From: Hank Roth <pnews@igc.apc.org>
Subject: PLP on SANDERO (3)
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: ?
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1993 21:37:36 GMT

/* Written 10:22 pm  Jan 23, 1993 by pnews@igc.apc.org in igc:p.news */
/* ---------- "PLP on SANDERO (3)" ---------- */
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{From THE COMMUNIST, the political journal of the Progressive 
Labor Party, Number 6/Fall/1992}
 
[I am presenting this article, by the PLP, on Sandero Luminoso, 
for informational purposes. It contains an accurate picture of 
life in Peru and provides, in my opinion, a better understanding 
of how different politics happens in the Third World. Be aware  
also that theory and practice tend to converge at first, but 
then they diverge from orthodox analysis and practice due to those 
exigencies that are caused by circumstance which are particularly 
peculiar to Latin America and specifically to Peru. 
 
The article is naturally critical of Sandero because of a 
difference in political analysis and process between the PLP and 
the SL, and anyone reading this material should bare that in 
mind. This article should thus be read with a certain objective
`truth seeking' detachment and a degree of skepticism, no less so 
than reports coming in from various amnesty groups and other 
tendencies with a possible ax to grind, and in that respect this 
reading and further reading from other sources should [can] 
present a totality that will be closer to the truth.---Hank Roth] 
    
                            Part 3 (of 4)
 
   "The `community' ...is a system of productin that keeps alive 
   in the Indian the moral incentives that stimulate him to do his 
   best work..in a relaced and pleasant atmosphere. [A Peruvian 
   sociologist] very correctly observes that "the vigor, industry 
   and enthusiasm with which the communal farmer [works], joking 
   with his companion..present a profound and decisive contrast to 
   the indolence, indifference, apathy and apparent fatigue with 
   which the [workers on a feudal farm] do the same or similar 
   work." [Mariategui, IBID, pg 61]
 
During the 1960s, when the leaders of what became the SHINING 
PATH drew up their capitalist reform program for the future (they 
had a written draft ready by 1968 and they haven't strayed far 
from it since) they ignored 4,500 active ayllus whose members 
communally worked 11% of Peru's farmland. Apart from the communal 
farmers, 60% of the rural families in Peru were landless 
farmworkers. [InterAmerican Committee on Agricultural 
Development, in HEctor Bejar, PERU, 1965, Monthly Review Press, 
1970, pg 13839, 14142] The general picture has not changed to 
this day. By what crazy logic are Peruvian communal farmers and 
rural workers a capitalist-class-waiting-to-be-born?
 
All of this shows not only the reactionary nature of SHINING 
PATH's "new bourgeois" of "new democratic" revoluion, but also 
that SHINING PATH opposes Mariategui's own shining path.
 
2.SHINING PATH'S STRATEGY
 
There is no way the CPP can achieve communism with their present 
reactionary politics. As SHINING PATH explains it, [Comments by 
representatives of CPP leadership to PLP delegation, February, 
1992] today they are leading a united front people's war of the 
peasants, the petty bourgeoisie (the self employed and the 
professionals) and themselves (representing the working class.) 
The peasants are the base, the working class leads. This united 
front is fighting for the "new sytle bourgeois revolution." Their 
aim is to replace the old bourgeois state with the new "front-
state," called the "Republic of New Democracy." That is happening 
now. The "front-state" already exists (based on 24 base areas the 
CPP controls) and is now assuming nationwide reponsibilities. The 
minute it controls the whole national territory, the revolution 
automatically will turn "socialist," and all productive capacity 
will be nationalized. A "party-state" will replace the "front-
state." The "party-state" will build socialism and lead cultural 
revolutions to prevent capitalist roaders from creeping into 
power. Meanwhile, it will wait for the "international proletariat 
and the oppressed nations" to carry out their own people's wars 
so everyone can enter communism. 
 
The CPP actually embodies many elements of the most Left-wing 
version of the old international communist movement's fatally 
flawed strategy of "revoluion for socialism." That strategy had a 
lot of truth and latent strength buried in it. Among those truths 
were: that revolutionary violence to win state power is the only 
way working people can liberate themselves from oppression, and 
the most generalized expression of this is people's war; a 
revoluion needs a revolutionary party; and the party must rely on 
base building. The CPP has obviously applied these correct 
elements of the old strategy to the horrible conditions Peruvian 
capitalism has created. This is the reason for SHINING PATH's 
current success, a success which baffles and amazes anti-communit 
political analysts.
 
In the old strategy these truths serviced an overall false idea--
somehow socialism leads to communism, so to get to communism you 
should fitht for socialism. Of course, this has already been 
tried many times. It never worked, and for good reason. Aftera 
ll, what is socialism? Socialsim is nothing more than a form of 
state capitalism. Lenin pointed out that socialism's only purpose 
is to develop economic production within capitalist forms, but 
under the "supervision" of a party claiming to be devoted to 
"ultimately" bringing about communism.
 
But results showed that socialism doesn't "grow" into communism 
any more than any other form of capitalism does. Who controlled 
the party and dominated society in socialism? It was the educated 
cadres, the managers and administrators, the intellectuals. There 
was a cult of "expertise." The highest goal for a worker or 
farmer---who remained trapped having to sell their ability to 
work in return for a wage--was to become an engineer, or 
scientist or other expert. Then he or she could leave the working 
class. Expertise naturally brought rewards in the form of higher 
wages and effective ownership of property; otherwise why bother 
to be an expert? This privileged group, centralized in the party, 
fought for socialism against the communist needs and desires of 
those who actually worked on the land and in the factories. 
 
Socialism, like all forms of capitalism, has to be overthrown in 
a revoluionary struggle for communism. So far the only attempt to 
do this was by workers and students in the so called "Cultural 
Revolution" in China during the last part of the 1960s. That 
revoluion was led by a coalition of Left and Right elements. 
Within the revolutionary coalition there was intense, violent 
struggle. The Left was overthrown by the Right. Then the Right 
was defeated by the socialist state capitalists in a bloody 
struggle for power. The name "Cultural Revoluion" hardly 
describes what was at stake or what was happening. It was a 
communist revolution against socialism. Its necessity proves that 
for working people, whose needs can only be satisfied by 
communism, socialism is a wrong path. 
 
Although SHINING PATH says "cultural revoluions" will be needed 
in the future, they actually have no understanding of the 
Cultural Revolution. They don't agree with the communist critique 
of socialism that was the basis for the Cultural Revolution, the 
critique which shows that socialism actually strengthens and 
reproduces capitalism. They don't understand the political 
economy of socialism. They don't see the facts because they look 
at socialism in the light of MArxist concepts that prevailed 
BEFORE there was a Marxist critique of socialism. In their view 
the Cultural Revolution was needed because traitors snuck into 
the leadership and "diverted" socialism to a capitalist path 
through a coup. It was all a conspiracy. If you ask them how a 
coultural revolution would work in Peru, they confess they have 
no idea, since it is inconceivable to them that traitors will 
succeed in infiltrating their leadership.
 
To make sure this won't happend they promote a cult of their 
leader, "President Gonzalo." Follow him and you won't go wrong. 
(Their sloagan is "Long Live President Gonzalo, Guarantor of 
Victory!") They learned this from Chinese socialism. Socialism 
requires this "cult of personality," but not, as bourgeois 
sociologists explain it, because of any desire to create "secular 
religion." Socialism requires it because the party establishes a 
hierarchical society and uses its control of the means of 
production to plan production on the baiss of profitability. It 
can not be supervised by the masses of working people. (This 
supervision we call the "mass line"). As a result, the party 
which is supposed to be the party of the working class instead 
appears as its boss. (Stalin was actually called "Thje Boss.") 
The working class remains alienated from the means of production 
and from political power. THEREFORE TO MAINTAIN ITS LINK TO THE 
WORKING CLASS, THE PARTY REQUIRES A PARTY INSTITUTION APPEALING 
DIRECTLY TO THE WORKING CLASS BEHIND THE BACK OF THE PARTY! This 
institution is the cult of the party leader. This was the reason 
for the Stalin cult in the Soviet Union and the Mao cult in 
China. 
 
But in communism, because an egalitarian society is being built, 
not a hierarchical one, the working class exercises supervision 
over the party, and production is planned to satisfy workers' 
needs. To bring about these conditions requires a hard class 
struggle to help people transorm their ideology and 
consciousness. The people must also forge new ways of relating to 
each other based on a communist spirit of class solidarity. 
(Production of what people actually need and want expands as a 
by-product of the new social relations of conscious class 
solidarity. Shoddy, rotten goods aren't tolerated becasue the aim 
isn't to increase production as an end in itself.) The implicit 
authoritarianism behind a cult of the party leader would only get 
in the way of the revolutionary transformation of social 
relations required by this communist organization of society. 
 
The cult of "President Gonzalo" already plays the same 
reactionary role (replacing the mass line) for the SHINING PATH 
as it did in Soviet and Chinese socialism. A U.S. sociologist 
who has studied women in the SHINING PATH, confirms this, 
reporting:
 
  "SHINING PATH cadre see the centralization of political 
authority in `Presidente Gonzalo' as a guarantee that grassroots 
power will not be subverted...Paradoxiacally, the existence of 
hierarchy in the party is regarded as an assurance that 
selfishness or egotism on the part of local cadre will not 
prevail over the common good." [Carol Andreas, "Women At War," in 
NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS, Vol 24, #4, pg 27]
 
3. SHINING PATH OPOSES ANTI-RACISM
 
The third significant reactionary element in SHINING PATH's 
politics is its attitude to racism. 
 
"Racism" is a word that describes two separate parts of material 
reality. (1) Racism is a set of social relations, ranging from 
discrimination to mass murder, all based ultimately on one 
relation: the super-exploitation of a socially distinct group. 
(2) Racism also is a set of ideas, all of which ultimately boil 
down to the notion that all groups, other than the racist's own 
group, are sub-human.
 
We know that today racism is capitalism's main ideological weapon 
and nowhere is this more true than in Peru. But what is often 
overlooked is that racist social relations have always been one 
of capitalism's main structural elements. (The Social Democrats 
have never understood this.) After all, why should a boss pay a 
worker what that worker wants if he can force another worker to 
do the same job for less? (This is the highest point of 
capitalist efficiency.) So one group of workers is singled out to 
be super-explo8ited because it is easily identifiable by color or 
being foreign. However little more workers get, the super-
exploited workers get less. The justification for this is that 
super-exploited workers "deserve" to get less because "they 
wouldn't know what to do with more," or some variation on the 
REAL theme---THE SUPER-EXPLOITED ARE REALLY SUBHUMAN.
 
The super-exploitation of a socially distinct group of workers is 
like a rope tied to the rest of the workers' legs. The 
capitalists jerk the rope to pull the other workers down to the 
level to which they have forced the super-exploited. The general 
level of capitalist profitability is set by this maneuver. In 
addition, (taking only the USA as an example), every year tens of 
billions of dollars of EXTRA profitgs, profits above "normal," 
are squeezed out of U.S. minority workers through racist super-
exploitation.
 
When the mass of workers accept the racist idea preached to them 
constantly by the ruling class that super-exploited workers 
deserve to be abused by racist social relations becaue they are 
"subhuman" (or, when minority workers respond with racism's 
mirror image, nationalism, which asserts that the minority is 
superior to the majority) then they are all lost. Even penny-ante 
pay raises become almost impossible to win. Definitely such 
workers cannot realize themselves as a conscious working class 
able to act in their class interest. They are condemned to remain 
mere labor power, merely an atomized component of capital, at the 
beck and call of capital. 
 
Do you want to unite isolated workers into a WORKING CLASS, and 
then go forward to win the liberation of the working class from 
exploitation? Well, that obviously requires that anti-racist 
struggle, both to change social relations and to change ideas, be 
in the forefront of your activities. You cannot wipe out 
capitalism anywhere in the world without making anti-racist 
struggle primary. Karl Marx long ago made this point. Especially 
in Peru is capitalism composed of racist exploitation combined 
with racist ideas. 
 
But this isn't so obvious to the SHINING PATH. In fact, the 
SHINING PATH doesn't agree with this. They think that anti-
reacist struggles are wrong. In their view anti-racist struggle 
would only call attention to differences within the working class 
and hold abck mobilizing working class unity for the revolution. 
[The SHINING PATH leader who explained this to a group of PLPers 
responded to their shock at what he was saying by assuring them 
that naturally SHINING PATH "opposes prejudice."]
 
People who want to look for excuses for SHINING PATH react to 
this by saying. "Well, this is a group which thinks the class 
struggle is primary, so they take a tactical hands-off position 
on racism. It's not as good a position as it could be, but at 
least it's not racist."
 
But it is racist. There is no way to be neutral about racism. 
This is the way liberal capitalists are racist. This is the way 
people who don't want to understand anything about the objective 
structure and laws of capitalism, and who despise dialectical 
reasoning, are racist. 
 
Marxism holds that insofar as they are expressed, ideas are 
material things. This may be hard to understand, but a deduction 
from this is very simple and clear: one way an idea takes 
material form is as the basis for social action. Then it exists 
in the material world as the activity of social classes, as a way 
in which one class relates to another. As an example, one way in 
which racist ideas are real material things is as they are 
embodied as a set of activities, founded on racist super-
exploitation, and ranging from discrimination to mass murder.
 
<continued in Part 4>
 

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