MAOIST INTERNATIONALIST MOVEMENT
POSITION PAPER ON VIOLENCE, PART I
Last edit: August 26 1992

People wonder what Comrade Gonzalo means about "lagoons of blood" being spilled by the existing order in Peru and why the Maoists are only "dipping their handerkerchiefs" trying to cross the river.

For starters, comrade Gonzalo went to China in the 1960s, and what he saw there under Mao is something he found that Peru still needs today. In fact, World Bank figures would back him up.

Peru in 1988 had a per capita annual income of $1,300 while China had one of $330. However, in Peru the life expectancy was 62, while it was 70 in China. (China's hasn't changed much since China turned capitalist. The basic accomplishment came under Mao before 1976.)

People on this net are fairly scientifically adept. If they think about it they can realize what it means that a country is four times richer than another (on average), while it has only 88.6% of the life expectancy: It means the poor are being killed off from malnutrition and inadequate basic public health measures.

The gini coefficient in Peru is about double what it was in China under Mao--.458. The gini coefficient is a measure of income inequality.

Further proof of this is that the average per-capita calorie supply in Peru actually declined between 1965 and 1986. The daily figure was 2,325 calories in 1965 and 2,246 in 1986, down 3.4 percent.

This is not an occasional bombing. This is a certain fraction of the population dying because Peru doesn't follow the socialist road. That is not to mention that the Peruvian army kills several times as many people as the Senderos do in combat.

Elsewhere, we will compare the non-violent road of Gandhi in India and the revolutionary road of Mao Zedong in China and show that Mao's road was much less bloody.

We Maoists know that it doesn't matter to the dead and dying whether they die from socially-caused starvation or a bullet: either way they are dead. Capitalist societies are insensitive not just to militarism but economic violence.

By the way, the source for this post is the four bourgeois economists Malcolm Gillis, Dwight Perkins, Michael Roemer and Donald Snodgrass, three of which work on government grants at the Harvard Institute of International Development. Economics of Development, 3rd ed., NY: W.W. Norton & Co., p.10, p. 76, p. 251. These economists favor export-led development like south Korea's, back the IMF and multinational corporate investment in the Third World.