NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/10292

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From: Hank Roth <[e-mail]>
Subject: PLP on SANDERO (3)
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/* Written 10:22 pm  Jan 23, 1993 by [e-mail] in igc:p.news */
/* ---------- "PLP on SANDERO (3)" ---------- */
<<< via P_news/p.nes >>>
{From THE COMMUNIST, the political journal of the Progressive
Labor Party, Number 6/Fall/1992}

[I am presenting this article, by the PLP, on Sandero Luminoso,
for informational purposes. It contains an accurate picture of
life in Peru and provides, in my opinion, a better understanding
of how different politics happens in the Third World. Be aware
also that theory and practice tend to converge at first, but
then they diverge from orthodox analysis and practice due to those
exigencies that are caused by circumstance which are particularly
peculiar to Latin America and specifically to Peru.

The article is naturally critical of Sandero because of a
difference in political analysis and process between the PLP and
the SL, and anyone reading this material should bare that in
mind. This article should thus be read with a certain objective
`truth seeking' detachment and a degree of skepticism, no less so
than reports coming in from various amnesty groups and other
tendencies with a possible ax to grind, and in that respect this
reading and further reading from other sources should [can]
present a totality that will be closer to the truth.---Hank Roth]

                            Part 3 (of 4)

   "The `community' ...is a system of productin that keeps alive
   in the Indian the moral incentives that stimulate him to do his
   best work..in a relaced and pleasant atmosphere. [A Peruvian
   sociologist] very correctly observes that "the vigor, industry
   and enthusiasm with which the communal farmer [works], joking
   with his companion..present a profound and decisive contrast to
   the indolence, indifference, apathy and apparent fatigue with
   which the [workers on a feudal farm] do the same or similar
   work." [Mariategui, IBID, pg 61]

During the 1960s, when the leaders of what became the SHINING
PATH drew up their capitalist reform program for the future (they
had a written draft ready by 1968 and they haven't strayed far
from it since) they ignored 4,500 active ayllus whose members
communally worked 11% of Peru's farmland. Apart from the communal
farmers, 60% of the rural families in Peru were landless
farmworkers. [InterAmerican Committee on Agricultural
Development, in HEctor Bejar, PERU, 1965, Monthly Review Press,
1970, pg 13839, 14142] The general picture has not changed to
this day. By what crazy logic are Peruvian communal farmers and
rural workers a capitalist-class-waiting-to-be-born?

All of this shows not only the reactionary nature of SHINING
PATH's "new bourgeois" of "new democratic" revoluion, but also
that SHINING PATH opposes Mariategui's own shining path.

2.SHINING PATH'S STRATEGY

There is no way the CPP can achieve communism with their present
reactionary politics. As SHINING PATH explains it, [Comments by
representatives of CPP leadership to PLP delegation, February,
1992] today they are leading a united front people's war of the
peasants, the petty bourgeoisie (the self employed and the
professionals) and themselves (representing the working class.)
The peasants are the base, the working class leads. This united
front is fighting for the "new sytle bourgeois revolution." Their
aim is to replace the old bourgeois state with the new "front-
state," called the "Republic of New Democracy." That is happening
now. The "front-state" already exists (based on 24 base areas the
CPP controls) and is now assuming nationwide reponsibilities. The
minute it controls the whole national territory, the revolution
automatically will turn "socialist," and all productive capacity
will be nationalized. A "party-state" will replace the "front-
state." The "party-state" will build socialism and lead cultural
revolutions to prevent capitalist roaders from creeping into
power. Meanwhile, it will wait for the "international proletariat
and the oppressed nations" to carry out their own people's wars
so everyone can enter communism.

The CPP actually embodies many elements of the most Left-wing
version of the old international communist movement's fatally
flawed strategy of "revoluion for socialism." That strategy had a
lot of truth and latent strength buried in it. Among those truths
were: that revolutionary violence to win state power is the only
way working people can liberate themselves from oppression, and
the most generalized expression of this is people's war; a
revoluion needs a revolutionary party; and the party must rely on
base building. The CPP has obviously applied these correct
elements of the old strategy to the horrible conditions Peruvian
capitalism has created. This is the reason for SHINING PATH's
current success, a success which baffles and amazes anti-communit
political analysts.

In the old strategy these truths serviced an overall false idea--
somehow socialism leads to communism, so to get to communism you
should fitht for socialism. Of course, this has already been
tried many times. It never worked, and for good reason. Aftera
ll, what is socialism? Socialsim is nothing more than a form of
state capitalism. Lenin pointed out that socialism's only purpose
is to develop economic production within capitalist forms, but
under the "supervision" of a party claiming to be devoted to
"ultimately" bringing about communism.

But results showed that socialism doesn't "grow" into communism
any more than any other form of capitalism does. Who controlled
the party and dominated society in socialism? It was the educated
cadres, the managers and administrators, the intellectuals. There
was a cult of "expertise." The highest goal for a worker or
farmer---who remained trapped having to sell their ability to
work in return for a wage--was to become an engineer, or
scientist or other expert. Then he or she could leave the working
class. Expertise naturally brought rewards in the form of higher
wages and effective ownership of property; otherwise why bother
to be an expert? This privileged group, centralized in the party,
fought for socialism against the communist needs and desires of
those who actually worked on the land and in the factories.

Socialism, like all forms of capitalism, has to be overthrown in
a revoluionary struggle for communism. So far the only attempt to
do this was by workers and students in the so called "Cultural
Revolution" in China during the last part of the 1960s. That
revoluion was led by a coalition of Left and Right elements.
Within the revolutionary coalition there was intense, violent
struggle. The Left was overthrown by the Right. Then the Right
was defeated by the socialist state capitalists in a bloody
struggle for power. The name "Cultural Revoluion" hardly
describes what was at stake or what was happening. It was a
communist revolution against socialism. Its necessity proves that
for working people, whose needs can only be satisfied by
communism, socialism is a wrong path.

Although SHINING PATH says "cultural revoluions" will be needed
in the future, they actually have no understanding of the
Cultural Revolution. They don't agree with the communist critique
of socialism that was the basis for the Cultural Revolution, the
critique which shows that socialism actually strengthens and
reproduces capitalism. They don't understand the political
economy of socialism. They don't see the facts because they look
at socialism in the light of MArxist concepts that prevailed
BEFORE there was a Marxist critique of socialism. In their view
the Cultural Revolution was needed because traitors snuck into
the leadership and "diverted" socialism to a capitalist path
through a coup. It was all a conspiracy. If you ask them how a
coultural revolution would work in Peru, they confess they have
no idea, since it is inconceivable to them that traitors will
succeed in infiltrating their leadership.

To make sure this won't happend they promote a cult of their
leader, "President Gonzalo." Follow him and you won't go wrong.
(Their sloagan is "Long Live President Gonzalo, Guarantor of
Victory!") They learned this from Chinese socialism. Socialism
requires this "cult of personality," but not, as bourgeois
sociologists explain it, because of any desire to create "secular
religion." Socialism requires it because the party establishes a
hierarchical society and uses its control of the means of
production to plan production on the baiss of profitability. It
can not be supervised by the masses of working people. (This
supervision we call the "mass line"). As a result, the party
which is supposed to be the party of the working class instead
appears as its boss. (Stalin was actually called "Thje Boss.")
The working class remains alienated from the means of production
and from political power. THEREFORE TO MAINTAIN ITS LINK TO THE
WORKING CLASS, THE PARTY REQUIRES A PARTY INSTITUTION APPEALING
DIRECTLY TO THE WORKING CLASS BEHIND THE BACK OF THE PARTY! This
institution is the cult of the party leader. This was the reason
for the Stalin cult in the Soviet Union and the Mao cult in
China.

But in communism, because an egalitarian society is being built,
not a hierarchical one, the working class exercises supervision
over the party, and production is planned to satisfy workers'
needs. To bring about these conditions requires a hard class
struggle to help people transorm their ideology and
consciousness. The people must also forge new ways of relating to
each other based on a communist spirit of class solidarity.
(Production of what people actually need and want expands as a
by-product of the new social relations of conscious class
solidarity. Shoddy, rotten goods aren't tolerated becasue the aim
isn't to increase production as an end in itself.) The implicit
authoritarianism behind a cult of the party leader would only get
in the way of the revolutionary transformation of social
relations required by this communist organization of society.

The cult of "President Gonzalo" already plays the same
reactionary role (replacing the mass line) for the SHINING PATH
as it did in Soviet and Chinese socialism. A U.S. sociologist
who has studied women in the SHINING PATH, confirms this,
reporting:

  "SHINING PATH cadre see the centralization of political
authority in `Presidente Gonzalo' as a guarantee that grassroots
power will not be subverted...Paradoxiacally, the existence of
hierarchy in the party is regarded as an assurance that
selfishness or egotism on the part of local cadre will not
prevail over the common good." [Carol Andreas, "Women At War," in
NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS, Vol 24, #4, pg 27]

3. SHINING PATH OPOSES ANTI-RACISM

The third significant reactionary element in SHINING PATH's
politics is its attitude to racism.

"Racism" is a word that describes two separate parts of material
reality. (1) Racism is a set of social relations, ranging from
discrimination to mass murder, all based ultimately on one
relation: the super-exploitation of a socially distinct group.
(2) Racism also is a set of ideas, all of which ultimately boil
down to the notion that all groups, other than the racist's own
group, are sub-human.

We know that today racism is capitalism's main ideological weapon
and nowhere is this more true than in Peru. But what is often
overlooked is that racist social relations have always been one
of capitalism's main structural elements. (The Social Democrats
have never understood this.) After all, why should a boss pay a
worker what that worker wants if he can force another worker to
do the same job for less? (This is the highest point of
capitalist efficiency.) So one group of workers is singled out to
be super-explo8ited because it is easily identifiable by color or
being foreign. However little more workers get, the super-
exploited workers get less. The justification for this is that
super-exploited workers "deserve" to get less because "they
wouldn't know what to do with more," or some variation on the
REAL theme---THE SUPER-EXPLOITED ARE REALLY SUBHUMAN.

The super-exploitation of a socially distinct group of workers is
like a rope tied to the rest of the workers' legs. The
capitalists jerk the rope to pull the other workers down to the
level to which they have forced the super-exploited. The general
level of capitalist profitability is set by this maneuver. In
addition, (taking only the USA as an example), every year tens of
billions of dollars of EXTRA profitgs, profits above "normal,"
are squeezed out of U.S. minority workers through racist super-
exploitation.

When the mass of workers accept the racist idea preached to them
constantly by the ruling class that super-exploited workers
deserve to be abused by racist social relations becaue they are
"subhuman" (or, when minority workers respond with racism's
mirror image, nationalism, which asserts that the minority is
superior to the majority) then they are all lost. Even penny-ante
pay raises become almost impossible to win. Definitely such
workers cannot realize themselves as a conscious working class
able to act in their class interest. They are condemned to remain
mere labor power, merely an atomized component of capital, at the
beck and call of capital.

Do you want to unite isolated workers into a WORKING CLASS, and
then go forward to win the liberation of the working class from
exploitation? Well, that obviously requires that anti-racist
struggle, both to change social relations and to change ideas, be
in the forefront of your activities. You cannot wipe out
capitalism anywhere in the world without making anti-racist
struggle primary. Karl Marx long ago made this point. Especially
in Peru is capitalism composed of racist exploitation combined
with racist ideas.

But this isn't so obvious to the SHINING PATH. In fact, the
SHINING PATH doesn't agree with this. They think that anti-
reacist struggles are wrong. In their view anti-racist struggle
would only call attention to differences within the working class
and hold abck mobilizing working class unity for the revolution.
[The SHINING PATH leader who explained this to a group of PLPers
responded to their shock at what he was saying by assuring them
that naturally SHINING PATH "opposes prejudice."]

People who want to look for excuses for SHINING PATH react to
this by saying. "Well, this is a group which thinks the class
struggle is primary, so they take a tactical hands-off position
on racism. It's not as good a position as it could be, but at
least it's not racist."

But it is racist. There is no way to be neutral about racism.
This is the way liberal capitalists are racist. This is the way
people who don't want to understand anything about the objective
structure and laws of capitalism, and who despise dialectical
reasoning, are racist.

Marxism holds that insofar as they are expressed, ideas are
material things. This may be hard to understand, but a deduction
from this is very simple and clear: one way an idea takes
material form is as the basis for social action. Then it exists
in the material world as the activity of social classes, as a way
in which one class relates to another. As an example, one way in
which racist ideas are real material things is as they are
embodied as a set of activities, founded on racist super-
exploitation, and ranging from discrimination to mass murder.

<continued in Part 4>