Date: 04 Mar 96 03:18:16 EST
From: "Chris, London" <100423.2040-AT-compuserve.com>
Subject: Re: Mariategui's road


Open letter to  Adolfo Olaechea,

Copy to Marxism

>>>>>>

From: hariette-AT-easynet.co.uk (hariette spierings)
Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 00:33:40 GMT
Subject: Re: Mariategui's Road

Dear Chris:

I am enclosing the documents which I think would contribute to give you an
idea of the ideology of the PCP.

<<<<<<<<<

I welcomed the personal tone of your reply for reasons which I would
like to explain. I would also like to explain why I have not rushed
to reply.

Your ability to address members of the l'st personally is 
very important to promote any dialogue over these questions. 

Within some limits I think reference articles from New Flag on 
key issues of policy are useful, but I know from supporting the ANC,
that a journal like New Flag is necessarily a propagandist, 
campaigning journal. It is not a forum for disinterested
analysis. 

I do not expect you to be disinterested, but you perhaps have
more flexibility to adopt a personal tone. It is helpful if you
understand what a highly sceptical l'st this forum is. Those subscribers
in academic departments however left-wing their desires, have to hold
their head up in a culture that is a bourgeois intellectual culture, 
with a model of scientific impartiality that takes for granted many 
of the assumptions of  capitalist society, while being particularly
searching in its standards of evidence for anything that 
might be uncomfortable for fundgivers.

On the political side, this forum has been created through contest,
through the conflict of ideas between individuals most of whom 
are committed to marxism but none of whom totally agrees with anyone
else. What is amazing is that some common ground even between supporters
of tendencies who have committed atrocities against one another has
started to open up. 

In your perspectives IMO you therefore need to make an economic, 
political and ideological analysis of what your objectives are in 
spending time on this l'st away from possibly more productive things.

Unless you do this my bet is you will not be subscribing 
in three months time.

Your most ambitious goal would be to win people to follow 
Gonzalo Thought. You might succeed with one or two. 
A more modest goal is an acceptance that the basic facts of the 
struggle in Peru have been seriously distorted. You have a greater
chance of winning a larger number of people at least to an open mind
on this question. But to do so, you need to address them in 
terms of their consciousness, not necessarily in terms of your
consciousness.


So thank you for addressing me in terms of my consciousness. And 
thank you in particular for your historical comments about the 
origins of the PCP. This is helpful for understanding some of the 
challenges and for appreciating that however much your enemies
present you as completely out of touch with reality, your
party has a historical continuity over more than 60 years.
even though I presume there were some splits. The historical 
relationship between you and the organisation that presumably 
exists and which you would call revisionist would be interesting
provided it is presented in a fairly factual way.

You refer to a historical figure called Ravinez. Despite the 
fact that you call him also a Comintern representative
in Spain and "the Barcelona Commissar" I cannot find the name
Ravinez in the index of Hugh Thomas's "The Spanish Civil War".
Did he go by a different name in Spain?


I appreciate the seriousness of some of your point I quote next.
It is clear to me that some of your harshest critics on the l'st
fear they have no reason not to assume you will do a Pol Pot.

>>>>>

 Far from subscribing the line of Pol-pot, Mariategui's road,
as I said in the mailer I sent you before, IMPLIES THE PROLETARIAT'S
LEADERSHIP IN THE REVOLUTION.

Yes, Lima is a monster city of nearly 7 million - I myself remember when it
was a city of barely 500.000!  This implies a process both of
"peasantrisation" of the urban centers, as well as proletarization of the
peasantry!  Offers challenges as well as opportunities.  Moreover,
Mariategui's Road implies the role of the National bourgeoisie IN THE
REVOLUTION.  Not its extermination as in Cambodia, or driving them to Miami,
like in Castro's case.

You are right that these are big questions and I would be lying if I said to
you that we have a clear idea of more than the general lines and a faith in
the creative power of the masses, both in Peru, the rest of Latin America
and the world (it is just as HARD to imagine that a People's Republic of
Peru can arise in the heart of Latin-America without at least a chance of a
general intervention on the part of the reactionary regimes, and,
conversely, a general spread of the revolution - something which is already
happening EVEN before the triumph of the Peruvian revolution - and,
moreover, a sporting chance of the rise of a Soviet Union of South America
and even of Latin-America.  
<<<<

>>>>>
All in all, I think the principal question today is to accumulate forces for
an attempt to break the chains of capitalist oppression in a part of the
world.  Part of this accumulation is our "People's War" to win international
public opinion in favour of the revolution.  In the end, it is down to the
class and the people, not only in Peru, but also in all parts of the world,
and in the people, I include all democrats and right thinking intellectuals..
<<<<<<

I appreciate your openness to the vulnerability of a Peruvian revolution
if it occurs in isolation. IMO the question of the revolution in one
country should not now be a doctrinaire one that separates marxists, who
come from different traditions of marxism. 

I also appreciate your awareness of the the extent of the challenge to 
win international public opinion. I would urge you to make more alliances
and more compromises. I snipped your quote just before the bit
where you talk about the importance of exposing phoney marxists. 
Obviously you need to stand your ground while you participate in this
l'st but it is not necessary for you to win a battle against 
revisionism, for you to get the message across I presume you have, 
that the regime is still torturing people and 
censoring and managing the news. 

To analyse the problem of resistance to your message as 
revisionism and best dealt with by means of fiery Leninist
polemic against revisionism, IMHO will be disastrous, 
but you will of course do what you think is in the best
interests of the Peruvian people. 

Even more important there is clearly a most dramatic story to be told
about the way the international oil companies are moving into the 
Peruvian rain forest and imposing bourgeois legal concepts on
the population by slicing up communal land. Public opinion is sensitised in 
the West to these issues. You would for example make more headway by spending 
a few hours per month in a working group on the defence of popular rights in
the Amazon basin, with some greens and democrats, offering to share
information from the PCP, than by writing about Gonzalo thought in the 
same few hours.

I also think clarification of what human rights organisations
are doing about Abimael Guzman and his lawyer's rights
is relevant. I fear you will think it hopelessly 
opportunist, but rather than writing polemics about 
the fact that neither Marx nor Engels were pacifists [which 
really is beyond contest], you could perhaps use a once a month 
vigil outside the Peruvian embassy with candles, at least one person 
dressed in Peruvian national costume, and preferably someone capable 
of playing an Andean flute. Please excuse me. I normally make it 
a rule never to tell people what to do. The above comments 
are an attempt to say as concisely as possible in a constructive
way, why I suspect some of your work may not be proceeding as 
fast as you would wish for the people of Peru and Latin America.


These are some of the reasons I have not rushed to reply to you 
personally and I am doing so in the form of an open letter, like your
letter to me. I am likely to disagree with you about the scope and 
relevance of "two-line" ideological struggle even though
I think some of the ideological concepts that emerged in the Communist
Party of China during the 30's and 40's were a more sophisticated 
development of how to handle contradictions in that context.

On a practical point, I will indeed look at your articles for 
reference, but it will help if they are in text format not
Wordperfect. 

Secondly, although you are entirely consistent with Lenin in using 
capitals as an equivalent for italics when you want to stress
a polemical point, you are likely to be heard as shouting on email.
Please consider using *  * or _   _ .

There is a little muscle in the ear that when it hears a loud
noise, automatically tightens, to reduce the sensitivity
of the ear as a protective measure against further loud noise.
Shouting literally makes people go deaf. 

Therefore may I suggest that in order to enhance the 
effectiveness of your communications, you continue to 
develop the personal tone in your replies, which I appreciated
in your open letter to me?


Chris







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