- New Australian Communist Blog Founded
May 2022
The appearance of a new Australian Maoist blog, The Waterhole was welcomed by the Swiss publication, The Red Flag:
A new blog, under the title The Waterhole, has been founded by Australian Marxist-Leninist-Maoists. We call the attention of our readers to this new development in the international communist movement. In recent months, new anti-revisionist organisations and websites have been formed in Germany, the USA and Australia, which shows the advances being made in the struggle of the communists of the world against the dogmato-revisionist trend.
On their blog, the Australian colleagues write:
The Waterhole is a Communist blog. Its audience is the Australian revolutionary movement, and it aims to serve the interests of the multinational proletariat and the Aboriginal nations in their struggles against Australian imperialism. It is completely opposed to the revisionist parties that dominate the Australian revolutionary movement. We believe the primary task of the Communists in this country is to establish a Red Faction capable of analysing Australian society and preparing for the refounding of the Communist Party of Australia. We believe that only through a revolutionary war against Australian imperialism will the multinational proletariat, the Aboriginal nations, and all who are oppressed, ever achieve peace and freedom.
We whole-heartedly greet the efforts of the Australian colleagues to struggle for the formation of such a Red Faction and for the refounding of the Communist Party of Australia. We have no doubt that all the pebbles on the path of the Australian revolution shall be crushed and that our colleagues will fulfill their goals.
The blog of the Australian colleagues can be found here: https://thewaterholeaus.wordpress.com/
DEATH TO REVISIONISM! UNITE UNDER MAOISM!
Switzerland, May 2022
EDITORIAL BOARD THE RED FLAG
- Long Live Red May Day
The Waterhole reproduced “Long Live Red May Day “ , the joint international declaration released by many Marxist-Leninist-Maoist parties across the world stating ”It represents a positive development towards a new Communist International.” It was originally published by Maoist Road at maoistroad.blogspot.com
Signatories
Communist Party of India (Maoist)
Communist Party of Turkey/Marxist-Leninist
Construction Committee of the Maoist Communist Party of Galicia
Maoist Communist Party – Italy
Communist Party of Nepal (Revolutionary Maoist)
Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan
Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan – Shola Jawid
El Kadehines Party – Tunisia
Maoist Revolutionary League – Sry Lanka
Revolutionary Communists (RK) Norway
Revolutionary Collective Britain (Formerly RVM)
Red Road Maoist Group of Iran
Communist Party of Switzerland (RedFraction)
Poder Proletario Organización Partidaria MLM Colombia
Maoist Kommunist Party Turkey/NorthKurdistan
- Split on American blog
With nothing posted at https://struggle-sessions.com since December 2021, this explanation was provided via the Swiss-based internet site, The Red Flag:
The dogmato-revisionist, White-chauvinist and patriarchal clique in the USA, which stood behind the blog Struggle Sessions and which was exposed time and again by revolutionaries in the USA and abroad, has been expelled from the U.S. Maoist movement. This is according to a document which was sent to us by U.S. supporters of the international communist movement.
In the light of these new developments in the struggle against dogmato-revisionism in the USA, we want to draw the attention of our readers to a new organisation which has emerged in the United States as a result of the struggle against opportunism — the Proletarian Feminist Research Group. In a recent statement, this group declared:
The threat of bourgeois co-optation of the women’s struggle takes two main forms:
1. That of the liberal-reformist response to out-and-out reaction, which has escalated its attacks on the democratic rights of women and transgender people; the liberal-reformist trend sees the solution to the oppression of women and transgender people to be found within the system of bourgeois democracy.
2. That of the revisionism which dominates the International Communist Movement, and whose backwards lines have crept unopposed into the Maoist tendency itself; this trend wears a variety of masks, but always fails to present a dialectical materialist approach to the women’s struggle or provide a proletarian class line capable of leading it, and thereby liquidates the vanguard role of communist politics.
We consequently see the urgent need for a theoretical intervention to disambiguate the correct line for the women’s and transgender struggles […].
We whole-heartedly greet this new and important advance in the struggle for proletarian feminism in the U.S. communist movement, which is necessarily part of the struggle for refounding the Communist Party of the USA on the basis of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. This is an important blow against the patriarchal-chauvinist, dogmato-revisionist line in the USA, which used to be represented by the clique behind Struggle Sessions, and which is a specifically U.S. reflection of the dogmato-revisionist trend at the world level.
The U.S. colleagues further write:
We consequently see the urgent need for a theoretical intervention to disambiguate the correct line for the women’s and transgender struggles, and to oppose the wrong ideas which inform the mechanical-materialist, chauvinistic and petit-bourgeois postmodernist positions which have been taken up by a wide set of so-called Maoist groupments across the ICM (and which are exemplified by the German and Swiss milieus, respectively). We are also aware that variations upon these lines have become commonplace within other sectors of the Maoist tendency here in the so-called United States, especially in those groups concentrated around the Struggle Sessions leadership and the eclectics of the former MCP-OC.
The effort made here to take up the struggle against the German expression of the dogmato-revisionist trend, which was first initiated by the Swiss communists through their expulsion of the «Committee Red Flag» revisionists from Switzerland in 2020, is noteworthy. However, the colleagues make a mistake when they refer to the Swiss communist movement as having «petit-bourgeois postmodernist positions» on the women’s and queer questions. This assertion should be substantiated and developed in the form of a Marxist polemic concerning the position paper of the Swiss communists on the question, «Marxism and Queer Emancipation», and the U.S. colleagues should not refer to an opinion piece written by an individual supporter of the Swiss communist movement, which does not necessarily represent the line in formation of our movement. We hope that the U.S. colleagues will follow these claims up with an actual debate, so that these important questions of the General Political Line of the international communist movement can be resolved through struggle, and not through empty accusations and rumour-mongering.
We would welcome a polemic by the U.S. colleagues. We are not afraid of being proven wrong in a debate over these important questions, which must be solved in a scientific manner if the world revolution is to win victory; neither should the American colleagues be afraid of being proven wrong by us. The only correct policy for achieving the reunification of the international communist movement is to «Let a thousand flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend!». The old revisionist clique which was expelled from the U.S. communist movement always used opportunist tactics, such as empty phrases about «secrecy», spreading rumours behind closed doors, and refusing to establish secure lines of communications with us, in order to avoid engaging with our viewpoints. It is now time for the American colleagues to prove that they have truly broken with dogmato-revisionism by giving up on this sectarian practice and openly engaging in the struggle between the two lines in the international communist movement.
The blog of the American colleagues from the Proletarian Feminist Research Group can be found here: https://proletarianfeministresearchgroup.wordpress.com/
DEATH TO REVISIONISM! UNITE UNDER MAOISM!
Switzerland, May 2022
EDITORIAL BOARD THE RED FLAG
- Intervention on the question of uniting under maoism
The Red Flag EDITORIAL BOARD has made an intervention, posting in February 2022, “a polemic against the dogmato-revisionist strategy put forward in the document “A Proposal Concerning the Balance and General Line of the International Communist Movement”.
Another contribution posted online was an article discussing Mao Zedong’s final contribution to marxism — his thesis that “the bourgeoisie is right in the Communist Party” – titled, Once Again, Yanan
- Status of Red Flag
As a result of the struggle between two lines in our Editorial Board, in January 2022,The Red Flag website was formally adopted as the organ of the Communist Party of Switzerland (Red Faction). It began in March 2021 as a revolutionary online news site, journal and marxist-leninist-maoist archive. It claims to represents the most consistently revolutionary journalism in Switzerland, its name from The Red Flag, the organ of the Communist Party of Switzerland for French-speaking Switzerland. The same name has been used by Communist Parties all over the world — from the Communist Party of Germany through the Communist Party of China to the Communist Party of Peru — and it thus represents an international revolutionary tradition to which we are proud to belong.
- Name change in Spain
The American Tribune of the People website sough to inform its readers of developments with the Spanish Workers Party (Marxist-Leninist) by summarize and contextualize a statement by the Maoist Communist Party (PCM, Partido Comunista Maoista) of the Spanish State on the Second Congress of the Workers Party (Marxist-Leninist). An unofficial translation of the full document by David Martinez is available on the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist online newspaper, Communist International, here: Spanish State: Chronicle of the II Congress of the Maoist Communist Party
In early December, the Workers’ Party (Marxist-Leninist) [Partido (Marxista-Leninista) de los Trabajadores], a revolutionary organization based in the Spanish State, held their Second Congress. In January, the group released a report of the event which celebrated the important fact that the organization had voted to adopt Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as its guiding ideology and had taken the historic step of changing its name to the Maoist Communist Party (PCM, Partido Comunista Maoista).
The II Congress began by reading greetings from other proletarian organizations who sent their best wishes for a successful gathering, which the PCM appreciated, saying it “demonstrates the important work of international relations that we have been doing.”
The discussion of adopting Maoism, or Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, as the guiding ideology of the organization was the main debate of the Congress. Maoism is the third and higher stage of the proletarian ideology, developed since the time of Karl Marx, who theorized and defined Marxism in the mid 1800s through the rigorous study of philosophy, history, and human society, applying his ideas to the revolutionary movements of his era. Marxism was developed further by Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the Russian Revolution and Chairman Mao, the leader of the Chinese Revolution.
PCM say the Congress conducted “important ideological work that would allow the two-line struggle to emerge and the militancy to express itself freely to show its opinions, to evaluate the work of the outgoing Central Committee and to mark the future of the organization.”
As part of this meeting, PCM studied and assessed the International Communist Movement and “the organizations that have claimed to be Maoist. We have been formed by studying the TKP/ML [Turkish Communist Party/Marxist-Leninist -Ed.], the CPI (Maoist) [Communist Party of India (Maoist), -Ed.], the Communist Party of the Philippines… and, especially, the Communist Party of Peru [PCP, Partido Comunista del Perú, -Ed.].”
The PCM highlighted that, “It was the PCP who initiated the first people’s war after the death of Chairman Mao Tse Tung, and it was Chairman Gonzalo who synthesized Maoism as the third, new and higher stage. Our Party, together with Maoism, has assumed the universally valid contributions of Chairman Gonzalo, considering that they form an indispensable part of the proletarian ideology.”
Chairman Gonzalo is the leader of the PCP who was killed by the Peruvian State under the orders of US imperialism last September, after 29 years of imprisonment and torture. Through his application of Chairman Mao’s lessons to the People’s War in Peru, Gonzalo led the work to define Maoism and fought for it to become the ideology of the International Communist Movement. The PCM’s adoption of Maoism is yet another advance for the ideology and for the World Proletarian Revolution, and a testament to Gonzalo’s immortal leadership.
The PCM focused on studying the question of Protracted People’s War, Mao’s proletarian military strategy developed during the Chinese Revolution. PCM said, “we have decided to assume the Protracted People’s War as the universal method for the seizure of power. We are fully aware that this is only a declaration of intentions, therefore we have to study and learn about its materialization and development in imperialist countries.”
The question of nations is an important one in the Spanish State, where multiple national struggles have been waged against Spanish Imperialism. At the Congress, PCM established in their analysis, “that in the Spanish State there are four nations, the Spanish, the Catalan, the Basque and the Galician. This leads us consistently to defend the right of self-determination of the nations.”
“The mass line has played a particularly relevant role in the Congress,” the PCM said. The mass line is another of Chairman Mao’s immense contributions to revolutionary theory, which establishes that the masses are the makers of history, and revolutionaries must draw their ideas from the masses, evaluate these ideas through their theory, then carry out and test them alongside the masses.
The PCM expressed it would follow the principle of the concentric construction of the three instruments of the revolution: the Party, the Army, and the United Front, which is an alliance of revolutionary and progressive organizations led by the Party. The PCM, taking up the contribution of Chairman Gonzalo, said this will be done with a “militarized Communist Party” at the center.
The PCM says that a key principle of its mass work will be to organize working women “on the oppression suffered by working women under capitalism, giving it a marked class character and a revolutionary commitment.”
While adopting the name of the Communist Party, the organization emphasized it could not really be considered a Communist Party at this stage, stating “we are a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist organization that is clear that it is not the vanguard Communist Party. Having this question clear, our Party fights for the reconstitution of the Communist Party of the Spanish State.”
To conclude, the PCM expressed their revolutionary optimism and readiness to take on their important tasks, quoting The Communist Manifesto, written by Marx and Friedrich Engels, which states:
“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.
“Proletarians of all countries, unite!”
- Canadians sent greetings
Among the greetings to the Spanish congress were a Canadian ‘group’ the COMMUNIST WORKERS FRONT (ORGANIZING COMMITTEE). Born out of a split in the Revolutionary Student Movement (RSM), the Red Fraction of the RSM (the Greater Toronto Area and Vancouver sections) on the eve of May Day 2021, the Red Fraction announced its dissolution and the formation of the Communist Workers Front (Organizing Committee).
“We are an organization of workers from across Canada, uniting in struggle to build a Communist Workers Front that serves the reconstitution of the Communist Party of Canada for People’s War. We envision a mass front that welds the working class into a revolutionary force, mainly at the point of production and secondarily among the unemployed. We will make this a reality through creative application of the ideology of the working class: Marxism-Leninism-Maoism–Gonzalo Thought, principally Gonzalo Thought.”
Greetings to the Founding Congress of the Maoist Communist Party of the Spanish State
Late last year, the Communist Workers Front (Organizing Committee) sent a letter of greetings and congratulations to the newly founded Maoist Communist Party (PCM) of the Spanish State. The PCM was born at the 2nd Congress of the Workers’ (Marxist-Leninist) Party, held last December, marking an important advance in the struggle to reconstitute the great Communist Party of Spain. The Congress adopted Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and the contributions of Chairman Gonzalo as the ideology of the organization, contributing another victory to the forward march of Maoism around the world. A new name was adopted for the organization, now known as the PCM. Today, in the spirit of internationalism on the eve of another red May Day celebrated by the proletariat of Spain and Canada alike, we are happy to publicize our letter to the Spanish comrades.
On behalf of the Communist Workers Front (Organizing Committee) [CWF(OC)], we wish to congratulate you comrades of the Workers’ (Marxist-Leninist) Party of Spain [P(ML)TE] for successfully convening your 2nd Congress. This Congress will undoubtedly mark a major milestone in the two-line struggle within your organization toward the reconstitution of the Communist Party of Spain.
The Unity of the Proletariat of Spain and Canada
We are honoured to have been asked to write a greeting toward this important event. We would like to open by remarking on the historical unity between the proletariat of Canada and Spain. In the 1930s, thousands of Communists, workers, and other progressives from around the world volunteered for the People’s War against fascism and the completion of the democratic revolution being waged by the Spanish proletariat. Among these, as many as two thousand would come from Canada, including Comrade Norman Bethune. The bulk of the volunteers from Canada would be organized into the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion as a part of the XV International Brigade. Of all the volunteers from Canada, at least 721 would be martyred, mingling the blood of the proletariat of Spain and Canada together in the fight against fascism as part of the world proletarian revolution. We greet your congress in the vein of this historical unity and with the hope of sparking two-line struggle between our two organizations as part of the process of reunifying the International Communist Movement and reconstituting the Communist International.
The Similar Development of the CWF(OC) and the P(ML)TE
The CWF(OC) and the P(ML)TE have a similar origin in the rebellion of the youth against revisionism. In Spain, the culmination of the organizational split from the various revisionist organizations was carried out by the Communists-in-formation of Spain in 2018, several years before our own, with the constitution of the Communist Youth and later the P(ML)TE.
On the part of the Communists-in-formation of Canada, this process culminated in mid-2021.1 Our organization has emerged out of the struggle against the former “Revolutionary Communist Party” (RCP) led by the liquidator Joshua Moufawad-Paul who attempted to strangle the revolutionary line in Canada that had been developing for years among rank-and-file members of the “RCP” and the “Revolutionary Student Movement”.2
Having gone through a similar process in our formation as the P(ML)TE, we recognize the immense struggle that has been waged internally to consolidate yourselves ideologically and politically in order to break with revisionism on an organizational level. This process is especially important today as we are faced with the general counter-revolutionary offensive (GCRO) of imperialism, revisionism, and reaction that tries to liquidate Marxism and prevent the outbreak of the new great wave of world revolution. The formation of the P(ML)TE and the convening of its second congress around the question of Maoism has already dealt a major blow to the GCRO.
This congress is especially important as it concerns the adoption of Maoism and the universally valid contributions of Chairman Gonzalo by the P(ML)TE. The successful adoption of this ideological line will further consolidate unity within the international communist movement. In 1982, the Communist Party of Peru began the campaign for Maoism. Its purpose was to place Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, principally Maoism as the sole command and guide of the world proletarian revolution (WPR). This campaign has been met across the world and has seen the start of the process of constituting and reconstituting militarized Communist Parties for People’s War and the development of the revolution under this ideological line where it has already been initiated. Internationally, this campaign has seen the deepening of two-line struggle toward the unified Maoist international conference and the reconstitution of a militarized Communist International that will lead the WPR to its final victory. By convening a congress with Maoism as its centre of discussion, the campaign for Maoism has been given new strength in Spain and by extension the campaign is strengthened internationally.
Since 1982, the international proletariat have more and more armed themselves with Maoism and applied it in class struggle and two-line struggle producing new lessons. The most important among these experiences has been the People’s War in Peru. The Communist Party of Peru under the great leadership of Chairman Gonzalo synthesised Maoism as the third, new, and higher stage of Marxism and applied it to the concrete conditions of Peru producing Gonzalo Thought. While Gonzalo Thought was originally synthesised in and for the concrete conditions of Peru, it has been shown to contain many universally valid and indispensable contributions such as the militarization of the Communist Parties, Guiding Thought, Unified People’s War, etc. The importance of these contributions have been seen in the initiation and development of the People’s War in Nepal, up to Prachanda’s liquidation, as well as in the driving role they are playing in the international unity of Maoists and in the constitution and reconstitution of the Communist Parties of the world. This growing importance of Gonzalo Thought has been summarized by the Communist Party of Ecuador – Red Sun (PCE-SR) as follows:
We are principally Maoists because we consider that we are entering a stage of inflection and leap, where in countries, particularly in the third world, where the weight of Gonzalo Thought is ceasing to be incidental and becoming decisive in politics and ideology.3
We agree with this assessment by the PCE-SR completely and hope to wage further two-line struggle with the P(ML)TE around the question of the universally valid contributions of Chairman Gonzalo, which we hold must be understood today as Marxism-Leninism-Maoism–Gonzalo Thought, principally Gonzalo Thought.
It is important to note that the universally valid contributions of Chairman Gonzalo are nothing new to Spain and can be seen as early as 1987. The Communist Party of Spain (PCE) was one of the first Parties in the world to adopt Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, principally Maoism as their ideological basis. The PCE would even sign a joint statement with the Communist Party of Peru upholding key contributions of Chairman Gonzalo such as the militarisation of the Communist Party. We are confident that the proletariat of Spain will seize upon this great legacy and develop it with the reconstitution of a powerful militarised Communist Party guided by MLM-GT, the Guiding Thought of the Spanish Revolution and initiate People’s War in Spain yet again.
- Communist Workers Front (Organizing Committee). “Destroy the Old and Build the New with Gonzalo Thought as Our Weapon!” 30 April 2021.
- Communist Workers Front (Organizing Committee). “Documents from the Split in the Revolutionary Student Movement.”
- Communist Party of Ecuador – Red Sun. “Some Comments on the Document ‘On Maoism Itself’ of the RCP of Canada.” Unofficial English translation by Struggle Sessions, 5 October 2020. Also available in Spanish.
Published May 11, 2022
- Demise of Canadian PCR
Without fanfare or much explanation the Revolutionary Communist Party of Canada, founded as a party in Quebec in 2006, announced its demise last year. The party, supported by J. Moufawad-Paul, suffered an internal split in 2017, resulting in two competing factions: the PCR-RCP (Central Committee) and the PCR-RCP (Historical Direction). The PCR-RCP (Central Committee) retained control over fronts such as the Revolutionary Student Movement (that also split), as well as the rest of the party membership. It later set up a new website, leading to two competing websites of similar names. The PCR-RCP (Central Committee) announced its dissolution on November 5, 2021.
- Amongst polemical maoist reflections there has been
- Kenny Lake of the US journal Kites surveys and the limitations of a variety of political lines adopted in America by those seeking social change. His observations on Pac-man politics compliments an earlier polemic on Tin Man Maoism .
- These snappy titles are in vogue – Canadian blog M-L-M Mayhem! used Straw Personing Maoism. Its true that in the imperialist metropoles Maoism still must prove itself and in Critique of Maoist Reason JMP indicate the heterogeneity within Maoism and issues that indeed needed to be worked out, so he is rightly miffed when supposedly critiqued when “that requires actually reading the source material you are claiming to critique rather than represent them through second and third hand sources, filling in the blanks as you go.” JMP’s text is published by Foreign Language Press, a MLM publishing enterprise https://foreignlanguages.press
- Another split, a new Nepalese party formed
In Nepal, the fractious communist movement saw a New Party Formed From Split In Chand Led CPN .
Kathmandu, May 9, 2022:The Netra Bikram Chand-led Communist Party of Nepal (CPN) has split formally with a dissident leader of the party, Dharmendra Bastola forming a separate party named the CPN (Majority), accusing that the “Chand-led faction is getting stuck in the quagmire of parliamentary politics.” According to Bastola, the new party was formed after “rejecting the conspiracy of some of the party’s central members” to trap the party in the parliamentary system by contesting the local polls from the UML’s election symbol.
Bastola said that the new strategy of his party was to complete the scientific socialist revolution and by carrying forward the slogan of prosperity and independence of the country.
“After the Biplav [Chand]-led faction was tempted to take some central members to the polls under the UML symbol, we decided to form a new party by continuing the goal of completing the democratic revolution,” Bastola said.
woodsmokeblog 