August 29,
2022
Proletarians of all countries, unite!
Note of the editorial-staff:
Although we do not know the authors, we publish this article because we
consider it to contribute for the development of the current two line struggle
in the International Communist Movement.
Polemic between the Russian Maoist Party
(RMP) and the Maoist Collective of Russia (MKR)
The Russian Communist Movement is young and to this date has lagged
relatively behind the world movement on many issues. There are several
historical reasons for this, besides the development of revisionist
social-imperialism itself, one of which is the history of the development of
the red line of Maoism: after the restoration of capitalism in China, which had
been the center of the world revolution before seizure of power by fascist
Teng, the International Communist Movement lost its Great Leadership, leading
it to temporary fragmentation and pessimism. But over the next 10 years another
great Communist Party – the Communist Party of Peru (PCP) – would emerge on the
world stage.
Under the leadership of Chairman Gonzalo, the PCP launched the People’s War
in 1980, which proved to the whole world the correctness of the PCP’s line and
established Chairman Gonzalo as the leader of the world revolution and the
sixth Marxist classic. It is the PCP that possesses the first correct
definition and application of Maoism as the next, new and higher milestone in
the development of Marxism. It is thanks to the struggle of the PCP that the
Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM) adopted Marxism-Leninism-Maoism
(MLM) in 1993. And it is to Chairman Gonzalo that belongs the first creative
application of the ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism to the concrete reality
of an individual country, the first Maoist Thought – Gonzalo Thought.
However, the correct positions that existed in RIM were distorted and
attacked by the revisionism of Bob Avakian, leader of the Revolutionary
Communist Party USA (RCPUSA), causing RIM to no longer serve the purpose of
promoting the Maoist line and to become a servant of American revisionism. From
then on, the main organ promoting the Peruvian revolutionaries’ red line became
the Peru People’s Movement (MPP), an organ of the PCP created specifically to
carry out work abroad. The MPP was particularly active in Europe, which is one
of the reasons why the Maoist movement in Germany is so advanced in Europe at
the moment. There were no active MPP organs in Russia or Asia.
Thus, communists in Russia have the task of establishing the MLM as the new
and higher stage of developing Marxism, the task of reconstituting the
Communist Party of Russia under the banner of Maoism.
The MKR enters into an open polemic with the RMP in order to propagate the
positions of MLM and to criticize the positions of the RMP that do not
correspond to the current realities of the struggle internationally and in Russia.
We believe that the working class and especially the communists must be united.
But we are also aware that only unity born through hard struggle has value.
That is why in all this controversy we cannot afford to use the word
“comrades” carelessly in relation to RMP. That would not correspond to reality.
At the moment, the political environment is such that the divisions between the
lines of the RMP and those of the advanced Communist Movements in the world
(such as the Brazilian and, for example, the German) are antagonistic. This can
be seen directly in the practice of the RMP itself. However, there are positive
and sincerely revolutionary aspects of the RMP that cannot be ignored and for
which we are writing this polemic.
Ideology issues
Before we start quoting our friends, we would like to point out that we are
well aware that the former RMP website ‘maoism.ru’ no longer belongs to RMP.
However, due to organizational consistency (RMP was and remains RMP), we find
it acceptable to consider that our criticism of the lines published on
‘maoism.ru’ remains valid. Having dealt with that, the key question of ideology
is the question of the ideological basis of RMP’s unity. In the “About us”
section, the friends write the following (emphasis added):
We are Marxist-Leninists. We mainly, though by no means entirely, approve of Stalin, but we are
mainly committed to the Chinese experiment in communism, which reached its apex
in the Cultural Revolution under Mao Tsetung and the Gang of Four.1
However, in the publication “Introduction to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism” it is
written (emphasis added):
Mao Tsetung Thought is the third
and new stage in the development of Marxism. Mao contributed to all the major
constituent parts of Marxism, but his main theoretical achievements were
the strategy of protracted people’s war and the theory of the continuation of
revolution under socialism. Maoism did not die in 1976 with its creator. Maoism
is in continuous theoretical development. In 1993, the then Maoist
International Party (“Revolutionary Internationalist Movement”) first
formulated the term “Marxism-Leninism-Maoism” (MLM), which is now accepted as
an ideology by all major Maoist parties in the world. MLM includes both the
basic principles of Maoism, already included in the theoretical canon
recognized by all parties, and new ideas from the experience of the
past fifty years, when Maoist parties, for example, have turned to the struggle
against patriarchy and to environmental issues.2
For us, these positions are very problematic because our friends contradict
their own words and reality, due to which we can see three contradictions here:
1. If Mao Tsetung’s
teachings are the third stage, how can adherents of these teachings remain
“Marxist-Leninists” – adherents of the second stage of Marxism? This is the
first contradiction.
2. The second
contradiction is whether the claim that RIM was the first to formulate a
correct definition of Maoism in 1993 corresponds to reality.
3. The third
contradiction: the addition to Maoism of the Maoist parties’ aspirations to
fight “patriarchy” and to resolve “environmental issues”.
As for the first contradiction: certainly, the issue is the contradiction between understanding ‘Mao
Tsetung Thought’ as the third stage in the development of Marxism and the
simultaneous need to recognize the universality of Maoism. In Marxism the words
‘position’, ‘line’, ‘Thought’ and ‘doctrine’ have clear roles in denoting
certain things. A position is a particular view of a single concrete political
issue. A line is a structural system of positions. A Thought is the new, mainly
specific, but also universal additions to Marxism as the result of applying a
universal truth – Marxism – to the conditions of a particular country. A
doctrine is a complete, synthesized, universal, closed ideological system.
The main difference between Thought and doctrine is universality. As we
know, every revolution in a given country faces new problems and solves them;
not solving new problems threatens to defeat the revolution. Thus, each
revolution that has reached a certain level of development gives rise to a
Thought that is mainly country-specific, although it has universal aspects. For
example: the Revolution in Peru developed in such a way that the New Power (the
Power of New Democracy) was built before the traditional armed forces had
entered into direct combat with the PCP in December 1982 (although the war had
been going on for almost 3 years, the police had been the main involved force
up to that point). This is a specific and faithful application of Marxism to
the specific political conditions of Peru in the 1980s, which cannot be applied
directly to the conditions of the countries of Commonwealth of Independent
States (CIS) or any other country. However, to the PCP and Gonzalo also belongs
a clearer definition of fascism as the rejection of bourgeois democracy and the
corporate construction of a country’s economy and politics, which is fully
applicable to Russia and other states around the world3.
This is a universal aspect of the experience of the Revolution in Peru and
an addition to Marxist theory. Other examples of universal aspects of the
specific experience of the revolution in Peru are the theses of “concentric
construction” and the “militarized Party”, which together constitute the main
points of the revolutionary experience in Peru and which together are the main
universal aspects of Gonzalo Thought, which by itself is in the first place
specific.
How then does Thought relate to doctrine? Thought may contain universal
contributions, but not in all components of Marxism. Or contributions can be
found in all parts, but the qualitative leap of them in each component is very
small. In doctrine iit s the opposite: large qualitative leaps in the three
constituent parts of Marxism, defining a new stage of development.
Returning to RMP, one can ask our friends the following question: how can
they apply Mao Tsetung Thought to the conditions of Russia, if this Thought has
always remained and remains primarily a national specificity? This is obviously
wrong, but there is a reason for this: historically, the fundamental and
universal aspects of Maoism had already gained international recognition
(during the GPCR) before its general character as a doctrine, as “-ism,” was
understood.
The PCP, who wrote the document “On Marxism-Leninism-Maoism” in 1988, at
the 1st Party Congress, teaches us the following:
However, while the universal validity of
Marxism-Leninism is being recognized, Maoism is not being widely recognized as
the third stage; so while some simply deny it as such, others just go to great
lengths to accept “Mao Tsetung Thought”. Essentially, in both cases, while they
clearly have differences between them, both deny the general development of
Marxism by Chairman Mao Tsetung. To not recognize the principles of Maoism as
an “ism” is to deny that it is universally applicable and, consequently, to be
characterized as the third, newer and higher stage of the ideology of the
international proletariat: Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, principally Maoism, which
we uphold, defend and apply.4
Regarding the second
contradiction: everything just said is a repetition of
the PCP’s masterful definition of Maoism in 19885.
The PCP itself accepted Maoism on the basis of the same criteria in 1982; the
document “Basis of Discussion” shows that the content of the criteria for
accepting Maoism as the third stage of Marxism has remained unchanged since
1982.
The Communist Party of Peru, through the
fraction led by Chairman Gonzalo that promoted the Party’s reconstitution,
adopted in 1966 Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought; in 1979 the slogan
“Unfurl, defend and apply Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought!”; in 1981
“Unite under Maoism!”; and in 1982 adopted Maoism as an integral part and
supreme development of the ideology of the international proletariat:
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.6
We learn from the most advanced communist organizations in the world and
insist that it was Gonzalo and the PCP who were the first to correctly define
Maoism. The proof of this is the history of RIM itself. And the one thing that allowed
Gonzalo and the PCP to be so visionary is the experience of the People’s War in
Peru. It is with experience that the Communist Movement acquires theory and
nothing else. Practice forces us to look at theses, which initially without
practice are only clear at the lowest level, from a completely different angle
and broadens our view of everything. The whole history of the Communist
Movement shows this and it seems logical to us that it was the most experienced
communists who were the first to correctly understand Maoism.
This brings us to the third contradiction: the RMP claims that there are
new additions to Maoism by the application of Maoism by Communist Parties when
they “turned to issues of struggle against patriarchy and environmental
issues”. Let’s dissect this position.
We know that today, as in the “last 50 years”, Thought can only develop in
that Communist Party which directs the revolution through the Protracted
People’s War (PPW) and does so successfully enough to solve new problems and
advance the revolution. When the Thought is confirmed through its application,
it acquires the name of its Great Leader, establishing it as the undisputed
Great Leader of its revolution. Like any other Thought, Gonzalo Thought evolved
along with the PPW through a persistent struggle: the Thought was first
identified as “Guiding Thought” and only later as “Gonzalo Thought”7.
The reason for this is as follows: the recognition of Guiding Thought
corresponds to the strengthening of the line of leadership and centralism; but
since experience has not yet proven Guiding Thought to be fully correct, it is
not named after its Great Leader. Thus, it is logical to suppose that the stage
of development of Gonzalo Thought, called Guiding Thought, was a stage when the
direction belonged to Gonzalo (Gonzalo was always in charge of the PCP – after reconstitution and before capture), but when experience was not enough to confirm the Guiding Thought itself
as Gonzalo’s Guide Thought, that is, Gonzalo Thought. We also know that the PCP
was the most advanced organization to exist in the last 50 years, because it
was the closest to carrying out a strategic offensive – the final stage of the
PPW to seize Power. This brings us to the undeniable fact that it is the PCP
that has the most advanced innovations in Marxism today – in Maoism. As we
know, there are exactly four PPWs today: the Turkish, the Peruvian, the
Philippine, and the Indian. We want our friends in RMP to take note of this:
none of the other Communist Parties that lead PPWs today have an established
Thought. According to this, what additions to Marxism can we talk about? It is
easy to check whether RMP’s claims are true or not. Just ask: which Communist
Party has expanded Marxism without completely repeating Marx’s words in “Das
Kapital”?
All progress in capitalist agriculture
is progress in the art not only of robbing the worker, but also of robbing the
soil; all progress in increasing the fertility of the soil for a time is
progress in destroying the most durable sources of that fertility… Capitalist
production, therefore, only advances the technique and the degree of combination
of the process of social production, while it undermines the original sources
of all wealth – the soil and the worker.8
Similarly: which Party has “addressed the issues of the struggle of
patriarchy” and thus improved the practice and theory of Marxism? Consider the
facts: the most advanced Party in the category of the “last 50 years” is the
Communist Party of Peru. The PCP had as women 50% of its cadres, and had one of
the strongest women’s movements led by a united front organization, the
People’s Women Movement (Movimiento Femenino Popular), which can be found in
the history of the PCP. But in these matters, studying the writings of the PCP
itself, one can clearly conclude that the PCP was entirely guided by Marxism
and the correct understanding of the united class front, just
as other Communist Parties, which are now successfully leading women’s struggles.
What new things did the Communist Parties then come up with to address the
issue of “patriarchy” and what ideology did they turn to on these issues? They
actually turned to Marxism and fundamental works like “The Origin of the
Family, Private Property and the State”, Mao’s works on the three instruments
of revolution, the writings of their founder Mariátegui, etc.
We believe RMP should ask itself when, where, and under which banner have
women gained the most rights and equality in the history of human development.
The only correct answer is in Red China. We believe, as adherents of
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, that the only solution to the question of women in
capitalism is communism, for it is in private property that the double
exploitation of women and their oppression lies. The so-called “patriarchy”
that liberals are so fond of talking about has no universally accepted
definition and is not a Marxist thesis: is it a society where private property
can only be inherited by a patriarchal man, or just a society where private
property exploits and oppresses women? If by “patriarchal” RMP means the
latter, then it is simply capitalism without adjectives, and the solution to
the class contradiction lies in communism, today in Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
The question is the ideology to which RMP adheres: Marxism-Leninism-Maoism or
feminism. We know of no feminist organization that has advanced the workers’
struggle and the struggle of women to the point where there is reason to
renounce Marxism and promote feminism.
Moreover, our friends from RMP should be well aware that there are two main
ideologies in the world at the moment: the ideology of the proletarians and the
bourgeois ideology. The difference between the two is this: the ideology of the
proletarians never hides its class character. Another difference is that
bourgeois ideology is always eclectic and proletarian ideology is never
eclectic. This should make our friends at RMP think about the following: there
is no clear definition of feminism because it is eclectic and has no
systematized political line. With Maoism, it is exactly the opposite.
But naturally, like everything else, feminism must be divided in two, based
on practice: the positive aspect is that the oppression of women is raised to
the agenda, followed by some self-organization, which ultimately leads to the
loss of all gains the second the leadership leaves Marxism; the negative
aspect, however, is that feminism easily leads to individualism and liberalism,
because without Marxism the class contradiction is always forgotten, the
movement is sold, and an overt false individualism is infiltrated into the
ideology, serving to split the class front.
In general, one gets the impression that often the attempt to embrace
feminism as an ideology is motivated by the desire to join the progressive
aspects of the masses that raise women’s struggles to the agenda. We have heard
of RMP’s positions on feminism and believe that in such matters RMP should
remember Lenin’s instructions:
The whole art
of running a secret organisation should consist in making use of everything
possible, in “giving everyone something to do,” at the same time retaining
leadership of the whole movement, not by virtue of having the power, of course,
but by virtue of authority, energy, greater experience, greater versatility,
and greater talent.9
We believe that to organize, to solve the women’s question, there are
women’s organizations that can exist exclusively within a united class front.
This means that their organizational task is to completely reject
individualism, liberalism, and to embrace and spread Maoism, in the service of
the revolution and the people. We wish to point out that at present none of the
existing organizations in Russia can claim to meet these criteria: first,
because there is no Communist Party that builds and runs a front; second,
because the character of all existing organizations of this kind is clearly
bourgeois.
We believe that people who really want to fight for women have a duty to be
communists, because it is in Marxism that the key to the liberation of all
living beings lies: Marxism is true and universal because it is scientific.
Thus, historically, the word “feminism” has been perceived as “women’s
liberation”. We believe this is wrong, because only Marxism, now Maoism, can
liberate women and all oppressed people.
International line issues – MLPD and
ICOR
Turning to the subject of RMP’s collaboration with the Marxist-Leninist
Party of Germany (MLPD) and RMP’s membership in the International Coordination
of Revolutionary Parties and Organizations (ICOR), it should be noted that many
of the positions that RMP propagates, including those of “ecoactivism” and
feminism, have their origins directly in MLPD’s revisionism. One need only look
at its party program to examine the nature of the MLPD. It states (emphasis
added):
The working class wants the revolution
to take place without the use of violence. But the
question of violence does not depend on the will of the proletariat. When the
struggle experiences a revolutionary upsurge, the monopolies, as every
historical experience proves, try to defend their power by brutal violence.
Therefore, the working class, under the leadership of its party, must, if
necessary, rise up in armed revolt. With the overthrow of imperialism and
the destruction of the bourgeois state apparatus, the class struggle of the
proletariat will reach its highest form under capitalism.10
We consider this paragraph an example of the revisionism with which the
MLPD tries to hide its reformism, its pathetic concept of “proletarian
parliamentarianism”. Just ask: how and when would the MLPD decide whether there
is a need for an armed revolt or not? The international proletariat has an
answer – the need is always there! This necessity stems from the fact that
class contradictions are irreconcilable, which means that the law of
revolutionary violence is universal. This is what ALL the classics of Marxism
teach us. Did Engels teach us that violence is the midwife of history or not?
That is the whole purpose of the Communist Party, which the MLPD is not, but
claims to be.
Doesn’t RMP find it strange that the entire MLPD program doesn’t talk about
the three instruments of revolution? This is worthy of a little more attention:
As the struggle of the working class
rises, it must increasingly become the party of the masses. To do this, the
party must constantly promote and develop cooperation with the trade unions and
other mass self-organizations.11
In the Maoist, correct, communist conception, the Party is the axis of
everything: the Party is the political organ of the proletariat, which directs
its own construction and simultaneously concretises the army and the united
front. Such a “party of the masses” is out of the question – this criterion
corresponds directly to Khrushchev’s revisionist thesis of the “party of all
the people”.
Each class has its own methods of self-organization and organization, it is
democratic centralism, not central democracy, that corresponds to the
proletariat. There is a contradiction between centralism and democracy, and
this contradiction is resolved by the Communist Party through the mass line,
because of which centralism remains paramount to maintaining the correct course
of the revolution. Thus the Party resolves this contradiction by acquiring a
popular character and maintaining class direction, but never by being “the
party of all the people”. All those who think this conclusion is wrong should
study the history of the USSR, the People’s Republic of China and the
Protracted People’s War in Peru and pay special attention to the quantitative
relationship between the Communist Party and the people.
However, this is the MLPD’s concept of a party and front. The army, on the
other hand, is not mentioned at all by the MLPD. The MLPD’s understanding of
class struggle does not accommodate the fundamental Marxist thesis that the
proletariat struggles on all three levels simultaneously: economic, political
and ideological. To separate one level from the other is revisionism and that
is exactly what the MLPD does: at no time is direct political struggle
mentioned in the entire program. In the Marxist concept, war is a necessary
continuation of politics. To disconnect the economic struggle from the need to
build the organs of political power is economism. It is this raw economism that
can be seen in the entire MLPD program, from beginning to end:
The class struggle in the true sense
begins when the struggles of the working class take on a society-changing
character and the working class launches its strategic offensive against the
dictatorship of the monopolies. That requires a socialist consciousness of the
decisive majority of the international industrial proletariat.
The leading factor of the
society-changing movement for the liberated socialist society is the transition
to the working-class offensive. The realization of the working-class offensive
is bound to the systematic rank-and-file work of the party and has these basic
elements:
– The struggle for daily demands and
partial slogans must be waged offensively so that it can be developed higher.
Starting from the struggle for every job, the working class must fight
unemployment at the expense of monopolist profits.
– The economic struggle must include the
social question and the environmental question and be combined with political
struggle, that is, be transformed into political struggle. It is only in this
way that the workers can grasp how their experience with exploitation and
oppression in the workplace is inseparably connected with the ruthless
exploitation of nature, that both are an expression of the monopoly
dictatorship and that the state is the decisive instrument of power of the
monopolies. The struggle for democratic rights and liberties must be made the
focus of the political demands.12
The MLPD says that “the economic struggle must include the social question
and the environmental question and be combined with political struggle, that
is, be transformed into political struggle” and does the opposite. As we have
already established, war is a continuation of politics. From this one can
deduce that in a revolution there is always a military change first and only
then a political change. Thus the directive is given: before the reconstitution
of the Communist Party everything must serve the reconstitution; after the
reconstitution of the Communist Party everything must serve the seizure of
Power by means of the People’s War; after the seizure of Power everything must
serve its maintenance and development. The general transformation of society
that the MLPD speaks of is only possible by “midwifery”. The MLPD, with
confusing words and garish slogans, tries to prove that the transformation of
society is possible not by war, but by the usual “struggle for everyday
demands”. This position characterizes the MLPD in its entirety.
In this way, the MLPD tries to hide the class truth of its position:
although the above quote ends, after these two points the MLPD continues to
present more and more consignments – equality, ecology, “unity between young and
old”, etc., all exclusively within the framework of legal union-type work. None
of the points presented in the MLPD’s program serve to seize Power. The error
of all the yellow unions is precisely this: without the leadership of the
Communist Party, the unions cease to act in the interest of the proletariat and
become a refuge for the labor aristocracy to sell out the movement. And if the
MLPD was really the Communist Party in Germany, it would develop the Protracted
People’s War and actually serve the seizure of Power. Doesn’t RMP find it
repugnant that the MLPD does a lip service to Rosa Luxemburg, Liebknecht and
Thälmann, but in reality follows entirely the 1918 specimen of the program of
the Social Democratic Party (SPD)? So the only correct position is this: the
MLPD are revisionist-reformists. And the icing on the cake of MLPD revisionism
is “proletarian parliamentarism” – what Lenin correctly called parliamentary
cretinism.
|
Year |
First round |
Second round |
% in the second
round |
|
1987 |
596 |
13,422 |
0 |
|
1994 |
4,932 |
10,038 |
0 |
|
1998 |
7,208 |
4,731 |
0 |
|
2005 |
16,480 |
45,238 |
0.1 |
|
2009 |
17,512 |
29,261 |
0.1 |
|
2013 |
12,904 |
24,219 |
0.1 |
|
2017 |
35,835 |
29,928 |
0.1 |
|
2021 |
22,754 |
17,994 |
0 |
The MLPD is running in elections because, as they themselves admit in their
own program, they are not interested in serving the proletariat and the people
by working to seize Power. To know exactly how much the revisionist-reformist
strategy has been able to win over the German working class, it should suffice
to look again at these statistics on the number of votes for the MLPD itself in
the German parliament.
We appeal to all sincere revolutionary-minded people of the RMP to pay
close attention to the political content of the MLPD program, with which the
RMP is in close cooperation within ICOR. All this program serves is only a
pathetic attempt to betray the revolutionary position of our class carried out
by the MLPD on the theoretical level by mixing standard copycat Marxist
positions with bourgeois positions, and on the practical level by useless,
futile, bourgeois activism that causes cadres to burn out and turn them away
from the path of revolutionary optimism.
And if RMP believes that the MLPD is really the Communist Party of Germany,
as they themselves claim, then our friends should substantiate this claim by
showing exactly how the MLPD is developing in a military direction. We
ourselves guarantee in advance that no such evidence exists.
Speaking of ICOR, primarily as a network of “Marxist-Leninist”
organizations that the MLPD founded and to some extent leads, exactly the same
criteria should apply that we apply to the MLPD. Most of the organizations that
make up ICOR have nothing in common except their name and their revisionism.
They are “Marxist-Leninist” organizations, totally lost in theory and practice,
some of which do not even accept Mao Tsetung Thought and Maoism at all, and
others which accept it half-heartedly and hold themselves to positions similar
to those of the RMP itself.
For communists, the International is extremely important because it
concretizes the center of world revolution and communist leadership. However,
the ICOR is anything but a Communist International. Work is already progressing around the world
to organize a Unified Maoist International Conference13.
With regard to the Communist Movement in Germany itself, it has long been
obvious to everyone except the RMP which organizations lead the working class.
All over the world it is the Maoist organizations and Parties that lead the
working class, not the self-proclaimed “Marxist-Leninists” of ICOR and MLPD.
International line issues – PCP and CPPh
We also want to touch on RMP’s erroneous position on the revolution in
Peru. In a September 11 post on its Telegram channel, RMP writes (emphasis
added):
The world media is reporting the death of
Abimael Guzmán (Chairman Gonzalo). The former leader of the Communist Party of
Peru (“Sendero Luminoso”) died at the naval base in Callao, where he was
imprisoned. He spent a total of 28 years behind bars after being captured by
Peruvian intelligence agencies in 1992.
The report of Gonzalo’s death has not
yet been confirmed. MOVADEF (Movement for Amnesty and Fundamental Rights),
which is considered the political wing of the senderists, is demanding that
Guzmán’s wife Elena Iparraguirre (also serving a life sentence) be allowed into
his cell to attest to his death. Given that Guzmán is already 86 years old, it
is likely that he has indeed died.
Guzmán has been actively demonized by
bourgeois journalists and academics who have created his “urban legend”. The
real Sendero made many mistakes, but in general Sendero was one of the most
vibrant revolutionary movements of the 80s and 90s, which was able to mobilize
the masses of Peru’s workers and peasants to fight for socialism and achieve
great success. Guzmán (along with Sison) was also one of the creators of the
term “Marxism-Leninism-Maoism” (MLM) which was then adopted by most Maoists.
Marxism-Leninism will open the shining
path to revolution!
We found an incredible amount of problems with this publication. We ask our
friends where the RMP gets the name “Sendero Luminoso” from, but we already
know, because there is not a single document where they call themselves that.
This nickname “senderists” was attributed to the PCP by bourgeois historians,
serving the old order to defame the PCP and accuse Gonzalo himself of a cult of
personality14.
The very claim that the Movement for Amnesty and Fundamental Rights (MOVADEF)
is the “political wing” of the PCP is an insult to all that the PCP stands for.
The PCP itself described and describes MOVADEF as follows: “right opportunist
capitulationists”15.
MPP, the PCP organ for international work that we have already mentioned in
this debate, gives exactly the same definition to MOVADEF:
The heroic death of Chairman Gonzalo
must serve to give a more powerful impetus to the still pending task of
overcoming the complex and difficult situation into which the people’s war
entered after his arrest and mainly because of the betrayal of the rats of the
revisionist and capitulationist right opportunist line (ROL), which was
structured in prisons with the help of the Yankee CIA and Peruvian reaction,
headed by the rat Miriam. ROL, which called to end the people’s war, that is,
to betray the people’s war, to disown Chairman Gonzalo and Maoism and Gonzalo
Thought, the Basis of Party Unity approved at the First Congress of the PCP,
all in exchange for better prison conditions and to serve the plans of
imperialism and reaction to destroy the Party leadership and Gonzalo Thought,
serving the absolute and perpetual isolation of the Chairman. First repeating
the reactionary hoax of the “peace letters and talks”, then “asking for a
political solution to the problems arising from the war”, in other words
amnesty, and then setting up their revisionist farce of a movement for the
defence of fundamental rights and amnesty, to try to legalize themselves and
participate in the reactionary elections as Movadef and also since 2012 to
crawl after the counterrevolutionary rondero Pedro Castillo Terrones to seek to
capture the Committee of Struggle of Sutep, which they achieved in the
teachers’ strike of 2017, which they betrayed in the service of the bosses (the
old State). Continuing their black road of service to the old state, they went
to form part of the opportunist partisan Perú Libre, owned by the shyster
Cerrón and his family, to occupy posts in the service of the old state and its
reactionary government and to put themselves at the service of the three
necessary tasks of imperialism and reaction: to re-impel bureaucratic
capitalism, to restructure the old state and to annihilate the people’s war,
mainly trying to give it a “definitive blow“ with the annihilation of Chairman
Gonzalo.16
We want to hear from the RMP: exactly why are traitors, People’s War
liquidationists and parliamentary cretins considered the “political wing of the
senderists”? Either RMP embraces reformism and revisionism, or they are simply
not sufficiently informed and confused about the People’s War process in Peru.
We believe that this is one of the positions that is spread by the MLPD and
imposed through ICOR17.
It does not reflect reality, but serves the interests of revisionism in
spreading and imposing parliamentary cretinism, repudiation of military
struggle and revolution – positions on which the MLPD itself stands. This
position is being spread along with the lie that Gonzalo supposedly
capitulated. This is not supported by any of the several public videos of
Gonzalo’s trial where the Chairman supports the People’s War and stands firm on
Maoism. One might then ask: where does this position spread from? The answer is
simple: MOVADEF lawyer supposedly obtained Gonzalo’s diary in which the
ideological positions are exactly the same as those of MOVADEF that reject the
People’s War. This whole story definitely has parallels with the so-called
“Lenin’s will”.
We strongly advise our friends at RMP to study the political situation in
Peru and think for themselves who is a communist and who is not.
Turning to the question of Jose Maria Sison, whom no communist can put on
equal footing with Gonzalo, we want to point out that we cannot write much
about these issues in this polemic, as it is worthy of a separate article and
would take too long. However, we cannot pass up an opportunity for criticism
and advice to our friends at RMP to study closely the article by the German
Communists in the Klassenstandpunkt editorial entitled “Initial Criticisms of the Role of the Communist
Party of the Philippines in the International Communist Movement”. This article
deserves extremely detailed attention by examining the root of the ideological problems of
the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPPh)
due to which the Party does not
follow the principle of concentric construction and postpones the agrarian
program until the seizure of Power, thus
showing major lapses
in the construction of the new Power, army, front and tendency to eliminate the
People’s War itself through peace negotiations. Reviewing Party documents, the article examines when exactly the CPPh
adopted Maoism and finds that the CPPh’s position is eclectic, to the point
that there is not even a definite moment when the Party adopted Maoism. On
issues of ideology – Maoism – the CPPh and especially Sison are almost
perpendicularly at odds with Gonzalo. A key disagreement is the question of
universal application of the PPW, on which the German movement has also
published an excellent article18.
Other key disagreements also include the CPPh’s position on “socialism” in
China in the 1990s, Sison’s position on “socialism” in the Democratic People’s
Republic of Korea (DPRK) and Cuba.
MKR also adds that Sison has become an obsolete revisionist, as indicated
by his 2021 interview, where he keeps referring to the DPRK as socialism,
alludes to socialism in Cuba, and says that the war in Donbass is a “national
liberation” or “people’s” war19.
There are no flawless communists, everyone makes mistakes and everyone
evolves through a struggle of opposities. The question is which aspect is
primary: the revisionist aspect or the communist aspect. For Sison, at the
moment, it is the revisionist.
Security and practice issues
On the key issue of security, it should be noted that RMP itself admits
that it is not the Communist Party of Russia. During the preparation of this
polemic, our friends in RMP openly told us that they were prepared to accept
criticism and work to improve.
We fully support this.
However, this willingness is worth proving first of all in practice: the
RMP has been around for decades, but RMP’s security policy remains the same as
it has been – open faces, full names, raids and activists alone on picket lines
being arrested. And the grossest mistake is the de-anonymization of the
leadership. As can be seen in ALL of the history of the Communist Movement,
reaction is always trying to destroy the leadership and distance it from the
people. What red line can we then speak of if the work for the reconstitution
of the Communist Party does not proceed in strict “anonymity”? Of course, mass
organizational forms have no possibility of being “anonymous” because of their
mass character. However, we do not see such large lapses in security anywhere
except in revisionist organizations that consciously risk nothing because they
do nothing – in organizations like the MLPD, for example. It should be noted
that if the RMP is really going to serve the reconstitution of the Communist
Party of Russia, then work in this direction must be carried out exclusively in
“anonymity”. This is a reality for all communist movements today and for all
communist movements yesterday. The question is to understand the construction
of the three instruments of revolution and the organizational forms (security
is one aspect of this) that are necessary for this.
Let’s remember what the PCP and Gonzalo teach us:
Organic construction. The organic
follows the political and taking into account that line alone is not enough;
the organic apparatuses must be built while seeing the organic structure, the
organic system and the Party work. In its organic structure, the Party is based
on democratic centralism, principally centralism. Two armed Party networks are
established, the territorial network which encompasses one jurisdiction and the
mobile network whose structure is deployed. The organic system is the
distribution of forces in function of the principal and secondary points
wherever the revolution is acting. Party work is the relationship between
secret work, which is principal, and open work; the importance of the five
necessities: Democratic centralism, clandestinity, discipline, vigilance and
secrecy, particularly democratic centralism.20
Gonzalo defines the construction principle as follows:
“On the ideological-political base, to
simultaneously build the organizational forms in the midst of the class
struggle and the two-line struggle, all of these within and as a function of
the armed struggle for the conquest of Power.”21
This is the most precise formulation that demonstrates how mass work must
serve the work of reconstituting the Communist Party at a time when it does not
exist. This is the directive that communists and revolutionaries must adhere
to.
To close the polemic, we want to emphasize that we very much expect RMP to
respond sensibly to criticism. As we have said, MKR believes that there are
genuinely revolutionary elements in RMP and we hope that these elements will be
the first to accept our polemic. For our part, given the issues of security and
ideology, MKR is ready to continue to cooperate with RMP primarily through
polemics.
1[A.N] Russian
Maoist Party, Марксизм-ленинизм-маоизм,
краткий курс, 2014.
2[A.N.] Russian
Maoist Party, Введение в
марксизм-ленинизм-маоизм, 2016.
3[A.N.] “On Fascism”
– MPP’s document that more briefly examines Gonzalo’s additions to the understanding
of fascism.
4[A.N.] Communist
Party of Peru, On
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, 1988.
5Idem.
6Idem.
7[A.N.] Communist
Party of Peru, General Political
Line, 1988.
8[A.N.] Karl
Marx, Das Kapital, Volume 1, p. 638 in the Russian version.
9[A.N.] Vladimir
Lenin, A Letter to a
Comrade on Our Organisational Tasks, 1902
10[A.N.]
Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany, Program of the Marxist-Leninist Party.
11Idem.
12Idem.
13[A.N.] Coordinating Committee for
the Unified Maoist International Conference – CUMIC, For a Unified Maoist
International Conference! – Proposal regarding the balance of the International
Communist Movement and of its current General Political Line, 2022.
14[Author’s] note:
we want to point out that all the bourgeois lies about “personality cult” and
“terrorism” have been refuted by Chairman Gonzalo in the document “Interview
with Chairman Gonzalo”. For those who think that the PCP really had a policy of
personality cult and terrorism, we want to ask: why are you Marxists and not
terrorists and cultists, if you think that terrorism and cultism can build a
New Power and achieve a strategic equilibrium?
15[A.N.] Communist
Party of Peru, ¡VIVA EL 91°
ANIVERSARIO DEL HEROICO COMBATIENTE, EL PARTIDO COMUNISTA DEL PERU!, 2019.
16[A.N.] Peru
People’s Movement, CHAIRMAN
GONZALO HAS DEFEATED THE REACTIONARY PLAN TO DEAL A DEFINITIVE BLOW TO THE
PEOPLE’S WAR, 2021.
17[A.N.] The MLPD
has a history of working with Peruvian revisionists. For example: an
international conference with the so-called “Peruvian Marxist-Leninist Party”.
18[A.N.]Klassenstandpunkt, People’s
War: the Sole Path to Liberation, 2018
19[A.N.] https://youtube.com/watch?v=i3_rKCMX1Ww
20[A.N.] Communist
Party of Peru, General
Political Line, 2018.
21Idem.
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