Fourth International Seminar on the Problems of the Revolution in Latin America

From July 17 to 21, 2000, the IV International Seminar was held in Quito called by the PCMLE and the MPD of Ecuador. Important and representative organizations attended the event. There were also greetings from many revolutionary organizations from the continent and Europe. The discussion, dedicated to the theme ‘the character of the revolution’, ended with the firm conclusions in the declaration below. The organizations that were present were the following:

Marxist Leninist Party of Germany MLPD
Revolutionary Communist Party of Argentina
Communist Refoundation of Argentina
Front of Unity of the People of Bolivia
Revolutionary Communist Party of Brazil
Communist Party of Colombia (Marxist-Leninist)
Army of National Liberation of Colombia ELN
Popular Army of Liberation of Colombia EPL
Movement of the Revolutionary Left MIR of Chile
Communist Party of the Workers of Denmark, APK
Revolutionary Marxist Organization of Greece, A/Synechia
Revolutionary Popular Democratic Party - Revolutionary Popular Army of Mexico
Communist Party of Labour of the Dominican Republic
Movement for Independence, Unity and Change, MIUCA, of the Dominican Republic
Marxist Leninist Communist Party of Ecuador
Popular Democratic Movement of Ecuador

Urged on by our commitment to carry forward the victory of the social revolution, we have come together in the Fourth International Seminar "Problems of the Revolution in Latin America", in which we discuss our views regarding the Character of the Revolution. The debate has been open, frank and reflective, carried out in a spirit of comradeship and brotherhood; we shared opinions and criteria which we should continue debating. We found the need to put forth joint initiatives of solidarity.

We agreed in characterizing our period as the era of imperialism and of proletarian revolutions. This era began with the triumph of the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, which established the world’s first socialist State.

Indeed, socialism later suffered a defeat, but one that is historically temporary. After the ebb that affected the revolutionary and popular movement in the whole world, today we are aiding in its recovery. In the five continents, in the imperialist and the dependent countries, the working class and the exploited masses are advancing in their organization and fighting for their material and political demands, sometimes shaking the structures of the ruling system. The continuity of the struggles, their forms and levels that they reach, the victories that the workers and peoples have achieved with their struggle, allow us to conclude that new revolutionary waves are arising in different parts of the world. The struggle for the revolution and socialism takes into account the need to fight revisionism and opportunism in all spheres.

In the world today there are a billion hungry people, two billion eight hundred million people are unemployed or underemployed; on the other hand, the three richest people in the world have assets greater than the total Net Internal Product of the forty-eight countries of Africa.

The social revolution of the proletariat, more than being a historical necessity, is today a possibility and a certain future.

Until a few years ago, the political conditions, the brutal anti-communist assault that we the workers, peoples and revolutionaries faced, put us in a defensive position that even led some to raise the discussion of whether the social revolution was viable or not and others to desert the revolutionary struggle. Today things are different; the revival of the popular forces and their vanguard detachments leads us to discuss the characteristics of the revolution, the content of its programs, the form that it takes in each place, the road to the conquest of power. This expresses the different political period in which we find ourselves.

The struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat is international in its essence; but, in each country it takes a national form. The contradiction between the social character of production and the private appropriation of social wealth is the pillar of capitalist accumulation, but it is also its Achilles heel since, with its appearance the working class also arose, the proletariat, the gravediggers of the system. This contradiction prevails during the historic era in which we live and will only be resolved with socialism. The struggle for the revolution and socialism in each country is part of the world revolution.

We revolutionaries have the obligation to organize and to make the revolution in our respective countries; to defeat imperialism and its local allies in our countries. It is clear that the revolutionary struggle transcends national borders, since this strikes and weakens the chain of imperialist domination. This transcendence includes the need to deepen actions of solidarity: if we have to organize internationalist brigades, actions of struggle and contribute with our solidarity in all spheres to the victory of the revolution in one country, we must do it, this is our commitment, just as with all our effort for the construction of the new society.

The uneven development of capitalism, the sharpening and unfolding of the correlation of forces, the deepening of the crisis, among others aspects, do not unfold in the same way in all places; they can be sharper and break out in one country before in another. These facts show the validity of the Leninist thesis regarding the configuration of a revolutionary situation. The proletarian revolutionaries must create and take advantage of that situation and to give direction to the revolution.

At the same time, the uneven development of capitalism, the course of the fundamental contradictions of the historic era and the times in which we live, show us emphatically that the thesis of the existence of the weak link is valid and demands that the revolutionaries unite their efforts to help to break it.

At present, we revolutionaries in each country count on a rear base internationally, made up of the great contingent of the working class fighting in all countries, of the oppressed masses who are fighting bravely, of the guerrillas forces and armies of revolutionaries who are fighting for liberation, of the communist and revolutionary parties that are fighting consistently for the liquidation of capitalism, of the great public opinion which questions the imperialist domination and which places itself on the side of the workers and the peoples. This rear base exists in all countries, it expresses itself and will be expressed in the solidarity in various forms and according to the circumstances. This was the experience of the October revolution and was one of the pillars of socialist construction. We have to contribute to the development of this rear base, pushing forward the revolutionary process that is in motion.

The political campaign persists that seeks to show that the working class no longer has historic conditions to lead the revolution and that there are new social actors who should place themselves at the head of the process. The revolution is led ideological and politically by the working class with its communist party as highest form of class organization. Nothing in present-day capitalist development negates the revolutionary and leading role that the proletariat must fulfill. Only the working class can carry the revolution through to the end.

We fight for socialism and communism, only this can get rid of the hateful capitalist system; only socialism will redeem humanity. As this is our objective, to build it we must start from the reality of each country, from the development of the productive forces and the relations of production, from the historical process which has been experienced in the respective conditions, which determine the tactics and strategy that we revolutionaries adopt to crystallize our objective.

The socialist revolution, in accord with the capitalist development of each country, incorporates to a greater or lesser degree the fulfillment of anti-imperialist, democratic tasks. In each case, it is done as part of a single process, in which anti-imperialist and democratic measures are intertwined with socialist ones. In the era of imperialism and the proletarian revolutions, anti-imperialist measures cannot be fully achieved without the perspective of socialism. There is a dialectical relation between them.

Other positions from the conception of the uninterrupted revolution in stages put forward the popular democratic, agrarian and anti-imperialist revolution in an uninterrupted march to socialism.

It is responsibility of the Communist Parties, of the revolutionaries, to elaborate the programme of the revolution in each country, starting from the conditions in each of them, which places before us the necessity of deepening the Marxist analysis of reality and a greater interrelation with Marxist-Leninist theory.

The capitalist-imperialist system began with violence, that is its nature, and those who support it resort to violence to extinguish the flames of battle and to exterminate the fighters. To the reactionary violence, we oppose the organized violence of the masses against their exploiters. The sure road for the conquest of power is in the armed insurrection of the peoples, in the revolutionary war. And once in power, this must be maintained by the people in arms, by the revolutionary armed forces that replace the reactionary army.

We reaffirm our commitment to the world proletarian revolution, to proletarian internationalism, we are in solidarity with the struggle that the peoples are raising. To confine the social struggle to national borders is to act against the victory of the revolution, therefore we take upon ourselves the responsibility of uniting our efforts to confront imperialism, the domination of capital, in order to take up the struggles of the people as of our own brothers, because, in reality, they are.

In particular today we should energetically give solidarity to the Colombian people, with their political, popular organizations of left, with the guerrilla forces, against the intervention of the great powers and particularly U.S. imperialism, which are preparing to invade Colombia in the vain attempt to strangle the revolution, through the so-called Colombia Plan, which in reality is a regional counter-insurgency plan.

We give our solidarity to all the peoples of the world who are fighting for their emancipation, in particular, we reject the brutal blockade against Cuba, the bombing and blockade against Iraq, the aggression against Yugoslavia and other peoples; our support goes to those fighters, victims of repression, who are deprived of their liberty or are persecuted for committing political ‘crimes’ that are nothing more than taking up the cause of justice and liberty.

Paraphrasing the Communist Manifesto, we say that, again the spectre of communism is haunting the world and imperialism and the bourgeoisie are trembling. We revolutionaries are taking into our hands the challenges that history has imposed on us and we will win!

We will return to meet in the V International Seminar next year.

Quito, July 2000

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