"We healthy March 25, 1922", by Fausto Arruda - the new democracy

Today, March 25, 102 years of the founding of the Communist Party-Brazilian Section of the Communist International, then appointed Communist Party of Brazil-P.C.B. In the passage of this important historical event of national political life, we republished article by Professor Fausto Arruda, former director general of AND , in which it discusses the role that communists had in the history of the country and the struggle for democratic revolution throughout history. To those interested in discussing the problem of the democratic revolution in contemporary times, with regard to the semi-colonial and semi-feudal countries, that is, which comprise the vast majority of the Earth's population, we recommend reading the work Capitalism and the bourgeois revolution in Brazil , by Nelson Werneck Sodré, and, more recently, the publication entitled The New Democracy Revolution is the main force of the world proletarian revolution .

First part

Appearing from the struggles of the source Brazilian proletariat and under the influx of the Bolshevik Revolution, but founded by militants, mostly, graduates of Anarcho-Syndicalism in the process of bankruptcy in the country, the Communist Party will be marked in its early years, still by inheritance and reminiscences of this ideology. Founded as a Communist Party, and though admitted soon at the Communist International, to be as such, as a Marxist-Leninist Party, will travel a long and complex path without, however, achieving it.

First step

In the struggle to assimilate Marxism-Leninism, struggling to overcome the anarcho-syndicalistic heritage of most of its founders and the obreist and economic conceptions, the party will face the theoretical challenge of understanding the peculiar reality of the countries dominated by imperialism, which It drags on the secular delay of pre-capitalist relations, slavery and semi-feudality.

In an attempt to break with economicism will take the shortcut of electoral reformism by organizing the Peasant Workers Block (BOC), backwards with the harsh criticism made by the IC. In the first eight years, he will hold three congresses, and in spite of the theoretical efforts of his paintings, all were marked by the false, not to say naive, thesis of agent versus industrialism. Thesis that advocated that the country was governed by an alleged contradiction within the ruling classes, which opposed the maintenance of the agrarian system to an industrializing process. In the same error it incurred the thesis that characterized the then stage of the Brazilian Revolution by Democratic-Peokie-Burgueis.

Although the country lived the consequences of the crisis of overcoming the bankruptcy of the domination of the old slave oligarchies and was shaken from above by democratic-bourgeois revolutionary movements, the party could not star in this very rich revolutionary situation, devoid of scientific understanding about Brazilian society and a proletarian ideological line. The party struggles were restricted to retail problems due to the weak management of historical dialectical materialism and the mass line to understand the national reality.

The party was practically absent and distant from turbulent events guided by democratic-bourgeois aspirations, in which the most active sectors of the small bourgeoisie were beating in military movements for the simple exchange of mandates in the country (tenentism, prestes column and liberal alliance-““ “ Revolution of 30 ”). This was a historical period of the effervescent revolutionary situation aborted by the armed movement that succeeded the Liberal Alliance of Vargas and assaulted the state power, betraying the democratic-bourgeois aspirations of the movements started with the so-called tenentist movement and culminated in the demobilization of the column Prestes.

Second stage

The 1930s will mark the beginning of a new stage of the party's life. Step that, due to its zigzagging characteristic between left and right in its orientation, will develop from the popular uprising of 35, culminating in the V Revisionist Congress of 1960. It goes through the crisis of disaggregation after the 37 STATE coup and reorganization with CNOP ² In 1943, for the struggle for Brazil to enter the war against Nazi-fascism alongside the allies, for the short life in legality (1945/46), by the 1948 Manifesto, the Manifesto of August 1950, by the important IV Congress (December /54-Janela/55), by the March 1958 declaration. This long stage of thirty years is marked by a permanent zigzag, which although it does not slightly establish a proletarian ideological line, will fertilize the terrain for the development of the two fight Lines based on the fight against reformism and later on modern revisionism with the party's reconstruction.

Although the party had advanced considerably in the assimilation of the basic theories of Marxism-Leninism, raising its ability to analyze the Brazilian reality, it will be deeply influenced by the springs of theses of modern revisionism, markedly browndores ³ . Theses of "peace and democracy", of "convergence between socialism and capitalism", which strengthened electoral opportunism and the dilution of the party into a "Democratic Front", paving the way for its sinking and rotting in the Khrushchevite revisionism and reformist opportunism of the Presto leadership of the following decades.

In 1935, thirteen years of its founding only, the party makes a quality leap in its process by establishing, in connection with the international communist movement, the path to taking power through armed struggle. At this stage, when the forces of fascism had risen in Europe, the Communist International developed new theses with the single working class to face its expansion and conjure the world imperialist war that was already gestated.

In Brazil, under the party's direction was organized the ANL - National Liberating Alliance, a single front of revolutionary classes that proposed by the establishment of a revolutionary popular government, to confiscate imperialism, the great bourgeoisie and the semi -feudal landlord. The party already understood the character of the Brazilian revolution as democratic, anti-feudal and anti-imperialist agrarian as a necessary stage for socialism.

At a time that has become a historical milestone for our country and our proletariat, the party will carry out an armed uprising for the seizure of power. In it, the party will make two fundamental mistakes: one of a strategic character and the other of a tactical character. On the strategic side, he had not understood the role of the peasantry, and this was a consequence of his failure to understand in depth the process of social classes in colonial, semi-colonial and semi-feudal countries.

Already with the damage of the strategic error of completely disregarding the field, in the tactical the error was irreversible. To the extent that Getúlio Vargas's government had struck Anl throwing it illegally, isolating the party temporarily, the insurrection plans were still maintained. This made what was already difficult, in a defeat of strategic proportion to the Brazilian proletariat. The reaction not only stifled the armed uprising, but also removed from the episode all the raw material to amalgamar the discourse of counterrevolution, which will be used to this day (the “communist intent”). Events embellish a paradox. Just as it was a transcendental moment of our history, in which the still very young and inexperienced proletarian party, driving a front of revolutionary classes (ANL) throws itself into the seizure of power, the defeat of the uprising will engender a deep reformism, lethal to lethal the lethal party in the following decades.

Thus, the party hindered by the Selvagery of the Estado Fascist of Vargas, will adopt incorrect policies of submission of the proletariat to the great bourgeoisie and the paths of electoral opportunism. For with the end of World War II, with the prestige of the USSR and the communists on the rise in the world, the party, which had come out of strengthened clandestinity, instead of dwelling on the preparation tasks to trigger the struggle for the seizure of power, will get drunk on constitutional illusions. Despite the great success in the elections for the 46 constituent was soon struck harshly, once again. Back in clandestinity and violently persecuted, he begins, with the January manifesto 48, a self -critical balance of legalistic illusions.

But even under the cruel persecution of the bureaucratic-latifight state of imperialism, especially Yankee, the party seeks to overcome such right deviations, fierce dogmatically to the European conceptions of insurrection and the mechanistic understanding of the Bolshevik Revolution, will completely despise the teachings. of the Chinese Revolution and the gigantic contributions of Mao Tsetung.

Although the theses of the IV Congress, formulated on the wake of the August 50 Manifesto, armed by the armed way to take power, the party will move to a radical discourse without being able to lead him fully to practice. The fact that follows without understanding who was who in the Brazilian bourgeoisie, of not understanding the double character of the national bourgeoisie (medium bourgeoisie) and continuing to take the bureaucratic fraction of the great Brazilian bourgeoisie by national bourgeoisie, besides continuing in practice despising the peasantry, It will be the land conducive to new turn on the right. Despite being considered leftist by several currents, the IV Congress will ultimately favor the prevailing old opportunism, assimilated after the defeat in the popular uprising of 35, of the right -wing line on the conception of the democratic revolution, this time under the flag of “National Union”.

On the grounds of the alleged leftism of the IV Congress and in the face of demonstrations of discontent with his resolutions, Prestes pulling to the right, as a self -criticism of the “leftism of the IV Congress” that will attack the government of Vargas, will support the defense of the policy of Support Juscelino Kubitschek's candidacy.

As soon as the revolutionary positions, albeit insufficient, accumulated in the IV Congress, were destroyed and crushed, serving as a right support point to attack any truly revolutionary conception, and drag the party once again to the swamp of opportunism. With the results of the 20th PCU Congress (1956), all the opportunism already rooted in the party gained coverage and theoretical foundations. As well stated later Manuel Lisboa ^Four "The decisions of the 20th Congress of the CPSU have only given legal and moral cover to the reformism of the party." With the famous Declaration of March 1958, the revisionist group of Prestes prepared the ground on which the Fifth Congress in 1960 consolidated in the party the theses of Khrushchev's reformism and modern revisionism. Such a statement deserved the harshest and most scathing criticism from Maurício Grabois ⁵ , that in the document “Two Conceptions, two political guidelines” unmasked its class collaboration content for the capitulation of the Brazilian proletariat against the bourgeoisie and the Brazilian reactionary state. This struggle cost Grabois his banishment from the Party Central Committee.

Third step

The V Congress in 1960 will be preceded by intense struggle within the party. Revisionists headed by Prestes did not tolerate the internal struggle and expelled most of those who did not accept coward attacks against Stalin. Still the fight against opportunism gains breath. Pedro Pomar will head, in the debates of the V Congress, the attack on the opportunistic theses of national reformism. In 1962, the paintings that conform to the revolutionary field will carry out the struggle to purify the party of the Revisionist Group of Prestes. Being in minority promoting the determined split with the revisionists, starting the process of party reconstruction. This event will mark the beginning of a new and third stage in the party's history, the richest and most important stage of its maturation that, in theory and practice, P.C.B. (Now under the acronym of PCdoB, to differentiate itself from the revisionist group) will indeed be constituted as a Marxist-Leninse Communist Party.

It is important to note that the party was one of the first in the world to openly combat Khrushchov's treacherous positions. Maurício Grabois's letter to Khrushchov, in which he attacked his revisionist positions and in defense of Stalin, led Khrushchov to attack the Brazilian communists, quoting them in the debates that arose with the Chinese letter ¹ In 1963. Also, prior to the 5th Congress (1960), Pedro Pomar, present at the Congress of the Communist Party of Romania, rejected the attacks on the leaders of the Albanian Labor Party, absent from that event, made by Kruchov who had accused them of adventurerism.

This will be the stage in which the party will live, for the first time, the open struggle against modern revisionism, as it approaches the thought Mao Tsetung (as was called Maoism at the time). Moment when the struggle between Marxism-Leninism and modern revisionism will gain worldwide dimension. Mao, ahead of this great battle, will unmask Kruchov's opportunism as modern revisionism, systematizing it in the formula of the “three peaceful” and the “two all” ² . In the same period, the party will also have to fight the "left" opportunism, which arose as a reaction to the pacifism of the Prestes group (Carlos Marighella's ALN, MR8, PCBR, etc., and those of other processes such as VPR, Polop, etc.).

This will be a serious problem of the revolutionary movement in spite of all heroism revealed by so many combatants in the armed struggle against pro-trial fascist military management. PCdoB will also have to combat the opportunism of “left”, revealing it as a form of expression of Kruchovista revisionism in Latin America (armed revisionism) ³ . However, the party will not be able to get rid of serious deviations such as dogmatism. The direction of PCdoB, formed by experienced communist frames, although he assumed the thought Mao Tsetung, did so formally and stagnuting the internal struggle. Will not understand something essential of Maoism, the struggle of two lines ^Four , as the correct method of forging the party. Such misunderstanding will be crucial to prevent the party from assimilating the maoism fully.

It will not examine and understand the true origins of reformism in the party. It will follow without the correct understanding of the Brazilian bourgeoisie, its fractions and role in the class struggle. Although the PCdoB proposed the Maoist strategy of surrounding the city from the countryside, that is, to take the peasantry as the main force in the first stage of our revolution, it will not understand that, where the fundamental contradictions and the main contradictions were most condensed in the country. , it was the Northeast Region and not the North, where it would focus the main strategic force.

Upon understanding and not practicing the fight of two lines, not only led to the fractionation of the party (PCR under the leadership of Manoel Lisboa and Amaro Luiz de Carvalho, Capivara, and PCdoB Red Ala ⁵ ), as impossible to develop direction in the correct understanding of the conception of the Popular War. And this was the background of the Araguaia guerrilla defeat, as well as the blocking of its critical balance in the party and consequently capitulation and complete rot from the death of most revolutionary paintings.

Important party documents will mark this period of the third stage in the party's history: 12 -point letter to revolutionary communists , of the PCR of Manoel Lisboa; Criticism of the union of Brazilians to defeat the crisis, dictatorship and neocolonialism , PCDO B-AV AND Prolonged Popular War, Way of Armed Fight in Brazil , of the PCdoB. Documents that deal with the theoretical question of the Brazilian revolution, guided by the contributions of Mao Tse-tung and at the same time conflicting with each other on several issues. In addition, others by Pedro Pomar should be highlighted: Great progress in the 1969 Cultural Revolution , about the development of the great cultural revolution in China, The glorious flag of 35, the party - historical need and on Araguaia , a document on the assessment of the experience of the Araguaia guerrillas.

Due to the total incomprehension on the question of the two-line struggle for the leadership of the party, the defeat of the Araguaia Guerrilla and the sabotage of the struggle for the correct balance of such an important experience, added to the elimination of the best communist cadres, completed with the Lapa episode ⁶ (1976), the capitulation will be inevitable. The capitulation of the revolutionary line of the popular war headed by the direction of João Amazonas led the party to conversion to revisionism and its complete liquidation as a Marxist-Leninist party, turning it into another opportunistic organization under the continuation of the acronym PCdoB.

This capitulatory line, led by João Amazonas, as a denial of the revolutionary path, could only settle in the party after the elimination of the main communist paintings in the direction, supporters of the path of revolutionary armed struggle. Without more prepared paintings to combat revisionist subterfuge, Amazonas will find the free way to pass the open and declared attack on Maoism by following the Dogmatic-Revisionist line of Ver Hoxha ⁷ to disguise their betrayal.

With the capitulation of the management, further reinforced by its complementation with the APML frames ⁸ , the party was converted into another revisionist opportunistic party. It will turn a heroic revolutionary experience of previous years into a dead icon, now used only as a "trophy" to keep deceiving youth in search of political militancy. It will then completely integrate with the official life of the old Brazilian state, in legalism, electoralism and parliamentary cretinism to the degenerate situation that is found today as part of the old pro-imperialist bureaucratic order, as an auxiliary force for management of Luiz Inacio's shift.

The events that will mark 1976 will be even more dramatic for the revolutionary movement around the world. With the bourgeois restoration in China, promoted by Teng Siao-Mapan's coup d'état, which will lead to the bloody massacre of the Maoist paintings, a long time ends, the first major wave of the world proletarian revolution, announced by the publication of the manifesto do Communist Party, in 1848, marked by the Paris Commune of 1871 as its “General Essay” and driven with the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917. In Brazil, the twists on PCdoB in the years following the dramatic episode of Lapa, liquidating it while Revolutionary party, it will culminate a whole rich phase of the third stage of the party's history.

The self -criticism of

When his return to the country in 1979, Luiz Carlos Prestes broke with the organization he had directed for almost 40 years. Unable to change the ideological-political positions already so crystallized in that group, in an exemplary self-critical effort, launched his letter to the communists, in a call to resume the revolutionary path. Without a doubt this gesture is demonstrative of his communist condition, but the content of his self-criticism, which politically gives a spin to the left, in the ideological was very limited. He maintained the same hostility to Stalin and his direction taken from the Kruschovista revisionism chest and did not even consider the extraordinary experience of the Chinese revolution, the one that was the highest level of the world proletarian revolution - the great proletarian cultural revolution - and even less to the great ideologist and Communist leader Mao Tsetung.

Fighting for the party's reconstitution must be the task of proletarian revolutionaries

As important as the economic struggles of workers, salary increases and in defense of rights, will result in failure if they do not have the destruction of every order of the old bureaucratic state. Only with the building of a new power, a new democracy that expresses the interests of the oppressed classes and based on the workers' covenant, which confiscates all lands of the latifundal, the capitals of the great bourgeoisie and imperialism will guarantee the transition to socialism. And this depends on the existence of a true revolutionary party of the proletariat. This is the lesson that gives us the history of the communist movement in the world and in Brazil. In the matter of the existence or not of an authentic party of the proletariat, the Communist Party, armed with a scientific ideology, lies the crucial point, whether or not the revolution in the country.

As an expression of the worsening of the country's semi-colonial condition, the growing and inevitable intensification of the popular struggle will eventually impose itself. In the midst of the struggles of the poor peasants for land, against the semi-feudal landlord system, the resistance struggles of the working class, the students, the women of the people and other popular classes in the face of the current state of misery and obscurantism in our society, the revolution will develop. Just as popular resistance is growing all over the world, new fighters of the proletariat and the people are surely being forged for new revolutionary battles throughout the country. The implacable struggles against all opportunism will gather, little by little, from the disillusionment with the farcical electoral process, corruption, unemployment and hunger and all the other scourges that express the farce of the existing republic and democracy, the strength to raise the revolutionary and communist movement in Brazil.

The task of the Brazilian proletariat by his revolutionary party follows inconclusive. But it should not be understood as the creation of a brand new party, nor that of its "refounding", anti-dialectical and anti-historical versions that reject the historical process as a whole. The Communist Party was created in 1922 and crossed decades of tormentous and complex struggles, reached a high level of its constitution, but was settled as a revolutionary party. The question that arises for true proletarian revolutionaries, who have not broken or sold to the general offensive of the worldwide counterrevolution, is the task of reconstituting it. Reconstitute it as Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Communist Party.

1. Chinese Letter-As propositions about the general line of the International Communist Movement issued on June 14, 1963, by the Communist Party of China in defense of Marxism-Leninism and combating the theses of Modern Revisionism of Kruchov. In his letter of July 14, 1963, responding to the Chinese letter, the CC of the PCU calls Grabois “Antipartite Group”.
2. With the slogans "Everybody Two", "People's State" and "All People's Party" he stripped the Socialist State and the Communist Party of their proletarian class character. It revised the Marxist-Leninist conception of the state, according to which it is a phenomenon of class society, being nothing more than "the special instrument of repression" of the ruling class. According to Khrushchov's new revisionism, the state under socialism, the dictatorship of the proletariat, had lost its raison d'être and had become the state of "the whole people", because under socialism there would be no more social classes. Consequently, from this conception it followed that in the capitalist countries bourgeois democracy in its parliamentary form would cease to be the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and would become the state of the whole people, and would have to be fought over and occupied peacefully by the proletariat. As for the Communist Party, it had ceased to have the character of a proletarian class and had become the party of "the whole people."
3. This criticism of the “left” opportunism is exposed in PCdoB documents The revolutionary line of PCdoB.
4. 5. PCdoB Red Wing - Party emerged from the differences of numerous PCdoB militants with the positions of the Central Committee and its thesis for the 6th Conference. In the influence of the great proletarian cultural revolution, they launched the document “ Criticism of the union of Brazilians to rid the country from the crisis, to defeat dictatorship and neocolonialism "Hardly criticizing what they pointed out for opportunistic deviations in the central thesis of the conference. This is an important document of the Brazilian communist movement that has two aspects. One that represents a fair criticism of the central committee thesis to the 6th Conference and another that expresses “fucking” deviations regarding the conception of the popular war. The intolerance of the Central Committee by not accepting the internal struggle and developing it led to the isolation of the criticism supporters who later conforming the Communist Party of Brazil Red Wing. In your document Sixteen points The wing self -criticism of the deviations present in the document Criticism of the union of Brazilians… , but soon abandon Maoism, then defined only by Marxist-Leninist and denominating from there to the Communist Red Wing Party.
6. Lapa Massacre - dramatic episode in which the security house used for meetings of the PCdoB Central Committee in the Lapa neighborhood of São Paulo was surrounded by a major operation of the II Army. The components of the meeting were being arrested as soon as they were left in streets far from the site. When the repression attacked the house with the house, Pedro Pomar, Ângelo Arroyo and Maria Trindade were found in it. Pomar and Arroyo were massacred. John the Baptist Drumond, one of the arrested to leave the scene, was barbarously tortured and murdered.
7. PER HOXHA - Dirigent of the Albanian Labor Party and the boss the Albanian Revolution. He took a position in defense of Stalin against Kruchov's cowardly accusations, as well as the decisions of the 20th PCU Congress. Despite initially fought Kruchov's modern revisionism, during China's great cultural revolution, it changed its position and became hostile to Maoism. Because of his dogmatism, he eventually reviewed positions previously assumed in the fight against modern revisionism, such as the recognition that in socialism the classes and class struggle follow existing.
8. APML-Organization originated in revolutionary Christianity in the early 1960s, later joined Marxism-Leninism and in the late 1960s assumed Maoism. In the struggle between entering or not on PCdoB was divided. The part that ended up joining PCdoB quickly abandoned Maoism and its paintings occupied the party's direction with the death of the best communist frames the party had forged.

Carlos Marighella

Manoel Lisboa

Communist militant, who had entered the party from a young age, participated in the reconstruction process and from 1966, along with Amaro Luiz de Carvalho, who returned from study in Popular China, broke with the PCdoB and organized the revolutionary communist party in the Northeast. Manoel Lisboa fought revisionism and expressed his positions in the important letter of 12 points to the revolutionary communists, with which he sustained the essential conceptions of Maoism for the Brazilian Revolution synthesizing that “the core of the strategy of the proletariat and his party is the Popular War through the war of guerrillas ”. Manoel Lisboa was brutally murdered in 1973, after several weeks of torture in the holdings of the military regime in Recife.

Pedro Pomar

As early as 1960, as a delegate to the V Party Congress, he held the titanic fight against the positions led by Prestes and launched by the March 1958 declaration. Development of capitalism in Brazil. It was against reformist and antimarxist theses like this that orchard was placed in the first trench in the defense of Marxism-Leninism.

Already after the defeat of the Araguaia Guerrilla, in his struggle in the central committee of the party to make the correct balance of that important experience, he stated that "in Brazil the problem of the revolutionary path to free the people from exploitation and oppression has been very difficult. And the determination to tread it became the touchstone of the different revolutionary forces, especially the Marxist-Leninists. Around the path, the conception and method of the armed struggle there have always been great differences."

Maurício Grabois

Born on 12/02/1912, at the age of 18 is admitted to the party and shortly after becomes responsible for the agitation and propaganda of the communist youth of Brazil. Actively participates in the National Liberating Alliance - ANL and later CNOP. In the brief period of legality of the party, he is elected constituent deputy (1946). Participates in the split process with the party's revisionism and reconstruction (1962), now under the acronym PCdoB. Soon with the party's approach to Mao Tsetung's thinking contributes to the elaboration of the party's prolonged popular war strategy. He was the commander of the Araguaia guerrilla forces, having listed in combat on December 25, 1973.