Marxism= Understand the World to Change it!

[Rubyg580@xxxxxxx]

     Marx said"The point of understanding the world is to change it." (The
scholars in this group probably can give the exact wording and attribution--I
think it's from "Civil War in France".)
     I am curious as to how the various subscribers put this into practice:
 How are you using your understanding of Marxism to change the world?
 Professors: what student struggles are you supporting and how?  Or what
struggles of campus workers, or other
issues in your city or nationally?
     Activists, what struggles are you engaged in ?  How does your
understanding of Marxism guide your participation?
     The thing that stands out about the postings from The New Flag is that a
lot of them deal with exactly this question.  The PCP is applying their own
understanding of Marxism: Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Gonzalo Thought, to change
the world in a major way, while many of us just sit around in cyber-space
throwing digitalized words around.
     Marx also said something about how he did not discover class struggle;
others before him had dealt with that question.  His contribution was
discovering that class struggle inevitably leads to the overthrow of the old
ruling class by a new one as history progresses, and in today's world that
means the proletariat overthrowing the bourgeoisie, now developed into the
imperialist bourgeoisie--and establishing the dictatorship of the
proletariat.  (NOT, by the way, the dictatorship of Marxist scholars!)
     Lenin took this understanding and applied it in practice to the first
ever proletarian revolution to seize power in a whole country.
     Mao Tsetung took the Bolshevik experience and applied it in China, where
the basic strategy of seizing power had to be very different because China
was not a backward imperialist country, but one dominated by imperialism, in
cahoots with the old feudal lords.
     He called this a "semi-feudal,semi-colonial" country.  The strategy he
developed for seizing power--thru long and bitter experience--was protracted
people's war, constructing base areas in the countryside, and finally leading
urban insurrections to seize the strongholds of the old state. Developing
this strategy involved not only harsh experience on the battlefield, but
fierce struggle within the Party against those who wanted to copy the Russian
experience, or who had other ideas about how to proceed. Thus, he also
synthesized the principle of two-line struggle within the party as being its
lifeblood, crucial to developing a correct theory and practice.
     This is why the PCP explains that today Marxism can only be
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, principally Maoism. (It is very notable that in the
PCP documents announcing the use of this terminology, they emphasize that it
was through
actually leading a people's war in practice that they came to the realization
of the importance and primacy of Maoism.)  Gonzalo Thought is the creative
application of M-L-M to the objective conditions of Peru.
     Because the PCP has had the whole experience of thed Chinese revolutions
(and the Russian revolution and Paris Commune before that) to learn from,
they were able to plan from the start the strategy of protracted people's
war, base areas, surrounding the cities from the countryside.  They didn't
have to discover this strategy by trial and error because Mao and the Chinese
revolution had already shown this as the correct strategy in an oppressed
country.
     But Peru in the 80s and 90s is not China in the 30s and 40s.
 Imperialism has changed; technology has changed; the population of Peru is
much more concentrated in the urban areas than was the population of China.
 More attention has to be paid to revolutionary organization in the cities,
even while the overall strategy is still constructing the new power in base
areas in the countryside (in Peru, the "People's Committees") and surrounding
the cities before the final urban insurrections to seize power.  The armed
strike was developed by the PCP as a way to organize and mobilize the urban
masses and to prepare them for the final assault to come.
     OF COURSE imperialist mouthpieces are going to slander this process;
even other "leftists" who are comfortable in the world as it is, living
priveleged lives in imperialist countries or as part of priveleged strata in
the oppressed countries.  It's far easier to criticize from the sidelines
than to confront the status quo in order to demolish it and construct
something really new.  It's far easier for intellectuals and other "middle
class" forces to simply critique the existing order than to work for its
overthrow and replacement by a system based on and controlled by the
PROLETARIAT--the class of people who are despised and portrayed as fearful
and ignorant by this system's propaganda.
     Changing the world is not a "comfortable" process, its a dirty, bloody
process and you have to change yourself as you go.  Many don't want to jump
into this process and shake up the life they've grown accustomed to.
     But what is better, living in material comfort, isolated from the masses
of people of the world in our individualistic arrogance, smug in some
"superior wisdom" about the right and wrong way to "be a Marxist"--or joining
with the masses of people; risking rejection by those who are "bribed" and
manipulated by imperialist propaganda, to unite with those who can see that
it's going to take turning things totally upside-down?
     It's going to take learning from Marx and from those who came after
Marx, applying that learning to the gritty, grimy, bloody task of
overthrowing a system that offers us nothing but material goodies--bribes--in
exchange for isolating us from each other and from the masses of the rest of
the world, pitting us against each other and exploiting us for its profit,
using us as cannon-fodder in wars of plunder, and discarding us when it can't
use us any more.

     So how about it folks?  How are we using Marxism....to change the world?

Gina  PSC/ Detroit


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