Line of Building the Three Instruments of the Revolution
Chairman Gonzalo established the international line of the Communist Party of Peru. As proletarian internationalists, he teaches us that we must begin by unfolding the Peruvian revolution through the People’s War as part of, and at the service of, the world proletarian revolution. We are marching towards our inalterable goal, Communism; taking into account that each revolution is unfolded within the zigzags of world politics.
In appraising the world situation, Chairman Gonzalo begins with Lenin’s thesis: “The economic relationships of imperialism constitute the basis of the existing international situation. The history of the 20th Century has been defined completely by this new phase of capitalism, its last and highest phase,” and that the difference between oppressed and oppressor countries is a distinctive feature of imperialism. Since we are in its final and highest phase, imperialism, in order to analyze the current situation we cannot depart from the fundamental contradiction of capitalism.
Furthermore, upholding what Chairman Mao taught us, that imperialism and all reactionaries are paper tigers and that what is truly powerful are the people, and that: “Working hand in glove, Soviet revislonism and U.S. imperialism have done so many foul and evil things that the revolutionary people the world over will not let them go unpunished. The people of all countries are rising. A new historical period of struggle against U.S. irnperialism and Soviet revisionlsm has begun.” He sustains that the destruction of imperialism and world reaction to be carried out by the Communist Parties, leading the proletariat and the peoples of the world, will be an incontrovertible reality. He calls upon us to fight against the two imperialist superpowers, Yankee imperialism and Russian social-imperialism, against the imperialist powers and world reaction, in accordance with the specific conditions of each revolution to determine the principal enemy and to confront their actions.
The victory of the October Revolution in 1917 marked an extraordinary milestone in world history, the end of the bourgeois revolution and the beginning of the world proletarian revolution. This new period was signaled by the intensifying violence expressing the decrepitude of the bourgeoisie in leading the revolution and the maturity of the proletariat to take, lead, and maintain the Power of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The revolutions of the oppressed nations also occur within this framework.
In the midst of a complex system of wars of all types, imperialism will be sunk along with world reaction, from which socialism will emerge; consequently, revolution and counter-revolution are conscious that only through war political changes are defined. Since war has a class character, there are imperialist wars such as the First and Second World Wars that were wars of plunder for an allotment of the world; or imperialist wars of aggression against oppressed nations such as those of England in the Malvinas, Yankee imperialism in Vietnam, and social-imperialism in Afghanistan; and national liberation wars such as those which are waged in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The People’s War in Peru is led by Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Gonzalo Thought, for this reason, it cannot be held back by the superpowers, nor any imperialistic power because of its just character and correct ideology. It is in the vanguard, it is a reality that demonstrates to us that the Communists should focus on this principal aspect of developing people’s war as the principal form of struggle to serve the world revolution.
Facing this situation, it is only through war that the world is transformed; as outlined by Chairman Mao, we uphold the omnipotence of the revolutionary war, meaning people’s war, as the highest military theory, that of the proletariat which must be applied according to each type of country whether imperialist or oppressed. The world people’s war is an adequate response that serves to prevent the imperialist war or, if this is already happening, to transform it into people’s war. As Communists we wage war to destroy war through war in order to establish a “lasting Peace.” We are the only ones that fight for a real peace, not like Reagan and Gorbachev who wage war the more they speak of peace; they are the warmongers.
Upon analyzing the world in this era, we see that four fundamental contradictions are expressed:
the contradiction between capitalism and socialism, referring to the contradiction between two radically different systems, which will encompass this entire era. This contradiction will be one of the last to be resolved, and will continue after the seizure of Power;
the contradiction between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, the contradiction between two opposite classes that will persist after the taking of Power, expressing itself through multiple ideological, political and economic forms until its resolution with the arrival of Communism;
the inter-imperialist contradictions, the contradiction between the imperialists themselves for hegemony in the world and occurring between mutual superpowers, between superpowers and the minor imperialist powers and among the minor imperialist powers themselves. This contradiction will be solved during the subsequent era of 50 to 100 years;
contradictions between oppressed nations and imperialism which is the struggle of the oppressed nations to destroy imperialism and reaction, whose resolution is also framed within the next 50 to 100 years. During this period, this is the principal contradiction, although any one of the four fundamental contradictions can become principal in accordance with the specific circumstances of the class struggle, temporarily, or in certain countries.
In perspective, in order to arrive at our final goal, Communism, Marxist-Leninist-Maoists must carry forward three types of revolutions:
democratic revolution, the bourgeois revolution of a new type led by the proletariat in the oppressed countries, which establishes the dictatorship of the proletariat, consisting also of the peasantry, the petty bourgeoisie, and in certain conditions the middle bourgeoisie, under the hegemony of the proletariat;
socialist revolution, in the imperialist and capitalist countries, which establishes the dictatorship of the proletariat;
cultural revolutions, which are made to continue the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The latter is to suppress and eliminate the regeneration of capitalism and to wage armed combat against attempts at capitalist restoration, and which also serves to strengthen the dictatorship of the proletariat and to facilitate the march towards Communism.
Just as no class in the world was able to seize Power all at once, but only through a process of restorations and counter-restorations, when the proletariat takes power and establishes its dictatorship, the eagerness of the bourgeoisie for restoring capitalism and to recover its power grows and opens up a historical process of struggle by the proletariat to maintain and defend its dictatorship and to combat the conspiracy of capitalist restoration. This struggle between restoration and counter-restoration is an undeniable historical law, which is replayed under the dictatorship of the proletariat. In world history, when the feudal class advanced in China, it was delayed 250 years while it crushed the restoration of slavery; when the bourgeois class in the west struggled against feudalism to crush the attempts at restoration or the restorations of feudalism, it took 300 years to be definitively established in Power. And, addressing a revolution in which the proletariat is definitively established in Power, the acute struggle between restoration and counter-restoration will last approximately 200 years, starting from the Paris Commune in 1871. The experiences of capitalist restoration in the USSR and in China taught us great lessons, positive as well as negative; especially emphasizing the gigantic steps forward in the formation of the new State and how the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is the solution to avert restoration.
We, who follow Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Gonzalo Thought, reaffirm ourselves in revolutionary violence as the universal law to seize power, and to do so it is crucial to substitute one class by another. The democratic revolutions are carried out with revolutionary violence. Socialist revolutions are carried out with revolutionary violence and, since they are faced with restorations, power will be recovered through revolutionary violence. We will maintain the continuation of the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat with revolutionary violence through cultural revolutions and we will only reach Communism through revolutionary violence. While there is a place on the Earth in which exploitation exists, we will finish it off through revolutionary violence.
This new era arms us with a wealth of new weapons, and we Communists must strengthen ourselves ideologically, politically, and organizationally to assume the responsibilities that correspond to us at this time.
There are two currents that operate in the international Communist movement: The international proletarian movement and the national liberation movement. The first leads and the second is the base.
It takes place in the oppressed nations against imperialism and reaction. In the first decade of this century, Lenin paid close attention to the struggles in India, China, and Iran. He outlined that the socialist revolution would not be only and exclusively of the proletariat against its bourgeoisie, but also of all the colonies against their oppressors. He said there is a fusion of two forces, the international proletarian movement and the national liberation movement and, that the weight of the masses in the oppressed nations constitutes most of the population in the world and will be decisive in the world revolution. He concluded that revolution is shifting to the oppressed nations, but this fact does not negate the revolution in Europe, which was demonstrated by how a formerly socialist State such as the USSR could develop in the midst of imperialist encirclement. Developing the ideas of Marx, Lenin laid the strategic foundations of the world revolution to undermine imperialism by linking the struggle of the national liberation movement with the struggles of the international proletarian movement in order to develop the revolution. Although the slogan for Communists is “Proletarians of all countries, Unite!,” he proposed the slogan that must guide the struggle of the two forces: “Proletarians of all countries and peoples of the world, Unite!” Chairman Mao Zedong developed Lenin’s strategy based on the great significance the national liberation movement has for the world revolution since imperialism plunders ever more from the oppressed nations, which in turn rise-up in powerful revolutionary storms that must be led by their Communist parties. Thus, the national liberation movement is fused to the international proletarian movement and these two forces propel the development of world history. Chairman Gonzalo teaches that the strategy that Communists must follow should be based on the thesis laid down by Lenin and developed by Chairman Mao.
The international proletarian movement, is the theory and practice of the international proletariat. The proletariat struggles on three levels: theoretical, political, and economic. Since the proletariat appears in history as the final class, it does so in constant struggle, highlighted by the following milestones: 1848, the Communist Manifesto elaborated by Marx and Engels established the basis and the program of the proletariat. 1871, the Paris Commune where for the first time the proletariat seizes Power. 1905, the dress rehearsal of the revolution. 1917, victory of the October Revolution in Russia, the class established the joint dictatorship of the proletariat and opened a new era. 1949, victory of the Chinese revolution, and the establishment of the joint dictatorship led by the proletariat which resolved the passage to the socialist revolution, and changed the correlation forces in the world. The decade of the 1960s with the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, led by Chairman Mao Zedong, the revolution continued under the dictatorship of the proletariat in the acute struggle between restoration and counter-restoration.
In its struggle for its rights and demands the proletariat generates the union and the strike, which are not only meant to be instruments for economic struggle, but to forge the class “for the great battles still to come.” The strike is the principal instrument in the economic struggle and the general strike is a complement to the insurrection, but it is wrong to expound, as do Sorel, the anarchists, and others, that Power can be seized by the general strike alone. We develop the struggle for better living conditions as a function of the seizure of Power.
The proletariat generates a political apparatus. As defined by Marx, the Communist Party is totally opposite and different from the other parties seeking political power. Lenin established the characteristics of the Party of the new type, combating the undermining influences of the old revisionism that generated bourgeois workers’ parties based on the labor aristocracy, the union bureaucracy, parliamentary cretinism, all tied to the old order. Chairman Mao Zedong developed the building of the Party based on the gun and outlined the building of the three instruments. Chairman Gonzalo established the thesis of the militarization of the Communist parties and the concentric building of the three instruments.
The proletariat generates ideology: Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, principally Maoism for the world revolution and Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Gonzalo Thought, principally Gonzalo Thought, for the Peruvian revolution.
Marxism was based on the ideas of Marx. Marx and Engels drew ideas from the best that humanity had produced: German classical philosophy, English political economy and French socialism on which they based the ideology of the proletariat. Marxism has not taken a step in its life without struggling against wrong positions. It stood up against Proudhon and anarchism, against right-wing deviations of the supposedly creative developments of Dühring, and against the opportunist positions that emerged in the German Social Democratic Party. After the death of Engels, the old revisionism unfolds with Bernstein and Kautsky; Lenin is going to defeat them. In sum, in its first stage Marxism establishes the Marxist philosophy or dialectical materialism, Marxist political economy, and scientific socialism.
Lenin develops Marxism and brings it to a second stage, Marxism-Leninism. This stage is achieved through hard struggles fought against the old revisionism that was denying Marxist philosophy, by proposing neo-Kantism instead; that is idealism and not dialectical materialism. In political economy, they were denying the growing pauperization among the proletariat, and claimed that the proletariat was being satisfied by capitalism. They denied the fact of imperialism and surplus value. In scientific socialism, they propagated pacifism, denying the class struggle and revolutionary violence.
Revisionism means to revise Marxist principles by invoking new circumstances. Lenin said that revisionism is the advance of the bourgeois ideology in the ranks of the proletariat and that to fight effectively against imperialism one must also fight against revisionism, since they are two sides of the same coin. Lenin emphasized that revisionism seeks to divide the trade unions and the political movement of the proletariat and that it generates the split in socialism. In this effective and relentless struggle against revisionism, during World War I Lenin further proposed the need to convert the imperialist war into a revolutionary war, unmasking the old revisionists as social-patriots. Lenin pointed out that in revolutionary times one must create new organizations, since the reactionaries can destroy the legal organizations and we should develop clandestine organizations even for mass work. Based on these principles, he led the October Revolution with the Communist Party through the insurrection.
In the process of building socialism in the USSR, Stalin continued the work of Lenin. He waged a 13-year struggle against the deviations of Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev that concluded in 1937. It is untruthful to say that things were administratively resolved. We agree with the position of Chairman Mao on the legacy of comrade Stalin as being 70% positive. As Communists today we have the task of making an adequate analysis of World War II, the standing of the International Communist movement and, particularly, to study well its VII Congress and, within this, the role of Comrade Stalin, along with the actions of revisionists in France, Italy, etc.
In developing Marxism-Leninism, Chairman Mao Zedong raises Marxism to its highest summit, thus the theory of the proletariat evolves into Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. This task is fulfilled in the midst of a tenacious and persistent struggle, crushing the right opportunist line within the Chinese Communist Party, especially the revisionist line of Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping; and on the international level, he led the struggle against and the defeat of the contemporary revisionism of Khrushchev. Mao forged the democratic revolution in China, the leap to the socialist revolution and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. What is fundamental in Maoism is political power, the power of the proletariat, the power of the dictatorship of the proletariat, based on a armed force led by the Party. Maoism is the application of Marxism-Leninism to the oppressed countries, of the strategic offensive of the world revolution, and of the continuation of the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat.
We Communists have three great swords: our founder Marx, the great Lenin, and Chairman Mao Zedong. Our great task is to raise, defend, and to apply Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, principally Maoism, and place it as the command and guide of the world revolution.
Continuing the development of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, developing the Peruvian revolution and supporting the world revolution, Chairman Gonzalo upholds, defends and applies our undefeated and unfading ideology: Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Gonzalo Thought as the base of Party unity. Fur us, what is principal is to incarnate Gonzalo Thought because it is the guarantee of victory that leads us to the democratic revolution, to the socialist revolution, to the cultural revolutions, and on through to Communism.
Chairman Gonzalo teaches us that in the process of the world revolution to sweep away imperialism and reaction from the face of the earth there are three moments: 1st, the strategic defensive; 2nd, the strategic equilibrium; and 3rd, the strategic offensive of the world revolution. He reaches this conclusion by applying the law of contradiction to the revolution since contradiction rules everything and all contradictions have two aspects in struggle; in this case revolution and counter-revolution. The strategic defensive of the world revolution is opposed to the offensive of the counter-revolution, begging in 1871 with the Paris Commune and ending with the Second World War. The strategic equilibrium begins after the victory of the Chinese revolution, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, and the development of the powerful national liberation movements. Afterwards, the world revolution enters the strategic offensive, this moment can be identified in history in connection with the 1980s in which we see indications such as the Iran-Iraq war, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, the beginning of the People’s War in Peru, an era circumscribed within the “next 50 to 100 years.” From there onward the contradiction between capitalism and socialism will develop and whose resolution will carry us to Communism. Our conceptions is of a long-term process with the conviction of reaching Communism even if it means passing through a series of twists and turns and the reverses that will necessarily occur. Furthermore, it is not strange that we should apply the three moments to the world revolution, since Chairman Mao applied them to the process of the protracted people’s war. As Communists, we should see not only the specific moment, but the long years to come.
In the current situation and in perspective we have entered the strategic offensive of the world revolution, we are within the “50 to 100 years” in which imperialism will be sunk together with world reaction and we will enter the stage when the proletariat firmly takes root in power and establishes its dictatorship. From there forward the contradiction will be between socialism and capitalism on the road toward Communism. The fact that restorations have occurred in the USSR and China does not negate the strong developmental process of the international proletariat, but shows how fierce the struggle is between restoration and counter-restoration is from which the Communists draw lessons to prevent the restoration of capitalism and to definitively establish the dictatorship of the proletariat.
We reaffirm the thesis of Chairman Mao Zedong that a period of struggle has begun between American imperialism and Russian social-imperialism; thus the two principal enemies are defined at the world level, for those who make democratic revolution or socialist revolution, including those who make nationalist movements, and what corresponds to them is that each revolution or movement specifies its principal enemy and seek to combat the dominance of the other superpower or of the other powers. In Peru, Yankee imperialism dominates us in collusion with the big bourgeoisie and the landowners. However, at the world level there is contention between the two superpowers for world hegemony. We fight against American imperialism, feudalism and bureaucratic capitalism, but we can not allow its substitution with the domination of social-imperialism, nor of some other power. In Afghanistan, the direct aggression is by Soviet social-imperialism that contends for hegemony with Yankee imperialism, China, as well as with other western powers, and there a struggle must be waged against social-imperialism as the principal enemy and not to permit the entry either to the domination of American imperialism nor of other powers; the problem is that the struggle is not correctly unfolded due to lack of political leadership, of a Communist Party. In synthesis, there are two superpowers that are the principal enemies with one being the principal in each case, and we do not overlook the actions of the imperialist powers.
We consider Chairman Mao Zedong’s thesis that three worlds are delineated just and correct and that it is connected with Lenin’s thesis on the distribution of forces in the world based on the analysis of classes and contradictions. We reject the opportunist and revisionist misrepresentation by Deng Xiaoping of the three worlds that follows at the tail of the U.S. or USSR in order to betray the revolution. Starting from this, Chairman Gonzalo analyzes the current situation in which the three worlds are delineated and further demonstrated that they are a reality. The first world is the two superpowers, the U.S. and the USSR which contend for world hegemony and which can unleash an imperialist war. They are superpowers because they are economically, politically, and militarily more powerful compared to the other powers. The U.S. has an economy centered on non-state monopoly of property; politically, it develops a bourgeois democracy with a growing restriction of rights. It is a reactionary liberalism; militarily, it is the most powerful in the west and has a longer process of development. The USSR is economically based on a state monopoly, with a politically fascist dictatorship of a bureaucratic bourgeoisie and is a top-level military power although its process of development is shorter. The U.S. seeks to maintain its dominance and also to expand it. The USSR aims more towards expansion because it is a new superpower and economically it is in her interests to dominate Europe to improve its conditions. In synthesis, they are two superpowers which do not constitute a block but have contradictions, clear mutual differences, and they move within the law of collusion and contention for the redivision of the world. The second world are the imperialist powers which are not superpowers, but have smaller economic, political, and military power such as Japan, Germany, France, Italy, etc. which have contradictions with the superpowers because they sustain, for example, the devaluation of the dollar, military restrictions, and political impositions; these imperialist powers want to take advantage of the contention between the superpowers in order for them to emerge as new superpowers, and they also unleash wars of aggression against the oppressed nations and furthermore, acute contradictions exist among them. The third world is composed of the oppressed nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. They are colonies or semi-colonies where feudalism has not been destroyed, and on that basis a bureaucratic capitalism unfolds, they are tied to a superpower or imperialist power. They have contradictions with imperialism, furthermore they fight against their own big bourgeoisie and landlords, both of which are at the service of and in collusion with imperialism, especially with the superpowers.
All this gives us the basis on which the Communists can establish the strategy and tactics of the world revolution. Chairman Mao Zedong had come to establish the strategy and tactics of the world revolution but the Chinese revisionists concealed it. Therefore, it remains for us to extract from his own ideas, especially if there are new situations in sight.
Our Party sustains the view that in the current world there are three fundamental contradictions:
The contradiction of the oppressed nations, on one side, against the superpowers and imperialist powers, on the other. Here the thesis of the three worlds is delineated, and we formulate it this way because the kernel of that contradiction lies with the superpowers but it is also a contradiction with the imperialist powers. This is the principal contradiction and its solution is the development and victory of new democratic revolutions.
The contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, which has as its solution the socialist revolution and within that perspective, the proletarian cultural revolution.
The inter-imperialist contradictions between the superpowers themselves, between the superpowers and the smaller imperialist powers and, finally, among the imperialist powers themselves, which leads to war for world hegemony and imperialistic wars of plunder which the proletariat must oppose with people’s war and in the long run, world people’s war.
We do not list the contradiction socialism-capitalism because it exists only at an ideological and political level, since socialism does not exist anywhere as a state; today there is no socialist system. It existed, and to say that it exists today it is to claim in essence that the USSR is socialist, which is revisionism.
The need to address the contradictions serves to analyze the world situation and to define its strategy and tactics within its strategic and conflicting zones. Today, the most incendiary conflicting points are: Southeast Asia where the struggle in Vietnam, Laos, and Kampuchea are a focal point in the immense strategic region of Asia, a region where great masses are concentrated. If India, for example, had a sufficiently developed Communist Party, it would serve to powerfully advance the revolution. In the Middle East, the great oil center, there is also an acute contest between the superpowers and powers bound to the issues of the Near East and to nationalist and even reactionary movements. Another area is South Africa, where there are guerrilla movements that are usurped by the superpowers to convert them into occupation forces and dominate them. Latin America is an important center of struggle, from Central America (Nicaragua and El Salvador) to the volatility of the Antilles (Haiti, etc.), and the People’s War in Peru, a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, Gonzalo Thought revolution that struggles for an authentic democratic revolution without submitting to any superpower or power. In Europe, where persistent anti-imperialists military actions are developing, it is necessary to study their ideology and the politics they uphold, the class which they serve, their links with the ideology of the proletariat, and their role within the world proletarian revolution, as well as their position on contemporary revisionism. These movements express the uneven development of the revolutionary situation that exists in the Old World. Any one of these points of conflict could provide the spark to an imperialist World War, a situation that may occur when the strategic superiority of one of the superpowers is defined. Therefore, it is increasingly urgent and peremptory to rely upon Communist parties based on Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and be forged for and in people’s war through their militarization. To strategically define the zones of secondary and principal importance in waging the world revolution, is key to establishing the role that each region and each party will play in the world revolution.
For the Communist Parties, the problem is not to center attention on the imperialist World War but to do so on the people’s war, since only from such a conflict will power led by the proletariat derive. We believe that while there is imperialism, there is a likelihood that imperialist World Wars will develop. What Chairman Mao said is certain, that either revolution will prevent war or World War will provoke revolution. In order for an imperialist world war to happen, the strategic superiority of one of the superpowers must be defined. According to the reactionary military theoreticians, this situation would unfold at the moment of the first use of atomic weapons, or the overwhelming atomic bombardment by each belligerent. This would be followed by a second moment, which would involve contingents of millions in an invasion and, subsequently, (since the objective is the division of the spoils, especially of the oppressed nations) a conventional war to occupy territories. Then it will enter into a great and ferocious massacre which will have repercussions against the imperialists and will provide great reasons for the oppressed nations, the peoples of the world and the class to rise up in people’s war. Thus, if another imperialist world war presents itself, first, we will oppose it, and second, we will not fear it as we will focus on revolution. Third, to focus on revolution means to wage the people’s war led by the proletariat through its Communist parties; and fourth, this people’s war must be specified in each type of country according to its type of revolution. Therefore, the world people’s war is the order of the day.
The history of the International Communist Movement is a glorious process of struggle through which the Communists in the world have fought, and continue to fight, for unity in order to attain their unalterable goal: a Communist society. In this heroic struggle, three Internationals were forged.
The International Workers’ Association, or First International, was founded by Marx and Engels in 1864. In hard struggle they opposed and crushed the anarchistic positions of Bakunin and established that there is only one doctrine of the proletariat: Marxism. Lenin says that the role fulfilled by the First International was to lay down the ideological foundations of the doctrine of the proletariat. This International split, and when this was blamed on Marx and Engels, they answered that if such a division had not occurred, the International would have died in any case—killed by those who united in rejecting principles. The Second International was founded by Engels in 1889. It served to multiply organizations and parties, but with the death of Engels, the emerging old-style revisionism was confronted and crushed by Lenin. This International became bankrupt in the First World War when its leadership (Kautsky and Bernstein), instead of opposing the imperialist world war in order to transform it into revolution, supported the war of plunder and their own countries’ bourgeoisie. Thus, they turned into social-patriots. In 1919 Lenin organized the Third International, the Communist International, conceiving of it as a fighting machine to carry out the world revolution and the establishment of the proletarian dictatorship. Two problems emerged in the Communist International during the 1920s which were to have great repercussions: The problem of Germany (or rather, the revolution in an advanced country), and the problem of China (or revolution in a backward country). The situation became more acute with the emergence and victory of fascism and the question on how to conceive the United Front. Thorez and Togliatti proposed revisionist opinions, seeking to support rather than destroy the old order, while focussing solely on the anti-fascist struggle. In 1943 the International was dissolved, leaving only an Information Committee. It is an urgent task for Communists, and for our Party, to evaluate the Communist International, especially its VII Congress before World War II, and the role of Comrade Stalin.
The struggle of Communists to unite at an international level is long and complex. This was shown in the struggle against contemporary revisionism after World War II. Tito was condemned in 1948. The ideas of Browder also played a negative role. The Workers’ and communist parties met in Moscow in 1957 and 1960 after the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1956, in which Khrushchev had already usurped the dictatorship of the proletariat in the USSR, and assaulted it under the pretext of combating Comrade Stalin. However, the prestige of the USSR was still very great throughout the world, and in such circumstances the meetings of 1957 and 1960 agreed on ambiguous positions, in spite of the firm, principled positions upheld by the CPC, especially those of Chairman Mao, and the Party of Labor of Albania. The positions of Chairman Mao caused the CPSU to alter some of its positions, but the positions of contemporary revisionism were systematized in 1961, when the CPSU held its 22nd Congress.
Chairman Mao, leading the Communist Party of China (CPC), summarized the essence of the new revisionism systematized in the “three peacefuls” and the “two alls.” With “peaceful coexistence,” Khrushchev had twisted the old thesis of Lenin that distinguished between relationships among states to those within states to propose that the general line of the international Communist movement is “peaceful coexistence.” For Khrushchev, the problem was to prevent war, because according to him, atomic weapons did not distinguish between exploiters and exploited and men had to fraternize in order to prevent the annihilation of humanity. “Peaceful transition” proposes that revolution no longer required revolutionary violence but that one social system could be transformed into another through the “peaceful route”: through elections or parliamentarism. The concept of “peaceful emulation” expressed the idea that to destroy the imperialist system, the socialist system had to emulate it in order to demonstrate to the imperialists that the socialist system is superior, and thus encourage the imperialists to become socialists. The “state of the whole people” was the revisionist thesis with which Khrushchev intended to deny the class character of the state. It was specifically aimed against the dictatorship of the proletariat. The “party of the whole people” was another monstrosity which denied the class character of the Party as the party of the proletariat. Khrushchev maintained that the Twenty-second Congress of the CPSU was the new program of the Communists, and thus the Communist Manifesto was substituted by the bourgeois slogans of “liberty,” “equality,” and “fraternity.” The Manifesto is the program of the Communists, and its negation generated and sharpened the struggle between Marxism and revisionism.
On June 14, 1963, the Proposal on the General Line of the International Communist Movement (also known as the Chinese letter) was published. Then the Nine Commentaries, in which Chairman Mao and the CPC brilliantly criticized and crushed modern revisionism in all aspects, were circulated.
We understand that Chairman Mao and the CPC felt that because the political and ideological base—which had to be Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought—had not yet been defined it was inconvenient to form a new Communist International in such circumstances. This was mainly due to the fact that the Party of Labor of Albania, led by Enver Hoxha, did not accept Mao Zedong Thought and advocated an International based only on Marxism-Leninism, disregarding the new developments. In essence, Hoxha was opposed to Mao Zedong Thought.
The growing influence of Chairman Mao in the world unfolded with the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. The CPC focused on very urgent problems, such as recovering power in the People’s Republic of China from the usurpation of the revisionists Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, and on the method to continue the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Chairman Mao became the great teacher of the proletariat and the leader of the world revolution, in the class struggle at home and in the struggle against revisionism on the international level. His thought developed into the third stage of Marxism. In that era, Communists referred to this development as Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought. The Communist Party of Peru adopted Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought as the basis of party unity at the VI National Conference in January 1969. This was achieved as a result of the struggle of Chairman Gonzalo and the red fraction of the Party that had been adhering to Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought since 1966. Chairman Gonzalo upheld the positions of Chairman Mao as early as 1962, and on the basis of that conception, went on to forge the red fraction. The authentic Communists were waiting for the CPC to define Maoism as the third stage of Marxism, but with the death of Chairman Mao in September 1976, the Chinese revisionists pulled off a counter-revolutionary coup aimed at Chairman Mao and his thought. Thereafter, the unity of the Marxists encountered serious and complex problems, but the Communist Party of Peru remained firm and unshakable in the defense of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought, immediately denouncing the counter-revolutionary coup and the revisionist usurpation in China. It was at that time that the Expanded Political Bureau in October 1976 declared, “To be a Marxist is to adhere to Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought.”
With the death of Chairman Mao and the revisionist usurpation in China by Deng and his gang, the Communists were left scattered in the world without a center or base for world revolution; the counter-revolutionaries brandished their claws to negate Chairman Mao and the validity of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought, unleashing the triple revisionist assault of Deng Xiaoping (Chinese revisionism), Hoxha (Albanian revisionism), and Brezhnev (Russian revisionism). In the face of this situation, in 1979, at the PCP’s First National Conference, Chairman Gonzalo called upon the whole party to defend and apply Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought against the revisionist triple attack. The Party’s principled positions remained firm and unalterable. In 1980, the PCP launched the People’s War based on Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought. And it is with the application and development of the People’s War that the PCP has advanced further in the comprehension of Maoism as the third stage of Marxism. Hence, at the Second National Conference held in May 1982 the Party agreed that Marxism-Leninism-Maoism was the third stage of Marxism. The PCP was the only party in the world in the vanguard of the defense of Maoism, assuming the task of struggling for the unity of the Marxist-Leninist-Maoists of the world so that this ideology be the command and guide of the world and Peruvian revolution.
The application of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism must be specific to each revolution, so that it does not become a mechanical formula. For this reason, the Peruvian Revolution has generated Chairman Gonzalo and Gonzalo Thought, which is the main principle in the basis of Party unity. Each revolution must specify its guiding thought, without which there can be no application of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, nor any revolutionary development.
In the Fall of 1980, 13 Communist parties and organizations signed a statement, “To the Marxist-Leninists, Workers, and the Oppressed of All Countries,” calling upon Communists to unite around Marxist-Leninist struggle and to uphold Chairman Mao, but without representing Maoism as a new stage with universal validity. The Revolutionary Communist Party of the US principally led this effort. In 1983 the RCP of the US contacted the PCP and invited it to sign the 1980 statement. The PCP opposed such a statement since Mao Zedong Thought was not considered therein; furthermore, we were already basing ourselves on Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. In March 1984, the Second Conference of these organizations was held and the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM) was founded which approved a joint declaration, referring to uniting around Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought. Our position on the participation of the PCP in RIM is condensed in a letter written to the Committee of RIM dated October 1986: “We wish to reiterate two questions about this issue. First, from the beginning of our ties, the origin of our differences was the substantive and decisive question of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as the only, true and new stage in the development of proletarian ideology, of universal validity, having Maoism as the key issue. Therefore, our objection to the choice of ‘Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought.’ Nevertheless, we have thought and still think that the resolution of this matter, which for us is indispensable as a point of departure, is complex, demands time, and especially revolutionary development.”
“Second, in signing the Declaration produced by the Second Conference which founded the RIM, we did so with observations and even clear differences, which were briefly explained. We reiterated these issues in meetings, reports, and communications which clearly indicate differences on the principle contradiction, the revolutionary situation of unequal development, on world war, and on some criteria on the role of the Movement, and other more important issues, such as the universal validity of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, and in particular the general validity of People’s War (the expression of proletarian military theory that our class has developed completely with Chairman Mao Zedong), and our insistence in always raising the great slogan, ‘Proletarians of all countries, unite!’ Nevertheless, we thought and continue to think that the Declaration constituted and continues to constitute a relative basis of unity, whose development and improvement will be demanded by the advance of our Movement, as facts are clearly demonstrating already.
Presently, the Declaration is repudiated by some as opportunist. Others assert that it is useless to resolve the burning problems that the revolution demands, and therefore, we should move on to a new declaration. The PCP believes that the RIM faces problems on various levels: On the ideological level, it needs to advance towards the understanding of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. This advance is principal, and even political development hinges upon it. On the political level, it needs to advance in defining the fundamental contradictions, and the principal global contradiction, the question of the Third World War, and that revolution is the main tendency, and in the event that imperialist war becomes a reality, we must transform it into people’s war. In regards to this building, what political lines we must follow to achieve the establishment of the International that we need, which must continue the glorious International Communist Movement. Concerning mass work, our point of departure are the slogans ‘The masses make history,’ ‘It’s right to rebel,’ and ‘The colossal garbage heap.’ The purpose of mass work is to begin and develop people’s war. In regards to leadership, it is a key issue, which requires time for its formation, development, and credibility. In regards to two-line struggle, it is not being handled as it should be. These are problems of development, but if they are not addressed justly and correctly, they can cause disarticulation, and such negative possibilities necessarily cause us concern. We believe that the Committee of the RIM aims to impose the denomination of ‘Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought,’ trying to frame us within the Declaration, and thus resolve the problems of leadership of the Committee, which leads us to believe in the existence of hegemonic tendencies.”
Taking the above situation into account, the Fourth National Conference of the PCP of October 1986 reaffirmed our intention to develop a fraction within the International Communist Movement in order to place Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, principally Maoism, as the command and guide of the world revolution. We call to: Uphold, Defend, and Apply Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Principally Maoism!, since only through this can the international proletariat, through its Communist Parties, lead the seizure of power and emancipate the oppressed so they can emancipate themselves as a class.
We are for the reconstitution of the Communist International, and we regard the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement as a step in that direction. It will serve this purpose as long as it upholds and follows a just and correct ideological and political line.
The struggle to make Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, principally Maoism, the command and guide of world revolution will be long, complex and difficult, but in the end, the Marxist-Leninist-Maoists of the world will succeed. Marxism has not taken a step forward in its life without struggle.
GLORY TO THE INTERNATIONAL PROLETARIAT!
LONG LIVE THE WORLD PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION!
UPHOLD, DEFEND, AND APPLY MARXISM-LENINISM-MAOISM, GONZALO THOUGHT, PRINCIPALLY GONZALO THOUGHT!
Upholding, defending and applying Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, principally Maoism, Chairman Gonzalo establishes that the Peruvian revolution in its historical course must first be a democratic revolution, then a socialist revolution which in turn must unfold cultural revolutions in order to reach Communism, all in an uninterrupted and specific process carried out by the application of people’s war. To reach this conclusion, his point of departure was Marx’s teaching, that Germany needed to replay the peasant wars of the 16th century, which would have channeled the democratic energy of the peasantry. Lenin developed this point further, holding that since the bourgeoisie is a decrepit class and since the peasantry have raised the necessity of destroying feudalism, they could only fulfill a democratic revolution under the leadership of the proletariat. Later, Chairman Mao established in On New Democracy that as part of the world proletarian revolution, a transitional stage consisting of a joint dictatorship of the revolutionary classes must be formed in opposition to the bourgeois dictatorship, which can only be fulfilled under the leadership of the proletariat.
He takes into account the specific conditions of Peru that are characterized as follows: In the historical process of Peru there has not been a bourgeois revolution, since the bourgeoisie were incapable of leading it. Consequently, the land question and the national question are two pending problems to be solved. We are in the era of imperialism and of the world proletarian revolution, therefore, the proletariat is the class that has the task of destroying imperialism, bureaucratic capitalism and semi-feudalism, not for the benefit of the bourgeoisie but rather for the proletariat, the mainly poor peasantry, the petty bourgeoisie and the middle bourgeoisie. The Peruvian proletariat has matured with a Communist Party of a new type capable of leading the revolution. The democratic revolution of the old type is no longer appropriate, but instead a bourgeois revolution of a new type is needed; and that this type and all revolutions today can only be fulfilled through people’s war, the principal form of struggle, and by the revolutionary armed forces, the principal form of organization.
Thus, he establishes the character of Peruvian society as a semi-feudal, semi-colonial one in which bureaucratic capitalism develops. He also sets the targets of the revolution, the tasks to undertake, and finally he defines the social classes and outlining the essence of the democratic revolution, its practicality today and its perspectives.
Based on historical materialism, he analyzes the Peruvian process of history and shows that in the old society an agrarian order unfolded based on the ayllu, which was a communal agrarian order which was beginning to develop a form of slavery, the Incan empire erected through wars of conquest. Later in the 16th Century, the Spanish brought a decrepit feudal system and imposed it by force of arms against the resistance of the natives, and Peru became feudal and colonial; later, with independence, Spanish dominance was broken, but the feudal system was not. The emancipators were landowners and the peasants did not achieve the conquest of the land. The 19th Century expresses an intense struggle between England and France to dominate us; and by the mid-century, the first sprouts of capitalism begin to develop on the existing feudal base. All this process in Peru is going to mean a change: The passage from feudalism to semi-feudalism and from colonialism to semi-colonialism.
In characterizing contemporary Peruvian society, Chairman Gonzalo says: “... contemporary Peru is a semi-feudal and semi-colonial society in which bureaucratic capitalism develops.” Although Mariátegui had defined it well in the third point of the Program of the Constitution of the Party, this character is the light of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, mainly of Maoism. Chairman Gonzalo has demonstrated how this semi-feudal and semi-colonial character maintains and develops itself through new modalities, and in particular how bureaucratic capitalism has developed on this base throughout the entire process of contemporary society. This a problem of transcendental importance in order to understand the character of society and of the Peruvian revolution.
Bureaucratic capitalism is a fundamental thesis of Chairman Mao that it is not yet understood nor accepted by all the Marxists throughout the world, which for obvious historical reasons was not known by Mariátegui, and that Chairman Gonzalo applies to the concrete conditions of our country. He maintains that in order to analyze the contemporary social process, one must start from three intimately linked problems: The periods that bureaucratic capitalism is going through; the process accomplished by the proletariat in its highest expression, the Communist Party; and the road that the revolution must follow. He teaches us that since 1895 three historical moments can be differentiated in contemporary Peruvian society:
1st moment. The development of bureaucratic capitalism. The constitution of the PCP. Definition and outlining of the path of surrounding the cities from the countryside;
2nd moment. The development of bureaucratic capitalism. Reconstitution of the PCP. Establishment of the road of surrounding the cities from the countryside;
3rd moment. The general crisis of bureaucratic capitalism. The leadership of the PCP in the People’s War. Application and development of the road of surrounding the cities from the countryside.
At the same time, he proposes that contemporary Peruvian society is in a generalized crisis, a serious and incurable illness that can only be transformed through the armed struggle. The Communist Party of Peru is leading the people in this, as there is no other solution.
Why is Peru semi-feudal? Chairman Gonzalo states: “The decrepit semi-feudal system continues subsisting and characterizes the country from its deepest foundations to its most elaborate ideas. In essence, it persistently maintains the land question unresolved, which is the motor of the class struggle of the peasantry, especially of the poor peasants that are the immense majority.” He stresses that the land question continues subsisting because the semi-feudal relationships of exploitation allow semi-feudalism to evolve, and it is the basic problem of society that is expressed in land, servitude, and gamonalismo. We must see these conditions in all their aspects, economic, political, and ideological, in both the base and superstructure. The peasantry constitutes about 60% of the population, which for centuries has worked the land but it is tied to the big property and to servitude. Hence, a great concentration of land exists in a few hands, with both associative and non-associative forms. The immense majority of the peasantry are the poor peasantry that do not have land, or if they have it they are very few, thus giving the position of the minifundio [small landowner] submitted to the voracity of the latifundio. [Large landowner]
This condition crushes the peasantry in a system of servitude that as Lenin taught presents itself in a thousand forms, but its essence is personal subordination. Thus we see forms centered around servile relationships such as unpaid work in the SAIS [agrarian societies], CAPS, peasant groups, in Cooperación Popular [Servile labor in government works during the Belaúnde regime.], PAIT [Assistance programs], PROEM [Emergency program run by the government.], etc. Beyond this, it is known that in the countryside for every three peasants able to work only one works, and the State tries to channel the unused labor to benefit itself with unpaid labor. We can also observe (particularly in the Sierra region) an autarchic economy outside of the national economy.
Reaffirming himself in Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Chairman Gonzalo unfurls the principle that the agrarian reform consists in the destruction of the feudal landlord property; in the individual distribution of land to the peasantry under the slogan of “land to the tiller,” which is achieved through the People’s War and the New Power, led by the Communist Party. This is equivalent to Lenin’s thesis that there are two roads in agriculture: The landlord’s road which is reactionary, evolves feudalism and supports the old state, and the peasant’s road which is advanced, destroys feudalism and tends towards a new state.
He analyzes the character and the results of the agrarian laws passed by the old state, proving with certainty the subsistence of semi-feudalism, whose existence today is often denied. Thus, the Law of Bases of Pérez Godoy of 1962, the Law 15037 of 1964 and the Law 17716 of 1969 (essentially corporative that encourage big associative property) are characterized as being three laws of purchase/sale, executed by the bureaucratic apparatus of the state to develop bureaucratic capitalism. He warns that the Law of Promoting Cattle Ranching of 1980 treats the land question as resolved and at the same time advocates associative property and the return of the gamonales to invigorate bureaucratic capitalism, which is also under the control of the big bankers with the direct participation of Yankee imperialism. This is the path that the fascist and corporativist Aprista government takes, which is returning to the fascist and corporative “agrarian reform” of Velasco, raising cries of “revolutionizing agriculture” and thus strengthen gamonalismo, which treats the land question as resolved and centers around productivity, gives the law of communities, the law of peasant rondas in order to deepen bureaucratic capitalism and to spread it to every corner of the country, calling the masses to corporativization, aiming at the peasant communities as the base of their corporative zeal, which equally serve the creation of the micro-regions, the regions, CORDES [A development corporation] and other fascist and corporative creations. All of this does not mean anything except new modalities of concentration of the old latifundista property, still not destroyed, and it is the old path of landowner policies followed in contemporary Peru that was brought up in the 1920s, deepened in the 1950s and especially in the 1960s, which is followed today under new conditions.
This road of the landowner is expressed politically in the old state through gamonalismo; as Mariátegui says, gamonalismo does not only designate a social and economic category but an entire phenomenon represented not just by the gamonales, but which also encompasses a large hierarchy of officials, intermediaries, agents, parasites, etc., and that the central factor of the phenomenon is the hegemony of big semi-feudal property in politics and in the mechanism of the state, which should be attacked at its root. Chairman Gonzalo specifically emphasizes the manifestations of semi-feudalism in politics and in the mechanism of the state by conceiving that gamonalismo is the political manifestation of semi-feudalism upon which this regime of servitude is supported, in which bosses and lackeys, who change outfits according to the government in turn, represent the old state in the most remote villages of the country. Since this is an agrarian war, this is the factor which the spearhead of the democratic revolution is targeted at.
Why is it semi-colonial? Modern Peruvian economy was born in submission to imperialism (the final phase of capitalism), which was masterfully characterized as monopolistic, parasitical and dying. Imperialism, even though it allows our political independence, as long as it serves its interest, still controls the entire economic process of Peru: our natural wealth, export products, industry, banking and finances. In brief, it sucks the blood of our people, devours the energies of a nation in formation, and most strikingly today it squeezes us and other oppressed nations with the external debt.
Chairman Gonzalo reaffirms himself in Lenin’s thesis, later accurately developed by Chairman Mao, to define the semi-colonial character of our society. In synthesis, Lenin outlined that there are many forms of imperialist domination, but two are typical:
The colony, which is the complete domination by the imperialist country on the oppressed nation or nations, and an intermediate form;
The semi-colony, in which the oppressed nation is politically independent but economically subjugated. It is an independent republic, but one that finds itself subjected to the ideological, political, economic, and military web of imperialism no matter if it has a government of its own.
Thus, the term “neocolony” used by revisionism in the 1960s is rejected. It was based on the conception that imperialism applies a softer form of domination and which led them to derive the characterization of a “dependent country.” Therefore, applying Chairman Mao’s thesis that a period of struggle was opening against the two superpowers that contend for the repartition of the world, one must specify who is the principal enemy of the moment. He defined that the principal imperialism that dominates Peru is Yankee imperialism, but asserted that one must ward off Russian social-imperialism that penetrates the country more each day, as well as the actions of the imperialist powers that are not superpowers. Thus, the proletariat in leading the democratic revolution will not be tied to any superpower or imperialist power and must maintain its ideological, political, and organizational independence. In conclusion, he demonstrates that Peruvian society continues to be a nation in formation, and that its semi-colonial character continues, showing itself as such in all fields and under new conditions.
Bureaucratic Capitalism. Chairman Gonzalo states that the understanding of this issue is key to the comprehension of Peruvian society. Following Chairman Mao’s thesis, he specifies five characteristics:
that bureaucratic capitalism is the capitalism that imperialism develops in the backward countries, which is comprised of the capital of large landowners, the big bankers, and the magnates of the big bourgeoisie;
it exploits the proletariat, the peasantry, and the petty bourgeoisie and places constraints upon the middle bourgeoisie;
it is passing through a process by which bureaucratic capitalism is combined with the power of the State and evolves into state monopoly capitalism, comprador and feudal, from which can be derived that in a first moment it unfolds as a non-state big monopoly capitalism and in a second moment, when is combined with the power of the state, it unfolds as state monopoly capitalism;
it ripens the conditions for the democratic revolution as it reaches the apex of its development; and,
confiscating bureaucratic capital is key to reach the pinnacle of the democratic revolution and it is decisive to pass over to the socialist revolution.
In applying the above, he conceives that bureaucratic capitalism is the capitalism that imperialism generates in the backward countries, which is linked to a decrepit feudalism and in submission to imperialism which is the last phase of capitalism. This system does not serve the majority of the people but rather the imperialists, the big bourgeoisie, and the landowners. Mariátegui has already pointed out that the bourgeoisie, for example upon creating banks, generates a capital owed [enfeudado] to imperialism and linked to feudalism. Chairman Gonzalo masterfully establishes that the capitalism that is unfolding in Peru is a bureaucratic capitalism hindered by the surviving shackles of semi-feudalism that bind it on the one hand, and on the other hand is subjugated to imperialism which does not permit it to develop the national economy; it is, then, a bureaucratic capitalism that oppresses and exploits the proletariat, the peasantry, and the petty bourgeoisie, and that constricts the middle bourgeoisie. Why? Because the capitalism that develops is a delayed process that only allows an economy to serve imperialist interests. It is a capitalism that represents the big bourgeoisie, the landowners and the rich peasants of the old type, the classes that constitute a minority but which exploit and oppress the large majority, the masses.
He analyzes the process that bureaucratic capitalism has followed in Peru, the first historical moment in which it develops from 1895 to the Second World War, in which, during the 1920s, the comprador bourgeoisie assumes control of the State, displacing the landlords but preserving their interests. The second moment is from the Second World War to 1980, a period of its expansion, during which a branch of the big bourgeoisie evolves into the bureaucratic bourgeoisie, which began in 1939 in the first government of Prado, at the time when the participation of the State in the economic process begins. Subsequently, this participation has grown even more, and was due to the fact that the big bourgeoisie, due to a lack of capital, is not capable of deepening bureaucratic capitalism. Thus a clash between both factions of the big bourgeoisie was generated, between the bureaucratic and the comprador. In 1968, the bureaucratic bourgeoisie takes the leadership of the state through the armed forces by way of the military coup of Velasco, which in turn generated a great growth in the state economy. The number of state-owned companies, for example, increased from 18 to 180; the state passes has become the motor of the economy led by the bureaucratic bourgeoisie, but it is during this moment that the economy enters into a deep crisis. The third moment is from 1980 onward, in which bureaucratic capitalism enters into a general crisis and its final destruction, a moment which begins with the People’s War. Since it is a capitalism that is born critically, sick, rotten, and bound to feudalism and subjugated to imperialism, at this time it enters into a general crisis, to its final destruction, and no measure or reform can save it. It will lengthen its agony at best. On the other hand, like a beast in agony, it will defend itself by seeking to crush the revolution.
If we see this process from the people’s road, in the first moment the PCP was constituted with Mariátegui in 1928, and the history of the country was split into two; in the second, the PCP was reconstituted as Party of a new type with Chairman Gonzalo and revisionism was purged; and in the third, the PCP entered to lead the People’s War, a transcendental milestone which radically changes the history by taking the superior qualitative leap of making the conquest of power a reality by way of armed force and the People’s War. All of this merely proves the political aspect of bureaucratic capitalism that is rarely emphasized, but which Chairman Gonzalo considers as a key issue: bureaucratic capitalism ripens the conditions for revolution, and today as it enters into its final phase, it ripens the conditions for the development and victory of the revolution.
It is also very important to see how bureaucratic capitalism is shaped by non-state monopoly capitalism and by state monopoly capitalism, that is the reason why he differentiates between the two factions of the big bourgeoisie, the bureaucratic one and the comprador, so as to avoid tailing one or the other, a problem that led our Party to 30 years of wrong tactics. It is important to conceive it this way, since the confiscation of bureaucratic capitalism by the New Power will facilitate the completion of the democratic revolution and to advance into the socialist revolution. If only the state monopoly capitalism is targeted, the other part would remain free, the non-state monopoly capital, and the big comprador bourgeoisie would remain economically able to lift its head to snatch away the leadership of the revolution and to prevent its passage to the socialist revolution.
Furthermore, Chairman Gonzalo generalizes that bureaucratic capitalism is not a process peculiar to China or to Peru, but that it follows the late conditions in which the various imperialists subjugate the oppressed nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, at a time when these oppressed nations have not yet destroyed the vestiges of feudalism, much less developed capitalism.
In synthesis, the key issue to understand the process of contemporary Peruvian society and the character of the revolution, is this Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, Gonzalo Thought thesis on bureaucratic capitalism, which is a contribution to the world revolution that we Marxist-Leninist-Maoists have firmly assumed with Gonzalo Thought.
What type of state is sustained by this semi-feudal and semi-colonial society, upon which bureaucratic capitalism is unfolding? Based on the analysis of contemporary Peruvian society and the masterful Maoist thesis On New Democracy which proposes that the many state systems in the world can be classified according to their class character into three fundamental types:
Republics under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, which also include the old democratic states and the states under the joint dictatorship of landowners and the big bourgeoisie;
republics under the dictatorship of the proletariat; and
republics under the joint dictatorship of the revolutionary classes.
Chairman Gonzalo establishes that the character of the old reactionary state in Peru is of the first type, a joint dictatorship of landowners and the big bourgeoisie, bureaucratic bourgeoisie or comprador that in collusion and contention struggle for the leadership of the State. Since the historical trend in Peru is that the bureaucratic bourgeoisie imposes itself, this necessarily implies a very acute and long struggle, especially since today the bureaucratic bourgeoisie is in command of the old landlord-bureaucratic state.
At the same time there are differences between the state system and the system of government. They are parts of a unity of opposites; the state system is the place that classes occupy within the state and the government is the form in which power is organized. Chairman Mao taught that the main thing is to define the class character of a state. The forms of government that are introduced can be civilian or military, with elections or by decree, liberal-democratic or fascist, but they always represent the dictatorship of the reactionary classes; to not see the old state this way is to fall into the trap of identifying a dictatorship with a military regime and to think that a civilian government is not a dictatorship, thus tailing one of the factions in the big bourgeoisie behind the tale of “defending democracy” or “avoiding military coups,” positions that instead of destroying the old state support it and defend it, as is the case in Peru with the revisionists and opportunists of the United Left.
The old state is subordinated to imperialism, in our case mainly Yankee imperialism, which is propped up by its spinal column, the reactionary armed forces, and counts on a increasingly growing bureaucracy. The armed forces have the same character as the state that they support and defend.
Chairman Gonzalo tells us clearly: “It is this social system that yields their usufruct that the ruling classes and their master Yankee imperialism defends with blood and fire, through their landlord-bureaucratic state, sustained by their reactionary armed forces; constantly exercising their class dictatorship (of the big bourgeoisie and landlords), either through a de facto military government... or through governments stemming from elections and so-called constitutional ones...” and, “...this decrepit system of exploitation, destroys and halts the powerful creative forces of the people, the only forces capable of the deepest revolutionary transformation...”
Chairman Gonzalo teaches us that there are three targets of the democratic revolution: imperialism, bureaucratic capitalism and semi-feudalism, with one of them being the principal target according in which the revolution crosses takes place. Today, in the period of the agrarian war, the principal target is semi-feudalism.
Imperialism, mainly Yankee, because for us it is the principal imperialism that dominates and that tries to ensure its dominance more and drives home our situation as a semi-colonial country; but we must also ward off penetration by Russian social-imperialism and of the other imperialist powers. We must use the various factions of the old state to sharpen their contradictions and isolate the principal enemy in order to defeat it. Bureaucratic capitalism is the constant obstacle of the democratic revolution that acts to maintain semi-feudalism and semi-colonialism at the service of imperialism. And semi-feudalism that subsists today with new modalities but that still constitutes the basic problem of the country.
1st: To destroy imperialist domination, mainly Yankee imperialism in Peru’s case, while warding off the actions of the other superpower, Russian social-imperialism and of the other imperialist powers.
2nd: To destroy bureaucratic capitalism, confiscating both the big state and non-state monopoly capital.
3rd: To destroy the property of the feudal landlords, confiscating both the big associative and non-associative properties, with individual distribution of the land under the slogan “Land to the tiller,” primarily and principally to the poor peasants.
4th: To support middle capital, which is allowed to work while imposing conditions. All of this implies the collapse the old state through the People’s War with armed revolutionary force and the leadership of the Communist Party in building a new State.
Chairman Gonzalo has defined the social classes which must be united according to the conditions of the revolution: the proletariat, the peasantry (mainly the poor peasants), the petty bourgeoisie and the middle bourgeoisie. The classes we aim against are: landlords of the old and the new mold, and the big bureaucratic bourgeoisie or comprador bourgeoisie.
Chairman Gonzalo tells us: “...the peasantry is the principal motive force... who for centuries fundamentally demand ‘Land to the tiller,’ which despite their courageous struggles has yet to achieve it”; “...the proletariat... the leading class of our revolution... that in the long, arduous struggle has torn only starvation wages and has conquered only crumbs from their exploiters, only to lose them through each economic crisis that the society suffers; a proletariat that debates within a sinister iron circle...”; “a petty bourgeoisie with broad layers, which corresponds to a backward country, who sees their dreams shattered in time to the inexorable pauperization that the prevailing social order imposes to them”; and, “a petty bourgeoisie, a national bourgeoisie that is weak and lacks capital, which develops unevenly, zig-zagging and split between revolution and counter-revolution...” “Four classes that historically make up the people and the motive forces of the revolution, but of them all it is mainly the poor peasantry who are the main driving force.”
A particular importance is attached to the scientific organization of poverty, a thesis that comes from Marx and that for us implies organizing the mainly poor peasantry and the poorest masses in the cities into a Communist Party, a People’s Guerrilla Army and a New State that is concretized through People’s Committees. A series of relationships is established. Thus, to speak of the peasant question is to speak of the land question, and to speak of the land question is to speak of the military question, and to speak of the military question is to speak of the question of power, of the New State which we will reach through the democratic revolution led by the proletariat through its Party, the Communist Party. In the People’s War, the peasant question is the base and the military question is the guide. Furthermore, without the peasantry in arms there is no hegemony in the Front. It is, then, of great significance to understand that the peasant question is basic and it sustains all of the actions in the democratic revolution. It is important even in the socialist revolution.
The proletariat is the leading class. It is the class that guarantees the Communist course of the revolution, that unites with the peasantry, it makes up the worker-peasant alliance, the basis of the Front. The Peruvian proletariat that is concentrated largely in the capital and is proportionally greater than in China, but in terms of percentage decreases day by day, a specific situation that presents itself as we apply the democratic revolution, for which we wage the People’s War in the cities as a complement. A class that has arrived today to the formation of a Communist Party, a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, Gonzalo Thought party that has generated a People’s Guerrilla Army which it leads absolutely and a New State which it leads in a joint dictatorship, a Party that through almost 20 years of reconstitution and seven in leadership of the People’s War has given the people a great historical leap. It is vital to understand its leading role in the democratic revolution, since it guarantees the correct course towards Communism; and, without the leadership of the proletariat the democratic revolution would evolve into an armed action under the leadership of the bourgeoisie and would fall under the tutelage of a superpower or imperialist power.
To the above two classes are added the petty bourgeoisie, and taken together they are the solid trunk of the revolutionary Front, which is no more than a Front for the People’s War and a framework of the alliance of classes that make up the New State, the People’s Committees in the countryside and the Revolutionary Defense Movement of the People in the cities.
Concerning the middle bourgeoisie, today it does not participate in the revolution but its interests are respected. It is not a target of the democratic revolution; it is a class that suffers ever-greater restrictions from the reactionaries but it is of dual character and in the course of the democratic revolution can join the side of the revolution at any moment. If the interests of the middle bourgeoisie are not taken into account then the revolution would change character, it would no longer be democratic but socialist.
In sum, the New State that we are forming in the democratic revolution will be a joint dictatorship, an alliance of four classes led by the proletariat through its Party, the Communist Party: a dictatorship of workers, peasants, the petty bourgeoisie and under certain conditions the national or middle bourgeoisie; a dictatorship that today is of three classes, since the middle bourgeoisie do not participate in the revolution, but their interest are respected. These classes make up the dictatorship of New Democracy in the state system, and a People’s Assembly as a system of government.
In the democratic revolution there are three fundamental contradictions: The contradiction between nation-imperialism, the contradiction between the people and bureaucratic capitalism, and the contradiction between the masses and feudalism. Depending on the periods of the revolution, any one of these can be the principal contradiction. As we develop an agrarian war today, if we carefully take note of the three, the principal contradiction is between the masses and feudalism. This has a process of development in the different phases of the war, thus in our case the principal contradiction of masses-feudalism has unfolded as masses-government, and later will be between the new state — old state, and its perspective is Communist Party — reactionary armed forces.
Chairman Gonzalo teaches us that the democratic revolution is the indispensable first stage in the oppressed nations, which will pass through various periods according to how such contradictions are resolved. There is an unbreakable relationship and an uninterrupted road between the democratic revolution and the second stage, which is the socialist revolution, and its perspective is a series of cultural revolutions to arrive at Communism, serving the world revolution. As such, we have a maximum program and a minimal one, the minimum being the program of the democratic revolution that is specified in each period and which implies a new politics: the joint dictatorship of four classes; a new economy: confiscation of big imperialist capital, of bureaucratic capitalism, and of the big feudal landlord property, with individual land distribution to the mainly poor peasants; a new culture: national, or rather anti-imperialist, democratic, or rather for the people, and scientific, or based on the ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Gonzalo Thought. The maximum program implies that we, as Communists, aim to eliminate the three inequalities between town and countryside, between intellectual and manual work, and between workers and peasants. Two programs for which we give our lives against every kind of injury, taunt and abjectness. Only the Communists can fight for the revolution to maintain its course.
Chairman Gonzalo stated: “What in essence is this democratic revolution? It is a peasant war led by the Communist Party, which intends to create a new state comprised of four classes to crush imperialism, the big bourgeoisie, and the landlords in order to fulfil its four tasks. The democratic revolution has a principal form of struggle: The People’s War, and a principal form of organization: the armed force, which is the solution to the land question, the national question, and the question of the destruction of the landlord bureaucratic state and the reactionary armed forces, the vertebral column that sustains it, in order to fulfill the political objective of building a new state, a state of new democracy, and to make the People’s Republic of New Democracy, advancing immediately to the socialist revolution. In synthesis, the democratic revolution is concretized by a peasant war led by the Communist Party; any other modality is only a service to the landlord bureaucratic state.”
In synthesis, Chairman Gonzalo demonstrates the force of the two stages of the revolution in the oppressed nations and establishes that the world proletarian revolution has three types of revolution. As such, by making the democratic revolution, the Communist Party of Peru is serving the world revolution and Chairman Gonzalo is contributing to the world revolution. We, with Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Gonzalo Thought, have assumed the line on the democratic revolution established by Chairman Gonzalo.
In over seven years of the People’s War in Peru, the justness and correctness of Gonzalo Thought is demonstrated, and we see that the Communist Party of Peru, with the leadership of Chairman Gonzalo, is leading the poor peasantry in arms, is forming a joint dictatorship of workers, peasants, and the petty bourgeoisie under the hegemony of the proletariat, is observing the interests of the middle bourgeoisie, and is destroying thirteen centuries of the reactionary state. It is a dictatorship that marches within the People’s Committees, today clandestine, which are expressions of the New State that exercises power through People’s Assemblies, in which everyone expresses opinions, chooses, judges, or sanctions by applying true democracy. They do not hesitate in using the dictatorship, force if necessary in order to maintain their power and to defend it from the exploitative classes or their oppressors, gamonales or lackeys; thus specifying a new politics and an advance in the seizure of Power from below. It is destroying the basis of this society, semi-feudalism, and it is introducing new social relations of production by applying a new economy, taking into account the agrarian tactic of combating the evolution of semi-feudalism by aiming at associative property and avoiding non-associative property, neutralizing the rich peasantry, winning over the middle peasantry and basing itself on the poor peasantry; and the agrarian program of “Land to the tiller” through confiscation and individual distribution through a process: with plans of razing, whose concrete objective is to destroy semi-feudal relations in order to disarticulate the productive process, directing the spearhead of the revolution at dislocating the power of the gamonales with armed actions; applying sowings and collective crop harvestings although we do not yet have power and while the EGP is not sufficiently developed, all the peasants work everyone’s land, always collectively favoring the mainly poor peasantry. In the event of a surplus, a form of taxes is calculated and produce or seeds is distributed to the poorest and to the middle peasants. The lands of the rich peasants are not touched unless such land is needed, but conditions are imposed on them. This political policy has had highly positive results, it has benefitted the poorest, it has increased the quality of the products and above all it is defended better; the perspective of this policy is the invasion of lands and individual allotment. Also, particularly in new peasant zones, we have applied invasions of lands and individual allotment, lighting the struggle in the countryside and disturbing the plans of the old state, of each government in turn, in each specific conjuncture, organizing the armed defense. Today, we have generalized the land invasions countrywide. Furthermore, the organization of production of an entire people is being achieved, with the exchange of produce or seeds, the collection of firewood or cochinilla, for example, communal shops, trade, and mule driving. This process serves the actions in cities, sabotages against demo-bourgeois or corporative-fascist state organizations, state or private and imperialist banks, imperialist centers of the superpowers or powers, industrial or “research” sites, businesses of bureaucratic capitalism, for example Centromin Perú; also the selective annihilation of recalcitrants and the agitprop campaigns and armed propaganda.
And on the basis of this new politics and new economy, a new culture is being erected that beats in the hearts of mainly the poor peasants; basic education is a problem that deserves our fundamental attention and is unfolding under coeducation, education and work, with a basic program for the children, adults, and for the masses in general; it is truly important. The problems of health and recreation of the masses are also of vital importance. Thus, the masses are organized, forming their mobilization, politicization, organization and armament, aiming towards the armed sea of masses, based on the ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Gonzalo Thought, under the leadership of the Party, with the experience of the People’s War and above all and principally with the new power, exercising it, conquering it, defending it and developing it, as People’s Committees, Bases of Support and advancing the People’s Republic of New Democracy.
This is the democratic revolution that the Party is specifying for Peruvian society, overthrowing imperialism, bureaucratic capitalism and semi-feudalism in the country through a united People’s War, principally in the countryside and with an urban complement, and it is not the "democratic revolution” falsely proclaimed by the current fascist and corporatist Apra government that denies the character of Peruvian society, classes and the class struggle, especially the landlord-bureaucratic dictatorial character of the old state, as well as the need for violence to topple it. It is a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, Gonzalo Thought democratic revolution that constitutes an ardent and growing flame serving the world proletarian revolution which is guaranteed by the masterful leadership of Chairman Gonzalo.
DOWN WITH THE LANDLORD-BUREAUCRAT STATE!
FOR THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF NEW DEMOCRACY!
LONG LIVE THE PERUVIAN REVOLUTION!
Upholding, defending, and applying Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, principally Maoism, Chairman Gonzalo established the military line of the Party. In the First Expanded National Conference of November, 1979, it was agreed upon as being central to the general political line and it is now being developed through the People’s War.
Chairman Gonzalo has persistently integrated the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism with the concrete practice of the Peruvian revolution, combating and crushing revisionism and the right opportunist line. By applying dialectical materialism to the question of war, the military line also expresses the philosophical thought of Chairman Gonzalo and summarizes the laws of war, of revolutionary war in general, and the specific laws of the revolutionary war in Peru. The military line is vital to our ideological, political, military, economic, and cultural work and permits us to differentiate between the proletarian military line and the bourgeois military line.
The military line consists of the laws that govern the People’s War for the seizure of Power and its defense. It contains three elements:
People’s war, specified in our case as unified People’s War, principally in the countryside, with its complement in the city;
Building of the revolutionary armed forces, applied here as the People’s Guerilla Army, which has the particularity of incorporating the militia in order to advance towards the sea of armed masses, and;
Strategy and tactics that are formed through the encirclement and annihilation campaigns and the counter-campaigns of encirclement and annihilation. In our case this element is specified by applying political and military plans that have a political and military strategy developed in campaigns with specific objectives.
Chairman Gonzalo, reaffirming himself on the universal law of revolutionary violence, follows the military theory of the proletariat established by Chairman Mao: The people’s war has universal validity and is applicable in all types of countries, in accordance with the conditions of each revolution. The World People’s War is the principal form of struggle that the proletariat and the oppressed peoples of the world should launch to oppose imperialist world war. The people’s war is a war of the masses and can only be accomplished by mobilizing the masses and being supported by them. He says: “The masses give us everything, from the crusts of bread that are taken from their own mouths to their precious blood which stirs jointly with that of the combatants and militants, which nourishes the road of the People’s War for the New Power.” The masses should be organized into armed units in the People’s Guerilla Army. In the rural Base Areas all the men and women of each People’s Committee are organized militarily. In the cities, the People’s Guerrilla Army also acts and is bound more and more to the masses in the various new organizations in and for the People’s War. The Revolutionary Movement in Defense of the People is the realization of the Front in the cities. Its objective is to mobilize the masses in resistance, to serve the war, and serve the future insurrection.
He holds that in order to carry forward the People’s War we must take into account four fundamental problems:
The ideology of the proletariat, Marxism-Leninism-Maoism that must be specified as a guiding thought, therefore we base ourselves on the Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Gonzalo Thought, primarily the latter;
The need for the Communist Party of Peru that leads the People’s War;
The People’s War specified as a peasant war that follows the road of surrounding the cities from the countryside; and
Base Areas or the New Power, the building of the Base Areas, which is the essence of the path of surrounding the cities from the countryside.
He analyzes the historical process of our people and demonstrates that they have always struggled, that it “has been nurtured and advanced through revolutionary violence. It is through this violence, in its diverse forms and degrees, that our people have seized their economic gains, rights, and freedoms, since nothing fell from the sky, nor was it handed out. ‘Damn the words of traitors’; everything was won in fact through revolutionary violence, in ardent battles against the reactionary violence; that is how the eight hour day was won, our lands were seized and defended, our rights were won and tyrants were overthrown. Revolutionary violence is, therefore, the very essence of our historical process... it is easy to understand that the development and victory of the Peruvian revolution, of our democratic revolution, the emancipation of the people and the class, will be achieved solely through the greatest revolutionary war of our people, raising the masses in arms through the People’s War.”
He draws the historical lesson that these political and military realities have defined the major transformations in the country. First comes the military deed and later political change. This shows once again that war is the continuation of politics by other means. He teaches us how the masses of our people have fought against exploitation. Since the VII century, in which the Peruvian state emerged, the masses have combated oppression and exploitation. The Incan empire established its domination through wars of conquest which culminated in the battle of Yahuarpampa against the Chancas Predominant cultural group in the region of Ayacucho and Apurímac.. The empire further expanded through war. This is a political and military fact.
The conquest by the Spanish crown was another political and military fact that was imposed, crushing the resistance of the indigenous people and using the infightings among the conquered. However, we should highlight among others the struggle of Manco Inca, who led a rebellion against the Spanish.
The imposition of the Vice-royalty was another political and military fact that was used to crush the conquistadors themselves. To maintain itself it had to face large peasant uprisings such as the one led by Juan Santos Atahualpa, and in 1780 the powerful movement of Túpac Amaru that raised 100 thousand men, extending from Cusco and Puno into Bolivia, putting the dominance of the Vice-royalty at serious risk, having repercussions in Argentina, Colombia, and Mexico and thus shaking up the American continent. While the movement was defeated, it had weakened and undermined the Vice-royalty, thus preparing the conditions for Emancipation. To see its class character, we should recall that Túpac Amaru was a cacique. [A cacique was a chief of the indias in the area of Cusco, appointed by the Viceroy]
The Emancipation was another military and political fact and has three moments: First, in the XVIII Century, peasant uprisings, Túpac Amaru, for example; second, the uprisings in the cities, such as that of Francisco de Zela in Tacna and the guerrillas, especially those of Cangallo and Yauyos among many others; third, confrontations of large armies that ended with the liberating epics of San Martín and Bolivar in the battle of Ayacucho in 1824. It is important to understand that even though the Emancipation was led by the creoles, it had the merit of breaking the domination of the Spanish crown; that San Martín was a great military strategist and Bolivar proved to be both a political and military strategist. Both of them fought for the emancipation of several American countries without seeking personal gain, showing that to serve a great cause we must always put the general interest first and never the personal, and they did so without being Communists.
In the Republic the landlords remained in power but facing with fire and blood great peasant struggles, among them those of Atusparia and Uscho Pedro, or that of Llaccolla Autsparia, Uscho Pedro, and Llaccolla were leaders of rebellions in southern Peru. in Ocros. Here we have the dark chapter of the war with Chile where both countries faced each other manipulated by the interests of the English and the French that were seeking our wealth in guano and nitrates. This was a war that halted the incipient capitalist development of the country and revealed the dirty role of the dominant classes, part of which capitulated to Chile. But one must emphasize the heroic resistance of the masses against the invader in defense of the people and territorial integrity, a resistance that was especially strong in the mountainous Central and Southern regions of the of the country where guerrillas were formed; Cáceres, who was a landowner-soldier, played an important role in that circumstance.
The war with Chile was waged from 1879 to 1883, and it led to the collapse of the Peruvian economy. Shortly thereafter, in 1895 it entered the beginning of bureaucratic capitalism that initiates the development of contemporary Peruvian society. As the XIX Century passes, Peru goes from a colony to a semi-colony and from feudal to semi-feudal. Bureaucratic capitalism bound to Yankee imperialism begins to develop, thus replacing the English one. Finally, the modern proletariat emerges which changes the terms of the political struggle.
From this historical process the following lessons are drawn:
The people have always struggled, they are not peaceful and they apply revolutionary violence with the means at hand.
The peasant struggles are those which have most shaken the foundations of society, and these struggles have not triumphed because they lacked the leadership of the proletariat represented by the Communist Party.
The political and military deeds determine the major social changes.
From the position of the military line, contemporary Peru has three moments linked to the appearance of the proletariat that founds its Party to seize Power through revolutionary violence, specifying its road, which is synthesized in the process of the military line of the Party.
In the first moment, from 1895 to 1945, the Communist Party of Peru is constituted and, concerning the military line, Mariátegui establishes the “Indication and outline of the road.” The heroic workers’ struggles for better wages, the eight hour day, for decent working conditions, the peasant movements for lands and the agricultural proletarian movements of the southern Sierra, and the movements to reform the university, led to a complex sharpening of the class struggle in which the Peruvian proletariat matured and in which Mariátegui founded the Communist Party of Peru, on October 7, 1928, under the banner of Marxism-Leninism.
Mariátegui pointed out and outlined fundamental ideas on revolutionary violence. He said: “There is no revolution that is moderate, balanced, calm, placid.” “Power is seized through violence... it is preserved only through dictatorship.” He conceived the revolutionary war as being protracted in nature: “A revolution can only be fulfilled after many years. Frequently it has alternating periods of predominance of either the revolutionary forces or the forces of counter-revolution.” He established the relationship between politics and war; understanding that the revolution generates an army of a new type with its own tasks different from those of the exploiters; he also understood the nature of the peasantry and the vital participation of the working class in a leading role, that the revolution will come from the Andes, that “with the demolition of the latifundista feudalism, the urban capitalism will lack forces to resist the growing working class”; that in order to make revolution, guns, a program and doctrine are needed. He conceived the revolution as a total war in which there is a conjunction of political, social, military, economic and moral elements, and that each faction puts in tension and mobilizes all the resources that it can. He totally rejected the electoral road.
Mariátegui died in April, 1930. The Right led by Ravines is going to usurp the leadership of the Party and the questioning and denial of Mariátegui’s road occurs. They invoke insurrection in words but degenerate into electoralism. The so-called “Constitutional Congress” of the Party in 1942 sanctions the tactics of capitulation of the “National Union”, both in internal politics as well as internationally. The Party is influenced by Browderite ideas, a predecessor of contemporary revisionism, where there is a clear abandonment of revolutionary violence and an electoral tactic is promoted focusing on the “National Democratic Front.” Nevertheless, the red line in the Party struggled to defending the Marxist-Leninist positions, although it was bitterly resisted and the internal struggles were resolved through expulsions.
In the second moment, from 1945 to 1980, The Communist Party of Peru is reconstituted, and with respect to the military line, Chairman Gonzalo establishes the “Definition and Basis of the Road.” This second moment has two parts: The first, in the period from 1945 to 1963, which is one of “New impulses for the development of the Party and the beginnings of the struggle against revisionism.” The second part, from 1963 to 1980, is one of the “Establishment of the general political line and reconstitution of the Party.”
In the first part of the second moment, by the mid-1950s, the struggle for reactivating the Party that had remained unfinished after Odría’s coup d’état begins. Afterwards, the Party starts the opening step in the struggle against revisionism. This process occurs in the midst of the repercussions of the Cuban revolution. At the same time, at the world level, the unfolding of the struggle between Marxism and revisionism begins. The revolutionary road is discussed, the armed struggle is discussed again and, in the Fourth Congress of the Party, in 1962, it is agreed that in Peru the so-called “two roads” are feasible: “The peaceful road and the violent one.” Also, “the revolution can follow the road of surrounding the cities from the countryside or from the city to the countryside.” But in spite of this talk, the Party in essence was hanging on to the old electoral strategy then taking the form of the so-called “National Liberation Front.” This was the revisionism of Khrushchev. At this time the political positions of Chairman Gonzalo began to emerge, laying the foundations of the red line which adhered to the positions of Chairman Mao in the struggle between Marxism and revisionism.
In the second part of the second moment, from 1963 to 1980, we have the “Establishment of the general political line and reconstitution of the Party,” this task was carried forward by Chairman Gonzalo in constituting the red fraction of the Party in an intensive struggle of more than fifteen years and through three political strategies:
From 1963 to 1969 he guided the red fraction under the political strategy of following the “Road of surrounding the cities from the countryside.” From 1969 to 1976 he led the Party with the political strategy of “Reconstitution of the Party for the People’s War.” From 1976 to 1979 there was the political strategy of “Complete the Reconstitution and Establish Bases” for the beginning of the armed struggle.
During the first strategic period following the “Road of surrounding the cities from the countryside,” the Communists of Peru are profoundly shaken by the struggle between Marxism and revisionism, and Marxist positions seep into the organization. In the 1960s there is a great peasant movement that mobilized 300 to 500 thousand peasants which fought for land but that was precluded from the armed struggle by a revisionist leadership; a great movement of labor strikes occurs in the working class, and the university struggle is developed to a higher level. All these events had repercussions on the Party and Chairman Gonzalo forged the red fraction in Ayacucho, with clear ideas that the Party must seizing power, and that it must be based on Marxist theory. A frontal struggle is unleashed against revisionism that had its center in the Soviet Union, and adheres firmly to the positions of the Chinese Communist Party and principally with those of Chairman Mao. He sustained that: “The countryside is in a powerful revolutionary ferment,” “we must lend special attention to the countryside and to the poor peasants,” that “our revolution will be from the countryside to the city.” In the Fourth National Conference of January, 1964, he met with the different bases of the Party to expel revisionism and its crusty representatives Jorge del Prado, Acosta and Juan Barrio. Our Party is going to be one of the first in breaking and expelling revisionism from its ranks.
Chairman Gonzalo began to consolidate the Party in the Regional Committee of Ayacucho; the center of Party work was focused in the countryside; in the city he organized the poor masses in the Neighborhoods’ Federation, and reorganized the Revolutionary Student Front. But what is of transcendental importance, is that despite the opposition of the new central leadership, Chairman Gonzalo applying a Party agreement launched the “Special Work,” which was the military work of the Regional Committees by giving them three functions: political, military, and logistical. Afterwards, in sharp two-line struggle against the positions of the central leadership that wanted to control the military work, he combated militarism, mercenaryism and focoism. In these circumstances the guerrillas of the MIR [Movement of the Revolutionary Left] develop, a position that expressed the struggle of our people from a petit-bourgeois outlook, which follows a militaristic line and ignores the Party. In spite of being out of step with the rise of the peasants, this movement showed the feasibility of the perspective of armed struggle, provided that it was led by a just and correct line under the leadership of the Party. For that reason, Chairman Gonzalo was opposed to dissolving the Party in order to tail the MIR and the ELN [National Liberation Army] in a supposed Front. At the September 1967 meeting of the Expanded Political Bureau, he outlined a Strategic Plan which contained a set of measures that the Central Committee had to take for the building of the three instruments, having as its principal task the forming of the armed forces that was agreed upon at the V National Conference of 1965. This occurs in the midst of a factional struggle where most notably the fractions of “Patria Roja” and of the Right liquidationism of Paredes contended for the leadership of the Party. Paredes intended to replay the tactic of tailing a faction of the big bourgeoisie, while those of “Patria Roja” went on to plunge into Right opportunism.
During the second political strategy of “Reconstitute the Party for the Peoples’ War,” Chairman Gonzalo outlined the underlying revisionism within the Party and that its reconstitution on the Basis of Party Unity, upholding Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong thought, the thought of Mariátegui and the general political line was necessary. These positions were opposed by the aforementioned fractions. The mishandling of the two-line struggle by Paredes is going to lead to the break-up of the Party. Chairman Gonzalo understood the need for the reconstitution of the Party and the need for waging an internal struggle to make it a reality by sweeping away revisionism, as evidenced by the editorials he wrote in Bandera Roja of December 1967, “Develop in Depth the Internal Struggle,” and that of April 1968, “Deepen and Intensify the Internal Struggle in Revolutionary Practice.” He worked tirelessly for the channeling of revolutionary violence in a people’s war, for the road of surrounding the cities from the countryside, thus accomplishing the principal task demanded by the Party: The building of the revolutionary armed forces. He proposed that the indispensable base in this undertaking was the development of revolutionary peasant work, that without good work in the peasant masses, that is, work guided by Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong thought and led by the Communist Party, there cannot be a development of the armed forces nor of the People’s War. Afterward, he proposed that the Party must not only retake the continuing validity of Mariátegui’s thought, but must also develop it. He established the Agrarian Program of the Party in May of 1969. In 1972, the Strategic Plan of the Regional Committee of Ayacucho was established. Right liquidationism is defeated, and in the Party two fractions remain: the red fraction fundamentally in Ayacucho, led by Chairman Gonzalo, and the “Bolshevik” fraction, acting mainly in Lima. This second one developed a left liquidationist line, a form of revisionism that isolated the Party from the masses. Their conception was that fascism could not be fought, that a correct line was sufficient. They had a military line that was opposed to the People’s War. They were crushed in 1975 and their leaders fled.
During the third political strategy to “Complete the Reconstitution and to Establish Bases” to begin the armed struggle, the problem was to finish, to consider the Reconstitution of the Party as complete, and to establish bases to begin the armed struggle. This issue was settled in the VII Plenum of April, 1977, in which all the Party worked under the slogan of “Building serving the armed struggle,” in struggle against the seeds of a right opportunist line (ROL), which sustained that Velasco had made the agrarian reform, that there was a need to organize the peasants in connection with the Peasant Federation of Peru and that the People’s War needed to be waged for the “deepest claims of the masses,” forgetting about the problems of land and of power. In the cities, they developed “workerism,” focusing the class in labor unions and opposed to the class playing its leading role. Once these positions were crushed, Chairman Gonzalo launched the “National Plan of Building” in June of 1977; dozens of cadre were sent to the countryside in the interests of the strategic needs of the People’s War and to build Regional Committees taking into account the future Bases Areas. In the VIII Plenum of July of 1978, the “Outline for the Armed Struggle” was established. In essence, this outlined outlined that the People’s War in Peru must be developed as a unified whole in both the countryside as well as in the city, with the countryside being the principal theater of armed actions, following the road of surrounding the cities from the countryside. Furthermore, it must take into account the historical social process of the country, especially the military aspect, the importance of the Sierra and principally from the Central and Southern part in our history, the importance of the Capital, and the need to pace Peru within the context of Latin America, in South America particularly, and within the international context and the world revolution. All the Party was put into a general reorganization, placing the countryside as central to develop the principal form of struggle and organization. Thus, the basis of the building of the three instruments of the revolution was laid down.
In synthesis, the entire process of Reconstitution led us to a Party of a new type prepared to begin the People’s War and to lead it until the seizure of power countrywide. In this process the historical contingent was forged, who with the ideology of the proletariat under the leadership of Chairman Gonzalo was prepared to assume the seizure of Power through the People’s War.
In the third moment of the Party, from 1980 to present, the Party begins to lead the People’s War. Its military line is formed with the “Application and development of the Road.” This third moment has four milestones:
Definition;
Preparation;
Initiation; and
Development of the guerrilla war.
In essence, the Party takes up the historic and transcendental agreement of initiating the People’s War in Peru, which was agreed upon in the IX Expanded Plenum of June, 1979. This agreement was achieved in the midst of three intense struggles: The first was against the right opportunist line that was opposed to beginning the armed struggle, denying the revolutionary situation and declaring its conditions as nonexistent, and that there was a condition of “stability.” After the expulsion of this line, the Party agreed upon a new stage and a new goal. The second struggle was against a new Rightist line that believed that the armed struggle was impossible, that it was a “dream,” that there was no need of taking up that agreement because it was a matter of principle. The third struggle was with the divergences in the Left, one in which the details were discussed on how to develop the People’s War. It was established that the proletarian position was Chairman Gonzalo’s and therefore was the one which should be implemented; all the Party made a commitment to be guided by the leadership of Chairman Gonzalo.
Concerning the organization of the armed forces, it was agreed to form military cadres, specific groups for action and to undermine the reactionary forces, aiming at soldiers. In strategy and tactics, the organizational system was restated.
In this milestone event, the Program of the Party is sanctioned, along with the general political line of the Peruvian revolution and the Party statues. Problems related to political strategy, revolutionary violence, the People’s War and the Party, the Army and Front United are resolved. The following Decision is assumed: “Forge the First Company in Deeds! Let violence flourish towards the initiation and development of the armed struggle; we open with lead and offer our blood to write the new chapter of the history of the Party and of our people forging the First Company in deeds. Peru, December 3, 1979.”
The Party prepared the armed struggle dealing with two problems: 1) Problems of Political Strategy that give both the content and the objectives of the People’s War in perspective and in the short term, as well as the guidelines that the People’s War should have, the military plans and the building of the three instruments and their ties with the new Power; 2) The Initiation of the armed struggle. This decisive and essential problem had merited the most special attention from Chairman Gonzalo, who established the “Plan of Initiation” guided by the slogan “Initiate the armed struggle!” that was the gist of the principal politics that had to be developed militarily. Its contents included:
First, the political tasks that had to be fulfilled during the initiation of the armed struggle, to boycott the elections, to promote militarily the armed struggle for the land and to establish the bases for the new seizures, especially the new Power;
Second, forms of struggle: guerrilla warfare, sabotage, propaganda, armed agitation, and selective annihilation;
Third, organizational and military forms: armed detachments, with or without modern weapons;
Fourth, a chronology, date of the initiation and duration of the Plan, and simultaneous actions for specific dates.
The Preparation began with the struggle against the Rightist positions within the Party that were denying the revolutionary conditions, and they were saying that the Party was not prepared or that the masses would not lend us support. The leader of these positions deserted and they were crushed.
On May 17, 1980, the People’s War in Peru began. It “was a defiant political blow of transcendental significance that, displaying rebellious red flags and hoisting hammers and sickles, proclaimed: ‘It is right to rebel’ and ‘Power grows from the barrel of a gun.’ It summoned the people, especially the poor peasantry, to stand up in arms, to light the bonfire and to shake the Andes, to write the new history in the fields and hidden features of our tumultuous geography, to tear down the rotten walls of the oppressive order, to conquer the summits, to storm the heavens with guns to open the new dawn. The beginnings were modest, almost without modern weapons. It was fought, it was advanced and it was built from the small to the large and from the weak material and initial fire came the great turbulent fire and mighty roar that grows, sowing revolution and exploding into ever more impetuous People’s War.”
This third milestone lasted from May to December of 1980, resolving the problem of how to initiate the armed struggle, of going from the times of peace to the times of war. In this context, the militarization of the Party through actions and the masterful Plan of Initiation were key. This was how the new was born: the principal form of struggle, the armed struggle and the principal form of organization, the detachments and squads. The most outstanding actions in the field were the guerrilla actions of Ayrabamba and Aysarca and, in the city, setting fire to the Municipal Building of San Martín. The boycott of the elections by the people of Chuschi was the action that initiated the beginning of the People’s War. This plan was fulfilled, defeating the Rightist positions that were saying that the Plan was “Hoxhite” and that the actions were centered in the city. Their arguments confused appearances with reality and distorted the essence of the struggle, since reactionary propaganda gave big headlines to the sabotages in the cities and minimized the actions in the countryside. It is a characteristic of the People’s War in Peru to make the countryside the principal theater of action and the cities a necessary complement.
It has been fulfilled through three military plans: To deploy guerrilla warfare, to Conquer Bases and to Develop Bases.
Regarding the Deployment of guerrilla warfare. This was completed by a plan that lasted from May 1981 to December 1982 and had a pilot period in January 1981. The slogan “Open guerrilla zones serving as Base Areas” implied an ideological-political leap by putting Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, guiding thought of Chairman Gonzalo as the basis of party unity. Militarily, they opened the guerrilla war throughout the country seeking to “Capture weapons and the means for war, stir up the countryside with armed actions and go forward toward the Base Areas.” These plans were partially completed with the last one, “Go forward,” being the link with the subsequent plan. It advanced by razing the feudal relationships of production aiming against the gamonales [semi-feudal landlords] as the spearhead and fighting against the joint police operations. A multitude of assaults on police posts and selective annihilation of gamonales were carried out, generating a great mass mobilization of peasants that volunteered themselves for the militia, giving rise to a power vacuum for the reactionaries. The People’s Committees emerged, which grew and multiplied. Their appearance defines the Base Areas.
We should emphasize actions such as the assault on the city jail of Ayacucho where the First Company acted for the first time, occupying the city and freeing tens of prisoners of war; the assaults on the police posts of Vilcashuamán, of Totos, of San José de Secce; the sabotages to the power grid and communication lines; the razings like those of Pincos, Toxama, Allpachaca, Huayllapampa among others. In the cities, there were the sabotages to bureaucratic capitalism and to imperialism, as well as support to strikes by armed actions.
Here the Rightist positions that were combated were those of personal power and fealty and the retreat from actions. Deploying the guerrilla war gave us the most important conquest: The new Power, the clandestine People’s Committees that are the backbone of the Base Areas.
In the face of the advance of the People’s War, the reactionary government of Belaúnde launched from the very beginning the persecution, repression, torture, the imprisonment and death of the militants, fighters and the masses. They have mounted independent police operations and jointly with their police forces, Civil Guards, Republican Guards, Investigative Police, along with the counterinsurgency corps known as the “sinchis.” They promulgated the D.L. [Decreed Law] No. 046, a truly terrorist law that violates the most elementary principles of bourgeois criminal law. But the result of all their plans has been the most categorical failure, the masses rejected and resisted their aggression. The emergence of the new Power broke the reticence of the government of Belaúnde, which from the beginning minimized the problem to maintain their bogus democratic facade and strengthened the class necessities of the two exploiters, the big bourgeoisie and landlords under the protection of Yankee imperialism. Belaunde then entrusted the armed forces (Army, Navy and Air Force), the backbone of the State, to reestablish public order with the support of the police forces, imposing a state of emergency under political-military control in the regions of Ayacucho and Apurímac, from December of 1982 until today (1988).
Chairman Gonzalo, with the development of the People’s War and the counter-revolutionary response that implied a qualitative leap, outlined the Great Plan of Conquering Bases in the Expanded Central Committee from January to March 1983 where four political tasks were defined: a general reorganization of the Party, the creation of the People’s Guerrilla Army and the Revolutionary Defense Front of the People and their consolidation as People’s Committees in the countryside and as the Revolutionary Defense Movement of the People in the cities and the Military Plan of Conquering Bases. Politically, the contradiction between the new State and old State was advancing under the slogan of “Defend, Develop and Build” the Base Areas. A sharp armed conflict developed in which the reactionaries struggled to re-establish the old Power and the revolution struggled to counter-establish the new Power. This is what we call the struggle between restoration and counter-restoration encompassing the years 1983 and 1984. Military plans were specified for the zones applying the tactics of encircling and striking the enemy’s weak point. Two successful campaigns were completed in which the new Power was tempered passing its first test of fire; the Party was forged and the People’s Guerrilla Army was developed.
The reactionary armed forces pursued the counter-revolutionary war, following the concepts of their Yankee imperialist master, theories established by their experience in counter-revolutionary war, mainly extracted from Vietnam and particularly drawn from the combat against the armed struggle in Latin America, especially in Central America. That is the basic theoretical source combined with the “anti-terrorist” experience of Israel and its counterpart in Argentina, along with the Federal Republic of Germany and its advisors in Taiwan, Spain, etc. This adds to their experience of the few months of anti-guerrilla struggle of 1965 and the more limited experience of fighting in La Convención [a province in Cusco where there was guerrilla struggle in 1965]. The operations are under the direction of the Joint Command of the armed forces that acts according to the will of the National Defense Council headed by the President, today under Alan García, who holds direct responsibility. This counter-revolutionary strategy has been defeated many times. It has been crushed and defeated completely and thoroughly by the People’s War, showing to the world again and again the superiority of the strategy of the proletariat over that of imperialism.
A summary of the specific policies that were applied by the genocidal government: masses against masses; genocide, mass graves; disappearances of entire villages. In sum, they unleashed the white terror in the countryside, especially in Ayacucho, Huancavelica and Apurímac. The result of this genocide is eight thousand seven hundred Peruvians dead. Of these, four thousand seven hundred of the murdered were the poorest and the most exploited, mainly peasants and in the neighborhoods and slums of the cities, where four thousand disappeared. This genocide has not produced the result they wanted; it did not crush the People’s War. On the contrary, “the People’s War grows stronger, developing and striking powerful blows,” evidence of what Chairman Mao taught, that repression is what arouses and feeds the revolution.
Within the Plan of Conquering Bases is the “Plan of the Great Leap” that is subject to the specific political strategy of “Two Republics are expressed, two roads, two axes” and the military strategy of “generalize the guerrilla warfare.” Four successful campaigns were carried out under the political guidelines of: “Open our political space,” “Against the general elections of 1985, disrupt and destabilize them and impede them wherever feasible,” “Against the ascension to power by the new Aprista government,” and “Undermine the fascist and corporativist Aprista assembly.” The People’s War developed in the region of Ayacucho, Huancavelica, and Apurímac and was expanded to Pasco, Huánuco and San Martín, covering an area from the department of Cajamarca, on the border with Ecuador in the Northwest, to Puno on the border with Bolivia in the Southeast of the country, striking and shaking-up the cities, especially in the capital. The People’s War fundamentally takes place in the sierra, the historical axis of Peruvian society and its most backward and poorest part, by transforming it into the grand theater of the revolutionary war. It advanced to the edge of the jungle and to the headlands of the coast. Thus, the People’s War was not conceived in a single region was developed simultaneously in several regions, although in unequal form, with the principal area that can vary as necessary. All activities were conceived within a strategically centralized and a tactically decentralized plan.
Among the most salient actions, we see the blows to the anti-guerrilla bases in the department of Ayacucho; the destruction of the counter-subversive settlements [nucleamientos] disruptions in the establishment of the local micro-regions; in Huancavelica the demolition of the electrical grid and the destruction of the highway system; the destruction of the agricultural cooperatives Cinto and Vichincha with cattle redistribution and appropriation of lands; breakthroughs in Apurímac. In the Central region, there were ambushes such as in Michivilca, sabotage to the substation of Centromín [state mining corporation], sabotage to SAIS [state-run cooperative] Túpac Amaru. In the North, land seizures under the slogan “Seize the Land!” that mobilized 160 thousand peasants and confiscated 320 thousand hectares, mostly pastures, and 12 thousand head of livestock; sabotage to the oil pipeline “Norperuano,” and to the headquarters of the APRA in the city of Trujillo. In the South, the land seizures mobilized more than 10 thousand peasants; in Huallaga, an assault on the police post of Aucayacu, destruction of the large company Tealero, ambush of the Republican Guards; in Metropolitan Lima, sabotages against the embassy of the Russian social-imperialists, against dozens of local offices of the APRA party, against banks and factories, all leading to a state of emergency with military control in February of 1986.
Alan García Pérez continued the counter-revolutionary policy of his predecessor and sought to crush the People’s War through genocides such as those of Accomarca, Llocllapampa, Umaru and Bellavista in the countryside. In the capital of the Republic, he unleashed two genocides against the prisoners of war, the first on the 4th of October, 1985, where 30 militants and combatants were annihilated in the shining trench of Lurigancho. That did not break the heroic resistance of the prisoners of war who, with their blood, formed the Day of the Prisoner of War. On the 19 of June, 1986, the most vile and despicable premeditated crime was unleashed to crush the People’s War and to annihilate the prisoners of war, who with a ferocious resistance inflicted the most serious political, military, and moral rout to the genocidal Aprista government. This brought out and defined their dilemma of serving the bureaucratic faction of the big bourgeoisie, in order to develop corporativist fascism, García and the Aprista party remaining forever bathed in the blood of the genocide. Thus the Day of Heroism was formed with the monumental trilogy of 250 dead in the shining trenches of combat of El Fronton, Lurigancho, and Callao.
We unmask and condemn opportunism and revisionism in its various incarnations: The pro-Russian, the pro-Chinese, the false Mariateguists, all those who have acted and continue to act as informers, tailing after the counter-revolution, denying and combating the People’s War and branding it as terrorism, repeating what Reagan and the Peruvian and world reactionaries say. They can never hope to prove their accusations and simply hurl adjectives and condemn violence “whatever the source,” and continue with their old electoral posturing with the aim of hoodwinking the people with parliamentary cretinism, sinking further each day into the embrace of the old order, their rotten parliament, their electoral farces, their constitution and their laws, living in quivering fear and reverential dread before the reactionary armed forces and the bluster of the old State. We condemn the groveling attitude and capitulation of Barrantes Lingán and others of his ilk.
Since 1983, the political strategy of the Great Plan of Conquering Bases was completed through two campaigns of defending, developing and building Parts I and II, and of the Plan for the Great Leap with its four campaigns up to December of 1986. These plans show us the advance of the People’s War, that we are solidly linked to the masses, contrary to everything they say, since the facts are undeniable. The People’s War has seized an area that is being extended through the Sierra, the Jungle and the Coast, marching vigorously and strong, building what is new and opening the future. The Base Areas which are the foundation of the road of surrounding the cities from the countryside have been already established.
This has a special role in the People’s War since the essence of the People’s War is to develop support; therefore the Great Plan of Developing Bases has to do with the building of the new Power and its development, it has to do with the perspective that is being opened for the seizure of power countrywide. The political strategy is to develop Base Areas and the military strategy is to develop the People’s War serving the world revolution, a plan that is being fulfilled through a pilot plan.
The triumph of the revolution begets and crushes a powerful counter-revolution. We are entering decisive years in which the APRA government continues without having a strategic plan; they talk of a “new strategy” but there is none. What remains is only greater repression: Political, economic, and social laws, strengthening the military to facilitate the actions of the armed forces to unleash new genocides under new conditions, for us as well as for them. For us, the genocide under way presents itself under new circumstances. We have passed through the genocide of 1983 and 1984 that demonstrated the great popular repudiation and the strengthening of the revolution. The reaction can only apply genocide, but that will strengthen the People’s War. There might be initial withdrawals or inflections, but we will prevail by persisting in Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Gonzalo Thought, in our politics of the five developments, in the invincibility of the People’s War and in the support of the people who make history always under the leadership of the Communist Party.
On the concrete situations and possibilities that are presented us in the new Great Plan of Developing Bases we must be aware of:
Armed groups such as the MRTA and the CRP [the short-lived People’s Revolutionary Commando] have appeared. They have been recast and they do not have a definite Marxist conception. Thus, they march to serve imperialism, social-imperialism, and the supposedly fascist dialogue to which they have already given unilateral truces.
APRA has already begun to unfold fascism and corporativism. It faces serious and increasing difficulties, such as its growing and sinuous collusion and contention with the comprador bourgeoisie, among other more important contradictions.
The class struggle sharpens and intensifies more, the masses begin to defend themselves and resist; if social explosions occur in the urban areas, they could be used by social-imperialism and the reactionaries in general, through their political representatives.
A coup d’etat is possible at any moment. The same García Pérez may promote a self-coup in order to preserve his political future.
In perspective, the reactionaries can also play with an Allende-type government, using the Aprista Barrantes or someone similar; within this possibility one must consider the sinister role of the United Left.
The Peruvian State has border problems that can be inflamed at any moment, as is shown by the experience of other Latin American countries. This problem must be seriously addressed.
The sending of Yankee troops is already a real fact and not a simple possibility. Their presence is linked to a similar presence in other countries, especially on the border and it must be seen in the context of military measures taken by Brazil.
The imperialist wars and their aggressions continue to increase. The World War for hegemony between the USA and the USSR continues being prepared through collusion and contention of a global dimension. Consequently, the People’s War is a peremptory necessity and the world People’s War is an inevitable perspective.
All these possibilities must be taken seriously into account to handle the People’s War with politics in command, and, particularly with an eye toward the seizure of power countrywide that may present itself and which must be taken up. For all these reasons, we must be ideologically, politically and organizationally prepared.
The First Campaign of the Pilot Plan of the Great Plan of Developing Bases has meant the largest shake-up with national and international repercussions. It is fracturing the old State more and more, which had never been shaken up this way by anyone in Peru. Now it is up to us to fulfil the historical and political necessity of “Finish by brilliantly establishing a historical milestone!” in the Second Campaign. Understand that the Pilot Plan is like the initial battle of the Great Plan of Developing Bases.
In conclusion, after close to eight years of People’s War we have completed more than forty five thousand actions that reveal their high quality; the militarized Party has been tempered; the People’s Guerrilla Army has been developed and has increased its belligerence; and we have hundreds of organizations of the new Power with the poorest masses increasingly in support of us. The People’s War has raised the class struggle of our people to its highest form and that impinges on the struggle of the masses themselves, impelling them to be incorporated by leaps and bounds into the People’s War. The “People’s War is turning the country upside down, the ‘old mole’ is rotting profoundly in the entrails of the old society. No one can stop it, the future already dwells among us, the old and rotten society is sinking irrevocably, the revolution will prevail. Long Live the People’s War!” Our task is to develop the People’s War serving the world revolution under the banners of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Gonzalo Thought.
Chairman Mao established the road of surrounding the cities from the countryside. At its heart are the Base Areas, taking into account that the powerful imperialists and their reactionary Chinese allies were entrenched in the principal cities. If the revolution refused to capitulate and wanted to persevere in the struggle it had to convert the backwards rural zones into advanced and solid Base Areas, into great military, political, economic and cultural bastions of the revolution to fight against the fierce enemy that was assaulting the rural zones using the cities, and to carry the revolution step by step to a complete victory through a protracted war.
True to this basic Maoist thesis, Chairman Gonzalo has established the carrying forward of a unified People’s War where the countryside is the principal theater of armed actions: Since in our country we have an immense majority of peasant masses, that is where we must build the Base Areas. As Chairman Mao said: “The protracted revolutionary struggle supported in such revolutionary base areas is fundamentally a guerrilla war of the peasants led by the Chinese Communist Party. Therefore, it is wrong to ignore the necessity of using the rural zones as revolutionary base areas, to disregard the arduous work among the peasants and to neglect the guerrilla war.” Going further, Chairman Gonzalo specifies that in the cities armed actions should be carried forward as a complement, since international experience, as well as our own, demonstrates that this is feasible. He draws lessons from, for example, what happened to the guerrillas in the Philippines which recast themselves in the countryside and left the cities quiet, especially the capital, resulting in the isolation of the guerrillas. In Brazil, the revolutionaries also carried out armed actions in the countryside and city, only they neglected to specify which was principal. In Vietnam, important armed actions were carried out in the cities. Thus, taking into account the peculiarities of the cities in Latin America, where the percentage of the proletariat and of the poor masses in the cities is high, the masses are ready to develop actions complementing those in the countryside. In the cities, however, the New Power or Base Areas are not being built, rather the Front is materialized through the Revolutionary Defense Movement of the People (MRDP) with Resistance Centers that carry out the People’s War and prepare the future insurrection, which will occur when the forces of the countryside assault the cities in combination with the insurrection from within.
The Base Areas are the strategic bases which the guerrilla forces rely on to fulfil their strategic tasks and to achieve the objective of preserving and increasing their forces as well as annihilating and throwing back the enemy. Without such strategic Bases there would not be anything from which to carry out any one of our strategic tasks to reach the war’s objective.
Chairman Mao outlines three reasons for the creation of Base Areas: To have armed forces, to defeat the enemy and to mobilize the masses. These were specified in our People’s War in 1982, when applying the Plan of Deployment the guerrilla war in its role of beating the enemy, we aimed at destroying the old feudal relations of production. Police posts were assaulted, selective annihilation of landlord power was applied, and the police forces abandoned the countryside and were regrouped in the provincial capitals. The authorities of the old Power massively resigned which created a power vacuum, while tens of thousands were mobilized. It is in these conditions that the Base Areas emerged and were specified in the clandestine People’s Committees. Therefore, it is wrong to take the Chinese experience dogmatically since if the conditions were given and principles were in effect, we would have had sufficient reason to build the Base Areas. To agree with this thesis implied a struggle against Rightism that was arguing that we had not defeated large enemy forces, when the problem was that the enemy forces had abandoned the field as a consequence of the rout of their political and military plans.
Chairman Gonzalo has established a system of Base Areas surrounded by guerrilla zones, zones of operations and points of action taking into account the political and social conditions, the history of struggle, the geographical characteristics and the development of the Party, the Army and of the masses.
It is fundamental to support the validity of the road of surrounding the cities from the countryside and its heart, the Base Areas, because with only wandering guerrillas of insurrection the People’s Guerrilla Army would not have the Base Areas as a rearguard that sustains it and neither would the new Power be built. We are totally against foquismo.
The People’s War is protracted because it derives from the correlation between the factors of the enemy and ourselves that are determined by the following four fundamental characteristics: The first is that Peru is a semi-feudal and semi-colonial society, one in which a bureaucratic capitalism unfolds. The second is that the enemy is strong; the third is that the People’s Guerrilla Army is weak; and the fourth is that the Communist Party leads the People’s War. From the first and fourth characteristics we can derive that the People’s Guerrilla Army will not grow too rapidly and will not defeat its enemy soon. These peculiarities determine the protracted character of the war.
The enemy is strong and we are weak; in that fact resides the danger of our defeat. The enemy has a single advantage–the numerous contingents of its forces and the armaments they rely upon. But every other aspect constitutes their weak points. Their objective is to defend the old and rotten Power of the landlord-bureaucratic State. It has a bourgeois military line; it is a mercenary army. It does not have conscious discipline and its moral is low. It has profound contradictions between officers and soldiers, and it is discredited before the masses. Furthermore, the very base of the reactionary army are of worker and peasant origin, which can disintegrate during the course of an unjust war. Apart from this, the Peruvian armed forces have never won a war and they are expert in defeats. Furthermore, they have repeatedly counted on the support of international reaction, but we count on the support of the oppressed nations, of the peoples of the world and the international proletariat, which are the new forces.
The People’s Guerrilla Army has a single weak point, its insufficient development but the remaining aspects constitute valuable advantages: It carries forward a People’s War to create a new Power; it has a proletarian military line, led absolutely by the Communist Party; it is based on class valor and revolutionary heroism and on a conscious discipline. Its morale is high and there is a close union between officers and soldiers and it is an army composed of the people themselves, mainly poor workers and peasants.
But the objective fact is that there is a large disparity between the forces of the enemy and our forces and for us to go from weak to strong requires a period of time, one in which the defects of the enemy are exposed and our advantages are developed. Therefore, we say that our army is apparently weak but in essence it is strong and the enemy’s army is apparently strong but in essence it is weak. Thus, to go from weak to strong we must carry forward the protracted war and this has three stages: The first is the period of the strategic offensive of the enemy and the strategic defensive of our forces. The second will be the period of the strategic consolidation of the enemy and of our preparation for the counteroffensive. The third will be the period of our strategic counteroffensive and of the strategic withdrawal of the enemy.
Chairman Gonzalo teaches us that the People’s War is protracted, long and bloody but victorious and tells us that the time of its duration will be extended or shortened within the scope of its protracted character. The time will depend on the extent that we fight within the proletarian military line, since Rightism is the principal danger that can cause serious setbacks to the war.
Today, we find ourselves in the period of the strategic offensive of the enemy and of our own strategic defensive. We must strengthen the People’s War by applying guerrilla warfare, establishing bases for the next stage, paying whatever cost is necessary but fighting to minimize it.
To wage the People’s War we must count on the principal form of organization, which is the People’s Guerrilla Army, since the backbone of the old State is the reactionary armed forces and to destroy the old State one must first destroy its reactionary army. The Party must count on a powerful army: “Without a peoples’ army the people have nothing,” as Chairman Mao taught us.
The building of the Army is seen in the line of building based on Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Gonzalo Thought. In synthesis, Chairman Gonzalo has contributed in bringing the incorporation of the militia into the People’s Guerrilla Army. Its creation is a step toward the sea of armed masses and the solution of going from disorganized masses to masses who are militarily organized.
Chairman Gonzalo emphasizes seven points on strategy and tactics of Chairman Mao specifying some of them. We must pay close attention to these in order to lead the People’s War.
He departs from Chairman Mao’s thesis that the task of strategy as a science is to study the laws of leading military operations that influence the situation of the war in its entirety. The task of the science of campaigns and tactics is to study the laws of leading military operations of a partial character. He makes a strategic development of how to wage the war in each zone and in the country as a whole, taking into account its ties to the international situation. He outlined for us the axes, sub-axes, directions of movement and lines of movements which permit us to maintain the strategic course of the war under any circumstances and to face all types of political and military operations that the counter-revolution launches. On this basis he established the National Military Plan that is strategically centralized and tactically decentralized, departing from the premise that all plans reflect an ideology, that they must reflect both the reality and vagaries it must express. Taking up Stalin, he links strategy with tactics and establishes the strategic-operational Plans that are the concrete way that strategy is linked to tactical operations. As a result, each Committee must elaborate its strategic-operational plans within the strategic-operational Plan common to the entire Party.
The correct disposition emanates from the just decision of the commander; all military plans must be based on the indispensable recognition and careful study of the situation of the enemy, the actual situation and the interrelationship of both. That is, we must always keep in mind “the two hills”; we must be guided by a political strategy and by a military strategy.
For the elaboration of the Plans always take into account the following general features:
The international class struggle between revolution and counter-revolution; ideology; the international communist movement; the RIM.
The class struggle in the country; the counter-revolution.
The development of the People’s War; its balance; laws and lessons.
The need for investigation.
The People’s War and its building.
The People’s War and the masses.
The two-line struggle.
Programming and Chronology.
Attitude and slogans. “Rise above the difficulties and seize greater victories!”
In almost eight years of the People’s War, we have had four plans: Plan of Initiation; Plan of Developing the People’s War; Plan of Conquering Bases; and, Plan of Developing Bases.
All the orienting principles of military operations originate with a single basic principle: do everything possible to preserve our own forces and to annihilate the enemy’s forces. All war imposes a price, sometimes it is extremely high. To preserve our own forces, we must annihilate those of the enemy; but to annihilate the enemy, we must pay a price in order to preserve the whole. Chairman Gonzalo teaches us that one must be prepared to pay the highest cost of the war, but we should fight so that it will always be the smallest possible cost. It is a contradiction and the problem resides in attitude and good planning. It is mainly a question of leadership. He forged us in the “challenge to the death,” in “revolutionary heroism” and in “conquer laurels in death.” In war we always see the two aspects, the destructive and the constructive and the principal aspect is the second one.
“When the enemy advances, we retreat; when the enemy is stalled, we harass him; when the enemy is tired, we attack him; when the enemy withdraws, we pursue him.” This basic tactic must be incorporated and applied, maneuvering around the enemy and seeking his weak point to smash it.
It is a law that the counter-revolution in seeking to crush the revolution unleashes campaigns of “encirclement and annihilation” against each unit of the People’s Guerrilla Army or against the Base Areas. The operations of the People’s Guerrilla Army adopt the form of counter-campaigns and Chairman Mao has established nine steps to crush a campaign of “encirclement and annihilation”:
The active defense;
The preparation of a counter-campaign;
The strategic withdrawal;
The strategic counteroffensive;
The initiation of the counteroffensive;
The concentration of forces;
The mobile war;
The war of rapid decision; and,
The war of annihilation.
Chairman Gonzalo, applying this law to the conditions of our People’s War, has outlined the five parts of the campaign which permit us to defeat the political and military plans of the reactionaries. Each campaign has a specific political and military objective, fulfilled by the element of surprise, attacking them when we want, where we want and as we want. He also specified the five steps that must follow each military action always serving the political objective, opposing the criteria of action for action’s sake. He stresses the importance of differentiating between the essence and the appearance of the enemy’s movements. He has also established for us the four forms of struggle of the People’s War:
Guerrilla action with its two forms, the assault and the ambush;
sabotage;
selective annihilation; and
Propaganda and armed agitation, as well as its diverse methods.
Chairman Mao raised guerrilla warfare to a strategic level. Prior to him, it was only considered as a tactical problem that did not decide the outcome of the war; but even though the guerrilla war does not decide the war’s outcome because this requires conventional warfare, it fulfils a series of strategic tasks that carry forward to the favorable outcome of the war. We conceive guerrilla war on a vast scale, generalized guerrilla warfare that must support the protracted and bloody war. From there, we apply the six strategic problems of guerrilla warfare:
Initiative, flexibility and planning in the realization of offensive operations within the defensive war, battles of rapid decision within the protracted war and operations in the exterior lines within the war in the interior lines.
Coordination with the regular warfare.
Creation of Base Areas.
Strategic defense and strategic assault in the guerrilla war.
Transformation of the guerrilla war into mobile warfare.
Relationships of command.
In December 1947 Chairman Mao masterfully synthesized the just and correct strategic line followed in more than 20 years of People’s War in 10 military principles. This is seen in his article: “The current situation and our tasks,” Third part. We apply these principles and it is very important to broaden their application.
Chairman Mao has summarized in a brilliant way the strategy and the tactics of the People’s War in the following phrase: “You fight your way and we’ll fight ours: We fight when we can win and we retreat when we cannot.”
“In other words, you rely on modern weapons and we rely on highly conscious revolutionary people; you give full play to your superiority and we give full play to ours; you have your way of fighting and we have ours. When you want to fight us, we don’t let you and you can’t even find us. But when we want to fight you, we make sure that you can’t get away and we hit you squarely on the chin and wipe you out. When we are able to wipe you out, we do so with a vengeance; when we can’t, we see to it that you don’t wipe us out. It is opportunism if one won’t fight when one can win. It is adventurism if one insists on fighting when one can’t win. Fighting is the pivot of al our strategy and tactics. It is because of the necessity of fighting that we admit the necessity of moving away. The sole purpose of moving away is to fight and bring about the final and complete destruction of the enemy. This strategy and these tactics can be applied only when one relies on the broad masses of the people, and such application brings the superiority of people’s war into full play. However superior he may be in technical equipment and whatever tricks he may resort to, the enemy will find himself in the passive position of having to receive blows, and the initiative will always be in our hands.” From Long Live the Victory of People’s War!, September 1965.
The application of this principle allows us to demonstrate the invincibility of the superior strategy of the People’s War, because the proletariat as the last class in history has created its own superior form of war and no other class, including the bourgeoisie with its greatest political and military strategists, are capable of defeating it. The reactionaries dream about elaborating “superior strategies” to the People’s War, but are condemned to failure since they are against history. Our People’s War after nearly eight years blazes victoriously, demonstrating the invincibility of the People’s War.
As militants of the Communist Party of Peru, we assume completely and thoroughly the military line of the Party, established by Chairman Gonzalo, which based on the highest creation of the international proletariat, Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, has specified our military line with Gonzalo Thought, endowing us with an invincible weapon, the unified People’s War principally in the countryside together with the city as a complement. As the principal form of struggle we carry it forward, it is a bright torch before the world, proclaiming the universal validity of the forever living Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
LONG LIVE THE MILITARY LINE OF THE PARTY!
THE PEOPLE’S WAR IS INVINCIBLE!
Chairman Gonzalo established the line of building the three instruments of the revolution by upholding and applying Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, principally Maoism.
He teaches us that Marx said that the working class creates organizations in its image and likeness, in other words, its own organization. In the 19th century, with Marx and Engels, we started off provided with a specific conception, our own doctrine, our own objective, our own goal, how to seize Power and the means of doing it: Revolutionary violence; all that was achieved in a very hard two-line struggle. Marx established that the proletariat can only act as a class by constituting himself as a political party different and opposite to all the political parties created by the propertied classes. Therefore, since its appearance in a prolonged process the proletariat has created its own forms of organization. As a result, the Party is the highest form of organization, the army the principal form of organization and the Front is third instrument, these three instruments are to seize Power by means of revolutionary violence. He tells us that by the end of the 19th century, Engels came to the conclusion that the class did not have either the proper organizational forms or the proper military forms to take Power and hold it. Yet, he never said we should abandon the revolution but the we should be working on finding a solution to these pending problems. This must be well understood since the revisionists twist it to sell their opportunism.
In the 20th century Lenin understood that the revolution was ripe and created the proletarian Party of a new type, molding the form of struggle: The insurrection; and the form of organization: The detachments, which were mobile forms and superior to the barricades of the previous century, which were stationary forms. Lenin set forth the need to create new, clandestine organizations, since going on to revolutionary actions meant the dissolution of the legal organizations by the police and that step was only possible if it is taken by going over the old leaders, going over the old Party, destroying it. The Party should take as example the modern army, with its own discipline and with its united will and be flexible.
With Chairman Mao Zedong, the class understands the need to build the three instruments of the revolution: Party, Army and United Front in an interrelated way. That way it solves the building of the three instruments in a backwards, semi-feudal and semi-colonial country, by way of the People’s War. Concretely, it resolves the issue of building the Party around the gun and that it is the heroic fighter who is the one leading its own building, the Army and the Front.
Chairman Gonzalo set forth the militarization of the Communist Parties and the concentric building of the three instruments. The militarization of the Communist Parties is the political directive with a strategic content, since it is “the set of transformations, changes and readjustments it need to lead the People’s War as the main form of struggle that will generate the new State.” Therefore, the militarization of the Communist Parties is key for the democratic revolution, the socialist revolution and the cultural revolutions.
He defines the principle of building: “Based on the ideological-political base, to simultaneously build the organizational forms in the amidst of the class struggle and the two-line struggle, all of these within and as a function of the armed struggle and the seizure of Power.”
In addition, he links the entire process of building with the fluidity of the People’s War, which based on Chairman Mao’s theses that “the mobility of military operations and the variability of our territory provide all works of building with... a variable character.”
Hence, to understand the line of building, we must start from the form of struggle and the forms of organization; from the principle of building and building linked to the fluidity of the People’s War which is the main form of struggle in today’s world.
We base ourselves in Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Gonzalo Thought, principally Gonzalo Thought, on the ideology of the proletariat, the highest expression of humanity, the only truthful, scientific and invincible. We struggle for the Communist Program whose essence is to organize and lead the class struggle of the proletariat so it can seize political Power, carry out the democratic revolution, the socialist revolution and the cultural revolution on the way to Communism, the unwavering goal which we march towards. We rely on the general political line of the revolution, based on the laws governing the class struggle for the seizure of Power, which was established by Chairman Gonzalo with its five elements:
International line;
Democratic revolution;
Military line;
Line of building the three instruments of the revolution;
Mass line.
The military line is the center of the general political line. We forge ourselves in proletarian internationalism as we conceive our revolution as part of the world proletarian revolution. And we maintain ideological, political and organizational independence supported by our own efforts and by masses.
Party of a new type which generated the leader of the Peruvian revolution, Chairman Gonzalo, the greatest living Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, who leads the Party, the guarantee of the triumph of the revolution and will carry us to Communism.
Chairman Gonzalo established the thesis that the Communist Parties of the world should militarize themselves for three reasons:
First, because we are in the strategic offensive of the world revolution, we live during the sweeping away of imperialism and reaction from the face of Earth within the next 50 to 100 years, a time marked by violence in which all kinds of wars take place. We see how reaction militarizes itself more and more, militarizating the old States, their economy, developing wars and aggression, trafficking with the struggles of the peoples and aiming at a world war, since revolution is the main tendency in the world, the task of the Communist Parties is to raise revolution making reality the main form of struggle: The People’s War, to oppose the world counter-revolutionary war with world revolutionary war.
Second, because capitalist restoration must be confronted. When the bourgeoisie loses Power, it reintroduces itself inside the Party, uses the army and seeks a way of usurping Power, of destroying the dictatorship of the proletariat to reinstate capitalism. Therefore, the Communist Parties must militarize themselves and exercise the overall dictatorship of the three instruments, forge themselves in the People’s War and empower the armed organization of the masses, the people’s militia, so as to engulf the army. Towards this end, Chairman Gonzalo tells us to “forge all militants as Communists, first and foremost, as fighters and as administrators”; for that reason every militant is forged in the People’s War and remains alert against any attempts of capitalist restoration.
Third, because we march towards a militarized society. By militarizing the Party, we complete a step towards the militarization of society which is the strategic perspective to guarantee the dictatorship of the proletariat. The militarized society is the sea of armed masses which Marx and Engels spoke about, that guarantees the seizure and defense of the seized Power. We take the experience of the Chinese Revolution, of the anti-Japanese base at Yenan, which was a militarized society where everything flowed out of the barrels of guns, Party, Army, State, new politics, new economics, new culture. And that way we develop war Communism.
In the First National Conference, November 1979, Chairman Gonzalo proposed the thesis of the necessity to militarize the Communist Party of Peru; then, in the early months of 1980, when the Party was getting ready to launch the People’s War, he proposed to develop the militarization of the Party by ways of actions, based on what the great Lenin said about reducing the non-military work and to center it in the military, that the times of peace were ending and we entered the times of war so that all forces should be militarized. Thus taking the Party as the axis of everything, build the Army around it and with these instruments, with the masses in People’s War, build the new State based on both. The militarization of the Party could only be carried forward through concrete actions of the class struggle, concrete military type actions; this does not mean we will carry out various types of military actions exclusively (guerrilla actions, sabotages, selective annihilation, propaganda and armed agitation) but that we must carry out mainly these forms so as to provide incentive and development to the class struggle, indoctrinating it with facts, with these types of actions as the main form of struggle in the People’s War.
The militarization of the Party has precedents in Lenin and Chairman Mao, but it is a new problem developed by Chairman Gonzalo taking into account the new circumstance of the class struggle and we must realize that new problems will arise which will be solved through experience. This will necessarily imply a process of struggle between the old and the new in order to develop it further, with war being the highest form of resolving the contradictions, empowering the faculties people have to find solutions. It is the militarization of the Party which has enabled us to initiate and develop the People’s War; and we consider that this experience has universal validity, for that reason, it is required and necessary for the Communist Parties of the world to militarize themselves.
The concentric building of the three instruments is the organizational fulfillment of the militarization of the Party and in synthesis it is summarized in what Chairman Gonzalo teaches: “The Party is the axis of everything, it leads the three instruments overall, its own building, absolutely leads the army and the new State as joint dictatorship aiming towards the dictatorship of the proletariat.”
The militancy is forged on the base of Party unity with Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Gonzalo Thought, principally Gonzalo Thought. We say Marxism-Leninism-Maoism because it is the universal ideology of the proletariat which is the last class in history, an ideology that must be applied to the concrete conditions of each revolution and generate its guiding thought. In our case, the Peruvian revolution has generated Gonzalo Thought because Chairman Gonzalo is the highest expression of the fusion of the universal ideology with the concrete practice of the Peruvian revolution.
Militancy is forged in the Program and Statutes; the general political line and the military line as its center, specific lines; general policy, specific policies and the Party’s military plans. Politics must always be in command and that is our strong point.
The organizational building follows the political building and taking into account that line is not enough, the organizational apparatuses must be simultaneously built taking into account the organizational structure, the organizational system and the Party work. In its organizational structure, the Party is based on democratic centralism, mainly centralism. Two Party armed networks are established, the territorial network which covers one jurisdiction and the mobile network whose structure is deployed. The organizational system is the distribution of forces in function of the principal and secondary points wherever the revolution is acting. Party work is the relationship between secret work, which is the principal, and open work; the importance of the five necessities: Democratic centralism, clandestinity, discipline, vigilance and secret work. Of the six, democratic centralism is the most important.
We are fully conscious that no class in history has ever achieved the installation of its rule unless it promotes its political leaders, its vanguard representatives, capable of organizing the movement and leading it. The Peruvian proletariat in the midst of the class struggle has generated the revolutionary leadership and its highest expression: The leadership of Chairman Gonzalo, who handles revolutionary theory and has a commanding knowledge of history and a profound understanding of the revolutionary practice; who in hard two-line struggle defeated revisionism, the right and left liquidationism, the right opportunist line and rightism. He has reconstituted the Party, leads it in the People’s War and is the greatest living Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, a great political and military strategist, a philosopher; teacher of Communists, center of Party unity. The reaction has two principles to destroy the revolution: To annihilate its leadership and to isolate the guerrilla from the masses. But in synthesis its problem is to annihilate the leadership, because it is what enables us to maintain our perspective and reach our objective. Our Party has defined that leadership is key and it is duty of all militants to constantly work to defend and preserve the leadership of the Party and very especially the leadership of Chairman Gonzalo, our leader, against any attack inside or outside the Party and to abide his personal leadership and command by raising the slogans of “Learn From Chairman Gonzalo” and “Embody Gonzalo Thought.”
We base ourselves in the collective leadership and the individual leadership and we keep in mind the role of the leaders and how through the People’s War, through the renewal of the leadership, the direction of the revolution fulfills and tempers itself. We maintain the principle that the leadership never dies. We who follow Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Gonzalo Thought, subject ourselves to Chairman Gonzalo and embody Gonzalo Thought.
The Party is a contradiction where the class struggle expresses itself as the two-line struggle between the right and the left. It is the two-line struggle that propells the development of the Party, its just and correct handling requires that the left must impose itself. We fight conciliation because it nourishes the right; and the principle of criticism and self-criticism must be practiced by all: militants, cadres, leaders, combatatants, masses too, assuming the philosophy of the struggle and then going against the current, keeping in mind that the Central Committee is the vortex of the storm, since there the class struggle expresses itself the sharpest. The just and correct handling that Chairman Gonzalo makes of the two-line struggle has helped maintain the unity of the Party and develop the People’s War even further. In general the main danger the Party faces is revisionism, although inside the Party it continues to develop a struggle against rightist criteria, opinions, attitudes and positions, in the midst of the people. It is necessary to organize the two-line struggle to impose the Party line, through a plan to develop it in an organized manner.
We apply the principle that: “The masses make history.” The Party leads the mass struggle in function of Power, which is the principal economic and political right; we develop the mass work in and for the People’s War basing ourselves on the basic masses, workers and peasants, mainly the poor, in the petty bourgeoisie and we neutralize or win over the middle bourgeoisie, as conditions may demand. We subject ourselves to the law of the incorporation of the masses and the only Marxist tactic of “going to the deepest and most profound masses,” educating them in revolutionary violence and in the relentless struggle against revisionism. The mass work of the Party is done through the Army and the masses are mobilized, politicized, organized and armed as the new Power in the countryside and in the Revolutionary Defense Movement of the People in the cities.
In synthesis, it is through the forge and the leadership of Chairman Gonzalo that we have a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, Gonzalo Thought Party of the a type which leads the People’s War and has opened up the perspective of the seizure of Power countrywide serving the world revolution.
The People’s Guerrilla Army is an army of a new type which fulfills the political tasks of the revolution established by the Party. It applies the Maoist principle: “The Party rules the gun and we will never allow the gun rule to rule the Party.” It fulfills three tasks: To fight, which is the main task, as it corresponds to the principal form of organization. To mobilize, which is very important and by which the mass work of the Party is fulfilled, educating the masses politically, mobilizing, organizing and arming the masses. To produce, applying the principle of self-sufficiency, trying not to be a burden for the masses. Fundamentally it is a peasant’s army, absolutely led by the Party. Chairman Gonzalo teaches us: “The legions of steel of the People’s Guerrilla Army sustain themselves on Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, guiding thought, which is the basis of its invincibility; and are forged in the hard life, the sacrifice and the challenging of death, which elevate them to revolutionary heroism.”
Marx set forth that the proletariat needed its own army and the thesis of the general arming of the people. Lenin created the Red Army and established the thesis of the people’s militia with the functions of the police, army and administration. Chairman Mao developed the building of the revolutionary armed forces with the immense participation of the masses. The People’s War materializes its mass character in three great coordinations.
Chairman Gonzalo, based on these Marxist-Leninist-Maoist theses and taking into account the specific situation of the People’s War in Peru, proposed the forming of the People’s Guerrilla Army. Since the Preparation of the war, Chairman Gonzalo conceived the need of building the principal form of organization to carry forward the People’s War, defeat the enemy and build the new State. On December 3, 1979 it was agreed to form the “First Company of the First Division of the Red Army,” in 1980, with the Initiation, the platoons and detachments were materialized and we proposed to transform ourselves from unorganized masses to militarily organized masses.
In 1983, we needed to take a leap forward in the building of the revolutionary armed forces, we faced a large growth of the people’s militias, which demonstrated how the masses wanted to fight; besides, that year the reactionary armed forces had entered the fight against us. That way, in the Expanded Central Committee meeting (CCA) of March 1983, Chairman Gonzalo proposed the materialization of the People’s Guerrilla Army. Why an Army? Because it was a political need to confront the enemy and develop the People’s War. All the Party thus agreed, amidst the two-line struggle against the rightism opposed to incorporating the militias into the Army. Why a guerrilla? Because it applies guerrilla warfare in the milestone of “Developing guerrilla warfare”; it is not a regular army but a guerrilla army and its characteristics enable it, if needed, to develop itself as some sort of regular army. Why people’s? Because it is formed by the masses of the people, by the peasants, especially the poor ones; they serve the people, since they represent the interests of the people. A very important situation is how Chairman Gonzalo conceived the People’s Guerrilla Army by incorporating the people’s militias, made up of three forces: Principal, local and of the base, which acts mainly in the countryside and in the city as complementary; that is a great step towards the sea of armed masses.
The character of the army is based on the fighters and not on the weapons; our army is made up of peasants, mostly poor, proletarians and petty bourgeoisie; it wrests weapons away from the enemy and also uses all sorts of elementary weapons. Our slogan is, “Conquer Weapons!” from the enemy by paying whatever cost is necessary. The formation of the People’s Army must be distinguished from its building.
The ideological-political building is principal, based on Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Gonzalo Thought. In the political and military lines of the Party, all its political and mass work are being implemented under the Party’s leadership. The Party is organized at all levels of the army, the double command is applied: political and military, and the two-line struggle develops between the proletarian military line and the bourgeois military line. In addition the revolutionary armed requires the formation of three Departments: Political, Military and Logistical.
The military building is important. Armed with the theory and practice of the People’s War, the military line and the Party’s military plans, it is organized in platoons, companies and battalions in the countryside and in special detachments and people’s militias in the cities. This building is also based on the two-line struggle. The three main forces: principal, local and at the base level fulfill the specific role as supporting the new State. “Develop the companies, strengthen the platoons aiming at battalions!” is still a valid slogan.
The instruction is necessary and indespensible. It aims at increasing war readiness; testing is unavoidable and the ability to command is the key to action. Instruction specializes, elevates the forms of struggle. The organization of courage has a class character and strengthens war readiness because it is fought with absolute unselfishness and fully convinced of the justness of our cause.
In synthesis, Chairman Gonzalo created the People’s Guerrilla Army, an army of the new type, he established the line of its building based on Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Gonzalo Thought so it can fulfill the specific tasks of the revolution. It is an example before the world and serves the world revolution.
Power is the central task of the revolution and the Front is the third instrument. By applying the masterful thesis of Chairman Mao On New Democracy, Chairman Gonzalo teaches us our conception of joint dictatorship which materializes the People’s Republic of New Democracy. Starting from the link between State-Front, the Revolutionary Front for the Defense of the People is materialized which began in the People’s Committees in the countryside, and in the cities it is simply the Revolutionary Defense Movement of the People. We build the New State in the countryside until finally Power extends throughout the entire country.
As a state system, it is a joint dictatorship of workers, peasants, mainly poor, and the petty bourgeoisie, that respects the interests of the middle bourgeoisie, under the leadership of the proletariat represented by the Party, which applies it functions through the People’s Assemblies.
The building of the new State follows the fluidity of the People’s War, it can expand or contract, disappear in another place to appear in another. It is fluid. As Chairman Mao teaches us: “Our workers’ and peasants’ democratic republic is a state, but today it is not yet a full-fledged one... the form of our political power is still far from that of a full-fledged state... ur territory is still very small, and our enemy is constantly out to destroy us.”
Always keep in mind the system of Support Bases, of guerrilla zones, of zones of operations and points of actions, because those constitute the environment in which the new State develops and are key to maintaining a strategic course; within this environment the EGP (People’s Guerrilla Army), under the leadership of the Party, moves as its backbone.
“Strengthen the People’s Committees, develop the Bases and contribute to advance the People’s Republic of New Democracy!” That is the slogan which continues to guide its building.
We struggle for Power for the proletariat and for the people and not for personal power. We are against roving and wandering and sidestepping the Base Areas.
The new State is built amidst the People’s War and follows a process of specific development, being built in our case first in the countryside, until the cities are surrounded, to materialize it through the entire country. This is a process in which the deterioration of the old State continues and the expression of the contradiction old State-new State; which causes all the political and military plans of reaction to fail and incorporates the masses to the struggle.
At the Expanded PCP National Conference of November 1979, Chairman Gonzalo established the relationship between Front — New State applying the theory of Chairman Mao. In the First Military School of April 1980, he told us: “...In our hearts, minds and wills, the power of the people is alive, and we carry it with us... Comrades, we must never forget the people’s power, the State of the working class, the State of workers and peasants. This State marches with us, we carry it on the muzzles of our rifles, nestled in our minds, throbbing in our hands, and it will always be burning in our hearts. It is the first thing on our minds. We should never forget it. Comrades, the armed struggle will be born fragile and weak because it is new, but its destiny will be to develop through change, from the variation of fragility like a tender plant. The roots we plant at the beginning will be the future of a vigorous State. Comrades, all this begins to flourish with the modest and simple actions that tomorrow we will carry out.” In 1980, the Committees of Distribution emerge, the embryo of the new State; in 1982, the first People’s Committees emerge, which would multiply towards the end of that year, forcing reaction to order their armed forces to enter the fight against the People’s War, since the reactionary Power itself was threatened. In 1983, we agreed upon the Great Plan to Conquer Bases, one of its tasks was to form the Organizing Committee of the People’s Republic of New Democracy. Starting from there, we have followed the struggle between the counter-reestablishment of the old Power by the enemy and the counter-establishment of the new Power, applying defense, development and building.
Thus the new Power passing through the blood bath develops the People’s Committees, is tempered in hard battles against the enemy in which the blood of the masses of peasants, of the fighters and of militants is spilled.
At the Expanded Central Committee of March 1983, Chairman Gonzalo further develops the line of building the Front — New State. He proposes the levels in which the new State is being organized: People’s Committees, Base Areas and People’s Republic of New Democracy. The functions of the Base Areas and of the Organizing Committee of the People’s Republic of New Democracy are that of leadership, planning and organization; and each Base must elaborate its own specific Plan.
He establishes that the People’s Committees are materializations of the new State, they are Committees of the United Front; led by Commissars who assume their State functions by commissioning, elected by the Assemblies of Representatives and subject to removal. They are, up to now, clandestine, they march forward in Commissions, led by the Party applying the rule of the “three thirds”: One third of them are Communists, one third are peasants and one third are progressives, and are sustained by the Army. They apply people’s dictatorship, enforcement and security, exercising firmly and resolutely revolutionary violence so as to defend the new Power against its enemies and to protect the rights of the people.
The set of People’s Committees constitute the Base Areas and the set of Base Areas is the ring that arms the People’s Republic of New Democracy, now being formed. We have gone from Conquering Bases to Developing Bases, which is the present political strategy. We have to plant the new Power more and more for which we have to apply the five established forms, especially today when the conditions point towards the perspective of seizing Power throughout the country.
In synthesis, Chairman Gonzalo has established the line of building the new State and two republics, two roads, two axes are counterpoised. We have advanced in establishing new social relations of production and the People’s Republic of New Democracy now being formed shines defiantly against the old State and opens up the perspective of seizing total Power. This example encourages the revolutionaries of the world, especially the international proletariat.
As followers of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Gonzalo Thought, we assume the line of building the three instruments of the revolution, of the Communist Party of Peru, The highest form of organization and the first political society; of the People’s Guerrilla Army, principal form of organization; and of the Front — New State, central task of the revolution. These are the Instruments which are being built in our country in the heat of the battles of the People’s War, crossing the rivers of blood spilled by the reactionary army in which with much heroism, the Communists, fighters and masses give their lives to materialize the just and correct political line established by Chairman Gonzalo, and that those who survive will carry the flag of continuing it in the service of our goal, Communism.
LONG LIVE THE MILITARIZATION OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF PERU!
LONG LIVE THE PEOPLE’S GUERRILLA ARMY!
LONG LIVE THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF NEW DEMOCRACY IN FORMATION!
FOR THE CONCENTRIC BUILDING OF THE THREE INSTRUMENTS!
Upholding, defending and applying Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Chairman Gonzalo has established the mass line of the Party. His thesis reaffirms itself in the proletarian conception that we must have in order to evaluate the problem of the masses. He outlines the following political role of the masses in the struggle for Power by way of the People’s War and the struggle for better living conditions which must serve this end. We must principally go to the basic masses, the workers and peasants and the many fronts of struggle according to their specific demands and grievances. The only Marxist tactic is going to the deepest and most profound masses, educating them in the revolutionary violence and in the struggle against opportunism. The mass work of the Party that leads the People’s War is carried out through the people’s army. He indicates the importance of the Party generated organizations, as one of the forms of organizing the masses. They must do mass work within and for the People’s War.
Chairman Gonzalo reaffirms himself in the powerful Marxist principle: “The masses make history.” This teaches us to forge our Communist conception in struggle against the bourgeois conception which is centered around the individual as the axis of history. Chairman Gonzalo states: “The masses are the very light of the world... they are its fiber, the inexhaustable heartbeat of history... when they speak everything trembles, the old order begins to shake, the high summits bow down, the stars change their course because the masses make everything possible and are capable of anything.”
Today this reaffirmation has a great importance because it is part of the proletarian conception. It upholds the mass line and is applicable to everything. The mass line allows judgment on everything from international questions to specific policies, because it is an ideological problem. No historic fact, no transforming movement, no revolution can be made without the participation of the masses. The Party applies this principle because it has a mass character and it cannot be unlinked from them, otherwise it would be extinguished or diluted. The masses, in order to guarantee the course of their struggle must be led by the Party. The Party has masses: the militants, who as Communists must necessarily embody this principle and struggle constantly to overthrow the rotten individualism which is not a proletarian conception. It can be observed how our process of People’s War is critical to this transformation. Furthermore, one principle of leadership is “from the masses to the masses.” This also applies to the People’s War because it is a war of the masses, which are the very source of it. It is with this Marxist conception that we make the People’s War.
He particularly highlights the rebellion of the masses as the makers of history. Chairman Gonzalo says: “Since ancient times the masses live subject to oppression and exploitation, but they have always rebelled. This is a long and inexhaustible history... Every time the masses have fought their oppressors they have always called for organizing their rebellion, their arming, their uprising, that it be led, that it be conducted. It has always been this way and it will continue to be. Even after there is another world, it will continue being this way only in another form.” “The masses clamor to organize the rebellion. Therefore, the Party, its leaders, cadre and militants today have a peremptory obligation, a destiny: To organize the disorganized Power of the masses and this can only be done with arms in hand. We must arm the masses bit by bit, part by part, until the general arming of the people. When this goal is reached, there will be no exploitation on Earth.”
Here he expresses his absolute conviction in the masses, in their historical and political necessity to rebel, to arm themselves, their demand that they be led and organized. He calls upon the Communist Parties to complete the demand that comes from Marx and Engels who taught us that there are two powers on the Earth: The armed force of the reactionaries and the disorganized masses. Chairman Gonzalo proposes that if we organize this power, what is only a potential will be activated, and what is a possibility will be a reality. If it is not based on the masses, everything is a house of cards. Concretely, the problem is to go from the state of disorganized masses to masses that are militarily organized.
We should organize the masses with arms in hand because they clamor to organize the rebellion. As such, we must apply the People’s War which is the principal form of struggle and organize them for the taking of Power led by the Party. This is clearly tied to the principal contradiction in the world today, the strategic offensive of the world revolution, and with the principal tendency in today’s world, revolution. As Marx indicated, the mass line also aims at forming the general arming of the people with the goal of guaranteeing the triumph of the revolution and to prevent capitalist restoration. This is a thought of great perspectives that will carry us to Communism: Only by organizing this sea of armed masses will it be possible to defend what is seized and develop the democratic, socialist and cultural revolutions.
He refutes those who propose that the masses don’t want to make revolution or that the masses will not support the People’s War. The problem is not with the masses because they are ready to rebel, but rather it is with the Communist Parties who must assume their obligation to lead and raise them up in arms. He differentiates from those positions that today are based on “the accumulation of forces,” which propose parsimoniously binding the masses by way of the so-called “democratic spaces” or the use of legality. Such accumulation of forces doesn’t correspond to the current moment of the international and national class struggle, it doesn’t fit in the type of democratic revolution we are developing and which will have other characteristics within the socialist revolution, since we are living in a revolutionary situation of unequal development in the world. He is opposed to and condemns the opportunist positions of making the masses tail after the big bourgeoisie, an electoral path or for armed actions under the command of a super power or power.
Thus, he upholds the great slogan of Chairman Mao: “It is right to rebel,” and conceives that the problem of the masses today is that the Communist Parties mobilize, politicize, organize and arm the masses to take Power, specifying people’s war.
He specifies the necessity of the scientific organization of poverty. Chairman Gonzalo again stresses that those most disposed to rebel, who clamor the most to organize the rebellion are the poorest masses, and we must pay particular attention to the revolutionary and scientific organization of the masses. This is not against the class criteria, because poverty has its origin in exploitation, in the class struggle: “Misery exists linked to fabulous wealth, even the Utopians knew that both are linked: A colossal and challenging wealth next to a revealing and clamorous poverty. This is because exploitation exists.”
This thesis is tied to Marx who discovered the revolutionary potential of poverty and the need to scientifically organize it for revolution. Marx taught us that the proletariat does not have property and is the creative class, the only class that will destroy property and will thus destroy itself as a class. This thesis is tied to Lenin, who taught us that social revolution does not arise from programmes but from the fact that millions of people say we prefer to die fighting for revolution rather than live as victims of hunger. This thesis is tied to Chairman Mao, who conceived that poverty will propell the yearning for change, for action, for revolution, that it is a blank piece of paper on which the newest and most beautiful words can be written.
He takes into account the specific conditions of our society. In Peru, to speak about the masses is to speak of the peasant masses, the poor peasants; that the 1920s, 1940s and 1960s demonstrate that it is the peasant struggles that shook the very foundation of the State, but that they lack a guide: The ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Gonzalo Thought. They lack a motor: The People’s War and the just and correct leadership of the Communist Party. The peasants’ struggles were not able to take the correct path to Power, and the blood they shed was used to fetter them and brand them to the old order. These were unforgettable bloodbaths which left extraordinary lessons. The 1980s show that a true mobilization of the armed peasant masses organized in the Communist Party and People’s Guerrilla Army, and that they are giving their precious blood for the new power that is blossoming and developing through the People’s War.
This particularity is strategic because it permits the comprehension that revolution in the world is defined on the side of the poorest, who constitute the majority and who are the most disposed to rebel. In each revolution we must go to the poorest applying the three requirements that the scientific organization of poverty demand: Ideology, people’s war and a Communist Party.
In this regard, Chairman Gonzalo says: “Poverty is a driving force of the revolution. The poorest are the most revolutionary, poverty is the most beautiful song;... poverty is not a disgrace, it is an honor, our mountains with their masses are the source of our revolution, who with their hands led by the Communist Party will build a new world. Our guide: Ideology. Our motor: The armed struggle. Our leadership: The Communist Party.”
Basing himself on Chaiman Mao’s thesis which generalized revolutionary violence as the universal law for the seizure of Power and which established that the principal form of struggle is the armed struggle and the principal form of organzation is the armed forces. Before the outbreak of a war all the struggles and organizations should serve to prepare it. Chairman Gonzalo teaches us that in mass work the struggle for Power and the struggle for economic demands are two sides of the same coin, with the struggle for Power being the first and foremost demand of the masses.
Organize the masses so that they can go beyond what is permitted by the existing legal order, so that they struggle to destroy the old order and not to maintain it. This is accomplished by use of the three instruments of the revolution: The Party where the few converge, the Army with more participants, and new State–Front which is the base which progressively aglutinates the masses through leaps. In the countryside this is achieved through People’s Committees and in the cities through the People’s Revolutionary Defense Movement. In this way the tradition of electoral fronts, which the revisionists and opportunists apply to channel the struggle of the peasantry and to divert the masses in the cities from not seizing Power through war, is destroyed.
To center on political Power also demands the organization of the masses in diverse new forms of struggle, because war imposes changes on the struggle and organization of the masses. As Lenin taught us, in revolutionary epochs, new organizations must be formed and go against the old leaders who seek to sell-out the revolution in order to accomodate themselves within the reactionary system. For that reason, the old forms of struggle and organization of the masses cannot be used.
The struggle for Power as the principal aspect does not mean that from the beginning we are going to incorporate the masses all at once. Chairman Mao teaches us that developing Base Areas and armed forces is what generates the apogee of the revolution. This has to do with the law of incorporation of the masses into the revolution, which was established by the Party in the Second Plenum of 1980, an incorporation that will be through progressive leaps; with more People’s War will come a greater incorporation of the masses. Thus, the People’s War is a political fact that continues to pound ideas into the heads of men through powerful actions, who will bit by bit come to understand their only true path, thereby developing their political consciousness. The People’s War summons all the revolutionaries and opens a trail as it develops.
The masses are avid for politics and it is incumbent upon Communists to organize and lead them. The masses have concrete problems everywhere and we must worry about them and attend to them. Mass work is done within the class struggle and not on its margins. If we do not do mass work, the reactionaries and revisionists will utilize it for their own ends, whether it be to develop fascism and to corporativize them or hand over their struggles to another imperialist master. These are two wills that are distinct and opposed.
The masses seek the voice of those who affirm and not those who doubt. In our Party, in the Initiation, Chairman Gonzalo demanded that no one must ever doubt the masses, fighting those who are blind and deaf to the voice of the masses, listening to their faintest rumor and attending to their daily, concrete problems. The masses must never be fooled, they must never be forced, they must know the risks which they may face. They must be summoned to the long, bloody struggle for Power, but with this goal they will understand that it will be a necessary and victorious struggle.
Therefore the struggle for Power is principal but it cannot be separated from the struggle for economic and political demands, they are two sides of the same coin, and the latter struggle is necessary.
How do we understand the struggle for economic and political demands? We are accused of not having a specific line for the economic and political struggle of the masses. The fact is that we apply it differently, in other forms, with different politics than those applied by the opportunists and revisionists, a new and different way from the traditional forms. Chairman Gonzalo teaches us that the struggle for economic and political demands is one side of a coin, which has the struggle for political Power on the other side. It is completely wrong to separate them, to talk only about the struggle for economic and political demands is revisionism. In specifying Marx’s thesis to our society Chairman Gonzalo tells us:
“The crisis presents us with two problems: First, how to defend what has been won, because even if in the crisis the gains are lost, more would be lost if they were not defended. This is the necessity of the struggle for demands..., an economic and political struggle..., furthermore, it forges the class and the workers in their struggle for Power. Second, how to end the crisis? It cannot be ended unless the predominant social order is ended... there is a necessity for revolutionary struggle which serving the seizure of power by the armed struggle under the leadership of the Party... one cannot be separated from the other. The relationship of both problems materializes in developing the struggle for demands as a function of political Power.”
To carry forward the struggle for demands, the union and strike are used. These are the principal form of the economic struggle of the proletariat which are developed into guerrilla warfare. That is how the class is educated in the struggle for Power and elevate it through concrete armed actions which strengthens this form of struggle, giving it a higher quality.
In sum, the struggle for demands must be developed serving the seizure of Power. This is a political principle of doing mass work.
We must start from the class criteria to resolve which masses to go to. It is very important to note that the masses are organized according to the common interests of the classes they belong to. Chairman Gonzalo teaches us that this approach is essential to combat those who pretend to separate masses from classes with tales of “unity,” and of those who betray the true interests of the masses by trafficking with their struggles. Also because it allows us to understand that the masses are always an arena of struggle where the bourgeoisie and proletariat clash to lead them. However, only the Communist Party is capable of leading them because it is the only one that can represent them and struggle for their interests. Those who talk about “mass democracy” or who create open mass organizations as if they were a form of Power without violence are merely upholding bourgeois positions that negate the leadership of the proletariat and its dictatorship.
Starting from a class criteria has to do with the character of the revolution, with the classes that make up the people who should be united under the leadership of the proletariat. In our case of the democratic revolution, the proletariat leads, the peasantry is principal, the petty bourgeoisie is a firm ally and the middle bourgeoisie has a dual character. The basic masses which we must go to are the proletariat and the peasantry, principally the poor peasantry, the petty bourgeoisie and also the middle bourgeoisie.
Keeping in mind the specific demands of the masses, we should differentiate between those sectors of the masses which suffer more oppression with the goal of organizing them so that they will struggle to achieve seizures and resolve their specific contradiction. This refers to the mass fronts in which we must work. These are: The workers, the proletariat, the leading class of all revolutions, a class whose principal and decisive political objective is the seizure of Power through the People’s War to emancipate itself, emancipate the other classes and finally to destroy itself as a class. Its specific demands are the winning of seizures and rights like increased wages, a shorter work day and better working conditions. Towards this end, the workers’ movement, its struggles, mobilizations, marches, agitation, and strikes must be developed with armed actions. “Worry about the fundamental problems of the class and also of the workers, their general and concrete problems which they fight for daily.”
The peasants are the principal force, especially the poor peasants, who struggle for the seizure of land through armed struggle under the leadership of the Communist Party. Not seeing it this way leads to the “land seizures” and conforming to the old order. Further develop the peasant movement applying the “three withs”: live with, work with and struggle with them, thus forging peasants with a proletarian mentality.
Women which make up half the world and develop the feminine movement for the emancipation of women, a task which is the work of women themselves but under the leadership of the Party. We must combat the bourgeois thesis of women’s liberation. Women struggle against the constant increase in the cost of living which affects the physical integrity of the class and the people. The Party mobilizes the working, peasant and intellectual women, etc.
The intellectuals so that they may fulfill their role as revolutionary intellectuals serving the proletariat and peasantry within the People’s War. Among them are the high school students, university students and professional occupations, etc. See their specific demands, the defense of their seizures, aiming at a new national, scientific and mass culture, making them conscious that they can only achieve this with the revolution.
Mobilize the poor masses in the cities, in the shantytowns and slums against hunger and misery, so that they fight for the revolution’s programme, summon them to the People’s War so that they may seize their conquests and rights which are trampled under foot more everyday. Do not allow that they be struck with impunity and teach them how to defend themselves, so that they can resist the enemy’s aggression using all the available means at their disposal. Apply “Combat and Resist,” which is the common slogan for the class.
Mobilize the youth so that they directly participate in the front lines of the combat trenches of the People’s War. Let young workers, peasants and students develop their struggles for a new world, their right to an education, against unemployment and other ills that wracks them.
Make the children active participants in the People’s War. They can carry out many tasks which will help them understand the necessity of transforming the world. They are the future and in the end they will live in the new world. Change their ideology so that they adopt the proletariat’s.
Starting from Engel’s thesis: “In a country with an old political and workers’ movement, there is always a colossal heap of garbage inherited by tradition that must be cleaned step by step.” Lenin established: “The only Marxist line in the world proletarian movement consists in explaining to the masses that the split with opportunism is inevitable and indispensible, educating them in revolution through a merciless struggle against it.” Chairman Mao indicated that a period of struggle against imperialism and revisionism was opening, with revisionism being one of the principal sources of imperialist wars and a danger within the Party for Communists in general. Chairman Gonzalo calls for persisting in the only Marxist tactic which implies four issues:
First, sweep away the colossal heap of garbage that is revisionism and opportunism, principally electoralism. None of these revisionists and opportunists, nor any of their variaties, can represent, much less defend, the masses. Now as before they only defend the exploiters in turn, yesterday they were merely a boxcar at the tail of the fascist and corporativist Aprista government, sinisterly dragging along the union organizations under their influence. All these political and union organizations and their leaders do not represent the people but that crust of the labor aristocracy. The union bureaucracy and the bourgeois workers’ parties that always try to swerve the masses from their revoluionary path and are no more than part of that colossal heap of garbage which must be gradually swept away as Engels said.
Second, go to the deepest and most profound masses which constitute the majority, which in our country are the workers and principally poor peasants, the petty bourgeoisie and also keep the national bourgeoisie in mind. Of these, the most important are the workers and principally poor peasantry, and we must go mainly to them in both the countryside and city. We must propell their movement, lead it, mobilize them for Power so as to topple and overthrow the old State. This is the principle issue of the tactic. Among the masses it is necessary to distinguish the superficial scum which is the crust that serves the bourgeoisie from the immense majority of deep and profound masses which will emerge more and more until the destruction of the decrepit state, even more so when a People’s War starts to crumble the old Peruvian state.
Third, the masses must be educated in the People’s War, in its theory and practice. Thus, educating them in the peace of bayonets is to allow them to be slaughtered. The masses should no longer shed their blood with impunity only to be betrayed by their false leaders, for capitulation, rather this precious blood should serve the seizure of Power for the class and the people.
Fourth, it is necessary to struggle implacibly against revisionism and opportunism, combatting it as a dangerous cancer within and outside the Party and among the very masses themselves, or else they will not solidify their revolutionary path. This is a struggle which we have been waging since the reconstitution of the Party and which today in open People’s War is more urgent and implacable because of the increasingly treacherous way they act against us, the people and the revolution, especially if social-imperialism is operating behind them within their policy of collusion and contention with Yankee imperialism for global hegemony. This is applicable to revisionism and opportunism of all breeds no matter who their representatives are.
Regarding this Chairman Gonzalo tells us: “Rise above this miasma, this superficial revisionism, opportunism and electoralism whic rides on the masses. The main thing is that below this the most colossal and self-impelled force agitates, upon which we operate with the most powerful instrument of the rebellion which exists on the Earth: Armed action. We are the cry that says: ‘It is right to rebel’.”
Chairman Gonzalo starting from the ideological and political bases and along with the organizational building, established the forms of struggle and the forms of organizing the masses. He teaches us the process in which the mass work of the Party developed.
In the Constitution. He tells us that Mariátegui outlined the bases for the mass work of the Party and determined specific lines by unleashing the two-line struggle against anarchism which sidestepped the necessity of the Party and also against Apra which negated the Marxist-Leninist conception and the capacity of the class to constitute itself into a Communist Party, through its work in the Front.
Once Mariátegui died in the 1930s, his line was abandoned. The work is centered around the masses, putting them at the tail of the big bourgeoisie, deviating them towards “frontism,” elections and revisionism which weighs down on the efforts of the red line to oppose them. These erroneous tactics last more than 30 years.
In the Reconstitution. Chairman Gonzalo establishes the mass line of the Party and the organizational forms. This is in a period of over 15 years of hard two-line struggle which achieve partial leaps. In the first political strategy of the Reconstitution he develops the initiation of the mass work of the Party, all the militants in Ayacucho did peasant work including the civil construction workers, for example, also with the intellectuals and poor masses of the slums. They supported the land seizures, carried out peasant events, organized the I Regional Convention of Peasants of Ayacucho where the agrarian program was established; this was a transcendental event. He led the historic struggles of June 20, 21 and 22 in 1969 in Ayacucho and Huanta, mobilizing the masses of high school students, parents and families against Decree 006 of General Velasco which we defeated. The PCP organized the People’s Defense Front of Ayacucho, reorganized the Revolutionary Student Front (FER), created the People’s Women’s Movement (MFP), the Center for Mariátegui’s Intellectual Work (CETIM), the Revolutionary High School Student Front (FRES) and above all the Poor Peasants Movement (MCP). Thus, new politics were developed through mass work, new forms of struggle and new organizational forms came to exist.
In the two-line struggle, Chairman Gonzalo fought against revisionism which led the masses towards electoralism and against revolutionary violence to preserve the old order. He fought against Patria Roja, a form of revisionism which trafficked, like it does today, with the slogan “power grows from a barrel of a gun,” negating semi-feudalism, focussing its work around the petty-bourgeoisie, especially students and teachers. He also defeated the right liquidationism that diluted the Party’s leadership among the masses, preaching legalism and saying everything could be done through the Peasant Confederation of Peru (CCP), that the peasants didn’t understand confiscation but they did understand expropriation, and that the fascist and corporativist measures of the Velasco government should be deepened.
In the second political strategy of the Reconstitution, he established the Generated Organizations agreed upon in the Third Plenum of 1973: “The actual movements as organizations generated by the proletariat in the different fronts of work. Their three characteristics:
Adherence to Mariátegui,
Mass organizations and
Practicing democratic centralism.”
He founded the character, content and role of the Generated Organizations applying Lenin’s thesis on a clandestine Party and points of Party support in the masses, leasned from the Chinese experience on open and secret work. He specified the necessity, that in order to develop the Reconstitution of the Party, of opening the Party to the masses more, that in order to agree on a policy and carry it out effectively needed to defeat the left liquidationism that believed fascism sweeps everything away, aiming at the Party’s extinction by isolating it from the masses, and showing contempt for the peasantry and proletariat and preaching that “line is enough.”
With the defeat of the left liquidationist line the ties with the masses grew and People’s Schools were formed, schools which politicized the masses with the conception and line of the Party, which played an important role in the agitation and propaganda by linking the struggle for demands with the struggle for political Power. They completed a systematic and planned study of base workplans, unleashing the two-line struggle and developing the mass work.
The advance of the work of the Generated Organizations led to Chairman Gonzalo proposing their development into one avalanche, under the political guide of initiating the armed struggle. This led to the forming of zonal works. The Metropolitan Coordination was established for the cities, applying Lenin’s thesis for open work, Chairman Mao’s thesis for work in the cities and that the struggle of the masses should be developed in a reasonable, advantageous and measurable way. Their application allowed us to keep the Party clandestine, entrenched in the masses, moving in a good number of activists, distribute propaganda in a short time and facitilated agitation and mobilization under a centralized Party plan.
All of this is what we called “the three little feet” for mass work in the cities: Generated Organizations, People’s Schools and the Metropolitan Coordination. For the countryside the first two forms were applied.
In the third political strategy of the Reconstitution, the Party widely developed its mass work in the zones of the Sierra, linking itself with the poor peasants primarily in the cities with the proletariat and masses in the slums and shantytowns. The generated organizations have played a good role within the culmination of the reconstitution and building bases for the armed struggle. The specific lines were developed even further, so that the Classist Movement of Workers and Laborers (MOTC) proposed 15 basic theses for the workers’ movement; the Poor Peasant Movement (MCP) politicized the peasants with the agrarian program specified for new conditions; in the Shantytown Classist Movement (MCB) the list of denunciations and demands of the people are published; the Student Revolutionary Front (FER) develops the thesis of the Defense of the University against fascism; the Revolutionary High School Student Front (FRES) impelled the struggle of students for popular education; the People’s Women’s Movement (MFP) raised the thesis of women’s Emancipation, propelling the mobilization of working women, peasants women, shantytown dwellers and students. Furthermore, there was participation in the United Synidicate of Peruvian Educational Workers (SUTEP) which led to its specific class line being adopted in the 1970s. The National Federation of Peruvian University Teachers (FENTUP) was also formed. All of this work entered into a wide ideological-political mobilization to initiate the People’s War.
In synthesis, all the mass work of the Party in the Reconstitution was to prepare the initiation of the People’s War. As Chairman Mao taught us, before initiating the war, everything is preparation for it, and once it has begun everything serves to develop it. Chairman Gonzalo has applied and firmly developed this principle.
In the leadership of the People’s War there was a great leap in the mass work of the Party, a qualitative leap, which shapes the principal form of struggle: The People’s War and the principal form of organization: The People’s Guerrilla Army. This highest task was carried out by way of the militarization of the Party, and with respect to the mass work means that all the mass work is done through the People’s Guerrilla Army, which as an army of a new type that fulls three tasks: Combat, mobilize and produce. We conceive that the second task of the army implies mobilizing, politicizing, organizing and arming the masses, a task which is not counterposed to fighting, which is the principal task, because the principle of concentrating for combat and dispersing for mobilization is applied. In addition, the masses are educated in the war. This is a principle which governs the three forces: Principal ones, local ones and in the bases where various degrees of actions are specified.
For the mobilization of masses, the Party through the EGP carries forward the People’s Schools, forms the Generated Organizations, the support groups, a policy that applied particularly one way in the countryside, because that is where the New Power is being formed, and in another way in the cities. In the cities, the Revolutionary Defense Movement of the People was formed, aiming at the future insurrection.
In the countryside, where we have Power, Base Areas and People’s Committees, we see to it that all the masses engage in armed participation, organized in the Party, Army and Front-State. If all the masses are not organized the New Power will not be able to sustain itself for long. Amorphous masses or Power without masses organized under the leadership of the Party is not enougn.
In the cities, the mass work is carried out by the Army as well, and the main thing is the struggle for Power through the People’s War, with the struggle for demands serving political Power as a necessary complement. Obviously, this happens with many armed actions with the goal of materializing the new forms of organization. We formed the Peoples’s Revolutionary Defense Movement (MRDP), which attracts masses from the workers, peasants, shantytowns and petty bourgeoisie, neutralizing the middle bourgeoisie, aiming at the democratic forces which support the People’s War. The objective is to lead the masses towards the resistance and to the elevation of their struggles into People’s War, to hinder, undermine and perturb the old State and serve the insurrection, preparing the cities with People’s War in a complementary way. We use the double policy of developing our own forms, which is principal, and penetrate all type of organizations. We apply Combat and Resist!
Regarding the Generated Organizations, in the People’s War they have expressed developement and their characteristics have changed. They continue being mass organizations of the Party and today:
They are guided by Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Gonzalo Thought;
They are governed by democratic centralism, and
They serve the development of the People’s War.
In the countryside, the Generated Organizations are militarized; in the cities many degrees of militarization can be applied. Today, we have the following: MOTC, MCP, MCB, MFP, MJP [People’s Youth Movement], MIP. [People’s Intellectual Movement] Peru People’s Aid is also important which has upsurged in the People’s War as part of the struggle for prisoners of war and dissappeared. For the Party’s overseas work the Peru People’s Movement (MPP) has been formed with its specific tasks.
Today, after nearly eight years of People’s War the Party has made a great leap in its mass work, proving that it is just and correct to develop mass work within and for the People’s War. As a result of its application our people are learning each day that the class struggle necessarily leads to the struggle for Power. Their growing participation in the People’s War is very expressive, and even if not everyone reaches an understanding of it, they see in it the concrete hope of their emancipation. They are developing their struggles with new forms of struggle and organization, and the class struggle in Peru has been elevated to its principal form: The People’s War. The masses are organized in People’s War and are the base and sustenance of it. They are organized in a Communist Party, into a People’s Guerrilla Army and principally in the New Power, the principal seizure of the People’s War in which the workers, peasants and petty-bourgeoisie participate, excercising political power like never before in History.
These are qualitative leaps which give rise to conditions for a new chapter in mass work within and for the People’s War until the seizure of Power countrywide.
Those who uphold Marxism-Leninsm-Maoism, Gonzalo Thought, assume the embodiment of the mass line of the Party and apply it giving up our lives so that the Party seizes Power throughout the country and serves the world revolution.
EMBODY THE MASS LINE OF THE PARTY!
ORGANIZE THE CLAMOR OF THE PEOPLE FOR REBELLION!
MAKE THE GREAT LEAP IN THE INCOPORATION OF THE MASSES WITHIN AND FOR THE PEOPLE’S WAR!