Land to the Tiller
Proletarians of all countries, unite!
“Land to the Tiller”
Imperialism on a world level is in a general and ultimate crisis, in the most advanced state of decomposition, both in the imperialist countries (oppressing countries) and also in the countries of bureaucratic capitalism, which has been generated by imperialism on a semi-feudal basis, in the oppressed nations of the Third World.
US imperialism is the most monopolistic, most parasitic and most agonising imperialism, therefore it is the one that most expresses this decomposition: US imperialism, the sole hegemonic superpower, the self-appointed world counter-revolutionary police and the main enemy of the peoples of the world, is in a long but inevitable process of decline like all previous empires. There are other imperialists nipping at its heels, such as the Russian atomic superpower (“the skinny dog”) seeking to regain its superpower status, and the powers nipping at its heels such as Germany, social-imperialist China, etc. The imperialist collusion and struggle is increasing for a new division and the spoils to be re-divided are the nations of the Third World. Imperialism is sinking in a complex series of wars of all kinds, going from failure to failure.
Imperialism in the last three decades has increased the exploitation of the whole world by new accumulation of capital. The means used is the “deregulation of labour” (suppression of class rights all over the world), internal and international migration to generate labour force in the imperialist countries which is exploited under colonial conditions, “privatisations” in all countries and the plundering of natural wealth, land and territories in the Third World countries. Here, the project “Sembrando Vida”, which A. López Obrador (AMLO) is planning to present to Biden in order to facilitate an orderly migration of cheap labour to the USA, which the American finance capital can exploit in Central American conditions in the USA itself, says, but in reality he has already started it. But it is not a project to “help” the peasantry with the story of environmental protection, but it is an economic and repressive project against the poor peasants who migrate to escape exploitation and oppression in their own countries. Economically, it is for the export of fruits to the imperialist market – it has a bureaucratic capitalist character, it does not serve the internal development but the world market – and, as for the repressive aspect, it is to justify the actions of the Mexican national guard and the customs of Mexico turned into the sheriffs of the Yankee sheriff (see the newspaper El País of 20 April 2021). If we look at Asia, we have the report of over a hundred thousand large-scale protests a year in China, as the working class protests against low wages, long working hours and poor working conditions and against the rampant corruption that favours a few factions of the big bourgeoisie. The over-exploitation of the labour force in the condition of workers brought in from the colonies, enforced in social-imperialist China with its own citizens expelled from the countryside, is one of the main causes of the more than one hundred thousand large-scale protests a year in China, which show a system in crisis. Social-imperialist China is also a colossus with feet of clay and as Chairman Gonzalo stated, like Soviet revisionism, it is marching towards its ultimate bankruptcy. This is a feature of the development of the other hill that must not be lost in appreciating the international situation.
In the face of increased exploitation and oppression, the masses are on the move all over the world, a great explosiveness of the masses that is going to explode everywhere. General crisis of imperialism and bureaucratic capitalism, imperialist wars of aggression against the oppressed nations, further exploitation of the whole world by imperialism and great plunder of natural wealth, land and territory. Sharpening of all contradictions, mainly the first and historically main contradiction (contradiction oppressed nations-imperialism), but also the third contradiction, the inter-imperialist contradiction for the spoils of the oppressed nations, is expressed. Sharpening of the proletariat-bourgeoisie contradiction in the imperialist countries.
The uneven development of the revolutionary situation in every country shows that the main contradiction in the world is oppressed nations-imperialism. It shows the weight of the oppressed nations and their role is better understood. In the oppressed nations, democratic revolutions of a new type take place; they are revolutions led by the proletariat through its parties.
The oppressed nations are the basis of revolution as the main tendency. Eighty-five per cent of the world’s population is in the oppressed nations. In these, too, the weight of the masses is expressed. These areas with some exceptions are backward areas. The imperialists invest in them and want to control them because they are subjugated economies. They are zones of collusion and struggle. Once again they are the disputed booty.
The peasants’ struggle for land is the basis of the struggle against the three mountains – imperialism, bureaucratic capitalism and semi-feudalism – in the oppressed countries. Without developing the peasants’ struggle for land, one cannot be truly anti-imperialist. In all the oppressed countries there are important struggles of the peasantry for land and against the great dispossession, and inseparably from these struggles, the struggles of the minorities for the defence of their territory. But, of all these, the great struggles in the countryside in India, Brazil, Peru, Mexico, Ecuador, Chile, etc. and in many African countries stand out. In the oppressed countries it is up to the mass work to initiate the People’s War, when it has not yet begun and when it has begun in the midst of the People’s War, by combating the three mountains, imperialism, bureaucratic capitalism and semi-feudalism. Moreover, by relentlessly developing the struggle against revisionism in concrete terms, by educating the masses in revolutionary violence, in People’s War, the only way to seize power for the proletariat and the people and to establish the red republic, necessary for the peasants road, led by the Communist Party, and thus to prevent the deviation of this road towards a coupling of the outdated system, to the evolutionary bureaucratic road of semi-feudalism. The road of bureaucratic capitalism in the countryside which leads to great dispossession and concentration. Todas las medidas o leyes agrarias que dan los gobiernos en los países de capitalismo burocrático llevan a la mayor ruina del campesinado, a la nueva concentración de tierras y al despojo.
For Example, the Indian peasantry struggles against the “Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act 2020”. The Agriculture Census in India, last held in 2014, identified that farmers in India have small land holdings, one of the reasons they are not able to meet their needs. Two-thirds of the land holdings in the country are less than one hectare. Other related issues include farmer suicides and the state of the economy in India. India reported a total 296,438 Indian farmers suicides between 1995 and 2015. In 2019, 10,281 peasants committed suicide. In the Punjab state the situation is much worse, which is why the protests have been growing much stronger.
In Punjab, small-scale protests had started in August 2020 when the Farm Bills were made public. It was only after the passage of the acts that more farmers and farm unions across India joined the protests against the reforms. On 25 September 2020 farm unions all over India called for a Bharat Bandh (lit. transl. nation-wide shutting down) to protest against these farm laws. The most widespread protests took place in Punjab, Haryana and Western Uttar Pradesh but demonstrations were also reported in Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Kerala and other states. Railway services have remained suspended in Punjab for more than two months due to the protests, starting from October. Following this, farmers from different states then marched to Delhi to protest against the laws. Farmers also criticized the national media for misrepresenting the protest. From 12 December, farmer unions took over highway toll plazas in Haryana and allowed free movement of vehicles. In certain parts of India, bullock-cart rallies in support of farmer’s protest have also been organized by marginal farmers.
In Brazil, the revolutionary movement of the poor peasants of the Western Amazon, especially in Rondonia, is resisting the new repressive onslaught of the landlord-bureaucratic state, which is trying to drown the struggle of the Brazilian peasants for land in blood, by committing a new massacre like the one in 1995.
The sinister repression of the Brazilian landlord-bureaucratic state, at that time, reached its peak in the “Massacre of Corumbiara” in August 1995 – as which this struggle on the Hacienda Santa Elina is internationally known. Here, the peasants’ struggle was answered by a bloody massacre by the Brazilian state. Since then, nothing has changed and the terror against the revolutionary peasant movement knows no bounds.Persecutions, kidnappings and murders of peasants and their revolutionary leaders continue to be on the agenda. All this because the peasants are taking what belongs to them and what they need to live.
The reactionaries have recently started to classify the revolutionary peasant movement as an armed organisation and are moving an intense and wide reactionary repressive campaign with persecutions, assassinations, defamation in order to criminalise it as a terrorist organisation, to capture its leaders with the aim, already unsuccessful, of crushing the revolutionary peasant movement. But, not only that, the reaction is trying to repress the revolutionary movement as a whole, including the popular and democratic press.The revolutionary peasant movement carries out its own campaign as a counter-campaign to the reactionary campaign on the basis of “combat and resist”, raising the example of the heroic battle of Santa Elina for the land where the poor peasantry won a great political and moral victory for the peasant and popular struggle despite the massacre of the landowners and the repressive forces of the old state, which preyed on the blood of the poor peasantry.
And on the issue of territory, it is necessary to add that, “one out of every three hectares given in concession for mining, oil, agro-industrial and forestry exploitation in Latin America – as well as in other regions of the world – belongs to indigenous peoples. In Argentina, 84% of soybean concessions are in indigenous territories. Mining and oil expansion in Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru and Chile is giving rise to increasingly frequent and acute conflicts with indigenous peoples, either by directly affecting their territories or by altering the water sources on which they depend. And in Colombia, banana and oil palm plantations have been established on lands from which Afro-Colombian communities were violently expelled,” says a report.
The proletariat in the imperialist countries has already shown enough signs that it is coming out of its long lethargy; spurred on by the general crisis of imperialism, the recurring cyclical crises, the increased exploitation and oppression in the imperialist countries themselves. Also by the consequences of the wars of plunder that are returning to the imperialist metropolises itself and are stoking not only the proletariat-bourgeoisie contradiction, but between the great mass of the population – within which is the broadest and deepest mass of immigrants – and imperialism.
Chairman Gonzalo at the 2nd Plenum of the CC of the CPP, at the beginning of the 1990s, at what point it was entering and where all this was leading to: “The wars that are opening up are wars not only in stormy areas, but wars of superpowers and powers, in collusion and struggle, against oppressed nations to subjugate them with blood and fire, even if it means disappearing them to a large extent, that is what they are plotting. This supports the fact that the main contradiction is between oppressed nations and imperialist superpowers and powers; even the main contradiction could momentarily become secondary if the inter-imperialist contradiction is strengthened, but only temporarily, because as it is plunder and distribution and as the population in the oppressed nations increases more and more and poverty becomes more and more acute, the masses will express all their revolutionary capacity and will prefer to die fighting than starving, they will wage anti-imperialist struggles, national liberation struggles, resistance to aggression and above all they will wage revolutions. In such circumstances, how will the imperialists respond with bloody wars to divide up the world and define hegemony?”
Since then, in the early 1990s, until the end of the last decade of the present century, we have witnessed the development of all those anti-imperialist struggles, armed struggles of national liberation and resistance to aggression in the oppressed nations of the Third World, which have dealt serious defeats to the imperialist aggressors. We have witnessed the awakening of the struggles of the proletariat in most of the imperialist countries and as part of them also in social-imperialist China. Now, with the new decade that we have entered in 2020, the time has come for all these struggles to take shape in revolutions. This spontaneous movement has a beacon that illuminates them, which are the People’s Wars in Peru, India, Turkey and the Philippines, to move from struggles and wars of national liberation or wars of resistance to People’s Wars led by real communist parties of a new type, militarised Marxist-Leninist-Maoist parties.
The objective conditions are more ripe for revolution and the subjective forces have developed in the world. As far as the objective or revolutionary situation is concerned, in all countries and in an uneven manner, it is expressed in a growing development; that is to say, those at the bottom no longer want to live as before and those at the top can no longer continue to rule as before. As for the development of the subjective forces of the world revolution, the International Communist Movement has entered a new moment with the advance of the process of reconstitution/constitution, of the militarised communist parties, Marxist-Leninist-Maoist parties, with the universally valid contributions of Chairman Gonzalo in the fight to the death against revisionism and all opportunism. The ICM is advancing firmly and resolutely in its process of re-unification with the holding of the Unified International Maoist Conference (UIMC) and the establishment of the New International Organisation of the Proletariat (NIOP). We have entered a new period of revolutions, within the moment of the strategic offensive of the world proletarian revolution and revolution is the main historical and political trend.
