The devastations of imperialist globalisation, wars of aggression and the
devastating economic crisis of the imperialist system and its impact on proletarians and the broad masses have awakened worldwide a wave of struggles and revolts.
In this context a potential new wave of the world proletarian revolution develops and emerges, with the people's wars led by Maoist parties as its reference points and strategic anchor. The realisation of this potential ultimately depends on how successful the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist parties are in fulfilling their revolutionary tasks at national and international
level. The pooling of their understanding and experience and the development of their capacity to take a united revolutionary message to the rebellious masses all over the world, have decisive importance. Unfortunately there has been a lag in this
matter. This is severely compounded by the crisis in the Revolutionary
Internationalist Movement (RIM), which is now defunct.
In this situation steps need to be taken to work for the building of an effective international MLM organization that can aid the fulfilment of revolutionary tasks and take the collective voice of the Maoists to the proletariat and struggling peoples. Therefore, we should move towards holding a new conference of the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist parties and organizations throughout the world. This conference should take up the task of building an international organization based on Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
It is appropriate that this task should be informed by the positive and negative experiences of RIM, given its experience in building and functioning as an international organisation during its nearly three decades of existence. As part
of the work for the conference and the building of
an international organization we need a summation worked out by all the parties and
organization which has been part of this experience. Here we put forward some
preliminary views.
1. Following Mao Zedong’s death in 1976, the Chinese revisionists seized political power through a military coup d’état, thus causing the Communist Party of China (CPC) to degenerate into a revisionist party––overthrowing proletarian political power, bringing down socialism, and transforming revolutionary China into reactionary China. Moreover, the emergence of the Hoxhaite revisionist line in the Party of Labour of Albania, influenced a certain number of communist parties and organizations throughout the world, and ended up producing a serious assault on the international communist movement.
Despite this context of defeat, some Marxist-Leninist parties and organizations, that did not follow either the Chinese or Hoxhaite variants of revisionism, though few in number, held the first international conference of Marxist-Leninist parties and organizations in 1980 and passed a Joint Communiqué, A Call to the Proletariat
and the
Oppressed Peoples of the World. Although this conference did not result in the creation of a stable international organization it prepared the ground for a second international conference in 1984.
The formation of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM) in this second conference of 1984 was a positive international, theoretical and practical endeavour that responded to the ideological, political and organizational needs and necessities of the international communist movement in the circumstances of a period defined by the crisis that had engulfed the communist movement following the defeat of the Chinese revolution.
The Declaration of the
Revolutionary Internationalist Movement that was passed at this conference - on the basis of Marxism-Leninism- Maoism (Mao Zedong Thought as it was then termed) and a principled opposition to the modern Russian and Chinese revisionism (as well as the Hoxhaite dogmato-revisionism) - provided a basic ideological-political framework for the
foundation of the movement .
2. In its past three decades of struggles the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, since it was based on Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, achieved important theoretical and practical gains that were principled and worthy of further development. The documents passed in the international conferences and the expanded meetings of RIM (like the Declaration of the Revolutionary
Internationalist Movement, Long Live Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, and the
Millennium Resolution), despite some of their deficiencies and shortcomings, were all important theoretical contributions to the
advancement of the Movement, as part of the international communist
movement. The internationalist support to the people’s war in Peru and PCP, including the historical campaign in defence of Dr: Abimael Guzman, the
contribution and support for the start and continuation of the people’s war in Nepal for its ten years, the publishing of the journal A World To Win in several languages that
allowed to make known ideological and political understandings and analysis of
the Movement and its parties and organizations in different countries, and
statements issued have been notable features of the role played by the RIM in
the international communist movement.
3. The founding conference of the RIM had recognised the necessity of building a new communist international of a new type. To
realize this, the Declaration of the RIM correctly identified the twin tasks of evolving ‘a general line and a correct and viable organisational form, conforming to the complex reality of the present-day world and the challenges it poses.’
4. The interim committee – conceived as an embryonic political center -
was
formed with the task of working for the process of furthering the ideological, political and organisational unity of communists, including the preparation of a draft proposal for a general line for the communist movement. But this task was not fulfilled
by the Corim and the RIM could not reach this goal.
5. In the experience of RIM, the existence of such a center, formed
for enabling a consistent and unified role for this Movement has given mixed results.
There were some good results. There have also been serious lapses, hegemonic tendencies in functioning that negated the collectiveness that was the RIM, sorely undermined its unity, hindered the incorporation of more MLM parties and thus blocked the fulfilment of the tasks it had set for itself.
The new international organization should have an executive centre, whose internal life and methods correspond to the stage and methods shared by the political parties and forces that give life to this organization.
It should function with the competency and commitment to work within the framework of the decisions and agreements of the international organization as decided in its conferences and other meetings. As in all other matters, here too, the consistent defence, application and development of MLM and the fulfilment of their own internationalist tasks and obligations by the individual parties are the ultimate guarantee.
In spite of its positive aspects, our Movement could not
fulfil the tasks it had taken up and entered a crisis. When revisionism of Bob Avakian’s post-MLM 'new synthesis' variety became dominant in the Revolutionary Communist Party-USA and of the Prachanda-Bhattarai variety became dominant in the United Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), not only did these parties deviate from the path of revolution and communism, but the destructive and disparaging effects of their counter-revolutionary lines negatively affected the parties and organizations within RIM, specifically the Committee of RIM (CoRIM), in an extensive and profound manner. These are the immediate ideological sources that have led to the current crisis and collapse of the RIM.
We propose the convening of an international conference in
order
reactivate and reorganize an international organization. We
believe that this task must be jointly taken up with the involvement of the
Maoist parties leading people’s wars, and all the Maoist forces, including
those outside the RIM, so that the conference will benefit from their views and
experiences. In order to achieve this aim a process of ideological, political debate must be carried out. As
part of preparation for the conference and serving its aims, we will it
necessary to organise a seminar on ‘Summation of Experiences of RIM, ICML, and other International
Initiatives.’
Through this whole process the points of unity and differences can be identified and a relatively advanced platform can be arrived at, to become the basis of a new international unity concretised in a new international organisation. In the current circumstances, the execution of this revolutionary responsibility can demonstrate a practical expression of the internationalist communist slogan, “workers and oppressed peoples of the world unite.” It is this that will allow the MLM communist parties to establish and develop Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, realize a new unity of the international communist movement, place it at the van of worldwide people’s struggles and fully unleash and realize the potential new wave of world revolution.
With revolutionary greetings,
Signed and diffused from
Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan;
Communist Party of India (M-L) [Naxalbari];
Maoist Communist Party - Italy;
May first 2012
Document 2:
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The imperialist system is going through the most severe crisis since the 1930s.
The current attempts to address and overcome the crisis only serve to deepen
and extend it.
The structural crisis that emerged in the field of finance has gradually
extended to the field of production, bringing about a deepening recession. The
crisis proceeds under the law of uneven development within the pursuit of the
maximum extortion of surplus value and the contention on the world market.
The crisis has its origin in the laws of running of the capitalist system
itself. It is the expression of the limits of production for profit, and the
contradiction between productive forces and relations of production, including
the general and global nature of the production and private appropriation. In
the world scene this means an ever growing gap between the wealth of a handful
of imperialist countries and the poverty of three quarters of human beings in
the countries oppressed by imperialism, between the wealth in the hands of the
bourgeoisie and the relative and absolute impoverishment of proletarians and
masses in the imperialist countries , between the overflowing richness of a
parasitic and comprador bourgeoisie and the living conditions of misery and
hunger of the proletariat and broad masses in the countries oppressed by
imperialism.
It is clear that a system dominated by these laws, these dynamics, can only go
into crisis, and overproduction and capital surplus become factors of crisis.
The phenomena of heightened and speculative “financialization” are the tip of
the iceberg of the dynamics of the system, which become point of implosion and
explosion.
The “financialization” of the economy – the main immediate cause of the crisis
– tends to reject any control. So the efforts of capitalism and its ruling
imperialist powers to get out of crisis through regulation and control of the
financial markets and use of the opportunities offered by high growth rates,
even if disarticulated, of some countries such as China, India and Brazil have
so far not succeeded. Although these efforts should not be underestimated, they
cannot ensure more than a temporary recovery, one which opens the door to new
and even more distressing crises.
The world is still faced with two possibilities: the exit from capitalism or a
painful temporary recovery from this crisis by strengthening, enhancing the
mechanisms of capital and thus prolonging the misery of the masses.
The imperialist bourgeoisie all over the world take advantage of the crisis to
restructure imperialism on a global scale and save the interests of their class
for their profits.
This leads to unloading the vicious weight of the crisis on the workers and
masses. In both the oppressed countries and imperialist countries,
unemployment, job insecurity and the cost of living increase, exploitation is
ratcheted up to modern forms of slavery, workers' rights are reduced, social
achievements won through years of struggles are erased, factories are closed
with massive layoffs, peasants are ruined and driven to suicide, cuts in social
expenditures and privatization of education and healthcare grow, the logic of
commodification and profit is extended even to primary goods, such as water,
air, sun, etc..
These policies are carried out within the contention for domination on the
imperialist world market and geopolitical strategic areas, but the unitary
character of the policies to unload crisis on the proletarians and the masses
is emphatically clear.
The policy of imperialism accentuates and makes more and more catastrophic the
effects of the system in terms of ecological and natural disasters. Imperialism
transforms factors of development in the field of science, culture and
education, information technology, access to media, communication, extension of
the freedom of young people and the processes of emancipation of women, into
new and more refined chains. In the context of crisis this results in massive
intellectual unemployment, social control and most extreme forms of barbarism,
new neo medieval attacks on women's rights and the regimentation of youth.
The balance of power among the imperialists is in a flux. Though the US still remains
the sole super power its capacities have been considerably weakened, by the
resistance of is victims and the crisis. This gave some room for the EU
grouping. However similar factors have negatively impacted on their position
too. Russia had not been affected so much by the crisis. Through its axis with
China and consolidating ties with erstwhile Soviet Union republics, it has
gained some advantage and has stepped up contention. Overall collusion is still
principal in inter-imperialist relations. But imperialism in crisis, develops
within it contradictions that can become potential sources of a new world war.
Imperialist powers, mainly the US, unleash and accentuate wars of aggression,
invasion, and neo-colonialism in the different regions of the world where their
interests are vital or threatened. In developing these wars, it continues with
the arms race and gets equipped with more and more devastating military
instruments, surpassing all limits enshrined in international conventions and
human rights.
One or the other form of fascistic control has always been the norm in
oppressed countries, even where a parliamentary system exists. In recent years,
a tendency to modern fascism grows inside the imperialist countries also. This
takes shape according to the characteristics of history, the reality and the
culture of each country. It strives to establish once again the totalitarian,
racist, securitarian and police-state forms of the rule of the bourgeoisie.
Imperialism is poverty, reaction and war. The crisis reveals that welfare,
democracy and peace become more and more words that cover an opposite
substance.
The devastating economic crisis of imperialism and its impact on proletarians
and the broad masses have awakened worldwide a wave of struggles and revolts.
In the countries oppressed by imperialism, the protests, rebellions and
liberation struggles have found in the revolts in Arab countries and in the
Persian Gulf a new height and a new dawn. Young people, proletarians and the
masses and, in some cases, organized sectors of workers, attacked and overthrew
dictatorial regimes subservient to imperialism that seemed permanent. This has
paved the way for new anti-imperialist, anti-Zionist, anti-feudal,
new-democratic revolutions.
False anti-imperialist regimes, such as those of Libya, Syria, Iran, and openly
pro-imperialist ones such as those in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain. Yemen, Morocco,
Algeria, as well as the military regimes that have replaced the reactionary
tyrants in Tunisia and Egypt, unleashed massacres and repression. Hiding under
the flag of democracy imperialism intervened in these struggles and maneuvered
to remove unreliable regimes and replace worn out servitors with new ones. It
launched a war and occupied Libya. But the wave of "Arab springtimes"
continue. Globally they have achieved an important position as a new front in
the battle between imperialism and the peoples. They join those existing in
Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. In these countries, the occupation and
invasions of imperialists and Zionists have faced heavy resistance. This forced
them to reshape their occupation plans and prevented them in a substantial
manner from realizing their aims. Apart from the Arab and West Asian countries,
people in Latin America, Africa and other regions of Asia have repeatedly taken
to the streets to resist the attacks on their livelihoods. The persistent and
growing labor strikes and peasant struggles in China is notable.
In this new wave of struggle and resistance we must support and strengthen the
struggle for the liberation of peoples and for new democracy, towards socialism
and communism, and oppose the pro-Western and Islamist currents which ride the
tiger of people’s struggles in order to impose new chains and new subordination
to the reactionary classes and their masters of all time, imperialism, mainly
of the U.S. and Europe.
The wave of unrest, flaring up of rebellions and struggles involving hundreds
of thousands of youth in the imperialist countries is a distinguishing feature
of the present world. The exciting uprisings of the proletarian youth, which
shakes the imperialist citadels, marks the entry of a new generation. Facing a
life without a future, through their rebellions they shout "it is right to
rebel" and declare that it is capitalism that has no future. Now fused,
now in parallel, this development is coupled to a rise in labor struggles.
General strikes have summoned to action the whole workers movement, especially
in countries hit hardest by the crisis Greece, Spain, Italy...
The workers' struggles have had a new development in Eastern Europe, where to
the bite of wild capitalism following the collapse of false socialist regimes,
was added the quick transformation into systems even worse than before.
New waves of immigrants flock to the imperialist countries in hope of a better
life. They flee from poverty and war devastations caused by these countries. To
reach their destinations they have to put their lives at risk through untold
suffering which often turn the seas into cemeteries. The imperialists respond
with harsh anti-immigrant laws and racism. The emergence of modern fascism, of
police states, the growing frequency of wars of aggression and anti-immigrant
laws have been responded to by the masses through the development of anti-fascist
and anti-racist movements, and broad movements against the war.
This is the context in which a potential new wave of the world proletarian
revolution develops and emerges. It has as its reference points and strategic
anchor the people's wars led by Maoist parties.
To this we must add the preparation of several new people's wars, particularly
in Turkey and South Asia, with the potential for it in Latin America, and
throughout the rest of the world, with the constitution of
Marxist-Leninist-Maoist (MLM) communist parties. In this framework, the new MLM communist parties in the imperialist
countries represent the potential for a quantum leap in revolutionary struggle
and the unity of the two currents of the world proletarian revolution: the
socialist revolution in the imperialist countries and the new democratic
revolution, marching towards socialism, in the countries oppressed by
imperialism.
All this shows that the principal contradiction in the world is that between
imperialism and oppressed peoples, while both the contradictions between the
proletariat and bourgeoisie and the inter-imperialist contradictions also
sharpen. In the crisis it is increasingly clear that the revolution is the main
trend.
In the current international situation the task of communists is to make
revolution in the different countries, because the revolution is the only
solution to the crisis, the only way out from imperialism and the only road to
achieve the ultimate goal of the struggles of the proletarians and oppressed
people.
This demands the strengthening and building of MLM communist parties in each
country, as a new kind of communist party, as vanguard detachments of the
proletariat and leading core of all the people, as a party fighting for the
revolution.
In the countries oppressed by imperialism the perspective of people's war is
advancing. In India, the people's war led by the Communist Party of India
(Maoist) successfully withstands unprecedented attacks by the enemy and is able
to expand and advance. The people's war in the Philippines led by the Communist
Party of the Phillipines advances and establishes itself as an important part
of the wave of world revolution. The people's war in Peru, initiated under the
leadership of the Communist Party of Peru led by chairman Gonzalo remains an
ideological and strategic beacon for the whole international communist
movement. Though it faces setback due to the attacks of the enemy and from
revisionists within the party, the struggle to overcome these hurdles persists.
In Nepal ten years of people's war enriched the history and experience of the
international communist movement and made significant advance towards the
victory of the new democratic revolution. In recent years, however, a
revisionist line that betrays the people’s war and the revolution emerged,
headed by Prachanda and Bhattarai. The Maoists within the United Communist
Party of Nepal (Maoist) [UCPN(M)] must save the revolution and resume its march
by revolting against that line and standing firm against centrist vacillations,
inside and outside the party. In Turkey, the revolutionary struggles led by the
Maoists are advancing in the pursuit of the people's war strategy suited to the
conditions of this country, placed as it is amidst two international theatres,
the European imperialist countries and the regimes ruled by the reactionaries
in West Asia. In other countries of South Asia and Latin America, the people's
war is in preparation for new beginnings and progresses. It is a task of
communists around the world to put into the practice the proletarian
internationalism, popularize and support the people’s wars and revolutionary
struggles.
In the imperialist countries, electoralism, parliamentarism and political and
union reformism are increasingly in crisis and, through this, revisionism is
bankrupt. The need of a revolutionary organization and a revolutionary strategy
to overthrow the bourgeoisie and seize the power is increasingly advancing and
strengthening in the workers and people's movements.. The idea that as long as the
proletarians are not in power it is an illusion to think that their lot will
improve is growing. The workers' struggles and the uprisings of proletarians and young
people must coordinate and grow within a perspective of overthrowing the
governments and states of the imperialist bourgeoisie, for the seizure of power
by the proletariat.
In order to transform these needs into reality, these movements into
revolution, we need to build MLM communist parties, in the fire of class
struggle and in close link with the masses, for the proletarian revolution,
with the MLM strategy of the revolutionary war culminating with the
insurrection, adapted to each country according to the concrete conditions.
In all countries we need communist parties based on Marxism-Leninism-Maoism,
able to lead the class struggle in all fields and aimed at seizing the
political power. In each country the Maoist communists strive to answer this
need for a scientific and determined leadership for the class struggle, by
fighting all kinds of revisionist and reformist, or dogmatist and extremist
deviations, in all their forms.
Our class can rely on the huge amount of experience through 140 years of
struggles and revolutions, from the birth of the glorious Paris Commune through
the peaks of the October Revolution, the Chinese revolution and the Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution. We must learn from both our victories and
defeats, from our correctness as well as from our mistakes.
Always in their entire history, the communists have built, participated and
counted on an international organization of the proletariat and the oppressed
masses. Without the First, the Second and Third International, the communist
movement would not have spread to every corner of the world, neither would it
have achieved its great victories, and would not have learned the lessons from
its temporary defeats.
The battle of Mao Tsetung was an international battle that paved the way to the
revival of communist parties after the establishment of Kruschevite revisionism
in the international communist movement.
After Mao's death and the end of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, the
formation of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM) has allowed the
Marxist-Leninist-Maoists in the world to begin to unite on an international
scale, to resume the march towards a new Communist International.
Today, facing the crisis and the collapse of the RIM, we must rebuild the
international organization of MLM parties and organizations on the basis of the
positive and negative experiences of the RIM. The current situation presents
the need to unite in this new organization all the MLM parties and
organizations, inside and outside the RIM, for a political and organizational
leap. This is necessary to put the communist movement at the height of the
class struggle in the new century. Thus the needs of the proletariat and the
oppressed masses, facing the impact of the crisis of imperialism, can be met.
The new international organization must unite in its ranks the genuine MLM parties
and organizations that exist and operate in the class struggle, that transform
the revolutionary theory into revolutionary practice, that are able to be an
advanced and integrant part of the proletariat and the oppressed masses,
getting rid of all the old and new waste, not only of revisionism but also of
the petty bourgeois revolutionaries and the self-referring
"virtualism".
To build this new international organization we must break with revisionism in
all its aspects and particularly with those that have led to the current crisis
and collapse of the RIM, namely the post-MLM 'new synthesis' of Bob Avakian in
the Revolutionary Communist Party,US and the revisionist line established by
Prachanda/Bhattarai in the UCPN(M).
The new international organization should have an executive centre, whose
internal life must correspond to the stage and methods shared by the political
parties and forces that give life to this organization, particularly taking
lesson from the positive and negative experiences of the CoRim.
The international organization of MLM communists is and should be the core of a
front, of an international anti-imperialist alliance of the proletarians and
oppressed peoples.
It is this that will allow the MLM communist parties to establish and develop
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, realize a new unity of the international communist
movement, place it at the van of worldwide people’s struggles and fully unleash
and realize the potential new wave of world revolution.
Imperialism has no future! The future belongs to communism!
Signed and diffused from
Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan;
Communist Party of India (M-L) [Naxalbari];
Maoist Communist Party - Italy;
May first 2012
