By the Editorial Board Editor’s Note: Since publication, an important article on the elections in Peru was published by the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist online newspaper, Communist International. …
It's a little more complicated because unlike Khmer Rouge they actually had a proper Marxist basis, but they fucked up their revolution for a bunch of reasons and were extremely violent which gave them a really bad reputation.
I'm not the most well read on the PCP, so forgive me if this answer is lacking, but the main two things I know were their overconfidence and their unhealthy reliance on their leader. During the height of their conflict with the Peruvian government, they made some very thoughtless mistakes like mistreating the peasantry that they relied on as their base of support. Then once Gonzalo was captured, a good portion of the party was still ready to continue the war, but the upper leadership refused to continue without Gonzalo at the helm and this caused the party to collapse and splinter.
There's definitely a lot to learn from the PCP, both positively and negatively, but I would say if we're reading from their mistakes it would be to follow the mass line, do not get overconfident in the revolution until it has actually succeeded, and ensure the leadership of our movements is flexible and self sufficient.
I mean there us the whole um... schniff you know schiff of course the old wisdom "don't throw out the baby with the bathwater", schniff this misses the proper dialectical materialist point that we should rather throw away the baby schniff and keep the dirty bathwater.
Nah not even close. Despite them fucking up massively, having horrible and violent wings and outbursts and losing popular support they were way way more legitimate than the Khmer Rouge and an actual revolutionary communist movement practicing people's war (pretty successfully till they didnt).
They are on the same vain and global tide as the people's wars that are still going on in the Phillipines and India (naxalites) etc with very little differences between them and these ideologicaly or in strategies. They just shit the bed hard in the height of the people's war while suspecting everyone as a collaborator ,turned violent against local rural population in a couple of instances and then didnt denounce it leading to them losing popular support and becoming progressively weirded
I mean, this is kinda downplaying how ridiculously brutal shit like Lucanamarca was, and how it was essentially just downplayed as "Shit happens when you do revolutions, sometimes you just torture elderly villagers and small kids with boiling water then hack them to death with machetes, but at least we made our point".
:dril: me and a bunch of stupid assholes are going to start a community in the middle of the desert to either die or prove a very important point :dril:
they were way way more legitimate than the Khmer Rouge and an actual revolutionary communist movement
You can say the same stuff about the Khmer Rouge. They were every bit as bad, they just never got to power. The only difference was that Shining Path was on slightly better theoretical grounding, but very slightly better. Even before they became big they were completely out of touch and weird, and they operated largely like a cult.
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It's a little more complicated because unlike Khmer Rouge they actually had a proper Marxist basis, but they fucked up their revolution for a bunch of reasons and were extremely violent which gave them a really bad reputation.
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Why did they fuck up? What can other movements do to avoid similar fuckups?
I'm not the most well read on the PCP, so forgive me if this answer is lacking, but the main two things I know were their overconfidence and their unhealthy reliance on their leader. During the height of their conflict with the Peruvian government, they made some very thoughtless mistakes like mistreating the peasantry that they relied on as their base of support. Then once Gonzalo was captured, a good portion of the party was still ready to continue the war, but the upper leadership refused to continue without Gonzalo at the helm and this caused the party to collapse and splinter.
There's definitely a lot to learn from the PCP, both positively and negatively, but I would say if we're reading from their mistakes it would be to follow the mass line, do not get overconfident in the revolution until it has actually succeeded, and ensure the leadership of our movements is flexible and self sufficient.
Yes but run by a lapsed college professor
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How long?......oh you are not pa......umm nevermind yeah lol imagine if that was a thing happening in secret
schniff zhe hegelian dialectish schniff decree zhe baby must be boiled schniff
Do I even wanna know about that?
I mean there us the whole um... schniff you know schiff of course the old wisdom "don't throw out the baby with the bathwater", schniff this misses the proper dialectical materialist point that we should rather throw away the baby schniff and keep the dirty bathwater.
or schniff clean zhe water by boiling it schniff with zhe baby inside
Pol Pot used to be a history teacher
OMFG it really is just eternal recurrence
Nah not even close. Despite them fucking up massively, having horrible and violent wings and outbursts and losing popular support they were way way more legitimate than the Khmer Rouge and an actual revolutionary communist movement practicing people's war (pretty successfully till they didnt).
They are on the same vain and global tide as the people's wars that are still going on in the Phillipines and India (naxalites) etc with very little differences between them and these ideologicaly or in strategies. They just shit the bed hard in the height of the people's war while suspecting everyone as a collaborator ,turned violent against local rural population in a couple of instances and then didnt denounce it leading to them losing popular support and becoming progressively weirded
I mean, this is kinda downplaying how ridiculously brutal shit like Lucanamarca was, and how it was essentially just downplayed as "Shit happens when you do revolutions, sometimes you just torture elderly villagers and small kids with boiling water then hack them to death with machetes, but at least we made our point".
:dril: me and a bunch of stupid assholes are going to start a community in the middle of the desert to either die or prove a very important point :dril:
You can say the same stuff about the Khmer Rouge. They were every bit as bad, they just never got to power. The only difference was that Shining Path was on slightly better theoretical grounding, but very slightly better. Even before they became big they were completely out of touch and weird, and they operated largely like a cult.