“We humans are mere fragments of time and heartbeats, but our deeds will remain for centuries stamped on generation after generation. We will people the Earth with light and happiness.” Gonzalo

History produces revolutionary leaders, people who breaks with the ideology dominating their epoch, denouncing injustice, studying the roots of the problems, paving the way for a revolutionary solution. They are the synthesized product of class struggles, like they synthesize class struggles.

Those leaders are not interesting as individuals in such, even of course respect is to be done for their accomplishment and their human ability to carry a break that others were not able to make.

Those leaders are interesting as they express the correct Thought to follow to be able to change the situation. It is the principle of the Guiding Thought, which we explained in an historical common document in Spring 2013.

In November 2016, we explained also the basis of Lenin Thought, which are carried notably in the following documents of Lenin : Guerrilla Warfare (1905), Lessons of the Moscow Uprising (1906), Leo Tolstoy as the Mirror of the Russian Revolution (1908), The Development of Capitalism in Russia (second preface).

Lenin Thought was the direct expression of the Russian situation, of the understanding of the Russian society, of its historical needs. In 1934, as 29 volumes of Lenin works were published, the following writers were for example quoted by Lenin : Mikhaïl Saltykov-Chtchedrine 320 times, Nikolaï Gogol 99 times, Ivan Krylov 60 times, Ivan Tourgueniev 46 times, Nikolaï Nekrassov 26 times, Alexander Pouchkine 19 times, Anton Tchekhov 18 times, Alexander Ostrovsky 17 times, Gleb Ouspensky 16 times, Ivan Gontcharov 11 times.

It is a good expression of the connection with the Russian culture and situation. The October Revolution was, in 1917, the expression of Lenin Thought.

In the same way, the Chinese revolution was the expression of Mao Zedong Thought. And in each country, history produced revolutionary leaders who begin a revolutionary process.

For this reason, we wish to stress the importance of rejecting the double attack on Gonzalo which happened ideologically in France those last few days.

As leader of the Communist Party of Peru, which launched a Peoples’s War, Gonzalo understood the principle of the Guiding Thought. It permitted him to explain that Maoism was a third stage of Marxism, after Leninism.

There is no other “Maoism” that has been defined. All others attempts are without any sense, a weak construct. Historically, the concept of “Marxism-Leninism-Maoism” comes directly from Gonzalo.

There is therefore no historically sense in translating in French and publishing, like it was done those last few days, a translation of a “Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Basic Course”, made by people who joined afterwards the Communist Party of India (Maoist).

This can only be an attempt to negate the role of Gonzalo and the signification of its teachings. Gonzalo’s name doesn’t even appear in this document. But what appears is the concept of “MLM Thought”, which is of course an attempt to skirt the question of the Guiding Thought based on a national frame.

It is any way well known historically that in India, like in the Philippines, there is a huge tradition of refusing Maoism in name of Mao Zedong’s Thought, the main parties in those both countries participating for this reason for a long time to the international congresses organized by the revisionist Workers’ Party of Belgium.

It shows very well that a Maoism, not accepting the only definition of Maoism, the one of Gonzalo, is only “Mao Zedong’s Thought”. When the Communist Party of the Philippines hails North Korea, it show that its Maoism is incorrect.

It is also erroneous that the Marxist–Leninist Communist Organization – Proletarian Way produced a document against Gonzalo, accusing him of capitulation, whereas he is in jail since his arrest in September 1992, 25 years ago.

Such an accusation, published those last days, is based only on what the enemy accepts to say about him, and this is for this reason a clear break with the revolutionary tradition of not criticizing an arrested comrade in the hands of the counter-revolution.

There is also a great naivety to explain that Gonzalo is a traitor, when he’s still in total isolation, in a tiny cell. When somebody capitulates, he’s put forward by the reaction.

The production of fake letters of capitulation is nothing new either : it was already made for the revolutionary leader Thomas Münzer in Germany in 1525.

As said, it is basic teaching of the revolution that the reaction is not to be trusted.

And in its accusation, the Marxist–Leninist Communist Organization – Proletarian Way affirms that the Communist Party of Peru said that Gonzalo Thought would be a new stage of marxism. This is of course not true at all and it shows that the Marxist–Leninist Communist Organization – Proletarian Way doesn’t know or understand the Communist Party of Peru.

And how can it be else, when the Marxist–Leninist Communist Organization – Proletarian Way believes that all countries in the world are capitalist (and not capitalist or semi-feudal semi-colonial), that Stalin was a counter-revolutionary, rejecting the universal character of People’s War ?

It’s also strange to see the Marxist–Leninist Communist Organization – Proletarian Way denouncing the “capitulation” of Gonzalo, when it has itself supported Prachanda, the revisionist leader of Nepal, until the end of its capitulation.

This is here good example, because genuine revolutionaries have foreseen Prachanda’s errors at a very early stage. There is no such thing like a genuine revolutionary leader who, suddenly, capitulates.

This is why we can’t trust the German state when it says that Ulrike Meinhof killed herself in her prison cell, or when the social-imperialist USSR said that the great Greek leader Nikos Zachariadis killed himself in exile. These are lies.

In the same way, it is a question of trust in the movement of History not to believe in Gonzalo’s capitulation. His arrest, like he said, is only a “bend in the road” for the Peruvian revolution.

Such a bend can take time, exactly like the revolution in the imperialist countries is knowing a strategical retreat since the wave of the 1960’s-1970’s, when anyway Asia, Africa and Latin America became the “storm centers of world revolution”.

What counts, in such situation, is that the revolutionaries unite themselves in avant-garde parties in each country, defending the revolutionary traditions and struggling against Revisionism and subjectivist interpretations coming from outside the historical revolutionary current.

This, to be ready for the next great wave of the World Revolution.

Marxist Leninist Maoist Center of Belgium
Communist Party of France (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist)

September 2017