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Some critical remarks regarding the 2022 Mayday declaration of the PC(m) Italy
The Italian comrades have published a Mayday-declaration, which we consider not only incorrect and hypocrite, but in particular it shows what stage these comrades have reached. We think it is a little bit embarrassing for the Italian comrades so we should not focus too much on it, but “What Is to Be Done?” was published in 1902, so in 2022 we celebrate its 120th anniversary not the 150th. We do not consider this as a proof or confession that the Italian comrades had fallen out of time.
Some of the deviations of the Italian comrades, short, listed, and our annotations:
1. They wrote: “This year marks the 150th anniversary of Lenin’s “What is to be done?”, a theoretical weapon given to us by the great master of the world socialist revolution to build Communist parties, today Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, as an advanced detachment of the working class, a war machine and a necessary guide to make proletarian revolution in every country.
[…]
Lenin demonstrated with the victory of the Socialist October Revolution that this is the only way to transform the imperialist war into a socialist revolution.”
Our stance: “What Is to Be Done?” is a great work of one of the marxist titans of theory and practice. It is mandatory to study and apply it, this document of Lenin has served generations of communists all around the world in the struggle to organize the proletarian party ideologically and organizationally cohesive, with professional revolutionaries, subjected to democratic-centralism against the circle’s mentality. On the basis of the great theoretical and practical efforts of Lenin, in the revolutionary struggle until he generated the party of a new type, the bolshevist party; based on this masterful development of scientific socialism this question was developed within the development of the proletarian world revolution in the practice of the Communist Parties.
In this regard Chairman Mao Tse-tung developed Marxism as established by Chairman Gonzalo and the glorious Communist Party of Peru: “3. The three instruments. The problem of the construction of the instruments of the revolution presents the Party with the problem of understanding the interrelationship between the Party, the army and the united front; and to understand and correctly handle the interconnected construction of the three instruments in the midst of war or in the defense of the new State based on the power of the armed people, expressing in that way a just and correct task of leadership. Their construction is guided by the principle that a just and correct ideological line decides everything, and it is on this ideological-political basis that the organizational construction is simultaneously developed in the midst of the struggle between the proletarian line and the bourgeois line and within the storm of the class struggle, mainly in war, as the principal form of current or potential struggle.
Regarding the Party, Chairman Mao starts from the necessity of the Communist Party, a new type of party, a party of the proletariat. Today, we would say a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Party: a party whose aim is to conquer political power and to defend it, and therefore it is inextricably bound to people’s war in order to initiate it, develop it or wage it to defend itself. A party sustained by the masses of people, be it by way of people’s war which is a war of the masses, or by the united front which, being a front of classes, is based on the broad masses. The Party develops and changes itself according to the stages of the revolution and the periods that these stages may have. The driving of its development is the contradiction which materializes in its heart as the two-line struggle, the proletarian line and the bourgeois or in general non-proletarian line, which is in essence and mainly a struggle against revisionism. This leads to the decisive importance of ideology in the life of the party and to the development of rectification campaigns that serve a greater adjustment of all the systems of party organizations and the membership to the just and correct ideological and political lines, guaranteeing the predominance of the proletarian line and keeping the Party leadership in its iron grip. The Party serves the establishment of political power for the proletariat as the leading class of the New Democracy, and principally for the establishment, strengthening and development of the proletarian dictatorship, and through cultural revolutions the conquest of the great, final goal: Communism. Because of this, the Party must lead everything in an all-around way.” (PCP, On Marxism-Leninism-Maoism)
We highlight and reaffirm the great principle: “The Party commands the gun and we will never permit it to be otherwise.” (ibid)
This should be standard in the International Communist Movement. Moreover, Chairman Gonzalo and the PCP with the all-embracing understanding of Maoism and by and with its application in the People’s War developed especially the concentric construction, the militarisation of the Communist Party and that the party reflects the omnipotence of the proletariat, leading absolute everything – its own construction, the construction of the red army and the proletarian dictatorship. Do you, Italian comrades, have comments, remarks, observations in this question? Do you agree or oppose? Are you aware of this at all?
It is good and correct to celebrate the masterful work of Lenin, but it is conspicous that you tried to oppose Chairman Mao Tse-tung with the great Lenin. The only reasonable basis for declaring Lenin’s “What Is to Be Done?”, as you wrote “the only way”, is the sinister attempt to turn back, i.e. negate Marxism in one of its very key questions, disorientating the developing new forces and spread confusion in the ranks of the ICM, homaging and praising immobilism not progress. Do you see?
2. They wrote: “… Ukrainian puppet state …”
Our stance: This is a deviation of the theory of Chairman Mao Tse-tung of three worlds in formation. Ukraine was (since the restoration of capitalism after the coup in the USSR) and is a semi-colony, this includes formal “independence”, but with a dense net of economic, political and military dependency and subjugation – Comecon, Warsaw Pact etc. Therefore you can find expressions of the “semi” in its state. A puppet state would correspond to fullscale colony but this is not the case. There is a section of the ruling classes in Ukraine, on which the invasion obviously counted, with the tendency to subordinate to Russian imperialism. This false simplification creates missunderstanding of the development of the situation in Ukraine, as your documents on the issue do. Do you see?
3. They wrote: “The keys of the tasks of the Communists are the support to the ongoing people’s wars in the world and the constitution/construction of the Communist Parties for New Democratic and Socialist revolutions, according to the conditions of each country.”
Our stance: It is exactly the other way round. The main, first and foremost task is the contitution or reconstitution of the Communist Parties (nota bene: the culmination of the constitution or reconstitution is – as the PCP thought us – the initiation of the Peoples War!) and simultaneously the two other instruments of the revolution, in midst of the fiercest class- and two-line-struggle. This self-evidentally also includes proletarian internationalism, the spirit of communism, and as part of this the support for the ongoing peoples wars and the ones to be initiated! As well as the support of the developing new forces in the ICM in their respective struggle. Do you do anything in these regards? The impression you give is that you are simply traffickers with the People’s War in India and a liquidationist force in the ICM (see the end of our critique). Do you see?
4. They wrote: “Revisionists and all forms of right opportunism are our main enemy and the main ally of the bourgeoisies in their work but, obviously, we can overcome this enemy if we get rid of the secondary but harmful influences of the ‘left’ opportunism made of ideological extremism, petty bourgeois revolutionism, militarist subjectivism.”
Our stance: The principal enemy of the peoples of the world and the world counterrevolutionary gendarme is Yankee-imperialism. In the question of revisionism, and general speaking, “main” cannot be “all forms”. One devides into two and it is revisonist deviation to intend that two unite into one, as you do. The “Main” is the most evolved revisionism, today the Peruvian ROL, revisionism masking as Marxism-Leninism-Maoism-Gonzalo Thought. And, comrades, we are curious, what and whom do you mean in detail by “‘left’ opportunism made of ideological extremism, petty bourgeois revolutionism, militarist subjectivism”? Is this the same slander by revisionism and reaction of an infantile disorder that the true revolutionaries, the left inside the ICM has always faced? Remember that the great Lenin thought us to struggle against imperialism, revisionism and reaction unceasingly and relentlessly. Are you really this kind of weak and anxious loosers, basing two-line-struggle on babbling crap, intrigues and lies, scared to death by truth and debate? Comrades, that is not a communist attitude. Do you see?
Finally, they wrote: “On this 1st of May we call to unite for a truly unified International Conference, which can give birth to a new International MLM Organization, theoretical, political and practical. To achieve this necessary and urgent Conference it is necessary to intensify unity of action, bilateral and multilateral meetings, international meetings and forums, and within these develop the active ideological struggle and the two lines struggle serving the unity.”
You, Italian comrades, call for unity and unification of the ICM. But let us know: What have you built, what have you contributed to a Unified International Maoist Conference throughout all the years? We consider: your Party has done nothing but practicing intrigueism and divisionism, usurp apparatuses and campaigns.
An example: what has happened in the ICSPWI? While the ICSPWI parties and organizations have deployed a vigorous campaign in quantity and quality, which ensured the relative success of the campaign, your Party has taken it upon itself to produce a shameful and unacceptable international day of action “report” that only sought to capitalize on it to promote itself. All the “facts” and “reports” produced by your Party for ICSPWI, show that your Party has usurped this apparatus for its own interests, i.e. to use the actions carried out by other ICM parties and organizations to promote itself and to hide the absolute non-existence of its own forces among the masses, trafficking in the great People’s War in India, divide and limit the campaign in its support.
You have been the false “champions” of the defense of the Peruvian revolution, as well as of the revolution in Nepal -including the defense of the rotten and failed thesis of the Prachanda road-, and now you are the false champions of the People’s War in India. Today they want to decree the end of the People’s War in Peru with the stroke of a pen, conflating with imperialism, reaction and the ROL in Peru. What kind of internationalism is this? This kind of practices, already known for a long time in the ICM, have no other name than that of the most vile opportunism. You should be ashamed you have to revert and rectify. Do you see it?
You propose meetings and forums but meetings convened publicly through the Internet, with their meeting points on public pages or emails that do not correspond to the fire of the class struggle, but to bourgeois liberalism, that is the basis of your work, even revealing details of clandestine meetings. This would correspond more to a sick liberal or an unpaid whistleblower than to anything that might resemble a communist. Your party, for a long time, has been applying nothing but legalism and economist syndicalism and has completely separated itself from the fire of the class struggle, from vast sections of the ICM and, what is more important, from the masses. Do you see?
Your organization, Italian comrades, exists for almost forty years. In these decades, how much have you advanced in your masterly work?
By the way: do you still believe and preach a phase of People’s War without bloodshed? With seriousness and eagerness, we must affirm that what does not advance, stagnates and can only maintain this state very temporarily before the process of dying occurs.
You have not built anything, because you run away from the two-line struggle and rely on unprincipled unity, you do not practice true internationalism, but traffic for decades in a row with the people’s wars of others for the sake of your hegemonistic interests. Do you see?
Editorial Staff of ci-ic.org
26/05/2022