From: Luis Quispe <lquispe-AT-blythe.org>
Subject: PERU: The Proletariat in the Revolution (I)
To: marxism-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu
Date: Mon, 29 Apr 1996 23:20:24 -0400 (EDT)
Cc: marxism-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu


[Document from the Peruvian Movement of Proletarians and Workers
"Movimiento de Obreros y Trabajadores Clasistas" organized by the
Communist Party of Peru.]

Proletarians of the World Unite!

 THE PROLETARIAT AND ITS ROLE IN THE PERUVIAN REVOLUTION

                 I. A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE 

Thousands of years of human development and the unfolding of the
class struggle resulted in the appearance of the new, and at the
same time, the last class in history, the proletariat, the modern
day working class. In the past, the revolutionary struggle of the
slaves resulted in the transformation of the old slave society
into a feudal society. Later, the capitalist class arose from
within feudal society with the development of commerce and
monetary circulation and the appearance of the world market. As a
result of the rise of the power of capital, bourgeois revolutions
broke out everywhere which abolished the old forms of domination
of the feudal landlords over the medieval peasant serfs,
replacing it with the open, shameless, brutal and direct
exploitation of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie. History has
shown us that the dominant classes, slave owners, feudal
landlords and capitalists, have always required an apparatus of
coercion in order to maintain their class damination. This
coercive apparatus is the State, and its backbone its armed
forces. Invariably, the revolutionary classes, in order to put an
end to the rule of their oppressors, have had to smash,
violently, the armed forces of the ruling classes and build a new
State upon the ruins of the old. Slave holding, feudal and
capitalist forms of rule rested upon the exploitation of the
majority and its maintenance by means of private property. But
the present form of private property, bourgeois property, is the
last and highest expression of the modes of production and
appropriation of production based upon the exploitation of one
class by another. The historic destiny of the proletariat is the
abolition of private property forever.

In its development, the proletariat has generated its own
leaders. The greatest teachers of the proletariat are Marx,
Lenin, Stalin, and Chairman Mao Tsetung. They grasped the
historic role of the proletariat, they organized it into a Party,
the Communist Party, and guided it towards revolution. The
proletariat and the world's people have been waging revolutions
upholding their brilliant teachings. The ideology of the
proletariat is Marxism, today developed to its highest stage in
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. The essence of this ideology is
revolutionary violence; since the bourgeoisie and all
reactionaries need violence to preserve their rule, the
proletariat and its allies (peasants and progressives) require
violence to smash that rule and impose their own.

All the teachers of the working class have pointed out that the
proletariat must constitute themselves as a class, organize
themselves into a Party, create a revolutionary army, destroy the
bourgeois State and construct a classless society, a Communist
society. And when no longer land owners nor factory owners exist,
and when no longer a situation in which some are bloated with
wealth exists while others starve, when all forms of exploitation
have disappeared from the entire world, happiness will reign over
the earth and there will be a true paradise for humanity. The
international proletariat marches toward this goal under the
unfading banner of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.

If this is the historic goal of the proletariat, history also
teaches us that, in the present epoch of imperialism and
proletarian revolution, where the bourgeois revolution has not
been completed, the bourgeoisie is incapable of leading a
revolution of this type. In the semi-feudal and semi-colonial
countries, like Peru, it is incumbent upon the proletariat to
channel the democratic energies of the peasantry, and, under the
direction of the Communist Party, form a revolutionary United
Front made up of the proletariat, the peasantry, the petty
bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie (the last one does not
participate in the revolution but its interests are respected),
with its axis being the worker-peasant alliance, and a
revolutionary army to carry out the People's War in both the
countryside and in the cities. Only in this way and in no other,
will it be possible to carry through the democratic revolution in
this type of country. And only after having defeated the rule of
the big bourgeoisie, the feudal landlords and imperialism, and
establishing a dictatorship of several united revolutionary
classes, only then and not before, will it be possible for the
proletariat to carry forward the Socialist Revolution and impose
its own class dictatorship. To ignore these experiences, and to
speak of the immediate possibility of a socialist revolution in
semi-feudal and semi-colonial countries, is right opportunism and
serves to maintain the rule of the big bourgeossie, the feudal
landlords and imperialism.

               II. THE WORKING CLASS IN PERU

The proletariat arose in Peru at the end of the 19th Century. In
the first period of the development of Peruvian society in this
century, imperialism (mainly Yankee imperialism) and the
reactionary classes (e.g., the comprador bourgeossie) implemented
measures seeking the development of bureaucratic capitalism which
were entramped by the slow evolution of feudality. The formation
of the industrial proletariat, as Mariategui [1] taught us,
"Changed the terms of the political struggle." With World War I
and the great Russian revolution in the background, the Peruvian
proletariat developed politically. Mariategui worked intensely in
this period to educate and organize the class; he taught the
proletariat the necessity of grasping Marxism-Leninism; he
educated the workers on the world crisis and the lessons of the
European revolutions, and analyzed deeply the history of the
Peruvian proletariat and the situation in which it was
developing. He organized the National Confederation of Workers
(CGTP) in the midst of a decisive struggle against anarchism and
the APRA [2] deviation. He fought for the unity of the
proletariat, and forged a proletariat with class consciousness
and class sentiments. But it was on October 7, 1928, amidst the
uproar of our people's struggle, especially the uprising of the
peasants and the heroic struggle of the proletariat, that
Mariategui completed his greatest work, the founding of the
Communist Party (PCP). Thus, the old bourgeois revolution became
the new democratic revolution, an anti-imperialist and
anti-feudal revolution led by the proletariat. The founding of
the PCP marks a dividing line in our history.

In the second period, the imperialists and the reactionary
classes deepened bureaucratic capitalism with the development of
corporativization [3] under the leadership of the bureaucratic
bourgeoisie. On the other hand, conditions for the democratic
revolution sharpened. This stage defined itself by the necessity
of using armed struggle to create a new democratic state. Since
1977, we live in a political period characterized by the third
restructuring of the Peruvian state in this century, and at the
same time, by the development of the mass struggle towards the
beginning of armed struggle. In the 1960s, the struggle of the
proletariat and, principally, of the peasantry, as well as the
rest of the masses of workers, generated the people's struggles
which rocked the entire society. In the heat of the international
class struggle after World War II, and following the lessons of
the Chinese revolution, the proletariat entered a new period of
political development. Its finest combatants came to the
forefront in the struggle to defend Marxism-Leninism against
revisionism. As in the period of the Party's formation, the
development of the proletariat and the unfolding of the mass
struggle, particularly the peasantry, during this second period
served to support the historic task of re-taking Mariategui's
Road and the development and reconstruction of his Party under
the guidance of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.

Peru is a semi-feudal and semi-colonial country, dependent on
imperialism, mainly Yankee imperialism. The Peruvian state is a
landlord bureaucratic state, sustained by the
counter-revolutionary violence it excercises over our people. The
electoral processes conducted in our country yesterday and today,
have been nothing but shows manipulated by the feudal landowners
and the big bourgeoisie to preserve their rule. Universal
sufrage, the Constituent Assembly, the Parliament [4], have never
changed the essence of their rule; far from it, they served to
embellish it cynically. The proletariat and our people must com-

prehend this truth: The democratic revolution has not been
completed in our country because the armed struggle has not been
carried out [5]. Consequently, it falls upon the proletariat
through its Party, to rise in arms and lead the principal force
of the revolution, the peasantry, mainly the poor peasants, in
order to destroy the dictatorship of the feudal landlords and the
big bourgeoisie, who, under the direction of the Yankee
imperialists, subjugate the Peruvian people and conspire with
other powers to maintain the imperialist domination -especially
the Soviet social imperialists.[6]

The Peruvian revolution is in its first stage, of a democratic
revolution which must unfold through a prolonged People's War
>from the countryside to the city, creating revolutionary base
areas, and following the road of encircling the cities from the
countryside.

For the proletariat, the Reconstruction of its Party is the
principal element of the 3 instruments it must developed in order
to carry out the revolution, the other 2 are the United Front and
the creation of a worker-peasant army. These are the tasks of the
Peruvian proletariat. Upon completion of this stage, the
revolution must necessarily and immediately pass into the
proletarian revolution.

Continued Part 2.
--------------------------------
Published by The New Flag
E-Mail:lquispe-AT-nyxfer.blythe.org
http://www.blythe.org/peru-pcp
--------------------------------


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