File spoon-archives/marxism-general.archive/marxism-general_1997/97-04-02.183, message 17


Date: Sun, 30 Mar 1997 19:36:18 -0500
Subject: M-G: A great stride in uniting the Int.Comm. Mov. on the basis of M-L-M


Saluting the new strides within the International Communist Movement towards
firmly re-establishing its glorious ideological basis of unity!


On a remarkable series of postings outlining the points of view of the
powerful Communist Party of the Philipines recently published in LeninList
by comrade Jim Hillier:

I will like to reproduce a part of the speech of the Chairman of the
Communist Party of the Philippines.  It fully validates the thesis advanced
by us regrading the development of a New Fascism on the part of the
imperialist bourgeosie, basing itself in the manipulation of the shibboleths
of the bogus "Left".

I will also like to salute and commend the recent publication in LeninList
of these brilliant documents of the Communist Party of the Phillipines which
totally validate our contention that the International Communist Movement
marches forward in undertanding the tremendous significance of GENUINE - as
oppossed to bogus - Maoism. Particularly, the summation of the GPCR in China
by comrade Jose Maria Sisson is a momentous contribution to a solid basis of
unity of the genuine proletarian revolutionaries in the world.

Adolfo Olaechea


>From the Speech by comrade Armando Liwanang:


The imperialists and the most reactionary forces have long funded
a few petty-bourgeois hirelings in the industrial capitalist and
underdeveloped countries to specialize in spreading anticommunist
and antiproletarian notions and undertake programs and projects
to obscure and blunt the class struggle of the proletariat and
the big bourgeoisie and the anti-imperialist struggles of the
oppressed peoples and nations.

The petty-bourgeois hirelings pretend to criticize their
imperialist and reactionary benefactors but prettify them by
conjuring illusions that these can reform themselves about such
issues as oppression and exploitation, sustainable development,
poverty alleviation, environment, gender equality, ethnicity,
civil society and so on. Pretending to be engaged in social
movement or civic initiative, above classes and without class or
government support, they misappropriate certain issues to slander
and attack the proletariat and its revolutionary party.

The reality of exploiting and exploited classes and class
struggle in the underdeveloped countries of the third world is
similar to that obtaining in the many economically depressed and
underdeveloped republics of Russia and the former Soviet Union.
The long process of restoring capitalism and the current
depredations of undisguised capitalism of the most barbaric kind
have destroyed the productive forces in a big and deepgoing way
and have degraded many republics to the status of backward third
world countries. To prevent Russia from rebounding as a major
imperialist rival and to let her military capability deteriorate
further, the US, the European Union and Japan are deliberately
carrying out a policy of dumping surplus goods on her, limiting
productive investments from abroad and effecting the further
destruction of her industrial and military-industrial base.

In most of the underdeveloped countries of the third world, a
modern industrial proletariat has somehow arisen from
import-dependent manufacturing, transport and communications,
public utilities, mining and so on. Only in a few countries of
the third world is there a modern industrial proletariat arising
>from some comprehensive industrial foundation or some heavy and
basic industries, where once before socialism was in place as in
China or where once before an anti-imperialist bourgeois
nationalism could insist on national industrialization as in
India.

There is a new development in the world arising from high-tech
capitalist production for profit and the most avaricious forms of
profit-taking by finance capitalism. There is an unprecedentedly
high rate of capital accumulation, concentration and
centralization of capital in such global centers of capitalism as
the US, the European Union and Japan. As a result, there is a
rapid process of deindustrialization and decapitalization in most
countries of the world.

In some ten countries outside the said global centers of
capitalism, investments are concentrated on sweatshops engaged in
the manufacture or reassembly of consumer goods for the
industrial capitalist countries. These avail of cheap labor, do
not provide job tenure and other workers' rights, are easily
relocated, undermine the national industry and are now
increasingly vulnerable to their own distinctive crisis of
overproduction and to reduced consumption in the recession-ridden
export market.

At the same time, in most of the underdeveloped countries where
these sweatshops are not established and where production
equipment are not renovated, there are depressed economic
conditions, extreme poverty and social disorder as a result of
the overproduction of raw materials since the 1970s. Production
of raw materials and some manufactures with the old equipment has
become uncompetitive in the world capitalist system and has
resulted in stagnation and closures.

At present, there is a great spasm in the world capitalist system
due to the crisis of overproduction induced by high technology
for profit and the most abusive forms of finance capitalism.
There is widespread destruction of productive forces through mass
unemployment and closures of factories. Condition in the
republics of the former Soviet Union are increasingly becoming
similar to those in the third world.

But the monopoly capitalists will always need a proletariat to
exploit in their own homegrounds and on a world scale. No matter
how far the current crisis of the world capitalist system goes,
the modern industrial proletariat will continue to exist in most
countries of the world and remain as the most productive and
progressive political force against monopoly capitalism. There is
no way for another class to take away from the proletariat the
revolutionary role of class leadership in the struggle for
socialism against imperialism.

We are still in the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution
as defined by Lenin. This is true especially because of the
revisionist betrayal and capitalist restoration in the Soviet
Union and other former socialist countries. The teachings of
Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao about classes and class
struggle remain valid to this day. Without a foundation in the
revolutionary theory and practice, we cannot make new theoretical
and practical advances in the struggle of the proletariat for
socialism and communism.

Long live Lenin and Stalin!

Build a Marxist-Leninist party in Russia!

Long live Marxism-Leninism!


And from comrade Jose Maria Sisson's speech, I like to reproduce the following:

1.  The fact that the GPCR triumphed in Mao's time should not be
glossed over.  Until now in the history of mankind, there has
never been as intensive and extensive a democratic process as the
GPCR, with the proletariat and the people being able to express
themselves freely, seize back the authority usurped by
capitalist-roaders and overthrow such deeply entrenched high
officials of the Party and the state.  The victory of the GPCR
came as the culmination of a series of struggles between the
proletarian revolutionary line and the bourgeois renegade line
within the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Chinese
socialist state.  The contradiction between the proletariat and
the bourgeoisie started to simmer in 1956, following the
overthrow of the proletariat by the revisionists in the Soviet
Union and the basic socialist transformation of the ownership of
the means of production in China and in the course of the Eighth
Congress of the CPC.

The basic principles and practical methods that Mao drew up for
the GPCR were guided by and developed from the basic teachings of
his great communist predecessors and arose from the two-line
struggle within the CPC and from the lessons learned from the
building of socialism by Lenin and Stalin, from the mistakes and
shortcomings of Stalin and from the betrayal of socialism by the
Soviet revisionists.

Among the points that Mao put forward during the GPCR were the
following: that the main contradiction in socialist society is
between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, that class struggle
is the key link in all spheres, that revolutionary politics must
be in command, that the mass line must be pursued,  that both the
mode of production and the superstructure must be revolutionized,
that the youth and the masses must be trained and gain experience
as revolutionary successors through cultural revolution, that
there must be the dialectical interaction and mutual supervision
and cooperation between the leadership and the masses, that there
must be a three-in-one combination of cadres, masses and experts,
that there must be freedom and discipline, that special attention
must be paid to the revolutionary education of the intelligentsia
and the bureaucracy lest they become the ideological and social
base of revisionism and capitalist restoration.

Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping and the like opposed the proletarian
revolutionary line of Mao with such notions as the harmony of
Marxism-Leninism and revisionism, self-cultivation and expertise
above the heads of the masses, dying out of the class struggle,
the main contradiction in socialist society is between the
backward productive forces and the advanced relations of
production, the Kautskyite "theory of productive forces"
(building socialism is merely an economistic operation), dealing
with the means of production as commodities, the consolidation of
the national democratic revolution and Bukharinite prolongation
of concessions to the national bourgeoisie and the rich peasants
and shunning the restriction and eventual elimination of
bourgeois rights.

The Chinese capitalist roaders wanted to overthrow Mao and his
proletarian line. In the demagogic fashion of the Soviet
revisionists, they depicted him as guilty of the cult of
personality and even as a feudal autocrat.  But on the way to the
GPCR, Mao succeeded in putting forward the general line of
socialist revolution and construction, launching the Great Leap
Forward and building the people's communes, making a
comprehensive critique of Soviet modern revisionism and defeating
the most overt Right opportunists in 1957 to 1959 and redirecting
the socialist education movement against the Party persons in
authority taking the capitalist road as the main target.

What makes the theory and practice of the GPCR the greatest
achievement of Mao is that by this he was able to identify the
crucial problems that, if unsolved, can spell the peaceful change
of socialism into capitalism and to win victory in the solution
of those problems up to a certain point.  The defeat of the GPCR
urges us to learn both positive and negative lessons, in the same
way that Marx analyzed the Paris Commune and upheld its
revolutionary significance.

Some lessons include the necessity of precluding factionalism,
ensuring that the Left win over the Middle to isolate the Right,
using due process in addition to Party leadership and mass
movement in order to narrow the target and limit the number of
those punished or humiliated, directing the ideological and
political offensive against the highest capitalist roaders, using
education and persuasion on those who merely lag behind and
preventing the return to power of the incorrigible and systematic
capitalist-roaders like Deng Xiaoping.  Because of serious
errors, the proletarian revolutionary succession to Mao could not
be fulfilled after his death.

2.  The Chinese revisionists who have reversed the proletarian
revolutionary line of Mao and falsely judged the GPCR as a total
disaster cannot gloat endlessly over their betrayal of socialism.
The actual restoration of capitalism in China indubitably proves
the correctness of Mao in putting forward the theory and practice
of continuing revolution under proletarian dictatorship through
the GPCR.  The basic revisionist notions of Liu Shaoqi and Deng
Xiaoping against the socialist line of Mao have led to capitalist
counterrevolution and the unbridled exploitation and oppression
of the proletariat and people by the imperialists and the Chinese
bourgeoisie.  

The Chinese revisionists and bureaucrat capitalists still
masquerade as communists and pretend to run a socialist state.
But the truth can be easily drawn from the facts.  The class rule
of the proletariat has been overthrown in all spheres and the
capitalist-oriented reforms and integration of China into the
world capitalist system have created a powerful bureaucrat and
private comprador big bourgeoisie.  Especially after Mao's
criticism of Soviet revisionism and monopoly bureaucrat
capitalism, it is naive of some people to say that China is
socialist simply because of the existence of state-owned
enterprises and the formal rule of a communist party.  These are
merely the base of a bureaucrat monopoly bourgeoisie, which is
growing as a big comprador bourgeoisie increasingly in collusion
with the imperialists and private bourgeois entrepreneurs in the
whole Chinese economy.

It is important for the symposium to clarify and demonstrate how
the Chinese revisionists and bureaucrat capitalists have revised
the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought,
overthrown the class dictatorship of the proletariat, redirected
and reorganized the CPC, adopted and enforced policies and laws
that have destroyed the socialist character of China and turned
it into capitalist in politics, economy and culture and in fact
inflicted severe oppression and exploitation on the broad masses
of the people by the imperialists and the domestic Chinese
bourgeoisie.

It is interesting to try answering the following questions: how
much longer will the bureaucrat and private capitalists use the
signboards of the communist party and the socialist state to
legitimize and enforce their bourgeois class rule before giving
way to openly anticommunist political liberalization as the
inevitable consequence of economic liberalization; and whether
there are still sufficiently resolute and courageous proletarian
revolutionaries to avail of the legacy of Mao Zedong and the GPCR
and lead the masses in a revolutionary movement.

3.  The completely undisguised restoration of capitalism in the
former Soviet Union and the disintegration of the Soviet Union
verify and vindicate the correctness of Mao's critique of modern
revisionism and the theory and practice of the GPCR.  The
direction in which the Chinese revisionists are taking China is
presaged by the earlier 35-year experience of the Soviet
revisionist renegades.

In a manner of speaking, the Chinese revolution was overtaken by
the betrayal of socialism in the Soviet Union in 1956.  Mao's
opponents took inspiration from the Soviet revisionists and tried
to cast away his proletarian revolutionary line.  But Mao
prevailed while he was alive. His successful resistance to modern
revisionism and defense of Chinese socialism actually lasted for
20 years from 1956 to 1976 and gave him the opportunity to make a
pathbreaking critique of an unprecedented phenomenon.

A necessary component of Mao's theory and practice of the GPCR is
his comprehensive and profound critique of Soviet modern
revisionism.  History presented to him the task of analyzing
something unprecedented, revisionism subverting and gaining power
in a socialist society.  And he performed his task well, up to
predicting correctly the undisguised  restoration of capitalism
and disintegration of the revisionist regimes.  So many had
believed for a long time before that Khrushchov would build the
material and technical foundation of communism and also that
Brezhnev's "real socialism" was irreversible.

4.  Mao's theory and practice of continuing revolution under
proletarian dictatorship through the GPCR is indispensable to
proletarian revolutionaries in understanding the problems of
making socialist revolution and construction in the face of
imperialism, revisionism and reaction.

Without this theory and practice, Marxist-Leninists would be at a
loss in the face of the attempt of the imperialists, the
revisionists and all their anticommunist petty-bourgeois camp
followers to completely discredit the socialist record of Lenin,
Stalin and Mao, further attack socialism by misrepresenting the
anti-Stalin and anti-Mao revisionist regimes as socialist and
prate about the futility of the socialist cause.

With Mao's crtique of modern revisionism and his theory and
practice of the GPCR, there is ample scientific basis for
revolutionary foresight and optimism and for the confidence that
when socialist societies shall again arise from the crisis of
imperialism and upsurge of proletarian revolution, the communists
will have a better grasp of what to do in upholding, defending
and advancing socialism towards the ultimate goal of communism.

5.  Because of the defeat of socialism since 1956 in the Soviet
Union and since 1976 in China, the proletariat and the people of
the world are still very much in the era of imperialism and
proletarian revolution and are being subjected to ever worsening
conditions of exploitation and oppression.

The centralization and concentration of capital are more rapid
than ever before in the entire history of capitalism before
because of the use of high technology and the most speculative
forms of finance capital.  The destructive consequences of
present-day capitalism are unprecedented in both industrial
capitalist countries and underdeveloped countries.  The uneven
development of capitalism is far grosser than ever before, as
most evident in the general run of third world and former
Soviet-bloc countries.

Insofar as the new-democratic and socialist revolutions will
still have to be waged in various countries at different times,
the basic teachings of the great communists from Marx to Mao and
the lessons from successful revolutions will continue to be
relevant and applicable long into the future.  The basic
principles of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought shall be upheld
and further developed on the basis of persistent, worsened and
new concrete conditions.  



Finally, I thank comrade Jim Hillier for this magnificent series of postings.


Adolfo Olaechea



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