None of the mass organizations collapsed afterwards. On the contrary, in some cases it appears that MIM members held back certain mass organizations because sometimes a year or two after the MIM member quit leadership roles, the ideas that MIM originally espoused become much more widely held within the organization and masses at large. It is very important for radicals and revolutionaries to look out for incipient leaders and to get out of their way. From this lesson and the lessons of SDS, MIM from its beginning has refused to assume crucial leadership roles in mass organizations. Mass organizations need to exist, but the reformist ones are more effective in these pursuits without communists working from within.
Radicals belong in communist-led mass organizations or in a communist party.
When MIM sponsors an educational event, demonstration or the like, MIM can go ask for help from a mass organization for that one project taking special care not to eat up too much of the organization's time and making it a point to identify the project as MIM- led so that no question of secret infiltration may arise. MIM members may attend mass organization meetings to inform themselves, but not to attempt to exert political leadership within the meeting. MIM members may join mass organizations and exert leadership within carefully specified and time-limited roles when MIM has made the determination that only a communist will be able to detonate a necessary mass movement. In this case, MIM members must make it clear that they are Maoists as they do their work and seek to get out of a leadership role as soon as the mass movement created generates people who could serve the role of mass organization leaders. MIM members may seek to influence members of mass organizations, but not on the time of the mass organization.