“Proletarians of all countries, unite!”
We publish this english translation of a joint declaration for the First of May 2018:
Proletarians of all countries, unite!
Joint declaration of Maoist Parties and Organizations on the occasion of the First of May 2018
“Proletarians of all countries, unite!”
In this First of May 2018 we address the international proletariat, as part of the Great World Campaign for the 200 years of the birth of our great founder, Karl Marx, under the slogan of “Proletarians of all countries, unite!”
In this glorious bicentenary of our great founder we also celebrate the 170 years of the Manifesto of the Communist Party, reaffirming the full validity of the fundamental Ideology, Principles and Program of the international proletariat established by him, synthesised in the motto: Proletarians of all countries, unite!
With the Communist Manifesto, the first systematic theoretical, ideological and political presentation of Communism, the International Communist Movement was born, from the League of Communists to the International Workers Association and from the latter up until today, passing through the II. International and the III. International, the glorious Communist International and organized expression of the vanguard of the international proletariat, which marches, through twists and turns, unstoppably upholding, defending and applying the principles and the program which will lead humankind to the New World, to the classless society, Communism.
With the birth of the Communist Movement, history experienced the emergence of a new type of men, possessing firm unity of thought and action, the communists, organized in a party, distinct and opposed to all the parties known to history until then, men and women willing to give their life for the cause of Human Emancipation, through the only possible path, the path of political emancipation of the proletariat: the Proletarian Revolution, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, scientific Socialism as transition to shining Communism. On this First of May we pay our warmest homages to the giants of thought and action Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, Josef Stalin and Chairman Mao Tsetung, notably the three great Immortal Luminaires Marx, Lenin and Chairman Mao, and to the countless legions of communists of the International Communist Movement, who have given their lives in unyielding fashion through these 170 years for the most glorious and biggest of all causes.
In 200 years since the birth of our founder and 170 years since the Manifesto, the world has never been in such turmoil and the objective conditions been so ripe for the World Proletarian Revolution, given the level of the socialization of production and the most advanced degree of decomposition of capital – agonizing imperialism – never seen before. And even though the proletariat has suffered heavily with the capitalist restorations, where it had conquered Power and was constructing socialism, the revolutionary proletariat has proven and developed its scientific ideology marxism, leninism and maoism as its new, third and superior stage, equipping the class more than ever with its almighty weapon to mobilize, politicize and organize the oppressed masses of the world to struggle, defeat and sweep away imperialism, its lackeys and all reaction from the face of earth, part by part, combating revisionism and all opportunism in an implacable way and inseparable from this struggle.
The general crisis of decomposition of imperialism keeps sharpening and in the next years and decades it will keep producing disruptions of growing magnitudes, bringing unheard suffering to the popular masses in the whole world and provoking, consequently, the most ferocious resistance and justified rebellion. The drama of millions of refugees afflicted by the wars of aggression and genocides shows the true face of the imperialist “civilization”, imperialism is a cancer and the peoples of the world do not need it. Imperialism has no other destiny but to fail successively, as the people is condemned to triumph inevitably. Thus it needs the proletarian vanguard to make it true as soon as possible!
The world wealth concentration has sharpened even more in 2017, according to data from the NGO Oxfam 82% of the wealth produced in the world during the last year was concentrated in the hands of 1% of the population, while 3.7 billion people, half of the population of the world, kept nothing. The increase of inequality grows acceleratingly also in the imperialist countries of North America, Europe and Asia, where alongside with the incorporation of big waves of immigrants into the proletariat of these countries, it makes the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie sharpen enormously.
The growing primarization and denationalization of the economy of the third world countries sharpen the economic dependency and semi-colonial or colonial imperialist domination. The so-called oil, mining, forest “concessions” were multiplied through Latin America, Africa, Turkey and India, promoting massive displacements of masses from their lands and producing great devastations in the natural and social environment, generating true colonial enclaves in the territories of India, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, South Africa, Philippines, etc.
According to official data, the land concentration in Latin America is even higher than before the decade of 1960, being the highest in the world. In India and in the whole south of Asia great contingents of hundreds of millions of peasants are rising in defence of their lands, showing that their decisive role for the democratic revolutions, which on the contrary to diminish, has elevated. Peasants are practically half of the world population, they are the principal force of the World Revolution.
Yankee imperialism (“The fat dog”) as the sole hegemonic superpower is the principal enemy of the peoples of the world, is the one who heads, in contend and collusion with the Russian atomic superpower (“the skinny dog”) and other imperialist powers, the wars of aggression and plunder against the oppressed peoples and nations of the world.
On the base of the increasingly deeper economic crisis of the world imperialist system, from which the crisis of bureaucratic capitalism in the oppressed countries is part of, the whole political system of the old order enters an advanced degree of decomposition. The political crisis expresses higher and growing contend between the factions of the ruling classes, showing that the old reactionary States have already reached an advanced stage of decomposition and sinking. A revolutionary situation develops unevenly and persistently in it.
The corruption scandals throughout the whole world, despite pointing out the rotten nature of these governments, show the growing personal unity among the representatives of big monopolist corporations and the State power. The bourgeois elections, as means to legitimate the old order, are increasingly discredited, without legitimacy and wake the spontaneous rejection of the masses, showing the exhaustion of the general offensive of the counterrevolution.
The USA, headed by the arch-reactionary Trump, keeps developing through its war of aggression for the partition and new repartition of the so-called Extended Middle East (West Asia), further sharpening the principal contradiction in the current epoch and world, between the oppressed nations on the one hand and the imperialist superpowers and powers on the other.
After the military defeats suffered in the field, the USA persists on preparing a new escalation of aggressions against Syria and in the whole Extended Middle East. And, in midst of the imperialist contend and collusion, they increasingly use the lackey and subservient forces of the region, like the latifundium-bureaucratic monarchy of Saudi Arabia, the theocratic Republic of Iran, interventionist troops of the reactionary Turkish State headed by Erdogan, complemented with the aid of reactionary mercenary forces of various types, bringing more and bigger genocides to the region.
As part of this war of aggression and genocides we are witnessing the use of reactionary nationalist movements to deviate the struggles of national liberation, like the one headed by the opportunist landlord-bourgeois leadership of PKK, which dragged part of the Kurdish masses into becoming pawns and cannon fodder for the imperialist plans of occupation and plunder of the region, serving the imperialist goals of the partition of Syria into areas of influence.
In the midst of hard class struggles against reaction and imperialism and the struggle against revisionism and liquidationism, the heroic proletariat of Turkey is forging the instruments capable of developing the New Democracy Revolution through People’s War against latifundium, the big bourgeoisie and imperialism and the old and lackey latifundium-bureaucratic State with the absolutist and genocide regime led by Erdogan – AKP. The communists of Turkey are struggling to unite the Turkish and Kurdish peoples in the Revolutionary United Front led absolutely by the Communist Party, to realize the New Democracy Revolution through People’s War.
The true national self-determination for the Kurdish nation, just like in the case of Catalonia, Basque country, Ireland and others, can only be achieved through New Democracy or Socialist revolution, according to each case, through the development of the People’s War, for which it is necessary to constitute or reconstitute the marxist-leninist-maoist communist parties capable to lead them to victory.
It is important to point out the struggle of the Palestine people against imperialist-zionist colonialism, which needs to transform its armed struggle of national liberation into People’s War. First, they fought against England, which substituted the Ottoman domination after World War I and began the colonisation of Palestine with European settlers (members of the Zionist movement) and, after World War II, against Yankee-imperialism which continued with the colonisation with the partition of Palestine in 1948 and the establishment of the Zionist state of Israel. During all of this, the occupation of Palestine and exploitation of its people through import of Jewish settlers of the revisionist former Soviet Union, including soldiers, and Yankee imperialism that armed them to sustain the genocidal colonial war against the Palestinians and the Arab people of the region.
In Asia, where the majority of the masses of the earth are, the great People’s War of India represents a great fortress and source of inspiration for the International Communist Movement. Defeating the campaigns of encirclement and annihilation, as well as the political immorality of “peace agreements” of the enemy and upholding proletarian internationalism, the CPI (maoist) is elevating the red flag of Maoism to high summits, it is a great point of reference for the struggles of national liberation and its triumph will represent a change in the correlation of forces between revolution and counterrevolution at the world level.
The CPI (maoist) constructing itself as the true and consequent defender, as organised vanguard of the proletariat, of the cause of the national minorities oppressed by the old Indian State – opposing resolutely the reactionary policies of the Hindu Brahman nationalism of the Modi regime of religious discrimination, of cast and of war against the people, trying to divide the masses – is an important point of reference and source of inspiration to revolutionaries of the whole world.
The enemy, in its desperate attempt to stop the development of the Revolution of New Democracy is intensifying its genocidal campaigns against the masses, principally the peasants and indigenous peoples, as well as selective annihilation campaigns of communist leaders and cadres and the persecution of revolutionaries, democrats and progressives. The great People’s War in India is showing once more the principle that “the spilled blood does not drown revolution, but waters it”, and all sacrifice made by the masses is converting into class hatred and more victories for the people and the revolution.
In the Philippines the People’s War persists for more than 45 years, defeating, one after another, the encircling and annihilation campaigns of the successive lackey governments of Yankee imperialism, as well as their insistent calls for capitulation through “negotiations”, “peace treaties” and calling them to integrate in the old State and their electoral farce. The ultra-reactionary policy of the Duterte government shows that the only thing the old Philippine State has to offer to the masses is more genocide, exploitation and oppression.
In Latin America the bankruptcy of the opportunist governments of the big bourgeoisie with the facade of the “left” in Argentina, Brazil, El Salvador, Ecuador, Uruguay, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Bolivia etc., is generating increasingly bigger waves of popular protest and sowing the seed of People’s War. The old States of big bourgeois and landlords, lackeys to imperialism, principally Yankee imperialism, experience a sharp and accelerated process of decomposition and are crumbling one by one. They are part of the higher reactionarisation of this old semi-colonial/semi-feudal State, with the increase of fascist movements and tendency for preventive counterrevolutionary military coups, against the inevitable and violent popular insurgency in the face of the exorbitant rise of exploitation and repression to save imperialism from its deep economic crisis and the big bourgeois and landlord classes from their crisis of domination and to prevent the initiation of more People’s Wars.
Throughout all Latin America, the noticeable advances in the reconstitution or constitution of militarized maoist communist parties ranges from Chile, passing through Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia until Mexico and in Peru, in the heights of Vizcatan in VRAEM, it has its highest and most shining point, where the Communist Party of Peru advances in its general reorganization based on its First Congress and in the defence of Chairman Gonzalo, to give a new and powerful impulse to the People’s War.
Asia, Africa and Latin America, as said by Chairman Mao, are the zones of revolutionary storms and the base of the World revolution. Latin America, as the “backyard” of the USA, is a great powder barrel and the initiation of more People’s Wars in the continent will be a powerful spark of maoism to burn all the prairie in great fires of People’s War.
In Europe, the struggles of July against the G20 in Hamburg, Germany led by the communists were a complete victory for the ICM. The communists raised the red flag of maoism and did not allow it to be taken down. The hideous campaign of witch hunt by the German imperialist State will not be able to stop the march of the proletariat in Germany in the reconstitution of its Communist Party. Also the struggles of the proletariat of France, Austria and others against the imperialist reaction in the year of 2017, showed how in the belly of the imperialist beast there are advances in the application of maoism, and that the maoist communist movement is strengthening and advancing on the path of the constitution/reconstitution of militarized communist parties to initiate the People’s War, quickly moving forward.
In North America, inside the USA itself, from south to north and from east to west, maoism flourishes with the emergence and growth of true revolutionary organizations of Red Guards and other communist Collectives. The reappearance of the communist movement in the USA, united under the defence of the necessity to form the marxist-leninist-maoist Communist Party to Initiate the People’s War, is a fierce blow against the Yankee imperialist reaction and the new avakianist revisionism of RCP.
Thus, the world situation demonstrates an enormous potential in which the communist movement is reappearing with renewed strength. To transform this potential strength of the International Communist Movement the World Proletarian Revolution needs the constitution/reconstitution of marxist-leninist-maoist communist parties to transform the current armed struggles of national liberation into People’s Wars, to make the revolution of New Democracy, unleash new People’s Wars for the Revolution of New Democracy or Socialist Revolution according to each case (oppressed countries and developed capitalist countries respectively), and, through successive Proletarian Cultural Revolutions, to transit the whole world into Shining Communism.
The great Marx warned us that: “That all efforts aiming at the great end hitherto failed from the want of solidarity between the manifold divisions of labour in each country, and from the absence of a fraternal bond of union between the working classes of different countries”
The international proletariat needs to fully overcome the current dispersion of forces – which began with the counterrevolutionary coup of Teng Siao-pings clique in China after the death of Chairman Mao, sharpened by the liquidation of the RIM by the new revisionism of Avakian, Prachanda and their adulator –, to realize a Unified Maoist International Conference, to advance the formulation of the General Line for the International Communist Movement and the formation of a New International Organization of the Proletariat, which serves the struggle to put maoism in the command and guide of the World Revolution.
Marxism is opposed to all kind of imperialist chauvinism and narrow nationalism. The Proletariat is one single international class with indissolubly linked interests and destinies, for this the only marxist principle for the International Communist Movement is the proletarian internationalism. The revisionists accused the marxists to be dogmatic, in his time Khrushchev and Liu Shao-chi, and today Prachanda and Avakian with their black lines against the proletarian revolution. Chairman Mao Tsetung affirmed: “internationalism is the spirit of communism.”
Marx, pointing out the importance of the existence of the International Workers Association – IWA, affirmed that while the vanguard role of the proletariat in the journeys of 1848 took decades to be acknowledged, when there was the Paris Commune, it was immediately acknowledged and its lesson were incorporated in the International Communist Movement.
Today, the international proletariat, in hard struggle to sweep away imperialism and all the reaction from the face of earth, needs an ICM and an International Organization that serves to defend and spread maoism as third, new and superior stage of development of marxism, that serves the proletariat in the constitution/reconstitution of marxist-leninist-maoist Communist Parties to seize power and defend it through People’s War in democratic and socialist revolutions, as well as to raise the defence, support and dissemination of the ongoing People’s Wars to organize the solidarity with the popular struggles and rebellions in the whole world.
Revisionism is still the principal danger to the World Revolution and the International Communist Movement. As such, one can not go a single step without combating it in an implacable way and inseparable from the struggle against imperialism and all reaction. Chairman Mao affirmed that the “history of the international communist movement demonstrates that proletarian unity has been consolidated and has developed through struggle against opportunism, revisionism and splittism”. Therefore, only counting on ideological and political unity can the proletariat achieve organizational cohesion and unity of action.
The opportunist plans for a broad unity, independently of ideological and political unity, must be rejected. As affirmed by Lenin, “It is not a question of numbers, but of giving correct expression to the ideas and policies of the truly revolutionary proletariat”.
The Communist movement needs a new International Organization, strongly unified around maoism and the People’s War, that serves to put Maoism at the command and guide of the world revolution, initiating and developing more People’s Wars.
Therefore, the unity of the communists at the world level demands: 1) defence of maoism as new, third and superior stage of marxism, against all kinds of revisionism, old and new, such as the Right Opportunist Lines in Peru, avakianism and prachandism, 2) defence of the People’s War as superior military strategy of the class, the Military Line of the Proletariat, centre of the General Political Line for the International Communist Movement, as means to realize the new democracy and socialists revolutions, to defeat the Imperialist World War if it is imposed, opposing it with World People’s War.
The realization of a Unified Maoist International Conference should be based on these ideological and political principles, to advance the formulation of the General Line for the International Communist Movement and give birth to a new International Organization of the Proletariat capable of fulfilling these tasks and goals that the World Proletarian Revolution demands, serving as a great step forward in the reunification of the communists in the whole world.
The Communist Movement is reappearing with renewed strength, today the objective and subjective situation for a Unified Maoist International Conference and the formation of an International Organization of the Proletariat are far better than when the RIM was founded, enough to say that in its foundation meeting in 1984, the participation of parties and organizations that opposed maoism as the new, third and superior stage of development of marxism was predominant, and it only adopted “Mao Tsetung Thought” and only much later they accepted maoism, even though it was only formally.
We marxist-leninist-maoist Parties and Organizations reaffirm ourselves and raise our committment to struggle for the reunification of the communists at world level, on the base and guidance of marxism-leninism-maoism and People’s War, combating implacably the old and new revisionism and all opportunism, in service of the World Proletarian Revolution.
During these 200 years since the birth of our founder and 170 years from the birth of the International Communist Movement we reaffirm his masterly predicts: “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win!”
Long Live marxism-leninism-maoism!
Down with revisionism in old and new clothing!
Defend the political prisoners and revolutionary prisoners of war in the whole world!
For a Unified Maoist International Conference and the formation of a New International Organization of the Proletariat!
Defend the life and health of Chairman Gonzalo, with People’s War!
Long Live the New Great Wave of the World Proletarian Revolution!
Down with the Imperialist War! Long Live the invincibility of People’s War!
Signatories*:
Communist Party of Brazil (Red Faction)
Communist Party of Peru – PCP
Communist Party of Ecuador – Red Sun
Red Faction of the Communist Party of Chile
Maoist Organization for the Reconstitution of the Communist Party of Colombia
Revolutionary Nucleus for the reconstitution of the Communist Party of Mexico
Revolutionary Front of the People of Bolivia MLM
Committee Red Flag – FRG
Committees for the Foundation of the (Maoist) Communist Party – Austria
*pending