Editorial
Proletarians of all countries, unite!
EDITORIAL
99 years since the founding of the Communist Party of Brazil (C.P.B.)
This article was recently published in the Brazilian newspaper A Nova Democracia and we publish it in our editorial section because of the importance of this date in the calendar of the international proletariat and because of the just and correct content of the article.
March 25: 99 years since the founding of the Communist Party of Brazil (P.C.B.)
March 25, 2021, marks the 99th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of Brazil (PCB). Inspired by the Great Socialist October Revolution, and the inauguration, along with it, of a New Era of Humanity – the era of World Proletarian Revolution – the Brazilian proletariat embarked on the arduous and prestigious task of constituting their revolutionary party, the Communist Party.
Thus Astrojildo Pereira, Hermogen da Silva Fernandes, Manoel Cendón, Joaquim Barbosa, Luis Peres, José Elias da Silva, Abílio de Nequete, Cristiano Cordeiro and João da Costa Pimenta – representing 73 communists scattered in different corners of the country – founded in March 1922, in the city of Niterói (RJ), the Communist Party – Brazilian Section of the Communist International.
Throughout its history, several of heroic deeds stand out. Among them, the Popular Armed Uprising of 1935, which was the Party’s first attempt to storm the skies, 13 years after its foundation. Another milestone was the break with the revisionist Prestes group and the reconstruction of the Communist Party of Brazil (with the acronym PCdoB) in 1962, when it was really constituted as a Marxist-Leninist party, 40 years after its foundation. And finally, the glorious Guerrilha do Araguaia, when it approached the thought of Mao Tsetung, proposed the task of initiating the People’s War in Brazil.
With the defeat of the Guerrilha do Araguaia and the brutal massacre of Lapa, in which the leaders Pedro Pomar, Angelo Arroyo and João Batista Drummond were assassinated, the left in the leadership of the Party suffered serious losses, creating the situation for the abandonment of the revolutionary line of the Party of the protracted People’s War. João Amazonas and his revisionist clique, sabotaging the just balance of the Araguaia experience, led the coup to liquidate the Communist Party of Brazil as a revolutionary party, giving rise to another revisionist organisation, under the continuation of the acronym PCdoB.
Today, the different acronyms PCdoB, PCBrasileiro, PCR, etc., converge in the same revisionist and electorally biased programme. According to the publications sent to us by the Centre for the Study of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism (NEMLM), the “Communist Party of Brazil in the underground, led by its Red Fraction, has been developing for 20 years, through the struggle of two lines, the process of its reconstitution as a true and authentic Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Communist Party, a militarised Communist Party. This period corresponds to the second phase of the third stage of its history, based on the hard struggles against the right and ‘left’ opportunist lines, mainly right-wing, revisionist within itself, throughout its history and in the theoretical and practical sphere for the assimilation and practical incarnation of the third, new and higher stage of the development of Marxism, Maoism.”
NEMLM characterises: “having completed this third stage of its history, with the reconstitution of the CPB and the total victory over revisionism and all opportunism, it will open its fourth stage, as the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Communist Party of Brazil, with the launching of the open struggle through the protracted People’s War for the New Democratic Revolution, uninterrupted to Socialism, in the service of the World Proletarian Revolution and on the road to luminous Communism”.
We publish below part of the prologue of the book Problems of the History of the Communist Party of Brazil, by NEMLM:
Preface
In Brazil, the struggle for the constitution of the genuine revolutionary party of the proletariat has travelled a long, complex and difficult road and has not achieved its complete solution until today. Since the distant year of 1922, when the founding pioneers of the Communist Party, Brazilian Section of the Communist International, began the march for the constitution of the revolutionary party of the Brazilian proletariat, more than 90 years have passed. Although the course of this struggle has been made up of intense struggles, sacrifices and sufferings of the proletariat and the popular masses, exploits and heroics of countless ardent communist militants, it has been marked fundamentally by severe defeats.
Throughout almost all this course, invariably, there was a misunderstanding of this fundamental question, that of the two-line struggle and the mass line. For many decades it was unable to fully and correctly solve the crucial and determining problem of the party, which is that of its ideological and political line, of mobilising, organising, politicising and arming the masses.
It is not by chance that the calamitous situation in which the proletariat and the popular masses of our country have lived and are living at present. It is true that in the midst of defeats the Communist Party achieved partial successes that were reflected in political gains for the class and the masses. But it is undeniable that the enormous efforts and sacrifices of several generations of revolutionaries and of our heroic proletariat have not resulted until today in the complete establishment of the true and authentic Communist Party and, consequently, of the greatest successes of the revolution. But this is the history of the communist movement in Brazil and of it, of its intricate paths amidst the adventures of the class struggle, which will concretely lead to the establishment of the genuine revolutionary party of the proletariat in our country and the triumph of the revolution.
In the course of the last century, stormy struggles marked the successive political crises of the scenario of permanent economic and social crisis that characterise the historical process of Brazil, in its condition as a semi-colonial country, subjected to imperialist domination and under the influence of its reactionary classes of big bourgeoisie and landowners, sustained in the rotten and bureaucratic Brazilian state.
Although the CPB has not been able to fully achieve the main objective of constituting itself as a real Marxist party, it has not been able to arm itself with this ideology and the proletarian revolutionary line in order to conquer political power for the proletariat and the exploited and oppressed masses. The communist and revolutionary movement, between mistakes and successes, has accumulated a vast and rich experience, in which the Popular Uprising of 1935, the sending of volunteers to the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War, the struggle in the harsh conditions of clandestinity, workers’ struggles of the 1950s, armed peasant struggles in Porecatú (Paraná) and Trombas and Formoso (Goiás), the Guerrilha do Araguaia and a large collection of studies on the Brazilian reality stand out. This is an experience on which the followers of the great revolutionary cause of the proletariat in the country should critically rely.
On the 150th anniversary of the Paris Commune
On the 150th anniversary of the Paris Commune, 13 Marxist-Leninist-Maoist parties and organisations from Latin America, Asia and Europe published the joint international declaration: “Raise the red flag of the Paris Commune as a weapon of combat“. We consider the great unity expressed in this Declaration to be an important success on the road to the First Unified Maoist International Conference (UIMC), which is of great importance on the road to the unification of communists worldwide and which will give birth to the New International Organisation of Proletarians (NOIP).
In turn, the opportunists and revisionists published their statements for the same reason and as part of their campaign against Maoism in the service of the general counter-revolutionary offensive. These anti-Maoist statements have their platitudes as an essential feature. They cannot and will not be specific, they evade the burning problems of the present day, in order to deny the tasks, strategy and tactics that belong to the communists in the present situation. They are silent in all languages and deny the existence of an unevenly developing revolutionary situation in the world, they deny that the present outbursts are an announcement of the great explosions to come. They deny the semi-feudal and semi-colonial character on which bureaucratic capitalism is developing in the Third World countries, thereby denying the peasant question, i.e. the struggle for land and democratic revolution. They deny the necessity of the destruction of the three motañas that oppress the oppressed nations. They deny the main contradiction in the world, oppressed nations-superpowers and imperialist powers, thus denying the main force of the world revolution, denying that the oppressed countries are the basis of the world revolution. By doing so, they deny that revolution is the main historical and political trend in the world today. This shows that such revisionists and opportunists are against the world revolution and against the people’s war as the way of the world revolution. They deny everything, they do not want to see that the world proletarian revolution is developing at the moment of its strategic offensive and that a new great wave of the world revolution is developing, that as part of its development, a new period of the world revolution is opening up, a new period or moment of revolutions is opening up with the reconstitution of the Communist Parties and the beginning of new people’s wars, providing the masses of the world with the only revolutionary way out of their accumulated explosiveness due to the ever more unbearable increase of exploitation and misery of imperialism and its henchmen of bureaucratic capitalism, the big bourgeoisie and landlords.
In connection with the statement of the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Parties and Organisations, we would like to point out three important points:
First: The flag, once raised, must never be lowered. The morale of the class is of such importance that communists must always be prepared to pay the cost. The heroic communists are exemplary in this respect. To hold one’s life at one’s fingertips and give it when the revolution needs it is the communist way. The struggle of the prisoners of war of the Communist Party of Peru in the Shining Trenches of Combat of Lurigancho, Callao and El Frontón, which the International Communist Movement celebrates on the Day of Heroism, is eternally inscribed in the heart of our class, as the commune. And that is only one example, of the countless examples given by the communists in Peru throughout these years of the invincible People’s War, which has never stopped, not for a minute until now, because the life of the Communist Party can never be ceased. As long as a single communist is alive, he or she has to do it all over again and so on until victory as Chairman Mao taught. In this way, you will wrest laurels from death and win great victories for the World Proletarian Revolution.
Second: The commune is the first conquest of power by the proletariat. In it the principles and laws of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, mainly Maoism, are manifested. We think it is appropriate at this point to quote José Carlos Mariátegui , the founder of the PCP, who “indicated and outlined fundamental ideas on revolutionary violence. He said: “There is no revolution that is moderate, balanced, calm, placid.” “Power is conquered through violence… it is preserved only through dictatorship.” He conceived war as being protracted in nature: “A revolution can only be fulfilled after many years. Frequently it has alternating periods of predominance by the revolutionary forces or by the counterrevolutionary forces.” He established the relationship between politics and war, understanding that the revolution generates an army of a new type with its own tasks different from those of the exploiters; he also understood the role of the peasantry and the vital participation of the working class in a leading role, that the revolution will come from the Andes, that “with the defeat of the latifundista feudalism, urban capitalism will lack forces to resist the growing working class”; that in order to make revolution rifles, a program and doctrine are needed. He conceived the revolution as a total war in which there is a conjunction of political, social, military, economic and moral elements, and that each faction puts in tension and mobilizes all the resources that it can. He totally rejected the electoral road.” (CPP, Military Line)
Third: The question of the class front. We want to emphasise that according to the character of the revolution and in the different stages of the revolution (strategic defensive, strategic balance, strategic offensive; as defined by Chairman Gonzalo), the Revolutionary United Front, the third instrument, is taking the corresponding concrete forms as a class front.
With the first conquest of power, the Commune expressed the form of the front as a new state. Karl Marx writes about this in “The Civil War in France”:
“The first decree of the Commune … was the suppression of the standing army, and the substitution for it of the armed people.“
“The Commune was to be a working, not a parliamentary, body, executive and legislative at the same time. Instead of continuing to be the agent of the Central Government, the police was at once stripped of its political attributes, and turned into the responsible and at all times revocable agent of the Commune. So were the officials of all other branches of the Administration. From the members of the Commune downwards, the public service had to be done at workmen’s wages. The vested interests and the representation allowances of the high dignitaries of State disappeared along with the high dignitaries themselves. Public functions ceased to be the private property of the tools of the Central Government. Not only municipal administration, but the whole initiative hitherto exercised by the State was laid into the hands of the Commune.
Having once got rid of the standing army and the police, the physical force elements of the old Government, the Commune was anxious to break the spiritual force of repression, the “parson-power,” by the disestablishment and disendowment of all churches as proprietary bodies. The priests were sent back to the recesses of private life, there to feed upon the alms of the faithful in imitation of their predecessors, the Apostles. The whole of the educational institutions were opened to the people gratuitously, and at the same time cleared of all interference of Church and State. Thus, not only was education made accessible to all, but science itself freed from the fetters which class prejudice and governmental force had imposed upon it. The judicial functionaries were to be divested of that sham independence which had but served to mask their abject subserviency to all succeeding governments to which, in turn, they had taken, and broken, the oaths of allegiance. Like the rest of public servants, magistrates and judges were to be elective, responsible, and revocable.
… the Commune was to be the political form of even the smallest country hamlet, and that in the rural districts the standing army was to be replaced by a national militia, with an extremely short term of service. The rural communes of every district were to administer their common affairs by an assembly of delegates in the central town, and these district assemblies were
again to send deputies to the National Delegation in Paris, each delegate to be at any time revocable and bound by the mandat impératif (formal instructions) of his constituents. The few but important functions which still would remain for a central government were not to be suppressed, as has been intentionally mis-stated, but were to be discharged by Communal, and therefore strictly responsible agents.”
“In reality, the Communal Constitution brought the rural producers under the intellectual lead of the central towns of their districts, and there secured to them, in the working men, the natural trustees of their interests”
“Its true secret was this. It was essentially a working-class government the produce of the struggle of the producing against the appropriating class, the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economical emancipation of Labour.”
“The political rule of the producer cannot coexist with the perpetuation of his social slavery. The Commune was therefore to serve as a lever for uprooting the economical foundations upon which rests the existence of classes, and therefore of class rule. With labour emancipated, every man becomes a working man, and productive labour ceases to be a class attribute.”
Annotations in Reference to Nord Stream 2
We would like to add three more aspects to our article on Nord Stream 2.
First: The FRG has succeeded in gaining substantial support for the continuation of the project. The “Welt am Sonntag” (also “WamS”; English: “World on Sundays”, is the weekend edition of the newspaper “Die Welt”) reports:
“It was also a surprising result of the video conference between Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron who met on Friday: “At first this project was called into question. Now we have taken a decision, I am now in full solidarity with her,” said Macron, assuring his
support for the increasingly controversial construction of the German-Russian Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.”
WamS continues: “How Merkel has now managed to get Macron to turn round, that remains unanswered. That the sceptical “Putin project”, decided under her predecessor Gerhard Schröder, even against the resistance of her allies, remains one of the contradictions of her mandate”.
The WamS describes at this point (although apparently incomprehensible to the authors) the contradictions between the fractions within the ruling class, albeit in an enveloped form. This is visually underlined by the resemblance of Manuela Schwesig, Gerhard Schröder, Matthias Warning, Timo Chrupalla and Matthias Platzeck.
Additionally the WamS lets Austrian Chancellor Kurz express his opinion, who once again gets to the heart of the matter presented in our article: “Whoever thinks that the new pipeline would only be of interest to Russia is wrong. This project will be beneficial for Germany, Austria and some other European countries. And care must be taken that it is not undermined in itself by the EU, when the Nord Stream 2 is underway.
…
Nord Stream 2 is a European project that is of interest to many EU countries. I am convinced that Nord Stream 2 is a very positive project …”
Second: Antony Blinken lately stated [here quoted by Chinese Global Times] on his first trip as U.S. Secretary of State to Europe on behalf of a NATO meeting: “President (Joe) Biden has been very clear, he believes the pipeline is a bad idea, bad for Europe, bad for the United States, ultimately it is in contradiction to the EU’s own security goals” and added “I’m sure I’ll have an opportunity to reiterate that, including the law in the United States, which requires us to sanction companies participating in the efforts to complete the pipeline.”
Third: The Spanish Newspaper El Pais, analysing the issue of Nord Stream 2 quite objective, wrote on 28th of March:
“The macro-project, which will bring Russian gas to Germany, continues to divide the European Union, where Eastern European countries fear that it will become another tentacle of Moscow’s influence. Meanwhile, the idea of new sanctions by the United States, which also has its own strategic and commercial interests, against the companies involved in the pipeline looms large.”
“This new flow of Russian gas under the Baltic feeds three major battles. First, geopolitics, over the course of the West’s relations with an increasingly assertive Russia, and over cooperation with the Kremlin on strategic issues. There is also energy, with the debate over the future use of gas versus other less polluting sources. And a third is commercial, with the struggle between Washington and Moscow – which are going through the worst moment in their relations – to try to place their gas in the European market.”
“Pressure on Germany to withdraw its support for the project has increased in recent weeks. The European Parliament has called for a freeze. But Chancellor Angela Merkel is standing firm. She claims that Nord Stream 2 is a private business and insists on separating it from the EU’s right to continue imposing sanctions on Russian individuals in response to the Navalni affair and Russia’s harsh crackdown on peaceful demonstrations.”
“Jürgen Trittin, Green member of the Bundestag and member of the Foreign Affairs Committee … calls the argument about Russia’s energy dependence “nonsense”: “Europe can get gas from anywhere. Russia is much more dependent on us because if it stopped sending us gas its economy would suffer a lot. The main problem with the pipeline is that as Europeans we prolong our dependence on fossil fuels,” he said.”
“Russia’s economy is heavily based on hydrocarbons, which account for 62 per cent of exports. However, geopolitics is of even greater importance to the Kremlin.”
“Pavel Zavalny, chairman of the Duma Energy Committee (lower house of the Russian parliament). … “… the energy projects have been a target for third countries interested in weakening the economy and international positions of both Germany and Russia,” he says. “The main beneficiary is the United States, as well as European countries that are oriented towards Washington or are losing transit to Russian gas.”
“The new US administration, led by President Joe Biden, could be more reasonable than that of his predecessor, Donald Trump, when it comes to negotiating a solution to the conflict that satisfies all sides. According to the German weekly Der Spiegel, representatives of the US, Germany and the EU are reportedly in talks on various proposals. One of them would be to provide for an automatic shut-off of gas supplies in case Russia violates human rights or international law. Brussels’ official position on Nord Stream 2 is that it does not support it, but can do nothing to stop it either. If the project complies with EU law, and for now it does, it cannot intervene. It is a national, in this case a German, issue.”
“German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said last February that after the progressive deterioration of relations between Europe and Russia in recent years, energy is practically “the only bridge” left standing, and that it is unwise to destroy it.”
In every of these three aspects our stance expressed in our previous editorial is undoubtedly confirmed almost perfectly. And the recent development of the dispute on Nord Stream 2 proves another thing true we expressed: A change in the Yankee administration does not change anything basically. It may give an impulse to negotiate some specific issues anew between the imperialists or to use it to haggle, because obviously each side tries to gain something, but this will won’t bring any substantial changes.
