Rebellion Is Justified!: September 2006

Friday, September 15

A Sober Look at the Situation of the Peru Revolution and Its Needs

(The following article is from A World to Win, issue 32, recently published. It assesses the struggle within the Communist Party of Peru following the capture of Party Chairman Gonzalo, Abimael Guzman. Importantly, it acknowledges that Comrade Gonzalo is the author of the line proposing a "struggle for a peace agreement," and recently calling for a "political solution to the problems derived from the internal war.")

The trial of Abimael Guzman (Chairman Gonzalo) and 23 other accused leaders of the Communist Party of Peru (PCP) for “aggravated terrorism against the state" that began in September 2005 is continu­ing as of this writing, May 2006. Yet according to both the government and the defence, there has never been any doubt that its only purpose is to have Peru's current civilian courts confirm the convictions decreed, in most of the cases, by hooded military officers acting in great haste and secret in 1992. In advance of this new trial, various officials promised that the 70-year-old main defendant would never leave prison alive. The candidates in Peru's current presi­dential electoral campaign seem to be competing as to who can pledge the worst fate for the imprisoned PCP leadership.

This is nothing but a flagrant act of revenge by the protectors of the old order. A mass upsurge, especially one on the scale of the revolutionary war in Peru that began in 1980, cannot be labeled terrorism. No one who believes in justice can accept this attempt by the US-backed Peruvian government to punish Chairman Gonzalo and others for having waged a people's war, an armed struggle deeply rooted in and reliant upon the country's scorned, poorest masses. That is what this trial and the inevitable sentencing are about, no matter what the current views of the defendants may be, and that must be opposed.
This frenzied lust for vengeance has a calculated political purpose:

The conditions for the vast majority of Peru's people are still desperate and outbursts of mass anger and even violence show that they have not become resigned to their fate. The waning of the people's war cannot be explained mainly by any change in their circumstances. It's not hard to understand why the country's rulers want to crush and criminalise the very idea of mass armed rebellion and revolutionary change.

In the years since Chairman Gonzalo's arrest in 1992, the people's war has suffered very serious set­backs. The level and geographic extent of the fighting has declined dramatically, especially since the late 1990s. It is not clear how many if any Open People's Committees - the rev­olutionary political power of the peas­ants the party established in the coun­tryside during the high tide of the peo­ple's war - and how many clandestine People's Committees survive.

In December 2005, around dates when the PCP historically carried out major military operations, for the first time in several years there were suc­cessful ambushes of police patrols in the Huallaga jungle and Ayacucho. The first area has been considered a stronghold of PCP forces that seek a ''political solution" to end the war ­and threatened armed action to force the government to grant amnesty as a "way out" of the conflict.(1) The sec­ond has been considered a focus of those who have sought to continue the war. Were these attacks coordinat­ed, as the authorities claim? Since both actions were carried out in the name of Chairman Gonzalo, it is very difficult to understand which of these two contradictory political goals they were meant to serve. There have been no major political statements clarify­ing the party's political orientation for years.

What makes this situation all the more complicated is that Chairman Gonzalo's conduct in the course of this current trial has added even greater weight to the serious and con­curring evidence from many different sources over the years that he is very likely to have been the source of the call to end the war. How the PCP faced this situation has been central to the development of the current state of affairs.

Chairman Gonzalo was captured in September 1992, as the people's war seemed to be surging forward. But an even greater blow to the Party was yet to come. In October 1993 Peru's US-backed strongman Alberto Fujimori triumphantly announced that Abimael Guzman had written him a letter asking for negotiations b end the people's war. Afterwards he released a video of the chairman and Elena Iparraguirre (a top party leader known as Comrade Miriam, Chairman Gonzalo's companion) reading the letters. Still photos showed the two flanked by other prisoners, some known to be prominent leaders as well.

The party's Central Committee comprising those party leaden remaining free, rejected this call as a "Right Opportunist Line" (ROL) "What goes against principles cannot be accepted," the party said, adding. "It is an international communist norm that one cannot lead from inside prison." But they said more than that: The whole thing was a "hoax" concocted by the regime in collaboration with the US and a "black grouplet" of renegade impris­oned (and now expelled) party mem­bers. The idea that Chairman Gonzalo could be associated with it was a "plot", part of US-sponsored "low intensity warfare" against the people's war. (2) The man who looked like Gonzalo, the party told people, was an actor.

Any revolutionary party would risk being shattered if its chair tried to reverse previous positions touch­ing on basic questions of orientation and strategic concepts and advocated abandoning the revolutionary war. This was even more the case for the PCP. At the core of the party's histor­ical identity was the concept of jefatura, the idea that Gonzalo was more than the chairman of the party's Central Committee, a jefe (literally chief, but here meant to designate a special category of leader) who played a role not only through the party but over and above it. Party members swore their unconditional subordination to him personally. Now the man who had led the launching and development of the people's war seemed to be telling the party to struggle for a peace accord with the Fujimori government to bring the war to an end. In return for such an agreement, it was argued, the party should dissolve the People's Committees, and disband the army led by the party.

The Central Committee's "solu­tion" to the problem, the idea that it was all a "hoax", might have seemed like the only way out to those leaders determined not to surrender. But in fact, this idea turned out to be a trap. It worked against the party's ability to persist in the people's war for two reasons. First, because, if there was certainly unclarity at the beginning as to the circumstances of the call for peace accords, there was never real evidence that it was a "hoax". How could continuing the war be sus­tained on the basis of telling party members to shut their eyes as Chairman Gonzalo's call for peace accords seemed more and more like­ly to be the reality? Second, this approach tried to avoid the problem of analysing and defeating the argu­ments being given for why it was necessary to end the people's war.

Chairman Gonzalo and the Peace Accords

The strongest argument for the "hoax" idea was that the calls for peace accords really did go against what Chairman Gonzalo had previously stood for. Shortly after his cap­ture, when put in an animal cage to be presented to the media and a howling pack of police and other reactionaries, he mocked their tri­umphalism. The arrest was nothing more than a "bend in the road" of the people's war, he said, shouting to be heard over the roaring motors of a hovering military helicopter. He called for the party to persist. (3) Was it really true, however, that Chairman Gonzalo could never change his thinking and come to a different con­clusion? Increasingly, the declared impossibility that such a thing could happen became the main line of reasoning. Tautologically (a circular form of argument in which the con­clusion is taken as the starting point), any evidence to the contrary was dis­credited because given this impossi­bility, it couldn't possibly be true.

When the video came out, it was natural not just to accept it without examination, given its source. Then Chairman GonzaIo's relatives abroad reported that the Fujimori regime, for its own reasons, had let him and Iparraguirre telephone them and argue at length for why he believed that the peace accords were neces­sary. This could not be ignored or dismissed with the circular con­tention that since the relatives became supporters of the peace accords, they must have invented the phone calls to justify their stand.

The same reasoning was used to reject a political interpretation of an event that for many people turned the possibility that Chairman Gonzalo was behind the ROL into a strong probability: the "about face" of Margie Clavo (known as· Comrade Nancy), a member of PCP's central leadership who along with Oscar Ramirez (Comrade Feliciano, who assumed party leadership after Gonzalo's capture), was a key leader of the opposition to the peace accords line. When she was briefly hauled before the media in handcuffs after her arrest in 1995, she was defi­ant, shouting "Persist, persist, per­sist!" in the people's war. Yet six months later she appeared on televi­sion again, telling an interviewer that she had been taken to talk to Chairman Gonzalo and that he had convinced her of the necessity of the accords. She had agreed to this broadcast, she said, so that she could make public self-criticism for her role in leading the Central Committee to persist in the war instead of immediately accepting Chairman Gonzalo's appeal.(4)

Ramirez, captured in 1999, was put in a cell next to Chairman Gonzalo. He also said that Gonzalo argued with him for the peace accords line, although Ramirez's conclusion was not the same as Clavo's. In a letter to Peru's president and in court in May 2004, he said he had decided that Peru's present "democracy is the best system" and that it had been wrong to launch a revolutionary war in the first place, criticising Chairman Gonzalo more for that rather than for calling a halt to it.(5) Comrade Artemio, who suc­ceeded Feliciano as party leader and head of the forces that wanted to per­sist in the war, later turned into a staunch supporter of the ROL even though he remained free. He said that Chairman Gonzalo had talked to him from prison, over a radio transceiver provided to Gonzalo by the authori­ties, and won him to seeing that the war had to be brought to an end.(6) Artemio was reported to have explained that no one can claim that he and others had not tried to main­tain the people's war, even though it was impossible.

All these party leaders had several things in common. When they had one understanding of the possibility and need of continuing the war, they acted bravely in defence of revolu­tion, and when they were convinced of a different understanding, they acted differently. When the call to end the people's war first came out, they argued that the call attributed to Chairman Gonzalo was a hoax and that the war could and should continue and that that was his real position. After speaking to him, they concluded that the war could not and should a not continue because that was Gonzalo's real position after all. (The important difference is that Ramirez [Feliciano] became a self-described anti-communist, while the others continued to argue in the name of Maoism.) Chairman Gonzalo's per­sonal involvement in the ROL is the most likely explanation of why the party's entire known central leader­ship turned against the continuation of the people's war.

Although they pale in compari­son with what the actions of these party leaders have told us, there are other indications relating to public and private statements by prominent figures and others, including Iparraguirre's mother (who has had regular contact with her daughter and at times Chairman Gonzalo since 1993) and GonzaIo's lawyer Manuel Fajardo, who has visited him often since 2000. Alfredo Crespo, the lawyer who defended Chairman Gonzalo before a military tribunal in 1992 and was punished with almost 14 years in prison in retaliation, joined Gonzalo's defence team in December 2005, shortly after he was released. He explained, "I have decided to accept the defence of Dr Abimael Guzman because Shining Path, also known as the Communist Party of Peru, now has a new politi­cal line. It stands for national recon­ciliation and a political solution to the problems derived from the war."(7)

What is remarkable is not the ever-accumulating body of facts but the stubbornness with which they have been continually dismissed by some people.

Chairman Gonzalo's recent courtroom appearances do not con­tradict his role in arguing for a Peace Accord. At the televised opening session of his second trial in 2004, a public event witnessed by more than a hundred journalists, Chairman Gonzalo embraced all but one of his co-defendants, including Clavo - all publicly identified with the peace accords line. (The exception was Ramirez.) Then he led them in standing together, raising their fist and chanting, slowly and deliberately, while the authorities frantically tried to restore order, "Long live the Communist Party of Peru! Glory to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism! Glory to the Peruvian people! Long live the heroes of the people's war!"

Nothing in these chants is incon­sistent with the ROL. This courtroom gesture, which a leader of Chairman Gonzalo's calibre must have carefully thought out in advance, could not have contrasted more with the cage speech he gave in far more difficult circumstances. He failed to utter the one word that would have demarcated between the two lines in the party, the word "Persist!", the word that Clavo had once shouted when she had only seconds to make her views known.(8)

His stand at his current trial is no different. Although this time inde­pendent filming has been prohibited to avoid letting Chairman Gonzalo create another fiasco for the regime, a continuous audio feed is available to journalists. There have been many reporters in the courtroom itself on key occasions, although after nine months the media in general is no longer covering it much. Chairman Gonzalo's courtroom strategy, his two lawyers have explained, is to refuse to recognise the legitimacy of this trial, maintain silence, await the inevitable conviction, and hope for an appeal before the Inter-American Human Rights Court in Costa Rica, which previously contested the legal­ity of the military tribunal that sen­tenced Chairman Gonzalo to life in prison right after his arrest.(9) If Chairman Gonzalo were opposed to the call for peace accords, he could certainly have seized the opportunity of the trial to denounce and dissoci­ate himself from the other defendants. In the past, no one has been able to stop him when he wanted to speak. The man who managed to get his word out to the world even when caged is still communicating.

The Peace Accords Line and the Central Committee

Actually, the strongest indication that the ROL was not just something cooked up by the American and Peruvian intelligence services but that Chairman Gonzalo was behind it was the line itself and the documents that argued for it. They did not put forward a crude rejection of Maoism, revolution or the necessity for peo­ple's war. Instead, they marshaled philosophical, historical and political arguments, purporting to uphold and apply the principles of what the PCP called Marxism-Leninism- Maoism, Gonzalo Thought to the very real problems the party was facing.

They referred to two kinds of issues. The first was the objective sit­uation. Even before Chairman Gonzalo was taken prisoner, the PCP had begun grappling with a changing international situation in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet bloc, which, these documents concluded, marked a "strategic ebb of the world revolu­tion". Further, there were theoretical and practical problems in terms of how - and under what conditions - ­the people's war could hold on to its achievements, in the face of some setbacks, and advance beyond the level it had attained so far. There was the question of Yankee interference and even invasion - and whether this might provide the opportunity to broaden the united front and advance to the countrywide seizure of political power. There was also debate about how much semi-feudalism remained a factor.(10) In short, there was a recog­nised urgent need to reassess the objective situation and its conse­quences for the future course of the people's war. Chairman Gonzalo's capture came at a time when the revo­lution faced a crossroads.

The second kind of argument advanced by these documents was the "problem of leadership": Chairman Gonzalo had been snatched up and much of the rest of the party's long­standing central leadership was dead or in prison. It was said that there were no leaders who could replace him in the needed timeframe to solve the first category of problems. The ROL's conclusion was that for many reasons, chief among them the unfavourable international situation and above all the "problem of leader­ship", the people's war could not con­tinue. Any attempt to do so would only lead to the destruction of the party, and given the circumstances, even if the people's war could hold out it would eventually become a "war without perspective" - with no clear goal or possibility of seizing nationwide political power - and disintegrate into scattered "roving rebel bands". By entering into negotiations to call off the people's war now, the argument went, the party could save itself from destruction at the hands of the enemy and endure to relaunch the armed struggle under more favour­able conditions in the future.(11)

This was not the empty ranting of a police agency. It represented a coherent line. The questions it posed had to be analysed and answered. No matter who first propounded it, this line could take hold among party members because it offered answers - although wrong answers - to cru­cial questions thrust forward by life itself. The revolutionaries needed to start out by identifying, analysing and refuting these arguments on the level of political line, that is, as ideas to be examined and found correct or incorrect reflections of reality. This included an objective (not wishful) assessment of the balance of forces to determine whether or not it was in fact possible to persist in the people's war and whether or not, in the con­crete conditions prevailing at that time, entering negotiations was a viable way for the party to gain time to rebound or, in fact, a death trap.

Shortly after the call for a peace agreement arose, the Committee of the RIM (CoRIM), the leading body of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, examined the available information and documents in an attempt to understand and guide RIM in taking part in a momentous line struggle that would not only deter­mine the future of the revolution in Peru but have great consequences for RIM and the international communist movement. The Committee argued, "In these circumstances, it is incum­bent upon RIM not only to continue its support for the People's War in Peru but also to join this two-line struggle: to undertake the necessary investigation, study, discussion and struggle to achieve a correct and com­prehensive understanding of all the questions involved and on that basis render the most powerful support to the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist line and the comrades carrying it forward in Peru." It established criteria for evalu­ating the call for peace negotiations: "Do they serve the task of seizing political power through revolutionary warfare" and "safeguard the 'funda­mental interests of the people' referred to by Mao, that is, the essen­tial core of the people's power and the revolutionary armed forces?" After an intense process of investigation, eval­uation and struggle, RIM adopted a position that the call for peace accords should be opposed and that a two-line struggle should be waged against the Right Opportunist Line in Peru and internationally. Regarding the role of the PCP chairman, it said, "It is important to continue to try to deter­mine Chairman Gonzalo’s current views. The key question, however, is the line, not the author." Furthermore, the Call said that those who had advocated the ROL should "repudiate this line... and retake the revolutionary road."(12)

As part of this process CoRIM had also asked the Union of Iran Communists - the predecessor of the Communist Party of Iran (Marxist-­Leninist-Maoist) - to write a major analysis and criticism of the peace accord arguments. That document concluded: "The people's war is far from over. Partial defeat is not absolute defeat." The only way to preserve the achievements of the people's war and solve the party's problems was to persevere in it. It raised a clear warning: a people's war, once launched, could not be turned on and off like a water spigot, including because the reactionaries themselves would use this to crush the revolutionary forces.(13)

The importance - and courage ­of the firm stand against the call to end the revolutionary war taken by the remaining PCP leadership cannot be overestimated. The ROL was very wrong in arguing that the most important thing of all was to save the party. In return, it was willing to sur­render the red political power that Gonzalo had called the "bone mar­row" of the revolution because of the way it brought about the conscious involvement of the masses, and to dissolve the people's army, without which, as Mao said, "the people have nothing" to defend their interests or even their lives. Such a step would objectively mean betrayal of the hopes and sacrifices of the masses who had taken up the people's war, those who supported it and those around the world who looked to it. This discrediting of Maoism would have led to a far worse setback and demoralisation than would have been produced by defeat alone. If it did this, instead of leaving a precious legacy the party would turn into an obstacle for the present and future generations of revolutionaries to push aside - even if the reactionaries didn't tear it apart and kill as many of its members as they could.

However, it was not at all inevitable that the only choice was between glorious or inglorious defeat. One thing at stake was a point of basic orientation: whether or not to persist in fighting for the revolu­tionary interests of the masses, in line with communist objectives, which meant figuring out how to continue that under new and very difficult conditions. But this stand, however basic, had to be grounded in some­thing more than moral commitment. In the end, as the actions of PCP leaders have told us, people act on the basis of how they understand things, what they think is possible and necessary.

The enormity of the problem can't be denied: the leadership which had been responsible for developing the line and strategy for the revolution could no longer do so with a correct orientation, and instead was apparently calling for a reversal of the whole strategic direction and principles they had been basing themselves on. But the difficulty of what was required didn't make it any less necessary. Of course, those remaining had to work out the answers to burning questions step by step and as required over time. To do that, it really wasn't possible to say, "OK, our chairman has left our side, so let's re-examine everything we ever believed before we do anything else." Maybe this is what the revolutionaries thought they were avoiding with the "hoax" line. They had to persist, and figuring out how to do that was as necessary as breathing. But even if Chairman Gonzalo had turned out not to be behind the call to end the people's war, it would not have been true that, as the Persist forces claimed, the thinking and line developed under his leadership to that point was sufficient to lead the people's war to victory. Further, over time it would become impossible to persist in the people's war without a review of the party's line and practice - and theory and experience internationally - to find the roots of the ROL and formulate new analyses and strategic concepts. In other words, without making the break­throughs in theory and practice ceaselessly required for the advance of this and any revolution.

This would have been very hard for anyone, and perhaps the remaining party leaders did not feel up to the task - especially since they were probably up against their party's chairman. But what else could they do but use their heads and their grasp of Maoism and play a real leadership role as best they could? Communist leaders are not born. Leadership involves talents acquired in many different ways and takes time to develop. But it is fundamentally a matter of ideological and political line (orientation and method). It means wielding Maoism to lead the party in seeking to understand the world and change it. Ironically, the only way to refute the thesis that the remaining party leaders were inca­pable of continuing without Chair­man Gonzalo was for them and new leaders who came forward to rise to the occasion, raising their level as party leaders on all fronts, including tackling and beginning to resolve the line questions involved. It should also be pointed out that the ROL's charge that the remaining leaders were "incompetent" was particularly cruel when it was the ROL itself that was the biggest obstacle placed in the path of the revolution and those try­ing to lead it forward.

The "hoax" conception was tight­ly linked to and in fact became a vehicle for a particular conception of political struggle in a communist party. The CC adopted an attitude of trying to persevere through practice alone ("smash the ROL through people's war") and ignore the specific content of the ROL beyond generally denouncing it as "black vomit". Although the February 1994 PCP CC statement said "pay attention to the two-line struggle", it argued that the stand of the ROL had put its mem­bers "outside the party by their own free will", as if there were no ROL inside the party itself and no real need to wage two-line struggle against it. To take up and attempt to refute the ROL's arguments, some maintained, would mean falling for the enemy's trap and giving credence to the hoax. Two-line struggle, it was said, should be waged among revolu­tionaries. The ROL and its "black heads" only needed to be "crushed" physically. PCP supporters abroad spread the attitude that the most serious problem was not the peace accords line but those who refused to accept the "hoax" theory.

One of the most vociferous propo­nents of this approach was the Peruvian journalist Luis Arce Borja. At the time RIM was adopting its position "Rally to the Defense of Our Red Flag Flying in Peru" and calling for a vigorous two-line struggle against the proposal for seeking a peace accord, Arce Borja launched a frantic attack on RIM and its Committee which, for a while, con­fused some of the friends and supporters of the PCP. Arce criticized RIM's understanding of the two-line struggle in the PCP. He wrote, "To hold that the 'peace agreement' is part of a process of internal conflict with­in the PCP portrays it as an organisa­tion corroded by a scandalous divi­sion, an organisation divided and undermined and on the very verge of destruction. This point of view is sim­ilar to that of the die-hard enemies of the revolution.(14). In reply, an article in A World to Win magazine pointed out that two-line struggle is a perma­nent feature of all communist parties, even though it has "high tides and low tides" in different periods, as a reflection of the existence of the con­tending classes in society and the resulting clash between ideas. What's more, such two-line struggle "is absolutely necessary to educate and transform the outlook of party mem­bers and the masses."(15) Arce reacted to this polemic by even more rabidly casting RIM and any others who refused to accept the "hoax" thesis into the camp of Fujimori and the imperialists.

Arce is on record upholding this position regarding the "hoax" through June 2004. Suddenly, during the trial in November of that year, the great defender of the faith against all "doubt" was assailed by doubts. A year later, Arce explodes. Chairman Gonzalo is a "traitor" and has been since October 1993! He wrote the peace letters after all. But this jour­nalist lets slip not a word of explana­tion or even mention of his previous position. The fault, Arce squeals, lies with RIM for not having denounced Guzman back then and for calling for his defence from the Peruvian state ever since.(16)

Unwilling to confront the task of waging the necessary two-line strug­gle, the Persist forces were only dig­ging themselves deeper and deeper into a pit. Especially if Chairman Gonzalo was the head of the ROL, but even if he were not, it was not the case that this line represented delib­erate betrayal and conscious treason of the kind committed by someone who, for example, informs on comrades to save their own life. It could represent a horrible mistake, meant to save the revolution even while objectively leading to its death, a wrong understanding and a wrong line - which would not negate what was correct in the line associated with Gonzalo previously, nor the disastrously harmful nature of the ROL. The main question in deter­mining whether a political line is right or wrong is not one of subjec­tive intent - whether or not its propo­nents want revolution. Political lines need to be examined in terms of what they call for and carry out, and where that would lead, no matter what some people might want. At any rate, no matter who put it forward and why, the ROL had to be taken on as a line and refuted as such.

A major two-line struggle against the ROL's political line and the ori­entation and method behind it and the beginning of a clear-eyed summation of the experience of the past period and the situation faced by the party and the revolution could lead to at least an initial idea of how to move forward. This would mean trying to work out how persevering in the peo­ple's war could be linked to and serve the building up of revolutionary strength and both hastening and awaiting a change in the internation­al and national situation, as Mao said during a difficult period in the Chinese people's war, when country­wide political power could be seized as a base area for he world proletarian revolution.

There is no guarantee that if the Central Committee had taken this approach, the people's war would have been able to advance or even hold out. First, there was no getting around the terrible fact that the bulk of the party's leadership had taken a wrong road. Second, this was taking place on the stage of difficult objec­tive conditions as well. But it is par­ticularly tragic that despite the wrong assessment of the CC, there was a sharp two-line struggle - waged by only one side, the ROL. By acting as if nothing had happened - as if the ROL were not real, as if its emer­gence did not reflect real questions, and as if Chairman Gonzalo could not possibly have anything to do with it, the "hoax" line and the associated conception of two-line struggle led those who wanted to persist to act on the basis of an analysis and plan increasingly out of accord with reali­ty. No matter what other problems they faced, the "hoax" line made a bad situation even harder to resolve in a positive direction.

The experience of the people's war in Peru and the issues and lines involved need to be thoroughly stud­ied. The great achievement in launching and carrying forward the People's War and the subsequent set­back constitute a very important experience of the Maoist movement in the period since the overthrow of socialism in China. This experience, in both its grandeur and its pain, are part of the common heritage of the whole international communist movement and especially RIM. A materialist examination of the whole complex affair, including the roles of all who took part in it, is necessary not only for the re-orientation and rebuilding of the PCP by the genuine Maoist forces in Peru but concerns all those who take seriously their responsibility to lead revolution in other countries and on a world scale. It is necessary to continue to defend the imprisoned Chairman Gonzalo and others who initiated and led for­ward this great uprising of the oppressed even if it is not possible to uphold their current political posi­tions. Ideological and political assis­tance must be extended to those in Peru who seek to overcome the set­back of the revolution. Nothing is more despicable than those who, see­ing the value of their "capital" dimin­ish, seek to cut their losses and look for new investments.

There are many aspects of politi­cal and ideological line that emerged in the course of the People's War and the two-line struggle in the PCP that need to be studied, understood and debated more thoroughly. New advances in Peru will come in con­junction with and as part of the trans­formations and advances that are required of the international commu­nist movement as a whole.

Footnotes

1. Huallaga Regional Committee and main PCP leader after 1999 Comrade Artemio. See La Republica transcription of radio interview, 16 April 2004, and its own interview with him, 28 August 2004. Also the British Channel 4 TV interview broadcast 7 January 2004.

2. CC statements of 7 October 1993 and February 1994. A World to Win magazine no. 21.

3. Cage speech, AWIW no. 18.

4. Later it was disclosed that the television programme had been made in cooperation with Fujimori's right-hand man Vladimiro Montesinos, who supervised the filming. In fact, it seemed that Clavo had been following a previously-agreed script when she spoke. This is not surprising, given that the regime and Clavo had come to a temporary agreement in pursuit of different ends.

5. A copy of this unpublished letter sent abroad by a reliable source. Its content was substantially repeated in a 10 April 2003 written interview in Caretas magazine.

6. La Republica interview, 28 August 2004. After the fall of the Fujimori government in 2000, documents putting forward the ROL concluded that because the CC members remaining free had refused to take up the call to negotiate with Fujimori directly, a peace accord was no longer possible. Nevertheless, the immediate goal remained forcing the regime to accept a "political solution", including amnesty for most prisoners and those like Artemio with a price on their heads. After carrying out an implicit ceasefire with the government for several years, in 2004 Artemio announced his forces would return to armed struggle if "a political solution to the war" were not achieved in six months

7. Agenciaperu.com, 18 December 2005. He has confirmed this stand in private letters as well.

8. If some revolutionary-minded people abroad took Chairman Gonzalo's chants as proof that he was opposed to the peace accord line all along, it is because they have not understood the real terms of the two-line struggle in the PCP - that it has not been between some people who opposed revolution and others who condemned it, but between two currents of thought that both claimed the mantle of Maoism, even though they called for opposite policies. This is why lines have to be studied before Marxism can be distinguished from revisionism.

9. Radio Programas Peru interview with Manual Fajardo, Gonzalo's attorney, broadcast 17 October 2005. This approach was confirmed in letters received in April 2006 by prominent supporters of the International Emergency Committee to Defend the Life of Abimael Guzman (IEC) abroad, signed by Crespo and Iparraguirre, who repeated her references, written in other correspondence and statements over the years, to "the strategic turn and the political solution that we had been proposing since '92".

10. This was discussed at the party Central Committee's Third Plenum in 1992. In addition to mentioning other political, military and theoretical problems the party was facing, the Third Plenum report reflects the heavy toll taken by the prison massacre of previously captured party leaders in May 1992. The main document is unpublished (some shorter documents are available at
www.redsun.org). But Chairman Gonzalo alluded to some main points in his cage speech, particularly the question of whether or not the war had exhausted the potential of anti-feudal revolution and had to go over to a national liberation struggle.

11. The foundational ROL document, purportedly a transcription of a speech given in prison by Chairman Gonzalo, "Take Up and Fight for the New Decision and the New Definition" (Asumir). There are several slightly different transcripts circulating. An early, relatively short version which appeared in a Lima daily in January 1993 was reprinted as a background document for studying the line struggle in Peru in AWTW no. 23.

12. "Rally to the Defence of Our Red Flag Flying in Peru", AWTW no. 21. Also see the 11-point programme of the peace accord forces, reprinted as reference material in that same issue.

13. "It's Right to Rebel", AWTW no. 21. This document was first circulated internally in RIM as part of the process of investigation and study. It was published in October 1995 along with the aforementioned Call "Rally to the Defense of the Our Red Flag Flying in Peru".

14. ''Trappist Monks Turn Into Village Charlatans: Another Summersault of the Circus Acrobats of RIM", El Diario Internacional, March 1995. About half of this article, including its main points, was reprinted as reference material in AWTW no. 22.

15. "An Initial Reply to Arce Borja: On the Maoist Conception of Two-Line Struggle," AWTW no. 22.

16. "The Red Guards of Political Trafficking", EDI, January 2006. Note that Arce Borja's only constants are hatred for RIM and very special venom for Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, a founding party of RIM. Also see "Peru: The Remnants of a Betrayed Revolution".

Friday, September 1

On the Main Ideological Contributions of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)

[The following is a distillation of the content of three articles taken from issue number ten of The Worker, organ of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist): 1. “International Dimension of Prachanda Path,” by Comrade Basanta; 2. “Epochal Ten Years of Application and Development of Revolutionary Ideas,” by Comrade Baburam Bhattarai; 3. “Hoist the Revolutionary Flag on Mount Everest in the 21st Century,” an interview with CPN(Maoist) Comrade Chairman Prachanda. My aim in writing this article is to synopsize the contributions of the Nepalese Maoists to the international communist movement and to the development of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist theory. Any italics are mine. - K.G.]

The CPN(Maoist) refers to the application and development of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism in the flames of the Nepalese revolution as “Prachanda Path.” Comrade Basanta writes that the Nepalese Party “does not claim that Prachanda Path has already become universal. Nor do we think it is the time to debate whether or not it has attained universality. Nonetheless, we believe that the new concepts and ideas that it has put forward encompasses ideological and political strength to help develop revolutionary struggles all across the world.” There are several areas in which the Nepalese communists have made ideological breakthroughs, the validity of which have been tested, and will continue to be tested by practice.

Combat Revisionism… and Dogmatism

The CPN(Maoist) has stressed, that although revisionism of basic Marxist-Leninist-Maoist principles and right-wing opportunism are the main danger to the communist movement, there cannot be a qualitative leap forward without challenging certain ossified, dogmatic tendencies among the communists. Comrade Basanta says: “Our Party believes that although right revisionism is the main danger in the contemporary ICM, sectarianism and dogmatism also have been creating impediments for the smooth development of revolution from within the Maoist camp in the world”; however, it is clear that “(n)o ideology other than MLM and no form of struggle other than People's War can wipe out imperialism.”

It is understandable that sectarianism and dogmatism have emerged as problems, since the very future of the communist movement was endangered following the loss in China in 1976. After the death of Mao, says Comrade Prachanda, “the revolutionary Maoist movement, in the name of defending the basic principles of MLM against right revisionism, happened to fall prey to sectarian dogmato-revisionism that repeats old things only and overlooks the analysis of the development of an object.”

What is called for is the creative development of communist ideology. “Creative development” is a term that has been sullied by renegades like Khrushchev, but a reflexively dogmatic response to revisionism will not enable a leap forward in the world revolution. Comrade Basanta states that “the usual business of clinging on to what Lenin and Mao said in their life time will not help the Maoist revolutionaries change the face of the globe” and that “the analysis of imperialism made by Lenin and Mao in the twentieth century cannot scientifically guide the Maoist revolutionaries to develop correct strategy and tactic to fight in the twenty-first century.” He quotes Comrade Prachanda: “This February, Comrade Prachanda stressed the importance of ‘struggling against the problems like those of preferring to analyze and eulogize the experiences of old proletarian revolutions but hesitating to develop courageously the strategy and tactics based on mass line by carrying out concrete analysis of the concrete condition.’”

Specifically, Comrade Prachanda calls for ”struggle against Hoxhaite dogmato-revisionism that eulogizes even some of the metaphysical weaknesses of Comrade Stalin and its negative consequences.” This sort of contention has been a source of controversy, with Indian comrades in particular expressing opposition to criticism of Stalin. He further called for learning from Marxist thinkers that have been previously criticized by communists for their errors: “Our Party is definitely opposed to discarding the great revolutionaries like Rosa (Luxemburg) and Che (Guevara) into a different camp by distancing them from the mainstream Marxism and revolution; rather, we are for respecting them and learning from their contributions.” This is the communist broadmindedness that is characteristic of the giants of the revolutionary movement.

Strategy and Tactics

One of the hallmarks of the Nepalese Revolution has been its combination of strategic firmness and tactical flexibility. Comrade Prachanda says that “tactical flexibility without strategic firmness leads to a quagmire of reformism and revisionism and while strategic firmness without tactical flexibility leads to a marsh of mechanical tendency and dogmatism, only a proper implementation of dialectical interrelationship between strategic firmness and tactical flexibility can propel revolutionary movement in a proper and dynamic way.” Comrade Baburam Bhattarai affirms that “it is evident that the policy of strategic firmness and tactical flexibility practiced with success during the past ten years is an important component in the development of MLM and Prachanda Path.”

The CPN(Maoist) has been criticized by Indian comrades for some of its tactics, including utilizing peace talks as a route of war by other means. Answering critics, Comrade Basanta states that “(i)t is true, we had gone too far before and we should be ideologically prepared to go far again if necessary for revolution. We had united with parties which were revisionists. Our Party had 11 members in the parliament that can nowhere be seen in the history of revolutionary communists after Lenin's Dumas. We were in table with the enemy twice in the history of People's War. We declared unilateral ceasefire when we were achieving military victory one after another.” Yet the Nepalese Revolution has, in the process of implementing flexible tactics on the basis of strategic firmness, moved from one victory to the next.

It is the view of the Nepalese Maoists that a lack of tactical flexibility has been at the root of setbacks to the communist movement. Comrade Bhattarai proposes: “There has been discernible sectarian and mechanistic deviation from both the right and left perspectives in the understanding and application of the dialectical interrelationship between war and politics inherent in the scientific formulation of 'War is politics by other (i.e. violent) means' developed from Clausewitz through Marx and Lenin to Mao. Rectifying this, the PW was initiated and after the initiation various types of negotiations and political initiatives were constantly and successfully undertaken in the service of the war.

Comrade Prachanda points to the case of Peru, attributing what must be admitted to be the failure of the People’s War in Peru to “the imbalance in the use of strategic firmness and tactical flexibility (unilateral emphasis on strategy), in the question of developing ideas through concrete analysis of concrete condition in the changed context of today's world as well as idealistic thought of glorifying the leadership.”(1)

Party and Revolutionary State

The CPN(Maoist) aims to create a situation after nationwide victory in which revolutionary successors continuously regenerate the Party, and the revolution continues under the revolutionary class dictatorship. The fact that socialism was destroyed in the Soviet Union and in China following the demise of Stalin and Mao presents a serious problem for communists. Comrade Basanta asks: ”(W)hy does the absence (death or capture) of the main leadership, who personally had led the revolution, become the cause of counter-revolution? How can we generate revolutionary successors, who are capable of uninterruptedly sustaining and developing revolution, while the main leadership is still alive?” The Nepalese comrades have attempted to address this question through proposing new organizational frameworks for the proletarian dictatorship. Perhaps most provocatively, this February, Comrade Prachanda said that "the Party firmly believes that only by organizing Partywise competition, even in the socialist society, within the constitutional framework against feudalism and imperialism and making lively the supervision, control and intervention of the masses in the state power, can the proletarian dictatorship be consolidated and the counter-revolutionary force be prevented from raising its head.”

a. Multi-Party Competition

Comrade Bhattarai refers to the “historic Plenum of the CC of the Party was held in Rolpa in May-June 2003. This Plenum adopted a document of monumental significance on 'The Development of Democracy in the 21 It Century'. After making a critical review of the experiences of revolution and counter-revolution in the 20th century, the document advocated the need to ensure the supervision, intervention and control of the masses over the Party, army and the state in order to march along the path of continuous revolution after making the revolution, and for this advanced the concept of practicing a multi-party competitive system within the stipulated constitutional framework. This was a new milestone in the development of revolutionary ideas.” This decision, according to Comrade Prachanda “prepared the ground for concluding the 12-point understanding with other parliamentary political parties to spearhead the anti-monarchy mass movement.”

The rationale for this decision is laid out by Comrade Basanta: “(I)n the course of exercising dictatorship upon the class enemies, no constitutional provisions were developed to ensure people's democratic right to supervise, control and intervene upon the communist Party, people's army and the people's government if they turn against the people.” Comrade Prachanda elaborates, contending that “within the anti-feudal and anti-imperialistic constitutional framework, only through multi-Party competition even in a socialist society can counter-revolution be prevented and proletariat's rule be strengthened by making effective the people's control, monitoring and intervention in the governance.”

Delving into the practical implications of multiple parties under new democracy and socialism, Comrade Prachanda states that “the political parties that represent various classes and ideological beliefs will not need to set up separate armies because there interests will not be antagonistic. Instead, there begins a people's democratic competition under people's dictatorship, which only further strengthens people's state.” He makes clear that the competition between parties under socialism would be non-antagonistic in nature. It must be asked: What, from an institutional perspective, is to assure that this will be the case? While Comrade Prachanda makes clear that multiple parties must abide by the constitutional framework established by revolutionary victory, stating that “(n)o one should forget the limit of people's democratic and socialist constitutional system,” it is not clear how this multi-party system will look in practice - specifically, how it will differ from previous multi-party people’s democratic states. New China always had multiple parties, as did many East European states like the German Democratic Republic. In sum, it is unclear at this point what CPN(Maoist) means by multi-party competition. However, it should be pointed out that Comrade Prachanda stated that “UML's (the main revisionist party –K.G.)multi-party people's democracy expresses class coordination and a reformist line of bourgeois parliamentarianism while our slogan of democratic republic expresses transitional revolutionary slogan that helps propel class struggle in a special condition of power balance.”

b. Separation of Party Cadres from Administrative Work; No Life Tenure

Comrade Prachanda refers to the proposal “that the chief leader and the core team of the leadership should focus on ideological works by keeping themselves away from the day to day administrative works and provide a physical environment for the revolutionaries of the new generation to be trained as successors.” It is important to maintain a ruling Party as a revolutionary Party, and the experience of the socialist states has shown that parties may become bogged down with administrative work; in essence, the communist organizer can in such a case become a “technocrat,” removed from conscious political activity. The danger in separating Party and state work is that politics will not be the lifeblood of economic work; that is, “reds” will occupy the sphere of public opinion while “experts” will occupy the state management of the economy. While it is commendable that the Nepalese comrades seek to maintain their revolutionary character through defining the distinction between administrative and ideological spheres, in no case should the administrative sphere become “off-limits” to communist organizers. Quite the contrary, communists must play a leading role in the management of all spheres of state and economic work.

With regard to official tenure, Comrade Bhattarai refers to the Party decision that after nationwide victory it is important to ”handover responsibilities to the revolutionary successors in time, rather than the main authoritative leadership running the Party and the state throughout his life…”; thus, the Nepalese comrades have rejected the practice of life tenure in organizational leadership. The transition to new generations of revolutionary leaders must occur while the veteran comrades are still alive. Mao stressed the need for combining old, middle-aged, and young comrades in leadership, but did not break with the life tenure concept. The principal leadership must be periodically regenerated through measures adopted by state law and Party statute.

c. No Standing Army

Comrade Prachanda proclaims that a revolutionary Nepalese state will not require a formal standing army. After nationwide victory, “when the same people's liberation army, instead of being confined in the barracks; goes to the people and creates an ocean of armed people and dissolves itself in it, it will truly reflect the balance between people's democracy and dictatorship and dissolution of the state.” In view of the current realities and balance of military power in the world, the strongest national defense for a country like Nepal is indeed a people’s militia, both popular in character and disciplined, which is politically capable of waging people’s war. Imperialist aggression will not be repelled with conventional warfare in the case of countries like Nepal, but rather guerrilla warfare. As regards standing armies under socialism, Comrade Prachanda further says that in Russia and China, “the extremely powerful permanent armies could not ultimately prevent counterrevolutions, rather the permanent armies themselves turned into the police of the counterrevolution.” It is true that, after the revolution, the professional armies in many cases were never able to break with the culture and ideology of the defeated classes; instead, they were breading grounds for anti-socialist conspirators. For example, one may look to Marshall Zhukov in the Soviet Union, who enforced Khrushchev’s coup against revolutionaries like Molotov. In China, Marshall Ye Jianying provided logistical support to the coup by Deng Xiaoping and his puppets against the Maoist revolutionaries.

d. Right to Self-Determination

Nepal, like many countries, is a prison house of nations. The Maoists place a high premium of leading the liberation movements of the oppressed nations and peoples of Nepal - they recognize that the right to national self-determination is an indispensable prerequisite of national liberation. Comrade Prachanda states that Nepal “will not disintegrate because of right to self-determination or autonomy. Rather it will become a united and powerful,” and that “reactionary forces who spread such rumours that the nation will disintegrate because of right to self-determination and autonomy are people of no less feudal mindset than those who feel that 'all women will start leaving their husbands if they are given the right to divorce'.” On the other hand, it should be stressed that some wives who are abused by their husbands will indeed leave their husbands, especially if these men will not reform! Likewise, some oppressed nations will want independent states, particularly if the oppressor nation will not “reform” by changing its ways through revolution.

Imperialism and Revolution

a. Implications of Globalization

Comrade Basanta points out that the “counter-revolution in China in the 70s, the collapse of Soviet social imperialism in the 80s and inability of other imperialist powers to compete with the US military strength created a temporarily 'favorable' situation for the US to escalate its all-round and unchallenged offensive against the nations and people all across the world.” Formulating a correct understanding of the operation of imperialism is crucial to maximizing the capacity of communists to lead and develop revolutionary struggle.

Comrade Bhattarai spells out the need for new analysis of imperialism in the current period: “Following the Second World War, the inter-imperialist rivalry and Lenin's analysis on the nature of war that continues among them to divide and redivide a certain part of the world and the proletarian strategy built up on its basis, and following the Cold War, the situation of the analysis of Three Worlds made by Mao, even though in a tactical sense, do not basically exist. The condition of the US imperialism, which is advancing as a globalized form of state, has caused Lenin's and Mao's analyses on this to lag behind in the same manner as the development of imperialism in Lenin's time had made Marx's the then analysis and strategy, based on his analysis of capitalism, that revolution will take place firstly and simultaneously in the developed capitalist countries of Europe, to lag behind.”

The Nepalese communists have developed the view that imperialist globalization has necessited the closer integration of world revolutionary movements, while still recognizing that revolution may occur in one or several countries at a time. Comrade Basanta states that the “globalized imperialism developing in the form of a single state and unprecedented revolution in the information technology has now made this world a small unit.” Quoting Comrade Prachanda, he reiterates “Comrade Prachanda writes in the document of CC meeting, 2005, ‘The main specificity of today's imperialism has been to exploit and oppress the broad masses of people of the earth economically, politically, culturally and militarily in the form of a single globalized state.’”

Comrade Basanta makes two propositions: (1) “(R)evolution in any country must be carried out as a part and parcel of the world revolution,” and (2) “revolution in any country can neither be accomplished nor defended unless masses are mobilized internationally. In this regard, the Nepalese Maoists emphatically affirm that “(c)onstituting a new Communist International has definitely become essential for the proletariat to fight against globalized imperialism and globalized revisionism, especially in the context of today's world situation.”

b. United Front Against Imperialism

Comrade Prachanda calls for a broad international front against imperialism. Rather than making the main point of departure the criticism of revisionism or “social-fascism,” Comrade Prachanda states that “(a)s far as the question of Cuba is concerned, we have taken it in the form of a united front against US imperialism.” In the current period, the revisionist states like China, Vietnam, Laos, and the DPR Korea must be won over to a united from against imperialism. They are a part of the third world, are often in sharp contention with imperialism, and as such are in a position to support just democratic demands for national sovereignty and freedom from interference in the internal affairs of third world countries, regardless of social system. The CPN(Maoist) has taken this stand with regards to China (and India), and is engaging in diplomacy for the new, embryonic revolutionary state, assuring Nepal’s neighbors that it seeks peaceful relations on the basis of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, as upheld by Mao.

Modern People’s War

The Maoists of Nepal have sought to fuse the conception of protracted people’s war as developed by Mao with insurrection as a revolutionary military strategy. Comrade Bhattarai points out the problems faced by communists waging people’s wars: “(I)t is seen that the protracted PWs launched in different countries have faced obstacles or got liquidated after reaching the state of strategic offensive and imperialism has attempted to refine its interventionist counter-insurgency war strategy as a ‘long war.’ In this context, if the revolutionaries do mechanistically cling to the 'protracted' aspect of the PW at any cost, it would in essence play into the lands of imperialism and reaction.”

Comrade Prachanda criticized ”the tendency to narrow down the war by erecting a Chinese wall between the two 20th century military strategies (general armed struggle and a Protracted People's War) or being imprisoned in one or the other model. In the present contexts of the world that is getting smaller due to revolution in information technology and a modem, unified and centralized exploitation-oppression of globalized imperialism, the Party on the basis of an analysis of positive and negative experiences of the past century concluded that it is necessary to move ahead by having a fusion of the strategies of long-term People's War in armed struggle and the strategies of armed struggle in People's War.” As summarized by Comrade Bhattarai: “(I)n keeping with the ever changing world situation and the specificities of Nepal it was decided to fuse certain aspects of the strategy of armed insurrection to the military strategy of protracted PW from the very beginning.”

Further stressing the tactical flexibility of the Nepalese communists, Comrade Basanta says that the CPN(Maoist) has “put forward a new concept of fusion of two strategies - the protracted People's War and insurrection. But this fusion does not mean a mechanical amalgamation of two kinds of strategies and creation of a new mixture but what it means is to flexibly apply the one that goes well with the given condition. The essence of fusion is not to abide by specific model but to remain ideologically unrestrained to apply any suitable tactic to confront the pressing challenge in the given concrete condition.” In terms of developing revolutionary military tactics, this “ideological unrestraint” as regards tactical questions is fully in accord with the practice of Mao Zedong during the course of the Chinese Revolution. If Mao had instead followed the orthodox dictates, nationwide victory could never have been achieved.

(1). Comrade Prachanda specifically points to the case of the losses suffered in the Peruvian Revolution: the PCP made the mistake “of idealizing Comrade Gonzalo as a supernatural leader who never makes a mistake and of placing him above the whole Party and the Central Committee by asserting his leadership as Jefetura…” and, furthermore, there are “(s)ufficient indications that Chairman Gonzalo himself is the main spokesperson of the two-line struggle developed within the Party after his arrest, as well as of the right opportunist line that argues for peaceful conciliation with the enemy by abandoning war, reveal the seriousness of the situation."