Presentation

People's war today is the key strategic line on which a new generation of revolutionary organizations are now building their foundations. Through Marxism-Leninism-Maoism ideology, the strategy of people's war is a political perspective that unifies the revolutionaries and puts the grounds for the next wave of revolutions and peoples' victories.

People's War Digest (PWD) -of which you hold the first issue- is a Canadian publication entirely dedicated to advocate and promote peoples' war. This publication is for struggle and is truly internationalist. But at the same time, it is totally devoted to the Canadian working class, to its struggle for socialism and for its own liberation.

Between World War II and the end of the 20th Century, and being misled by the "legal comfort" provided by bourgeois society, the official Left in the imperialist countries believed to a certain form of "imperialist exception". Most of these official Leftists gave in to the illusion that socialism would come without fighting or still, that it would be brought to us by the struggles of others. It seems for them that revolution is like anything else under capitalism: all the good belongs to the rich (imperialist countries), but the sweat and the efforts come from the poor (oppressed countries).

This so-called Left (revisionist communist parties, social-democrats, Trotskyist organizations) has merged progressively with the bourgeois State, giving birth to one "socialist civil servant" instead of a socialism with a true revolutionary nature. Because of this merger, it benefited from some assets, such as good visibility and institutionalization with an easy mind. On the other hand though, this left is now facing the drawback of its move: it is now being discredited, unable of any initiative, only copying itself in a stilted style. Alike the bourgeoisie-today unable to resolve the contradictions she is struggling with-the legal Left is totally disabled for looking at any step forward to the working class, who need a clear strategy to reach socialism.

It is the Maoist political current that progressively exposed, in the 80's and 90's the futility of this official Left, and held high the red flag of revolution and people's war. From the Andes to the Himalayas, the Maoist activists becoming wiser and stronger in the midst of the fight and of the armed struggle, have open new and courageous paths where they now walk with resolution in Asia, Africa, towards Europe and America.

With People's War Digest, we want to propose to the revolutionary activists in Canada a selection of articles and documents produced by a variety of Maoist parties and organizations or by other revolutionaries if it happens, that will help to understand and to give a wide overview of what the strategic line of people's war is all about. You could find in one article or another, some different points of view or conceptions. Good! This is precisely the goal we have with this selection: to produce progressively a clear and solid understanding of the people's war, by enlightening the weaknesses and hesitations here and there with the strongest we can find elsewhere. That is the first goal of PWD.

We agree to say that this clear and solid understanding would be with no effect if we don't bring it to the heart of the Canadian reality, in the most complex sides of the class struggle, in the revolutionary fight that we wage in our cities, our neighborhoods, our factories. The second goal we have at PWD is to also publish articles and documents that will enable us to confront the general perspective of the people's war, to some of our most concrete facts of life, such as:

• the reality of exploitation in Canada, something that is hidden too often by the bourgeois media and by the empiricism that rules in universities;
• the revolutionary struggle of the First Nations against the Canadian imperialist State;
• the struggle against the class-type democracy of the bourgeois State.

The third goal which is obvious for a Maoist publication is to produce the concrete, i.e. to transform ideas into actions. Mao Zedong rightly wrote the following: "It is necessary to master Marxist theory and apply it, master it for the sole purpose of applying it." (in Rectify the Party's Style of Work) The Maoists can not caution "stay-at-home" Marxism, the reformist chit-chat of the pseudo-communists for whom Marxism is only a topic of conversation. Again, Mao stated with reason: "If we have a correct theory but merely prate about it, pigeonhole it and do not put it into practice, then that theory, however good, is of no significance." (in On Practice)

With People's War Digest, we want to bring our contribution in producing a true and genuine liaison between the Maoists across Canada, a tool at the service of all activists who wish to develop a true and significant revolutionary practice, like what our comrades from the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP[OC]) are doing in Québec.

We are ruled by the political situation. We must clean the thick smog of Canadian reformism which lead us to blindness. We must contribute from our own experience to the fair struggle of the workers, to people's war and to worldwide revolution !

(paru dans the People's War Digest magazine n° 1)