V- Unite under Maoism!
Return to The New Democratic Revolution is the main force of the World Proletarian Revolution
IV- Unite under Maoism!
“The celebration of this First International Conference and the foundation of the New International Organization are of historic and transcendental importance, they are an achievement of the international proletariat and a striking blow against the general counterrevolutionary offensive of imperialism and the world reaction, as well as against revisionism and all opportunism. A great step to reunite us and to overcome the dispersion in the ICM was given, and a new stage of the organized struggle for the reconstitution of the Communist International under the command and guide of Maoism was opened, a new stage which is signed by the development of new People’s Wars which will join the ones that are ongoing.” 1
The preparation and realization of UMIC was guided by the slogan of Unite under Maoism! The UOC (MLM) took part in the two-line struggle at international level in the preparations for the UMIC only after the publication of the Bases for Discussion because they refused to do so before, taking part in the divisionist meeting in January 2020, called by the PCm (Italy). After intervening in the two-line struggle, they were not willing to continue this struggle at the conference itself. In 2022, the two-line struggle revolved around key philosophical questions of Marxism. This year, with the publication of the magazine of UOC (MLM) criticizing our Party and the ICL, and with the two editions of the magazine Two-line Struggle, led by this organization and the PCm (Italy), the political differences between these organizations and those that participated in UMIC became more evident. With this document, we have so far sought to analyze the most important political differences, however it is necessary to reveal the true ideological background of these divergences.
The leadership of the UOC (MLM) has argued for many years that Maoism constitutes a new, third and higher stage of Marxism. However, when we analyze their application of this stage of the ideology of the international proletariat in defining the political line for the world revolution and in their own country, we realize how empty this claim becomes. The UOC (MLM): 1st) denies the law of contradiction as the sole fundamental law of matter; 2nd) denies the validity of the new democratic revolution in Colombia; 3rd) denies the need for the national-democratic stage as a preparation for the uninterrupted transition to socialist revolution in oppressed countries; 4th) denies the strategic importance of the peasantry in the revolutions of semi-colonial countries; 5th) denies the correctness of the definition of the fundamental contradictions in the world today, established by the Chinese Letter (A Proposal concerning the General Line of the International Communist Movement); 6th) in their assessment of the experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the 20th century, they conclude that “in practice, Kautsky won the battle in both Russia and China”. 2 We sincerely ask the leadership of the UOC (MLM): which of the contributions and developments of Maoism do you use to formulate the political line of the revolution in your country?
The UOC (MLM) in their political proselytism defends Maoism, that the ideology of the international proletariat is “Marxism Leninism Maoism” and the importance of Chairman Mao for the Chinese Revolution, valuing the importance of the new democratic revolution and the strategy of encircling of the city from the countryside in this experience. They also defend the importance of the GPCR and the contributions of Maoism to the construction of socialism. However, to resolve the present problems of the world revolution and the Colombian Revolution, it does not rely on the universal contributions and developments of Maoism. They thus treat Chairman Mao’s contributions as an ideology that was important in the past and that may be necessary in the future. For the present, they adopt formulations that are alien to the ideology of the international proletariat, such as the characterization of semi-colonial countries as “oppressed capitalist countries”; defends the existence of a progressive tendency in imperialism; defends that the task of national liberation can be resolved with the dictatorship of the proletariat; defends the immediate collectivization of peasant lands; and, finally, state that the nature of the Revolution in India, the Philippines, Brazil, Bangladesh, as well as Colombia, is socialist, that is, that the bourgeois democratic revolution has already taken place in these countries through the progressive tendency of imperialism. And they say that such conclusions are the result of a concrete analysis of the concrete situation. With this they mean that the Maoist parties in the aforementioned countries that defend and apply the fundamental theories of Maoism are mere mechanistic transplanters of the experience of the Chinese Revolution. They even believe that they are making an innovative analysis of the Colombian reality and that of other oppressed countries, when in fact they are copying old Trotskyist “theories”, specifically the falsifying MTD [Marxist Theory of Dependency] of Gunder Frank, Rui Mauro Marini etc.
There is no empty territory in the ideological field, where there is no Maoism, revisionism breeds. Let’s see what the real ideological foundations of the UOC (MLM) are.
1- Assuming Maoism is to relentlessly combat all revisionism: the old, the modern Khruschevist-Tengist-Hoxhaist and the revisionist modalities of the 21st century
The leadership of the UOC (MLM) formulates that the result of the supposed “progressive tendency of imperialism” was the emergence on the world arena of so-called “oppressed capitalist countries”, in which, through the work and grace of finance capital, “pre-capitalist modes of production” were “swept away”. In the international magazine Two-line Struggle, they do not state what is the source of this formulation, but when you search the materials published in Spanish, it is easy to find it. Well, they openly say that they took it from “comrade Bob Avakian”, thus valuing as very positive this excerpt from the RIM Declaration, from 1980, proposed by the RCP of the USA and Chile:
“There is an undeniable tendency for imperialism to introduce significant elements of capitalist relations in the countries it dominates. In certain dependent countries capitalist development has gone so far that it is not correct to characterize them as semi-feudal, it is better to call them predominantly capitalist even while important elements or remnants of feudal or semi-feudal production relations and their reflection in the superstructure may still exist.” 3
The big falsification of this Avakianist formulation lies in the fact that in the imperialist stage capitalist development no longer occurs in the same way as in the stage of free competition. As established by Lenin, imperialism is reaction everywhere. Imperialism in its search for maximum profit engenders capitalism in semi-colonial countries by supporting, conserving and reproducing the most backward relations of landed property and production and in the most reactionary political regimes. That is, through the export of capital it engenders a type of capitalism that does not destroy pre-capitalist relations, as the revolutionary bourgeoisies of the 17th and 18th centuries did, quite the contrary, given its reactionary character as monopoly capital, parasitic capital and in decaying, and moribund capital, the imperialist bourgeoisie relies on the rotten foundations in force in these countries, its finance capital merges with capital of feudal origin and other pre-capitalist forms and impulses capitalism of a bureaucratic type. This is how Lenin formulated about imperialism and Chairman Mao further deepened it. To classify semi-colonial countries as “predominantly capitalist” with only “semi-feudal remnants in the superstructure” is to deny the Leninist and Maoist formulations on imperialism, it is to deny fundamental theories of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. It is, therefore, to make apology for imperialism, as if some type of progress in social relations were possible under its rule.
The UOC (mlm) depart from this Avakianist falsification to accentuate their Trotskyist features, although the 1980 Declaration speaks of dependent countries and not of dependent capitalism, a category of Khrushchevist-Brezhnevist revisionism and MTD Trotskyism. From “predominantly capitalist countries” they formulate the revisionist thesis of the existence of “oppressed capitalist countries”, in which the revolution would immediately be socialist.
Regarding the peasant problem, the leadership of the UOC (mlm) applies Avakianist deviations in the same direction to Colombia. In the 1984 RIM Declaration, the Avakianist smuggling of the “virtual elimination of the peasantry” in imperialist countries appears; the UOC (MLM), in turn, defends the virtual elimination of the peasantry in so-called “oppressed capitalist countries”. They state that: “In Colombia, the decomposition and differentiation of the peasantry between rural proletarians and bosses is a fact.”, that is, applying Avakianism in the analysis of his country, he concludes that there are no longer peasants as such in the countryside, only agricultural workers and agrarian bourgeoisie. The peasantry, just like semi-feudality, would be just a remnant.
The first revisionist ideological foundation with which the UOC (MLM) converges is, therefore, Trotsky-Avakianism. Their theses about the supposed progressive tendency of imperialism, the existence of such oppressed capitalist countries, the complete differentiation (or virtual elimination) of the peasantry in semi-colonial countries, all of them are based on fallacious Trotskyist-Avakianist formulations. The importance of these formulations is explicitly recognized by the leadership of the UOC (MLM) in their publications in Spanish:
“[The revolution in the oppressed countries] Has been a problem faced by the Communists since the times of Lenin; it was masterly dealt with, resolved and developed by Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communists; it was retaken with special emphasis by the Internationalist Revolutionary Movement – RIM – since the documents presented by their precursors in 1980 in the ‘Declaration’ of 1984 and in several articles on the Magazine A World to Win; Highlighted by the comrades of the RCP (USA) and especially by Comrade Bob Avakian” 4
Evidently, Avakian does not continue the development of the great leaders of the proletariat on the important problem of revolution in oppressed countries. Avakian, departing from revisionist, petty-bourgeois, and notably Trotskyist positions, distorts and confuses the issue. He underestimates the importance of the contradiction between oppressed nations/peoples and imperialism and accuses comrades Stalin and Chairman Mao of nationalist-type errors. The UOC (MLM) departs from these anti-Marxist conceptions and accentuates the Trotskyist tendencies of Avakianism.
Let us now see the direct convergence of the UOC (MLM)’s tergiversations with Trotskyist formulations. The UOC (MLM), when defending the supposed progressive tendency of imperialism, only repeats the analyzes of the sycophant Trotsky, a traitor to communism who considered the Japanese invasion of China to be positive, as it would lead to the increase of the proletariat in this country, thus creating the conditions for his permanent revolution:
“If Japan were to succeed in maintaining its conquered positions for an interval of some ten years, this would mean, above all, the intensive industrialization of North China in the military interests of Japanese imperialism. New railways, mines, power stations, mining and metallurgical enterprises, and cotton plantations would rapidly spring up. The polarization of the Chinese nation would receive a feverish impulse. New hundreds of thousands and millions of Chinese proletarians would be mobilized in the briefest possible space of time. On the other hand, the Chinese bourgeoisie would fall into an ever-greater dependence on Japanese capital. Even less than in the past would it be capable of standing at the head of a national war, no less a national revolution. Face to face with the foreign violator would stand the numerically larger, socially strengthened, politically matured Chinese proletariat, called to lead the Chinese village.” 5
Trotsky, this inveterate anti-Leninist, considered colonial enslavement as progressive. The leadership of the UOC (MLM), following the same steps, considers imperialism capable of sweeping away semi-feudality. The great Lenin highlights that imperialism exacerbates the contradictions of capitalism to the maximum, never claiming to resolve them.
Regarding the necessary national revolutionary stage of the people’s war in semi-colonial countries, the ‘Maoist’ UOC (MLM) state in their Program that:
““The content of the anti-imperialist revolutionary movement, in this Epoch and in the capitalist oppressed countries, ceases to be democratic liberation and turns into socialist”. 6
And then:
“The semi-colonial problem is part of the problem of the proletarian revolution, it is part of the problem of the dictatorship of the proletariat.” 7
What difference is there between this position and that defended by Trotsky in his revisionist work “Permanent Revolution”? Let’s compare:
“With regard to countries with a belated bourgeois development, especially the colonial and semicolonial countries, the theory of the permanent revolution signifies that the complete and genuine solution of their tasks of achieving democracy and national emancipation is conceivable only through the dictatorship of the proletariat as the leader of the subjugated nation, above all of its peasant masses.” 8
Let’s see what the great leader of the Chinese Revolution, Chairman Mao, says about these theses in On New Democracy:
“We are exponents of the theory of the transition of the revolution, and not of the Trotskyite theory of ‘permanent revolution’. We are for the attainment of socialism by going through all the necessary stages of the democratic republic. We are opposed to tailism, but we are also opposed to adventurism and impetuosity”. 9
The ‘Maoist’ UOC (MLM), just like the renegade Trotsky, conceives the solution of the national question in oppressed countries through the immediate dictatorship of the proletariat or as part of it. This is the complete negation of the Leninist thesis of the revolutionary democratic dictatorship of workers and peasants and, even more so, of the Maoist thesis of the joint dictatorship of revolutionary classes to carry out the socialist revolution in the oppressed countries.
In an article entitled Are we Trotskyists?, the leadership of the UOC (MLM), when responding negatively to the question, formulates that the defense of the immediate socialist revolution in Colombia would not be Trotskyism, since according to them, “Trotskyism does not consist in denying the stages through which the revolution must go. 10 Trotskyism is made up of countless lies and falsifications, among them, yes, the negation of the revolutionary role of the peasantry led by the proletariat in the democratic revolution, a decisive question in advancing the socialist revolution, proven by the experience of the proletarian revolution, the negation of the need for stages of the revolution, and the negation of the need for joint dictatorship of revolutionary classes in oppressed countries. Let us observe:
“The Comintern of the epigones began by canonizing for all countries of the Orient the formula of the ‘democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry” 11
And:
“The democratic revolution grows over directly into the socialist revolution and thereby becomes a permanent revolution”. 12
Just as Trotsky accuses the CI of canonizing a formula for revolution in the East, the UOC (MLM) accuses the ICL of dogmatism for stating that the new democratic revolution is valid for all semi-colonial countries. Just as Trotsky clings to the negation of the need for stages in the revolutionary process in semi-colonial countries; the UOC (MLM) formulates in its program that:
“Whichever the particularities, the capitalist character of a society in a country oppressed by imperialism demands an anti-imperialist movement, not in a stage apart.” 13
In fact, Trotskyism is not limited to the negation of the stages of the revolution, in addition it constitutes the apology of imperialism, the negation of the validity of the democratic revolution under the leadership of the proletariat and the negation of the peasant problem. All these elements are shared by Avakian and, even more explicitly, by UOC (MLM). Let us now compare their formulation and that of the anti-Leninist Trotsky on the peasant question. As already seen, in relation to the peasant problem, the UOC (MLM) defends the need to:
“(…) teach the peasants that for them to save themselves they must ally with the proletariat to struggle against private property and to convert the property of their land into collective property and collective exploitation.” 14
Trotsky, in turn, defends the same old anti-peasant program:
“The very fact of the proletariat’s representatives entering the government, not as powerless hostages, but as the leading force, destroys the border-line between maximum and minimum program; that is to say, it places collectivism on the order of the day.” 15
The identity of the positions of UOC (MLM) with Trotskyism is very strong and cannot be “negated” with the vague statement that Trotskyism does not consist in negation the stages of the revolution. Of course, it is a much more harmful thing, but his negation is the most fundamental thing in his rotten theories of petty-bourgeois revolutionarism with a radical appearance and right-wing anti-proletarian content. The UOC (MLM), by abandoning the contributions and developments of Maoism for the revolution in semi-colonial countries, depart from Avakianist smuggling and ends up in the Trotskyist mire. Behind such a vaunted anti-dogmatic vision, they reach anti-scientific formulations such as the supposed progressive tendency of imperialism and end up defending the deceitful Trotskyist “Permanent Revolution” in semi-colonial countries.
The second ideological foundation of the UOC (MLM)’s false political propositions, therefore, is Trotskyism. For the UOC (MLM) the new democratic revolution would be true in the past, but false for the present; while the “permanent revolution” would have been false in the past but true in the present.
The UOC (MLM) should, indeed, eradicate this late Trotskyism and truly embrace Maoism. But, in our opinion, this will not be a simple task, as the Trotskyist roots of their analyzes are very deep. Their convergence with this type of opportunism ranges from their political analysis of imperialism and semi-colonial countries, openly departing from Avakianism to end up into Trotskyism, until their economic analysis of the social formations of oppressed countries when they rely, in a covert way, on the so-called “Marxist Theory of Dependence”. The MTD was formulated in the 1960s/70s, by Latin American Trotskyist academics linked to ECLAC. The main exponent of this theory was the Brazilian Ruy Mauro Marini, who for many years was a professor in Chile and Mexico.
This supposed “Marxist Theory of Dependence” was an attempt by Latin American Trotskyism to economically substantiate Trotsky’s also supposed theory of “Permanent Revolution”. Based on the revisionist positions of Khrushchev and his fallacious and infamous “Secret Speech”, this quagmire of lies and counter-revolutionary resentments thrown at the heroic and glorious experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the USSR and at the contributions of comrade Stalin, Trotskyism experienced a resurgence at the international level in the late 1950s. After the Cuban Revolution, in 1959 and, mainly after the announcement by decree, in 1962, made by Castro, that the revolution had transformed into a socialist one, Latin American Trotskyism sought to update the Trotskyist “Permanent Revolution” defending the revisionist thesis that for oppressed countries the immediately socialist revolution would solve democratic tasks, without the need for a new democratic revolution. Exactly contrary to the historical experience of proletarian revolutions in oppressed countries, an experience in which was the new democratic revolution that advanced socialist tasks, by confiscating latifundium and big local and foreign capital, as Chairman Mao well demonstrated, in On New Democracy and other works of his.
To economically substantiate this ideological-political position, Marini and his consorts formulated a false theory of dependence that aims to nullify the importance of the national-democratic tasks of the proletarian revolution in semi-colonial countries. Falsifying Marxism, Marini seeks to reduce the contradictions of semi-colonial countries exclusively to that which opposes the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, and to summarize the oppression of imperialism solely to the super-exploitation of the proletariat, bypassing the mechanisms of suppression and appropriation of ground rent from primary production produced and exported by oppressed countries. Furthermore, Marini denies the existence and political importance of the middle bourgeoisie (national bourgeoisie) in the revolutionary process in these countries. As already seen in this document, the positions of the UOC (MLM) fully coincide with these formulations of the Trotskyist theory of dependence. Let us now move on, albeit briefly, to a direct comparison between the economic formulations of the UOC (MLM) and those of Marini.
Both the UOC (MLM) and the Trotskyist Marini conceive imperialism as a world mode production in which different economies would be “chained” or “integrated” in the same and single process. Both the UOC (MLM) and MTD theorists conclude that the result of this chain is that the native bourgeoisie of semi-colonial countries become “partners” of the imperialist exploitation regime, even achieving the same rate of profit as financial capital. The enormous inequality of labor productivity in imperialist countries in relation to dependent countries, that is, the high mechanization and application of cutting-edge technologies in the productive processes of the former and the low industrialization of the latter; from the higher organic composition of imperialist capital and the lower organic composition of local monopoly capital, both conclude that there would be a mechanism to “compensate” for this enormous difference in productivity, which would be the super-exploitation of labor in oppressed countries. This super-exploitation would have to be exclusive to the semi-colonial bourgeoisie, because if it also existed in advanced countries, there could not be a similar compensation mechanism. Let’s see how Marini formulates the question:
“Let us remind, to avoid mistakes, that the fall in the rate of profit in the dependent countries, as a counterpart to the increase of its organic composition, it is compensated through the procedures of the super-exploitation of labor, despite the peculiar circumstances they favor in the agrarian and mining economies, the high profitability of the variable capital.” 16
Likewise, for the leadership of the UOC (MLM) the supposed compensation that would allow the semi-colonial bourgeoisie to achieve the same rate of profit as financial capital is presented as follows:
“The cheapening of the elements that make up constant capital, i.e., the depreciation of existing capital or the sustaining of production without the renewal of machinery and plant, manifested itself especially in the “import substitution”, directed by the imperialists at the oppressed countries until the 1970s in the transfer of “obsolete” machines in the imperialist countries to the oppressed countries, where super-exploitation compensated for the average profit share of capital for the local bourgeoisie.” 17
The exclusivity of the super-exploitation of labor, supposedly belonging to the bourgeoisie of semi-colonial countries, as a compensation mechanism is presented as follows by Marini:
“(…) for the development of an industry, this bourgeoisie depends on a technology whose creation is privative of these monopolies. Therefore, there is no alternative left to offer them a society in their own process of production, justifying that the coercive retention of wage level of the working class contributes to generate an extraordinary possibility of profit.” 18
And even more explicitly by the leadership of the UOC (MLM):
“The reduction of wages below their value, i.e., below the value of labor power, has its own name in the oppressed countries: super-exploitation.” 19
No! The reduction of wages below their value, identified by Marx, is called super-exploitation of the proletariat in both imperialist and semi-colonial countries. The origin of this mechanism did not originate in oppressed countries, on the contrary, it emerged together with the industry itself in the most capitalist country of its time: England.
Both Marini and the UOC (MLM) distort the content of the super-exploitation of work, as if this alone could compensate for the brutal difference in productivity existing in imperialist countries and semi-colonial countries. Falsifying the law discovered by Marx of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, they assert a supposed advantage of the super-exploitation of labor over mechanization, since according to them, super-exploitation would allow the mass of surplus value produced to be increased without the “danger” of reducing the rate of profit. However, as Marx demonstrates in detail in Capital, when two competing capitalists produce under different conditions of machinery, the one that produces under the best conditions will obtain an extraordinary surplus value, as it produces commodities in less working time than is socially necessary. The super-exploitation of labor can reduce this difference, but never compensate for it, Marx exemplifies the issue as follows:
“An English manager of a cotton factory in Oldenburg [Russia], declares that the working time there lasted from 5.30a.m. to 8p.m., Saturdays included, and that the workpeople there, when under English overlookers, did not supply during this time quite so much product as the English in 10 hours, but under German overlookers much less. Wages are much lower than in England, in many cases 50%, but the number of hands in proportion to the machinery was much greater, in certain departments in the proportion of 5:3 (…) Mr. Redgrave gives very full details as to the Russian cotton factories. The data were given him by an English manager until recently employed there (…). On this Russian soil, so fruitful of all infamies, the old horrors of the early days of English factories are in full swing. The managers are, of course, English, as the native Russian capitalist is of no use in factory business. Despite all overwork, continued day and night, despite the most shameful underpayment of the workpeople, Russian manufacture manages to vegetate only by prohibition of foreign competition.” 20
Although the working day in Russia is 14h30, including Saturday, which adds up to a total of 87 hours per week; while in England the working day was 10 hours and weekly 60 hours. Despite the salary in Russia being 50% lower than in England; despite the possible intensity being high, as the Russian factory was commanded by English directors; despite all this, Russian commodities were only able to compete with the English because their import was prohibited. This practical example from Marx completely overturns the theory of Marini and the UOC (MLM) that the super-exploitation of work can compensate for the difference in productivity and thus provide an extraordinary surplus value for the “dependent bourgeoisie”.
By completely falsifying the foundations of Marxist political economy, both Marini and the UOC (MLM) seek to present the super-exploitation of labor as a magical mechanism that would make it possible to compensate for the difference in productivity and increase the mass of surplus value and the profit rate of the comprador and bureaucratic bourgeoisie of semi-colonial countries in competition with the bourgeoisie of imperialist countries:
“(…) the three mechanisms identified—the intensification of work, the extension of the working day, and the expropriation of part of the labor necessary for the worker to replenish his labor power—give rise to a mode of production based exclusively on the greater exploitation of the worker, and not on the development of his productive capacity. (…) this makes it possible to lower the value composition of capital, which, combined with intensifying the degree of labor exploitation, causes the rates of surplus value and of profit to rise simultaneously.” 21
And his UOC (MLM) disciples:
“The considerable disproportion of variable capital to total capital causes the wage to fall below the average level and thus increases both the mass of surplus value and the rate of profit.” 22
The extraordinary surplus value obtained by the bourgeoisie of “underdeveloped” countries, thanks to the “secret” of the super-exploitation of the proletariat, would allow the local bourgeoisie to achieve the same rate of profit, the same rate of capital accumulation, and would thus allow these bourgeoisies become exporters of capital, configuring what Marini calls sub-imperialism:
“What was put forward was the imperialist expansion of Brazil, in Latin America, which actually corresponds to a sub-imperialism or an indirect extension of North-American imperialism (let us not forget that a center of such an imperialism of this kind would be a Brazilian economy integrated to a North-American one)” 23
For the leadership of the UOC (MLM), the bourgeoisie of the “oppressed capitalist countries”:
“(…) [reached] a great accumulation of capital by making it excessive there as well” One cannot “evade its real monopoly character and imperialist aspirations.” 24
By adopting the Trotskyist theory of dependence, the UOC (MLM) conclude that the super-exploitation of the proletariat in oppressed countries, a real phenomenon, would enable the semi-colonial bourgeoisie to obtain a profit rate equal to that of finance capital, to the point of becoming an exporter of excessive capital and, thus, sub-imperialist. Both Marini and the UOC (MLM) summarize imperialist oppression to the super-exploitation of labor, thus ignoring the other factors of the maximum profit of financial capital: the suppression of ground rent and the restriction of the profit of the non-monopoly bourgeoisie. They simplify the complex picture of reality to a single contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, denying the revolutionary role of the peasantry in particular and the petty bourgeoisie in general, as well as the vacillating character of the national bourgeoisie and national oppression:
“Imperialism has broken national borders and has pit class against class in the world arena.” 25
And:
“Nowadays, finance capital’s yoke over the labor of society is the heaviest and vilest. The king of imperialist capital has expanded to the confines of the world, razing whole peoples and carrying the cause of its existence with him: survival and development: the super-exploitation of the proletariat.” 26
The cause of the existence of finance capital is not only explained by the super-exploitation of the proletariat, but also by the suppression of ground rent in oppressed nations, by the plundering of their natural wealth. To elude this is to deny the contradiction between oppressed nations and imperialism, it is to summarize the world’s fundamental contradictions into a single one: class against class, very much to the liking of Trotskyism. Or as Marini puts it: “the basis of dependency is the super-exploitation of labor”. This is one foundation but not the only one. What’s more, it is not exclusive to the bourgeoisie of oppressed countries; on the contrary, the permanent super-exploitation of the proletariat in oppressed nations, as demonstrated by Lenin, is the source that will supply the maximum profit of finance capital. This prevents the lackey bourgeoisie of the semi-colonies from taking advantage of this condition to the same extent. This super-exploitation, therefore, does not allow for the compensation of the profit rate theorized by Marini and repeated by the UOC (MLM). It is part of the privileges of finance capital given its imperialist nature and condition.
There are so many similarities between the UOC (MLM) and Marini’s analyzes that it is impossible to believe that they are just a fortuitous coincidence. In this way, we can conclude that the Trotskyist theory of dependence is a third ideological foundation of the false political conceptions of the UOC (MLM). In addition to these convergences, the UOC (MLM) is even closer to other revisionist variants. In their criticism of the International Line of our Party and the ICL, the UOC (mlm) repeatedly accuses us of “third worldist” deviations. With this they mean that we are supporters of Teng Siao-ping’s rotten “three worlds” theory. Our Party defended and defends the position that was present in the Bases for Discussion, but which is not present in the Political Declaration and the Principles, that is, that what was formulated by Chairman Mao that “three worlds delineate” is correct and that this approach is opposite to the forgery of the traitor Teng Siao-ping.
As everyone knows, in the 1950s and 1960s, Chairman Mao presented this thesis in which he drew attention to the contradictions within the imperialist camp, between imperialist superpowers and imperialist powers. Chairman Mao’s thesis pointed to the delineation of the following three worlds: imperialist superpowers (first world), imperialist powers (second world) and socialist countries and oppressed countries (third world). Teng Siao-ping falsifies this formulation and presents in 1974 and 1977 his rotten “three worlds theory”, an international revisionist line that aimed to sabotage the world revolution and demoralize Maoism. In his fateful speech at the UN in April 1974, Teng Siao-ping publicly presented his rotten theory for the first time:
“Judging from the changes in international relations, the world today actually consists of three parts, or three worlds, that are both interconnected and in contradiction to one another. The United States and the Soviet Union make up the First World. The developing countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and other regions make up the Third World. The developed countries between the two make up the Second World. (…) At the same time, all these developed countries are in varying degrees controlled, threatened or bullied by the one superpower or the other. (…) In varying degrees, all these countries [from the Second World] have the desire of shaking off superpower enslavernent or control and safeguarding their national independence and the integrity of their sovereignty.” 27
In other words, for the renegade Teng there would be imperialist countries (first world), developed but oppressed countries (second world) and developing countries (third world). The UOC (MLM), as we have seen, analyzes that the world is divided into imperialist countries, oppressed capitalist countries and semi-feudal countries; although they cry out against third worldism, they end up converging with the same categories of Teng’s rotten “three worlds” theory. Like him, they conclude about the existence of a “second world” composed of countries with developed capitalism, although oppressed by imperialism. Or as they formulate in their criticism of our Party and the ICL:
“(…) it is possible that there are countries which are neither imperialist nor semi-feudal and semi-colonial, but which are relatively backward capitalist countries.” 28
This possibility raised by the UOC (mlm), however unusual it may be coming from a political organization that defines itself as Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, is nothing new, it was already presented in 1974 by the rotten revisionist Teng Siao-ping. This convergence with Tenguism, therefore, constitutes the fourth ideological foundation of the false political positions of the UOC (MLM).
Finally, in relation to the philosophical issue, addressed in the first part of this document, it is necessary to consider the emphasis that the UOC (MLM) gives to the law of negation of the negation. Going as far as concluding that the fact that this law was supposedly discarded by Stalin and Chairman Mao would be one of the causes of capitalist restoration in the USSR and China. As we highlighted in the first part of this document, the UOC (MLM) in their formulations on the negation of the negation at no point demarcates the difference between the meaning of Marx’s use from the conciliatory position of Proudhon and Prachanda and the false interpretations of Dühring and Avakian. We have shown how, for Marx, the negation of the negation occurs as a complete suppression of private property over the means of production and not as a combination of social property and private property. That is, the process of permanent revolution until communism aims to put an end to the interdependence between social production and capitalist property, aims at the division of this unity of opposites into two, the development of the new aspect into a new contradiction and the historical disappearance of the old aspect. The UOC (MLM), by not demarcating this distinction between the negation of the negation in Marx and between revisionists, comes closer to the philosophical conception supported by the renegade Prachanda who takes the negation of the negation as the process in which two combine into one.
By abandoning Maoism, by reducing this powerful sword of the international proletariat, to past or future teachings, with no validity in the present, the UOC (MLM) ends up in terribly bad company: Avakian, Trotsky, Marini, Teng and Prachanda. By applying Maoism nominally and formally violating its fundamental theories and without revealing all its revolutionary content, it is not possible to combat revisionism consequently. The UOC (MLM), by not applying the revolutionary content of Maoism to the current and concrete analysis of concrete contradictions in the world and in its own country, ends up harboring in the foundations of its formulations old revisionist theses defeated long ago in the ICM. Among these erroneous conceptions, the most serious and deep-rooted in their formulations are the Avakianist and Trotskyist ones, as well as the economic foundation of the false Marxist theory of dependence, which seeks precisely to substantiate a supposed validity of the Trotskyist “Permanent Evolution” in Latin America and in the semi-colonial countries as a whole.
2- Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and the Democratic Revolution
The problem of the relationship between the leadership of the proletariat in the revolution for socialism and the democratic revolution is not a new question for the international proletariat and the ICM. On the contrary, it was present since the founding of its scientific ideology with Marxism and remains valid, in an updated and developed manner in the epoch of imperialism. In the course of the process of development of the ideology of the proletariat, this question was the subject of important two-line struggles. Just as it is today again in the camp of Maoism.
In the Manifesto of the Communist Party, Marx and Engels establish that: “the bourgeois revolution in Germany will be but the prelude to an immediately following proletarian revolution.” 29 In the evaluation of the defeat of the democratic revolution of 1848, Marx analyzes the difference between the petty-bourgeois position and the proletarian position, during the course of the German revolution, concluding that: “While the democratic petty bourgeois wish to bring the revolution to a conclusion as quickly as possible (…) it is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent, until (…) the proletariat has conquered state power.” 30
This permanent revolution formulated by Marx has nothing in common with the Trotskyist mirage of never-realized revolutions in paper that predicts the abandonment of democratic tasks, on the one hand, and parliamentary cretinism, on the other. 31 Marx and Engels continued, throughout their lives, defending the need to defend bourgeois democratic flags in the struggle against semi-feudality in Germany, even when these flags were abandoned by the bourgeoisie. Engels highlights this in the 1870s:
“It is therefore in the interests of the workers to support the bourgeoisie in its struggle against all reactionary elements, as long as it remains true to itself. Every gain which the bourgeoisie extracts from reaction, eventually benefits the working class, if that condition is fulfilled. (…) But what if the bourgeoisie is untrue to itself and betrays its own class interests, together with the principles these imply? Then there are two paths left to the workers! Either to drive the bourgeoisie on against its will and compel it as far as possible to extend the suffrage, to grant freedom of the press, association and assembly and thereby to create an arena for the proletariat in which it can move freely and organize. This is what the English workers have done since the Reform Bill of 1832 and the French workers since the July Revolution of 1830 (…) Or alternatively, the workers might withdraw entirely from the bourgeois movement and leave the bourgeoisie to its fate. This was what happened in England, France and Germany after the failure of the European workers’ movement from 1848 to 1850. (…) It cannot happen when the working class is in a healthy condition, for it would be the equivalent of total political abdication.” 32
In 1891, Engels, in his Critique of the Erfurt Program, also criticized German social democracy for not upholding the democratic demand for the Republic in Germany in opposition to the Prussian monarchy. The relationship, therefore, between the proletarian revolution and the democratic revolution, upheld in 1848, remained an important issue for Marxism throughout the 19th century. In the first stage of the ideology of the international proletariat, the most important two-line struggle around this relationship took place against the Lasallian petty-bourgeois socialist positions. Lassalle worked closely with Marx and Engels during the 1848 revolution and remained close to Marxism until the end of the 1850s. In the early 1860s, he began to openly defend opportunist positions and shortly before his death in 1863, founded the General Association of German Workers. The struggle against Lassallism had great importance in the development of the specific line of revolution in Germany and is at the center of the polemics of Marx with the social democratic leadership formulated in his brilliant work Critique of the Gotha Program.
Lassalle was a right-wing opportunist, who sought to cover up the content of his position with left-wing phraseology. In this way, he advocated a pure social revolution, advocating that the proletariat should abstain from the democratic struggle of the bourgeoisie against the feudal forces dominant in the kingdom of Prussia. The right-wing essence of this position is made clear in the question of the ways for unifying Germany. Marx and Engels argued that unification should occur through a democratic revolution, supported by the proletariat, that crushed feudal reaction and monarchy. Lassalle, in turn, supported the reactionary path of German unification, defending the Prussian monarchy in a dynastic war against Austria. In the episode of the Austro-French-Italian war, Lassalle argued that the “Prussian mission” would be to support Napoleon III in the destruction of Austria:
“Independently of how one conceives the form of this unity, if we think of it as a German republic, or as a German empire, or, finally, as a rigid federation of independent states—all of these questions can remain open at the moment. Anyways, all these parties, if they have the intelligence to understand each other, must work together on the essential condition for each one of these cases? The annihilation of Austria. (…) Napoleon is about to fulfill this preparatory work for the constitution of the German unity.” 33
The Marxist position on the issue, supported by Engels in Po and Rhine, aimed to convert the attack by the French Empire into a national revolutionary war that would lead to German unification on democratic and republican bases. Lassalle hid his right-wing position with left-wing phraseology, saying that in addition to the proletariat, the rest of the German population would be a “reactionary mass”, and that the national question would be resolved by a dynastic war without the participation of the working class. Engels describes this Lasallian dogma as follows: “(…) they adopt the high-sounding but historically false Lassallean dictum: in relation to the working class all other classes are only one reactionary mass.” 34
Thus, like Trotskyism, Lassallism had a right-wing essence covered by left-wing verbiage. Years later, Lassalle’s secret agreements with Bismarck were discovered, clearly revealing that behind the discourse of abstaining from political and national issues, there was essentially the position that saw a progressive tendency in the feudal aristocracy and the absolutist monarchy. In secret correspondence to Bismarck, Lassalle wrote that:
“[The workers] would be inclined, despite the republican convictions, (…) to see in the crown a natural bearer of a social dictatorship as opposed to the egotism of the bourgeois society, under the condition the crown (…) decides to truly walk the revolutionary and national path, and to convert itself, from a monarchy of privileged layers, into a social and revolutionary monarchy.” 35
Lassalle’s positions caused significant damage to the German proletariat. The lack of understanding the relationship between the proletarian revolution and the democratic revolution, widespread in Germany, seriously influenced the errors of the Spartacist left in the German Revolution of 1919. Franz Mehring, one of the exponents of the Spartacist League, for example, assessed that the position of Lassalle regarding the national question was correct. Mehring assesses this issue as follows in 1918: “Once the possibility of a bourgeois revolution had been excluded, Lassalle correctly realized that German unification, as far as it was possible, could only be the result of dynastic commotions.” 36
This assessment by Mehring was not restricted to just a historical assessment of the German revolution. It was full of positive considerations about Lasallianism, particularly the convergence with the assessment of the existence of a reactionary mass. This position, for example, influenced the erroneous line of the Spartacist League on the question of nationalities and the peasant question, on which they opposed the self-determination of nations and the agrarian revolution as a path to nationalize the land. These two questions, in turn, were masterfully resolved by Lenin, precisely because he knew how to draw on the ideological source of Marx and Engels and completely demarcate with Lassalle. Trotsky, on the contrary, expressed his deep admiration for this petty-bourgeois socialist:
“From the experience of the Hungarian and German revolutions Lassalle drew the conclusion that from now on revolutions could only find support in the class struggle of the proletariat.” 37
In the second stage of the ideology of the international proletariat, particularly in the course of the three Russian revolutions: 1905, February and October 1917, Lenin established a great leap in this matter. He showed how the Russian revolution, as a democratic revolution, would be carried out not with the Russian liberal bourgeoisie, but against this bourgeoisie. However, not falling into the Lasallian tale of pure social revolution, he upholds the need to raise the democratic flags of the end of monarchical absolutism, agrarian revolution and self-determination of the peoples as a necessary stage for the socialist revolution. With the entry into the political arena of the peasantry, in the Revolution of 1905, he masterfully establishes the need for the “revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of workers and peasants”. He defends, moreover, that the proletariat, supported by its own armed force, should dispute the leadership of the democratic revolution, composing the revolutionary government and aiming to bring the democratic revolution to the end in order to advance towards socialism.
The February 1917 revolution was the realization of this brilliant Bolshevik line. The monarchy was overthrown, the Soviets of workers, soldiers and peasants were established, but, still with a lot of weight from the Menshevik positions, did not seize Power, on the contrary, they started to support a provisional government hegemonized by the liberal bourgeoisie in composition with monarchical elements. Lenin then showed that one should not participate in this provisional government; but, rather, advance towards the Socialist Revolution with the conquest of all Power to the Soviets. And this is what happened, in October, with the Great Socialist Revolution, the Party seized Power in the insurrection of Petrograd and handed it over to the All-Russian Congress of Soviets. For the first time in history, in a complete way, the dictatorship of the proletariat initiated.
The Trotskyist theory contrary to the democratic stage in the Russian revolution was formulated in 1905, borrowing the formulations of another opportunist, Parvus. With the triumph of the Socialist Revolution in October, Trotsky will seek to falsify history, denying the importance of the February democratic revolution and shamelessly claiming that in October his rotten theory of permanent revolution was confirmed. In his attempt to deform Leninism, Trotsky says that Lenin belatedly realized the correctness of his theory and that before April 1917, Bolshevik tactics were identical to Menshevik tactics:
“Here it is suitable to remember that the official social democratic program was still at that time common to the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks, that the practical tasks of the democratic revolution looked the same on paper to both parties” 38
And then:
“According to Lenin, their joint uprising against the old society must, if victorious, lead to the establishment of the ‘democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry’: This formula is now repeated in the Communist International as a sort of supra-historical dogma, with no attempt to analyze the living historical experiences of the last quarter-century as though we had not been witnesses and participants in the Revolution of 1905, the February Revolution of 1917, and finally the October Revolution. Such a historical analysis, however, is all the more necessary because never in history has there been a regime of the ‘democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry’: In 1905, it was a question with Lenin of a strategical hypothesis still to be verified by the actual course of the class struggle.” 39
Blatant forgery! The Bolshevik line was victorious, because the February revolution was fulfilled as a democratic revolution. If it weren’t, there wouldn’t be enough forces to overthrow the monarchy; Furthermore, it took all the experience of 1917 to make the socialist revolution possible, which would have been defeated if it had been immediate. The revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasants did exist, but it was not realized in the provisional government, as predicted in the theses of 1905, but in the Soviets since February. However, the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries refused to recognize it and preferred, in their indifference, to support the bourgeoisie and English imperialism, strengthening the counter-revolutionary Provisional Government. And the struggle in this body of Power, the Soviets, was decisive, as the battle was fought there to achieve a solid alliance between proletarians and peasants (and soldiers, who were poor peasants in their vast majority). An alliance that began with the peasantry in general and throughout the course of the socialist revolution relied centrally on the poor peasantry. This is demonstrated by the precious assessment of the two revolutions of 1917, made by the great Lenin:
“First, with the ‘whole’ of the peasants against the monarchy, against the landowners, against medievalism (and to that extent the revolution remains bourgeois, bourgeois-democratic). Then, with the poor peasants, with the semi-proletarians, with all the exploited, against capitalism, including the rural rich, the kulaks, the profiteers, and to that extent the revolution becomes a socialist one. To attempt to raise an artificial Chinese Wall between the first and second, to separate them by anything else than the degree of preparedness of the proletariat and the degree of its unity with the poor peasants, means to distort Marxism dreadfully, to vulgarize it, to substitute liberalism in its place.” 40
Leninism established the relationship between the democratic revolution and the socialist revolution on a new level, demonstrating the need and possibility of transforming the first into the second, not through the artificial negation of the stages of this process, but through its implementation in facts. Lenin summarizes the issue this way:
“The direct and immediate object of the revolution in Russia was a bourgeois-democratic one, namely, to destroy the survivals of medievalism and sweep them away completely, to purge Russia of this barbarism, of this shame, and to remove this immense obstacle to all culture and progress in our country. (…) Both the anarchists and the petty-bourgeois democrats (i.e., the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries, who are the Russian counterparts of that international social type) have talked and are still talking an incredible lot of nonsense about the relation between the bourgeois-democratic revolution and the socialist (that is, proletarian) revolution.” 41
And also:
“But in order to consolidate the achievements of the bourgeois-democratic revolution for the peoples of Russia, we were obliged to go farther; and we did go farther. We solved the problems of the bourgeois-democratic revolution in passing, as a ‘by-product’ of our main and genuinely proletarian-revolutionary, socialist activities. (…) We said—and proved it by deeds—that bourgeois-democratic reforms are a by-product of the proletarian, i.e., of the socialist revolution.” 42
As the great Stalin concludes:
“(…) the idea of the growing over of the bourgeois-democratic revolution into the socialist revolution, propounded by Lenin as long ago as 1905, is one of the forms of the embodiment of Marx’s theory of permanent revolution.” 43
In the third stage of development of Marxism, Maoism, the question acquires its classical and higher form. Chairman Mao establishes that the transformation of the democratic revolution into a socialist revolution corresponds to the uninterrupted passage from the new democratic stage to the socialist stage of the revolution in semi-colonial and semi-feudal countries. He shows how in the course of the democratic revolution, socialist tasks are already being carried out, notably the confiscation of big local and foreign capital (imperialism), its nationalization in the hands of the new revolutionary state, that is, the complete socialization of the means of production controlled by imperialism and by the local big bourgeoisie. Furthermore, he formulates that in the course of the new democratic revolution a new form of dictatorship emerges, the joint dictatorship of the revolutionary classes, a transitional form indispensable for the proletarian revolution in semi-colonial countries, and, with the conquest of Power throughout the country, the democratic stage is concluded transforming the class nature of the State into a dictatorship of the proletariat:
“However, for a certain historical period, this form [dictatorship of the proletariat] is not suitable for the revolutions in the colonial and semi-colonial countries. During this period, therefore, a third form of state must be adopted in the revolutions of all colonial and semi-colonial countries, namely, the new-democratic republic. This form suits a certain historical period and is therefore transitional; nevertheless, it is a form which is necessary and cannot be dispensed with”. 44
Note that it is Chairman Mao who establishes the universality of the new democratic revolution in colonial and semi-colonial countries; and not in such semi-feudal countries as the UOC (MLM) falsifies, while reviving the Trotskyist “Permanent Revolution” with a “Maoist” stamp. This universality is neither the work of Chairman Gonzalo, nor the “dogmatism” of the ICL, it is the purest Maoism. Once again, in the history of the ICM, the question of the relationship between the proletarian revolution and the democratic revolution is placed on the agenda, now dividing the camps with those who, denying the fundamental theory of Maoism, claim to call themselves Maoists. In this sense, we consider the observations on this issue raised by the CPI(Maoist) in their greetings to the formation of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Nepal to be very correct:
“Our party believes that only by fulfilling the New Democratic tasks in relentless struggle in the path of Protracted People’s War against imperialism, comprador bureaucratic capitalism and feudalism in the base and superstructure, it can successfully advance in the direction of achieving new democracy and genuine people’s democracy in semi-colonial, semi-feudal systems in like Nepal and India.” 45
We consider this statement made by the CPI(Maoist) to be very correct, as it addresses the central political issue in the current two-line struggle in the ICM: the problem of the validity of the new democratic revolution. The ideological foundation of this question is the recognition that the theory of the New Democratic Revolution, which departed from the Leninist theses of the revolution in colonial/semi-colonial countries, constitutes one of the main developments of Marxism achieved by Chairman Mao in the course of the Chinese Revolution. This problem, therefore, is related to the question of the definition of Maoism, of what is the universal content of Chairman Mao’s contributions, of whether the new democratic revolution is a specificity for the Chinese Revolution or whether it is a fundamental universal contribution of Maoism. for the revolution of semi-colonial countries, which are the vast majority of countries in the world and whose populations correspond to the overwhelming majority of the popular masses on Earth.
In their criticism of the UMIC46 process, to which there is already a response from the ICL 47 itself, the CPI(Maoist), when dealing with the development of the ideology of the international proletariat, highlights that: “Mao Zedong Thought (…) was established as a new and higher stage in the development of proletarian ideology at the time of the Ninth Congress of the CCP” 48 then they highlight that it was Chairman Gonzalo “the first to formulate Maoism as the third, new and higher stage of Marxism”. We agree with the CPI(Maoist) that the Ninth Congress of the CPC had great historical importance for the establishment of Maoism. In this Congress, the left consolidates the achievements reached during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, the reestablishment at a higher level of the definition adopted in the VII Congress of 1945, in which it was defined that the CPC was guided by “Marxism-Leninism and the ideas of Mao Zedong”. This definition had been revoked by the right in 1956, at the VIII Party Congress.
The definitions of the IX Congress, highlighted by the CPI(Maoist), for example, advance in several issues such as the establishment of the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie as the principal contradiction, at the internal level, of socialist construction; the defense of the GPCR, the need for a two-line struggle for the development and forging of the communist party. However, it does not highlight, for example, as is explicit in Chairman Mao, in On New Democracy, the universality of the new democratic revolution for semi-colonial countries. Therefore, the definition of Maoism made by Chairman Gonzalo, in 1988, during the People’s War in Peru, is not restricted to naming the development of the ideology as a new stage. Chairman Gonzalo’s main contribution to the ICM was the definition of the content of this new, third and higher stage that is Maoism.
This is a profound ideological question from which important political errors can result. As is made clear in the formulations of the UOC (MLM), which proclaims, for example, that Maoism is a third stage, but which is against the universality of the New Democratic Revolution for semi-colonial countries. The definition of Maoism, established by Chairman Gonzalo, leaves no room for deviations like this, as he establishes that Maoism is a leap in the three component parts of Marxism, as a unit, because Chairman Mao established the law of contradiction as the sole fundamental in Marxist philosophy; in political economy, he gave great development to socialist construction and laid the foundations for the theory of bureaucratic capitalism; and in scientific socialism he resolved the question of the New Democratic Revolution, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and established the theory of Protracted People’s War.
The delimitation of the universal aspect, in each of the stages of the ideology of the international proletariat, is not a simple matter. Highlighting universality in the theoretical and practical work of Marx, Lenin and Chairman Mao corresponds precisely to the respective Definition of what Marxism, Leninism and Maoism are. The definition of each of these stages in the formulation and development of the ideology of the international proletariat corresponded precisely to the clear delimitation of its universality, as well as to the complete exposition of each of them as a doctrine. The Definition, therefore, encompasses a synthesis, but is not reduced to it.
In the current two-line struggle in the ICM, departing from the formulations on Mao Tse-tung thought made at the IX Congress of the CPC seems insufficient to us. After all, to say, as the UOC (MLM) does, that the new democratic revolution is not valid for all semi-colonial countries is to relegate Maoism to the experience of the Chinese Revolution, it is to reduce it, therefore, to the condition of a guiding thought and not a new stage in ideology. This is what the UOC (MLM) does, for example, when they compare the 1980 and 1984 RIM Declarations:
“[in the Declaration of 1980] it was already accepted that in some dependent countries, capitalism had achieved a good development and they were no longer semi-feudal (…). In the ‘RIM Declaration’ (1984), there is a revert in regards of the previous point of view to generalize: ‘Still in the predominantly capitalist oppressed countries (…) it is still necessary in general that revolution goes through an anti-imperialist democratic stage before being able to initiate the socialist revolution.’
This way there was a revert, as the concrete analysis of the concrete situation, the living soul of Marxism, is replaced by mechaniscism, that aims to bring the conditions of 1938 China to current conditions, as if capitalism had stopped, as if time had frozen.” 49
For the UOC (MLM), strictly speaking, the new democratic revolution was only valid in China in the 1930s. Today, it would only be valid in so-called “semi-feudal countries”, which no one knows exactly what they would be. For Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, since the Manifesto of the Communist Party to the latest works of Chairman Mao, the relationship between the proletarian revolution and the democratic revolution has always been a matter of paramount importance. The new democratic revolution uninterrupted toward socialism is an inseparable part of the world proletarian revolution. Denying the validity of the new democratic revolution is falling into the rottenest revisionism.
3- Chairman Gonzalo generalizes and develops the Maoist theory of bureaucratic capitalism
By defining Maoism as a new, third and higher stage of Marxism, Chairman Gonzalo bases the universality of the New Democratic Revolution, for all colonial and semi-colonial countries in the world, on the generalization and development of the Maoist theory of bureaucratic capitalism. The defense of the Maoist theory of bureaucratic capitalism was made quite adequately by the PCC-FR, in 2022, in the important document Answer to the Statement of the Communist Workers’ Union (UOC) on the Proposal of the Coordinating Committee for the Unified Maoist International Conference (UMIC). As this is an essential issue to defend the validity of the New Democratic Revolution, as an indispensable part of the World Proletarian Revolution, today, we will address, albeit quickly, this decisive contribution by Chairman Gonzalo to the ideology of the international proletariat.
Taking Maoism as a unit, Chairman Gonzalo synthesizes and applies the theory of bureaucratic capitalism formulated by Chairman Mao to the Peruvian reality, developing it in numerous aspects and generalizing it to the conditions of all oppressed countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Bureaucratic capitalism is part of the world imperialist system and the formulation of its theory by Chairman Mao and its robust development by Chairman Gonzalo is a continuation of the theory of imperialism by Lenin and of Capital by Marx and Engels.
Bureaucratic capitalism is defined by Chairman Gonzalo as “capitalism that imperialism engenders in backward countries, tied to feudality that is obsolete and subjected to imperialism that is the last phase of capitalism, which do not serve the majority but the imperialists, the big bourgeoisie and the landowners” and, departing from Chairman Mao, summarizes its basic features:
“1) Bureaucratic capitalism is capitalism that imperialism engenders in the backward countries, which includes the capital of big landowners, the big bankers and magnates of the big bourgeoisie; 2) exert exploitation over the proletariat, the peasantry and the petty-bourgeoisie and restricts middle bourgeoisie; 3) it goes through a process in which bureaucratic capitalism combines with state power and materializes state, comprador and feudal, monopoly capitalism, which results in the first moment it develops as big non-state monopoly capital and in a second moment, when combined with state power, develops into state monopoly capitalism; 4) it ripens the conditions for the democratic revolution to reach the apex of its development; and 5) confiscating bureaucratic capitalism is key to carry out the democratic revolution and decisive to pass towards socialist revolution.” 50
Therefore, bureaucratic capitalism is diametrically opposed to national conformation, preventing the liberation of the productive forces, exploiting the working classes of the city and countryside and the petty bourgeoisie, restricting the middle bourgeoisie and oppressing the entire people and carrying out the subjugation of the nation, serving imperialism to control the economic process, whether in colonial or semi-colonial countries; and, tied to latifundium, it maintains the obsolete forms of semi-feudal, feudal and even other more backward exploitation relations, which are perpetuated in society through the evolution of its forms, whether through state and non-state, associative or non-associative or forms mixed from these. This unravels all the revisionist, Castroist, Guevarist, Trotskyist and other theses of “dependent capitalism”, which support imperialist domination and the evolution of feudal forms to either change the character of the revolution in the dominated countries by predicating “socialist revolution now”, or leave aside their revolutionary phraseology and openly defend capitulation and pacifist reformism to integrate with the old State under the title of “cold accumulation for the socialist revolution”. In fact, trafficking in the interests of the popular masses, riding on their movement through opportunist organizations, electoralism and parliamentary cretinism, in the conquest of “profitable places” in the structure of the old State.
In the study of Peruvian society and its economic-social formation, Chairman Gonzalo based the three moments of the process of bureaucratic capitalism in which it 1) begins and develops, 2) deepens and 3) enters into a general crisis; a process whose course takes place in cycles with gradients of “temporary recoveries, but each new cycle starts from a lower point than the previous one”.
Chairman Gonzalo put forward that the big bourgeoisie is divided into two fractions, the comprador bourgeoisie and the bureaucratic bourgeoisie: the first is older and intermediate in the export-import processes, develops mainly in the banking and commercial sectors and expresses itself as private capital; The bureaucratic fraction appears when monopoly capital merges with the state, which is its main lever, and is concentrated mainly in industrial sectors. Such differentiation is key, as it arms the proletariat against the siren tale of the opportunist “fronts” that advocates being at the tail of one or another fraction of the big bourgeoisie in their relationship of contend and collusion for the management of the old state.
Studying the process and conditions in which bureaucratic capitalism finds itself is a decisive task to define the character of the revolution in oppressed countries as a new democratic revolution uninterrupted toward socialism, whose content is agrarian, anti-feudal and anti-imperialist and the targets are the three mountains that oppress the people and the nation: imperialism, feudality and bureaucratic capitalism. Such characteristics correspond to the fundamental contradictions that arise in these societies: the contradiction between nation and imperialism; contradiction between the people and bureaucratic capitalism, as a broader expression of the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, in oppressed countries; and the masses-feudality contradiction, as an expression of the contradiction between the mainly poor peasantry and the landlord system. The first and last ones may become principal depending on the phases of the revolution and modify their expressions in its course, but, in general, it is the masses-feudality contradiction that is principal when there is no military invasion by a superpower or imperialist power, being resolved through of the agrarian revolution and, when due to its progress there is an imperialist military invasion, the nation-imperialism contradiction takes principality, the resolution of which occurs through the national liberation or anti-imperialist revolution, as a national war of liberation. The second contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, which manifests itself as the contradiction between the people and bureaucratic capitalism, in turn, changes and becomes principal in the uninterrupted transition of the revolution from a triumphant new democracy with the destruction of all semi-feudality and national liberation toward the socialist revolution, guaranteed by the confiscation of all bureaucratic capital and the destruction of bureaucratic capitalism.
By taking up the study of bureaucratic capitalism, Chairman Gonzalo teaches us to pay close attention not only to the economic base, but also to the ideological, political, legal and cultural superstructure; sees semi-feudality in its complete expression throughout society, from its base in the concentration and monopoly of land ownership, in which servile and semi-servile relations arise, even in gamonalism, which expresses the hegemony of big semi-feudal property in politics and mechanism of the State, a factor against which the agrarian revolution is spearheaded; Furthermore, he draws attention to the political aspect of bureaucratic capitalism, which is already born rotten and sick and as it perpetuates itself, the objective conditions for the development and triumph of the revolution mature.
The generalization and development of the theory of bureaucratic capitalism is, therefore, a great contribution of universal validity of Chairman Gonzalo; corresponds to a development of the Marxist political economy that is indispensable for the foundation for the validity of the New Democratic Revolution in all colonial and semi-colonial countries in the world today. In this document, when studying the functioning of the ground rent of peasants and of colonial and semi-colonial countries, in the imperialist phase of capitalist development, we are only adding some economic elements to this great contribution established by Chairman Gonzalo.
4- Two camps delineate, the dividing line is the validity of the New Democratic Revolution for the vast majority of countries and the vast majority of the Earth’s population
The two-line struggle that began last year around the Bases for Discussion, published by the then CUMIC, in preparation for the Unified Maoist International Conference-UMIC, as a product of a long process of struggles and efforts to overcome the dispersion of forces in the ICM and for its unity, has mobilized the Maoist Parties and Organizations in a frank and direct debate, indispensable to impulse the ongoing process, in a way that had not been seen for a long time. Initially, the disagreements centered on philosophical issues and around the contributions of universal validity of Chairman Gonzalo. Holding the UMIC corresponded to the continuity of this two-line struggle between the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Parties and Organizations that founded the ICL and its result, the Political Declaration and the Principles and, as for the organizational matter, the constitution of a Leading Committee, the International Conference as sovereign body the and the Council of Representatives composed of the member Parties and Organizations. The continuity of the two-line struggle after the founding of the ICL, particularly with the document of the UOC (MLM), published in January 2023, and the two issues of the Two-Line Struggle magazine, published by this organization and the PCm Italy, served to clarify that the divergence with the ICL presented in them are not directly related to the issue of Chairman Gonzalo’s contributions, but rather around fundamental theories of Maoism itself, particularly the issue of the validity of the New Democratic Revolution, the importance of the peasantry in the World Proletariat Revolution, the necessary relationship between imperialism and semi-feudality and the weight of the contradiction between oppressed nations and imperialism.
We already knew the position of the UOC (mlm) of denying the underlying semi-feudality in semi-colonial countries and its denial of the validity of the new democratic revolution in the world today. However, as a result of the development of the two-line struggle in the ICM, with the publication of the Two-Line Struggle magazine, 2nd issue, we became aware that this position is also shared by PCm Italy, which in its criticism of the ICL states:
“A dogmatic approach about the “semi-feudal” characteristic of all oppressed countries exists, while some comrades of some of these countries reject this dogmatic approach, on the basis of their own revolutionary experience and analysis (think for example of the Colombian comrades of the UOC MLM; in other countries such as Tunisia, Iran and Nepal, some comrades are moving towards this direction).” 51
According to PCm Italy, there is no semi-feudality in Colombia, Tunisia, Iran or Nepal. In other words, for them, semi-feudality does not exist in any country in the world! They conclude this in the name of anti-dogmatism. However, they simply repeat, with the same words, Bob Avakian’s theses presented at the 1980 Conference, let’s see:
“While a concrete analysis must be made in each country and mechanical tendencies must be avoided with regard to this, it is a general principle that the degree of importance of work in the countryside in building the revolutionary movement is closely linked with the relative size of the peasant population and the extent to which there are pre-capitalist relations in the countryside.” 52
The same cackling of ignorants about the peasant question, of people who have never set foot outside the big cities and are saying that there is no longer semi-feudality in semi-colonial countries. Avakian orphans who join the rats of the ROL, RandC 53 of Peru, who repeat the same argument saying that there is no longer semi-feudality in the Andes and that therefore the revolution there would immediately be socialist. Just like the capitulators of the TKP-ML and MKP, who reject the peasantry as the main force of the new democratic revolution in Turkey, as a justification for the abandonment and betrayal of the People’s War.
The editors of Two-Line Struggle magazine inherit the worst that existed in the RIM, both in relation to the Avakianist-Trotskyist content of their position, and the methods of relations between parties and organizations. On the one hand, they censor a huge part of the CPI(Maoist) document, blatantly cut 6 pages out of 15 and call it “a small mistake”. And they cut out precisely the sections in which the CPI(Maoist) defends the weight of the contradiction between the oppressed nation/people and imperialism, and the encirclement of the city from the countryside in the Protracted People’s War. On the other hand, they do not publish the dozens of pages of the UOC (MLM) article, in which it is suggested that the revolution in India, the Philippines and Brazil would be immediately socialist. They do not publish the excerpts in which they argue that capitalism is developing in the countryside of these countries and sweeping away semi-feudality:
“In brief, the capitalist production in agriculture is mainly carried out for exchange and using wage labor. Whichever are the backward form of exploitation or ground rent, they can only slow down the capitalist transformation in agriculture, but they cannot stop it. Lenin has clearly shown this in the case of Russia and this can also be seen in the context of other countries today, as it is the case in India or Brazil.” 54
The UOC (MLM) transplants Lenin’s analyzes on the development of capitalism in the Russian countryside, made during the time of free competition capitalism, to India and Brazil during the epoch of imperialism; to conclude that both there and here, capitalist relations of production would sweep away semi-feudal relations. What must be swept away is the UOC (MLM)’s nonsense Trotskyist thesis of the progressive tendency of imperialism. As for semi-feudality in the countryside in India and Brazil, only the Protracted People’s War can sweep away their relations. And this is our commitment and concrete practice.
The current two-line struggle in the ICM, which began in 2022, around the holding of the UMIC and the founding of the ICL, clearly drew the line between Maoism and revisionism (in its old and current modalities). Maoists clearly and forcefully maintain that the principal contradiction in the world today is that which oppose oppressed nations and peoples against imperialism. The heroic Palestinian National Resistance, the enormous support expressed by broad masses around the world, fully confirm this truth defended by the Maoists. The only way to resolve this contradiction is the New Democratic Revolution, uninterrupted toward socialism, through the People’s War led by genuine Communist Parties. Therefore, the recognition of the validity of the New Democratic Revolution for all colonial and semi-colonial countries in the world constitutes a clear line of demarcation between Maoism and revisionism. To deny this truth is to fall into the vilest revisionism, it is to abandon the revolutionary path in oppressed countries.
Communists around the world, in addition to recognizing this validity, must assume that the New Democratic Revolution is the main force of the World Proletarian Revolution, because it encompasses the majority of countries and the overwhelming majority of the world’s popular masses. The International Communist Movement encompasses two major currents: the international proletarian movement and the national liberation movement, the first being the leadership and the second the base. Contrary to what Avakianism and other revisionists defend, the international proletarian movement is not only present in imperialist countries, but in all countries in the world. We are in the epoch of imperialism and proletarian revolution, and the Communist Parties in each country constitute the vanguard detachment of the proletariat whose main objective is the conquest of political Power through the Socialist Revolution in the imperialist countries and the New Democratic Revolution in the colonial and semi-colonial countries. The leadership of the international proletarian movement over the national liberation movement is realized in each oppressed country solely through the New Democratic Revolution through the Protracted People’s War. The further the New Democratic Revolutions advance in oppressed countries, the better the conditions will be for the advancement of Socialist Revolutions in imperialist countries.
Upholding and defending the validity of the New Democratic Revolution and mainly applying it through concrete revolutionary practice is a decisive demarcation line between Maoism and revisionism. The leadership of the UOC (MLM) has been openly opposing this issue for years and without rectifying this serious revisionist deviation they will not overcome their isolation from the masses. It will only be left for them to drown down into the swamp of electoralism, reformist and economistic practices. So much so, that this year the leadership of the UOC (mlm) abandoned the boycott of the electoral farce and tried to justify this right-wing position for their activists:
These same considerations are the ones that this year led us to the decision of not making the Anti-Election Policy (…) Voting or not voting at this moment, voting on candidate X or candidate Y, or blank as some propose have no importance.” 55
Defending that the electoral boycott is unimportant, that from the point of view of the politicization of the masses, it makes no difference to vote or boycott the elections, seem to us only preparing the ground to move from an economicist practice to an electoral practice. After all, this is the inevitable result of the abandonment of Maoism and the denial of the validity of the New Democratic Revolution in countries oppressed by imperialism.
Finally, we would like to respond to the low attacks by the UOC (MLM) leadership on the Communist Party of Brazil -P.C.B.
The UOC (MLM) in their criticisms of our Party and the ICL accuse us of being “leftist” and sectarian. However, the general line defended by them maintains that the revolution in most semi-colonial countries, the so-called “oppressed capitalist countries”, would immediately be socialist. For the revolution in their country, they advocate an agrarian program that predicts the “collectivization” of peasant lands. They argue that there is no need for a national revolutionary stage in the people’s war in semi-colonial countries. In practice, they deny the universal validity of the New Democratic Revolution for all semi-colonial countries. Ultimately, they essentially assume several Trotskyist conclusions and are we the “leftists”?
In the two-line struggle that began last year (2022) with the publication of the Bases for Discussion, three Colombian organizations took part in the debates: the Proletarian Power Partisan Organization M-L-M, the Communist Party of Colombia-Red Fraction and the UOC (MLM). All of these Parties and Organizations, to different extents, criticized in some aspects certain propositions contained in the Bases for Discussion, criticisms that were countered by other Parties and Organizations, due to some aspects of the positions of critics of the Bases for Discussion. Of the three organizations in Colombia, only UOC (MLM) refused to participate in the UMIC. Both PPOPMLM and PCC-FR took part in the UMIC and actively participated in the two-line struggle in the Conference sessions. The UOC (MLM) was the only organization in Colombia that abandoned the two-line struggle in its first phase, and are the Parties and Organizations that founded the ICL the sectarian?
The UOC (MLM)’s accusations about “leftism” and sectarianism on the part of the founders of the ICL simply do not stand tall. However, throwing unfounded accusations seems to be becoming a specialty of the leadership of the UOC (MLM). At the end of their long document criticizing the P.C.B. and the founders of the ICL, they launch the following attack against our Party:
“By the way, the second aspect of the incorrect method of the comrades [sectarianism], we had already known about it at a large meeting in Brazil in 2016, to which we were formally invited, but before the presentation of our Proposal for the Formulation of a General Line for the ICM, the leaders of the event incited the treatment of ‘death to revisionism!’ (In parentheses, if the position ‘Gonzalo Thought’, pretends to ‘kill’ revisionism, it means that it has not assimilated the a-b-c of the teachings and practices of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution to fight it).
Despite the grotesque and humiliating treatment received in Brazil – except for the workers’ comrades whose hospitality was exemplary and internationalist – we did not denounce it publicly, (…) hoping for some reconsideration from the hosts, who years later spoke with comrades from another organization about a self-criticism, which we never received directly; (…) Parodying the words of Engels, we have the tough hide to withstand the stings of our own comrades in struggle; neither in Brazil 2016, nor now, are we intimidated by their grievances.” 56
And this repulsive attack was, regrettably, supported by leaders of the Committee for the Construction of the Maoist Communist Party of Galicia, to the extent that, in their position on the founding of the ICL, they make a point of referring to this low attack by the UOC (MLM) to our party, including doing so in a generic and vague way, as can be seen:
“If in all the international contacts we have had within the ICM, all the organizations have always treated us with great courtesy and comradeship, the same has not happened to UOC (mlm), being subjected to an unfair treatment for an organization that dedicates efforts to contribute to the strengthening of the ICM.” 57
The UOC (MLM) wants to play the victim in the low objective of disqualifying the P.C.B., failing to tell the truth by stating that they were treated in a “grotesque and humiliating” way by the P.C.B. in Brazil and, even with cheap demagoguery that “except for the workers’ comrades whose hospitality was exemplary and internationalist”. What meaning would such an event have if it was the P.C.B. who invited the UOC (MLM), as evidenced by its own words in the document we are now referring to. They also lie when they state that they did not publicly denounce said treatment – which for the P.C.B. would not be and is not, in itself, any problem –, because they not only did so, but also stated that we would have presented a “self-criticism” to another organization of Colombia, without mentioning which one, about this alleged attack. To the leadership of the PCC-FR, who in correspondence informed the P.C.B. that they had received such an accusation from the UOC (MLM), and to whom we responded that, in all the facts that occurred in the events of 2016 in Brazil, the leadership of the P.C.B. did not have any information of such an occurrence and that they considered such an accusation absurd. The leadership of the UOC (MLM) did not even present us with any criticism about this alleged attack; Neither their delegation present at the events in Brazil nor subsequently did their leadership did so by correspondence.
In fact, we only knew about this supposed attack through the aforementioned correspondence from the PCC-FR to our Party, and then through a document published on the UOC (MLM) web portal that criticized the joint declaration celebrating the bicentenary of the birth of the great Karl Marx, in 2018, which the P.C.B. signed; and in the document that is the subject of our present assessment. Our party would never demean the ideological-political struggle, just as we would never hold a public controversy over something so low. Also, our party did not make any self-criticism about this, because we do not treat any organization, no matter how great our differences, in a “grotesque and humiliating” way. We now see, with the persistence of the leadership of the UOC (mlm) in this treacherous attack on the P.C.B., that their methods also include the subjectivism of playing with words and in a deceitful way. Who do you intend to deceive? To the ICM or your own bases?
In 2016, shortly after the aforementioned event, the UOC (MLM)’s public assessment of the activity was opposite:
“The celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was, in addition to well organized, a revolutionary and internationalist event. (…) Also, the presence of children, youth and women was noticeable – the majority Afro-descendants – who developed amid the struggle with great revolutionary conviction. There were also experienced agitators who provided livelihood to the event. The revolutionary convictions, the state of spirit of the ones present, the firmness of the cadres
that are continuing the revolutionary process in Brazil, makes it possible to trust that imperialist capitalism will not last much longer in its process of agony because the forces which will bury it are ripe. (…) For the communists in Colombia, it was an honor to participate in the event.” 58
The UOC (MLM), on the same activity, makes two antagonistic public assessments, in 2016, extolling its holding; in 2018, in the same press organization they say that they were “treated like dogs”, attacks that they repeat in their 2023 document. Which of the two assessments expresses what actually happened and what is the true position of the leadership of the UOC (MLM)?
Such insistence on the part of the leadership of the UOC (mlm) to repeat lies forces us to clarify the facts. Their delegation was in Brazil, invited like all the others, to participate in the three scheduled activities: a Seminar on Bureaucratic Capitalism, a closed-door meeting only of delegations from M-L-M Parties and Organizations, to debate the meaning of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (of a single day, lasting 12 hours) and a mass political-cultural act. In all of them, their delegation was given the same intervention time as all other Parties and Organizations present. As the UOC (MLM) itself state in their attack on our Party, their delegation was able to speak freely with the militants of the revolutionary movement and its mass bases present at the two semi-open events. In which, without any restrictions, they distributed photocopies of their Proposal for the Formulation of a General Line for the ICM. What is “grotesque and humiliating” about that? Did the UOC (MLM) delegation lack decent accommodation? Were you not provided with adequate food? Were you not allowed to speak at the events? Were you denied treatment equal to that given to other guests? No, absolutely none of this happened!
What the leadership of the UOC (MLM) does not report is that, when their delegation was called to form the table for the political-cultural event, they did not present themselves or even deign to give any explanation. Was it because of discomfort at having seen in the debates at previous events that the majority of Parties and Organizations present were defenders of the contributions of Chairman Gonzalo to the World Proletarian Revolution or because they were offended by the harshness of the clashes over bureaucratic capitalism? The leadership of the UOC (mlm) launches all sorts of epithets seeking to discredit the Maoist Parties and Organizations that defend the contributions of universal validity of Chairman Gonzalo. Would it be the case, then, that the leadership of the UOC (MLM) is very “fierce” when it comes to making their criticisms and is too sensitive when it comes to receiving them?
Let’s see, of all the moments of those events, the only one from which we could deduce a possible cause for the allegations of “grotesque and humiliating” treatment by our Party to the UOC (MLM) delegation, however absurd this interpretation may be, was in the context of the debates on bureaucratic capitalism, the fact that many of the participants echoed the slogan of “death to revisionism”. If the leadership of the UOC (MLM) understood this as an “offense” directed at their organization, when in the context of harsh debates on Bureaucratic Capitalism, the blows were frontal and relentless against revisionism and all opportunism, we can only say that it served as a cap to their head, it is a problem of the delegation and leadership of the UOC (MLM), this is a slogan raised in any activity of Maoist revolutionaries. The leadership of the P.C.B. is the one who states that understanding this slogan as aimed toward your Organization is a very defensive attitude for those who point out against so many Marxist-Leninist-Maoist parties, including those who sustain the people’s war in a harsh struggle, and accuse, as do the Avakianists and Trotskyists, of being dogmatic, who do not depart from the concrete analysis of the current concrete situation, that is, who violate the very soul of Marxism, due to defending the new democratic revolution through protracted people’s war in oppressed countries. If it is not the case that they put on the cap on their heads, we add to what was said by Engels and cited in your 2023 document, the teaching of Chairman Mao, who at a conference of cadres of the CPC (1962), as if foreseeing the radicalization that would come from the class struggle in the party between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, between Marxists and the capitalist roaders, between left and right, he called on them to “thicken their scalps” to prepare themselves to go through the storms. Because, contrary to what is said, your hide is still very delicate.
A leader of the CCCPM from Galicia was present at this activity and we were very surprised by the support he gave to the attacks of the UOC (MLM), acting in a dubious manner without openly criticizing the P.C.B. In the two-line struggle, centrism serves to spread the confusion generated by the right and to nourish it. We demand from the CCCPM of Galicia a clear position, saying whether or not the accusation of the UOC (MLM) against our Party is true, without any tergiversation, whether or not they were treated in a “grotesque and humiliating” way by our Party when they were in Brazil. The comrades of the CCCPM of Galicia were treated in a proletarian way when they were in Brazil just like it has been with others, and they reciprocated in the same way when a delegation of Brazilian revolutionaries was in Galicia. Communists must contribute in raising the level of the two-line struggle and as witness to the supposed “unfair treatment” to the UOC (MLM), they must help to clarify the issue and not nourish lies.
To conclude, we address the glorious ICM, the heroic Communist Party of Peru – PCP and Communist Party of Turkey/Marxist-Leninist – TKP/ML, founders of the ICL, aiming at the shining people’s wars led by their Parties, we have worked hard to promote the proletarian internationalism and for developing the revolution in our country. In the obligation and responsibility imposed on us by the contingencies of the polemic, we found ourselves obliged to write at length about subjects that are known to all Marxists-Leninists-Maoists, aiming to elevate the ideological struggle to the level of a two-line struggle. We also address the heroic CPI(Maoist) and CPP, torches of the world proletarian revolution, we salute the public positions of the fraternal parties and we publicly reaffirm our decision to impulse the old relations between our Parties, relations that, unfortunately, were interrupted by contingencies of the revolutionary class struggle and for no other reasons, aiming to take further steps towards completely overcoming the dispersion in the ICM and for its solid unity. Particularly, to the CPI(Maoist) and the CPP, as stated in their assessments of the ICL and their criticisms of the Political Declaration and the Principles, the P.C.B. reaffirms its commitment to continue debates and clarifications with the CPI(Maoist) in a “in a bilateral, direct and organized manner”.
We also address the other Parties and Organizations participating and supporting the ICL. In this document we sought to correspond to the extremely high level of the discussions and two-line struggles held at the Unified Maoist International Conference. We salute all of you for the intense campaigns and the resolute and tireless revolutionary work carried out during the course of this year, driven by the vigorous struggle for the future reconstitution of the immortal Communist International.
Finally, we address the leadership of UOC (MLM), we believe in the two-line struggle, in criticism-self-criticism-transformation. We sought to respond here, from a theoretical and ideological point of view, to the erroneous positions taken by your organization, we seriously study your documents and seek to extract important lessons from them. We hope that the present two-line struggle will contribute to the rectification of these errors, to impulsing the reconstitution of the Communist Party of Colombia, to the development of the revolution in this important country in Latin America. The destiny of the people of our countries is inevitably intertwined in the struggle against the common enemy, imperialism, principally Yankee. The bloodthirsty hordes of this colossus with feet of clay, sooner than later, will be buried between the Amazon rainforest and the Andes Mountain range and the North American people will bury it forever and ever. We are certain that under the leadership of their respective Communist Parties, the Colombian and Brazilian proletariat and peasantry will unite in this common task, in the service of the World Proletarian Revolution!
Long live Marxism-Leninism-Maoism!
Down with revisionism and all kinds of opportunism!
Long live the invincible People’s War!
Long live proletarian internationalism!
Long live the World Proletarian Revolution!
Long live the 130 years from the birth of Chairman Mao Zedong!
Long live the International Communist League!
Communist Party of Brazil – P.C.B.
Central Committee
58 Footnotes
