WE BEGIN TO UNDERSTAND

We publish the following speech delivered on behalf of the Editorial Board of The Worker at the 2026 International Workers’ Day convention, which brought together representatives of anti-imperialist, worker, and Maoist organizations across the country as part of the campaign to Learn from Chairman Gonzalo, Unite Under Maoism. Minor edits have been made for publication.

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Part I: Learn From Chairman Gonzalo

The Campaign Learn from Chairman Gonzalo, Unite Under Maoism is a profound campaign with a transcendental strategic perspective for the reconstitution of the Communist Party USA. It arms us not only with the way forward but hammers Maoism into our hearts and steels us against the vulgar individualism of this decomposing society. It strikes a blow at liquidationism and the main danger revisionism.

Where we have relied on our own forces, our own experience and our own process we have completely succeeded. Where we have attempted to apply external pressure and influence we have partially succeeded and partially failed. The problem is taking the wrong lessons and being influenced by bad examples internationally, and it really is our fault for taking this bad influence. We must be able to rely on our own forces by creatively applying the only correct lessons of the International Communist Movement (ICM) to our conditions and be aware of the dangers of mechanical application since it comes from a place of subjectivism.

The first part: Learn from Chairman Gonzalo. This is the main part actually, because you cannot understand Maoism, let alone unite under it if you have failed to learn it from Chairman Gonzalo. This is what we think and what we will keep on thinking. Chairman Gonzalo is the teacher of teachers, the greatest among the great. He remains a titan of thought and action and the greatest Communist of our era, because his thought is incarnated by so many revolutionaries armed and arming for the World People’s War.

The degree in which our campaign is a success hinges on how well or how poorly we learn from Chairman Gonzalo. We learn from him in a few ways. Of course by studying him, this is indispensable but it is not enough; we learn in class struggle and in two-line struggle. Where we have seen victories in the campaign is the result of learning well, where the campaign is faltering it is due to not learning well. Is this easy to understand or not?

Chairman Gonzalo placed importance on the question of the fundamental contradictions on the world scale and determining which of the main contradictions are principal for a given front in the World Proletarian Revolution. He made this position when defining and imposing Maoism and generating Gonzalo Thought. So while the contradiction between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat is the main one for our type of revolution in this type of country, it is not the main one in the world.

What does it mean that the world contradictions are delineated in this way? It means that we get better at philosophy and grasp the main contradiction because it decides the others: that is the contradiction on the world scale, between imperialism and the oppressed nations. The main contradiction is not between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie nor is it the contradiction between the imperialists themselves or the imperialist powers on one hand and superpowers on the other. Mistaking these contradictions will make you fail to unite under Maoism and instead unite under Avakianism or some other monstrosity. The principal contradiction on the world scale is between imperialism and the oppressed nations, do you agree with this or not? It is an essential thesis of Maoism.

The nations that rise in combat against imperialist aggression are part of the World Proletarian Revolution. This has to be understood, you have to uproot Trotskyism, especially inside of the imperialist country where the body has been animated instead of buried. All efforts to prevent full recognition of this are in essence deviations from revolution.

This fact has asserted itself clearly in the glorious war of resistance to US imperialist-Zionist aggression led by the Islamic Republic of Iran. A just war of national resistance against an unjust imperialist war. The right-wing all over the world will succumb to creative mania and present the idea of “junior imperialism” or “domestic reaction” and try to stamp it on the Iranians; this is due to either revisionism or a failure to grasp the law of contradiction, a failure to grasp the principal aspect of a contradiction.

Learning from Chairman Gonzalo on this is especially crucial for anyone in this country venturing to call themselves a revolutionary, and so uniting under Maoism demands we struggle for unified support as internationalists for the just war of national resistance, which has delivered marvelous blows to the clay-footed giant we are all up against. Honor and Glory to the martyrs who fell in this glorious battle!

In 1991, the Chairman addressed the Preparatory Session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Peru’s (PCP) Second Plenum with a document titled “Fundamentals of Political Ideology”. In it, he remarked on the Persian Gulf, remarks in which we can find some fundamental principles at work:

“We uphold the slogan: ‘Yankees out of the Middle East’ We support the Arab people! We think this is in accordance with the objective situation. Saddam has invaded Kuwait in order to benefit the classes and groups that rule his country, Iraq. Nonetheless, given the circumstances, especially the aggression of the alliance in which the US leads other imperialist countries and reactionary Arab regimes, Saddam presents the possibility that the situation could lead to a war of resistance. In that case he could bring about an important change, and become the leader of a just war, defending his country from imperialist aggression, especially Yankee aggression. These circumstances could develop to a point where the people themselves could develop a viable resistance. In that case only, the people could act openly. We know that today there is Iraqi aggression against Kuwait but it is not productive to condemn either it or Saddam. This would serve imperialism. We think also that in the Arab world it could reinforce the domination of imperialism. If the people do not take today the role assigned to them—to be the victims of a great massacre—if they reject this, they will become a great cauldron boiling over. They will rise up, now that this historical process has demonstrated the capacity to fight. Saddam? His position is difficult. If he was removed by the imperialists, he would be replaced by lackeys of the imperialists. In which case these lackeys would become targets for revolution. But meanwhile they would strengthen imperialism. So, ‘Yankees out of the Middle East!’ expresses our position, and explains why we openly support Saddam and Iraq” (emphasis added).

Iran is not part of the Arab world, and although it controls more coast in the Persian Gulf than any other it is not considered a “gulf state”. It has invaded no one, but even if it did we would still support it. We must first make recognition that more than any other forces the Islamic Republic of Iran has made the slogan “Yankees out of the Middle East” a reality. Ali Khamenei is a martyr in the just war of resistance to US imperialism, this above all else. Mojtaba Khamenei leads a just war of resistance. It is not productive to condemn the Iranian state, nor its leaders; to do so would serve imperialism and reinforce the domination of imperialism. This expresses why we openly support Khamenei and Iran. Is that clear?

So far, in the past six weeks or so, the Iranians have managed to shut down major oil trafficking routes, bomb strategic US military bases, attack the rabid Zionist dogs who occupy part of Palestine in their seat of power, and beautifully target and lay to waste the headquarters of US monopoly tech giants. It was the US imperialists who asked for peace talks, who were willing to concede to discuss the ten demands of Iran. They could not stop in their aggressive frenzy and Iran wisely and with high principle withdrew from negotiations and is in a position of power. It is very important that the American people come to defend Iran and not condemn it.

What about the argument that “they killed protesters”? We think that the Iranian government was acting in a correct manner to annihilate that part of the population that walks with the Mossad, that this was a responsible decision to safeguard the position against US imperialism in the interests of the oppressed nation. The US imperialists have armed and attempt to utilize the Kurds for regime change, and this too failed miserably. Hence, they were forced into open aggression and slaughtered the masses, 180 Iranian people killed in a single strike on the first day of the war, most of them schoolgirls between the ages of 7 and 12. The principal aspect of this contradiction is the contradiction between the oppressed nation and imperialism, specifically US imperialism. You have to know this, you have to see it.

The Situation of Revolutionary Forces in the US

Nationally, the dispersal of revolutionary forces correlates to the international dispersal of forces, both of which resulted to varying degrees in a lack of firm leadership, a shaky, vague, dispersed leadership—in other words, a crisis of leadership. In short, comrades, we should be careful of bad advice, and bad methods, we should discern the emergence and level of development of deviations as much as possible.

The crisis of leadership is the result of the mishandling of ideological struggle and two-line struggle, the conciliation between left and right, and the maneuvering of the right. The right will always take advantage of a crisis of leadership and our amateurism and lack of experience will facilitate them in every way.

First, we must heed Chairman Gonzalo’s warnings on the two-line struggle, and then we will assert the correct understanding of leadership that we learned from him.

Do not lower your guard against the tactics used by the right, these are: Maneuvering, revoking agreements, surprise attacks, intrigues and conspiracies, ganging up, changing targets, absolving yourself of your responsibility, making a dirty fight by lowering it to a personal level and not as a struggle of ideas. If you lower your guard against these, if you pardon them, promote conciliation with them, sooner or later your own rank amateurism will see you employing the same tactics, and be it ignorance and inexperience or calculated malfeasance, the result is deepening dispersal by mishandling the contradiction.

The problem of leadership is a problem of Maoism; it is a problem whose resolution requires struggle. But there are principles taught by Chairman Gonzalo, who based himself firmly on the teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao, which can guide the way forward.

Internationally, the problem of leadership persists and on the international level there is a lack of unity preventing its clear emergence. This does not set a very positive example. Even among the best forces internationally we witness vacillation on important questions and an unacceptable delay in important statements or a failure to state what is needed, a failure to lead because one cannot agree on direction. This is a petrified leadership. This too has been revealed to us by the glorious and just war of national resistance against foreign imperialism taking place in Iran led by the Islamic Republic.

Since the death of Chairman Gonzalo, Maoism internationally has taken a loss, it has lost its head and a new leadership will only be forged in the class struggle and the two-line struggle. After the death of Chairman Mao a similar problem for communists emerged—there was no head. In this crisis prompted by the death of the Great Helmsman, many false leaders and false Maoists emerged. Most notably for us is Bob Avakian, who trafficked with internationalism and had a negative role in the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM). He used the capture of Chairman Gonzalo as an opening to push his revisionism, setting back the entire ICM.

Between the time of the liquidation of RIM at the hands of the rat Avakian and now, the proletarian forces in the ICM, and mainly those who do learn from Chairman Gonzalo have advanced, and will advance so long as they continue in upholding, defending and applying his all-powerful thought. Because comrades, it cannot be any other way, there are those who never learned from the Chairman and the basis of their unity is deformed as a result. This is the basis on which left and right positions will emerge, and new heads of each.

It is a problem of Maoism that it needs leaders and the recognition of leadership, and managing the setbacks that occur when our leaders fall capture or are martyred. Where there are problems there are solutions, and the national liberation and resistance struggles in the Greater Middle East have demonstrated a lot, including how the selective annihilation of leaders does not reduce their capacity to fight, and this demonstration of fighting is the only way to accumulate masses. This is also understood in our ideology.

In the US, we see this problem asserting itself. Captured leaders and crises of leadership. Every retreat contains an advance, and the new will always emerge. The problem is the combination of new and old leaders, the combination of experience and energy. The dispersal reigns at all of our expense, and leadership must assert itself; it must be conquered and brandished. There is no other way.

If we learn well from Chairman Gonzalo and the Communist Party of Peru under his leadership, we will know that the strategy of low-intensity warfare is deployed the moment one leads, specifically at the moment one leads the masses to take what is theirs with their own hands rather than voting for A or B. Low-intensity warfare is used in combination with reactionary violence and civilian reaction, but it is immanently military and repressive.

All enemy tactics concern themselves with annihilating leadership and those under its lead, to separate the revolutionaries from the masses. The goal in targeting leaders is to spread dispersal and confusion, to wreck the work and eliminate support for revolution. To do this the enemy must create informants, snitches, agents provocateurs, soplones, rats or whatever you prefer to call them. When these rats develop a political center they become liquidationist forces. From here to finish they are counterrevolutionaries, and we must understand that all counterrevolutionaries in service of the old-state dress their treachery in civic duty. Our rats are like that too. Those who have not experienced living in close quarters with rats sometimes suggest we might tame them, and even insist on inviting them to dinner, contaminating the environment, and this is how the rats reproduce and how we become their collaborators.

The problem is one of leadership. The problem of the principal task is one of leadership, it is the question of which class is to lead? Which class is to wage war and win? The bourgeoisie or the proletariat? For the proletariat to lead it must reconstitute its political party. Is this clear? For the bourgeoisie to prolong its miserable existence it must liquidate all efforts of reconstitution. Do you hear me?

The problem of organizing anything is the problem of leading it. We have to wage struggles on all kinds of fronts, and organize them rationally. The role of leaders is to ensure the organization of the trenches, to constantly and everywhere assert the need to combine the fight for daily conquests with the fight for the conquest of political power by the class, and right now this means make everything serve reconstitution.

We have leaders all over, and these reflect the dispersal. Their quality has yet to develop to meet the conditions of class struggle in which we find ourselves. Amateurishness and incompetence still preside with dispersal reigning, and it will continue to do so until the old and new are combined and a single center leads. There must be a head, there is no other way, and which class it serves is decisive. Reaction and revolution strive to lead the masses; liquidationism and reconstitution represent these two positions. They propose leading the masses in opposite directions, and the masses are a trench of combat. Reaction has many expressions, as many as the diverse and antagonistic self-interests of the capitalists, but the proletariat has one interest, and can only have one ultimate political expression.

The two roads, the two interests that contend for the masses, these push and pull you in all your activity, even down to the individual level, and it is why there will always be left and right deviations, that it is always possible to deviate when making a decision. This is what Chairman Gonzalo teaches and we must understand this lesson with our own historic and contemporary problems in mind; we must guard against pragmatism and subjectivism.

No class in history has ever achieved the installation of its rule without promoting its political leaders, its vanguard representatives, those capable of leading the movement and organizing it. The class struggle is where leaders are forged; this is universal and without exception, but it is only the Party that can produce Great Leadership. In this country, the Party was liquidated in 1944, and today it simply does not exist, which is why we have taken up the road of reconstitution, and on this road our leaders are forged.

Specific problems of leadership in our particular conditions are: first, that the World Proletarian Revolution develops unevenly due to the weight of the masses, the storm center. This means the class struggle is less acute, less explosive here and hence less capable of producing quality leaders, less capable of molding them, and opportunism reigns for a long time. Second, it is an issue of inexperience and this we should not be afraid of; some have already got a decade of experience while some a few years to snatch experience. You simply have to do new things, to organize a convention if you really never have before. Revolutionaries are not scared of new things. However, we are often bad at learning from the hard won experience; we are often foolish.

Leadership is the only thing that can serve as guarantee for maintaining our perspective and reaching our goal. Is that understood? Leadership is key, it is the duty of all revolutionaries to defend and preserve leadership. Above all, this means the task of learning from Chairman Gonzalo, embodying his all-powerful thought, and defending his historic leadership. Leadership never dies.

Collective leadership and individual leadership is what we must base ourselves in. We must deepen our understanding of the role of leaders and how through revolutionary struggle, and ultimately people’s war, leadership is renewed and the direction fulfills and tempers itself.

We speak so often about unity; we treasure the little fragile bits we have won in hard struggle. Within this we must learn that the task is not only to “unite,” that is only the first part; the task is to unite, differentiate, and lead. We begin to understand.

Part II: Unite Under Maoism

A subjectivist, one-sided, and idealist conception of unity gives impulse to splitting and the splitters sharpen their knives. This law of the jungle simply asserts itself because the unity it undermines is false to begin with. The foundation is as runny as the leadership. When your ideas are porous a lot can fester there.

What is behind the tendency to rationalize counter-revolutionary acts? To extend a constant diplomacy to revisionism? The comrades who do this, barring nefarious intentions, do this because they see the desire for unity as one-sided, and have not grasped the concrete conditions in which it is possible to struggle for unity.

Concretely you cannot unite with scabs; this is the most basic sentiment of any honest worker. The scabs are more hated than the boss because if not for their scabbing you really could unite with them. You cannot sit with snitches. This is also a very basic sentiment of honest workers. You cannot sit with them because they will inform on you too, when it becomes profitable, or when you run afoul of them yourself.

The petty bourgeoisie has ideological inclinations that prevent these proletarian sentiments from being common sense. For them, it comes down to the individual and their individual case of scabbing or snitching. So when petty-bourgeois calls for unity mean unite with scabs and snitches, the call is also to divide from revolutionaries and workers. It is our duty to take up the task of exposing how a deviation, when centralized with its own organic form and political line, can become a Right Opportunist Line, a headquarters for revisionism. It is our duty to combat it implacably.

What are the conditions to struggle for unity with those who have made the mistake of including scabs and sitting with snitches? They must denounce the snitches and hand them over for people’s justice if the circumstance permits—asi mueren soplones! Then we can talk.

Snitch networks have to be destroyed. You must smash the snitch apparatus with one fist, and you must do it thoroughly with a consistent ideological campaign, a campaign based on the five criteria demarcating Marxism from revisionism and examining the three integral and component parts of Marxism. Revisionism must be exposed. You must struggle to identify when an organization stops circling the drain and enters the sewers of revisionism; we have had a year to watch this process.

One-sided, idealist unity is what we mean by subjectivist unity. When the struggle for unity has not reached a certain definite qualitative stage, and it comes to exist on paper, this is when petrification sets in, when leadership is hindered, when the right emerges and makes maneuvers. Plot and intrigue become the basic operations and agreements are revoked.

This has been a historic problem for Maoism internationally, since the death of Chairman Mao and the bastard Avakian made some use of it. The RIM declaration was just a paper for the right; they did not practice a bit of it. This problem persists, and the left and the right emerge in two-line struggle. We hold that organizations are a contradiction and ideological struggle is inescapable. One must watch closely to discern the features of the class struggle on the external surface of an organism.

So the crises of leadership in the ICM following the death of Chairman Mao, and now the one following the death of Chairman Gonzalo, are connected to the very basic process of uniting under Maoism.

Maoism must be defined. If we simply unite under three or four different definitions of Maoism we have yet to unite. The difficulties, how well or poorly the comrades are united internationally, is a question of how well or poorly they have learned from Chairman Gonzalo. This is why we define Maoism in the specific way that we do, and why we fight for this definition.

In our view, one must step forward boldly without being held back too far by the most backward; drag them along. The ICM must go further than the RIM, and much further than its definition of Maoism. It can because it must, the motion of history demands it and conjures it. This means the task of declaring what is principal—that it is Maoism that is principal, and that the contributions of Chairman Gonzalo are universally valid.

What are the problems of uniting under Maoism beyond the haunting spirit of Avakian’s definition of Maoism? Let me delineate a few, and while you may recoil, you all know and have seen it.

Sectionalism, what is sometimes called localism. It is a deviation that stops one from taking the consistent class standpoint of the proletariat, a condition in which one’s section is prioritized over national work, and in reality over unity among Maoists. This is both a product of and a reproducer of dispersal of forces. Those who owe their organizational birth to the split must be extra vigilant against remaining in the soiled diapers of division. Stop focusing only on local issues. Local issues are important but not as important.

Small-group mentality must be abolished. We begin to understand. Small group mentality goes against the interests of the class and the people, and against uniting under Maoism. Small group mentality is tightly bound to splitting. Do we see our interests as a unity or as a section? Without seeing interests as a unity we act like little bosses, little managers, the same type we find in the workplace, nose always up the big boss’s ass. This leads to a petty-bourgeois style of leadership, causing resentment, instead of developing united interests. One section goes against another. They develop personal animosities, petty intrigues, and dirty fighting. It is the recipe for a split and it is in almost every tattered little cook house in the country.

Corrective action means putting the interests of the class first with a strong, wise, and experienced strategic perspective. If groups are too ideologically and politically weak to do this, they should slow down a bit, gather some experience and keep at their tasks. We must lay the issues out openly and crush these sectional attitudes. This is what Chairman Gonzalo teaches and we must learn it now, because the people can see the little managers for what they are. Do not be like that, do not learn from Khrushchev or Avakian, learn from Chairman Gonzalo!

So let’s put the problems on the table! In the interests of our class as a whole and all people who stand to benefit from socialist revolution, it is unpardonable to work with snitches and their collaborators; this is what we think.

Chairman Gonzalo teaches that political ideology decides everything. And not only must our ideology guide all of our work without exception, we must also use it to analyze what we are doing.

The problem of real and false unity and knowing the difference—this too has to be put on the table.

Unity, what we have won in struggle is precious, we should not risk it on sectional attitudes or short-sighted perspectives. This is what Chairman Gonzalo teaches and he says that “The UNITY of Communists is precious, and must be based on principles. Unity that is not based and sustained on principles is not Unity. See how much Unity has been declared since the earliest times of the International Communist Movement, and how many treacherous revisionists have spoken about Unity. They have spoken empty words of Unity to hide their divisive positions. So where is the erroneous root for Unity not to be established? It is that individual and group interests have been established instead. Unity is sustained upon principles, upon Marxism-Leninism-Maoism (MLM) ideology, around an established plan, the process of the People’s War. That is what must unite us, and not personal or group interests” (emphasis added).

There is certainly some false unity that is not based on and sustained by principles, and this is the problem. To overcome it we must struggle. Plots and intrigues undermine this, being honest and aboveboard strengthen it. Get this right.

Some of this may be taken as blunt by some comrades, but this is good; you should toughen your scalps a bit. It is necessary to be honest in these positions and to make these arguments; they are opening the discussions to come. The problem of unity has to be understood ideologically, through grasping the law of contradiction.

Conciliationist approaches nourish the right. We all must deepen criticism and self-criticism. We must go against the tide and struggle against rightist criteria, attitudes, opinions and positions, practicing Marxism because revisionism is the main danger. It is necessary to consolidate and develop the left line and impose it in the ideological struggle. Now we begin to understand.

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