Below we publish a well-done review of the year 2020, which looks full of revolutionary optimism into the year of struggle 2021. The review was published at the communist website Communist International:
Proletarians of all countries, unite!
Retrospect 2020
We, the editorial staff of the Communist International - Internacional Comunista, end the year 2020 with great spirit of struggle and raised optimism and want to briefly look back at the year behind us.
2019 ended and 2020 began with great chaos on the hill of the enemy, imperialism in its dynamic of collusion and struggle, shaken mainly by economic crisis (cyclical crisis of overproduction) and a crisis the demo-liberal regimes (expression of the reactionarysation of the bourgeois state in the last phase of imperialism), as part of the general crisis of imperialism, which is sinking more and more into its agony and is approaching its sweeping away. Imperialism is becoming more monopolistic, parasitic and moribund every day. Imperialism seeks to exploit the world more and more, and the world has accumulated a strong explosive capacity; in the Third World this explosiveness is already expressing itself more strongly. Because imperialism is imposing more oppression, wars and plunder on the oppressed nations and peoples that are in the crisis of their rotten bureaucratic capitalism. The only hegemonic superpower, Yankee imperialism, has not been able to break the atomic superpower Russia that has made the Yankees attempts of total domination in the Greater Middle East fail, even though the take over in the countries of the former USSR by the Yankee imperialism is increasing. China seeks to profit from all this by widening the confrontation with the Yankee imperialists but it still does not have military capabilities to confront them; at the same time, Germany is imposing its hegemony on the EU as a manifestation of its old chauvinist ambitions of great world power.
On our side, on our hill, that of the international proletariat and the peoples of the world, this period was marked in particular by a great explosiveness of the masses. An explosiveness which is caused by the system itself, by the fact that this system is less and less able to feed its slaves, that imperialism more and more directly contradicts human existence as such. More and more it is breaking through, what Lenin formulated with great strength as preferring to die fighting than starving to death.
The Corona pandemic, which could mainly become a pandemic through the imperialists and their handling of it, was used by the imperialists to set in motion a great destruction of productive power - including a huge genocide in the oppressed nations -, a more rapid monopolisation of the economy under greater control of the state and a great terror against the masses - we are in a real war situation. Thus, the enemies' fear of the explosiveness of the masses is shown, which tends in the direction of the worldwide rebellion. The masses, due to the shortcomings of the communists, through the process of reconstitution/constitution of their parties, reacted to a certain extent and for a limited period of time with uncertainty, confusion and retreat. However, this temporary condition was quickly overcome. All over the world, the masses rose up to express their just and correct demands, especially the right to adequate health care (in some countries, fronts to defend the health of the people have been successfully formed), work and bread. Thus, today we are faced with the situation that the level of mass struggles is at least at the level of a year ago and is developing further thoroughly.
The People's Wars in the world are serving as beacons that are shining brightly on the path. The People's Wars in Peru, India, Turkey and the Philippines are showing the international proletariat and the peoples of the world the path to liberation. The Indian comrades have dealt blows to reaction in many battles, with ambushes and targeted punitive actions. They are resolutely waging the struggle against the land grabbing by the imperialists, big landowners and bureaucratic capital and successfully crushing the reactionary encirclement and extermination campaigns. In Turkey, the TKP/ML is developing the People's War it is leading - and thus powerfully defeating the right liquidators! - with actions in the countryside and in the city, as recently in Istanbul. The Communist Party of Peru is advancing on the road of reorganising the party, by and for the People’s War, and overcoming the bend of the road. Large mass struggles continue to develop in the country, for example in the coastal region against the big landowners who call themselves agro-exporters and exploit the agricultural workers in renewed forms of serfdom. In the Philippines, successful actions against reaction are being carried out in large numbers and these proving the people's war to be just and correct.
The people's war in Nepal has suffered a temporary defeat through the black treachery of revisionism, but the weapons it gave to the people are there and the people and the communists are fighting. The right is cornered and the left is playing the music for the right to dance to. The Communists insist in the struggle of the masses to lead and to educate them in revolutionary violence and in the struggle against revisionism. The communists leading the ceaseless and irreconcilable struggle against imperialism, reaction and revisionism.
Great hopes of the international proletariat are concentrated in Brazil. By constant and splendid struggles, most notably the struggle of the peasants against the big landowners under the slogan "Conquer the land!" - armed resistance against the armed forces of the biglandowner-bureaucratcapitalist old Brazilian state and the auxiliaries, militias or killers of the big landowners, of the repressive forces of the state - such as the total takeover of the latifundia of Santa Elina and by extensive electoral boycott actions. The comrades in Brazil are leading the way in Latin America, which today can just and correct be described as being formed as the weakest link in the chain of imperialist domination. This is also manifested in the great struggles of the masses, revolutionaries and communists in Ecuador, Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Paraguay and many other countries. All these mentioned struggles have an enormous mass base in the peasantry, in the struggle against imperialism, bureaucratic capitalism and semi-feudalism (big landlordism and modified forms of serfdom). The developments in Latin America as well as in India, the Philippines and Turkey demonstrate before all eyes that and how the oppressed nations are the basis of the world proletarian revolution.
In the USA, the only hegemonic imperialist superpower, the year 2020 brought an immense rise in mass struggles. Millions, especially Black people, of the deepest and broadest masses have risen in righteous rebellion. Even though reaction with its revisionist and opportunist accomplices, led by the rat Avakian, managed to shore up the apparent "legitimacy" of their system through a relatively high turnout, the Maoists in the belly of the beast have proved that they understand how to connect with the masses and are striving to lead them, regardless of their current limitations. In France, the militant mass struggles are omnipresent, the youth and the "yellow vests", for example, are in the struggle against the "Global Security" law and the communists are fulfilling their role more and more. In Austria, the masses are fighting and striking side by side with the communists, who build workers committees to lead the economic struggles of the masses for wages and against unemployment and to elevate these struggles to the level of political struggle through the correct leadership. The FRG sees sometimes big outbreaks of the explosiveness of the masses, like in Stuttgart or continuous militant actions. Consistent in the struggle against the robbery of the conquered rights and freedoms, the Maoists are also in the front ranks there and leading the way. The armed struggle in Ireland was and is not defeated, on the contrary. There, too, the revolutionaries and communists are developing their work and when reaction strikes, international solidarity can be relied on, as the struggle against the deportation of Liam Campbell shows. Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Switzerland, in more and more countries of old Europe the communists are forming under the red banner of Maoism - a really great cause for rejoicing.
The imperialists are failing with their wars of plunder for the redivision of the world in the oppressed nations. The heroic national resistance struggle of the peoples in Afghanistan and Iraq - where the imperialist occupiers, conscious of their defeat, are withdrawing more and more - Yemen, Palestine or Syria is a proof of the power of the masses.
In Africa, a continent of 1.3 billion people, second only to Asia (cf. britannica.com), the imperialists' competition is intensifying as their military presence and war operations increase. The build-up of the Yankee Africa Command is beginning to exert its influence, driving out the former French colonialists. All over the continent, the masses are struggling against imperialism, bureaucratic capitalism and semi-feudality, the masses in the cities and in the countryside are struggling against being part of the prey of imperialism. This requires the communists to fulfil their role. As in all Third World countries, the peasants' struggle is the basis of all struggles, without leading the peasants' struggle, it is impossible to advance the anti-imperialist struggle. The masses make history and the party leads, it is only in the latter that there are shortcomings and the communists in their countries must overcome their limitations.
Peace and order, which the imperialists crave, do not exist (and if so, only very limited and temporary) in this world of chaos. It is right to rebel and the masses are rebelling, whether in Poland, for example, against the arch-reactionary ban on abortion, in the Spanish state, in Belarus, in the Balkans, in Bangladesh or in China - where the Maoists have once again made their presence felt (at a moment Chinese social-imperialism facing a big crisis of its existence, as part of the general crisis of imperialism) which is a signal that the counter-restoration, as part of the growing general discontent, is gathering new forces and forging leadership. There the spark is reignited again and again, even if reaction, opportunism and revisionism take the lead again and again to turn the storm of the masses into a lukewarm breeze, to lead them astray. Maoism is being adopted and embodied by the communists in more and more countries. The roots struck allow the connection of the conscious movement under the leadership of the Maoist parties with the unconscious movement of the deepest and broadest masses and to push forward the revolution at this moment in the different countries of the different continents with People's War, to raise the uneven development of the revolutionary situation in the world to a growing revolutionary situation, as a clear sign of a new period of revolutions. Maoism is enforced as the guide and command of the New Great Wave of the World Proletarian Revolution. This year's international campaign on the 200th anniversary of the birth of the great Fredrick Engels has again powerfully demonstrated this.
Let us not forget that we are in the second half of the period of "50 to 100 years" in which imperialism will be completely swept off the face of the earth and the proletariat will finally establish its power. Chairman Mao's great historical foresight is confirmed to be completely correct. Thus we are entering a new period of revolution in which Maoism will be enforced as a command and guide, through more and new People's Wars, culminating in the World People's War, as the march of humanity, in legions of iron, towards the eternal golden shining goal, communism. Reconstitution, or constitution, of the Communist Parties where they do not yet exist, everything for the initiation of the People's War where it has not yet been initiated, everything for the development of the People's War where it has been initiated - AS FAST AS POSSIBLE - that is the order of the day!
Communists and revolutionaries have paid the price in blood for these gains in the last year. Without paying the price, we can win nothing, within the framework of preserving our own forces and destroying the forces of the enemy.
We affirm ourselves in the campaign for Maoism, inseparable from the campaign to defend the leadership of Chairman Gonzalo. We salute here first and foremost especially Chairman Gonzalo, greatest living Marxist-Leninist-Maoist on the face of the earth and leader of the World Proletarian Revolution. We salute the Communist Parties and organisations, their leaders, cadres, militants and masses. We salute our class, the international proletariat, and the peoples of the world. We salute all those in the world who are committed to Maoism as the guide and command of the World Proletarian Revolution.
With joy we look forward to the coming year which will bring the fulfilment of a great leap, the even greater unification of the Maoists on world scale by the Unified International Maoist Conference and the New International Organisation of the Proletariat.
Editorial staff of the Communist International - Internacional Comunista
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