The Initiators

Editorial Board

May 17 marks the glorious 46^th anniversary of the Initiation of Armed Struggle (ILA80) in Peru, the start of the ongoing and undefeated People’s War led by Chairman Gonzalo and the Communist Party of Peru. The contributions of this People’s War shine brighter than all other armed struggles of this period because it was in this furnace that a beautiful torrent of blood irrigated the future by allowing the ideology of the international proletariat to be defined and developed. It is the blood of the masses, the combatants, the militants, and the leaders in this People’s War that have dyed, and continue to dye, our flag the deepest red.

For the 46^th anniversary of ILA80, we raise several important universal principles drawn out from the inexorable path taken by our heroic comrades and Great Leadership. It is paramount to utilize this occasion to learn from Chairman Gonzalo in the spirit of the struggle to unite under Maoism.

1979 Marks the Reconstitution of the Communist Party of Peru, a New Future Unfolds

In 1979, Chairman Gonzalo spoke, “Today begins a new chapter: how the walls collapse and a new dawn unfolds. It will be said that our Party, forged with the strongest light and purest steel had a decisive moment. The moment generates the Plan of National Construction, and the Party which was a piece of the flag unfurled to the wind, spreads out in order to illuminate the country. Communists from all parts of the country were called and a national system was set in motion. Communists rose up and the land reverberated. With the rumbling of the land, the Communists advanced. For this purpose a landmark conference was held, a political basis was established and a course to follow was set. A flag was planted, a very high flag for a new epoch and with a new objective: INITIATE THE ARMED STRUGGLE. Men struggled hard and the few Communists that existed were gathered from various points and in the end they committed themselves to making a decision: to forge with deeds the First Company of the First Division of the People’s Army. In this manner, they began to clear out the darkness in a definitive form. The walls shook and were breached and with clenched fists, the dawn broke out. The key was the First National Conference, a milestone marking the beginning of a new chapter.”

Thus the work of the Communists in the Peru Trench of the World Proletarian Revolution was recovered and advanced heroically, setting the example for the world to follow in thought and action. Here the red flag is raised and it flutters out in a crimson wave to engulf the planet, at a moment when the forces of reaction and imperialism had proclaimed the ultimate triumph over the proletariat. Here in this moment it is recorded, the invincibility of our class to always rise, to fight again until victory, this is what is affirmed.

It cannot just be proclaimed: there is a process. The Chairman illuminates that process, the process of class struggle and its reflection inside the ranks of the proletarian organization as two-line struggle. War could not simply be declared, it first had to be won in two-line struggle. The First National Conference of the PCP also marked the defeat of the First Right Opportunist Line, which viciously opposed ILA and sought to destroy the war and close the future with cynicism. Such elements have to be defeated, such ideas have to be abolished. The future can now open.

In May 1979, one year before ILA80, the 9^th Plenum of the Expanded Central Committee of the Party would meet on the 19^th day. There was a preparatory session and a continued session. Important topics for the preparatory session were The Progress of Reconstitution and the defeat of the oppositional faction. To defend and decide was the character of this session. The culmination of reconstitution on the Party-level was established. In the continued session the agenda included: the political question, the question of the military problem, the two-line struggle, construction, direction, the international situation. It was the role of this important meeting to DECIDE AND DEFINE THE FINAL FIGHT AGAINST THE RIGHT OPPORTUNIST LINE.

Decide and define is an important principle with applicability to our particular conditions in the USA, insofar as we must decide to struggle against the right deviations and right opportunists and in making that decision we must define it. The two things are interrelated. This is a powerful verdict, a just and correct one that was necessary to initiate the armed struggle in Peru. Only a reconstituted Party guided by the ideology of the international proletariat could accomplish what was necessary in the preparation for ILA80 and only the Party could choose the correct moment.

The First Military School

The First Military School was held in April of 1980. It was not arms training, it was not a physical training school, this was carried separately and secondarily. The First Military School was armed with books, it was a theoretical school for ideological training. The ideological aspect of the Army of the New Type is the most important aspect, this follows the principle that unarmed hands can become armed hands if the correct ideology is placed in the sole command and guide.

In order for actions to speak, the action has to be established in understanding. In 1980 Chairman Gonzalo spoke at the First Military School:

“we must understand that the revolutionary struggle will be hard, violent and cruelly contested by reaction. They will send their sinister army, armed to the teeth to fight us, assaulting the working class, the peasants and the popular masses, spreading their sinister claws. They will try to encircle, isolate, crush and wipe us out. But we are the future, the strength, and history.”

Chairman Gonzalo taught that the task was to combat the persistent deviations on the left and the right, but mainly the right, because the left-wing deviations were fleeting. He taught that the problem of the Party was not that some comrades expressed impatience to initiate armed struggle. No, the problem was the deeper and more stable deviation, that of the right, which posed a greater danger. Understanding that the rightist deviation is principal is important to understanding revisionism as the main danger. Chairman Gonzalo taught that the problem was on the right, rightism. He declared that they would not be able to reach an understanding with those who do not want to initiate armed struggle.

Chairman Gonzalo Establishes How Forces are Accumulated

By defeating the First Right Opportunist Line, having prevailed in the organization of two-line struggle, imposing the Left on the Right and decapitating the elements from the Party that were incorrigible, Chairman Gonzalo established that the Party develops itself through armed struggle.

With the reconstitution of the Party armed with the correct ideological, organizational, and political line, the Communists of Peru unlocked their destiny to transform darkness into light, to transform the old society into the new. It is established that the purpose of the Party of the new type is to seize power by force of arms. “The Party cannot be developed more but through force of arms, through armed struggle,” Chairman Gonzalo spoke to the First Military School. “We have no power because we have no guns.”

There are always elements like the invertebrate right expelled from the Party that denounce every action, that seek to prevent any confrontation with the class enemy. They will always cite conditions and produce a tome of reasons why class enemies should be ignored; this is bourgeois ideology within the ranks of the revolution at work. Bourgeois ideology ceased to be revolutionary a long time ago, and it is rightist deviations that are principal.

Right deviations in our movement today come in many shades. The most common refrain of the right is: do not do this or that action because of a lack of “masses”. In reality, such rhetoric closes the door on accumulating the masses in leaps. The toiling masses will not join a talking organization and seek with their very instincts a fighting one. Other rightists will support economic struggles as long as they lack militancy and reject proclaiming the guidance of the ideology.

Defeating the right is therefore a direct part of accumulating forces through the highest possible realization of revolutionary violence. It is always possible for the right to destroy an organization and it is through prevailing against the right that the destruction is averted. In this moment it is possible to grow significantly, but you must defeat the right, you must avert the destruction of the proletarian forces. This is what Chairman Gonzalo taught. How will we reconstitute the Party and learn from Chairman Gonzalo? Through defeating the right and through confrontations with the class enemy. This is to say, two-line struggle and class struggle, turning a process without violence into a violent process. Revolutionary violence is the new, everything else is old. This is a universal lesson contributed by Chairman Gonzalo and presented to us by ILA80.

Today the Storms are Colliding

The Initiation of Armed Struggle in Peru 1980 demonstrated proof to the world of certain positions that are fundamental to Maoism: the world is in the Strategic Offensive of World Proletarian Revolution, the revolutionary tide is on our side, the wind is at our backs; the people seek to solve their problems with arms by seizing power so the future will be decided through people’s war; organic development relies on two-line struggle and defeating the right, the greatest development is through armed struggle, it is through violent class struggle that the Party is reconstituted, it is through people’s war that the Party is made invincible and the axis of everything, the kind of Party needed by the people and revolution. We must never let these principles slip through our fingers.

It was within the People’s War in Peru that began May 17, 1980, that Marxism-Leninism-Maoism was defined, and it was proven there that Maoism is principal for the world and Gonzalo Thought is principal for Peru. In this great epic of class struggle, Gonzalo Thought was concretized in deed. While the overall developments of the three integral and component parts of Marxism—that is, developing philosophy, political economy, and scientific socialism—are credits that belong to Chairman Mao, many contributions of Chairman Gonzalo made possible by ILA80 continue to bear fruit. Those who operate in denial of or suppress the truth of Chairman Gonzalo’s universally valid contributions disarm the World Proletarian Revolution of its most vital force, the advance of the ideology of the international proletariat.

Those who deny, suppress, or distort Chairman Gonzalo’s universally valid contributions are ultimately denying his Great Leadership, which has spread around the world, and consequently they are the same who deny what is principal. This trend is most accurately summed up in revisionism. On the one hand, there is the Second Right Opportunist Line (ROL) from Peru, the one that promotes “peace” by claiming Chairman Gonzalo’s capitulation. On the other hand, the main one for us in the USA, is the revisionist Avakian of the so-called “Revolutionary Communist Party USA”, who affirms the slanders of the Second ROL for his own gain, claiming Chairman Gonzalo is the one who deviated and capitulated in order to promote his own opportunist leadership and define his New Revisionism. All of these are attacks on leadership, all these roads lead to the same place—the interests of the class enemy.

In the USA we understand the attacks because the role of Avakian lingers here, especially in the thinking of our domestic Right Opportunists who increasingly converge around their revisionism, forming a center. They seek to utilize every attack from liquidationism and the old-state in order to shore up their opportunist headquarters and develop their revisionism, to divide the forces, liquidate the organisms, and foster a culture of police work. They do this because they distort the ideology of the proletariat and debase themselves in bourgeois ideas.

The light that will be cast into the dark rooms compelling these rightists to scatter like roaches is shone incandescently by the campaign: LEARN FROM CHAIRMAN GONZALO, UNITE UNDER MAOISM! A campaign they hate with the very marrow of their being because it spells their demise and foreshadows the epic of class struggle, which right now germinates in our deeds.

Those who have abandoned the path and embarked upon sinister revisionism must be overcome. Those who have faltered must return to their posts. Those who have strayed but not abandoned the proletariat must reassemble under its single flag, emblazoned with the hammer and sickle and raised aloft. There is no other way, it is a duty we must take seriously, it is necessary and those who oppose necessity will become obsolete and perish.

Among the unjustly dispersed forces that are guided by Maoism and act in the interests of the proletariat, joint and parallel actions like the commemoration of ILA80 will deepen the two-line struggle and increase combativity against class enemies, and side-by-side unity will be forged. In this sequence the just and correct leadership will emerge and be imposed. You will see.

Image: The First Military School of the Communist Party of Peru.

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