Date: Sat, 05 Jul 1997 20:13:44 -0700
From: CSRP <csrp-AT-usa.net>
Subject: M-I: Anti-RIM Critics from the Cyberswamp (2/2) AWTW#22


Anti-RIM Critics from the Cyberswamp: "Virtual Maoism" and Real
Opportunism

Part Two of Two

"Reform" RIM, or Try to Smash It? - A Debate Fit for "Virtual
Revolutionaries"

Having launched their virtual reality adventure, Arce, Olaechea, New
Flag,
and MIM maintained a steady stream of attacks on CoRIM and sometimes on
RIM
itself over a period of several months. They were puffed up by their new
found unity, and there were even claims that most RIM parties really
opposed CoRIM and supported their line instead. Thus the expectation was
planted that soon most RIM parties would come out in open support of
them,
and there was similar talk about other groups identified with Mao
internationally. 20 

Their attacks sometimes take the form of open calls to do away with RIM,
and sometimes of calls to "overthrow CoRIM" – either way, the heart of
this
opposition is to RIM's line. New Flag, for instance, advanced the
"virtual
reality" slogan of "Long Live RIM, Down with CoRIM". Maoists know that
the
nature of a political organization or movement is determined by its
line.
In the real world, calls to "overthrow CoRIM" mean opposition to RIM's
Declaration and to Long Live Marxism-Leninism-Maoism! and other major
elaboration's of RIM's line. The real reason New Flag advances its
slogan
is that, since the PCP is part of RIM, they do not want to be seen as
attacking RIM itself, and so try to disguise their attack as an attack
on
CoRIM. Their real agenda slips out when New Flag argues
that, "The PCP did not pull out of RIM as yet [!]. A mobilization of
'figure-heads' cannot change this, but only a mobilization of masses
could." 21 In other words, New Flag is setting itself the actual task of
mobilizing "masses" not only against RIM but against the line of the PCP
itself, which is clearly established as a RIM participant! 

Buoyed up by the bubble of lies, hype and self-deception these forces
generated, in the spring of 1996 Arce issued a Call to create a World
Mobilisation Commission (WMC), whose purpose was "to lead all the
support
work" [emphasis added] for the People's War in Peru. The WMC Call also
proposed uniting around "Gonzalo Thought", accepting "Maoism as the
third
and superior stage of Marxism", and fighting revisionism and
opportunism,
which is clearly identified in the Call as meaning, above all, CoRIM.
22  

At this stage, some of the anti-RIM forces stopped short. They pointed
out
that setting up a support group for the People's War with this platform
of
unity would cut out large sections of potential supporters of the
People's
War by explicitly limiting it to those who already embrace MLM. This
criticism is of course true. As a "Support the People's War" platform,
the
WMC Call sounds "left", but would isolate and weaken the vanguard forces
as
well as narrow support for the People's War. However, this criticism
misses
the key point that the WMC is seen by its organizers not only as a
support
organization for the People's War, but also as an organization to
undermine
RIM as the emerging centre of MLM forces internationally. 

The Call for the WMC states that "the revisionists and opportunists were
represented – and still are – by the leadership of the international
Committee of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (CoRIM) and by
the
heads of the IEC. This current, isolated and despised by the true
friends
of the People's War and the PCP, are crawling like snakes, loudly
hissing
their 'support for the people's war' and even screaming that their 'red
flag is flying over Peru'. Adopting this phony revolutionary position,
they
are attempting to continue to profit from the People's War. This is
precisely what must be stopped.... The opportunist leadership of CoRIM
is
the main cause of immobilism in the international movement in support of
the People's War in Peru." The subsequent call in the WMC to "fight
opportunism through to the end" is thus an open call to battle against
RIM's chosen leadership. 

Taken at face value, this enterprise seems most puzzling. A core of the
world's Maoists, including the PCP in particular, have been voluntarily
united in RIM around the banners of Marx, Lenin and Mao for more than 12
years, have chosen RIM's leadership, and are waging an international
campaign to defend the PCP and the People's War it is leading. And now
Arce
& Co want to set up a group also claiming to be based on MLM and also to
defend the PCP and the People's War. 

So what are Arce & Co really up to? They are in fact attempting to use
their anti-RIM, anti-two line struggle banners as rallying points for
the
liquidation of the actual content of Maoism and for forming a group that
pays lip service to MLM and the PCP, but more closely resembles a sort
of
international "United Left" of pro-Soviet and pro-Deng Xiao-ping
revisionists, social democrats, Hoxhaites, and some genuine
revolutionaries. 

Arce has already made clear in previous issues of El Diario
Internacional
just what kind of line-up he envisages for a "restructured"
international
communist movement. In the January 1996 issue of EDI, Arce divides up a
large number of groups active in the international revolutionary
movement,
based on his analysis of the correctness of their support for the PCP
and
the People's War. While the "bad" group includes a few RIM groups he
particularly opposes, the "good" group – "political organizations that
are
fighting against the Fujimori hoax and against capitulation" – includes
such groups as the Party of Labour of Belgium (known as the PTB), which
is
quite active in international left circles in Europe. 

The role of the PTB is of special interest. El Diario Internacional is
published from Belgium, where Arce himself has close connections to the
PTB, making many personal appearances at PTB functions. The PTB's role
is
further elaborated on by Olaechea, who was the first signatory besides
Arce
on the WMC Call. Pointing to "positive" developments in the
international
communist movement, Olaechea emphasizes the centrality of the role seen
for
groups like the PTB in the WMC: "...there is already clear indication
that
the medium- sized parties, such as the Party of Labour of Belgium, have
already undergone quite a good change.... Such parties, in addition to
the
traditional Maoist parties of the last two decades (excluding the
RCP-style
phonies), are precisely the backbone
around which the WMC is starting to develop." 23 Actually, the PTB has
not
endorsed the WMC and would not do so since it openly opposes recognizing
"Maoism" as a "higher stage of Marxism". But Olaechea's comments make
clear
that Maoism is not the real basis of the WMC, and what that basis really
is, as a look at the PTB's line will show. 

Perhaps the "good changes" Olaechea sees include the PTB's widely
circulated "Proposal for the Unification of the International Communist
Movement". 24 Here the PTB argues that "the former divisions between
Marxist-Leninist parties can be overcome". Principal among these "former
divisions" is Mao's opposition to Soviet revisionism. Indeed, the PTB
has
openly upheld the Deng Xiao-ping regime for many years, including
hailing
the Chinese state's repression of the Tiananmen rebellion in 1989. As
for
"good changes" being made by the PTB, its Chairman Ludo Martens recently
made a public self-criticism for having opposed the 1979 Soviet invasion
of
Afghanistan! Raising organizations like the PTB that oppose MLM and
uphold
revisionists like Brezhnev and the Communist Party of
China under the leadership of Deng Xiao-ping over RIM parties and
organizations and CoRIM, as Arce & Co does, shows how far they have sunk
into the swamp of opportunism. 

Just as Arce & Co have turned aside from using Maoist teachings to deal
with the cardinal questions of political and ideological line raised in
the
two-line struggle which emerged in the PCP and reduced this to a police
plot, so in their approach to the international communist movement they
throw away the lines that divide genuine MLM from revisionism and set up
other, narrower criteria. 

Olaechea goes on to argue that RIM as a whole is beyond saving. Calls to
overthrow the RIM Committee, he says, are as "illusory and hopeless" as
calls for "overthrowing Fujimori from his own party". 25 However, in
Olaechea's view there are better prospects out there anyway, notably the
remnants of the long-established pro-Soviet parties, which he says are
from
"the European tradition of the Third International" [sic]. Olaechea
argues
that these are much
"bigger" parties than the RIM groups, and he specifically points to what
he
calls the "left wing" of the old Communist Party of Italy (PCI), the
"left
wing" of the CPUSA, and other such groupings: "...the development of a
left
within the traditional parties of the Third International, which is
aware
of the importance of the People's War in Peru for their own aims of
giving
their respective parties a new direction capable of serving the class
interests of the proletariat and the people really holds promise, while
the
CoRIM strategy... has been proven kaput!" 26 

Does Olaechea really expect anyone to believe that these die-hard
revisionists, who have been props for imperialism for decades, are
changing
their spots and are now "trying to serve the class interests of the
proletariat"? Is it not really the case that such parties are merely
repositioning themselves in the bourgeois arena to deal with the
collapse
of their Soviet imperialist godfather?! 

What does all this show about the WMC Call's platform of uniting around
Maoism as "a third and superior stage"? That it is mere sugar coating,
designed to lure the naοve, and to protect the cynical who want their
retreat from Maoism to be carefully hidden. 

Furthermore, it is revealing that those giving support for Arce & Co are
found not in the hard core of the Maoist camp, but in parties that have
for
years fought the Maoists tooth and nail: pro-Deng Xiao-ping forces like
the
PTB, old-style pro-Soviet revisionists from the diehard revisionist
CPUSA
and PCI, etc. No wonder Arce & Co's supporters unite with them in
liquidating the struggle against the Right Opportunist Line. They uphold
out-and-out capitalist roaders like Deng Xiao-ping, why should they be
bothered by some right opportunists in Peru?! 

Arce & Co are dangling promises of "getting rich quick" by hooking up
with
the "left" of the big old revisionist parties, but the more likely
prospect
is that any genuine revolutionaries suckered into the WMC will be used
as
nothing more than pawns with Maoist labels to legitimize the attacks by
these established revisionist forces on the Maoists' international line
and
organization. These revisionists are already salivating in anticipation,
urging Arce & Co onwards. One Mr. Godenas, a leading figure in a small
group in Rhode Island, USA that is a WMC signatory, and whom Olaechea
and
MIM repeatedly defend, has the following to say: "Since its inception,
'RIM' has been a ghost entity, wholly innocent of any party or group
(other
than the PCP) that amounts to a hill of beans.... Why do a few
supporters
of the PCP and the People's War jib at endorsing the Call for a World
Mobilisation Commission, a Call that fully embodies the principles of a
cause to which we are all friendly, and to which we have all sworn
varying
degrees of support? Comrades Olaechea and Arce Borja have proven
themselves
to be as courageous and principled opponents of the fascist Fujimori as
can
be found anywhere. They are as an implacable enemy of Peruvian reaction
abroad as the PCP itself.... It is time, my friends, to junk Avakian,...
RIM, the RCP, World to Win, etc. Having done so, we can move forward
with
the Call for a World Mobilisation, with comrades Olaechea and Arce Borja
and the many thousands of others who stand ready to rebuild the
communist
international on a sound
ideological and political basis...." Godenas also says that, "The
Nepalese
'People's War' as such is a fiction", and he then refers to
"petit-bourgeois adventurism", to make his point perfectly clear. 27 It
turns out that "Comrade Godenas", as Olaechea calls him, has run several
times as a CPUSA representative for the United States Congress. 28 This
is
what Adolfo calls the "proletarian left" in the CPUSA – a die-hard
revisionist who seethes with hatred for
the world's genuine Maoists and oozes honeyed flattery for those who
might
help against them. The "sound ideological and political basis" on which
Arce & Co are building their WMC is nothing but a revisionist-fueled
fantasy of trying to wreck RIM. 29 

Similarly, other groups in this swamp, such as the Maoist
Internationalist
Movement (MIM), are also extending their connections to the hardcore
revisionists. MIM recently reprinted what they called "an extremely
sensible" article by a CPUSA member that extensively promotes this same
"Comrade Godenas". MIM justified this by arguing that "as the fighting
of
cops [referring to New Flag] in the movement to support the People's War
in
Peru is extremely urgent,
MIM puts aside its differences with the CPUSA here momentarily." 30 They
made a similar call to the PTB for unity against "cops". They think that
in
the interests of fighting a small journal in New York City, it is fine
to
unite with the principal revisionist party in the US. 

Arce & Co seem to be seeking some kind of devil's deal with some of the
revisionists, whereby they will gain recognition from revisionist forces
as
"worldwide heads of People's War support", in return for which Arce & Co
will lend their "Maoist" reputations to the revisionists to try and help
"wreck" RIM. Or perhaps Arce & Co actually believe their own boasts that
they will be the ones riding these dinosaurs – in which case they will
undoubtedly be swallowed alive, not least of all because they are bereft
of
any Maoism with which to defend themselves, and are moving increasingly
onto the revisionists' own turf. 

In this regard, it is worth noting that Arce & Co, while stubbornly
repudiating the need to wage line struggle against the Right Opportunist
Line, are headed in a direction that is increasingly similar to the
position of the Right Opportunist Line itself on many points. Not only
are
they liquidating key points of Maoist principle, as does the Right
Opportunist Line, but they are even bandying about some of the same
catchphrases. Aren't they, like the Right Opportunist Line, beginning to
denounce RIM as nothing but "paper parties", "not amounting to a hill of
beans"? Aren't they increasingly in the company of groups, like the PTB,
Communist Party of Nepal (UML), Communist Party of India (Marxist) and
others that promote participation in elections and long periods of
peaceful
political struggle in the oppressed countries instead of Maoist people's
war? They denounce CoRIM for supposedly censoring the PCP CC and
opposing
its line, and pretend to be unreserved upholders of the CC, yet they go
against MLM and the PCP's clearly established line on the most
fundamental
principles of the international communist movement. What do they think
the
PCP was talking about when it proclaimed the need to sweep away
"mountains
of revisionist
garbage"?! Now when it is more urgent than ever to fight the Right
Opportunist Line, not only are Arce & Co refusing to contribute to this
fight but they are even focusing all their efforts on attacking those
who
are. The spectacle of these "virtual Maoists" from the cyberswamp
lashing
out at RIM and each other provides a distasteful example of where
negating
political and ideological line can lead. 



Notes:

1. The 1 May 1996 Statement of the Movimiento Popular Peru quotes a
letter
from the PCP to CoRIM, stating: "We extend to you our most ardent
communist
greetings and express our deep joy because RIM has approved the adoption
of
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as a new, third and higher stage. Maoism is a
vital
point and of immense significance and even more, today, this will help
so
that 'Maoism will be taken up by the peoples of the world and come to
command the new great wave of the world proletarian revolution that is
looming.' Also, it has served the magnificent development of the
Celebration of the Centenary of Chairman Mao Tse-tung...." 

2. For instance, a "Report from the Belgium bureau of El Diario
Internactional" posted on the Internet by the Committee Sol Peru,
London,
refers to the "PCP representative" at a conference in Brussels at which
the
only Peruvian speaker was Arce. (2 May 1996). 

3. Having tried to make a career out of pretending to be representatives
of
the PCP, these forces now try to pass themselves off as representatives
of
other RIM parties as well. New Flag, for instance, recently tried to
pretend that the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) was in their cabal by
alleging that the CPN(M) "sharply criticize the revisionist leadership
of
CoRIM". 

4. Quoted in the Foreword to the book Peru: Time of Fear. The prolific
Olachea has never repudiated this quotation and has even confirmed it in
meetings. Moreover, this same contempt for vanguard leadership can be
seen
in the way Olachea deals with the man said to be leading the PCP CC
today:
"The Fujimori regime has long been spinning this fairy tale and for that
purpose the name of Mr Ramirez Durand – who no one has seen or heard of
for
years – has been bandied around and given the flashy name of 'Chairman
Feliciano'." (Internet posting, 5 August 1996, Committee Sol Peru,
London).


5. In a public Declaration dated 14 October 1993 and signed by the
Committee Sol Peru, London. 

6. See "An Initial Reply to Arce Borja" in this issue for more on this
point. For its part, New Flag works the same ground, arguing that
"leading
cadres are in particular subject to reverse-memory techniques and
alterations of the brain's electro-chemistry (drugs, etc.) in order to
reprogram behavior patterns and manipulate their consciousness of
existing
reality, in short, brainwashing." (Internet posting, 26 May 1996). 

7. This light-handedness with truth is the operative approach for all
these
forces: New Flag gave attendance figures of a demonstration in Berlin it
wanted to associate itself with when the demonstration was actually
cancelled and never took place – no clarification appeared in subsequent
issues. They also quoted from a personal letter written by Heriberto
Ocasio, the spokesman for the US Committee to Support the Revolution in
Peru, falsifying the contents
of the letter and then claiming it was a document of the RCP,USA. They
ignored a public demand for retraction. Arce's current no.1 ally Olachea
reports on his public debate in London with someone he says was "a CoRIM
leader". (Internet posting, 6 August 1996, "RCP/CoRIM/Sol Rojo Expose
Their
Hatred towards Chairman Gonzalo and the Revolution in Peru") The person
was
of course not at all a "CoRIM leader", but an AWTW supporter, as was
made
clear at the time of the debate. The list goes on and on. 

8. See the section "Two-Line Struggle or Counter-Revolutionary Fraud",
in
"A Response to the 'Investigators' of RIM", by Arce, in this issue. 

9. Arce's El Diario Internacional No 36 compares the Revolutionary
Worker,
voice of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP,USA), a participating
party
of RIM, to the pro-Right Opportunist Line edition of El Diario (Lima),
saying that they play "the same counter-revolutionary role". 

10. See the Revolutionary Worker, 16 June 1996, for an extensive
analysis
of the political police and the Internet. 

11. Big Brother: Britain's Web of Surveillance, Simon Davies (London
1996).


12. See the Declaration of RIM, section "On the Ideological, Political
and
Organisational Unity of Marxist-Leninists". 

13. MIM even announced at one point that it was stopping all support
work
for the People's War in Peru, because... Olaechea told them to! 

14. The Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM), for instance, shows how
casually it takes the struggle against the political police when it uses
the following logic: "[The New Flag editor] argues that because someone
is
someone else's brother, he must be a revolutionary. This thoroughly
reactionary line was crushed during the Cultural Revolution of Mao
Tsetung.
The prestige of one revolutionary does not convert to the family
members.
The fact that [the New Flag editor] argues this way shows that he is a
cop...." (Maoist Sojourner, June 96) Just as these forces reduce the
two-line struggle in Peru to a "police plot", now they want to reduce
virtually all political struggle to struggle against cops. With this
approach, they see cops everywhere, while at the same time they have
trivialized
the struggle against the political police into a children's game of
name-calling. This makes it impossible to carry out this most serious
battle which, as Lenin never tired of explaining, is an area where
revolutionaries must exert themselves to the utmost to break with
amateurism and develop professional methods. And, like children playing
with a loaded gun that they do not understand can actually kill, they
casually aim everywhere and nowhere, never knowing when it will go off.
For
if saying something wrong is grounds to be labeled a cop, then all of
these
forces are targets. Arce himself, currently one of MIM's champions, used
exactly the same argument as did New Flag above, in the August 1996
issue
of El Diario Internactional. He cast suspicion on a member of the Peru
People's
Movement (MPP) because of this comrade's purported family connection
with
the Right Opportunist Line! In other words, as above, family connections
determine political colour. We would like to ask MIM just what Arce's
method of arguing shows about him?! 

15. Internet posting, 12 August 1994, "Why Does the RIM Help US
Imperialism
Encircle the PCP?", by RM. 

16. For its part, MIM argues that: "apology for RIM = apology for CoRIM
apology for the Canto Grande authors = apology for capitulation embrace
of Fujimori and his Yankee puppeteers". (Internet posting, 23 May 1996,
MIM). 

17. Internet posting, 10 June 1996, "Gang of Five is Avakian's Theory
and
an Obvious Smokescreen". 

18. See, among other works, Comrade Avakian's Mao's Immortal
Contributions,
The Loss in China and the Revolutionary Legacy of Mao Tsetung; more
recently, he contributed to RIM with his defence of
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism
against the liquidiationist attacks of K Venu, in AWTW 1992/17. 

19. Internet posting, 12 March 1996, "Avakianism is Yankee Revisionism",
by
the Detroit Peru Support Committee. 

20. Olaechea, for instance, claims that "the Nepalese Party are against
CoRIM and for a World Mobilisation Commission", a claim for which he can
offer no reference since he has invented it himself. (Internet posting,
3
May 1996, "After Vomiting, Now Diarrhea"). 

21. Internet posting, 3 May 1996, "Is Olaechea a Plant of the
Intelligence
Services?". 

22. World Mobilisation Commission, Call for Mobilising for Struggle,
Brussels, 10 March 1996, El Diario Internacional et al. 

23. Internet posting, 28 June 1996. 

24. This version, the latest of several, is dated 4 May 1995. 

25. Internet posting, 28 June 1996, "US Imperialism Seeks to Expand its
Fascist Dictatorship". 

26. Ibid. 

27. "Avakian & Co Should Go Quietly"; 7 May 1996, "Re Maoist Revolution
in
Nepal". 

28. According to an article by "a CPUSA member" reprinted by MIM in
Maoist
Sojourner, June 1996. 

29. Arce emphatically shares the vehemence of Godenas' attacks on RIM.
This
comes out firstly in his polemics. In the more vitriolic "Trappist Monks
Turn into Village Charlatans: Another Somersault of the Circus Tumblers
of
RIM", he states that: "CoRIM went on to act in complicity with the
enemies
of the Peruvian Revolution"; "they openly side with Fujimori's agents
and
the capitulationist gang"; they are being "led to the side of
counter-revolution"; CoRIM are "vulgar metaphysicians"; CoRIM's "Call is
an
old trick of rotten revisionists and opportunists"; etc. He carries this
out in practice too. At the 1996 PTB May Day Conference, an AWTW
representative sent to distribute Maoist literature was physically
expelled
by the PTB. A "report from the Brussels bureau" of Arce's EDI reports
this
as follows: "alert comrades from the [Arce-generated] MPP in Belgium
assisted the security people of the PTB and ordered the AWTW
representative
out into the street". Arce cannot be reproached for lack of consistency
in
this case. While hailing the pro-Deng PTB for physically expelling a
Maoist
AWTW representative, Arce himself was sharing the podium with
revisionist
gangsters like the Communist Party of India (Marxist) – which heads the
state government in West Bengal, India, where thousands of Maoist
"Naxalites" have been killed or imprisoned – and the CPN (United
Marxist-Leninist), which was the former governing party in Nepal and has
lent support to ronda-style militias against the People's War there.
Arce
should be filled with shame for trying to attach the name of the PCP and
the People's War to his outrageous antics. 

30. Maoist Sojourner, June 1996. 

Part Two of Two 

 /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
| Committee to Support the Revolution in Peru    |
| PO Box 1246, Berkeley CA 94701 (USA)           |
| phone (415)252-5786 * fax (415)252-7414        |
| check out our web page at http://www.csrp.org  |
|                                                |
| The CSRP uses e-mail for public postings only. |
| We will NOT reply to incoming messages, but    |
| please do call, mail or fax us!                |
 \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/



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