From DEM VOLKE DIENEN:

IV. CONSTRUCT IN SERVICE OF THE ARMED STRUGGLE

The construction is the fundamental weapon of the proletariat in its struggle for power, is through it that the political line becomes reality and can move the masses under the leadership of the party. The construction among us, since the constitution of the party implies three instruments: party, united front and armed struggle; and the construction of the party puts forward, today as yesterday, its necessity, how to build it in a semi-feudal and semi-colonial society and how to develop it through the struggle. In this problem, like in all, we should stick to marxism, to our experience and the current concrete conditions of the class struggle. Is important to study and apply what was established by Lenin in “one step forward, two steps back”, vital for the comprehension of the opportunist line in this field, aiming to solve our specific problems. There Lenin established the importance of the organization, the simultaneous construction of the ideological-political, which is its base, and the organizational, and the development in the mids of the class struggle for power and the two lines struggle against opportunism. He say:

“In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organisation. Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labour for capital, constantly thrust back to the "lower depths" of utter destitution, savagery, and degeneration, the proletariat can, and inevitably will, become an invincible force only through its ideological unification on the principles of Marxism being reinforced by the material unity of organisation, which welds millions of toilers into an army of the working class. Neither the senile rule of the Russian autocracy nor the senescent rule of international capital will be able to withstand this army. It will more and more firmly close its ranks, in spite of all zigzags and backward steps, in spite of the opportunist phrase-mongering of the Girondists of present-day Social-Democracy, in spite of the self-satisfied exaltation of the retrograde circle spirit, and in spite of the tinsel and fuss of intellectualist anarchism.”

In the same text it is put forward how the necessity of the structure, system and party work unified and centralized “Unity on questions of programme and tactics is an essential but by no means a sufficient condition for Party unity, for the centralisation of Party work … The latter requires, in addition, unity of organisation, which, in a party that has grown to be anything more than a mere family circle, is inconceivable without formal Rules, without the subordination of the minority to the majority and of the part to the whole. As long as we had no unity on the fundamental questions of programme and tactics, we bluntly admitted that we were living in a period of disunity and separate circles, we bluntly declared that before we could unite, lines of demarcation must be drawn; we did not even talk of the forms of a joint organisation, but exclusively discussed the new (at that time they really were new) problems of fighting opportunism on programme and tactics. At present, as we all agree, this fight has already produced a sufficient degree of unity, as formulated in the Party programme and the Party resolutions on tactics; we had to take the next step, and, by common consent, we did take it, working out the forms of a united organisation that would merge all the circles together.”

in this same book, Lenin characterizes the opportunist line in organizational problems: “their advocacy of a diffuse, not strongly welded, Party organisation; their hostility to the idea (the "bureaucratic" idea) of building the Party from the top downwards, starting from the Party Congress and the bodies set up by it; their tendency to proceed from the bottom upwards, allowing every professor, every high school student and "every striker" to declare himself a member of the Party; their hostility to the "formalism" which demands that a Party member should belong to one of the organisations recognised by the Party; their leaning towards the mentality of the bourgeois intellectual, who is only prepared to "accept organisational relations platonically"; their penchant for opportunist profundity and for anarchistic phrases; their tendency towards autonomism as against centralism.”

all the previous are basic questions that we should deeply assimilate and apply having the experience of fifty years of the party in account, always acting with firmness and with initiative.

THE THREE PROBLEMS OF THE PARTY AND THEIR INTERRELATION

From the construction we must start from that our basic and fundamental problem is how to build the party, as the organized vanguard of the proletariat and its highest form of organization, which serves to seize power leading in deeds the democratic revolution in a semi-feudal and semi-colonial society. This problem solved, in its general and valid laws, by Chairman Mao Tsetung, in “Introducing The Communist”, is necessary to always remember.

In the referred work, it was established that the construction of the party, in these conditions, is developed linked to the united front and the armed struggle, remarking the three problems and its interrelation in the following terms:

“Therefore the united front, armed struggle and Party building are the three fundamental questions for our Party in the Chinese revolution. Having a correct grasp of these three questions and their interrelations is tantamount to giving correct leadership to the whole Chinese revolution. We are now able to draw correct conclusions concerning these three questions by virtue of our abundant experience in the eighteen years of our Party's history, our rich and profound experience of failures and successes, retreats and advances, contraction and expansion. This means that we are now able to handle the questions of the united front, of armed struggle and of Party building in a correct way. It also means that our eighteen years of experience have taught us that the united front, armed struggle and Party building are the Chinese Communist Party's three "magic weapons", its three principal magic weapons for defeating the enemy in the Chinese revolution. This is a great achievement of the Chinese Communist Party and of the Chinese revolution.”

it is here the substantive question of the necessity to build and develop the party through the armed struggle and the united front; here the question to subject ourselves to that the armed struggle is the principal form of struggle and the people’s army is the principal form of organization; here is the problem that the party is the “heroic combatant” that handles the united front and the armed struggle. All this is to subject the construction of the party to the law of marxism-leninism-Mao Tsetung thought of the revolutionary violence to seize power; what Chairman Mao masterly synthesized in the necessity of the revolutionary army to change the world:

“Whoever has an army has power, and war decides everything.”
“those which have more guns have more power”
“ Every Communist must grasp the truth, ‘Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun’.”
“Whoever wants to seize and retain state power must have a strong army.”
“Experience in the class struggle in the era of imperialism teaches us that it is only by the power of the gun that the working class and the labouring masses can defeat the armed bourgeoisie and landlords; in this sense we may say that only with guns can the whole world be transformed;We are advocates of the abolition of war, we do not want war; but war can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun.”

all the previous is a solid whole of marxist truths and indispensable part of our education in the view of the proletariat and sole criteria that can correctly guide the transformation of the Peruvian society. To these criteria we must subject ourselves and implement them in the masses, today, is more necessary given the upcoming electiorary political perspective.

The three problems and their interrelation are present from the constitution of the party. Synthesizing we could say, Mariategui started from the principle of the revolutionary violence, framed the action inside the democratic revolution led by the proletariat (because, the bourgeoisie can not lead it); and, conceived and furnished the party linking it to the united front and the necessity of the armed struggle of the peasantry. Thus our founder, precisely established how to develop the party in the first stage of the revolution. His thesis on this question should be seriously studied both in its practical work for constituting the party organization; to which we should add the experience of almost fifty years, paying particular attention to the lessons about party, united front and armed struggle has left from the decade of 1960s, and principally sum up the experience of the reconstitution of the party and its struggle around the problem of the construction.

ON SECRET WORK AND OPEN WORK

Which guidelines should we follow? The construction of the party develops in a semi-feudal and semi-colonial country where the proletariat should lead, in deeds, the democratic revolution getting ready to develop the armed struggle to seize power through People’s War and following the road from the countryside to the city. Consequently, the party develops necessarily in relation with the armed struggle and the united front. This is the guideline of the construction of the party in our country if we subject to marxism-leninism-Mao Tsetung thought.

Applying this guideline, in the current conditions, means that the questions of structure, system and party work should be solved. The first, puts forward to develop a sole organization structure that is national, unified and centralized, in its whole subjected to the leadership of the central committee, key expression of the democratic centralism; this is the question of structure. The second, is the problem of the distribution of forces, to center the activity in the peasantry to develop the principal forms of struggle and organization and is the problem of following a road of accumulation of forces in the cities; this is the question of party system. The third, is the problem of secret work, of the clandestine activity, of the armor that guarantee the constant functioning under whatever circumstance; is the problem of the open work; of the mass work, which in the country puts forward the necessity of “invert the triangle”, which means of putting the peasant work as the base of the revolutionary struggle, the problem of the necessity of having the struggle for the seizure of power while leading the peasantry in the revolution under the leadership of the Party tenaciously and firmly as the course of the worker movement, is the problem of “our duty of going down lower and deeper” to forge the masses in the necessity to make revolution and combat revisionism, of mobilize, politicize and organize workers and peasants, who are the basic masses, to incorporate in the struggle intellectuals, women and youth, and is the obligation of developing the struggle for demands in service of power; is, finally, the problem of the necessity of the secret and open work and its indispensable interrelation, subjecting to the orientation that the first is the principal and leads the second; all this is the question of the party work. The structure, the system and the party work are three fundamental questions of the organizational line and are of vital importance for the construction of the party; but, as in everything, the application of these questions subjecting to the correct line the struggle against opposite lines is waged; in synthesis, a just organizational line can not be applied nor develops if not in struggle, and currently its application and development can only take place combating revisionism as the main danger.

ON LEADERSHIP

the VI and VII Plenum of the Central Committee have been important events dedicated to the problems of the construction, it was sanctioned in them “reconstitute the party from the countryside and put the peasant work as the base to follow the road of encircle the cities from the countryside”, thus concretizing the general political line; and, “develop the construction, principally of the party, in service of the armed struggle”, as guidelines to develop the construction of the three instruments synthesized in the slogan of “construct in service of the armed struggle”. Furthermore, it was called to celebrate the “50 anniversary” of the foundation of the party and to prepare the successful realization of the V Congress, which must be “RECONSTITUTION CONGRESS” which culminates the reconstitution of the party sanctioning the program and the general political line of Mariategui and its development and the new Party constitution.

These positions are historical and important and the development of the Party as the organized vanguard of the proletariat depends from the firm and resolute application of it, as well as the fulfillment of its mission: the emancipation of the proletariat, fulfilling in this first stage with carrying forward the Revolution of New Democracy.