Internet Statement 2006-09

About the orientation of the World People's Resistance Movement (WPRM )*

Feb. 10, 2006     

I.

The contradictions in the world are again intensifying towards the next aggravation. The threats against Iran, the imperialists' blackmails against smaller states, the suppression of revolutionary movements and initiatives in several countries, partly by armed force, let us see that.

The WPRM is conducting a campaign which aims at focusing the international movement on the struggle of the people of Nepal and in particular on the struggle of the Communist Party of Nepal, which refers to Mao Zedong. What is even more, the struggle of all revolutionary forces in the world is in a way to commit itself to the revolution in Nepal as the yardstick.

There are, however, past experiences of lasting effect, which make us raise several questions.

The Communist Party of Nepal (M) has repeatedly and formally referred to the model of the Communist Party of Peru - Shining Path of José Carlos Mariátegui. It was by this Communist Party of Peru that a people's war was declared in 1980, which concentrated on a certain form of military struggle, on certain techniques of assault. It claimed, though, to continue the revolutionary struggle in the world in the sense of the Chinese revolution under Mao Zedong. Although a large part of the revolutionaries in Peru was decidedly committed to a people's democratic revolution and wanted to bring about fundamental changes in Peru, a struggle was fought which opened several gates to the US' subversion in Peru. This becomes clear most obviously in its results: the same moment when the chairman of this party was captured by the Fujimori-Montesinos regime in 1992, work was started from the part of the leadership itself towards the liquidation of the war previously so fervently propagated.

The policy of this party shows several idealistic features, to which we have pointed already in the middle of the nineties. In the declaration of the RIM (Revolutionary Internationalist Movement) of 1984 it is clear that it opposes fundamental views of Marxism about the national question and contains indirect attacks also against the foreign policy of the People's Republic of China until 1976 and against the combination of legal and illegal struggle as practised by Mao Zedong. This was supported also by the Communist Party of Peru.

In 1992, the chairman of the Communist Party of Peru was captured by forces of the police and military of the Peruvian state under Fujimori. For a revolutionary there is nothing defamatory about such a capture in the case of military inferiority or of single tactical mistakes. After the capture, though, it was demanded in the name of this chairman of the Communist Party of Peru, that the struggle be changed over to a so-called "peace process". The forces of the Communist Party of Peru split between those who declared this call a forgery, and those who wanted to practise this call. In the course of time, the RIM moved away from the fervent assertion that it was a forgery, and it its latest statements about Peru it is leaving the question open. Basically, it does no longer deny that the chairman Guzman, called Gonzalo, had indeed released this so-called proclamation of a "new definition of the struggle". Actually, it hardly can be that after a struggle which cost the lives of tens of thousands of people such a declaration is passed at the capture of the leader. It had been said that the military forces of the Communist Party of Peru had gained strategic equilibrium in Peru. This assertion melted away like a soap bubble after that strike against the Communist Party of Peru.

The totality of the circumstances of the Communist Party of Peru's struggle leads to the inference that the subversion from the part of US imperialism had a role to play in the struggle of this party in spite of the heroism of a large number of its members and the spirit of resistance from the part of the Peruvian peasants and other laborers of the broad rural population. Everywhere the US and the modern revisionists attempt to instrumentalize the revolutionary struggle of single nations, in particular in the case of small nations, for themselves. Particularly the revisionists of the former Soviet Union acted in this manner.

Several agents on the international level attempted to oblige the international Marxist-Leninist movement to support exactly this struggle by the Communist Party of Peru. This proposal did, of course, not come by chance.

Our organisation, represented by Klaus Sender, published a politically and theoretically profound criticism in the article "José Carlos Mariátegui and Cultural Problems of the Peruvian Revolution" in the end of June, 1997, in order to deprive the backgrounds and fundaments of these actions of essential elements. The policy of the previous revolutionary Mariátegui (1894-1930) contained materialistic revolutionary elements as well as idealistic-reactionary ones. The assertion that he was completely concordant with the fundaments of Marxism-Leninism is devious, it corresponded to one's own idealism.

It was the Communist Party of Peru under Guzman, too, which was particularly emphatic on advocating the introduction of the notion "Maoists" into the Marxist-Leninist movement. Not by chance this notion had been refused by the People's Republic of China under Mao Zedong. The teachings of Mao Zedong are not a basically new stage, which further develops Marxism-Leninism in all realms, but rather an application of Marxism-Leninism in a certain important revolution, bringing about also important new insights and principles, but not justifying to talk about a new system. In our country, the notion "Maoism" was brought about and spread by writers of the revisionism of the DKP ("Deutsche Kommunistische Partei") and muddy sources of the foreign secret service "Bundesnachrichtendienst" ("BND") in the end of the sixties. Thus it is a provocative notion. There is no reason to introduce such a notion into the Marxist-Leninist movement, if it doesn't have truly scientific fundaments at the same time.

The Communist Party of Nepal chose this notion "Maoists" as an addition for the formal identification of its political direction.

After the experiences of the Peruvian revolution and the outcome of the events there, isn't it the right of the whole Marxist-Leninist movement of the world to question the matter? If today it is declared again that the international movement is to focus on the struggle of another member party of the RIM in a certain country, this time Nepal, then it is self-evident under the conditions given to demand that these grave experiences are taken into consideration, and that things are not simply repeated with the same methods as then.

II.

Nepal is situated, so to say, on the border between two large states, the People's Republic of China, which today has been capitalistically overthrown since long ago, has undergone a capitalist development of 25 years, and India. Both of these states are entangled in deep contradictions with the US imperialists in particular since 1999 and 2001. The same US imperialists, which have evolved their subversive activities in almost every corner of the world and attempt to infiltrate virtually every movement, are also striving to get this important piece of earth, Nepal, at the joint between India and China, under their control. The international policy of a revolutionary party cannot leave that out of consideration.

Without doubt, in India there are in particular deep agrarian contradictions with the capitalist regimes existing there and a bloody suppression of peasant uprisings at certain points in that country, and it is natural that the resistance movements in Nepal are standing in a close relation to the neighbouring movements in India. Simultaneously, however, the international position of these countries has to be taken into account. It is fundamental and laid the ground for the success of the Chinese revolution, that it always banded together with the justified democratic movements of the country and materialized the proletarian hegemony in this way. The Communist Party of China under Mao Zedong was a master in the role of a leader of the national independence of the former half-colony China. It organised the peasantry in the new democratic revolution and integrated all forces in China truly striving for national independence. The Communist Party of China was the great leader of the Chinese people in the struggle for national emancipation. The working class fundamentally took this question into its hands.

In countries like India or also Nepal as well as in many countries of the former colonial and semi-colonial world, the communists are basically facing the same task. In Nepal, the revolutionary party fights an ossified brutal neo-colonial regime, abetted by the US-imperialists and the revisionists. Armed struggle against that is categorically just. But this alone is not sufficient for the political assessment, as we have also to look at the political foundations and the points of reference of a party. After almost 40 years of this Marxist-Leninist movement, which originated from the criticism of modern revisionism, we have enough experiences with all kinds of attempts by the US as well as other imperialists to meddle in this movement and to instrumentalize it for themselves. These attempts are existing with all organisations, relatively large ones as well as small groups. Everywhere, revolutionaries are striving, committing their lives, and everywhere we have this subversion, we have enough cases, where the imperialist state or foreign powers grant their "support" in their particular way to any party, in order to experiment around with them and to finally distort things on a completely wrong track. Please, do at last begin to understand by yourselves that the revolutionary parties cannot swallow every story in good faith, but must question it critically. With regard to the previous history of the RIM we cannot avoid putting these necessary questions as written down in this article. We ask, we even demand that all organisations of the RIM and the organisations going back to it deal with these imperialistic and subversive activities of US imperialism and modern revisionism against the Marxist-Leninist movement in the world and thus contribute to the real consolidation of the movement. We miss that fundamental element in all of the calls internationally emitted by the VWBW or the WPRM. [VWBW - Volkswiderstandsbewegung der Welt - is the german name of the WPRM. Tr.'s note] It won't do that we have a history of 20 or 25 years with such fundamental experiences, and simultaneously there are calls being published which are exactly of such a kind as if this history of 25 years was non-existent.

The VWBW, the WPRM resp. itself is confronted with the necessity to critically reassess the mistakes of the RIM, the infrigements of the democratic program and the national question as contained therein. This is at the same time a precondition for correctly developing the hegemony of the proletariat in the democratic revolution.

Group Neue Einheit

*) Name was corrected in Nov. 06. Red.NE

www.neue-einheit.com