Maoist militarization: the proletariat’s soldiers are invincible

An indispensable component of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, principally Maoism, is the militarization of the Communist Party. That is not to say that other core components of Maoism – the universality of people’s war, the concentric construction of the three instruments of revolution[1] – are any less important. Nor is it to say that the emphasis on the Maoist conception of Great Leadership or that of the methodology of revolutionary violence are somehow apart from these core components; all exist in an interrelated and dialectical permanence within Maoism. One cannot exist without the other. You cannot go to war without understanding the proletarian’s method of warfare. You cannot win the war without the necessary arsenal. And most importantly you cannot win a war without the people. To subtract or downplay Maoist militarization would be revisionism because it would distort Maoism and completely negate it and thus make it a tool not for the proletariat and the masses but rather for the bourgeoisie and the enemies of the people.

To speak on the militarization of the Communist Party, one must speak on the essence of militarization. What does it mean to militarize? What doesn’t it mean? What is the class character on the application of militarization – how does bourgeois militarization differ from proletarian militarization? What is the role of armament and the proletarian military apparatus, the People’s Army?

Supporters of the Maoist movement here in the U.S., as well as abroad, may have an incorrect understanding of Maoist militarization. It is with this in mind, then, in the following that we explore our understanding of militarization.

A brief review of the militarized Communist Parties

The Communist Party of Peru, and principally Chairman Gonzalo, synthesized the core concept of the militarization of all Communist Parties of the world as a necessary component for the correct leadership of People’s Wars in each respective Party’s country. One cannot lead the highest form of class struggle, the People’s War, without mastering militarization. It means quite literally to transform the Communist into a revolutionary fighter, a soldier – which generally means a guerrilla – for the proletariat and the masses, subordinate to the authority of the Party, its Guiding Thought and the invincible ideology of Maoism.

Chairman Gonzalo studied the revolutions of the world, in particular the Russian and Chinese revolutions – socialist, new democratic and cultural – and synthesized all their lessons and applied them to Peru. He saw the militarization by the Bolsheviks in Russia through their Revolutionary Military Committees, through Lenin’s call (which was Marx’s call and in general the Marxist position) on arming the proletariat and the masses, through making the armed Communist Party an indispensable leading force of the proletariat – never to lay down its arms. Stalin took on the red banner of Marxism-Leninism from Lenin and carried the Party forward, never dispensing with Party militarization as well. Gonzalo saw this again in China with Chairman Mao’s similar call for the peasantry and the proletariat, and in general the masses, to be armed and organized through three-in-one Revolutionary Committees, through the full integration of the People’s Liberation Army with the masses in the three areas of production, fighting and administration. We further saw a militarization of the masses within the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution with Mao’s call for the masses to rise up and fight against the capitalist roaders inside the Party. This manifested, in just one of many ways, with the creation of the Red Guards populated principally by the revolutionary Communist youth and students of Mao. While the primary purpose for the Red Guards was destruction of capitalism in and outside of the Party in order to continue the construction of socialism to then go on to construct Communism, they were nonetheless militarized. Gonzalo saw this as the universal application of the militarization of the masses, or the sea of armed masses. The armed masses – militarized by the Communist Party – are trained as the safeguards of the revolution and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. The Party is the offensive front guard, the vanguard, of the proletariat. The masses are its rearguard, or its safeguard, without which there would be no Party or revolution.

The masses in all countries currently suffer from capitalist and imperialist exploitation and many oppressed nations and colonies continue to suffer from ongoing colonization. The masses objectively yearn for revolution and revolutionary leadership. We are living the era of worldwide strategic offensive, as initiated and asserted by Chairman Gonzalo. Now is the time for People’s War, in general People’s War until Communism. For the People’s War to be victorious, we must grasp its essence as the military method of warfare for the proletariat. Just like the bourgeoisie has its bourgeois armies and method of imperialist warfare, the proletariat has its armies and its specific method.

To be a Communist today, as it has always been, means to be a guerrilla devoted selflessly and completely in serving the people for revolution. This is not a figurative comparison or a slip-up of word choice. It is not an exaggeration. It is not hyperbole. But of course a soldier always serves one class or another. That said, there are however certain qualities that defines a soldier in either class.

The soldier and the military apparatus

A soldier is a member of a highly-hierarchical, centralized and disciplined military apparatus, organized into a top-down structure of subordinated formations (the names of such formations vary from country to country, and in certain cases era to era, but some generally common ones include: General command, battalions, companies, platoons, squadrons and units). A soldier is conditioned prior to full insertion into the military apparatus for an appropriate amount of time for their general political-military education, combat training, physical conditioning and cultural education. They must be transformed from a civilian into a soldier. That is the initial primary task of any military apparatus. This is universal across the political spectrum, from the bourgeoisie to the proletariat – with the former currently being the biggest and superior. The bourgeoisie’s worldwide military apparatus, while bigger and superior both in numbers and arsenal, however is not more advanced than the proletariat’s military apparatus, even if it’s significantly smaller and weaker. Advancement means an overall higher qualitative level of something. As Maoists, as followers and students of Chairman Gonzalo, we can say the proletariat’s People’s Army and its guiding ideology of Maoism, is the most advanced method of warfare and worldwide revolution. Just because the Pentagon still enjoys global imperialist hegemony does not make it more advanced. That’s putting forward quantitative ahead of qualitative. We certainly would never consider revisionist “Communist” Parties or organizations with more members and supporters than actual Maoist Communist Parties or organizations as being more advanced. The Democratic Socialists of America, countrywide, are one of the biggest, if not the biggest, “left” formations in the U.S. But no serious revolutionary would ever consider the DSA a more advanced organization than the U.S. Red Guards Movement.

Going back to militarization: in the process of the civilian transforming into the soldier, the military apparatus’ leadership must ensure the civilian has been fully transformed into a soldier. The person will no longer generally be a civilian. They will be totally a soldier, from sunrise to sundown. They will eat and maintain proper hygiene in a militarized method. They will take rest periods in a militarized method. They will sleep in a militarized method. Even their dreams – as a manifestation of their rigorous and perpetual political-military education and cultural education – will become militarized, dreaming of heroism, bullets, martyrdom and history. A total militarization.

The soldiers will be fully consumed with the political line of the military apparatus and continue perpetual conditioning and political-military education. This is not conditional to whether or not the military apparatus is currently engaged in combat, but of course that will change the level of militarization. Through peace time and in times of war, the soldier remains a soldier. The military apparatus never is liquidated simply because it finds itself not fighting. The People’s Army in general and the guerrilla, or Communist soldier, in particular does not cease to exist in times of peace.

The superiority of the Communist soldier

Since the political line of the military apparatus will become the all-guiding line of the soldier, it is only natural that the soldier will enthusiastically, voluntarily, grasp it and be absorbed by it. But it is here that we must combat metaphysics and let it be assumed that any military organization can have a correct political line capable of carrying it to lasting victory. This is fundamentally incorrect and un-Marxist. The fact that desertion, suicide, reactionary intimate violence against loved ones especially wives, drug and alcohol abuse, are so rampant in the bourgeois military is precisely due to the incorrectness of the decaying bourgeois political line. It is imposed on imperialist soldiers, many from proletarian backgrounds and oppressed nations – the fastest growing demographic being Latino (mainly Chicano, Central American, Caribbean and South American). Like an incompatible transplant organ or blood transfusion, the body of the proletariat rejects the alien object like a foreign position, in one way or another. The bourgeois military, just like its class, is destined to fail. The proletariat, as the last social class in history, will be triumphant, and its military apparatus – the People’s Army and its Party leadership – guarantees this.

For the Communist soldier, one of the fundamental differences between them and the bourgeois soldier is that the Communist soldier clearly understands that they are fighting for the proletariat and the people in building socialism. The bourgeois soldier, although fully reeducated and de-civilianized, because of the class nature of the bourgeois military, only fights for imperialism. Many are like mercenaries fighting for pay. There is no future for the bourgeois soldier in imperialism. They are relegated to an unthinking pawn or cog to be tossed away when their use is done – be it securing a new source of cheap surplus labor or oil or strategic territory for bourgeois inter-imperialist war.

The Communist soldier, however, is not merely a mechanical part of a machine. They are a vital component to socialist society, the Party and the revolution. Their victory is the people’s victory. In this way the Communist soldier is always connected to their subject – the people, and acts in their defense – while the bourgeois soldier mostly sees their position as a necessary inconvenience much like employment. The Communist soldier, with full consent and conviction, maintains their discipline through collective military life.

Revolutionary armed forces normally adopt a system of strict discipline, freely consented to. Discipline that is freely consented to, because it builds upon the political consciousness of the cadres and the combatants and is largely maintained through a process of ongoing education and persuasion. This system is such that everyone is motivated to respect it and to help each other to observe it. Strict discipline means that all members of the army, without exception, cadres as well as combatants, superiors as well as subordinates, must respect it to the letter and nobody is exempt. – T. Derbent, “Categories of Revolutionary Military Policy”[2]

Communist soldiers fight so as to, eventually, after the enemy is annihilated and totally subdued, not fight in the future. While they are selfless and subordinate, the Communist soldier does not dogmatically become a humanless valueless instrument. The guerrillas of the People’s Army grasp Maoism; they serve their class and Party; they’d lay down their own lives for it because they are correctly convinced – or better said, they fully understand – Communism is coming and can only arrive with the blood of martyrs. This is not a despairing thing. This is not a dark and gloomy acceptance of a doomed life. On the contrary. It is a glorious honor. It is the most illuminating and exultant conviction for any human being on earth. History is filled with heroic examples of revolutionaries and guerrillas laying down their lives willingly, consciously, for the people. Presently we see this with the revolutionary guerrillas of the People’s Liberation Army of the Communist Party of Peru, the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army of the Communist Party of India (Maoist), the New People’s Army of the Communist Party of the Philippines, the Liberation Army of the Workers and Peasants of Turkey (TIKKO) of the Communist Party of Turkey/Marxist-Leninist.

The People’s War is fortified with the blood of martyrs. The TKP/ML understands this and with great poetry and steel-like conviction they reaffirm it boldly in their 2002 document commemorating their martyrs, “There is no death for us! We have our revenge oaths and war cries!”[3]

Our martyrs; chanting the cries of our martyrs, (such slogans as, “Everything is for the Party, Party is for the Revolution!” “Long live our party TKP/ML”) is the red rivers for the deepening our ideology, policies and their implementation. Our martyrs are the peaks of our ideals, decisiveness in the struggle like the permanent, high and elegant peaks of the Ararat, the Munzur, the Taurus and the Kachkar Mountains. These peaks carry us to conquer the sun and the stars. Therefore, each of our martyrs is an important “loss” in the short term. But on the contrary, in the medium and long terms they will be strong gains for our 25 years of class struggle and especially today, in the Restructuring of the Party and the continuation of the class struggle.

The Communist Party of Peru and their precursor to their People’s Liberation Army, the People’s Guerrilla Army, recognized the immortality of its martyrs – especially the heroic martyrs of the state’s onslaught of June 19, 1986.[4] The day continues to live on as the internationally-recognized “Day of Heroism” in the International Communist Movement. More than 300 heroic revolutionaries and People’s Guerrilla Army fighters were murdered in three of the state’s dungeons:

Thus, the nineteenth of June is imperishable as DAY OF HEROISM, the blood of these heroes and the armed revolution fructifies the fire burning more, rising up as a monumental … flag and inexhaustible war cry that summons the inevitable final triumph. The glorious belligerent death of these prisoners of war is cherished with the blood already poured and before it the Communists, the combatants and the sons of the people, armed, we assume the unwavering commitment to follow their shining example, to develop the People’s War to serve the world revolution until the unfading light of Communism is everywhere in the world under the undefeated banners of Marx, Lenin and Mao Tsetung, of the ever-living Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.

Martyrs are made immortal. The Communist Party of India (Maoist) gives permanence to its revolution’s martyrs in their 200-page book dedicated extensively to all the martyrs of the Indian New Democratic Revolution.[5]

The martyrs of the Indian revolution represent the scientific ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism (MLM). They herald a new society, new politics, new economy and new culture and are forerunners of the new kind of human beings who would inhabit a communist society. They represent a great history. They represent all that is just, righteous, virtuous, moral and humane in human beings. The great values of selflessness, sacrifice, unflinching commitment to the revolution, placing the interest of the collective above individual interests, undaunted courage in facing the enemy, broadness in thinking, love for the people and comrades, steely determination to confront and overcome any number of difficulties, perseverance in the face of hardships, devotion to serving the people and many more such higher values have been imbibed and practiced by these martyrs. They have placed glorious models in front of us to emulate with the way they lived and died.

Therefore, as made evident in this document, the Communist soldier is a more advanced soldier. They are nothing short of a piece of history. They carry the legacy of the international proletariat, of the International Communist Movement, a history of martyrdom and a sea of tears and blood, of unfading memory of our movement’s somber losses and victorious gains. The Communist soldier fights for nothing short of the full transformation of the world. They are on the front lines of destroying imperialism and building Communism. The Communist soldier is exemplary. The Communist soldier is prestigious and well-respected. They are a source of authority and respect for the masses, with the peasantry or the proletariat, in the countryside or in the cities. The Communist soldier is trustworthy. They are guided by Communist morality and ethics. If appropriate (such as in low-intensity warfare or peace time), enemy soldiers are captured. They are not ruthlessly and unnecessarily killed. Communist soldiers do not torture. The bourgeois soldier, on the other hand, is cynical, greedy, corrupt, disenfranchised, demoralized. They are eager to lay down their weapon or to quickly die so as to escape the horrors of a war they are never really agreed with. Their bourgeois shortsightedness contributes to the demoralization, which in turn infects entire military formations. The bourgeois soldier steals, rapes and brutalizes the masses. Out of frustration, bourgeois soldiers have committed great horrific war crimes against the people, especially in oppressed nations and colonies.

They can never match the bravery of the guerrilla, the Communist soldier, because the Communist soldier knows deep down in their cellular level that they fight for a historic and noble cause. They have the weight of history and the world on their shoulders. And this is contagious, too. It infects entire proletarian military formations, where there is a strong sense of camaraderie – ironically a phrase stolen by the bourgeois military. Communist soldiers, even on their rest periods, read Communist literature; they build each other up, struggle over important questions. Like any Communist outside of war, the Communist soldier in combat struggles even more intensely with their comrades and the masses for political unity and sharpness. They clearly see the correlation between a correct political line and victory on the long march toward Communism.

The Communist soldier’s grasp of the Party’s military line, its governing ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, principally Maoism, and its particular Guiding Thought, directly aids in the construction of socialism, both locally and internationally. There is no force on earth than can match this high level of commitment and discipline.

Our general militarization in the U.S.

In the absence of a People’s War, which is part of our current general countrywide situation in the U.S., Maoists oppose the arguments by revisionists and others in refusing militarization. As said earlier, to refute or attempt to remove militarization from Maoism would result in inevitable failure with the variable being time. You cannot wage revolution without an army. You cannot have an army without soldiers. You cannot wage a revolution without revolutionary theory. The task of Maoists in countries where there is no Maoist Communist Party is to reconstitute their respective Communist Parties, and militarize them, as part of concentrically constructing the three instruments of revolution. We train ourselves and the masses to wield revolutionary violence while we begin building the future Base Areas of the People’s War. The task for Maoists in countries without Maoist Communist Parties and without People’s Wars is to seize the subjective conditions in favor for war. The general objective conditions are already there for revolution. Our task is to catch up with the masses and our historical mission.

Maoists do not wait for the next economic crisis or government shutdown or mass unrest. In our mass organisms and initiatives we seek to attack the enemies of the people, securing revindications, while we construct the subjective conditions for People’s War. All our militarized mass work leads us to this inevitability.

As Chairman Gonzalo said in the “Line of Construction of the Three Instruments of Revolution[6]” of the General Political Line of the Communist Party of Peru, the Communist Party militarizes itself as part of militarizing the masses for the safeguard the revolution and new socialist state.

… because we march toward a militarized society. By militarizing the Party, we complete a step toward the militarization of society which is the strategic perspective to guarantee the dictatorship of the proletariat. The militarized society is the sea of armed masses which Marx and Engels spoke of, that guards the conquest of power and defends it once conquered. We take the experience of the Chinese Revolution, of the anti-Japanese base at Yenan, which was a militarized society where everything grew out of the barrels of guns: Party, Army, State, new politics, new economics, new culture. And in that way we develop war communism.

Let us take up this call seriously. Let us propagate the militarization of the Party and masses in all our mass work. As we march toward Communism, we must march first toward the sea of armed masses.

Militarize the pre-Party organisms!

Militarize all mass work toward a sea of armed masses!

Long live Chairman Gonzalo and Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, principally Maoism!

—

[1] Red Guards Austin “Toward a Sea of Armed Masses” from the Maoist Conference on Line Struggle concisely emphasizes these three core components of Maoism.

[2] T. Derbent – “Categories of Revolutionary Military Policy”

[3] “There is no death for us! We have our revenge oaths and war cries!” http://www.bannedthought.net/Turkey/TKP-ML/2000s/ThereIsNoDeathForUs-2002-Eng.pdf

[4] “Day of Heroism.” http://www.cedema.org/ver.php?id=639

[5] “Martyrs of the Indian Revolution: the roll call of honor.” http://www.bannedthought.net/India/CPI-Maoist-Docs/Cadre/PhotoAlbumOfMartyrsOfCPI(Maoist)-Book-Eng-140915.pdf

[6] “Line of Construction of the Three Instruments of Revolution ” of the General Political Line of the Communist Party of Peru. https://gplpcp.wordpress.com/line-of-construction-of-the-three-instruments-of-the-revolution/