This is the second of two articles produced by the Editorial Board of The Worker to introduce readers to the ideology which acts as command and guide of the paper. This article explains the ideology which The Worker defends, upholds, and applies. The first lays out The Worker‘s answers to the fundamental questions facing revolutionaries and class conscious workers in the USA today.
1. Emergence of the first stage
The ideology of the international proletariat emerged in class struggle as Marxism with the publication of the Manifesto of the Communist Party of 1848. Its first summit is the founder Karl Marx. Marxism is comprised of three component parts—Marxist philosophy, Marxist political economy, and scientific socialism.
Karl Marx, using the best accomplishments in human thought of his time, developed dialectical materialism, and so the philosophy of the proletariat emerged. It was Marx who established that philosophers have always attempted to understand the world, but the thing is to change it, thus establishing that the philosophy of the exploited class, unlike that of the exploiters, was a practical philosophy, a partisan philosophy, scientific and applicable to all human thought and to society and nature.
The philosophy of Marxism rises on the basis of materialism—a philosophy that is true to science and hostile to superstition. Philosophical materialism has throughout the history of philosophy struggled against philosophical idealism; materialism holds that matter exists independently of man’s thinking, and that man’s thinking is the reflection of matter in the human mind, and that the human mind is the highest form of matter.
The greatest development of Marxist philosophy is dialectics. It was Marx who ascertained the ceaseless motion of matter by taking the rational aspects of dialectics and resting them on a materialist foundation. Dialectics means that everything is in a state of constant change; it is hostile toward metaphysics which presents an eternal oneness. Through applying this philosophy to the study of history, Marx proved that history is not just a list of what has happened but a process of class struggle that represents becoming. He charted the path that human society has passed through—the economic epochs of primitive communal society, slave society, feudal society, and capitalist society, proving that one society contained the germ of the next and the next had the birthmarks of the former. This is called historical materialism, and it proves that the communist society is inevitable regardless of man’s will. Inseparable from dialectical and historical materialism is the Marxist conception of knowledge, a knowledge in which theory and practice are inseparable aspects of the same whole.
Since Marx was busy applying dialectical materialism to the study of political economy, a task which he gave his life to fulfill and which produced the greatest critique of political economy, the task of systematizing Marxism fell to Friedrich Engels. It was mainly Engels who systematized the philosophical doctrine of Marx, and it was Marx himself who directed this necessary work. Marx and Engels became the first great leaders of the international proletariat. There are those who distort the facts by trying to counter-pose Marx and Engels on the question of the philosophical content of Marxism. It must be understood that Marx was a Doctor in Philosophy, who inspected and approved of all of Engels systematic formulas of Marxist philosophy. The philosophy expressed in the work of Engels is the philosophy of Marx: dialectical and historical materialism.
In political economy, Marx confronted the shortcomings and distortions of the bourgeois political economists while developing their best theories beyond the limits of bourgeois thought. He proved that all social relations arise from economic relations in production. Understanding this, he dedicated his life to exposing the reality of capitalist political economy. Marx showed that the value of every commodity is based on the amount of socially necessary labor power that goes into making it. He showed that economics is not a relationship between things primarily, but between people, and he showed how man’s labor power becomes a commodity to be sold on the job market. He proved that the worker spends only part of the work day reproducing himself and his family, and the rest of the day he works without remuneration creating surplus value, which is the source of profits for the capitalist and the source of their exuberant wealth. He proved scientifically the motion of capitalism—its tendency to enter cyclical crises and the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands while poverty is accumulated among more and more of the world’s people. It was Marx that flayed open the inner workings of the capitalist mode of production, proving that socialist revolution is forced into being not by the policy and misdeeds of individual capitalists, but by the contradictions which exist between those who socially produce and those who privately own and profit. This basic law of Marxism proves that socialist revolution is inevitable regardless of man’s will.
In scientific socialism, it was Marx who confronted the superstitious ideas of the Utopians and their approaches to socialism which did not think of class struggle and were mainly moralistically motivated. Marx proved scientifically that class struggle is the motor force of social change, that revolution is forced into existence by the economic conditions of a society and that violence is the method in which the revolution is carried out. Marx confronted the ideas that the rich could be convinced to develop a better society and exposed the solutions of the Utopians as false.
It was Marx who showed what social force—the proletariat—is capable of leading social change. Marxist scientific socialism rests on the basis of the doctrine of class struggle, of one class overthrowing another; it includes the political and military strategies to accomplish the revolution. Marxist scientific socialism established the foundational principals on which all truly revolutionary struggles rest: the doctrine of class struggle, the party of the proletariat, and the dictatorship of the proletariat.
It was Marx who insisted that violence is the midwife of history and following this he developed principals of insurrection: 1. Never play with insurrection, but when beginning it realize firmly that you must go all the way; 2. concentrate decisive forces at the decisive moment, otherwise the class enemy who has the advantage will destroy the insurgency; 3. the offensive is principal in insurrection, and once begun it must be prosecuted with the greatest determination; 4. seize the moment and take the enemy by surprise, attacking when his forces are scattered; and 5. Strive for daily success, no matter how small, and retain moral superiority at all costs. So Marx set the course for the further development of the military strategy of the international proletariat. Finally, it was Marx who established the Communist Party as the party of the proletariat which is to command and guide the revolutionary forces to victory, and he established the role of party leaders to educate the workers and recruit them.
All three component parts emerged in the fierce class struggle and two-line struggle in the workers’ movements in which Marx was the most active participant and great leader. Marxist philosophy emerges in struggles against mechanical materialism and dialectical idealism, synthesized as dialectical materialism. Marxist political economy emerges in struggles against classical bourgeois political economy and all theories that seek to conceal the role of exploitation in the creation of surplus value. Marxist scientific socialism emerges in struggles against the Utopian socialists of the past, and against the anarchists of Marx’s time, giving revolution (i.e., the armed struggle of the proletariat for the conquest and defense of political power) a scientific and hence repeatable foundation1.
Karl Marx was a titan of human thought; he was a great leader who was forged in the flames of the class struggle of the proletariat. At his side was his closest comrade-in-arms Engels, who contributed fully to the development of Marxism and carried out all the necessary work that Marx lacked the time to do. Engels applied the three component and integral parts of Marxism to the study of natural science, armed struggle, the oppression of women, the housing question, and so on. It was Engels who systematized and defined Marxism, thus contributing greatly to the first summit, to the first stage of the ideology of the international proletariat.
II. The Development of the Second Stage
The ideology of the international proletariat was developed to a second and higher stage by the great Lenin in the furnace of class struggle against imperialism, the old Tsarist state, the liberal bourgeoisie, the anarchists, and the deposed reactionaries in the Russian revolution and civil war, and in fierce two-line struggle against the social-patriots—the social-chauvinists and imperialist collaborators of the Second International. In these struggles, Lenin led the revolution to the successful seizure and defense of power through revolutionary violence, elevating and developing Marxism into its second stage: Marxism-Leninism. It must be understood that Leninism is the second stage, a development from the first, and not an emergence, because Leninism does not rupture from Marxism; it does not treat Marxism as merely raw material in which the rational kernel must be extracted. Rather, Leninism forms from Marxism as its cohesive development in the conditions of the time, specifically imperialism as the last stage of the capitalist mode of production. Lenin was not only a remarkable theorist of Marxism, but a fierce militant and unmatched statesman.
Lenin was the first to elevate Marxist philosophy on the basis of the preeminence of contradiction. He defined dialectics as “the study of contradiction in the very essence of objects” in the material world, thus giving philosophy a concrete subject, taking the direction of Marx to new discovery. It is critical to understand that Lenin did not treat philosophy as the study of thought and nothing more. Lenin’s dialectical world outlook enabled him to masterfully observe and analyze the movement of opposites in different things and, on the basis of this analysis, to discern the correct method of resolving them. This is how Lenin led the revolution in the political and military sense which led to the birth of the first worker’s state and which ended the epoch of bourgeois revolution, ushering in the epoch of World Proletarian Revolution.
Lenin was an audacious and ardent materialist. With boundless energy and resolve he combated major deviations from Marxist philosophy even among fellow Bolsheviks. Through an in-depth study of philosophy, he confronted the empiricist distortions of the time which sought to replace Marxism on the basis of denying its philosophy; it was Lenin who proved that these attempts were merely those of revisionism and that they ultimately sought to negate the revolutionary content of Marxism.
Lenin led the charge against the revisionist Eduard Bernstein who argued that Marxism had no philosophical basis, that it was not a scientific ideology but pure science, and in this erroneous line of thinking argued that production itself (and not the class struggle provoked by it) would evolve naturally and peacefully toward socialism. The law of contradiction as understood by Lenin destroyed these myths. The great Lenin took up the task in 1908 of confronting the deviations of the followers of Ernst Mach, Richard Avenarius, and Bishop Berkeley, metaphysical and idealist bourgeois philosophers who were being re-branded to replace dialectical materialism by trendy intellectuals in the revolutionary movement. These teachings all sought to replace Marxism with empiricism (the idea that direct experience is the sole basis of all knowing), agnosticism (the idea that it is not important whether or not materialism or idealism is correct and that this question is irrelevant or impossible to know), eclecticism (the false combination of materialism and idealism in the interests of metaphysics), and dualism (the separation of mind and matter, body and soul, theory and practice, etc). Lenin upheld, defended, and applied dialectical materialism in these struggles and principally through creative application he developed dialectical materialism to a new stage where the role of contradiction had greater emphasis. It was the great Lenin who thoroughly tore the mask from the faces of the renegades of Marxism and exposed their bourgeois reactionary characters, safeguarding the theoretical foundations of Marxism.
In Marxist political economy, it was the great Lenin who discovered the scientific basis of capitalism’s decomposition into imperialism. In the conditions of imperialism, the proletarian revolution had become an immediate and practical question; those who sought to stymie proletarian revolution with revisionist theories had a direct interest in confusing what imperialism is economically. Lenin proved in his early writings that Russia had developed capitalism, and that it was already in the practice of imperialism, and he would develop these positions further in the struggles against those who would distort Marxist theory. It was Lenin who through mastering and developing Marxist political economy like no other established the fact that the Russian empire was a military feudal imperialist system, a discovery which would be invaluable to the global application of Marxism. Because of this it was Lenin who expressed that the storm center of the world proletarian revolution had shifted from Europe to the East, specifically the third world nations oppressed under the yoke of imperialism and colonialism.
Lenin defined imperialism as 1. monopoly capitalism; 2. parasitic, or decaying capitalism and; 3. moribund capitalism. Hence imperialism is to be understood as the final stage of capitalism that simultaneously increases misery and exploitation of the world’s people while hastening its inevitable overthrow. It rushes to the grave while the world’s proletariat marches to victory.
It was Lenin who, on the basis of examining the contradictions of imperialism, pointed out that it is the omnipotence of financial capital in the industrialized countries that renders traditional parliamentary struggle and trade unionism inadequate and that forces the proletariat into violent revolutionary war. Furthermore, Lenin understood the role of imperialism outside of the industrial countries, how it tended toward world war to oppress and divide up the colonial world. Lenin understood that the storm center was pivoting to the third world countries, which he understood would creatively apply Marxism to their particular conditions. Three contradictions are expressed here: the contradiction between labor and capital in the industrial countries, the contradiction between the imperialists themselves leading to world war, and the contradiction between the countries oppressed by imperialism and the imperialist powers.
Lenin proved that under imperialism opportunists and class collaborationist forces could take over the workers’ movements without revolutionary intervention and class combat internal to the workers’ struggle. He developed the work of Marx and Engels to show how capitalism, especially pronounced in its imperialist stage, can use the super-profits gained by plunder and parasitism to bribe sections of the working classes in the imperialist countries and postpone uprisings and revolutions by placing these imperialist agents among the labor movement and awarding them an aristocratic position. The fact that this takes place while the proletariat is forced into violent means only proves the importance of practicing Marxism to fight opportunism. Lenin proved that the victory of opportunism is temporary, and that the proletariat which exists internationally as one class will overthrow opportunism and revisionism inseparably from their overthrow of imperialism.
In the struggle against imperialism Lenin comprehensively developed Marxist political economy to its second stage.
In Marxist scientific socialism Lenin made many developments, but among these, two stand out: the conception of the Communist Party and the military theory of the proletariat—how the Party leads the masses to conquer and defend political power.
Lenin developed the theory of the proletarian party to a higher stage by defining it as the vanguard party composed of a core of professional revolutionaries with iron discipline that grows from its high quality into a vast quantity in the conditions of relentless struggle and the use of revolutionary violence. It was the great Lenin who established the Party of a New Type. Lenin proved that the proletariat has no other weapon besides organization, that the proletariat can only overcome the conditions with which capitalism disorganizes and oppresses it with ideological consolidation around Marxist principles, with which it secures for itself organizational unity and becomes an invincible force—forming millions of workers into the army of the working class. In the process of class struggle, this army extends itself further, reaching great leaps.
It was Lenin who developed the Party concept by delineating that 1. It is the most advanced military detachment of the working class, a part and parcel of the class. The Party goes ahead and leads, it knows the laws of the revolutionary process, and it grasps Marxism and sustains itself on the working class; 2. It is an organized detachment, composed of a system of organizations. As the vanguard of the class, it combines the maximum organization possible and only brings within it those who accept at least a minimal level of organization. It has obligatory discipline for all its members; 3. It is the proletariat’s highest form of organization, it leads the other classes. It counts on being composed of the best children of the class, steeped in Marxism, learning it through class struggle armed with the experience of the international proletariat; 4. It is the incarnation of unity of the working class and the masses—it cannot live or develop without links to the class and the masses; 5. It is organized on the principle of democratic centralism—it has single statutes and equal discipline for all, it has a single leadership organ at its head known as the Party Congress, the minority is subordinate to the majority, and in between congresses the Central Committee is the highest decision making body carrying out the decisions of the congress, with all lower bodies subjected to the higher bodies; 6. It cares for the unity of the Party, the class, and the masses by maintaining unity within its own ranks through discipline equally applied to all and as such the Party is the strictest organization, will all manner of loose to tight organizations constructed around it.
The Great Lenin specified that the Party is the “General Staff” of the proletariat, and here he uses precise military terminology which refers to the top officer corps in charge of directing a war. This means that the Leninist Party is composed of the best, those who command and control the army of the proletariat through careful planning and analysis.
It was the great Lenin who developed the Party’s democratic centralism, a system in which democracy is subordinate to its correlate centralism, in which the proletariat can accomplish the most profound democracy and preserve itself through centralized leadership that allows the class to speak with one voice and accomplish unified action with a single will. In democratic centralism there is freedom of discussion but unity in action, through a system of reports and ideological and practical leadership. One of Lenin’s greatest skills which must be upheld and defended was his keen ability to organize everything and his deliberate focus on organization.
Lenin further developed the party of the proletariat on the question of clandestinity. He established that the clandestine party is necessary and necessarily established as a system of highly organized bodies with the goal of being able to be constantly counted on in all circumstances—able to lead in all conditions of oppression and illegality. It is clandestinity that allows the party to become a war machine, persevering against all odds in accomplishing its goal of seizing and defending political power, never losing its links with the masses.
The great Lenin qualified the vanguard party of the proletariat as expert in conspiratorial work; it knows how to use everything and everyone, to give work to everyone, and to maintain its leadership of the entire movement by virtue authority, energy, greater experience, and a variety of knowledge and talent.
He expressed that while being clandestine, the party generates various forms of organizations around itself from the strictest and most closed to the loosest and most open, from the most to the least structured determined by the organization’s tasks and conditions in which it is to carry out these tasks.
Lenin established the mass work of the communist parties as the mobilization of the masses by the party to carry out the minimum and maximum party program. Hence he combines the question of open and closed work, of legal work which enhances and fortifies the party’s illegal work. The party is composed of clandestine cells who create points of support for the revolutionary work among the masses, creating a vast web, generating its own organism and penetrating every organization of the people and even infiltrating enemy organisms. In this way clandestine and illegal work are combined with open and legal work, with the clandestine work being principal, preserved and grown in the conditions of secrecy. Lenin mastered underground work as a militant for revolution and the great leader of the Russian revolution, everything was organized according to a plan and compartmentalization made the Party impervious to enemy attacks by the old state. It was the struggles against the social democratic parties of the old type as well as the conditions of the autocracy through which Lenin developed these aspects of Marxism. It is these very Leninist principles which face so much hatred and attack from the revisionist camp, and it is these that made Leninism invincible.
The great Lenin was a master of military matters, specifically the art and science of insurrection. He defended the universal role of revolutionary violence in the conquest of power via armed uprising. Lenin based himself in the five points on insurrection laid out by Marx mentioned above. On this basis, Lenin developed the military strategy of the international proletariat through the protracted sequence of war beginning in 1905 and ending in 1923, a war in which the masses were mobilized to conquer and defend power in 18 years of armed struggle. Proletarian insurrection, a vital component to the military strategy of the proletariat was greatly advanced by Lenin. The insurrection led by Lenin relied fully on the masses of workers, soldiers and sailors. Lenin relied on the youth as shock troops to hold key positions in the insurrection and combined advanced fighting with guerrilla combat to assign posts to everyone. It was Lenin who led the conquest and defense of Petrograd and used it as a base area to extend the revolution throughout Russia and the countries oppressed by the Russian empire. It was Lenin who led the first proletarian state to stand against the mightiest imperialist powers in the world who wasted no time in attacking the workers’ power.
In regard to Comrade Stalin, it was Stalin who defined Marxism-Leninism and led the International Communist Movement to accept it as the second and higher stage of the ideology of the international proletariat. Comrade Stalin’s contributions and developments of Marxism-Leninism are vast. It was Comrade Stalin who led the development of the first socialist state, who led the people in transforming a backward peasant nation into an iron socialist fortress of proletarian power. It was Comrade Stalin who led the proletariat of the world and the people of the Soviet Union to defeat the fascist menace in the Great Patriotic War. It was Comrade Stalin who inherited the post of the Great Lenin and led the two-line struggle for 13 years against revisionism, right and “left” represented by Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and Bukharin; he did not solve this problem through purely administrative means despite the claims of some. For all these reasons, Comrade Stalin is one of the most polarizing figures in the history of the struggles between revisionism and revolution and it is critical to maintain the correct assessment and defense of Comrade Stalin.
It was this assessment and defense of Comrade Stalin that served as the springboard for the Great Debate led by Chairman Mao against the Modern Revisionism of Khrushchev. Chairman Mao correctly assessed Comrade Stalin as the Great Leader of the international proletariat as mainly good, with secondary mistakes. The attempts to discredit Comrade Stalin with infamy and slander must be militantly opposed.
III. The Development of the Third and Superior Stage
The ideology of the international proletariat was developed to its third, higher and superior stage by Chairman Mao Zedong, and it is his comprehensive development of Marxism-Leninism that is principal today. The contributions of Chairman Mao are so extensive that they require volumes and continuous study to begin to grasp; we can only offer a short summary at this time.
Chairman Mao proves the thesis of Lenin correct regarding the situation in the East by creatively applying Marxism-Leninism to the concrete conditions of the Chinese Revolution. Chairman Mao led the Chinese people and later the international proletariat through great storms and in new conditions; the conditions of imperialism, world proletarian revolution, national liberation and capitalist restoration in the Soviet Union. Chairman Mao led the national liberation and, without interruption, the socialist revolution in China. Confronting the question of capitalist restoration, Chairman Mao initiated and led the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, all of which provide invaluable lessons to the proletariat of all countries.
In Marxist philosophy, basing himself in the great works of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, Chairman Mao develops the essence of dialectics: the law of contradiction as the sole fundamental law of the incessant transformation of all eternal matter. He further develops the Marxist theory of knowledge, expressing that it is based on leaps from practice to knowledge and from knowledge to practice, with knowledge to practice being the principal leap. It was Chairman Mao who brought Marxist philosophy to the vastest masses and masterfully applied it to politics, war, education, and everything else he engaged in. It was Chairman Mao who proves that Marxist philosophy is the scientific study of the contradictory motion of everything: society, nature and human thought, and who shows that Marxist philosophy forms the basis of the other two component parts of Marxism. The Chairman expressed that all laws of dialectics are derived from the law of contradiction, that this law expresses itself in numerous ways, e.g., through the transformation of quality into quantity and visa versa, and the process of negation and affirmation that goes on in everything, when simultaneous destruction and preservation results in the leap—elevation. It is through his great contributions, his great leap in Marxist philosophy, that Chairman Mao develops the other correlating and component parts of Marxism.
By applying Marxist philosophy to Marxist political economy, Chairman Mao discovers and proves that the superstructure and consciousness can modify the economic base in given conditions and that it is with political power that the forces of production can be developed. He expresses that since politics is the concentration of economics, it must be placed in command. Chairman Mao proves that the development of capitalism in countries oppressed by imperialism differs from the traditional passage of a country from feudalism to capitalism seen in much of Europe. Specifically, countries oppressed by imperialism develop bureaucratic capitalism, which does not do away with the past modes of production but preserves them in the interest of subordinating the entire nation to foreign powers.
Chairman Mao’s greatest development of Marxist political economy is the development of the political economy of the socialist mode of production. This development led Chairman Mao to solve the problem of industrialization by combining heavy industry, light industry and agriculture, with heavy industry as the leading force and agriculture as the base force. This corresponds generally to the leading role of the proletariat in a peasant country. It was Chairman Mao who mobilized the greatest masses in history to transform a backward country into a powerful industrial country. It was the Chairman who developed agricultural collectives and the people’s communes in the context of transitioning from a New Democratic to a socialist revolution. Chairman Mao provides the thesis that socialist revolution takes a long time, and the socialist mode of production requires politics and revolution in command in order to develop further. That is to say, the Chairman proves that the economic birthmarks of the former epoch must be overcome with grasping revolution in order to promote production, thus defeating the revisionist “productive forces” theories.
In scientific socialism, Chairman Mao affirmed and developed the law of revolutionary violence as a universal law without any exceptions. He defines revolution as the violent overthrow of one class by another and that this relies on the force of the armed people led by the Communist Party. He resolved the question of the conquest of political power in the nations oppressed by imperialism by defining the laws of surrounding the city from the countryside. He defined and developed the theory of class struggle in socialism by proving that the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, between the capitalist road to restoration and the socialist road to communism, becomes more and not less acute. He showed that in socialism it was not concretely determined who would defeat whom, that it was a problem whose solution demands time—the unfolding of a process of restoration and counter-restoration—in order for the proletariat to strongly and definitely hold political power through the proletarian dictatorship; and, finally and principally, the grand solution of historical transcendence, Chairman Mao established the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution as the continuation of the socialist revolution under the proletarian dictatorship. Hence we can draw from this that Cultural Revolution strengthens the Communist Party and the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Thus, Chairman Mao develops the three component parts of Marxism to a third superior stage, and does not emerge as something else. Today it is Mao who represents the highest summit; that is to say, Maoism is principal, expressed in the correct formulation of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, principally Maoism.
Going deeper into the contributions of Chairman Mao:
New Democratic Revolution, which develops the Marxist theory of the State, establishing three types of dictatorship: 1. the dictatorship of the old bourgeoisie, including bourgeois democracies like the United States; 2. proletarian dictatorships, like the ones in the USSR and China before the usurpation of political power by the revisionists, and 3. New Democracy, a joint dictatorship based on the worker-peasant alliance, led by the proletariat headed up by the Communist Party like the one in China during its democratic revolution.
It was Chairman Mao who proves that the principal thing about the state is that it is a class formation, a dictatorship of a class or classes that hold political power, while a system of government is the organization for the exercise of political power. Chairman Mao masterfully expresses that New Democratic revolution is the democratic revolution of a new type to be carried out in the oppressed nations, the completion of the bourgeois democratic revolution in the age of the proletarian revolution led by the proletariat via the Communist Party. Without understanding and applying this, all national liberation efforts will fall under the domination of one imperialist power or another and fall short of their explicit aims—only the proletariat via the Communist Party can accomplish true democratic revolution. While it is a bourgeois democratic revolution, New Democracy led by the proletariat fulfills certain socialist tasks and transitions without stopping into socialist revolution.
The Three Instruments of Revolution: it was Chairman Mao who expressed the interrelationship between the Party, the Army, and the United Front. The construction of the three instruments is guided by the principle that a just and correct ideological line decides everything, and it is on this ideological-political basis that the organizational construction is simultaneously developed in the midst of the struggle between the proletarian line and the bourgeois line and within the storm of the class struggle, mainly in war, as the principal form of current or potential struggle.
Chairman Mao masterfully applies Marxist philosophy to the question of the Party. He begins with the necessity of the Communist Party as the Party of a new type, a party of the proletariat. The aim of the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Party is to conquer political power for the proletariat, and once conquered, to defend it. The means of conquering and defending political power is people’s war. The Party is sustained by the masses of people, via the people’s war, which is a war of the masses or by the United Front, which is a front of the classes also based on the broad masses. Hence the Party develops itself through a dialectical process, a process of leaps according to the stage of revolution and the periods these stages have. Hence we can understand how the Party starts out small and accumulates the masses in great leaps and mainly through war—quality transforms into quantity and visa versa.
The driving force of the development of the Party is the two-line struggle inside of it. Hence we understand the Party as a contradiction in ceaseless motion. Two-line struggle is the struggle between the proletarian line and the bourgeois line or the non-proletarian line in general; this is principally a struggle against revisionism. Chairman Mao places great importance on the role of ideology in the life of the Party, the development of rectification campaigns and adjustments so that the proletarian ideology can keep the Party in its iron grip.
Chairman Mao establishes the revolutionary army as the Army of a New Type, an army for the fulfillment of the political goals of the Party. It is the army which carries out the Party’s mass work, that is the mobilization of the masses to carry out the minimum and maximum Party program. The revolutionary army has three tasks: to fight, to produce so that they do not become parasitic or a burden on the people, and to mobilize the masses. The army of a new type is based on the people and not weapons. It comes from the masses and serves the people wholeheartedly. It is strictly led by the Party and not the other way around. The revolutionary army gradually and generally arms the masses, and when the whole masses are armed, there will be no exploitation left on earth.
By applying dialectical materialism to the question of military strategy Chairman Mao develops the military theory of the proletariat: people’s war, a war in which the Party through its army mobilizes the masses for the conquest and defense of power. People’s war passes through three stages, three leaps: 1. Strategic Defensive, where the revolutionary forces constructed around the Party begin small and remain mobile and the forces of reaction are drawn into asymmetrical combat upon the Party’s initiative; 2. Strategic Equilibrium, where the revolutionary forces have accumulated the masses rivaling the forces of the enemy, and having established bases of support, they fight along more conventional lines and; 3. Strategic Offensive, in which the revolutionary forces seize power on a larger scale defeating the enemy forces. In this process the proletariat becomes armed and develops from weak to strong.
There is much confusion and misunderstanding on the question of people’s war—the thing to understand is that it must be creatively applied to the conditions of each country. In order for the stronger enemy to be defeated, in order for the forces of revolution to become the principal aspect, and the stronger state to become weak and the revolutionary forces to become the New State, the masses must be mobilized and developed in war to seize power.
Chairman Mao, through his great leadership in the Chinese revolution, specified the tactics and strategy applied to the oppressed and semi-feudal nations in the third world as surrounding the cities from the countryside. This is because in semi-feudal conditions the oppressed peasantry form the majority of the people and comprise the base force, led by the proletariat and its Party. So the peasantry is the base force while the proletariat is the leading force. Creative application means the understanding of the majorities, in the imperialist countries the base force and the leading force are proletarians, leaving the questions as to how a proletarian war develops, to which masses of proletarians does the Party go, etc.
In all cases, following the developments made by Chairman Mao, the following principles apply: the masses make history, people and not weapons are decisive in war, the Party must lead, the army must fight, and everything proceeds through internal contradictions activated by external ones. Hence people’s war is universal without any exceptions at all; it is the higher organic development of revolutionary violence that exists and begins developing before the people’s war. People’s war, therefore, encompasses the insurrection and civil war in a comprehensive manner, different in each application. Revolutionary war is omnipotent and this is a good thing, it is Marxist.
Cultural Revolution is the continuation of the socialist revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in a historical perspective is the most transcendental development of Marxism-Leninism made by Chairman Mao. It must be defined in this way or all manner of misunderstandings and revisions ensue. Cultural Revolution solves the problem of capitalist restoration by solidifying the dictatorship of the proletariat and transforming the culture and society to accord with the socialist mode of production; it cannot exist without the socialist revolution being won by force of arms led by the Communist Party. Since it represents a stage in the development of socialist revolution it cannot come first—any such attempts under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie come to no good end. Chairman Mao expressed that once political power has been conquered by the proletariat, it must be defended, and, building on Lenin, that once the bourgeoisie has been overthrown in a country it still tries to avail itself through old ideas, culture, and habits to corrupt and influence the masses. Hence Chairman Mao directed the revolution to deal merciless blows to all challenges of the bourgeoisie in the ideological arena. This is why Chairman Mao specified the enemies to target: those in power taking the capitalist road. The revolutionary transformation of literature, art, education, and the rest of the superstructure so that they conform to the socialist economic base cannot be conducted without first conquering power in the socialist revolution.
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, initiated and led by Chairman Mao from 1966-1976 was the greatest mass mobilization in history. There were many fruits of this event, but the most important one was the Revolutionary Committees. Although capitalism was restored in China following Chairman Mao’s death and the counter-revolutionary coup, this does not negate the role of Cultural Revolution, on the contrary it proves that it is necessary, just as the Paris Commune of 1871, though defeated, affirmed the necessity of the dictatorship of the proletariat which it embodied.
These are the briefest possible examples of Chairman Mao’s contributions to Marxism and the world proletarian revolution; they are enough to prove that to be a Marxist today requires being a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, mainly a Maoist. Maoism is the elevation of Marxism-Leninism to a new, third, and superior stage in the struggle for proletarian leadership of the democratic revolution, the development of the construction of socialism and the continuation of the revolution under the proletarian dictatorship as a proletarian cultural revolution; when imperialism deepens its decomposition and revolution has become the main tendency of history, all amidst the most complex and largest wars seen to date and the implacable struggle against contemporary revisionism.
IV. The Contributions of Universal Validity of Chairman Gonzalo
We offer a brief outline of what we mean by the contributions of universal validity of Chairman Gonzalo, and modestly acknowledge that for this question to be resolved in the theoretical sense it requires work and exposition that we are not up to the task of providing at this time.
The first contribution of universal validity of Chairman Gonzalo is the definition of Maoism. It was the Chairman in the early 1980s as leader of the Communist Party of Peru and the People’s War who initiated and developed the campaign for Maoism, defending, upholding and applying it (principally applying it). By 1988, when the Party accomplished its historical First Congress, Maoism was further elaborated and a campaign to impose it as the command and guide of the world proletarian revolution resulted. From here it was the Chairman who led the two-line struggle against the rightist distortions and misunderstandings in the Revolutionary International Movement that sought to impose a false counter-definition of Maoism. Although some still cling to the definition provided by the right, the right themselves, led by the revisionist Avakian, develop this definition into the “New Synthesis of Communism” which is an attempt to negate and replace Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. Hence, the definition provided by the RIM, while a step in the correct direction, was incomplete; it contained the views of both the left and the right. The struggle was ongoing and after the arrest of Chairman Gonzalo in 1991 the revisionist Avakian and his clique sought to consolidate power in the RIM resulting in its liquidation.
Chairman Gonzalo contributed to the understanding of how fascism can emerge under bureaucratic capitalism in the oppressed nations; he developed upon how the united front of the classes led by the Party is developed into the New State. The theory of militarization of the Party was completed by Chairman Gonzalo, although begun by Lenin and Chairman Mao. Chairman Gonzalo also elaborated the necessity of combined urban and rural strategy in people’s war.
Of particular universal importance in the application of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism to the concrete conditions in Peru is the role assigned to philosophy, the necessity of forming ourselves in it and the application of the law of contradiction to study and understand every problem. Chairman Gonzalo’s all powerful thought, which we must defend and uphold, develops the General Political Line of the Communist Party of Peru with the Military Line at its center. By applying Maoism to sweep the mountain and assault the heavens, Chairman Gonzalo has developed Maoism with his universal contributions, contributions that are vital to all applications of the ideology in all countries. The question of upholding, defending, and applying the contributions of universal validity of Chairman Gonzalo is of critical importance at the current time. This begins with the acceptance of the definition of Maoism imposed by the Chairman, and an assessment of his life, legacy, and Great Leadership which provide countless theoretical insights and practical examples. From here it is necessary to discuss the specifics about Maoism in Peru and examine their contents fully, to apply the lessons everywhere possible and prove the universality in practice. This task, left to the revolutionaries and communists of the present era is only made more significant by the assassination of Chairman Gonzalo at the hands of imperialism, reaction and revisionism. Chairman Gonzalo was murdered after 30 years of isolation and torture. He never relented in his defense of World Proletarian Revolution, Maoism and the People’s War. This is another mighty victory of the Chairman and another great lesson on how Communists in formation fight toward the realization of our unalterable goal—Communism.
Marxism has three great summits, represented by Marx, Lenin and Chairman Mao. The highest summit is represented by Chairman Mao and the entire range has many smaller summits. Six Great Leaders and teachers stand out—they are Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Chairman Mao, and Chairman Gonzalo.
MARXISM-LENINISM-MAOISM, PRINCIPALLY MAOISM, WITH THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF UNIVERSAL VALIDITY OF CHAIRMAN GONZALO IS THE IDEOLOGY OF THE INTERNATIONAL PROLETARIAT, ALL POWERFUL BECAUSE IT IS TRUE.
Footnotes
- Anarchism in all its forms is the individualistic ideas of the small producer; it is not proletarian nor can it serve the proletariat. Hence it is incompatible with Marxism. It is one of the most misleading and detrimental influences any time it enters the peoples movements.
