LET'S CELEBRATE THE 50th ANNIVERASRY OF THE CHINESE REVOLUTION

October 1, 1949, exactly 50 years ago, Chairman Mao Tse-tung proclaimed the birth of the People’s Republic of China, thus stating the victory of the revolution he led. It is an event of tremendous historic significance for the proletariat and the oppressed peoples of the whole world.

With the Chinese Revolution, a country of 700 million people liberated itself from the yoke of imperialist semi-colonial oppression and from semi-feudal social relations; a victorious People’s War lasting 20 years that demonstrated in deeds how the most powerful weapons, better trained armies, military and economic support from the imperialist countries and the force and weight of traditions, can do nothing against the masses who — through the instrument of a People’s Army guided by a Communist Party armed with a strong Marxist-Leninist ideology enlightened by the leadership of Mao Tse-tung — lifted themselves from the condition of oppressed and exploited people and "made history".

Today, 50 years after the Chinese Revolution, we are here to affirm and celebrate the universal value of its results and teachings.

Today, like yesterday, we cannot accept opinions that don’t see the relationship of continuation and development between the Chinese Revolution and the October Revolution and the Third International. It is a continuation, because the Chinese Revolution would not have been possible without the birth of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921, as a Marxist revolutionary party of a new type, Marxist-Leninist, on the example set forth by the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik) which, under Lenin’s guidance, was able to defeat all the opportunist and extremist tendencies inside Russian Marxism. At the same time, it breaks with the ideological degeneration of the European socialist parties that led the Second International to political bankruptcy, thus gaining the vanguard of the Russian proletariat and popular masses, building the strategy and tactics that led the same masses through the February 1917 revolution (in which power was taken by the bourgeoisie) to the red and proletarian October Revolution.

The most advanced vanguard of the Chinese proletariat and masses understood that, in the age of imperialism, there was no way out for the movement started by the students on May 1919, except for the one leading to the overthrow of the old semi-colonial/semi-feudal social relations, produced by the state of dependency of China on imperialism, and the linkage with the most radical breakout from the world order of the time (i.e. Soviet Russia). We can say that the Chinese Communist Party was born and developed along the path charted by the October Revolution and the Third International, that, under Lenin’s guidance, was working for the build-up of Communist parties as parts of a single World Communist Party for the development of the World Proletarian Revolution while breaking with the old ideas of the Second International on national liberation.

The victorious Chinese Revolution in 1949 came to break the attempts of imperialism to encircle the newly born socialist camp, guided at the time by the Soviet Union under Stalin’s leadership. The Chinese Revolution was, in fact, enlarging the socialist camp, bringing to it a huge part of Asia and the great masses of the Chinese people, creating conditions for new victories in Korea and Indochina, thus inspiring the proletariat of the whole world, showing that socialist revolution was a concrete tendency in the world, that socialist revolution was developing while imperialism was on the defensive, that socialist revolution could really win against imperialism, which was showing, more and more every day, its real nature (i.e. that of a "paper tiger"), in spite of its powerful atomic weapons.

With the Chinese Revolution, the proletarians and the oppressed peoples of the world gained two formidable weapons for their struggle against imperialism: People’s War and New Democratic Revolution—weapons forged through the summations of Chairman Mao, tested through the practice and the revolutionary experience of the Chinese people. These weapons marked the history of the national liberation movements of the oppressed peoples, accelerating and opening the road for the destruction of colonialism through armed liberation struggles in Asia, Africa and Latin America, powerfully contributing to the anti-imperialist offensive that took place in the 50s, 60s and 70s, having its highest point in the war of Vietnam’s liberation.

We can say, without a doubt, that the Chinese Revolution, under Mao Tse-tung’s guidance, changed the balance of power of the world in favour of the proletariat and of the oppressed peoples.

LONG LIVE THE CHINESE REVOLUTION !
LONG LIVE MARXISM-LENINISM-MAOISM !

The universal value of the Chinese Revolution

Mao was able to solve, in practice, as a summation of the Chinese revolutionary experience, the problem of the dialectical relationship between national liberation and proletarian revolution through New Democratic Revolution as a stage between anti-imperialist revolution and socialist construction. He was able to solve the problem of the achievement of proletarian party leadership in a semi-colonial/semi-feudal society, transforming the great masses of the poor peasants into the ocean in which the revolutionary fish could swim. He was able to solve the problem of which strategy to use for the revolutionary struggle in a principally agricultural country through the theory and practice of protracted People’s War, building Red Base Areas and surrounding the cities from the countryside. But this was not all. Mao was able to participate, side by side, with the Soviet Union, then guided by comrade Stalin, in the international struggle against fascism, that had its specific Asiatic version in Japanese imperialistic expansionism, solving, at the same time, the problem of the United Front with non-Communist forces, or anti-Communist forces such as the Kuomintang, preserving the independence of the Chinese Communist Party and of its Red Base Areas; he thus avoiding the mistakes committed, for example, by the Italian and the French Communist Parties that, at the end of World War II, were thrown out of government even though they carried the heaviest load in the armed struggle against Fascism. Mao was thus able to continue revolution through to victory on a much greater mass base after Kuomintang’s treachery.

The Chinese Revolution is a revolution of tremendous historical significance. Its teachings are of universal value. This is the flag that we raise today against today’s China that, by mean of the coup d’etat of 1976, allowed the black line of the capitalist roaders inside the Chinese Communist Party to take power and wipe out Mao and his revolution, and has again dragged the Chinese proletariat and the Chinese masses into the hell of exploitation and oppression. This is the flag that we raise against imperialism which, due to the failure of revisionism and to the fall of the stronghold of the proletariat that was Red China, again is depicting itself as an invincible iron tiger, strong from his weapons and from the bloody will to use them. The Chinese Revolution is the flag we raise against opportunists and false Communists that reject the lessons of the Chinese Revolution, closing themselves within the vicious circle of revisionism disguised as "new ways" reproducing utopian ideas, theories and practices already defeated by the historical experience of the proletariat; "new ways" that put a mask on imperialist capitalism and put their upholders at its orders. The Chinese Revolution is the flag that we raise against the current leadership of the National Liberation Movements (such as EZLN, PKK, FARC) that are now proving their incapacity to solve even the most basic problems of national liberation. By rejecting the Chinese Revolution, by rejecting People’s War, by rejecting the leadership of the Communist Party in the united front they are a cause of defeat for their own people.

LONG LIVE PEOPLE’S WAR !
LONG LIVE MARXISM-LENINISM-MAOISM !

Uphold Marxism-Leninism-Maoism

We are opposed to those who are going to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Chinese Revolution as a noble event of the past, an icon from history to remember — sometimes even with nostalgia — and to confine it to museums, casting aside its living revolutionary content, the lessons for today. Today, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Chinese Revolution means, for us, to develop more and more the struggle to assert Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, principally Maoism as the third and superior stage of Marxism-Leninism, as the ideological base of the World Proletarian Revolution.

Maoism has developed as the third and superior stage of Marxism-Leninism on the basis of the teachings of the Chinese Revolution, but this goes beyond the victory of 1949. It developed in the leap from the New Democratic Revolution to the Socialist Revolution, when Mao summed up the historic experience of socialist construction in the USSR, highlighting its limits and contradictions, already emerging at the time of Stalin, who talked about them in his last writings. Mao charted a new path starting from his speech On the Ten Major Relationships through to the building of People’s Communes in the countryside and the Great Leap Forward.

Maoism has developed in the world struggle against Khruschev’s modern revisionism, denouncing the fall of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Soviet Union into the hands of capitalist roaders and polemicizing against the servants of revisionism from Tito to Togliatti to Thorez. At that time Red China was transformed into the stronghold of the World Proletarian Revolution, defending Marxism-Leninism from the distortions set up by modern revisionists, holding up the flag of liberation struggles and the World Proletarian Revolution, concretely supporting the movements fighting imperialism while launching the call to build up a new International Communist Movement based on new Marxist-Leninist Communist Parties to oppose revisionism; in this way building an alternative to the capitulation to imperialism proposed by Khruschev and his followers in the name of "peaceful coexistence", which consisted of the denial of the struggle against the class enemy because of the atomic threat, and on the theory of the state of the whole people and the party of the whole people, in opposition to the Party of the proletariat and the state of the proletariat.

Maoism has developed, first and foremost, with the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, the greatest storming of the heavens by the proletariat since the Paris Commune and October Revolution. At the basis of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution stands Mao’s summation of the historic experience of proletarian dictatorship in socialist countries. The grasping of the continuation of class struggle in the socialist stage, as a transitional stage between capitalism and Communism, due to its inner contradictions: contradictions between base and superstructure, between mental and manual work, between technical functions and political ones, between cities and countryside, between men and women, etc. This socialist stage full of contradictions will inevitably last a long historical period, and during this period the danger of taking the road back to capitalism is a great one. The subjective force capable of this capitalist restoration exists and tends to reproduce throughout the socialist stage: it’s the new bourgeoisie that, because of all the contradictions of the socialist stage, tends to reproduce in the managing mechanisms of the state and, first and foremost, in the same Party through which the proletariat exercises its dictatorship on the other classes. The new bourgeoisie inside the party tends to build itself up as a black line ready to overthrow proletarian leadership and to substitute it. Against the black line and capitalist restoration there is no other weapon than class struggle carried consciously on by the proletariat and the masses to defend the red line. Mao gave practical answers to this summation calling the masses to rise up against the capitalist roaders who were conquering the Chinese Communist Party.

During the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, millions of youth, proletarians and women rose up, waging a revolutionary struggle against capitalist roaders inside the Party, upholding the interests and will of the vast socialist masses. They upheld the firsthand conquest in practice of proletarian dictatorship, raising their class-consciousness, learning to use Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as a weapon able to prevent for a decade capitalist restoration, transforming it into a basis to remodel the international people’s struggles.

Through all of these passages Maoism has developed as the third and superior stage of Communist thought, as a theory coming from practice and tested in practice, as the way out from the crisis of the International Communist Movement and the necessary ground for its new strategic offensive, as the guide for the New Great Wave of the World Proletarian Revolution. While the decomposition of imperialism gets deeper and revolution becomes once again the principal tendency amidst big and complicated wars, to be Marxist today means being Marxist-Leninist-Maoist. Those who refuse Maoism as the third and superior stage of Communist thought are transforming Marx and Lenin into useless icons with no revolutionary content at all.

Anyway, to call ourselves Maoists is not sufficient to put Maoism in command. This will happen only if Maoism will walk with the legs of concrete subjects: an International Communist Movement developing on a world scale through the struggle to build a new Communist International, Communist Parties of a new type, i.e. Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, proceeding from the transformation of existing Marxist-Leninist parties or new ones; and, finally, by upholding People’s War as the universal road to proletarian revolution.

To put Maoism in command means, again, to stand resolutely against all its enemies: the revisionists, who refuse to make a historical summation of the Soviet Union from Khruschev to Gorbachev or, feeling like orphans of the Soviet power, carry on peace accords and capitulation in front of imperialism; the Hoxha followers, who lost power in Albania with a complete failure and have flirted with the revisionists the world over opposing the development of revolution and Maoism in every country; the Deng followers who erased all of Mao’s teachings, restoring capitalism and the exploitation of the Chinese masses. All of these tendencies are bankrupt and have transformed themselves into instruments of the ruling classes, or into degenerate leaders of the proletariat and people.

To put Maoism in command means refusing the idea that it is possible to work for the rebuilding of the Communist International, simply uniting on an eclectic basis with various communist groups. This is a one cause of confusion, an obstacle on the road for the new international that cannot see the light without the basis of unity of Maoism as the third and superior stage of Communist thought. Finally, it’s not possible to build new Communist parties if not on the basis of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.

It’s time to build Communist parties of a new type, with the application of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism within the concrete conditions in which the parties are operating — that is, with the development of a specific thought that will allow the class vanguard to swim like fish among the masses of every single country, to penetrate specific contradictions putting this at the service of people’s war.

Here lies the importance of the lessons that were given to us by Chairman Gonzalo and Chairman Gonzalo’s Thought, who was able to forge a new type of party (i.e. the Communist Party of Peru); a militarized party that took the leadership of Peruvian masses, guiding them in a People’s War that is reaching its twentieth year, that has passed from the strategic defensive to the strategic equilibrium, that carries on developing in spite of the capture of Chairman Gonzalo and Comrade Feliciano, overcoming the bend in the road to struggle until victory, until Communism.

The example of Chairman Gonzalo and of the Communist Party of Peru enlightens the proletariat and oppressed peoples of the whole world, as we can see with the initiation of the People’s War in Nepal and with the recent developments of the People’s War in Turkey, India and the Philippines. Maoism is taking its leading role in the New Great Wave of World Proletarian Revolution.

LONG LIVE MARXISM-LENINISM-MAOISM, PRINCIPALLY MAOISM!
LONG LIVE CHAIRMAN GONZALO’S THOUGHT!
LONG LIVE COMMUNIST PARTY OF PERU!
LONG LIVE THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF NEPAL (MAOIST)!
LONG LIVE COMMUNIST PARTY OF TURKEY (MARXIST-LENINIST)!
FORWARD TOWARD THE NEW GREAT WAVE OF WORLD PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION!

Maoists here and now

Today Marxist-Leninist-Maoist parties and organisations are united principally within the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM). RIM represents a concrete step toward the rallying of communists on a world scale, toward a new international. Nevertheless wanting a Revolutionary Internationalist Movement is not enough. It is necessary to put the red line proceeding from its tested experience in the leading role. In the same way we need today Communist Parties developing People’s Wars and Marxist-Leninist-Maoist organizations that aim for the great leap toward the Party to start new People’s Wars.

In Italy today this program lives in the Great Announcement and in the Great Decision to constitute, on the 50th anniversary of the Chinese Revolution, a new Communist party, the Maoist Communist Party, a practical answer to the alignment of the Italian workers movement with the New Great Wave of the World Proletarian Revolution.

LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTIONARY INTERNATIONALIST MOVEMENT!
LONG LIVE THE MAOIST COMMUNIST PARTY!
PEOPLE’S WAR UNTIL COMMUNISM!

Rossoperaio
September 1999