In this anniversary the principal task of marxist-leninist-maoist in the world is the work for the international unity on the basis of marxism-leninism-maoism
for this it needs to start from the most high level of this unity in the past after Mao's death - RIM's foundation and RIM's adoption of athe Declaration Long live Marxism-Leninism-Maoism - 26th december 1993 - that we publish today - in the next days we will publish other texts for showing that new declarations about this, are less good and correct than this.
Long Live Marxism-Leninism-Maoism!
Introduction
In 1984, the Revolutionary
Internationalist Movement was founded, grouping together the nucleus
of the Maoist revolutionaries the world over who were determined
to carry forward the fight for a world without exploitation and
oppression, without imperialism, a world in which the very division
of society into classes will be overcome - the communist world of
the future. Since the formation of our Movement we have continued
to advance and today, on the occasion of the Mao Tsetung Centenary,
with a deep sense of our responsibility, we declare to the international
proletariat and the oppressed masses of the world that our guiding
ideology is Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
Our Movement was founded
on the basis of the Declaration of the Revolutionary Internationalist
Movement adopted by the Second Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties
and Organisations in 1984. The Declaration upholds the proletarian
revolutionary ideology and on that basis in the main it correctly
addresses the tasks of the revolutionary communists in different
countries and on a world scale, the history of the international
communist movement, and a number of other vital questions. Today
we reaffirm the Declaration as the solid foundation of our Movement
upon which we are building a new clarity and deeper understanding
of our ideology and the more solid unity of our Movement.
The Declaration correctly
stresses "Mao Tsetung's qualitative development of the science of
Marxism-Leninism" and affirms that he raised it to "a new stage".
However, the use of the term "Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought"
in our Declaration reflected a still incomplete understanding of
this new stage. In the last nine years our Movement has been engaged
in a long, rich and thoroughgoing discussion and struggle to more
fully grasp Mao Tsetung's development of Marxism. During this same
period the parties and organisations of our Movement and RIM as
a whole have been engaged in revolutionary struggle against imperialism
and reaction. Most important has been the advanced experience of
the People's War led by the Communist Party of Peru which has succeeded
in mobilising the masses in their millions, sweeping aside the state
in many parts of the country and establishing the power of the workers
and peasants in these areas. These advances, in theory and practice,
have enabled us to further deepen our grasp of the proletarian ideology
and on that basis take a far-reaching step, the recognition of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism
as the new, third and higher stage of Marxism.
New,
Third and Higher Stage of Marxism
Mao Tsetung elaborated
many theses on a whole series of vital questions of revolution.
But Maoism is not just the sum total of Mao's great contributions.
It is the comprehensive and all-round development of Marxism-Leninism
to a new and higher stage. Marxism-Leninism-Maoism is an integral
whole; it is the ideology of the proletariat synthesized and developed
to new stages, from Marxism to Marxism-Leninism to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism,
by Karl Marx, V.I. Lenin and Mao Tsetung, on the basis of the experience
of the proletariat and mankind in class struggle, the struggle for
production and scientific experiment. It is the invincible weapon
which enables the proletariat to understand the world and change
it through revolution. Marxism-Leninism-Maoism is a universally
applicable, living and scientific ideology, constantly developing
and being further enriched through its application in making revolution
as well as through the advance of human knowledge generally. Marxism-Leninism-Maoism
is the enemy of all forms of revisionism and dogmatism. It is all-powerful
because it is true.
Karl
Marx
Karl Marx first developed
revolutionary communism almost 150 years ago. With the assistance
of his close comrade-in-arms Frederick Engels, he developed a comprehensive
philosophical system, dialectical materialism, and discovered the
basic laws which shape human history.
Marx developed a science
of political economy that revealed the exploitation of the proletariat
and the inherent anarchy and contradictions of the capitalist mode
of production. Karl Marx developed his revolutionary theory in close
connection with and to serve the class struggle of the international
proletariat. He built the First International and wrote, together
with Engels, the Communist Manifesto with its resounding call "workers
of all countries, unite!" Marx paid great attention to and summed
up the lessons of the Paris Commune of 1871, the first great attempt
of the proletariat to seize state power.
He armed the world
proletariat with an understanding of its historic mission: seizing
political power through revolution and using this power - the dictatorship
of the proletariat - to transform social conditions until the very
basis for the cleavage of society into different classes is eliminated.
Marx led the struggle
against the opportunists in the proletarian movement who sought
to confine the struggle of the workers to improving the conditions
of wage-slavery without challenging the existence of this slavery
itself.
Together, the stand,
viewpoint and method of Marx came to be called Marxism, and represents
the first great milestone in the development of the ideology of
the proletariat.
V.I.
Lenin
V.I. Lenin developed
Marxism to a whole new stage in the course of leading the proletarian
revolutionary movement in Russia and the struggle in the international
communist movement against revisionism.
Among many other contributions,
Lenin analysed the development of capitalism to its highest and
final stage, imperialism. He showed that the world was divided between
a handful of imperialist powers and the great majority, the oppressed
nations and peoples, and showed that the imperialist powers would
be forced to go to war periodically to redivide the world amongst
themselves. Lenin described the era in which we live as the era
of imperialism and proletarian revolution. Lenin developed the political
party of a new type, the Communist Party, as the proletariat's indispensable
tool for leading the revolutionary masses in the seizure of power.
Most importantly, Lenin
raised the theory and practice of proletarian revolution to a whole
new level as he led the proletariat in seizing and consolidating
its political power, its revolutionary dictatorship, for the first
time with the victory of the October Revolution in formerly Tsarist
Russia in 1917.
Lenin waged a life-and-death
struggle against the revisionists of his day within the Second International
who had betrayed the proletarian revolution and had called on the
workers to defend the interests of their imperialist masters in
World War I.
The "guns of October"
and Lenin's struggle against revisionism further spread the communist
movement throughout the world, uniting the struggles of the oppressed
peoples with the world proletarian revolution, and the Third (or
Communist) International was formed.
Lenin's all-round and
comprehensive development of Marxism represents the second great
leap in the development of proletarian ideology.
After Lenin's death,
Joseph Stalin defended the proletarian dictatorship against enemies
from within as well as from the imperialist invaders during World
War II, and carried forward the cause of socialist construction
and transformation in the Soviet Union. Stalin fought for the international
communist movement to recognise Marxism-Leninism as the second great
milestone in the development of the proletarian ideology.
Mao
Tsetung
Mao Tsetung developed
Marxism-Leninism to a new and higher stage in the course of his
many decades of leading the Chinese Revolution, the world-wide struggle
against modern revisionism and, most importantly, in finding in
theory and practice the method of continuing the revolution under
the dictatorship of the proletariat to prevent the restoration of
capitalism and continue the advance toward communism. Mao Tsetung
greatly developed all three component parts of Marxism - philosophy,
political economy and scientific socialism.
Mao said, "Political
power grows out of the barrel of a gun." Mao Tsetung comprehensively
developed the military science of the proletariat through his theory
and practice of People's War. Mao taught that people, not weapons,
are decisive in waging war. He pointed out that each class has its
own specific forms of war with its specific character, goals and
means. He remarked that all military logic can be boiled down to
the principle "you fight your way, I'll fight my way", and that
the proletariat must forge military strategy and tactics which can
bring into play its particular advantages, by unleashing and relying
upon the initiative and enthusiasm of the revolutionary masses.
Mao established that
the policy of winning base areas and systematically establishing
political power was key to unleashing the masses and developing
the armed strength of the people and the wavelike expansion of their
political power. He insisted on the need to lead the masses in carrying
out revolutionary transformations in base areas and to develop these
politically, economically and culturally in the service of advancing
revolutionary warfare.
Mao taught that the
Party should control the gun and the gun must never be allowed to
control the Party. The Party must be built as a vehicle capable
of initiating and leading revolutionary warfare. He emphasised that
the central task of revolution is the seizure of political power
by revolutionary violence. Mao Tsetung's theory of People's War
is universally applicable in all countries, although this must be
applied to the concrete conditions in each country and, in particular,
take into account the revolutionary paths in the two general types
of countries - imperialist countries and oppressed countries - that
exist in the world today.
Mao solved the problem
of how to make revolution in a country dominated by imperialism.
The basic path he charted for the revolution in China represents
an inestimable contribution to the theory and practice of revolution
and is the guide for achieving liberation in the countries oppressed
by imperialism. This means protracted People's War, surrounding
the cities from the countryside, with armed struggle as the main
form of struggle and the army led by the Party as the main form
of organisation of the masses, mobilising the peasantry, principally
the poor peasants, carrying out the agrarian revolution, building
a united front under the leadership of the Communist Party to carry
out the New Democratic Revolution against imperialism, feudalism
and bureaucrat capitalism and establishing the joint dictatorship
of the revolutionary classes led by the proletariat as the necessary
prelude to the socialist revolution which must immediately follow
the victory of the first stage of the revolution. Mao put forward
the thesis of the "three magic weapons" - the Party, the Army and
the United Front - the indispensable instruments for making revolution
in every country in accordance with its specific conditions and
path of revolution.
Mao Tsetung greatly
developed the proletarian philosophy, dialectical materialism. In
particular, he stressed that the law of contradiction, the unity
and struggle of opposites, is the fundamental law governing nature
and society. He pointed out that the unity and identity of all things
is temporary and relative, while the struggle between opposites
is ceaseless and absolute, and this gives rise to radical ruptures
and revolutionary leaps. He masterfully applied this understanding
to the analysis of the relationship between theory and practice,
stressing that practice is both the sole source and ultimate criterion
of the truth and emphasising the leap from theory to revolutionary
practice. In so doing Mao further developed the proletarian theory
of knowledge. He led in taking philosophy to the masses in their
millions, popularising, for example, that "one divides into two"
in opposition to the revisionist thesis that "two combines into
one".
Mao Tsetung further
developed the understanding that the "people and the people alone
are the motive force in the making of world history". He developed
the understanding of the mass line: "take the ideas of the masses
(scattered and unsystematic ideas) and concentrate them (through
study turn them into concentrated and systematic ideas), then go
to the masses and propagate and explain these ideas until the masses
embrace them as their own, hold fast to them and translate them
into action, and test the correctness of these ideas in such action".
Mao stressed the profound truth that matter can be transformed into
consciousness and consciousness into matter, further developing
the understanding of the conscious dynamic role of man in every
field of human endeavour.
Mao Tsetung led the
international struggle against modern revisionism led by the Khrushchevite
revisionists. He defended the communist ideological and political
line against the modern revisionists and called upon the genuine
proletarian revolutionaries to break with them and forge parties
based on Marxist-Leninist-Maoist principles.
Mao Tsetung undertook
a penetrating analysis of the lessons of the restoration of capitalism
in the USSR and the shortcomings as well as the positive achievements
of the construction of socialism in that country. While Mao defended
the great contributions of Stalin, he also summed up Stalin's errors.
He summed up the experience of the socialist revolution in China
and the repeated two-line struggles against revisionist headquarters
within the Communist Party of China. He masterfully applied materialist
dialectics to the analysis of the contradictions of socialist society.
Mao taught that the
Party must play the vanguard role - before, during and after the
seizure of power - in leading the proletariat in the historic struggle
for communism. He developed the understanding of how to preserve
the proletarian revolutionary character of the Party through waging
an active ideological struggle against bourgeois and petit bourgeois
influences in its ranks, the ideological remoulding of the Party
members, criticism and self-criticism and waging two-line struggle
against opportunist and revisionist lines in the Party. Mao taught
that once the proletariat seizes power and the Party becomes the
leading force within the socialist state, the contradiction between
the Party and the masses becomes a concentrated expression of the
contradictions marking socialist society as a transition between
capitalism and communism.
Mao Tsetung developed
the proletariat's understanding of political economy, of the contradictory
and dynamic role of production itself and of its interrelationship
with the political and ideological superstructure of society. Mao
taught that the system of ownership is decisive in the relations
of production but that, under socialism, attention must be paid
that public ownership is socialist in content as well as in form.
He stressed the interaction between the system of socialist ownership
and the other two aspects of the relations of production, the relations
between people in production and the system of distribution. Mao
developed the Leninist thesis that politics is the concentrated
expression of economics, showing that under socialist society the
correctness of the ideological and political line determines whether
the proletariat actually owns the means of production. Conversely,
he pointed out that the rise of revisionism means the rise of the
bourgeoisie, that given the contradictory nature of the socialist
economic base it would be easy for capitalist roaders to rig up
the capitalist system if they come to power.
He profoundly criticised
the revisionist theory of the productive forces and concluded that
the superstructure, consciousness, can transform the base and with
political power develop the productive forces. All this took expression
in Mao's slogan, "Grasp Revolution, Promote Production."
Mao Tsetung initiated
and led the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution which represented
a great leap forward in the experience of exercising the dictatorship
of the proletariat. Hundreds of millions of people rose up to overthrow
the capitalist roaders who had emerged from within the socialist
society and who were especially concentrated in the leadership of
the Party itself (such as Liu Shao-chi, Lin Piao and Deng Xiao-ping).
Mao led the proletariat and masses in challenging the capitalist
roaders and imposing the interests, outlook and will of the great
majority in every sphere that, even in socialist society, had remained
the private reserve of the exploiting classes and their way of thinking.
The great victories
won in the Cultural Revolution prevented the capitalist restoration
in China for a decade and led to great socialist transformations
in the economic base as well as in education, literature and art,
scientific research and other parts of the superstructure. Under
Mao's leadership the masses dug away at the soil which engenders
capitalism - such as bourgeois right and the three great differences
between town and country, between worker and peasant, and between
mental and manual labour.
In the course of fierce
ideological and political struggle, millions of workers and other
revolutionary masses greatly deepened their class consciousness
and mastery of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and strengthened their capacity
to wield political power. The Cultural Revolution was waged as part
of the international struggle of the proletariat and was a training
ground in proletarian internationalism.
Mao grasped the dialectical
relationship between the necessity of revolutionary leadership and
the need to arouse and rely on the revolutionary masses from below
to implement proletarian dictatorship. In this way, the strengthening
of the proletarian dictatorship was also the most extensive and
deepest exercise in proletarian democracy yet achieved in the world,
and heroic revolutionary leaders came forward such as Chiang Ching
and Chang Chun-chiao who stood alongside the masses and led them
into battle against the revisionists and who continued to hold high
the banner of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism in the face of bitter defeat.
Lenin said, "Only he
is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to
the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat." In the
light of the invaluable lessons and advances achieved through the
Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution led by Mao Tsetung, this dividing
line has been further sharpened. Now it can be stated that only
he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of class struggle to
the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat and to the
recognition of the objective existence of classes, of antagonistic
class contradictions, of the bourgeoisie in the Party and of the
continuation of the class struggle under the dictatorship of the
proletariat throughout the whole period of socialism until communism.
As Mao so powerfully stated, "Lack of clarity on this question will
lead to revisionism."
The capitalist restoration
following the 1976 counter-revolutionary coup d'etat led by Hua
Kuo-feng and Deng Xiao-ping in no way negates Maoism or the world-historic
achievements and tremendous lessons of the Great Proletarian Cultural
Revolution; rather this defeat confirms Mao's theses on the nature
of socialist society and the need to continue the revolution under
the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Clearly, the Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution represents a world-historic epic
of revolution, a victorious high point for the world's communists
and revolutionaries, an imperishable achievement. Although we have
a whole process ahead of us, that revolution left us great lessons
we are already applying, such as, for example, the point that ideological
transformation is fundamental in order for our class to seize power.
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism:
The Third Great Milestone
In the course of the
Chinese revolution Mao had developed Marxism-Leninism in many important
fields. But it was in the crucible of the Great Proletarian Cultural
Revolution that our ideology took a leap and the third great milestone,
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, fully emerged. From the higher plane of
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism the revolutionary communists could grasp
the teachings of the previous great leaders even more profoundly
and indeed even Mao Tsetung's earlier contributions took on deeper
significance. Today, without Maoism there can be no Marxism-Leninism.
Indeed, to negate Maoism is to negate Marxism-Leninism itself.
Each great milestone
in the development of the revolutionary ideology of the proletariat
has met with bitter resistance and has only achieved recognition
through intense struggle and through its application in revolutionary
practice. Today the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement declares
that Marxism-Leninism-Maoism must be the commander and guide of
the world revolution.
Hundreds of millions
of proletarians and oppressed masses of the world are increasingly
propelled into struggle against the world imperialist system and
all reaction. On the battlefield against the enemy they search for
their own flag. Revolutionary communists must wield our universal
ideology and spread it among the masses to further unleash them
and organise their forces, in order to seize power through revolutionary
violence. To accomplish this, Marxist-Leninist-Maoist parties, united
in the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, must be formed wherever
they do not exist and existing ones must be strengthened in order
to prepare, launch and carry through to victory People's War to
seize power for the proletariat and the oppressed people. We must
uphold, defend and, most importantly, apply Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
We must step up our
struggle for the formation of a Communist International of a new
type, based on Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. The world proletarian revolution
cannot advance to victory without forging such a weapon because,
as Mao Tsetung taught, either we all go to communism or none of
us go.
Mao Tsetung said, "Marxism
consists of thousands of truths, but in the final analysis they
all boil down to one: it is right to rebel." The Revolutionary Internationalist
Movement takes the rebellion of the masses as its starting point,
and calls on the proletariat and revolutionaries the world over
to take up Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. This liberating, partisan ideology
must be brought home to the proletariat and all the oppressed because
it alone can enable the rebellion of the masses to sweep away thousands
of years of class exploitation and bring to birth the new world
of communism.
Hold
High the Great Red Banner of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism!
26 December 1993
