Читать онлайн "International Maoism in the Developing World" - Alexander Robert Jackson - RuLit

However, Cecil Johnson concluded that at that time, “the Chinese were not prepared to accept the work at the conference as proof that a new Marxist-Leninist party had been founded at that time.”[274] It would be some while before the Chinese extended their “franchise” to the PCC-ML.

Meanwhile, in the summer of 1965, the Maoists summoned what they called the “10th Congress of the Colombian CP.” Several dozen people attended, as well as representatives from the pro-Chinese elements in Peru, Ecuador, and Venezuela. The Congress officially “expelled” the principal pro-Soviet party leaders.

Although a report on this meeting was published in Peking Review, Cecil Johnson argued that the decision of this “10th Congress” fell short of Chinese Communist orthodoxy. Johnson wrote, “The political resolution adopted by the Congress lacked several of the characteristic features of a Chinese analysis of world and domestic problems. Its analysis of the world situation made no reference to various contradictions in the contemporary world, and consequently did not expressly state that the main contradiction was that of the oppressed peoples of the Third World and U.S. imperialism.”

Johnson went on, “Compared with Chinese class analysis, that presented in the resolution was certainly inadequate. Nowhere in the document… can one find the ‘scientific analysis, allegedly required for decision-making by the Communists. There was no statement regarding the national bourgeoisie or the policy to be followed in regard to this class. Several months before, the pro-Chinese position… was that this class could not be treated as part of the united front. One would also have expected the Colombians to have described as a semi-feudal and semi-colonial country. Nor was there any indication that the revolutionary process would consist of two distinct but closely connected stages.”[275]

However, the Maoist congress did reflect the altered view of the Chinese toward Castro. Cecil Johnson noted “The Colombians strongly denounced a neutralist stand in the struggle against revisionism. From the context it would appear that Fidel Castro was the principal target that the Colombians had in mind. When the 10th Party Congress of the Colombian party was held in July 1965, the Chinese had conveyed their displeasure with Castro to their followers in Latin America. The fact that the Colombian resolution did not even mention Cuba in its discussion of the revolutionary movement in Latin America would seem to support this interpretation. Only a few months before, the ‘First Extraordinary Conference’of the same party had declared that the Cuban people were leading the revolutionary forces of Latin America.”[276]

By 1968, the PCC-ML was clearly an orthodox Maoist party. It lauded the Chinese Cultural Revolution. The August 1968 issue of its newspaper, Revolución, argued, “Facing these reactionaries there rises the gigantic force of socialism which flourishes invincible in the huge China of the Cultural Revolution and in the battle-hardened Albania which symbolizes the victory of all countries which rise resolutely against all the enemies. The enormous force of the world proletariat besieges imperialism and the exploiters in their own lairs. The force of the proletariat of the countries dominated by revisionism, whose only revolutionary role is to rise in arms against the social traitors and against their imperialist Allies.”[277]

The PCC-ML remained a clandestine organization. Its principal leader, until his death in 1969, was Pedro Vázquez Rondón.[278] Subsequently, Pedro Leon Arboleda, the First Secretary, and Francisco Garnica, were reported to be its main figures.[279]

In its early years, the PCC-ML had under its influence a small trade union organization, the Bloque Independiente, the membership of which was estimated at about 20,000 workers.[280] Also in the late 1960s, it was reported as having some influence in the Oil Workers Federation, where its forces were led by Alfonso Romero Buj, who was “causing trouble” for the pro-Soviet Communist oil workers leader, Diego Montaña Cuellar.[281] It did not have any influence in the Confederación Sindical de Trabajadores Colombianos, the trade union central controlled by the pro-Moscow Communists.[282]

In contrast to the pro- Moscow party, the PCC-ML rejected electoral action. It argued “To vote is like making the whip for the master, to give arms to the holdup man. It is to give approval to the oppression of imperialism and the bloodstained oligarchy. It is to collaborate with the enemy. It is to support tyranny. … Our task does not consist of insulting the voters, who in the end constitute the idled masses, but to enlighten them, help them to assimilate their experiences. And for that we must unmask without hesitation the electoralists, among whom the most criminal are the revisionists, since they consciously falsify principles and betray the working class, using the usurped title of ‘communists.’”[283]

The PCC-ML remained very small. In 1970, William Ratliff commented, “the PCC has only marginal influence in Colombian national affairs, and the PCC-ML practically none.”[284] This judgment was borne out in 1968 by Gloria Gaitán de Valencia, a leader of a rival far Left Colombian political group.[285] However, in the early 1970s it did have considerable influence in the student movement.[286]

In 1975, the PCC-ML suffered a severe blow when its Secreatary-General, Pedro León Arboleda, was killed by police in Cali.[287] At that time, it had an estimated membership of 1,000 and was publishing a periodical, Revolución.[288] It still had guerrilla forces in the field in the late 1980s, having repudiated an agreement made in 1984 to cease military action after some of its people were killed by government forces. In 1988, Daniel Premo noted that “its impact in terms of national life is insignificant.”[289]

The PCC-ML was much influenced by changes in the Chinese party after the death of Mao. From 1980 on, it moved toward the Albanians. By 1984, it was reported to have adopted the Hoxha line, including rejection of the teachings of Mao Tse-tung. The PCC-ML was denouncing, among other things, “the negative influence of the theory of Mao Tse-tung on prolonged popular war.”[290] Although the PCC-ML was listed as a founding member of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM), the international organization of orthodox Maoists,[291] its name was not subsequently on the list of member organizations.

Another Maoist splinter appeared after the PCC-ML veered toward Enver Hoxha. This was the Grupo Comunista Revolucionario (GCR), which apparently arose from a split from the PCCML. It appeared in the early 1980s and began publishing a periodical, Alborada Comunista, in 1983. This organization proclaimed its support for orthodox Maoism and the Gang of Four, and participated in the formation of the RIM.[292] Although it proclaimed its task to be “to construct the Revolutionary Communist Party,”[293] in 1988 the GCR was “a party in formation,” and it apparently had not completed that task eight years later, since its name remained the same.[294] Although the GCR professed belief in “popular war as the only road to power, we have no indication that it in fact engaged in such a conflict.