Democracy and Class Struggle says we have received this new document from Dem Volke Dienen and it helps us clarify the relationship between the Party the United Front and the Army and the idea of the militarisation of the party.
19th of June day of heroism
Every year the communists revolutionaries in the whole world celebrate the 19 of June as the day of heroism and the international day of political prisoners.
In the 19 of June 1986 the revolutionary political prisoners and prisoners of war rose up in rebellion in the three Lima prisons: Lurigancho, El Frontón and Callao.
They gave in an enormous display of revolutionary heroism, where over 250 of them gave their lives to defeat the genocidal plans of the old Peruvian state and its imperialist masters. These comrades, as all the sons and daughters of the people, lives on in the struggle of the international proletariat and the peoples of the world.
The best way to honor these comrades is to continue their struggle, to follow the same path and to learn from their great leader Chairman Gonzalo, today when the communists of the world are intensively struggling to achieve higher levels of unity based on the principles of marxism-leninies-maoism, principally maoism, the struggle against revisionism and to serve the world proletarian revolution, it is of decisive importance to advance boldly and through leaps in the struggle for the reconstitution of the communist parties, in that sense in honor of the fallen heroes and serving their aims, today we publish in Spanish a document from the communist party of Peru titled:
DEVELOP THE CONSTRUCTION, PRINCIPALLY OF THE PARTY IN SERVICE OF THE ARMED STRUGGLE which is a declaration from the sixth and seventh plenary sessions of the central committee of the PCP.
In English we publish an excerpt from the document and we will publish the full translation as soon as possible.
As far as we know, this document was not published before in the Internet and we hope by this publication it will also reach comrades who didn't know it before.
Regarding this we want to note one important point, we have transcribed the documents from ”GUERRA POPULAR EN EL PERU El Pensamiento Gonzalo TOMO II” a recompilation of PCP documents which was published 1993 by a certain BORJA.
This figure at some point were linked to the newspaper “el diario” and also published an international edition of this newspaper but he was never a party member and never represented the position of the party. After the publication of the mentioned recompilation, he tried to use it as well as the other works he have done so to attack the position of the party and destroy the work of the party abroad, obviously these intentions failed and he ended up as an open renegade of the people’s war and until this day continues vomiting his reactionary class hatred against Chairman Gonzalo.
From such a person not even the slightest degree of “intellectual honesty” can be expected so we warn the reader that the text may include some errors in regard to the original text published by the pcp.
The case of “the great mister Borja” is well known to everyone who is familiar with the history of the Revolutionary internationalist Movement in the 90s and is a good lesson because it shows how individuals with the support of some right opportunist in the leadership of parties momentously can generate confusion and difficulties by applying the revisionist method of “fighting red flags with red flags” and its particularly interesting because it also shows that these particular characters end up forgotten and irrelevant at the garbage heap of history while the communists march forward overcoming every difficulties and raising the red flag to even higher peaks.
We hope today’s publication is a humble recognition of the fallen comrades.
Glory to the fallen heroes! Long live revolution!
¡Gloria à los heróes caídos! ¡Viva la revolución!
The Writers of Dem Volke Dienen
DEVELOP THE CONSTRUCTION, PRINCIPALLY OF THE PARTY IN SERVICE OF THE ARMED STRUGGLE
III. COSTRUCTION AND STRUGGLE I’N THE PARTY. COMBAT REVISIONISM AS THE MAIN DANGER
The development of the party work and the two lines struggle led us, during the last years, to the following conclusion: develop the construction taking the ideological-political construction as the base and develop the organizational construction simultaneously, in the midst of the class struggle of the masses and the two lines struggle, that is of the proletarian line of Mariategui and its development against the right and left opportunism.
And more recently, we have advanced in the understanding of the unseparable link between construction and struggle. This process is particularly linked to the struggle against the right and left liquidationism; is struggling against liquidationism that we have understood these important problems.
These experiences the party have lived in these last years are just to those of the international proletariat; thus, in the experience of China take the following certain synthesis into account:
“Whether to persist in inner-Party struggle or not is a principled difference between Chairman Mao’s line and the revisionist line in Party building.
”
STAGES AND IMPORTANT STRUGGLES IN THE HISTORY OF THE PARTY
In general lines and from the point of view of the construction of the party in particular, we could divide our history in the following stages: first, of the establishment of the Road of Mariategui and the constitution of the party; second, of the pursuit of the road of Mariategui and the defense of the party; third, of the struggle to retake the road of Mariategui and of the reconstitution of the party.
If we want to concrete more, to point out the problems of the construction of the party, the three stages we would specify like this: constitution, defense and reconstitution.
The constitution of the Communist party, in October 1928, the greatest work of Jose Carlos Mariategui was a long and great struggle that concludes more than three decades of combat of the Peruvian proletariat. The constitution implied struggle against anarco-sindicalism and against the machinations of the emerging Apra-ism, and was the triumph of the necessity of the party of the proletariat in our country.
Since the constitution or founding of the party we can highlight five important struggles:
1. against the abandonment of the road of Mariategui and the left liquidationism of Ravinez and co.;
2. against capitulationism and right liquidationism of Terreros – Portocarrero and Acosta – Del Prado – Barrio, under the influence of browderism;
3. against the revisionism of Del Prado and co. under the command of the contemporary revisionism of Khrushchev – Brezhnev;
4. For the construction of the three instruments of the revolution and against the rightism disguised as “left” and,
5. against both the right and “left” liquidationism.
These are important struggles in the almost fifty years of history of the party, we must pay great attention to it in order to draw experiences and lessons from it which serves to the development of the construction which we are engaged. The study and investigation of the history of the party, although have advanced, should be reinforced, it is vital to understand the two lines struggle, the process of construction of the three instruments in the country and to adhere more to the line of Mariategui and its development.
RECONSTITUTION AND STRUGGLE
The process of reconstitution of the party is a consequence of retaking the road of Mariategui; it was initiated in the beginning of the decade of the 1960s and although raises over the class struggle of our motherland, especially of the proletariat and the peasantry, is intimately linked in its development to marxism-leninism-Mao Tsetung thought. During more than 15 years the reconstitution has passed by the following moments: of its determination, which is established in the VI Conference with the establishment of the Party Unity Base (marxism-leninism-Mao Tsetung thought, Mariategui thought and general political line) and the decision on the necessity of the reconstitution of the party, in 1969; of its application, which key is the III plenum that sanctioned the basis of the reconstitution in the ideological-political, the organizational and in the mass work, in 1973; of its impulse, which develops since 1975. thus, the reconstitution of the party entered in the actuality in the moment of its culmination which should be concluded in the V Congress. The task today is, then, culminate the reconstitution.
The reconstitution has allowed to understand with more clarity and certainty the inseparable relation between the construction of the party and general political line; that the construction of the party serves the general political line which core is to follow the path of encircle the city from the countryside, this is the stage of the democratic revolution which we find ourselves, and to move away from the political line undermines the construction and leads to negate the character of the party and its role as the organized vanguard of the proletariat making it impossible to struggle for power, central problem of the revolution. All that is proven by our own party history.
The development of the reconstitution had been done, as it must be, in struggle against opposed lines; against revisionism, rightism disguised as “left” and liquidationism; the struggle against right and left liquidationism while waged in parallel to the application of the reconstitution was successfully completed when it was decided to “liquidate liquidationism to advance and develop two lines struggle against revisionism as the main danger” and while concreting the political line for its immediate application in the guideline of “Reconstitute the party from the countryside and put the peasant work as the base to follow the path of encircling the city from the countryside.”
COMBAT REVISIONISM AS THE MAIN DANGER
the development of the two lines struggle in the party in the present puts forward to combat revisionism as the main danger; the summary of the waged struggles in the last years and the problems we face today demands us to combat revisionism having the following points in mind:
1. opposition to marxism-leninism-Mao Tsetung thought and the thought of Mariategui. Negation of the development of the line of Mariategui.
2. opposition to the path of encircle the city from the countryside. Hopes in the reactionary state and in the regime and questioning of directing the work to serve the struggle for power.
3. opposition to reconstitute the party from the countryside and to build it in struggle against revisionism as the main danger. Questioning the path of building the party in a backward country as ours.
4. separate the ideological-political construction from the organizational and pretend to develop the construction outside the framework of the class struggle and of the two lines struggle.
5. unilateral application of the open and secret work which negates its interrelation. Questioning of the party system, structure an work.
6. negation of the role of the leadership and the great leaders and opposition to proletarian discipline.
7. negate to the peasantry its condition of main force and be against putting the peasant work as the base of the whole construction.
8. questioning the effective leadership of the proletariat in the revolution while following the criteria of considering it as the main force.
9. negate the necessity of “to go down lower and deeper, to the real masses” in order to educate them for revolution and that the split with revisionism is unavoidable and indispensable. Negate to develop the struggle for demands in service of the struggle for power.
10. accept the worker-peasant alliance as the base of the united front in theory but questioning in praxis and negate the necessity of building the united front from the countryside.
11. negation of the People’s War. Opposition to principles and military line of Chairman Mao Tsetung and raising insurrectionist and urban guerrilla criteria. Negation of the universal law of the revolutionary violence.
12. questioning of the necessity of combating revisionism as the main danger. Negation of proletarian internationalism, particularly as a defense of marxism-leninism-Mao Tsetung thought and obligation of combating revisionism. Conciliation with revisionism.
13. exaltation of revolutionarism and preaching of “unitarianism” without demarcation.
14. opposition to the “philosophy of struggle”. Liberalism, conciliationism and groupism. “Dirty struggle”.
15. questioning the view of proletariat to substitute it for the bourgeois view.
The struggle against revisionism as the main danger that is currently being developed is of a great importance and in perspective, and its generalization and differentiation which considers all the fronts of our activity and the diversity of concrete situations, as how to conduct it correctly and with firmness and sagacity is a decisive question for the development of the construction.
IV. CONSTRUCT IN SERVICE OF THE ARMED STRUGGLE
The construction is the fundamental weapon of the proletariat in its struggle for power, is through it that the political line becomes reality and can move the masses under the leadership of the party. The construction among us, since the constitution of the party implies three instruments: party, united front and armed struggle; and the construction of the party puts forward, today as yesterday, its necessity, how to build it in a semi-feudal and semi-colonial society and how to develop it through the struggle. In this problem, like in all, we should stick to marxism, to our experience and the current concrete conditions of the class struggle. Is important to study and apply what was established by Lenin in “one step forward, two steps back”, vital for the comprehension of the opportunist line in this field, aiming to solve our specific problems. There Lenin established the importance of the organization, the simultaneous construction of the ideological-political, which is its base, and the organizational, and the development in the midst of the class struggle for power and the two lines struggle against opportunism. He say:
“In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organisation. Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labour for capital, constantly thrust back to the "lower depths" of utter destitution, savagery, and degeneration, the proletariat can, and inevitably will, become an invincible force only through its ideological unification on the principles of Marxism being reinforced by the material unity of organisation, which welds millions of toilers into an army of the working class. Neither the senile rule of the Russian autocracy nor the senescent rule of international capital will be able to withstand this army. It will more and more firmly close its ranks, in spite of all zigzags and backward steps, in spite of the opportunist phrase-mongering of the Girondists of present-day Social-Democracy, in spite of the self-satisfied exaltation of the retrograde circle spirit, and in spite of the tinsel and fuss of intellectualist anarchism.”
In the same text it is put forward how the necessity of the structure, system and party work unified and centralized “Unity on questions of programme and tactics is an essential but by no means a sufficient condition for Party unity, for the centralisation of Party work … The latter requires, in addition, unity of organisation, which, in a party that has grown to be anything more than a mere family circle, is inconceivable without formal Rules, without the subordination of the minority to the majority and of the part to the whole. As long as we had no unity on the fundamental questions of programme and tactics, we bluntly admitted that we were living in a period of disunity and separate circles, we bluntly declared that before we could unite, lines of demarcation must be drawn; we did not even talk of the forms of a joint organisation, but exclusively discussed the new (at that time they really were new) problems of fighting opportunism on programme and tactics. At present, as we all agree, this fight has already produced a sufficient degree of unity, as formulated in the Party programme and the Party resolutions on tactics; we had to take the next step, and, by common consent, we did take it, working out the forms of a united organisation that would merge all the circles together.”
in this same book, Lenin characterizes the opportunist line in organizational problems: “their advocacy of a diffuse, not strongly welded, Party organisation; their hostility to the idea (the "bureaucratic" idea) of building the Party from the top downwards, starting from the Party Congress and the bodies set up by it; their tendency to proceed from the bottom upwards, allowing every professor, every high school student and "every striker" to declare himself a member of the Party; their hostility to the "formalism" which demands that a Party member should belong to one of the organisations recognised by the Party; their leaning towards the mentality of the bourgeois intellectual, who is only prepared to "accept organisational relations platonically"; their penchant for opportunist profundity and for anarchistic phrases; their tendency towards autonomism as against centralism.”
all the previous are basic questions that we should deeply assimilate and apply having the experience of fifty years of the party in account, always acting with firmness and with initiative.
THE THREE PROBLEMS OF THE PARTY AND THEIR INTERRELATION
From the construction we must start from that our basic and fundamental problem is how to build the party, as the organized vanguard of the proletariat and its highest form of organization, which serves to seize power leading in deeds the democratic revolution in a semi-feudal and semi-colonial society.
This problem solved, in its general and valid laws, by Chairman Mao Tsetung, in “Introducing The Communist”, is necessary to always remember.
In the referred work, it was established that the construction of the party, in these conditions, is developed linked to the united front and the armed struggle, remarking the three problems and its interrelation in the following terms:
“Therefore the united front, armed struggle and Party building are the three fundamental questions for our Party in the Chinese revolution. Having a correct grasp of these three questions and their interrelations is tantamount to giving correct leadership to the whole Chinese revolution.
We are now able to draw correct conclusions concerning these three questions by virtue of our abundant experience in the eighteen years of our Party's history, our rich and profound experience of failures and successes, retreats and advances, contraction and expansion.
This means that we are now able to handle the questions of the united front, of armed struggle and of Party building in a correct way. It also means that our eighteen years of experience have taught us that the united front, armed struggle and Party building are the Chinese Communist Party's three "magic weapons", its three principal magic weapons for defeating the enemy in the Chinese revolution. This is a great achievement of the Chinese Communist Party and of the Chinese revolution.”
it is here the substantive question of the necessity to build and develop the party through the armed struggle and the united front; here the question to subject ourselves to that the armed struggle is the principal form of struggle and the people’s army is the principal form of organization; here is the problem that the party is the “heroic combatant” that handles the united front and the armed struggle.
All this is to subject the construction of the party to the law of marxism-leninism-Mao Tsetung thought of the revolutionary violence to seize power; what Chairman Mao masterly synthesized in the necessity of the revolutionary army to change the world:
“Whoever has an army has power, and war decides everything.”
“those which have more guns have more power”
“ Every Communist must grasp the truth, ‘Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun’.”
“Whoever wants to seize and retain state power must have a strong army.”
“Experience in the class struggle in the era of imperialism teaches us that it is only by the power of the gun that the working class and the labouring masses can defeat the armed bourgeoisie and landlords; in this sense we may say that only with guns can the whole world be transformed;
We are advocates of the abolition of war, we do not want war; but war can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun.”
all the previous is a solid whole of marxist truths and indispensable part of our education in the view of the proletariat and sole criteria that can correctly guide the transformation of the Peruvian society. To these criteria we must subject ourselves and implement them in the masses, today, is more necessary given the upcoming electionary political perspective.
The three problems and their interrelation are present from the constitution of the party. Synthesizing we could say, Mariategui started from the principle of the revolutionary violence, framed the action inside the democratic revolution led by the proletariat (because, the bourgeoisie can not lead it); and, conceived and furnished the party linking it to the united front and the necessity of the armed struggle of the peasantry.
Thus our founder, precisely established how to develop the party in the first stage of the revolution. His thesis on this question should be seriously studied both in its practical work for constituting the party organization; to which we should add the experience of almost fifty years, paying particular attention to the lessons about party, united front and armed struggle has left from the decade of 1960s, and principally sum up the experience of the reconstitution of the party and its struggle around the problem of the construction.
ON SECRET WORK AND OPEN WORK
Which guidelines should we follow? The construction of the party develops in a semi-feudal and semi-colonial country where the proletariat should lead, in deeds, the democratic revolution getting ready to develop the armed struggle to seize power through People’s War and following the road from the countryside to the city. Consequently, the party develops necessarily in relation with the armed struggle and the united front. This is the guideline of the construction of the party in our country if we subject to marxism-leninism-Mao Tsetung thought.
Applying this guideline, in the current conditions, means that the questions of structure, system and party work should be solved.
The first, puts forward to develop a sole organization structure that is national, unified and centralized, in its whole subjected to the leadership of the central committee, key expression of the democratic centralism; this is the question of structure.
The second, is the problem of the distribution of forces, to center the activity in the peasantry to develop the principal forms of struggle and organization and is the problem of following a road of accumulation of forces in the cities; this is the question of party system.
The third, is the problem of secret work, of the clandestine activity, of the armor that guarantee the constant functioning under whatever circumstance; is the problem of the open work; of the mass work, which in the country puts forward the necessity of “invert the triangle”, which means of putting the peasant work as the base of the revolutionary struggle, the problem of the necessity of having the struggle for the seizure of power while leading the peasantry in the revolution under the leadership of the Party tenaciously and firmly as the course of the worker movement, is the problem of “our duty of going down lower and deeper” to forge the masses in the necessity to make revolution and combat revisionism, of mobilize, politicize and organize workers and peasants, who are the basic masses, to incorporate in the struggle intellectuals, women and youth, and is the obligation of developing the struggle for demands in service of power; is, finally, the problem of the necessity of the secret and open work and its indispensable interrelation, subjecting to the orientation that the first is the principal and leads the second; all this is the question of the party work.
The structure, the system and the party work are three fundamental questions of the organizational line and are of vital importance for the construction of the party; but, as in everything, the application of these questions subjecting to the correct line the struggle against opposite lines is waged; in synthesis, a just organizational line can not be applied nor develops if not in struggle, and currently its application and development can only take place combating revisionism as the main danger.
ON LEADERSHIP
the VI and VII Plenum of the Central Committee have been important events dedicated to the problems of the construction, it was sanctioned in them “reconstitute the party from the countryside and put the peasant work as the base to follow the road of encircle the cities from the countryside”, thus concretizing the general political line; and, “develop the construction, principally of the party, in service of the armed struggle”, as guidelines to develop the construction of the three instruments synthesized in the slogan of “construct in service of the armed struggle”.
Furthermore, it was called to celebrate the “50 anniversary” of the foundation of the party and to prepare the successful realization of the V Congress, which must be “RECONSTITUTION CONGRESS” which culminates the reconstitution of the party sanctioning the program and the general political line of Mariategui and its development and the new Party constitution.
These positions are historical and important and the development of the Party as the organized vanguard of the proletariat depends from the firm and resolute application of it, as well as the fulfillment of its mission: the emancipation of the proletariat, fulfilling in this first stage with carrying forward the Revolution of New Democracy
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