Date: Mon, 19 Jan 1998 22:12:56 -0800
From: Juan Fajardo <fajardos-AT-ix.netcom.com>
Subject: M-G: Maritegui's autobio.; PCP and "It's right to rebel!"; A thought.


In this post:
1. Autobiography of Jose Carlos Mariategui
2. Reply to Rolf M. on PCP and use of slogan "Its right to rebel!"
3. A thought on formerly socialist countries


1. AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTE FROM JOSE CARLOS MARIATEGUI, FOUNDER OF
PERUVIAN MARXISM

         
[Partial text of letter, dated 10 January 1927, to Enrique editor of the
Buenos Aires journal “La Vida Literaria.”  The text was published for
the first time in the May 1930 issue of that magazine, after
Mariategui’s death. This trans. by Juan R. Fajardo, 1998.]


                     *“Autobiographical Note”*

                     by Jose Carlos Mariategui 

Although I am not a highly-autobiographical writer, I will myself give
you some
summary information.  I was born in ‘95.  At 14 years of age I got into
a newspaper as a
go-for.   Until 1919 I worked in daily journalism, first in “La Prensa,”
later in “El
Tiempo,” and lastly in “La Razon.”  In this last daily we promoted the
university reform
movement.  From 1918, nauseated by creole politicking, I turned
resolutely toward
socialism, breaking with my first attempts being a literato full of
fin-de-siecle decadence and Byzantinism, then in full bloom.  From late
1919 to mid-1923 I travelled through Europe.  I lived more than two
years in Italy, where I married a woman and some ideas.  I travelled
through France, Germany, Austria, and other countries.  My wife and
child prevented me from reaching Russia.  From Europe I joined with some
Peruvians for
socialist action.  My articles from that period mark the stations of my
socialist
orientation.   Upon my return to Peru, in 1923, in reports, in lectures
in the Student
Federation, in the People’s University, in articles, etc., I explained
the European situation and began my work of investigating national
reality following the Marxist method.  In 1924 I was, as I have already
told you, near to losing my life.  I lost a leg and was left very
delicate of health.  I would surely have already recovered entirely with
a restful existence.  However, neither my poverty nor my spritual
restlessness permit it.  I have not published any more books than those
you already know.  I have two ready and, in-progress, two more.  That is
my life in few words.  I do not believe that it would be worth making
notable; but, I cannot refuse you the information you request.  I
forgot: I am self-taught.  I once enrolled in Letters in Lima, but only
with interest in taking an erudite Agustine’s Latin course.  And, in
Europe I freely attended some courses, but without ever deciding to lose
my extra-collegiate, and perhaps anti-collegiate, status.   In 1925, the
Student Federation nominated me to the University as an instructor in
the field that is my specialty; but the Rector’s ill-will and, probably,
my state of health, frustrated
that initiative.


2. PCP AND "IT'S RIGHT TO REBEL!" SLOGAN; REPLY TO ROLF M.

In marxism-general-digest, Monday, January 19 1998 (v.I: n.594), 
Rolf Martens wrote that, 

>Mao Zedong ... pointed out ...that for the proletariat and the 
>forces striving to represent it, the slogan should really be: 
>"It's right to rebel *against reactionaries*."  
>That idea, "It's right to rebel", really stems, as Mao pointed out 
> too, from the petty-bourgeoisie... It's no coincidence of course 
>that, ... the "RCP"-USA and... the "RIM", ... deceitfully are 
>advancing that petty-bourgeois slogan as if it were one of Mao Zedong's. 
>[The] PCP in Peru, ... not really unnaturally, does have such weaknesses 
>as would make it liable to swallow such stuff as "It's right to rebel -
>period". 


So, "That idea, "It's right to rebel", really stems, ...from the
petty-bourgeoisie"? Perhaps, then it isn't a coincidence either that the
PCP was using this slogan well before the Revolutionary Internationalist
Movement (RIM) was formed?  

If one peruses the Peruvian press for the early 1980's one can find
photos of PCP posters and flyers proclaiming "La rebelion se justifica!"
Specifically I am thinking of an example which appeared in *Oiga*
magazine in 1981, I believe, certainly no later than 1982. At that time
the RIM was not yet formed.  True, the First International Conference of
Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations (precursor to the Second
Conference out of which the RIM was formed) *had* taken place in late
1980.  However, ther is no mention of the slogan "It's righ to rebel!"
anywhere in the document issued by the Conference, "To the
Marxist-Leninists, the Workers, and the Oppressed of All Countries"
([USA]: s.n., 1980), of which the Revoluionary Communist Party, USA, is
a signatory.  Nor is there any mention of it in the preaparatory docment
for that meeting, written by the RCP,USA and RCP of Chile, "Basic
Principles For The Unity of Marxist-Leninists And For The Line Of The
International Communist Movement" (USA:RCP Pubs., 1981). 

As a matter of fact it does not turn up in the "Declaration of the RIM"
either. (If anyone cares to check on this they can look up the
"Declaration" at  
 < http://www.csrp.org/rim/rimdec.htm > and use the Netscape "find"
command.)  So, we have, it seems, neither the RCP,USA nor the RIM using
the slogan "It's right to rebel!" until *after* the PCP, which had been
using the slogan, joined the RIM some time after the Second Conference. 
You may still argue that the RIM has peddeled that "petty-bourgeois"
slogan to the PCP, I think it might be the other way around.  But, does
either case really speak well of the PCP? 

3. A THOUGHT ON THE FORMERLY SOCIALIST COUNTRIES

A strange thought struck me in a strange place for such a thought to
strike one.  I was sitting in the dark, watching the latest James Bond
adventure with my wife and I started to think about the formerly
socialist countries of Europe and Asia which have now gone whole-hog to
capitalism: China, Russia, Poland, Vietnam, Central Asia, etc.  I
thought about how they were "semi-feudal" or their bourgeois revolutions
were incomplete at the time of their revolutions, and that among the
tasks of their revolutions was to "complete the bourgeois-democratic
tasks" and so on.  Now they have abandoned socialism, such as they had
it, and gone capitalist.  Was this last transformation truly a
counterrevolution or was it in fact the completion of the earlier
incomplete bourgeois revolution?  Was in their case the rightist joke
true, that socialism *was* the shortest route from feudalism to
capitalism?  I haven't developed much on this, but I'd like to hear what
other think on the subject.


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