The Gonzaloists are gathering

Emergence of co-ordinated internet sites posting statements and news, reflective of a push to consolidate a MLM “Gonzaloist” trend, has seen momentum towards a United International Conference, which would make possible to reconstruct an international organization based on Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, after the collapse of the RIM. The unity based on the defence and application of maoism as the third and superior stage of the ideology of the revolutionary proletariat and its universal character (with an emphasis on people’s war) for the different revolutionary processes in the world. This would be something very different from the proposition of an anti-imperialist international front which is advocated by organizations such as ILPS and ICOR sponsored by the MLPD, and in opposition to new revisionism, such as avakianism, prachandaism and the Right Opportunist Line in Peru.

A leading element, in this largely Latin American based trend, the Communist Party of Brazil (Red Faction) has been critical of what its described as the “rightist line that works for the split of the ICM” and “revisionist line that intends to undermine the People´s Wars” coming out from the International League of Peoples’ Struggle led by veteran communist Jose Maria Sison. Warning that so called “peace agreements” “demonstrated how an efficient liquidating road of revolutionary movements by the imperialists and their revisionist lackeys, with the example in the case of Nepal”.

The criticism brought a strong rebuke from Dan Borjal, Political Consultant of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines, for “the remarkable ignorance of Dem Volke Dienen about concrete Philippine conditions and about the Philippine revolutionary movement, and its audacity in exhibiting its idealist, ahistorical and un-Marxist way of thinking.”

More recently there was a flurry of condemnation, carried on the website Dem Volke Dienen – Serve the People, of the aggression that the Committee Red Flag suffered during the 2018 May 1st demonstration in Berlin from elements of the Jugendwiderstand [“Youth Resistance”] .Rather than explain it off as a ‘turf battle’, CRF supporters raised suggestions that it was stirred up by prompting from Utrecht.

The May 2016 meeting of marxist-leninist-maoist Parties and Organizations of Latin America set out the contours of the trend in three joint declarations, for debate and as contributions for the development of the two lines struggle in the International Communist Movement to draw the demarcation line: “Thesis on the international situation and the tasks of the International Communist Movement”, “Celebrate the 50 years of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution with People’s War until Communism” and “Resolution of Class Solidarity with the Communist Party of India (maoist) and the People’s War”.

“In these documents we advanced on the questions of utmost importance for the Proletarian World Revolution, such as the understanding of Maoism as the new, third and superior stage of the development of Marxism, the defense of the necessity of the concentric construction of the three fundamental instruments of revolution, of the militarization of the Communist Parties, the understanding of great leadership and guiding thought of each party and the revolution it struggles and leads – among other contributions of universal validity of Gonzalo Thought.”

Beside individual organisations’ websites and publications, the news site https://www.newepoch.media/ seems the main blog channel for international solidarity in the emergent trend.

Not all MLM “Gonzaloists” are on board for a United International Conference e.g. the grouping around the online magazine Communism or Red Sun magazine of the Peru People’s Movement.

This year’s campaign on the bicentenary of Karl Marx’s birthday illustrates the activities and political positions taken by the organisations involved:

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 – Germany
Committees for the Foundation of the (Maoist) Communist Party – Austria

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