THE
FALSE PETTY-BOURGEOIS INTERNATIONALISM
Regarding
a new attack by a gentleman from Brazil against the Communist
Workers' Union (mlm)
Last
May, a new attack against the Communist Workers’ Union (MLM) was
published under the name “Editorial
Team at the Service of the People – Brazil,”
entitled “The
UOC’s False Self-Criticism and Its Political Complicity with the
Treachery of the Revisionist Clique of Sonu-Satish-Devji.”
This attack once again deserves our rejection, as it reveals the same
bad faith and intellectualist tricks traditionally employed by
petty-bourgeois sects to attack the revolutionary proletariat and its
organizations.
For
any proletarian with even a modicum of class consciousness,
internationalism is a class principle which, according to Lenin at
the Second Congress of the Communist International, requires:
“...first,
that the interests of the proletarian struggle in any one country
should be subordinated to the interests of that struggle on a
worldwide scale and, second, that a nation which is achieving victory
over the bourgeoisie must be able and willing to make the greatest
national sacrifices for the overthrow of international capital.”
This
formulation carries forward the banner raised by Marx and Engels in
the Manifesto
of the Communist Party:
Workers
of all countries, unite!
And the Inaugural
manifesto of the International Workingmen’s Association,
written by Marx: “The
experience of the past has shown us how the disregard of the bonds of
fraternity which ought to exist between the workmen of different
countries, and which should incite them to support by each other in
all their struggles for emancipation, is punished by the common
defeat of their isolated efforts.”
Consequently,
internationalist solidarity against imperialist aggression toward
peoples, and solidarity with comrades fighting against every form of
oppression and exploitation throughout the world, are not the private
property of any small group, nor are they conditioned on blind
adherence or upon remaining silent about their shortcomings,
mistakes, or deviations. On the contrary, the entire experience of
the workers’ movement demonstrates that genuine proletarian
internationalism requires, in addition to unconditional support for
those fighting against reaction, learning from both their positive
and negative lessons, as well as offering fraternal criticism of
their mistakes and limitations.
Marx
did not disown the Parisian workers who dared to storm heaven in
1871, despite his warnings that the uprising was premature. On the
contrary, once the proletarians took the initiative, he made the
greatest possible efforts to ensure that the Commune advanced as far
as possible along the revolutionary path, drawing general lessons
from this experience for the international workers’ movement. Lenin
did not dismiss with reactionary diatribes the European “Leftists,”
who refused to analyze the concrete situation and attempted to turn
the Bolsheviks’ experience into a universal recipe. Instead, he
patiently exposed their limitations and provided guidance for their
correct course of action, as set forth in “Left-Wing”
Communism: An Infantile disorder.
Mao did not attack the Communist International as an enemy despite
its mistakes in its guidance concerning China; rather, he criticized
those errors both theoretically and practically, providing the
proletariat of the backward countries with a broader and more
comprehensive perspective for revolutionary action.
For
communists, there is a dividing line between the enemy and ourselves,
and for this reason the entire history of the workers’ movement is
the history of the struggle between what is correct and what is
erroneous within its own ranks, as an expression of the struggle
between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat in society. Mao
repeatedly insisted on the need to distinguish between Yenan and
Sian, between the enemy and ourselves. This corresponds to the
orientation put forward in the Manifesto
of the Communist Party:
to support every revolutionary movement directed against the existing
social order.
In
this regard, solidarity with the Palestinian people against
U.S.-Zionist-imperialist aggression, and support for the Palestinian
resistance, are not conditional upon defending Hamas’s
fundamentalist obscurantism, just as condemning the aggression
against Ukraine, Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba is not conditional upon
supporting their regimes, which are also pro-imperialist.
Likewise,
internationalist solidarity with the Communist Party of India
(Maoist) [CPI (Maoist)] and with the People’s War it leads is not
the property of any particular party, organization, or group. The
revolutionary struggle of the Indian people, led by the CPI (Maoist),
is part of the struggle of the world proletariat against imperialism
and reaction, and forms part of the World Proletarian Revolution,
regardless of whatever ideological and political differences may
exist.
Furthermore,
an inseparable part of proletarian internationalism is to take upon
ourselves the problems faced by comrades around the world. Taking
them as our own does not merely mean signing statements of support or
carrying out some activity; it requires active participation and
contributing to the clarification of problems, criticizing mistakes,
and developing the struggle of lines. A timely criticism, a
scientific argument, or a well-founded recommendation is worth more
than a thousand speeches of empty praise and flattery.
Consequently,
attempting to use a disagreement over the development of capitalism
in oppressed countries as grounds for labeling a proletarian
organization revisionist and counterrevolutionary is not only a vile
and despicable act, but also a service to reaction and imperialism.
By
attempting to turn support for the People’s War in India and for
the CPI (Maoist) into private property, the author of the libel
against the UOC (MLM) ends up adopting, in this case, a sectarian and
essentially counterrevolutionary position, as demonstrated by his
underhanded attack on the International Committee in Support of the
People’s War in India (ICSPWI), which for more than a decade has
been the principal promoter of international support for this
revolutionary struggle. Regarding the worldwide campaign of
solidarity with the People’s War in India and against Operation
Kagaar, a global campaign endorsed by the CPI (Maoist), the
aforementioned gentleman states:
“This
time, usurping the leadership of the International Committee in
Support of the People’s War in India (ICSPWI), reducing it to a
small group that restricted its expansion to democratic, progressive,
and anti-imperialist forces, as well as to worldwide mass support for
this advanced line of combat of the World Revolution.”
Who
usurped the leadership of the ICSPWI? It was the comrades from France
(Pierre), Italy, and Galicia who organized and developed this
initiative, around which comrades from other countries joined,
including the UOC (MLM) in Colombia. It was an initiative supported
by the CPI (Maoist), and it seems that what bothers the gentleman in
question, due to his petty egotism, is that others, rather than
himself, took the initiative and led the efforts in support of the
People’s War in India.
Anyone
who has closely followed the solidarity actions in support of the
People’s War in India and against Operation Kagaar, particularly
those carried out during the week of March 23–29 of this year, will
realize that numerous revolutionary and progressive forces
participated in this campaign
so
that no one can claim it as though it were his own “fiefdom,” as
the gentleman in question attempts to do.
On
the other hand, the gentleman once again resorts to slander,
maliciously accusing the UOC (MLM) of calling for the abandonment of
the People’s War. On the contrary, anyone even remotely familiar
with the history of this position knows that, since the days of the
magazine Contradiction,
the UOC has consistently denounced the so-called “peace agreements”
(such as the Peace
Letters
in Peru following the arrest of Comrade Gonzalo, and even the false
peace agreement signed by the guerrillas in Colombia); it has
condemned betrayals of the revolution, as it did in the case of
Prachanda’s clique in Nepal; it has harshly criticized liquidators
such as K. Venu in India when he called for the dissolution of the
Party; and it has even thoroughly criticized comrades who have
adopted a centrist attitude toward these decisive problems of the
revolution.
The
gentleman believes he has found a fact and an argument with which to
condemn the UOC (MLM) as revisionist and counterrevolutionary in the
mistake of plagiarizing Mr. Abhinav Sinha, committed by a comrade of
the organization’s Commission for Theoretical Struggle. This error
was recognized by our Directing Committee as a failure of
revolutionary vigilance, since plagiarism is unacceptable in the
workers’ movement. He further argued, however, that our
organization did not need to borrow Mr. Abhinav Sinha’s arguments,
since the discussion over whether imperialist capitalism destroys
feudal relations in oppressed countries has a long history in
Colombia and in the International Communist Movement dating back to
the 1960s, a debate in which we have taken a position of our own.
As
for Mr. Abhinav Sinha, we do not know if he is an “important
counterrevolutionary,” as the gentleman from Brazil pontificates.
What can be known from his writings is that he is an intellectual who
also identifies himself as a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist and who
polemicizes against advocates of the thesis of semi-feudalism in
India, including comrades of the Communist Party of India (Maoist).
As
to whether the uneven development of capitalism implicitly
entails the destruction of precapitalist relations, and how this
process has unfolded in oppressed countries, this is a legitimate
discussion among Marxist-Leninist-Maoists concerning the Marxist
analysis of the socioeconomic relations of concrete reality, and
not a matter of reciting phrases, as is customary among dogmatists.
The
existence of capitalist relations, particularly in the countryside,
in the majority of oppressed countries is a concrete reality, an
objective truth. Even in India, where the majority of the population
still lives in rural areas, wage-labor relations have become
established in many regions where semi-feudal relations once
predominated. This is a law of the uneven development of capitalism
and shouldn´t surprise to any Marxist, but which dogmatists refuse
recognize.
Now,
the fact that some intellectual—even if he were a reactionary
bourgeois—acknowledged this objective truth should not be a reason
for the uproar raised by the gentleman from Brazil. Marx, Lenin,
Stalin, and Mao did not hesitate to recognize the discoveries made by
bourgeois authors and even welcomed their correct conclusions,
incorporating and developing them further. Marxist economic theory,
the recognition of class struggle as the driving force of history,
the evolution of the family, the theory of imperialism, among many
other truths, have their antecedents in bourgeois intellectuals. Even
the Three
Principles of the People,
which the Communist Party of China adopted as the programmatic basis
of the Revolutionary United Front, were formulated by Sun Yat-sen.
The
gentleman from Brazil believes that insults can invalidate or
discredit the findings of science, and for this reason he attempts to
intimidate less-informed comrades, once again pontificating and
demonstrating, for the umpteenth time, not only his bad faith but
also his profound ignorance:
“This
is the legacy of which they are so proud; they claim that capitalist
relations had already become established in the Colombian countryside
by the mid-1960s. But it is completely false to associate this legacy
with the founding of the Communist Party of Colombia (PCC). The
PCC-ML was headed by Pedro Vásquez Rendón, an advocate of Mao
Zedong Thought, as Maoism was referred to at the time. Rendón
participated in and led the guerrilla struggle in southern Tolima, a
peasant region with a strong revolutionary tradition in Colombia.”
But
let us allow the comrades themselves—especially Pedro Vásquez
Rendón—to refute the claims of the gentleman in question. In their
preparatory documents for the 1965 Party Congress, when addressing
Colombian society and the program of the revolution, they stated:
“Colombia
is a capitalist country, fundamentally intertwined with remnants of
feudalism, dependent on U.S. imperialism, which distorts and
obstructs its development.
It
is a capitalist country because its predominant relations of
production are capitalist and show a clear tendency toward expansion,
while feudal forms of production are receding. As for its evident
dependence on U.S. imperialism, this is the fundamental cause of its
insufficient and distorted development. This dependence is not open
and straightforward, as occurs in colonies in the strict sense, but
rather concealed, since it operates through economic exchange
ultimately imposed by the circumstances of the world history of
capitalism in which Colombia has been situated since the beginning of
its history as a nation, particularly when the incipient bourgeoisie
achieved a certain accumulation of capital derived primarily from
mercantile activities.
… In
Colombia there are typical representatives of the remnants of
feudalism, but they do not constitute a class in development; rather,
they are a class in decline, closely intertwined with the
pro-imperialist bourgeoisie and, like imperialism, hostile to
Colombia’s development.”
(See
Documents 1, Communist Party of Colombia M.L., Editorial 8 de Junio,
pp. 107–108 and 116.)
Referring
to the landowners and “large landowners” whom the dogmatists of
the time described as feudal lords, the comrades stated that this was
a particular phenomenon in which reactionary military and
paramilitary violence had been the instrument through which the large
landowners and capitalists had seized the best lands, displacing the
peasants; a phenomenon that has marked the history of the country and
still persists:
To
speak of “large landowners” in the abstract and to see them as
mere feudal lords from the European past, while forgetting that, to a
great extent, they are genuine modern capitalists, is evidence of
diverting the revolutionary edge away from the pro-imperialist
bourgeoisie that has developed anti-popular violence for nefarious
purposes.
… The
convergence of the interests of large landownership and the big
bourgeoisie constitutes a fundamental aspect of the assessment of the
national reality, since it explains the reactionary and aggressive
character of the ruling classes, demonstrated throughout the process
of violence of recent decades, and determines—and must
determine—basic changes in revolutionary strategy.
We
are dealing with remnants of feudalism, but above all with a
feudalized bourgeoisie that has become the worst internal enemy of
our people.
… The
struggle against the pro-imperialist big bourgeoisie is therefore the
same struggle against large landownership, since in Colombia large
landownership and big capital, when they do not coincide, mutually
reinforce one another… (Ibid., pp. 117, 118, and 119).
Referring
to the Colombian bourgeoisie, the comrades stated the following
regarding its pro-imperialist character:
The bourgeoisie,
for its part, must continue clamoring for the incorporation of
foreign capital into the country, and by doing so it accentuates its
truly anti-national character. It mortgages the sovereignty of its
state, since, lacking possibilities for development in the productive
sense, it can only sustain itself by surrendering more and more into
the arms of imperialism.
It
increasingly depends on international exploiters, although it retains
the reins of domestical power, with a well-organized state to squeeze
from the people the profits that enrich it and the tribute it pays to
its masters.
Confronted
with our people as an exploiting class, the Colombian big bourgeoisie
becomes a junior partner of U.S. imperialism in this common
enterprise of profit-making.
It
loses out to imperialism only relatively, since it is only with the
latter’s help that it can profit at the expense of our people.
Thus,
the patriotic, popular, anti-imperialist revolution will also be a
revolution against the pro-imperialist bourgeoisie, its agents, and
its allies. In the face of this revolution, the fate of the
denationalize and anti-national bourgeoisie will be the same
as that of imperialism. (Ibid., p. 121).
As
can be seen, the comrades of that period did not devote themselves to
reciting empty phrases; rather, they used Marxism-Leninism-Maoism to
knit
one's brow
when examining reality and, from that examination, to elucidate
programmatic, strategic, and tactical formulations.
In
response to that reality, the Communist Party of Colombia
(Marxist-Leninist) set out to develop the strategy of Protracted
People’s War, but in accordance with the characteristics of
Colombian society. The Second Plenum of the Central Committee, held
in October 1966, devoted an important part of its efforts to
clarifying the question of people’s war in Colombia, considering
the various revolutionary armed detachments of the period, it stated:
Of
course, both the ELN and the guerrillas of Marquetalia, Riochiquito,
Pato, and Guayabero are objectively
revolutionary,
and on the subjective level they fight with weapons in hand against
reaction and imperialism. Both have enormous possibilities for
development if they correct their most pronounced defects. For the
ELN, magnificent prospects will open up if it overcomes its contempt
for theory and for the vanguard party, consciously participating in
the Patriotic
Liberation Front.
As for the other guerrilla detachments, the only possibility for
progress lies in repudiating the treacherous leadership of the
Vierist clique and participating in the great revolutionary current
leading to the formation of the National
Patriotic Liberation Front,
as indicated by our Tenth Congress.
… Our
Party, and a large part of the people as well, knows and has found
the flaw about the experience of attempting to lead war from one or
more armed fronts (“foco”), placed more or less behind the backs
of the masses. For us, the issue is to extend
the people’s war,
starting from several guerrilla zones deeply rooted in the masses of
each region. Furthermore, we know that the concentration of
revolutionary forces in a single location provokes, in response, the
accumulation of enemy forces in that same sector, depriving us of the
tactical superiority initially acquired. It is therefore necessary to
develop the struggle, more or less simultaneously, in various zones,
dispersing the enemy’s forces. No one can fail to see that this is
happening in the country today and that it constitutes a guarantee
for the progressive expansion of the people’s war. (Ibid., pp. 285
and 296, emphasis in the original).
In
March 1968, Pedro Vásquez Rendón, during the controversy with the
advocates of semi-feudalism and the “national bourgeoisie” at the
Third Plenum of the Central Committee of the Party, stated:
Our
Party has vividly assimilated… [the]
extraordinary and rich experience of the struggle of the popular
masses; it has united with them and, interpreting their interests,
formulated at the Tenth Congress its characterization of Colombian
society, based on the historical stage of its current economic,
political, social, and cultural development; it identified the social
classes that participate in national life, establishing the role each
of them has played up to the present and the role they will have to
play in the historical destiny of the nation; it identified armed
struggle as the principal means of resolving all the problems of the
nation and the Colombian people; it concluded that “Colombia is a
country with predominantly capitalist relations of production,
fundamentally intertwined with feudal remnants, dependent on U.S.
imperialism, which distorts and obstructs its development,” and
that, consequently, only through the Patriotic,
Popular, and Anti-Imperialist Revolution on the Road to Socialism
is it possible to liberate the nation and the people from oppression
and exploitation.
These
formulations are the product of a concrete analysis of the concrete
reality of the country and the Colombian people, and in arriving at
them, the viewpoints and universal truths of Marxism-Leninism have
been employed. They constitute the backbone of the
political-theoretical body that our Party has submitted to the
judgment of the broad popular masses for subsequent verification and
rectification. (Documents 2, Communist Party of Colombia M.L.,
Editorial 8 de Junio, pp. 279–280).
Refuting
the advocates of a supposed national bourgeoisie, he said:
Our
Party has pointed out since the Tenth Congress, and this has been
confirmed in practice, that the bourgeoisie is an enemy class of the
revolution, given its characteristics as an obligatory and
unconditional partner of U.S. imperialism. In Colombia, this class
exercises political power in alliance with the landlord sectors and
serves anti-national interests, since it serves U.S. imperialism.
(Ibid., p. 283).
“… It
must be very clear that in Colombia, within the class referred to by
our Party as the bourgeoisie, just as among the landlords, there is
currently no progressive sector, much less a nationalist one. This is
what our Party has determined as a result of many years of study,
investigation, and analysis. This formulation of the Tenth Congress
has been and continues to be subjected to a severe test in daily
practice
If
a progressive bourgeois sector emerges within the process we are
experiencing in the future, only practice will be able to determine
this, and when that opportunity arises, our Party will not disregard
it, because we are a Marxist organization whose greatest concern is
that its theoretical formulations correspond exactly to concrete
reality. (Ibid., pp. 285–286).
Likewise,
he argued that in Colombia there existed an internal market and that
its economy was immersed in the world market; furthermore, that wage
labor, the «typical form of capitalist relations of production» had
become established in the countryside, even though it is precisely
there those «feudal relations exist with the greatest
aggressiveness»:
In the countryside,
where the backwardness of capitalist development is most evident,
machinery and certain modern techniques of animal breeding and
cultivation are already present, as are developed financial systems.
This is demonstrated by coffee-growing operations, the sugar and
panela industries, cotton, banana, rice, cereal, and oilseed
plantations, vegetable oil industries, etc. Moreover, small-scale
peasant production contains certain germs of capitalism, manifested
in the high degree of commodification of small farms across vast
regions; we have observed that the production of middle peasants and
above is carried out to a large extent through wage labor and, to a
considerable degree for the market.
… Yes, comrades,
Colombia is a country with predominantly capitalist relations in its
economy. This is strictly
true.
Those who fail to recognize this reality are completely mistaken, as
are those who advocate a classical bourgeois revolution while
attempting to disguise their aims under the pretext of a progressive
bourgeoisie.
But our Party not
only asserts the predominantly capitalist character of the relations
of production; it also maintains that our economy is “dependent on
U.S. imperialism, which distorts and hinders its development.” The
advocates of the old-type bourgeois revolution forget this part of
our formulations; they forget that this situation determines our
condition as a semicolonial country; they forget the historical fact
of the October Proletarian Revolution; they forget the existence of
the socialist camp. They neither see nor wish to see the
anti-imperialist and national-liberation character of our revolution,
which prevents the ruling bourgeoisie, allied with and subordinate to
imperialism and associated with the landed estates, from
participating in the process alongside the people or from leading it,
and which at the same time determines the fact that our revolution is
part of the world proletarian revolution. (Ibid., pp. 291–292).
And
in the same way that he polemicized against the right-wing position
that was expelled from the Party in 1968, Pedro Vázquez Rendon also
fought against the “leftist” ideas of those who upheld the thesis
of an immediate socialist revolution:
The system of land
ownership, which identifies approximately 8,000 landowners (large
landowners and bourgeois) as the owners of 50 percent of the
country’s arable land...
b) The existence of
nearly a quarter of a million peasant families who still live under
conditions very close to serfdom and cultivate land belonging to
landowners, having to pay rent for the land in money, in products,
and even through personal service.
c) The widespread
presence of rudimentary means of production.
d) The persistence
of numerous artisans still bound to the feudal mode of production.
e) The persistence
of numerous legal, ideological, cultural, and religious institutions
that are survivals of a feudal superstructure.
Those who put
forward the thesis of the socialist revolution have not wanted to
take the trouble to investigate our national reality. (Ibid., pp.
293–294).
This
is how the great Pedro Vásquez Rendón spoke,
and in this way, he reaffirmed the line approved at the Congress,
according to which the character of the revolution in Colombia was
Patriotic,
Popular, Anti-Imperialist, on the Road to Socialism;
a form of the New Democratic Revolution as proposed by Mao Tse-tung,
but not identical to the revolution in China. Such was the outlook of
the Marxists of that period, mortal enemies of religious
formulations.
In
this historic document, Pedro Vásquez said regarding investigation:
With sufficient
reason, Comrade Mao states: “He who does not study and investigate
has no right to speak.” That is to say, whoever does not study and
investigate the concrete conditions of concrete reality does not
possess the elements that scientific rigor requires for serious
analysis and, consequently, cannot issue a serious judgment.
Everything else is the charlatanism of fools or dishonest people who
have nothing to do with Marxism-Leninism or with the sacred interests
of the proletariat and the people in general. (Ibid., p. 278).
These
are words that the know-it-all from Brazil should remember, since he
arrogantly ignores this history of the programmatic struggle in
Colombia and yet dares to pontificate about it. In Colombia, since
the mid-1960s, when the Communist Party of Colombia
(Marxist-Leninist) was restructured, it was already clear to the
communists that capitalist relations predominated, and the comrades
of that period found a particular formulation to point out that this
was not a revolution like the one that had taken place in China,
although it was still necessary to sweep away the existing feudal
remnants.
Consequently,
the Strategy of Protracted People’s War also had certain particular
and specific formulations, as cited above in reference to the ELN and
the FARC. To this was added the plan to establish five operational
zones, based on the same idea of dispersing the enemy’s forces and
not losing the tactical advantage, while establishing support bases
or liberated zones. Given the enemy’s initial superiority, this
compelled the adoption of guerrilla warfare as the form of struggle,
which could not be separated from the revolutionary struggle of the
masses: “The
mobilized masses are the main point of support, the fundamental
force, the superior weapon.”
When
examining the characteristics of the Colombian population and its
majority concentration in the cities, the Second Plenum of the
Central Committee of the Party made it clear that:
“More than half
of the population, 53%, lives in concentrations of more than 1,500
inhabitants.
… Statistics from
recent decades show a rapid exodus from the countryside to the city,
and at present it continues irresistibly—and with nothing
indicating that it will diminish—the tendency toward urban growth
at the expense of the rural population.
… Nevertheless, the Plenum considered
that this does not invalidate the concept that the struggle will
fundamentally take place in the countryside during its first two
phases, but rather obliges us to think about how to link broad
sectors of the urban population to the people’s war from the
beginning. It obliges us to
anticipate that, under conditions such as ours, the people’s war
will shift its principal center to the cities in a shorter period
than would be required in a country with a majority peasant
population. (Documents 1,
Communist Party of Colombia M.L., Editorial 8 de Junio, pp. 259–260).
With
this orientation, efforts
were made to form detachments in several regions,
and the peasant uprising was organized in the northwestern region of
the Upper Sinú and San Jorge River, where the first Patriotic Junta
was established, an experiment in building the new power, which
relied on the strength of the masses organized in the Junta, with its
own democratic government backed by the People’s Liberation Army
and the militias. This epic struggle withstood two campaigns of
encirclement and annihilation, but was ultimately defeated by the
forces of reaction supported by the Yankee imperialists.
The
failed efforts to launch a genuine people’s war and build support
bases led to the death of the majority of the Central Committee, the
isolation of the Party from the working class, and a crisis from
which it never recovered, culminating in its fragmentation and its
degeneration as the proletariat’s vanguard detachment.
Where,
then, is the malicious rubbish spewed by the pontiff from Brazil,
according to whom: “it
is completely false that this legacy [that of the UOC (mlm)] is
related to the founding of the Communist Party of Colombia (PCC)”?
And
regarding the detachments linked to drug trafficking, which the
gentleman claims are still an expression of the peasant struggle for
land, the cruel facts of the war against the people speak for
themselves. As early as 1973, the Fifth Plenum of the Central
Committee of the Communist Party of Colombia (Marxist-Leninist) was
compelled to identify the FARC as counterrevolutionary in a historic
Resolution, which we reproduce in full so that the reader may judge
for themselves:
CONCLUSION OF THE
FIFTH PLENUM OF THE CC THAT MUST BE MADE KNOWN TO THE MASSES
REGARDING THE FARC
The Fifth Plenum of the CC of the
Communist Party of Colombia (M-L), once again establishing the true
reactionary class nature of the native revisionists, their sinister
role in the struggles of the people and, in particular, in the
Colombian armed movement, which they have sought to infiltrate and
manipulate for the purpose of betraying the revolution, considers it
necessary to denounce:
That the FARC are a counterrevolutionary
organization directly serving the revisionists and the oligarchy of
Colombia; they are completely controlled by revisionism from the
lower ranks upward and governed by statutes that oblige the rank and
file not to dissent from the revisionists’ treacherous policies.
According to these Statutes, all “commanders are distinguished
militants” of revisionism.
That the FARC are an armed instrument
for carrying out a plan of native revisionism in complete agreement
with the political and military plans of the oligarchy and Yankee
imperialism against the revolutionary movement in northwestern
Colombia. For both the oligarchy and North American imperialism, as
well as native revisionism, this movement constitutes a major
obstacle to their efforts to prevent the revolution.
For these clear reasons, the Fifth Plenum
considered that organizational-level relations with the FARC cannot
be established or maintained, and resolves:
- To publicly
denounce the FARC and their activities as counterrevolutionary, and
to draw attention to the difference between their revisionist
leadership and the honest but misled elements at the base of the
organization.
- To strengthen the
Party, the EPL, and the masses from an ideological and political
standpoint in order to confront revisionism and, in particular, the
activities it carries out through the FARC.
- To issue special
instructions to the regional organizations to confront this
situation.
- To deploy an
intensive propaganda plan throughout the Party.
- To entrust the
EPL newspaper with developing an active campaign to clarify and
denounce the activities of the FARC, both within and on the periphery
of this region and throughout the rest of the country.
- To prevent the
infiltration of the region by the FARC and entrust the EPL with
carrying out this provision.
- To identify and
denounce the counterrevolutionary maneuvers that the FARC have
carried out or are carrying out against other revolutionary
movements.
Communist Party of
Colombia (Marxist-Leninist)
V Plenum of the
Central Committee
July 11 – August
4, 1973 – From the Mountains (Documents 3, Communist Party of
Colombia M.L., Editorial 8 de Junio, pp. 310–311).
This
was already that clear to the communists in Colombia as early as
1973, but the crimes of the FARC leaders did not stop there: there is
also a history of their ties to the ruling classes, and particularly
to drug trafficking, which only the naive refuse to accept. In the
case of the gentleman in question, this reaches the extreme of
labeling communists counterrevolutionaries and mouthpieces for the
imperialists simply for telling the truth, as it is their duty to do.
It
is an irrefutable historical fact that, in the early 1970s, the FARC
persecuted and treated as criminals the peasants who cultivated
marijuana, considering it a counterrevolutionary practice, while
charging “taxes” to large producers, just as they did with cattle
ranchers and other capitalists; on numerous occasions, they opposed
the struggle of the peasant masses for land, even going so far as to
assassinate their leaders. This tendency toward an alliance with the
enemies intensified in the late 1970s, turning the FARC into
protectors and intermediaries between the peasants and buyers of coca
leaf and coca base paste.
It
is also an irrefutable historical fact that, at the proposal of
Rodrigo Londoño, alias “Timochenco,” the Seventh FARC
Conference, held in May 1982, approved the collection of “taxes”
from all actors in the drug-trafficking chain, from cultivation and
processing laboratories to the use of airstrips and other means of
transportation for bringing in supplies and taking out the final
product, etc. The excuse was that, from that moment onward, this
guerrilla organization would become a true regular army—for which
reason it added Ejército
del Pueblo
(People’s Army), or EP, to its acronym—and that it intended to
“expand the war toward the seizure of power.”
Subsequently,
during the 1990s and 2000s, following the Eighth Conference, the FARC
assumed direct territorial control over cultivation areas, moving
from the collection of “taxes” to directly administering the
cultivation, processing of coca leaf, and transportation of cocaine
hydrochloride toward the borders and coastal areas.
They
participated directly in cultivation, processing, and export in the
Eastern Plains, where they controlled the entire process, from
production to direct delivery to foreign drug traffickers at their
own airstrips and camps. They continued charging a “tax” for
every gram of coca base paste marketed in the areas where they had a
presence, providing armed protection for crops, laboratories, and
drug escape and transit routes. They also established alliances with
international drug cartels, particularly Mexican ones.
This
is a historical truth, so much so that even during the false peace
negotiations in Havana, the FARC leaders acknowledged it. The pontiff
from Brazil conceals these facts, including the notorious case in
which Tomás Medina Caracas, alias “Negro Acacio,” one of the
members of the FARC leadership, escaped a bombing of his camp where
Brazilian drug trafficker Luiz Fernando da Costa, alias “Fernandinho
Beira-Mar,” was arrested in the midst of an exchange of a cocaine
shipment for weapons in 2001.
The
groups now referred to as FARC dissidents have changed absolutely
nothing, except that they do not even fight the military forces
anymore. They are devoted to the struggle for control of the
territories where coca leaf is cultivated and the routes used to
export cocaine in the country. Added to this is their involvement in
mining, principally gold mining.
As
for the ELN, although it preserves some of the revolutionary aspects
of its founders and generally maintains work among the masses, both
rural and urban, it is not exempt from charging “taxes” to
imperialist companies and large capitalists in exchange for “peace”
in the territories where it has a presence. At the same time, some of
its fronts have also become involved in drug trafficking and mining,
as well as in armed struggle over the revenues generated by these
activities.
All
of these are confirmed facts; denying them, as the gentleman from
Brazil does, is simply indefensible. Where
is
the peasant struggle for land? In the mind of someone who pretends to
know everything and dares to pontificate about problems that he
either ignores or deliberately conceals.
If
this gentleman truly cared about the peasants, he should pay
attention to the frequent denunciations made by indigenous and
peasant comrades from the territories, some of which have been
published on the Revolución
Obrera
portal,
where they expose the reactionary practices of those whom he defends.
These are facts that anyone with a modicum of common sense and even a
little social consciousness should repudiate, not because the
imperialists and reactionary classes say so.
What
has been said is sufficient to refute the “brilliance” of the
gentleman from Brazil and to reaffirm the correctness of the position
of the Communist Workers’ Union (mlm), which, following the
revolutionary Marxist tradition of which it is an heir, has fought to
defend the science of proletarian revolution, despite and against
those who seek to turn it into a catechism of articles of faith.
Thus,
with such “arguments” and slanders, a character who poses as an
all-knowing internationalist reveals his miserable subjective
idealist conception of the world, his metaphysical method of
thinking, and his petty-bourgeois, sectarian point of view. The
efforts of this pontiff from Brazil, in his attempt to smear those
who unreservedly support the revolution in India by labeling them
counterrevolutionaries, merely expose the false internationalism of
the petty bourgeoisie which, in its sectarian eagerness to divide the
revolutionary camp, does indeed render a great service to imperialism
and world reaction. This occurs at a time when the Communist Party of
India (Maoist), the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army, the
People’s War, and the people of India are demanding from the
proletariat and the peoples of the world the broadest unity and the
firmest internationalist solidarity in order to isolate their
imperialist, bourgeois, and landlord enemies.
Finally,
we hope in the coming weeks to respond to the diatribe that the same
gentleman entitled: The
New Democratic Revolution Is the Main Force of the World Proletarian
Revolution.
Commission
for Investigation and Theoretical Struggle
Communist
Workers’ Union (mlm)
August
2026
