MAKING REVOLUTION IN OUR COUNTRY IS INSEPARABLE FROM SUPPORTING THE PEOPLE'S WAR IN PERU
[Editor's Note. This is a statement of the Committee for a Revolutionary Communist Party in Australia, GPO Box 474D, Melbourne VIC 3001. In 1996, these comrades have published and reproduced several documents and posters in support of the People's War. Their magazine "Struggle" offers insightful information on world Maoism, and they have published the English version of the PCP document: Marxism, Mariátegui and the Feminist Movement.]
Proletarian internationalism demands that the communists work whole-heartedly for the development of the revolutionary movement and the revolutionary struggle in their respective countries, while supporting the revolutionary line and struggle in every country. We have set ourselves the task of reconstituting the Communist Party of Australia on the basis of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. Our perspective is one of leading and unleashing the masses to seize power through revolutionary war and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat in Australia.
This striving to make revolution in Australia is intimately connected with our support for the Communist Party of Peru (PCP) and the People's War it is leading. The revolutionary movement in Australia would be a sheer fraud if it did not stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the anti-imperialist, national democratic movements in the oppressed countries. The People's War in Peru is the most important storm center of the world proletarian revolution today.
We give it our full support.
The Peruvian revolution is a beacon shining through the fog of imperialist lies and distortions that "communism is dead." The comrades of the PCP are an inspiration to communist revolutionaries the world over who may temporarily face difficulties in a making revolution in their own countries.
Not a single Communist Party, not a single communist, not a single internationalist can remain aloof from the struggles around the People's War in Peru. The People's War in Peru is the vanguard of the world proletarian revolution. Its outcome will change the conditions of world politics. The creation of a red base area for world revolution in Peru is no small matter.
Victory to the People's War in Peru, Vanguard of the World Revolution!
The Significance of Peru's People's War to the United States: Proletarian Internationalism
by C.M., North Carolina
"A final (important lesson) is proletarian internationalism, always developing the struggle as part of the international proletariat, always viewing the revolution as part of the world revolution, developing the People's War, as our Party's slogan says, in the service of the world revolution."
President Gonzalo
The People's War that rages on in Peru has several implications for the masses of the United States of America. It expresses at once the true internationalism of the Communist Party of Peru (PCP) and the deceit of the United States government towards its own people.
Only an individual with a profound case of nearsightedness, or a victim of the US propaganda system could incorrectly view the events in Peru as pertaining to that country alone. The People's War in Peru, which began in 1980, affects not only Peruvians, but the citizens of the United States and all of humanity, for the true communist is an internationalist.
President Gonzalo says that "... we (the PCP) are fervent and consistent practitioners of Proletarian Internationalism."(1) Mao Tsetung spoke of an "internationalist duty," that those successful in their own revolutions must support those fighting for their liberty.(2) "To achieve a lasting world peace," Mao explains in 1956, "We must give active support to the national independence and liberation movement in Asia, Africa and Latin America as well as to the peace movement and to just struggles in all the countries of the world."(3)
Of course the argument will arise that Mao and Gonzalo were concerned chiefly with the liberation of their own countries. Indeed, Mao led a People's War to expel Japan from China. President Gonzalo's revolutionary activity centered in his native Peru. But Mao explained that "... in wars of national liberation, patriotism is applied internationalism." This is necessarily so since:
"For only by fighting in defense of the motherland can we defeat the aggressors and achieve national liberation. And only by achieving national liberation will it be possible for the proletariat and other working people to achieve their own emancipation."(4)
A communist adheres to dialectical materialism. Communism will follow capitalism after a period of socialism marked by the dictatorship of the Proletariat. Mao considered this "an objective law independent of man's will."(5) In other words: communism is coming; It might take time getting here, but, rest assured, it's on the way.
Socialism has a chance to take root in some countries sooner than in others. Such is the case in Peru. The rest of the world looks at the events in Peru as an isolated phenomenon rather than a definitive step in history. As the PCP struggles to fight revisionism and keep the communist dream alive, they fight not merely for the sake of Peru's people, but for all the peoples of the earth.
The problem in the United States of America today is one of consciousness. Her citizens are not aware of the ties linking the people of Peru and the people of America in the family of humanity. Nor are her citizens aware of the deception practiced by their government. Those who rule the United States claim to cherish something they call "democracy" while undermining it every step of the way. Support of tyrants such as Fujimori clearly shows the non-democratic true intentions of American statesmen.
At home in America the propaganda system seeks to sweep the people up in a clamor about the 1996 Presidential Election, as though the outcome would matter either way. Marx, in The German Ideology, Volume I, recognized that: "The social structure and the state are continually evolving out of the life-process of definite individuals, but of individuals, not as they may appear in their own or other people's imagination, but as they really are; i.e., as they are effectively, produce materially, and are active under definite material limits, presuppositions and conditions independent of their will."(6)
As long as the economic substructure of the United States is based on the inviolable right to private (wealth producing) property, the social and economic superstructure will follow suit. In other words, Clinton or Dole, Liberal or Conservative, Republican or Democrat, all support wholeheartedly a capitalist system which could care less about the masses other than their potential to create profit.
Consciousness is nearly nonexistent in a majority of Americans. As a graduate student at a major American university, I find this disheartening. The only people aware of "how" capitalism works are those on the left. The average citizen of this country never questions the economic foundation on which America is rooted, a foundation that forefather James Madison told the Constitutional Convention, required a government to protect "the minority of the opulent from the majority."
What is life like for the "average" American? Most of us go to work and labor at monotonous jobs eight or more hours a day. We make enough money to go home, put food in our stomachs and wake up to work again the next day. After work we zone out in front of the television set, absorbing all the pre-determined information that shapes our views. Once in awhile we make enough money to buy an automobile or go on a vacation (if we did not, perhaps we would start to notice that something is seriously wrong here). We do not have time to worry about other people because we are too busy struggling to feed our own families, developing conservative attitudes as we seek to provide for "ours" at the expense of "theirs."
At the end of the week we find solace in alcohol and other drugs, convincing ourselves we enjoy them, when in fact we enjoy the escape from a harsh economic and social reality which haunts us. Instead of discussing major issues that effect our everyday lives, we rail about women's abortion rights, gays in the military, little children kissing one another in school, and other non-issues that only serve to divide us. We have no problem watching a three hour long sporting event but read a book? Watch a political commentary? We rest assured that the intentions of our leaders are benign, because this is the United States of America. Our enemies practice "propaganda;" Here, we call it education.
We condemn a few homosexuals marching in a gay-pride parade but laud the weapons of mass destruction rolling by in a military procession. We cry about the genocide of Native Americans but never question a policy which sends six billion of our tax dollars a year to Israel so that country can carry out a similar policy with the Palestinians. We cherish "freedom of speech," while political prisoners like Mumia Abu-Jamal, Larry Hoover, and Leonard Peltier rot in our prisons. We get teary-eyed over something called "democracy." Meanwhile, we do not control what we produce, how we produce it or where the profits go.
In short, we are a fooled people indoctrinated by a very efficient propaganda system. The beauty of the system (from the point of view of the exploiters) is we do not even recognize how bad off we are. But, as Sigmund Freud opined, "No one, needless to say, who shares a delusion ever recognizes it as such."(7)
So, what then is the task at hand? The need to awaken consciousness is paramount. To recognize a problem, one must be aware of it. We are not born into consciousness, we arrive at it. In "On Practice," Mao Tse-Tung says, "Whoever wants to know a thing has no way of doing so except by coming into contact with it, that is, by living (practicing) in its environment."(8) Only by achieving consciousness will the family of humanity be recognized; only through awareness will the American see the actions of his Peruvian brothers and sisters as grounded in unselfishness; only by cutting through the distortions and lies will one arrive at the truth which is reality. The methods of achieving consciousness are another matter for another time.
1 Abimael Guzman, "Interview with Chairman Gonzalo," A World to Win November 1992: p.50. This interview originally appeared in E1 Diario in 1988.
2 Mao Tse-tung, Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung (Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1972) p. 178.
3 Ibid, p.65-66
4 Mao Tse-tung, Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung. Volume II (Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1965) p.196.
5 Mao Tse-tung 1972: p.24
6 Karl Marx, The Portable Karl Marx. Edited by Eugene Kamenka (USA: Penguin Books, 1983): p.169.
7 Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (NY: WW Norton and Company, 1961)p.32
8 Mao Tse-tung, Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung. Volume I. (Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1965)p. 299.
SOCIALISTS IN IMPERIALIST COUNTRIES MUST SUPPORT REVOLUTIONS IN THE OPPRESSED COUNTRIES.
In the first place, it is obligatory for socialists in imperialist countries to support the struggles of the progressives and revolutionaries in countries economically, politically and/or militarily oppressed by their nations. Not to do so is to abandon Proletarian Marxism and objectively to go over to the side of the imperialists and opportunists.
From the perspective of building the proletarian movement "in the belly of the beast," what better way to build up momentum than by actively working for the cause of the Third World peoples against imperialism? The US Left (to use a generic term) is sickening in its inactivity and hopelessness. The term "self satisfied complacency" comes to mind. And, should you decide to join up with some of these organizations, especially the ones who are "Maoists" or who "respect" Mao as a "great" theoretician, then you will find yourself basically with nothing to do --except sell papers and raise money --for their organization or so-called Party!
By the way, years ago, attempts to raise the issue with the RCP and the MIM about practical support for the PCP were met with the answer that the PCP stands for "self-reliance" and therefore does not "want" our help.
The whole problem lies in your correct assessment of the Euro-American chauvinism. Actually, a study of the history of the Euro-American left yields a picture of chronic downplaying of the national liberation struggles in the Third World and of the emancipation of women, going back to the Comintern's positions in the 1920's.
Modern day imperialism, in its last stages, leads to the super-exploitation of the Third World Proletariat, driving them into abject poverty. Hunger and misery drive these workers out of their own countries and toward the richer, imperialist countries. Every imperialist country is being "invaded" by the proletariat from the countries under their domination. This then forms the new world proletariat that indeed "has no country." And just as the European emigre workers formed the radical wing of the U.S. working class, so now this phenomenon is taking place with Proletarians from the Third World, especially Mexico, in the U.S. So, the Mexican workers have a dual role to play.
The exploitation of child labor by the monopoly capitalists is so intense that even some sections of the bourgeoisie "protest." The situation that now exists is a mirror image of the conditions which Karl Marx and Frederick Engels wrote about more than a hundred years ago.
At the same time, the proletarization of women and children along with the peasant class leads to the situation where the proletarian revolution merges or become identical with national liberation, unlike in previous periods.
A truly revolutionary organization or party within the U.S. would be working double overtime to find ways to support all the struggles that are going on right now against U.S. monopoly capitalist imperialists. To repeat myself, what better way to build up the so-called movement right here in the belly of the beast than by focusing on "corporate abuse" in the Third World and the struggles launched by the masses against this evil.
Lenin said: "The recognition of internationalism in word, and the substitution of petty-bourgeois nationalism and pacifism for it in deed, in all propaganda, agitation and practical work is a very common thing not only among the parties of the Second International, but also among those which have withdrawn from the International..." (Preliminary Draft Thesis on the National Colonial Questions, 1920.)
And: "Every party wishing to join the Third International must ruthlessly expose the colonial machinations of the imperialists of its 'own' country; must support -- by actions and not merely by words -- every colonial liberation movement, demand expulsion of the imperialists from the colonies, educate the workers in the spirit of brotherhood with the labouring population of colonial and oppressed nations, and conduct systematic agitation among the armed forces against all colonial oppression." (Conditions for affiliation to the Communist International, July 1920.)
And he also talked about giving "unselfish culture aid" to the movement in the oppressed nations (Imperialist Economism, a Caricature of Marxism, 1916.)
The above quotes are from a pamphlet by the Chinese entitled "Lenin on The National Liberation Struggle" and distributed very cheaply in the U.S. around the time of the Cultural Revolution, certainly one example of the attitude of the Chinese toward "unselfish cultural aid."
Another related, topic is the fact that I, and I suppose a lot of people, were suspicious of the RIM ten years ago because it looked like an RCP front. The "Declaration of RIM" also had a lot of revisionism in it. And I don't remember any discussion about forming a new International. In any case, the RCP has burned a lot of people, and it looks like the MIM is doing the same.
Of particular interest to me was the discussion [July 1996 issue of The New Flag] of they tactics of the people's committees, the armed strike, graffiti and the use of literature and art. Perhaps you could give more details in later issues, particularly about the people's committees.
In What Is To Be Done?, Lenin talks about publishing a national newspaper at least once a week that would provide "all-round political exposures" to the militant workers. In this day and age, these exposures would be centered on exposing the monopoly capitalist imperialists' oppression and exploitation of the Third World proletariat and how the Proletariat is fighting back. These exposures could eventually be the subject of guerilla graffiti artists and leafleteers in all the barrios where the impoverished proletarians live. In addition, I think the revisionism and chauvinism of the U.S. "left" needs to be exposed, especially that of the "Maoists" who in fact give Mao a bad name. In doing so, theoretical work can be carried out more effectively than through dry study classes.
[From C.T., Oxnard, California.]