People's School - Toronto

This Sunday is International Workers Day! We'll be joining a rally in Mississauga to celebrate and build the workers' movement in the area. Message us privately for the rally location and come out on May 1st at 2 PM.

Coming up this Saturday, August 21, at 5-6 PM in North York! Join us for a discussion about workers’ struggles and revolution. If you’re facing any problems or abuses at work, we want to hear it, so come out and share. Message us for the meet-up location.

We’ve been spreading the word about an educational discussion coming up on Saturday, August 21, in North York. DM us for more info if you’d like to attend! No previous knowledge needed.

Supporters of the People’s School held a fundraiser book sale at Jane & Finch recently. Big thanks to everyone who stopped by to pick up stuff and learn about our work! We hope to table more regularly in the coming weeks.

𝗠𝗔𝗬 𝗗𝗔𝗬 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟭: 𝗗𝗜𝗦𝗖𝗔𝗥𝗗 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗗𝗘𝗔𝗗 𝗪𝗘𝗜𝗚𝗛𝗧, 𝗥𝗘𝗖𝗢𝗡𝗦𝗧𝗜𝗧𝗨𝗧𝗘 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗖𝗢𝗠𝗠𝗨𝗡𝗜𝗦𝗧 𝗣𝗔𝗥𝗧𝗬!

An important joint declaration for International Workers' Day has been released by the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist–Gonzalo Thought organizations in Canada.

➡️ READ MORE: t.ly/Ohgx

Montreal!

What is the Communist approach toward the lumpenproletariat, those de-classed elements who prey on the working class?

This new article from Struggle Sessions is a good intro to this topic which many comrades and organizations in Canada are unclear on.

Again on the Lumpenproletariat Bourgeois Ideology and the Refuse of All Classes By Kavga Bourgeois culture is a cadaver which produces countless caricatures of the romantic thief—the disgraced bourgeois whose avenue for criminal…

Revolutionaries in Montreal and Toronto stand with the League of Poor Peasants! Long live the LCP!

Leaflets were distributed for the LCP in the neighborhood of Hochelaga with the following text.

𝗧𝗢𝗪𝗔𝗥𝗗 𝗔 𝗥𝗘𝗗 𝗔𝗡𝗗 𝗖𝗢𝗠𝗕𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗩𝗘 𝗠𝗔𝗬 𝗗𝗔𝗬 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟭!

May 1st marks its importance in history as a testament to working-class struggles and sacrifices. It was declared as International Workers’ Day by the Second International in 1889, to commemorate the martyrdom of eight revolutionaries in the Haymarket massacre carried out by the U.S. regime. It has since been a day marked by tremendous revolutionary action all over the world by the toiling classes.

This new decade has already been marked by tremendous revolutionary upheavals in the face of an ever-deepening global crisis and imperialism’s reaction. Within the centers of imperialism, the people’s struggles and the Proletariat – in particular – have risen to combative heights unseen for decades past.

Canada has been no exception. This country is not a citadel of stability but an imploding, rotten imperialist State. The intensified Land Defender struggles in Unist’ot’en, Secwépemc Territory, Kanonhstaton, Kanesatà:ke, Nitaskinan, and Miꞌkmaꞌki (to name just a few) give the imperialists a bitter taste of bigger things to come. They show just how the Indigenous National Liberation struggle against settler-colonialism has not dulled in the face of the health crisis, armed reaction, or liberal appeasement. Tenant struggles have been resurgent, resisting the soaring rents and the landlords’ ever parasitic extortion of countless people. Withstanding state- and monopoly capital-attacks, workers’ struggles have worked towards advancing their economic demands despite the usual betrayals from the labour bureaucrats.

On the international level, the escalating tension between imperialist powers are met with an insurgent response from the masses. The People’s Wars in Peru, Turkey, India, and the Philippines continue to light the way as the axis of World Revolution. The armed struggles waged by Communist Parties and Organizations in Brazil, Manipur, Bangladesh, and Ecuador have been persevering and advancing against the General Counter-Revolutionary Offensive of imperialism, revisionism, and world reaction. National liberation struggles of the New African nation, Ireland, Catalonia, Sahrawi, Palestine, and Balochistan, among countless others, are all reaching combative heights after so-called “lulls” in action. Canadian imperialist interests across Latin America, Africa, and Asia have been among targets of the masses’ righteous fury.

The crisis of imperialism that was already exploding in insurrection in 2019 across the world – from Chile to Haiti to France to Lebanon – has intensified with the COVID-19 health crisis. Horrible living standards have worsened as countless people are given a “choice”: to stay at home as expenses increase and protections are scaled back, or to work in unsafe conditions under high risk of infection. Meanwhile, the bourgeois States of the world have only used the lockdown to intensify repressive measures against the masses, with increased surveillance and denial of the right to assembly or movement used to dampen political dissent. In Canada, this is as clear as day. Whether it is used to justify more harassment by police and the rising death toll on the homeless, or to make way for worsening treatment of prisoners and detained migrants, or in the encirclement and cordoning of Land Defender camps, all levels of governments in Canada have taken advantage of the crisis to inflict greater austerity, repression, and terror on the masses.

Despite the deepening of the global crisis, the Communist movement in Canada has been stagnant due to the lingering influence of liquidationism. The postmodernist idler clique in Anglo-Canada, known as the “pan-Canadian Revolutionary Communist Party” (RCP) and publicly represented by the ineffectual academic Joshua Moufawad-Paul, has chosen to hide from any struggle inside or outside their dwindling circles. Choosing self-implosion, they have decided that exerting energies on hidden campaigns against “ultra-leftist influence” takes precedence over engaging in revolutionary political work. In Montreal, an opposing group under the “historic leadership” of the RCP, calling themselves the “Continuators”, have clung to dogmatic politics and ideology that have left them isolated, unable to grow their strengths beyond their limited audience. In the same city, a splinter from the “Continuators”, known as the Charles Gagnon Cell, is attempting in vain to restore the perceived former glory of the RCP through idealist unity projects that result in the purging of all opposition and introducing vile reactionary Quebec nationalism into Maoist ideology.

In the midst of this, the Revolutionary Student Movement (RSM) has become the battleground where liquidationism is being forcefully confronted by Maoism, foreshadowing the bigger struggles to come. Once the self-declared “largest Communist student organization” in Canada, the RSM has reached an impasse in overcoming the lingering liquidationist influence of the old leadership. Some within the RSM continue to cling to this influence, while the Maoists combat it relentlessly. This political struggle will decide whether the RSM will remain isolated from the struggles of working-class youth and students, or whether it will emerge as a Militarized Red Guard organization of youth serving the preparation of the People’s War in Canada.

All these liquidators converge with the pro-imperialist social-fascists like the falsified “Communist Party of Canada” and the New Democratic Party. They divert the explosive potential that the working class and the masses display every day.

In the struggle against these miserable rats, the Communist movement must not only shed these old burdens, but must outright reconstitute the Communist Party! It must do so in hard struggle against all relics of the past. The primary task today is to build a Militarized Communist Party, to unite the most advanced revolutionary forces based on Marxism-Leninism-Maoism–Gonzalo Thought, to link up with and organize the rebellion of the masses.

With that in mind, this year we are launching a country-wide campaign for a red and combative International Worker’s Day as part of the movement for reconstitution of the Communist Party of Canada. This will be an effort which must also contribute to the larger struggle to reunify the International Communist Movement, advancing the new great wave of World Proletarian Revolution.

These stormy times demand that all genuine revolutionaries pick up the red flag and join the fight. We call on all those who wish to bring the revolutionary movement in Canada out of the festering swamp of liquidationism to reach out to us without delay!

UPHOLD, DEFEND, AND APPLY MARXISM-LENINISM-MAOISM–GONZALO THOUGHT!

DISCARD THE DEADWEIGHT! RECONSTITUTE THE COMMUNIST PARTY!

UNITE COMMUNIST FORCES AGAINST LIQUIDATIONIST CURRENTS!

CRUSH CANADIAN IMPERIALISM AND SETTLER-COLONIALISM WITH PEOPLE’S WAR!

———

Signatories:
★ Revolutionary Student Movement - Toronto
★ People's School - Toronto
★ Guiding Thoughts Publishers
★ Revolutionary Student Movement - Vancouver

This statement is also available here: t.ly/jZgX

A self-criticism from Guiding Thoughts for publishing an ideologically weak booklet during an earlier phase of their development.

Guiding Thoughts Self-Criticism on Publishing “What Maoism Has to Offer the World” – français suit – Guiding Thoughts launched its website a few months back with the aim of specializing in publishing Marxist-Leninist-Maoist texts, which we had been doing for sometime …

New titles available from Guiding Thoughts Publishers! Contact them to order in Canada.

We have two new booklets up on our website! Here is the preface we are including to the Fundamental Documents:

"There exists on this planet a whole legion of scholars who have spent their lives attempting to understand the world. In their time they spent their days attempting to crack the code of reality, pondering questions such as whether chairs are real, and today these individuals have accumulated throughout history such that in any common graveyard one can find the resting place of at least one of these scholars. It is sufficient to say that not a single one of these individuals have done even an ounce of a useful thing—their contributions exist solely in their heads, or if they are fortunate enough in the lecture halls of universities where glassy-eyed students fill their credit requirements.

It is upon this dreadful backdrop that a bright red star outshines all that has existed before. This red star claims no impartiality as a passive observer; its philosophy does not serve the pastimes of the bored thinkers, its economics does not work for the greater good of rich and poor, and its methods of work require no convincing of those that feast off the work of others. Our red star is Marxism, and it is the creation of the struggle of the classes under capitalism and the result of an objective and correct analysis of the whole of human history. Marxism is the ideology of the working class—its origins lie in the historical process of the workers’ just struggle for Power against the ruthless exploitation of the capitalists, and it wholly and openly serves the interests of the workers, not for a moment feigning an air of harmless neutrality so that the exploiters and oppressors of this world may sleep in peace. All of Marxism reaffirms and facilitates the necessary seizure of Power by the working class in the building of a classless, stateless society which the proletariat alone can create as the final class in history.

Since its inception in the late 19th century, Marxism has developed in leaps and bounds, learning from the practice of class struggle and scaling new heights as the proletariat gains experience. Through the maturing of the working class in Europe and the creation of the Paris Commune, the first instance of a Dictatorship of the Proletariat, the great leap of Marxism was born in the works of Marx and Engels. Then, in the struggles against various opportunists and revisionists in the early 20th century, the beginning of the imperialist period of capital, and the October Revolution led by the Great Lenin—which marked the beginning of an era of Proletarian revolution—Leninism was created by Lenin and his close comrade and successor, Comrade Stalin, becoming Marxism-Leninism. Finally, through the experience of the Second World War in which German, Japanese, and Italian fascism were defeated, the Chinese Revolution that turned the global geopolitical tide in favour of the socialist bloc, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, the greatest peak of socialism and the largest mass movement in human history, the national liberation movements of the 60s and 70s, the beginning of the decline of the imperialist powers, the struggle against the modern revisionists who took over the CPSU, the coup against socialism in China by the Hua-Deng reactionaries, and the initiation of the People’s War in Peru by the P*P and their leader, Chairman Gonzalo, all of which indicates our current period to be the final offensive of the World Proletarian Revolution, Maoism, the ideology of the proletariat today, was established. Today, Marxism is Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and Gonzalo Thought, which is the necessary and only correct form of Marxism that logically results from the experience of the struggles that the Proletariat waged in the 20th century. To grasp revolution and liberate the working class today, one must uphold, defend, and apply Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and Gonzalo Thought.

The Fundamental Documents of the Communist Party of Peru are the documents which establish and outline Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and its Guiding Thought in Peru, Gonzalo Thought, which although generated in the conditions of Peru, has increasingly shown universally applicable elements that must be grasped. These documents are essential reading for anyone who wishes to participate in the liberation of the oppressed people of the world, principally the Proletariat, and to negate or disregard their teachings is bound to cause failure. Today in Canada, the working class is in dire straits. In the midst of the ongoing reactionisation of society, the pauperisation of the masses, the growing imperialist crisis which creates misery and war, the continued and ongoing colonisation of the native nations, and the general disintegration and desperate thrashing of the old order, the only organisations the Proletariat is left with are nothing but yellow unions colluding with the bosses if they are lucky, and charities that cannot even meet their most basic needs if they are not. There is no Communist Party to lead their struggle for power, no People’s Army to serve their interests with guns, and no United Front to bring together the broadest possible unity to mobilise them in the fight for revolution.

In this environment, one must build the Vanguard of the Proletariat, the Communist Party, an armed organ of the People under its command, the People’s Army, and the broad coalition led to serve and politicise the masses, the United Front. To build these magic weapons of revolution, to use them to initiate People’s War for the seizure of power, to establish the New State that constructs socialism, and to carry on successive Cultural Revolutions until the whole of humanity enters together into luminous Communism, and to give one’s life to realise these achievements, are the duties of every servant of the People. To do any of this it is imperative to understand Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and Gonzalo Thought, and so we must all study the Fundamental Documents for this purpose.

The principal duty of revolutionaries today is the reconstitution of the Communist Party of Canada to lead the realisation of the goals of the working class. Let all comrades study hard and apply what they learn – that is, study and apply Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and Gonzalo Thought, so that we may be successful in our tasks! The Fundamental Documents, the teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Gonzalo, and the fervent struggle of the masses all guide us. With them we are invincible. Victory is sure to be ours.

- A comrade in Vancouver"

Revolutionaries in Montreal marked International Working Women’s Day with a banner drop today!

A Banner seen in Hochelaga today!

Une bannière vue dans l'Hochelaga aujourd'hui !

𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗣𝗔𝗧𝗛 𝗧𝗢 𝗪𝗢𝗠𝗘𝗡’𝗦 𝗘𝗠𝗔𝗡𝗖𝗜𝗣𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡 𝗖𝗔𝗡 𝗢𝗡𝗟𝗬 𝗕𝗘 𝗔𝗖𝗛𝗜𝗘𝗩𝗘𝗗 𝗕𝗬 𝗔𝗕𝗢𝗟𝗜𝗦𝗛𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗜𝗠𝗣𝗘𝗥𝗜𝗔𝗟𝗜𝗦𝗠 𝗔𝗡𝗗 𝗣𝗔𝗧𝗥𝗜𝗔𝗥𝗖𝗛𝗬 𝗜𝗡𝗦𝗘𝗣𝗔𝗥𝗔𝗕𝗟𝗬!

March 8 marks International Working Women’s Day.

The first ever Working Women’s Day March was held in New York City in 1908 at the initiation of the (then revolutionary) Socialist Party of America. This march was pushed for after women workers protested their conditions in garment factories across New York City. Its implementation would then be championed principally by German revolutionary Clara Zetkin who, through the Second International, made the mobilization of International Working Women’s Day a world-wide event in 1910. Demonstrations led by revolutionaries – from the US to China – would be held on March 8 to commemorate and advance the struggle for women’s emancipation to be completed through socialist revolution.

Seizing on the revolutionary fervour of the masses, seeking to defang it into a passive day of celebration rather than a combative and militant one, the imperialists would turn IWWD into simply “International Women’s Day”. This can be seen by the United Nations adopting International Women’s Day as a harmless celebration. The change goes beyond just language, it removes the class character of the day and the revolutionary history of struggle surrounding women’s emancipation. The diluting of the class content of IWWD is done to cover for the imperialist and colonial powers that seek only to – at best – give lip service to the struggle against patriarchy, principally the oppression of women, among the big capitalist class. The capitalist women are fundamentally a reactionary group incapable of changing anything but the most superficial elements in the manifestation of patriarchy. They are unable to break this system, and fundamentally it is not in their class interest to do so, as the patriarchal exploitation of working women helps to line their pockets. This reveals the complete bankruptcy of postmodernist conceptions of “gender solidarity” where women can be united as women to fight patriarchy. Like the erasure of the class character of IWWD by the big capitalist class, this only serves to confuse contradictions, divide the working class, and prolong the existence of imperialism. Only the working class can destroy imperialism and only working women can be a vanguard fighter in the inseparable struggle to eradicate patriarchy.

A myth peddled by some is that women’s oppression no longer exists in Canada. This ilk would have you believe that some social and political rights – rights that had to be won by countless women revolutionaries who struggled tooth and nail to achieve them – means that patriarchy has been crushed. They would complement this by saying that patriarchy exists only in the “backward” societies. This is most often seen in countries like Canada in the characterization of Muslim-majority countries, wherein the most die-hard opponents of women’s emancipation in Canada will paint themselves as the most ardent feminists internationally. This lie perpetuated by the imperialists is nothing more than an attack on the people of the Third World, the nations oppressed by imperialism, by painting them as barbaric and thereby justifying intervention economically or militarily toward the strengthening of their political power over these nations. This lie also aims to keep private property and women’s oppression alive in the home markets.

The reality is that the exploitation and oppression of working women is alive and well in Canada and is integral to its functioning. The current economic crisis of imperialism has only sharpened this exploitation. The oppression of women is principally rooted in the existence of private property, whose origin allowed for the subjugation of women. This exploitation manifests in how they are pushed toward the role of reproductive and domestic labour whose value is erased, thereby justifying it going unpayed under capitalism. On top of this assignment to reproductive labour, women are also pushed into the workforce to conduct productive labour on top of reproductive labour. The jobs open to women are often restricted to “feminized labour” that is underpaid and overworked. In this way, capitalism provides the means for women’s emancipation by proletarianizing the bulk of them, yet it simultaneously thrusts this double exploitation, both in the home and as workers outside the home, upon them.

Marxist analysis shows that the State is made up of two main elements, primarily its armed force, and secondarily its massive bureaucratic apparatus. Under capitalism, this bureaucratic apparatus has brought forward a whole host of obstacles to prevent the organization of working women to break their chains. Access to healthcare, housing, stable and viable employment, and other necessities are stonewalled by these bureaucratic obstacles and they face increasing unavailability due to rising costs all around. Reproductive rights that include access to birth control, hormones, and abortion are under relentless attacks, whether from religious fundamentalists and fascists who are catered to by “moderate” politicians on the federal levels, or through economic means by denying funding to clinics for the sake of “balanced budgets” that makes access impossible even if “freed” from bureaucratic red tape. Universal childcare has been mocked as either a waste of resources or derided for “denying women their natural maternal role,” which has greatly worsened the condition of women and children as living expenses increase and schools are fluctuated between being opened or being closed. Increased living expenses and impoverishment has made escape from violence in the home and the workplace all but impossible for many, shackling countless women to incredibly dangerous and abusive living situations.

The already meagre situation of trans women has only been compounded. Access to necessities such as housing and medical services are out of reach due to costs, and trans women often experience violence at work or difficulty gaining stable employment due to discrimination. On top of all this, there are bureaucratic obstacles that are added with the very denial of their right to even call themselves women.

The imperialist and colonial core of Canada has only worked to strengthen women’s oppression. The genocide of Indigenous nations within the borders of Canada has been marked by the most ruthless violence against Indigenous women and Two-Spirit people. The fight to get the Old Canadian State to simply investigate the thousands of missing and murdered Indigenous women has been resisted, no doubt due to the clear reality that many of these murders were done at the hand of civil servants, police, and soldiers as a result of ongoing colonial policy and action. Within Canada’s borders to the global scale, Canada’s economic and military endeavours have only strengthened the oppression of women.

Canadian imperialism penetrates deeper into the Third World, creating new semi-colonies. The Old Canadian State does this economically through the export of capital to these colonies or through force. In the latter case, economic domination and ultimately political power follows. Imperialism stunts the economies of these nations, forcing many workers and peasants to flock to the imperial centres to support their families. This is best seen in the case of Filipina women who represent one of their country’s biggest exports.

The solutions normally offered to end patriarchy are often short-sighted and outright reactionary. Some liberal feminists believe the solution is through removing some obstacles so the few women at the top can reach esteemed positions easier; more women cops, corporate board members, drone operators and Hollywood producers. It is assumed that slightly better media representation and “sensitivity training” will somehow tear down patriarchy. Some politicians even recognize the primacy of the economic problem at the root of women’s oppression, only to then argue that this is proof there isn’t “patriarchy”, but rather it is an issue of poverty, leading to an argument for a “gender-blind” and purely economic solution. These social-fascists (they may posture behind more radical labels but amount to social-fascists all the same) will advocate a “revolution” to achieve this by incredibly incremental reform achieved only by glorified lobbying of politicians, by petitioning, and by voting. In total, these reforms do not empower women to attack the issues at their root but rather strengthen the reliance on the Old State through welfare aid.

Alongside these “progressives”, there exists a number of reactionaries who wish to cement old-style traditionalist oppression and paint it as liberation. Whether “traditional conservatives” or postmodernists, they will push for conditions that make it “easier” for women to remain subjugated in the home and workforce, whether it be through pushing tax credits to take care of families to outright justifying sexual exploitation as “legitimate options” or “alternatives” in place of destroying the root of patriarchal oppression stemming from putting women in these conditions against their will.

The reality is that only a revolution that destroys imperialism and settler-colonialism, principally imperialism, can destroy patriarchy. The only way to achieve revolution is through the conquest of Power to destroy the Old State through a People’s War under the centralized leadership of a Communist Party.

Today, the working class lacks this Communist Party. They have been robbed of it at least since its liquidation into the “Labour-Progressive Party” at the hands of the revisionist traitor Tim Buck in 1943. Since then, the proletariat has been left with nothing but opportunists and traitors falsely portraying themselves to the masses as a Communist Party. The most recent face adopted by revisionism in Canada is the “Revolutionary Communist Party”. Whether it is the RCP’s historic leadership in Montreal (the self-styled “Continuators”), or their recent splinter calling itself the Charles Gagnon Cell, or the postmodernist sycophants of Joshua Moufawad-Paul in English Canada, they are all the same: obstacles to be disposed of by the working class on the road to the reconstitution of the Communist Party of Canada as a Militarized Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Communist Party.

Only when armed with our reconstituted Communist Party can we join our comrades in India, Peru, Turkey, and the Philippines in waging a glorious People’s War against the Old Canadian State, abolishing patriarchy alongside imperialism and settler-colonialism all the way until Communism, serving the World Proletarian Revolution.

WOMEN OF THE WORKING CLASS: IT IS OUR DUTY TO RECONSTITUTE THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF CANADA!

WAVE AFTER WAVE, BLOW AFTER BLOW – AGAINST IMPERIALISM AND PATRIARCHY!

PROLETARIAN FEMINISM FOR COMMUNISM!

———

Signatories:
★ Revolutionary Student Movement - Toronto
★ Guiding Thoughts Publishers
★ Revolutionary Student Movement - Vancouver
★ People's School - Toronto

This statement is also available on the RSM website: mer-rsm.ca/iwwd2021

Many thanks to the 30 or so people who came through for yesterday's session on Proletarian Feminism! Your contributions made for a great discussion and we look forward to hosting future events like this. Be sure to send us any comments, criticism or suggestions about our events, and follow our pages to stay informed about upcoming sessions:

★ twitter.com/PeoplesSchoolTO
★ instagr.com/PeoplesSchoolTO
★ fb.me/PeoplesSchoolTO

We also encourage everyone in the Greater Toronto Area or in Vancouver to apply what they learned yesterday, and hit the streets next Monday, March 8, for the International Working Women's Day rallies that will be held by our comrades over at the Revolutionary Student Movement - Toronto and the Revolutionary Student Movement - Vancouver:

★ 𝗧𝗢𝗥𝗢𝗡𝗧𝗢 – Event page: Rally for International Working Women's Day! Gather at 5:30 PM on the corner of Yonge & Finch.

★ 𝗩𝗔𝗡𝗖𝗢𝗨𝗩𝗘𝗥 – Event details will be announced soon on their page.

Lastly, as part of our mission to serve the people by providing revolutionary political and ideological education, the People's School must also learn from the people and build on their advanced ideas. So we want to hear from working-class and colonized women in Greater Toronto and across the country: tell us about the daily struggles you face at work or at home or anywhere else. We encourage you to share your experiences with us via [email protected] or through our social media. This will help us to better understand the concrete conditions and needs of proletarian women in our context. Without this understanding, it is impossible for a revolutionary women's movement to emerge.

That's all for now. Until next time!

Our online session on "WHAT IS PROLETARIAN FEMINISM? – Presentation & Discussion" is tomorrow!

Four Points on Mutual Aid by Cathal 1. Political Power Grows from a Plate of Lentils the Barrel of a Gun “There can be no competition between a mutual aid society and a revolutionary circle… But if in this same mutual…

Music: You Ain’t Done Nothin’ if You Ain’t Been Called Red Guards Tribune of the People is pleased to release a song from musician comrades in Pittsburgh. This song is dedicated to the comrades in Austin, Texas who are struggling to serve the people in the most d…

A statement from the TKP/ML sent to our comrades over at the RSM.

Below is a statement and greeting sent to RSM by TKP/ML, in light of our upcoming study session on Kaypakkaya’s “The National Question”. Red salute to our Turkish comrades!

“Comrades,

We salute your event on our leader İbrahim Kaypakkaya's approach to the "National Question".

Comrade İbrahim Kaypakkaya has been one of the most active revolutionaries in the revolutionary student movement that started in 1968 and then the revolutionary wave that spread to all social segments. In the revolutionary struggle, Comrade Kaypakkaya came to the fore as a revolutionary leader in a short time.

Comrade Kaypakkaya has predicated on examining the revolutionary theory at each stage of his revolutionary work and finding its direction by being equipped with this theory. When we look at his revolutionary life for about 6 years, we see that he is the most active practitioner of the revolutionary movement and has an approach that constantly tries to equip revolutionary theory. It is seen that the developing and constantly growing class struggle was devoid of revolutionary theory, namely Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. The biggest reason for this is TKP's revisionist line. This party has based the class struggle on a pacifist, class collaborator line since 1923. It has rémiges the ML theory from its revolutionary essence. It handled social problems by detaching them from ML principles, and used revolutionary theory to legitimize its bourgeois line. When the Revolutionary Movement grew towards the 1970s, the theory was the monopoly of this revisionist line and its cadres.

Many young revolutionary leaders of the period quickly sought revolutionary theory with their advanced revolutionary practices. While one side of this seeking has been an ideological struggle with this revisionist and pacifist segment, the other has been an intense study and research.

In this tendency, Comrade Kaypakkaya has come to the fore with his style of examination and his level of understanding Marxism not as a dogma but as a guide to action. On the one hand he studied a limited number of Marxist classics, on the other hand, he learnt from the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and from the documents on its effects and consequences. That led Comrade Kaypakkaya to grasp that many things that revisionism presented "pertinently" on the analysis of the social structure, the basic principles of Marxism, class struggle issue, party understanding, and on the issue of the way of revolution, were actually wrong.

The most fundamental characteristics of Comrade Kaypakkaya like the claim, ideological courage and the approach to question everything, are formed and shaped by the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. This attitude of our leader bring along determining his position, analyzing the way of the revolution, the state's political nature, the structure of the ruling class, the party concept, social structure and multinational character of Turkey, which were never analyzed clearly and transformed into a political program until that day.

Kaypakkaya took an open and definite attitude towards all these issues at the point where all progressive segments were under the influence of social-chauvinism, assumed progressivism in the Kemalist fascist dictatorship, and remained silent about the existence and rights of the Kurdish nation. He has accepted the reality of multinational social structure. He started to look at the main and historical issues on this axis in this reality. He has turned MLM theory into a guide through these facts with great skill, but more importantly, with the ideological courage of the international proletariat. Under conditions where even the use of the word Kurd required great courage, he defended the Kurdish nation's self determination by opposing the entire revisionist and opportunist front, and defined this problem as a part of proletarian revolutions and as a fundamental problem of class struggle. He defined the accusations of “feudal reaction” against the Kurdish revolts in history in the name of communist attitude, as “social-chauvinism". These are the points that nobody calling himself Marxist, progressive, or democrat has been able to articulate until then. Kaypakkaya is a milestone and a turning point in this respect. He solved a brilliant method of examining the problems from the MLM perspective and drawing conclusions by organizing his party TKP / ML."