MORE ON TWO LINE STRUGGLE WITHIN RIM (4 of 5)

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                    MAOISM AND THE TWO LINE STRUGGLE
                        WITHIN THE REVOLUTIONARY 
                    INTERNATIONALIST MOVEMENT  (RIM)

                                PART 4 OF 5

                              Document from
                       Committee Sol Peru - London
                              October 1994
                                    
                A Red Star Information Bureau Publication

A CARICATURE OF MARXISM

In 'Imperialist Economicism' (Collected Works, page 1916, Vol 22 - Published in 
Proletariskaya
Revolutsyia N§7), Lenin said: "No one can discredit social-democracy 
(communism) unless it
discredits itself.  Whenever this or that important Marxist theoretical thesis 
or tactic succeeds, or
at least becomes the order of the day, whenever this or that theoretical thesis 
or tactical advance
comes under the concentrated attack of the open and consistent enemies of 
Marxism, it is also
usually threatened in a hopeless manner by certain 'friends'.  Such friends 
discredit this Marxist
advance by turning it into a caricature of itself".

This happens too with Maoism, with Gonzalo Thought, and with the revolutionary 
advances that
the People's War in Peru has contributed to the proletariat and the people at 
the international level
in theory and practice.  There are also such 'friends' who make of this 
theoretical advance, of these
glorious achievements of the class, of this heroic revolutionary struggle, a 
grotesque caricature. In
this manner they contribute their grain of sand to the discrediting of Marxism. 
 This truth expressed
by Lenin matches well the well known saying: 'with friends like this, who needs 
enemies?.

Some friends of the Peruvian revolution who follow the lead of the RCP USA, as 
well as other
similar revolutionists, are precisely this kind of 'friends'.  Whenever the PCP 
and Chairman Gonzalo
advance a correct thesis or implement a successful policy, together with the 
inevitable attack of the
professional reactionaries, such 'friends' also take the field and draw a 
grotesque caricature
discrediting those theses or policies with their ham-fisted 'defence'.

A CARICATURE OF THE PCP AND THE DAY OF HEROISM

Let us take the case of the massacre in the prisons of Lurigancho, Santa 
B rbara and El Fronton,
events in which the fascist regime of Alan Garc¡a assassinated more than 350 
prisoners of war (19
of June, 1986, Day of Heroism). Our 'official' friends from the RIM in London 
partially coincided
with the Trotskyist press in evaluating such events.  The Trotskyists painted 
them as the actions
of illuminated madmen who had undertaken a hopeless and pointless rebellion. 
They condemned
these events as another proof of the 'suicidal, fanatical and terrorist 
madness' of the Maoists. 
While it must be said that our 'friends' did burn high volumes of incense to 
the heroism of the
PCP's prisoners of war and to Maoism, they also portrayed these events as 'an 
insurrection on the part
of those who preferred to die than continue living in this cruel world of 
exploitation', forgetting to
mention that this massacre was a premeditated and planned action of the 
genocidal regime, while
simultaneously glossing over the crucial importance of exposing the criminal 
activities of the fascist
Apra party and their II international accomplices.  

The impression reflected in their press was that of a suicidal act of sheer 
courage and bravado
undertaken with the sole and exclusive aim of demonstrating how revolutionary 
'their Peruvian
comrades were'.  Evidently, our friends expected everybody to salute them for 
the great merit of
'officially representing' such heroic and fearless communists before the world. 
 To ride on the backs
of the proletarians while unpunished reaction mows them down, is the only way 
to describe such
an immature and caricature-like 'defence' of the true and glorious heroism and 
steel like resistance
of the PCP's war prisoners.

A CARICATURE OF THE PROLETARIAT

In the context of the class struggle in Great Britain our 'friends' also 
managed to 'threaten' in a
hopeless manner the cause of winning over public opinion in favour of the 
Peruvian revolution
among the masses, principally the proletariat; let us look at some examples: 

In 1984-85 the great miners' strike took place, a protracted and glorious 
action of the British
proletariat that in its course came to mobilise wide sections of the working 
class and, at times, to
challenge, even by violence, the bourgeois imperialist dictatorship itself. 
Hundreds of thousands,
millions of proletarians and  democratic people participated in one way or 
another in this great
workers movement undertaken by the traditionally most combative section of this 
country's
proletariat. In this context, there were demonstrations, solidarity stoppages, 
public collection of
strike funds, and the protracted and stubborn head-on clashes of the working 
masses at the mine
gates against the repressive forces of the state,  principally the police at 
the service of the
employers, the imperialist state itself.  

Thus, 1984 saw the growing development of intense political activity in Great 
Britain alongside the
growing social polarization created by the miner's strike.  A strike that with 
every passing day
began to assume more and more a concrete political character far beyond a 
simple trade union
dispute, and in the course of which, at some point, the very question of state 
power was openly
raised by the struggling workers, the very question of class dictatorship.  

In the London Committee of Supporters of the RIM we then proposed to carry out 
an intense
campaign to publicise the revolutionary developments in Peru among the striking 
miners and their
even more numerous sympathizers, workers, students and other democratic 
sections who were
participating in these actions.  

This proposal of ours was plainly rejected by the 'official leaders of the RIM' 
who claimed that the
miner's strike was nothing but 'the stinking black smoke of a decaying class 
and not the fire of real
revolutionaries'.  However, this did not put us off, and despite the practical 
difficulties, we were
able to send a delegation to the pits of the Kent area, in Southern England. In 
Kent we were given
shelter by the miners themselves, we shared their bread, we partook in their 
struggles and in the
pickets to stop scab labour breaking the strike at the mine gates.  In those 
intense days we were
to learn many lessons about the fighting spirit and organisational capacity of 
the working class in
developed countries.  These are key lessons in order to understand the concrete 
strategy and
tactics of the revolutionary struggle in such countries. 

In these visits, the workers themselves requested that we should address their 
great mass
meetings. 

We spoke to them about our solidarity and gave them truthful information on the 
revolution in Peru
and the development of Maoism in the world.  Those of us who partook of this 
great and
unforgettable experience will never erase from our minds the proletarian 
spirit, the class solidarity,
the real internationalism and the great enthusiasm that the revolutionary news 
awoke in the masses
of our brother miners of the Kent area. 

Even today, we have in that zone many good and true friends, principally among 
the masses and
the mining youth, but also among the rank and file union leaders, some of whom, 
despite holding
totally different opinions than ours in many issues, never stopped us from 
expressing our views in
any way, always behaving correctly and courteously with us. The class is always 
the class,
something that the petty bourgeois intellectuals will never fully understand. 
We especially noted
that this supposed 'black and stinking smoke' showed more fire and held more 
promise for the
battles to come than all the 'red' bombast of the crimson ultra-revolutionaries 
who follow the line
of the RCP USA.

Later, during 1985, in the mass demonstrations staged by the miners and their 
sympathizers in
London - at that time, such sympathizers were even organising themselves into 
Support Committees
by areas and neighbourhoods all over the country - we distributed many 
thousands of leaflets and
pamphlets about the People's War, about the PCP and Chairman Gonzalo, 
emphasising proletarian
internationalism.  

Never in our campaign to popularise the ideas of the Peruvian revolution and to 
win public opinion
in favour of Maoism, now more than ten years old, we have observed so much 
interest and
solidarity like we did in those memorable actions of the proletariat in the 
streets.

ECONOMIST THESES

Another important event in British social life, in the class struggle in this 
country during the second
part of the 80s, also saw the 'official representatives' of the RIM and the 
true Marxist-Leninist-
Maoists take diametrically opposed positions.  We are referring here to the 
protracted conflict
pitting the printing workers union against the giant press monopolist Rupert 
Murdoch due to the re-
structuring of the labour practices in that industry. 

The printing unions are some of the oldest unions in this country and are 
mostly identified with the
labour aristocracy, made up of many workers that according to the old labour 
practices and the
social conquests, earned high salaries and had ample benefits and a high 
standard of living. Some
of them were even able to pass on their employment to sons and relatives as 
part of their
inheritance.  However, these workers suffered a cynical lock-out by the 
employers when they
refused to accept the new conditions and were arrogantly dumped to the social 
waste-heap, hiring
strike-breakers and substituting skilled labour  for modern computerised 
processing in order to
maximise capitalist profits.  

Despite the privileged status of such workers and the compensation offered by 
the bosses for every
job position to be given up, this was effectively a bosses lock-out and the 
solidarity of the class
was not to leave these workers isolated in their struggle.  Moreover the class 
correctly perceived this
action of the bosses as a barefaced attempt of the imperialist bourgeoisie to 
unload their crisis onto the
backs of the working people.  Therefore, for over a year there were pickets and 
support
demonstrations, some of which we ourselves saw being turned into large scale 
violent combats,
with many injured and arrested people suffering brutal reactionary repression. 

In order to support this just cause and to condemn the unbounded ambition of 
the bosses, the
workers of London called for a Great May Day Parade to pass in front of the new 
printing works
of the Murdoch press monopoly in London's East End, a plant that had been 
turned with the
protection of the state apparatus into what the workers themselves dubbed 
'Fortress Wapping'. 
In this occasion, and adopting a different stance to the one they had in the 
case of the miners, the 
RIM 'officials' also participated.  This was, in part, a consequence of the 
criticisms aimed at them
because of their previous attitude. 

On that occasion, by means of a May First Manifesto, we carried out a just 
recapitulation of the
class struggle, including a critical summing-up of the economist policies that 
arise on the grounds
of privilege among certain sections of the workers, firmly but soberly calling 
the class's attention
to the terrible consequences of Economicism and of capitulating the 
revolutionary struggle.  We
reminded the class of the consequences of abandoning principle and proletarian 
internationalism. 
We aimed at demonstrating in a practical manner to the class what can be 
expected from the
bosses 'sympathy' by using the example of the printing workers, thus complying 
with the obligation
of educating the class, an ineluctable task of Marxists. 

At the same time, we dealt with the theme of the Peruvian revolution, with the 
development of
Maoism, with the fight against revisionism and the policies of the worker's 
aristocracy, outlining
the revolutionary tasks and emphasising the necessity of the construction of 
their necessary
instruments, the Party, the United Front, and what we in that Manifesto 
described as 'the necessary
and appropriate instrument to face the armed resistance of the class enemy'. 

However, in their parallel efforts, our 'friends' the disciples of Robert 
Avakian, distributed in the
name of the RIM a economist and workerist tract promising those who joined-up 
with the
Movement that they would lead them in 'rebellion' in order to achieve a society 
guaranteeing them a
'secure job' and a 'fair day's wages'.  Once again, the anti-imperialist tasks 
in solidarity with the
Peruvian revolution and the tasks of the proletariat in reference to the 
development of Maoism, criticism
of revisionism, and the task of winning public opinion for the revolution, were 
turned into a hopeless
caricature by these gentlemen. 

CARICATURES OF SELF-CRITICISM

With the development of the People's War in Peru, with the growth of 
international solidarity with
the revolution led by the Maoists in Peru and the consequent greater diffusion 
of the writings of
Chairman Gonzalo and of the points of view of the PCP - now available directly 
from proper sources
in Europe and USA - and, also partly due to the repeated ideological and 
political blows dealt them
by the representatives of the proletarian current, for some time, the bourgeois 
line became
subordinated within the activities of the RIM. 

They ceased in their direct attacks upon the Marxist Classics, their literature 
against Georgi Dimitrov
and the United Front was temporarily confined to their most secret closets. 
More articles from PCP
sources began to appear in the RIM's press and eventually, even the RCP USA 
itself let it be known
that they had carried out a 'self-criticism ' on the question of their 
ideological positions, particularly,
on their line centred on the imminence of imperialist nuclear war among the 
super-powers which
they had for a long time upheld as the 'main historical trend' and 'main 
contradiction in today's
world'.

In a certain fashion, such self-criticism was itself compelled by the very 
circumstances of
international politics, that had rendered such theses totally indefensible 
without a major overhaul. 

However, the RCP USA has never published the results of such 'self-criticism', 
or at least, up to
now, no one knows these directly.  Despite some of their followers asserting 
that this indeed took
place, we must, however, say that we cannot vouch for it.  Moreover, there are 
other followers of
the bourgeois line that deny any knowledge of the existence of such 
self-criticism.  Maybe it is still
'under study' or being 'debated'.  Who knows!  Maybe somewhere there is already 
a 'Secret
Report' from the RCP USA patiently asleep during the life-time of its leader!. 

The important thing, however, is to see how our caricaturist 'friends' 
understand Marxist criticism
and self-criticism.  We must remind them that the very purpose of criticism and 
self-criticism is not
to humiliate or punish anybody.  It is to be able to use experience in order to 
advance Marxist
understanding with the aim of solving problems.  

A self-criticism announced but not revealed is merely a pointless exercise.  To 
make contradictory
noises about self-criticism without anyone knowing for sure anything about it, 
is nothing but an
admission that there has been a change of line but not of ideology.  In 
synthesis, and at the very
most, a change of sales pitch but the merchandise being peddled remains the 
same.  

The modern revisionists were also past masters at secret self-criticisms.  For 
example, when
Khrushchev fell, the revisionists led by Brezhnev made some 'self-critical' 
noises on the issue of
Stalin.  They also altered the external appearance of their political regime, 
especially their evident
subservience to the imperialist bourgeoisie, principally the US.  They ceased 
their craven fealty and
clownish praise for the imperialist leaders, as Khrushchev had done with 
Eisenhower and Kennedy. 
They even began to mumble 'militant calls' aimed at deceiving the masses with 
bogus 'anti-
imperialism', a useful ruse in their new orientation in which contention became 
primary and
collusion with the other imperialists became secondary.
  
What all this really meant was that modern revisionism had fully entered into 
its social-imperialist
phase of competition for colonies and spheres of influence. It should not be 
necessary to say that
with such posturing they did deceive some petty-bourgeois revolutionists, but 
not for very long. 
 
Deng Xiao-ping and his disciples are also masters of this trade.  After long 
years of denigrating
Chairman Mao to the seventh hell, from time to time these revisionists also 
make their self-critical
noises and somehow restore him his 'condition as a great Marxist-Leninist'.  We 
have particularly
observed this charade during the celebration of the 100 Anniversary of Chairman 
Mao carried out
in China and other parts of the world by Deng's followers.  

>From time to time, they also carry out their so-called campaigns against the 
>'spiritual pollution'
resulting from the very capitalism they themselves have enshrined in China and, 
on this pretext,
persecuting the poorest sections, the dispossessed, and principally, the class 
conscious
proletarians. 

However, with such cheap tricks, revisionists of all hues continue to bamboozle 
some 'socialists'
in the world who even today refuse to see China and all other revisionist 
regimes as for what they
are really: fascist dictatorships of big international financial capital, 
directly exercised by Deng's
gang and others just like them. As Lenin once noted, revisionists and 
opportunists always swear
by Marxism wherever it is popular among the masses and they perceive an 
advantage for their
interests in doing so. 

THIS DOCUMENT CONTINUES IN PART 5