On the Unified Maoist Conference (UMIC)
First of all, we must congratulate
the Coordinating Committee for the Unified Maoist International Conference
(CUMIC) for making public the text that will be the main discussion document on
the basis of international unity. The publication of this document makes it
possible for the various communist parties and detachments to have the
opportunity to openly putting forward our positions, making public the
important topics for study of the International Communist Movement (ICM) at
this historic moment.
"So
far as such criticism represents a class, it can only represent the class whose
vocation in history is the overthrow of the capitalist mode of production and
the final abolition of all classes −
the proletariat."
Karl Marx. Afterword to the Second
German Edition of Capital. 1873
"Only
after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without
betraying its woeld-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the
scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this
condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before."
V.I. Lenin. The Military Program of the Proletarian Revolution. 1916.
"Basing
himself on the in-depth critical study of the economic and political conditions
of Russia, the character of the Russian bourgeoisie and the historical mission
of the Russian proletariat, Lenin, since 1905, will come to the conclusion
that, due to the high degree of class consciousness of the proletariat and
given the development of the class struggle, any political struggle would in
Russia necessarily turn into a social struggle against the bourgeois
order."
Antonio Gramsci. Lenin´s Work. 1918.
"When
classes disappear, all instruments of class struggle − parties and the state
machinery − will lose their function, cease to be necessary, therefore
gradually wither away and end their historical mission; and human society will
move to a higher stage."
Mao Tse-tung. On the People´s
Democratic Dictatorship. 1949.
"9.
To serve the development of the Peruvian proletariat as part of the
international working class, and the formation and strengthening of real
Communist Parties and their unification in a revived international Communist
movement guided by the Marxism-Leninism-Maoism; all as a function of the
proletariat fulfilling its great historical mission as the final class."
PCP, The Basis of the Party Unity.
1988. Chapter: III Program and Statues.
Section:
“General Program of the Democratic Revolution”, point number 9.
Introduction
The
Construction Committee of the Maoist Communist Party of Galicia is based on
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as the synthesis of the experience of the Revolutionary
Movement of the proletariat of different countries, of the International
Communist Movement from its birth to the present day. During the struggles of
the proletariat and the oppressed masses of the 19th and 20th centuries,
revolutionary authors and communist militants Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and Mao
Tse-tung, study, question, experiment and theorize this knowledge of the
struggle and warfare between social classes throughout history, in order to be
able to establish a new science. One that makes it possible to understand the
history of both human societies and humanity as a whole. The name of this science
is Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, and it is an indispensable guide for carrying out a
conscious social practice to create the revolutionary movement of the
proletariat and is, therefore, indispensable for conquering political power,
the emancipation of humanity and to be able to raise humankind towards
communism.
Marx,
Lenin and Mao are the main fathers of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. Alongside them,
Engels and Stalin form the basis on which we stand. They are the great teachers
of the proletariat. There are also great revolutionaries like Gonzalo, Mazundar
and Kaypakkaya, with an originality, scientific depth and historical
transcendence fundamental to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
"Without revolutionary theory
there can be no revolutionary movement", wrote Lenin in his famous book, What Is To Be Done?. Throughout history,
the oppressed classes and the "marginalized" social sectors have
risen up against exploitation and started struggles, revolts and just wars
against their oppressors. But without Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, the triumph of
the just struggles of workers and workers, of peasants and peasants, or the
just struggle for national liberation of the oppressed peoples, cannot triumph
because they do not have the science that allows us to create consciousness in
large masses, neither create the Party, nor the People's Army, nor the Front,
nor to create the New Power, and so without all this, it would be impossible to
build a socialist society.
1.
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism; On the “Principally Maoism”
From our perspective, the Political
Declaration and Principles for UMIC should be amended in several points. Beginning
with the fact that it is a constant in this document to follow the formula of
"principally Maoism". This expression contains within it two
important dangers that will lead us to lose our way if we are not careful. The
first danger is that we get carried away by the repeated forms of memory that
are more characteristic of religion than of the science of the proletariat.
Learning a phrase from memory is not understanding, still less internalising,
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. Rethoric, slogans, etc., have their own place in a
revolution, but they are not the main, nor the primordial, nor the essential.
What is essential is the science of the proletariat, the consciousness of the
history of humanity as a long road of struggle between classes, and also the
conciousness of the necessity to fulfil the historical mission of the
proletariat: the dictatorship of the proletariat, socialism, the abolition of
social classes under communism. This is the particular worldview of scientific
socialism, the worldview of the revolutionary proletariat. Because this
particular vision is the basis of the New Proletarian Culture.
Marxism is composed of scientific
theses on the human societies of different epochs. These theses can evolve
through study and conscientious social practice, through mass work wich creates
new social relations by transforming revolutionary theory into practice, until
it becomes a New Power, a new law and, in the end, through people's war, a new
state is born.
The other reason for not using the
“especially Maoism” formula, is that it makes it difficult to understand that
in every advance of proletarian science there is a continuity and a rupture at
the same time. In Lenin and Stalin we have a continuity and a rupture with
respect to Marx and Engels in strategic matters for the world proletarian
revolution, like the importance of the struggles of the colonized peoples or,
at the philosophical level, we find that Lenin integrates in Dialectical
Materialism the question of the internal and external conditions of social
phenomena and also in the movement of nature. In Lenin we have the theory of
the proletarian party of the New Type which was neither elaborated by Marx nor
by Engels. If the “consciousness of the proletariat” plays a major role in Marx
and Engels, in certain fundamental works of Lenin (such as What Is To Be Done?), the “consciousness”, the “conscious factor”,
takes on a protagonism never before seen in Marxism. If for Marx, for Engels
and for the Bolshevik Party before the October Revolution, the trade unions
would be the administrative instrument with which to direct the economy, for
the Lenin of 1918, it is already clear that the workers' unions of Russia are
not an adequate instrument to direct the industrial production of Soviet
Russia. The rupture and continuity is a constant in the history of Marxism,
just as it happens with the natural sciences of bourgeois academia, where this
process of rupture and continuity also takes place. This whole exposition leads
us to understand why the term “Marxism-Leninism” is correct and not simply
“Leninism”, or “Marxism-Leninism principally Leninism”.
In the same way, in Mao Tse-tung we
also encounter rupture and continuitywith respect to Marx.
If in Lenin consciousness is the
protagonist, so too is it in Mao. If in Lenin the internal and the external
enter the scene, with Mao they acquire protagonism.
If Marx could only study bourgeois
revolutions and a first attempt at proletarian revolution such as the Paris
Commune, Mao could study the Soviet experience, the liberation struggles of the
colonies, the Chinese Revolution, etc. If Lenin encountered a spontaneously
born soviets, when Lenin considers the "dual power" as a
particularity of the proletarian revolution in Russia, Mao has to conciously
create the “New Power” and can identify this “New Power” as a universal
necessity of the revolution.
If Lenin gives us the outlines of
the New-type Party, Mao gives us a detailed description of how to build the
party with things like, what is the way we should treat liberal tendencies, the
political line, cadres, mass work, mass line, etc.
Moreover, thanks to his own
practical experience, Mao was able to elaborate the military theory of the
proletariat: the theory of protacted people's war. With the discovery of the
people's war, Mao breaks with the insurrectionist view that corresponds
historically with the bourgeois revolutions but not with the proletarian
revolution. With this rupture comes another, with his thesis that the epoch of
the bourgeois revolutions has already historically ended, so in the backward
(semi-feudal) countries it is up to the proletariat “as the leading class”,
united with the peasantry “as the principal class”, to carry out the same
historical mission of overcoming feudalism that the bourgeoisie fulfilled in
the countries of the imperialist core during the historical epoch of bourgeois
revolutions.
The need to mobilize the broad
masses in cultural revolutions is another example of a break with the more
linear view of history that Marxism had at that time. In Mao we can clearly see
this contradictory characteristic of continuity and rupture with what was
before−which is a constant in Marxism−in the ICM.
From this perspective, rhetorical
formulas like “principally Maoist” are not only alien to Marxism, but are a
distorting ingredient of the internal logic of the science of the proletariat,
of Marxism itself. An element which distorts the absolute rationality of the
revolutionary theory of the proletariat.
To really understand revolutionary
theory we have to pay attention to Lenin's point about revolutionary theory as
a "guide to action". So that revolutionary theory must indicate to us
what is a priority in our work at any given moment. If we start from “consciousness”
as the fundamental subjective factor to accomplish the proletarian revolution,
we have two possible paths to be able to give it protagonism in revolutionary
theory. These paths are either that of philosophy or that of the social science
of Historical Materialism. To rely more on philosophy implies going to the
philosophical categories of “itself” and “class itself” and of, “for itself”,
“class for itself”. To rely more on historical materialism leads us to give it
more prominence to the historical subject, the social classes.
If the working class is the
inevitable result of the birth of capitalist societies, the revolutionary
proletariat is the result of the birth of the conscious proletariat. A
proletariat armed with Marxism and which has its own Party. The Party is the
instrument which transforms consciousness into “a social being”, into something
so real that it is a social relationship between different people as any other
objective social relationship. Therefore, consciousness is not something
spontaneous that can occur in the economic struggle itself or in the different
immediate demands of the broad masses. We can say that consciousness and the
revolutionary proletariat itself are a historical creation of the science of
the proletariat, of Marxism.
If we study the history of the class
struggle itself, we see how the construction of the Party can only be done on
the basis of a correct political line, from a strong central nucleus that must
create organisms to do mass work. We also see how the construction of the Party
is the creation of the Revolutionary Proletarian Movement, it is expressed as
the union between the vanguard and the broad masses. We can develop this thesis
on the basis that the construction of the Party is the same as the constitution
of the proletariat as revolutionary proletariat, something that is produced
thanks to its Communist Party and the Revolutionary Proletarian Movement. The
constitution of the revolutionary proletariat as a conscious subject is also
the birth of the first and only conscious historical subject of history.
As we see, Marxism-Leninism-Maoism
is the result of a succession of ruptures and continuities with Marx, but the
reality is that the primary is continuity. By contrast, if we compare the
theses of Marx with bourgeois science, in this case what prevails is the
rupture. In this regard, we must propose to redact the part of Section “II.2
The Process of the World Revolution” in which it is stated that Marx and Engels
“Igather the best” from “…German classical philosophy, English political
economy…”. What Marx and Engels are really doing is not simply “gathering” the
best of bourgeois science, but criticizing bourgeois science in order to
overcome it and lay the foundations of the ideology of the proletariat.
2.
On the principal contradiction
The CUMIC Committee document
addresses the thesis of the “historically principal contradiction” but the
development of this thesis is confusing.
One way of dealing with this
question is to focus on the fact that social contradictions are the internal
dynamics within each people but are under the influence of external factors.
Besides, in the epoch of imperialism there is the phenomenon of class struggle
on a global level.
To determine which is the principal
contradiction we have to determine which contradiction inevitably leads to war.
Within each country, the
contradiction between the different social classes is the principal
contradiction in most of the history of any people. It is precisely for this
reason that social classes are the historical subjects.
The epoch of imperialism is the
epoch of proletarian revolution. This means that even in economically backward
countries, in which the peasant population lives in a semi-colonial and
semi-feudal society, the overcoming of feudalism through a revolution is only
possible if the proletariat is the leading class. It also means that it will be
the outcome of the war between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie on a world
level which will ultimately determine the future of humanity. But this does not
conflict with the study of what contradictions have led to war in the world in
each concrete period of time.
The study of history is what enables
us to see how the contradiction between imperialism and the semi-colonial
countries was the contradiction which most often led to war, and was therefore
the principal contradiction for most of our time in capitalist imperialism. Still,
during World War I the inter-imperialist contradiction was the principal
contradiction. We must also point out that during WW II the contradiction between
the proletariat and fascism was temporally and tactically, the principal world
contradiction and it was this precisely, what gave meaning to the USSR alliance
with the US and UK, which were major imperialist powers.
3.
On Maoism.
We do not share the formula of
“imposing Maoism” [II.4. International Communist Movement] because it does not
clarify the complexity of the ideological struggle between the sectors of
advanced workers, the sectors of the most combative students, advanced
peasants, the different independence movements, etc. We cannot impose
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism on the people, but we must “raise” the consciousness of
the people, through the consciousness of their social existence thanks
precisely to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
Another important point is the fact
that we can determine historical tendencies, but we cannot know whether these
historical tendencies will reach their culmination in a certain period of, say,
50, 100 or 200 years. Determining the years is a speculation which may result
useful as a “poetic license” in a certain exposition for didactic reasons, but
it is impossible to determine how long the period of confrontation between the
proletariat and the bourgeoisie will last.
The CUMIC document uses the term
“third world” several times. A term that does not help to clarify. A more
realistic terminology would be preferable. Economically backward countries,
semi-colonial countries, countries of the periphery or, “oppressed nations” as
it is in other parts of the cited document, among other terms that can better
express the objective social reality of the world today.
“the base for [world proletarian
revolution] . . . is constituted by the oppressed nations,” [I. Introduction]
“The countries of the Third World
from Asia, Africa and Latin America, as pointed out by Chairman Mao, are the
zones of revolutionary storms and the base for the world proletarian
revolution.” [II.3. International Situation]
The base of support for the world
proletarian revolution can only be a people's state of New Democracy or a
socialist state, but at this historical moment the proletariat does not have a
state and this means that the world proletarian revolution does not have even a
base of support.
Right now only in the semi-colonial
countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America has the class struggle reached the politically superior form of the
struggle between the classes, by becoming an open war, a war of national
liberation or a people's war. But this does not mean that the mission of the
M-L-M detachments from the countries of the imperialist core should be a simple
support of the people's wars of the periphery but
that these detachments of the imperialist core should work for the construction
of the Party in each of their countries.
4.
The thesis of a single world superpower
“The United States currently bears
the condition of sole hegemonic superpower” [II.3. International Situation -
Third Contradiction]
“One cannot speak about 'imperialist
blocks', this is revisionism.” [II.3. International Situation - Third
Contradiction]
Most importantly, this document
defends the thesis that the United States is the only imperialist superpower
today and that to argue that the world is divided into imperialist blocs is
revisionism. Our disagreement with this could not be greater.
Firstly because, compared to the
situation in the 1990s, the United States is in a clear decline, while China
and Russia are on the rise. If the United States spends three times more on
arms than its competitor China, the formation of a bloc with Russia, Pakistan,
Iran and other states could equal its military forces with those of the NATO
bloc in a few years.
The influence of China and Russia in
Africa and Asia will only increase. In Latin America, although much more
slowly, Chinese and Russian influence is also increasing. Chinese companies are
increasing their holdings and step by step, the Latin American countries will
also enter the world division of labor designed by the Chinese bourgeoisie.
In the 1990s, there was a clear
dominance of the United States as a great world empire, but right now, we can
see the same generalized tendencies towards militarism, a rearmament of all
states, an increase in spending to prepare for war, the formation of imperialist
alliances and blocks. We can see how the tendency leads to the growing
importance of the contradiction between the different bourgeoisies on a world
level. A confrontation which is growing in importance every day and which is a
tendency that will end up leading the world to a new world war between the
imperialist blocs if the triumph of the world proletarian revolution does not
come first. As Mao has said, “either the revolution will prevent the war or the
war will bring the revolution”.
As we can see, it is a situation
similar to what happened before World War I. A situation in which it is the
tendency towards inter-imperialist war that has more and more weight until it
becomes an open inter-imperialist war and not an anti-fascist one, no matter
how much revisionism insists on looking for similarities with World War II.
A scenario such as World War I is a
conjuncture in which the political independence of the proletariat is a factor
of great importance. It also implies that the anti-fascist movement is not of
strategic importance. Therefore, the anti-fascist movement in each country must
receive more or less attention from the communists, according to each concrete
case.
The world proletariat must oppose
inter-imperialist wars with all means, knowing at the same time that even the
outbreak of this war between imperialist blocs does not make revolution
impossible, but that this war can create power vacuums which the Communist
Party can exploit.
5.
The current people's wars
“We must lead People´s War to make
revolution in all kind of countries, comprising countries and continents until
advancing toward the world People´s War.” [I. Introduction]
Another section of this document
talks about coordinating the world's people's wars. This question should not be
addressed publicly, but since it is there we have to give our opinion.
First of all, we have to say that it
is unrealistic that people's wars in the world can be coordinated by people who
only fully know the social reality of their country, at a time when we are
trying to lay the foundations of an organization that has yet to gain
international political authority. Fot an organisation that most likely will
not have a member who has experience in leading an army in a people's war, we
conclude that this cannot be brought forward right now.
If the people's wars were centrally
directed at this stage, it would not bring anything positive for the revolution
as it would be totally impossible for anyone outside India to improve the
military strategy and tactics currently employed by the PLGA, and the same can
be said for any other country. Our work in support of the revolution in India
includes criticism of its political line, but it is absurd to think that from
outside we can contribute anything positive to the military activity of the
Indian people's army (PLGA). Apart from criticising the general line, criticising
a certain statement, or criticising its political position on a certain issue
(negotiations, religions, ceasefire, etc.), apart from publicising the struggle
of the EGPL among the proletariat of our countries, carrying out mobilizations
among the conscious proletariat, seeking support for the peoples of India from
intellectuals and democratic organizations or, at most, helping to mobilise the
migrants from India in Europe; we cannot really contribute anything else as
long as we do not have a socialist republic that can serve as a base of support
for the World Proletarian Revolution.
6.
The trade unions
“The
proletariat generates the trade union and the strike within its struggle for
demands, which are not only instruments for the struggle for demands, but they
‘forge the class for the great battles to come’.”
Trade Unions are historically
necessary instruments for the working class. Among other things, the most
politically advanced people often participate in the unions, so it can be
important for a communist detachment to have a presence in the trade unions.
But
the problem is that in many countries of the imperialist core, the communist
detachments have forgotten some very important theses of Marxism on trade
unions. One of these theses is that the trade union is the most primitive form
of organisation of the working class. We have very easily forgotten what Lenin
saild in What is to be Done?
“working-class trade-unionist politics is precisely working-class bourgeois
politics”. It is not a question of not participating in the trade unions, but
of understanding that the vanguard should not dedicate itself to trade
unionism. Trade unionism transforms the party cells and the committees of a
communist detachment into trade unions. We go from training party cadres to
training trade unionists. It creates a tendency to “hide” or forget the
primitive characteristics of the trade unions for the advanced workers. The
broad masses that mobilise in the trade unions and other popular organisations
are fighting for causes that are just, but it is a spontaneous struggle created
by the social contradictions between the classes. In countries where there is
no Communist Party which can bring consciousness into this spontaneous struggle
and transform it into a struggle for political power, into a struggle to create
a Revolutionary Proletarian Movement, to be able to create the New Power; the
result is that the communist detachments in Europe find themselves in a situation
where they are really behind the masses. Thus, the communist detachments pass
from the vanguard to rearguard in social practice and at the same time
disconnect revolutionary theory from their social practice of propaganda and
agitation.
The
popular and trade union mobilisations are just and should be supported to the
extent of our strengths and priorities, but a consolidated bourgeois state will
not be defeated through an insurrection, nor through a strike, nor through the
struggle of an armed vanguard. To defeat the bourgeois state it is necessary to
have the masses armed and consciously organised thanks to the Party, with a
people's army and a united front which is the basis of the Revolutionary
Movement with a New Power that is capable of creating its own institutions.
A social practice illuminated by
revolutionary theory is what defines the vanguard, being qualitatively superior
to the tendency to follow the spontaneous demands of the broad masses.
A social practice illuminated by
revolutionary theory is a conscious social practice and this is what defines
the vanguard. This conscious social practice is qualitatively superior to a
practice of following the immediate and spontaneous just demands of the broad
masses—demands that cannot overcome bourgeois ideology.
7.
The People's War
We
must fully agree with the thesis defended in the document for the UMIC on the
universality of people's war. We must understand people's war as the military
theory and practice of the proletariat, consisting of the armed masses
consciously organized by the Communist Party. A Party work which aims to
fulfill the historical mission of the proletariat, which is to create a world
without social classes, communism.
To
deny the universality of people's war means condemning the conscious
proletariat of the countries of the imperialist core to the false hopes of
insurrectionalism and foquism.
8.
The United Front and the Popular Front
The
UMIC preparatory document is right to point out that the “United Front” as a
revolutionary instrument of the people's war is much more than the anti-fascist
“United Front” tactic promoted by the Third International.
Furthermore,
the same document deals with the “Popular Front” policy adopted at the 7th
Congress of the Third Communist International in 1935. A Popular Front policy
which in many countries did not even mean a change from the United Front, but
in Europe meant the attempt to create electoral platforms with the bourgeois
programme of radicalised social-democratic reformism as a tactic to stop
fascism. The most “successful” example of a Popular Front took place in the
Spanish state, where communists of different peoples, social democrats, most of
the nationalism of the Basque Country, Catalonia and Galicia, together with
some anarchist sectors, created the “Popular Front” which won the 1936
elections to stop fascism, but Spanish fascism won the subsequent civil war.
The Popular Fronts did not really succeed in stopping fascism in any country in
the world.
The
Popular Front policy was a very particular tactic of the ICM at that particular
time, at a historical moment in which the contradiction between the proletariat
and fascism was becoming the principal contradiction on the world level.
9.
The militarisation of the Party
“Militarisation
of the Party and concentric construction of the three Instruments of the
revolution.”
We
consider the thesis of “concentric construction” to be a very good guide for
action. First, because it links the existence of a party nucleus with a
periphery in one image. It expresses this idea of construction from a core very
well.
Second,
because the Communist Party is the union between revolutionary theory and
social practice or—what is the same—the union between the vanguard and the
broad masses, so creating the Party is also creating the Revolutionary
Proletarian Movement and not simply a union of previously existing social
struggles and social movements (trade unionism, ecologism, etc.).
On
the contrary, the thesis of the “militarisation of the Party” must be clarified.
We have to know what it means exactly. Today, it sometimes seems that
“militarisation of the party” is a thesis of all Maoism, but neither Mao, nor
Ibrahim Kaypakkaya, nor Charu Mazundar, nor in the CPI (Maoist), etc., have
this thesis. Not even in the documents of the PCP before the 1988 Congress does
“the militarisation of the party” appear. A “label” cannot be approved without
having clearly defined its content. The thesis of the militarisation of the
party should have been clarified. It should have been clearly stated in the
document.
The
advancement of the science of the proletariat requires an understanding of the
practical consequences of defending a given position at each historical moment.
Endorsing “labels” but leaving their implications undefined is not a two-line
struggle, it is a formal radicalism which is not capable of being a guide to
action. To transform the inevitable two-line struggle into a struggle over who
is for or against a “label” which in reality does not contain within it clear
theses to be our guide to action, would lead us into an aesthetic war and
rhetorical “formulae” which may sound more radical, but it is a practice which
does not allow the advance of the revolutionary theory which the proletariat
needs.
We
are in a historic moment of great responsibility in which it is necessary to
take a position on various theses that are in dispute among the M-L-M
organisations and parties. For our part, we would like the different communist
detachments of the world to give their opinion in this important debate.
The
conscious proletariat always with consciousness in command!
Construction Committee of the Maoist Communist Party of
Galicia
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