Editorial Board Self-Criticism and Criticism: On Human Rights and Proletarian Revolution

By the Struggle Sessions Editorial Board and Tiburcio

Struggle Sessions is always working to be a platform for debate and ideological struggle. We are always eager to share and promote two-line struggle, as it is what the purpose of this platform is. In the recent publishing of On Human Rights and Proletarian Revolution the Editorial Board has shied from the rigor of its usual scientific precision in evaluating contributors claims. The editorial process involves our editors reading line for line and subjecting every claim and framing by the author to the scrutiny of revolutionary science. The objective truths of MLM are defended and applied in a partisan way during the editorial process, in ways that can be challenging to some contributors as it involves protracted struggle over claims they’ve made rather than uncritical posting, especially when it relates to the promotion of rightist lines. We do not, as policy, uncritically allow untrained contributors to move forward with an endorsement for us to publish unless they push the left line, and if they do push lines that are not in accordance to Maoism, we also permit publishing for those who we do not have unity with at all under One Hundred Flowers with the expectation that they must continue to contend and have their ideas scrutinized.

In the case of Tiburcio’s work there were serious lapses in evaluating some positions and the authors that he cited in the piece. As editors we failed in sufficiently interrogating the author and his claims, revealing our own ignorance on the matters. This was because he was taking leftist positions but did them in a way that rehabilitated rightists. The editors opted for amateurishness and poor professionalism unbecoming of a theoretical journal, glossing over things and not aggressively interrogating the citations and origins of many of the claims. For this we must strive to be better. We hope that this statement, drafted by editors and the old author alike, serves as demonstrating the improvement in quality of ideological struggle in this journal, and shows the seriousness of the editors and writer in rectifying mistakes.

Out of inexperience the author spoke in the service of the rats associated with the Right Opportunist Line (ROL) in the international Movement, and the editors were asleep at the wheel when it happened. When we speak of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism (MLM) we are starting from a development process from ML to its higher stage of MLM, where the Peruvian Revolution and Chairman Gonzalo’s synthesis and the post that Gonzalo held at the forefront of the world proletarian revolution is what earned him the title of the fourth sword (even though this is not a term really in currency much outside of Peru) and gave us our ideology. The Protracted People’s War (PPW) in Peru under Chairman Gonzalo’s Leadership advanced higher and faster than any other PPW anywhere, which speaks to the important differences in the application of revolutionary science in all countries where there is PPW today. The author revealed a illiteracy of the two-line struggle against the ROL, RCP-USA Bob Avakian and the Communist Party of the Philippines’ (CPPh) international line throughout the piece. We must affirm our class hatred for the ROL and how it has perverted the International Communist Movement (ICM) with its lies and usurpation, which marauds in the U.S. and internationally in an attempt to liquidate revolution.



The Peru People’s Movement (its abbreviation in Spanish, MPP) is cited by the author in the article, for example, and this false branch was in control of the Sol Rojo website based in Sweden and was not recognized as the real MPP. If this was a mistake and the ROL had not yet consolidated control, the author did not mention this issue and uncritically quoted them. The rat Jose, and his cronies, have subverted Communist Party of Peru (PCP) work abroad on top of attacking efforts for the general reorganization of the Party, making clarity on this matter important. Triburcio also cites liquidator Luis Arce Borja, who has attacked Comrade Norah and that promoted the hoax that Gonzalo called for peace agreements and surrender (even as a counterrevolutionary agent admitted to penning the letters in front of the Supreme Special Criminal Chamber in Peru) all for the sinister purpose of liquidating Party leadership and Gonzalo thought, and of promoting a “people’s war” without a Party. We can not write as pop leftists who cite authors regardless of their class stand, “black cat, white cat” is a reactionary guideline we do not use.

Triburcio also promotes the CPPh, referring to them as “comrades.” Founder of CPPh, Joma Sison, holds that Marxism Leninism (ML) and Mao Zedong Thought (MZT) are the same as MLM. Sison, through his leadership of the International League of People’s Struggles (ILPS), has backed the counterrevolutionary MOVADEF. MOVADEF claims to exist to support political prisoners and promotes amnesty but uses these demands in a liquidationist way to discourage armed struggle and end the People’s War, and this detailed relationship in higher and lower levels to the Filipino Party is not the only example of collaboration with revisionism internationally. ILPS also caters to the Marcyite Party of Socialism and Liberation (PSL) and Workers World Party (WWP), as well as Dengite Freedom Road Socialist Organization in the United States, all who are antagonistic towards those Maoists organizing towards the reconstituting the Communist Party. Most notably, Sison negated two-line struggle within the ILPS and used administrative measures to expel Indian revolutionary intellectual G.N. Saibaba from the Revolutionary Democratic Front (RDF) and comrades from the Brazilian center for support of the Peoples (CEBRASP), among others, on grounds that they were “sectarians” and “ultra-lefts.”

We can not appraise labeling those who represent and reinforce the ROL in such a way as comrades. The path of Party construction towards reconstitution and carrying out revolution is a hostile one, where opportunists pull the cord to get off the bus early with greater frequency as their petty comforts decrease and greater struggles give way. With Sison and Belisario promoting legalism internationally and using ILPS as its organ to do so, it becomes necessary to show Communists have an ideology that does not believe in reducing revolution in imperialist countries to decades of legal work before a short and decisive civil war when the time finally comes. It becomes necessary, in other words, to engage in ideological struggle.

In contradiction to the demarcation line set earlier with Maoism in the U.S., we also allowed Avakian’s front group the “Committee to Support the Revolution in Peru” (CSRP) to be cited. Struggle Sessions is resolute in its plan to destroy the RCP and its ideological influence which is, in part, due to be sentenced for its propping up of the ROL and promotion of the hoax that Chairman Gonzalo is a traitor. Avakian in RIM along with Sison moved to rename Chairman Gonzalo by his birth name, in part to appeal to liberal intellectuals but also to show that they rejected his Party leadership. Revolutionaries in the U.S. continue to pay the price of revisionism, of which Avakianism at one point claimed the mantel of MLM (showing they never grasped or applied it) when all it has done is ingest the poison pills of pop activism and legalism, along with a host of other bizarre positions.

As a final criticism, the author is passively critical of the lack of child soldiers in the New People’s Army (NPA), which is unprincipled and shows a lack of clarity with the international situation.

Maoism is a third and higher stage and not just a modern term for MZT, and Chairman Gonzalo is a prisoner of war, who has converted the Naval base prison he is incarcerated at into the most shining trench of combat, contrary to the claims of Sison and others who reproduce the lies around the false letter. MOVADEF is a fake Party who the CPPh has granted opportunistic support to. Avakian and Avakianism must be combated, until its influence and vestiges are nothing but historical memory. The promotion of the ROL must be criticized and struggled against wherever it manifests, the red line in the ICM that continues in its support for the PW in Peru and Chairman Gonzalo persist, and while it claims the Peoples War has halted in Peru, tried and tested revolutionaries have an internationalist obligation to present the truth.

Works Cited:

First Critical Remarks About the Role of the Communist Party of The Philippines in the International Communist Movement, Issue 16 of Klassenstandpunkt, Retrieved from: https://www.demvolkedienen.org/index.php/en/12-dokumente/2726-first-critical-remarks-about-the-role-of-the-communist-party-of-the-philippines-in-the-international-communist-movement

Important Documents, from VND Peru, Retrieved from: http://vnd-peru.blogspot.com/2011/10/ubersetzung-des-dokument-english.html