El Diario Internacional releases more documents on "peace accords" in Peru: Evaluating police success in our movement March 13 2004 El Diario Internacional has re-released some documents concerning the armed struggle in Peru with a 2004 preface. Peru was the greatest hope of the Maoists in the 1980s and early 1990s. The People's War there had developed beyond any previous revolutionary struggle in the Western Hemisphere. In luckier circumstances, such as in Cuba in the late 1950s, the struggle in Peru would have been more than enough to issue in a thorough revolution. Today, Peru is still a great hope of Maoism internationally, because despite the arrest and murder of many leaders there, we know that Peru's material conditions keep on generating more Maoists every day. Documents continue to surface that describe the Peruvian secret services in the 1980s and 1990s. Something that Luis Arce Borja knows about and MIM does not is the persynalities involved in the PCP. Luis Arce Borja is now saying that it was no accident that Osman Morote survived the prison massacres that killed PCP members. The SIN (something like the FBI/CIA for Peru) set up Morote to offer a contending authority to tear down Comrade Gonzalo's line for People's War and documents about the SIN continue to back up Luis Arce Borja's analysis. The SIN created the "peace accords" idea and the strategy of winning over prison members of the PCP to spread the idea--this according to documents now released by the bourgeoisie in Peru. In 2003, Luis Arce Borja wrote an article concluding that the arrest of Comrade Gonzalo in Peru and the subsequent problems in the international communist movement offer a valuable lesson: "Alliances such as that made between the PCP and RIM in 1984 only serve for political trafficking and for debilitating the advance of revolutionary forces at the international level." RIM (Revolutionary Internationalist Movement) is the organization that stole MIM's original name to form a mutual recognition society led by the "RCP=U$A." (Revolutionary Communist Party-USA) From its very inception then, even from its very naming, we can see that RIM had the purpose of setting back the international communist movement- -through a reversal of correct verdicts by Stalin and Mao and for competitive sectarian purposes at the least. We would add that the negative lesson concerning Peru and the RIM should not result in total cynicism. We have to learn negative lessons or become utopians. One good thing about El Diario Internacional despite the betrayal of the RIM is that it continues to work with non-Peruvian comrades and does not veer off in a narrow nationalist direction, a completely distrustful direction. Quite the contrary, El Diario Internacional shows a continuous development in the internationalist direction. If anything, the RIM was holding back that development despite its name. Operational ties with the RIM were bad and held the revolutionary process back, but the struggle in the realm of ideas--done in the most secure fashion possible--is always good. There are more lessons to be learned in combating feel-good utopianism. In the international communist movement today, there are those that continue to uphold Stalin's and Mao's decisions to disband the Comintern and there are those who think we need to go back to having one international party led by its most advanced comrades, which in the past in practice meant comrades from Western Europe or Russia. It is MIM's observation that most of the people favoring a Comintern do so for the sake of wanting a quick unity of the communist forces internationally, while a minority of the "RCP=U$A" leader sort wants to manipulate those seeking a quick unity. The better elements wanting a new Comintern are simply wishful and as yet oblivious to scientific struggle--the difference between Khruschev and Stalin for instance. They think it is a simple matter to unite people upholding Stalin, Khruschev, Brezhnev, Mao, Hoxha, Deng and Gorbachev under a single banner and they don't understand why MIM can't see it would be a good thing. The worse elements wanting a Comintern are police infiltrators and sectarians. The key to combating utopianism is understanding what can and cannot be done, the difference between merely dreaming and actually doing something. The RIM was not prepared to step in with the capture of Gonzalo. That is the reality, and it was knowable in advance. Not only that, but the natural process that had to occur within the Peruvian ranks suffered in confusion because of the PCP's established tie to the RIM. When we say within the Peruvian ranks, we point to the choices between Esparza and Luis Arce Borja that existed. Even that struggle no doubt also interacts with and influences the struggle inside Peru. For those who thought they belonged to something of an international party called the RIM, the arrest of Comrade Gonzalo in Peru proved the drawbacks of an international party approach. It took the RIM over a year to "investigate" the "peace accords" offered in Peru supposedly by Comrade Gonzalo. On this point, MIM is able to offer eyewitness testimony, because MIM was an outsider. MIM was not part of the RIM, but we did see RIM distribute EL Diario Internacional including in Revolution Books for years, but when the "peace accords" controversy came up, "RCP-USA" started boycotting El Diario Internacional. On these points we confirm everything Luis Arce Borja is saying. He continued to put forward the same line as before in El Diario Internacional, but the "RCP=U$A" boycotted him. In practice, "RCP=U$A" took sides with the "peace accords" plot despite whatever rhetoric it used. Of course, the Liberals sympathizing with the "RCP=U$A" could say that Luis Arce Borja states the facts correctly, but his line is wrong. Because of the betrayal of the Peruvian Esparza, Luis Arce Borja admits there was going to be at least some temporary confusion; however, since this confusion meant in practice not distributing El Diario Internacional anymore, there needed to be a decision on whose line was better, Luis Arce Borja's line or Esparza's. The only alternative to such a struggle was to say that the "RCP=U$A" was in direct contact with the PCP Central Committee in Peru or that the RIM could make the appropriate decision. In the end, "RCP=U$A" acted to oppose both Esparza and El Diario Internacional in public in such a way that benefitted Esparza. This is something that we need to understand in the international communist movement. It involves questions of principle in how to make decisions when something like the arrest of Gonzalo happens and old patterns of practice are disrupted. One thing that the whole RIM idea did was to confuse people into thinking it was maybe possible to have a RIM in the sense of an international party in touch with Peru. There needed to be a thumbs up or down on that idea alone for RIM to have handled the Peru question in principle. Even comrades with state power--Stalin and Mao--said it was impossible; yet these RIM "comrades" came along and left open the utopian hope that it was possible. All in all it reflected the difference between MIM's materialist approach and the "RCP=U$A"'s typical white utopianism, which stresses that anything is possible as opposed to making choices among things that are in front of them in the real world. When a party speaks for a class of labor aristocrats that have shown no inkling of revolutionary movement in decades, one must either take up utopianism or abandon the labor aristocracy's class demands. The "RCP=U$A" has taken up the line of utopianism, that 90% of Amerika is objectively revolutionary, in which case, sure dump both Esparza and Luis Arce Borja and it won't make a difference. It were as if the "RCP=U$A" decided to go into spell-casting and astrology to call forward its objectively revolutionary allies to straighten out the situation. So to settle this in principle let's try to imagine an "RCP=U$A" rank-and-file member trying to sort this out. Let's ask some questions and answer. 1) What if the truth was that Luis Arce Borja was a police plot as well? Answer: Everything we know says that he was not. He continued the same line as before the arrest of Gonzalo. We should never rule out degeneration-- anyone talking to MIM knows that; however, the question at hand concerned the distribution of El Diario Internacional. At that time, Luis Arce Borja was active, so whether he was a police agent or not, the question was whether or not the distribution of El Diario Internacional hastened class consciousness. It's important not to place undue emphasis on the individual as opposed to line. We must figure out how to do our work with the assumption that some people are police agents. As opposed to Trotsky who favored a people-uniting approach, Stalin and Mao favored a line-centered approach. As long as the line goes forward, individual police agents cannot completely derail the progress of the class struggle. They can only do so if we stake everything on our analysis of who individuals are instead of what their lines are. The strength of the proletariat is not figuring out who individuals are. We must all be trained along the lines of the strengths of a class. Finally, MIM has no problem with this question at all, because we are not the ones claiming it's possible to have an international party like the Comintern. RIM is. If you do not know for sure that Luis Arce Borja is or is not a police agent or that he has been kidnapped and replaced with one, then that should tell you something about the feasibility of an international party. 2) You did not do any investigation. Maybe "RCP=U$A" was running down to Ayacucho for directions. Answer: It turns out that "RCP=U$A" admits that was not occurring, but even if that is still not the whole truth, then we have to ask the "RCP=U$A," "why do you think you can accomplish this (this being an effective implementation of mass line across distant borders) when Stalin and Mao recommended against it? They had state power to do it and did not do it. What do you have that Stalin and Mao did not?" The "RCP=U$A" and RIM allies would have to go before the international proletariat and answer this question if they want trust of their judgment over that of Luis Arce Borja's. 3) Luis Arce Borja was engaged in Stalin-style metaphysics. Answer: MIM has already addressed this in previous articles. The real issue is that the "RCP=u$A" jumbles the words "counter-revolutionary," "right opportunism" and "cardinal" all the time-- much to the satisfaction of natural imperialist country Liberalism. The Canto Grande weed was not "right opportunism," a shade of opinion within the PCP. Furthermore, the "RCP=U$A" in sectarian opportunist recruiting tactics simultaneously now tells people as in its Revolutionary Worker footnote that the MIM line on the white working class is "counterrevolutionary." On the other hand, it tells people it is recruiting that it's not a cardinal question, which means it will tolerate people within its ranks holding the MIM line on the white working class and reparations. One "RCP=U$A" recruiter goes so far as to tell people that the "RCP=U$A" can accept the line just minus the harsh MIM tone that goes with it. Lately the "RCP=U$A" complains of MIM's philosophy of "harsh blows" as being too Stalinish. They fail to understand that the tone has to go with the situation and the situation is that 38 out of 40 of Earl Browder's Politburo voted to dissolve the "CP=U$A." That was in that 1940s era before the Khruschev setback and at a time when the party had great influence among the industrial "workers." In 2004, parasitism has even worsened much further, and so the natural tendency in the imperialist countries is for the alleged communist parties to get off track both spontaneously and intentionally. The proletarian struggle for influence inside the imperialist countries needs the sharpest edge in the world. As always, we recommend to the Third World comrades not to copy MIM's style. MIM Thought is specifically designed for the imperialist countries. MIM Thought aims to go beyond cheerleading for the Russians when they criticize Khruschev and the Peruvians when they take up armed struggle: We want to take up the struggle against revisionism in a way appropriate for our conditions and thus contribute to anti- revisionist struggle globally. This is exactly the same dispute that the "RCP=U$A" had with Luis Arce Borja. If the MIM line is "counterrevolutionary" it should not be allowed in the "RCP=U$A," unless of course the "RCP=U$A" is a counterrevolutionary party. To say otherwise is to comfort the outright bourgeois Liberals. It's quite a joke. "RCP=U$A" sectarianism says that MIM line is counterrevolutionary, but a document advocating the complete laying down of arms in Peru is not, because that is only "right- opportunism" as they called it. That's an incredibly poor substance judgement if not a direct police plot. Even if "RCP=U$A" were correct that MIM line is counter-revolutionary, then it should not be tolerated inside the "RCP=U$A." Counterrevolutionary lines are counterrevolutionary because they touch on something "cardinal," not because "RCP=U$A" feels like throwing some rhetoric at MIM this week. On the one hand, people like Luis Arce Borja in one aspect of the struggle have to realize what it is possible for outsiders (outside Peru in this example) to know and not know. Likewise, he has to put himself in the shoes of comrades in the international communist movement. What principles should such comrades have in how they choose what line to support. MIM held consistently that it does not belong in a Comintern and hence there is no way to equate MIM and the "RCP=U$A." The "RCP=U$A" had certain obligations in the given context that MIM did not. If you believe in the Comintern thing, you had better act in sensible ways to back that up. When we mention "utopianism," we should also point out that a major reason that the "RCP=U$A" managed to carry out its line as it did is that the rank- and-file have no training or concern for materialism. To be frank, it does not occur to them why it might be necessary to choose between Esparza and Luis Arce Borja. They dreamed of something better than both even if that meant choosing new leaders. Once this dream came into being it was a small step from that to using the RIM for chauvinist purposes. Rather than siding with one side in the Peruvian struggle, the RIM in practice called for entirely new leaders to step forward and carry forward the will of the RIM. "Fill-in-the-blank" we should all be clear is not some revolutionary miracle, just white utopian chauvinism. In the meantime, and ever since, there was no El Diario Internacional in that work of the RIM. Such a pace of struggle after the arrest of Comrade Gonzalo that the RIM had--never mind the contents of the investigation!--suited two groups of people, the Peruvian state and the imperialist country Liberals who can never carry out a decisive struggle because of their basis in the petty-bourgeoisie, the super-profits swamping imperialist countries. For imperialist country Liberals and Trotskyists, even one year is too short for such a question. The reason should be obvious: there is no urgent armed struggle for these people to attend to and for that matter even Mao instructed that there would not be for people in the imperialist countries. What is more these "comrades" lack the basic proletarian sympathy that enables them to envision being in such an armed struggle and what decisions would be entailed and when. Hence, to mix together imperialist country comrades engaged in no armed struggle who "have nothing" as Mao said, because they have no People's Army, and comrades from oppressed nations who have an ongoing armed struggle, and to expect quick organizational decisions is clearly unrealistic in the best of circumstances, and these were not the best of circumstances with successful police plots being afoot. In the worst of circumstances, such loose thinking makes CIA infiltration easiest. Even within the Third World parties, carrying out such a task would be difficult as every country has its own conditions and struggle against Liberalism; although at least in theory, comrades tested in protracted armed struggle against the state should have some better basis for forming such an organization. The imperialist country parties and those parties just getting off the ground have no armed struggles yet to weed out their ranks and drive forward their scientific struggles. MIM believes it speaks for the majority of countries in the world when it says that really only a handful of comrades from a handful of parties in the world-- not the majority--would have been able to absorb the arrest of Comrade Gonzalo and successfully steer out of successive police plots. Thus to think that an international party or center could carry out the task of directing a two-line struggle or saving the life of Comrade Gonzalo started from a flawed RIM-like premise. The situation in Peru required a "real time" response, but the alleged international center could in no way provide one. While Comrade Gonzalo spoke of "militarizing the party," because of practical problems he faced leading the Peruvian revolution, the supposed international center was off in a completely different direction. The RIM encompassed parties that needed to have as their central task the creation of public opinion, which is really only one step up from creating debate societies. Hence, the police plot in Peru had fertile grounds to operate in in the imperialist countries as well. After the arrest of Comrade Gonzalo came an attack on Luis Arce Borja abroad. Out of no where popped up suddenly dedicated activists to disparage Luis Arce Borja, who conducted the most famous public interviews of the leader of the Peruvian revolution that are published and available. Leading this nefarious venture was "New Flag." Because of the timing of the attack and because of its target, a solid portion of comrades paying attention could figure out that there was something really rotten and fishy going on. "New Flag" claimed to be new forces trying to follow the line of the PCP, but even if the PCP itself decided that there was something wrong with Luis Arce Borja, it would have to know that without proof and line, attacking Luis Arce Borja when "New Flag" did would look suspicious. For that reason, we never feared that the "New Flag" had PCP sanction. While we could imagine the PCP directing a criticism of Adolfo Olaechea, we could not see it undermining Luis Arce Borja in some counter-productive and even anti-Semitic ways as the "New Flag" did. Nonetheless, there were those who complained when MIM labeled "New Flag" part of a police plot. They trotted out the usual Liberal rhetoric about MIM "always" finding police under the bed, when in fact, MIM has rarely publicly named any police enemies. Confronted with pages and pages of evidence of the nature of "New Flag" published by "New Flag" itself on the Internet, there were still many alleged comrades not able to figure it out, not able to make a decision that this in fact was a part of a police operation. There needed to be a decisive break with the "New Flag" characters, but we are quite sure that in that struggle as in subsequent struggles, had a payroll stub signed by the CIA shown up, someone would have said it was forged. In essence, for many people in the u$a, there is nothing, no combination of circumstances and no political logic that one could use to conclude that "New Flag" was a police plot. And this suited the police and typical imperialist country Liberals. When it comes down to it, the "RCP-USA" was unable or unwilling to call certain lines calling for the end of armed struggle in Peru counter- revolutionary; even though it has called our line on the white working class "counter-revolutionary" while simultaneously saying the question is not cardinal! There is a question of steering here. In public, the "RCP=U$A" tries to appear more Liberal than MIM. That goes for the gender question or deciding when to break with "New Flag" or even self-named FBI informers and "national socialists." On the "New Flag" question, "RCP=U$A" flip-flopped. On the one side, the "RCP=U$A" is saying to unite with everybody and counterposing that to MIM's "harsh blows" approach. What rightly raises doubts in Luis Arce Borja's mind about "RCP=U$A"'s leader is that for them, there is no loss of decisiveness or clarity in not breaking with counterrevolution. That's why the Canto Grande weed was just "right opportunism" for the "RCP=U$A" and supposedly counterrevolutionary lines on parasitism are allowed in the "RCP=U$A" itself. It goes without saying that if counterrevolution is welcome in the party, then counterrevolution is welcome in the united front, which is why in practice, "RCP=U$A" pisses on MIM in public while uniting with self- admitted Internet fascists and FBI informers. From the vantage point of 2004, MIM would again point out how useful the labor aristocracy line is in taking comrades out of synch with the People's Wars. Calling itself "proletarian" along with the imperialist country's majority of population, the "RCP-USA" and similar organizations unite with the labor aristocracy. This makes it impossible for the "RCP-USA" and similar organizations to break with reactionaries. Most recently, "RCP" circles created a dream come true for police in the united $tates as well. A self-admitted FBI informer who denounced MIM as "pro-terrorist" to the FBI after 911 has admitted right on the Internet that she informed on MIM and others. Yet "RCP" circles denied it and sought to unite with her and open fascists in a public discussion group. One of the activists carrying out this activity on the Internet openly even had the initials "RAF," not to be confused with the "RATF." RAF is the acronym of the British air force. Yet still, because of the pace of struggle and the super-profits raining down on heads in the imperialist countries, even many by-standers did not bother to examine the evidence or force a conclusion. This lack of decisiveness favors the imperialists. It is outright bourgeois Liberalism and petty-bourgeois paralysis. There are only two reasons that someone would reject a decisive break with someone admitted in black-and-white to be an FBI informer. 1) You are carrying out a police operation yourself. 2) You are a Liberal who does not care to begin with. The PCP's joining of RIM was wrong to begin with, because Stalin and Mao were right that Cominterns do not suit the level of development of the international communist movement anymore. All important decisions have to be in "real time," and the comrades of each country are best suited for those decisions. What is more, it is unrealistic to expect that comrades abroad would know something like the history of individual comrades like Osman Morote. Information like that could only come from people with more detailed knowledge. Also, information like that does bring up that rarely applicable question: "what are your sources?" For the grand question of choosing capitalism or socialism, "what are your sources" is usually a lazy question, but concerning a party like the PCP which cannot present all information in public, choosing who to rely on becomes more important. Even within the PCP and all parties guided by Marxism-Leninism-Maoism though, the task is not to focus on the individual but to push forward the development of line uniting a whole class. One key to advancing our struggle is understanding those things which must be left to the forces with the tactical knowledge of struggle. That means knowing what tasks the Peruvian comrades must figure out for themselves and what tasks unite the international communist movement at higher levels. The imperialists seek to create division at the individual level. The Peruvian secret police called SIN created long strings of illusions in order to divide the revolutionary movement continuously. The SIN aims to have MIM and others credit the wrong people and discredit the right people. The SIN does this by spreading rumors and incorrect information. Inevitably the SIN must fool MIM to at least some degree. We struggle against that fact, but we cannot hold back our line development in order to win a decisive struggle of individuals. We must account for the fact that we will not see through every SIN trick and that means stressing our areas of relative strength and destroying the influence of psychology in our movement. We should never allow someone to attack individual motivations as a substitute for line, because that is a game we cannot win all the time. In contrast to the SIN/CIA/FBI strategy at the individual level, we must spread those analyses that cannot fail the proletarian class and we must combat all forms of psychological warfare, because it is the oppressor that benefits from making each oppressed persyn a separate individual with a separate psychology apart from the rest of the oppressed. In order to make it easier to separate from the enemy, all comrades should avoid spreading false information that could find its way into the international communist movement. That way when false information does appear, we know it is the enemy spreading it. MIM does not recruit under any guises. If someone claims to be in Peru on behalf of MIM or in India on behalf of MIM or needing specific security-related information for MIM--in such a case it's better to be paranoid and doubt it. Unfortunately, the "RCP=U$A" does recruit under guises and its whole approach to the RIM creates an opening for the SIN/CIA with idealism-tinged comrades. We call on anyone with any remaining illusions about the RIM to go on holding high the banner of Mao, the Cultural Revolution and the "Gang of Four," but to break with the RIM. We welcome any such statements in support of Mao and the Cultural Revolution for our web pages. Notes: 1. "El MRI fue un aliado de la policía," www.eldiariointernacional.com 2. References to MIM's recent struggle against police informers operating under pseudonyms on the Internet are here: http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/links/witbd.html