This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, 1966-1976: the greatest and most profound revolution in history, continuation of the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat serving communism and communist society. We must celebrate this great deed, and we do it reaffirming ourselves in everything that Chairman Gonzalo and the Party has put forward on this point, in particular the document that has previously been read in this conference (on the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the GPCR).
40 years after the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, what is the situation? The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution gave us Maoism: 40 years later, we are fighting for upholding, defending and applying Maoism and the Communist Party of Peru is carrying out the task, giving its contribution with people’s war, and in the world a new great wave of the world proletarian revolution is developed. What is in front of us? The general counter-revolutionary offensive of imperialism, and revisionism in collusion and conflict, a converging offensive, that intends to suffocate the revolution as the main historical and political tendency today in the world, trying in vain to divert the new great wave of the world revolution that we have entered. Even more so, imperialism, mainly Yankee, as sole hegemonic superpower, that is heading this offensive, while they carry out their war of aggression against the peoples of the world, is trying in the present moment to prevent that a powerful world anti-imperialist movement is generated and that it be under the command of Maoism. A futile attempt! But this is what the new revisionism serves; this is what they are after and what we are confronting.
Thus, 40 years after the GPCR, the Communist Party of Peru, on one hand, leading the people’s war, maintains: that Maoism is the most powerful weapon, it is our atom bomb, an unbeatable weapon; today we must be more conscious of the historical transcendence of Marxism, of its invincibility, that Marxism is all-powerful because it is true… It is the decisive point, on which everything depends, and from which everything is derived; if we move away from Maoism, the revolution is delayed, although they can not stop it because Maoism will impose itself again and lead the revolution. We need principally Maoism and to put it very high, higher every time; this demands defending it, not only upholding it – we uphold banners to defend them, but the principal is to apply it.
Meanwhile on the other hand, the comrades in the Revolutionary Communist Party of the United States (RCP-USA) and its Chairman, Bob Avakian, echoing the general counter-revolutionary offensive, deny the decisive character of our ideology, Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, its validity, and deny the established road of the proletarian revolution. For example, Avakian has written: “I have been bringing forward an epistemological rupture with a lot of the history of the ICM [International Communist Movement], including China and the GPCR [Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution], which had this thing arguing that there is such a thing as proletarian truth and bourgeois truth—this was in a major circular put out by the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party.” And against this correct thesis of dialectical materialism – that Chairman Mao concretized in “The class state, the class philosophy and the class science” – he continues: “...we have to go for the truth, rather than hiding things, etc. — a whole approach of interrogating our whole history... It is not that Mao never had any of this approach, but still what I have been bringing forward represents an epistemological break... There’s been a clinging to this old way the communist movement has approached these questions, epitomized in class truth–this is still a real problem.”1
We have selected quotes from this “Discussion with Bob Avakian,” for this occasion because they constitute a good sample of the peculiar form, style and method that the author has of dealing with the ideological and political problems that have to do with the world revolution, its history, the road, its tasks, etc. Here, he presents himself as an innovator, as a man who opens a breach; but the result is that his ideas are nothing but a mere repetition of old ideas of the bourgeoisie in the philosophical terrain, thus he is dragged behind, incapable of guiding the car of society and trying to make it go backwards or turn around and go back. Why do we say this? Because to deny the class character of the truth, is to separate the subjective from the objective; this rupture between knowledge and the social practice belongs to the epistemology or theory of knowledge of idealism and of mechanical materialism, and is therefore pre-Marxist, thus acting like the opportunists and adventurists. Even more, he accuses Marxism of “hiding things,” providing material for others to repeat it and talk about “not falling in the errors of 20th century socialism” and the necessity of “21st century democracy,” thus spreading the general counter-revolutionary offensive’s attacks against Marxism. The Marxist-Leninist-Maoist theory of knowledge, characterized by the scientific social practice, crushes these erroneous conceptions about the problem of knowledge. We Maoists affirm the dependency of knowledge upon the social practice, i.e. the dependency of knowledge upon production and the class struggle – we are followers of what Chairman Mao put forward in his work On Practice: “Of these other types of social practice, class struggle in particular, in all its various forms, exerts a profound influence on the development of man’s knowledge. In class society everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class... Marxists recognize that in the absolute and general process of development of the universe, the development of each particular process is relative, and that hence, in the endless flow of absolute truth, man’s knowledge of a particular process at any given stage of development is only relative truth. The sum total of innumerable relative truths constitutes absolute truth. The development of an objective process is full of contradictions and struggles, and so is the development of the movement of human knowledge. All the dialectical movements of the objective world can sooner or later be reflected in human knowledge. In social practice, the process of coming into being, developing and passing away is infinite, and so is the process of coming into being, developing and passing away in human knowledge... The movement of change in the world of objective reality is never-ending and so is man’s cognition of truth through practice... In the present epoch of the development of society, the responsibility of correctly knowing and changing the world has been placed by history upon the shoulders of the proletariat and its party.”
In his “Discussion,” Avakian continues his ideological attacks against Marxism, repeating the reactionary stories of the general offensive; that do nothing more than affirm and qualify that “Marxism is outdated,” “it is no good anymore.” In this way, Avakian calls for overthrowing Marxism because it is aged, saying: “But we need to go further with this. Mao’s been dead for 30 years and Lenin 80–what are we doing if we don’t go beyond them?” And he, Avakian, could not do otherwise, as we have seen in his so-called “epistemological break,” he does not succeed in undermining even a minimum of the foundations of dialectical materialism, this “rupture” does not become anything more than a furious attack against Maoism because it can not storm its fortress. Marxism-Leninism-Maoism is the new and it is living, it continues its battles moved by the class struggle of the international proletariat and the peoples of the world, by us in the people’s war led by the Communist Party of Peru. Maoism is alive and develops; it brings us to Gonzalo thought that is the universal truth specified to the concrete reality of Peruvian society and to the concrete conditions of the class struggle today. The principal of Gonzalo thought is having defined Maoism as third, new and higher stage, and it is its present application and development, and this is what he tells us to “go beyond.” This explains the position that some have of investigating, because according to them, “there are strong indications that Chairman Gonzalo is behind the ‘peace letters’.” We refer to some within the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, more precisely the CoRIM, that in this way have echoed the hoaxes of the Yankee CIA, of the Peruvian reaction and of the rats of the revisionist and opportunist ROL against the Great Leadership of the Party and the revolution, Chairman Gonzalo.
Avakian, continuing his “rupture” with Maoism and the GPCR, lifts up a stone that then drops on his own feet, like this: “we have to lead the masses and even struggle with these intermediate strata by putting the contradictions to them... You have to pose the contradictions and ask: what’s your idea for how to solve this?... It’s not like Mao didn’t have a lot of that, but it’s a little bit different way, what I’m putting forward. You trust the masses... You couldn’t do the Paris Commune again to do the Soviet Union. Too much has gone on, even besides the propaganda of the bourgeoisie, people are not going to get inspired to do the same thing. They should recognize that in its time and place the inspiration was the main thing. The Chinese revolution was much better than what they had before and much better than what they have now in China. But it’s not enough to inspire people to do that again. And they shouldn’t want to. Is what I’m arguing for a bunch of idealism? Or is it the only way we can go forward? What’s the truth of this?”
The Chairman of the RCP-USA, Avakian, in this previous paragraph that really will go down in history, against what he is trying to say, tangles up the philosophy in strange words, full of cobwebs to hide his own separation from the masses and to hide the historical class truth, that Chairman Mao fulfilled what Marx taught, to “bring the philosophy to the masses.” Chairman Gonzalo tells us: “Since Marx we were taught this necessity, and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is the most living and grand example of mass mobilization with the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist ideology to continue the construction of socialism under the dictatorship of the proletariat, to continue the revolution and not let the conquered fruits be snatched away, to defend the revolution... the philosophy, the science, are not for the scholars but for the masses.”
Against the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist theory of the state and the revolution – that teaches that every revolution is a continuation and a development of the previous experiences in the fundamental question of the violent destruction of the old bureaucratic-military machinery of the state through people’s war and the establishment of the state machinery of the dictatorship of the proletariat and that we have the solution for continuing the revolution in socialist society, with successive proletarians cultural revolutions – Avakian puts forward: “You can’t repeat the experience [of the proletarian revolution and socialist society],” to then attack the GPCR saying that what he does this is “something that adds a whole strategic dimension and embodies but goes further than the GPCR; and if, in the name of upholding the GPCR, you resist the part that goes further—then you’re opposing the whole thing.” One who acts like that, who denies the two great experiences and the GPCR, does it to put forward his own ideas contrary to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, to lay the foundations for his own road, opposed to the true revolutionary road of the world people’s war, and that is summed up in “imperialist countries insurrection, backward countries people’s war,” like he preaches in his “Discussion”: “when the time comes, when there is a revolutionary situation, our material force has to be able to meet and defeat the imperialists.” But not now, as he sees imperialism as super-powerful and proposes to struggle for “replacing the Bush government before the end of its term”–pure reformism, that considers that it is a problem of the “ultra-rightists” etc, in the Bush government, denying that the Yankee state machinery is an instrument to exercise the class rule of the Yankee imperialists. Therefore, to paraphrase Lenin, it is fitting to ask oneself: what new does he contribute to this doctrine, to Marxism, this boisterous “renewer,” who has made so much noise? And to paraphrase the same Lenin, one must answer Absolutely nothing, he does not propel even one step forward the science that we have inherited: he teaches the proletariat no new method of struggle; he does nothing but fall back, picking up fragments of backward theories and preaching to the proletariat the doctrine of concessions of the most fierce enemies; backward theories, that others will repeat, trying to claim their fatherhood. Now it is clearer why comrade Avakian, along with other comrades, oppose tenaciously in the RIM that Marxism-Leninism-Maoism is adopted as the universal ideology of our class. Comrade Prachanda should remember that it is because of the struggle of Chairman Gonzalo, the Party and the people’s war that the RIM, in 1993, adopts Maoism.
This “Conversation about epistemology,” with its pseudo-scientific and pompous expositions, ends up reducing itself to an open and cunning attack against the communist movement: “In some instances, the Bolsheviks had a kind of ‘Mafia’ approach in some areas, especially during the civil war that followed the October 1917 Revolution. In some cases, when people would be organized by reactionaries to fight against the Bolsheviks, the Bolsheviks would retaliate broadly and without mercy. Or they would kill people not only for deserting the Red Army but even for dragging their feet in fighting the civil war. While sometimes in the midst of war, extreme measures may be necessary, overall this is not the way to deal with these contradictions. I addressed some of this in ‘Two Great Humps’—I read Lenin on this and thought, ‘this is not right.’ There’s epistemological stuff bound up with all this as well.” On another occasion, we will see more thoroughly the implications of this quote – the important thing is to see how he surreptitiously attacks our all-powerful scientific ideology, and tries to slip in the idea that all the communists are nothing but a bunch of mafiosos because they have “epistemological problems.”
Comrades, whether some people like it or not, the principal tendency in the world is the revolution, and as an expression of this a new great wave of the world proletarian revolution has started to develop; there is no future for humanity without the full and complete triumph of the revolution concretized in communism; well then, the question is to develop the world revolution, and to develop it means to apply it, to make revolution – and it does not matter how many you are, but if one wants to do it or not. We have two great historical experiences, rich with lessons that are there, that live in us, in the proletariat, in the people – and we insist, that there have been two restorations does not negate what is principal, to negate it is a black dream because the world proletarian revolution advances and we are part of this advance. That the world proletarian revolution will cost blood, so it will, but what is there that does not cost blood? We would not be here without the blood spilled by so many communists and revolutionaries in the world.
Today, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the GPCR we reaffirm ourselves in what is established by the First Congress of the Communist Party of Peru, about “What is fundamental in Maoism? Power is fundamental in Maoism. Power for the proletariat, power for the dictatorship of the proletariat, power based on an armed force led by the Communist Party. More explicitly: Power under the leadership of the proletariat in the democratic revolution; Power for the dictatorship of the proletariat in the socialist and cultural revolutions; Power based on an armed force led by the Communist Party, seized and defended through people’s war.” On the fundamental issue of Maoism a struggle is currently raised between Marxism and revisionism, i.e. between Maoism and new revisionism; this brings us to seriously weigh the development of the present situation in Nepal. In Nepal a peace accord is being concretized, within a unilateral truce of ceasefire established by the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist); an accord that implies the deactivation of the support bases, the control of the People’s Liberation Army and its arms that are to be located in an area and in deposits under the control of the UN Security Council, to then go on to a stage of transition of more or less two and a half years to demobilize; the subjection of the PLA to the UN arms control is a condition for the CPN(M) to integrate itself in the interim government of the 7 parties, under the residence of Koirala, an old head of the Congress party, that is one of the parties of the great bourgeoisie and the landlords, that since 1960 are for a constitutional multiparty monarchy, backed by India and the British imperialists and principally the Yankees; the repeated declarations of Prachanda and other CPN(M) leaders that they will submit to what the future constituent assembly, appointed by the elections of the old state, decides on monarchy or republic, keeping the king until the constitution decides. This is preparation to raze the countryside to the ground and literally demolish what has been achieved in the last ten years by the proletariat and the Nepali people. In this way they go from war to the road of elections within the old state and the hope in these and in the commitments to the native and foreign reaction.
We ask: What is a policy true to the principles, a “strategic faithfulness”? It is a policy that start from the class position of the proletariat, from its fundamental interests, from the principles of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, that defends the principles of the people’s war and the revolution. A Communist Party can not sacrifice the fundamental interests of the class to gain advantages for the moment. The Party of the proletariat must defend its independence before all the other classes and differentiate itself from all the parties of these classes, not only the enemy classes like the landlords and the great bourgeoisie, but also those of the middle bourgeoisie and the petit bourgeoisie. To submit to the dictates of what a “constituent assembly” determines and to the results of elections controlled by the native reaction and imperialism and hand over the achievements of the proletariat and the people, that have cost so much blood, is not in keeping with the elasticity of a policy that is true to the principles, but means to fall in the errors of opportunism.
Comrade Prachanda warns us in one of his last interviews (made on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the people’s war in Nepal for the Worker, number 10), that the people’s war in Nepal in its preparation, initiation and development “is different from many of the prevalent and conventional norms of the past communist movements.” And then he presents his singularity thus: “We have prepared for People’s War using even the parliament, given emphasis on striking a balance and coordination between political and military interventions, and we have used peace talks and ceasefire against the enemy in a new way. But in this context, one thing is continuous, which is, placing revolutionary political line at the centre, making concrete analysis of concrete condition and adopting mass line. In the context of preparation, initiation and development of People’s War, it is being developed as a right coordination between political and military lines.” As part of this balance he says that before the initiation they presented “the basic problems of the country and the people in the form of 40-point demands from an open front. The first and the second peace talks can be considered as a new development of that coordination. The Party has already analyzed that the two talks have played an important role in establishing the Party’s political line among the people in a more extensive way and in clarifying the Party’s commitment to establishing peace with a forward-looking political solution reflecting people’s need and aspiration as well as justifying the development and significance of the military line.”
This quote is a key to understanding the thinking of Comrade Prachanda and the events in Nepal – for him it is not right to rebel – the truth that resumes all the truths of Marxism. What he puts forward is a “submissive uprising,” that is justified only if it is done to arrive at a commitment to establish peace (see our underlining in the final part of the quote). In the quote, like in the whole interview he talks about everything but not about the central task of every revolution, the conquest of power through people’s war; the fact is that this “balance and coordination between the political and the military lines” does not have as its strategic objective the conquest of power in the whole country in order to culminate the new democratic revolution; on the contrary, from his explanations on the “use of parliament” for the initiation, from the “two peace talks,” it leaks out that he sees the people’s war as reduced to a guerrilla war; he does not understand the strategic character of the guerrilla war within the people’s war; his war does not have the Support Bases and the new power as its marrow, and even more, he has never understood the new power from our Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, Gonzalo thought outlook; his military line is oriented towards the political solution by means of talks; the development of the war does not go after the victory of the revolution by means of the conquest of power in the whole country and the establishment of the People’s Republic of Nepal, but the strategic ends and objectives of the war is to obtain better conditions for negotiation. It is the means to put pressure in negotiations that will allow gaining political space within the system for a change, like going from absolute monarchy to the monarchy or republic of a parliamentary multiparty regime within the old Nepali state, landlord-bureaucratic, submitted to imperialism and to the tutelage of the “giant” Indian state. In order to from there, combining the parliamentary and extraparliamentary methods, go gradually to the new democracy and to socialism, with a dictatorship of the proletariat that shall not be a dictatorship, that permits the formation of political parties of the other classes, including the bourgeoisie (and this is not signed by Comrade Avakian, but it is signed by Comrade Prachanda). After his so-called “balance” comes the subordination of its military line, of the “people’s war,” to the political objectives of his political line, of the political solution, of commitments to the enemies of the proletariat and the people. Political objectives that are there since the context of initiation, and therefore there is no concentric construction of the three instruments of the revolution – what is this Open Front? Frontism for all purposes, not being built around the gun but around the elections, not for the program of the new democratic revolution but for perfecting the ruling system of the great bourgeoisie and the landlords in service of imperialism and Indian expansionism, to arrive to what? To a “system of parliamentary multiparty democracy” under the tutelage of what they call the monopolist state capitalism of India, and therefore submitted to imperialism, principally Yankee, to which they are calling through the UN, that is the Security Council (the two superpowers and the three powers with veto rights within it). So, what is the aim of his “strategic firmness and tactical flexibility”? The aim is a supposed mix of the two roads, the democratic road, that of the “people’s war,” with the bureaucratic road, the dead end road of the elections, of the parliamentary seats – that is where his whole long speech about “strategic firmness and tactical flexibility” and his “concrete application to the concrete reality” leads, and therefore, his “mass line.” His military line is not in keeping with the proletarian military line. In his interview he once more negates the proletarian military line and says that one must “combine the people’s war with the armed struggle.” Within this context are the conversations of Comrade Prachanda with representatives of the reactionary state of India, imperialism’s foreman in South Asia, that acts as the guardian of the “changes” in Nepal. To incorporate themselves into the government of the 7 parties they are negotiating with India “based on mutual benefit” – what benefit? This is denounced by the comrades in India in an interview in June.
Therefore he shows his disagreement with us, because we are not the revisionist and capitulationist ROL. He, repeating what Comrade Bob Avakian and his other followers say, accuses us of being dogmato-sectarians, saying that we idealize Chairman Gonzalo like a supernatural being, to end up predicting our death and with him, Prachanda, as the one to count the dead: “the Party has reached a stage of crisis of existence in such a short time despite the sacrifice of more than 60 thousand people.” These are the same accusations that the reaction are making against Chairman Gonzalo and the people’s war. The same reactionary propaganda that there are only remainders of sendero. All these attributions seem to be copied from the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), an organization created by the Yankee CIA to try to legitimize the cowardly and barbaric genocide committed against the people during these more than 26 years of people’s war, and wash the hands of the old Peruvian state and imperialism.
Concerning his accusation of sectarianism it does not correspond to reality. The Party certainly sees the importance of the united front, which has a constant trunk in the revolution: workers, peasants, petit bourgeoisie, but the national or middle bourgeoisie has to start supporting the revolution expressing its class condition and with that develop unity and struggle, this is not closed doors, this is not sectarianism. In this way we always maintain hegemony with the worker-peasant alliance and leadership of the Party, in this way the broad masses of the people in the united front will serve to demolish the old state. Keep in mind that the front for us is not the type of front that is formed in the case of a foreign invasion of the country – for us the question is to march towards the conquest of power. And the people’s war marches splendidly because it counts on the Great Leadership of Chairman Gonzalo and his all-powerful thought, because based on this, we count on a leadership that is proven and recognized and applies firmness in the principles and flexibility in their application.
In Peru, how are we applying the fundamental in Maoism? The Communist Party of Peru, representing the proletariat, applying the concentric construction of the three instruments, is leading the front – new state, the new democracy as a joint dictatorship today and tomorrow the dictatorship of the proletariat. This position differentiates us from the revisionist and bourgeois positions in Peru and on the international level; we are against the general counterrevolutionary offensive and all those that preach the failure of Marxism, against the Party, the revolutionary violence, all that is people’s war, that is joint dictatorship, that is the dictatorship of the proletariat. We are against the new revisionism that wants a Maoism only by name, without people’s war, that talks of people’s war without new power, that preaches the impossibility of the triumph of the people’s war, presenting imperialism and counterrevolution as all-powerful, colossal, etc. The fundamental in Maoism goes against the revisionist and capitulationist ROL and against and against all those whose interests go in that direction, i.e. to the peace accords. The CoRIM carries out an erroneous handling of the two line struggle because they do not understand the fundamental in Maoism, that is they distort Maoism. On the new power they are completely mute. Then, through the magazine “A World to Win” they spread cunning attacks and slander against Chairman Gonzalo, repeating all the blackest hoaxes of the reaction against him, presenting him as the author of the “peace letters.”
We demand the public and direct presentation of Chairman Gonzalo before the national and international press and television and that he makes a pronouncement!
Long live Chairman Gonzalo and his all-powerful thought!
Long live the glorious Communist Party of Peru!
Down with the new sinister farce of the petition for amnesty!
Honor and glory to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, principally Maoism!
Long live the 40th anniversary of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution!
Unite under Maoism!
People’s war until Communism!
Implacably and inseparably imperialism, world reaction and revisionism! Down with the new revisionism!