From: Hank Roth <pnews@igc.apc.org>
Subject: PLP on SANDERO (4)
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: ?
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1993 21:37:44 GMT

/* Written 10:28 pm  Jan 23, 1993 by pnews@igc.apc.org in igc:p.news */
/* ---------- "PLP on SANDERO (4)" ---------- */
<<< via P_news/p.nes >>>
{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 4 (of 4)
 
Now, if these racist social activities are constantly going on 
(as they are in this world), and if SHINING PATH chooses to 
ignore them (as it does), does that make them disappear? Only 
psychotics imagine the real world disappears when they choose to 
ignore it. 
 
Marxism teaches that life is constant activity. Social life is 
constant class struggle. "Struggle is constant." Everything we do 
has its effect. Everything we fail to do has its effect. To not 
do something is another way of doing that thing's opposite. We 
are swamped in a racist high tide. To go with the flow is to go 
with racism. To oppose racism we need to swim actively against 
the current. That is why SHINING PATH's hands-off attitude to 
racism appears to be neutral, but can only take material form as 
the opposite of neutral---as partisan, as pro-racist.
 
There is a good example from the Second World War of how central 
anti-racism is to the struggle against capitalism. When Nazi 
Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 to re-establish 
capitalism, anti-Jewish racism (anti-Semitism) was the main way 
they tried to win over the Soviet citizens they were trying to 
conquer--mainly Russians and Ukrainians, who, before the 
Communist revolution, had been well trained in anti-Semitism. The 
Stalin leadership didn't try to dodge the issue. They rejected 
the SHINING PATH line that they should be "neutral" on racism, or 
that would hold back mobilizing support for the Soviet state. 
Instead, the communists took a forthright anti-racist position. 
Ilya Ehrenburg, then the leading Soviet writer, put it this way: 
"You are either an anti-Nazi or an anti-Semite." What was the 
result? Support for the Soviet state was never higher than during 
World War II, although by SHINING PATH logic, that should not 
have happened. 
 
On the other hand, there are two instructive examples of how 
SHINING PATH "neutralism" becomes open racism. 
 
The March, 1991 issue of the SHINING PATH monthly newspaper 
refers on page 4 to Peruvian President Fujimori (whose parents 
were Japanese) as "the slanty-eyed ruler." The actual colloquial 
meaning of the phrase in Peru is much more vicious. It is a 
brutal racial insult typical of the Klan, of France's racist 
politician Le Pen, of Hitler and Goebbels. It is unimaginable 
that such a phrase could be uttered by a communist, much less be 
printed in a communist newspaper.
 
The second example has to do with the USA group that SHINING PATH 
refers to as its close ally, a group which also promotes 
"Marxism-Leninism-Maoism-Gonzalo Thought." This is a small group 
which calls itself the "Revolutionary Communist Party", and which 
has been around since the early 1970s. Its line on racism has 
always been the same SHINING PATH line we have been discussing. 
In 1974-76 fascist forces in Boston tried to organize a mass 
racist movement, using opposition to school integration as their 
organizing device. At first they were very successful, and they 
were looking forward to leading a nationwide anti-black racist 
mass movement. PLP determined to try to stop this dangerous 
fascist threat by  killing it in its cradle. PLP sent cadres to 
Boston, organized volunteers, and worked with working people in 
Boston to organize against the Boston fascists' movement. PLP 
succeeded, which was important. Conditions in the USA would have 
been even worse if there had been a mass racist movement active. 
But guess who joined the fascist effort and participated in the 
fascist demonstrations? Right---the "Revolutionary Communist 
Party." What was their excuse|? The SHINING PATH line, expressed 
this way: "Busing black students to predominently white schools 
to integrate the schools is a liberal plot to divide the working 
class, and stir up whites against blacks." 
 
Marxism hold that the main way humans are different from each 
other is through class division. The working class has interests 
and needs which are antagonistic to the capitalists. The working 
class outlook on life is in basic conflict with the capitalist 
outlook on life. The idea that "anti-racist struggles would only 
call attention to differences within the working class and hold 
back mobilizing working class unity for the revolution" actually 
amounts to justifying the opposing notion: that humans are 
unbridgably divided by skin color and culture, and that class 
diovisions in society are a secondary division. (By this logic 
Peruvian bosses are not as bad--for Peruvian workers---as U.S. 
bosses, whereas Peruvian bosses are worse--for U.S. workers---
than U.S. bosses.) 
 
But this is completely senseless. Are differences in skin color 
or in culture the product of different species of humans? Are 
there different species of humans? Are humans like cats and dogs, 
lions and lambs--not to be stirred up? If this is the working 
class' true nature, then the working class would be able to 
achieve its liberation in communism only if it remained ignorant 
of its true nature!
 
Modern science has given the lie to what is implied by the 
SHINING PATH position. Modern science has conclusively shown that 
all people alive today are descended from common ancestors who 
arose about 200,000 years ago in Africa, and that class division 
in society is the primary way humans are "different" from each 
other. SHINING PATH is justifying precisely what the Nazis said 
in a crude way and what today's sociobiologists promote in a 
sophisticated "scientific" way. A "communist" movement that 
doesn't combat this kind of thinking tooth and nail isn't worth 
spit. 
 
SHINING PATH's idea also attacks the great history of Peruvian 
people's resistance. The history of the Peruvian people form the 
Spanish conquest in 1533 up to the present is one of horrible 
racist oppression and heroic resistance. The largest of hundreds 
of revolts was put down at a cost of 200,000 Indian lives. In no 
country has racist oppression been more ferocious than in Peru.
 
When Pizarro, the Spanish repreentative of burgeoning European 
capitalism, "discovered" Peru in 1526 there were some 20 million 
Peruvians living in an agrarian communist society in the 
continent's most developed and powerful civilization. By 1570, as 
a result of the Spaniards' holocaust (which combined slaughter, 
smallpox, slavery and starvation) the population had been reduced 
to 1.3 million. Continued oppression killed another half, so that 
only 600,000 remained alive in 1630. [Ronald Wright, STOLEN 
CONTINENTS, NY, 1992, pg 185] The Inca civilization was 
destroyed, although the basis of Indian society---the ayllu---was 
not. (The population didn't recover to pre-Conquest levels until 
the 1980s.)
 
The Spanish capitalist came to Peru to loot and enslave. In 1532 
alone they melted down enough Incan art objects to ship back to 
Spain seven tons of silver--a value greater than any European 
king had then at his disposal. In 1534 they shipped back another 
four tons of gold. [Wright, IBID, pg 82] Adventurers, gold and 
silver prospectors, priests and lawyers came to Peru, not as 
settlers. They super-imposed a feudal system of huge farms on the 
ayllus, turning the free Indian farmers into serfs, bound to the 
soil, absolutely dominated and controlled by the landlord and 
forced to work for him for free. This feudal landlord ruling 
class controlled Peru until the 1970s.
 
But the capitalistgs' policy was contradictory and self-
defeating. From the capitalist point of view, there were both too 
many Indians and too few Indians. There were too many Indians 
because the ruling class was too small to control them. To solve 
this problem the rulers took two tacks. First, they needed a 
buffer population to stand between the mass of exploited and 
oppressed Indian labor and themselves. They created a native 
class of ruling-class hangers on: judges, policemen, and other 
petty power-holders to help police and administer the feudal 
order. And they imported slaves from Africa. (By 1600 there were 
already 30,000 African slaves in Lima, the colonial capital.) The 
second tack had three aspects: exterminate the Indians; breed the 
"inferior race" out of existence, [From this arose the MESTIZOS, 
people of mixed Indian caucasian parentage who today number more 
than 40% of the population. Though most mestizos are working 
people, there is an upperclass small town mestizo  elite. This is 
the group that traditionally oppressed the Indian peasants, and 
spread the "mestizo ideology" that "Indians are inferior."] 
assimilate them (ban Quechua, their language, force them to learn 
Spanish, ban their culture, etc.). Still, no matter how hard the 
Spanish rulers tried (and they tried very hard indeed), they 
couldn't get rid of the Indians and Indian culture. 
 
But the problem of controlling too many Indians was overwhelmed 
by a more serious problem: the ruling class found it actually 
didn't have enough Indians. The rulers needed more labor power to 
exploit the natural wealth they had conquered. They tried 
importing slaves from Africa, but that didn't work because they 
couldn't import enough. In time they couldn't import any at all. 
When they ran out of black slaves they imported contract labor 
from China. It was in this way, through agony, murder, slavery 
and racism, that the capitalists created their Peruvian labor 
force. 
 
>From colonial times until today labor was always a shameful and 
oppressive condition forced upon mainly nonwhite workers. The 
white ruling class always lived a life of luxurious indolence in 
Lima. How well they benefited from racist exploitation is easy to 
see. In the mid-1960s (a time when everybody agrees life was 
better in Peru than it is now) the 24,000 individuals who 
basically made up the white Lima ruling class each had an average 
annual income equivilant to US$62,500. The rest of the population 
combined had an average annual income equivalant to US$157. 
Indian farmworkers had an average annual income of $10. Moreover, 
in 1965 the mostly mestizo workers living on the coast were paid 
seven times more than the mostly Indian workers living in the 
mountains were paid. [Peruvian National Planning Institute, in 
Bejar, IBID, pg 27]
 
RACISM, THEREFORE, HAS BEEN THE IDEOLOGICAL, POLITICAL AND 
ORGANIZATIONAL PIVOT OF PERUVAIAN CAPITALISM. The Peruvian 
working people are exploited and oppressed by Peruvian 
capitalism, which is a racist exploitative system. Peru is a 
hothouse of ruling-class-promoted racism; anti-Indian, anti-
black, anti-mestizo, coastal groups against highland groups 
against forest groups. Racism is deep in the Peruvian social 
consciousness. No one, except the SHINING PATH, denies this. 
Racism runs through every social issue of the lst 400 years up to 
this very moment. You can't get rid of the exploitation withoujt 
at the same time getting rid of racism, just as you can't get rid 
of the racism without at the same time getting rid of 
exploitation. Both the market for labor power and the ideology of 
racism  are primary targets of communist revolution. Anti-racist 
struggle therefore must be a central aspect of the Peruvian 
communist movement and its revolution. 
 
A FINAL WORD
 
In the early 1960s the Left within the old commmunist movement 
denounced almost all the existing parties for having turned into 
fascist organizations. They denounced the socialist countries for 
having become fascist socieites. The old maovement disintegrated, 
as the Left split from the old parties and set up new parties. 
This is how PLP was formed. 
 
In those days Mao explained how a Communist Party could easily 
"change color" and become a fascist party. All it needed to do 
was promote pro-capitalist policies and abandon the mass line. 
This would cause it to change class position and turn it from 
being a workers' party to being a capitalist fascist party. 
 
The Cultural Revolution carried the process of defining what a 
communist party should stand for a step further. The communist 
rebels who destroyed the old Chinese Communist Party, because it 
was turning fascist, wanted to replace it with a communist party 
that stood for egalitarianism, no money relations, no buying or 
selling of labor power or of anything else. planned production of 
those goods and services which working people needed, the mass 
line in politics, culture, education and health care, and 
democratic centralism. This is what the PROGRESSIVE LABOR PARTY 
stands for. 
 
Now along comes the SHINING PATH, endlessly quoting Mao's words, 
while consistently opposing their meaning. Despite what they may 
thing about themselves or say about themselves, what are they 
actually up to?
 
The SHINING PATH themselves tell us they are trying to lead a new 
bourgeois revoluion to set up centralized state control over a 
bourgeois economy. They don't believe you can carry out communist 
revolution. their political theory is to be guided by the 
authoritarian cult of the all-knowing Leader, not practicing 
democratic centralism based on the mass line. In fact, their only 
interest in the masses is to mobilize them to support the 
Leader's orders. They explain to us why it is not so bad to be 
implicitly racist, but already they are a little explicitly 
racist.
 
Our experience as communists already ahs taught us that there is 
no way any working class can benefit from this program. This is 
not the shining path to communism. 
                                    [By B.T.]
 
 
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