Here we publish a preliminary and unofficial translation of the text "EL COVID-19, UN NUEVO CHANTAJE DEL IMPERIALISMO PARA DESMONTAR LA LUCHA DE CLASES Y LAS GUERRAS POPULARES" by the Communist Party of Ecuador
COVID-19, A NEW BLACKMAIL BY IMPERIALISM TO SMASH THE CLASS STRUGGLE AND PEOPLE'S WARS
In the 1960s, Chruschtschow argued in relation to the nuclear issue and the way he dealt with his US colleague J. Kennedy: "We (the US and the USSR) are the most powerful countries in the world; if we unite in the name of peace, there will be no war. So if some madman wants war, all we have to do is threaten him with our fingers and he will calm down.
"What good are principles to him if he loses his head? (Pravda, 1963)
With such statements the Soviet revisionism of Chruschtschow and his clique tried to argue their nefarious thesis of "peaceful coexistence" with US imperialism. In other words, in the face of the so-called danger of a Third World War, revisionism proposed a ceasefire with US imperialism, and apparently part of this commitment determined that the USSR would renounce proletarian internationalism, support popular revolutions and national liberation, under the pretext of not committing any actions that might eventually provoke the US. And not only that, it is time to recall how Chruschtschow's revisionism vehemently attacked Chairman Mao's China for supporting the people's revolutions and national liberation that took place in Asia, which in his view was an irresponsible act and threatened world peace.
In other words, the history of nuclear war by the imperialist social revisionism of the USSR became a vicious blackmail for the oppressed peoples of the world to refrain from their revolutionary processes and in them from class struggle.
The blackmail of the nuclear war should devour the class struggle!
Today, imperialism of all colours: the USA, China, Russia, Germany, France, etc., its puppets in the countries of the Third World, and in them the revisionists, are once again releasing this green Khrushchev puke of reconciliation, of "peaceful coexistence", using the pandemic as a Trojan horse.
This new version of nuclear blackmail, which is shown in the "Unity against COVID-19", tries in a certain way to put us in the "same pigeonhole" of the 1960s, where the struggle of the communists in the world and its different forms, as it manifests itself in different countries (people's war; bloody, non-bloody class struggle), tries or pretends to be subordinated to an apparent main contradiction, which appears in the "struggle of humanity" against the pandemic.
Today, the health emergency caused by the same imperialism, be it Yankee, Chinese or Russian, has shown even more vehemently how weak imperialism is inside, a real paper tiger; able to develop nuclear weapons; able to travel outside the planet; able to attack any country in any part of the world, but unable to withstand a crisis within its borders, which, as in the case of the USA, is already more than 80 years old. 000 dead, which is 15 percent of the US soldiers killed in the Second World War; more than the number of victims that the imperialists suffered in the Vietnam War (53,000); more than those who died in Korea (33,000); far more than those who joyfully left blood on Iraqi soil (5,000 dead); and an unstoppable increase in the number of those infected (about one million people), which will certainly double the number of dead in the coming weeks.
But even under these conditions, imperialism cries out for "unity", for "peace", which is repeated in all the countries subjected to the different manifestations of imperialism in the world; but the same powers are still in violent struggle in the Middle East: Syria, Iraq, Iran; also in Afghanistan, Yemen and Palestine, which increases the suffering of the peoples exposed to the worst misery and destruction.
They are not remaining inactive in America militarily either. It was precisely in those days that they attempted an armed invasion of Venezuela from Colombia.
Imperialism and its lackeys are calling us to unity in the same way as in 1963, using the same tactics: "One is trickery in the style of the priest and the other is repression in the style of the executioner. The deceptive peace policy of imperialism and its war policy have always served and complemented each other.
Is it appropriate in this and any other context to declare a ceasefire in the middle of the development of the people's war in the countries where it is waged by the communist parties?
Is it convenient to fall for the lure of throwing the governments and old states at the proletariat and other exploited masses with euphemisms of unity, of a cease-fire with "party, ideological or group interests" in order to witness the crisis caused by the pandemic?
No! Impossible!
Now it is important to remember how, in the development of the People's War in Nepal, and especially before the attack on Dunai in February 2001, the Second National Conference of the CPN-M was held in India, where the GP's betrayal began to be forged, since from this "event" a cease-fire was accepted by the government. As an act of "good will", the CPN-M handed over the prisoners of war to the regime, and "tactical" actions resulted from these events and this conference, which demanded a ceasefire and negotiations. Not much time passed, and the " Prachanda Way " took root in the party leadership and led them to the abyss of history, of surrender. The people's war was betrayed in a horrible way.
In other words, it only took a moment, a certain scenario, and the revolutionary forces, through their traitors, revisionism and opportunism, gave the initiative to the enemy. The rest is practically only a matter of time.
Between revolution and counterrevolution, between the oppressed countries and the oppressing countries, between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, between the masses and the feudal system, there can be no peace, not even a conditional one. The pandemic does not justify leaving the initiative to the class enemy, the enemy of the people and the state; it must not be given a break. The old state is shaken, it is weak, and that is when we must bring about its downfall, as Mao taught us in the Six Military Writings. We must not allow the old power, since its bankruptcy, to try to show itself as generous, "humanitarian"; that it has, above all, the opportunity to sell the idea that the State does not belong to a certain class but to the people, and thus to revive Khrushchev's old theses, which are so timely, in order to maintain the entrenched discourse which calls for unity in order to face the health crisis in Ecuador and the world.In any case, the pandemic is raging among the weakest, the most miserable, the poor, the outcasts, the landless, those who are not only alienated from receiving decent hospital care; those who live from one day to the next and who are now forcibly confined without the old states being able to satisfy their most basic needs of daily life.
There can be no peace with the old states and their governments if they place all the responsibility, the social, health and economic crisis on the shoulders of the workers, as is happening right now in Ecuador.
There can be no peace with the apparatuses of repression because they serve the interests of the old state. This is evident in such elementary things as the violent reaction against our people, who have been physically, psychologically and even in their dignity attacked by these wretched guardians of the old power.
There can be no peace in Colombia if paramilitarism, supported by the armed forces and the old state as a whole, continues to assassinate peasant leaders in Cauca, Putumayo and other departments. And we must bear in mind that those with a high death rate are precisely peasant/indigenous leaders who are at the forefront of the struggle to defend the country and who have had enough of armed revisionism and paramilitary/state violence to a large extent. But armed revisionism also "takes its toll", which, without going beyond its ideological diatribe typical of the principles and laws that dominate revisionism, has led to a peace process fed by permanent ceasefires at Christmas, ceasefires for the exchange of prisoners, for the New Year, for Easter, for the floods, "humanitarian" ceasefires and so on, a series of pauses under every pretext that finally gave the reaction the total initiative. The sum of the small truces turned into a capitulation that, like an avalanche, took everything, the lives of poor peasants, of fighters, of demobilized people, who in the end were used by their leadership to get where opportunism and revisionism always end: in the parliament, in the National Assembly or in any political dignity of the old state.
There can be no cease-fire in countries where the class, the poor peasantry and the masses have developed a people's war under the pretext that these, the masses, should be provided with healthy supplies, when we know that such supplies, if they come at all, are inappropriate and inadequate and are obviously being instrumentalised to undermine the support base that the people's war has within the poor peasantry.
The recent experiences of comrades in the Philippines in relation to the unilateral ceasefire announced between April this year speak volumes. The enemy took advantage of the ceasefire because of the pandemic and carried out 36 attacks on the NPA, in which 18 comrades were killed and 8 injured. Although it is true that the timely reaction of the People's Army inflicted 56 casualties on the enemy, the facts themselves show that imperialism and the old states are always trying to reach ceasefire agreements, basically with the intention of destroying the revolution, be it by annihilating the living forces, such as destroying bases or influencing their political and ideological line in order to draw them into political annihilation.Lenin rightly pointed out the attitude that we revolutionaries should take in case of pandemics and the impossibility of abandoning the struggle against the class enemy, because it is obvious that they are behind this world crisis, that it was caused by them, by the enemies of the class and the people.
We must do exactly what Chairman Mao did in 1963 when Chruschtschow tried to blackmail the countries of the Third World with talk of nuclear weapons and the Third World War; expose them, fight them; denounce their error, their lie, their strategy. To fight and resist and to persevere in the class struggle, in the people's war, but also in the two-line struggle among the peoples; to ignore this situation, not to understand it, will lead to defeats for the international proletariat.
The people's war has made great leaps in Turkey, the Philippines, India and Peru. If we fall into the blackmail of COVID-19, cracks will remain open which will certainly make the people's war vulnerable, because what is won is easily handed over to the enemy and yes, contrary to what was said in 1963 in the publication of Pravda in support of Khrushchev's theses, the principles tell us to lose our heads, because this is the way it has always been throughout history, because this is the way the Paris Commune, the revolution in Russia, in China, the people's wars fought in the world by the communists, who are convinced of their principles and who have shown us the right way, if the New Democratic Revolution, socialism and communism are really in our program.
We cannot and must not declare a ceasefire in the people's war or in the class struggle because of a fundamental fact: We do not yet have power in our hands, and that is indeed the greatest and most solid argument.
Today there is no wind coming from the East to rule over that of the West; today there is an unstoppable hurricane rising from the bowels of the countries of the Third World and that there is no nuclear war, no military aggression, no reaction, no pandemic and no social or natural phenomenon ,which can stop it.
No to ceasefires; no to alliances; no to negotiations; yes to popular war up to communism.
No to the medicine men, because the imperialist oppression of the semi-colonies does not stop, it does not stop for a single minute; because capitalism is predatory, intransigent and exploitative towards the workers; because the big landowners bleed the poor peasants second by second, minute by minute; because revisionism and opportunism do not lose a moment to sink their poisonous arrows in the destruction of the revolutionary achievements of the proletariat and its strategic allies.
No to the ceasefire in the class struggle in the countries where the war is waged without bloodshed; no to class reconciliation; yes to open, determined confrontation, to that which, even out of the struggle for the rights, contributes to the rapid and necessary development of the people's war.
No to passive struggle; no to dialogue; yes to active, revolutionary struggle, otherwise we will not be what we are.
LONG LIVE THE PEOPLE'S WAR IN PERU, IN THE PHILIPPINES, IN TURKEY AND IN INDIA!
NO TO CEASEFIRE WITH THE ENEMY OF THE CLASS, OF THE POOR PEASANTRY AND OF THE PEOPLE!
NO TO CLASS RECONCILIATION ON THE PRETEXT OF THE FIGHT AGAINST THE COVID 19 PANDEMIC!
IF WE DON'T FIGHT REVISIONISM, WE HAVEN'T DONE ANYTHING!
