[International Minister of MIM by way of introduction: MIM does not comment on the leadership of the revolution in south Asia, where there are many good Maoists but where distance and imperialist domination of communications makes it difficult for them to be known. According to what we are able to read from the BBC and other sources, what the article below says about Nepal being in peace negotiations is accurate. However, exactly who is leading the negotiations or why is not something we comment on. We are especially thankful for the global sweep of this article and its explanation of how the times today are different than those Mao faced in his day of the People's War against Japanese invasion and the Chinese landlord-comprador puppets of the Japanese.]
By Luis Arce Borja
Many guerrilla groups have been involved in dialogues and round tables with the representatives of various States. They have launched formidable guerrilla offensives but immediately ask for peace negotiations. What is really behind the "peaceful political solution of the armed struggle"? In general lines it is said that according to this road one can solve the war and put an end to the social causes that have originated the conflict. It has also been postulated that on this road it is possible to see social and political solutions in favor of the oppressed people. Nepal and Colombia serve us as elements to this analysis. In those countries have developed two of the most important armed processes of the present times. In the first case, the armed struggle has been led by the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), and in the second, the Revolutionary Armed Forces (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia--FARC) lead the subversive actions. Those armed groups, different in their doctrinal conceptions, coincide in attempting to solve the civil war through peace negotiations with the State's representatives.
The armed struggle in Nepal started on February 13th, 1996. In the middle of 2001 the leaders of the guerrillas announced the start of peace negotiations with the country's government. In accordance with the leader of the guerrilla group the negotiations have been developing under the creative application of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. (1) In January, 2003, the party announced a "cease-fire," pointing out at the same time that the front of the peace negotiations, expression of the strategic balance, is another front of war in a distinctive form ... From our part we will do our best, with responsibility and seriousness, so that the peace negotiations can solve the problems of the nation and people ... We will conduct a dialogue in favor of the fundamental interests of the country and of the masses ... Thus, our Party tries firmly so that the dialogue can be not only between our Party and the old regime, but also with all political parties, intellectuals and the broad masses, to accomplish results for the country's and the people's cause ..." (2).
The armed struggle led by the FARC began on April, 1966, and in 1983 started its large peace pilgrimage when, for the first time, they accepted the establishment of a peace dialogue with the Belisario Betancourt government. On March, 1984, they sign the first document on "cease-fire and truce." From that time on, they did not stop proposing Colombia's pacification through negotiations. In the last two decades no one Colombian president has escaped from the peaceful proposals of the guerrilla group. In August, 2002, they sent an open letter to Alvaro Uribe Vélez ( seen as a mafioso and ultra-reactionary), the new president of Colombia. They point out "that the FARC reiterate to the Colombian people and to the new president their deep concern of the urgent need for a political solution to the social armed conflict which the Colombian family bears." (3) But more recently, during the American aggression against Iraq ( the Colombian government is one of the South-American countries who supported Bush's war plans) they have repeated their proposal to solve their internal war through negotiations. On April 2nd, 2003, Raul Reyes, a high leader of the FARC, announced the intention of not discarding "the political solution for the conflict on the basis of opening peace negotiations." (4) The peace negotiations between the subversive groups and the State constitute an old story in the social struggle of humankind. Spartacus, 71 AC, tried to negotiate with the Roman generals, and his movement ( a historical uprising in which participated more than 100,000 slaves) was exterminated. Not very far away from our times, in 1934, Augusto César Sandino, after leading a victorious guerrilla war against the American invaders and the puppet government of Nicarágua, accepted the start of a peace dialogue. He was murdered after surrendering and signing a "Peace Agreement." In 1999 was arrested Abdullah Oçalan, the head of the Party of the Workers of Kurdistan (PKK) and leader of the national liberation war of the Kurd people in Turkey. In prison the Kurdish leader had announced his agreement to the possibility of a peace agreement with the State and called for his followers to lay down arms. Ocalan's peace call did not prevent the Turkish State from sentencing him to capital punishment ( still not done), besides launching a fierce repression against the people of Kurdistan.
Between 1824 and 1994, the USA accomplished 73 military invasions in Latin America and all of them were preceded by cunning peace negotiations. In just the period of the beginning of the '50s up to 1994, the American troops openly intervened 14 times in Latin America. Just to give some examples: in 1954 they invaded Guatemala to defeat the nationalist government of Jocobo Arbenz. In 1960 the Marines disembarked in Nicaragua to give support to the power of the tyrannical Somoza dynasty. In 1964 it was Cuba's turn ( during the American invasion of Cuba the U.S. government was negotiating with the Russians.). In 1965 it was Santo Domingo. In 1983 the small island of Granada, and in 1989 the Americans carried out the plan "Just Cause," according to which 28,000 marines invaded Panamá.
OBSCURE ORIGIN OF THE NON-MILITARY ROAD
Differently from what has been believed, the modern version of the negotiations has not come up from pacifist political democratic criteria. It has been structured as part of a strategic conception of the USA with the fundamental objective of defeating the subversive groups in the continent. Under the administration of Ronald Reagan (1981-1989) the use of peace negotiations was institutionalized as a counter-revolutionary tool. The concept of the negotiation inserts itself as a principal element of the North-American counter-insurgent strategy well known as Low Intensity Conflict (5) that has been structured by the Americans since 1981 to be employed in the Third World. The accomplishment and development of their strategy is done by a tactics composed of two options to face the guerrilla war. One of them lingers exclusively on the military aspect and the other emphasizes the diplomatic and business administration. In the first case one refers to the use of military force and any repressive means ( invasion, troops deployment, etc), to destroy the revolutionary or nationalist movements. On the other hand one conceives a programme of negotiations and "dialogue with the guerrilla" to erode the progressive or revolutionary stances from inside, to attempt to demobilize the masses and gain time "with the objective of defeating the subversion." (6) Nicaragua was a laboratory where the efficacy and the double side of the "Low Intensity Conflict" was demonstrated. Military actions were put into practice ( open and covert) and the formula of peaceful negotiations. The American government supported and financed armed groups against the Sandinista government, but at the same time sponsored peace negotiations as a "peaceful and democratic solution" to the conflicts in the country.
It is January, 1983, that the USA formulates officially what is known as a "negotiated political solution to the armed conflict." General Manuel Antonio Noriega, a well known drug-trafficker and one of the most remarkable CIA agents in Latin America, was the promoter of it. The meeting that gave birth to the strategy took place in the island of Contadora, in Panama. Participating with Noriega were the presidents of Mexico, Venezuela and Colombia, all of them aligned with the North American policy. At that time Noriega was the president of Panamá. He had taken over after the death, in 1981, of general Omar Torrijos, a military leader that used to uphold the sovereignty of the Panamá Canal that the Americans had since 1903. Torrijos died in a very strange plane accident. Many analysts have pointed out that Noriega, following the CIA's orders, planned Torrijos' murder.
The peace agreements, true or not, have been lethal means used by the counter-insurgent struggle. Its efficacy has been proved in different countries in Latin America. For example, in Peru, Vladimiro Montesinos, another CIA agent like Noriega, with American support and complicity of a group of prisoners who converted themselves to SIN's employees ( National Intelligence Service) made up, in 1993, the "peace letters," which the government assigned to the leader of the Maoist guerrillas, in prison and isolated since 1992. Those letters were widely circulated by the police and government media. The effects were disastrous in the interior of the Communist Party of Peru (PCP) and the cause for the subversive movement to refound itself in the Andes and the mountains as at the beginning of the armed struggle, in 1980. The present retrogression of the people's war in Peru and the weakness of the PCP are direct consequences of what the Peruvian Maoists denounced from the beginning as a counter-revolutionary "patraña" ( a fake) manufactured in the laboratories of the police in Peru. (7)
Negative balance for the revolution
The dialogue processes and the signing of the peace agreements, in opposition to what has been publicized, have been adverse to the interests of the poor people and mostly of the negotiator guerrillas. They have only served to extend the military and oppressor character of the sponsored states of the peace agreements. The negotiator experience ( guerrilla-State) in the last 20 years shows a negative balance for the guerrilla movements and not for the states and powers that have used this strategy to defeat many subversive groups. From the Contadora Declaration in (1983), several subversive organizations were involved in the promotion of the negotiation processs of war. The first of the armed groups that has taken seriously the Contadora agreements was the FARC ( Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) which, on October, 1983, ( nine months after the Contadora declaration) formulated a planning for the "cease-fire, truce and peace" with the objective of searching a peaceful and negotiated way out for the war in Colombia. (8) Then it was the guerrilla group, M-19, from Colombia that, in 1985, materialized a new creation for peace. This group signed an agreement with the government of their country, abandoned arms and said good-bye to the armed struggle. It was said that this fact would make feasible a peaceful way out of the internal war and the beneficiaries would be the poor of the country. Seventeen years have gone by and there is neither peace nor have the poor people got rid of their misery.
In 1990 it was Nicaragua's turn and the country had to accept the peace negotiations. The negotiated solution to the internal conflict ( war between the Sandinistas in power and the contras, armed and supported by the CIA) served so that the FSLN (Frente Sandinista de Liberación) could give back, via general elections, the power to the reactionary pro-yankee groups in the country. In 1985, the MRTA, a guerrilla group from Peru, shot two or three bullets and proposed to the government led by Alan García Pérez "peace negotiations." The MRTA turned the armed struggle negotiation into its second "battle front," and spent 17 years interchanging peace letters with different governments. Finally, during the year 2000, the tupacamaristas were defeated by Fujimori's regime with whom they had tried to negotiate many times. In 1992, the FMLN (Frente Farabundo Martí Para a Liberación Nacional), El Salvador, after a long way of more than 10 years of peaceful dialogues, signed a peace agreement with their government. The Salvadoran guerrilla people, one of the strongest subversive movements at the time, pointed out that the "peace was a victory for the people" and that the "stalemate" ("tie") in the war against the State would be beneficial for the poor people. The peace agreement between the FMLN and the State amounted to nothing and successive governments have refused to apply the minimum reforms to alleviate the hunger and misery of the population. The militarists, responsible for loathsome massacres and thousands of assassinations, keep their hegemony in the power of the State and their criminal actions continue bathing the country in blood. In 1996 the URNG ( Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca) signed with the government what was called the "Firm and Lasting Peace Agreement." Presently the hunger and the repression have nearly the same dimension it used to have during the armed conflict, before the peace agreement. In Mexico, the Zapatistas -- EZLN (Ejérjito Zapatista de Liberación Nacional), since the year they started guerrilla actions (1994), have launched a campaign to find a peaceful and negotiated way out to the armed conflict. This group, in spite of their repeated peace proposals, has not given a forward step in the social struggle and their theatrical political struggles have only been useful to implement the ONGs business (Non-governmental Organizations) as well as to increase the tourist flow to the Chiapas region.
Who wins and who loses ?
In spite of the disastrous experience of the democratic and liberation movements, some insist on taking this negotiating model as a way to solve the problems of the internal war in various countries. Some argue that these peace processes make the way to socialism feasible and that they mean a safe passage for the change of society. One adds that the negotiations weaken and disparage the "militarist sector" of the State. On the other hand, some say it strengthens the guerrilla movement and through negotiations one reaches the democratization of the State, and it is possible to introduce political and social reforms. Many times the promoters of the negotiations demand, as part of the agreements with the State, to establish general or legislative elections in order to shape a pluri-class government in which all political parties and all social classes could participate.
For example, the FARC ( Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) has been involved for two decades in dialogues and peace conversations. Their very particular form to solve the Colombian internal conflict has acquired a status as a full strategy in their famous "Platform for a Reconstruction and Reconciliation National Government" ( April 1993), which as a political thesis was presented to several governments of their country. ( 9) The ten points of the Platform plead for a "lovable fatherland, in development and peace," and require the formation of a national government, "plural, democratic and patriotic." And it is asked with this orientation that the Armed Forces be the "guarantors of the national sovereignty and respect the human rights," that a "unicameral parliament be restage in which the opposition and the minority have full social and political rights." Besides asking for "development and economic modernization with social justice" the planning of the Colombian guerrilla people is striking in applying a programme that maintains the State and the political system without any fundamental change.
To intend to wage a revolution and reach historical requirements in favor of the poor without affecting the State's foundation is like offending and disrespecting the oppressed people. In Colombia or in any other part of the world a "lovable fatherland in development and peace" must start with the complete destruction of the old State and with the total destruction of the old army and the bourgeois parliament. None of these institutions of oppression can survive in a real liberating socialist movement. The version related to apply "structural reforms" in the States of decomposition and creating governments of "all bloods" (10) are fairytale versions not fit for concrete political realities. The sole idea that a State can become democratic in the process of war negotiation is an absolutely mistaken proposal and in essence has the objective of hiding the fact that the State is a political superstructure ( a machinery) raised on a class-based economic basis. The State is not neutral in a divided class society, and, according to Marx and Engels, it belongs to the "economic ruling class." (11) To place the State over the society is an ideological appraisal coined by the bourgeoisie whose proposal is to propagate the idea that it is possible to conciliate the antagonistic social class interests. With that one intends to present a scene of idyllic unity between the poor and the rich ( exploited and exploiter), sharing equitably in State power. This idea takes the State as an institution, simple and administrative, whose mission is to conciliate and harmonize the classes and their interests. The State is placed over the society as an alien of the class problems and its struggles. With this proposal one tries to hide that the State is but a political-historical category connected to private property and to the society's class division and having different interests. The project for negotiating to "democratize the State" is the most simplistic negotiation of a reactionary nature of any kind of exploiting State. This wrong idea contributes politically to giving support to the exploitation system and to imperialism. A revolutionary struggle against the oppressor State is, besides a violent political and military fight for power, a historical, irrevertible shock with an ideological, cultural, ethical and moral character. If one thinks that the State, without changing its class essence ( still belonging to the bourgeoisie and landlords) is at disposal for "making structural changes" in favor of the oppressed people, one denies the anti-democratic and reactionary nature of the States in the semifeudal and semicolonial countries. To think that the State, from its most remote origins, can work itself out of being a repression device of one class over the other and can be democratized in the course of a negotiation of an armed struggle, is to believe wrongly that the classes which control the State can change its oppressive nature voluntarily and in a peaceful way with no need for the oppressed people to resort to the revolution for it. Therefore by means of the magic of the armed conflict negotiation, the State, criminal and odious (as the guerrilla people used to say when they started their armed process), shows itself up generous and nice to the poor people of the country. This is how the peaceful solution to the war produces its largest benefits of the ideological type in favor of the bourgeoisie and imperialism.
The historical concrete facts and the reality itself contradict any supposition that a State immersed in the era of imperialist control can democratize itself and change its reactionary nature via peace negotiations. The States in every poor country of the world behave as simple managers of the imperialist interests and are subject to the rules of the world powers. They do not have any self-determination and their structure ( political, judiciary and military) is a caricature of the bourgeois States of the rich countries. It does not exist in the Third World something that approaches to being an "independent State" apart from imperialism. Those States, instruments of the local domination, operate as simple branches of the transnationals, and financial apparatus of the empires (IMF, World Bank, etc.). The great imperialist metropolises determine the social and political dimension of the State and the economic role it has to play in the concert of the world imperialist system. The economy of the backward countries is submitted not to the people's demands but to the voracity of the rich countries. From this results that the political ruling systems ( military dictatorship or concealed dictatorships) are the reflex of an economy in ruins and in permanent crisis. With the planning of negotiations to democratize the State, one hides also the corrupt and reactionary nature of the political elites who control the State apparatus. Those elites are under no circumstances interested in developing the country¹s economy let alone raise the life conditions of the population. Their big businesses are settled to maintain a backward country and millions of people in poverty. The wealth of those classes comes fundamentally from the State crisis. Their high greed is the result not of the productive development of the country but of robbery, bribery, drug traffic, income evasion and many other crimes that can only exist in a society and in a State in crisis and bankrupted.
Negotiate for advancing ... truth or lie ?
The partisans of the peaceful and negotiated way out together of the armed conflicts pretend, on the other hand, that to sit down at the negotiation table with the representatives of the State is a tactical movement which advances in three directions. On one side, it "unmasks" the State representatives, showing them as those responsible for repelling the internal peace; and the ones who do not want to solve the enormous problems of the poor. On the other side, one says that according to the war negotiation, one isolates the "reluctant militarist sectors of the State." And on another side one concludes that the negotiation strengthens the armed movement. Those arguments are not serious ones and otherwise favor the State and the ensemble of the ruling political elites. This aspect, as seen in perspectives of the struggle against the exploitation system, hands over huge political-ideological dividends to the groups that detain the State power and to the imperialism as well. Why?
In the first case it is a wrong idea to think that the poor masses need the political elites to be "unmasked," to understand they do not want neither peace nor to solve the oppressed people's problems. The premises of the masses' knowledge have been sustained not by a doctrinal reflection on politics or ideology but by the everyday suffering and hunger to which they have been subjected all their lives. Nobody is better than the poor to understand that the classes which rule the State have reduced society to an endless war and that willfully ( without war) they will never alleviate the miserable existence of the oppressed. In the ancient times the slaves did not have "to unmask" their executioners to be conscious that their main enemies were the parasitic enslaving classes. Right now it is useless to grant better arguments ( unmask) the criminal international policy made by Bush and his allies to make clear that the fundamental enemy ( number one) of the oppressed and of humankind is the ruling classes of the USA and other imperialist powers.
Secondly, it is absurd to divide the political elites between militarist and non-militarist ones, between the ones that want peace and the ones that want war. The bourgeoisie and the landlords ( who control the State) do not behave under the simple criteria of war and peace, but in accordance with the State defense and their interests. In some moments they Wilbur be pacifist ( democratic) in case it is convenient for them to maintain their ruling class positions; and in certain moments they will have no limits to resort to the most brutal repression to keep up their privileges and their exploitation system. Depending on the political circumstances the classes holding state power develop sharp contradictions among them. They can include facing each other militarily but this does not mean one of the factions of the ruling class adopts an advanced position about the poor people's demands and much less that one of them cast aside the military way to crush a subversive movement or a mere rebellion. Many times there have been civil wars which confront, not the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, but the different factions of the exploiters. The intra-bourgeois fights and contradictions refer to the fundamental goal, that is, how to divide the State's cake plus the most convenient way to control power. It is a mistake to believe that some of the factions of the big bourgeoisie will be ready to sustain a "peace agreement" that in reality will favor the oppressed and the subversive movement. It is still worse to believe - as the leaders of FARC do - that the Armed Forces of Colombia, aloof from the the central government and American imperialism, can influence matters so that the guerrilla struggle reaches a favorable "peace agreement." (12) Recently, on March 31st, Manuel Marulanda, the main FARC leader, sent a letter to the high command of the Army where he points out: "The future of Colombia cannot be of an endless war which only benefits the interests of the government and we both have been delaying in solving our differences with dialogues."
Thirdly, it is not correct to conclude that negotiation favors the armed movement. The masses that participate in the revolution have acquired consciousness in a large process of struggle against the police, the army, the bourgeois and other State institutions. The masses are united to the subversive movement not by a theoretical knowledge of the revolution but by the "class rage" they feel against their oppressors. Their struggle, sustained by their experience and class consciousness, is based on the conviction that by means of their sacrificed actions they will succeed in defeating their oppressors and will be able to build a new society. However, in the middle of the way they are told ( their own leaders say so) that now one can reach peace and social justice without using violence and without destroying the odious bourgeoisie and landlords. Through peace negotiations the exploiters and rulers become nice and peaceful characters not to be destroyed but to be invited to shape a harmonious government of all classes. With negotiation one pushes the masses into "putting down arms" that debilitates, as an ideological phenomenon, the strength of revolution. In a little time one loses what one has demanded years to be formed: the revolutionary consciousness of the masses. In the course of the negotiations, the masses ( the ones that make history as Marxism affirms) lose their revolutionary optimism and, as the facts prove, they fall immediately into a sharp political pessimism towards revolution. Lenin said, not because he liked it, that in "every war, victory depends, after all, on the state of spirit of the masses who offer their blood in the battle fields." (13)
To divert the masses' attention towards peace negotiations has meant not only a retrogression on ideological grounds, but also in the politics and military fields. It has also permitted the deaths of thousands of combatants and partisans of the armed struggle who have been murdered during either the "truce" processes or the peace negotiations. In order to illustrate this dramatic peculiarity of the negotiating method, we have to remit ourselves to the version of a Colombian journalist who, being a partisan of the so-called peaceful way, does not stop from exposing the disastrous consequences and the high costs in human lives to the peace in Colombia: "I fear the peace; although it sounds paradoxical, peace in Colombia has had, the last times, high costs; for the guerrilla, because the historical experience has shown in the last decades that peace means more deaths than during the war. In the 1980s a guerrilla movement, the M19, signed peace and their integration into 'sound' Colombian politics. Nowadays one counts hundreds of militants of that organization who were murdered. The Unión Patriótica that at the time wanted to be the political arm of the FARC participated in the elections and disputed the democratic power obtaining a resounding triumph: senatorship, congress and city hall. Naturally that did not please the oligarchy which considers Colombia as their private reserve. The Unión Patriótica, in an act which recreates the whole country¹s history, was decimated, totally massacred. Two presidential candidates, the majority of the people's representatives, around five thousand militants were killed cruelly. This experience shows the forms the 'policy a la Colombia' takes when the interests of the ruling class are being jeopardized. The final balance of this guerrilla incursion on the 'democratic road' has produced more casualties than the 20 years of war since then." (14)
The nature of the class wars
Lenin said that by analyzing a social phenomenon, it was necessary to start from a concrete historical situation and from the objective elements of reality. The first political characteristic of the present stage has been expressed by the ultra-reactionary international policy of the imperialist States, and, in the fundamentals, by the aggressiveness shown up by the USA through the development of the "Bush doctrine." The imperialist voracity outlines a new geo-political partition of the world and a new power relationship among the world powers. In this race for the strategic domain of oil and some other natural resources, the empires compete, and the Americans are the ones which, through their mighty military machinery, accomplish plans for the world domain. In this period, mostly for the social struggles, there is no indication showing that a subversive group can take advantage of a political negotiation with the State's representatives. The semicolonial character of the poor countries has as a consequence that the more reactionary the imperialist States become, the more reactionary will be the the States and governments of the so-called Third World countries.
What many people call globalization--and Lenin defined on April 1917 as an imperialist stage of the capitalism (15)--refers not only to the hegemony exercised by monopoly capital, the capital export and the huge concentration of production and the capitalist market, but also the political, economic and military subjugation ( semicolonialism) imposed by the powers on the so-called Third World. Believing that on those stages of boundless control from the part of the USA a war for socialism will develop victoriously towards power conquering, without any foreign military intervention, is a serious mistake that can lead to the defeat and extermination of the liberation movement. Under the present conditions no revolutionary party can reach political power unless defeating the empire's military forces, mostly the Americans'. In Colombia and Nepal a real national liberation struggle will be defined in a military confrontation with the U.S. Armed Forces, NATO's and of any other world power. It is obvious that in the present political conjuncture no one pacifist formula will serve to liquidate the local and imperialist power groups. The USA and their allies will never permit a proletarian party, or any other fairly anti-imperialist movement, to settle down in power without their open intervention.
From the Chinese revolution to Nepal
It is true that under certain historically exceptional conditions a revolutionary organization-attempting not to weaken their forces and less lose their strategic perspectives, can sit at the table to negotiate with the State representatives. The most concrete case refers to the Chinese revolution which is taken, by some subversive groups, not as a guide for their extraordinary example, but as a piece for camouflaging their compromise with the government. As an example, the Nepal guerrilla leaders say that their "searching for a peaceful way out" to their country's war is based on "principles," the "synthesis of the experience" of the negotiations as much in China as in Soviet Russia: "The principles which guide us in the negotiation questions are the synthesis and experiences of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty under the leadership of Lenin, and the negotiations of Chunching under the leadership of Mao." (16) They have also said ( 5 years after starting their subversive actions): "we are not against the negotiations themselves and we would be ready to fight at the negotiation table provided some conditions are fulfilled ... We have emphasized that, if the old State wants to negotiate a political solution, we are ready." (17)
Historical events are incomprehensible if not rigorously analysed within the historical context in which they develop. The negotiation process between the Communist Party of China (CCP) led by Mao Tsetung and the Kuomintang is situated in a very specific period of history. The negotiations are developed in the middle of worldwide and national situations, completely different from the present political world scenery. The fundamental condition so that the Chinese communists accepted peace negotiations with the State representatives was to assure the hegemonic role of the Communist Party of China in the war against Japan. And in the establishment of the Democratic Republic in the country as a first stage towards socialism. The great political lines in the negotiation process led by Mao had as a background the brutal Japanese invasion of China. On September, 1931, Japan, with around 1 million soldiers, invades Mandchuria and settles down a puppet government by force. At this stage, the important thing, Mao points out, was to "guarantee the territorial integrity of China and prevent the catastrophe of the country¹s subjugation." (18) With this purpose, to save the country and defeat the Japanese invaders, the Chinese communists planned the creation of a United National Front, and conceived it with the participation of all classes and their political organizations, including in the first place the Kuomintang, China's largest bourgeois and landlord party who were in power. According to this unity, as Mao Tsetung affirmed, the Communist Party impelled a "time of war government," favorable to the resistance war against Japan. (19) As history records, the Communist Party of China and its military apparatus get strengthened with the anti-Japanese war. In 1944 the Red Army had a military contingent of 1 million 270 soldiers ( a regular force with modern weapons they had taken from the Japanese army) and around 2 million partisans. The State of New Democracy was in complete development where new rules and new forms of distributing wealth prevailed. In the territory controlled by the Red Army lived 160 million inhabitants. For the Kuomintang the situation was the opposite. During the resistance war, the army and the State led by Chiang Kai-shek had lost their prestige. Their troops were completely demoralized and many of them were joining the revolutionary forces.
In the international aspect the peace negotiations in China were situated in a
period characterized by three political elements which interacted as an
impulse to the struggles of the oppressed peoples:
1. The outburst and the development of World War II. The war and the world mobilization to fight against the fascist danger had an enormous impact in the democratic struggles and national liberation.
2. The USSR (United Socialist Soviet Republic) during the war and mostly after 1945 reaches a solid military and economic balance in the world scene. Counting on a modern army with millions of men, and with a great prestige, it converts itself into the best ally of the liberation struggles and a powerful dissuasive force of the imperialist attacks to the countries in revolution.
3. The International Communist Movement (ICM) was strong and actuated powerfully in most of the poor and rich countries. Since 1917 up to to middle of the 50s a solid social movement develops led by well-known revolutionary vanguards. The political activity of the communists at a world level had a great influence over the internal policy of the bourgeois States. Besides, China had with the USSR thousands of miles of common frontiers that constituted a safe rearguard for the revolution led by Mao. If one compares it with Nepal, this country does not have any ally at its frontiers. China and India have cornered nearly the total of their frontiers and have not only declared themselves against the armed struggle led by the Maoists but have also been delivering arms, money and military assistance to the despotic regime of Nepal.
What is the present world situation ?
Between the political situation in which the Chinese revolution of 1949 developed and the present stage there is objectively a tremendous difference. The present conjuncture is signaled by three elements which strongly influence political events internationally. Firstly, a socialist camp does not exist. In the '80s, after a large decomposition process originated in the middle of the '50s, the Soviet Union collapsed and the USA remained for the moment without any rival on a worldwide scale. The USSR, first as as great socialist country, and then as social-imperialism, constituted a balancing force before the world powers. Secondly, as part of the phenomenon related to the end of the "socialist camp," the USA became the absolute boss of the world capitalist system. Based on this, the USA has structured a military strategy called "The Planet Control" and as part of it the Americans have been applying a military plan they named "Preventive War," according to which they grant themselves the right to abolish, through war, any rule and the most elementary international law. Thirdly, the international communist movement continues in crisis and there are presently no serious attempts to overcome the situation. Albeit the working class - up to before and after the World War II-counted on a strong International Communist Movement, now the situation is completely different. There is no revolutionary leadership internationally and in most parts of the world there are not true communist parties. And as a consequence of the USSR's breakdown the grotesque communist parties of the "Soviet orbit" have disappeared or survive miserably. Those organizations ( the few left over) are actually appendages of the bourgeois parties and depend totally on the scraps they receive from the State. The communist movement crisis has given free grounds for the organizations and political parties of the bourgeoisie, of the landlords and the small bourgeoisie. With some exceptions, the weak communist organizations, either in the rich or poor countries, do not have any political influence and in general they have moved away from the people's struggles. That is why the large mass struggles and spontaneous mobilizations and social explosions in the so-called Third World ( which express the existence of a permanent revolutionary situation in development), the lack of a political direction and without strategic perspectives of power, are dissolved within a process of reaccomodation of the political elites that lead the State. The same phenomenon has been observed in the large "anti-globalization" mobilizations or the ones that have developed in the rich countries against the war in Iraq. Those movements, pacifist and eclectic, have been sponsored and conducted by Non-governmental Organizations ( NGOs), bourgeois political parties, ecologists, and others, which in most of the cases represent non-communist sectors of the societies.
As a conclusion it is important to mention that the history of all victorious revolutions has proved that among all wars the only one that could not finish in a tie, "with no winner and neither loser"- as one advertises during the peace dialogues-is the struggle for socialism. In this aspect, it is more than evident that the historical struggle against the exploitation system will not have any better result at the negotiation table except on the grounds of the military, ideological and political combat against the bourgeoisie and the world powers. This notion of objectivity has been proved by the revolutionary science (Marxism) and the historical experience itself. Thus a revolutionary process whose strategic purpose is socialism has to assert its decision to resort to the "guns, cannons and authoritarian means" to conquer power and continue holding it. (2)
The nature and essence of the wars in Colombia, in Nepal or in any other poor country is: those are class wars, that is, the struggle between exploited and exploiters. Those kinds of war are social phenomena which come up and mature in a large process of acuteness of the antagonistic contradictions between rich and poor. Those contradictions will only be solved by a violent political and military confrontation with the local groups and imperialism. Out of this absolute truth are left only political fantasies that come involved in the bourgeois idea which plans to solve the armed conflict through peace negotiations. This updated idea, either as tactical or strategic movement, is the safest road to capitulation. It is important to oppose it and expose not only the protagonist leaders of the peace agreement, but also the "left" and the imperialist State institutions (NGOs, churches, "peace commissions," etc.) which applaud and support such an aberrant solution for the internal wars. It becomes of utmost importance in strategic order for the revolution to show the masses that the "pacifist ways out to the armed conflicts," or the "peace agreements" with the oppressors are political illusions brought into being with the intention of defeating the armed processes.
Brussels, April 29th , 2003
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(1) Prachanda, chairman of the Communist Party of Nepal (maoist). Article in the magazine A World to Win.
(2) Prachanda, chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Nepal (maoist), February 13th , 2003. The same speech was expressed by Barburan Bhattarai, member of the political bureau of the Communist Party of Nepal. In an interview on December 14th 2003, in the newspaper The Washington Times: ³ ...our immediate political goal is the establishment of a communist republic as a result of a democratic republic. It is important to stress that we do not fight for the establishment of a communist republic, but for a bourgeois democratic republic. That is why we have as an immediate demand the creation of a round table with the total of the political forces to form a temporary government and the election of a constituent assembly².
(3) Open letter to chairman Alvaro Uribe Vélez, Secretary of the Central Major State of the FARC-EP, Colombia, August 20th, 2002.
(4) Newspaper El Tiempo (Bogotá), from Resumen latinoamericano, April 2nd , 2003.
(5) According to Isabel Jaramillo Edwards (Centro de Estudios sobre America, January,87), the strategy named Low Intensity Conflict ³ "incorporates doctrinal elements that had come into force from the II World War on." According to this analyst the LIC, that came up in 1981, is developed from the programme ³ security and development², whose objectve is to defeat the subversive movements or any other expression of anti-american struggle. The author summarizes this strategy as a ³ flexible and integral stategical conception, fundamentally with a broad scope of political-militar objectives². She points out that its instrumentalization corresponds to the use of political, economic, diplomatic, military, social, psychological and advertising choices.
(6) El Conflicto de Baja Intensidad, modelo para armar ( The Low Intensity Conflict, a model to arm), Isabel Jaramillo Edwards, Centro de Estudios sobre America, January 87.
(7) On September, 1992, the leader of the maoist guerrilla of Peru was arrested. After a fake judgement he was condemned to lifelong imprisonment and was immediately taken to a jail 4 metres under the soil where he stayed totally isollated of the external world. In October, 1993, strangely, the government published the first "peace letter" which supposedly the guerrilla leader had sent to the government trying a "negotiation for the internal war." Those letters, as exposed by the leadership of the Communist Party of Peru (PCP), had been created in the laboratories of the National Intlligence Service ( Servicio de Inteligencia Nacional SIN) managed by Vladimiro Montesinos and supported by the American CIA.
(8) Cese el Fuego, Una Histoia Política de las FARC (Cease fire, A Political History of the FARC), Jacob Arenas, February,1985.
(9) Plataforma para um Gobierno de Reconstrucción y Reconciliación Nacional, ( Plataform for a National Reconstruction and Reconciliation Government) VIII FARC Conference, April 1993.
(10) "Todas las sangres" (All bloods) is the title of a novel from the indigenist writer, Jose Maria Arquedas (1911-1964). This title was vulgarized and converted into an election slogan by Alejandro Toledo. "El cholo" Toledo used demagoguely his racial appearance and in his electoral campaign in 2001 he promised a government of "all bloods," referring to a regime integrated by poor, rich and indians (Cholos), white, black, etc. Toledo won the elections and the presidency of Peru and his government resulted in a nightmare for the poor people of the country.
(11) K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works, Volume 2.
(12) Manuel Marulanda, El Tiempo, April 7th , 2003.
(13) Lenin, Speech for the conference of red workers and soldiers of the headquarter Rogojsko-Simonovski, Completed Works 31.
(14) Florencio Rodil Urrego, Colombia: The war was waged because of the fear of peace, Magazine Rebellion, March 21st, 2002.
(15) Lenin, Imperialism: Final stage of capitalism, April 1917.
(16) Interview with Prachanda, leader of the the Communist Party of Nepal, published by "A World to Win," issue 27, 2001.
(17) Report published on May 28th, 2001, magazine "A World to Win."
(18) Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, December 1935
(19) Mao Tsetung, interview to the newspaperman James Bertram, October 1935.
(20) Karl Marx and Frederic Engels, Completed Works, Volume 18.