On the 130th Anniversary of the birth of José Carlos Mariátegui and the 95th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party we pay tribute to its great founder.
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(Moquegua, June 14, 1894 - Lima, April 16, 1930)
Nothing more appropriate for this tribute than to quote what President Gonzalo said about Mariátegui in 1975:
Mariátegui, as a fighter of the working class, followed and analyzed the world class struggle as an indispensable context to understand the revolution in our country; His accurate vision is in the following words: "The class struggle fills the foreground of the world crisis"; "the dominant events of the last quarter of a century have surpassed all limits. Their stage has been on the five continents"; "The dictatorship of the proletariat, therefore, is not a party dictatorship but a class dictatorship, a dictatorship of the working class"; "Marxism-Leninism is the revolutionary method of the stage of imperialism."
Development and class struggle in Peruvian society.- Since 1895, modern industry developed in Peru, culminating in the 1920s, a decade that marks the boost of bureaucratic capitalism under Yankee rule. This industrialization occurs in a semi-feudal society whose economy is increasingly subject to North American imperialism that displaces English rule. Thus, bureaucratic capitalism implies the development of our semicolonial condition and marks the entire development of Peruvian society, and its understanding is essential to interpret the class struggle in 20th century Peru.
In the previous framework, the Peruvian proletariat grew but not only numerically; The development of mining, textiles and other branches of manufacturing production gave it a defined and increasingly important location; In short, it implied the appearance of a new class and a precise goal. Our proletariat, fighting since its dawn for salary increases, reduction of working hours and other demands, generated a labor movement that, under the class union line, created unions in the fight against anarcho-syndicalism until culminating in the construction of the General Confederation of Workers. of Peru, a task precisely completed under the leadership of Mariátegui. Furthermore, the struggle of the working class determined the founding of its Party, also through the work and action of Mariátegui; Thus, the Peruvian proletariat became an adult class, forming itself as an independent political party and having as its goal the "economic emancipation of the working class." It began a new stage in the country, that of the national democratic revolution led by the proletariat through its Party.
The peasant, continuing his old struggles, also fought valiantly for "the land for those who work it"; He defended his lands against the usurpation of feudal landowners and monopolistic companies and his struggle, reiterated and tenacious, faced the "martial response" of the Peruvian State and its repressive instruments; Witnesses of his combativeness are the great actions of the first two decades of this century, those of Puno in particular. The petite bourgeoisie, employees and students for example, also fought against their enemies; The protest struggle and the organization of employees, such as the university reform, are palpable examples of the broad popular struggle.
In the political field of the exploiters, leguiista civilism, an expression of the "mercantile bourgeoisie" at the service of Yankee imperialism, assumed power and, becoming the axis of the economic process, displaced the "land-owning aristocracy" more closely linked to England. Leguiismo involved the remodeling of Peruvian society and politics according to demoliberal molds, as can be seen in the constitutional order and legislation, e.g. in the educational law of 1920 and other measures. Thus, the Peruvian bourgeoisie, whose momentum was recorded in the mid-19th century, became a compraist bourgeoisie and the axis of the Peruvian social process and the directing head of the country's exploiting classes.
The above was reflected in the ideological field. On the one hand, the civilist bourgeoisie hit the system of ideas of the landowning civilists, one of whose expressions is the Villarán-Deustua dispute in the educational field at the beginning of the century; criticism that was always moderate and lukewarm as well as propagandizing the excellence of the North American model. But while this occurred in the field of the exploiters, within the people and mainly through the action of the working class, a democratic system of ideas matured that little by little took shape as an understanding of our society from the position of the proletariat, precisely through the theory and practice of José Carlos Mariátegui, who reflected and systematized all these thirty-odd years of Peruvian life and was able to do so through his direct and ardent participation in the class struggle.
Mariátegui's Thought political expression of the Peruvian working class.- Mariátegui's life has a clear and precise path as a man of a new type, of "thinking and operating", of a life that matured more than changed, as he himself said, of "a declared and energetic ambition: that of contributing to the creation of Peruvian socialism." In the 35 years of his existence, in 1918, "nauseated by Creole politics, I oriented myself, he says, resolutely towards socialism" fighting for the working class; and, returning from Europe where, unlike many, he felt and became more Peruvian, he worked tirelessly propagandizing Marxism-Leninism, organizing the masses, especially workers and peasants, and finished off his work by founding the Communist Party.
José Carlos Mariátegui was a fighter of the working class, a great protagonist of the Peruvian proletariat that in theory and in practice, with word and action grew and developed in the heat of the class struggle, mainly in our country; a militant of the proletariat who, firmly adhering to Marxism and fusing it with the concrete conditions of our revolutionary process, became the culmination and synthesis of the struggle of the Peruvian working class, a political expression of the proletariat in our country, a systematizer of more than 30 years of the class struggle of our working class and our people.
In short, Mariátegui is a product of the class struggle, mainly that waged by the proletariat of which he is the highest political expression of it.