The Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Parties and Organizations participating on the UNIFIED MAOIST INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE (UMIC) – following the path of the Third International founded by the Great Lenin and the best traditions of the International Communist Movement (ICM) – solemnly declare to the international Proletariat and the peoples of the world that the historical and transcendental decision of giving birth to the new international Maoist organization was taken, founded under the three great and glorious red banners: Maoism, the struggle against revisionism and the world proletarian revolution.
With deep communist conviction, we parties and organizations reunited here reaffirm ourselves – once more and with solemn commitment – in fulfilling the agreements of the Unified Maoist International Conference, defending and applying the almighty ideology of the international proletariat – Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
It is a firm commitment in the arduous and restless struggle for imposing Maoism as the sole command and guide of the World Revolution, the only deeply red and unfading flag which is the guarantee of triumph for the proletariat, the oppressed nations and the peoples of the world in its inexorable march towards the golden and forever shining communism.
The 1st Unified Maoist International Conference of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist communist parties and organizations have an historical transcendence and a deep strategic content. It is a glorious task which corresponds to the New Great Wave of the World Proletarian Revolution.
With ardent enthusiasm, and overflowing with class optimism and deeply moved, we raise the red slogan:
The 1st Unified Maoist International Conference is a base and inexorably marches toward the reunification of the communists in the ICM – a war machine – a machine of combat that raises the unfading flags of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and the invincible People’s War!!
Proletarians of all countries, unite!
Communism is the inexorable goal of history, humanity marches toward it and this unfading goal will be reached no matter the vicissitudes we face today.
The principal task for the communists is to conform and develop themselves as a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Communist Party in order to make revolution to conquer Power – which we have to develop according to the particularity of each country – as part of and in service of the World Proletarian Revolution to reach Communism. The existence of a communist party is decisive to make the proletarian revolution in the New Era in which we find ourselves – which was opened with the Great Socialist October Revolution in 1917. Without a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Communist Party, revolution can not be carried out and neither can it develop itself to conquer and defend the New Power.
The International Communist Movement is the vanguard of the international proletariat. The principal problem for the ICM is still the dispersion of forces and the main danger is revisionism. Its unity is built on the base and guidance of Marxism – today Marxism-Leninism-Maoism – and its application to the concrete practice of revolution on each country and to the process of the world revolution.
Chairman Mao told us: “the history of the international communist movement shows us that proletarian unity is consolidated and developed in the struggle against opportunism, revisionism and divisionism.” The current dispersion was originated with the capitalist restoration in the USSR and in People’s China, and it was aggravated by the emergence of the right opportunist line – revisionist and capitulationist – (ROL R&C) in Peru, the revisionist treason of “Prachandism” in Nepal and the “avakianite” liquidationist revisionism in the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM), among other manifestations of new revisionism in different parties and organizations. Divisionism and the following dispersion were the result of treason by new revisionism to the fundamental principles of Marxism in the proletarian movement.
The current demarcation line between Marxism and revisionism consists in: 1) acknowledging or not acknowledging Maoism as the third, new and higher stage of Marxism and the necessity to combat revisionism and all opportunism; 2) acknowledging or not acknowledging the omnipotence of revolutionary violence in order to make revolution in each one’s own country; 3) acknowledging or not acknowledging the necessity to demolish the old state apparatus and replace the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie with the dictatorship of the proletariat; 4) acknowledging or not acknowledging the necessity of the revolutionary party of the proletariat. 5) acknowledging or not acknowledging the necessity of proletarian internationalism.
The ICM can not give a single step toward its reunification without combating revisionism and all opportunism implacably and inseparably from the struggle against imperialism and all reaction. This is why we base ourselves in the principle of “two-line struggle as a driving force for party development”, which is decisive to formulate and defend the red proletarian line and to combat the other non-proletarian lines, in other words, to keep the Party red.
The general counterrevolutionary offensive that was unleashed in the beginning of the 90s of the last century – mainly by Yankee imperialism – is being defeated by the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist revolutionary counteroffensive through the People’s Wars, the struggles for national liberation and the struggles developed by the proletariat and the oppressed peoples of the world. We greet the heroic People’s Wars in India, Peru, Turkey and the Philippines and the national liberation armed struggles.
Class struggle in the era of imperialism and the world proletarian revolution – the era in which we find ourselves in, the era of the general crisis and sweeping away of imperialism – follows the logic of the people that was established by Chairman Mao Tse-tung, according to which there is no definitive defeat for the proletariat. Thus, the capitalist restorations in the USSR (1956) and in China (1976) can not stop the revolutionary march of the international proletariat on its path to ultimately settle down in Power. These defeats are only moments in the development of the contradiction between revolution and counterrevolution, from which we draw lessons to prevent restorations in the future. The few decades of dictatorship of the proletariat – which started the construction of socialism in more than a third of the world – produced the greatest social transformations and achievements for the masses in human history, which were never reached before.
The end of the social-imperialist USSR in the beginning of the 90s did not represent the defeat of Marxism nor the failure of socialism, but the bankruptcy of the decomposing revisionism and social-imperialism. Marxism – today Marxism-Leninism-Maoism – is the most complete, progressive and rational doctrine of the whole human history; it represents the new because it is the world view, the ideology of the last and most advanced class in History: the proletariat; the class that is conscious of its historical role of being the gravedigger of capitalism and consequently of all class society. Maoism is opposed to all the decadent and obsolete bourgeois ideology and its revisionist deviations.
During more than 170 years starting from the Manifesto of the Communist Party in 1848, the ideology of the proletariat has emerged and developed itself in the crucible of class struggle in three stages: 1) Marxism, 2) Marxism-Leninism and 3) Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. Maoism is the almighty scientific ideology of the international proletariat, it is almighty because it is true; the third, new and higher stage of Marxism; the current Marxism that we uphold, defend and principally apply.
The new revisionism of the ROL in Peru, of the so-called “prachandaism” and “avakianism”, etc., act within the international proletarian movement as part of the general counterrevolutionary offensive, as an anti-Maoist counter-current that attempts to hold down the World Proletarian Revolution. The new revisionism negates Marxism, the party, socialism, and the dictatorship of the proletariat. However, the center of its attacks are condensed in the negation of the People’s War as an essential and inseparable question of Maoism.
The fundamental of Maoism is Power, in other words, the power to the proletariat, the power to the dictatorship of the proletariat, the power based on an armed force led by the Communist Party. Notably: 1) Power under the leadership of the proletariat within the democratic revolution; 2) Power to the dictatorship of the proletariat in the socialist revolution and the successive cultural revolutions; 3) Power based on an armed force led by the communist Party, conquered and defended through People’s War.
Chairman Mao established the strategy and tactics of the world revolution. The development of the world revolution is principal in preventing the world imperialist war and – if it starts – we communists must oppose it with world revolutionary war. This demands us to lead People’s War to face the imperialist wars of aggression against the oppressed nations in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and even in Europe itself. Even without the imperialist aggression we must lead the People’s War to make revolution, reaching out countries and continents until advancing toward the world revolution, with which we will sweep away imperialism and the reaction from the face of Earth. Thus, it corresponds to us making the world revolution through revolutionary war, and the base for it is constituted by the oppressed nations.
Therefore, the fundamental aspect of Maoism is Power. People’s War and Power for the class are an essential and inseparable part of Maoism – of the political and military conception of the proletariat: Power conquered and defended by the armed force led by the Communist Party.
The Revolutionary War, the People’s War, is the superior form of struggle – through which the fundamental problems of revolution are solved; it is the military strategy that correspond to the political strategy (conquest of power) to transform society in favor of the Class and the people; it is the principal form of struggle and the People’s Army is the principal form of organization, an army of a new type that combats, mobilizes, and produces. People’s War is a war of masses led by the Communist Party to conquer and defend the New Power for the proletariat.
In order to carry out People’s War it is necessary to have four fundamental problems in mind: 1) ideology of the proletariat – Marxism-Leninism-Maoism – applied to the concrete practice and the particularities of revolution on each country, either oppressed countries or imperialist countries; 2) the necessity of the Communist Party to lead the People’s War; 3) specification of the political strategy for its path; 4) base areas. The New Power or Front-New State – that is formed in the base areas – is the core of the People’s War.
In order to establish the base areas, Chairman Mao established three fundamental requirements: 1) to have armed forces, 2) to defeat the enemy, 3) to mobilize the masses. That is to say, to develop the Guerrilla warfare to annihilate the living forces of the enemy, thus, creating a void of power in order to establish, construct, and defend the new Power – to destroy the old social relations of production and to build new ones. From there the contradiction New Power/New State versus Old State develops, through various moments of reestablishment and counter-reestablishment, according to the fluidity of war.
Imperialism is the higher and last stage of capitalism, it is monopolistic, parasitic, and decomposing and agonizing. It is in its general and last crisis and due to this situation it is harassed by its inevitable cyclical crisis that is increasingly worsened and deepened. This is why it always has to start from a lower point. It is only there to be swept away by the world revolution.
Imperialism is the tendency toward reaction and war all along the line. Imperialism and world reaction will collapse in the midst of a complex of wars of all kinds, they will be swept away from the face of Earth by revolution, and Socialism will emerge. Lenin established that “imperialism is a colossus with clay feet” and Chairman Mao said strategically, we must utterly despise imperialism. Tactically, we must take it seriously.
Mao established his great Thesis: “The next 50 to 100 years or so, as of today, will be a great epoch of radical change of the social system in the world, an epoch that will shake the earth, an epoch with which no other previous historical epoch can be compared. Living in such an epoch, we must be ready to fight a great struggle whose forms will have many different characteristics from the past.” (Mao Tse-tung, “From a speech in front of a meeting with 7000 cadres in 1962”)
The process of World Proletarian Revolution – in which we develop ourselves in this period – is the one in which imperialism and world reaction will be swept away from the face of Earth. Thus, revolution has become the historically and politically principal tendency in the current world.
All the fundamental contradictions of this epoch are aggravated, the principal one being the contradiction between oppressed nations and imperialism. The objective conditions were never so ripe for revolution. The development of the subjective conditions advances, smashing the declining general counteroffensive and smashing pessimism and capitulationism promoted and spread by revisionism. The conditions are each day more favorable for revolution.
Developing the world proletarian revolution requires more People’s Wars. It is necessary to constitute or reconstitute communist parties – according to each case – in each country, by applying the teachings of Lenin “go further into the deepest masses”, “educate them in the practice of revolutionary violence”, and “sweep away the colossal heap of garbage relentlessly fighting opportunism and revisionism.”
The current international conference and the new organization that is born by this act are achievements of the international proletariat and a striking blow to the general counterrevolutionary offensive of imperialism and the world reaction, as well as to revisionism and all opportunism.
The new international organization is a center of ideological, political, and organizational coordination, based on democratic centralism and the solution of problems through mutual and permanent consultation among the parties and organizations that conforms it, and it will extend this procedure to all those who – while participating with the same principles and purposes – are outside of it. The task of the new international organization is to struggle to impose Maoism as the sole command and guide of the World Proletariat Revolution, serving the constitution or reconstitution of the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist communist parties (the delayed strategic task) and serving to start, develop and coordinate People’s Wars in the world towards the reconstitution of the Communist International.
By applying Marxism-Leninism-Maoism to the concrete practice of revolution on each country and the World Revolution, we point out the following foundations for the establishment and development of the General Political Line for the International Communist Movement:
With the emergence of imperialism, the world was divided between a handful of oppressing nations on the one hand, and a big number of oppressed nations on the other, ripening the conditions for the World Revolution.
The triumph of the Great Socialist October Revolution, 1917, led by the great Lenin and the Bolshevik Party marked an extraordinary milestone in Universal History. It is the end of the world bourgeois revolution and the opening of the New Era, where the proletariat is the class that assumes the destruction of imperialism, bureaucratic capitalism and semi-feudalism: the Era of Imperialism and the World Proletarian Revolution. There were many revolutions before the great October Revolution, each one of them provided new impulse to society. However, these revolutions only replaced an exploitation system with another.
The Great Socialist October Revolution (GSOR) was the first revolution that was conceived and carried out to establish a society free from exploitation and oppression – a classless society. The Great Socialist October Revolution represented a radical turning point in the history of humanity. It opened a New Era in the shining and long path that leads to socialism and communism.
The GSOR potentiated revolutionary violence as an indispensable weapon to transform the whole world. Lenin said: “In the October Revolution ... revolutionary violence achieved a brilliant success.” Assuming the Marxist principle of revolutionary violence as a universal law, we reaffirm ourselves in the established by Chairman Mao that “Power grows from the barrel of a gun” and that “we are in favor of the theory of the omnipotence of revolutionary war.”
In order to appraise the world in this New Era we see that four fundamental contradictions are expressed: 1) the contradiction between capitalism and socialism – the contradiction between the two radically different systems – will cover this whole period and it will be one of the last to be resolved, it will last even after the seizure of Power; 2) the contradiction between bourgeoisie and proletariat – it is the contradiction between two opposed classes – will also remain after the seizure of Power, it manifests itself in various ideological, political and economic forms until its solution when we enter communism; 3) the inter-imperialist contradictions – these are the contradictions between the imperialists for world hegemony; it takes place between the superpowers, among the superpowers and the imperialist powers and among the imperialist powers; 4) the contradiction between oppressed nations and imperialism – it is the struggle for the liberation of the oppressed nations to destroy imperialism and reaction; it is the historically principal contradiction during the whole era of imperialism; however, any one of the four fundamental contradictions can become the principal according to specific circumstances of class struggle, but the historically principal contradiction will again express itself as such until its final resolution.
We, the Marxist-Leninist-Maoists, have to carry out three kinds of revolution in order to, in perspective, achieve our final goal – communism: 1) democratic revolution – the bourgeois revolution of a new type, led by the proletariat in the backward countries – establishes the joint dictatorship of the proletariat, the peasantry and the petty bourgeoisie, and – under certain conditions – the middle bourgeoisie, all under the hegemony of the proletariat represented by its Communist Party; 2) socialist revolution – in the imperialist countries – which establishes the dictatorship of the proletariat; 3) the cultural revolutions – they are carried out in order to continue revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat, to submit and eliminate any emergence of capitalism and to struggle against the attempts of capitalist restoration – they serve to strengthen the dictatorship of the proletariat and to march toward communism.
Chairman Mao taught us that “the replacement of the old for the new is a universal, eternal and inescapable law”. It is a law of history which, in the struggle for establishing the new social system, the classes cannot impose themselves in one single attempt, with one single blow, and it cannot be different with the proletariat. The capitalist restorations in the USSR (1956) and in China (1976) are part of the contradiction between socialism and capitalism – the historical struggle for the replacement of the old by the new.
Lenin warned that the exploiting classes would never resign after being defeated and expropriated. Their hatred and efforts to restore capitalism would be hundredfold by their defeat. Their wishes and intent for restoration will turn into restoration attempts. This is why they must be firmly submitted to the dictatorship of the proletariat in order to generate the conditions for the extinction of classes. Lenin declared: “liquidating capitalism and its traces and introducing the principles of the communist order constitutes the content of the new epoch in the history of the entire world that has now commenced.”
This way, Lenin pointed out that this task would take a long time and that – in order to completely liquidate the classes – it is not only necessary to eliminate the exploiting classes but also to eliminate the differences between city and countryside, workers and peasants, manual and intellectual labor and other differences.
This contradiction will only be solved through a long and complex process of restoration and counter-restoration, until the dictatorship of the proletariat and socialism are consolidated in the whole world. Thus, paving the way for the disappearance of all social classes – with which the state is also extinguished – and humanity enters the forever shining and golden communism. Chairman Mao taught that: “socialism will eventually replace the capitalist system; This is an objective law, independent of the will of man. As much as the reactionaries try to stop the wheel of history, sooner or later the revolution will take place and, without a doubt, will triumph.”
There are two forces that operate in the revolutionary movement in the whole world: the international communist movement and the national liberation movement, the first one is the lead and the second is the base.
The national liberation movement is the force that operates within the nations oppressed by imperialism and the reaction. In the 1910s, Lenin paid maximum attention to the struggle in India, China, Persia, putting forward that the socialist revolution would not be uniquely and exclusively the proletariat against their own bourgeoisie but of all colonies against their oppressors. He said that there is a fusion of forces: the international proletarian movement that acts in the whole world, and the national liberation movement of the oppressed nations, and, given that the masses in the oppressed nations are the majority of the global population, it will be the decisive weight in the world revolution. He reaches the conclusion that revolution shifts toward the oppressed nations, but this does not deny revolution in the imperialist countries. Furthermore, he shows that a socialist state – as was the USSR – could develop in the midst of imperialist siege. This is how the law of uneven development of revolution in the world operates.
Further developing Marx, Lenin lays the basis of the strategy of world revolution to undermine imperialism, unite the struggle of national liberation with the struggles of the international proletarian movement and develop revolution. Although “Proletarians of all countries, unite!” is the lemma for the communists, he puts forward that the lemma that should guide the struggle of the two forces should be “Proletarians of all countries and peoples of the world, unite!”. The latter unifies the proletarian movement for the construction of socialism in the imperialist countries with the struggles of national liberation in the colonial and semi-colonial countries, a lemma that was accepted by the Communist International.
Chairman Mao – developing the strategy and tactics of the world revolution – specified this lemma according to the tasks at the moment: “Marxist-Leninists of all countries, unite! Revolutionary peoples of the whole world, unite; overthrow imperialism, contemporary revisionism and all reactionaries of the different countries!” Thus, he fuses the national liberation movement with the international communist movement and these two forces impulse the development of world history.
The international proletarian movement is the theory and practice of the international proletariat. The proletariat struggles in three spheres – ideological, political and economic – and since it first appears in history as the last class, it does so in struggle. The following milestones stand out: 1848, when the Communist Manifesto written by Marx and Engels establishes the foundation and the program of the proletariat; 1871, Paris Commune, where for the first time the proletariat seizes power; 1905, general rehearsal of revolution; 1917, the triumph of the October Revolution in Russia, the class establishes the dictatorship of the proletariat and opens a new era; 1949, the triumph of the Chinese revolution, the joint dictatorship of the revolutionary classes led by the proletariat and the uninterrupted step into socialist revolution is resolved, it changes the correlation of forces in the world; and the decade of 1960 with the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, led by Chairman Mao Tse-tung, revolution continues under the dictatorship of the proletariat in sharp struggle between restoration and counter-restoration.
We must develop the struggle for demands serving the struggle of Power. The proletariat generates the trade union and the strike within its struggle for demands, which are not only instruments for the struggle for demands, but they “forge the class for the great battles to come”. The strike is the principal instrument for the struggle for demands and the general strike is a complement to insurrection.
The proletariat generates political apparatus: the Communist Party which is totally opposed and distinct to the other parties, it has the goal of seizing political power, as defined by Marx. Lenin established the character of the Party of a new type when combating the hindering influence of old revisionism, which generated bourgeois worker parties based on labor aristocracy, union bureaucracy, parliamentary cretinism and that are adjusted to the old order.
Chairman Mao Tse-tung developed the construction of the Party around the gun and put forward the interrelated construction of the three instruments: Communist Party, Army of a new type and revolutionary United Front, among which the center is the Communist Party.
The proletariat generates ideology for the world proletarian revolution: Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
Marx has formulated and laid foundations to dialectical materialism and applied it to the analysis of capital – of the capitalist society – and has discovered the law of development of history. Marx and Engels gathered the best that was produced by humanity: German classical philosophy, English political economy and French socialism, to lay foundations to the ideology of the proletariat. After the death of Marx, Engels has completed the still pending works of Marx, such as the books two and three of The Capital. He systematized and defined Marxism as the integral and harmonic theory of the international proletariat. In Lenin’s words: “it is impossible to understand Marxism and to propound it fully without taking into account all of the works of Engels.” Marxism has never given a single step in life without struggling against erroneous ideas and positions. Thus, it had to confront Proudhon and anarchism, the rightist deviations and supposedly creative developments of Dühring, the opportunist positions that emerged within the social-democrat party of Germany.
Our immortal founders Marx and Engels have shown, through scientific analysis, the collapse of capitalism and its inevitable transit into communism – where no more exploitation of man by man will exist. They established that the mission of the proletariat of all countries is to rise in revolutionary struggle against capitalism and gather all workers and exploited to destroy it and to edify socialism and communism over its ashes.
After the death of Engels, the old revisionism developed – with Bernstein and Kautsky – and Lenin combated and defeated them. To sum up, Marxism – in its first stage – will establish Marxist philosophy or dialectical materialism, Marxist political economy, and scientific socialism.
Lenin developed Marxism and raised it to a second stage, Marxism-Leninism. He made this in a fierce struggle against old revisionism. They denied Marxist philosophy by saying one should base oneself in neo-kantism, which is idealism and not dialectical materialism. In political economy, they denied growing pauperization, thus they affirmed that capitalism met the demands of the proletariat; they denied plus-value and imperialism. In Scientific socialism, they went against class struggle, against revolutionary violence, and the dictatorship of the proletariat – disseminating pacifism and parliamentary cretinism.
Lenin taught that the revolutionary politics of the proletariat is materalized through its vanguard party. Without its General Staff – the Communist Party – the proletariat cannot fulfill its principal role in the transformation of the world. Thanks to the existence of a Revolutionary Party of New Type, created and led by Lenin, the Russian proletariat could take advantage of the revolutionary situation and answer the imperialist war with revolutionary civil war. Chairman Mao said: “with the birth of revolutionary parties of this kind, the physiognomy of world revolution has changed”.
Revisionism is to revise the Marxist principles by invoking new circumstances. Lenin said that revisionism is the advanced detachment of the bourgeoisie in the ranks of the proletariat and that to struggle against imperialism it is necessary to struggle against revisionism – because they are two faces of the same coin. Lenin highlights that revisionism attempts to divide the trade union movement and the political movement of the proletariat and generates the split of socialism. Furthermore, within this unerring and implacable struggle against revisionism, Lenin puts forward – in the context of the preparation and beginning of the World War I – to convert the imperialist war into revolutionary war, thus unmasking the old revisionists as social-patriots and social-chauvinists; he puts forward that in times of revolution it is necessary to create new organizations because reaction attacks the legal and open organizations and we must assemble clandestine apparatuses, even for mass work. Then, he materialized the October Revolution with a Communist Party and through armed insurrection.
Comrade Stalin would continue the work of Lenin and – in the process of the construction of socialism in the USSR – he will struggle against right opportunism and the treason of Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and Bukarin. Stalin developed this struggle for 13 years and it is false that he solved things administratively.
During the World War, the USSR under the leadership of comrade Stalin had to apply scorched land to defend its territory, the defense of the socialist motherland costed more than 25 million lives. In the midst of a complex and difficult situation – under the leadership of comrade Stalin – the dictatorship of the proletariat was consolidated and the construction of socialism triumphed. The five five-year plans that were applied for twenty five years led to the biggest transformation in the relations of production, to the most powerful development of the productive forces in history and the greatest social achievements by the people’s masses seen until then.
We assume the position of Chairman Mao on the role of comrade Stalin that he was a great Marxist. Furthermore, we must bear in mind that he was the one who brilliantly defined Leninism. We, the communists, today have the task to assume the defense of his role in World War II within the Communist International, particularly its 7th World Congress.
Chairman Mao Tse-tung, while developing Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, raises Marxism to its highest summit turning the theory of the proletariat into Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. He fulfilled this task in the midst of a tenacious and persistent struggle, smashing right opportunist lines within the Communist Party of China – here we highlight smashing the revisionist lines of Liu Shao-chi and Teng Siao-ping; and at the international level he led the struggle and defeated modern revisionism of Khrushchev. He materialized the democratic revolution in China, the uninterrupted transit to socialist revolution and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR).
In historical perspective, the GPCR is what is the most transcendental of the development of Marxism-Leninism, that was done by Chairman Mao; it is the solution of the big pending problem of the continuation of revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat; “it represents a new stage, even deeper and wider, in the development of the socialist revolution”.
Let us highlight two questions: 1) the GPCR implies a milestone in the development of the dictatorship of the proletariat toward rooting the proletariat into Power, which was concreted with the “Three in One” Revolutionary Committees; and 2) the restoration of capitalism in China – after the counterrevolutionary coup in 1976 by the clique of Teng – is not a negation of the GPCR but simply part of the contend between restoration-counterrestoration and, on the contrary, it shows us the transcendental historical importance the GPCR has in the inexorable march of humanity toward communism.
In these conditions, the most earthshaking political process and the biggest political mass mobilization ever seen on Earth was produced, which goals Chairman Mao defines as follows: “The present Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is completely necessary and very timely to consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat, to prevent the restoration of capitalism and to build socialism”.
Chairman Mao affirmed that not having a correct ideological-political point of view corresponds to not having a soul, and that the GPCR is a great revolution that has the goal of changing the soul of people – in other words, the worldview, the ideology – raising the proletariat and the broad masses for the struggle for Power, the defense of the dictatorship of the proletariat, world revolution, and communism.
Thus, we communists have three great swords: our founder Marx, the great Lenin and Chairman Mao Tse-tung, our great task is to uphold, defend and apply Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, placing it at the command and guide of the world revolution.
The path of heroism and great social transformations of the world proletarian revolution has concretely started in 1871 with the immortal Paris Commune, followed by the revolution of 1905 in Russia. Afterwards, in the midst of the first imperialist world war, it triumphed with the Great Socialist October Revolution of 1917, opening a New Era of Universal History.
Once more and shortly afterwards, imperialism was expressing its general crisis of decomposition and opened the confrontation among its main powers in order to get out of the crisis and redefine the new world hegemony with the resurgence of the second great imperialist war. The war transformed itself in great battles of national liberation throughout the whole world and sharpened the contradiction between revolution and counterrevolution – which led to the smashing of fascism and the great triumph of the USSR and the Red Army, as well as many other democratic revolutions in Europe and Asia, which generated a broad socialist camp.
With the great Chinese revolution, a new relation of strategic stalemate of the forces of the world between capitalism and socialism was marked. All the period after World War II was of bitter battles between imperialism and socialism. The Yankee imperialists have reached hegemony in the capitalist camp and have threatened the world with the blackmail of the atomic bomb, which resounded in class struggle in the whole world.
In the USSR, the right wing of the CPSU raised to hinder the development of socialism and – with the death of the great comrade Stalin – seized the moment to take the offensive and modern revisionism came out into the light, which undermined the dictatorship of the proletariat and the unity of international communist movement. In the 20th Congress of the CPSU, 1956, Khrushchev revisionism ran rampant and usurped the leadership of the Party of Lenin and Stalin and of the Red Army. With a state coup, the leadership of the proletariat was usurped, producing the bourgeois restoration in the USSR.
Facing this fact, imperialism inflates and promotes offensives in many countries – with state coups – in order to deepen its domination and to oppose the high tide of national liberation struggles which was taking place in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The CPCh – with Chairman Mao at its head – and a handful parties rose against Khrushchev revisionism and imperialism and in defense of the world revolution, opening the greatest ideological confrontation ever seen. All this process sharpened the internal struggle within the communist parties in the whole world.
In China, the left wing in the CPCh – under the Great Leadership of Chairman Mao – took the offensive in defense of Marxism-Leninism and Mao Tse-tung thought. They unleashed the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which deepened the socialist revolution. It synthesized the path on how to carry out class struggle and revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat – a question of utmost importance in Marxism that was not resolved until then. It prevented the bourgeois restoration in China for ten years. With the death of Chairman Mao, the rightist capitalist roaders – with the clique of Teng – were encouraged and able to assault and usurp the power of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Then the world revolution was left without its base area and entered a new period of dispersion of the ICM. In the struggle against modern revisionism and in defense of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung thought, the parties that were reconstituted in many countries of the world unleashed people’s wars. Thus, the torch of the world proletarian revolution was maintained in the armed struggle as People’s War in India, the Philippines, and Turkey and afterwards Peru. Especially with the people’s war in Peru – under the Great Leadership of Chairman Gonzalo, by applying Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung thought to the Peruvian revolution – in which Maoism was defined as the new, third and higher stage of the development of Marxism.
A new general counterrevolutionary offensive headed by the Yankees was unleashed in the midst of a worsening of the general crisis of imperialism. However, they could only achieve a sharpening of all contradictions of the system, leading the world into an increasing disorder and advancing its decomposition. This generated great explosiveness of the exploited and oppressed masses in the whole world, the continuation and impulse of the ongoing peoples wars, and the preparations for the initiation of many others, as well as the intensification of the wars of plunder on the oppressed nations with a serious sharpening of the inter-imperialist contradictions.
Facing the current situation, we communists are before the great challenge of giving a leap in the ICM by unifying ourselves around Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and the definition of its general political line in order to confront the general counterrevolutionary offensive of imperialism, which is being thorn into pieces in its sharp contradictions.
Universal history is entering a new period of revolution. Today, the communists are for precisely defining the moment the WPR is on. This is key to understand the relation of forces in the current world, our situation and that of the enemy, to serve the advancement of revolution in the world.
Chairman Mao taught us that the path is tortuous, but the perspectives are brilliant. Revolution will triumph in the whole world and communism will shine over the Earth sooner than later, depending on the action of the communists.
Upholding the thesis of Lenin, the economic relations of imperialism constitute the basis of the currently existing international situation. Throughout the whole 20th Century, this new particular phase of capitalism – its higher and last stage – was completely defined and the division of the world into oppressed and oppressor countries is a distinctive feature of imperialism. The whole process of the capitalist society has the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie as the fundamental contradiction. Yet, three fundamental contradictions are developed in the world when it transits from non-monopoly capitalism into monopoly capitalism – or imperialism:
First contradiction: between oppressed nations, on the one hand, and imperialist superpowers and powers on the other. This is the principal contradiction in the current moment and the principal contradiction of the epoch of imperialism at the same time. The world is divided: On one side there is the immense majority of oppressed nations – which are colonial or semi-colonial countries (the latter have only formal sovereignty or independence, they are economically, politically, militarily and culturally subjugated to imperialism); on the other side there are a handful of imperialist powers, either superpowers or powers – in both cases they are oppressing nations. On the side of the imperialist powers, Yankee imperialism is the sole hegemonic superpower. Russia is still an atomic superpower and there is a handful of second-tier imperialist powers.
Yankee imperialism is the largest exporter of capital in the world, which is expressed in enormous unbalances in its economy. In order to keep its hegemony, imperialism is forced to carry out many wars at the same time, as well as having military presence in all continents. This leads to enormous economic costs for maintaining its huge military machinery, espionage and covered operations, credit costs from the past and current wars, support for the war veterans; not to mention the high social cost that is caused in their own land, the despise for the life and dignity of the masses of the oppressed nations, the genocide they apply to subjugate them which nourishes class hatred from all the peoples of the world.
On its part, the oppressed countries host the largest and poorest population, they are subject to imperialist oppression, they live in conditions that do not fit the level of development achieved by humanity, they suffer the demise of their living conditions, of the natural environment and they are stricken by the systematic wars of plunder of imperialism and their local lackeys.
A bureaucratic capitalism evolves on a semi-feudal and semi-colonial basis in those countries. It generates the corresponding political and ideological genres and systematically prevents national development, it exploits the proletariat, the peasantry and the petty bourgeoisie and restricts the medium bourgeoisie.
Not acknowledging the semi-feudal character of the oppressed countries and, thus, the necessity for a peasant war to solve it, ends up denying the necessity of the democratic revolution in those countries, the necessity to develop the People’s War as a unitary war – in which the countryside is principal and the city is a necessary complement – to end with semi-feudality, imperialism and bureaucratic capitalism.
World crisis will continue to be unloaded on the oppressed countries and as long as they hold this condition they will still be the spoils for the imperialist repartition. The policy of imperialism is further reaction and violence against the oppressed nations for a further national subjugation or wars of prey and plunder. The plan of the imperialists is the partition of the countries and the new world repartition, based on the relations of military force and the advance in the occupation of strategic positions. What they seek is not peace but to subjugate the peoples through capitulation with imposed “agreements” and “peace agreements”, in which they only formalize what they have achieved in the battlefield.
The oppressed countries from Asia, Africa, and Latin America – as pointed out by Chairman Mao – are the zones of revolutionary storms and the base for the world proletarian revolution. It is necessary to highlight that the oppressed countries extends even to Europe itself.
We reaffirm that the true national self-determination can only be achieved through revolution of a new democracy or socialist revolution, according to each case, to which it is necessary to constitute or reconstitute communist parties of new type, marxist-leninist-maoist parties capable of leading revolution to its end. Chairman Mao has masterly synthesized all the struggles in the oppressed nations with the following great guideline: “The countries want their sovereignty, the nations want their liberation and the peoples want revolution!”
Second contradiction: between proletariat and bourgeoisie.
The economic crisis in 2008 that began as a finance crisis in the USA was unloaded on the masses in the oppressed countries and even in the imperialist countries themselves. Thus it has stricken the proletariat of the imperialist countries, which instigated sharp struggles for the defense of the achievements they conquered throughout the 20th Century. The consequences of this crisis were not overcame, this is why the recovering of employment is at the expense of worse quality, lower wages and larger working day. The recovering is at the expense of increasing the over-exploitation of the class.
The contradiction proletariat-bourgeoisie is also worsened as a result of the migratory waves of thousands of war refugees and poor people in general who – fleeing from the imperialist war and the ferocious exploitation and oppression in the semi-colonies – are thickening the ranks of the proletariat in the imperialist countries. These migratory waves are a consequence of the system itself and the “humanitarian tragedy” to which they are leading benefits the monopolies in the imperialist countries by reducing the production costs by reducing salaries with this working force that has costed them nothing.
At the same time, the imperialists themselves cynically broadcast at their media the danger of “terrorism” of those immigrants and promote chauvinist hysteria, nourish racism and nationalism. Imperialism applies its chauvinist reactionary policy of dividing the class between native workers and immigrant workers to prevent the united class-conscious action of the proletariat. To prevent it from organizing itself as a single class with the same interests with a single ideology, a single politics and a single party – the Communist Party.
The contradiction in the imperialist countries is also between revolution and counterrevolution, it is not a question of changing this or that political regime – in other words, the form of government of the bourgeois dictatorship – but to put an end to the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie over the proletariat and the people through socialist revolution.
The contradiction bourgeoisie-proletariat and all the other contradictions within the imperialist nations are sharpening. Also, because all the kinds of infamies that are carried out by the imperialist states against the oppressed nations and their peoples – particularly by USA imperialism – is increasingly backlashing within the imperialist countries themselves – this is a feature of the current phase of its decomposition. The imperialist war has to necessarily return home.
Furthermore, in their own land, the systematic and continuous murder of the members of the poorest masses by the repressive forces of Yankee state are part of the war against the US proletariat and people – particularly against the black and immigrant from the oppressed countries and their descendants. Facing oppression, the tendency is that the masses upraise in rebellion and turn the guns they were given for the massive genocide in the oppressed nations against their own oppressors. Some expressions that confirm such tendency have already taken place.
In brief, the principal is that the movement against the imperialist war will increase, added to the rebellion against the exploitation and oppression of the Class and the increasing poverty of the masses. This is happening in all the imperialist countries.
When dealing with the fundamental contradictions of the world today – which is to say, the contradictions which decisively marks the struggle of the international class, the struggle between revolution and counterrevolution – we cannot think that the contradiction proletariat-bourgeoisie exists only in the imperialist countries. This contradiction exists in all countries of the world.
In the oppressed countries, it is expressed as the contradiction between the proletariat and the bureaucratic-comprador bourgeoisie. In those countries, the side of the people has a center: the proletariat, which is the only class that is able to lead the democratic revolution until the end, given the condition that it develops its vanguard – the Communist Party – which leads the People’s War through actions, forging the workers-peasant alliance, winning over the petty bourgeoisie as a trustful ally, and – in given conditions and circumstances – uniting with the national bourgeoisie (medium bourgeoisie).
In those countries, the more the ruling classes attempt to restructure the state, the antagonism of the contradiction between the proletariat and the bureaucratic-comprador bourgeoisie gets even more evident. Both antagonistic classes start to increasingly polarize one against the other and the proletariat gains more importance as the sole leading class of the democratic revolution.
We highlight that there are three fundamental contradictions in the democratic revolution: contradiction nation-imperialism, contradiction people-bureaucratic capitalism, and contradiction masses-feudality. Any of those could become the principal contradiction according to the periods of revolution. In the oppressed countries, the contradiction proletariat-bourgeoisie is expressed in the contradiction people-bureaucratic capitalism (due to it, the proletariat is the leading class on the people’s side). When the victory is achieved in the democratic revolution – which economically implies the confiscation of the imperialist capital, the bureaucratic capitalism, and the big landlord feudal property and the individual distribution to the poor peasants, mainly the ones without or with little land – the socialist revolution on that moment starts to develop uninterruptedly changing the character of revolution, then the contradiction proletarian-bourgeoisie becomes the principal one.
As Maoists, we know well that after the triumph of the socialist revolution – having established the dictatorship of the proletariat – it corresponds to carry out successive cultural revolutions in order to prevent the capitalist restoration and to continue the march towards communism, in which all or none enters.
Third contradiction: interimperialist. Just as Lenin taught us: imperialism is not one – there are different imperialist countries. In other words, there are imperialist powers and superpowers which divides the world among them according to their relations of economic, political and military strength; relations of strength that changes all the time and develop through collusion and contend.
The United States currently bears the condition of sole hegemonic superpower. After the disintegration of the social-imperialist USSR in 1991, the economic weight of imperialist Russia was reduced and so did their military power, but it still maintains its character of atomic superpower. In turn, the other imperialist powers, like Germany, England, France, Japan, China, Austria, the Netherlands, Australia, Sweden, Canada, Italy, Spain, etc., altogether are also a handful of oppressing countries. Since the decade of 1990, they are contending for a new repartition of the oppressed countries that were subjected to social-imperialist USSR. Since then, all the events of some relevance – be them bellicose or non-bellicose – in Eastern Europe, in the former Soviet Republics of Central Asia, the so-called Amplified Middle East – the Persian Gulf, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Northern Africa –, and in the Far East – North Korea –, in Southeastern Asia – Vietnam, Laos, Kampuchea – and in Latin America – Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela – are included in this contend for the new repartition of those countries.
The current world situation is marked by the plan of Yankee imperialism to develop its war of aggression through blood and fire. Their main strategic objective is to snatch the condition of atomic superpower from Russia, hold down social-imperialist China and press it to widely open its economy. Alliances with other imperialist powers are used for that purpose – according to convenience – as with Germany, France, England, etc., to subvert the order in the spheres of influence that has a high strategic value for Russia and imposes economic sanctions as a threat to all imperialist powers. In turn, Russia makes efforts to maintain its spheres of influence, especially in Ukraine, Syria and Iran.
As for the imperialists, be them alone or in coalitions, they are against one or many oppressed countries, at this moment not only the principal contradiction expresses itself, but also the third contradiction – among the imperialists themselves – is expressed there. Yankee imperialism uses “divide and rule” against other imperialist powers. The imperialists violates as they wish their own treaties, their own international rules – the principle of non-aggression – because the law is for others to follow. This is why peace and harmony between imperialists is a repetition of an old cackle – as those of “superimperialism” and “ultraimperialism”, which spread reactionary concepts such as “neoimperialism”, “neocolonialism”, “neoliberalism”, “globalization”, “geopolitics”, etc. Those are pseudo-theories that mainly points against democratic revolution and the struggles for national liberation and are used by both imperialists themselves and by revisionists.
The imperialist dispute is absolute and the collusion is relative. This determines the circumstantial and temporary character of the imperialist alliances; this is why one cannot speak about “imperialist blocks”, this is revisionism. Thus, the European Union is not a block, or an “European imperialism”, but an alliance of countries of Europe, under hegemony of Germany – in collusion and contend with France that tries to increase its power – to dispute against Yankee imperialism.
The second tier imperialist powers struggle to convert themselves into new superpowers and start contending for world hegemony to occupy the place that is today held by Yankee imperialism and to impose – through a new world war – a new repartition of the world – that is already divided – and a new world order.
Regarding the contradiction between socialism and capitalism – which corresponds to the whole era of the world proletarian revolution – in the current situation, it is expressed and develops in the ideological and historical field – due to the fact that there is no socialism since the bourgeois restoration in China until now.
On the side of the reaction, this contradiction manifests itself as the general counterrevolutionary offensive – which is weakening – and is currently pointed against the national liberation wars through the so-called “war on terror”. We oppose it with the marxist-leninist-maoist revolutionary counteroffensive, which mainly develops with People’s War. In the terrain of revolution, the contradiction between socialism and capitalism expresses itself in that socialism lives as an idea in the struggles of the proletariat and the peoples of the world; in the ongoing combats and People’s Wars in India, Peru, Turkey and the Philippines; and the restless propaganda and increasing two lines struggle among the marxist-leninist-maoist parties and organizations for unifying the ICM under the guidance of Maoism and the application mainly of People’s War.
All of that, on the one hand, impulses the greater reactionarization of the bourgeois state (big landowners-bureaucratic old state in service of imperialism in the oppressed countries) to counter the revolutionary situation in uneven development in the whole world. Its expression is the advance toward the absolute centralization of power in the Executive power – be it as presidential absolutism or as fascism – according to the particularities of the different countries. The centralization of power to face the crisis of maintaining its domination and the revolution, and for the imperialist war of aggression.
The objective situation at world level develops, fundamentally as a worsening of the general decomposition crisis of imperialism – which even the reaction itself needs to acknowledge. It is the deepening of its collapse. The huge richness that is socially produced incessantly grows for a handful of imperialists and the big bourgeois and landowners of the oppressed countries while the people’s masses in the whole world are deprived of its appropriation. The result of all this are sharper crisis and shorter cycles within the general and last crisis of imperialism, which pushes all imperialist states to wage wars of prey for a new repartition.
Imperialism is still alive and Yankee imperialism – as the sole hegemonic superpower and world counterrevolutionary gendarme – is the principal enemy of the peoples of the world; it still does as it pleases in Africa, Asia, and Latin America; it still occupies colonies by force, establishes its military bases in all parts of the world and imposes a war of plunder; it continues to oppress the people’s masses in its own country. But the same situation is also becoming further unbearable and it is inevitable that sooner or later more than 90% of the world population would rise against imperialism and the reactionaries. All that in fierce struggle and in uneven development, it is already going on as a New Great Wave of the World Proletarian Revolution.
Since the beginning of this decade, the crisis of imperialism and bureaucratic capitalism sharpens even more in the whole world. Whenever its decomposition deepens, all the contradictions sharpen; which generates more revolutionary situation in uneven development in the whole world. The situation is expressed by the great activity of the masses, its explosiveness makes all reactionaries and their revisionist lackeys tremble. It is expressed everywhere at great explosions never seen before. The objective situation meets at fast pace with the subjective factor – principally the process of the Communist Parties, as marxist-leninist-maoist parties of a new type to initiate new People’s Wars. Thus a new moment opens, a period of revolutions as part of this New Great Wave of the World Proletarian Revolution. This situation determines the tasks, the strategy and the tactics of the Communist Parties in the whole world.
We reaffirm ourselves in the full validity of the Manifesto of the Communist Party from 1848, which is the birth certificate and cornerstone of the International Communist Movement. It established the fundamental principles and the Program of the proletarian revolutionaries. Our great founders, Marx and Engels, made that great calling and lemma “Proletarians of all countries, unite!”, and that lemma for combat inspires the struggles of the proletariat in the whole world and guides it through the path of emancipation. The flames of revolution that were ignited by Marx and Engels have set the world on fire, forever changing the course of world history.
Marx said: “Past experience has shown how disregard of the bond of brotherhood which ought to exist between the workmen of the different countries, and incite them to stand firmly by each other in all their struggles for emancipation, will be chastised by common discomfiture of their isolated efforts.”
Lenin established that true proletarian internationalism requires: “first, the subordination of the interests of the proletarian struggle in a country to the interests of this struggle on world scale; second, that the nation that is reaching the triumph over the bourgeoisie is capable and willing to make the greatest national sacrifices for the overthrow of international capital.” Chairman Mao raised internationalism in its deepest sense when affirming: “it is the spirit of communism”.
Thus, the History of the International Communist Movement is a glorious process of struggle, through which the communists of the world have struggled and struggle to unify themselves serving the achievement of the unalterable goal: the communist society.
Three internationals were built in this heroic struggle:
The First International, or International Worker’s Association (IWA), was founded by Marx and Engles in 1864 in a fierce struggle against the anarchist, the Blanquists and other positions to establish that the ideology of the proletariat was only one – Marxism – it is solid and scientifically welded with the international nature of the proletariat and its revolutionary party, it laid the ideological basis of the proletarian revolution. The moment the International was infiltrated and surrounded by opportunists who attempted to usurp it, Marx put forward that it would be better to end with the IWA than to see it murdered by unity without principles.
The Second International, based on Marxism, was founded by Engels in 1889 and served the multiplication of worker’s socialist organizations and parties, especially in Europe and North America. After the death of Engles, the revisionism of Bernstein and Kautsky assaulted the leadership of the Second International and it degenerated into opportunism, it was finally bankrupt during World War I, when their leaders opposed themselves to struggle against the imperialist war under the pretext of Defensism. They refused to turn it into revolution by voting for the credits of war at the parliament – they supported the imperialist war and the bourgeoisie of their own countries – then becoming social-patriotic, social-chauvinists, social-traitors.
The founding of the Third International, in March 1919, was the result of a long struggle by the left of the ICM that was developed under the Great Leadership of Lenin and the Bolshevik Party. It condensates the experience of the proletarian revolution in the combats against tsarism, imperialism and all reaction inseparably to the struggle against all opportunism and revisionism of the parties of the Second International which was molded to the old order. Lenin conceived and founded the Third International as a war machine to carry out the World Proletarian Revolution and the construction of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The founding of the Third International constitutes a great leap in the history of the International Communist Movement.
The Third International – Communist International (CI or Comintern) – existed for 24 years, seven world congresses were held during that time until its self-dissolution in 1943. It had to develop in a complex context represented by the loss of its founder and principal leader – the Great Lenin – in 1924, the great challenges of the construction of socialism in the USSR, the rise of fascism to Power in many countries of the world – especially in Europe – and the beginning of World War II.
Its existence was strongly influenced by the intense and hard two line struggle that was developed within the Bolshevik Communist Party which lasted 13 years, in which the left – under the leadership of comrade Stalin – had to tenaciously struggle to unmask and smash trotskyism, bukarinism, and the right opportunist clique of Kamenev-Zinoviev, among other gangs and black lines, against their efforts to undermine the dictatorship of the proletariat in the USSR, their attempts to usurp the leadership of the CI and controlling apparatuses to impose their policies in many sections – nefarious actions that caused grave harm.
Because of that, the CI (Comintern) suffered right and “left” deviations – particularly within the period between the 5th and the 7th Congresses – and it has issued some erroneous advises and directives that caused some harm to revolutionary parties and processes. However, the principal was that comrade Stalin led – developing the two line struggle – the left within the Communist International preventing the revisionist usurpation and smashed the trotskyist and zinovievist influence at its leadership. Under the just and correct leadership of comrade Stalin, the Comintern retained its red color, Marxism-Leninism prevailed and revisionism could not raise its head.
The 7th Congress, celebrated in mid-1935, was of particular transcendence due to the circumstances of the moment and the challenges it faced. This important Congress had to answer to new and far-reaching problems in the midst of a difficult and complex situation.
The 7th Congress established the tactic of World Antifascist Front and People’s Front to defend the dictatorship of the proletariat and develop the proletarian revolution, while combating the counterrevolutionary offensive of fascism. With it, for the first time in the history of the ICM the international proletariat and the people’s masses of the whole world could be united under the same flag, the same politics, the same plan and under the same leadership, with a single combating army, giving shape to the task inherited from Lenin of working as a true war machine for the World Revolution.
Guided by the Comintern, hundreds of millions of masses have risen as a great torrent of steel against fascism, for revolution and in defense of the USSR and the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Chinese revolution stood out, which changed the correlation of forces in the struggle against imperialism and the reaction worldwide, favoring socialism and the proletariat and oppressed peoples.
Under the leadership of the Comintern, the communists carried out heroic armed struggles as guerrilla warfare – like in the Spanish Civil War – in dozens of countries – not only in Europe but also in Asia. In those countries in which revolution could not triumph, the cause for that was principally because there were no sufficiently mature and prepared communist parties, based on Marxism-Leninism and warned against revisionism. Despite of that, as history shows, its struggle contributed to the defeat of fascism, and the communists have shown to the whole world the communist high valor and heroism, not allowing the morale of the class to be broken.
By applying the resolutions of the 7th Congress, the CPCh, led by Chairman Mao, knew how to carry out the Front policy specified to the necessities of Revolution in China – applying independence and self-decision, unity and struggle, defeating Japanese fascism and continuing with the liberation war until seizing power in the whole country, smashing the local ruling classes and their imperialist masters and completing the revolution of a New Democracy and continuing socialist revolution uninterruptedly. The creative application of Marxism-Leninism and the line established by the 7th Congress to the concrete conditions of the country and its integration with the practice of the Chinese revolution led to the development of a more comprehensive and complete understanding of united front and the full development of the theory and practice of People’s War.
The problems and deviations that took place in many countries were mainly due to the application of the front policy by each respective party, the main responsibility falls on the communist parties, who are the responsible ones for the application of the International line to their respective countries. According to what was put forward by Chairman Mao, in order to establish a just assessment of this experience, it is necessary to draw a clear demarcation line between those who were still within Marxism from those who fell into the mire of revisionism and still within the first group we need to differentiate the mistakes of principles from the mistakes made within the practical work. What is key is that Chairman Mao develops the six laws of the united front and regarding the three fundamental instruments of revolution and their interrelation.
After carrying out armed struggle of heroic resistance against Nazi-fascism, in some countries like Italy and France, the communist parties moved away from the orientations of the Comintern and the fundamental principles of Marxism-Leninism due to the right opportunist positions at the leadership of these, their leadership capitulated before their bourgeoisie while centering in the defense of the demo-liberal regime and betrayed revolution, degenerating into the most rotten revisionism, the modern revisionism.
At a world level, the Antifascist Front was brilliantly applied under the leadership of comrade Stalin – the center was the defense of the dictatorship of the proletariat represented by the USSR. Through it, the dictatorship of the proletariat faced fascism and World Revolution advanced. The victory of the antifascist war was a great and heroic victory of socialism, a victory of the international proletariat and the oppressed peoples of the world over imperialism and world reaction, a victory of Marxism-Leninism over revisionism.
With the victory of the antifascist war, the imperialist camp was weakened and the proletarian revolution grew stronger. Thanks to the glorious role of the Red Army and the wars of resistance, revolution has expanded through Eastern Europe and Central Europe reaching part of Germany – thus increasing the socialist camp. Remarkably with the victory of the Chinese revolution in 1949, the correlation of forces between revolution and counterrevolution at the international arena changed in favor of world Revolution. The world revolution advanced into the stage of strategic stalemate – a powerful socialist camp and a powerful movement of national liberation in the colonies and semi-colonies emerged.
This is why we consider that the 7th Congress was an important marxist-leninist congress that armed the proletariat with a just and correct political line to fight fascism and advance with the World Proletarian Revolution.
Although the Comintern and comrade Stalin made some mistakes on the course, the problems of grave deviations and betrayals were caused by revisionism in the leadership of those parties who got into those situations and it cannot be credited to comrade Stalin, the CP(b) of the USSR, or the Comintern.
When gleaning the history of the ICM and the Proletarian Revolution, we see that comrade Stalin knew how to firmly and ingeniously apply – in the midst of a complex and difficult situation – the definition of Lenin of true proletarian internationalism and to subject the particular and national interests to the interests of the international proletariat as a whole, putting the defense of the World Proletarian Revolution and the cause of communism in first place.
In 1943, the Comitern self-dissolved and the ICM entered a period of relative dispersion, which was principally generated by the splittist and treacherous action of modern revisionism. Modern revisionism was a counter-current represented by Browder, Tito, Togliatti, Thorez and mainly Khrushchev and the infamous 20th Congress of the CPSU where his clique usurped the leadership of the CPSU, the Red Army and the Socialist State – degenerating them into revisionist party, anti-people’s army and social-fascist bourgeois state, respectively – and destroying the dictatorship of the proletariat, undermining the basic principles of the unity of the International Communist Movement.
The Cominform was founded in 1947, comrade Stalin had fiercely combated modern revisionism and smashed and condemned Tito revisionism through it. It was the Cominform who started the struggle against the first state to have revisionism in power. In the Conference of Budapest, Tito revisionism was condemned and expelled, clearly showing that it is false that comrade Stalin conciliated with revisionist lines of national reconciliation and other lines of revisionists that emerged after World War II. The Cominform – under the leadership of comrade Stalin – started the struggle against modern revisionism that Chairman Mao would complete years later.
The task of the communists to unify at world level – after World War II and the death of comrade Stalin – is done in a fierce struggle against contemporary revisionism, in which Chairman Mao is elevated as the growing Great Leadership of the World Revolution.
In 1957 and 1960, two international conferences of communist parties and worker’s parties took place in Moscow. The declarations of these conferences correspond to the development of the two line struggle in the ICM at that moment, and they resulted in concessions aiming not to divide at that moment and to give time for the true followers of Stalin in the CPSU to wage two line struggle within it. Considering that the weight of the CPSU was very big and its internal situation was very difficult, this expresses a correct handling of the left led by Chairman Mao at the head of the CPCh in applying the principle of combating with reason, advantage and not exceeding.
The 22nd Congress of the CPSU was held in 1961, in which the positions of modern revisionism were systematized. Chairman Mao – leading the Communist Party of China – defined the essence of new revisionism, which he systematized in the “three peacefuls” and the “two wholes”. Khrushchev distorted the peaceful coexistence thesis from Lenin – which differentiates the relations between states with different social systems from those of classes within the states – to put forward a “peaceful coexistence” as a general line for the International Communist Movement. For Khrushchev the problem was to avoid war because – according to him – the atomic weapons did not distinguish exploited from exploiters, which was why men had to join each other in order to prevent the disappearance of humanity. The “peaceful transition” put forward that revolution did not need revolutionary violence, but one could replace a social system with another through the “peaceful way”, through elections, through parliamentarism. As for the “peaceful emulation” they defended that – in order to destroy the imperialist system – the socialist system should make an emulation to show the imperialists that the socialist system was superior and thus the imperialists would change into socialism. The revisionist thesis of the “state of the whole people” was meant to deny the class character of the state and was concretely against the dictatorship of the proletariat. The “party of the whole people” is another machination that denied the class character of the Party as the Party of the proletariat. Thus, Khrushchev advocated that the 22nd Congress of the CPSU was the new program of the communists and substituted the Manifesto of the Communist Party with the bourgeois lemma of “liberty”, “equality” and “fraternity”. The Manifesto is the program of the communists and its denial has sparked and sharpened the struggle between Marxism and revisionism.
On June 14th, 1963, the “Proposition on the General Line of the International Communist Movement”, also known as the “Chinese Letter”, followed by “The 9 Comments” are published, in which Chairman Mao and the CPCh brilliantly unmasked and smashed modern revisionism in all its facets.
Only with the deep demarcation produced by the Great Polemic – led by Chairman Mao and the Communist Party of China – is that the International Communist Movement was able to elevate the process of reunification around the Great Leadership of Chairman Mao and his contributions to the World Proletarian Revolution.
Chairman Mao developed this struggle simultaneously to the struggle against the right opportunist line within the CPCh – which had usurped important apparatuses of the Party and the state.
Chairman Mao and the CPCh considered that – in such circumstances – it was not adequate to conform a new Communist International because the ideological and political basis – which should be Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung thought then – was not defined. Particularly the Worker’s Party of Albania – led by Enver Hoxha – did not accept mao tsetung thought and wanted an international solely based on Marxism-Leninism, without considering the new development that it had, because essentially Hoxha was opposed to mao tsetung thought.
With the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China, the influence of Chairman Mao increasingly develops throughout the world. The CPCh centers in very urgent problems such as recovering power in the People’s Republic of China from the revisionist usurpation of Liu Siao-chi and Teng Siao-ping, and on how to continue revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is how Chairman Mao – within the national and international class struggle against revisionism – is converted into the great master of the proletariat and into Great Leader of the World Revolution and his thought turns into the third stage of Marxism – even though the struggle for its definition and acknowledgment would only take place later. This goal was pursued for four decades and the UMIC is a step of great importance.
At the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s and under the influence of the GPCR, revolutionary processes in struggle against modern revisionism emerged establishing Communist Parties and establishing People’s Armies which uphold Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung thought; in India with the CPI (ML) and the MCC; in the Philippines with the CPP, and in Turkey with the TKP/ML, in addition to the struggle in other countries against revisionism, in defense of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung thought, of the GPCR and the People’s War.
Chairman Mao dies in September 1976 and the Chinese revisionists made a counterrevolutionary coup attacking Chairman Mao and his thought. Thus, the unity of the marxists entered in grave and complex problems. With the death of Chairman Mao and the revisionist usurpation in China by Teng and his accomplices, we communists became dispersed in the world, without a center nor a base for the World Revolution; counterrevolution has shown its claws to deny Chairman Mao and the validity of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung thought and unleashed the triple revisionist attack of Teng Siao-ping (Chinese revisionism), Hoxha (Albanian revisionism) and Brezhnev (Russian revisionism).
The counterrevolutionary coup in China 1976 opened a new period of deep dispersion in the ICM, on which a general counterrevolutionary offensive was unleashed by Yankee imperialism that centrally and mainly centered its attack to snatch the soul of revolution – its ideology, Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
On the Fall of 1980, thirteen communist parties and organizations signed a declaration “To the marxist-leninists, the workers and the oppressed of all countries” which called the communists to unite around Marxism-Leninism and uphold Chairman Mao, but not considering it a new stage, thus not having universal validity – a work that was mainly conducted by the Revolutionary Communist Party of the USA.
Its 2nd Conference was held in 1984, it decided on founding the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM). In its founding declaration, it was affirmed that it was guided by Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung thought.
The RIM meant a step forward in the path of reunification, this is why it is necessary to make a correct and just evaluation of this experience. For that, it is necessary to analyze the process of two line struggle within the RIM and the role that each party had played. Like every revolutionary body, within the development of the two line struggle the left, center, and right were defined in its core.
In the decade of 1980, the Communist Party of Peru (PCP), under the Great Leadership of Chairman Gonzalo, upheld, defended and applied Maoism as the third, new and higher stage of Marxism in the International Communist Movement. The principal contribution of Chairman Gonzalo to the International Communist Movement was having defined Maoism in a complete and scientific way by upholding, defending and applying it with the initiation and development of the People’s War in Peru which was initiated in May 17th, 1980. This event was of fundamental importance for the World Proletarian Revolution and the International Communist Movement because it has proven the validity of Maoism and the People’s War. With his heroic sacrifice on September 11th, 2021 – murdered after resisting for 29 years in absolute isolation regime in the dungeons of imperialism and the reaction – his name was permanently carved at the gallery of the great titans of the international proletariat.
Through the action of the PCP within the RIM, it went as far as acknowledging Maoism as a new stage of Marxism in 1993.
The RIM lasted a little more than 20 years – from its foundation in 1984 until it went into liquidation in 2006 by the treason of Prachanda to the People’s War in Nepal and the pretension of the RCP-USA of making this body be subjected to the revisionist “new synthesis” of Avakian. Its formal dissolution was made in 2012. Its existence reflected the two line struggle in the International Communist Movement. The RIM served the world proletarian revolution and the task of struggling for the reunification of the communists while the left – in hard struggle – was able to maintain the struggle for imposing Maoism as the sole command and guide of the world revolution at its core.
However, with the arrest of Chairman Gonzalo in 1992 and soon after the blows suffered by the People’s War in Peru – which have hindered the action of the left within the ICM – the RCP-USA converging with the right opportunist line, revisionist and capitulationist (ROL), took advantage of the complex situation to attack the left and to advance on its cheap hegemonism – firstly spreading the revisionist, opposed to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, so-called “new synthesis” in a hidden form, then doing it openly afterwards.
The RIM was entering into greater dis-cohesion. This was aggravated when the RCP-USA – with Avakian at its head – started to deny the RIM Declaration: For a Century of People’s Wars from RIM (2000) after having sanctioned and taken position for it and fell into the path of revisionism, increasing its attacks against Maoism. In the following years, the contend for the hegemony between Avakian and Prachanda – both revisionist currents and chieftains – sharpened not only in the RIM but at the level of the whole ICM. Also the ideological, political and organizational dis-cohesion of the RIM sharpened. Finally, these revisionists have exploded the RIM from their Committee. The RIM ceased to play a positive role and degenerated, getting into bankruptcy and liquidation.
Today – when a New Great Wave of the World Proletarian Revolution is produced in the world with the ongoing People’s Wars in India, Peru, Turkey, and the Philippines, and its preparation in many other countries, when the heroic struggles of national resistance and people’s resistance emerge around the whole world, when the general crisis of imperialism and its drowning are hugely intensified – it is necessary and urgent to raise the two line struggle at the core of the ICM to a higher level in order to establish and develop its necessary, just, and correct General Political Line and to strengthen this New Great Wave through the spark of revolution with People’s War in many countries and further advances wherever they are already being waged, as well as in the antiimperialist revolutionary movement under the hegemony of the proletariat.
This is why it is necessary to deepen the ideological and political struggle on the basis of the just and correct assessment of the historical experience of the proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat as a whole. An assessment that particularly synthesizes the experience of the application of the third stage of Marxism – Maoism.
The struggle to impose Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as the command and guide of the world revolution is hard, long, and complex. Marxism has never advanced without a hard struggle, but in the end Maoism is guiding the New Great Wave of the World Proletarian Revolution that has already started and needs to be impulsed in order to sweep away imperialism and the reaction from the face of earth through People’s war, in order to carry out democratic revolutions, socialist revolutions and proletarian cultural revolutions – according to each case – and transit toward the shining and golden communism.
It is particularly necessary to keep deepening the struggle against new revisionism in its different expressions because – although they were unmasked and smashed in the ICM – they still have influence through the right and “left” opportunist positions, centrist positions, liquidationist positions, etc. and they harm the unity of the ICM as a whole because they are the main danger to the ICM.
The celebration of this First International Conference and the foundation of the New International Organization are of historic and transcendental importance, they are an achievement of the international proletariat and a striking blow against the general counterrevolutionary offensive of imperialism and the world reaction, as well as against revisionism and all opportunism. A great step to reunite us and to overcome the dispersion in the ICM was given, and a new stage of the organized struggle for the reconstitution of the Communist International under the command and guide of Maoism was opened, a new stage which is signed by the development of new People’s Wars which will join the ones that are ongoing.
Contradiction – the sole fundamental law of the incessant transformation of eternal matter;
The masses make history and rebellion is justified;
Class struggle, dictatorship of the proletariat and proletarian internationalism;
To apply the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism to the concrete conditions and to integrate it to the practice of revolution on each country;
The necessity of the marxist-leninist-maoist Communist Party that firmly applies independence, self-decision and self-reliance;
Inseparably and implacably combat imperialism, revisionism and the reaction;
Two line struggle as an driving force for party development;
Practice Marxism, not revisionism; work towards unity, not for splitting; act in honest and honored way and don’t thread intrigues nor machinations
Constant ideological transformation and always putting politics in command;
Serve the people and the world proletarian revolution;
Absolute selflessness and just and correct style of work;
Going against the current.
Very specially we reaffirm ourselves in the undeniable Marxist truth that was put forward by Chairman Mao: “According to the Marxist theory of the state, the army is the chief component of state power. Whoever wants to seize and retain state power must have a strong army. Some people ridicule us as advocates of the “omnipotence of war”. Yes, we are advocates of the omnipotence of revolutionary war; that is good, not bad, it is Marxist. The guns of the Russian Communist Party created socialism. We shall create a democratic republic. Experience in the class struggle in the era of imperialism teaches us that it is only by the power of the gun that the working class and the labouring masses can defeat the armed bourgeoisie and landlords; in this sense we may say that only with guns can the whole world be transformed”.
As communists, we are sons and daughters of a single class in the world – the international proletariat – which has its destiny undeniably welded – communism – which either all or none enter. For that, we firmly subject ourselves to proletarian internationalism as a fundamental principle for the ICM, we unfold our powerful and immortal lemma that was established in the Manifesto of the Communist Party from Marx and Engels: “Proletarians of all countries, unite!”
The Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Parties and Organizations participating on the UNIFIED MAOIST INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE (UMIC) – following the path of the Third International founded by the Great Lenin and the best traditions of the International Communist Movement (ICM) – solemnly declare to the international Proletariat and the peoples of the world that the historical and transcendental decision of giving birth to the new international Maoist organization was taken, founded under the three great and glorious red banners: Maoism, the struggle against revisionism and the world proletarian revolution.
With deep communist conviction, we parties and organizations reunited here reaffirm ourselves – once more and with solemn commitment – in fulfilling the agreements of the Unified Maoist International Conference, defending and applying the almighty ideology of the international proletariat – Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
It is a firm commitment in the arduous and restless struggle for imposing Maoism as the sole command and guide of the World Revolution, the only deeply red and unfading flag which is the guarantee of triumph for the proletariat, the oppressed nations and the peoples of the world in its inexorable march towards the golden and forever shining communism.
The 1st Unified Maoist International Conference of marxist-leninist-maoist communist parties and organizations have an historical transcendence and a deep strategic content. It is a glorious task which corresponds to the New Great Wave of the World Proletarian Revolution.
With ardent enthusiasm, and overflowing with class optimism and deeply moved, we raise the red slogan:
The 1st Unified Maoist International Conference is a base and inexorably marches toward the reunification of the communists in the ICM – a war machine – a machine of combat that raises the unfading flags of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and the invincible People’s War!!
Committees for the Foundation of the (Maoist) Communist Party of Austria (KG(m)KPÖ)[Austria]
Communist Party of Brazil (P.C.B.) [Brazil]
Red Fraction of the Communist Party of Chile (FRPCCh) [Chile]
Communist Party of Colombia (Red Fraction) (PCC(FR)) [Colombia]
Poder Proletário – M-L-M Party Organization Colombia (PP-OP-MLM) [Colombia]
Communist Party of Equator – Red Sun (PCE-SR) [Ecuador]
Maoist Committee in Finland (MKS) [Finland]
Maoist Communist Party (PCM) [French State]
Committee Red Flag (KRF) [Federal Republic of Germany]
Committee for the Reconstitution of the Communist Party of Mexico (CR-PCM) [Mexico]
Serve the People – Communist League of Norway [Norway]
Communist Party of Peru (PCP) [Peru]
Maoist Communist Party (PCM) [Spanish State]
Communist League of Sweden [Sweden]
Communist Party of Turkey/ Marxist-Leninist (TKP/ML) [Turkey]