From: lquispe-AT-nyxfer.blythe.org (Luis Quispe)
Subject: In Defense of Maoism
Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 00:59:14 -0500 (EST)


[Translated from the original version in Spanish by Peru People's
Movement (MPP).]

            THE NEW DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION.

It is a development of the Marxist theory of the State in which
is established three types of dictatorships:

1) the bourgeoisie, in the bourgeois democracies like the United
States, a type in which the dictatorships in the oppressed
nations such as the ones in Latin American are assimilable;

2) proletarian dictatorships, like the one in the Soviet Union or
in China before the usurpation of power by the revisionists; and
 
3) New Democracy, as a joint dictatorship based on the
worker-peasant alliance, led by the proletariat headed up by the
Communist Party, which was formed in China during its democratic
revolution, and which is concretely expressed in Peru today
through the People's Committees, in the base areas and in the
People's Republic of New Democracy in formation.  It is
fundamental to emphasize, within this development of the theory
of the state, the key differentiation between a state system as a
dictatorship of a class or classes that hold political power,
which is principal, and a system of government, which is
understood as an organization for the exercise of political
power.

On the other hand, New Democracy, one of the extraordinary
developments made by Chairman Mao, masterfully realizes for us
the bourgeois revolution of a new type, which only the
proletariat can lead. In synthesis, it is the democratic
revolution within the new era of the world proletarian revolution
in which we find ourselves.  The New Democratic Revolution
implies a new economy, a new politics, and a new culture,
obviously overthrowing the old order and upholding the new one
with arms is the only way to transform the world.

Finally, it is important to emphasize that New Democracy is a
democratic revolution, although it mainly fulfills the democratic
tasks, it also complementarily advances in some socialist tasks;
in this way the question of two stages, democratic and socialist,
which corresponds to countries like ours, is thoroughly solved by
guaranteeing that, when the democratic stage is concluded, it
will be continued as a socialist revolution, without any
intermission, uninterruptedly.

               THE THREE INSTRUMENTS. 

The problem of the construction of the instruments of the
revolution presents the Party with the problem
of understanding the interrelationship between the Party, the
army and the united front; and, how to understand and to handle
the interrelated construction of the three instruments in the
midst of war or in the maintaining of the new State based on the
power of the armed people, expresses a just and correct task of
leadership.  Their construction is guided by the principle that a
just and correct ideological line decides everything, and it is
on this ideological-political basis that the organizational
construction is simultaneously developed, in the midst of the
struggle between the proletarian line and the bourgeois one, and
in the storm of class struggle, mainly war, as the principal form
of struggle, be it actual or potential.

Regarding the Party, Chairman Mao starts from the necessity of
the Communist Party, a new type of party, a party of the
proletariat. 

Today, we would say a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Party: a party
whose aim is to conquer political power and to defend it, to
which the People's War is inextricably bound.  Let the Party
initiate it, develop it, or wage it in order to defend itself; a
party sustained by the masses of people, either by way of the
People's War which is a war of the masses, or by the united front
which, being a front of classes, is based on the broad masses.
The Party develops and changes itself according to the stages of
the revolution and the periods that these stages may have; and
the motor of its development is the contradiction which
materializes in its heart as the two-line struggle, the
proletarian line and the bourgeois or in
general anti-proletarian line, which is in essence mainly a
struggle against revisionism.  This leads to the decisive
importance of ideology in the life of the party and to the
development of rectification campaigns on behalf of a greater
adjustment of all the systems of party organizations and the
militancy of the just and correct ideological and
political lines, also on behalf of the predominance of the
proletarian line and the maintenance of the Party leadership in
its iron grip. The Party serves the establishment of proletarian
political power, whether it be as the leading class of the New
Democracy, and principally for the establishment of the
proletarian dictatorship, its strengthening and development, and
for the conquest through cultural revolutions of the great, final
goal: Communism.  On account of this, the Party has to lead
everything.

The revolutionary army is of a new type, it is an army for the
fulfillment of the political tasks that the Party establishes in
accordance with the interests of the proletariat and of the
people, a character concretely expressed in three tasks: to
combat, to produce in order to pose no parasitical burden, and to
mobilize the masses.  It is an army based on the political
construction starting from the proletariat's ideology (of today),
from Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, and from the general political line
as well as from the military one that the Party may establish. 
It is an army based on people and not on weapons, an army that
has come forth from the masses with whom it has always been
linked, serving them wholeheartedly, which allows it to move
within their bosom like the fish in the water.  Without a
people's army the people have nothing, says Chairman Mao, at the
same time teaching us the necessity of the Party's absolute
leadership over the army and setting up his great principle: The
Party commands the gun and we will never permit it to be
otherwise. Besides having thoroughly established the principles
and norms for the construction of a new type of army, the
Chairman himself called for warding off the employment of the
army for the restoration of capitalism by usurping the leadership
through a counterrevolutionary coup d'etat and, developing
Lenin's thesis on the people's militancy, he carried out farther
than anyone the general arming of the people, thus opening a
breach and pointing out the path towards the armed sea of masses
that will lead us to the definite emancipation of the people and
the proletariat.

It was Chairman Mao who for the first time developed a complete
theory on the united front and established its laws.  A front
based on the worker-peasant alliance as a guarantee of the
proletariat's hegemony in the revolution; a front of social
classes led by the proletariat represented by the Communist
Party; in synthesis, a united front under the leadership of the
Communist Party, a united front for the People's War, for the
revolution, for the seizure of power in favor of the proletariat
and the people.  Therefore, concretely, the united front is the
grouping of the revolutionary forces against the
counter-revolutionary forces in order to wage the struggle
between revolution and counter-revolution mainly through the
armed People's War.

The united front, obviously, is not the same in every stage of
the revolution and, furthermore, it has its specifications
according to the various historical periods of each stage;
likewise, the united front in a concrete revolution does not
equal the one on a world level, although both follow the same
general laws.  Apart from this, it is important to emphasize the
relation between the front and the State that Chairman Mao
established when the war of resistance against Japan was
evolving, setting forth that the united front is a form of joint
dictatorship, a question that deserves to be especially studied
by those who face democratic revolutions.

 THE PEOPLE'S WAR IS THE MILITARY THEORY OF THE INTERNATIONAL
 PROLETARIAT.

In it are summarized, for the first time, in a systematic and
complete form the theoretical and practical experience of the
struggles, military actions, and wars waged by
the proletariat, and the prolonged experience of the people's
armed struggle and especially of the incessant wars in China.  It
is with Chairman Mao that the proletariat attains its military
theory; nevertheless, there is a lot of confusion and
misunderstanding on this issue.  And much of it springs from how
the people's war in China is seen. Generally, it is considered
derisively and contemptuously as simply a guerrilla war; this
alone denotes a lack of understanding that, as Chairman Mao
points out, guerrilla warfare achieves a strategic feature; but
furthermore, the development of guerrilla warfare is not
understood as it exists, how due its essential fluidity, it
develops mobility, a war of movements, of positions, of how it
unfolds great plans of the strategic offensive and the seizure of
small, mid-sized, and big cities, with millions of inhabitants,
combining the attack from outside with the insurrection from
within. Thus, in conclusion, the four periods of the Chinese
revolution, and mainly from the agrarian war till the people's
liberation war, considering the anti-Japanese war of resistance
between both, shows the various aspects and complexities of the
revolutionary war waged during more than twenty years amidst a
huge population and an immense mobilization and participation of
the masses. In that war there are examples of every kind; and
what is principal has been extraordinarily studied and its
principles, laws, strategy, tactics, rules, etc. masterfully
established. It is, therefore, in this fabulous period of
Marxism-Leninism that Chairman Mao established the military
theory of the proletariat: the People's War.

We must bear in mind that subsequently, the Chairman himself,
aware of the existence of atomic bombs and missiles and with
China possessing them, maintained and developed People's War in
order to wage it under the new conditions of atomic weapons and
of war against powers and super-powers. In synthesis, people's
war is the weapon of the proletariat and of the people, even to
confront atomic wars.

A key and decisive question is the understanding of the universal
validity of People's War and its subsequent application taking
into account the different types of revolution and the specific
conditions of each country.  It will help solve this issue to
consider that no insurrection like that of Petrograd, the
anti-fascist resistance, and the European guerrillas movements in
the Second World War have been repeated, as well as the armed
struggles that are at present waged in Europe; and to see that,
in the end, the October Revolution was not only an insurrection
but a revolutionary war that lasted for several years.
Consequently, in the imperialist countries the revolution can
only be conceived as a revolutionary war and the latter is today
simply the People's War.

Finally, today more than ever, we the Communists and
revolutionaries, the proletariat and the people, need to forge
ourselves in: "Yes, we adhere to the theory of the omnipotence of
the revolutionary war; it is good for the people, it is
Marxist"; which signifies being adherents to the invincibility of
the People's War.

[This document is an extract from the "Fundamental Documents"
written by the Central Committee of the PCP.]
PART II to be continued...
================================Published by The New Flag
30-08 Broadway, Suite 159
Queens, NY 11106
E-Mail: lquispe-AT-nyxfer.blythe.org


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

     ------------------