On the 132th Anniversary of the birth of José Carlos
Mariátegui and the 97th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party we
pay tribute to its great founder.
(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.
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