We follow the already known outline, sanctioned by the Party several times, that we have three moments in our course: that of the Constitution, Reconstitution and Leadership of the people’s war. It is within this that we take up problems. Within these three parts of the course of the party, since it was founded by Mariátegui and his predecessors, we have some problems:
We raise the following problems:
This point is very important. First, our position on Mariátegui founding the Communist Party of Peru must be clear; we reject that Ravinez1 founded it because it is historically untrue, it was Mariátegui himself who proposed changing the name of the Party and that it be called the Communist Party of Peru, that was his proposal. Except, he died and Mariátegui’s proposal was sanctioned in a party meeting after his death, that is the problem. The Party was not founded by Ravinez, that is untrue. To make the struggle very clear, particularly the struggle waged against Haya de la Torre2 and his ideas of nascent APRism. APRA was an alliance; it was even called ARPA initially, it was founded with 5 points and it ended. What else is the famous alliance? Well, we are only interested in Mariátegui’s struggle against Haya de la Torre’s criteria and positions. We want to take up problems that serve us, we do not want a history in which we inform ourselves; we want a weapon of struggle, that is why we take up problems, that is the reason.
That is another question. These must be very clear: Mariátegui is the founder of the Party, what Mariátegui has done, what the role of Mariátegui is; especially because Mariátegui is trafficked, is he not? We cannot consent, we cannot allow the existence of a PUM3 that trafficks. Therefore, it is a problem of the history of Marxism in Peru, of course; beyond that, it is a problem of the new ideas in Peru, is it not? It is a problem of the class in Peru, it is not an unimportant thing, this must be very clear.
What do we want to see here? Not only that the line that Mariátegui established was forged in struggle, but that his line was abandoned, it was denied and what did all that lead to? Opportunism. Scandalous examples: the bastard electioneering of 1939, the frontism of 1945 when they said “the thesis that the elections should be used only as propaganda has expired, the program today is to win seats,” these are the textual words of the Party Secretary himself, Jorge Acosta. Why do we use this, why do we need this problem, what does abandoning a line imply, where does it lead? Historically our Party demonstrates that it leads to opportunism, does it not? To abandon Marxism-Leninism and its application here in Peru — because Mariátegui applied Marxism-Leninism and in a creative way, nobody can deny it — to abandon it led to opportunism, it led to Browderism, a predecessor of contemporary revisionism. So, it is a good lesson, is it not? Of course, our own history gives us great lessons.
Why do we raise these two problems? It is linked to the above. To abandon the just and correct Marxist-Leninist position of Mariátegui and its creative application in Peru, abandoning that line led to opportunism, we sank into the swamp. To get out of it we had to wage a struggle against contemporary revisionism. Is it linked to the above or not? Opportunism sinks us, to save ourselves we have to fight against revisionism; it is an easy lesson to understand, isn’t it? Just as the history of the Party demonstrates that abandoning Marxism leads us to sink, it also tells us that by taking Marxism and fighting revisionism we develop, we stand up again, and we get out of the swamp. That is the reason for this problem.
And the Reconstitution, why do we underline the Communist Party of Peru? because it must be very clear that the Party exists: and it proves it because it has opened in reality, with weapons in hand, with a vigorous people’s war, the true and real road of the democratic revolution to seize power. This is being demonstrated here, what the Chairman says when he analyzes the experience of Russia, of the old Russia, of the Bolshevik Party and the experience of China, of the CPC, confronting it with India; he says: “why is it that in the old Tsarist Russia there was revolution: because there was a Party; why was there in China: because there was a Party; why is there not in India having similar conditions as in China: because there is no Party.” So, this is another key problem, not only for us communists, but to struggle in this country.
Here, we deal with three problems:
There are three problems. It is linked to the above: we have a Party. Having a Party, what did we do? we initiated and developed the people’s war, without a Party there is no initiation and there is no people’s war; and that people’s war, what has it given us, a People’s Guerrilla Army, otherwise such a war would not have been possible; it has given us something else, the new Power, we are solving the central problem of the revolution, we are demolishing the old order and generating the basis of what has to be the new in a brilliant perspective towards the future, that is another problem. This must be very clear.
The second one, why are we dealing with it? Because the class struggle is sharpening, there is polarization, in the world the class struggle is intensifying, there is polarization, there is a great ideological struggle, it is going to develop, we are seeing how a revisionist offensive is developing again, whether it is Albania, whether it is China as an imperialist power, whether it is the Soviet Union, an imperialist power or a superpower that is fighting for world hegemony, not only them, also the imperialist powers, all imperialism, all world reaction points against Marxism, points against Marxism-Leninism-Maoism; not only them, but also the imperialist powers, all imperialism, all world reaction points against Marxism, points against Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. It is pretended that it has expired. All this hits, it is what we call the current ideological dynamics and we have to face it. What is the key here? To fight revisionism as the main danger, in the Party, in the country, in the world, against whoever it is, power of the tenth order, it is all the same to us, whether it is social-imperialism, it is all the same to us, whoever it is that points against Marxism. Because the partners collude and fight for world hegemony, but they help each other to crush the revolution, dreaming. So, this problem is very important. Remember what we have said about differentiation, is it necessary, or not? Does it have to do with the rectification campaign? Of course it has to do with it. This prepares us, arms us, for what? To fulfill the task that falls to the Party; what is that task? Our problem, then, is to lead the seizure of power in the whole country, to finish off the democratic revolution and uninterruptedly pass, then, to the socialist revolution and then, when the conditions are ripe, the great revolution or the proletarian cultural revolution will be expressed and will take place; who knows the magnitude it may have, and then we will go on our way.
So, we point to problems that are weapons of combat. That is what we need, not a simple document from which someone can read, be informed, that does not interest us; what interests us is to arm ourselves with our own experience, with our own problems, to draw our own lessons, positive or negative, whatever it may be. That is how we understand this problem of history. On these questions we have discussed many times (...); but we want a brief, clear, understandable document that the masses can handle, the proletariat, the people, obviously the communists first and foremost. We think about the type of militancy we have, what do we gain with a kind of 300-page or 500-page tome? At least today we do not need it; perhaps tomorrow, if tomorrow the conditions allow it to be, it will be; but what do we need today? That is what we are asking ourselves, what do we need today? That the history of the Party with its problems be, then, one more weapon of struggle, that is the idea, that is the idea that guides us to raise these type of problems, they can be these or others.
This is the Problems of the History of the Party, in the form of an outline.
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From the position of the military line, contemporary Peru has three moments linked to the appearance of the proletariat that founds its Party to seize Power through revolutionary violence, specifying its road, which is synthesized in the process of the military line of the Party.
In the first moment, from 1895 to 1945, the Communist Party of Peru is constituted and, concerning the military line, Mariátegui establishes the “Indication and outline of the road.” The heroic workers’ struggles for better wages, the eight hour day, for decent working conditions, the peasant movements for lands and the agricultural proletarian movements of the southern Sierra, and the movements to reform the university, led to a complex sharpening of the class struggle in which the Peruvian proletariat matured and in which Mariátegui founded the Communist Party of Peru, on October 7, 1928, under the banner of Marxism-Leninism.
Mariátegui pointed out and outlined fundamental ideas on revolutionary violence. He said: “There is no revolution that is moderate, balanced, calm, placid.” “Power is seized through violence... it is preserved only through dictatorship.” He conceived the revolutionary war as being protracted in nature: “A revolution can only be fulfilled after many years. Frequently it has alternating periods of predominance of either the revolutionary forces or the forces of counter-revolution.” He established the relationship between politics and war; understanding that the revolution generates an army of a new type with its own tasks different from those of the exploiters; he also understood the nature of the peasantry and the vital participation of the working class in a leading role, that the revolution will come from the Andes, that “with the demolition of the latifundista feudalism, the urban capitalism will lack forces to resist the growing working class”; that in order to make revolution, guns, a program and doctrine are needed. He conceived the revolution as a total war in which there is a conjunction of political, social, military, economic and moral elements, and that each faction puts in tension and mobilizes all the resources that it can. He totally rejected the electoral road.
Mariátegui died in April, 1930. The Right led by Ravines is going to usurp the leadership of the Party and the questioning and denial of Mariátegui’s road occurs. They invoke insurrection in words but degenerate into electoralism. The so-called “Constitutional Congress” of the Party in 1942 sanctions the tactics of capitulation of the “National Union,” both in internal politics as well as internationally. The Party is influenced by Browderite ideas, a predecessor of contemporary revisionism, where there is a clear abandonment of revolutionary violence and an electoral tactic is promoted focusing on the “National Democratic Front.” Nevertheless, the red line in the Party struggled to defending the Marxist-Leninist positions, although it was bitterly resisted and the internal struggles were resolved through expulsions.
In the second moment, from 1945 to 1980, the Communist Party of Peru is reconstituted, and with respect to the military line, Chairman Gonzalo establishes the “Definition and Basis of the Road.” This second moment has two parts: The first, in the period from 1945 to 1963, which is one of “New impulses for the development of the Party and the beginnings of the struggle against revisionism.” The second part, from 1963 to 1980, is one of the “Establishment of the general political line and reconstitution of the Party.”
In the first part of the second moment, by the mid-1950s, the struggle for reactivating the Party that had remained unfinished after Odría’s coup d’état begins. Afterwards, the Party starts the opening step in the struggle against revisionism. This process occurs in the midst of the repercussions of the Cuban revolution. At the same time, at the world level, the unfolding of the struggle between Marxism and revisionism begins. The revolutionary road is discussed, the armed struggle is discussed again and, in the Fourth Congress of the Party, in 1962, it is agreed that in Peru the so-called “two roads” are feasible: “The peaceful road and the violent one.” Also, “the revolution can follow the road of surrounding the cities from the countryside or from the city to the countryside.” But in spite of this talk, the Party in essence was hanging on to the old electoral strategy then taking the form of the so-called “National Liberation Front.” This was the revisionism of Khrushchev. At this time the political positions of Chairman Gonzalo began to emerge, laying the foundations of the red line which adhered to the positions of Chairman Mao in the struggle between Marxism and revisionism.
In the second part of the second moment, from 1963 to 1980, we have the “Establishment of the general political line and reconstitution of the Party,” this task was carried forward by Chairman Gonzalo in constituting the red fraction of the Party in an intensive struggle of more than fifteen years and through three political strategies:
From 1963 to 1969 he guided the red fraction under the political strategy of following the “Road of surrounding the cities from the countryside.” From 1969 to 1976 he led the Party with the political strategy of “Reconstitution of the Party for the People’s War.” From 1976 to 1979 there was the political strategy of “Complete the Reconstitution and Establish Bases” for the beginning of the armed struggle.
During the first strategic period following the “Road of surrounding the cities from the countryside,” the Communists of Peru are profoundly shaken by the struggle between Marxism and revisionism, and Marxist positions seep into the organization. In the 1960s there is a great peasant movement that mobilized 300 to 500 thousand peasants which fought for land but that was precluded from the armed struggle by a revisionist leadership; a great movement of labor strikes occurs in the working class, and the university struggle is developed to a higher level. All these events had repercussions on the Party and Chairman Gonzalo forged the red fraction in Ayacucho, with clear ideas that the Party must seizing power, and that it must be based on Marxist theory. A frontal struggle is unleashed against revisionism that had its center in the Soviet Union, and adheres firmly to the positions of the Chinese Communist Party and principally with those of Chairman Mao. He sustained that: “The countryside is in a powerful revolutionary ferment,” “we must lend special attention to the countryside and to the poor peasants,” that “our revolution will be from the countryside to the city.” In the Fourth National Conference of January, 1964, he met with the different bases of the Party to expel revisionism and its crusty representatives Jorge del Prado, Acosta and Juan Barrio. Our Party is going to be one of the first in breaking and expelling revisionism from its ranks.
Chairman Gonzalo began to consolidate the Party in the Regional Committee of Ayacucho; the center of Party work was focused in the countryside; in the city he organized the poor masses in the Neighborhoods’ Federation, and reorganized the Revolutionary Student Front. But what is of transcendental importance, is that despite the opposition of the new central leadership, Chairman Gonzalo applying a Party agreement launched the “Special Work,” which was the military work of the Regional Committees by giving them three functions: political, military, and logistical. Afterwards, in sharp two-line struggle against the positions of the central leadership that wanted to control the military work, he combated militarism, mercenaryism and focoism. In these circumstances the guerrillas of the MIR [Movement of the Revolutionary Left] develop, a position that expressed the struggle of our people from a petit-bourgeois outlook, which follows a militaristic line and ignores the Party. In spite of being out of step with the rise of the peasants, this movement showed the feasibility of the perspective of armed struggle, provided that it was led by a just and correct line under the leadership of the Party. For that reason, Chairman Gonzalo was opposed to dissolving the Party in order to tail the MIR and the ELN [National Liberation Army] in a supposed Front. At the September 1967 meeting of the Enlarged Political Bureau, he outlined a Strategic Plan which contained a set of measures that the Central Committee had to take for the building of the three instruments, having as its principal task the forming of the armed forces that was agreed upon at the V National Conference of 1965. This occurs in the midst of a factional struggle where most notably the fractions of “Patria Roja” and of the Right liquidationism of Paredes contended for the leadership of the Party. Paredes intended to replay the tactic of tailing a faction of the big bourgeoisie, while those of “Patria Roja” went on to plunge into Right opportunism.
During the second political strategy of “Reconstitute the Party for the Peoples’ War,” Chairman Gonzalo outlined the underlying revisionism within the Party and that its reconstitution on the Basis of Party Unity, upholding Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought, the thought of Mariátegui and the general political line was necessary. These positions were opposed by the aforementioned fractions. The mishandling of the two-line struggle by Paredes is going to lead to the break-up of the Party. Chairman Gonzalo understood the need for the reconstitution of the Party and the need for waging an internal struggle to make it a reality by sweeping away revisionism, as evidenced by the editorials he wrote in Bandera Roja of December 1967, “Develop in Depth the Internal Struggle,” and that of April 1968, “Deepen and Intensify the Internal Struggle in Revolutionary Practice.” He worked tirelessly for the channeling of revolutionary violence in a people’s war, for the road of surrounding the cities from the countryside, thus accomplishing the principal task demanded by the Party: The building of the revolutionary armed forces. He proposed that the indispensable base in this undertaking was the development of revolutionary peasant work, that without good work in the peasant masses, that is, work guided by Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought and led by the Communist Party, there cannot be a development of the armed forces nor of the People’s War. Afterward, he proposed that the Party must not only retake the continuing validity of Mariátegui’s thought, but must also develop it. He established the Agrarian Program of the Party in May of 1969. In 1972, the Strategic Plan of the Regional Committee of Ayacucho was established. Right liquidationism is defeated, and in the Party two fractions remain: the red fraction fundamentally in Ayacucho, led by Chairman Gonzalo, and the “Bolshevik” fraction, acting mainly in Lima. This second one developed a left liquidationist line, a form of revisionism that isolated the Party from the masses. Their conception was that fascism could not be fought, that a correct line was sufficient. They had a military line that was opposed to the People’s War. They were crushed in 1975 and their leaders fled.
During the third political strategy to “Complete the Reconstitution and to Establish Bases” to begin the armed struggle, the problem was to finish, to consider the Reconstitution of the Party as complete, and to establish bases to begin the armed struggle. This issue was settled in the Seventh Plenum of April, 1977, in which all the Party worked under the slogan of “Building serving the armed struggle,” in struggle against the seeds of a right opportunist line (ROL), which sustained that Velasco had made the agrarian reform, that there was a need to organize the peasants in connection with the Peasant Federation of Peru and that the People’s War needed to be waged for the “deepest claims of the masses,” forgetting about the problems of land and of power. In the cities, they developed “workerism,” focusing the class in labor unions and opposed to the class playing its leading role. Once these positions were crushed, Chairman Gonzalo launched the “National Plan of Building” in June of 1977; dozens of cadre were sent to the countryside in the interests of the strategic needs of the People’s War and to build Regional Committees taking into account the future Bases Areas. In the Eighth Plenum of July of 1978, the “Outline for the Armed Struggle” was established. In essence, this outlined outlined that the People’s War in Peru must be developed as a unified whole in both the countryside as well as in the city, with the countryside being the principal theater of armed actions, following the road of surrounding the cities from the countryside. Furthermore, it must take into account the historical social process of the country, especially the military aspect, the importance of the Sierra and principally from the Central and Southern part in our history, the importance of the Capital, and the need to pace Peru within the context of Latin America, in South America particularly, and within the international context and the world revolution. All the Party was put into a general reorganization, placing the countryside as central to develop the principal form of struggle and organization. Thus, the basis of the building of the three instruments of the revolution was laid down.
In synthesis, the entire process of Reconstitution led us to a Party of a new type prepared to begin the People’s War and to lead it until the seizure of power countrywide. In this process the historical contingent was forged, who with the ideology of the proletariat under the leadership of Chairman Gonzalo was prepared to assume the seizure of Power through the People’s War.
In the third moment of the Party, from 1980 to present, the Party begins to lead the People’s War. Its military line is formed with the “Application and development of the Road.” This third moment has four milestones:
Definition;
Preparation;
Initiation; and
Development of the guerrilla war.
1. Definition
In essence, the Party takes up the historic and transcendental agreement of initiating the People’s War in Peru, which was agreed upon in the Enlarged Ninth Plenum of June, 1979. This agreement was achieved in the midst of three intense struggles: The first was against the right opportunist line that was opposed to beginning the armed struggle, denying the revolutionary situation and declaring its conditions as nonexistent, and that there was a condition of “stability.” After the expulsion of this line, the Party agreed upon a new stage and a new goal. The second struggle was against a new Rightist line that believed that the armed struggle was impossible, that it was a “dream,” that there was no need of taking up that agreement because it was a matter of principle. The third struggle was with the divergences in the Left, one in which the details were discussed on how to develop the People’s War. It was established that the proletarian position was Chairman Gonzalo’s and therefore was the one which should be implemented; all the Party made a commitment to be guided by the leadership of Chairman Gonzalo.
Concerning the organization of the armed forces, it was agreed to form military cadres, specific groups for action and to undermine the reactionary forces, aiming at soldiers. In strategy and tactics, the organizational system was restated.
2. Preparation
In this milestone event, the Program of the Party is sanctioned, along with the general political line of the Peruvian revolution and the Party statues. Problems related to political strategy, revolutionary violence, the People’s War and the Party, the Army and Front United are resolved. The following Decision is assumed: “Forge the First Company in Deeds! Let violence flourish towards the initiation and development of the armed struggle; we open with lead and offer our blood to write the new chapter of the history of the Party and of our people forging the First Company in deeds. Peru, December 3, 1979.”
The Party prepared the armed struggle dealing with two problems: 1) Problems of Political Strategy that give both the content and the objectives of the People’s War in perspective and in the short term, as well as the guidelines that the People’s War should have, the military plans and the building of the three instruments and their ties with the new Power; 2) The Initiation of the armed struggle. This decisive and essential problem had merited the most special attention from Chairman Gonzalo, who established the “Plan of Initiation” guided by the slogan “Initiate the armed struggle!” that was the gist of the principal politics that had to be developed militarily. Its contents included:
First, the political tasks that had to be fulfilled during the initiation of the armed struggle, to boycott the elections, to promote militarily the armed struggle for the land and to establish the bases for the new seizures, especially the new Power;
Second, forms of struggle: guerrilla warfare, sabotage, propaganda, armed agitation, and selective annihilation;
Third, organizational and military forms: armed detachments, with or without modern weapons;
Fourth, a chronology, date of the initiation and duration of the Plan, and simultaneous actions for specific dates.
The Preparation began with the struggle against the Rightist positions within the Party that were denying the revolutionary conditions, and they were saying that the Party was not prepared or that the masses would not lend us support. The leader of these positions deserted and they were crushed.
3. Initiation
On May 17, 1980, the People’s War in Peru began. It “was a defiant political blow of transcendental significance that, displaying rebellious red flags and hoisting hammers and sickles, proclaimed: ‘It is right to rebel’ and ‘Power grows from the barrel of a gun.’ It summoned the people, especially the poor peasantry, to stand up in arms, to light the bonfire and to shake the Andes, to write the new history in the fields and hidden features of our tumultuous geography, to tear down the rotten walls of the oppressive order, to conquer the summits, to storm the heavens with guns to open the new dawn. The beginnings were modest, almost without modern weapons. It was fought, it was advanced and it was built from the small to the large and from the weak material and initial fire came the great turbulent fire and mighty roar that grows, sowing revolution and exploding into ever more impetuous People’s War.”
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THE OUTLINE OF THE HISTORY OF THE PARTY AND THREE MOMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF CONTEMPORARY PERU, extracted from the documentation of the First Congress of the Communist Party of Peru; Marxist Congress, Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, Gonzalo Thought, principally Gonzalo Thought Congress that we publish today is in homage to the 92nd Anniversary of the founding of the PCP by J. C. Mariátegui on October 7, 1928. This Party Documentation is a weapon of combat of communists, combatants and masses to culminate the pending task of the general reorganization of the Party in and for the people’s war in the struggle to death against revisionism both of the revisionist and capitulationist ROL structured in the prisons with the support of the Yankee CIA-Peruvian reaction and against those structured in the VRAE, both sworn enemies of Maoism and Gonzalo Thought, of Chairman Gonzalo, of the PCP, of the BPU4 and of the people’s war.
Long live the 92nd Anniversary of the Communist Party of Peru!
- Peru People’s Movement, October 7, 2020.