Proletarians of all countries, unite!
THE MILITARY THOUGHT OF THE
PARTY
(CONCLUSIONS)1 2
The Military Thought of the Party in more than five decades has unfolded through the first and second restructuring of Contemporary Peruvian Society. This is, of the appearance and development of Bureaucratic Capitalism in the first instance, and of the deepening in the second. Corresponding to both historical periods are two moments or milestones in the Party life: The Constitution and the Reconstitution.
In the Constitution of the Party, the Military Thought is embodied as an Appointment and Blueprint of the road, while in the Reconstitution it is concretized as Definition and Bases.
In the entire process, the central question, which is principal, is the question of the Party, that is, the construction of a Party of a New Type, capable of leading the Armed Struggle.
The Military Thought of the Party continues its development in the Third Moment of contemporary Peruvian society, which corresponds to the general crisis of bureaucratic capitalism. In this moment, the Party assumes leadership of the armed struggle, and the Military Thought is expressed in Application and Development of the Road.
The Application and Development of the Road has put in march our armed struggle, Marxist-Leninist-Maoist-Guiding Thought, through the ILA,3 war, principally peasant war, and is currently being waged as development of the guerrilla warfare, which necessarily leads to the establishment of revolutionary support bases.
Through the Guerrilla Warfare, we have concretely Established and Deployed the guerrilla zones, the immediate step being the development of the Guerrilla Zones for the construction of the Revolutionary Support Bases.
The Second Campaign to Stir prepares the conditions of the Great Leap: Create Bases. Upon this depends the future of our Armed Struggle.
MILITARY THOUGHT OF THE PARTY IN THE CONSTITUTION AND RECONSTITUTION
Appointment and Blueprint of the Road: Constitution
1895 — 1928
I. Struggle for the Constitution
1895 — 1945. First Moment of contemporary Peruvian society.
The founding of the PCP4 by José Carlos Mariátegui. It has a historical significance, changing the terms of the political struggle in the country. It is the initiation of the democratic-national Revolution. It has great importance. The working class is organized in the Party to seize power. Military Thought in six points: Party, Revolutionary Violence, Road, Protracted War, Construction of the Armed Force, Strategy and Tactics.
The necessity of creating the Party. The Construction of the Party led to ten years of hard struggle for JCM, developing an internal struggle against the anarchist positions of Gonzales Prada, reactionary positions such as those of APRA which negated the necessity of creating the Party. The worker comrades have organized the Party, the highest form of organization. JCM clearly understood that without a Party there can be no revolution. The position of JCM is clear.
He adheres to Revolutionary Violence and has theses from the years 1921, 1923, 1925, and 1927. “There is no revolution that is moderate, balanced, calm, placid. Every Revolution has its horrors”. If the revolution demands violence, authority and disclipine, I am for violence, authority and discipline. I accept them, as a whole with all their horrors without cowardly reservations”.
He clearly understood revolutionary violence.
Mexican magazine in 1923: “The indigenous cause is the task of Socialism”. “The force of the revolution always resided in the alliance between workers and agrarians, that is of the worker and peasant masses”. “Socialist doctrine is the only one capable of giving a modern, constructive sense to the indigenous cause, which, placed in the true social and economic arena, and elevated to the level of a realistic and creative policy, counts for the fulfillment of this enterprise with the will and discipline of a class now making its appearance in our historical political process: The proletariat” (“The Revolution Will Come Down from the Andes” 1927).
Gamonalismo as the basis of the State. The necessity of liquidating feudalism.
When analyzing the Mexican Revolution, JCM raised the necessity of a people’s war, understood that it was a country with a peasant majority, and that our situation is not equal to that of the capitalist countries. In Latin America, a different road had to be developed. JCM tells us about the China Resolution and the Eastern countries that the Second International did not see the necessity of finding a road of their own for the backward countries.
JCM. “The Revolution is the Party’s task”, understanding that only the party can lead. The peasantry would always fail without the leadership of the proletariat, which is the only force capable of achieving the tasks of the democratic national Revolution.
Those of the reactionary position said that the indigenous problem was an educational problem. JCM raised that the Revolution would descend from the Andes with sandals.
1927. Gamonalismo. The problem is to liquidate feudalism, given the semifeudal nature of the society, which should be the road for the backward countries.
“The term Gamonalismo designates more than just a social and economic category: that of the latifundistas or large landlords. It signifies a whole phenomenon. Gamonalismo is represented not only by the gamonales but by a long hierarchy of officials, intermediaries, agents, parasites, etc.”
JCM adhered the Party to the Third International, raising that it adheres to Marxism-Leninism; we are members of the ICM5 and practice proletarian internationalism. Point 8 of the Program of the PCP: “Marxism-Leninism is the revolutionary method of the stage of imperialism, and of the monopolies”. Point 9: “The Communist Party of Peru is the vanguard of the proletariat, the political force that assumes the task of its orientation and leadership in the struggle for the realization of its class ideals”.
Power is seized through violence and always maintained through dictatorship. See the relationship between revolutionary violence and the dictatorship of the proletariat; it is not just a matter of seizing Power, but of maintaining it and applying it as dictatorship of the proletariat.
C. “With the feudal latifundium defeated, urban capital will lack the strength to resist the growing working class”.
He raises two problems to be solved: the national problem and the land problem. Stages of the Revolution: New Democratic Republic, led by the proletariat through the Workers” Party. The bourgeoisie can no longer lead because it has historically become obsolete, and it is now the working class’s turn, as it is the only class capable of carrying it out.
“The emancipation of the economy of the country is only possible through the action of the proletarian masses, in solidarity with the world anti-imperialist struggle. Only proletarian action can first stimulate and then carry out the tasks of organizing and defending the socialist order”.
G.P.:6 He presents us with total war; it analyzes the different revolutions and the movement of leaders who call themselves revolutionaries. Not just any movement can be called revolutionary, but only those that advocate social, economic, and political goals, those that destroy the economic foundations of the State; that is to say, the relations of production as well.
JCM, analyzing Atusparia’s movement, says that it failed because “when the revolt aspired to become a revolution, it felt powerless due to a lack of weapons, of program and of doctrine”.7 He already saw the problem of the three instruments (1930).
JCM analyzes the phenomenon of imperialism as international, oppresses and exploits backward countries. In a document discussing Eastern countries, he states that capitalism thrives at the expense of European workers, colonists, slaves, and indigenous peoples in the East and in backward countries. Imperialism generates its social sustenance, which JCM calls the “mercantile bourgeoisie” and develops bureaucratic capitalism.
He conceived of Marxism-Leninism as a development of the First International and the need to apply it to the concrete reality of the backward countries, establishing the road. JCM died two years after founding the PCP; this is his historical limitation.
II. Questioning and Negation of the Red Line
Struggle for the Road of Mariátegui and Revolutionary Violence.
1930.
In this year Mariátegui dies without being able to establish a Party of a New Type that embodies the General Political Line he laid down; they usurp the leadership of the Party, question its line, and center everything on the CGTP,8 on the struggle for demands, sidestepping the Party and the problem of power. This is what right opportunism does, always aiming to seize the leadership, change the line, and change the color of the Party, abandoning the road.
There is abandonment of Revolutionary Violence and the Road, insofar as they only talk about revolutionary violence but do not put it into practice, leading them to abandon it.
By abandoning the road, they call for insurrection, which is not the road of our Party. Revisionism has usurped the Party and changed its program and line, paying lip service to following the road of Russia, but in essence what they sought was elections, placing themselves at the tail end of the big bourgeoisie.
Ravínez and Jorge del Prado, in the struggle of the Malpaso workers, argue: “Only once every five hundred years does the opportunity for insurrection arise”. Talking about insurrection, about organizing Soviets; leftist positions that, at heart, are rightism, are an incomprehension of the road. JCM’s article “The Revolution will descend from the Andes in sandals” is anonymously circulated among the Party’s rank and file, forcing debate and developing a two-line struggle, and expressing the red line.
In 1939, they supported Manuel Prado in his candidacy, calling him the “Peruvian Stalin”, placing themselves at the head of the big bourgeoisie. The Second World War was initiated, and under the pretext of blocking fascism, they called for “uniting the entire nation” in a national unity front and supporting Prado because, according to revisionism, he represented the interests of the nation. They sanctioned electoral tactics at the First National Congress in 1942, aligning themselves with the big bourgeoisie and thus abandoning the road. Since 1931, they have participated in elections: 1939, 1945. They declared war on Germany. The working class in our homeland emerged struggling and followed a process until it became a Party and came of age.
Definition and Bases of the Road; Reconstitution.
New impetus for the development of the Party and the beginning of the struggle against revisionism.
1945.
I. Browderist Electorialism
Electoral Party; they changed the name of the Party to “Socialist Vanguard”. Browderism was counterrevolutionary, proposing criteria for organizing a Party as a machine of organization rather than a machine of combat for the seizure of power, but mired in electorialism.
Electorialist opportunism. Bourgeois pacifism, they reject violence, centered on parliamentary cretinism.
They abandon the road by further developing capitulationism, changing the character of the Party into a revisionist party; in essence, they capitulate before the reaction.
They advocate national defense, which is an electoral front, abandoning the Party. In the post-war period, they continue to follow in the wake of the big bourgeoisie. They bring Bustamante to power under the pretext of continuing to block fascism, “in the face of the imminent danger of fascism”, calling for the whole nation to unite.
II. Reactivation of the Party
1950.
In the mid-1950s, there was a struggle to revive the party that had been sidestepped.
The abandonment of revolutionary violence continues.
Capitulationism continues, but the comrades fight for the Party and the road forward, and a two-line struggle develops. Grassroots CCs send a document to the Party, demanding a return to the JCM theses.
Electioneering tactics continue.
III. Khrushchev’s revisionism and the struggle over revolutionary violence.
Two routes.
1960.
The Party continues to be electioneering; however, after thirty years, in the 1960s, there is renewed talk of revolutionary violence and armed struggle. There was debate about which of the two routes was best: the peaceful, electoral route, or the violent route. It is the revisionists who speak of two routes, but there is no such thing; there is only one route, the violent route, which today is concretized in armed struggle.
Comrades who struggle along the way begin the fight against revisionism. Great progress. Statements are issued by the various Party apparatuses; here too, the Chinese Revolution and Maoism, as well as the Cuban Revolution, play a strategic role. Internationally, a great controversy develops between Marxism and revisionism, driven by Chairman Mao with the letter from the CPC,9 which raises 26 points to the CPSU,10 denouncing the revisionism of Khrushchev (who assumes power upon Stalin’s death). This letter is taken up by Chairman Gonzalo, who leads the class faction, drawing on Maoism, which will later lead him to rediscover JCM. Violent development of the struggle against revisionism.
Discussions begin on the road of the Revolution, with ambiguous, unclear proposals regarding the two options.
The electoral tactic line continues, focusing on the FLN (National Liberation Front), whose candidates are Father Bolo and General Pando Egúsquiza. The Party agrees to vote for Belaúnde, whom they consider to be part of the national bourgeoisie (revisionists); but the Arequipa Regional Committee, led by Chairman Gonzalo, speaks out against participating in the elections and exposes Belaúnde as being part of the big bourgeoisie. We see the role of Chairman Gonzalo’s faction, which, although a minority, makes its position clear.
Establishment of the General Political Line and Reconstitution of the Party
1963
I. The Road of Encircling the Cities from the Countryside (CCCC)
The road is clearer thanks to the actions of the faction. Comrade Gonzalo, returning to JCM, carries out his actions in the Ayacucho Region and develops the line. He tells us that the Party is for seizing power, not for elections. Based on Marxist-Leninist revolutionary theory, taking up Stalin and Chairman Mao, “without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary practice”, the goal is the seizure of power and communism. He organizes the Ayacucho Regional on m-l-m11 bases.
In 1967, Comrade Gonzalo drafted a document for the 20th Plenum with a Report on the Three Instruments: on the Party, a party weighed down by revisionism; the electoral United Front; and the Armed Forces with mercenary criteria. Although revisionism had already been expelled, revisionist conceptions and organizational forms remained; he proposed modifications to rebuild the apparatus. The document was not approved because the Party exploded first. Patria Roja was expelled, entire Regional Committees, anarchists, and amautas for mismanagement, right-wing tendencies, and the struggle against the liquidationism of Paredes.
In 1968, the need to reconstitute the Party was raised for the first time because, with these revisionist burdens, it could not fulfill the task of leading the Revolution to seize power. Internationally, the Party’s position in the ICM is one of adherence to Maoism, and it is one of the first parties to break with Russia.
1963. He fought against revisionism, leading to the expulsion of Jorge del Prado and company in January 1964 at the Fourth National Conference, prompted by the controversy between revisionism and Marxism at the international level, led by Chairman Mao against Khrushchev, debating and studying the 25-Point Letter from the CPC to the CPSU; he broke with revisionism and moved closer to Maoism.
Opposition to centering elections, it is against voting for Belaúnde and the FLN, which is electoral.
Comrade Gonzalo puts forward basic theses, returning to the origins, within the Party he centers once again on the problem of the Revolution, pointing out that our Revolution is peasant-based, following the road of encircling the cities from the countryside.
From the initiation of the Reconstitution, he clearly sets out the road. Our center is the countryside, the principal point of our work.
1968 marks the beginning of the agrarian policy: “Land for those who work it”, confiscation. The war is protracted, winding, with ups and downs.
1969. Develops an Investigation Plan for the countryside, aiming to understand it in terms of the Armed Struggle and the People’s War. He conducts a political, economic, historical, military, geographical, etc. analysis.
Report (Initiation). He describes the character of the Ayacucho Zone, the main zone, considering its strategic importance in terms of the armed struggle. This plan of initiation was updated in 1976. He establishes military work zones for the Party, against the opportunist positions that opposed it.
He establishes that, in essence, our Revolution is a peasant one and prepares for total war.
Comrade Gonzalo establishes special work in the countryside, relating it to military work.
Organizations that fulfill three tasks: political, logistical, and peasant; with three functions: to combat, to build the Party in its infancy, and to organize for armed struggle. He proposes self-sufficiency in opposition to positions that went as far as canned goods, mercenary positions. Comrade Gonzalo: “We sustain and support ourselves among the masses; we are not mercenaries”.
1965. The Second National Conference is held, where the main theme is the construction of the armed forces, and it is determined that Belaúnde is not part of the national bourgeoisie.
He analyzes the Vietnamese guerrilla movement, which fundamentally is supported by the peasantry, following the strategy of encircling the cities from the countryside. He explains that it is a small people that dares to struggle against a superpower and defeat it.
1967. He establishes a Strategic Plan based on the war and provides measures for the construction of the three instruments; transfer of the Leadership to the countryside; main theater of war, the countryside.
Comrade Gonzalo is consistent in his positions; it is in his positions that he conceives the road and imposes it in the midst of a two-line struggle, even though at that time the faction was on the defensive because it did not have a majority. Comrade Gonzalo and the faction fought hard against revisionist and opportunist positions.
II. Reconstitution of the Party for the People’s War
The Sixth National Conference of the Party sanctions the Reconstitution of the Party for People’s War and the Basis of Party Unity. General Political Line. Thus providing the Party with an ideological-political basis that it did not have and agreeing to “hold high the banners against capitulationist positions that question the Party”. The Party’s bureaucratic leadership is antediluvian. Struggle for the Party’s survival, never lower the banners. Comrade Gonzalo relies on the masses, on the bases, organizing the Party work. He breaks the siege and promotes work among the masses in the countryside and the city, proposing the relationship bases=masses=power. The Party leads the masses to seize power.
1973. Organization of the Party at the national level. Expansion of organizational work. Work in Lima.
Events take place: Sixth National Conference 1968, Second Plenum January 1970, Third Plenum 1971, Fourth Plenum 1973, Fifth Plenum 1975, Sixth Plenum 1976.
Power is the central question and revolutionary violence takes the form of armed struggle, people’s war, and the Party exists to seize power.
He applies and develops Maoism in reality.
Compliance with the road of encircling the cities from the countryside; the principal task is peasant work, without which there can be no revolution; work guided by m-l-m, GT,12 led by the Party, without which there can be neither Armed Forces nor People’s War.
1969. Chairman Gonzalo develops the Agrarian Program and presents us with the two Roads on the problem of land and the destruction of feudalism: the landlord road of expropriation and the peasant road of confiscation, which leads us to defend it with arms, to armed struggle. The landlord road evolves feudalism, the peasant road destroys feudalism.
Peasant events: from the Provincial Federation of Peasants of Ayacucho; there, the agrarian problem and the “Allpa” document were discussed. He analyzes the Agrarian Law and unravels its reactionary nature and how it develops the path of the landlord (”Voz Popular”13). Three steps: Who gives it? Who executes it? Confiscation or expropriation.
Construction of the Armed Force led by the Party and based on the peasantry principally. There can be no democratic national revolution, nor a new State, without an army to back it up and without the peasants doing it with their own hands, led by the Party. Our People’s War is a peasant war or it is nothing. Criteria based on m-l-m that we are now developing to a higher level. Today we are in Agrarian War.
Everything is in function of the People’s War, the work of the Party, the work of the masses, etc.: everything is in function of organizing the People’s War. Chairman Gonzalo has given us the Strategic Plan for the Construction of the Regional Committee JCM 1972. He determines the areas of military work and the main point: Ongoy (between Andahuaylas and Ayacucho).
He establishes the Tactics. First Plenum and Conference. He analyzes the regime, characterizing it as fascist, and determines its internal contradictions. He analyzes the Agrarian, Industry, and Education Laws.
III. Complete the Reconstitution and Establish Bases
Put construction in function of the armed struggle.
The National Plan of Construction is established, Sixth and Seventh Plenums of Construction (1976 and 1977).14 The “First Displacement” takes place.
Then it proposes completing the Reconstitution and laying the Foundations (1976 and 1978), Eighth Plenum. Then Reorganization G. of the Party (1978 and 1979), Ninth Plenum, in function of the armed struggle.
At the Eighth Plenum, the Party completed its Reconstitution. The key to Reconstitution is to transform the party, weighed down by revisionism, into a Party of a New Type, prepared for the struggle to seize power, equipped with a General Political Line and the apparatus to carry it forward. Determination of the General Political Line and its implementation. VII P. de C., 17 points.15
The two-line struggle against positions of the right on the peasant problem, which later took shape as a rightist opportunist line.
1977. First National Conference of the CM.16 The development of the construction and the city is seen in relation to the countryside, fulfilling its role as a complement.
ILA is proposed as a germinal idea to be developed, starting in September 1977.
At the ICM, Chairman Gonzalo denounces Teng’s17 counterrevolutionary coup in China. Our Party is the only one to denounce this revisionist action and take a clear position in favor of m-l-mttt.,18 for the red line.
Eighth Plenum. He proposes an outline for the armed struggle:
International Situation
National Situation
Strategic Location of Peru in Latin America
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism
People’s War: Countryside-city management
He proposes Great Leadership and defines the basis for surrounding cities from the countryside.
He shows us that the peasant road leads to the Red Republic, necessarily to the People’s Republic of New Democracy. The landlord road is the one promoted by the reactionary regime to evolve feudalism. He develops the problem of the countryside in terms of initiating the armed struggle (ILA).
Gamonalismo persists, he concludes after analyzing the course of the Peruvian state and the need to make the Revolution.
The landlord-bourgeois State presents us with its two classes: the big bourgeoisie and the feudal landlords; with its two factions: the bureaucratic bourgeoisie and the comprador bourgeoisie. They propose to associate and not to associate, and the hegemony of one faction or the other prevails, but the class character of the state does not change.
The New State is the product of destroying the landlord-bourgeois State through revolutionary violence.
He centers the countryside as the principal form of struggle (armed struggle) and the principal form of organization (Army).
With the implementation of the National Plan of Construction, it is initiated at the national level, whereas previously it was focused on the Metropolitan Committee and the Regional Committee of Ayacucho. The construction of three inter-related instruments is proposed, to be carried out simultaneously. The Party is who leads the Armed Forces and the United Front.
E and T.19 Application of tactics at the international and national levels, in function of initiation.
From the outset, the CCCC and the birth of the people’s democratic revolution are implicit. JCM gives us the program and the line. Develop the Military Thought, whose basic principle is to encircle the cities from the countryside.
Then he struggles against revisionism and to reactivate the Party; in 1964 he is expelled. With ILA, the spell of more than fifty years of dark revisionist action is broken. Hence the great importance of ILA; it is the struggle of Chairman Gonzalo, of the red faction, to reconstitute the Party.
Chairman Gonzalo takes Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, applies it, and develops it to our concrete reality.
https://vnd-peru.blogspot.com/2025/12/03-de-diciembre-el-pensamiento-militar.html↩︎
Red Library: While the year for this text is unspecified, it is likely from between 1981 to 1988 due to its usage of “Marxism-Leninism-Maoism-Guiding Thought”, which would later develop into “Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Gonzalo Thought” with the Communist Party of Peru’s First Congress, which took place in 1988 and 1989. The Communist Party of Peru took up the slogan “Towards Maoism!” in 1981.↩︎
Red Library: Initiation of Armed Struggle. May 17, 1980.↩︎
Red Library: Communist Party of Peru.↩︎
Red Library: International Communist Movement.↩︎
Red Library: People’s War.↩︎
Red Library: Ideology and Politics, José Carlos Mariátegui, 1930.↩︎
Red Library: General Confederation of Laborers of Peru.↩︎
Red Library: Communist Party of China.↩︎
Red Library: Communist Party of the Soviet Union.↩︎
Red Library: Marxist-Leninist-Maoist.↩︎
Red Library: Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Guiding Thought.↩︎
Red Library: People’s Voice.↩︎
Red Library: The declaration of the Sixth and Seventh Plenums of the Central Committee, Develop the Building, Principally of the Party, In Service of the Armed Struggle, can be read here: https://redlibrary.info/works/pcp/develop-the-building-principally-of-the-party-based-on-the-armed-struggle.html.↩︎
Red Library: Unknown acronym.↩︎
Red Library: Unknown acronym.↩︎
Red Library: Teng Hsiao-Ping, in Pinyin it is Deng Xiaoping.↩︎
Red Library: Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung Thought.↩︎
Red Library: Strategy and Tactics.↩︎