K. Marx and F. Engels, with great conscious clarity, correctly synthesized that "the average price of wage labor is the minimum wage, i.e. the quantity of means of subsistence (means of life) necessary to keep the workers in bare existence as workers" (industrial, agricultural, and service workers). Therefore, what the average wage-worker appropriates by means of his labor is hardly sufficient to prolong and reproduce his bare existence. Proletarians, as a class --through the dictatorship of the proletariat-- by no means intend to abolish this personal appropriation and consumption of the products from one's labor, on the contrary, the proletariat aims at improving and further enlarging the appropriation and enjoyment of the means of subsistence for the working classes; such workers' appropriation occurs for the basic maintenance and reproduction of human life, and it leaves no surplus-value that leads to exploit other people's labor-power. All that the proletariat aims at -through MAOIST COMMUNIST PARTIES, PEOPLE'S ARMY, PEOPLE'S FRONT and PEOPLE'S WAR- is to do away with the miserable and unjust character of capitalist private property of the means of social production. Under private property, the workers live merely to increase capital (material and cultural wealth) for the enjoyment of greedy capitalists and landlords, and in this way workers are allowed to live only as long as the greedy interests of the rich ruling classes require it.
Thus, it becomes clear that in order to construct, improve, and further develop the means of life for the working classes' benefit, it is essential to demolish the private ownership that rich ruling classes impose over the means of social production which consists in the private appropriation of industrial machinery factories, means of transportation, buildings, banks, medical services, technological, scientific and cultural resources, etc. The existing social relations of production do not serve any longer to meet the basic physiological and cultural needs of the working classes worldwide. On the contrary, everyday the existing property relations (exploitation relations imposed by the rich ruling classes) come into conflict and obstruct the actual development of the material and social productive forces already capable to satisfy the means of life for all working people. Through the "free market," a growing exploitation, thievery, unemployment, poverty, hopelessness, misery, disease, oppression, ignorance, crimes, prostitution, drug addiction, pollution, etc. are imposed on working people. It is a clear fact that the existing privately owned means of social production need to be transformed into collectively owned means to meet and satisfy the ever evolving basic needs and rights of working people, in the city and countryside, and in all aspects of life.
The working class masses, proletarians, peasants, and progressives led by the proletariat's vanguard in every country, must exercise the right to conquer political Power, to appropriate the means of social production to end people's sufferings, and to construct ALL material and social means of life to reach socialism, and through successive cultural revolutions, conquer the true kingdom of liberty, Communism, when the free development of each will be the necessary condition for the free development of all. The experiences in Russia, in China, and now in Peru, confirm that such inevitable transformation will be achieved in every country through the revolutionary People's War (the highest form of class struggle) to demolish the corrupted State and Power of capitalists, landlords and native lackeys, and to conquer, defend, and develop the PEOPLE'S NEW POWER, NEW STATE, NEW SOCIETY and NEW LIFE. This is the inevitable path and true lesson from known history, the history of contradictions and class struggles in human society, as K. Marx and F. Engels correctly synthesized, and today confirmed in practice by the heroic COMMUNIST PARTY OF PERU (PCP) through the victorious People's War.
`Property' since each one disposes and can only do so, with that which is one's own; and `Bentham' since those who take part in these acts are only motivated by their self interests. The only force that joins them and relates them is the force of their self-centered interest, their selfish gain, their private interest. Precisely because of this, each one protects only one's own self and nobody cares for the others, contributing all of them, thanks to a pre-allocated harmony in things or under an all-knowing providence, to realize the tasks for their mutual benefit, their collective convenience, their social interest.
When abandoning the circuit of simple circulation or commodity exchange, where vulgar profiteers search for Capital's ideas, conceptions and criteria for wage-labor, it seems that the characters in our drama change: the old owner of money opens the march transformed into a capitalist, and behind him comes the owner of labor-power transformed into a worker of his; the first comes with vigorous steps and contemptuous smile, bustling about, the second -the worker- is timid and hesitant, in a bad mood, as someone who is going to sell his own skin and knows the faith that awaits him: to work his skin off."
Here Marx synthesizes the relation between the capitalist system of purchase-sale of labor power and the paradise for the rights of man. He specifies the class character of each one of these rights: freedom for the buyer of labor power, and freedom for the worker to sell his labor power, the equality of commodity owners, that of the capitalist owning capital, and that of the worker whose only property is his labor power and the liberty to dispose of the property that each one has. If one has capital, then one has the right to dispose of it as one pleases: through more exploitation. if one has only labor power, then one has the right to sell one's skin off --to work one's skin off for the capitalist. Finally, Marx exposes the bourgeois basis for centering only on the individual, relying on selfish egotism, on self-centered interest, and on the believe in a pre-allocated order or under some kind of God for these rights.
In "The misery of Philosophy", Marx deals with liberty (freedom): "Do not be deceived by the abstract word `freedom'. Whose freedom? It is not the freedom of each individual in relation to another. It is the freedom of Capital to crush the worker." PRESIDENT GONZALO commenting on this subject during a meeting of the PCP-Political Bureau, July 1990, in midst of the People's War, expressed "Marx himself helps us to understand him; since there is so much talk of freedom, then, from what? from who? from what class? for who? Freedom of the bourgeoisie to crush the worker! To crush not only the proletarian class, but also all those who work through sweat and tears! Marx already told us, so much talk of liberty, and so much talk that this system derives from liberty, without understanding that such liberty is the ideological product of the actual capitalist system. This is what today we understand as liberty."
In "The Holy Family," under the title of "On the Jewish Question" paragraph I `Declaration of the Rights of Men and Citizens', Article 2, Marx establishes: "These rights (the natural and indispensable rights) are equality, security and property. What does freedom consist of? It is the right to do everything which does not harm others, the limit is determined by law, and deals with man's freedom as an isolated entity, refolded on itself. But such human right to freedom is not based on the union of man with man, but rather on the separation of man by man. This is the right to disassociation, the right of the restricted individual, limited by the individual himself." A clear criticism of bourgeois freedom; Marx continues: "Man's practical application, that of liberty, is the human right to private property. The human right to private property is, therefore, the right to enjoy one's property and to dispose of it arbitrarily (as one pleases), without concern for other men, as existing independent from society, it is the right to selfish interest. This is the problem of the human right to liberty. Such individual freedom and its own application constitute the fundamental basis of bourgeois society.
Thus, bourgeois freedom is in essence the human right to private property; and private property is the right to enjoy one's property and to dispose of it for one's self interest, this constitutes the fundamental basis for bourgeois society. A society which causes man to find in it not the realization, but rather the limitation of man's liberty, and it proclaims above all the human right to enjoy and to dispose as one wishes of one's goods, products, fruits of labor and industry. In essence, this is what the human right to private property proclaims. Such is the freedom and fundamental base of bourgeois society. It links freedom to private property and self interest. These two cannot be separated. When speaking of freedom, one is speaking of private property, the right to egocentric interest. This is its fundamental basis. It is the basis of trampling liberalism and neo-liberalism. We have seen this in the analysis of Peru's Constitution and international laws. It is nothing more than the right to selfish interest for the capitalist class and for submission to imperialism. Therefore, what Marx expressed is completely valid. Equality, Marx observes, is considered as linked to private property and self interest, and this equality is nothing more than each man being equally considered as a single individual entity, you individual entity, we all individual entities, but each one with one's own selfish interest. It recognizes that everyone has equal right or self interest, and such selfish interest is to grab property, to enjoy it, and to exercise it as one's right in relation to each other. He observes that `security' is the supreme social concept in bourgeois society, the police concept. According to this, all of society only exists to guarantee the self-preservation, the rights and property of all of its members.
From the above, it is understood that human rights are the rights of the bourgeoisie -the capitalist class- based on a conception which centers in the individual as owner of natural rights, corresponding to one's condition as individual; indispensable rights, in so far as these are linked to one's freedom, which is freedom as a human right to private property. This human right is one's right to private property, as being able to arbitrarily dispose of one's property and enjoy it, which in turn corresponds to one's right to selfish interest, and such is the fundamental basis of bourgeois society. From this criteria derives equality, that is each individual's right to equally exercise the right for one's own self interest, the right to private property, one's right to selfish interest. Security, the supreme concept of bourgeois society; stands out the police concept, Marx says, since a bourgeois society requires machinery that guarantees the rights of individuals, and their right to private property." [All comments by President Gonzalo, Central Committee, PCP, II Plenum, Oct.-Feb. 1991/92].
LENIN. President Gonzalo in "Elections No! People's War Yes!" reaffirms Lenin's analysis of this same problem as synthesized in "Political Economy in the Era of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat", part V, concerning socialism, social classes, and dictatorship of the proletariat: "Under capitalism the proletariat is an oppressed class, lacking all property of the means of production, the only class directly and totally opposed to the bourgeoisie, and therefore the only class capable of being revolutionary to the end." "The general phrases about liberty, equality and democracy are in reality nothing more than the blind repetition of concepts copied on the mold of commodity production. To use these phrases for attempting to resolve the concrete tasks in the proletariat's dictatorship equals in principle, to completely go over towards the theoretical positions of the capitalists. From the proletariat's point of view the problem is formulated as follows: freedom in relation to the oppression of what social class? Equality between what social classes? Democracy based on property or based on the struggle to abolish private property? etc". In the first question, Lenin clearly leads us to view the proletariat's revolutionary role as opposed to the capitalists' reactionary role. In the following questions, the class character of freedom, equality and democracy is so clear that it is enough to transcribe these.
MAO TSETUNG. Also in the text -PCP's II Plenum- President Gonzalo transcribes: "In relation to freedom and democracy Mao Tse tung teaches us `In reality, in the world there is only concrete freedom and concrete democracy, and there are no freedom and democracy in the abstract. In a society where class struggle exists, there is freedom for the exploiting classes to exploit the working people, there is no freedom for not exploiting the people. There is democracy for the capitalists, and not for the proletariat and the rest of the working people. In some capitalist countries certain Communist Parties are allowed legal existence, but only to the extent that these do not endanger the fundamental interests of the capitalists. There is no tolerance beyond this limit. Those who ask for freedom and democracy in abstract believe that democracy is an end and not a mean. Marxism teaches us that democracy is part of the superstructure and belongs to the category of politics. This means that, in the end, democracy serves the economic base. The same occurs with freedom. Both democracy and freedom are relative, not absolute, and have surged and developed in the course of history. In the ranks of the people democracy is co-related to centralism, and freedom goes with discipline. These are two distinct aspects in a single whole, contrary and at the same time united to each other. We should not arbitrarily emphasize one aspect to deny the other. In the ranks of the people one cannot leave out democracy, nor exclude centralism. Such unity of democracy and centralism, of freedom and discipline, constitutes our democratic centralism. Under this [socialist] system the people enjoy broad democracy and freedom, but at the same time must stay within the limits of socialist discipline. This truth is well understood by the broad masses of people'. In this way Mao Tsetung, upholding the proletariat's perspective regarding rights and freedoms founded and developed by Marx and Lenin, re-emphasizes the class character of such aspects, their capitalist ideological base centered on the individual, on selfish interest, and the relation between such rights and the social system."
Up to here we have seen the proletariat's Marxist-Leninist- Maoist, Gonzalo Thought conception. Now let us deal with the process followed around the world by the financial oligarchy in relation to human rights.
Imperialism, chiefly US imperialism, aims at hiding that human rights are one more instrument to impose its reactionary ideology (its essence is idealism, and most ruthless pragmatism, totally contrary to materialist dialectics) and to impose its deceptive bourgeois-democratic politics of bloody reactionary dictatorships headed by the financial oligarchy in the imperialist States or by the big bureaucratic bourgeoisie in the oppressed nations (these regimes are absolutely contrary to the people's democratic dictatorship and the dictatorship of the proletariat, both led by the proletariat and supported by the alliance of the working classes, proletariat-peasant alliances). Reactionaries vainly attempt to defend the decrepit, bloody, barbaric and parasitic imperialist system that destroys the planet Earth, totally contrary and opposed to the proletarian socialist system -the new great social system surging in the XX century, and the only system that will lead humanity to the kingdom of liberty: COMMUNISM!.
Imperialists, reactionaries and revisionists apparently defend man's rights as something above social classes, but in essence they only defend their imperialist right and freedom to submit peoples and nations; specially today, imperialism, chiefly Yankee imperialism, employs human rights (and most recently relate these to a phony "war on drugs") to impose its international norms and justify its intervention in any part of the world, subjugating all nations to its hegemony. Thus, at the UN since 1991, an Austrian representative proposes the formation of "white helmets" to defend human rights, he stated: "The respect for human rights has to be one of the supports for international order;" their protection "cannot be considered as an interference in the internal affairs of a State. On the contrary, to express concern for this task is an important and legitimate element of international dialogue." Imperialism attempts to wipe out the people's, nations', and States' rights to sovereignty, independence and self-determination. Evidence of this is the recent US aggression, along with other imperialists, against Iraq, followed by the imposed embargo after the genocidal war against the Arab people. Other evidence is the shameless subjugation of Cambodia by the UN, which imposes and manages the political aspect, the economy, troops' reduction, and elections, absolutely everything in the internal order of that country. Or the aggression against Panama in 1989. Consequently, above all, it is Yankee imperialism, a great police thug attempting to become the sole and hegemonic imperialist super-power, who upholds those worn out and rotten banners of human rights.
What exists is freedom for imperialists to spread their sinister deceptions and lies, to impose exploitation on the working masses throughout the world. In human rights there is no room for the rights of the proletariat and poor oppressed peoples. The people of Asia, Africa and Latin America have the right to live but they are condemned to die in hunger, drowned in growing misery or plunged into profound ignorance and drug addiction by genocidal drug dealing imperialists operating from Wall Street, the Pentagon, Downing Street, the Kremlin, and other luxurious hiding holes. The working people have the right to exercise political Power, but they are not allowed to have their joint people's dictatorships, still much less the dictatorship of the proletariat, even worse, in the so-called democratic systems, which are reactionary bourgeois-democratic dictatorships or fascist dictatorships. The people are never consulted, except only to manipulate appearances, and the rights in Constitutions, laws, or norms of the old State become mere formalities.
For the application of their sinister politics, imperialists create human rights organizations as part of their tactic to use both hands; thus, at the international level, the Human Rights Commissions in the UN or the OAS, and in Peru the Non- Governmental Organizations (NGOs), function all in one way or another at the service of imperialism. Among these, in Lima-Peru for example, there is the Institute for Legal Defense (IDL), a pro-Yankee organization that praises the genocidal pimp Alberto Fujimori for his "advances" in the policy of "reinsertion" in the market economy. It salutes the "optimism" of this pro-imperialist exploiter, and it criticizes "the depressive daily violence that reminds us that Peru is not a wonderland," which means, that without the People's War, the politics of exploitation and total sell-out to Yankee imperialism is welcomed by these defenders of human rights. Thus, these NGOs are no more than direct lackeys of Yankee imperialists who demand a so-called pacification. That is the counter-revolutionary strategy of low intensity warfare. Other NGO's also function as support for vile and sinister counter-revolutionary journalists who always hated the Peruvian people. Such is the case of the self-serving journalist Zileri from the frivolous reactionary sewage `Caretas.'
Even mercenary journalists, senderologists, and other "brains" in NGO'S, with their biased research and filthy pseudo-theories, cannot hide that human rights are manipulated in order to justify and carry out political repression and genocide against humanity. Let us see the concrete case of the reactionary scribbler Robin Kirk, a known trafficker of Central American Refugees and now a self-proclaimed "researcher" of Peruvian affairs. This faithful maid of Yankee imperialism engages in decorating and justifying Fujimori's human rights violations in Peru. This is what Robin Kirk portrays:
"...The political landscape changed in April 1992, when President Alberto Kenyo Fujimori Fujimori imposed draconian anti-terrorism laws and vowed to retake control of the prisons. In Peru, massacres of inmates by the security forces are like natural disasters, unpredictable yet cyclical. In May 1992, the transfer of Shining Path women from Castro Castro [prison] ended with 42 dead, including three guards.
When I visited the women a month later at Yanamayo prison, they were living four to a cell built for one. They were so short on clothing that one cell-mate had to remain naked in bed so that another could move about. The impression that remains strongest with me is the smell none had been allowed to bathe or brush their teeth since their transfer -As of 1996, inmates no longer control their cell blocks ... in new prisons constructed just for treason convicts. One prison, near lake Titicaca, sits at an oxygen deprived freezing 14,000 feet above sea level." (Pacific News Service, January 19, 1996).
Robin Kirk engages in biased journalism to cover up that it was in April 1992 when Fujimori, propelled by the military and US government, executed a coup d'etat to crush Peru's Congress, suspend and abolish the Constitution, terminate civil liberties, arrest political enemies, carry out indiscriminate execution of civilians, impose press censorship and military curfews, launch dictatorial decrees and establish a fascist dictatorship based on an alliance between military authorities and drug dealers. Robin Kirk portrayed such facts simply as "the political landscape changed in April 1992." Moreover, Kirk portrayed these crimes against humanity, and clear violations of human rights, as simply "imposed draconian anti-terrorism laws," that is the same propaganda manipulated by Fujimori's regime to arrest any person who opposed such crimes. The truth of the matter is that anyone who resists and struggles to serve the Rights of the People is immediately imprisoned and tortured for being "a terrorist." Considering these facts, let us ask: WHO is the terrorist? Obviously, Fujimori and his clique of militaries and drug dealers are the real terrorists. Fujimori's fascist regime, with its terrorist decrees, death squads, people's disappearances, Gestapo-style concentration camps, etc. attempts to maintain imperialist domination and exploitation of Peru, and prevent the inevitable triumph of the People's War, the war of the masses of working people to serve their own interests, and who at present, struggle precisely against such State terrorism and imperialist exploitation. Robin Kirk does not even mention secret military courts, nor pre-arranged verdicts against all honest working people, not only Peruvians, because such fascist State terrorism aims at crushing all working class people of all countries, who oppose in one way or another Fujimori's terrorist regime. For instance, let us see the case of U.S. political activist Lori Berenson, a US citizen.
Robin Kirk redecorates Fujimori's terrorist actions and does not even mention human rights. Instead, she portrays the Gestapo- style concentration camps and the genocidal extermination of prisoners as "natural disasters, unpredictable yet cyclical." A bold face lie. The prisoners and their lawyers have denounced for years the criminal plans of the regime to the OAS International Commission of Human Rights, the Red Cross, even to US Amnesty International and America's Watch who have received such denunciations. Therefore, it was a planned and premeditated murder. In sum, the fraudulent "researcher for Rights/American Watch" Robin Kirk justifies the freedom and rights of the exploiters to crush the working class masses of all countries.
Another issue closely linked to human rights is the "legitimacy" of reactionary dictatorships, a key factor in the Yankee strategy of low intensity warfare. Thus, the puppet regimes must be "democratically" elected, appear to satisfy basic human needs, and appear to respect human rights. But neither the votes collected by Fujimori in the fraudulent elections (in 1995 only 30% of eligible voters in Peru participated, and 64% of this 30% voted for Fujimori, is this the so-called "majority"?) nor this cynical charlatan's lack of moral authority, nor his private island and new private Boeing jet 735-500, nor his ridiculous lies in the mass media advertising "peace calls from the PCP," nor his alliance with narco-generals and drug barons, nor his systematic genocidal policies, can give any legitimacy to his corrupted regime. On the contrary, before the people of Peru and the world, Fujimori is an illegitimate dictator hooked to the bloody bayonets of the armed forces.
Human rights are manipulated as reactionary ideological weapons. Yankee imperialism repeatedly hoists such "rights" with more hypocrisy than anyone because it aims at erecting itself as a sole and hegemonic super-power. For what exists, the position of the proletariat's vanguard -the heroic Communist Party of Peru (PCP) leading the Peruvian revolution is quite clear: Human rights are bourgeois, reactionary and counter-revolutionary rights.
Today, such "human rights" are a weapon for revisionists (reactionaries disguised as leftists and agents of the enemy in the ranks of the wporking class) and imperialists. To uphold human rights in Peru today means to validate Yankee imperialism's interventionist politics, to serve the megalomaniac terrorist lackey of imperialism Fujimori, and to serve the three reactionary tasks in support of the reactionary State. It means to neglect and maintain the misery, hunger and genocide that the exploited working masses suffer. It means to oppose the Rights of the People -social and political Class Rights to Conquer political Power and exercise it; and it also means to be a cannon fodder for low intensity warfare against the People's War. In synthesis, it means to side with imperialism and against the emerging PEOPLE'S NEW POWER, NEW STATE, NEW SOCIETY and NEW LIFE; it means to be for the big bourgeoisie, and big landlords, against the broad working class masses; it means to be sell out to colonialism and reject a brilliant future.
VICTORY TO THE PEOPLE'S WAR AND THE CONQUEST OF POWER NATIONWIDE!
DEFEAT IMPERIALISM'S LOW INTENSITY WARFARE!
AGAINST FUJIMORI'S FASCIST REGIME AND THE CLIQUE IN CO-RIM!
UPHOLD, DEFEND, AND APPLY MARXISM-LENINISM-MAOISM, GONZALO
THOUGHT!
THE PEOPLE'S WAR IS INVINCIBLE!
Sources:
"Communist Manifesto," K. Marx, F. Engels, Foreign Language
Press, Beijing.
"Sobre las Dos Colinas: Documento de Estudio para el Balance de
la III Campaña de Impulsar las Bases de Apoyo," Comité Central
del Partido Comunista del Perú (PCP), 1991.
News articles as cited.