*----------------------------------------------------------* | | | x x x x x xxx x x xxx xx xxx x x | | xx xx x xx xx x x x x x x x x x x Issue #2-3 | | x x x x x x x x xxxx xx x x xxx xxx | | x x x x x x x x x x x x x x 02/10/86 | | x x x x x x x x xxx xx x x x | | | |----------------------------------------------------------| | Theory Journal of the Maoist Internationalist Movement | *----------------------------------------------------------* ON PERU'S SHINING PATH ON SEXUAL ORIENTATION PERUVIAN COMMUNIST PARTY CALLS FOR "MILITARIZATION OF PARTY" Recognizing the profound universal significance of Maoism for the development of Marxism-Leninism, the Peruvian Communist Party is working to develop and apply Mao Zedong Thought to the question of the vanguard party's relationship to the military. According to a speaker from the World Tour to Support the Revolution in Peru, Chairman Gonzalo supports the "militarization of the party." In the imperialist dominated countries, comrade Gonzalo stresses the political necessity of armed struggle. Formed in 1928, the Communist Party of Peru had two years of development before it was sidestracked. For 30 years, the rightists dominated the Communist Party of Peru. Then in the midst of a wave of spontaneous struggles of the Peruvian peasants, workers and students and the rising crescendo of revolution in China, a red faction formed in the Peruvian Communist Party led by Comrade Gonzalo. According to the speaker from the World Tour, the Peruvian Communist Party marks its formation as a Leninist party of a new type only in 1964 when revisionists were finally expelled from the party. For 15 years, the party of a new type prepared for armed struggle. In 1979, the party finally agreed to go over to armed struggle after prolonged struggles within the party. From 1980 to this day, the Peruvian Communist Party has led the armed struggle of the Sendero Luminoso. Criticizing the FMLN of El Salvador for not forming a vanguard party to lead the masses' armed struggle, the PCP points out that the masses are politically disarmed as a result of the eclecticism, revisionism and opportunism of the FMLN's leaders and its social democratic political wing--the FDR. While the speaker did not waste his time pissing on the anti-imperialist struggle of El Salvador, he made it clear that Peru's armed struggle took a different form because of the leadership of the PCP. The PCP has vowed to never lay down its arms. In El Salvador, the military wing of the FMLN is viewed by at least its pro-Soviet revisionist leaders as a terrorist bargaining chip to gain a share of parliamentary power in coalition with the social democrats of the FDR. Armed struggle need not win or lose, only serve as a bargaining chip according to revisionists. In Peru, there is also such an arrangement led by the pro- Soviet supposed communists. It is called the United Left. The pro-Soviet revisionists, Dengists, social democrats and all other kinds of revisionists agree to stick together to gain electoral power and then divide up their power afterwards. In this strategy, the pro-Soviet revisionists have organized the largest of four unions that have organized the one-sixth of the 40% of the Peruvian masses who have steady jobs. They try to convert economic struggles into parliamentary power. The PCP says this is a farce because real power is in the military. The "militarization of the party" is also a development of the program of the Gang of Four in China. According to the speaker for the tour, Jiang Qing favored the formation of militias which would eat up the army bit by bit. In fact, this did happen in China in the 70s. A militia of over a million formed in Shanghai for example. Bourgeois observor Roger Garside has detailed the events leading to the coup in 1976 and the possibilities of the militia led by the Gang of Four in his book Coming Alive: China After Mao. The theory behind the people's militia was sound. The standing army of the People's Republic did form a material basis for the coup as comrade Gonzalo apparently stresses. Regional commanders protected Deng after he was purged from his state posts one last time in 1976. The same commanders forced Hua's hand in the arrest of the Gang of Four. Comments by Deng show that he considered veteran regional commanders to be a base of his power. It is also clear that leading generals from China's Liberation did not have an active hand in the Cultural Revolution, and for the most part behaved as bourgeois nationalists stuck in the first stage of China's revolution called the New Democratic stage. A standing army is by definition a professional army. Although the effects of rank were mitigated, there were ranks in China's professional army. Experts in the army had much the same power as experts in production. By arming the masses of workers and peasants, the Gang of Four hoped to insure against the ever present possibility of capitalist restoration. Comrade Gonzalo suggests that even before socialism, the vanguard party needs to politically prepare people to arm themselves and seize power. Hence there should be no separation of the army and party; although, the details have yet to be worked out completely. This question deserves more study. Although it is clear that the army did serve as a basis for the counterrevolutionary coup in 1976, it is not clear that Mao did not adopt the best strategy in fighting that eventuality. Mao adopted three strategies in handling the possibility of the army's getting out of hand. First, the People's Liberation Army of China held repeated campaigns to serve the people. Indeed, the PLA kicked off the campaigns that led directly to the Cultural Revolution. Army members, as during the War of Liberation, took part in production so that the PLA would not be a parasite on the people. The Learn from the PLA campaign also demonstrated that people in the army could be models of politeness and political studiousness. While the army had to know how to fight, it certainly received training in staying close to the masses and serving the masses through public works. Secondly, Mao had separated economic and governmental administration from the military. People in the military were not the same people who led the party except for a few such as Mao, Lin and Deng. Comrade Gonzalo points out that the Gang of Four of China certainly had leading posts in the party, but they did not have corresponding posts in the military; although, the military might have had campaigns at times to learn from the Gang of Four. On the other hand, precisely because Chu Teh and others were not the leaders in the party, they did not have economic and governmental administration experience. Quite frankly, power flows from the barrel of a gun, but the army leaders at least could not directly form the bourgeoisie in the party. They needed heads of state like Liu, Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping to articulate their concerns. Chairman Mao was able to keep the army from physically attacking Cultural Revolutionaries through his preeminence in both the party and army. One implication of Comrade Gonzalo's plan is that the struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat in the party itself may come more quickly to military blows if the party is militarized. Finally, during the Cultural Revolution, the ultraleft pushed for "dragging out the handful of capitalist-roaders in the army." Circles very close to Mao advocated this position. Indeed, they won out momentarily before being purged. It seems likely that Mao would have supported this position if it were feasible. Instead, Mao called for the army to support the Left in the Cultural Revolution. He said that the beauty of this was that the army itself would become politicized in deciding who is Left or not. All participants involved would see that there are two lines struggling. Hence, the PLA was not monolithic and Mao saw this well enough to be able to politicize the army and make contradictions for reactionary army leaders. In the end, people's militia's are the way to go. However, comrade Gonzalo points out that even Lenin had to rely on a standing army to defeat the invasions of 14 imperialist armies. Later it formed the basis for party- splitting and the coup from 1953 to 1956. On the other hand, a successful revolution in Peru may face the same problem on a larger scale. There is no friendly socialist bloc for Peru to lean on and Peru is in fact much smaller than the weakened Soviet Union of 1917. Even so, it is not a simple matter to conclude that therefore comrade Gonzalo is wrong. Today, unlike Lenin's time, any genuine revolution benefits from the historical experience of the international communist movement. One of the lessons that is taught again and again is not to adopt pragmatist solutions for fear of losing. A principled loss could form the basis of later victory, as in the case of the Paris Commune. On the other hand a capitulation to revisionism or imperialism may gain a movement material support but cause it utmost confusion and eventual disaster as in the case of the PLO. In the case of Peru, it is clear that no standing army or conventional Soviet-style war is going to protect the gains of the revolution. People's militias and People's War is the only way to go. It would be better to let the enemy come in deep and bide time for a final victory. According to Bob Avakian in Conquer the World, revolutions in the imperialist countries will require standing armies because every revolution has so far. (Conquer the World, p. 8) With that kind of reasoning, the anarchists would be right that since every revolution has faced capitalist restoration, its no accident that Leninism ends up as capitalism. Avakian denies the univeral validity of the Chinese experience in the struggle against capitalist restoration. He does not explain why people's militias would not be equally appropriate in the United States. Also, he pisses away the universal validity of the Cultural Revolution by implying that it will not be much of a problem in the United States for the proletariat to hold power as it is in the Third World. (Ibid., p. 37) Of course, Trotsky said the same thing, but Mao has shown that what determines the success of the revolution against capitalist restoration is the all-round dictatorship of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie. That means success is determined by the proletariat's dictating over the bourgeoisie in each of society's institutions. It is precisely here that Avakian is disarming the masses with Trotskyist shibboleths. If anything, the army in the United States will serve an even greater basis of revisionism than in China. The American Army will not be hardened by a protracted People's War. Indeed, it will necessarily reflect some of the weight of history in the United States, which is nothing but the genocidal history of the U.S. military composed of the oppressed but run by the most vicious and advanced dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, surpassed perhaps only by Hitler. AVAKIAN HAS MISTAKEN TECHNICAL AND ECONOMIC ADVANCEMENT FOR POLITICAL EXPERIENCE AND PROGRESS. CULTURAL REVOLUTION CHINA PROVIDES THE MOST ADVANCED POLITICAL EXPERIENCE SEEN IN THE WORLD YET, BUT AVAKIAN IS ALREADY PREPARED TO SAY THAT THE PROLETARIAT OF THE IMPERIALIST COUNTRIES WILL HAVE AN EASIER TIME HOLDING POWER UNDER SOCIALISM AND WILL REQUIRE A STANDING ARMY. AVAKIAN: FROM WHAT CONCRETE EXPERIENCE OF SOCIALIST REVOLUTION IN THE IMPERIALIST COUNTRIES ARE YOU PISSING AWAY THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION? TOUR SPOKESPERSON MENTIONS WAR COMMUNISM From the speaker's presentation, it appears that comrade Gonzalo sees "war communism" ahead for Peru. That is that he expects the party to have to organize the masses largely by emergency measures and to exact the most thorough-going sacrifices for revolution. It is unclear to what extent that Gonzalo sees this as permanent plan for socialist construction. SEXUAL ORIENTATION AND LIBERATION So-called Marxist-Leninists internationally have a poor record on the relationship of sexual orientation to revolution. Most so-called Marxist-Leninist groups in the US uphold the belief that homosexuality is a form of the decay of capitalism or a product of class society to be eliminated with socialism and communism. Lenin and particularly Stalin said little about sexuality, and Stalin tended toward a straight puritan line.To a certain extent, Lenin and Stalin believed that discussion of sexual matters would cause a diversion of people, especially youth, from revolutionary tasks. The historical practice of supposed Marxist-Leninists towards homosexuality has not been conscious, rather a simple unquestioned continuation of moral practices from the religiously mired past.For example, Castro jailed homosexuals in Cuba. Judges in Cuba merely cloak old thinking in the rhetoric of "proletarian morality." The current position of the supposedly Maoist Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) USA is that the ideology of homosexuality should be reformed in socialist revolution. Significantly its draft of its current program contained a simple paragraph statement that homosexuality would be reformed and ended under socialism. While making such a broad condemnation of homosexuality, the RCP program did not see fit to devote much space to the justification of its view. The RCP's more virulently anti-gay predecessor, the RU did a whole pamphlet on homosexuality as a product of capitalist decay and a bourgeois diversion from revolution. It is high time that communists examined the issue of sexual orientation. Six to ten percent of the people in the USA are homosexual. This is a large strata of people that faces obvious repressions from the state and the masses as a whole. Sexual orientation raises as many questions as there are presumptions in USA WASP culture. First, is the question of the importance or role of sex in the first place. Following Lenin,M-Ls tend to downplay sex relative to its preeminence in American culture. Any group arguing for sexual rights tends to be tarred as selfish and narrowly concerned with unimportant matters. Unfortunately, the M-Ls do not say that they are going to reform"heterosexual ideology" during the socialist revolution;therefore, they attack one form of pleasure-seeking but not the other. Secondly, the issue of the family is not far behind. In these days when artificial insemination, never mind test tube babies, is so prevalent, it is distressing to hear some M-Ls defend heterosexual relations as necessary for procreation. The influence of the Pope is not far behind. Thirdly, is the husband-wife relation. Somehow, lesbians seem more justified in their actions to M-Ls because they have found an avenue of averting the oppression of husbands and boyfriends. But where does that leave men? If women are more likely to enjoy relations of equality with themselves does it not follow that men do not exploit women if they are involved with men? If M-Ls accept that patriarchal institutions exist, then how can they deny that it would be better for exploiters to exploit each other and weaken the patriarchy than to exploit women? True, the majority of men are not the target of socialist revolution, just as the majority of whites are not. Still, sexism and homophobia are as much allies of the bourgeoisie as racism. All serve to justify domination. All divide the proletariat and its allies. The handling of these contradictions between the people and the enemy and within the people themselves requires that Marxist-Leninists discard philistine thinking on these matters. No strategy concerning sexual orientation alone is going to overthrow the state. However, this is not to belittle the spirit of "by any means necessary." Women do not enjoy political, economic, social or sexual equality with men. It is especially loathsome that men through their economic and political power can obtain sex from women with less power. Such power relations are responsible for the fact that women are made into sex objects in advertizing, television and music more often than men. By withholding sexual pleasure from men, not to mention their money and work at home, women exhaust one avenue of power open to them. Objectively speaking, gay men are the flipside of women's all-out struggle against patriarchy,whether they are conscious of it or not. If sexual rights are to disappear the way national rights are to disappear, there must first be equality in sexual rights--for homosexuals and women more generally. This alone speaks for defense of homosexuals against the state. Just as there must be self-determination for all nations before nations disappear, there must be sexual self-determination and equality before questions of sexuality become irrelevant. Under communism non-state backed national cultures will flourish and intermingle. Likewise, communism will require a long period of broad-minded thinking concerning sexual/leisure-time activities. While neither homosexual nor heterosexual leisure-time is the main issue currently facing the revolutionary movement, it is time that M-Ls stopped tailing the most backward sections of the masses and the Pope and Jerry Falwell. Homosexual relations are not necessarily any more selfish than heterosexual ones, and in fact, they serve as one possible means of all-out struggle against the capitalist patriarchy.