Communist Workers Union (mlm): PROPOSAL FOR A UNITY PLATFORM
Preface
Comrades Marxist Leninist Maoists of the World:
Taking into account the urgency of marching to a Unified International Conference and the efforts that have been made from different expressions and groupings, especially the proposal presented by the comrades of the Coordinating Committee for a Unified Maoist International Conference – CCIMU, For a Unified Maoist International Conference! – Proposal about the balance of the International Communist Movement and its current General Political Line, as well as the observations presented by several comrades to it, where it is evident that it does not express the current level of unity of the Marxist Leninist Maoists of all countries, we see the need to make a special effort to formulate a Unity Platform, general minimum, which serves as a basis for the purpose of the Unified International Conference of the Marxist Leninist Maoists.
What are the objective and subjective conditions that make it not only necessary but possible to hold a Unified International Conference?
The exacerbation of the class struggle in the world is the engine that drives society to emancipate itself, to break the chains of imperialist world oppression and exploitation. This objective force of society, requires the international proletariat to fulfill its role as revolutionary class and vanguard at the forefront of the World Proletarian Revolution, on condition that it organizes itself as a party independent of the other classes, and leader of its actions as a conscious class.
Such is the material basis of the urgent international unity of the Marxist Leninist Maoists and in each country, for being those who do not sacrifice the cardinal interests of the workers movement for the sake of certain advantages of the moment, because they consciously represent and defend in the current movement, the future interests of the world working class.
Such is the material basis of the current need to break the isolation, depose sectarianism and submit the particular interests of group or nation to the general and common interests of the World Proletarian Revolution.
It is not a question of conciliating and coexisting with the different opportunist tendencies, but of dividing the camps mainly with revisionism, by means of the struggle of lines in the heat of the class struggle.
From the bitter defeats of the dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia and China, the International Communist Movement fell into a deep crisis, where the old revisionism already defeated, emerged under new forms, declaring again as irrelevant the theoretical foundations of the science of the proletariat, drawing absolutely defeatist conclusions from the historical experience in the proletarian revolution, in the exercise of the class dictatorship, in the construction of socialism and international organization.
The Marxist Leninist Maoist parties and organizations, separately have waged a line struggle against the old and new forms of revisionism, coinciding in the defense of the fundamental principles of Marxism Leninism Maoism: On the class struggle, the State, the revolution, the historical role of the masses, the path of revolutionary violence of the armed masses, the people’s war to overthrow the old State, the historical necessity of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the continuation of the revolution in it, the recognition of the present epoch of imperialism as the highest and last phase of capitalism and the beginning of the new Era of the World Proletarian Revolution whose historical experience has been correct, the inevitability of crises in capitalism, the inexorable march towards its bankruptcy, the vanguard role of the proletariat, the necessity of the party as its political detachment and superior form of organization, the need to build the front of the revolutionary classes and masses, and the popular army, the tasks that the present situation demands of the communists…. all of which, in itself, constitutes the content of a general minimum basis of unity that the world class struggle demands in the immediate future.
This is still an insufficient basis for unity in the General Line, that is, to resolve the various nuances existing in the ranks of the Marxist-Leninist Maoists as a reflection of the complexity in the analysis and synthesis of some historical problems, of the changes in the current world situation, of the doubts sown by the false revisionist theories.
To recognize, formalize and proclaim such a general minimum basis of unity, in the form of a concise and clear Platform of Unity that expresses the more general ideological unity of the Marxist-Leninist-Maoists, is a necessary condition for them to assume the great tasks demanded by the current situation where the revolution manifests itself as a throbbing need in all countries.
Platform of Unity, necessary to develop the struggle of lines that settles the divergences that divide the Marxist Leninist Maoists, and conquers a superior basis of unity in the general line, deepening the theoretical defeat of the new revisionism and demarcating a clear and deep demarcation between Marxism Leninism Maoism and all types of opportunism, in the perspective of unity in a new Communist International.
Platform of Unity, necessary to formulate a Program of International Political Struggle, which unifies and organizes the immediate joint political action, with a common orientation for the international proletariat and the masses facing the crises, the imperialist wars, the internationalist solidarity, confronting opportunism in the leadership of the movements and spontaneous rebellions of the masses, of the trade union movement, peasants, women, ecologists, for the freedom of political prisoners and other forms of the mass movement that rise up against imperialism and the reactionary classes.
Platform of Unity, necessary to materialize a new form of International Organization, understanding that, as Chairman Mao said, «Only when it has theoretical and political unity, the international proletariat can have organizational cohesion and unity of action». A new organizational form that given the existing divergences among the Marxist Leninist Maoists regarding the experience in this field, should have at least the character of a Committee that plays the role of leading nucleus in the work of spreading Marxism Leninism Maoism, promote the struggle of lines, encourage common political action, facilitate the exchange of experiences and fraternal relations between organizations and parties, develop mutual aid and cooperation in the construction of new parties, influence and bring together other Marxist Leninist Maoist forces not yet committed to the proposal of an International Conference.
Platform of Unity that makes it possible to consciously apply the method of unity-struggle-unity to wage the struggle of lines over the divergences between Marxist-Leninist-Maoists, treating them as contradictions within the people, fighting sincerely for unity not for splitting, differentiating the contradictions between communists, from the contradictions with opportunist, revisionist, anti-Marxist, anti-proletarian, anti-party lines, which, being contradictions of a different nature, are resolved with different methods.
The pretension of avakianist revisionism to enthrone its «New Synthesis of Communism» as the General Line of the International Communist Movement has been defeated; but opportunism has not yet been defeated in a General Line that expresses the profound unity of the Marxist Leninist Maoist movement. In this long-term purpose, in the immediate future we see it necessary to define and approve a common Platform of the Marxist Leninist Maoists, such as the one proposed here, conscious that it presupposes to promote with success the struggle of two lines in its bosom, to struggle consciously for the unity of the communists without any shackling with the principles, to organize more preparatory meetings, more bilateral and multilateral meetings, more exchange of documents, initiatives directed to the masses, on the tortuous but luminous road towards the triumphant realization of a single International Conference of the Marxist Leninist Maoists of the world, which overcomes the fragmentation, the effects of the collapse of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement and responds to the need for unity on the basis of Marxism Leninism Maoism, on the basis of a critical self-critical evaluation of the general experience of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement and other initiatives, to advance to a new international organization, the new Communist International based on Marxism Leninism Maoism.
In this purpose of fighting for unity we should be guided by Chairman Mao’s Dialectical Method for Internal Party Unity:
Can we not hold negotiations on the basis of the desire for unity and in a spirit of help? Of course, it is not a question of negotiations with imperialism (we also need to hold negotiations with it), but of internal negotiations among communists. Let us give an example: is it not holding negotiations what the twelve countries gathered here are doing? Is it not negotiating what the sixty-odd Parties are doing? Indeed, that is what we are doing. In other words, on condition that we do not undermine Marxist-Leninist principles, we accept the acceptable views of others and discard those of our own that can be discarded. Thus, we act with two hands: one for struggle with erring comrades and the other for unity with them. The purpose of the struggle is to persevere in Marxist principles, which presupposes fidelity to principles. This is one hand; the other is to see to unity. The purpose of unity is to provide an outlet for those comrades, making compromises with them, which means flexibility. The integration of fidelity to principle with flexibility is a Marxist-Leninist principle and is a unity of opposites.
Bearing in mind the above considerations, in the spirit of sincerely contributing to specify that basis of common general unity, the one that really exists now, and without the pretension of making a special block of a particular nuance, we submit for your consideration the present proposal for a Platform of Unity for the Unified International Conference.
Unity Platform Proposal
Marxism, defended by Lenin as the system of conceptions and the all-powerful doctrine of Marx, because it is exact, arose not enclosed in itself, but in the midst of and in response to the social problems of capitalism. Marxism is not a dogma, nor a finished and immutable doctrine, but a living guide for action, whose development reflects the change in the conditions of social life.
Hence the revolutionary development of Marxism has passed through stages, Marxism Leninismbeing the leap to the new stage of development of the conceptions and doctrine of Marx to the conditions of the imperialist phase and the new Era of the World Proletarian Revolution, andMarxism Leninism Maoism the leap to a new, third and higher stage of development in view of the need to continue the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat against the revisionist restoration of capitalism and the bourgeois dictatorship in the socialist countries.
The capitalism of free competition has passed into history. This is the epoch of imperialism, the highest and last phase of capitalism whose inevitable and increasingly frequent economic crises bring to the surface its incompatibility with the existence of society, affirm its inexorable course to bankruptcy, its character of parasitic capitalism, in decomposition, the prelude to the World Proletarian Revolution and Socialism.
The fundamental contradiction of the capitalist system between increasingly social production and increasingly private appropriation is the deepest cause of its inevitable demise and can only be resolved with the triumph of the World Proletarian Revolution, socializing the ownership of the means of production. Capitalism upon reaching its imperialist phase, in the course of more than a century of agony, has taken charge of extending and deepening the fundamental contradiction to all countries, sharpening in turn all the other contradictions that accelerate its death as a world system of exploitation and oppression.
The changes in the imperialist world have exacerbated the most important contradictions of imperialism: between the imperialist countries and between the big monopoly groups; between the oppressed countries, nations and peoples and the imperialist countries; between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie; highlighting in turn in recent years, the contradiction between society and nature.
In the epoch of imperialism the world was divided into a handful of imperialist countries, exploiters and the vast majority of oppressed countries, exploited. The economic law of the unequal development of the imperialist countries, is the material basis of the inter-imperialist contradictions, of the reactionary wars against the oppressed countries and of the international wars for world domination, being latent the danger of a new world war. The contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, between capital and labor, is the expression on the social terrain of the fundamental contradiction of capitalism. On which of these contradictions occupies the main place in the present period, there are differences among Marxist-Leninist-Maoists that must be resolved through the study, analysis and discussion of the changes that have occurred in recent years.
Imperialism artificially prolongs its existence, on the one hand, by exhausting, depredating, destroying, the only two sources of wealth on the planet: labor and nature; and on the other hand, by the aid that opportunism gives it by dulling the revolutionary edge of the political struggle of the working class and the peoples of the world, subjecting it to the limits allowed by the old State. «The struggle against imperialism,» says Lenin, «is an empty and false phrase if it is not indissolubly linked to the struggle against opportunism.
The advance of capitalism to its final imperialist phase, sealed the expiration of the bourgeois revolution and ushered in the new era of the World Proletarian Revolution, inaugurated by the October Revolution, as the main historical trend of the epoch of imperialism.
The World Proletarian Revolution will defeat imperialism and the reactionary classes, using as a means the midwife of history, the revolutionary violence of the masses. The violent revolution, universal law of the proletarian revolution, is necessary to destroy the old State and build the new State of dictatorship of the proletariat. «The central task and the highest form of a revolution,» says President Mao, «is the seizure of power by means of arms, it is the solution of the problem by means of war.
The old State is the bulwark and political protector of the privileges of the reactionary classes; it is not extinguished, it is not reformed, it does not yield power by the peaceful parliamentary way; it must be destroyed by the higher form of political struggle, the armed struggle of the broad masses of the people, the people’s war whose form is determined by the concrete conditions of each country.
The new revolutionary political power of the workers and peasants in the imperialist countries and in the oppressed countries, in essence cannot be other than the State of dictatorship of the proletariat, an unlimited power that rests directly on the violence of the armed people not on the law. In the semi-feudal and semi-colonial countries, the new State established by the New Democratic Revolution is a form of the State of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Against the power of the imperialist bourgeoisie and its reactionary lackeys in the old State, the spontaneous movement of the great popular masses, of the unemployed, the landless, those with nothing to lose, who for very different reasons today take the political stage in the fields and cities of imperialist countries and oppressed countries, shows the objective force available to the proletariat and the peoples of the world, which creates better conditions for the advancement of the political tasks of the Marxist Leninist Maoist communists.
Even more advanced are the revolutionary mass movements led by Marxist Leninist Maoist parties against the old State, against the old system, ranging from the broad revolutionary political mobilization of the masses, to the people’s wars that with different degrees of development and difficulties advance in different countries at the forefront of the World Proletarian Revolution.
The political movements, uprisings and spontaneous rebellions of the masses throughout the length and breadth of the planet, the struggles and wars of resistance against the wars of aggression and occupation plotted by the imperialists, the people’s wars, are the characteristics of the uneven development of the revolutionary movement, but above all, are vivid expressions that the World Proletarian Revolution is the main historical trend of the imperialist epoch, are indicative that the world society transits to a period of popular life when in the words of Lenin, «the anger accumulated for centuries (…) comes to the surface in actions, and not in words, in actions of millions of beings of the popular masses, and not of isolated individuals». The times of violent revolution against the world system of oppression and exploitation are approaching.
Imperialism is an outdated and useless social economic system for the progress of humanity, a world system of oppression and exploitation that will be overthrown and destroyed by the World Proletarian Revolution whose two historical currents, the struggle of the proletariat for socialism and the struggle of the oppressed peoples against the imperialist yoke, are the powerful social forces generated by the world contradictions of imperialism itself. Given this great antagonism, the proletariat to defeat imperialist capitalism, needs to organize and mobilize all the social force capable of being united against the common enemies, for which it requires organizing its own political party through which it exercises the role of leading class, both of a broad class front or class alliance with the working masses of the petty bourgeoisie, mainly peasants and semi-proletarians, and of an army of the people in arms, to guarantee the violent conquest of power and its sustenance once the oppressors have been overthrown.
The World Proletarian Revolution, by focusing against imperialist capitalism and its lackeys in the oppressed countries, against the world system of wage exploitation and all other types of exploitation of man by man, is the only fundamental solution to stop the destruction of nature, to eradicate inequalities based on race, nationality and sex, to begin the end of the great systemic inequalities of capitalism: between men and women, between the countryside and the city, between manual labor and intellectual labor.
The class struggle, objective law of society divided into classes, leads inevitably to the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, and even more, as demonstrated by the experience of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China, to the continuation of the revolution under the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. This is the profound essence of the Marxist theory of the State; it is the fundamental question of the proletarian revolution; it is the touchstone for differentiating between Marxism and opportunism.
The modern working class was born with capitalism, and since then it has not ceased to struggle against the system of world wage exploitation. Today the changes in the systems of hiring wage labor have reduced to a minimum the conditions of stability and remuneration of millions and millions of proletarians, impoverishing their living conditions especially in the oppressed countries, where large imperialist factories reproduce conditions of enslavement similar to those of the emergence of the working class. But neither the terrible material conditions of life and work, nor the defeats suffered in the once socialist countries, are an obstacle to doubt the existence of the working class, nor to ignore its growth in all countries, where its character as an international class, without a homeland, and its social position of labor force that moves the great means of production of the system to generate the surplus value that the world bourgeoisie appropriates in the form of interest for the financial parasite, profit for the industrial parasite and rent for the landlord parasite, reaffirm its historical mission of vanguard in the revolution to emancipate itself and emancipate humanity.
The international character of the working class demands the conscious practice of proletarian internationalism, which subordinates its interests in each country to its common interests in the world, which develops the revolution in each country as part of and at the service of the World Proletarian Revolution, which gives material solidarity support to the combats of the revolutionary detachments in other countries, mainly to the advances of the people’s wars, which demands not only the solidarity and support of the proletariat to the struggles of other peoples against imperialism and the reactionaries, but the union of the proletarians and peoples of the world against imperialist capitalism.
The objective world situation is excellent for revolution, but it needs the action of the subjective communist element to lead revolutionary actions of the masses strong enough to break (or break) the old government, which will never, even in times of crisis, ‘fall’ if it is not ‘made to fall’, in Lenin’s words. And given the international character of the workers’ movement, of which the communist movement is part as leader and bearer of its class consciousness, the unity and international organization of communists is needed.
Indeed, today the Marxist-Leninist-Maoists, faithful representatives of the International Communist Movement, struggle to overcome the profound crisis caused initially by the temporary defeat of the dictatorship of the proletariat in China and aggravated later by the collapse of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement defeated by a revisionist line emerged in its Committee. They fight to rescue and defend the historical experience of the proletarian revolution, the dictatorship of the proletariat and the construction of socialism in the old USSR and in socialist China, where the greatest advance was the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution to defeat the new bourgeoisie of socialism, consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat and give continuity to the proletarian revolution. They proudly raise the banner in defense of the historic role of the Third International and of comrade Stalin, master of the world proletariat.
The defects in these experiences, proper to the construction of the new and the struggle of lines within the communist organizations as a reflection of the class struggle in society, the new avakianist revisionism has turned them into reasons to deny the historical experience of the proletarian revolution, to deny the objective laws that move society in the perspective of communism and to declare insufficient the fundamental principles of Marxism Leninism Maoism. The errors and limitations of the historical experience of the communist movement cannot be ignored, but they must be submitted to study, discussion and criticism in the light of the principles, in order to deepen the balance of the historical experience and the knowledge of new phenomena in the phase of extreme agony of world capitalism, without turning the correct into incorrect, nor confusing the secondary with the principal as international opportunism does.
The Marxist Leninist Maoists recognize the historical merits of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement in its role as ideological and political center, promoter of the creation and strengthening of proletarian parties in different countries, defender in the midst of the great crisis, of the banners of the World Proletarian Revolution, of revolutionary Marxism and its development to the new and higher stage of Marxism Leninism Maoism, of the struggle of the international working class whose development leads inevitably to the dictatorship of the proletariat, of the right of the oppressed peoples to rebellion, people’s war and revolution against their enslavers, all this in frontal struggle against the anti-communist offensive of imperialism and world reaction, and against the revisionist offensive of propaganda to surrender and pacifism.
The nefarious and artful blow of avakianist revisionism against the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, does not deny or obscure its merits that, together with its errors and limitations, are recognized by the Marxist Leninist Maoists as part of the heritage of historical experience in the struggle for the unity and international organization of the communists, which today is the struggle to organize a new International Conference in order to draw up the plans and tasks to build a new Communist International based on Marxism Leninism Maoism.
The struggle for the unity and international organization of the communists, does not deny the simultaneous need to build the Party of the proletariat in each country, a political party that cannot be constituted in isolation or outside the class struggle, but acting in it as a party: in the theoretical struggle -defending its ideology both from opportunist distortions and bourgeois falsehoods-, in the political struggle -orienting the masses so that without expecting supreme saviors they act as protagonists of their revolutionary emancipation-, in the economic struggle -organizing the necessary resistance to the consequences of wage-earning exploitation, on condition that it serves in turn, as a lever in the struggle for political power that eradicates the causes of exploitation.
Today, according to the particular objective and subjective conditions and the degree of development reached in each country, it remains an inexcusable task to build or rebuild Marxist Leninist Maoist Parties that contribute to resolve the need for a new International, that carry the ideas of socialism to the workers and mass movement, that fight to isolate the opportunist leadership in the trade union and mass movement, that fight tirelessly for the leadership of the immediate struggle of the working masses, to raise their political consciousness and channel their spontaneous impetus towards the revolutionary political struggle, towards the highest form of political struggle, the armed struggle in the form of people’s war, the war of the broad masses of the people.
¡ For a Unified International Conference of Marxist-Leninist-Maoists! Forward!
Comrade Marxist Leninist Maoists of the world: this is the proposal of the Platform of Unity, which we deliver today for your consideration, as a contribution to break the dam of division and dispersion, which aggravate the weakness of our movement.
With a red and internationalist greeting, we subscribe ourselves,
Steering Committee – Communist Workers Union (mlm)
Colombia, March 2022