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Subject: Peru: Who Makes History?
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Subject: Peru: Who Makes History?
From: nyxfer!mim (Maoist Intl'ist Mvmnt)


Via The NY Transfer News Service * All the News that Doesn't Fit

from the Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM)

MIM Notes, Issue 70: November, 1992


                        Who makes history?

                             by MC121

MIM has been criticized in some quarters for saying that the
capture of Chairperson Gonzalo of the Communist Party of Peru will
not decisively subvert the course of the people's revolution. Some
of our critics have asked why MIM does not work with any of the
committees that sprang into existence to "defend the life" of
Comrade Gonzalo.

First of all, MIM wishes Comrade Gonzalo a long and productive
life. Gonzalo and uncounted PCP comrades have brought forth a New
Power in Peru that is an inspiration and a catalyst for worldwide
Maoist-led revolution.

In solidarity with the PCP and the Peruvian masses, MIM strives to
organize for revolution inside North Amerika. At this time, we do
not join, nor do we attempt to lead, single-issue or mass
organizations. These movements play a vital role in weakening
imperialism; and assumption of leadership by communists inevitably
results in the splitting and fragmentation of these movements.(2)

While we are building a vanguard party step by step, we recognize
that the most advanced political groups in any given national
formation are not necessarily Maoist groups. For instance, where
Maoism does not yet exist, revolutionary nationalist organizations
often take the lead in fighting and weakening imperialism.

Two-Line struggle

A hard-won fundamental lesson of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist mass
struggle is that a new bourgeoisie is engendered in the top ranks
of victorious communist parties -- hence the necessity for a long
period of overlapping mass Cultural Revolutions against capitalist
restoration and ongoing patriarchal relations.

The PCP is the achievement of the Peruvian people. The Peruvian
masses brought forth the Party, nurture the Party, die for the
Party and are liberating their nation from imperialism through the
Party. The masses, not individuals, are the makers of history.

The masses gave birth to Chairperson Gonzalo. The masses supported
Gonzalo in the struggle against revisionism in the time of
party-cleansing and preparation for the armed struggle. This
general line became embodied in the "Thought" of Comrade
Gonzalo -- not simply of Professor Abimael Guzman.

It is to the everlasting credit of Comrade Gonzalo and his
contemporaries that the Peruvian People's War cannot be killed if
one or a few leaders are killed. The liberation of Peru can only
be undone by a slip into revisionism and the abandonment of the
decisive political line which the masses have written in their own
blood. The strategy and tactics of the revolution in Peru do not
depend upon the leadership of one individual.

In a 1988 interview Comrade Gonzalo remarked that the two-line
struggle is the basis of party unity and that "a leadership cannot
be improvised, it requires a long time, a hard striving, an ardent
struggle to forge a leadership ."(3) Gonzalo did not pump up his
personal command in this interview, rather, he emphasized that it
is the leadership of the party organism that is principal.

When asked if he had "any kind of fear?" Gonzalo replied: "What
could be the greatest fear? To die? As a materialist I believe
that life will end some day, what is foremost to me is to be an
optimist, with the conviction that the work to which I am
committed others will continue and will carry it on until the
fulfillment of our definite task: Communism.

"Because the fear that I could have is that the task would not be
continued; but this fear dissolves when one trusts the masses. I
think that the worst fear, in the end, is not to trust the masses,
to believe that one is indispensable, the center of the world. And
if one is forged by the Party with the proletarian ideology,
principally Maoism, he will understand that the masses are the
ones that make history, that the Party makes revolution, that the
advance of history is determined, that the revolution is the
principal trend; the fear disappears from him, and remains only
the gratification of being mortar, and together with other mortar
serve to put the groundwork so that some day Communism may shine
and illuminate all the Earth."(4)

When the secret police caught Chairperson Gonzalo, he remarked,
"My turn to lose." Gonzalo understands that his imprisonment or
death does not spell the end of Gonzalo Thought. Presented to the
media in a cage on September 24, Gonzalo defiantly sang the ITALIC
Internationale END even as the PCP "detonated bombs in the portals
of at least six branches of Banco de Credito, Peru's leading
financial institution."(5)

Personality cults

Mao Zedong basically disavowed the personality cult that the
treacherous Lin Biao created around him during the Cultural
Revolution. He remarked, "To be a genius is to be a bit more
intelligent. But genius does not depend on one person or a few
people. It depends on a party, the party which is the vanguard of
the proletariat. Genius is dependent on the mass line, on
collective wisdom . I am no genius."(6)

Marx wrote, "Neither of us [Marx or Engels] cares a straw for
popularity. A proof of this is, for example, that, because of
aversion to any personality cult, I have never permitted the
numerous expressions of appreciation from various countries with
which I was pestered during the existence of the International to
reach the realm of publicity, and have never answered them except
occasionally by a rebuke. When Engels and I first joined the
secret Communist Society we made it a condition that everything
tending to encourage superstitious belief in authority was to be
removed from the statutes."(7)

The creation of international public opinion highlighting the
ongoing achievements of the PCP is an honorable task for
communists. Even if the reaction murders Guzm n, the revolution in
Peru will continue to unfold.

May the strength of the masses always be with you, Comrade Gonzalo.(8)

Notes:

1. MIM Notes 69 10/92.

2. Write to MIM for a reading list on the history of
settler-radicalism in Amerika.

3. Interview to Chairman Gonzalo, PCP Central Committee 1989,
p.26.

4. Ibid., p. 150.

5. UPI 9/24/92.

6. Stuart Schram, ed. _Chairman Mao Talks to the People_, p. 293.

7. Karl Marx, in Robert Tucker: _The Marx-Engels Reader_, 2nd ed., p. 521.

8. Write to MIM for the essays _On Personality Cults_ and _Lessons
in Single Issue Organizing: Mass Organizations and the Vanguard
Party_ ($2 each postpaid). We also distribute a _Study Pack on
Peru_ ($15.00 postpaid) and other PCP materials. Copies of the
video _The People of the Shining Path_ ($20 postpaid) may be
obtained from the CSRP, P.O. Box 1246, Berkeley, CA 94701. Spanish
materials may be obtained from Committee to Support the Peruvian
People (CSPP), P.O. Box 216, Paterson, NJ 07524. The excellent
bulletin _Peru Scholars/News and Notes_ may be obtained from Peru
Scholars, Dept. of Sociology, University of Northern Colorado,
Greeley, CO 80639. The September 1992 PS/N&N states that, as far
as is known, "no organization in the United States has been
generated by the PCP's _Movimiento Popular del Peru_, as have
several groups in Europe." MIM does not yet know what has happened
to the European _Sol Peru Committees_ or _El Diario Internacional_
since Fujimori requested deportation of Peruvian revolutionaries
living abroad; with one exception: According to the October 19
issue of the Boston Globe, Sweden decided to deport a contingent
of vocal sympathizers of the PCP.

                               -30-

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