THE AGRARIAN PROBLEM¹

d) The agrarian problem. The current agricultural campaign. Fundamental question: semi-feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalism.

1. QUOTATIONS

Marx, The Class Struggles in France

Marx is going to describe the situation in which the peasantry unfolds; take note and differentiate well, he speaks here of a capitalist process of development subsequent to a triumphant bourgeois democratic revolution, when the bourgeoisie was revolutionary and combated feudalism; he deals with the case of the French revolution of 1879. What is important here is how the peasantry moves in those capitalist conditions, when the bourgeois State rules. Marx said “The rural population⁠—over two-thirds of the total French population⁠—consist for the most part of so-called free landowners.”² Despite all the distortions of the statistics in Peru, more or less that is the proportion of persons linked to agricultural work and, precisely the latest analyses of the agricultural population are expressing an increase in small proprietors to whom much importance is being given in the current government, in the current process of the old Peruvian State.

He says: “The first generation, gratuitously freed . . . from its feudal burdens, had paid no price for the soil.” The situation in Peru is different, here in the first place there has not been a bourgeois revolution, the bourgeoisie was not capable of leading it in its historical moment, when it was revolutionary; today, since 1917 when the era of world revolution opened, the bourgeoisie became an obsolete and incapable class and only the proletariat is capable of leading the democratic revolutions that destroy feudalism, in addition to the socialist and cultural revolutions; therefore, there was no bourgeois revolution of the old type. But, Peruvian reaction, at the service of imperialism, has unfolded and continues unfolding the bureaucratic road, takes bureaucrat-capitalism to the countryside and applies the evolution of semi-feudalism; part of that process is the application of its three agrarian laws, in particular, of the so-called “agrarian reform law” which is nothing but one more law of purchase and sale of lands and which has not destroyed semi-feudalism but has evolved it, what is seen today is a consequence of that purchase-sale of lands, the associative forms that arose from that “agrarian reform” are being parceled out and thus, then, situations similar to those Marx deals with arise. For example, he continues saying: “the following generations paid, in the form of the price of land, what their semi-serf forefathers had paid in the form of rent, tithes, corvée”; what interests us is that here there was purchase-sale. It is also necessary to differentiate that the peasants under the feudal regime pay for the land with servile services, in the thousand forms in which the servile relation presents itself; and, in the capitalist system, the peasants pay for the land in money, in the form of price.

“The more, on the one hand, the population grew and the more, on the other hand, the partition of holdings increased, the higher became the price of the plot.” Here the aim is to form a rural market, the lands are being parceled out, the peasant population increases; what does this generate? A rise in the price of land and that burdens the people because the peasantry has to pay more for the land. He continues, “But in proportion as the price which the peasant paid for his plot rose . . . necessarily also rose the indebtedness of the peasant.” He refers to the mortgage, what is taking shape in Peru? What do the big bourgeoisie, banking, the State, the landlords seek to impose? That commercial banking have facilities to give credits to the countryside and, under mortgage security, keep the lands and thus promote a new process of concentration to apply evolutive forms of semi-feudalism.

The division of the land, the parceling out, leads to minifundism and this determines a retrogression in the cultivation of the soil because the possibility of applying new forms of agricultural production is restricted. On the parcel, the entire family works to exhaustion, a great labor power is invested but the net product diminishes progressively as the gross product increases. This same thing governs in micro and small production, as we have analyzed previously, the more gross consumption the less net consumption and no one escapes that law, but this is optimal for imperialism because it buys at lower cost exploiting immensely. This phenomenon in the countryside, furthermore, has repercussions against the proletariat because thus the countryside has to consume less, production has to fall, the workers’ wages are reduced, and there is much scope for unemployment. In another text, Marx tells us that small property is condemned by history.

The text continues: “In the measure, therefore, that the population and, with it, the division of the land, increases, does the instrument of production, the soil, become dearer and its fertility decrease, does agriculture decline and the peasant become loaded with debt.”³ This is extraordinary. The population increases in Peru, the land is divided and becomes more expensive; but what derives from all this? This process diminishes the fertility of the land and, consequently, agriculture declines, and as a complement the peasant is loaded with debts, the mortgage of the lands is introduced and in this manner the bankers or usurers snatch their lands from them, the peasant loses his land. The phenomenon described by Marx presents itself, everything is concatenated and we must, then, unmask it and establish a specific policy.

“Each generation leaves behind another more deeply in debt; each new generation begins under more unfavourable and more aggravating conditions.” Formidable! Is it not seen in the production cycle of imperialism in general? Do you remember the process of falling into decline of bureaucrat-capitalism that we studied in the Congress, in the third session? In the capitalist system and also in imperialism cyclical crises occur and this continues governing despite the denials made by the big bourgeoisie; this thesis of Marx is in force and no one can deny it, there has been no one until today, nor can there be, who can demonstrate that cyclical crises no longer occur in capitalism; what has to be seen is how, after so many years since Marx grounded his theory for us, it has been expressing specifications, how crises present themselves today. Well, there are cycles, but each cycle leads to a crisis, to a sinking and then expresses a recovery that begins from a lower point to then generate an expansion, a crisis, and a stagnation that reaches a new point deeper than the previous one; and from there a new recovery recommences and the cycle continues, but always from a lower point.

“mortgaging begets mortgaging, and when it becomes impossible for the peasant to offer his small holding as security for new debts, that is, to encumber it with new mortgages, he falls a direct victim to usury.” The mortgage is burdensome, if the mortgage is not paid the land is lost; then it is amortized with a mortgage, one mortgage saves another mortgage, but it reaches a point where they can no longer use the mortgage, but as they have to pay they resort to the usurer who charges much higher interest; the peasants jump from bad to worse, to flee the fire they fall into the conflagration.

Marx says: “Thus it came about that the French peasant cedes to the capitalist, in the form of interest on the mortgages encumbering the soil and in the form of interest on the advances made by the usurer without mortgages, not only rent, not only the industrial profit, in a word, not only the whole net profit, but even a part of the wages.” No longer does it only have to yield all its gain but it has to hand over part of what is its sustenance to maintain itself, it means that it has gone below the physical minimum of the wage. For historical reasons falling below the minimum physical value can occur, then they apply social compensation plans, philanthropy; “he has sunk to the level of the Irish tenant farmer⁠—all under the pretence of being a private proprietor.” That is what afflicts the small peasants, that afflicts the minifundists; and in Peru it is being said that today what is going to develop the most is the system of parcel proprietors. A terrible perspective under the capitalist system, here in Peru under the development of bureaucrat-capitalism.

Marx also states the solution “the peasantry needs a red republic, it needs the dictatorship of the proletariat, it needs to unite with the proletariat to combat, only thus can it find a true historical destiny.” (The preceding quotation begins “the peasant population. . .” page 201 and ends “private proprietors” page 212.)

Marx says: “The condition of the French peasants, when the republic had added new burdens to their old ones, is comprehensible,” “The exploiter is the same: capital. The individual capitalists exploit the individual peasants through mortgages and usury; the capitalist class exploits the peasant class through the state taxes.”⁴ He is describing to us what the exploitation consists of, see the difference, in one manner it is exploited: as an organized class the bourgeoisie exploits it through the State by means of taxes; and as capitalists, in the modalities of usury, of loans, of capital, of interest, which when unpaid are collected with the mortgage. And how does the landlord exploit it? Through rent. This is how semi-feudalism is differentiated.

Marx says: “The peasant’s title to property is the talisman by which capital held him hitherto under its spell, the pretext under which it set him against the industrial proletariat.” Masterly! When Vargas Llosa presented himself as the exclusive representative of the comprador bourgeoisie he said all Peruvians proprietors; what do they agitate today specifically in the agrarian problem? Property in land; what does Fujimori uphold for his plans in Huallaga? Property in land, recognizing property through the issuing of titles; what is agitated in general for micro enterprise, small enterprise? Property. Today given the circumstances of the supposed defeat of communism, of socialism, property is a talisman that shines with much demagogy and that is yielding and can yield political dividends for them. That is why we must make it seen, putting real, concrete facts in motion, how this is a talisman to counterpose the peasantry to the class.

Marx says: “Only the fall of capital can raise the peasant; only an anti-capitalist, a proletarian government can break his economic misery, his social degradation. The constitutional republic is the dictatorship of his united exploiters; the social-democratic, the Red republic, is the dictatorship of his allies.” Here it is a democratic revolution and the dictatorship it establishes is a joint dictatorship based on the worker-peasant alliance, it is not yet a dictatorship of the proletariat, that is the perspective, but the essence of things does not change.

Marx says a phrase that must be analyzed: “And the scale rises or falls, according to the votes that the peasant casts into the ballot box.” The hegemony of the proletariat in the democratic revolution and not only in it but also in the socialist one has to do with the worker-peasant alliance, with the proletariat leading the peasantry, if the peasantry is tied to the tail of the bourgeoisie, the revolution becomes trapped.

Marx says: “Clearest of all, however, was the voice of the peasants’ actual experience of using the vote and the successive disappointments it rained down blow by blow, with revolutionary speed, upon them.” There is, then, propaganda of reaction and there is propaganda of the revolution that has to unmask everything; but after all, the facts themselves, he says, the very experience of the peasant class that already had the use of the right of suffrage and the disappointments that in the rapid revolutionary development were discharging blow after blow upon its head, spoke the most intelligible language, those blows that the peasantry receives make them comprehend better, more rapidly, and more directly. But this is an objective material fact but it does not exempt us from propaganda. He concludes with his great slogan “Revolutions are the locomotives of history.”

Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

He poses to us the problem of the peasantry as a class; on page 318 of the Works of Marx and Engels, vol. 1.

Insofar as millions of families live under economic conditions of existence that separate their mode of life, their interests and their culture from those of the other classes, and put them in hostile opposition to the latter, they form a class. Insofar as there is merely a local interconnection among these small-holding peasants, and the identity of their interests begets no community, no national bond and no political organisation among them, they do not form a class. They are consequently incapable of enforcing their class interests in their own name, whether through a parliament or through a convention. They cannot represent themselves, they must be represented. Their representative must at the same time appear as their master, as an authority over them, as an unlimited governmental power that protects them against the other classes and sends them rain and sunshine from above. The political influence of the small-holding peasants, therefore, finds its final expression in the executive power subordinating society to itself.⁵

It is a class because of the objective conditions, it is a class in itself, it exists as a reality because of the common interests, but it is not a class for itself, insofar as it neither becomes conscious nor is politically organized to defend its own interests and that is why it seeks someone to represent it; well then, the government is the one that has, for concrete reasons of the social process, means to appear thus, to present itself demagogically in that manner and that gives scope for the peasantry to be tied to the tail of reaction and to be used, manipulated, maneuvered by the government, by the Executive; that is why the various reactionary States put themselves forward as defenders of the peasantry, they say that they are going to benefit, protect, defend it, an example of this is Morales Bermúdez. Today itself we see how the government tries to play with the interests of the parcel holders, with the talisman of the property title.

In Peru, in the concrete, there is no peasant party, it does not exist; there is a certain degree of peasant organization but those who command those organizations are trade bureaucracies, bourgeois, revisionists, opportunists, petty bourgeois who defend their own interests. That is not to belittle the peasantry, but to see it with a reality just as it is. Do not forget what Lenin taught us, that the peasantry is petty bourgeoisie and as such has no historical perspective, only the proletariat has it; historically the peasants have never led a triumphant revolutionary movement. It does not mean that they have not combated, they have been doing so for centuries, a dauntless, heroic, and unwavering struggle, but they lack ideology. Their very condition of dispersion hinders them; it is one of the most exploited and oppressed parts of society, sunk in impoverishment, in deep misery, all that weakens the peasantry more, restricts and limits them. If the peasantry has advanced it is because of the action of the proletariat, mainly only when it integrates an alliance with the proletariat.

The practical conclusion that we must draw, apart from the necessity of developing the worker-peasant alliance more, is to make them comprehend (that through action they draw the historical lesson and that they assimilate it consciously and that they incorporate themselves more into the People’s War) that it is the People’s Republic of Peru that is going to resolve the fundamental problem: the land, base and substantive question of the democratic revolution which resolves it for the benefit of the mainly poor peasantry.

Marx then deals with how the peasantry divides into two, one part is for the revolution and another against the revolution. A revolutionary peasantry that is the very essence and a conservative peasantry. The governments, the reactionary States that traffic demagogically in the interest of the peasantry and that say they represent it only represent the conservative peasantry, never the revolutionary one. Whom does Fujimori represent? That conservative peasantry.

The first quotation is on page 318. “Insofar . . . serving society,” the second quotation, “But let it be understood . . . modern Vende,” pages 322–324.

2. The Party’s Propositions.

In People’s Voice No. 5 page 5, title “The problem of the agrarian law,” the Party in the year 1969 posed its position toward law 17716 and what we said there has been fulfilled; in general we must insist that the positions of the Chairman were attacked and today everyone recognizes and chimes the same, although, as could not be otherwise, now they want to interpret things again, as yesterday, at the service of the system.

We emphasized that that was not an agrarian reform law; it was simply, like the two preceding ones, a law of purchase-sale of lands; therefore, it could only unfold an impetus to the evolution of semi-feudalism. We said that it was within the process of developing bureaucrat-capitalism; that the State would play a key role and was going to handle the entire process, it passed to acting as a landlord for the benefit of the big bourgeoisie, particularly the bureaucratic one; it was part of its task of corporatively reorganizing Peruvian society and that it unfolded within the necessity of imperialism, mainly Yankee imperialism. All these things have been fulfilled from a to z; it must serve us as experience to make us comprehend that Marxism–Leninism–Maoism allows us to comprehend reality thoroughly and transform it, if it is applied.

“The former minister of agriculture himself, General Gallegos, said on the occasion of last June 24: the bases of the new structure already laid, the process of agrarian reform must now aim at a single great objective, the integrated rural development of our country to make Peruvian socialism a reality.” Today we could ask ourselves where is Peruvian socialism? Did those who today are in the Mariateguist Unified Party, Letts, Diez Canseco, not say that the flaw of the agrarian law, which they called reform, was simply that it was not socialist? Which is a “theoretical” drunkenness because agrarian reform is a democratic demand.

The document says transcribing the words of that general “Our great objective in the second stage of the process of revolutionary transformation in the countryside is, then, integral rural development,” years have passed, where is the integral rural development? It is the evolution of feudalism that has sunk the peasantry more, which struggles in the deepest crisis and misery. It is good to remember this, because we are hearing the same words today; this process began in the year 1963; more than 25 years have passed, with successive laws since the year 1963. General Gallegos said “basic aspects are the increase in production and agrarian productivity” and today the same is said; today there is also talk of rationalizing the system, agro-industry is again presented as the perspective led by export, as Fujimori and Hurtado say. He ends saying: “And all the institutions, both of public and private sectors, must converge toward remobilization to transform the Peruvian countryside into the fastest and most powerful wheel that will make a road toward the development of our homeland.” Today they speak to us of prosperity, it is the same and Hurtado Miller and Fujimori have also invoked the homeland; but what stands out here is the call to public and private institutions, today the call is to unite State with civil society.

On page 14: “How to comprehend bureaucrat-capitalism in our country, how to comprehend the agrarian process in our country?” Here Lenin’s thesis on the two forms that capitalism can unfold in the countryside is posed: “This development in a capitalist country may take place in two different ways. Either the latifundia remain, and gradually become the basis of capitalist economy on the land. This is the Prussian type of agrarian capitalism, in which the Junker is master of the situation. For whole decades there continue both his political domination and the oppression, degradation, poverty and illiteracy of the peasant. The productive forces develop very slowly. . . . Or else the revolution sweeps away the landed estates. The basis of capitalist agriculture now becomes the free farmer on free land, i.e., land clear of all medieval junk. This is the American type of agrarian capitalism, and the most rapid development of productive forces under conditions which are more favourable for the mass of the people than any others under capitalism.”⁶ Take into account that Lenin did this analyzing concrete situations that were expressed in Germany; he saw that that evolutive road occurred there, the latifundia subsist and gradually become the base of capitalist exploitation of the land; it is evolutive, it does not destroy the feudal system, it is the one that costs more sacrifice, more effort, more pain, more blood, it is a skinning of the peasantry through that evolutive maintenance of the medieval defects. Facing that road, the American road, the one that was expressed in the last century, is the one that he also called the road of the “farmers,” it sweeps away landlord agrarian property; it occurred fully linked to and derived from the civil war that permitted its broad expansion. As long as there are medieval burdens one cannot speak of a free peasant.

“What develops in Peru is a bureaucrat-capitalism and what develops in the countryside is the process of evolution of semi-feudalism, whereas the American road is the one the democratic revolution develops, the one we conduct through the People’s War under the direction of the Communist Party. They are peculiar, distinct, concrete situations of the epoch in which we unfold. Both roads have undergone modifications, concretions with the course of the historical process, what is the essence of those two roads? Those roads occur in the concrete circumstances where we already have imperialism, which already has a century of unfolding and we are an oppressed nation that has its peculiarities.” We were told that the roads were erroneous, that they no longer corresponded historically, that these theses of Lenin no longer governed. Well, when they speak of parcel holders as the base of the agrarian fundamental of the country what they are speaking of is that road of “farmers,” but they are conceiving it opportunistically, as always, to serve the order, dreaming that it can be implemented without revolution, apart from the fact that they deny the existence of the land problem as a basic question.

Lenin: “In reality the struggle going on in the Russian revolution is not about ‘socialisation’ and other absurdities of the Narodniks”; when we analyze the problem of peasant promotion, of non-governmental organizations, there we are going to see how a sector is branding them as populists. Populist is nothing but petty bourgeois ideology. Lenin continues: “but about what road capitalist development of Russia will take: the ‘Prussian’ or the ‘American.’ Without ascertaining this economic basis of the revolution, it is absolutely impossible to understand anything about an agrarian programme.” That is why they do not understand bureaucrat-capitalism, they do not understand the evolution of semi-feudalism because of petty bourgeois ideological positions.

Lenin continues: “All the Cadets do their utmost to obscure the essence of the agrarian revolution. . . . The Cadets mix up (’reconcile’) the two main types of agrarian programme in the revolution”; they confuse, reconcile both roads, reduce them to one, complement them as if they were the same when they are two contradictory elements. Lenin continues “In Russia both types of capitalist agrarian evolution already made their appearance in the years between 1861 and 1905⁠—both the Prussian (the gradual development of landlord economy in the direction of capitalism) and the American (differentiation of the peasantry and a rapid development of productive forces . . .).”⁷ That is what we are seeing here, allowing for distances, because of historical conditions and considering bureaucrat-capitalism, we with the democratic revolution open room for capitalist development in the countryside, hence we must take into account how to handle that process so that from the very base which is agriculture a capitalist process does not become unbridled that prevents us from developing the second stage of the revolution; we open room but we are not going to let the revolution plunge down a capitalist road that after all would be a restoration and return to the domination of imperialism.

But this is not all, Lenin establishes a relation between these two economic roads and two political roads, he says: “The genuine historical question which objective historical and social development is putting to us is: a Prussian or an American type of agrarian evolution? A landlords’ monarchy with the fig-leaf of a sham constitution, or a peasant (farmers’) republic? To close our eyes to such an objective statement of the case by history means to deceive oneself and others, hiding in philistine fashion from the acute class struggle, from the acute, simple and decisive presentation of the question of a democratic revolution.”⁸ The landlord road is the road of bureaucrat-capitalism and leads to the old Peruvian Republic, to defending and sustaining it. The peasant road is the road of the democratic revolution and leads to the People’s Republic of Peru, not to see this political difference means to deceive oneself and deceive others, it is to evade in the petty bourgeois manner the problem of the democratic revolution.

Lenin says: “We cannot get rid of the ‘bourgeois state.’ Only petty-bourgeois philistines can dream of doing so. Our revolution is a bourgeois revolution precisely because the struggle going on in it is not between socialism and capitalism, but between two forms of capitalism, two paths of its development, two forms of bourgeois-democratic institutions.” The revolution is democratic but here there are two roads as the Sixth and Seventh Sessions of the Central Committee said in the year 1976, the bureaucratic capitalist road and the democratic road. The second, as far as the countryside is concerned, implies sweeping away every trace of semi-feudalism, sweeping away the landlords and the big bourgeoisie that has power over agriculture, whether exploiting it in whatever manner, as well as the domination of imperialist action. As a counterpart we support and defend the interests of the peasantry, we base ourselves on the poor peasantry, support the middle and neutralize the rich; this when dealing with the peasant problem, but the democratic revolution poses to us sweeping away the three mountains: semi-feudalism, bureaucrat-capitalism, and imperialism; and the base of that revolution is semi-feudalism which we have to sweep away, yes but that is part of the other three mountains, we cannot separate them, the three form a unity.

It is very good to see the agrarian problem, because the peasant question is a basic problem of the democratic revolution; but let us always consider it within all that the democratic revolution implies, overthrow of the three mountains, which demands people’s war, overthrowing the old State and making the People’s Republic of Peru. This great thesis of Lenin is basic to comprehending the agrarian program within the democratic-national revolution. There are those who consider that these two roads are no longer valid, a great error that only serves to cover up support for the agrarian measures of the landlord road.

The document says: “It develops under new conditions, bureaucrat-capitalism . . . uses cooperative and associative forms in general.” Today that landlord road, bureaucratic, evolutive of semi-feudalism, is unfolding but is specified in another manner, it is no longer a question of cooperatives, nor of associative forms in general; we ourselves must investigate again and define our policies better to handle the current process.

The document continues and says that the peasant road has been extraordinarily developed by Chairman Mao Tsetung and that the slogan “Land to the tiller” continues being valid, fully valid, it is a slogan that directly continues implying the thorough and complete destruction of all the semi-feudal relations of exploitation and serves all those who make up the people because the proletariat, the petty bourgeoisie, and even the national bourgeoisie also have an interest; the specifications have to be seen with what we are posing to ourselves today, with the concrete circumstances of 1990, with the plans of reaction.

The document says: “Mariátegui posed that in Peru the road of the landlords was followed, we can see it in the final part of the Seven Essays: ‘Capitalist concentration has been preceded by a stage of free competition. Large property does not arise, therefore, within large feudal property as the creole landlords probably imagine. Quite the contrary, for modern large property to arise, the fragmentation, the dissolution of large feudal property was necessary. Capitalism is an urban phenomenon, it has the spirit of the industrial, manufacturing, mercantile town, for this reason one of its first acts was the liberation of the land, the destruction of the fief. The development of the city needed to nourish itself from the free activity of the peasantry. In Peru, against the sense of republican emancipation, the spirit of the fief, antithesis and negation of the spirit of the town, has been entrusted with the creation of a capitalist economy.’”

The document continues: “This is the road that has been followed in Peru, as Mariátegui demonstrated it, a road that was propelled in the 1920s and that deepens from the year 1950, especially in the decade of the 1960s. (In that decade Pérez Godoy’s law of bases was given; in 1964 Belaúnde’s 15237 was given; and, the so-called “agrarian reform” one, 17716, of Velasco, in 1969). Three agrarian laws were given characterized by restrictions and limitations of feudal property, expropriation of the land, and execution by the bureaucratic apparatus of the State. We could not say, then, that feudal property today is the same as that which existed before the three agrarian laws. It says: “In synthesis, as could not be otherwise, this regime like the preceding ones develops in our country the old landlord road, only that it is accompanied by cooperatives, agrarian societies of social interest, and associative enterprises of social property.” This corresponded to the year 1976 and although it is correct and governs today, we need to specify how the two roads are occurring in the countryside. The landlord road, bureaucratic, which evolves feudalism, which takes bureaucrat-capitalism to the countryside; and the democratic, peasant road, which unfolds as a counterpart to the preceding one and which we with the People’s War, leading the democratic revolution, are carrying forward destroying the semi-feudal relations and opening new social relations; a peasant road that can be coupled to the old order if the revolution is not developed. We insist, the land problem continues being the basic problem of the democratic revolution and we must always concern ourselves with it, see how the plans, the policies of reaction are being specified, how we are imprinting changes on the semi-feudal base of Peruvian society. We need to judge correctly that process of parceling out, the dispossession of lands, the titling, the property in land, what are the results of their so-called agrarian reform, what do the intellectuals pose, what do the revisionists and opportunists? To concern ourselves with this problem, more so if we are in the construction of the conquest of Power.

3. Positions of the Big Bourgeoisie, its Comprador Faction.

- Magazine Economic Advance. Article “Twenty years without structural changes”; in it, Year 10, No. 107, we can find the position of the comprador bourgeoisie. It says that law 17716, the so-called “agrarian reform,” meant a change of hands; that the land changed proprietor but that the latifundium survived; that the State succeeded in institutionalizing its direct presence in the lands, that it became the new owner of the lands, precisely this was what we denounced when that law was promulgated under Velasco’s fascist corporative regime, we are not prophets of the past, we are politicians, Marxist–Leninist–Maoists and in the light of our ideology we can analyze everything and define what the reality is; this proves once more that our positions are correct and are confirmed in practice.

It says: “Never, not even under the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance government, was agriculture given the atmosphere it required for production, modernization, and progress in particular of the highlands”; “more exactly it was the consequence of the policy of importing foods with an artificially cheapened and subsidized dollar.” Here it is reflecting that agriculture has sunk more and that the Aprista government did not propel agricultural production at all but rather fostered the sinking of agriculture with the importation of agricultural foods with the dollars from the Unified Exchange Market that have permitted them so much profiteering. But the true cause of the process of sinking of Peruvian agriculture is the semi-feudalism that subsists despite the evolution that the landlord road generates. Now, that the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance would not resolve the land problem either, we also denounced it and spread it, even a graphic leaflet against its agrarian policy. It continues posing that then there was no such agrarian reform that they proclaimed so much but, it says “. . . that change, that true agrarian reform is being made by the people,” it refers to the process of parceling out the lands and to how the associative forms that were gestated with Velasco’s corporative law have come down. Once more we are seeing the verification of our positions, it was we who denounced that the associative forms were nothing but a base for the corporativization of Peruvian society and that they would not resolve the land problem. It says textually: “That agrarian reform has begun some time ago, spontaneously as regards the enterprise model, the parceling out and the distribution of land tenure.” Let us take note, here, as in other articles, the big bourgeoisie and its scribblers and technicians do not speak of property in land but of tenures; then, if they say that the distribution of land tenure has begun it means that the so-called agrarian reform did not resolve the problem of property in land, that neither the latifundium nor its counterpart the minifundium was destroyed, that the question of property is pending and saying that it has begun spontaneously is also to sidestep that what is being expressed is the peasant road that subsists and develops facing the landlord road; and above all that with the parceling out today what is being sought on the part of reaction is that property titles be given to the peasants to tie them to the process of the mortgage and usury, dispossess them of the land which the bankers, the big bourgeoisie, and the landlords appropriate; they want broad room so that they can invest in the countryside and unfold agro-industry; take possession of the lands; usufruct the few irrigation works that there are or grab the great concessions of bristling lands through the “Private Projects for Comprehensive Development.” In synthesis, dispossession of the peasants’ land so that the landlords and the big bourgeoisie take possession and unfold the countryside according to what imperialism demands, produce to export, not to feed the people, this position is inscribed within the plans of the current government, Fujimori has posed property titles and hurtado in the Program that he reported to the Congress placed emphasis on the exporting process as leadership of development.

- Magazine Economic Advance (Idem.). “Interview with Gonzales Olarte and with Raúl Hopkins. The article is called “The twenty years of agrarian reform and its results.” Mr. Efraín Gonzáles Olarte says: “It is very well known that agrarian reform was made with political criteria,” what criteria, then, are going to guide the class struggle? It is established that politics is the quintessence of economics, Lenin warned of it very clearly in his dispute with Trotsky when he said that that was the ABCs of Marxism when economic reasons were presented to him.⁹

This specialist, also of the comprador bourgeoisie, agrees with Velasco insofar as he had broken the backbone of the oligarchy but sees a problem insofar as “the model of agrarian development was not thought of,” he says that there were flaws in the model of development and that it is verified when comparing how the estates functioned with the cooperatives, behind this they defend the estates. They ask him if the objectives of that reform were fulfilled and he responds: “It did not replace that order with another order” “agrarian reform is not a process that has strengthened rural society,” it broke the backbone of the oligarchy but that order was neither replaced by another nor was the countryside strengthened, rather it sank even more. But what order had to be imposed according to him? “A democratic enterprise order” in the hands of private individuals, not of the State, in essence he agrees with an agrarian reform but wants it without the State, with a bourgeois democratic order. A proof that he praises it is in: “one of the most radical reforms of Latin America.” It is that the two factions of the big bourgeoisie have benefited from it.

When analyzing the cooperatives he makes a great discovery, according to him, that the female cooperative members were owners and workers at the same time; but precisely with this the aim was to target the class and make them formal proprietors. Then: “60% of the cooperatives are parceled out”; in the parceling out we must see how the two roads express themselves: on the peasant road, the peasants, orphaned of proletarian direction under the influence of revisionism, of opportunism, with their burdens of petty bourgeoisie, orphaned of good orientation and in the worst conditions, launch themselves into the parceling out of lands. For the big bourgeoisie, especially the comprador one, parceling out favors it because it facilitates dispossession for a new concentration of the parcels because the parcel is tiny and is unproductive; it wants parceling out with the objective of evolving the countryside to make great agro-industrial complexes. It says: “The parcel is the epilogue of agrarian reform, and it did not come to be complemented.” It says that there are enterprises on the Coast, in the Highlands, and in the Jungle of optimal size: 30, 50 hectares. Little? No; what happens is that to unfold a capitalist system 50 hectares is a good condition to work; more so if one has 50 and they work that land well, they buy the 30 hectares or the 50 of one of the neighbors, then they develop them and buy those of the other neighbor, thus they go on unfolding the evolutive, landlord road and take bureaucrat-capitalism to the countryside and apply the plans of imperialism. And the peasantry? Dispossessed of its lands. That is the new concentration that they now intend when private enterprise tends to play an important role in the Peruvian economy.

Mr. Raúl Hopkins says: “I believe that after agrarian reform a whole new situation is produced in economic terms that have no parallel in the development of legislation. It is necessary to develop a whole post-reform legislation, for example the purchase sale of lands, rental . . .”

It is that a series of economic phenomena are occurring that the law does not allow and that they need to legislate, he considers that one cannot continue with informality in the countryside, he, like Hernando de Soto, considers that the problem is resolved giving laws. He says: “there is a confusion because the economic fact is outside the legal provision and that must be legalized, regularized, regulated; one cannot continue with that informality.” Nor is he against the military government and its measures in the countryside; he also thinks that the flaw is in the model, that that is its limitation, the technique applied, not having imposed an exporting system. In synthesis, this gentleman’s position is laws, norms, and a stable policy, that lasts a time, guarantees to be able to invest and an exporting model; that it be done under bourgeois democracy or under military dictatorship is not a problem, he does not specify.

He continues: “the most important thing is to recognize that the problem of the development of agriculture is not resolved in the short term. It is not a problem of a single government; it is a problem of many governments, a minimum of ten years.” “Change the system of the Andean Pact because it was based on failed models.” He conceives a long time for development of the countryside, centers on productive development and wants to change the model; he is awaiting what the presidents of Latin America decide to adjust to Bush’s initiative for America; he is within the criteria of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean that was studied more in the Bureau of August 1990, it poses that in agriculture in Latin America, toward the year 2000 the lands are not going to increase nor is the number of workers going to increase, then, one must center on agricultural productivity; he says: that the problem is to develop agricultural technology, étc. That is precisely what Fujimori is posing and what the comprador bourgeoisie applauds, for them the problem is no longer of distribution of the lands because they were already distributed but of productivity, how to produce more with what techniques, with what organic apparatuses, what markets to encompass, etc., etc.

There we have the position of the comprador bourgeoisie in Peru; it seeks to evolve the countryside and to have the property titles regularized for dispossession and new concentration.

1991