We publish this inofficial translation of the joint declaration for the 200 year anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx:
Proletarians of all countries, unite!
JOINT DECLARATION
Long live the 200 year anniversary of the birth of the great Karl Marx!
This year the proletariat and all the exploited and oppressed people of the world celebrate 200 years of the birth of the great Karl Heinrich Marx. With overwhelming joy, the communist all over the world celebrate the founder of our ideology. With Marx and with Marxism, a great chapter in the history of humankind was opened, where men, equipped with the proletarian ideology, can scientifically comprehend the laws of society and thought, then starting the conscious struggle to put an end to class society and advance towards the glorious communism.
Marx and his endearing comrade Friedrich Engels raised for the first time the word of command: Proletarians of all countries, unite! A Slogan under which millions of workers all over the world have thrown themselves into the revolutionary struggle and have placed the flags of communism in higher and higher peaks: since the triumph of the Great Socialist October Revolution in Russia that inaugurated a New Era for humanity, passing through the great Chinese Revolution in 1949 and dozens of victories of the national liberation and oppressed people’s struggles, to the epic Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China, to today’s People´s Wars in Peru, India, the Philippines and Turkey. In this process Marxism has developed through its application and in the midst of the most fierce struggles, becoming Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, mainly Maoism, as the new, third and superior stage of Marxism. In outstanding and hard struggle against wind and sea in Peru flies the invincible the flag of Maoism and Gonzalo thought, lifted by the PCP and Chairman Gonzalo, leader of the World revolution and continuator of Marx, Lenin and Chairman Mao.
Reactionaries and revisionists are committed, since they are unable to hide its almighty and immortal doctrine, to showing a fragmented and distorted Marx, as a “library intellectual”, as the “humanist”, as a “poisoned avenger”, as “a dogmatic”. The revisionists, the old and the new, make efforts in their task of emptying Marxism of its revolutionary essence and are bulwark against Marx’ unmistakable definition regarding class struggle and the dictatorship of the proletariat:
“Now as for myself, I do not claim to have discovered either the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them. Long before me, bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this struggle between the classes, as had bourgeois economists their economic anatomy. My own contribution was 1. to show that the existence of classes is merely bound up with certain historical phases in the development of production; 2. that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat; 3. that this dictatorship itself constitutes no more than a transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.” 1
Others try to show him as the “anti-dogmatic” in their attempt to oppose Marx to who they blame of being dogmatics but who have in fact been his continuators, who have consequently and creatively applied Marxism to the revolutionary practice, leading the proletariat to the conquest of power and to constructing socialism; Lenin and Chairman Mao.
However, there is only one Marx: the genius founder of the proletarian ideology, the great leader of the proletariat that placed the theoretical, ideological and political foundations of the class struggle, who led the workers in their first battles against the European bourgeoisie and reaction., the vindicator of the necessity of the revolutionary violence and the dictatorship of the proletariat, the fierce fighter against the fake theories that mislead the proletariat, the fervent revolutionary that dedicated his entire life to the proletarian cause and that did not have any aspiration other than the workers` emancipation. It is the duty of the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Parties and organizations to clean the mud that the revisionists have poured over the figure of the great Marx and to give back to the proletarian masses the true image of the first great leader of the class.
Some revisionist portrait a Marx locked up in the library of London. This way trying to hide – under the enormous scientific work completed by Marx – their own betrayal of the proletariat and trying to justify their capitulation and ineptitude to lead the proletariat and the masses in the conquest of power. Avakian, a blabbering revisionist, is raving when comparing his sapping work to the years spent by Marx in London dedicated to the scientific labour of writing the capital, a work that uncovers the root of the capitalist profits, the plus value, essence of the capitalist contemporary economy, and scientifically demonstrates the inevitability that the proletariat will sweep off the outdated capitalist production relationships. As Marx himself stated “my main mission consist today in leaving the working class a theoretical base, firm and wide enough so to serve as a support for their future organization and as an arsenal from where to take out the necessary weapons for the struggle against the bourgeoisie.”2 “To ensure the success of the revolution, the unity of thought and action is necessary. The members of the international try to create this unity through propaganda, discussion and organization.”3 Marx devoted himself to the scientific labour, not for erudition or fame, but on the contrary – under the most fierce attacks from his opponents and supporting strenuous sacrifices in poverty and sickness – he did it with the only goal of placing the theoretical foundations of the proletarian ideology, which he understood was of vital necessity for the workers` cause, since it settled the ideological bases for its political struggle and organization.
Nothing farther from reality and from Marxism is thinking, that Marx spent his life away from the masses and their revolutionary struggle. Marx was always a decided revolutionary: A militant in the left Hegelian newspaper, the leader of the communist league, participated in the 1848 German revolution, maintained a thorough correspondence throughout his life with the most varied leaders of the proletariat, constantly published articles and in occasions led agitation magazines, and finally, he achieved a great direction of the International Workers’ Association, the First International, that placed the proletarian ideological bases, on which the first communist parties in several countries were built. On Marx` grave, Engels said:
“For Marx was before all else a revolutionist. His real mission in life was to contribute, in one way or another, to the overthrow of capitalist society and of the state institutions which it had brought into being, to contribute to the liberation of the modern proletariat, which he was the first to make conscious of its own position and its needs, conscious of the conditions of its emancipation.”4
Others attempt to deceive the masses portraying a humanist Marx and even show him as a pacifist. The founder of the proletarian ideology stated that “Meanwhile the antagonism between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is a struggle of class against class, a struggle which carried to its highest expression is a total revolution. Indeed, is it at all surprising that a society founded on the opposition of classes should culminate in brutal contradiction, the shock of body against body, as its final denouement?”5 After the experiences of the proletariat in the 1848 German revolution and especially with the glorious Paris Commune in 1871, Marx would raise his understanding and would synthesize even more the necessity of destroying the old bourgeois State machinery through the use of revolutionary violence and establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat.
“Marx in his critique to the Gotha Programme brought into the question of the relationship between state and socialist society [that Marx called “first” stage, or lower phase of the communist society]. He wrote: "Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat."”6
Today, some dare to rise against the universal validity of People´s War. They state that in some countries there aren't conditions for beginning Peoples War – or revise the concept of People´s War as if it was a political mass strike or insurrection – and say that preparing the beginning of People´s War would be wayward, adventurous and isolated from the mass movement. Marx harshly criticized those desperate revolutionaries that throw themselves into combats without the masses regarding their “own wishes as the driving force of the revolution instead of the real facts of the situation.”7 However, precisely the reality is not static. The historical and political development has led to a revolutionary situation in uneven development on the world and to the strategic offensive of the world’s proletarian revolution, a situation that demands the reconstitution/constitution of militarized Communist Parties to start People's Wars as soon as possible. Those who preach mass political strike and insurrection as the strategy for revolution – even if some called it the strategy for People's War for the imperialist countries – are who really deny the demands of reality and defend the well-known opportunist path of the pacific accumulation of forces, prelude to parliamentary cretinism.
It was precisely Marx who saved the energetic principle of the human activity, the “active side” from idealism and brought it to materialism, refuting all the contemplative materialists and urging an active revolutionary practice to transform the reality, something that today can only be materialized arming the masses part by part, incorporating them amidst People's War for the conquest of power. Marx also said: “Whilst we tell the workers that they must go through fifteen, twenty, perhaps even fifty years of war and civil war, not only in order to alter existing conditions, but even to make themselves fit to take over political power, you tell them, on the contrary, that they must seize political power at once or abandon all hope.”8
Wayward and isolated form the masses are those who initiate or develop People's War without having a militarized communist party, firmly guided by Marxism-Leninism-Maoism applied to their own country. In this path, they would eventually arrive at preaching the “abandonment of all hope”, to “peace” agreements and to capitulate to reaction, denying the general crisis of imperialism and the main political and historical trend towards revolution.
Marx was the leader of the proletariat that achieved the unity of the worker's movement in various countries during the years of the I International, unity based on the unwavering defence of the proletarian principles and opposing conciliation. He was accused by the Bakuninist of being authoritarian and by many others of splitting; Marx knew that the I International had already fulfilled its historic task and that it was better to end it before it died, killed by unity without principles. Today the dispersion in the International Communist Movement can only be overcome building unity on the base of Marxist principles, this is to say, on a unified understanding on Maoism, that far from leading to dogmatism, it proportionates the ideological base for the creative application in each country, forging guiding thoughts to reconstitute/constitute Communist Parties that initiate and lead People´s War.
Marx always relentlessly trusted the proletariat and never, during the defeats of its first struggles, doubted of its historical mission – scientifically proven – of being capitalisms gravedigger. Far from falling into desperation and discouragement, he dedicated himself to extracting the lessons from its temporary defeats to enrich Marxism and also lay the bases for the struggle against revisionism. “every important part of the revolutionary annals from 1848 to 1849 bear the heading: Defeat of the revolution! What succumbed in these defeats was not the revolution. It was the pre-revolutionary traditional appendages, results of social relationships which had not yet come to the point of sharp class antagonisms — persons, illusions, conceptions, projects from which the revolutionary party before the February Revolution was not free, from which it could be freed not by the victory of February, but only by a series of defeats.”9
Applying Marx` analysis to all the era of world proletarian revolution, we see that we are in front of a tremendously fortified proletariat, that in the struggle between revolution and counter-revolution has come out victorious and fortified with Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, in a hard and bloody struggle against imperialism and reaction, inseparable from the struggle against all opportunism and revisionism.
In 1879, whom was later the first revisionist of history, E. Bernstein, tried to revive in his “retrospective evaluation of the socialist movement” those pre-revolutionary ideas that Marx condemned and declared defeated in the revolution of 1848. Marx and Engels threw themselves into battle and broke ranks declaring that: “as for ourselves, there is, considering all our antecedents, only one course open to us. For almost 40 years we have emphasised that the class struggle is the immediate motive force of history and, in particular, that the class struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat is the great lever of modern social revolution; hence we cannot possibly co-operate with men who seek to eliminate that class struggle from the movement.”10 Today, the pending task of the balance of the last decades of the International Communist Movement can only be achieved clearly demarcating the fields, repudiating the new revisionism that has come out defeated, and unifying ourselves around a higher comprehension of Maoism.
The call of the Manifesto of the Communist Party and of the I international manifesto for the proletariat was clear: to seize power and to subordinate to that end all the immediate interest of the proletariat, and according to the moment, without losing sight of the final objective, trace the adequate tactics. This is why Marx always oriented with great skill the tactics of the proletariat for each moment and the relationship it had to have with the other classes in society. In times of prosperity of capitalism (that had not yet become monopolist, parasitic and agonizing) he traced the worker's struggle for wages as a truly civil wars that prepared the class for the “future struggle” and for the “final objective.” He defended the use of legality on periods of “political stagnation and bourgeoisie legality dominance”11 but severely condemned the German social democratic party not firmly passing to illegality after the law against socialists in Germany was passed. Regarding the relationship of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie and the peasantry in the places where the democratic revolution had not been consummated yet, Marx made a treasured analysis that served as the guide for Lenin and Chairman Mao to develop. “Without faith in itself, without faith in the people, grumbling at those above, trembling before those below”12 And regarding the peasantry, Lenin summarized “While the democratic (bourgeois) revolution in Germany was uncompleted, Marx focused every attention, in the tactics of the socialist proletariat, on developing the democratic energy of the peasantry”.13 Lenin placed at the surface what Marx said and the revisionist tried to bury “The whole thing in Germany will depend on the possibility of backing the proletarian revolution by some second edition of the Peasant War.”14
This year is also the 170th anniversary of the publication of the Manifesto of the Communist Party, the program of the proletariat traced by Marx and Engels, principles that have complete validity today and that it is up-to-date to apply them. We highlight once more the call of the manifesto: “The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.”
We rejoice the birth of the giant of the proletariat, who took from the highest of humanity, the German classic philosophy, the English political economy, and the French socialism, and in struggling with them, synthesizing them and masterfully uplifting them, gave birth to the proletarian scientific ideology, that after more than a century and a half of hard class struggle and two line struggle, has become Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and the universal contributions of chairman Gonzalo.
It is the task of the communists today to uphold, defend and apply, mainly apply Maoism in order to carry out new democratic revolution and without interruption pass to the socialist revolution in the countries dominated by imperialism – the immense majority of the countries and where most of the masses are at – socialist revolution in the developed capitalist countries and successive cultural revolutions to prevent restoration, develop socialism and assure the passage to communism. This can only be done by fighting imperialism and reaction implacably and inseparably from the fight against old and new revisionism, and its new expression that systematized and structured in the right opportunist lines in Peru, today with their own revisionist party organization, that pretends to usurp the name of PCP and has its electoral organs, the Movadef and Fentep. As well as fighting against other expression of this new revisionism, as Avakian and Prachanda, etc.
We celebrate the bicentenary of our founder, the great Karl Marx and the 170th anniversary of the Manifesto of the Communist Party, serving more and better to impose Maoism as the command and guide of the emerging new wave of world proletarian revolution, necessary base so that the proletariat can reconstitute the Communist International that would lead with People's War the epic battle started by Karl Marx on the path of our final goal, the forever golden Communism:
¡Workers of all countries, unite!
Long live the 200 year anniversary of the birth of the great Karl Marx, first great leader of the proletariat”
Long live his genius and unfading works!
Long live the 170 years of the Manifesto of the Communist Party!
Uphold, defend and apply proletarian internationalism!
Defend the life and health of Chairman Gonzalo with People’s War!
Down with imperialism! Long live People’s War!
People’s War until Communism!
Communist Party of Brazil (Red Faction)
Peoples Movement Peru (Reorganisation Committee)
Communist Party of Ecuador – Red Sun
Red Faction of the Communist Party of Chile
Maoist Organization for the Reconstitution of the Communist Party of Colombia
Revolutionary Nucleus for the reconstitution of the Communist Party of Mexico
Committee Red Flag – FRG
Committees for the Foundation of the (Maoist) Communist Party - Austria
February 2018
1 Letter from Marx to Weydemeyer. March 5 1852.
2 Quoted by Jose Mesa in the prologue of the translation of The poverty of philosophy. to Spanish. 1981.
3 Quoted by Chairman Gonzalo in on the construction of the party. 1976
4 F. Engels. Speech at the grave of Karl Marx. 1883.
5 K. Marx. The poverty of philosophy. 1847.
6 Quoted by Lenin in the State and the Revolution.
7 K. Marx in the CC session of the communist league 1850. Quoted by Franz Mehring in Karl Marx, founder of the scientific socialism.
8 ibid
9 Karl Marx. Class struggle in France 1848-1850. 1850.
10 Karl Marx and F Engels. On the circular letter to August Bebel, Wilhelm Liebknecht, Wilhelm Bracke and Others. 1879.
11 Quoted by Lenin in Carlos Marx. 1914
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid.
14 Letter form K. Marx to F. Engels. 16 April 1856.
