From O Proletariado
Organ of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Brazil
May, 1997

Editorial

The revolutionary movement in Brazil has passed through distinct periods in its history, periods of upsurge and of crisis. It has lived through periods of violent internal struggle and of vigorous ideological debate in which, naturally, together with more correct positions there arose erroneous positions proceeding from spontaneity, dogmatism, petty-bourgeois radicalism, and principally, revisionism.

The Brazilian communists seek to theorize the road of revolution, placing themselves at the head of the class struggle and, in these clashes, many times ferocious ones, hundreds of honored and valiant revolutionaries have given their blood for the freedom of our people.

Nevertheless, it is a fact that although many times there have been objective conditions for the revolution, the action of the revolutionaries and our people were not able to carry through the revolution in Brazil to victory. The revolutionaries did not succeed in establishing in a clear and firm manner the way to develop a correct line, a proletarian revolutionary line which would guide them by means of a correct practice to lead the revolution.

Founded in 1922, the Communist Party, in the struggle to develop itself along the road of Marxism-Leninism, of the proletarian revolution, was profoundly affected by reformism, revisionism, and opportunism. When there arose conditions for a revolutionary rupture in the party, the repressive apparatus was able to annihilate, in a selective manner, the majority of revolutionary cadres forged until that time, causing the failure of the revolutionary opportunity and thus favoring the conditions for the resumption of the domination of reformism by means of revisionism of different hues.

Therefore, today there falls upon us, the Brazilian communists, the proletariat - with a steel-like logic under the threat of betraying the revolution - the task of reconstructing the Communist Party. This task necessitates the rigorous understanding of Marxist theory and its development; the understanding of the process of the international communist movement; a precise analysis of the situation in Brazil; a strict demarcation between the revolutionary and counter-revolutionary camps; the definition of the basic principles which orient the communist organization and of the methods of work in the process of unification of the revolutionary vanguard, until we attain the establishment of a single line in the organizational, political, ideological, theoretical and practical sphere.

We know that a revolutionary party and a revolutionary theory cannot be created from one day to the next by means of a simple decree. We also know that without its class party it is impossible for the proletariat to confront and overthrow the bourgeoisie and imperialism, or to unmask revisionism, which is a dagger treacherously stabbing the working class in the back. We know as well that to avoid the creation of the party, its theory, and its policy is to betray the revolution.

We know that it is our indisputable task to build the Revolutionary Party. We know that it is our task to unmask revisionism, to rigorously define Marxism, to demarcate the line between the conception of the exploited class and the conception of the exploiting class. We know that this is an indispensable task to advance the revolutionary movement.

The Brazilian communists, when they broke with revisionism and with opportunism - the false communist parties of bureaucrats, corrupt cliques of friends that utilize the prestigious name of communists, usurping this political capital, to deceive the working masses and above all the proletariat - they assumed the task of taking up Marxism again, of building a revolutionary party, of making the revolution.

They assumed this immediate and necessary task of working thoroughly, on the theoretical and practical level, to reconstitute the Communist Party. This is the fundamental and immediate duty of all true communists, of the whole class-conscious proletariat, which knows that without an authentic Communist Party, without a correct line, however favorable the conditions and the intentions of the revolutionaries, there cannot be a proletarian revolution, nor the conditions for the construction of socialism and communism. It is the indisputable duty of all those who claim for themselves the honorable name of communist to work thoroughly in theory and practice to fulfill this task.

We can say with pride that in these two years in which we have taken upon ourselves this task, we have advanced along this road, a road that we know will be arduous and difficult, a road which leads to combating without truce and implacably against the erroneous conceptions that revisionism brings into the Brazilian communist movement, carrying out an intense and permanent political and ideological struggle.

It is necessary to go deeply into this struggle. It is necessary to deepen the struggle against revisionism, an inseparable task from the struggle against imperialism and reaction, understanding that the contradiction between Marxists and revisionists is a class contradiction, a frontal contradiction between the theory, ideology, politics and practice of the revolutionary proletariat against the practice, ideology, politics and theories of the bourgeoisie and imperialism.

It is necessary to carry through the struggle until we establish in a clear, precise and unmistakable form the ideology, the general line and the revolutionary program as a basis of our party unity.

The task which we have carried out for two years, immediate and necessary, is to build the party of the proletariat, adopting its theory and its ideology, to establish a correct strategy and tactics which leads to power, to its conquest and the destruction of the bourgeois state, the construction of popular power, of popular democracy based on the worker-peasant alliance to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat.

It is along this glorious road, pointed out by Marx and Engels, that we have decided to tread, that we have begun to tread. The triumphant road of uninterrupted struggle of the working class - whether of the struggles of the Paris Commune, of the October Revolution of 1917, of the Chinese revolution, of the anti-colonial revolutions; whether in the construction of socialism, shows, in the practice of the class struggle, the absolute necessity of a Communist Party armed with revolutionary theory, the guide and general staff of the victory of the proletariat, of the poor peasantry and of the popular masses, the indispensable instrument to cleanse humanity of bourgeois filth.

Throughout the whole process of the proletarian revolution, in the great battles of the class struggle, its leaders, its theoreticians stressed the absolute necessity of the vanguard party of the working class, of the party of the proletariat, of the communist party to seize power, by means of revolutionary violence and with the same to defend the revolution from the attacks of the reactionary clique.

Only the Communist Party armed with the revolutionary theory of the proletariat, armed with its powerful ideology, can weld into one dialectical whole, the scientific theory and the concrete reality, to transform society from the perspective of the working class, welding itself like steel to the working masses to forge the firm mainstay of the revolutionary interests of the proletariat, combating implacably all the erroneous, anti-Marxist, anti-proletarian and anti-party conceptions, carrying out criticism and self-criticism, learning with it in a constant theoretical, ideological, organizational and practical adaptation.

It is this party that we swear to build for the honor and liberation of our people, as continuers of all the comrades of the struggle for the liberation of our people, glorious fighters, heroic and unforgettable, whose blood stains our red flag; it is to this party that we swear to give our life to break with the slavery which transforms our people into sub-humans, at the service of the profit and the deranged delight of the degenerate bourgeoisie.

This party we swear to rebuild and we are building it, because only this party can be the tool of the victory of the proletariat and of the popular masses who in a single and irresistible torrent, by means of a harsh and prolonged war of the whole people, will conquer power, destroying the apparatus of the bourgeois-latifundist Brazilian state, the servant of imperialism to construct the organs of popular power, the instrument of the democracy of the people relying on the dictatorship of the proletariat, as part of the world-proletarian revolution.

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