collectivity. It is the structure that demands the highest degree of personal and collective creativity and power-located within the dialectic between leadership and cadre. Our political structure Is the link-the vital connection between our theory (conception) and our practice. it is the hookup of our conception of the human being as a member of the mass class with the activation and catalysis of revolutionary cadre enraged in changing historical reality. Our structure reflects our conception of the collective (the human race, ultimately) as primary to the individual in demanding of cadre that they organize (catalyze) the full collective-to which they are subsumed-towards the momentous undertaking of creating a new historical epoch.

We are going to the Midwest as NUWRO organizers. At this moment, NUWRO exists. It is a significant part of the real world, insofar as we have actualized it in our recent organizing: work, insofar as the practical and conceptual term of its existence resides within us and is reflected in our organizing capacity. NUWRO, however, is a mass union. What exists is not a mass-based union. NUWRO will only be fully realized when the working people in this continent, through a political union, have dual control of the economy-when, literally, the masses are conceptually and practically located within NUWRO. It will fully come into being in a period very shortly prior to the insurrection.

And so we are consistently engaged in the act of its creation even as it comes into being. Labor Committees have taken little initiative in providing cadre with the conceptual tools we need as NUWRO organizers. That is not to put down the Labor Committees, but rather to make clear the reality that we are the NUWRO leadership, that we must create NUWRO, that we must provide the class with the conceptual tools. How do we organize a Midwest farmer into NUWRO? How do we organize an independent trucker? What are we asking them to do? Is it the same in each case? What is our theory of organizing?

We are demanding of workers nothing short of changing their entire lives. Our work is to creatively engage the particular individual and demonstrate, step by step, that his or her demands can only be met through a dual union of the working class. We must move people from the concrete to the conceptual from the particular to the universal. We must demand that they become working class organizers-that nothing short of that active intervention in a worldwide historical process can change the reality of imminent catastrophe. We must sweep every parochial strike into continental agitation, into a coordinated mass strike; every parochial demand must be transformed into the class-wide demand of unconditional cost of living escalator clauses for the whole class-we must organize the class to organize itself. When we say that we must move people, that is not only a psychic description of the process. Workers must move to other strikes, to other areas of working-class ferment, and agitate those workers. Again, it is not simply a matter of convincing the proletariat, we must move them. We are in an agitational period. We must shake up the class.

We must create the Bill of Materials. The Bill of Materials is not a pamphlet issued by NUWRO at the second national conference. It is a conception, a conception of working people running the economy. It is a conception as well as a detailed practical plan for reconstruction of the world, which all of us must collectively create. We do not create the Bill of Materials by sitting in our room and trying to be "creative." We create it by working with farmers in the Midwest to develop conceptual breakthroughs in expanding and qualitatively upgrading agricultural production. We [must work] creatively with truckers to develop new ways of organizing the transportation network, new designs for trucks, etc. Farmers and machine tool workers will work together to design tractors fit for current and new modes of farming. We must organize the working people to rebuild the world. That is an essential feature of what "NUWRO organizing" is. To block on that is to block what is by far the hardest task-the task of REBUILDING THE ECONOMY. To block on that work means that cadre don't really believe that we are going to win. "What do you mean expand fertilizer production, we might be killed tomorrow?" That's bullshit. If you convey that to the working class then we might as well hang it all up right now. We must see the struggle for life as well as the struggle against death, historical necessity as well as peril. When we engage working people on that most advanced conceptual level, when we demand that THEY develop fundamentally new conceptions of running the world, when we show them the reality of life behind the appearance of world-wide death, then we will have built NUWRO.

Again, we are bringing not only NUWRO, but CFC as well to the Midwest. Our work is to reproduce and develop the theoretical and practical conceptions of CFC, concretely rooted in the material reality of that area as well as changing historical circumstances. We may run health services, provide counseling and legal, help. We will continue to have internal therapy groups. We will probably be doing a lot of organizing work around Operation Red Canary, working with the people there to develop ways to detoxify the world, given the present reality of intensive biological warfare being waged by the fascists against the human race. We plan to send people whom we've organized back to New York for political training and education, and to enable them to see and engage the more advanced fascist techniques which are waged against the (especially) lumpen people of this area.

Report on Work to Date

We plan to leave Sunday or Monday. [Deleted] has been working on getting a car. We got one last night! A station wagon, ca. 1968. It should be ready to go by Sunday morning. [Deleted] and [Deleted] will be working on it to get it in shape.

[Deleted] is responsible for financial work (including bookkeeping and fundraising), as well as getting the literature and supplies we need to go there. [Deleted] is working with [Deleted] to develop the financial relationship of the Midwest Regional to the National. Our estimated budget for the first month is about $1,500, including hotel rooms, gas, apt, rent and security deposit, storefront (or office) rent and security, gas telephone, food. We are bringing a cassette machine with us to record the daily briefings from Chicago. [Deleted] has suggested that we might get . MORE TO COME..

ENDNOTES

[1]   Years later, it was revealed that one or more IWP cadre met with members of the Ku Klux Klan as part of this Midwest "organizing" venture.