Since the heroic Al-Aqsa Intifada, a broad and powerful solidarity movement around the Palestinian people and their armed national liberation movement has grown in the imperialist countries. This has resulted in communists in formation, i.e., those working to recreate the communist parties, and all honest revolutionary forces having to create a policy in relation to it. Revisionists, anarchists, and other bourgeois forces either condemn the solidarity movement, i.e., a position that is in practice Zionist and imperialist, or they tail the movement, which in practice can manifest itself in an opportunistic line that seeks to gain short-term gains at the expense of long-term goals by neglecting the difficult and arduous communist work, which in the long run means a liquidationist line. Marxists, today Marxist-Leninist-Maoists, understand that regardless of changes in the international situation, the main task is to reconstitute the communist parties around the world, and for this, political work capable of producing communists is needed.
During these two years, important lessons have been learned both about the relationship between communists in formation and the spontaneous anti-imperialist movement, and about the limitations of the spontaneous movement. Now, after the “peace agreements” have been signed and the enthusiasm within the Palestinian solidarity movement in Europe has cooled, it is a good time to evaluate the line on this issue and contrast it with that of other groups in our own country. The aim is to draw important lessons and to show how all struggles must serve the same goal: the proletarian world revolution.
Communists have a proletarian internationalist duty to carry out actions, activities, meetings, etc., in support of the ongoing people’s wars (revolutionary wars led by the communist parties) and revolutionary movements around the world, as well as the national liberation movement that forms the basis of the international communist movement. However, this does not mean that this should be the main work of the communists in the formation. These actions, activities, or meetings should not operate within the legal framework of the bourgeois state. This would be a totally toothless activity, one that in no way contributes to the reconstitution or challenges the bourgeois state.
Within the Palestinian solidarity movement, the lack of political leadership has led to a tendency to overemphasize the significance of large-scale demonstrations, which turns into a tail wagging the dog when opportunistic politicians readily endorse unrealistic demands made at demonstrations in order to win a few votes. We see this, for example, in the so-called “Left of the Future,” which leads an association of various revisionist and reformist organizations and parties united in their ambition to form an electoral alliance for next year’s parliamentary elections with the aim of transforming the anger and rage of the masses into parliamentary quagmire. Is this the best that two years of large-scale mass mobilization around a national liberation war in Sweden has been able to produce?
On the other hand, there is an activist tendency within the Palestinian solidarity movement that is content with what are, in practice, entirely permissible actions and activities. But boring poster campaigns, banner hangings, graffiti in tunnels, participating in or leading legal demonstrations, etc., which only present empty words and promises, are simply not enough. The same applies to reducing solidarity work to open meetings in a basement room about the Palestinian resistance. The masses have had enough of that from the revisionists.
So why should we do the same and lead them into a swamp of legalism and empty promises, as reformists and revisionists have done for decades? The only real way for us to support the Palestinian people is to take up our duty to make revolution, that is, armed struggle (!), and crush Swedish imperialism, and for this we need the Communist Party.
Here, revolutionary violence must be emphasized in contrast to the legalism that characterizes the revisionists who parasitize the Palestinian solidarity movement. Why? Because it serves our main task, namely the reconstitution or constitution of the communist parties. The party must be militarized. A party whose task is to wage revolutionary warfare against the old state must be capable of mastering military issues and actions; this work must therefore be carried out even during the reconstitution, it cannot be neglected as a task that will come “later on” or when “objective conditions are ripe.” This takes, and is currently taking, the form of small-scale and modest actions, such as sabotage and armed agitation and propaganda actions. This is good and Marxist. It must develop into larger, more complex, and more powerful actions. Some revisionists oppose this fact. Many oppose it because it is more comfortable to act as “supporters” of the revolutionary struggle in the Third World than to follow their example and apply revolutionary violence in our own countries. To harden oneself in revolutionary violence is not an “ultra-left” deviation, as revisionists often claim. It is to understand the structure of the party, of its reconstitution, to understand that no real change can take place without violence. To neglect the necessity of mastering revolutionary violence is, on the other hand, a total capitulation to the social democratic legalism that has characterized the revolutionary movement in our country for decades, beyond a cover for its own bourgeois self-preservation and outright cowardice.
Communists in formation must draw a line between themselves and the toothless revisionists in the imperialist countries whose only strategy is to rely entirely on spontaneous movements. All genuine revolutionaries understand that the main task today is the reconstitution or constitution of communist parties around the world, because without a party we have nothing. But the question is, why is this the main task? There may be some confusion here.
We do not demand a party for the sake of the party; this is not a meaningless formula. The Communist Party is a vanguard capable of leading hundreds, thousands, and even millions of struggling masses in revolutionary struggle and war against the old society. It is a fighting force made up of the best sons and daughters of the class who are capable of carrying out the previous point, who embody the ideology and politics of the party. The party is, of course, also a war machine, an apparatus that knows how to wage this war through military actions and plans and that is ready and able to withstand major blows from the reactionaries without falling apart, but, like the Communist Party of Peru, continues to persevere, wage, lead, and develop the people’s war even in the most difficult situations and circumstances. In concrete terms, this means that our work must serve to generate the group of people who can take on these tasks, that the ideology we study and apply, the politics we produce, are embodied in a group of individuals who can be identified as communists; these will constitute the glorious Communist Party of Sweden and initiate the unbeatable people’s war. Keep in mind that the Communist Party of Peru had fewer than 30 members at the time of the start of the people’s war in 1980! It is therefore not a question of quantity but of quality, of the communists’ determination and ability to lead the struggle of the masses to higher levels—to the level of people’s war—through a correct ideological and political line.
We must maintain the perspective that the revolution in Sweden is part of the proletarian world revolution, which is a global war in which national borders represent different fronts in the war. It is our task as revolutionaries, communists in formation, to create and develop multiple fronts in this war in order to weaken imperialism. This is in fact the only genuine anti-imperialism, because it requires us in the imperialist countries to do the same thing as those in the Third World: to develop revolutionary violence in the service of initiating and developing the armed struggle.