Date: Thu, 10 Jul 1997 17:11:54 -0400
From: hariette-AT-easynet.co.uk (Hariette Spierings)
Subject: M-G: DEBUNKING A SILLY ANTI MARIATEGUI ANTI-PCP CAMPAIGN 


>Folks, here is an interesting article by J. C. Mariategui, the
>founder of the Communist Party of Peru.  I found it in the 
>Marx-Engels Archives on the internet.  -Jay Miles/Detroit
>====================================================================>ANTI-IMPERIALIST VIEWPOINT
>
>By  J. C. MARIATEGUI
>
>Presented to the First Latin American Communist Conference, June 1929.
>
>
>To what degree is the situation of the Latin American republics
>similar to that of the semi-colonial countries? The economic condition
>of these republics is undoubtedly semi-colonial, and this
>characteristic of their economies tends to be accentuated as
>capitalism, and therefore imperialist penetration, develops. 

But the
>national bourgeoisies, who see cooperation with imperialism as their
>best source of profits, feel themselves secure enough as mistresses of
>power not to be too greatly preoccupied with national sovereignty. The
>South American bourgeoisies, not yet facing Yankee military occupation
>(with the exception of Panama), are not disposed to admit the
>necessity of struggling for their second independence, as Aprista
>propaganda naively supposes. 


The state, or better yet the ruling
>class, does not seem to feel the need for a greater or more secure
>degree of national autonomy. The revolution for independence is
>relatively too near, its myths and symbols too alive in the 
>consciousness of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie. The illusion
>of national sovereignty still lives on.  It would be a serious mistake
>to claim that this social layer still has a sense of revolutionary
>nationalism, as in those places where it does represent a factor for
>anti-imperialist struggle in semi-colonial countries enslaved by
>imperialism, for example, in Asia in recent decades.
>
>Over a year ago, in our discussion with Aprista leaders in which we
>rejected their desire to propose the creation of a Latin American
>Kuomintang, we put forward the following thesis as a way to avoid
>Eurocentric plagiarism and to accommodate our revolutionary activity
>to a precise appreciation of our own reality:
>
>Collaboration with the bourgeoisie and even many feudal elements in
>the anti-imperialist struggle in China are explicable in terms of race
>and national culture that are not relevant for us. A Chinese nobleman
>or bourgeois feels himself Chinese to the core. He matches the white
>man's contempt for his stratified and decrepit culture with his own
>contempt and pride in his millennia-long tradition. Anti-imperialism
>can therefore find support in such sentiments and in a sense of
>Chinese nationalism.

 Circumstances are not the same in Indo America.
>The native aristocracy and bourgeoisie feel no solidarity with the
>people in possessing a common history and culture. In Peru, the white
>aristocrat and bourgeois scorn the popular and the national. They
>consider themselves white above all else. The petty bourgeois mestizo
>imitates their example. The Lima bourgeoisie fraternizes with the
>Yankee capitalists, even with their mere employees at the Country
>Club, the Tennis Club, and in the streets. The Yankee can marry the
>native senorita without the inconvenience of differences in race or
>religion, and she feels no national or cultural misgivings in
>preferring marriage with a member of the invading race. The middle
>class girl has no qualms in this regard, either. The girl who can trap
>a Yankee employed by the Grace Company or the Foundation does 
>it with the satisfaction of thereby raising her social position. 

The
>nationalist factor for these inescapable objective reasons is neither
>decisive nor basic to the anti imperialist struggle in our
>environment. Only in countries such as Argentina, where there is a
>large and rich bourgeoisie proud of their country's wealth and power
>and where the national character for this reason has clearer 
>contours than in more backward countries could anti imperialism
>(perhaps) penetrate more easily among bourgeois elements.
>But this is for reasons related to capitalist expansion and
>development, rather than for reasons of social justice and socialist
>theory as in our case.
>    
>The betrayal by the Chinese bourgeoisie and the failure of the
>Kuomintang have not yet been understood in their full magnitude. Their
>capitalist style of nationalism (one not related to social justice or
>theory) demonstrates how little we can trust the revolutionary
>nationalist sentiments of the bourgeoisie, even in countries like
>China.
>
>As long as the imperialists are able to "manage" the sentiments and
>formalities of these states' national sovereignty and are not forced
>to resort to armed intervention or military occupation, they can
>definitively count on the collaboration of their bourgeoisies. While
>they may depend upon the imperialist economy, these countries, or
>rather their bourgeoisies, consider themselves as much the masters of
>their own fate as Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, and the other "dependent
>states" of Europe.
>
>This factor of political psychology should not be discounted in the
>precise estimation of the possibilities of anti-imperialist action in
>Latin America. Neglect of this matter has been one of the
>characteristics of Aprista theory.
>
>The fundamental difference between us in Peru who originally accepted
>the APRA (as a project for a united front, never as a party or even as
>an effective organizer of struggle), and those outside Peru who later
>defined it as a Latin American Kuomintang, is that the former remain
>faithful to the revolutionary, socioeconomic conception of
>anti-imperialism; the latter, meanwhile, explain their position by
>saying: "We are leftists (or socialists) because we are
>anti-imperialists." 

Anti-imperialism thereby is raised to the level of
>a program, a political attitude, a movement that is valid in and of
>itself and that leads spontaneously to socialism, to the social
>revolution (how, we have no idea). This idea inordinately
>overestimates the anti-imperialist movement, exaggerates the myth of
>the struggle for a "second independence," and romanticizes that we are
>already living in the era of a new emancipation. This leads to the
>idea of replacing the anti-imperialist leagues with political parties.

>>From an APRA initially conceived as a united front, a popular
>alliance, a bloc of oppressed classes, we pass to an APRA defined as
>the Latin American Kuomintang.
>
>For us, anti-imperialism does not and cannot constitute, by itself a
>political program for a mass movement capable of conquering state
>power. Anti-imperialism, even if it could mobilize the nationalist
>bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie on the side of the worker and
>peasant masses (and we have already definitively denied this
>possibility), does not annul class antagonisms nor suppress different
>class interests.
>
>Neither the bourgeoisie nor the petty bourgeoisie in power can carry
>out anti-imperialist politics. To demonstrate this we have the
>experience of Mexico, where the petty bourgeoisie has just allied with
>Yankee imperialism. In its relations with the United States, a
>"nationalist" government might use different language than the Leguia
>government of Peru. This government is clearly, unabashedly
>Pan-Americanist and Monroeist. But any other bourgeois government
>would carry out the same practical policies on loans and concessions.
>Foreign capital investment in Peru grows in direct and close relation
>to the country's economic development, the exploitation of its natural
>riches, its population, and the improvement of its routes of
>communication. 

How can the most demagogic petty bourgeois oppose this
>capitalist penetration? With nothing but words; with nothing but a
>quick, nationalist fix. The taking of power by anti-imperialism, if it
>were possible, would not represent the taking of power by the
>proletarian masses, by socialism. The socialist revolution will find
>its most bloody and dangerous enemy (dangerous because of their
>confusionism and demagogy) in those petty bourgeois placed in power by
>the voices of order.
>
>Without ruling out the use of any type of anti-imperialist agitation
>or any action to mobilize those social sectors that might eventually
>join the struggle, our mission is to explain to and show the masses
>that only the socialist revolution can stand as a definitive and real
>barrier to the advance of imperialism.
>
>
>These factors differentiate the situation of the South American
>countries from that of the Central American nations. There, Yankee
>imperialism, by resorting to armed intervention without the slightest
>hesitation, does provoke a patriotic reaction that could easily win a
>part of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie to an anti-imperialist
>perspective. 

Aprista propaganda, conducted personally by Haya de la
>Torre, has obtained better results here than in any other part of
>America. His confusionist and messianic perorations, which claim to be
>related to the economic struggle, actually appeal to racial and
>emotional factors, thereby meeting the necessary conditions for
>impressing the petty bourgeois intellectual. Class parties and
>powerful, clearly class-conscious union organizations are not destined
>for the same quick growth here as in South America. In our countries,
>the class factor is more decisive and more developed. 

There is no
>reason to resort to vague populist formulas behind which reactionary
>tendencies can only prosper. At the moment,  Aprismo, as
>propaganda, is limited to Central America; in South America, it is
>being totally liquidated, a consequence of the populist, "bossist,"
>and petty bourgeois deviation that sees it as a Latin American
>Kuomintang.  

The next Anti-Imperialist Congress in Paris, which will
>have to unify the anti-imperialist organizations and distinguish
>between anti-imperialist programs and agitation and the tasks of class
>parties and trade unions, will put an absolute end to this question.
>
>Do the interests of imperialist capitalism necessarily and inevitably
>coincide with the feudal and semi-feudal interests of our countries'
>landowning classes? Is the struggle against feudalism unavoidably and
>completely identical with the anti-imperialist struggle? Certainly,
>imperialist capitalism uses the power of the feudal class to the
>degree that it considers it the politically dominant class. But their
>economic interests are not the same. 

The petty-bourgeoisie, even the
>most demagogic, can end up in the same intimate alliance with
>imperialist capitalism if it, in practice, dilutes its most
>conspicuous nationalist impulses. Finance capital would feel more
>secure if power were in the hands of a larger social class that is in
>a better position than the old, hated feudal class to defend the
>interests of capitalism and serve as its guard and water boy by
>satisfying certain overdue demands and distorting the masses' class
>orientation. 

The creation of a class of smallholders, the
>expropriation of the latifundia, and the liquidation of feudal
>privileges are not in opposition to the interests of imperialism in an
>immediate sense. On the contrary, to the degree that feudal vestiges
>still remain despite the growth of the capitalist economy, the
>movement for the liquidation of feudal privileges coincides with the
>interests of capitalist development as promoted by imperialist experts
>and investments. 

The disappearance of the large latifundia, the
>creation of an agrarian economy through what bourgeois
>demagoguery calls the  democratization" of the land, the displacement
>of the old aristocracies by a more powerful bourgeoisie and petty
>bourgeoisie better able to guarantee social peace: none of this is
>contrary to imperialist interests. 

The Leguia regime in Peru, as timid
>as it has been in regard to the interests of the latifundistas
>and gamonales (who support it to a great degree), has no
>problem resorting to demagogy, declaiming against feudalism and feudal
>privilege, thundering against the old oligarchies, and promoting a
>program of land distribution to make every field worker a small
>landowner.   

Leguiismo draws its greatest strength from precisely
>this type of demagogy.   Leguiismo does not dare lay a hand on the
>large landowners. But the natural direction of capitalist
>development-irrigation works, the exploitation of new mines, etc.-is
>in contradiction to the interests and privileges of feudalism. To the
>degree that the amount of cultivated land increases and new centers of
>employment appear, the latifundistas lose their principal power:
>the absolute and unconditional control of labor. 

In Lambayeque, where
>a water diversion project has been started by the American engineer
>Sutton, the technical commission has already run up against the
>interests of the large feudal landowners. These landowners grow mainly
>sugar. The threat that they will lose their monopoly of land and
>water, and thereby their means of controlling the work force,
>infuriates these people and pushes them toward attitudes that the
>government considers subversive, no matter how closely it is connected
>to these elements.  

Sutton has all the characteristics of the North
>American capitalist businessman. His outlook and his work clash with
>the feudal spirit of the latfundistas.   For example, Sutton has
>established a system of water distribution that is based on the
>principle that these resources belong to the state; the latifundistas
>believe that water rights are part of their right to the land. By this
>theory, the water was theirs; it was and is the absolute property of
>their estates.
>
>And is the petty bourgeoisie, whose role in the struggle against
>imperialism is so often overestimated, necessarily opposed to
>imperialist penetration because of economic exploitation? The petty
>bourgeoisie is undoubtedly the social class most sensitive to the
>fascination of nationalist mythology. 

But the economic factor which
>predominates is the following: in countries afflicted with
>Spanish-style poverty, where the petty bourgeoisie, locked in
>decades-old prejudice, resists proletarianization; where, because of
>their miserable wages, they do not have the economic power to
>partially transform themselves into a working class; where the
>desperate search for office employment, a petty government job, and
>the hunt for a "decent" salary and a "decent" job dominate, the
>creation of large enterprises that represent better-paid jobs, even if
>they enormously exploit their local employees, is favorably received
>by the middle classes. 

A Yankee business represents a better salary,
>possibilities for advancement, and liberation from dependence on the
>state, which can only offer a future to speculators. This reality
>weighs decisively on the consciousness of the petty bourgeois looking
>for or in possession of a position. In these countries with
>Spanish-style poverty, we repeat, the situation of the middle classes
>is not the same as in those countries where these classes have gone
>through a period of free competition and of capitalist development
>favorable to individual initiative and success and to oppression by
>the giant monopolies.
>
>In conclusion, we are anti-imperialists because we are Marxists,
>because we are revolutionaries, because we oppose capitalism with
>socialism, an antagonistic system called upon to transcend it, and
>because in our struggle against foreign imperialism we are fulfilling
>our duty of solidarity with the revolutionary masses of Europe.
>
>==============================================================>Posted by:
>Peru Support Committee/Detroit
>PO Box 23306
>Detroit   MI   48223    USA
>phone (messages):  313 730-5213
>email:  detcom2-AT-sprynet.com
>El Diario Internacional Page:  http://www.netizen.org/peru
>
>
>
>


Comrade Jay has done very well in publishing this article by J.C. Mariategui.  
Currently - as we have seen both by the antics of Louis Proyect and the
Peruvian revisionist Renique, as well as with the pedantic and barren
"criticism" of Jose Carlos Mariategui on the part of the "Teutonic-Vikings"
- there bourgeois intellectuals mascarading as "Marxists" are currently
engaged in anti PCP propaganda with the sole aim of slandering the
ideologues and leaders of today's Maoism.

It is therefore very important that Mariategui's contributions - which are
ALWAYS related to concrete revolutionary proletarian policies as can be seen
from the article above - be studied directly and RELATED to their CONCRETE
CONDITIONS of time and place by all those who are seriously interested in
understanding how the universal ideology of the proletariat was applied and
embodied by Mariategui into the concrete reality of the Peruvian and
Latin-American revolution.

In Mariategui there is nothing of the barren doctrinaire observing the world
and criticising everything from an abstract plane or an ivory tower of
conceit.  

No.  His is a school of proletarian ideology deeply linked to the concrete
problems of the revolution, particularly centerd in its own patch of the world. 
A school of revolutionary proletarian ideology, explaining with scientific
precision the particularities of a situation so that - besides orienting the
proletarian revolutionaries at HOME (which was ALWAYS Mariategui's principal
aim as it should be)-  also allows genuine Marxists and revolutionaries of
OTHER realities to understand well how the universal ideology of the
proletariat is developing in latin America and Peru, contributing thus to
orient CORRECTLY internationalist solidarity of a proletarian nature on the
part of all genuine revolutionaries.

The above article too is very important to understand the two main
ideological and political currents in the Latin American revolution,
precisely at a time in which the proletarian current is represented by the
People's War in Peru, while the failure and bankruptcy of the petty
bourgeois current (or bourgeois currents in general) (mostly represented by
the Apra first and later by the various revisionist and social-democrat
tendencies coalescing around "Cubanism") have now fully manifested itself in
every detail in the concrete reality of the Latin American and the Peruvian
revolution.

Moreover, under the leadership of the proletariat, the People's War in Peru
- at a time in which DIRECT US imperialist military intervention is actually
increasing exponentially in South America AS WELL - what Mariategui then
identifies as "the social sectors that may eventually join in the struggle"
have began to do so, but - as he had foreseen - they can only do so UNDER
THE LEADERSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT, and not under the leadership of the
national or petty bourgeois revolutionists, who are NOT NECESSARILY
counter-posed to imperialism.  This factor, an extremely important one for
those wanting to analyses a concrete situation in a CONCRETE MANNER,
Mariategui demonstrates with sound and valid arguments that fully stand the
test of time and historical development.

In order to see this as Marxists, one must bear in mind that, as the PCP
says, such "national bourgeois and petty bourgeois" sectors, "under certain
conditions" (concretely, US military intervention and further development of
the social conditions, class stratifications, etc.) can and do play a role
in the People's Liberation Front. Mariategui does not deny this.  What he
denies is that these social sectors can play a leading role in such a front,
and thus his polemic against the "Kuomingtanism" of Apra and Haya de La Torre.  

Moreover, he gives the concrete reasons why such sectors - particularly the
leaders and political representatives of those classes - would in fact opt
most likely for an alliance with imperialism, and explains why imperialism
itself would see in those sectors a better and wider social base for its
semi-colonial domination in Peru and Latin America at large.  

That is precisely what is ALSO developing today under the US imperialist
strategy of "peace negotiations" - the cooptation by imperialism of petty
bourgeois former revolutionists to serve as a butress (fascism) for the
brutal imperialist system. Nicaragua, Guatemala, Cuba and the efforts to
expand this line of the "negotiating guerillas" is directly connected to
this phenomena analysed by Mariategui back in 1929.

That is why, given Peruvian and Latin American conditions in general, a true
Front of People's Liberation cannot be led by any other ideology but that of
the proletariat - genuine socialist ideology, today's Maoism, as is the case
in Peru today.

As Mariategui said back in the 1920s, in Peru, and more generally in South
America:     

"There is no reason to resort to vague populist formulas behind which
reactionary tendencies can only prosper".  


Adolfo Olaechea


PS:  Now, of course, our "Teuto-geniouses" - following their silly "funny
farm" logic - could just as well "discover" in Mariategui a "pro-imperialist
deviation" too.  To save them the trouble of putting accross their "helpful
critisms" in this regard, I will now - and to show to them that there is
nothing very intellectual or difficult in foolishly playing with words -
"argue" in their very own silly and peculiar style, and thus conclude that
Mariategui's appreciative comments vis a vis the Yankee Sutton in relation
to the ultra-reactionary land-owners in Peru would - following their own
Aunt Sally method - reveal a "pro-imperialist inconsistency in Mariategui"
of the same kind as their "incanist and clerical inconsistencies!  Of
course, only arrogant idiots can think like such pathetic "Teuto-Viking
intellectuals", howver, here it goes: 

Mariategui says: "Sutton has all the characteristics of the North
American capitalist businessman. His outlook and his work clash with
the feudal spirit of the latifundistas".  And moreover: "A Yankee business
represents a better salary, possibilities for advancement, and liberation
from dependence on the state.....".

However, any SERIOUS Marxist - i.e. one who has no reason to fear the little
men in white coats knocking the gates of their ivory towers - would see that
such opinions of Mariategui are nothing strange to Marxism, and dozens of
quotes by Marx and Lenin can be found that would elicit equally positive
assessments of certain aspects of the "North American capitalist
businessman" when being compared, let's say, with Junker imperialism or
Czarist bureacracy.

Only the most idiotic and pedestrian and self-obssessed doctrinaire
"critics" can read in this a "pro US imperialist position" on Mariategui's
part!  Those who speak rubbish - playing into the hands of the maleckis and
others out and out provocateurs trying fruitlessly to smear the
revolutionary leaders - ought to think about their equally stupid
caracterisation of Mariategui as a "incanist clerical" by using the odd
quotation out of context to make of Mariategui an Aunt Sally they can play
silly doctrinaire games with.

These people, who thought opportunistically to build themselves a reputation
as "great Marxist scholars" by throwing cheap innuendo on the great
revolutionary leader of the Latin American people, J.C. Mariategui, have -
like all those who engage in counter-revolutionary activities whether
wittingly or unwittingly - only succeeded TOO WELL in exposing their own
ignorance and lack of a concrete scientific approach to Mariategui and
Marxism, as well as to any concrete subject whatsoever.
  
They have, with their silly "criticism", only succeeded in exposing how
theirs - so differently from Mariategui's - is a case of people who have
never analysed a SINGLE concrete situation or place in their entire lives.

They have unmasked themselves as total phillistines and shown unforgettably
how theirs is a case of people who, limiting themselves to dogmatic
pontifications and the most abstract, metaphysical and useless lucubrations
without the slightest connection to any real struggle, in their own
countries, or abroad, are of no use to the proletarian cause, whether in
Sweden, Germany or Timbuctu.  
What use are people like this for the revolution?  No wonder Chairman Mao
once said that the views of the dogmatists and sectarians were of "less use
than cow dung, because at least with cow dung one can fertilise the
peasants' fields", while dogmatism and sectarism, "has no use whatsoever". 

Such people - if as they claim so insistently and sanctimoniously - want to
"help" the struggle of the Communist Party of Peru and are not mere
hypocrites as we have charged them after the umpteenth baseless provocation
and their various and documented collusion with malecki in their activities,
ought to think again most seriously and ask themselves who are they really
serving by their childish attitudes?.  The People's War in Peru and Maoism,
they are certainly not. 

While they persist in this road and shunning any intention or even the
vaguest sense of self-criticism while - on the contrary - piling up more and
more reactionary and base allegations in their "defence", they would -
innevitably - slide more and more into the camp of out and out reaction.  

Then, just like their silly "criticisms", they themselves - irrespective of
their subjective wishes - would end up as just another little, forlorn and
pitiful mini-pile of the "colossal mountain of rubbish" that genuine Maoism
has undertaken to clear out from the Augean stables of revisionism and
bourgeois ideology parading itself as of the "Left", "Marxism" in general,
as well as bogus "marxism-leninism" and bogus "maoism", in particular. 

Adolfo Olaechea



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