Long Live Marxism-Leninism-Maoism!

The 1993 Document of RIM

Introduction

In 1984, the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement was founded, groupingtogether the nucleus of the Maoist revolutionaries the world over who weredetermined to carry forward the fight for a world without exploitation andoppression, without imperialism, a world in which the very division of societyinto classes will be overcome-the communist world of the future. Since theformation of our Movement we have continued to advance and today, on theoccasion of the Mao Tsetung Centenary, with a deep sense of our responsibility,we declare to the international proletariat and the oppressed masses of theworld that our guiding ideology is Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.

Our Movement was founded on the basis of the Declaration of the RevolutionaryInternationalist Movement adopted by the Second Conference ofMarxist-Leninist Parties and Organisations in 1984. The Declarationupholds the proletarian revolutionary ideology and on that basis in the mainit correctly addresses the tasks of the revolutionary communists in differentcountries and on a world scale, the history of the international communistmovement, and a number of other vital questions. Today we reaffirm theDeclaration as the solid foundation of our Movement upon which weare building a new clarity and deeper understanding of our ideology and themore solid unity of our Movement. The Declaration correctly stresses"Mao Tsetung's qualitative development of the science of Marxism-Leninism"and affirms that he raised it to "a new stage". However, the use of the term"Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought" in our Declaration reflecteda still incomplete understanding of this new stage. In the last nine yearsour Movement has been engaged in a long, rich and thoroughgoing discussionand struggle to more fully grasp Mao Tsetung's development of Marxism. Duringthis same period the parties and organisations of our Movement and RIM asa whole have been engaged in revolutionary struggle against imperialism andreaction. Most important has been the advanced experience of the People'sWar led by the Communist Party of Peru which has succeeded in mobilisingthe masses in their millions, sweeping aside the state in many parts of thecountry and establishing: the power of the workers and peasants in theseareas. These advances, in theory and practice, have enabled us to furtherdeepen our grasp of the proletarian ideology and on that basis take afar-reaching step, the recognition of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as the new,third and higher stage of Marxism.

New, Third and Higher Stage of Marxism

Mao Tsetung elaborated many theses on a whole series of vital questions ofrevolution. But Maoism is not just the sum total of Mao's great contributions.It is the comprehensive and all-round development of Marxism-Leninism toa new and higher stage. Marxism-Leninism-Maoism is an integral whole; itis the ideology of the proletariat synthesized and developed to new stages,from Marxism to Marxism-Leninism to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, by Karl Marx,V.I. Lenin and Mao Tsetung, on the basis of the experience of the proletariatand mankind in class struggle, the struggle for production and scientificexperiment. It is the invincible weapon which enables the proletariat tounderstand the world and change it through revolution. Marxism-Leninism-Maoismis a universally applicable, living and scientific ideology, constantlydeveloping and being further enriched through its application in makingrevolution as well as through the advance of human knowledge generally.Marxism-Leninism-Maoism is the enemy of all forms of revisionism and dogmatism.It is all powerful because it is true.

Karl Marx

Karl Marx first developed revolutionary communism almost 150 years ago. Withthe assistance of his close comrade-in-arms Frederick Engels, he developeda comprehensive philosophical system, dialectical materialism, and discoveredthe basic laws which shape human history.

Marx developed a science of political economy that revealed the exploitationof the proletariat and the inherent anarchy and contradictions of the capitalistmode of production. Karl Marx developed his revolutionary theory in closeconnection with and to serve the class struggle of the international proletariat.He built the First International and wrote, together with Engels, the CommunistManifesto with its resounding call "workers of all countries, unite!" Marxpaid great attention to and summed up the lessons of the Paris Commune of1871, the first great attempt of the proletariat to seize state power.
He armed the world proletariat with an understanding of its historic mission:seizing political power through revolution and using this power -- thedictatorship of the proletariat -- to transform social conditions until thevery basis for the cleavage of society into different classes is eliminated.
Marx led the struggle against the opportunists in the proletarian movementwho sought to confine the struggle of the workers to improving the conditionsof wage-slavery without challenging the existence of this slavery itself.
Together, the stand, viewpoint and method of Marx came to be called Marxism,and represents the first great milestone in the development of the ideologyof the proletariat.

V.I. Lenin

V.I. Lenin developed Marxism to a whole new stage in the course of leadingthe proletarian revolutionary movement in Russia and the struggle in theinternational communist movement against revisionism.
Among many other contributions, Lenin analysed the development of capitalismto its highest and final stage, imperialism. He showed that the world wasdivided between a handful of imperialist powers and the great majority, theoppressed nations and peoples, and showed that the imperialist powers wouldbe forced to go to war periodically to redivide the world amongst themselves.
Lenin described the era in which we live as the era of imperialism andproletarian revolution. Lenin developed the political party of a new type,the Communist Party, as the proletariat's indispensable tool for leadingthe revolutionary masses in the seizure of power.
Most importantly, Lenin raised the theory and practice of proletarian revolutionto a whole new level as he led the proletariat in seizing and consolidatingits political power, its revolutionary dictatorship, for the first time withthe victory of the October Revolution in formerly Tsarist Russia in 1917.
Lenin waged a life-and-death struggle against the revisionists of his daywithin the Second International who had betrayed the proletarian revolutionand had called on the workers to defend the interests of their imperialistmasters in World War I.
The "guns of October" and Lenin's struggle against revisionism further spreadthe communist movement throughout the world, uniting the struggles of theoppressed peoples with the world proletarian revolution, and the Third (orCommunist) International was formed.
Lenin's all-round and comprehensive development of Marxism represents thesecond great leap in the development of proletarian ideology.
After Lenin's death, Joseph Stalin defended the proletarian dictatorshipagainst enemies from within as well as from the imperialist invaders duringWorld War II, and carried forward the cause of socialist construction andtransformation in the Soviet Union. Stalin fought for the international communistmovement to recognise Marxism-Leninism as the second great milestone in thedevelopment of the proletarian ideology.

Mao Tsetung

Mao Tsetung developed Marxism-Leninism to a new and higher stage in the courseof his many decades of leading the Chinese Revolution, the worldwide struggleagainst modern revisionism and, most importantly, in finding in theory andpractice the method of continuing the revolution under the dictatorship ofthe proletariat to prevent the restoration of capitalism and continue theadvance toward communism. Mao Tsetung greatly developed all three componentparts of Marxism -- philosophy, political economy and scientific socialism.
Mao said, "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." Mao Tsetungcomprehensively developed the military science of the proletariat throughhis theory and practice of People's War. Mao taught that people, not weapons,are decisive in waging war. He pointed out that each class has its own specificforms of war with its specific character, goals and means. He remarked thatall military logic can be boiled down to the principle "you fight your way,I'll fight my way", and that the proletariat must forge military strategyand tactics which can bring into play its particular advantages, by unleashingand relying upon the initiative and enthusiasm of the revolutionary masses.

Mao established that the policy of winning base areas and systematicallyestablishing political power was key to unleashing the masses and developingthe armed strength of the people and the wavelike expansion of their politicalpower. He insisted on the need to lead the masses in carrying out revolutionarytransformations in base areas and to develop these politically, economicallyand culturally in the service of advancing revolutionary warfare.

Mao taught that the Party should control the gun and the gun must never beallowed to control the Party. The Party must be built as a vehicle capableof initiating and leading revolutionary warfare. He emphasised that the centraltask of revolution is the seizure of political power by revolutionary violence.Mao Tsetung's theory of People's War is universally applicable in all countries,although this must be applied to the concrete conditions in each countryand, in particular, take into account the revolutionary paths in the twogeneral types of countries-imperialist countries and oppressed countries-thatexist in the world today.
Mao solved the problem of how to make revolution in a country dominated byimperialism. The basic path he charted for the revolution in China representsan inestimable contribution to the theory and practice of revolution andis the guide for achieving liberation in the countries oppressed by imperialism.This means protracted People's War, surrounding the cities from the countryside,with armed struggle as the main form of struggle and the army led by theParty as the main form of organisations of the masses, mobilising the peasantry,principally the poor peasants, carrying out the agrarian revolution, buildinga united front under the leadership of the Communist Party to carry out theNew Democratic Revolution against imperialism, feudalism and bureaucratcapitalism and establishing the joint dictatorship of the revolutionary classesled by the proletariat as the necessary prelude to the socialist revolutionwhich must immediately follow the victory of the first stage of the revolution.Mao put forward the thesis of the "three magic weapons" -- the Party, theArmy and the United Front -- the indispensable instruments for making revolutionin every country in accordance with its specific conditions and path ofrevolution.
Mao Tsetung greatly developed the proletarian philosophy, dialecticalmaterialism. In particular, he stressed that the law of contradiction, theunity and struggle of opposites, is the fundamental law governing natureand society. He pointed out that the unity and identity of all things istemporary and relative, while the struggle between opposites is ceaselessand absolute, and this gives rise to radical ruptures and revolutionary leaps.He masterfully applied this understanding to the analysis of the relationshipbetween theory and practice, stressing that practice is both the sole sourceand ultimate criterion of the truth and emphasising the leap from theoryto revolutionary practice. In so doing Mao further developed the proletariantheory of knowledge. He led in taking philosophy to the masses in their millions,popularizing, for example, that "one divides into two" in opposition to therevisionist thesis that "two combines into one".
Mao Tsetung further developed the understanding that the "people and thepeople alone are the motive force in the making of world history". He developedthe understanding of the mass line: "take the ideas of the masses (scatteredand unsystematic ideas) and concentrate them (through study turn them intoconcentrated and systematic ideas), then go to the masses and propagate andexplain these ideas until the masses embrace them as their own, hold fastto them and translate them into action, and test the correctness of theseideas in such action". Mao stressed the profound truth that matter can betransformed into consciousness and consciousness into matter, further developingthe understanding of the conscious dynamic role of man in every field ofhuman endeavour.
Mao Tsetung led the international struggle against modern revisionism ledby the Khrushchevite revisionists. He defended the communist ideologicaland political line against the modern revisionists and called upon the genuineproletarian revolutionaries to break with them and forge parties based onMarxist-Leninist-Maoist principles.

Mao Tsetung undertook a penetrating analysis of the lessons of the restorationof capitalism in the USSR and the shortcomings as well as the positiveachievements of the construction of socialism in that country. While Maodefended the great contributions of Stalin, he also summed up Stalin's errors.He summed up the experience of the socialist revolution in China and therepeated two-line struggles against revisionist headquarters within the CommunistParty of China. He masterfully applied materialist dialectics to the analysisof the contradictions of socialist society.

Mao taught that the Party must play the vanguard role -- before, during andafter the seizure of power -- in leading the proletariat in the historicstruggle for communism. He developed the understanding of how to preservethe proletarian revolutionary character of the Party through waging an activeideological struggle against bourgeois and petit bourgeois influences inits ranks, the ideological remoulding of the Party members, criticism andself-criticism and waging two-line struggle against opportunist and revisionistlines in the Party. Mao taught that once the proletariat seizes power andthe Party becomes the leading force within the socialist state, the contradictionbetween the Party and the masses becomes a concentrated expression of thecontradictions marking socialist society as a transition between capitalismand communism.
Mao Tsetung developed the proletariat's understanding of political economy,of the contradictory and dynamic role of production itself and of itsinterrelationship with the political and ideological superstructure of society.Mao taught that the system of ownership is decisive in the relations ofproduction but that, under socialism, attention must be paid that publicownership is socialist in content as well as in form. He stressed the interactionbetween the system of socialist ownership and the other two aspects of therelations of production, the relations between people in production and thesystem of distribution. Mao developed the Leninist thesis that politics isthe concentrated expression of economics, showing that under socialist societythe correctness of the ideological and political line determines whetherthe proletariat actually owns the means of production. Conversely, he pointedout that the rise of revisionism means the rise of the bourgeoisie, thatgiven the contradictory nature of the socialist economic base it would beeasy for capitalist roaders to rig up the capitalist system if they cometo power.
He profoundly criticised the revisionist theory of the productive forcesand concluded that the superstructure, consciousness, can transform the baseand with political power develop the productive forces. All this took expressionin Mao's slogan, "Grasp Revolution, Promote Production."
Mao Tsetung initiated and led the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution whichrepresented a great leap forward in the experience of exercising the dictatorshipof the proletariat. Hundreds of millions of people rose up to overthrow thecapitalist readers who had emerged from within the socialist society andwho were especially concentrated in the leadership of the Party itself (suchas Liu Shao-chi , Lin Piao and Deng Xiao-ping) . Mao led the proletariatand masses in challenging the capitalist roaders and imposing the interests,outlook and will of the great majority in every sphere that, even in socialistsociety, had remained the private reserve of the exploiting classes and theirway of thinking.
The great victories won in the Cultural Revolution prevented the capitalistrestoration in China for a decade and led to great socialist transformationsin the economic base as well as in education, literature and art, scientificresearch and other parts of the superstructure. Under Mao's leadership themasses dug away at the soil which engenders capitalism -- such as bourgeoisright and the three great differences between town and country, between workerand peasant, and between mental and manual labour.
In the course of fierce ideological and political struggle, millions of workersand other revolutionary masses greatly deepened their class consciousnessand mastery of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and strengthened their capacity towield political power. The Cultural Revolution was waged as part of theinternational struggle of the proletariat and was a training ground inproletarian internationalism.
Mao grasped the dialectical relationship between the necessity of revolutionaryleadership and the need to arouse and rely on the revolutionary masses frombelow to implement proletarian dictatorship. In this way, the strengtheningof the proletarian dictatorship was also the most extensive and deepest exercisein proletarian democracy yet achieved in the world, and heroic revolutionaryleaders came forward such as Chiang Ching and Chang Chun-chiao who stoodalongside the masses and led them into battle against the revisionists andwho continued to hold high the banner of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism in the faceof bitter defeat.

Lenin said, "Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the classstruggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat." In thelight of the invaluable lessons and advances achieved through the GreatProletarian Cultural Revolution led by Mao Tsetung, this dividing line hasbeen further sharpened. Now it can be stated that only he is a Marxist whoextends the recognition of class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorshipof the proletariat and to the recognition of the objective existence of classes,of antagonistic class contradictions, of the bourgeoisie in the Party andof the continuation of the class struggle under the dictatorship of theproletariat throughout the whole period of socialism until communism. AsMao so powerfully stated, "Lack of clarity on this question will lead torevisionism."
The capitalist restoration following the 1976 counter-revolutionary coupd'etat led by Hua Kuo-feng and Deng Xiao-ping in no way negates Maoism orthe world-historic achievements and tremendous lessons of the Great ProletarianCultural Revolution; rather this defeat confirms Mao's theses on the natureof socialist society and the need to continue the revolution under thedictatorship of the proletariat.
Clearly, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution represents a world-historicepic of revolution, a victorious high point for the world's communists andrevolutionaries, an imperishable achievement. Although we have a whole processahead of us, that revolution left us great lessons we are already applying,such as, for example, the point that ideological transformation is fundamentalin order for our class to seize power.

Marxism-Leninism-Maoism: The Third Great Milestone

In the course of the Chinese revolution Mao had developed Marxism-Leninismin many important fields. But it was in the crucible of the Great ProletarianCultural Revolution that our ideology took a leap and the third great milestone,Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, fully emerged. From the higher plane ofMarxism-Leninism-Maoism the revolutionary communists could grasp the teachingsof the previous great leaders even more profoundly and indeed even Mao Tsetung'searlier contributions took on deeper significance. Today, without Maoismthere can be no Marxism-Leninism. Indeed, to negate Maoism is to negateMarxism-Leninism itself.
Each great milestone in the development of the revolutionary ideology ofthe proletariat has met with bitter resistance and has only achieved recognitionthrough intense struggle and through its application in revolutionary practice.Today the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement declares thatMarxism-Leninism-Maoism must be the commander and guide of the world revolution.
Hundreds of millions of proletarians and oppressed masses of the world areincreasingly propelled into struggle against the world imperialist systemand all reaction. On the battlefield against the enemy they search for theirown flag. Revolutionary communists must wield our universal ideology andspread it among the masses to further unleash them and organise their forces,in order to seize power through revolutionary violence. To accomplish this,Marxist-Leninist-Maoist parties, united in the Revolutionary InternationalistMovement, must be formed wherever they do not exist and existing ones mustbe strengthened in order to prepare, launch and carry through to victoryPeople's War to seize power for the proletariat and the oppressed people.We must uphold, defend and, most importantly, apply Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.

We must step up our struggle for the formation of a Communist Internationalof a new type, based on Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. The world proletarian revolutioncannot advance to victory without forging such a weapon because, as Mao Tsetungtaught, either we all go to communism or none of us go.
Mao Tsetung said, "Marxism consists of thousands of truths, but in the finalanalysis they all boil down to one: it is right to rebel." The RevolutionaryInternationalist Movement takes the rebellion of the masses as its startingpoint, and calls on the proletariat and revolutionaries the world over totake up Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. This liberating, partisan ideology mustbe brought home to the proletariat and all the oppressed because it alonecan enable the rebellion of the masses to sweep away thousands of years ofclass exploitation and bring to birth the new world of communism.

Hold High the Great Red Banner of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism!
26 December 1993