Proletarians of all countries, unite!
IN COMMEMORATION OF THE 96TH ANNIVERSARY
OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF PERU
ON THE STRATEGY AND TACTICS OF THE WORLD REVOLUTION
We greet
the international proletariat and the peoples of the world, with exultant joy
and revolutionary optimism to the fullest, on the occasion of the 96th anniversary
of the founding of the Communist Party of Peru (PCP). On this new anniversary
of the founding of the Party, the Popular Movement of Peru, the organization
generated by the Party for international work, pays tribute to its great
founder José Carlos Mariátegui.
Chairman
Gonzalo, in many years of intense, tenacious and incessant struggle to uphold,
defend and apply Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, to take up the path of Mariátegui and
develop it, has generated Gonzalo thought and reconstituted the Party, and has
initiated and developed the people's war in Peru, serving the world revolution
and making Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, mainly Maoism, its only command and guide
in theory and practice.
Therefore,
as a necessary introduction to the subject we will discuss, on this new
anniversary of the founding of the Party, it is appropriate to clarify some issues about our founder:
Mariátegui
lived in the era of imperialism, according to his words, in the period of
"capitalism of monopolies, of financial capital, of imperialist wars for
the monopolization of markets and sources of raw materials" and that
imperialism matures the conditions for the revolution.
From 1914
to 1918 the world was shaken by the First World War, the "war of
imperialist plunder" which, with the treacherous support of the old
revisionism, set the working class and the people of some powers against others
in order to divide the world by the imperialist powers and their monopolistic
bourgeoisies.
But as
Lenin had foreseen, the war hatched the revolution and in 1917 the Bolshevik
Party overthrew the power of the Tsarists of old Russia through armed
insurrection; thus, with the October Revolution a new stage opened for
humanity, the era of the proletarian revolution. Fulfilling the
scientific predictions of Marx and Engels, the October Road laid down general
rules for the emancipation of the working class: the need for a Communist
Party to lead the revolution, the need for revolutionary violence to
overthrow the old established order and the need to establish the
dictatorship of the proletariat to build socialism and move towards the
future classless society. What Marx and Engels taught, Marxism in a word, was
confirmed as an incontrovertible reality.
The
October Revolution had repercussions throughout the world. Europe was shaken to its
foundations and the proletariat launched itself to conquer power; the
struggles in Germany, Italy and Hungary are examples, which Mariátegui
himself spread in "History of the World Crisis", but although the
masses were ripe for the revolution, the communist parties indispensable for
its leadership were lacking and fascism was born. The repercussions were
not only European, the October Revolution gave impetus to the anti-imperialist
colonial movement; the East entered into convulsion, constituting the
Chinese Revolution "the most extensive and profound sign of the
awakening of Asia." Our own America developed an anti-imperialist
struggle and the working class, reaching maturity, generated its own communist
parties and acquired political weight.
On the
ideological level, the crisis of bourgeois thought was accentuated while,
within the world workers' movement, revisionist opportunism was swept away,
revolutionary syndicalism was overcome and Marxism entered a new stage, that of
Marxism-Leninism.
Mariátegui
experienced this process directly as a combatant of the working class, and
followed and analyzed the world class struggle as an indispensable context to
understand the revolution in our country.
Since 1895,
modern industry developed in Peru, culminating in the 1920s, a decade that
marks the impulse of bureaucratic capitalism under Yankee domination. This
industrialization took place in a semi-feudal society whose economy was
increasingly subject to American imperialism, which displaced English
domination. Thus, bureaucratic capitalism implies the development of our
semi-colonial condition and marks the entire development of Peruvian society,
and its understanding is essential to interpret the class struggle in Peru.
The
Peruvian proletariat grew, but not only numerically; the development of mining,
textiles and other branches of manufacturing gave it a defined and increasingly
important position; in short, it implied the appearance of a new class and a
precise goal. Our proletariat, fighting from its beginnings for wage increases,
reduction of the work day and other demands, generated a workers' movement
that, under the class-based trade union line, created unions in struggle
against anarcho-syndicalism until culminating in the construction of the
General Confederation of Workers of Peru, a task completed under the leadership
of Mariátegui. 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.
José Carlos
Mariátegui was a combatant of the working class, a great protagonist of the
Peruvian proletariat who in theory and in practice, with words and actions,
grew and developed in the heat of the class struggle, mainly in our country; a
militant of the proletariat who firmly adhered to Marxism and fused it with the
concrete conditions of our revolutionary process, becoming the culmination and
synthesis of the struggle of the Peruvian working class, the political
expression of the proletariat in our country, the systematizer of more than 30
years of the class struggle of our working class and our people.
When
referring to the founder of the Party and the founding of the PCP on October 7,
1928, we have already established some solid questions about the process of the
world revolution. Now we proceed to present the subject, as always, taking the
words of Chairman Gonzalo as faithful as possible.
Chairman
Gonzalo emphasizes that Chairman Mao once again emphasizes the importance of
the world revolution as a unit. Why? Marx already told us this problem,
that we must conceive the world revolution as a unit; moreover, he insisted
that communism must be entered into as a whole, implying that it must be a
revolution that we all carry forward - I do not mean that he said it in unison.
In the
document “UNITE AROUND THE CONGRESS AND DEVELOP THE METROPOLITAN COMMITTEE!”
(PCP, 1988), the President masterfully summarizes the development followed by
Marxism up to Chairman Mao on the strategy and tactics of the world revolution,
thus:
Lenin,
after World War I, proposes a triple division of the countries of the earth. He
was faced with a concrete problem, Lenin with that clairvoyance predicted that
the revolution in Europe was not immediate, but that it was taking place in the
oppressed nations of the East and, thus, he begins to make an outline of the
strategy and tactics for the world revolution.
Lenin
pointed out that an era of wars would accompany the emergence of socialist
society:
“We have
already seen how many difficulties the civil war in Russia caused, how it is
intertwined with a whole series of wars. Marxists have never forgotten that
violence inevitably accompanies the bankruptcy of capitalism in its entirety
and the birth of socialist society. And this violence will fill an entire
world-historical period, an entire era of the most varied wars: imperialist
wars, civil wars within each country, combinations of the two, wars of
liberation of nations oppressed by imperialism, various combinations between
the imperialist powers which will inevitably intervene in various alliances, in
this era of enormous state capitalist trusts and consortia and military
monopolies. This era of gigantic bankruptcies, massive decisions taken under
the pressure of military forces, of crises – has already begun; we can clearly
distinguish it, but it is only the beginning.”
‘What the
socialists should do is take advantage of the war that the bandits are waging
to overthrow them all.’ ‘War is politics by other means’ (namely, by
violence.’)
Within this
perspective he reiterated: 'the
distinction between oppressor and oppressed nations, which constitutes the
essence of imperialism', and established that: 'the socialist
revolution will not be solely and primarily a struggle of revolutionary
proletarians of each country against its bourgeoisie; no, it will be a struggle
of all colonies and of all countries oppressed by imperialism, of all dependent
countries against international imperialism... that the civil war of the
workers against the imperialists and the exploiters of all advanced countries
begins to combine with the national war against international imperialism. This
is confirmed by the progress of the revolution, and will be increasingly
confirmed'.
Thus,
Lenin defined the two great contemporary forces: the international proletarian
movement and the movement of the oppressed nations, establishing as an obligation of the
Communist International ‘to support the bourgeois-democratic national movements
in the colonies and backward countries only on condition that the elements of
the future proletarian parties – communist not only in name – group together
and educate themselves in all backward countries to become fully aware of the
special mission that is incumbent upon them. To fight against the
bourgeois-democratic movements within their respective nations’; for if the
International establishes temporary alliances, in these cases, it must
unconditionally maintain the independence of the proletarian movement, even of
its most rudimentary forms’; and that, as communists, we will only support
these movements ‘in the event that their representatives do not prevent us from
educating and organizing the peasants and the great masses of the exploited in
a revolutionary spirit’.
Lenin also
teaches us that since the beginning of this century there have been great
changes, since 'millions and hundreds of millions of people - in fact, the
vast majority of the world's population - are now active and independent
revolutionary factors. And it is clear that in the future decisive battles
of the world revolution, the movement of the majority of the world's
population, initially directed towards national liberation, will turn against
capitalism and imperialism and will perhaps play a much more important
revolutionary role than we expect... Naturally, in this vast sector there
are many more obstacles, but, in any case, the movement is moving forward
and the working masses, the peasants of the colonies, although still backward,
will play a very great revolutionary role in the successive phases of the world
revolution.'
And
pointing out the revolutionary perspective, he said at the Second Congress
of the Communist International: ‘World imperialism must fall when the
revolutionary drive of the workers and oppressed of each country, overcoming
the resistance of the petty-bourgeois elements and the influence of the
insignificant elite constituted by the labor aristocracy, merges with the
revolutionary drive of millions of people who until now had remained on the
sidelines of history, for which they were nothing more than a patient subject.
’
The great
Lenin led the October Revolution, opening a new stage for humanity, but he
never thought that capitalist restoration was impossible; he said:
‘We do not
know if after our victory there will be some transitory period of reaction and
triumph of the counterrevolution – it is not impossible, far from it – so, once
we triumph, we will raise a ‘triple line of fortifications’ against such a
possibility. ’
Lenin
warned: ‘The bourgeoisie is defeated in our country, but not yet extirpated,
not annihilated, not even completely destroyed. That is why a new and higher
form of struggle against the bourgeoisie is on the agenda, the transition from
the simplest task of the further expropriation of the capitalists to the much
more complex and difficult task of creating the conditions that will make the
existence and re-emergence of the bourgeoisie impossible. It is obvious that
this is an incomparably higher task and that without it there is still no
socialism.’ And he concluded: ‘The dictatorship of the proletariat is not the
end of the class struggle, it is its continuation in new forms. The
dictatorship of the proletariat is the class struggle of the victorious
proletariat, which has taken political power into its hands, against the
defeated, but not destroyed, not disappeared bourgeoisie, which far from having
ceased to resist is intensifying its resistance. ’
These are all substantive theses of Lenin on
the era in which we live and the period of wars in which we will continue to
develop, on the two forces of the contemporary world and in particular on the
national movement and on socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat;
theses that we must take into account today in order to analyze the class
struggle that is developing in the world.
Chairman
Mao Tsetung, basing
himself on Marxism-Leninism, systematized the development of the world
revolution and established fundamental theses that develop Marxism and that we
must also keep in mind to guide us in understanding the current international
situation. In his great work ‘On the New Democracy’, he stressed that
with the First World War and the October Revolution, history had entered a new
era of world revolution: the ‘proletarian socialist world revolution’ and that,
consequently, ‘every revolution undertaken by a colony or semi-colony
against imperialism, that is, against the international bourgeoisie or
capitalism, no longer belongs to the old category of the world
bourgeois-democratic revolution, but to the new category’.
Thus he
conceived that the powerful revolutionary movement of the colonies and
semi-colonies was part of the revolution that the international proletariat
leads on a world level; Stressing after the Second World War that the Latin
American peoples “are not submissive slaves of American imperialism,” that “a
great national liberation movement” had arisen throughout Asia, and calling on
the countries of the East to fight imperialism and internal reactionaries with
the goal of emancipating the oppressed in the East, he said: “We must take our
destiny entirely into our own hands. We must extirpate from our ranks every
idea that is an expression of weakness or impotence. Any point of view that
overestimates the strength of the enemy and underestimates that of the people
is erroneous... We live in a historical epoch in which capitalism and
imperialism in the world are rushing to ruin and socialism and people's
democracy in the entire world are marching towards victory.” Summarizing the
subsequent struggle, he specified the present era:
‘The
next 50 to 100 years or so, starting from today, will be a great era of
radical change in the world's social system, an era that will shake the earth,
an era with which no previous era can be compared. Living in such an era, we
must be ready to wage a great struggle whose forms will have many
characteristics different from past eras.’
Analyzing
this era of the proletarian revolution, Chairman Mao Tsetung established his
great thesis on the reactionaries: ‘All reactionaries are paper tigers.
They look fearsome, but in reality they are not so powerful.’ In ‘Conversation
with A.L. Strong’, where the above quote is found, analyzing the contradictions
and the distribution of forces, he also stated:
‘The U.S.
and the Soviet Union are separated by a vast area in which there are many
capitalist, colonial and semi-colonial countries in Europe, Asia and Africa.
Before the American reactionaries have subjugated these countries, there can be
no question of attacking the Soviet Union.
To this
statement from 1946 we must add the following analysis by Chairman Mao himself
on inter-imperialist contradictions and those between imperialists and
oppressed nations and contending forces:
‘The
squabbling between the imperialist countries and their dispute over colonies
stands out above all other contradictions. What they are doing is using the
contradictions they have with us as a pretext to cover up their own.’
‘Two
types of contradictions and three different forces converge in the conflict
(events at the Suez Canal) that is taking place there. These two types of
contradictions are: first, the inter-imperialist contradictions, that is,
the contradictions between the United States and England and between the United
States and France, and second, those that exist between the imperialist
powers and the oppressed nations. Of the three forces at play, the
first is the United States, the greatest imperialist power; the second,
England and France, second-rate imperialist countries; and the third,
the oppressed nations.
Thus,
American imperialism was denounced and called for combating it. But revisionism usurped power in
the USSR, restoring capitalism and turning it into a social-imperialist country
that, as such, extended its penetration, undermining, control and domination, competing
for world domination with Yankee imperialism, affecting the aforementioned
intermediate zone. Chairman Mao denounced: ‘The Soviet Union is currently
under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, the dictatorship of the big
bourgeoisie, a dictatorship of the German fascist type, a dictatorship of the
Hitlerian type.’ And calling for the fight against the two superpowers,
he laid down the following important theses:
‘The United
States is a paper tiger. Do not believe in it. You can pierce it with a single
blow. The revisionist Soviet Union is also a paper tiger.’
‘Soviet
revisionism and American imperialism, in collusion with each other, have
committed so many evils and infamies that the revolutionary peoples of the
whole world will not let them go unpunished. The peoples of all countries are
rising up. A new historical period of struggle against American imperialism
and Soviet revisionism has begun.’
‘Peoples of
the whole world, let us unite and oppose the war of aggression unleashed by any
imperialism or social-imperialism, let us especially oppose the war of
aggression in which atomic bombs are used as weapons! If such a war breaks out,
the peoples of the whole world must eliminate it by revolutionary war, and we
must make preparations right now!’
“Thus
the period of struggle that has opened against the two superpowers, the United
States and the Soviet Union, was defined. And within this perspective,
reiterating the role of the peoples of the world, in May 1970 he made his
famous statement: 'Whenever the people of a small country dare to rise up in
struggle, dare to take up arms and take the destiny of their own country into
their own hands, they will be able to defeat the aggression of a big country.
This is a law of history.'
Chairman
Mao Tsetung always paid great attention to tactical principles, his work 'On
Our Policy' is of utmost importance in this regard; there he laid down the
fundamental policy:
'In relations with the different classes of the country, apply the fundamental
policy of developing progressive forces, winning over the intermediate ones and
isolating the recalcitrant anti-communists'; of having a double revolutionary
policy against the recalcitrants and to combat them apply: 'In the fight
against the recalcitrant anti-communists, exploit the contradictions, win over
the majority, fight a minority and crush the enemies one by one; ‘Fight with
reason, with advantage and without going too far.’ These criteria, first
established for the struggle in China, are applicable to the struggle against
the imperialists.
In 1957,
Chairman Mao summed up the strategic and tactical concepts for fighting the
enemy:
‘Over a
long period of time we have come to form this concept for fighting the enemy:
strategically, we must disdain all our enemies, but tactically we must take
them very seriously. That is, when considering the whole, we must disdain
the enemy, but take him very seriously in each concrete question. If we do not
disdain the enemy when considering the whole, we will fall into the error of
opportunism. Marx and Engels were only two people, but already in their time
they declared that capitalism would be overthrown throughout the world.
However, when facing concrete questions and each enemy in particular, if we do
not take them seriously, we commit the error of adventurism. In war, battles
can only be fought one by one and enemy forces annihilated piece by piece.
Factories can only be built one by one. Peasants can only plough the land piece
by piece. Even when eating, it is the same. Strategically, we think little of
eating a meal: we are sure we can finish it. But in the actual process of
eating, we eat it bite by bite. We cannot gobble down a whole meal at once.
This is called a piecemeal solution. And in military literature it is called
destroying enemy forces separately.
So far we
have fundamental questions about the historical period we live in, the
contradictions and forces in development and tactics; but, in addition,
Chairman Mao Tsetung devoted himself to synthesizing the experience of the
socialist revolution by establishing his great theory and practice of the
continuation of the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat by
finding the appropriate way to develop it through the Great Proletarian
Cultural Revolution.
Chairman Gonzalo tells us that the President
raised the need for strategy and tactics for the world revolution, but there are things that are not known, let's see:
In 1946,
President Mao was asked if war between the USA and the USSR (in Stalin's time)
was something immediate and he said no because between the two there is an
intermediate zone of capitalist countries, colonies and semi-colonies and that
Yankee imperialism would seek to cover that intermediate zone and as long as it
does not cover it there could not be a world war. 40 years have passed and what
President Mao said has been proven.
In 1956,
when the Suez Canal problem arose, President Mao said when the English and
French landed on the canal, to keep it. The USA opposed it and Egypt (an
oppressed nation) even more so. President Mao said there we see the
contradictions, first inter-imperialist contradictions; and second, the
contradiction between imperialism and the oppressed nation and other forces: 1)
England, France, 2) the most powerful USA, and 3) the Egyptian nation (Nasser
is a joker), each one wanted the canal for itself, and thus established a
difference between the interests of the depressed imperialist England and
France.
In 1957,
President Mao attended a meeting of communists in Moscow where he said:
"the east wind prevails over the west wind," there he was stating
that the revolution is the main tendency and he made a four-way division of the
world, because at that time there was a socialist camp and nobody told him that
what he was proposing was wrong, not even the revisionist fool HOXHA (keep in
mind that Lenin said that Albania, when defeated, would become a semi-colony).
In
another meeting with the Japanese, President Mao said: China and the oppressed
nations, the vast majority, are the third world: the poor and backward of the
earth. England, France and Japan are the second world and the USA is the first
world. Years later,
when the representative of China in the UN spoke and said that President Mao
proposed: “three worlds are delineated” – for what purpose? He was looking to
analyze the world, to highlight the role of the oppressed nations, the vast
majority of the earth and for the communists, the masses make history. Before
Lenin said the weight of the masses defines and that if we imagine how the
revolution in the East will be, after World War II an arch-reactionary advisor
said: “The masses and the oppressed nations have risen to their feet
politically, President Mao, taking all this into account, said: “in the world
there are villages and there are metropolises, and the path is not against the
revolution in Europe but seeing what the world trend is, and how by raising up
the oppressed nations imperialism sinks.” Yankee imperialism was defeated by
Korea and Vietnam, so he proposed that a period of 50 to 100 years would open
and that imperialism and all the reactionaries are paper tigers.
If we
put together all these ideas of President Mao, to which he dedicated the last
part of his life, what he is doing is laying the foundations for the strategy
and tactics of the world revolution. In the Chinese Letter the President proposed
the need for strategy and tactics, but there are things that are not known, for
example the V volume is cut, however we must tie up the loose ends, it is to
define the strategy and tactics of the world revolution. But there are things
that are not yet known, since the congress of the Communist International until
today, no strategy and tactics have been defined, nor at the meeting of the communists
in 1959-60, nor did the Chinese Charter of the 25 points define it, nor did CC
Stalin, because the VII Congress sanctioned an anti-fascist front, later after
the death of Chairman Mao, Teng came out with his revisionist theory of the
three worlds which implies putting himself at the tail of the superpowers,
specifically Yankee imperialism, and shackling the situation of the oppressed
nations to the result of the disputes between the greats.
They
opposed the three worlds outlined by the Soviets first of all, after Chairman
Mao died, Hoxha in the seventies, on the anniversary of Lenin's birth, said:
"After Lenin, no one." And who was the first to support this theory?
Khrushchev, and thus the revisionists have foisted Teng's revisionist theory on
Chairman Mao, to fight it and say that they defeated it. Furthermore, Hoxha
never fought Chairman Mao, and after his death he accused him of nationalist
revisionism and called him the Chinese Khrushchev. In Peru, some scumbags have
repeated Hoxha. Then Avakian came out against him, attacking what Chairman Mao
said in 1946, criticizing the three worlds outlined by Chairman Mao, but (in
reality) not his, but Teng's, knowing that Chairman Mao's is something else.
The
President says:
We, the
PCP, are Maoists and we need to unite the communists and to do so we have made
progress and it is commendable to have taken steps and I repeat, we do not know
everything that Maoism is, what should be said. Where is the error in what
Lenin defined? Where in what Maoism says? Where in what we say? And not to
cover up with ˆprocess of ideasˆ. We have defined the main contradiction and the three
fundamentals. What is wrong with the main contradiction? Are the fundamental
contradictions wrong? Is it wrong to propose a world people's war against world imperialist war?
On war,
PCR-USA says that the problem is the world war. Why do they artfully twist the
fundamental contradiction of capitalism? They say that the world war will wipe
out the northern hemisphere. They are repeating the scientists and have not
analyzed what the military says, but the problem is deeper: has the war lost
its class character? It is to propose that classes commit suicide, just like
Khrushchev, and today Gorbachev claims it and attacks Stalin, just like Avakian.
Coincidences? Avakian supports the theory of productive forces, either he
corrects himself or he collapses. We put the center on the revolution, on the
masses, the PCR in the imperialist world war. We propose a world people's war,
because the problem is to see the revolution, not the enemy.
Then he
will tell us:
Regarding
revolutionary violence, it is the core of Marxism. Universal law without any
exception, that the
universal law, in Marx and Lenin there is an exception, although the latter
corrected it after the Kornilov coup and prepared the insurrection that he led.
To clash with revolutionary violence is bourgeois pacifism, the PCR-USA preach
peace, one is either a Maoist or one is not. This is how Maoism is being thrown
and they must define themselves for or against it.
Democratic
revolution, it is the last straw to clash with democratic revolution. Why do
some doubt semi-feudalism? Because they have no qualitative idea of what
class is, but rather they base themselves on falsified bourgeois statistics on
what is the city and what is the countryside in order to deny that the
peasantry is the main force, to abandon the countryside and focus on cities?
And focus on what class? On the petite bourgeoisie? Or do they support
socialist revolution? Others have proposed an intermediate revolution, an
intermediate revolution, according to Liu Shao Shi's criteria; before the
uprising of 27 he said: "there are no conditions"; the revolution
continues, when Japan is defeated he proposes to unite with the Kuomintang, to
hand over arms and exchange them for seats; when power is taken throughout the
country he said, to continue with the democratic revolution so that the
productive forces develop, the bourgeoisie is good and the democratic
revolution is consolidated. In 1957, in the midst of the socialist revolution,
he argued that there was no class struggle. He expressed this in the 8th
Congress, where he once again put forward the theory of the "productive
forces."
In 1930,
Chairman Mao stated that the revolution had two uninterrupted stages: the
democratic revolution, when the revolution triumphed and power was taken
immediately throughout the country, and without any interruption, the socialist
revolution began.
Chairman
Mao had resolved the problem of the democratic revolution. Marx spoke to us of
the permanent revolution. In the 1950s, he told us that the revolution in
Germany could be carried out if the peasant wars were repeated and the
democratic energy of the peasantry was channeled. In 1891, in Germany, the
question of a "socialist revolution" or a "democratic
revolution" was being raised. In the past, when there was no imperialism,
conditions were given for the transition from feudalism to capitalism,
particular to Germany. England; an evolutionary process through collusion
between the bourgeoisie and the landowners.
Lenin was
faced with the question of the democratic revolution, because Russia had a
semi-feudal system on which the process of late capitalism developed. There was
a Duma, no parliament, there was Tsarism, there was a Romanov kingdom for 400
years. The Mensheviks said little: the proletariat cannot make the revolution,
this is opportunism, because Marx had already said that the proletarians had to
lead the democratic revolution, one must look at the character of the 1905
revolution in Russia, its democratic revolution, and in “Two Tactics” he says
that the proletariat must lead the democratic revolution with a government of
workers and peasants. In February 1917 there was a bourgeois revolution led by
Kerensky and Lenin said: “that the party could and should have done it, but it
did not because the party was not prepared and so Lenin made the first
socialist revolution in October 1917 and opened a new era. Lenin said: “that
the proletariat leads the democratic revolution.”
Chairman
Mao made the democratic revolution from 1927 to 1949, because he was the one
who resolved the democratic revolution and some will say, what about Vietnam?
It was before 1945, yes, but Ho Chi Minh himself said: “We have learned from
Chairman Mao Tse Tung. He has resolved it this way and has established his laws
that must be applied.”
The problem
of bureaucratic capitalism (...). In “On the coalition government” in 1945,
Chairman Mao speaks of bureaucratic capitalism, which is the capitalism of the big
bourgeoisie, big landowners, financiers, who have a government represented by
the Kuomintang, which exploits four classes: proletariat, peasantry, petite
bourgeoisie and which restricts the national bourgeoisie. In 1947, volume IV,
page 170, he talks about bureaucratic capitalism, but he still calls it
bureaucratic capital and that the monopoly capitalism that existed in China had
grown in those twenty years and had merged with the state, becoming
state-bureaucratic and comprador capitalism; it therefore merges with the
economic power of the State; then they say that in China bureaucratic
capitalism must be confiscated. What did Sergio think of left-wing
liquidationism? That it was only state-bureaucratic capitalism, not the other
part of big capital. So they let this part loose. In later pages, Chairman Mao
talks about bureaucratic capitalism, which is why he says “three mountains.”
In unpublished writings he speaks of
bureaucratic capitalism as well as the Russian and Chinese revolutions, he says
that the October Revolution was a socialist revolution and that by confiscating
bureaucratic capital we are laying economic foundations that allow us to
control the entire economy and the transition from the democratic revolution to
the socialist revolution. In the country we have applied this thesis and in our
opinion bureaucratic capitalism is the capitalism that the imperialists
belatedly promote in the oppressed nations and it is stubborn not to understand
it this way.
In Mariátegui we find: ˆbourgeoisie enfeoffed to imperialism and linked to semi-feudalism ˆ that
in 1920 the mercantile bourgeoisie assumes the direction of the
State, an accurate approach and linked to Maoism, that is why we have studied
the economic process of Peruvian society applying this theory we have analyzed
this critical phenomenon because of two sick parents; feudalism and imperialism.
What comes out? In Peru, bureaucratic capitalism has three stages: since 1895,
and in the third stage, the revolution has matured, engendering the class that
destroys it. We have entered the destruction stage, and for this destruction of
the old State, the destruction of its backbone is required, the armed forces
and repressive forces in general. We have applied the thesis of bureaucratic
capitalism to differentiate two factions in the big bourgeoisie and not to
stand in line with any of them.
Most of the world is democratic revolutions,
then socialist revolutions and cultural revolutions towards communism, but
today within communism we fulfill what is our responsibility, as a concrete
task until we die. Why think about what communism will be like from today? In
these problems of militarization, we have proposed a militarized society,
aiming at an armed sea of masses, but we have not gone into depth because it
is not the main problem today.
Chairman Gonzalo, in his speech at the First
Congress, summarizing the problem that concerns us, said:
Lenin says that the revolution is not going
to be simply the revolution in the advanced countries, that is senseless, it
has to be combined with the revolution in the backward countries, because that
is how imperialism will collapse; he establishes lines, concrete, masterful
lines for the long term. If one reads Lenin carefully, one sees that he turns
his eyes toward the backward countries, not because he does not want the
revolution within imperialism, no, that is not the problem, but because he sees
the reality and the perspective of the world.
Chairman Mao, in the other circumstance where
the revolution is already developing, has passed, in our opinion - that is what
we think - to the problem of equilibrium and has entered into the question of
the strategy of the world revolution, the strategic offensive of the world
revolution, that is what we think.
So the Chairman already foresees all these
things, I believe then he is thinking again of the revolution as a unit; Hence,
he goes so far as to suggest that China is a base for serving the world
revolution, hence his great effort to train cadres to wage people's war, mainly
in backward countries. And he reiterates that "we all join communism or no
one joins it."
In this
respect, where does Chairman Mao start? “The revolution is the main tendency,
as the decomposition of imperialism is greater every day, the role of the
masses is greater every year, which make and will make their unstoppable
transforming force felt, and in the great truth, reiterated by him, that: we
all enter communism or nobody enters”; that is why he focuses again on seeing
the world revolution as a unit, but I insist, already feasible, as a concrete
perspective.
In Marx it
is as a principle and in Lenin it is a need to promote it: for the Chairman the
problem is that this situation has opened up and we are going to develop in it.
The
revolution, the main tendency of history, yes. It is the main tendency in the
world, historically and politically; that is what we must emphasize, it is not
simply that it is the historical perspective but that it is political, it is
already the order of the day, he means, and that is why we must fight. That is
compatible with the 50 to 100 years, otherwise why did the President propose a
masterful calculation: 50 to 100 years, because in that period imperialism and
reaction must be swept from the face of the earth and that is the world
revolution.
It is “the
period that opens of struggle against Yankee imperialism and Soviet
social-imperialism, paper tigers that dispute world hegemony”, of course,
another key issue of the President.
It is well
combined, the military principle is well combined: world revolution, tendency,
weight of the masses, 50 to 100 years, period; he is specifying and that is
masterful, it is regrettable that it is not seen that way. Hegemony, of course,
two, there are two that can develop or unfold a world war - Yankee imperialism
or Soviet social-imperialism - paper tigers!, says the President; There is no
need to fear them, you can drill holes in them! This is what he taught, is a
quote from the President. Atomic war" What is there to oppose to atomic
war?: "First we must condemn it and then prepare in advance to oppose it
with a people's war." Everything that the President has raised is in line.
Now, the
problem of the oppressed nations. Are they or are they not the ones that house
the immense masses of the Earth? Two thirds or seventy percent, immense masses,
more or less. In the end, I believe that this is not the problem because some
situations can change, yes, because the revolution is not straight, it is in
zigzags, but that does not deny that the oppressed nations have the immense
mass of the Earth; moreover, the growth of the masses is immensely greater than
the increase of the oppressors in the oppressor nations, of the oppressor
countries, of the imperialisms, even considering that they themselves oppress
their own people; it is enough to see the growth rates, that 70% of the new
children born are those born in the backward world and that will continue to
increase more and more. For me, it is a good thing, of course, because the
weight of the masses in history has begun to be expressed more and more and
that is fundamental; if the masses make history and that is a great truth, then
the weight of the masses will decide the revolution in the world. And where is
that weight, then? In the oppressed nations. I don't think there is much to
discuss there, if they are material realities, facts; closing one's eyes? That
is foolishness.
As well as
the economic and political relations that are developing due to the process of
decomposition of imperialism. Very important. One of the problems we have had
is how to define this moment, this period in which we are developing. Where
have we found the question? In the President himself - the decomposition of
imperialism is greater every day - with his own positions, he raises that. Who
can deny the greater decomposition of imperialism every day? Is it not sinking
more and more? It is decomposing, it is rotting; If some can claim to produce
more, what the hell does it matter, that is the problem? On the contrary, if
they produce more, what they are showing is that there are all the means to
satisfy the basic needs (...) that is showing us that the times of the
expropriation of the exploiters are approaching and that they are going to be
destroyed, that is why they are in decomposition.
Some say
Lenin was wrong because we see that they have more rockets, more weapons, but
is that not an expression of weakness throughout the world? Throughout history
it has always been an expression of weakness. What Marxism says is that
imperialism slows down all the capacity that the existing means of production
have, it does not say that they do not produce (...) That is the decomposition
of imperialism and its ever greater armament, a sign of weakness and not of
strength; review any history or look at history in depth and you will
understand, any military history shows it.
The weight
of the masses, oppressed nations, the decomposition of imperialism, where does
all this lead? Three worlds are emerging. Yes, Chairman Mao Tsetung's thesis;
it has nothing to do with Teng's rotten, revisionist theory of the three
worlds, which is something else because it is a front to serve imperialism or
to side with the superpowers, or to want to be a power in turn, as it is
already dreaming of. Why does (revisionist China) want to arm itself to the
teeth? Why does it want to be a military power? You see, the same path! Not
being able to develop and strengthen economic strength because they are
restoring capitalism more and more, now they want to use the immense mass of a
billion men as cannon fodder, they want to use it by strengthening military
power to be a power and fight for world domination, also plotting like others
like Germany, like Japan, that from the clash of the two superpowers another
power or another dominant superpower must emerge; Wasn't that the bastard dream
of Japan in the 1930s, isn't it the black dream of Germany, isn't it the black
dream of Teng?
And it's
not a problem of tactics, Avakian even goes so far as to say "I think it's
a situation of using tactics," which seems stupid to me. It's a strategy,
it's a global understanding of where the weight of the masses on earth is, it's
the problem of the relations between imperialism and oppressed nations, that's
the problem, it's the problem that the current international situation can only
be understood starting from the international economic relations of
imperialism, that's Lenin's thesis. But - when he poses and says what is the
essence of my position? it's that there are oppressor nations and oppressed
nations or he says: "oppressor peoples, oppressed peoples" well some
don't like it to be peoples, go argue with Lenin, he put it that way, he put it
that way - but then he himself specifies it and it's already as imperialists
and oppressed nations.
It also
seems to me that it would be a mistake to say that Lenin was wrong. Why do we
know what he meant? I believe that there are many things, comrades, about Marx,
Lenin, and the President, that we do not understand. One must be sincere. Every
time one goes back and picks up a text by any of these greats, one finds new
things, or is that not so? It seems to me a stupid vanity to believe that we
already understand everything. I ask myself, do we understand everything that
Lenin has said? I don't think so; everything that the President has said? I
think that we must not have bastardly arrogance, it is the arrogance of flying
horses, of people who believe that genius comes from heaven. There are many
things that we have to understand, there are many things to understand.
Finally,
Chairman Gonzalo sums up with these words:
It seems to
us that with this the President is laying the foundations for developing the
strategy and tactics of the World Revolution and this is obviously necessary.
But there we have a problem. Do we know everything that the President has said,
all his writings? What I could raise are the political criteria of orientation,
other debates had to be reserved for a while, it seems to me that this is
elementary to understand.
Long live Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Gonzalo
Thought!
Long live Chairman Gonzalo!
Long live the 96th Anniversary of the Founding
of the Communist Party of Peru by José Carlos Mariátegui!
Peopels Perou Movement
October 2024