It is especially important and decisive to analyze the problems of the peasantry from the point of view of how it is helpful for the conquest of power. That is what ultimately interests the Party, as the question of power is the control question of the revolution. That way, the fundamental thing is to organize and lead the overall class struggle with the definite purpose of taking power, and in that perspective, to elucidate and solve each problem as it arises. In analyzing topics of this kind, the V Plenum of the PCP said:" The problem of Power as a central question, the People's War as a synthesis of revolutionary violence, the conditions in which a Party develops itself in a country like ours, and the importance of peasant work as sustenance of the People's War is, then, substantial problems of our line which we must always have to deal with and today, when we promote the reconstitution of the Party, it will become more and more actualized and will impact matters of the political line and their application."
The importance of analyzing a topic such as the present question is evident. After all, developing the peasant's movement in the course of the armed struggle today constitutes the central part of the question of power.
The great teachers of the proletariat have set the basic questions on this matter. Marx expressed it accurately in a letter to Engels:
"The entire course of the events in Germany will depend on the possibility of rendering assistance to the proletarian revolution by way of a second edition, to put it that way, of the Peasant War."Lenin reinforced this idea in dealing with the Russian Revolution:
"The proletariat must take the democratic revolution to its conclusion, and in so doing, attract the peasants' masses in order to crush the resistance of the autocracy by force, and paralyze the instability of the bourgeoisie."(Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution.)And in a report to the Third Congress of the international he asserted:
"The movement advances, and the working masses, and the peasants in the colonies, (although these are still very backward) will fulfill a very substantial revolutionary role in the successive phases of the world revolution."And finally Mao Tse-tung, who achieved a very profound understanding of the role of the peasant movement, proposed:
"the current ascendance of the peasant's movement is a magnificent event. Very soon, the millions of peasants, in the central, southern and northern provinces of China will arise like a tempest, like a hurricane, with such an impetuous and violent force that nothing, no matter how powerful, will be capable of containing them. They will rupture all obstacles and will launch themselves toward the road to liberation. They will bury all the imperialists, military chieftains, corrupt officials, local despots and evil `shenshi.' All the parties and revolutionary comrades will be tested before the peasantry and they will have to choose which side they are on. To put themselves in front of them and lead them? To remain in the rear gesticulating and criticizing them? Or to get on their way and fight them? Each person in China is free to choose among these three alternatives, and only those events will compel them to choose quickly." (Report on an investigation of the peasant movement in Hunan.")Mariátegui, the founder of the Party, defined this basic problem in the General Political Line. Speaking about the indigenous peasantry he said:
"The indigenous hope is entirely revolutionary and pointed out to the PCP the objective of organizing workers and peasants in an exclusively classist way, and of first stimulating and thereupon, fulfilling the tasks of the democratic-bourgeois revolution."In retaking the road of Mariátegui, the PCP has been heightening the understanding of this important question. Thus, the editorial in the Red Flag No. 41 (Bandera Roja)says:
"Without a consequent revolutionary work among the peasant masses, that is, orienting them politically on Marxism-Leninism and leading them by the Communist Party, there cannot be development of the armed forces nor can there be a People' s War. In conclusion, there can be no national liberation and therefore no destruction of imperialist and feudal exploitation."II. The Peasant Movement and the Democratic-National Revolution.
The struggle of the peasantry for land, which is an anti-feudal struggle, provides the very foundation of the democratic-national revolution; that follows from the general laws of the class struggle in our revolution, laws systematized by Mariátegui as the General Political Line. Our society has a semi-feudal and semicolonial character in which the Peruvian people suffer the exploitation and oppression of imperialism, of the feudal landlords and of bureaucratic capitalism; hence the need to defeat these classes and sweep off their rule. That is precisely what the present stage of the revolution consists of, and its content is demo-bourgeois. It is not directed against all of the bourgeoisie but only against part of it. It is against the bureaucratic and comprador big bourgeoisies, besides fighting the feudal landlords and imperialism.
Let's highlight the role of bureaucratic capitalism. In its development the final conditions for the triumph of the democratic-national revolution mature. Mao teaches us that this monopolist capital associated to the power of the state, as well as intimately linked to and subject to imperialism and the landlords, conform a state monopolist, comparadore and feudal type of capital. Thus, in this manner; it reaches the summit of its development and prepares the sufficient material conditions for the new democratic revolution. The remaining tasks are those of seizing the lands of the feudal class, delivering them to the peasants and seizing monopolist capital. Currently developing in our country is the deepening of this bureaucratic capitalism, and in particular, the state monopolist capital that is being developed as lever of the economy, which seeks to amass enormous sums of capital and monopolize the vital economic arteries. All of this leads us to the same conclusions pointed out by Mao-Tse-Tung. The democratic-national revolution and the peasant war. To what extent are the question of the peasantry and the question of the war inextricably entwined as absolute conditions of the democratic -bourgeois revolution, was established by Mao-Tse-Tung when he analyzed the Chinese revolution:
"Thus, then, the democratic-bourgeois revolution in China has two fundamental characteristics:
Here we do not consider the relationship with the urban petty-bourgeoisie a fundamental characteristic since, first, these relationships are basically the same as in all Communist Parties in the world; and second; in China, when we speak of armed struggle, we refer basically to the peasant war, and the close relationship of the Party with the peasant war and its relationship with the peasantry, are one and the same thing." ("On the Occasion of the Appearance of the Communist.")
- 1) Either the proletariat establishes with the bourgeoisie a United National revolutionary front, or it breaks it up when forced to do so, and
- 2) armed struggle is the principal form of the revolution.
So it is very clear that the armed struggle we must carry out, is an agrarian revolution, to be waged by the peasants, under proletarian leadership; that is the natural environment of the revolution. If the war has not broken out yet, all must help to prepare it, and once it begins, all must help to develop it.
The workers-peasant alliance. Mariátegui taught us:" The strength of the revolution always resided in the alliance of agrarists and laborists, that is, of the peasant and workers masses."
According to this, workers and peasants constitute the basic masses of the revolution. Once they are mobilized and organized the exploiters will be defeated and the revolution will triumph. On this base of the alliance of millions of workers and peasants it will be possible to also unite the urban petty-bourgeosie and under certain conditions, the national bourgeoisie. The peasantry is the most numerous and most oppressed class. On their shoulders weigh the heavy chains of the semifeudal system, and for this same reason, they have a formidable force. As our founder said:
"The Indian, so lightly labeled as submissive and coward, has never ceased rebelling against the semifeudal regime oppressing them under the republic as under the colony." Supporting the peasant, in their struggle for land allows us to win over the greatest potential ally of the proletariat and in that way to organize powerful battle forces. The peasantry happens to be the principal force of the democratic-national revolution, and the best ally of the proletariat. The proletariat, the most advanced class in history has the unavoidable duty of leading the peasant masses. Mariátegui thoroughly synthesized this problem in his preface to the "Amauta Atusparia."
"The vindications of the peasantry did not succeed against feudalism in Europe, until they were expressed only in the `jacqueries.' They succeeded with the bourgeois liberal revolution that transformed them into a program. In our Spanish America, still semifeudal, the bourgeoisie has neither wanted nor ever known how to fulfill its tasks of liquidating feudalism. They are the descendants of Spanish colonists. It has been impossible for them to make theirs the vindications of the peasant masses. So, the task is left for socialism to do. The doctrine of socialism is the only one capable of providing a modern, constructive meaning to the indigenous cause, which placed in its genuine social and economic field, and risen to the level of a realist and creative politics,] counts to realize this task on the will and discipline of a class now making its appearance on our historical process: the proletariat."
The essence of the workers-peasants alliance is to give the peasantry proletarian leadership. It means welding the Party to the peasantry and their struggles, to give the peasants a proletarian conception, to win over activists among them and to build the Party in the countryside. It is in summary, to mobilize, organize and aim the peasantry under the leadership of its working class represented by its Party, the Communist Party.
The Bureaucratic Road.
Along the centuries, feudal oppression was manifested by land properly being concentrated in the hands of a few landlords while millions of peasants had no land at all, or at best very little land. So on this gigantic concentration of land, cruelly usurped by the feudal class, a luxurious parasitic life at the expense of the boundless misery and oppression of the peasantry, sinks the vast majority of our people into backwardness and hunger. Latifundia (vast estates) and serfdom has thus been perpetuated along several centuries, as pillars of the social, political and economic organization of Perú.
The landlord economy evolves along a very slow and protracted process toward a capitalist Form, following the bureaucratic road, which consists of the introduction of capitalist forms and techniques, while preserving the vast agrarian estates and safeguarding the political power and influence of the feudal landlord class.
By taking that road, the landlord economy evolves internally and, instead of liberating the peasantry, it takes maximum advantage of the exploitation of unpaid labor and other feudal modalities to achieve an accelerated accumulation of capital. The peasantry suffers painfully this long transformation process, in which their labor and possessions are sucked in.
They are despoiled of what meager land they had and are even evicted from the countryside onto the city slums. Latifundia and serfdom are preserved, hidden under new names (CAP, SAIS, "Social Property" communal work," etc.) and linked more closely to bureaucratic capitalism and State Power. Mariátegui explains this process as follows:
"Capitalism is an economic and political system, and he proves that it is incapable in Latin America of building an economic system emancipated from feudal deformities." Prejudices about the racial inferiority of the indigenous peoples, are conducive to maximum labor exploitation of that race; and the ruling classes are not willing to renounce these advantages, by which they obtain so many benefits. In agriculture, the introduction of salaried work, the adoption of some machines, do not erase the feudal character of the vast estates. They merely optimize the system of exploitation of the land and the peasant masses. The peasant question cannot be separated from the national question. Mariátegui had already told us that "the problem of the Indians is the problem of three-fourths of the population of Perú. It is the problem of the majority. It is the problem of nationality." The struggle against imperialism is sustained on the struggle of the peasantry, in the semifeudal struggle. To take one apart from the other, is to fall into false rationalism. "Land to the tiller!" said the founder of our Party, Mariátegui, in the "Outline of the Indigenous Question."
"The struggle of the Indians against the gamonals (latifundia owners) invariably has consisted of defending their lands against absorption and despoiling. There exists, therefore, an instinctive and profound indigenous vindication: the vindication of the land. Providing an organized systematic, defined character to this vindication is the task we all have the duty of actively carrying out."
Thus, Mariátegui summarized hundreds of years of peasant struggles and also the need to channel this peasant's aspiration of "land to those who till it," because only by having the proletariat organize the peasantry will this struggles have a successful outcome. Delivering land to the peasantry, after crushing the landlord class and their state, will enable us to forever stamp out serfdom, thus emancipating the peasantry from feudal relations. Opening up the peasant road in agriculture opens the perspective of capitalist development in the countryside, under the most favorable conditions possible for the peasantry. It will be in the second stage of the revolution, the socialist stage, when these capitalist relations will be curbed and restricted in favor of the collectivization of the countryside. As part of a democratic path, the peasantry demands an agrarian reform that will liquidate feudalism. This reform implies:
- 1) The destruction of latifundia, its distribution among the peasantry;
- 2) The seizing or "expropriating without compensation" (of vast estates or latifundia)
- 3)its execution by force, by the peasant's war, by the people's power.
IV. The People's War is a Peasant War.
The war is an absolute necessity for the realization of our revolution. Mariátegui hammered this universally applicable principle of Marxism-Leninism into the conscience of the PCP and the Peruvian proletariat with the following words: "Power is conquered by way of violence, and is preserved only through dictatorship." To qualify, the vast masses in the use of revolutionary violence is key to attain the liberation of our people. This is even more urgent in a backward, semifeudal and semicolonial country like ours.
The war is the principal form of struggle.
The victory of the proletariat and the people over their enemies in the future is inevitable. The present situation of weakness of the people and strength of the enemy is only superficial and temporary, because looking at things as a whole, the reactionaries are but "paper tigers" whereas the people are a solid iron wall and invincible. His concept of Mao Tse-tung is fundamental in fighting assured of victory in Mao's own words:
"The enemy has a fragile base. They disintegrate internally. They are detached from the people and are immersed in inextricable economic crises; therefore they can be defeated,"
and at the same time, the masses, that is the millions and millions of men are sincerely supporting the revolution. That is the veritable iron wall that no force will be able to break." To fear the enemy as if all powerful is rightism that fetters the action. In their fear of the enemy many end up saying: "fascism means the destruction of the people's movement and its organizations," thus justifying their hiding themselves, under the guise of "orderly retreat or illegalization."Reaction has a large powerful army, but its economy confronts serious contradictions and they suffer a very severe economic political and ideological crisis. The strength of the enemy rests on a weak point, but this weakness will not be manifested overnight. At the same time, the masses are vast and strong, but their weakness consists in still not being organized and mobilized today. It is necessary, therefore, to start a protracted war, a war to death in which we will destroy the enemy one little part at a time. Then and only then, through a protracted process having many bends and over bends, will the weakness of the enemy become evident, and will the strength of the people become overpowering.
The proletariat needs to forge and qualify itself in the middle of this war. It must organize and mobilize all the people and mainly the peasantry in function of this form of struggle. The fact of being a semi-feudal and semi-colonial country, of having the immense countryside shackled down by feudal oppression, without any freedom of political rights of any kind, determines for the armed revolution the need to confront the armed counterrevolution if it wants to advance. Mao Tse-tung synthesized this great truth which is valid for all backward countries, and has tremendous value to build the Communist Party in those countries.
"In China, the principal form of the struggle is the war, and the army is the principal form of organization. All the rest of the forms, such as the organization and struggle of the masses are also very important, and absolutely indispensable, and in no way to be neglected, but the objective of all of them is to help the war. Before the war breaks out, all the organizations and struggles have the object of preparing it . . . After a war breaks out, all of the organizations and struggles are coordinated directly or indirectly with the war." (Problems of War and Strategy.")
We cannot afford, then, a long period of preparation and use of legality before starting the war, as we would do in a capitalist country. It is in the middle of the war that we will make progress winning the people over to our side and destroying the enemy one little part at a time.
The war is of the peasantry, under proletarian leadership.
The peasantry, for constituting the base of the national democratic revolution, is also the base of the People's War. This is either a peasant war, or nothing at all.Mariátegui analyzed the role of the peasantry in the revolution and sustained the need to arm the workers and peasants, to conquer their vindications, the first and foremost of which is land. He pointed out: "The armed struggle of the peasant masses in Mexico and how there the rebellion spread out very quickly, despite they lacked a definite program: Their first concrete vindication was the return of the land usurped by the landlord class." ("Topics of our America.")
And he precised that it was a democratic bourgeois revolution that would only be able to advance if the proletariat led it. Otherwise, the revolution would start "traveling in reverse."
The beginning of the proletariat in the democratic-national revolution once it has arrived at a just and correct line, is measured by the leadership it is able to exercise over the peasant movement. The Party must take care of mobilizing the peasantry and of organizing them as a powerful battle force.
The road of the revolution is from the countryside to the city. Mariátegui showed us this road when he taught: "Once landlord feudalism is beaten, urban capitalism will have no strength left to oppose the rising working class."
This road consists of surrounding the cities from the countryside and to end up by taking the cities by assault. Thus, advantage is taken of the weakness of the enemy and the reduced number of their force in the countryside, while there the vast masses of the peasantry are the principal contingent in this war. The revolution must develop its forces by first occupying vast areas in the countryside and once it is strong there, march on the cities, in which reaction concentrates its armed forces, and take them by assault. This revolutionary road in the backward countries was systematized by Mao Tse-tung, who with his profound teachings provided us with a valuable weapon for our own revolution:
"In the light that the powerful imperialists and their Chinese allies have for many years been entrenched in the main cities of our country, the revolutionary detachments, if they refuse to compromise with imperialism and its lackeys and want to persevere in the struggle, if they want to accumulate forces, temper their strength, a decisive battle with the powerful enemy must take place. They must transform the backward rural areas into advanced points and get solid support bases, which will be transformed into large military, political, economic and cultural battlements of the revolution. They will be able to battle the fierce enemy, who attacks the rural areas using their cities, and carrying on step by step the revolution to its complete victory by way of a protracted struggle."
(The Chinese Revolution and the Communist Party of China.")We will not be able to conquer the peasantry immediately. First, we are going to build support bases in extensive areas and based upon that, develop the People's War. In the general picture of its revolutionary work, it is required for the Party to be built in the countryside, to have its main weight there. The Party must be thoroughly familiar with the economic and political situation of the countryside and using Marxism-Leninism, it must investigate the classes in the country to find out for sure who are friends and who are enemies.
The Party must go to the poorest ones and "sink its roots" in their midst, mobilizing and organizing the masses in their struggle for land. This type of work leads painlessly to armed struggle, and it pertains to us leading this struggle so that, having overthrown the reactionary power in a given region we establish the people's power instead. That is how the problem of establishing support bases is outlined in the Party, advanced points in the ideological, political, organizational and military aspects. Lastly, the agrarian reform must be carried out, seizing the land of the feudal landlords and distributing it among the peasantry.
Mariátegui always paid a lot of attention to building the PCP in the countryside.
Speaking about a peasant activist of the time he said: "The `New Indian' is awaiting. He has a goal. There reside his secret and his strength . . . Urviola represents the first spark of the coming conflagration. He was the revolutionary Indian, the socialist Indian . . . Nowadays the Sierra is pregnant with many Spartans."
Another important problem of the war is the People's Army, which is the principal form of organization and one of the three instruments of the revolution. Mariátegui defined the role of this army of the new type, of which he said: "The Red Army is a new case in the military history of the world. It is an Army that feels its role as a revolutionary army and is not able to forget that its object is the defense of the revolution." And highlighting the guerrillas he asserted that "the same relationship of a body, of a class, was present between the montaneros (informal armies of peasants) and the masses of peasants and workers. The montaneros were merely the most active, militant and dynamic part of the masses."
The problem of the war and its general laws must be consciously studied by the entire Party so we are able to fulfill resolutely the role that history assigns to us.
In our country reaction develops a bureaucratic road that, essentially, unravels the rule of imperialism and feudalism, and upon these two pillars it develops bureaucratic capitalism. This road has met since its inception, the firm opposition of the people and it has confronted a series of difficulties blocking its advance. In the 60s decade, the peasantry rose up and dragged the entire people into a revolutionary upsurge that got reaction into serious trouble and questioned their power. From that scare, the reactionaries drew two conclusions:
- 1)The need to deepen bureaucratic capitalism and
- 2) The corporativization of Peruvian society.
In that spirit, there emerges the (Velasco Alvarado) fascist regime on a pilot and preventive plan aimed at crushing the People's War.
One of the principal measures then adopted was the Agrarian Law, which meant essentially maintaining and developing the vast estates based on new forms of gratuitous labor. It meant the bureaucratic capitalist road in the countryside, not at all a kind of "socialization" as some would have us believe. Facing the difficulties such a scheme met due to the peasants opposition, came the general corporative readjustment began in 1974 by the Fascist regime, seeking to assure its objectives by way of "taking capitalism to the countryside," and, through the frantic exploitation of the peasantry, to achieve their cherished "accelerated accumulation of capitals."
On the 7th anniversary of the Agrarian Law (since 1976) the Minister of Agriculture announced that "all the institutions, both the public sectors as the private sectors, must attend to this great mobilization to transform the Peruvian countryside into the fastest and most powerful wheel that will enable us to march towards the development of our country."
In reality, what they will accomplish with all that rigamarole about taking bureaucratic capitalism to the countryside, will be to help push the countryside further onto the road to revolution.
Engels clarified this matter long ago:
"The transformation of all the small rural proprietors into industrial workers delivered to the front door, the disappearance of the former isolation and consequently of the political nullity of the small farmers, who are now dragged along the `social storm vortex'; happens to be the extension of the industrial revolution to the countryside, and for that reason, the transformation of the most stable and conservative sectors of the population, into a vipers nest of revolutionary activity, and to top it all, the expropriation by the machine of these peasants that used to devote themselves to local consumption industry, which necessarily pushes them onto insurrection."
The Peruvian people only have one road through which they shall liberate themselves, and that is the road of Mariátegui. This road ungently lead us to understand that the democratic national revolution will only be able to continue forward if we get a hold "of guns, programme and doctrine," as Mariátegui literally told us to do, in essence what we know today as the three instruments of the revolution: Party, Army, and United Front.
Nowadays, we witness a growing ferment in the masses in which the people wage larger struggles and develop in all aspects: ideologically, politically and organizationally. The socially lowest and most backward masses of the country are living this situation intensely. Desperation and malcontent prevails as they get ready to unravel great revolutionary storms.
This principal tendency necessarily conveys the upsurge of the masses. Let us remember the guerrilla experience of the 1960s: The ferment of the masses meant the ferment of the peasantry. At that time, the peasantry occupied lands and disallowed rulings by the courts, reaching the point of violent encounters with reaction. We certainly live in a situation that is very similar to that of which Mao said: "a single spark may set the prairie on fire," at times in which all the contradictions are sharpening, and from the bosom of the people there will emerge a colossal and self-propelled multitude.
Mariátegui analyzed masterfully a situation very similar to ours, that of Mexico in the times immediately preceding its revolution.
"But people that had fought so relentlessly for their right to possess the land could not now be content themselves with this feudal regime and renounce their vindications. Besides, the growth of the factories was creating an industrial proletariat to which foreign immigration provided the pollen of the new social ideas. New trade unionist and socialist nuclei appeared everywhere . . . And, above all, fermenting in the countryside was a sour revolutionary bile. A chieftain, any minor skirmish was capable of setting the whole country on fire."("Topics of our America," p. 39).
In this heated situation it is up to the PCP to promote its reconstitution and mold itself to the masses, mainly to the peasant masses. Let us conclude by trusting entirely these words of wisdom by Mao Tse-tung.
"Whether the ideological and political line is correct or not decides it all. When the Party line is correct, we have everything. If we have no fighters, we will have them; if we have no weapons, we will get them; and if we have no power, we will conquer it. If the line is incorrect, we will lose all we had obtained."