In Peru, the Communist Party of Peru understood the things very differently: Mao Zedong used the concept of “Three Worlds”, but in a manner which was of course totally different from Deng Xiaoping. Here is what is said about it in the “The International Line” of the Communist Party of Peru, published in 1988.

“In the current situation and in perspective we have entered the strategic offensive of the world revolution, we are within the « 50 to 100 years » in which imperialism will be sunk together with world reaction and we will enter the stage when the proletariat firmly takes root in power and establishes its dictatorship.

From there forward the contradiction will be between socialism and capitalism on the road toward Communism. The fact that restorations have occurred in the USSR and China does not negate the strong developmental process of the international proletariat, but shows how fierce the struggle is between restoration and counter-restoration is from which the Communists draw lessons to prevent the restoration of capitalism and to definitively establish the dictatorship of the proletariat.

We reaffirm the thesis of Chairman Mao Tse-tung that a period of struggle has begun between American imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism ; thus the two principal enemies are defined at the world level, for those who make democratic revolution or socialist revolution, including those who make nationalist movements, and what corresponds to them is that each revolution or movement specifies its principal enemy and seek to combat the dominance of the other superpower or of the other powers. In Peru, Yankee imperialism dominates us in collusion with the big bourgeoisie and the landowners.

However, at the world level there is contention between the two superpowers for world hegemony. We fight against American imperialism, feudalism and bureaucratic capitalism, but we can not allow its substitution with the domination of social-imperialism, nor of some other power.

In Afghanistan, the direct aggression is by Soviet social-imperialism that contends for hegemony with Yankee imperialism, China, as well as with other western powers, and there a struggle must be waged against social-imperialism as the principal enemy and not to permit the entry either to the domination of American imperialism nor of other powers; the problem is that the struggle is not correctly unfolded due to lack of political leadership, of a Communist Party.

In synthesis, there are two superpowers that are the principal enemies with one being the principal in each case, and we do not overlook the actions of the imperialist powers.

We consider Chairman Mao Tse-tung’s thesis that three worlds are delineated just and correct and that it is connected with Lenin’s thesis on the distribution of forces in the world based on the analysis of classes and contradictions. We reject the opportunist and revisionist misrepresentation by Teng Hsiao-ping of the three worlds that follows at the tail of the U.S. or USSR in order to betray the revolution. Starting from this, President Gonzalo analyzes the current situation in which the three worlds are delineated and further demonstrated that they are a reality.

The first world is the two superpowers, the U.S. and the USSR which contend for world hegemony and which can unleash an imperialist war.

They are superpowers because they are economically, politically, and militarily more powerful compared to the other powers. The U.S. has an economy centered on non-state monopoly of property; politically, it develops a bourgeois democracy with a growing restriction of rights. It is a reactionary liberalism; militarily, it is the most powerful in the west and has a longer process of development.

The USSR is economically based on a state monopoly, with a politically fascist dictatorship of a bureaucratic bourgeoisie and is a top-level military power although its process of development is shorter. The U.S. seeks to maintain its dominance and also to expand it.

The USSR aims more towards expansion because it is a new superpower and economically it is in her interests to dominate Europe to improve its conditions. In synthesis, they are two superpowers which do not constitute a block but have contradictions, clear mutual differences, and they move within the law of collusion and contention for the redivision of the world.

The second world are the imperialist powers which are not superpowers, but have smaller economic, political, and military power such as Japan, Germany, France, Italy, etc. which have contradictions with the superpowers because they sustain, for example, the devaluation of the dollar, military restrictions, and political impositions; these imperialist powers want to take advantage of the contention between the superpowers in order for them to emerge as new superpowers, and they also unleash wars of aggression against the oppressed nations and furthermore, acute contradictions exist among them.

The third world is composed of the oppressed nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. They are colonies or semi-colonies where feudalism has not been destroyed, and on that basis a bureaucratic capitalism unfolds, they are tied to a superpower or imperialist power. They have contradictions with imperialism, furthermore they fight against their own big bourgeoisie and landlords, both of which are at the service of and in collusion with imperialism, especially with the superpowers.

All this gives us the basis on which the Communists can establish the strategy and tactics of the world revolution. Chairman Mao Tse-tung had come to establish the strategy and tactics of the world revolution but the Chinese revisionists concealed it. Therefore, it remains for us to extract from his own ideas, especially if there are new situations in sight.

Our Party sustains the view that in the current world there are three fundamental contradictions:

1) The contradiction of the oppressed nations, on one side, against the superpowers and imperialist powers, on the other. Here the thesis of the three worlds is delineated, and we formulate it this way because the kernel of that contradiction lies with the superpowers but it is also a contradiction with the imperialist powers.

This is the principal contradiction and its solution is the development and victory of new democratic revolutions.

2) The contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, which has as its solution the socialist revolution and within that perspective, the proletarian cultural revolution.

3) The inter-imperialist contradictions between the superpowers themselves, between the superpowers and the smaller imperialist powers and, finally, among the imperialist powers themselves, which leads to war for world hegemony and imperialistic wars of plunder which the proletariat must oppose with people’s war and in the long run, world people’s war.

We do not list the contradiction socialism-capitalism because it exists only at an ideological and political level, since socialism does not exist anywhere as a state; today there is no socialist system. It existed, and to say that it exists today it is to claim in essence that the USSR is socialist, which is a revisionist position.”