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 --- from list marxism-general-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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