OLD AND NEW FASCISM AND THE REVOLUTIONARY TASKS OF THE PROLETARIAT

By

Adolfo Olaechea

Spokesman for

Sol Peru Committee - London

The Stalin Society

London, September 25, 1994

I would like to express my thanks to The Stalin Society for this opportunity to speak on fascism, old and new, in the context of the current world situation. Thus, the Stalin Society plays once again its role as a platform for the class, honouring the name and ideology of the great proletarian leader.

Yesterday was the second anniversary of the speech delivered on the 24 of September 1992 by Chairman Gonzalo, leader of the Communist Party of Peru.

We know that this speech was given under the most difficult circumstances, facing the guns of a fascist regime. With this speech, the illustrious prisoner of the People's War in Peru snatched an ideological and political victory from inside the cage of the tyrant Fujimori. Chairman Gonzalo emulated the example of Georgi Dimitrov when that comrade faced the courts of Nazi Germany.

But what should interest us specifically today is that this speech contains important historical guidelines for the struggle against fascism in the present era. Therefore I would like us to link it with the study we are presently undertaking.

In his speech from the jail of the fascist tyrant Chairman Gonzalo said:

"We have a fact, a Peruvian revolution, an advancing powerful fire of people's war that continues and shall continue to develop. What has this resulted in? In strategic equilibrium. And we must grasp well this issue. It is an strategic equilibrium, a concrete reality within an essential situation. What have twelve years of war served for? To clearly demonstrate before the eyes of the world and principally before the Peruvian people that the Peruvian state, the old Peruvian state, is a paper tiger which is rotten to the core. That has been demonstrated!"

For the last fourteen years in Peru the revolution and the counter-revolution have been in armed conflict. This process develops today within its stage of strategic equilibrium. In 1992 the development and growth of the People's Committees, of the people's organs of power in the countryside and the cities, the peoples' advance in dismantling the old state, generated a mighty wave of revolution that threatened, in the eyes of reaction, a speedy outcome of the war and the seizure of power by the Maoists. This development in the Peruvian revolution forced the bourgeois regime to drop the mask of democracy and install its open dictatorship. A fascist regime fostered by imperialism and local reaction was set up to face the most advanced struggle of the proletariat for political power in our time.

Fascism and communism, fascism and a popular front of liberation under proletarian leadership are, as in no other place in the world, fighting a merciless war in this acute class struggle in the Andes. In Peru today the destiny of the current revolutionary wave is being decided. As in republican Spain from 1936 to 1939 the imperialist circles are conspiring to ensure the fascists' victory as a prelude and general rehearsal for imposing their reactionary program at the world level. This is how we should understand the Fujimori dictatorship. It is the dark model that imperialism is designing for the submission of the people. It is no accident that in Russia the Yeltsin government is busy trying out the same recipe pioneered by the tyrant Fujimori.

In Peru we have an unscrupulous enemy ready to do its worst in defence of the counter-revolutionary imperialist order. On the other hand we also have the most advanced and consistent Marxism of our era, embodied in a communist party of the new type. We have a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist party that leads the people's war, the highest and most complete military theory and practice of the proletariat, standing defiant and pointing out for us a hopeful and bright alternative path.

Therefore in dealing with the theme of fascism today it is necessary to deal simultaneously with the theme of the revolution in Peru.

The capture of Chairman Gonzalo should be viewed as an occupational hazard that revolutionaries must face, a harsh blow against the revolutionary leadership but not a real and lasting victory, instead a temporary setback. The brutal repression of the regime comes backed by the most modern psychological warfare techniques designed to set masses against masses - low intensity warfare, the current military doctrine of imperialism. Trying to induce the revolution and the proletariat onto the road of capitulation they enlisted the services of a handful of opportunists to assist them in concocting a plot of peace negotiations. In this plot, the regime has tried to use the figure of Chairman Gonzalo and, with the help of traitors and revisionists, it has succeeded to a degree in creating a certain amount of confusion. Within the movement of support for the Peruvian revolution that is developing abroad these manoeuvres of the fascist Fujimori government have also had some effect. One sector has gone over to the counter-revolution. Among those who rejected treason however, there are also some who objectively developed a sectarian and dogmatic line that played into the hands of fascism in fostering splits and exaggerating problems. There are even others who, in adopting liberal positions, dither in condemning treason out in the open. They claim that this is a case of 'ideological differences' which they propose should be studied.

We must emphasise that these are secondary problems, common whenever the revolution goes through a difficult moment. The blows of the reactionaries always generate vacillation among the intermediate elements. Always two different kinds of opportunism arise at such moments. One toys with capitulation in front of the enemy. Another clouds the issues and hits wildly in all directions regardless of maintaining the necessary unity in the people's ranks.

It is important to bring these problems out into the open so that the international communist movement may find its bearings correctly and have the capacity to lend its support in upholding the correct Marxist line. The revolution in Peru is led by the proletariat and the proletariat is an internationalist class. It is true that the Peruvian proletariat directs its own revolutionary struggle but it is also true that the opinions and feelings of the international proletariat have important repercussions among those who are directly leading it, as well as among the wide masses of the people. In Peru the proletarian leadership has remained firm in upholding the revolutionary line of Chairman Gonzalo.

The question of the prosecution of the war has been totally settled and the sectarian positions have not been echoed. Today the problem is in finding the means of developing a new upsurge towards the seizure of power in the whole country. It is not enough that the war should go on. The revolution needs to find the means for victoriously concluding it, to fully develop the necessary instruments for its victory and to mobilise the necessary public opinion to back them up.

Thus, our study of fascism, of the United Front and of Marxists politics, relates to establishing the line that Chairman Gonzalo had already developed before his capture in the forefront of the struggle. This is something that certain people have attempted to conceal:

"We must bear in mind that both the revolution and the people's war are intensifying and that we are the leading centre, the axis of the polarisation; taking this into account as the basic fact, let us develop the United Front of the revolution based upon the worker-peasant alliance and integrated by four classes: proletariat, peasantry, petty bourgeoisie and national bourgeoisie, who together constitute 90% of the people. A front that should unite all those persons and organisations who are truly in favour of the revolution and its realisation by means of the people's war; if we were not to see things in this way we would not be able to develop the third instrument and, within a perspective of revolutionary crisis, we shall fail to contribute to break the influence that the different cliques wield over the masses, and in turning the Party into the centre of the people's camp; if we do not act in this fashion how are we to develop the polarisation, the upsurge of the masses and the seizure of the cities? Therefore we must clearly see the importance of the United Front. In the revolution there are constant forces: proletarians, peasants, petty bourgeois; but the national bourgeoisie must come over to the side of the revolution, expressing its class nature, and we must develop unity and struggle towards them; if we do not act in this fashion we shall be committing sectarian errors. Closed doors amounts to sectarianism. The question is one of unity and struggle. The time has arrived to open doors for a great incorporation into the revolution; for example, the greater portion of the intelligentsia is petty bourgeois and the intellectuals are indispensable for the revolution; these are more complex problems, problems that entail a greater danger of rightism and demand more open minded work. There will be a version of the People's Consultative Council, otherwise how are we to set up the democratic government? (Chairman Gonzalo, November 1991 - Let Strategic Equilibrium Shake-up the Country Even More).

Taking this into account we can see the importance of undertaking this study of fascism. We shall try to clarify the issues that today are being debated in the process of the Peruvian revolution, and to contribute, so that the international proletariat may organise its united front in support of the revolutionary line. In my opinion victory in the Peruvian revolution, as an integral part of the world revolution, necessitates a thorough understanding and application of the historical lessons of the anti-fascist struggle.

I believe that this is the true Marxist way of undertaking any study. Concretely, I am fully convinced that today, within the belly of this imperialist power of Great Britain, there is no better forum for these ideas and these studies that the one afforded by this Stalin Society, a society that, as indicated by its very name, is dedicated to the defence of the revolutionary ideals of the proletariat. I harbour the sincerest hope that all of us may jointly undertake this study and exert the greatest efforts in applying the most advanced Marxist ideology, thus making our contribution today to the resolution of the vital and critical problems facing the class.

In his speech Chairman Gonzalo pointed out: "Today there is but one reality. The same contenders of the First and Second World Wars are generating and preparing the Third new World War. This we must be aware of, and that we, as people from an oppressed country, are regarded as part of the loot. We can not allow it! We have had enough with imperialist exploitation! We must do away with it!

For some time now the theme of the renewed growth of fascism has been a burning topic. Germany's re-unification, the downfall of Soviet social-imperialism and the rise of the Yeltsin dictatorship as 'gauletier' of international finance in Russia, the process of the Western European Union and its military, political and economic encroachment into the former Soviet sphere of influence, its collusion and contention in all these fields with the great hegemonic power of the USA - this latter acting as world counter-revolutionary gendarme, and using the fig leaf of the United Nations to advance its aims of world domination - Japanese re-armament, the coming to power of Berlusconi in Italy and the imminent return of the Franco clique in Spain - all these factors are only some of the symptoms of varying importance indicating that it is timely to consider fascism as a growing real danger.

In his Report to the Seventh Congress of the Communist International comrade Dimitrov began his speech with the following words: "Comrades, as early as its Sixth Congress the Communist International warned the world proletariat that a new fascist offensive was under way and called for a struggle against it. The Congress pointed out that 'in a more or less developed form, fascist tendencies and the germs of a fascist movement are to be found almost everywhere'."

Can anyone deny that today we are facing a similar danger? Can anyone be so blind as to ignore the fascist elements that in all sort of guises are thriving everywhere? Can any one ignore that today, as yesterday, as the Communist International pointed out:

"The imperialist circles are trying to shift the whole burden of the crisis onto the shoulders of the working people. That is why they need fascism."

Can we deny that today like yesterday, the imperialists are "..trying to solve the problem of markets by enslaving the weak nations, by intensifying colonial oppression and repartitioning the world anew by means of war. That is why they need fascism?"

And what is more important, can anyone deny that today, more, much more than yesterday, the imperialist circles are "..striving to forestall the growth of the forces of revolution by smashing the revolutionary movement of the workers and peasants.....", and that for this reason, today more sorely than yesterday, and with more urgency, the imperialist circles "need fascism"?

Therefore it is evident - and we know this thanks to the lessons of the carnage of the imperialist wars - that the masses in this era are facing unprecedented mortal danger, a danger that must be overcome once again for the salvation of humanity itself, for the renewed advance of the world revolution, for the victory of the proletariat and for the communist future.

In order to defeat an enemy it is necessary to have a full understanding of who the enemy is. It is impossible to defeat fascism without knowing it from the roots up. Denunciation and condemnation are not sufficient. We must face and defeat this enemy in open and tenacious combat. What we have to fight is today's fascism - yesterday's fascism, given the changed conditions under which we live is not, and can not be, identical to today's fascism in all its manifestations.

But unless we are to restrict ourselves to hypocritical denunciations of the old fascism while actively clearing the obstacles for its renewed advance and objectively abetting it, as the old bourgeois liberals, social-democrats, revisionists and Trotskyists did in the past, we must firmly grasp the essence of the old fascism, primarily to reveal the true character that this phenomenon is displaying today. Comrade Dimitrov said:"Such an enemy must be known to perfection, from every angle. We must, without any delay whatever, react to its various manoeuvres, discover its hidden moves, be prepared to repel it in any arena at any moment. We must not hesitate to learn from the enemy if that would help us more quickly and more effectively to wring its neck."

What is and what is not fascism? What are the fundamental outlines of this process, its roots and diverse manifestations and derivations? What are the different attitudes that the different classes adopt vis a vis this phenomenon?

These are essential questions and a correct understanding of the fascist phenomenon will depend upon the accuracy of the answers which we provide from the stand point of the proletariat.

History clearly shows that the old fascism was a specific form of bourgeois dictatorship with which, as comrade Stalin said in his Report to the XVI Party Congress (June 1930): "..the bourgeoisie would seek a way out from the economic crisis, on the one hand by crushing the working class through the establishment of fascist dictatorship......on the other, by fomenting war for the redivision of colonies and spheres of influence at the expense of the poorly defended countries."

In this same report Stalin specifically defined the fascist dictatorship as "..the dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic, most imperialist capitalist elements."

Chairman Gonzalo, when referring to the work of the founder of the Communist Party of Peru, José Carlos Mariátegui, who had the opportunity to carry out a first- hand observation of the political and social developments in Europe during the twenties, says:

"Another important point on scientific socialism for Mariátegui is the crisis of bourgeois democracy, the symptoms of which could be observed even from before World War I, and Mariátegui sees its causes in 'the parallel increase and concentration of capitalism and the proletariat'. Therefore the development of monopolies, characteristic of imperialism, and the challenge to the bourgeois order on the part of the proletariat are the causes of the crisis of bourgeois democracy. Looking further into the problem, Mariátegui underlines that under the bourgeois regime industry experienced an extraordinary development driven by machinery, having 'arisen enormous industrial enterprises'. And as social and political forms are determined by the base upon which they are sustained, he concludes: 'The expansion of these new productive forces does not allow the old political mould to survive. It has transformed the structure of the nations and it demands the transformation of the regime's own structure. Bourgeois democracy has ceased to correspond with the formidably transformed and augmented economic forces. That is why democracy is in crisis. The typical institution of democracy is parliament. The crisis of democracy is a crisis of parliament'."

Chairman Gonzalo continues: "Here is a thesis intimately linked to Lenin's thesis about the reactionary character of imperialism. It is upon this thesis that Mariátegui bases his understanding of fascism as political reaction, as an international phenomena, not merely in Italy, nor something exclusive of an imperialist country, but also possible in backward countries such as Spain. Fascism that typically blames 'all the country's ills on politics and parliamentarianism'. Fascism as the expression of the fact that 'the ruling class no longer feels sufficiently protected by its own institutions, Parliament and universal suffrage are regarded as impediments'. Mariátegui sees fascism as 'reaction that everywhere organises itself playing a demagogic and subversive tune (the Bavarian fascists call themselves "National Socialists". During its mass preparations fascism abundantly used an anti-capitalist discourse.....)'. He sees this phenomena as a 'reactionary and nationalistic mysticism' that 'has opened the path of violence and dictatorship' with its seizure of power and repression, the use of knuckle-dusters and torture. A phenomenon that despite its duration, '..seems inevitably destined to exacerbate the current crisis and undermine the foundations of bourgeois society'."

In his Report to the XVII Party Congress (January 1934) comrade Stalin put across an identical point of view:

"The victory of fascism in Germany must be regarded not only as a symptom of the weakness of the working class and the result of the betrayals of the working class by the Social-Democratic Party, which paved the way for fascism; it must be regarded as a symptom of the weakness of the bourgeoisie, of the fact that the bourgeoisie is already unable to rule by the old methods of parliamentarianism and bourgeois democracy, and, as a consequence, is compelled in its home policy to resort to terrorist methods of rule.....".

The History of the CPSU (b) Short Course describes this political juncture: "The German fascists inaugurated their home policy by setting fire to the Reichstag, brutally suppressing the working class, destroying its organisations, and abolishing the bourgeois-democratic liberties. They inaugurated their foreign policy by withdrawing from the League of Nations and openly preparing for a war for the forcible revision of the frontiers of the European states to the advantage of Germany."

It is also worth quoting from A. Leontiev's Political Economy (Moscow, 1936) for a description of this process: "..an unwonted sharpening of class contradictions takes place under the conditions of the general crisis of capitalism. In the new situation the bourgeoisie, feeling the approach of its downfall, makes use of the severest and cruellest methods of repression against the working class. In a number of countries the bourgeoisie, after repelling the first attacks of the working class in the very first years after the war, established fascist dictatorships (e.g. Italy and Hungary). In Germany the bourgeoisie established a fascist dictatorship only after a number of intermediate steps, in February 1933, when the Hitler government came into power.

The bourgeoisie finds it continually more difficult to maintain itself in power by means of the more veiled forms of bourgeois dictatorship. It goes over to open fascist dictatorship. It represses the labour movement by the bloodiest methods. It passes over to open terror against the working class and its organisations. All this is clear evidence of the instability of capitalism, of the uncertainty of the bourgeoisie concerning what the morrow will bring."

"The fascist form of open dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is extremely characteristic of capitalism in the epoch of its decay and downfall. Fascism tries to create a bulwark for the bourgeoisie against the working class. It appeals to the broad masses of the petty bourgeoisie, the peasantry, office employees and clerks, small business men and the intelligentsia. It penetrates into the more backward elements of the working class. It widely mobilises all the declassed elements. It conducts its frantic defence of capitalism, at least at first, under the mask of anti-capitalist agitation. The hazy demagogy against capitalism serves fascism as a decoy to catch adherents from among the disinherited but politically backward sections of the bourgeoisie."

Therefore, as the Programme of the Communist International says:

"The principal aim of fascism is to destroy the revolutionary labour vanguard, i.e., the Communist sections and leading units of the proletariat. The combination of social demagogy, corruption and active White terror, in conjunction with extreme imperialist aggression in the sphere of foreign politics, are the characteristic features of fascism. In periods of acute crisis for the bourgeoisie, fascism resorts to anti-capitalist phraseology, but, after it has established itself at the helm of state, it casts aside its anti-capitalist rattle and discloses itself as the terrorist dictatorship of big capital."

Dimitrov points out:"The development of fascism, and the fascist dictatorship itself, assume different forms in different countries, according to historical, social and economic conditions, and to the national peculiarities and the international position of the given country. In certain countries, principally those in which fascism has no extensive mass basis and in which the struggle of the various groups within the camp of the fascist bourgeoisie itself is rather acute, fascism does not immediately venture to abolish parliament, but allows the other bourgeois parties, as well as the Social-Democratic Parties, to retain a certain degree of legality. In other countries, where the ruling bourgeoisie fears an early outbreak of revolution, fascism establishes its unrestricted political monopoly, either immediately or by intensifying its reign of terror against and persecution of all competing parties and groups. This does not prevent fascism, when its position becomes particularly acute, from trying to extend its basis and, without altering its class nature, trying to combine open terrorist dictatorship with a crude sham of parliamentarism."

Dimitrov continues: "The accession to power of fascism is not an ordinary succession of one bourgeois government by another, but a substitution of one state form of class domination of the bourgeoisie - bourgeois democracy - by another form - open terrorist dictatorship. It would be a serious mistake to ignore this distinction, a mistake which would prevent the revolutionary proletariat from mobilising the widest strata of the working people of town and country for the struggle against the menace of the seizure of power by the fascists, and from taking advantage of the contradictions which exist in the camp of the bourgeoisie itself. But it is a mistake, no less serious and dangerous, to underrate the importance, for the establishment of fascist dictatorship, of the reactionary measures of the bourgeoisie at present increasingly developing in bourgeois democratic countries - measures which suppress the democratic liberties of the working people, falsify and curtail the rights of parliament and intensify the repression of the revolutionary movement"....... "Whoever does not fight the reactionary measures of the bourgeoisie and the growth of fascism at these preparatory stages is not in a position to prevent the victory of fascism, but, on the contrary, facilitates that victory."

Dimitrov also points out that fascism is a ferocious but unstable power. That its internal contradictions grow sharper precisely because fascism attempts to solve the antagonisms and disagreements within the bourgeois camp by resorting to political monopoly and the destruction of all other parties, including their own camp-followers who are pitilessly punished and destroyed, as happened in Germany on June 30, 1934. Having elevated violence and armed force to the position of prime arbiters of inter-bourgeois contradictions, the fascist regimes are compelled to fight with violence and armed force even against other fascist groups who likewise use violence with the aim of displacing them and substituting them at the helm of the state. In this context, Dimitrov mentions the National Socialist putsch against the fascist government of Austria and the violent individual attacks carried out by fascist groups against the fascist regimes of Poland, Finland, Bulgaria and other countries.

That fascism "by destroying the remnants of bourgeois democracy, by elevating open violence as a system of rule .... shakes the democratic illusions and undermines the authority of the law before the eyes of the working people."

Finally, the architect of the United Front against fascism warns against those who believe that fascism can be prevented by accommodation with the imperialist bourgeoisie. He warns against those who advocate that the revolutionary struggle of the class must be laid aside to allow for unity with the parties of the liberal bourgeoisie and social-democracy, against those who advocate giving up the revolutionary class struggle ..so that we should not play into the hands of fascism and justify every equivocation under the pretext of ..defense of legality or ..not to bring about repression. It is good to remember this, because today there are also those who misuse the correct policy of the united front to advocate revisionist points of view and sow reformism and class conciliation.

Dimitrov said:

"Only such monstrous philistines, such lackeys of the bourgeoisie, as the superannuated theoretician of the Second International, Karl Kautsky, are capable of casting reproaches at the workers, to the effect that they should not have taken up arms in Austria and Spain. What would the working-class movement in Austria and Spain look like today if the working class of these countries were guided by the treacherous counsels of the Kautskys? The working class would be experiencing profound demoralization in its ranks."

And precisely in this context, Dimitrov quotes Lenin: "The school of civil war, does not leave the people unaffected. It is a harsh school, and its complete curriculum inevitably includes the victories of the counter-revolution, the debaucheries of enraged reactionaries, savage punishments meted out by the old governments to the rebels, etc. But only downright pedants and mentally decrepit mummies can grieve over the fact that nations are entering this painful school; this school teaches how to bring about a victorious revolution; it concentrates in the masses of present-day slaves that hatred which is always harboured by the downtrodden, dull, ignorant slaves, and which leads those slaves who have become conscious of the shame of their slavery to the greatest historic exploits."

In synthesis, we have seen that fascism is a possible development inscribed within the logic of history in the era of imperialism, that in a revolutionary crisis under development, fascism becomes a necessity for the imperialist bourgeoisie. Dimitrov summarised: "...whatever the masks which fascism adopts, whatever the forms in which it presents itself, whatever the ways by which it comes into power - Fascism is a most ferocious attack by capital on the mass of the working people. Fascism is unbridled chauvinism and predatory war. Fascism is rabid reaction and counter-revolution. Fascism is the most vicious enemy of the working class and of all the working people."

It is likewise important to clearly indicate what fascism is not:

We continue with Dimitrov: "Fascism is not a form of state power 'standing above both classes - the proletariat and the bourgeoisie', as Otto Bauer, for instance, has asserted. It is not 'the revolt of the petty bourgeoisie which has captured the machinery of state,' as the British Socialist Brailsford declares. No, fascism is not a power standing above class, nor a power of the petty bourgeoisie or the lumpenproletariat over finance capital. Fascism is the power of finance capital itself."

Chairman Gonzalo in his work 'Let's Retake Mariátegui's Road and Reconstitute his Party' says: "...in his analysis of fascism, Mariátegui advances the characterisation of the 'typical attitude of a reformist, a democrat, although tormented by a number of "doubts about democracy" and worries about reforms' that H.G. Wells, the English writer had in reference to the Mussolini regime: 'Fascism appears to him as something akin to a cataclysm, rather than the consequence and result in Italy of the bankruptcy of bourgeois democracy and the defeat of the proletarian revolution. As a convinced evolutionist, Wells could not conceive of fascism as a possible phenomenon within the logic of history. He had to understand it as an exceptional phenomenon'. For reformism, as we see, fascism is not the consequence of the crisis of bourgeois democracy but 'something exceptional', a 'cataclysm'. It is, as some people hold in our own country, solely and exclusively terror on the move, failing to see that it is 'a possible phenomenon within the logic of history' that has its causes: the development of monopolies within imperialism and the questioning of the bourgeois order by the proletariat."

As Chairman Gonzalo noted, we should keep this very much in mind: "..to reject the reformist views that are put forward on the question of fascism."

We all know that fascism, the fruit of the imperialist crisis of the years following the First World War, came to power within the big imperialist countries of Italy, Germany and Japan, and also in Spain, Rumania, Bulgaria, Finland, Poland and other European, Asian and African countries. We know that fascism had important followers and allies in the Americas and within the very countries of bourgeois democracy, that in its occupation of numerous countries in Europe and Asia, fascism installed quisling-type regimes in Ukraine, the Baltic countries, France, Manchuria, Norway, Holland, and various others. Besides, fascism also had collaborators and accomplices in many other parts of the world - a good example is the Japanese puppet regime of the Trotskyist Wang Ching-wei in China - as well as saboteurs, agents and spies who contributed to the formation of a world front of aggression and war that caused enormous suffering to humanity.

We recall that there was a great anti-fascist war, and that in this war the proletariat gave us untold heroes and martyrs from all corners of the earth. We also know that it is not true that the majority of the victims of fascism were simply defenceless Jews, as the Zionists make out - themselves a typically fascist and anti-communist movement which also collaborated with fascism in many instances, particularly in the very extermination of the Jewish population of Europe. We know that between 50 and 100 million victims can be attributed to fascism and the reactionary war imposed upon the peoples of the world by the imperialists. This is the historical truth and undeniable fact.

Therefore, it is right to say that, just as the principal objective of fascism was to destroy the revolution and especially its proletarian vanguard, it was the proletariat, especially the communists of the world, and principally the heroism of the popular masses led and oriented by them, who played the main role in its defeat.

Signal role played by three outstanding luminaries in the anti-fascist struggle:

J.V. Stalin, as the acknowledged leader of the class and of the first country of socialism, the Soviet Union, and Commander-in-Chief of the Red Army, the main protagonist in the European front. Chairman Mao Tse-tung, leader of the Communist Party of China and great strategist of the anti-Japanese war in China, the scene of immense military actions on the part of the masses and the crucible of the People's War as the strategic theory of the highest calibre and importance for the proletariat and the world revolution. And finally, Georgi Dimitrov, leader of the Communist International, the guide of the class and the architect of the United Front against fascism.

The imperialist bourgeoisie and its servants have never forgiven these heroes of the people for their brilliant role in the defeat of fascism. Today, now that a new fascist wave is in the rising, these three leaders are the ones who are most viciously attacked by them.

In their vile propaganda aimed at the masses - propaganda that is a necessary pre- condition for advancing their current fascist objectives - the bourgeoisie directs its fire against Marxism in general, but at J.V. Stalin and Mao Tse-tung in particular.

However, within the communist and workers' movement, the detachment of the bourgeoisie that exists within the ranks of the proletariat - the opportunists of right and 'left' - while hypocritically praising one or both of the great leaders mentioned, always slander or distort Dimitrov. This is no accident. The imperialists' intention is precisely to divert the proletariat from the just line of the United Front, the key for victory for the class and the people.

Among us today there is still too much abstract struggle against deviations and imaginary deviationists. There is also a surfeit of egotism and sectarianism that from time to time produce political absurdities and wild speculations. There are some who, lacking a concrete role in the class struggle, waste their time raking over the past and judging it with the eyes of the present, arriving at the most childish conclusions. There are even some others who specialise in inventing falsehoods about the proletarian leaders, about comrade Dimitrov, about comrade Mao Tse-tung. Everyone has a right to express their ideas and even to carry out their provocations. We are certain that the last to pay attention to such people would be comrade Dimitrov himself. Neither would Chairman Mao. In Peru we have a saying: "Whoever spits at heaven, ends up with drool on his own face."

We Marxists are well used to the lurid fantasies of the bourgeoisie. Did not the bourgeois intellectuals allege that 'Lenin was the Kaiser's agent'? That there are always those who wear the label of 'communists' to parrot the vile concoctions of the bourgeoisie should no longer surprise or lead us to waste our time in dealing with them.

Nevertheless, such otherwise useless attacks have an unexpected positive aspect: they serve to instruct by negative example. When such people rant against comrades Dimitrov and Mao, we know then that we'll do well to study and apply their contributions in our revolutionary practice, and raise their red banner ever higher.

It is our duty to learn how to use such 'ideologues' in a positive fashion. They are our infallible compass, always pointing in the wrong direction. You certainly need some 'genius' to be so consistently in error. They are really our excellent teachers by negative example. They demonstrate to us in the most striking fashion how things should not be done, and give us the best example of how harmful, sterile and anti-communist dogmatism and sectarianism can be.

On the other hand, their opportunist brethren who infest the fringes of the working class movement, praise and reclaim Dimitrov while they busy themselves in distorting him. They emasculate the United Front of its revolutionary content, renouncing the proletarian hegemony and reducing it to a mere electoral pact aimed at dragging the proletariat along at the tail of the liberal or the social-fascist wing of the imperialist bourgeoisie.

In their collusion at the service of the bourgeoisie and the social-fascism of labour and social-democrat politicians they give blanket support and full endorsements at 'any price' to the policies of the organisms, parties, and union leaders that represent the interests of the aristocracy of labour. In synthesis, these people hide and distort the fundamental condition of the United Front: "..that unity of action be directed against fascism, against the offensive of capital, against the threat of war, against the class enemy. That is our condition." (Georgi Dimitrov, Report to the VII Congress of the Communist International).

Such advocates of the 'united front' promoted by revisionism aim at the same target as the dogmatists and sectarians who dismiss it as not sufficiently red, Marxist, etc.. They approach from different angles and use different methods, but both try equally to divert the proletariat and the people from the road to victory. They serve the imperialist bourgeoisie and pave the way for fascism.

This should be sufficient for us to uphold and value Dimitrov at all times. But today, precisely today, when what we must fight against is fascism, we must be absolutely clear that his contribution is totally indispensable.

We shall see more of this in the future, but we can say with absolute confidence today that no one will ever obliterate comrades Stalin, Mao and Dimitrov from the heart of the people, and even less from the memory of the communists. Nor will any one ever succeed in diverting us from the United Front led by the proletariat that they masterfully defended and whose purpose they loyally carried out - to defeat fascism and advance the revolution.

What were the consequences of the defeat of fascism for the imperialist bourgeoisie and for the peoples of the world? After the Second World War, how did the correlation of class forces stand in the contemporary political scene?

Socialism was enormously strengthened in every field, peoples' democracies arose in capitalist Europe itself. In Asia the Chinese revolution achieved victory and Chairman Mao proclaimed the Chinese People's Republic; the imperialists suffered humiliating defeat in their counter-revolutionary interventions and democracy gained the upper hand against fascism all over the world.

The anti-colonial movement vigorously expanded. There were liberation wars in Vietnam, Korea and Algeria, the Arab and Islamic world entered into an era of progress and national revolution. Africa stirred against foreign domination. The situation in Greece, Italy, France and Germany itself, presented dire problems for the victorious faction of the imperialist bourgeoisie. The Marshall Plan and the social-democratic reforms are clear proof that the imperialist bourgeoisie did not find itself in a position to shift completely the burden of the post-war crisis upon the shoulders of the working people. Faced with this great instability they were compelled to make concessions and to stand by while their domination was undermined everywhere.

The great political fact emerging from the Second World War is that the popular masses of the whole world stood up. Every day the masses became more dialectical in their approach and able to manage their own struggles in accordance with the experiences for which such a high cost of blood and suffering was paid. This is a decisive and unprecedented fact allowing us to hold that because of the anti-fascist victory in World War II and its success in China, the world proletarian revolution entered into its stage of strategic equilibrium. Chairman Mao summed it up: "The East Wind prevails over the West Wind" and "...revolution is the main trend in history in today's world."

Alongside the revolutionary advance the imperialist bourgeoisie, seeking to stabilise its position and regain the initiative, projected its counter-revolutionary policy to snatch back from the people the fruits of victory. They aimed to obliterate the conquests of the revolution and of the anti-fascist war. They dreamt of restoring the tottering edifice of bourgeois rule. The class struggle intensified at the international level and the reactionaries sought out all kinds of fascist formulas to achieve their aims.

Thus the iron curtain, the re-establishment of the pre-war imperialist encirclement against the Soviet Union, now extended against the totality of the emerging socialist camp. So too, the bamboo curtain, another term of imperialist propaganda used for the isolation and harassment of People's China. In this way a united anti- communist front of imperialism and its underlings was formed, imposing a 'cordon sanitaire' while unleashing their so-called cold war amidst the most hysterical McCarthy-style campaign. This campaign unfolded with provocations, as in Berlin; with subversion and outright purchase of the revolution as in Yugoslavia; with attempts at restoration in various countries of Eastern Europe; with aggression against Korea, combined with nuclear sabre rattling.

Following comrade Stalin's passing away the bourgeoisie within the CPSU managed to gain the upper hand and seized power. From their 20th Congress they began unleashing their anti-proletarian class policies. They restored the bourgeois leadership at the helm of the state. The CPSU, whose central organs were usurped by the Khrushchev clique, was turned from a communist party into a party of bourgeois restoration at its 22nd Congress, indeed, into a social-imperialist party. Each and every one of the political actions of the Khrushchev clique undertaken under the banner of 'Leninism', was dictated by their class interest in restoring capitalism and depriving the proletariat of the last grain of power. Who can not understand this, is completely ignorant of the meaning of class struggle. Such gentlemen do not understand why the revisionists aimed their daggers at comrade Stalin and everything he stood for, precisely in order to undermine and subvert the proletarian dictatorship. They will never understand the central question of socialism, the proletarian dictatorship.

Therefore we can see that the first acts of domestic policy of the new bourgeois dictatorship in the USSR were to expel and hound the communists, to install their brutal reactionary dictatorship, and the assassination and ostracism of the proletarian vanguard. Indeed an identical domestic policy to that instituted by the German fascists once they grabbed power.

Simultaneously, reaction headed by Khrushchev revisionism carried out a two faced foreign policy. On the one hand, colluding with the old bourgeois imperialists, it aimed its attacks against the revolution and the peoples using every means at its disposal. On the other, it carried out an adventurist policy of imperialist competition in a grab for colonies and semi-colonies, it outlined spheres of influence and finally, proclaimed its 'Brezhnev doctrine'. They gave themselves superpower status and emulated the US in proclaiming their own 'right of intervention' under the fig-leaf of 'defence of socialism'. This was the big Russian version of the Monroe doctrine used by the other super-power, the US, in the Americas, and of the old imperialist defence of its privileges under the fig-leaf of 'democracy' in the rest of the world.

Like the German fascists, in domestic policy the revisionists were anti-communist and repressively anti-people. In foreign policy, adventurism and aggression against weaker countries and unbridled counter-revolutionary action against the proletariat, particularly its political leadership, the communists and the revolutionaries, became the order of the day. As the Third International did with the old revisionists of social-democracy, it is right to characterise the modern revisionist clique of Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Chernenko, Andropov, Gorbachov, together with their accomplices, as social-fascists and social-imperialists. Socialists in words, but rabid fascists and imperialists in deeds.

This fascist offensive, supported and validated at the international level by the whole of the imperialist bourgeoisie, constitutes a second stage within the counter- revolutionary action of the bourgeoisie to reverse the peoples' gains resulting from the proletarian revolution and the anti-fascist victory.

The International Communist Movement, also a victim of bourgeois restoration.

The revisionists, shamelessly exploiting the prestige earned by the CPSU during the era of revolution and anti-fascist victory under the leadership of Lenin and Stalin, promoted their opportunist and revisionist brethren abroad - the detachment of the bourgeoisie within the ranks of the proletarian movement. Together with them they unleashed a witch-hunt against true communists and revolutionary elements of the class at the world level. A veritable and protracted 'night of the long knives' followed. This ended by splitting or liquidating a great portion of the workers movement.

The communists, the defenders of Lenin, Stalin and their historical legacy, were stigmatised as enemies of socialism and of the great Soviet Union. They were expelled or ostracised from the party apparatuses. Finally, revisionism turned many communist parties into social-fascist parties of the quisling type, agencies of the power of the big bourgeoisie of Russia, totally subservient to their ambitions for world domination. This is the naked panorama, the hideous spectacle of the priceless service rendered to the class enemy that the apologists of revisionism tried to obscure for more than 35 years - a panorama that even today some politically blind people pretend not to see.

But social-fascism is not fascism itself, nor can it serve the imperialist bourgeoisie in the same manner in its hour of need. The Trojan horse may open the doors of the citadel to the enemy, but by itself it can not slaughter all the inhabitants. Like the old social-democracy, the social-fascism of modern revisionism could only take the reactionary counter-offensive so far and no more. Vainly Khrushchev and its successors begged for a re-partition of the world and offered to share jointly with the imperialist the white man's burden of the role of colonial and anti-revolutionary world policeman. The 'new world order' that they jointly concocted over decades had in the end no place for them. Just like with the old Second International social fascists, these social-fascist of modern revisionism also served to pave the way for the full-blooded fascists to come to power, and then found themselves among the first victims. Dismissed from office and on meagre pensions at that.

In the first place their social base, like that of the old social-democracy, had its roots in the working class movement and the progressive ranks. Their anti- imperialist posturing and their false socialism did not allow the big bourgeois, the Russian monopolists, the same degree of freedom in exploiting the oppressed peoples and their own working class. Their reformist schemes were useful for disarming the masses and extorting from them tributes and sacrifices for the sake of the 'revolution and the communist ideal', while simultaneously accumulating their own imperialist capital. But this was not sufficient for chaining the masses and forcing them to shoulder the whole weight of the capitalist crisis: To allow for the extortion of the 'maximum profit', which in the last analysis, as Stalin has pointed out, is always needed by imperialism and constitutes its "basic economic law". (J.V. Stalin - Economic Problems of Socialism, Moscow, 1952)

And, what is more important, Marxism and the revolution carried on and marched forward. The Communist Party of China, led by Chairman Mao Tse-tung, unmasked and smashed modern revisionism.

Other communist parties and revolutionaries of the world refused to accept the policies and dictates of revisionism and carried on dealing violent blows against imperialism, reaction and social-imperialism itself. The strategic equilibrium in the world proletarian revolution continued to develop and the imperialists, despite the assistance of revisionism, were still unable to reverse the trend.

In the acute class struggle for the restoration of their tottering power and the grabbing back from the people the fruits of the anti-fascist victory, the imperialist bourgeoisie and the reactionaries had to fight against Marxism and the very idea of the proletarian dictatorship, socialism, and the movement for national liberation of the oppressed countries.

In this battle their advance snipers were the revisionists who used Marxism, the prestige of the Soviet Union and socialism, to serve the class enemy. Therefore, social-fascism is the heir of the old Trotskyists who used 'the party card' in their wrecking and sabotage for the restoration of bourgeois power, as Stalin pointed out - a reactionary project aimed at liquidating the revolutionary advance and the proletariat's future in exchange for the traditional bowl of porridge. Today some are complaining that the porridge itself is rotten and tastes rather sour. For some that ought to be the beginning of wisdom.

From inside the jail of fascist tyranny Chairman Gonzalo called upon us:

"It is the One Hundredth Anniversary of the birth of Chairman Mao. We must celebrate it!..... We want a new manner of celebration. A celebration that entails understanding the importance of Chairman Mao for the world revolution."

Lenin once said: "In politics, as in all the life of society, if you do not push forward, you will be hurled back." - V.I. Lenin - March 1906, Collected Works, Vol 10, pages 189 - 195. Comrade Stalin also said: "Marxism is the science of the laws governing the development of nature and society, the science of the revolution of the oppressed and exploited masses, the science of the victory of socialism in all countries, the science of building communist society. As a science, Marxism cannot stand still, it develops and is perfected. In its development, Marxism cannot but be enriched by new experience, new knowledge - consequently some of its formulas and conclusions cannot but change in the course of time, cannot but be replaced by new formulas and conclusions, corresponding to the new historical tasks. Marxism does not recognise invariable conclusions and formulas, obligatory for all epochs and periods. Marxism is the enemy of all dogmatism." (Marxism and Problems of Linguistics, August 2 1950)

In consequence the Marxist-Leninists had also to advance in theory and practice to serve the proletarian cause. In their battle against modern revisionism Marxism could not stand still, merely re-affirming its basic principles. It had to develop, as Marxism always develops, in acute class struggle at every level - in political economy, in scientific socialism, and in Marxist philosophy itself.

Therefore, amid the most acute class struggle against the bourgeoisie in the political, economic and military levels, that is within social life, and at the ideological level against revisionism the most advanced representative of bourgeois thought, the Marxism of our era was forged - Maoism.

There are some who pay lip service to Chairman Mao and Maoism, but who carp at, belittle and even slander our comrade Stalin and his contributions. These people cannot be considered real Marxists-Leninists, nor can they be considered true Maoists. Likewise, those who negate the identity between Marxism-Leninism and Maoism are but defenders of petrified, mummified 'Marxism'. They can not be recognised as true defenders of comrade Stalin, nor of his dialectical thought. They are people like: "The textualists and Talmudists (who) regard Marxism and separate conclusions and formulas of Marxism as a collection of dogmas, which <<never>> change, notwithstanding changes in the conditions of the development of society. They believe that if they learn these conclusions and formulas by heart and start citing them at random, they will be able to solve any problem, reckoning that the memorised conclusions and formulas will serve them for all times and countries, for all occasions in life. But this can be the conviction only of people who see the letter of Marxism, but not its essence, who learn by rote the text of conclusions and formulas of Marxism, but do not understand their meaning." (J.V. Stalin, Marxism and Problems of Linguistics, July 28, 1950).

It fell to Chairman Mao Tse-tung to direct this necessary struggle of the proletariat for the continuation of the development of Marxism, in China as well as at the world level. The Communist Party of China under his personal leadership was the most staunch defender of the historical role of comrade Stalin and the dictatorship of the proletariat, foremost in unmasking the gang of social-fascists that had wormed its way into the leadership of the CPSU, and foremost in branding them as revisionists and social-imperialists. But that was not all. Also in China, as it could not be otherwise, revisionism gave battle in a variety of forms, trying to reverse in the East the advances of the proletarian revolution.

In this context, the proletariat with Chairman Mao in the lead took the road that Marx had already pointed out, that Lenin and Stalin had rehearsed and prepared for, but that never in history had been attempted in such a bold, massive and decisive manner. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution shook the world for ten years. The deepest and most complex class struggle of the proletariat, mobilising in its vortex hundreds of millions of the people. Such was the massive stage upon which the proletariat dared to assault the heavenly citadel, as yet unconquered, of the bourgeois social relations that in socialism are inherited from the old society. Their aim was principally to transform their outlook and create a whole proletarian generation able to conceive of life totally without the bourgeoisie. In Chairman Gonzalo's words: "The gist of the problem is to change the soul, to transform ideology."

In this process all classes confronted each other and their ideologies and the widest masses were able to participate in exposing the grotesque nature of revisionism, principally of those Party people in power who were taking the capitalist road.

Of the four great historical milestones of the proletariat - the Paris Commune, the October revolution, the Chinese revolution and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, it is this last movement that achieves the greatest degree of development and significance in historical perspective. This in no way diminishes the glory and importance of all the previous ones.

This should not in any way surprise us. It is nothing but in compliance with the laws of historical development and materialistic dialectics: as contradictions develop in time they become intensified, the revolutionary movements deepen and widen in scope, range and significance. They open up new avenues and frontiers, discover new aspects, exponentially develop criticism, subjecting the remnants of the bourgeois ancien regime with which the new society emerges from the womb of the old, to the intense fire of the class struggle of the proletariat for establishing its leadership in all fields and aspects of the new.

It is in this kind of "permanent revolution" - as understood by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Chairman Mao, and not as Trotskyists imagine - and in ever growing waves, how the revolutionary class, the last in history, the proletariat, at the head of the immense masses of the oppressed, and in the last analysis on behalf of humanity itself, approaches, and continues to approach - in successive revolutions, democratic, socialist and cultural, according to the concrete conditions in each country and type of society - each time closer to the golden goal of communism. And as the class struggle develops and its bourgeois adversary presents greater resistance, more intense, brutal, violent and desperate - and also, even more subtle and crafty - generating an ever greater challenge each time round, until, driven against the last wall, the class is ready, willing and able to go for the ultimate prize. Hic rosa, hic salta!

The Cultural Revolution, as with all true revolutions, had great repercussions on the world scene. The masses, who had already stood up around the world during and after World War II and in the victory of socialism in China - the starting point of the strategic equilibrium in the world proletarian revolution - now take the road of open rebellion at every level against bourgeois and reactionary authority, political, religious, military, academic - indeed, reactionary authority of every kind. Youth refuses to serve in the reactionary armies, women demand real equality. The intellectuals, the petty bourgeois, the workers and peasants, in all nations and to different degrees, reclaim their rights in daily battles and bring about the greatest crisis affecting all sorts of old states, in the oppressed nations, as well as inside the imperialist powers themselves, including the Soviet Union. This is the great historical and undeniable fact of the decades of the sixties and seventies. Facing a world of 'Bolshie' masses, the reactionary needs of the imperialist bourgeoisie become increasingly overwhelming. The ruling classes fight with every means at their disposal, economic, political and ideological as well as military, in a hopeless attempt to put the genie back into the bottle.

Those are the true roots of the current crisis we are experiencing and of the new fascism, that the imperialist bourgeoisie and the reactionaries, are striving for - to shore up their threatened, ridiculed, impotent and untenable state machineries all over the world - amid feverish haste, and abundant blood and fire. Their motto is: Action before it is too late.

From its beginning the imperialist bourgeoisie attacked the Cultural Revolution at every level, political-ideologic, military and economic. The Soviet social- imperialists, as spearhead of the bourgeoisie, and using to the full their bogus communist credentials, committed even military aggression, made nuclear threats and made war preparations against the People's Republic of China. At the global level, with the assistance of the bourgeois cliques leading the so-called 'communist parties', with the collaboration of their allies in the bourgeois intelligentsia that go under a false 'left' label, together with opportunists of all hues, particularly Trotskyists and similar dogmatic tendencies, they carried out a sinister campaign of vile insults and falsehoods. They attempted to negate the Cultural Revolution, waving even the racist 'yellow peril' banner. They used the most diverse sophists and professors of 'Marxism' to drag out arguments to divert the masses from the revolutionary road taken by the Chinese proletariat and the teachings of Chairman Mao.

Within China the bourgeoisie fostered extremist winds from the right and from the 'left', aiming at generating diversions of all kinds in the development of the revolution, sowing disorder and promoting the restoration of their lost positions of power. All of this demonstrates that the Cultural Revolution was, and is to date, the most intense class struggle for the continuation of the revolution that the proletariat has ever undertaken within the conditions of socialism.

A word about the campaign of vilification against the Cultural Revolution and the flimsy arguments, echoing the accusations of 'extremism' and 'red guard excesses' that even today are carried out by imperialism, that are made by some 'Marxist- Leninist professors'. It should be sufficient to remind them of Lenin's words in 'Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government': "Frequently, the lackeys of the bourgeoisie reproached us for having launched a 'Red Guard' attack on capital. The reproach is absurd and is worthy only of the lackeys of the money-bags, because at one time the 'Red Guard' attack on capital was absolutely dictated by circumstances."

All serious Marxist-Leninists should now see clearly that the circumstances of the menace of capitalist restoration, Soviet social-imperialist aggression, and the very machinations of revisionism in China, were no idle threat, but on the contrary, that they "absolutely dictated" a "Red Guard attack" by the revolutionaries. Therefore the question is not whether there were or not excesses or mistakes - no real revolution can be free of these - the question is: The Cultural Revolution - was it, or was it not, an attack on capital?

Every Marxist knows that capital, as Lenin once emphasised, is not merely money or property but "a definite social relation". The 'Red Guard attack' of the Cultural Revolution, was or was it not directed against a definite social relation? This revolution, was it or was it not the greatest proletarian onslaught against the capitalist social relations inherited from the old society, the authority of academics and bureaucrats, the arrogance of the reactionary intellectuals and the monopolists of knowledge, paternalism and male authority in the family, and principally against the Party leaders using Marxism, the Party and the revolution, to defend their privileges and to take the road of capitalist restoration?

Taking advantage of the death of Chairman Mao Tse-tung the revisionist clique of Deng Xiao-ping made a power grab in China with the open and total support of imperialism. In this fashion the bourgeoisie carried out its fascist policy in attempting to reverse the achievements of the Cultural Revolution. This meant a second stage in its counter-revolutionary endeavour against Maoism and a further step in its search of a new fascist order at the world level. The capitalist restoration in China usurped the state and party machinery developed by the proletariat in order to install the most overt negation of democratic freedoms at the service of the most voracious exploitation of the working class and the peasantry ever witnessed. Using Deng's Thatcher- like slogan 'Party members must lead the way in getting rich first' - another version of trickle down economics - the revisionist gang carried out a ferocious witch-hunt of loyal revolutionaries and true communists. They unleashed bureaucratic capitalist corruption as the political- economic lever and sold, even more frenziedly that the Russian social-fascists, the country to foreign monopoly capital. In their external policy, as it befits a fascist regime, they joined in the aggressive imperialist front, colluding and contending with the other big powers for spheres of influence, besides using their acolytes inside the Communist Parties to set up liquidationist splinter organisations geared to fighting against the revolutionary line of Chairman Mao all over the world.

Restoration in China failed to deliver the imperialist pipe dream of stability.

On the contrary, it presented the bourgeoisie with enormous additional problems, not solely in China but at the world level. The rapid growth of bureaucratic capitalism in China, the opening of its immense markets to monopoly capitalist exploitation, resulted in a cut-throat competition for capital and markets among the different imperialist groups and, eventually, in the very collapse of Soviet social- imperialism. This last bourgeois dictatorship found itself unable to compete in the rate of capitalist development with China without totally jettisoning the 'brake mechanisms' that the remnants of the economic model inherited from the socialist era meant for this objective. It found itself forced to launch Gorbachov's Perestroika and Glasnost. This 'opening of Pandora's Box' led them directly into their total political crisis - the bankruptcy of their political model - and in time, to the open 'free market' fascist dictatorship set up under former CPSU Central Committee member Boris Yeltsin and supervised directly by international finance capital that is now attempting to shore up their tottering class rule.

However, the echoes of the crisis are not limited to Russia and China. They involve parallel economical and political developments within the big imperialist countries, principally in Europe, where the post-war settlement also falls politically before the new economic reality. The 'socialist' and 'labour' reforms are taken down one after the other. The power of the worker's unions is restricted and trampled upon, repressive legislation set up, all with the aim of making the economy 'more competitive'. It is in this way in which we must understand Thatcher's slogan of 'there is no alternative'. The formation of a European super- estate is accelerated while simultaneously this scheme is experiencing a lingering political crisis and encountering ever growing resistance. At the world level, unemployment grows and salaries are reduced again and again in real value, labour is made to speed-up, foreign debt and windfalls for finance capital are taken straight from the people's pockets and the sufferings of small nations. Corruption at the national and international level proliferates, presenting enormous political problems and threatening the very stability of the states. The old fascists raise their ugly heads and begin auditioning themselves for the role of storm troopers for the maintenance of the old imperialist order.

With the start of the People's War in Peru - vindicating the revolutionary proletarian line - the imperialist crisis considerably deepens. This development overtakes it while it is still struggling, without final results, for reversing the outcome of the two previous high tides of the proletarian revolution - the one that brought about the October revolution, the anti-fascist victory and the triumph of the Chinese revolution - waves that as a whole had brought about strategic equilibrium in the class struggle at the world level - and the tide of the Cultural Revolution that crowned this equilibrium and prepared the conditions for this third wave that we are already perceiving - a wave that has its first signs, like the masts of an approaching ship on the horizon, in the People's War in Peru. In this way, the World Proletarian Revolution enters into its strategic offensive amidst the greatest crisis of imperialism, amid countless peasant wars that are shaking the world, and with the proletariat all over the globe, stronger and incomparably more numerous and conscious every passing day.

This is a total and unrelieved crisis revealing ever more starkly the obsolescence of the social relations sustaining the bourgeoisie's power. A crisis in which, moreover, the Marxists reorganise, raise again their banners of struggle, and make a comeback equipped with greater experience and more proven solutions than before.

Under what forms does fascism presents itself today? How is the power of finance capital preparing to defend itself in this, its greatest crisis?

In 1918 Lenin had already noted: "There is no other alternative: either Soviet government triumphs in every advanced country in the world, or the most reactionary imperialism triumphs, the most savage imperialism, which is throttling the small and weak nations and reinstating reaction all over the world." And he added an important characterisation: "..Anglo-American imperialism, which has perfectly mastered the art of using the form of a democratic republic."

As a consequence of the defeat of German, Italian and Japanese fascism in World War II, the fascist method prevailing today is the Anglo-American method of exerting the power of finance capital. Today Russia and all the eastern European countries have all adopted this method with the necessary variations and restrictions. These correspond to how fascism is unevenly developing today: a greater reactionary attitude on the part of the state and a growing concentration of power in the hands of the executive branch, with a tendency towards even more concentration and one-man dictatorships, with pocket parliaments and barely disguised dictatorships that change and alter constitutional arrangements at will, resorting to coups and fascist style referendums. In synthesis, the Anglo-American model of finance capital dictatorship is tending toward Fujimori or Yeltsin style regimes, as a specific form of narrow social-base fascist dictatorship which arises amid acute internal contradictions among different sections of the reactionary ruling classes.

In its domestic policy the imperialist state is progressively adopting an openly reactionary visage. Fascist positions proliferate and there is an accelerated curtailing of public liberties. The reconstitution of the imperialist states in order to adapt them to the new repressive necessities of the ruling classes proceeds full steam ahead. In the legal field, principally by means of penal and public order legislation of a fascist character, emergency laws and states of siege are employed that turn into permanent instruments of government for all sort of purposes. All this is aimed primarily against the working people, in particular the class conscious proletariat and its political leadership.

In foreign policy it gives vent to a new interventionist and colonialist elan in its relations with weaker countries, using the United Nations as a military-political counter-revolutionary and oppressive instrument, recruiting mercenary armed forces from among the diverse reactionary dictatorships of the third world, including openly fascistic regimes. Today the various imperialist powers are apparently coordinating actions for re-establishing a stranglehold on their respective spheres of influence at the expense of the weaker countries, principally in the third world and in Eastern Europe. But this 'coordination' due to mutual necessity can barely conceal or retard the new forcible redivision of these spheres of influence that is under way even now. Neither can it hide the fact that this tendency to unleash its inter-imperialist contradictions is constantly on the rise and becoming more acute, as we can observe in the permanent bickering among the 'coalition members'- and even within each 'coalition member - in Yugoslavia, in Somalia, in Iraq, in Cuba, in Korea, in Haiti, and wherever they may be today tying a further 'knot of war'.

About ideological preparation for fascism:

We must not forget the role that so-called humanitarian organisations, bourgeois charitable foundations, human rights watchdogs, think-tanks and non-governmental organisations, etc., are playing today in the service of monopoly capital. Here we have a rich loam that imperialism is exploiting in order to widen its social base and drag the intermediate social layers into support for its reactionary adventures. It is within these organisations that imperialism seeks to generate the necessary bourgeois 'altruism' and paternalistic 'internationalism' that new fascism can use in mobilising favourable public opinion and, especially, to recruit a 'Jeunesse Dorée' with whose misguided idealism they may spearhead their reactionary assault. We must not forget that those masses influenced by these organisations are in the main a traditional constituency of the left, social layers that may normally be influenced by the proletariat, but that today, partly because of the spread of revisionist ideas during the last few decades, have temporarily become a strategic reserve for imperialism in its attempt at setting up a wider-based fascist project.

In this context I would like to quote a journalistic piece entitled precisely 'Act before it is too late' and written by three European MPs and members of humanitarian organisations, José María Mendiluce, Pierre Pradieur and Bernard Kouchner (El País, August 9, 1994): "In our 'fin de sicle', nearly all the conflicts that the international community passively witnesses are internal wars"......."It is necessary to fight, send in more doctors, more medicines, more supplies, more vaccines, and more and more. These will never be sufficient, but, evidently, this is not enough."..."There is an epidemic threatening the life of the inhabitants of our planet: war, more concretely, civil, ethnical, ideological wars......". "....from now on the action of the states, of the governments, of the inter-governmental and non- governmental organisations, of the specialist agencies of the UN is indispensable."

"Europe today....is in a privileged position to generate and develop a collective will.......". "What are the stages that we must contemplate in order to advance? Firstly, to generate the political will on the part of public opinion.........a will in favour of preventive action.......". "It is necessary that the international community demonstrates a will to arm itself with the means of intervention (political, diplomatic and, in the last analysis, but no less important, the military means) in order to prevent civil wars.". "This is what Europeans must contemplate. This is why us.........men and women from different nationalities and political groups, have set up an inter-work group with the objective of fostering preventive action. The success of our enterprise will be linked to the faith, the intelligence and the perseverance of the citizens of our European Union."

Here we have an imperialist, a fascist program for today. A programme that develops the revisionists' proposals on 'joint administration of the world' and imperialist collaboration against revolutionary civil wars originally advocated by Khrushchev at the time of the Vietnam conflict and the spread of Maoist insurgencies and other revolutionary activities in the Third World. Comrades cannot have forgotten how Khrushchev spoke to the other big imperialists, principally the USA, about 'jointly pointing our little fingers against troublemakers'. This is a programme later updated and refined by Gorbachev and today implemented in practice by Yeltsin, and also by Chinese revisionism under Deng Xiao Ping. This programme, in the main - the only quibbles being over the price of collaboration - is today accepted and endorsed by all the other revisionist regimes who partake, actively or passively, in the new world order that imperialism is attempting to impose. All these regimes of bogus socialism and real subservience to imperialism are today involved in counter-revolutionary wars, supplying weapons of repression, military advisers, and political and moral support to reactionary regimes, particularly aiming their hypocritical efforts against the People's War in Peru.

This programme seeks to mobilise masses against masses in order to sustain imperialism. It seeks to mobilise masses to stabilise the reactionary order. It is a programme that, under a mask of humanitarian concern and international solidarity, shows the fascist military fangs of imperialist intervention on a global scale. Let us create not one, but one hundred Somalias, that is their programme.

What does the spread of the racism and chauvinism of the old Hitler and Mussolini style fascism means in these circumstances? What about Japanese militarism, the Islamic movement in Asia and Africa, monarchism and the Cossack-style reaction in Russia as well as so many other reactionary monsters, even in this very country?

It means that beneath the shadow of the current counter-revolutionary offensive, imperialism is nurturing forces capable of radicalising even more its reactionary tendency. That these are forces kept in reserve by imperialism, as a strategic asset that may provide the iron chains and the torture chambers, staff for the concentration camps and for the butchery of subversives and rebels who refuse to submit to their project. This new fascism aims strategically at enroling these forces into the legions of 'men and women of different nationalities and political groups' they need in order to promote their 'preventive action', by 'military means' when necessary.

The racism and chauvinism of these social forces is one of the reactionary contradictions that imperialism is seeking to overcome to give its fascist project the homogeneous content necessary for the present era. The current project does not tally well with open racism and even less with anti-semitism, which were some of the main levers of the old fascism. For example, the state of Israel is today one of the principal partners of modern fascism. Moreover, monopoly capital today has too many senior partners of different skin colours and cultural backgrounds for them to play these cards like in the past. The world has changed.

However, it would not do to overlook the efforts of imperialism to gain the incorporation of the traditional fascists into their new reactionary programme. For example, French imperialism. Here we see an extremely aggressive imperialist policy in foreign relations dressed up as 'humanitarian intervention', adopting a 'Leftist' discourse and even an 'anti-fascist' tone (for example in Yugoslavia). Intellectually it claims to be inspired by an altruistic mixture of Medecin sans Frontiers and Madame Mitterrand. However, French domestic policy is directed by a racist and openly terrorist demagogue, Charles Pasqua - a personality who practically puts Goering himself in the shade.

The sewer rats of old fascism will be useful from time to time for imperialism and whenever they need to use the iron fist against their own citizens. Meanwhile, they strive to update the old brown shirts. That is why imperialism invites them to rather feel themselves 'citizens of our European Union', or 'citizens of the civilized world'. A role in which these gentlemen of long arms and short ideas may give free play to their racism and their chauvinism in the name of 'fighting against barbarism' and 'for the values of European civilisation'. The Nazis also spoke in this fashion in their own time.

The current reactionary offensive, the current fascist offensive of monopoly capital, of imperialism, is essentially an anti-communist, in particular anti-Marxist offensive. They aim at diverting the people from the revolution. That is why they point their spears against the quintessence of Marxism, rebellion, armed struggle and civil war - in class society civil war is always class war in one form or another. They foster 'pacifist' ideology in order to negate the class struggle and its most acute expression. Therein the characterisation as 'terrorism' that they apply against national liberation wars and revolutionary civil wars. Therein the negation of the right to exercise violence - right that they reserve for themselves in the guise of the 'international community' - negation that they hypocritically foster under bogus progressive banners. That is why imperialism aims against the acme of Maoism, the People's War, painting it in the darkest colours. They want to negate in every possible way the great truth expressed by Chairman Mao: "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."

At what stage in the development of the new fascism we find ourselves?

It is apparent that a number of fascist regimes are already in place, having come to power, or grabbed further powers, by various means of violence and violations of their own legality, for example in Russia, and traditionally, in a number of Third World countries. However, at the global level, particularly in the old established bourgeois regimes, we are still at the preparatory stage. The 'most reactionary circles' have not yet assaulted power by means of force, and in some instances, even the old style fascists and their progeny, continue to uphold, at least in words, the bourgeois democratic institutions. On the one hand they swear loyalty to these while, on the other, they seek the opportunity for the coup de force - Berlusconi in Italy, for example.

But even at this preparatory stage the bourgeoisie is already introducing a series of intermediate steps, repressive measures and a fascistic remodelling of society. It is not accidental that the large imperialist states are currently all undergoing reforms in two key areas. Firstly, a reform in matters of internal policies, principally penal reforms - authoritarian use of repression, building of jails and labour camps (short, sharp shocks for rebellious youth for example), policies to increase the criminalisation of whole classes within society, sending larger numbers of people to jail, interning refugees, as is done now in Germany and to some extent in other countries, including Britain. On the other hand, and as a complement, the use of social welfare and other state services to reactionary ends: cataloguing and surveillance of the population, persecution and marginalisation of state income dependants, introduction of state persecution for defaulters in various areas of state or local contributions, poll tax defaulters, child maintenance, etc. A genocidal policy in health matters, euthanasia forced and voluntary and commercialisation of health services. They invoke Malthusian principles on population growth matters, principally in the Third World. Nevertheless, the thought of having a redundant population in the very metropolitan countries keeps cropping up in various fashions. The principle promoted today from China to the banks of the Thames seems to be that the old should die as soon as possible and the young should not be even born.

Secondly, they are also setting up military reforms to convert the armed forces of their states into forces principally geared to foreign intervention and occupation. They are recruiting and arming mercenary forces and 'colonial' troops from a number of proxy states. They are streamlining intervention forces and implementing low-intensity warfare doctrines, as well as psychological warfare.

I could say much more on these topics, but surely there will be many comrades who would study and reveal these factors in a more systematic and scientific basis. Sufficient is to say that all this is evidence that the imperialist bourgeoisie is indeed preparing for fascism.

In synthesis, we find ourselves at a moment in which, as Dimitrov said: "Whoever does not fight the reactionary measures of the bourgeoisie and the growth of fascism at these preparatory stages is not in a position to prevent the victory of fascism, but, on the contrary, facilitates that victory."

Old style fascism was able to win the day and come to power in the past. Why? Dimitrov pointed out: "Fascism was able to come to power primarily because the working class, owing to the policy of class collaboration with the bourgeoisie pursued by the Social-Democratic leaders, proved to be split, politically and organisationally disarmed, in face of the onslaught of the bourgeoisie. And the Communist Parties, on the other hand, apart from and in opposition to the Social- Democrats, were not strong enough to rouse the masses and to lead them in a decisive struggle against fascism."

Is this not also the case today? And is it not an even more serious problem than yesterday? Is it not the case that the class, many communist parties, have been divided, politically and organisationally disarmed by revisionism? Can anyone say that we have numerous sufficiently strong communist parties today so as to 'lead the masses in a decisive struggle against fascism'?

What is to be done?

In his speech Chairman Gonzalo said:

"What should we do? What is the order of the day? Well, the order of the day is to strengthen the people's liberation movement........ The order of the day is to set up a Front of People's Liberation ...... That is the order of the day! That is what we shall do! That is what we are already doing! And that is what we are going to be doing!....You will witness it!"

Dimitrov said: "Comrades, millions of workers and working people of the capitalist countries ask the question: How can fascism be prevented from coming into power and how can fascism be overthrown after it has obtained power? To this the Communist International replies: The first thing that must be done, the thing with which to begin, is to form a united front, to establish unity of action of the workers in every factory, in every district, in every region, in every country all over the world. Unity of action of the proletariat on a national and international scale is the mighty weapon which renders the working class capable not only of successful defence but also of successful counterattack against fascism, against the class enemy."

"Proletarians of all countries, unite!"

From the time of Marx and Engels our movement has been guided by the necessity of forging its unity. Its unity of action to defend its freedoms and rights, its class interests. Its unity, in synthesis, for the struggle for political power, to accomplish our revolution and to shape the world in accordance with our outlook in life.

All the classics of Marxism have advocated the United Front as the class policy. Whosoever disputes this fact does not know what the proletariat is, and even less does he know Marxism.

We must always remind ourselves that to achieve victory our cause depends upon the many, and that the few, the leaders and cadres, have only an important but limited role to play. That revolutions are made by the masses, as indeed history itself is. That the parties, the leaders and the revolutionary organisations can only exert the various tasks of leadership and orientation. The tasks of leadership are crucial for the victory of the masses, and we all know that without a revolutionary party there can not be a victorious revolution. But these are tasks that, if not discharged properly by some, others can always - and, inevitably, will always - take their place in accomplishing.

"Ye are many, they are few!", wrote the English poet Percy Shelley. The communists have as a principle the unity of the greatest number. Chairman Gonzalo once said "..either we all enter communism or no one does". But this unity we seek, the only possible unity, is unity with a class sense and purpose. Unity rooted in principle and with a clear objective. Our unity has but one condition: "..that it is directed against the class enemy."

Moreover, this unity of the untold millions of workers, peasants, students and other democratic sectors, this great anti-fascist and revolutionary front, cannot be accomplished without simultaneously forging the unity of the proletarian class, its backbone, organiser and guide in the struggle. And the proletariat would be unable to fulfil its role if it lacks its own class party, its thinking and acting organ, the Communist Party. Today in the world, there is a lack of Communist Parties as never before. The handiwork of revisionism still weighs heavily upon the subjective conditions, particularly in the advanced countries where the social basis of imperialism allows fertile ground for revisionist weeds - the ideas of the labour aristocracy. It is undeniable that a large portion of the workers movement in the imperialist countries has for a long time followed a revisionist orientation. It has abandoned Marxism and served the class enemy.

Therefore the masses, in their wisdom and common sense, and seeing with a sharp eye how things stood, stayed away from such communist parties that were dragging the red flag through the social-fascist mud, justifying all the crimes against the class and the people that revisionism committed at the service of the imperialist bourgeoisie. Obsolete parties, miserable cabooses for the train of the aristocracy of labour and its social-democrat parties. What use could such parties be for the oppressed? What advantage could the class or the people perceive in them?

Moreover, among those who one way or another resisted the Marshall's baton of modern revisionism, a true communist movement failed to coalesce, nor did authentic revolutionary parties arose in most parts of the world. Apart from a handful of individuals, the majority of these organisms fell to charlatans and dogmatic sectarians, who made of 'anti-revisionism' a bargaining chip to receive the largesse of various factions within the revisionist camp. With such 'communist parties' there could not be revolution of any kind, and the popular masses were better able than the leaders to perceive their true interests in resisting and staying away from the social-fascist project of revisionism.

Therein the roots of the divorce between the party and the masses. A party that wants to direct the masses against their own interests ends up an empty shell and an obsolete apparatus of no use whatsoever.

Conditions are changing. Today there is a change of front and many people are opening their eyes and re-examining their conduct.

This is something good, positive. If a blind man may at the end see a ray of light, it is something of a minor miracle. There are some, who 38 years after the 20th Congress realise that they 'no longer can continue upholding it'. That is good, but hardly sufficient.

Such people today approach the Marxists, dust off their Stalin badges, no longer quibble with Chairman Mao. They have a good word for the Peruvian revolution and show concern for Chairman Gonzalo. All of this is really very good.

However, I think that those who would want to be considered to be back in the camp of revolution ought to remember that they have a number of heavy debts to pay. Debts with the revolutionaries that never left the trenches and had to endure their crossfire on behalf of Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and even down to Gorbachov. There are many good communists who suffered at their hands, were expelled, victimised and hounded out from the party organisms for the only crime of resisting the liquidation of the Party they gave their lives to build. This cannot be ignored either, and good comrades are right in criticising with a rod of iron.

There is at least one minor point that the penitents of revisionism must concede immediately: That any 'communist party' that takes 38 years to discover what the masses were already absolutely clear about in their millions, can hardly claim the ability, let alone the right to lead anyone anywhere. Such people ought to sit in the dock while the proletariat faces them with all their failures. They must repudiate all their conduct, all their line, which only began to unfold with the 20th Congress to which they no longer adhere. Many still need to see how can they can explain 38 years of following every pirouette of Khrushchev and his successors. They want to know how they ended up following in the footsteps of every treason of revisionism, every aggression of social-imperialism, every crime of social-fascism.

There are some other people that say, the blind have seen a light. Stop criticising them for the sake of unity.

I cannot agree with this position either. To see a ray of light does not mean that a blind person is cured, nor that such people are in a capacity to play a positive role in forging a real unity in the service of the revolution and the people. No, criticism of revisionism must continue and deepen even more. Those in debt to Marxism, to the revolution, to the people, and a handful have even blood debts, cannot escape so lightly. They must be made an example of and must take all their medicine. They must purge themselves of their rotten bourgeois elements.

However, I do not consider that criticism should be purely negative. It is of course possible that all this is a farce and the spirit of self-criticism they claim is not sincere. But still, my opinion is that we must be patient with the sick, and cannot expect overnight cures even with the best medicine. I do not think everyone can be cured, but we should trust that the great majority can be, if not today, then tomorrow.

It is no good for those who remained loyal to Marxism in this occasion, to become arrogant and adopt airs of infallibility.

No one is free of errors, let alone of the possibility of committing them. We must take into account that if someone has suffered an illness and becomes cured, even if it took 40 years, there is a good chance that a resistance to the same bug may develop. On the other hand, those who proved immune to this strain of the virus are not immune to any and all other varieties. Nor are they inoculated for all time. Marxists only know of one infallible prevention and cure: Criticism and self- criticism. This should never cease, on the contrary, it must become ever deeper, more radical and concrete.

Lenin said, "Vacillation on the part of the petty bourgeois-democrats is inevitable." I consider that the great majority of those who followed revisionism, apart from a handful of criminals and bureaucrats beyond redemption, can be regarded as deluded masses who were followers and not ring leaders. That, in the last analysis, it was their petty bourgeois mentality, their lack of true Bolshevik spirit, that led them to follow the class enemy. Therefore, it is possible to apply to them the terms that Lenin used about petty bourgeois democrats: "The period of our proletarian revolution in which the differences with the Menshevik and Socialist Revolutionary democrats were particularly acute was a historically necessary period. It was impossible to avoid waging a vigorous struggle against these democrats when they swung to the camp of our enemies and set about restoring a bourgeois and imperialist democratic republic. Many of the slogans of this struggle have now become frozen and petrified and prevent us from properly assessing and taking advantage of the new period in which a change of front has begun among these democrats, a change in our direction, not a fortuitous change, but one rooted deep in the conditions of the international situation." Lenin added: "It is not enough to encourage this change of front and amicably greet those who are making it. A politician who knows what he is working for must learn to bring about this change of front among the various sections and groups of the broad mass of petty-bourgeois democrats if he is convinced that serious and deep-going historical reasons for such a turn exist. A revolutionary must know whom to suppress and with whom - and when and how - to conclude an agreement." "...it would be equally foolish and ridiculous...... to insist only on tactics of suppression and terror in relation to the petty bourgeois democrats when the course of events is compelling them to turn in our direction." "The task of influencing the waverer is not identical with the task of overthrowing the exploiter and defeating the active enemy." " One of the most urgent tasks of the present day is to take into account and make use of the turn among the Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary democrats from hostility to Bolshevism first to neutrality and then to support Bolshevism." (V.I. Lenin, November 20, 1918 - The Valuable Admissions of Pitirim Sorokin, Collected Works Vol. 28, pp 185-194).

From inside the cage of fascist tyranny, Chairman Gonzalo indicated:

"What is unfolding in the world today? What do we need? We need Maoism to be taken up by the people, and that is already happening. We need Maoism to take the lead in generating Communist Parties able to handle and guide this great wave of the world revolution that is upon us."

How should we regard Maoism?

We should regard Maoism as the continuation, the intensification, the deepening and elevation of Marxism and Marxism-Leninism. I say this because there are some in our world who understand the new solely in contradiction with the old. One- sided people who assume Maoism to be something in 'essential' contradiction with Marxism-Leninism. Such comrades are deeply mistaken. Maoism is the Marxism- Leninism of our era. Is Marxism incorporating the decisive importance of the theoretical and practical developments in the proletarian revolution since the death of comrade Stalin. Maoism is the most highly developed Marxism, forged in the midst of the class struggle, in the most consistent, profound and orthodox manner.

Lenin said: "a communist is expected to devote greater attention to the tasks of tomorrow, and not of yesterday." (V. I. Lenin 'Left Wing Childishness and Petty Bourgeois Mentality, Collected Works, Vol 27, pp. 323-54). Therefore, any movement that undertakes to reclaim the fundamental principles of Marxism, principles emasculated by modern revisionism, will find such principles are already living more in the morrow than in the yesterday. In communism there is no 'return to the past', rather there is always an advance to the future. To advance to the future one must sum up the level of present development in the light of past accomplishments, but with eyes firmly fixed on the days to come where the hardest battles lay. If all that heroic and glorious past is to mean anything at all, it can only be in relation to the final aim, the golden future of the class and the people. Otherwise, like Bukharin, we would be 'regarding the tasks of the proletariat ... from the point of view of the past and not of the future', as Lenin reproached him for. Or, like old Bernstein, we may as well proclaim: "The movement is everything, the final aim is nothing."

That is why I have no doubt that if comrade Stalin himself could be here today he would applaud this position and fully endorse it by participating in our struggle. That is why true followers of Stalin are doing precisely this right now. Whoever counter-poses comrade Stalin to comrade Mao Tse-tung is not serving the development of the proletarian cause but the interests of the class enemy. It does not matter what label this comrade may assume, Stalinist or Maoist, such comrade has no grasp of Marxism whatsoever.

This task of summing up the historical experience and theoretical developments of the proletarian movement under the leadership of Chairman Mao, Maoism, is still a pending task for many of us here present. This lack too is part of the negative baggage of revisionism. We could do well by giving this immediate attention. Taking up Maoism is the key for resuming the advance of the proletarian cause.

How should we understand the generation of Communist Parties?

Engels once noted that in the course of the historical development there will come a time in which 'the class becomes the party'. We should interpret this as an indication of the fact that the party lives in the consciousness of the class. That the disorganisation inflicted by revisionism is but a passing phenomena that merely ripples in the surface of events. The old mole is always burrowing. The quantitative and qualitative growth of the proletariat cannot not in any way be interrupted by these negative winds in the super-structure. It continues to develop and therefore the Party, although in a disorganised state, lives today in the hearts of the masses even more powerfully and brightly than yesterday.

The question is to reorganise and reconstitute it on the grounds of the most advanced Marxist theory and policies. The question is to equip it with its necessary organs and instruments to accomplish its tasks, that such a party may take the lead in the class struggle and aim at the victorious accomplishment of the revolution and the complete fulfilment of the unflinching tasks of the class.

This brings us again to the question of the United Front. The Party, in a certain way is also a form of united front. A united front of Marxist revolutionaries that has achieved a certain degree of homogeneity of views and established such voluntary discipline under democratic centralist principles that allows it to function and be regarded as a Party, not only by itself but by a sufficient section of the masses. We must never confuse the United Front with the Party but nevertheless it must be affirmed that the Party is not and can never be a monolith. Therefore inside the Party the same general principles of the United Front apply. Dimitrov taught us: "..unity of views is better achieved in the joint struggle against the class enemy this very day"..." To propose immediate unity instead of forging a United Front is like putting the coach in front of the horses and to think that it then would move forward."

Our Stalin Society is this class of United Front geared to forging the basis of the most homogeneous unity capable of offering fertile ground for the reconstitution of an authentic Communist Party. This society is not today the only United front of its kind but is, in my opinion, the one that offers the best perspectives in this country. Fundamentally because this Society boldly upholds the banner of comrade Stalin, a truly revolutionary banner without which there is no Marxism worth a candle.

Nevertheless, there are some people who say: 'We must forge a Party free of any opportunist or revisionist tendencies'. These gentlemen would be better served in seeking the Holy Grail. In our world things of such purity do not exist and cannot exist. Their position does not tally with dialectics, and historical experience demonstrates that as soon as a form of revisionism or opportunist trend is overcome, the same tendencies reappear under new guises. It will always be so under conditions of class society and while diverse interests may affect even the conclusions of science. As Lenin once noted: "..if mathematics were found to affect people's interests, there would be those that would argue that two plus two make five". The question is that Marxism is put in command and that Marxism be the guide - principal and not subordinated, as in those opportunist organisations where incense is burned to Marxism, but revisionism is the daily practice.

This principle applies even to the most Bolshevik-like Communist Party, where the two-line struggle is precisely the motor that impels its development and the savvy of the Party's life, without which it would come to an end. This is even more apposite in the case of a United Front. Therefore struggle against revisionism and opportunism, struggle for the defence and for the advance of Marxism, is a permanent necessity that can never end this side of class society. On the other side, in communist society, there will still continue the struggle between correct and advanced things and ideas and the incorrect and backward ones. This is how things stand in reality. Whosoever thinks otherwise has unfortunately missed out in vocation. Such people should do well in seeking out a religious doctrine that preaches and offers them an everlasting heaven. They should really leave Marxism alone, although precisely because of the laws of dialectics, we know they certainly will not.

In synthesis, our immediate task is to strengthen the unity of our front. To generate a movement in defence of Marxist ideas, aiming it against the class enemy. To strive for revitalising the Party spirit and training successors for the revolution. We must place the United front at the top of the agenda and we should put it in practice in a bold and determined fashion.

Chairman Gonzalo, writing about José Carlos Mariátegui, quotes him: " 'My attitude since my incorporation in this vanguard, has always been one of a convinced factor, of a fervent propagandist of the United Front', Mariátegui wrote on May First 1924; He held that 'we are still to few for us to become divided' and that there was too many common tasks to accomplish in the service of the class. Firm advocate of the United Front, he demanded it as solidarity, concrete and practical action on the part of those, who without losing their respective ideological identities 'must feel united by class solidarity, linked by the common struggle against the common enemy, linked by the same revolutionary will and the same passion for renewal'. And taking the standpoint of recognising that 'the variety of tendencies and the diversity of ideological hues within this human legion that is the proletariat is inevitable', he demanded: 'The important question is that those groups and those tendencies be able to understand each other in the face of the concrete reality of the day. That they should not clash in Byzantine arguments, or mutual excommunications and canonical condemnations. That they should not drive the masses away from the revolution with the sorry spectacle of the dogmatic quarrels among their preachers. That they shall not use their weapons or waste their time in wounding one another, but use them in fighting the old social order, its institutions, its injustices and its crimes'. Today these words are a living call demanding that we put our unity in today's agenda, unity, like we did yesterday, to accomplish the common 'historical duties ' of developing class consciousness and class sentiments, to sow and propagate class ideals and ideas of renewal, to rescue the workers from false institutions that claim to represent them; to fight repression and the corporative (fascist) offensive, to defend the organisation, the press and the tribune of the class; to struggle for the peasants' demands. 'Historical duties' that will 'merge and combine our roads' in the course of their accomplishment'........ These theses tested by reality also demand that we shall overcome sectarianism that today is a generalised problem. We should take into account that 'the masses demand unity' and lend attentive ears to these valid and commanding words: 'The sincere, noble and elevated spirits in the camp of revolution, are able to perceive and respect, beyond any theoretical barrier, the historical solidarity of their efforts and of their works. It is to the mean minded and shortsighted, to those dogmatic minds that want to petrify life in a rigid formula that the privilege of lack of understanding and sectarian egotism belong'.....Let us fight for unity today more than ever, because 'a reactionary policy will cause, finally the polarizing of the left. The capitalist counter-offensive will achieve what the instinct of the working classes could not do: the united proletarian front'."

Let us again turn to the words of Georgi Dimitrov: "The cause of communism demands, not abstract, but concrete struggle against deviations; prompt and determined rebuff to all harmful tendencies as they arise, and the timely rectification of mistakes. To replace the necessary concrete struggle against deviations by a peculiar sport - hunting imaginary deviations or deviators - is an intolerably harmful distortion".

In synthesis:

Today we face a fascist danger in progress. In order to fight it and win we must develop the United Front, mobilising the widest masses. To generate such a front and to lead it, we need Communist Parties that uphold, defend and apply proletarian ideology, Marxism, today Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. We need to develop a specific thought translating these universal principles in accordance with the concrete reality of each country and each revolution.

For all this we need to apply the principles of the United Front in a consistent manner. A Communist Party. The party of the revolution that is needed to see off fascism victoriously, will not arise from a consortium of a few individual figures, nor from the fusion of a number of organisations, although individuals and organisations may and should play an important role. Parties like the ones we need would only arise in the struggle for the common objectives.

Party and United Front. Party and the instruments of the revolution. United Front, in unity and struggle to forge the Party. Party, forged in unity and struggle, to lead and extend the United Front in combat, and by means of unity and struggle.

This is what we really need, right now!