STALINISM & IMPERIALISM IN PERU PART TWO

new industrial code discussed in Workers are asked to form a 'community of interests', to share profits and "management. This fairy tale has long been denounced by the international working class as a step towards State unions The next step is the creation of state-controlled unions. The Minister of the Interior (chief of police) has declared recently that no communist will enter the unions'.

General Velazco, in his recent statement on the 'Defence Committees of the Revolution', which are supported wholeheartedly by the Stalinists, made clear that he will have nothing to do with his supporters.

But the right-wing union, the nized. has been offcially recogCGTP has not been recognized.

It all points to increased pressures against the Stalinist bureaucracies which would probably • be led to dissolve CGTP and integrate the statecontrolled trade unions under the leadership of what General Velazco called la new breed of non-partisan, nationalistic union leaders'.

The Defence Committees of the Revolution' are another step in the direction of a corporate state. They amount to an undeciared political party (where the Stalinists are active supporters) dedicated to publicising the government and putting up smokescreens over its deeds.

With this political party, plus the state-controlled unions and newspapers, plus 'profit-sharing', ware freeze and one delegate of the 'community' on the board of directors in every firm, we have a Peruvian version of the well-known corporate state, the old 'new path between capitalism and communism'.

Why has this occurred in Peru? What are the social forces behind this?

It is certainly not a unique case. The Argentinian and Brazilian dictatorships show amazing similarities. Differences sometime appear more semantic than real. Not that semantic differences are not important!

itself government In the Argentine, as instance, •to strengthening 'colaboracionista' union, and has practically wiped out any legal existence for the left-wing unions.

The 'colaboracionista' union has been called to support a state programme that will bring the state's share of investments to nearly 40 per cent of all industry in the next few years. Formal democracy has been abolished as The difference is more apparent with regard to the working-class opposition. The Argentinian working class is much stronger than the Peruvian.

has long since passed through the experience of Bonapartism and corporatism, and has revolted against the rulers in Cordoba and elsewhere.

The military government in Bolivia expresses the same tendency. 'After unsuccessful attempts at crushing the resistance of the miners, it has followed the 'progressive' steps of the Peruvian military.

The establishment of military or quasi-military governments in Latin America is a tendency that started some years ago. Only a few governments keep an appearInevitably formal democracy, the rule by professional politicians of the bourgeoisie, becomes incompatible with the chaos, anarchy and crisis brought by monopoly capitalism. Direct control over every single movement of the economy becomes a necessity. A strong government is indispensable law and order bebreaches of come more intolerable than ever.

Whether the Bonapartists or semi-Bonapartists called to the fore define themselves as left wing or right wing is a semantic problem. Their policies against the working class and in support of capital are indistinguishable.

The social basis of this kind of government is therefore monopoly capital. Their agents are the weak and dependent sections of the national bourgeoisie, of the middle class, petty bourgeoisie, professionals, job-hunting bureaucrats, and, of course, the top military. It is within these ranks that Communist Party bureaucracy expects to find its new jobs.

When we say that the social basis of regimes like the Peruvian junta is monopoly capital, we do not mean to say, as one of the factions of the Peruvian Maoists say, that the present government is the result of a 'fascistimperialist plot.

Weak

We only say that monopoly capital and the rulers of the world bourgeoisie, are the economic and social basis of the world capitalist system of which Peru is nothing but a weak and highlydependent part.

Monopoly capital has closely determined the direction of the Peruvian economy, even in its most minor details. Monopoly capital has changed the traditional Peruvian oligarchy into a highly dependent and subservient Bollvian miners militia.

bourgeoisie whose most dynamic profitable activities pertain to industry and trade and not land. Monopoly capital has fashioned the Peruvian army, its values, its equipment, its training, its officers.

Within this transformation a huge parasitic growth of the army, the bureaucracy, professionals, petty bourgeois merchants and traders, as well as the concentration of wealth in the hands of the industrial bourgeoisie has taken place. These are the agents of the kind of state structure that monopoly capital needs: a bourgeois corporate state.

Inflation

Not that these sections of the population are prosperous. They have gone and may go through periods of improvements in their conditions. But recently the characteristic has been inflation, low income and low profits. In times of crisis they also suffer, but infinitely less than workers and peasants. fess to hate what he most loves, or to love what he most hates, one can without difliculty understand how this nationalistic ideology, this progressive rhetoric is nothing but a rationalization of an essentially reactionary, anti-working-class, anti-peasantry. policy.

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Could you briefly tell us how the different sections of the left have defined their policies with respect to the military junta?

We shall exclude the Communist Party. We have mentioned their position before and it is a left-wing party only because of its historic roots and because of the presence in its ranks of honest revolutionary workers who have not yet realized entirely the reactionary character of the leadership.

The Maoists are split into five factions. Their best-known group, publishing the monthly Bandera Roja', defined the junta as 'an imperialist plot'.

But their ultra-left verbiage does not obscure the fact that they have consistently refused to have anything to do with the working class, which they describe as 'aristocratic', and have concentrated their efforts on convincing the peasantry that they should join future guerrilla activities. Their presence and opinion is of little relevance.

The revisionist pseudoTrotskyists are also split. Posadists and Pabloites have endorsed the military government.

The one time leader of the left, Ismael Frias, has endorsed the junta and is today a senior writer on the government-controlled newspaper, 'Extra' using its columns to praise the junta.

Hugo Blanco is in jail and you can imagine what his opinion of the junta is! He is not just a cadre of the left, he is a very well-known figure, an honest, dedicated revolutionary in spite of his mistakes. He has rebuffed the thesis of United Secretariat revisionist recent interviews and has not supported the government.

Fidelists are in confusion. Their dismissal of the working class, their glorification of the peasantry, the support of Castro military regime, the agrarian reform, the fierce police repression, their imprisoned leaders, are together hopeless contradictions.

In general they do not support the government and their imortance is minimal. They have ived for long a semi-conspiratorial existence and have not attempted to build a party, only an organization, a conspiratorial unit, to support, logistically and militarily the 'focos' of guerrillas, which, as you may imagine, are not the order of the day.

The key organization of the working class is the Vanguardia Revolucioneria. Founded in 1965, it has established itself firmly in the working class and its organizations.

Ihis organization can become TV retician of the Peruvian Socialist It should demand a fight for tical and organizational, opPoliworking class and its organizations from bourgeois parties and from the bourgeois state. It should fight the corporate state. It should demand the refusal of the working class to collaborate and share responsibility for the failures of capitalism.

It should refuse to share the profits of bankrupt capitalism. It should demand the distribution of land without compensating the landlords, and without making the peasants pay for the land.

It should demand the expropriation, without compensation, of all monopolies and the establishment of workers' control in industry, trade, education and services.

It should establish as immediate aims the strengthening of the working-class organizations, the satisfaction of their demands, the raising of the political level of the masses and the formation of the revolutionary workers party, as an integral part of the Fourth International.

It must fight for the overthrow of the military regime and the establishment of the workers' state based on soviets.

These should be the aims of the revolutionary party in the present situation and the development of working-class consciousness will depend on the strength and policies of its international vanguard.

In two parts - PART ONE appeared in yesterday's Workers Press.