Declaration of the Sixth and Seventh plenums of the Central Committee.
In Peruvian society in the 20th century, two roads confront each other as an expression of the class struggle: the bureaucratic road and the democratic road. The first is the road of the exploiting classes, imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucrat-capitalism; the road of the monopolistic bourgeoisie, primarily of Yankee imperialism, which oppresses us, of feudal landowners, and of the comprador and bureaucratic bourgeoisie. This is the road of the development and deepening of bureaucrat-capitalism in a semi-feudal and semi-colonial society; the road of the state of landlord-bureaucratic dictatorship under imperialist control; the predominance of imperialist and feudal ideology.
The bureaucratic road is the one followed by the exploiting classes in the country from 1895 to the present day. This road, in the 1920s, enthroned the “merchant bourgeoisie” as the ruling class of the reactionary countryside and restructured the Peruvian state from the perspective of the so-called “representative democracy.” This first state restructuring, under the leadership of the comprador bourgeoisie, occurred “at a time when, having reached the stage of monopolies and imperialism, all the liberal ideology corresponding to the stage of free competition has ceased to be valid,” as stated in point 3 of the Party’s Program. However, while the 1920 constitution served the development of bureaucrat-capitalism and the slow evolution of feudalism, as well as the dominance of Yankee imperialism and the associated comprador bourgeoisie, the unfolding of the economic process, the contradictions within the reactionary forces themselves, and primarily the development of class struggle, mobilization, politicization, and organization of the masses, especially peasants and workers, and, fundamentally, the founding of the Communist Party by Mariátegui in an environment of general crisis, greatly aggravated by the global crisis of 1929, led to the second state restructuring of this century. This restructuring, like the first one, directly derived from a so-called “revolutionary” movement, was embodied in the 1933 constitution, which, with variations that do not change its essence, falls within the same conditions of the bureaucratic road.
Since the 1950s, this road has entered into the deepening of bureaucrat-capitalism with an increasing participation of the State in all aspects of national life, especially in the economic field. The 1960s are crucial for this second phase, in which its economic process revealed more obstacles and limitations, even generating dangerous prospects for its system, and also witnessed a crisis in the so-called “representative democracy.” It is worth noting that similar conditions occurred throughout Latin America. Thus, in October 1968, the Armed Forces assumed power to fulfill two tasks: deepening bureaucrat-capitalism and restructuring Peruvian society, which they have been carrying out for almost 10 years. The new government, presenting itself as “revolutionary” and with the main cooperation of the corporatist social revisionism of “Unity,” initiated a resounding campaign questioning the “pre-revolutionary order” and especially the system of “representative democracy.” Guided by a fascist political conception, the Armed Forces, after immediate economic and political readjustments, focused on laying the foundations for corporatization and the deepening of bureaucrat-capitalism, taking the State as the driving force of the economy through state monopolism. Subsequently, their own process and the global crisis that worsened the situation will lead the government to a general corporate readjustment in the economic, political, and ideological spheres, adopting measures for reactivation and other tendencies towards corporatization. The road it has followed is currently unfolding as a stage of restructuring the corporatist State, to be fulfilled over several years.
The bureaucratic road is, therefore, a process of over eighty years, and if yesterday its leadership was in the hands of the comprador bourgeoisie, since the 1960s, it is the developing bureaucratic bourgeoisie that commands the process through the Armed Forces. And while in past decades the State was fundamentally restructured twice based on the model of so-called “representative democracy,” currently, the third restructuring of the landlord-bureaucratic State is being carried out on corporatist foundations.
In contrast to the bureaucratic road, the democratic road, the road of the people, is being developed. This is the road of the exploited and oppressed; it is the road of the popular masses to destroy the exploitation of feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalism, as well as the exploitation and oppression of Yankee imperialism that dominates us, thwarting any other imperialist ambition, especially social-imperialism, which currently contends for global hegemony. It is the road of the uprising of the masses, primarily peasants, to overthrow the existing order, to seize power through violence. It is the road that the proletariat, through its Party, guides as the leading class, and which the peasantry carries out as the main force; it is the road actively supported by the petty bourgeoisie, and in which the national bourgeoisie can participate under certain circumstances and conditions.
The road of the people, in Peruvian contemporary history, also begins in the late 19th century, and its course is marked by the political development of the proletariat. Mariátegui, founder of the Communist Party, taught us that the formation of the industrial proletariat in our country “changes the terms of the political struggle.” This is an undeniable truth for all revolutionaries. In the midst of the 1920s, amidst the struggle of our people, especially the peasant uprisings, and through the heroic struggle of the proletariat under the banners of Marxism-Leninism, José Carlos Mariátegui founded the Communist Party on October 7, 1928. It is “the vanguard of the proletariat, the political force that assumes the task of its orientation and leadership in the struggle for the realization of its class ideals,” as written in point 9 of our Program. Thus, the old bourgeois revolution that the bourgeoisie was able to lead, although in practice it was unable to do so, has become a new type of bourgeois revolution, a New-Democratic revolution, an anti-imperialist and anti-feudal revolution that only the proletariat, through its Party, is capable of leading by following the road of encircling the cities from the countryside and waging a protracted people’s war. This is the road that Chairman Mao Zedong established for countries like ours and the road that our founder points us towards.
In its second phase, parallel to the bureaucratic one, the democratic road underwent significant development in the 1960s: the proletariat engaged in major struggles, and the peasantry, reenacting its old actions, shook the foundations of Peruvian society. Meanwhile, students, workers, intellectuals, and popular masses, particularly the working masses in neighborhoods and slums, increased their combativeness. In summary, there was a remarkable rise in the struggle of the popular masses.
During this decade, the country also witnessed guerrilla struggles, from which we must draw lessons for the future. Class struggle fueled the defense of Marxism-Leninism against revisionism. In the light of the international battle between Marxism and revisionism, and under the guidance of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought, the communists fought to Retake the Road of Mariátegui and Reconstitute his Party. The goal was to return to Mariátegui, to his road, his general political line, his line of building, and his mass line. Specifically, the aim was to retake his road, continue and develop it, and on this foundation, rebuild his Party.
The democratic road, the road of the people, in its contemporary journey of over eighty years also has two moments. The first, centered around the 1920s, is when Mariátegui founded the Communist Party, making the proletariat the leading political class, conscious and organized within the revolutionary field. During that time, the Peruvian proletariat had the task of constituting itself as a Party under the principles of Marxism-Leninism. The second moment, in which we are currently living, has a key task: to reclaim Mariátegui and reconstitute his Party, which operates under the banners of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought. This occurs amidst the deepening of bureaucrat-capitalism and corporatization promoted by the exploiters. It is through this deepening that the conditions for a democratic revolution mature, and as the guerrillas of the 1960s demonstrated, the conditions for deciding on revolution through armed struggle are born.
Paying attention to the issue of the two roads is of utmost importance. We must study this problem as it involves understanding the process, the situation, and the perspective of the fields of revolution and counter-revolution. It is part of comprehending our history through the lens of class struggle, so that our course is clearer and there is less risk of disorientation. In summary, the bureaucratic road has now entered the structuring of its corporate state under the command of the so-called “social democracy of full participation.” It will seek, through the implementation of its “gradualism” in both the economic and political spheres, to serve precisely its own plans, binding the people to this road and focusing their attention on the electoral activities it schedules. This structuring and these activities will also be used to address the crisis and revive the economy.
For the democratic road, the problem lies in changing the existing social order by seizing power through the strategy of encircling the cities from the countryside, in order to create a People’s Republic. As long as this goal is not achieved in essence, the situation will remain the same. For the people, the issue is to transform their tendency for development into organized action through their own forces, building and developing their revolutionary instruments, and not allowing themselves to be tied to the chariot of corporatist state structuring. For the people, the problem is to develop the growing popular protest and organize struggles for the benefits of conquests, rights, and freedoms, particularly economic demands, without losing sight of their direction and not becoming focused solely on electoral activities that go against their deep interests. Let us not forget that, as Engels said, elections are “instruments of bourgeois domination,” and let us remember Mariátegui, who taught us to use “elections for mere purposes of agitation and class propaganda.” In summary, for the people, for the working class, and for the Party, the problem is: to rebuild the Party from the countryside and to base it on rural work, in order to continue the road of encircling the cities from the countryside.
What course have the popular masses followed under the current regime? Initially, there was a retreat in response to the military coup in 1968. Then, there was a resurgence of popular struggle in 1971, followed by the development of democratic struggle for the unification of the masses, which gained significant momentum in the second half of 1973. Subsequently, in 1975, the popular masses tended towards development as their main trend, implying progress in ideological, political, and organizational aspects. Over the course of almost nine years, the masses, naturally, have engaged in intense struggles, with ebbs and flows. A broad labor movement, especially in this decade, with 1975 being the peak so far, demonstrates the increasing militancy of the proletariat. The peasantry, in turn, has continued to fight for land and has opposed agrarian laws. The struggles in Andahuaylas are clear evidence, if not the only one, that the old and still unresolved peasant struggle continues to resonate in various regions of our homeland. The popular masses in different cities of the country have also engaged in notable actions, and it can be affirmed that there is no major city that has not been a scene of popular protest.
The above shows the tendency towards development that nests as the main current in the popular masses, especially in workers and peasants who are the basic forces. All of this leads to a deeper intensification of the class struggle, which tends to become a future rise in the people’s struggle. But the rise in our country, essentially, is the development and rise of the peasant movement, and without it, one cannot speak of a strong and true rise of the popular struggle. Here lies the importance of the peasantry, which is nothing but a reflection of its condition as the main force. This problem is fundamental and is clearly a weak point in the revolutionary work of the country.
Against the development of the mass movement, the regime launched its fascist and corporatist political offensive, seeking to organize the popular masses in its so-called “grassroots organizations” to unite them with its counter-revolutionary program. However, their plans did not fully achieve their objectives. An example of this can be seen in the trade union front: Initially, the government denied the need for unions, then advocated for “trade union pluralism,” and later organized its own corporatist unions, the propagandized CTRP.1 Subsequently, it promoted its “revolutionary labor movement” (MLR) aiming to seize control of the unions and usurp their leadership. This evolution of its trade union policy occurred parallel to the constant “dialogue” and coordination and collaboration it maintained with the “recognized federations”: CGTP,2 CNT, and CTP,3 which have supported it with minor disagreements, mainly CGTP. It also occurred parallel to its constant and systematic use of repressive violence, which it applied from the beginning of its administration and which, starting from 1976, became a year of suspended guarantees, a state of emergency, and an anti-trade union and anti-people offensive.
The regime and its program aimed at controlling the masses and organizing them were supported, in addition to the mentioned factions, by reactionary political parties. The Apra4 party, mainly among the defenders of the so-called “representative democracy,” was the main point of divergence between these parties and the government, which, in turn, are united, government and parties, by their submission to North American imperialism. The revisionist party “Unidad,”5 mainly among the adherent parties of corporatism, also supported them. Within these parties, the agreement between the government and “Unidad” lies in corporatism, while their divergence lies in the fact that revisionism is the spearhead of social imperialism.
Throughout these years, the government has relied, directly or indirectly, and through secondary divergences, on the support of the Apra and revisionism, mainly among the parties of “representative democracy” and corporatists. However, it is the revisionist party “Unidad” that has served as the main ally and support of the regime up to this day. Currently, it is precisely the one calling for closing ranks around the so-called “achievements of the revolution” and advocating for the purest structuring of the corporative state, which the government and revisionism refer to as “full participation social democracy.” The Christian Democracy is linked to the government not only due to its corporatist position but also because of its ties to Yankee imperialism and its Christian social conception. However, given its limited influence, it has not played the same role as revisionism.
However, despite all of that, even amidst the confusion sown by revolutionary ideas within the ranks of the people, and despite the historical burdens that hinder a popular struggle and its current weaknesses, the popular masses have not been tied to the corporatist wagon. This shows the level of development of the masses, especially the grassroots, and that political propaganda is never in vain, no matter how much time passes between sowing and reaping, as Lenin teaches us.
Since 1975, the people have been enduring a crisis resulting from the implementation of the program to deepen bureaucrat-capitalism and corporatize Peruvian society, exacerbated by the global crisis. This crisis, which will continue in 1978 and whose consequences threaten to extend until ’80, strikes the masses with wage cuts expressed in significant losses of purchasing power; with increasing unemployment that primarily affects young people and women and expands as underemployment in rural areas; with skyrocketing living costs and a lack of basic food products for the popular consumption; and with a systematic anti-union, anti-popular, and antidemocratic offensive, manifested for over a year most recently in the suspension of guarantees, a state of emergency, and the denial of elementary rights such as wage demands, trade union organization, and the right to strike, leading to numerous arrests and repression.
This crisis is just another one of the usual crises that we suffer and to which the social system condemns the people. It poses a question to the masses: How do we overcome the crisis? Marxism teaches that the crisis is a vicious circle that repeats itself every certain number of years because its root cause lies within the social order itself. Through well-led trade union struggles, workers can achieve demands such as wage increases, reduced working hours, and improved working conditions. However, when a crisis arrives, what has been gained is lost, and once it is overcome, workers return to the same road of demanding and reclaiming what was lost, as well as seeking new achievements, only to lose them again in another crisis, and so on. This is the vicious cycle Engels spoke of, the repeated cyclical pattern that will continue as long as the dominant exploitative order exists. It presents a challenge to the proletariat and the people to fight and break free from it. The crisis presents us with two problems: first, how to defend what has been conquered, and secondly, the more these gains are not defended, the more they will be lost. This is the question of the necessity of the ongoing struggle for demands, always adhering to the principles of “reason, advantage, and limit.” Reclaiming struggle that not only involves the defense of benefits, achievements, rights, and freedoms but also an economic struggle as a demand for a group or a section of the class, and a political struggle as a general claim. Additionally, the reclaiming struggle shapes the class and the workers for their fight for Power. Secondly, how to end the crisis? Since crises are cyclical products of the social order of exploitation, they cannot be ended without putting an end to the prevailing social order. This is the fundamental issue in the struggle for Power, the problem of developing the road of surrounding the cities from the countryside to advance the revolution of new democracy through popular warfare. Therefore, it is the necessity of revolutionary struggle that serves the working class in taking Power under the leadership of its Party. These two issues, the reclaiming struggle and the struggle for Power, which worsen and become evident during crises, cannot be separated from each other. The challenge is for the masses to engage in both struggles, with the ultimate goal of Power in mind. The relationship between both issues is concrete when developing the reclaiming struggle in function of obtaining Power; hence, to primarily focus on the reclaiming struggle is revisionism.
Currently, more than ever, we must adhere to the great principle that the masses make history and that “the proletariat, in its struggle for power, has no weapon other than organization.” We should be guided by the following important orientation: “only when the workers and peasants, who constitute 90 percent of the population, are organized and mobilized, will it be possible to overthrow imperialism and feudalism.” These are fundamental propositions of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought that we must keep in mind. Today, when the struggle against revisionism, the main danger in the national and international revolutionary struggle, becomes more necessary, we must firmly apply the Marxist tactic of distinguishing the “bourgeois workers’ party, the party of the privileged minority, from the ‘lower masses,’ the true majority... who are not contaminated by ‘bourgeois respectability.’ ” This was established by the great Lenin, and we must persist in his guidance that “if we want to remain socialists (that is, communists), our duty is to go deeper and down to the true masses: this is the essence of the struggle against opportunism and the entire content of this struggle.” We must adhere to the line he summarized as follows: “The only Marxist line in the world workers’ movement consists in explaining to the masses that a split with opportunism is inevitable and essential, in educating them for revolution through ruthless struggle against it, in using the experience of war to expose all the infamies of liberal-nationalist labor politics, and not to cover them up.”
To consider in Peru the problem of the popular masses is to focus attention on the peasantry, which is the main force of the revolution. Mariátegui, founder of the Communist Party, centered on this issue. In summary, the national-democratic revolution is based on the question of land, and the problem of land in Peru is the survival of feudalism, “the feudal economic regime, whose expressions are bossism, latifundium, and servitude,” emphasizing that “the land ownership regime determines the political and administrative regime of the entire nation.” Therefore, Mariátegui, with great vision, established that the first problem we must solve is “the liquidation of feudalism.” On the other hand, he masterfully pointed out the relationship between the indigenous problem and the issue of nationality, stating: “Peru is still a forming nationality. It is being built on the inert indigenous strata, the alluviums of Western civilization,” adding that the “problem of the indigenous people... is the problem of the majority. It is the problem of nationality.” And delving into the indigenous problem, he stated: “The indigenous question stems from our economy. It has its roots in the land ownership regime,” and “the control of the land places the fate of the indigenous race in the hands of the ‘bosses.’ ” Thus, our founder established the inseparable relationship between the land problem and the national problem. In this way, the struggle for land is the basis of the national struggle, and the latter cannot develop revolutionarily without the former.
Furthermore, in Mariátegui, gamonalismo, one of the expressions of feudalism, inseparably linked to the land issue and the national problem, acquires decisive importance due to its relationship with the state problem and the revolution. In Introduction to Storm in the Andes, he wrote:
“The term ‘gamonalism’ does not only refer to a social and economic category: that of the large landowners or big agricultural proprietors. It designates an entire phenomenon. Gamonalism is not represented solely by the gamonales themselves. It encompasses a long hierarchy of officials, intermediaries, agents, and parasites. The literate indigenous person transforms into an exploiter of their own race by serving gamonalism. The central factor of this phenomenon is the hegemony of the semi-feudal large property in politics and the mechanisms of the State. Therefore, it is upon this factor, on which action must be taken if one wants to attack at its root an evil that some insist on only considering as episodic and subsidiary expressions.”
“The eradication of gamonalism or feudalism could have been carried out by the Republic, within the framework of liberal and capitalist principles... but they were sabotaged by the very class entrusted with their implementation. For over a century, they have been powerless to free the indigenous people from their servitude, which is inseparable from feudalism. It is not to be expected that today, when these principles are in crisis worldwide, they will suddenly acquire an unheard-of creative vitality in Peru”
The same founder, addressing these issues in relation to all of America, said: “The current state in these countries rests on the alliance of the feudal landowning class and the merchant bourgeoisie. Once feudal latifundism is defeated, urban capitalism will lack the strength to resist the growing working class.” Analyzing the implications of capitalism in relation to the peasantry, he concluded: “Capitalism, with its own instruments of exploitation, impels the masses along the road of their demands, urging them to engage in a struggle where they develop the material and mental capacity to lead a new order.”
All these propositions are of great significance for our Party and our people, especially now, when the implementation of three agrarian laws since the 1960s has propelled the landowning road of feudal evolution, within the deepening of bureaucrat-capitalism and corporatization. They confirm their validity and importance day by day, as well as the need to apply them with determination and firmness, developing them in the midst of the peasant class struggle for land, which is the very foundation of the democratic revolution. Hence, there is an increasingly urgent demand to place peasant labor as the basis of all revolutionary activity in our country. This is the foundation of the struggle for Power in a country like ours because, as we reiterate, the peasantry is the main force in the transformation of Peruvian society and, consequently, the source that will primarily contribute to the road of encircling the cities from the countryside. Let us combat the erroneous revisionist criteria that claim the proletariat is the main force and that revolutionary activities should be centered around it. In our country, as demonstrated by the Chinese revolution, the proletariat may not be the main force, but it is the leading class, and its course consists precisely in raising up the peasantry and guiding it, through its Party, in the democratic revolution through people’s war.
In conclusion, our problem is to mobilize, politicize, and organize the masses, primarily the peasantry, considering that the principal form of struggle is armed struggle and that we must develop the struggle for demands in relation to Power. Only in this way will we serve the proletariat, the people, and the revolution; only in this way, ultimately, will we serve proletarian internationalism; only in this way, in summary, will we forge ourselves as communists and pave the way to fulfill the Party’s program until communist society. Let us firmly adhere to the principles of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought, develop in the class struggle the general political line established by Mariátegui, and have infinite confidence in the masses, as stated in the Party’s Program drafted by our own founder: “The working masses of the city, the countryside, and the mines, and the indigenous peasantry, whose interests and aspirations we represent in the political struggle, will know how to appropriate these demands and this doctrine, fight persistently and strenuously for them, and find, through this struggle, the road that leads to the final victory of socialism.”
The development of party work and the two-line struggle have led us, in recent years, to the following conclusion: to develop building based on ideological-political building and simultaneously develop organizational building, amidst the class struggle of the masses and the two-line struggle, namely the proletarian line of Mariátegui and its development against right and left opportunism. And more recently, we have made progress in understanding the inseparable link between building and struggle. This process is particularly linked to the struggle against right and left liquidationism; it is through the struggle against liquidationism that we have understood these important issues.
These experiences that the party has lived in recent years correspond to those of the international proletariat; thus, in the Chinese experience, the following accurate condensation should be taken into account: “Whether to persist in the internal struggle of the party or not is a principled difference between the line of Chairman Mao and the revisionist line in the building of the Party.”
In general terms and from the perspective of the Party building in particular, we could divide our history into the following stages: first, the establishment of the Road of Mariátegui and the constitution of the Party; second, the search for the Road of Mariátegui and the Defense of the Party; third, the struggle to Retake the Road of Mariátegui and the Reconstitution of the Party. If we wanted to be more specific, highlighting the problems of Party building, we would specify the three stages as follows: Constitution, Defense, and Reconstitution.
The constitution of the Communist Party in October 1928, the masterpiece of José Carlos Mariátegui, was a long and great struggle that concluded over three decades of combat by the Peruvian proletariat. The Constitution involved fighting against anarchosyndicalism and the machinations of emerging aprismo, and it was the triumph of the proletarian Party’s necessity in our country.
Since the constitution or foundation of the Party, we can highlight five important struggles:
Against the abandonment of the Road of Mariátegui and the left liquidationism of Ravínez and company.
Against the capitulationism and right liquidationism of Terreros - Portocarrero and Acosta - Del Prado - Barrio, under the influence of Browderism.
Against the revisionism of Del Prado and company under the leadership of the contemporary revisionism of Khrushchev - Brezhnev.
For the building of the three instruments of the revolution and against right disguised as “left” and,
Against both right and “left” liquidationism.
These are important struggles in the nearly 50 years of history of the Party. We must pay great attention to them in order to extract experiences and lessons that serve the development of the building we are engaged in. The study and research of the Party’s history, although they have advanced, must be reinforced. It is vital to understand the struggle of the two lines, the process of building the three instruments in the country, and to adhere more to the line of Mariátegui and its development.
The process of Party Reconstitution is a consequence of Returning to the Road of Mariátegui. It began in the early 1960s and, although it is based on the class struggle in our homeland, especially of the proletariat and the peasantry, it is intimately linked in its development to Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought. Over the course of more than 15 years, the Reconstitution has gone through the following stages: Its determination, which culminates in the Sixth Conference with the establishment of the Bases of Party Unity (Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought, Mariátegui’s thought, and the general political line) and the agreement on the need for Party Reconstitution in 1969; its implementation, whose key is the Third Plenum that endorsed the Bases of Reconstitution in ideological-political, organizational, and mass work aspects in 1973; its momentum, which has been developed since 1975. Thus, the Party Reconstitution has now reached the stage of culmination, which must culminate in the Fifth Congress. The task today is, therefore, to complete the Reconstitution.
The Reconstitution has allowed for a clearer and more certain understanding of the inseparable relationship between Party building and the general political line; that Party building is in service of the general political line, whose essence lies in following the road of surrounding the cities from the countryside, in this stage of the democratic revolution in which we find ourselves, and that deviating from the political line undermines Party building and leads to denying the Party’s character and its role as the organized vanguard of the proletariat, rendering it unable to fight for Power, which is the central problem of the revolution. All of this is proven by our own party history.
The development of the Reconstitution has taken place, as it had to be, in a struggle against opposing lines: Against revisionism, rightism disguised as “leftism,” and liquidationism. The fight against liquidationism from both the right and the left, carried out simultaneously with the implementation of the reconstitution, successfully culminated in the agreement to “liquidate liquidationism in order to advance and develop the struggle of the two lines against revisionism as the main danger” and to concretize the political line for its immediate application in the orientation of “Reconstituting the Party from the countryside and placing peasant work as the foundation to continue the road of encircling the cities from the countryside.”
The development of the two-line struggle within the Party currently raises the fight against revisionism as the main danger. The summary of the struggles waged in recent years and the problems we face today demand that we combat revisionism taking into account the following points:
Opposition to Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought and Mariátegui's thought. Denial of the development of Mariátegui’s line.
Opposition to the strategy of surrounding the cities from the countryside. Placing hopes in the reactionary State and regime and questioning the orientation of work in terms of the struggle for Power.
Opposition to the Reconstitution of the Party from the countryside and building it in struggle against revisionism as the main danger.
Questioning the road of party building in a backwards country like ours.
Separate the ideological-political building from the organizational one and attempt to develop building apart from class struggle and the two-line struggle.
Unilateral application of open work and secret work that denies their interrelation. Questioning the system, structure, and party work.
Denial of the role of leadership and leaders, and opposition to proletarian discipline.
Denying the peasantry its status as the main force and being against making peasant work the foundation of all building.
Questioning the effective leadership of the proletariat in the revolution by considering it as the main force.
Denying the need to “go deeper and reach the true masses” in order to educate them for the revolution and asserting that the split with revisionism is inevitable and essential. Refusing to engage in the struggle for demands in relation to power.
Theoretical acceptance of the worker-peasant alliance as the basis of the united front but questioning it in practice and denying the need to build the united front from the countryside.
Denial of people’s war. Opposition to the principles and military line of Chairman Mao Zedong and promotion of insurrectionary and urban guerrilla criteria. Denial of the universal law of revolutionary violence.
Questioning the necessity of combating revisionism as the main danger. Denial of proletarian internationalism, particularly as the defense of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought and the obligation to combat revisionism.
Reconciliation with revisionism.
Exaltation of revolutionism and preaching of unity without demarcation.
Opposition to the “philosophy of struggle.” Liberalism, conciliationism, and groupism. “Dirty fighting.”
Questioning the conception of the proletariat in order to replace it with the bourgeois conception.
The struggle against revisionism as the main danger that unfolds at present is of great importance and perspective, and its generalization and differentiation that take into account all fronts of our activity and the diversity of specific situations, as well as guiding it correctly and with firmness and sagacity, is a decisive matter for the development of building.
Building is a fundamental weapon of the proletariat in their struggle for power. It is through building that the political line becomes a reality and can mobilize the masses under the Party’s leadership. Building, for us, since the establishment of the Party, involves three instruments: the Party, the united front, and armed struggle. The Party building presents us, today as yesterday, with the need to understand how to build it in a semi-feudal and semi-colonial society, and how to develop it through struggle. In this problem, as in all others, we must adhere to Marxism, our experience, and the current concrete conditions of the class struggle. It is important to study and apply what Lenin established in One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, as it is vital for understanding the opportunist line in this field and addressing our specific problems. In that text, Lenin emphasized the importance of organization, the simultaneous building of the ideological-political foundation, and the organizational development amidst the class struggle for power and the struggle against opportunism. He says:
“In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organization. Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labour for capital, constantly thrust back to the ‘lower depths’ of utter destitution, savagery, and degeneration, the proletariat can, and inevitably will, become an invincible force only through its ideological unification on the principles of Marxism being reinforced by the material unity of organization, which welds millions of toilers into an army of the working class. Neither the senile rule of the Russian autocracy nor the senescent rule of international capital will be able to withstand this army. It will more and more firmly close its ranks, in spite of all zigzags and backward steps, in spite of the opportunist phrase-mongering of the Girondists of present-day Social-Democracy, in spite of the self-satisfied exaltation of the retrograde circle spirit, and in spite of the tinsel and fuss of intellectualist anarchism.”
In the same text, the need for a unified and centralized structure, system, and partisan work is presented to us. It states: “Unity on questions of programme and tactics is an essential but by no means a sufficient condition for Party unity, for the centralisation of Party work (...) The latter requires, in addition, unity of organization, which, in a party that has grown to be anything more than a mere family circle, is inconceivable without formal Rules, without the subordination of the minority to the majority and of the part to the whole. As long as we had no unity on the fundamental questions of programme and tactics, we bluntly admitted that we were living in a period of disunity and separate circles, we bluntly declared that before we could unite, lines of demarcation must be drawn; we did not even talk of the forms of a joint organization, but exclusively discussed the new (at that time they really were new) problems of fighting opportunism on programme and tactics. At present, as we all agree, this fight has already produced a sufficient degree of unity, as formulated in the Party programme and the Party resolutions on tactics; we had to take the next step, and, by common consent, we did take it, working out the forms of a united organization that would merge all the circles together.”
In this same book, Lenin characterizes the opportunist line on organizational issues: “their advocacy of a diffuse, not strongly welded, Party organization; their hostility to the idea (the ‘bureaucratic’ idea) of building the Party from the top downwards, starting from the Party Congress and the bodies set up by it; their tendency to proceed from the bottom upwards, allowing every professor, every high school student and ‘every striker’ to declare himself a member of the Party; their hostility to the ‘formalism’ which demands that a Party member should belong to one of the organizations recognised by the Party; their leaning towards the mentality of the bourgeois intellectual, who is only prepared to ‘accept organizational relations platonically’; their penchant for opportunist profundity and for anarchistic phrases; their tendency towards autonomism as against centralism.”
All of the above are basic matters that we must deeply assimilate and apply, taking into account the 50-year experience of the party, always acting firmly and with initiative.
We must start from the premise that in building, our basic and fundamental problem is how to build the Party, as the organized vanguard of the proletariat and its highest form of organization, which serves to seize Power by leading in practice the democratic revolution in a semi-feudal and semi-colonial society. This problem, resolved in its general and current laws by Chairman Mao Zedong in Introducing The Communist, must always be remembered.
In the referred work, it was established that the Party building, in those conditions, develops linked to the united front and the armed struggle, pointing out the three problems and their interrelation in the following terms:
“Therefore the united front, armed struggle and Party building are the three fundamental questions for our Party in the Chinese revolution. Having a correct grasp of these three questions and their interrelations is tantamount to giving correct leadership to the whole Chinese revolution.”
Here is the substantive question of the need to build and develop the Party through the armed struggle and the united front; here is the question of subjecting ourselves to the fact that the armed struggle is the principal form of struggle and that the popular army is the principal form of organization; here is the problem that the Party is the “heroic fighter” that manages the united front and the armed struggle. All this is to subject the Party building to the law of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought of revolutionary violence to seize power; what Chairman Mao masterfully synthesized in the necessity of the revolutionary army to change the world:
“Whoever has an army has power and that war decides everything.”
“Those which have more guns have more power.”
“Every Communist must grasp the truth, ‘Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.’ ”
“Whoever wants to seize and retain state power must have a strong army.”
“Experience in the class struggle in the era of imperialism teaches us that it is only by the power of the gun that the working class and the labouring masses can defeat the armed bourgeoisie and landlords; in this sense we may say that only with guns can the whole world be transformed. We are advocates of the abolition of war, we do not want war; but war can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun.”
All the above is a solid set of Marxist truths and an indispensable part of our education in the conception of the proletariat and the only criterion that can correctly guide the transformation of Peruvian society. We must adhere to these criteria and embody them in the masses; today, it is all the more necessary given the political electoral perspective that is approaching.
Since the constitution of the party the three problems and their interrelation are present. Synthesizing, we can say, Mariátegui started from the principle of revolutionary violence, he framed the action within the democratic revolution led by the proletariat (the bourgeoisie cannot lead it); and, he conceived and shaped the Party linking it to the united front and to the need for the armed struggle of the peasantry. Thus our founder, with precision, established how to develop the Party in the first stage of the revolution.
His theses on this question should be seriously studied as much as his practical work to build the party organization; to which we must add the experience of almost 50 years, paying particular attention to the lessons on the Party, united front and armed struggle left by the decade of the 1960s, and mainly summarize the experience of the Reconstitution of the Party and its struggle around the problem of building.
What guideline should we follow? The Party building develops in a semi-feudal and semi-colonial country where the proletariat must lead, in practice, the democratic revolution preparing to develop the armed struggle to take power through the people’s war and following the road from the countryside to the city. Consequently, the Party necessarily develops in relation to the armed struggle and in the united front. This is the guideline of the Party building in our country if we subject ourselves to Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought.
Applying this guideline, in the current conditions, is that the questions of party structure, system and work must be resolved.
The first is to develop a single organizational structure that is national, unified and centralized, as a whole subject to the leadership of the Central Committee, a key expression of centralism; this is the question of structure. The second, is the problem of the distribution of forces, that of centering the activity in the peasantry to develop the main forms of struggle and organization and is the problem of following a road of accumulation of forces in the cities; this is the question of the party system. The third is the problem of secret work, of clandestine activity, of the framework that guarantees constant functioning in any circumstance; it is the problem of open work; of the work of the masses, which in the country poses the need to “turn the triangle,” that is, to put peasant work as the basis of the revolutionary struggle, the problem of the need to have tenaciously and firmly as the direction of the workers’ movement, the struggle for the seizure of power leading the peasantry in the revolution under the leadership of the Party, it is the problem of “our duty to go lower and deeper” to forge the masses in the need to make the revolution and fight revisionism, to mobilize, politicize and organize workers and peasants, who are the basic masses, to incorporate intellectuals, women and youth into the struggle, and it is the obligation to develop the struggle for demands in terms of power; it is, finally, the problem of the necessity of secret and open work and of their indispensable interrelation, subject to the orientation that the first is the principal and directs the second; all this is the question of party work. The structure, the system and the party work are three fundamental questions of the organizational line and are of vital importance for the Party building; but, as in everything, the application of these questions subject to the correct line occurs in struggle with contrary lines; in short, a just organizational line can only be applied and developed in struggle, and at present its application and development can only be achieved by fighting revisionism as the main danger.
The Sixth and Seventh Plenary Sessions of the Central Committee have been important events dedicated to the problems of building, in them it has been sanctioned to “Reconstitute the party from the countryside and put as a base the peasant work to follow the road of encircling the cities from the countryside,” thus concretizing the general political line; and, “Develop the building, principally of the Party, in service of the armed struggle,” as an orientation to develop the building of the three instruments synthesized in the slogan of “Building in service of the armed struggle.” In addition, a call has been made to celebrate the “50th Anniversary” of the founding of the Party and to prepare the successful realization of the Fifth Congress, which will have to be a “RECONSTITUTION CONGRESS” that will culminate the Reconstitution of the Party by sanctioning the Program and the general political line of Mariátegui and its development and the new Statutes.
These provisions are of transcendence and importance and on their firm and decisive application depends the development of the Party as the organized vanguard of the proletariat and the fulfillment of its mission: the emancipation of the proletariat, fulfilling in this first stage the task of carrying forward the New-Democratic Revolution.
Lenin pointed out that an era of war would accompany the emergence of socialist society:
“We see immediately that the civil war has made many things difficult in Russia, and that the civil war is interwoven with a whole series of wars. Marxists have never forgotten that violence must inevitably accompany the collapse of capitalism in its entirety and the birth of socialist society. That violence will constitute a period of world history, a whole era of various kinds of wars, imperialist. wars, civil wars inside countries the intermingling of the two, national wars liberating the nationalities oppressed by the imperialists and by various combinations of imperialist powers that will inevitably enter into various alliances in the epoch of tremendous state-capitalist and military trusts and syndicates. This epoch, an epoch of gigantic cataclysms, of mass decisions forcibly imposed by war, of crises, has begun—that we can see clearly—and it is only the beginning.”
“Socialists must take advantage of the struggle between the robbers to overthrow them all.”
“ ‘War is a continuation of policy by other means’ (namely: by violence).”
Within this perspective he reiterated:
“that division of nations into oppressor and oppressed which forms the essence of imperialism,” and stated that: “the socialist revolution will not be solely, or chiefly, a struggle of the revolutionary proletarians in each country against their bourgeoisie-no, it will be a struggle of all the imperialist-oppressed colonies and countries, of all dependent countries, against international imperialism. (...) that the civil war of the working people against the imperialists and exploiters in all the advanced countries is beginning to be combined with national wars against international imperialism. That is confirmed by the course of the revolution, and will be more and more confirmed as time goes on.”
Thus, Lenin specified the two great contemporary forces: the international proletarian movement and the movement of the oppressed nations, setting as an obligation of the Communist International “support bourgeois-democratic national movements in colonial and backward countries only on condition that, in these countries, the elements of future proletarian parties, which will be communist not only in name, are brought together and trained to understand their special tasks, i.e., those of the struggle against the bourgeois-democratic movements within their own nations.”; for if the International establishes temporary alliances, in these cases, it must “under all circumstances uphold the independence of the proletarian movement even if it is in its most embryonic form”; and that, as communists we will only support these movements “when their exponents do not hinder our work of educating and organising in a revolutionary spirit the peasantry and the masses of the exploited.”
Likewise, Lenin teaches us that since the beginning of this century great changes have taken place as “millions and hundreds of millions, in fact the overwhelming majority of the population of the globe, are now coming forward as independent, active and revolutionary factors. It is perfectly clear that in the impending decisive battles in the world revolution, the movement of the majority of the population of the globe, initially directed towards national liberation, will turn against capitalism and imperialism and will, perhaps, play a much more revolutionary part than we expect (...) Of course, there are many more difficulties in this enormous sphere than in any other, but at all events the movement is advancing. And in spite of the fact that the masses of toilers—the peasants in the colonial countries—are still backward, they will play a very important revolutionary part in the coming phases of the world revolution.”
And pointing out the revolutionary perspective he said, at the Third Congress of the Communist International: “World imperialism shall fall when the revolutionary onslaught of the exploited and oppressed workers in each country, overcoming resistance from petty-bourgeois elements and the influence of the small upper crust of labour aristocrats, merges with the revolutionary onslaught of hundreds of millions of people who have hitherto stood beyond the pale of history, and have been regarded merely as the object of history.” The great Lenin led the October Revolution, opening a new stage of humanity, however he never thought that capitalist restoration was impossible; he said “We do not know how soon after our victory revolution will sweep the West. We do not know whether or not our victory will be followed by temporary periods of reaction and the victory of the counter-revolution—there is nothing impossible in that—and therefore, after our victory, we shall build a ‘triple line of trenches’ against such a contingency.” And analyzing the building of the new society, in The State and Revolution he wrote:
“In its first phase, or first stage, communism cannot as yet be fully mature economically and entirely free from traditions or vestiges of capitalism. Hence the interesting phenomenon that communism in its first phase retains ‘the narrow horizon of bourgeois law.’ Of course, bourgeois law in regard to the distribution of consumer goods inevitably presupposes the existence of the bourgeois state, for law is nothing without an apparatus capable of enforcing the observance of the rules of law.
It follows that under communism there remains for a time not only bourgeois law, but even the bourgeois state, without the bourgeoisie!”
This is why Lenin warned:
“We have defeated the bourgeoisie, but it is not yet destroyed and not even completely conquered. We must therefore resort to a new and higher form of the struggle with the bourgeoisie; we must turn from the very simple problem of continuing the expropriation of the capitalists to the more complex and difficult problem—the problem of creating conditions under which the bourgeoisie could neither exist nor come anew into existence. It is clear that this problem is infinitely more complicated and that we can have no Socialism until it is solved.”
And he concluded:
“The dictatorship of the proletariat is not the end of class struggle but its continuation in new forms. The dictatorship of the proletariat is class struggle waged by a proletariat that is victorious and has taken political power into its hands against a bourgeoisie that has been defeated but not destroyed, a bourgeoisie that has not vanished, not ceased to offer resistance, but that has intensified its resistance.”
These are all substantive theses of Lenin on the era in which we live and the period of wars in which we will continue to develop, on the two forces of the contemporary world and in particular on the national movement and on socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat; theses that today we must take very much into account to analyze the class struggle that is developing in the world.
Chairman Mao Zedong, basing himself on Marxism-Leninism, has systematized the development of the world revolution and has established fundamental theses that develop Marxism and that we must also keep in mind to guide us in understanding the current international situation.
In his great work On New Democracy, he stressed that with the First World War and with the October Revolution history had entered the new era, “of the new world revolution, the proletarian-socialist world revolution” and that, consequently, “any revolution in a colony or semi-colony that is directed against imperialism, i.e., against the international bourgeoisie or international capitalism, no longer comes within the old category of the bourgeois-democratic world revolution, but within the new category.”
Thus, he conceived that the powerful revolutionary movement of the colonies and semi-colonies was part of the revolution that the international proletariat leads at world level; stressing, after the Second War, that the Latin American peoples “are not slaves obedient to U.S. imperialism,” that in all Asia “a great national liberation movement” had arisen and calling on the countries of the East to fight imperialism and the internal reactionaries having as a goal the emancipation of the oppressed of the East, he said: “We should rid our ranks of all impotent thinking. All views that overestimate the strength of the enemy and underestimate the strength of the people are wrong. (...) This is the historic epoch in which world capitalism and imperialism are going down to their doom and world socialism and people’s democracy are marching to victory.”
By condensing the subsequent struggle he specified the current epoch:
“The next 50 to 100 years or so, beginning from now, will be a great era of radical change in the social system throughout the world, an earth-shaking era without equal in any previous historical period. Living in such an era, we must be prepared to engage in great struggles which will have many features different in form from those of the past.”
Analyzing this era of the proletarian revolution, Chairman Mao Zedong established his great thesis on reactionaries: “All reactionaries are paper tigers. In appearance, the reactionaries are terrifying, but in reality they are not so powerful. From a long-term point of view, it is not the reactionaries but the people who are really powerful.” In Talk with A. L. Strong, where the above quote is from, analyzing the contradictions and the distribution of forces, he also posited:
“The United States and the Soviet Union are separated by a vast zone which includes many capitalist, colonial and semi-colonial countries in Europe, Asia and Africa. Before the U.S. reactionaries have subjugated these countries, an attack on the Soviet Union is out of the question.”
To these statements of 1946 should be added the following analyses of Chairman Mao himself on inter-imperialist contradictions and between imperialism and oppressed nations and contending forces:
“(...) the embroilment of the imperialist countries contending for colonies is the greater contradiction. They try to cover up the contradictions between themselves by playing up their contradictions with us.”
“In the conflict (events of the Suez Canal) that is taking place there, two types of contradictions converge and there are three distinct forces. These two types of contradictions are: first, the inter-imperialist contradictions, that is to say, the contradictions between the United States and England and between the United States and France, and second, those existing between the imperialist powers and the oppressed nations. Of the three forces at play, the first is the United States, the greatest imperialist power; the second, England and France, imperialist countries of the second order, and the third, the oppressed nations.”
In January 1964, Chairman Mao issued a statement in support of the Panamanian people, in which, after highlighting that U.S. imperialism “has continuously been plundering and oppressing the people of the Latin American countries and suppressing the national-democratic revolutionary struggles there”; of denouncing that “U.S. imperialism has (...) turned the southern part of Korea and the southern part of Vietnam into its colonies, kept Japan under its control and semi-military occupation (...) and committed intervention and aggression against other Asian countries”; pointing out that in Africa “U.S. imperialism is feverishly pursuing its neocolonialist policies, seeking vigorously to take the place of the old colonialists, to plunder and enslave the peoples of Africa, and to undermine and stamp out the national liberation movements”; warning that the Yankee policy of aggression and war “is vigorously seeking to push its policy of ‘peaceful evolution’ in the socialist countries,”; and that “Even toward its allies in Western Europe, North America and Oceania, U.S. imperialism is pursuing a policy of the law of the jungle, trying hard to trample them underfoot.”; concluding by calling: “The people of the countries in the socialist camp should unite, the people of all the countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America should unite, the people of all the continents of the world should unite, all peace-loving countries and all countries that are subject to U.S. aggression, control, interference and bullying should unite, and so form the broadest united front to oppose the U.S. imperialist policies of aggression and war and to safeguard world peace.”
Thus, he denounced American imperialism calling to fight it. But revisionism usurped power in the USSR restoring capitalism and turning it into a social-imperialist country which as such extended its penetration, undermining, control and domination contending for world domination with Yankee imperialism, affecting the aforementioned intermediate zone. Chairman Mao denounced: “The Soviet Union today is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, a dictatorship of the grand bourgeoisie, a fascist German dictatorship, and a Hitlerite dictatorship.” And calling for the struggle against the two superpowers he laid down the following important theses:
“The United States is a paper tiger. Don’t believe in it. One thrust and it’s punctured. Revisionist Soviet Union is a paper tiger too.”
“Working hand in glove, Soviet revisionism 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. imperialism and Soviet revisionism has begun.”
“People of the world, unite and oppose the war of aggression launched by any imperialism or social-imperialism, especially one in which atom bombs are used as weapons! If such a war breaks out, the people of the world should use revolutionary war to eliminate the war of aggression, and preparations should be made right now!”
In this perspective, reiterating the role of the peoples of the world, in May 1970 he made his famous statement: “The people of a small country can certainly defeat aggression by a big country, if only they dare to rise in struggle, dare to take up arms and grasp in their own hands the destiny of their country. This is a law of history.”
Chairman Mao Zedong always paid great attention to tactical principles, his work On Policy is of great importance in this regard; there he laid down the basic policy: “With regard to the alignment of the various classes within the country, our basic policy is to develop the progressive forces, win over the middle forces and isolate the anti-Communist die-hard forces.”; to have a revolutionary dual policy against the die-hards and to combat them to apply: “In the struggle against the anti-Communist die-hards, our policy is to make use of contradictions, win over the many, oppose the few and crush our enemies one by one, and to wage struggles on just grounds, to our advantage, and with restraint.” These criteria established first for the struggle in China, are applicable to struggle with the imperialists.
In 1957, Chairman Mao synthesized the strategic and tactical concepts for fighting the enemy:
“We have developed a concept over a long period for the struggle against the enemy, namely, strategically we should despise all our enemies, but tactically we should take them all seriously. In other words, with regard to the whole we must despise the enemy, but with regard to each specific problem we must take him seriously. If we do not despise him with regard to the whole, we shall commit opportunist errors. Marx and Engels were but two individuals, and yet in those early days they already declared that capitalism would be overthrown throughout the world. But with regard to specific problems and specific enemies, if we do not take them seriously, we shall commit adventurist errors. In war, battles can only be fought one by one and the enemy forces can only be destroyed one part at a time. Factories can only be built one by one. Peasants can only plough the land plot by plot. The same is even true of eating a meal. Strategically, we take the eating of a meal lightly, we are sure we can manage it. But when it comes to the actual eating, it must be done mouthful by mouthful, you cannot swallow an entire banquet at one gulp. This is called the piecemeal solution and is known in military writings as destroying the enemy forces one by one.”
So far we have basic questions about the historical period we live in, the contradictions and the developing forces and tactics, all substantive problems of strategy and tactics; but, in addition, Chairman Mao Zedong set out to synthesize the experience of the socialist revolution laying down his great theory and practice of the continuation of the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat by finding the appropriate way to develop it through the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. In the beginnings and development of this great revolution he laid down the following theses:
“A great disorder under the heavens leads to a great order under the heavens and the same thing happens again every seven or eight years. Monsters and demons will of their own accord come to the forefront. As determined by their own class nature, they cannot act otherwise.”
“In the past we waged struggles in rural areas, in factories, in the cultural field, and we carried out the socialist education movement. But all this failed to solve the problem because we did not find a form, a method, to arouse the broad masses to expose our dark aspect openly, in an all-round way and from below.”
“As a matter of fact, those party people in authority taking the capitalist road who support the bourgeois scholar-tyrants, and those bourgeois representatives who have sneaked into the party and protect the bourgeois scholar-tyrants, are indeed big party tyrants who have usurped the name of the party, have no contact with the masses, have no learning at all, and rely solely on ‘acting arbitrarily and trying to overwhelm people with their power’.”
“Those representatives of the bourgeoisie who have sneaked into the party, the government, the army, and various cultural circles are a bunch of counter-revolutionary revisionists. Once conditions are ripe, they will seize political power and turn the dictatorship of the proletariat into a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Some of them we have already seen thorough, others we have not. Some are still trusted by us and are being trained as our successors, persons like Khrushchev, for example, who are still nestling beside us.”
“The main target of the present movement is those Party persons in power taking the capitalist road.”
“What will you do if revisionism emerges in the CC? This is very likely, this is the greatest danger.”
“the working class must exercise leadership in everything, to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat in the superstructure, including all spheres of culture,”
“The current great proletarian cultural revolution is absolutely necessary and most timely for consolidating the dictatorship of the proletariat, preventing capitalist restoration and building socialism.”
“It is imperative to carry out the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.”
“The present Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is only the first; there will inevitably be many more in the future. The issue of who will win in the revolution can only be settled over a long historical period. If things are not properly handled, it is possible for a capitalist restoration to take place at any time in the future.”
“It is right to rebel against reactionaries.”
“All proletarian revolutionaries unite and fight for political power against the handful of capitalist roaders in authority.”
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution struck the counter-revolutionary bourgeois headquarters headed by Liu Shaoqi, the Chinese Khrushchev, whose lieutenant was Deng Xiaoping, “another top Party person in authority taking the capitalist road”; and also crushed the counter-revolutionary conspiratorial headquarters headed by Lin Biao. Thus, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was developed to consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat, prevent the restoration of capitalism and build socialism and, whose condensation was realized in the Ninth Congress of the CPC which is a great milestone in the history of the CPC and the International Communist Movement.
The development of the class struggle in China, the struggle between capitalism and socialism, between bourgeoisie and proletariat and between Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought and the counter-revolutionary and capitulationist revisionism took shape in the great campaign of criticism of Confucius and Lin Biao that aired the problem of restoration and counter-restoration, the long process of consolidation of a class in power that implies preventing its recapture by the reactionaries and the consequent restoration and if it is lost to fight for its reconquest; a problem that was raised at the beginning of the polemic against Khrushchev-Brezhnev revisionism. Subsequently, the struggle centered on the decisive question and on the very essence of Power, the problem of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Chairman Mao said:
“Why did Lenin speak of exercising dictatorship over the bourgeoisie? It is essential to get this question clear. Lack of clarity on this question will lead to revisionism. This should be made known to the whole nation.”
“In a word, China is a socialist country. Before liberation she was much the same as capitalism. Even now she practises an eight-grade wage system, distribution to each according to his work and exchange by means of money, which are scarcely different from those in the old society. What is different is that the system of ownership has changed.”
“Our country at present practises a commodity system, the wage system is unequal, too, as in the eight-grade wage scale, and so forth. Under the dictatorship of the proletariat such things can only be restricted. Therefore, if people like Lin Biao come to power, it will be quite easy for them to rig up the capitalist system. That is why we should do more reading of Marxist-Leninist works.”
“Lenin said that ‘small production engenders capitalism and the bourgeoisie continuously, daily, hourly, spontaneously, and on a mass scale.’ They are also engendered among a part of the working class and of the Party membership. Both within the ranks of the proletariat and among the personnel of state and other organs there are people who take to the bourgeois style of life.”
“Lenin spoke of building of a bourgeois state without capitalists to safeguard bourgeois right. We ourselves have just built such a state, not much different from the old society; there are ranks and grades, eight grades of wages, distribution according to work and exchange of equal values.”
These theses and the previous ones are, evidently, continuation and development of fundamental Marxist-Leninist approaches. Chairman Mao Zedong reiterated the validity of Marx’s and Lenin’s statements on the long revolutionary transformation of the old society; the need for the dictatorship of the proletariat and its strengthening; the incessant class struggle in socialism and its extreme aggravation in certain circumstances; the subsistence of bourgeois law and its necessary restriction; the constant generation of capitalism and the bourgeoisie; the constant generation of capitalism and the bourgeoisie; the subsistence of bourgeois right and its necessary restriction; the constant generation of capitalism and bourgeoisie and the possibility of restoring capitalism by climbing the Power; the persistence of a “bourgeois right” and of a “bourgeois State” that protects it. Also stating the need to aim against the followers of the capitalist road within the Party and to continue the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat through the cultural revolution.
In January 1975 Deng Xiaoping became Vice-Chairman of the Central Committee, which he had joined at the Tenth Congress. In September of the same year the critique of Water Margin is called to unfold. Chairman Mao calls attention to capitulation, which is an essential issue of revisionism; he says: “The merit of the book Water Margin lies precisely in the portrayal of capitulation. It serves as teaching material by negative example to help all the people recognize capitulationists.”; “Water Margin is against corrupt officials only, but not against the emperor. It excludes Chao Kai from the 108 people. Sung Chiang pushes capitulationism, practises revisionism, changes Chao’s Chu Yi Hall to Chung Yi Hall, and accepts the offer of amnesty and enlistment. Sung Chiang’s struggle against Kao chiu is a struggle waged by one faction against another within the landlord class. As soon as he surrenders, Sung Chiang goes to fight Fang La.” (Chao Kai: founder of the insurgent peasant army in the novel; The 108 people: the 108 captains of the peasant insurgents; Sung Chiang: a main character in the novel who has usurped the leadership of the insurgent peasant army; Chu Yi Hall and Chung Yi Hall: the assembly hall where the peasant insurgents in the novel meet to discuss matters. What Chao Kai meant by chu yi was to unite and rise in revolt; what Sung Chiang meant by chung yi was to be loyal to the emperor.; denomination used by the usurper). Let us emphasize that capitulationism implies class capitulation to the bourgeoisie in the country and capitulation of the nation to imperialism internationally and that capitulationism is revisionism.
In these circumstances, the struggle against the rightist anti-Cultural Revolution attempt to reverse correct verdicts develops, in which Chairman Mao states:
“After the democratic revolution the workers and the poor and middle and middle peasants did not stand still, they want revolution. On the other hand, a number of Party members do not want to go forward; some have moved backward and opposed the revolution. Why? Because they have become high officials and want to protect the interests of the high officials.”
“With the socialist revolution they themselves come under fire. At the time of the cooperative transformation of agriculture there were people in the Party who opposed it, and when it comes to criticizing bourgeois right, they resent it. You are making the socialist revolution, and yet don’t know where the bourgeoisie is. It is right in the Communist Party — those in power taking the capitalist road. The capitalist-roaders are still on the capitalist road.”
“Reversing correct verdicts goes against the will of the people.”
“Without struggle, there is no progress.” “Can 800 million people manage without struggle?!”
“What ‘taking the three directives as the key link’! Stability and unity do not mean writing off class struggle; class struggle is the key link and everything else hinges on it.”
“This person does not grasp class struggle; he has never referred to this key link. Still his theme of ‘white cat, black cat,’ making no distinction between imperialism and Marxism.”
Thus the struggle was centered against Deng Xiaoping. Against who, following Liu Shaoqi, the Chinese Khrushchev, held the theory of the extinction of the class struggle; against who, in 1956, in his report on the modification of the statutes in the Eighth Congress of the CPC, held that the classes were in extinction, especially the bourgeoisie, that the socialist revolution had already fulfilled most of its tasks and that the emphasis should not be placed on the class struggle but on the tasks of construction; against those who, in the same report, followed the theory of the masses of Liu Shaoqi to oppose the theses of Chairman Mao on the Party; against those who raised the 20th Party Congress of the Soviet Union, in which Khrushchev attacked the dictatorship of the proletariat camouflaging himself behind the so-called struggle against the “cult of personality,” considering it an “important matter,” precisely, for him, “one of the most important” is that “struggle against the divinization” that he used to fight Chairman Mao Zedong.
The campaign to counter the right deviationist attempt to reverse correct verdicts of the Great Cultural Revolution was focused against Deng Xiaoping. Against the tenacious defender of Peng Dehuai, the careerist military warlord and conspirator sanctioned in 1959 and defended by Liu Shaoqi and his reactionary headquarters; it was aimed against Deng who, in the years of difficulties of 1959 to 1961, attacked the three red flags; the general line, the great leap forward and the people’s commune. Against whom he advocated increased private land use, free markets, enterprises responsible for their own profits and losses and agricultural production quotas on a per family basis, unleashing a revisionist wind of individual farm labor. Against whom he argued, “Black cat or white cat, if it can catch mice, it’s a good cat.” This is the Deng Xiaoping of the 1950s and 1960s, “another top capitalist road-follower power element within the Party” as he was typified, the lieutenant of Liu Shaoqi who served as geneal secretary whom the great proletarian cultural revolution overthrew.
The struggle that Chairman Mao led to counterattack the right deviationist attempt to reverse correct verdicts points against Deng Xiaoping who since the 1950s upheld a counter-revolutionary program and who, like others, as soon as he returned to leading positions pursued his old road by again deploying a contrary program based on “taking the three directives as the key link” aiming at “conquering the ideological position as a means of forming public opinion,” “dealing, first of all, with the leading bodies” to take organizational positions, “rectification in all aspects.” A program aimed at overthrowing the GPCR, usurping the leadership in order to promote restoration, undermine the proletarian dictatorship, propagandize the extinction of the class struggle and focus on the development of the productive forces. A program that the GPCR fought against, accusing it of “wounding” “experienced cadres” and serving to “overthrow” “good cadres of the Party,” qualifying it as “ultra-left” for fighting the followers of the capitalist road. This counter-struggle against the right deviationist attempt to reverse correct verdicts led to the “dismissal of Deng Xiaoping from all both posts inside and outside the Party,” a resolution taken “in accordance with the directives of the great leader Chairman Mao Zedong.”
The death of Chairman Mao Zedong, like the death of all the great leaders of the proletariat, has generated deep commotions and wide repercussions in China and in the world; and, in the conditions in which the struggle was developing in China, it propitiated the conjuncture for the rightists to usurp the power of the dictatorship of the proletariat, to undermine the conquests of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and to open the doors to capitalist restoration, to capitulation and to revisionism by means of a coup d’état. The class struggle in China between revolution and counter-revolution, between Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought and revisionism, between the proletarian line of Chairman Mao and the revisionist, counter-revolutionary and capitulationist bourgeois line led by Deng Xiaoping has entered crucial, complex and difficult moments; strange and surprising methods are resorted to in the treatment of the problems and the struggle, important and broad changes are produced in the leadership and in the organizations, mainly in the Party, at the same time that the campaign of criticism against the revisionist revocatory wind of Deng Xiaoping is suspended, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is openly questioned, capitulation is developed, especially national, and is raised as a banner of Deng’s counter-revolutionary program. All this is nothing but a rightist coup in the sharp two-line struggle in the period of the continuation of the revolution, taking advantage of the conjuncture and repercussions of the death of Chairman Mao Zedong.
The situation that has arisen in China is not an unimportant problem. It is, on the contrary, a problem of transcendence for the revolutionaries and communists of the world and we must all pay very special attention to it, because, from the usurpation of power derives the general change of line both in the development of socialism and in international politics. The key question of Marxism is the dictatorship of the proletariat, this is its essence, and a rightism coup and its usurpation is a very serious and important problem; and it is not only a question of China, it is a question of all communists since its repercussions have to do with the world revolution. The experience of the restoration and usurpation of power in the USSR are fresh lessons that we cannot forget.
Mariátegui taught us: “It is not possible to be disinterested in the destiny of a nation that occupies such a principal place in time and space. China weighs too much in human history for us not to be attracted by its deeds and its men.” This great truth remains valid today more than ever for all communists and revolutionaries in the country. But while the events in China, after the death of Chairman Mao Zedong in particular, move us to just concern and the obligation to defend the banners of Marxism, precisely to defend them let us be guided by their own forecasts:
“If the Rightists stage an anti-Communist coup d’etat in China, I am sure they will know no peace either and their rule will most probably be short-lived because it will not be tolerated by the revolutionaries, who represent the interests of the people making up more than 90 per cent of the population.”
“No matter whether in China or in other countries of the world, over ninety per cent of the people will support Marxism-Leninism in the long run. In this world at present there are still many people being deceived by social-democratic parties, by the revisionists, the imperialists, or by the reactionary elements of various countries, who have not yet awakened. But eventually little by little they will awaken, they will support Marxism-Leninism. Marxism-Leninism is truth; it cannot be resisted. The masses want revolution; the world revolution will finally be victorious.”
We have raised fundamental theses of Lenin and Chairman Mao on the class struggle at the international level because the understanding of such a complex problem, especially of its strategy and tactics, can only be approached from Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought. The international question, the position before it, is part of the general political line of the Party since its constitution and its substantive points are in the same Program: part of the international character of the economy and the revolutionary movement of the proletariat that is guided by the slogan of “Proletarians of all countries, unite!”; It raises the situation of the backward, semi-feudal and semi-colonial countries, which under imperialist oppression cannot have an independent national economy nor at the service of their people; and concludes by affirming that in the epoch of imperialism, epoch of monopolies and wars of plunder for the division of the world, Marxism has become Marxism-Leninism to which we adhere as a guide for our action.
Mariátegui also, in his work for the construction of the Party, paid special attention to the international class struggle; for him, with the First World War the capitalist system entered into great crisis and with the October Revolution began a new era for humanity; bourgeois democracy accentuated its crisis and engendered fascism, the socialism of the second International, follower of “parliamentary cretinism,” aggravated its decomposition and the revolution swept through Europe with repercussions throughout the backward world, especially in Asia, whose awakening, he tells us, is worthy of the times. The emergence of the Communist International, for Mariátegui, implied a great development because for the first time the International really embraced the exploited and oppressed of the world and, with great vision, understanding the perspective of the movement of the oppressed nations and its importance for the world revolution, he was against those who against Lenin wanted to maintain a narrow International circumscribed and centered in Europe, blind to the strategic need to raise the oppressed nations in a powerful movement of national liberation.
As it is seen, since our constitution as a Party, the position in front of the international class struggle is an important part of the general political line and concrete expression of proletarian internationalism. And if this was so in the foundation, sickle that we are in pursuit of culminating the Reconstitution, it is also of importance and of necessity to pay attention to this part of the general line; for them it is pertinent to raise some problems.
With the October Revolution a new epoch began: the World Proletarian Revolution, that of the passage to socialism and the construction of communist society; historically the world bourgeois revolution that for centuries unfolded expired and if in this the bourgeoisie was the leading class, in the new epoch the revolution is led by the proletariat through its Communist Parties. In this epoch there are fundamental contradictions: between capitalism and socialism, between bourgeoisie and proletariat, between imperialists, and between imperialism and oppressed nations; of them, the contradiction between capitalism and socialism will continue its development throughout this epoch and the other fundamental contradictions serve to its development because it depends, ultimately, the construction of the new society; however, in each period one of the four takes shape as the main one as shown by the history of the 20th century.
The class struggle of this century also proves that two powerful movements are developing: The international proletarian movement and the movement of national liberation and, although the first is an expression of the ruling class which is concretized in the Communist Parties and the International Communist Movement, the movement of national liberation, as a consequence of imperialism itself, has acquired great strength and fulfills, as foreseen, an important strategic role. We must consider that, as long as imperialism and bourgeoisie exist, revisionism will subsist, generating in this way the split within the international proletariat, hence the necessity and importance of fighting its counter-revolutionary activity inseparable from the anti-imperialist and revolutionary struggle.
This epoch, on the other hand, is one of great wars for the hegemony and distribution of the world, for the domination of the colonies and semi-colonies, to maintain the exploitation of the proletariat and to prevent the development of socialism, all these are reactionary wars that imperialism carries out with the support of the reactionaries. Against them rise the revolutionary wars: those of national liberation, the civil wars against the exploiters themselves and those for the defense of socialism and the continuation of the revolution; if those are unjust, reactionary wars, these are just wars that serve the revolution and whose direction depends on the course that the proletariat gives it through its Parties.
In short, we live in the great epoch of the world proletarian revolution in which the construction of the new society opens its way through the universal law of revolutionary violence concretized in democratic revolutions, socialist revolutions and continuation of the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat; an epoch in which the oppressed peoples are more and more incorporated into the revolution, mobilizing the masses as never before in history, particularly those of the oppressed nations; in which the proletariat expresses more and more its character of leading class of the new epoch; in which Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought manifests its growing power proven in more than 100 years of struggles and, in which the Communist Parties, which adhere to it, fulfill and will fulfill their role of organized vanguard fighters for the emancipation of the proletariat and the world revolution.
The post-World War II development with the vigorous growth of the national liberation movement, the transformation of the Soviet Socialist Union into a social-imperialist country, the inter-imperialist struggles especially of the two powers, the United States and the Soviet Union, for world hegemony, and the development of the proletariat, socialism and Marxism have led Chairman Mao Zedong to the greatest precision of the present epoch. The next 50 to 100 years will shake the earth and change its face like no previous epoch and in it many new things will emerge, we revolutionaries must be vigilant to grasp them firmly and develop them for the sake of the revolution. The counter-revolutionary activities of the United States and the Soviet Union and the struggle of the peoples of the world against the two superpowers have initiated a new period, that of the struggle against American imperialism and Soviet revisionism; this precision is of extraordinary importance for the development of the world proletarian revolution.
The revisionism of Khrushchev—Brezhnev is one of the substantive issues of this period; the usurpation of the USSR and its conversion from a socialist country into a social-imperialist superpower shows the gravity and transcendence of the restoration of capitalism. And, besides being the superpower that needs a new distribution of the world to enthrone its hegemony, it generates a counter-revolutionary movement, concealed behind the prestige of socialism and the Party that Lenin founded, to develop bourgeois workers parties at the service of its interests of revisionist social-imperialism; this is a problem of strategic importance, especially for the communists, hence the character of revisionism being the main danger, whose center is the social-imperialist Soviet Union cannot go unnoticed.
It is precisely in this period, starting from the fundamental contradictions, the forces in contention and their distribution according to tactics, that the strategic concept that three worlds are delineated can be understood; the question of the existence of the two superpowers vying for world domination, of the inter-imperialist contradictions with the superpowers in particular and of the national liberation movement. To, starting from relying on the peoples of the world whose axis is the international proletariat, “apply the basic policy is to develop the progressive forces, win over the middle forces and isolate the anti-Communist die-hard forces” and “In the struggle against the anti-Communist die-hards, our policy is to make use of contradictions, win over the many, oppose the few and crush our enemies one by one, and to wage struggles on just grounds, to our advantage, and with restraint”; bearing in mind the following and important orientation: “We must turn to good account all such fights, rifts and contradictions in the enemy camp and turn them against our present main enemy.” All that must be kept very much in mind in order to develop the front against the two superpowers, American imperialism and Soviet revisionism, the United States and the Soviet Union.
This period shows more clearly that the problem of “which will win out” is not defined, that the restoration of capitalism can occur in any socialist country and that the solution is the continuation of the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat concretized in the proletarian cultural revolution and not one but several, since the revolutionary transformation of the old society is a long historical process.
The fundamental contradictions, since the social-imperialist transformation of the USSR, have been embodied in the following: “the contradiction between the oppressed nations on the one hand and imperialism and social-imperialism on the other; the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie in the capitalist and revisionist countries; the contradiction between imperialist and social-imperialist countries and among the imperialist countries; and the contradiction between socialist countries on the one hand and imperialism and social-imperialism on the other.” As established by the Ninth Congress of the Communist Party of China. Every day the great thesis that “imperialist wars are absolutely inevitable” as long as their system subsists and that the inter-imperialist contradictions are those that lead to world wars in the face of which the revolutionary position has been clearly defined: “Whether the war gives rise to revolution or revolution prevents the war,” Finally, this period shows more and more the growing role of the peoples of the world, of the millions and millions, especially of the colonies and semi-colonies, who are drawn into the international class struggle and rise up in revolution.
It is in the light of the epoch of the world proletarian revolution and the period of struggle against Yankee imperialism and Soviet revisionist social-imperialism that we must analyze the present international situation. In it the two superpowers vie for world domination; one, the United States, to maintain its domination and even extend it over the colonies and semi-colonies of old displaced powers and to tighten control over its own allies; the other, the Soviet Union, struggles to extend its domination and consolidate the positions it has achieved. Both superpowers are hit by the crisis which at various levels is shaking the foundations of the imperialist system headed by the United States and the social-imperialist system headed by the Soviet Union; imperialism in particular is struggling in an unfinished crisis which even threatens to worsen. In these conditions the superpowers are the fundamental source of the world problems at present and their contention ignites the warlike conflicts burning in Africa, the Middle East and others that threaten to lead to World War III. Although in addition to these enemies, there are imperialism and world reaction in general, it is of the two superpowers that it is right to affirm: “Working hand in glove, Soviet revisionism 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.”; and against the wars they wage or against the world war they prepare to settle their hegemony, the peoples of the world must unite in opposing any aggressive war unleashed by imperialism or social-imperialism, especially the war of aggression that uses atomic weapons, and if it breaks out: “the people of the world should use revolutionary war to eliminate the war of aggression, and preparations should be made right now!”
Thus, if the development of the fundamental contradictions increases the danger of world war, which would be a new war of plunder, a new division of the world by the superpowers and even a means to “overcome” their crises and impose, as they pretend and dream, new “world orders,” let us not forget that, as Chairman Mao Zedong said, “revolution is the main trend in the world today.” And that it is the law of history that a people, even of a small country, can defeat a powerful country on the contradiction that “they dare to rise in struggle, dare to take up arms and grasp in their own hands the destiny of their country.” To the peoples of the world, to the international proletariat and to the Communist Parties that remain faithful to Marxism there is a great historic task and they will fulfill it.
To have a defined position on the international class struggle is of utmost importance given its complexity, the continuation of the “great disorder under the heavens,” the important rethinking that is taking place, the transcendence of the current situation, the grave perspective of the rightist coup in China, the divergences that are developing in the Communist Movement and the reiterated need to specify the strategy and tactics of the world revolution at the present time. Furthermore, let us reiterate that the position, the line on the international class struggle is part of the general political line, hence the necessity to deal with it more today that we have entered to culminate the reconstitution of the Party. Finally, let us not forget that around World War II, under Browderist conceptions, with an opportunist position before the international struggle, the way was opened to capitulation in our country, before the comprador bourgeoisie and reaction as class capitulation, and before US imperialism as capitulation as a nation. This is, therefore, an important problem that we cannot ignore if we adhere to proletarian internationalism.
The treatment of the line on the international class struggle demands three questions: first, to adhere firmly to Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought, applying it decisively; second, to take up again the line of Mariátegui on international politics and its development; third, to summarize the experiences of the Party on this problem and especially the struggles around it. Of the three, the question is to start from the conception of the proletariat, of Marxism and its development; for our Party this is what is decisive as a starting point, more so at present, since there is no other starting point or other basis that can serve as a guide for the communists or unite them as is necessary; for our Party, in synthesis, the question today is posed as follows: to be Marxist is to adhere to Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought. Subjecting ourselves to this position we can make our way towards the understanding of the class struggle at the international level in order to fulfill our role accordingly, both with our revolution and with proletarian internationalism.