mostly edge, mostly no point

There is a startling tendency for self-described “Maoists” to follow the deranged and revisionist line of Abimael “Chairman Gonzalo” Guzman. This tendency, while declaring itself “anti-revisionist”, is ironically itself a revisionist line. This is no more evident than in the hero-worship of Guzman himself. Hero-worship and the uplifting of individuals about the wider movement is contrary to basic Marxist and Communist values. The masses advance Global Communism, not individuals, least of all the baby-killer Guzman.

To the uninformed, I will begin by giving some context.

Gonzaloism?

Manuel Ruben Abimael Guzman Reynoso (hereafter known as “Abimael Guzman”) was born eighty-six years ago in 1934. Guzman was loosely a Maoist, inspired by the founder of the Peruvian Communist Party and became a member himself. However, he’s more infamous for the Shining Path insurgency.

The Shining Path was a split from the original Peruvian Communist Party. Their insurgency began officially in 1980 when they burned ballot boxes in a church near Chuschi, a village in the Ayacucho region, where the Shining Path was based. At first, the Shining Path was welcomed (if not lukewarmly) by the locals, until it became apparent that the Shining Path was more interested in enriching itself and its leader than in supporting the Peruvian people.

In no instance was this more apparent than the Lucanamarca Massacre of 1983, ordered directly by Guzman himself. The massacre was ordered after Ronderos, autonomous peasant patrols, stoned and executed a local Shining Path commander. This happened because the Shining Path were a nuisance in the region, and the Ronderos were defending themselves from further Shining Path encroachment. Was this because they were counter-revolutionaries? Quite the opposite. The locals had, at first, embraced the Shining Path. What did the Shining Path “revolutionaries” do?

They made absurd demands of the locals. Alcohol was banned, strict curfews were put into place, the Shining Path expropriated supplies from the locals whilst doing no work in return, and exacerbated conflict between different families. After the Shining Path commander was (rightfully) assaulted by the Ronderos, Guzman himself ordered the Sanderos (Sendero Luminoso – Shining Path) to attack the villages of Lucanamarca, Yanaccollpa, Ataccara, Llacchua and Muylacruz. In total, sixty-four locals were murdered, the youngest of which was a six-month old baby. Was the baby a revisionist counter-revolutionary, then? In what world would it be justified for self-described “revolutionaries”, who are meant to be subordinate to the masses, to slaughter them?

There is no doubt that the Shining Path was nothing more than a Gonzaloist death cult – they idolized the use of extreme cruelty, and the “blood quota” was a core tenet of their organization. The “blood quota” was Guzman’s desire to throw the lives of his underlings into the proverbial meat grinder.

Any principled communist should be against the Gonzaloist tendency of so-called “Maoism”, if not for the purpose of subjugating the Shining Path revisionists, who tarnish the very name of Marxism and Communism. Gonzalo was fortunately arrested in Lima in 1992, and sentenced to life imprisonment in 2006. He remains there to this day.

Red Eureka Journal and Gonzaloite Revisionism

Red Eureka Journal describes itself as “principally Maoist”, and normally I don’t spend too much time fretting over niche internet journals, however, I came across them oft-handedly and feel as if I should try and clarify a few things. Before I can explain how Red Eureka Journal and other Gonzaloites follow a revisionist line, I will explain what revisionism actually is.

Revisionism is the purposeful misappropriation of Marxist principles, some of those being: the universality and primacy of contradiction, organizing the masses via the mass line, the primary contradiction in the world being between the imperialist countries and the countries oppressed and exploited by the imperialists, and that working class organization and power is the only way to eradicate the capitalist mode of production.

For example, the Communist Party of China (CPC) is a revisionist organization as it follows the Dengist line, in which bourgeois elements are allowed to thrive within the party. It is for this reason that China is not a socialist state, as it does nothing to facilitate the transition from capitalism to socialism, instead, China maintains a flourishing millionaire and billionaire class that exploits the working masses of China and Asia, as much as the imperialists from America and Europe do.

Gonzaloism is a fundamentally revisionist tendency as it hyper-focuses on Guzman the Man. It is, first and foremost, a personality cult centered around Guzman, and exists solely to make Guzman feel special for the rest of his life whilst he rots in a Peruvian prison.

As BlackLikeMao, a pan-Afrikan Maoist, writes:

The Gonzalo/Peruvian left-deviation in the International Communist Movement considers the principle of “great leadership”, the “universality of Gonzalo thought”, and the “militarization of the Party” as being additional principles of Maoism, but other than their small groups, no other Maoist formation in the First World nor the Third (including every Party that is actively waging People’s War) considers these universal principles and has rejected them as being the products of sectarians justifying their own existence. It is also the habit of these creatures to use revisionism as a cheap slur, hurled towards anybody who disagrees with their attempts to impose a dogmatic mirror of revisionism into the ICM — we’ve seen everybody from Joma Sison to Huey Newton to J. Moufawad Paul to even myself labeled as revisionists for a variety of reasons, most of which have something to do with rejecting the dogmatic and infantile antics of the left-opportunists. Revisionism is a real threat, not a slur.

Hero Worship, or Great Leadership, is against the very principles of Marxism and Maoism. Marx rejected the antiquated notion that it was Great Men who advanced society, but instead the working masses. While people might claim to be staunch Marxists whilst idolizing the cruelty of Guzman and his Shining Path, they are doing little but indicating their opportunism to other communists.

This is indicated in the Founding Statement of Red Eureka Journal, where they write:

Principally Maoism was synthesized by Chairman Gonzalo in Peru. We vehemently uphold him as the greatest living Communist on the face of the Earth. Accordingly, we also uphold the Communist Party of Peru (PCP) and the Peruvian People’s War which is still being waged to this day.

This is not something that principled Communists would say off-handedly. It comes from a place of worship, upholding one man above the entire masses is opportunism, using the revolutionary potential of the working class simply to enrich yourself and your party. It’s the kind of behavior principled communists would scoff at.

Another failing of the Red Eureka Journal is that they treat parties as sovereign, i.e, that it is the duty of communists to shed blood for their party. This once again demonstrates their opportunism; it is not the working class for whom revolutionaries die, it is the party, more often than not, their (Gonzaloites) party, because they are as perverse as they are pervasive, injecting themselves into communist spaces like ticks and fleas, siphoning away revolutionary energy into self-serving Guzman worship instead of working class power.

I write this not because I find it interesting to write long-winded responses to tiny niche Gonzaloite journals, I do this because I do not want people to fall for the opportunist lies of organizations such as Red Eureka Journal and the “principally Maoists”, who throw away Marxist principles in order to justify the existence of their Gonzalo cult. Ideological unity is a key tool of success for the communist working class movement worldwide, which is why it is necessary to call out organizations who are acting poorly, or have poorly thought out ideas, such as the Gonzaloite revisionists that manage the Red Eureka Journal.

In summary, Red Eureka Journal follows a Gonzaloite revisionist tendency that exists for no reason other than to throw working class people into the proverbial meat grinder, and to make Abimael Guzman feel special whilst he rots in some Peruvian prison somewhere.

Red Eureka Journal is also probably just two to five people sitting in Melbourne somewhere with a wordpress subscription and an Abimael Guzman poster on their wall.

I invite the people behind Red Eureka Journal to contact me with any qualms they have with this piece, however.

References/Bibliography/Sources/etc

Sullivan, C. (n.d.). Abimael Guzman. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Abimael-Guzman

El Diario interview with Abimael Guzman, https://web.archive.org/web/20071108165711/http://www.blythe.org/peru-pcp/docs_en/interv.htm

Profile of the Shining Path, https://perureports.com/shining-path/

International Center for Transitional Justice: Hatun Willakuy, https://www.ictj.org/sites/default/files/subsites/peru-hatun-willakuy-en/

Red Eureka Journal Founding Statement, https://redeurekajournal.wordpress.com/2021/07/12/red-eureka-journal-founding-statement/

Red Eureka Journal, ‘About Our Journal’, https://redeurekajournal.wordpress.com/about-our-journal/

‘What is Revisionism? Three types, all suck’ by BlackLikeMao, https://blacklikemao.medium.com/what-is-revisionism-three-types-all-suck-30ab42364a19

Blayney, S. (2018, May 20). The “Great Man” Theory of History and New Labour. Retrieved from https://newsocialist.org.uk/the-great-man-theory-of-history-and-new-labour/