Approved on June 9, 2000. Updated on January 3-4 and May 21, 2004.

1. Ideology and Method

   1. We are Marxists. We believe that the heritage of classical Marxism, in all its fundamental features, adequately reflects the social processes taking place in today’s world. The oblivion into which Marxism has fallen in the Russian public consciousness today is the result of quite specific historical events and this very oblivion can be adequately described within the framework of the categorial apparatus of Marxism itself. A correct approach to social phenomena is impossible without applying the method of historical materialism, the dialectic of the basis and the superstructure, the theory of proletarian revolution, proletarian internationalism.

   2. The legitimate transformation and generalization of the Marxism of Marx and Engels was Marxism-Leninism which explained the transition of the capitalist nations to the stage of imperialism. In our times the legitimate transformation and generalization of the Marxism of Lenin and Stalin is Marxism-Leninism-Maoism with its analysis of the superstructure as the factor which ultimately decides the success or failure of the construction of socialism:

      “The representatives of the bourgeoisie that have crept into the Party, the Government, the Army, and into the different spheres of culture are a group of counterrevolutionary revisionists. At the first opportunity they are ready to seize power and turn the dictatorship of the proletariat into a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.”

      Mao Zedong

2. Problems of History

   1. We believe that socialism which politically can be only the dictatorship of the working people under the leadership of proletariat is a necessary step towards a communist world – a world without inequality or dictatorship. We consider the Soviet Russia and the USSR under V. I. Lenin and J. V. Stalin (1917–1953) and China under Mao Zedong (1949–1976) models of carrying of such dictatorship.

   2. As Maoists, we believe that the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat continues to be waged (in modified forms) under socialism and the principal arena of this struggle becomes the Communist Party leading the socialist construction. The death of Stalin in 1953 and of Mao in 1976 are those historical landmarks after which the victory of the bourgeois elements inside the CPSU and the CCP over proletarian elements was becoming more and more evident. Soon this victory led to the consolidation of typical state capitalism in both countries and to their degeneration into social-imperialist regimes.

   3. From the above follows the unconditionally reactionary character of the slogan of the restoration of the USSR. The nations residing in its former territory may, after each of them has carried out a successful socialist revolution, decide to form a certain kind of an interstate union, but we are not in a position now to predict either the day of its formation, or the nature of this union, or the concrete forms it will take.

3. Contemporary World

   1. The world today appears to us divided into three groups of countries: (1) countries of the Metropolis (the U$A, the Western European states, Japan, etc.); (2) comparatively rich and/or having a big military/industial potential countries which hold an intermediate position (Russia is among them); (3) countries of the Third World (the most of post-Soviet countries are there), exploited by the former two groups of nations.

   2. The revolutionary role of the proletariat in each of the above groups of countries is different.

      1. In the countries of the Metropolis the working class is bought off with the superprofits gained from the exploitation of the Third Worlds and cannot, at the present stage, be considered a revolutionary force. The national contradiction is to be considered the principal one in the given group of countries, while the principal revolutionary forces there are the opressed minority of the working class usually not belonging to the historically dominant national groups (including Gastarbeiter) and the revolutionary intelligentsia.

      2. In the semi-imperialist countries the proletariat as a whole potentially is the main motive force of socialist revolution, while the principal contradiction at this stage is the class one. However, due to the ambivalent socio-economic position of these countries the proletariat here is infected with nationalist and chauvinist ideology, harbors reformist illusions. The main ally of the proletariat in its struggle against the bourgeoisie here is the revolutionary petty bourgeoisie.

      3. In the Third World countries the struggle of the proletariat for its own rights is inseparable from the struggle of these nations for the true national independence. Here the natural allies of the proletariat are the petty bourgeoisie and the considerable part of the national bourgeoisie. The immediate task of the proletariat’s struggle here in many cases is not a socialist, but a bourgeois-democratic revolution, and the main method of this struggle, the strategy of the People’s War.

4. Strategy and Tactics

   1. We believe that correct tactics flow from correct strategies, which flow from a correct ideological and political line. We believe that the fight against imperialism, capitalism and patriarchy goes hand in hand with the fight against revisionism, chauvinism, and opportunism.

   2. Our goal is carrying out a socialist revolution and going on to build communism – a society excluding any form of oppression of one social group by another: class oppression, national oppression, gender oppression.

   3. The motive force of this revolution is the working class, while its conductor is an avant-garde disciplined revolutionary Communist Party, a Party with a system of democratic centralism. The latter system includes organization, leadership, discipline and hierarchy.

   4. We believe that the ruling bourgeoisie will never give up its power without a fight. Putting an end to the bourgeois dictatorship is only possible by building public opinion to seize power through armed struggle. We believe, however, that any armed insurrection on the territory of Russia will be inevitably crushed until an arising of objective conditions for its mass support of the potentially revolutionary strata of the population.

   5. The building on the territory of Russia of an avant-garde disciplined revolutionary Communist party guided by the theory of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism is hindered by objective historical conditions resulting from the long years of rule of revisionist Khrushchevite-Brezhnevite social-imperialism.

      1. The main consequence of this rule for the post-Soviet Russian proletariat is the fact that it has lost not only its traditions of mass revolutionary struggle, but even the elementary skills of self-organizing, its readiness to defend its rights, its libertarian values and aspirations towards self-government. The working class of contemporary Russia is divided, passive, indifferent towards politics. Overcoming this situation will take a long time.

      2. The inability of contemporary Russian “Communist movement” to develop a correct ideological and political line is the direct consequence of its being theoretically, organizationally, and on the level of cadres deeply rooted in the revisionist CPSU of the Khrushchevite-Brezhnevite period. The worst part of the CPSU legacy in the Russian “Communist movement” are such ugly phenomena as chauvinism, xenophobia, anti-democratism. These are impossible to overcome without a renaissance of the revolutionary traditions of the working class.

   6. We believe our principal tactical task to be revolutionary agitation and propaganda of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism among the proletariat and the intelligentsia.

      It is should also be noted that modern Marxism-Leninism-Maoism is inconceivable without seriously tackling the problems of national liberation (unconditional recognition of the right of nations to self-determination); sexism and patriarchy (struggle for the rights of wimmin and GLBT); bourgeois democracy (demands for the maximum possible rights and liberties, declared, but in most cases not observed, by the state); the environment (the predatory attitude towards nature by any modern state can only be stopped by the victory of the socialist revolution).

Long live the great proletarian red banner of the ideas of Mao Zedong!
Workers and oppressed nations of all countries, unite!