Socialist Strategy in Peru, Documents by José Carlos Mariátegui
On the party, class organizations, national populism, and mass politics.
The New Pro-Indigenous Crusade
On the political significance of indigenismo.1
An association of intellectual and manual workers—teachers, writers, artists, professionals, workers, peasants—has just been born in Cuzco, which intends to carry out a great crusade for the Indian. It is called the Grupo Resurgimiento. The list of its founders includes the representative men of Cuzco indigenismo: Luis E. Valcárcel, J. Uriel García, Luis F. Paredes, Casiano Rado, Roberto la Torre, etc. And in the first sessions of the group other leaders of the Indigenous renaissance have been included: Francisco Choquehuanca Ayulo, Dora Mayer de Zulen, Manuel Quiroga, Julio C. Tello, Rebeca Carrión, Francisco Mostajo and our great painter José Sabogal. There are still several more missing, among others César Vallejo, Antenor Orrego, Enrique López Albújar, Víctor R. Haya de la Torre, Julián Palacios, Gamaliel Churata, Alejandro Peralta, Jorge Basadre, J. Eulogio Garrido. But what has been formed is only the initial nucleus that, little by little, will reinforce its ranks with the other people who, in the current historical period, represent the cause of the Indian, in its various aspects. I am particularly honored by my inclusion.
The Resurgence Group does not appear untimely. Its constitution has its immediate origin in the protest provoked in Cuzco by recent denunciations of excesses and cruelties of gamonalismo [communal peonage under a landowner]. But this is only the episodic, accidental cause. The gestation process of the Group comes from further away. It is mixed up with that of the spiritual and ideological movement aroused by those who, based on similar principles or common feelings, think, as I have already said, that "the progress of the Peru will be fictitious, or at least it will not be Peruvian, as long as it does not constitute the work and does not represent the welfare of the Peruvian mass, which in its four fifths is Indigenous and peasant.”
This movement heralds and prepares a profound national transformation. Those who consider it an artificial literary current, which will exhaust itself in a passing declamation, do not perceive the depth of its roots or the universality of its sap. New literature and ideology, art and thought, have in Peru, within the natural and convenient variety of temperaments and personalities, the same intimate sentimental accent. A complex spiritual phenomenon is accomplished, which is expressed differently but coherently by Sabogal's painting and Vallejo's poetry, Valcárcel's historical interpretation and Orrego's philosophical speculation, all of which show a spirit purged of intellectual and aesthetic colonialism. Through the paintings of Sabogal and Camilo Blas and the poems of Vallejo and Peralta, the same blood circulates. The same sentiment is found in the apostrophes of Valcárcel, Haya de la Torre and Gamaliel Churata. It identifies them with a certain messianic intonation.
And the national phenomenon is not differentiated or disconnected, in its spirit, from the world phenomenon. On the contrary, it receives its ferment and its impulse from it. The leaven of the new Indigenous demands is the socialist idea, not as we have inherited it instinctively from the extinct Inca, but as we have learned it from Western civilization, in whose science and in whose technique only utopian romanticisms can fail to see the inalienable and magnificent acquisitions of modern man.
We currently have many signs of the presence of a palingenetic renewing spirit, which is nourished at the same time by autochthonous feeling and universal thought. More or less simultaneously, the magazines "Amauta" and "La Sierra" have appeared in Lima, "La Puna" in Ayaviri, "Pacha" in Arequipa (all do not adopt the same word, but all want to express the same truth); Alejandro Peralta has shown us his book "Ande" that points him out to us as the modern, Western poet of the primitive, hieratic "oriental” Andes; and the Resurgence Group that motivates this comment has been founded in Cuzco.
Three weeks ago—just when this Group was being constituted—I wrote in "Mundial" that, after the experiment of the Pro-Indigenous Association, whose balance has been made with such loyalty by its generous animator Dora Mayer de Zulen, had been ended and liquidated, the demands of the race had entered a new phase and had acquired a broader scope, so that the old "pro-Indigenous" method of humanitarian and philanthropic fund was absolutely no longer valid.
In accordance with this conviction, it seems clear to me that the Resurgence Group, which arrives in due time, begins a new experience, typical of the new historical situation. Even in the fact that the protest voice is leaving Cuzco this time, I think I see a symbol. The logical seat of the Pro-Indigenous Association was Lima. The natural headquarters of the Resurgence Group is Cuzco.
This group, with very good accordance, in its statute, which otherwise must be considered only as a sketch or an outline, still complete, does not present us with a body of definitive propositions on the Indigenous problem. It confines itself to declaring its spiritual and practical solidarity with the Indian. And it declares that "as long as the ideology of the new Indian is concretized and defined, it must operate its spiritual transformation, enunciating and solving the problem of Indigenous resurgence,” it will be engaged in the realization of the immediate goals of defense, education and fraternity.
Message to the Workers’ Congress
On the meaning of class organization.2
The first Workers’ Congress [Congreso Obrero] of Lima, realized, within its means, its essential object, giving life to the Local Workers’ Federation [Federación Obrera Local]; cell, nucleus and foundation of the organization of the working class of Peru. Its natural program, modest in appearance, was reduced to this step. The development, the work of the Local Workers' Federation, during these five years, demonstrates that in that assembly, the vanguard workers of Lima, through uncertain trials, knew how to find, finally, their way.
The second Congress is coming in its time. It has taken a while; but it would not be fair to blame this on its organizers. And their purposes are, of course, novel and their own. Now, it is about taking one more step and one must know how to take it with resolution and success.
The experience of five years of union work in Lima should be reviewed and utilized. Propositions and debates that in 1922 would have been premature and inopportune, can be approached today with the precise elements of judgment related in this period of struggle The discussion of orientations, of praxis, is not born as sterile as when it rests exclusively on abstractions. The history of the last years of the world crisis, so full of reflections and lessons for the proletariat, demands a realistic approach from its leaders. We must radically divest ourselves of old dogmatism, discredited prejudices and archaic superstitions.
Marxism, which everyone talks about but which very few know and, above all, understand, is a fundamentally dialectical method. That is, a method that is based entirely on reality, on facts. It is not, as some mistakenly suppose, a body of principles of rigid consequences, the same for all historical climates and all social latitudes. [Karl] Marx drew his method from the very core of history. Marxism, in every country, in every people, operates and acts on the environment; on the environment, without neglecting any of its modalities. That is why, after more than half a century of struggle, its strength is constantly increasing. The Russian communists, the English Labourists, the German socialists, etc. also claim Marx. This fact alone is valid against all objections towards the validity of the Marxist method.
Revolutionary syndicalism, whose greatest teacher is Georges Sorel—also less known to our workers than his adjectives and mediocre repeaters, paraphrasers and falsifiers—absolutely does not deny the Marxist tradition. On the contrary, it completes and expands it. In its impulse, in its essence, in its ferment, revolutionary syndicalism constituted precisely a rebirth of the revolutionary spirit, that is, the Marxist one, provoked by the reformist and parliamentary degeneration of the socialist parties. (Of the socialist parties, not of Socialism). Georges Sorel felt identically distant from the tame socialists of the parliament as from the incandescent anarchists of the riot and sporadic violence.
The revolutionary crisis opened by the war has fundamentally changed the terms of the ideological debate. The opposition between socialism and trade unionism no longer exists. The old revolutionary syndicalism, in the very country where it claimed to be most purely and faithfully Sorelian—France—has aged and degenerated, no more and no less than the old parliamentary socialism, against which it reacted and revolted. A part of that trade unionism is now as reformist and as gentrified as right-wing socialism, with which it tenderly collaborates. No one is unaware that the post-war crisis broke the C.G.T. (French General Confederation of Labour [Confédération Générale du Travail]) into two factions, one of which works alongside the Socialist Party and the other marches with the Communist Party. Old trade union leaders, who until recently filled their mouths with the names of [Fernand] Pelloutier and Sorel, are now cooperating with the most tame reformist politicians of socialism.
The new situation has thus brought about a new rupture, or better, a new split. The revolutionary spirit is not now represented by those who represented it before the war. The terms of the debate have totally changed. Georges Sorel, before he died, had time to greet the Russian Revolution as the dawn of a new age. One of his last writings is his "Defense of Lenin.”
To repeat the commonplaces of pre-war trade unionism, in the face of an essentially different situation, is to persist in a superseded attitude. It is to behave with absolute disregard of the accelerating and convulsing historical process of recent years. Especially when the commonplaces that are repeated are not those of true Sorelian trade unionism, but those of its bad Spanish or, rather, Catalan translation. (If there is anything to be learned from the anarchizing syndicalism of Barcelona, it is undoubtedly the lesson of its failure.)
Besides, the programmatic debate between us does not have to get lost in theoretical ramblings. The trade union organization does not need labels, but a spirit. I have already said in "Amauta" that this is a country of labels. And here I want to repeat it. To get lost in sterile principled debates, in a proletariat where principles still have such weak roots, would serve only to disorganize the workers when what is at stake is precisely to organize them.
The slogan of the congress should be proletarian unity.
Theoretical differences do not prevent agreement on a programme of action. The united front of the workers is our goal. In the work of constituting it, the vanguard workers have the duty to set the example. On the tasks of the day, nothing divides us: everything unites us.
The Syndicate must demand of its members only the acceptance of the class principle. Within the Syndicate there are reformist socialists as well as trade unionists, communists as well as libertarians. The Syndicate constitutes, fundamentally and exclusively, a class organ. The praxis, the tactics, depend on the current that predominates within it. And there is no reason to distrust the instinct of the majorities. The masses always follow the creative, realistic, confident, heroic spirits. The best prevail when they know how to truly be the best.
There is, therefore, no real difficulty in understanding each other about the program of the workers' organization. Otherwise, there are all the Byzantine discussions about remote goals. The proletariat in the vanguard has, under its eyes, concrete questions: the national organization of the working class, solidarity with the demands of the Indigenous, the defense and promotion of popular cultural institutions, cooperation with the braceros and yanaconas of the estates, the development of the workers' press, etc., etc.
These are the questions that should be of major concern to us. Those who provoke splits and dissidence, in the name of abstract principles, without contributing anything to the study and solution of these concrete problems, consciously or unconsciously betray the proletarian cause.
It is up to the second Workers' Congress to lay the foundations for a general confederation of labour that will bring together all the trade unions and workers' associations of the republic that adhere to a class program. The object of the first congress was local organization; that of the second should be, as far as possible, national organization.
Class consciousness must be formed. The organizers are well aware that for the most part the workers have nothing but a corporate or guild spirit. This spirit must be broadened and educated until it becomes a class spirit. The first thing to supersede and win against is the anarchoid, individualistic, egotist spirit, which besides being profoundly anti-social, constitutes nothing but the exasperation and degeneration of the old bourgeois liberalism; the second thing to overcome is the spirit of the corporation, of the office, of the category.
Class consciousness does not translate into empty and loud declamations. (It is extremely comical to hear, for example, protests of delusional and extremist internationalism from a man, gorged with bookish revolutionism, who has not freed himself at times, in his practical behavior and vision, of bell-tower and bourgeois sentiments and motives.)
Class consciousness translates into solidarity with all the fundamental demands of the working class. And it also translates into discipline. There is no solidarity without discipline. No great human work is possible without the association being carried out with the sufficient sacrifice of the men who attempt it.
Before concluding these lines, I want to tell you that it is necessary to give the proletariat of the vanguard, at the same time as a realistic sense of history, a heroic will to creation and fulfillment. The desire for improvement, the appetite for wellbeing is not enough. The defeats, the failures of the European proletariat have their origin in the mediocre positivism with which passive trade union bureaucracies and soft parliamentary teams cultivated in the masses a Sancho Panza-esque mentality and a cowardly spirit. A proletariat with no other ideal than the reduction of working hours and the increase of wages by cents will never be capable of a great historical enterprise. And just as one must rise above a ventral and gross positivism, one must also rise above negative, destructive, nihilistic feelings and interests. The revolutionary spirit is a constructive spirit. And the proletariat, as well as the bourgeoisie, have their solvent, corrosive elements, which unconsciously work for the dissolution of their own class.
I will not discuss the congress program in detail. These greeting lines are not a guideline but an opinion. The opinion of an intellectual colleague who strives to fulfill, without easy demagogic declamations, with honest sense of his responsibility, with discipline, his duty.
The Power of the Cooperatives
Cooperatives in socialist strategy.3
When we discuss the need to encourage the establishment of consumer cooperatives, the economic principles that universally govern the development of cooperation are often ignored. Cooperatives are usually considered as private companies that can arise from personal effort, even if this is not articulated with an organized mass of consumers, and develops within an individualistic and inorganic environment. Cooperation is, however, an economic method that, even by the word that designates it, should not lend itself to confusion. It is obvious that without cooperators there is no cooperation. And it is not possible to associate these cooperators with the exclusive purpose of constituting a cooperative, without some prior community link. The cooperative is usually born from the labor union. It does not need, unlike the private enterprise, which faces the risks of free competition, to gradually acquire a clientele of consumers. Its commercial security rests precisely on the mass of its associates. The profits that guarantee the consumption of these are enough for it to subsist.
Economic science has long since clarified the laws of cooperation. In our universities and colleges, economics is studied according to the texts of Charles Gide, who is precisely characterized by his recalcitrant cooperativism. And the experiments of cooperation that have prospered among us objectively and concretely confirm the principle that the consumer cooperative finds the proper conditions for its development only in the masses or groups of workers or employees, susceptible to association.
There is no reason to be deceived about the reasons why cooperation has not been extended and accredited more in our country. An incipient cooperativism is in strict correspondence with an embryonic syndicalism. The union regularly precedes the cooperative, because a category or a group of workers is associated for the defense of their most basic economic interests, rather than for their supply of groceries, clothes and crockery. Cooperativism is, typically, one of the creations of the capitalist economy, although in most cases it appears inspired by a socialist orientation, or, more accurately, prepares the elements of a socialization.
The Guildist movement—the culmination of cooperativism—would not have been possible in Great Britain without the bases that the trade-unionist movement spontaneously offered. And the same can be said of all countries where cooperativism has achieved a remarkable degree of prosperity. In all these countries, it has been the trade union association, and not any so-called "Labourist" committee, that has been the engine of cooperation. "The present-day workers' unions," writes an authoritative guild leader, "constitute the natural bases of the guilds." The guild surpasses the cooperative both because it is conceived on a national plan, instead of a local plan, and because it looks at the socialization of an entire industry; but, for this very reason, it makes it possible to appreciate, with the greatest possible accuracy, the degree of solidarity between cooperativism and syndicalism.
To the extent that the advance of syndicalism is hindered in a country, the progress of cooperation also makes way. This does not mean—as the extreme cooperativists suppose—that the cooperative spontaneously leads to socialism with the same or greater certainty than the trade union. The cooperative, within a regime of free competition, and even with a certain favor from the State, is not opposed, but on the contrary useful, to capitalist enterprises. Georges Sorel considers them "excellent auxiliaries of capitalism, since they allow it to trade directly with the clientele and be able to take advantage of all the increase in consumption that normally corresponds to a reduction in prices.” (This is why the great teacher of revolutionary syndicalism does not underestimate the role of cooperatives. He widely recognizes that they are very interesting fields of experience and that "they teach us which supply services it is possible to socialize profitably and how this socialization can be operated"). The trade union itself has its origin in the class struggle; but it does not ordinarily function as an organ of conciliation and compromise. Henri de Man is right when, in his recent book—so vulnerable in other respects—he observes that the trade union maintains feelings in the worker that make him accept the workshop and work under conditions that, without the moral stimuli of the association, would end up seeming intolerable. "This trade union movement," De Man writes, "which the employers accuse of fomenting the aversion to work, and which is, in large part, the consequence of this disease, effectively contributes to sustaining or creating the conditions that can favor work’s pleasantness. This is the work that the trade unions are doing, fighting for an increase in wages and a reduction in working hours. In this way they protect the worker against misery and fatigue and allow him to see in work something other than an abominable servitude. They give him the awareness of his human dignity without which all work is nothing but slavery."
In Peru, the development of cooperatives cannot but be subordinated, in accordance with the teachings of economic theory and practice, either to the development of trade union action, or to the general factors of our economic process. But, nevertheless, Peru is one of the Latin American countries where cooperation finds the most spontaneous and peculiar elements of support. Indigenous communities gather as many moral and material skills as possible to transform themselves into production and consumption cooperatives. Castro Pozo has rightly studied this capacity of the "communities,” in which undoubtedly resides, against the interested skepticism of some, an active and vital element of socialist achievements.
While in the cities, as well as in the agricultural centers of the country, the trade union or trade unionist base on which consumer cooperatives can rest is still lacking, in the Indigenous peasant centers, community traditions offer the elements of an integral cooperativism.
The True Scope of Mutualist Propaganda
A critique of class collaborationism.4
The class consciousness of the workers must be alert against a danger that, judgmentally disguised, insinuates itself in the workers' ranks. At a time when all over the world, mutual aid societies are considered as a primitive system of professional association, which the progress of social insurance on the one hand and syndicates on the other, has deprived of all importance and usefulness, an active mutualist propaganda is starting in Peru. What does this propaganda propose? What are their real goals? It is not difficult to find out.
If in any country there is reason for mutualism to be discredited, it is in ours, as in all those where, due to a retrograde craft, which has not been able to emancipate itself from servility and the habits of inferiority and lackadaisy contracted in a feudal society, mutualism has vegetated miserably, without aptitude to rise above its rudimentary origins, always ready to supply sycophants and courtiers to all of the powerful. The Creole-type mutual aid societies have preserved a funerary physiognomy, from the point of view of their services, and a tendency to ornamentary, from the point of view of their social and spiritual role. The general staff of the pseudo-workers' and mercenary assemblies, which have always prostituted the name of the working class, where has it invariably recruited its members from? And all those ignorant and conservative people, when have they even been aware of what mutuality was in other countries and the possibilities of developing and improving it?
It would be explained, no doubt, why mutual societies were striving to preside over and promote a movement for the organization of savings banks, cooperatives, etc., if, in the field of mutuality, they had been able to get in tune with the progress of this social institution in Europe, if they had an organ that revealed intellectual and technical preparation for such an undertaking, if in some way they represented a respectable and prestigious group of worthy associations, whose backwardness and servility should not be blamed.
But, in the absence of all these factors, there is nothing that authorizes mutualist propaganda in Peru, as a progressive and spontaneous activity of a sector of the working class. And it is clear that what is at stake is to take advantage of an instant of temporary crisis of the syndical organization to separate the workers from their own way, enrolling them in idyllic mutual aid associations where, through some interested subsidies, certain patrons and some gullible marks, they will conjure the demon of syndicalism with mellifluous hymns to mutuality.
Because it is not only the propaganda of mutuality that is accomplished, without dispensing with the other aspects of the workers' organization. If that were the case, the mutual aid society campaign would not worry us and we would have nothing to say about their motives. What is being pursued is to make mutuality the sole goal of the worker, assuring them that there is no more effective and practical means of organization. And it is this that must be denounced, so that real workers do not fall into a snare, good for a certain kind of craftsmen and petty bourgeois, accessible to all these and worse preaching.
Mr. [Ricardo] Tizón [y] Bueno, the mentor of this movement, has said with manifest intention: "We must fight by flying high only the flag of mutualism." These words confirm the general meaning of their propaganda, aimed at lulling the industrial proletariat, as the vanguard of its class, diverting it from the unions, from effectively class-based action.
This movement will undoubtedly fail because, in the most elementary practice of factory life, the workers discover for themselves that they need an organ of cohesion and defense and that this can be none other than the trade union, to which all other corporate activities must be subordinated. But the mutualist propaganda, by having economic means, journalistic pages and a thousand other elements, which reveal the interest of the employer class in supporting it, can nevertheless cause much confusion and lend life, even if it is only apparent, to organizations such as the Association for the Promotion of Mutuality [Asociación para el fomento de la Mutualidad] in Peru, installed last January 6, with a great luxury of anti-classist statements and acts.
The worker who seconds this propaganda is, depending on their knowledge or ignorance of what they truly represent, a conscious or unconscious traitor of their class. Capitalism acts behind all these maneuvers which seem innocent, but are clearly aimed at corrupting the pliable or backward sectors of the proletariat, to undermine and hinder trade union organization, to relax the class sentiment of the workers, to place them under the self-interested influence of political elements who, no matter how much they protest about the apolitical character of their work, cannot disguise the real spirit of it, nor its links with the most conservative and reactionary elements of national politics.
The syndicate is—contrary to everything that those interested in demoralizing the trade union organization say, in order to more easily crush it—the natural and rational form of organization of the workers, the only one that can defend their rights, the only one suitable to represent their interests, in front of capital. Mutual funds, savings and assistance, can and should be attached to the trade union organization as long as social insurance does not exist in Peru.
Well, although the directors hide it from the mutualist propaganda, social insurance is the institution that replaces, in the States considered as models, the very old and discredited mutual aid societies. Where mutual societies subsist, it is because they have managed to ascend by themselves to the functions and structure of that new institution. It is anachronistic to speak, in a country yet to be organized, of mutualism.
The mutualist propaganda abuses, in this as in other aspects, in the most implausible way, the naivety of its listeners or readers. Thus, for example, when the enterprising engineer mentor of these campaigns says that "one of the secrets of the relative success that mutual aid societies have achieved so far has been their detachment from active politics." Is Mr. Tizón y Bueno referring to the mutual aid societies of Peru? But who is unaware that, for the most part, they have obeyed cliques that have always acted as clubs of capitulators? What else, if not that, have those endless lists of patrons and honorary members that constitute the signature of these institutions meant? When have honorary presidents and vice presidents not been politicians? Hasn't this same Association for the Promotion of Mutuality in Peru started by acclaiming several politicians as founding members? Now, it may be that the Mr. Manager's phrase of "Victory" has another intention and that's why he spoke of "active politics.” Mutual societies would not have created active politics—too much honor, no doubt—but passive politics, that is, a politics of flattery, of abjection, of servitude, of vassalage.
Alert, conscious workers! Alert to danger! We must be more vigilant than ever against all dangerous infiltrations. "The emancipation of the working class will be the work of the workers themselves." This should be your motto, today as always.
Manifesto from the "Workers' General Confederation of Peru" to the Working Class of the Country
A definitive statement of class organization in Peru.5
The creation of the Center of the Peruvian Proletariat closes all series of attempts by the working class to give life to a Unitary Federation of the workers' guilds. In 1913, the "Maritime and Terrestrial Federation" arose, with headquarters in Callao, and a subcommittee, in Lima, which after waging different struggles disappeared in the year 1915. In 1918, on the occasion of the struggle for the eight-hour day, the "Pro-Eight Hours” Committee was created, which brought the movement to its culmination. The following year, the Committee "For the Cheapening of Subsistence" was created, and the "Peruvian Regional Federation" was born from this Committee, which convened the First Workers' Congress in 1921. In 1922 this Federation was transformed into the "Local Workers’ Federation of Lima,” an organization that, although by its name seemed destined only for the workers of Lima, was concerned with the problems of the workers of provinces, knowing and raising claims in favor of the workers of Huacho, peasants of Ica, at the time of the massacre of Parcona, the same as when the massacres of Indigenous people in Huancané and La Mar. The anarcho-syndicalist heritage, which prevailed in it, detracted from the effectiveness of its activities, giving rise to serious conflicts over "ideological" supremacy, which culminated in the Local Workers' Congress of 1926. This Congress, despite the disorientation of the congressmen who spent three weeks discussing the "ideological orientation,” approved a motion that dealt with the transformation of the Local into the "Peruvian Syndical Union" This resolution, that when effective would have produced a great advance of the trade union movement, could not be put into practice, both because of the little support given to it by the dissolving organizations and because of the repression of the month of June, which ended with the Local Congress and Federation. While, in Lima, it was about giving life to a Trade Union Center, the workers of the provinces worked in the same direction, creating in Ica the "Federation of Peasants,” in Puno the "Regional Federation of the South,” and in Trujillo, the "Regional Labor Union.” But it is only the Committee for the First of May, this year, that lays the foundations for the constitution of the Center of the Peruvian Proletariat. The manifesto it launched (reproduced in "Labor" No. 8) on this occasion was an appeal to the proletariat for the creation of its Center. The birth of our Center is therefore not the work of chance, but of a whole process that the Peruvian Proletariat has followed, in its effort of vindication. The popular assemblies of April 30 and May 1, held at the premises of the comrade chauffeurs of Lima, approved the following conclusions for the creation of our Central. 1.—To fight for the creation of a united trade union front without distinction of tendencies in a United Center of the Proletariat. 2.—To fight for the creation and maintenance of the Proletarian Press. 3.—To fight for the freedom of association, assembly, press, tribune. 4.—To defend and enforce the laws that concern the worker, which have been grossly violated by capitalist reaction today. In order to implement these conclusions, the assemblies authorized with their unanimous vote the Committee Pro-1st of May to continue the organizational work under the name of the Committee "Pro-Workers’ General Confederation of Peru.” This Committee expanded its radius of action to Callao, and on May 17, the session was held in which the Provisional Committee of the "Workers’ General Confederation of Peru" was constituted, composed of delegates from the Federations of Drivers, Textile, Yanaconas, and Unification of Beer Workers, for Lima; Federation of Railway Workers of Chosica, Federation of Cabotage Crew, Society of Stevedores, and Wood Workers Union, for Callao. Thus, our Confederation was born, and counting on the adhesion of the Confederate Maritime Society, Unification of Callao Brewers, Society of Masons, Guild of Fideleros and Millers, English Railway Society, Industrialists of the Callao Market, and Federation of Bakers of Peru, plus some from the Center and North, we address the workers and peasants of the country, so that responding to the historical call of your class, they proceed to create the syndical organization, both in the factory, company, mines, ports, as in the farms, valleys and communities.
Up to the present there has always been talk of organization, but in a general sense, without the workers being able to realize the type of class organization that claims the defense of their interests. The "Workers’ General Confederation of Peru" addresses this problem by outlining in broad strokes the form of organization, for which it will fight incessantly. The general situation of the country, with its incipient industrial development in the cities, feudal character of the latifundismo on the coast and in the mountains, has prevented until now the class development of the proletariat. The craft sector has turned to its mutual societies, seeing in them the only type of workers' association. But today, when there are large concentrations of proletarian masses in the mines, ports, factories, factories, plantations, etc., this type of organization, which has corresponded to the stage of handicrafts, is decaying, giving way to the trade union system. What are the advantages of union organizing? The trade union organization, in the first place, has the advantage that it allows the grouping of all the workers who work in the same company, or industry, in a single organization without distinction of race, age, sex, or beliefs, for the struggle for their economic improvement, for the defense of their class interests. Secondly, it banishes the bureaucratism established by the mutualist system, which hands over all the management machinery into the hands of the president, who in many cases is not even a worker. Thirdly, it trains the worker to manage their interests on their own by educating and developing their class spirit, banishing the intermediary who almost always turns out to be an opportunist politician. And fourthly, being an economic defense organization, it solves all the economic problems of the workers, with the formation, under its supervision, of mutual funds, cooperatives, etc., which are nothing more than sections of the union, as are the sections of workers' sports, culture, solidarity, artistry, library, etc. These are the fundamental advantages of trade union organization (without being all of them). For this reason, the Confederation launches this word of order, facing the problem of organization: the constitution of workers' unions, of company, factory, mines, maritime, agricultural, and Indigenous. The word union does not enunciate a closed formula. We well know that there are places where it is not possible to establish unions, either because of the lack of factories, companies, etc., or because the mere announcement of the word union, sounds the alarm of the prejudices and backwardness of the environment. In that case, it is necessary to establish various trade unions, associations, or societies, which respond to a sense of backing up, that is, organizations created, sustained, and directed by workers, without the intervention of politicians or bosses, even as presidents or honorary partners. The worker must suffice in the representation and defense of their interests without having to resort to commitments that in the end have to burden them.
The syndical organization is therefore born as a force of the proletariat that has to face and solve multiple class problems, among which the ones we deal with immediately are outlined.
Problems of the Industrial Proletariat. Rationalization
The advance of finance capital finds no better channel through which to prosper than the incessant exploitation of the working class. The present system of the rationalization of industry shows us how the bourgeoisie organizes its system of exploitation. This exploitation is found in the large companies (we will mention among others the "Fred T. Law and Company"), which for their better "development" make a clean slate of the rights that assist workers, with the system used of piece work and "contractors.” These intermediaries, in order to get their daily wage, which is at risk due to "professional" competition, receive workers who submit to working 9 and 10 hours a day for a meager salary. The system implemented by the Fredetik Snare Company, and in the port works of Callao, by paying the workers both hourly, (the peons earn 25 cents an hour, regardless of Sundays or holidays), forces them to work 10 and 12 hours a day to bring home a wage that helps them not to die of hunger. The system, in short, of the big Railway Companies that pay by mileage, of the mining companies with their contracting systems creating foremen, etc. of textile factories, wood factories, electrical companies, etc.; with their system of parts and pieces, are so many other methods implemented by the rationalization of industry. The workers, faced with the lack of work for some, and the prospect of a penny more for others, will not reflect on the danger of submitting to these methods and, when they feel that, as they are disorganized, they have no one to defend and protect them. The work section of the Ministry of Public Works is already aware of countless claims of this nature, claims that cannot be all since those who claim are only the most "audacious.” To face this problem, therefore, there is nothing but the organization of the exploited masses into solid trade unions. At the same time that we note the exploitation regime in which the city worker is debated, we have to record the inhuman way in which the national sailor is treated and paid, without a regulation of wages, without measures that defend them from the voracity of the shipowner. The national merchant seaman suffers a series of deprivations and humiliations: the rude treatment of the captains and pilots of ships, the derisory salary they receive (fluctuating from 25 to 50 soles per month), the lack of guarantees of safety by some ships, all of which make life for these comrades not odious but impossible. Seafarers will find protection only in their organization, in the national organization based on the ship and port committees.
The Youth Problem
Up to the present the problem of the working youth has not been raised among us, moreover, many do not attach importance to it, but if we stop to study it we will see conclusively that it cannot be relegated and that the organization of the youth will give us a more active force for our struggles. Let us consider the young apprentices who work in the workshops, factories, etc., and we will see how they are exploited by the "patrón" from the moment of their entry. First of all, we will see in the workshops that, because they lack the proper notions of the “official,” they have to carry out domestic commissions and many others, even in the home of the "patrón,” which have nothing to do with the trade they are going to learn. The working day for apprentices in the best of cases is 10 hours, but there are workshops where they work until 10 and 11 at night; that is, they work 14 hours a day. The initial daily wage, if those who work without receiving anything are dispensed with, is 80 cents, or 1 sol, for a daily wage, which does not vary until, in the opinion of the employer, the apprentice is already official; their wage then goes up to two soles, that is to say that when a youth becomes an official they can replace the operator and compete with them in the execution of the works, in a proportion of 50 or 60 percent. Usually the officials serve as a replacement so that they see that they already know how to work, and in this way the heads of workshops have a staff that, replacing the qualified workers of the “operators,” do not get to earn but 40 or 50 percent of their salary. If we come across these scenes in the workshops where, due to the way they work, are often in the public eye, let's think about how young people can be treated in the small "factories,” in the countryside where the tenant or orchard owners have at their service, for every adult worker, two or three "cholitos" who work the same as the big "cholos," but who have the advantage of eating less and earning less too. In the mines and companies we find young people as much or worse exploited as in the workshops or orchards. But where the exploitation of youth reaches its height, it is undoubtedly in the very house of the bourgeois. There we find them performing the functions of errand boy, dry cleaner, cook, laundress, in short all the functions proper to the "servants” working from six in the morning until ten or eleven at night, the time when they finish their work to go to sleep in their "bed” (a better one of which the dog has in the bourgeois house). The form of "recruitment" of these "kids" also shows us the medieval spirit of our bourgeoisie: a landowner or gamonal sends from their "domains" to children torn from their parents under the pretext that they are sent to read and write at their relatives' house; compadres, or friends, from the city, where we find them barefoot, semi-naked, and with the well-known "seams" on their heads, all signs of the good "treatment" they give them. The salary that this youthful mass earns is the shoes and old clothes of the "child" and five or ten cents as a tip a week. Conscious workers, i.e. unionized workers, have to face this problem head on, the problem of youth, which is the problem of all the exploited. Its treatment, its focus within the social-demand struggles, should be a task assumed with all the attention it deserves, instituting within each union the youth section where young people enjoy the same rights as adult workers; integrated by the youngest and most enthusiastic comrades; these sections will be the ones that will deal with and solve the problems of the working class youth.
The Woman Problem
If the youthful masses are so cruelly exploited, the proletarian women suffer the same or worse exploitation. Until very recently, the proletarian woman had limited her work to domestic activities at home. With the advance of industrialism she enters to compete with the worker in the factory, workshop, company, etc., banishing the prejudice that enclosed her to have a convent life. If woman advances on the path of her emancipation on a bourgeois-democratic terrain, on the other hand, this fact supplies the capitalist with cheap labor at the same time as a serious competitor to the male worker. This is how we see them in textile factories, biscuit shops, laundries, packaging and cardboard box factories, soaps, etc., where performing the same functions as the worker, from operating the machine to the slightest occupation, she always earns 40 to 60 percent less than the male. At the same time that women are trained to perform functions in industry, they also enter the activities of offices, commercial houses, etc., always competing with men and to great advantage for industrial enterprises that obtain an appreciable decrease in wages and an immediate increase in their profits. In agriculture and mines we find the proletarian woman in open competition with the worker, and wherever we investigate we find large masses of exploited women providing their services in all kinds of activities. The entire defense of working women is reduced to Law 2851, which, due to its deficient regulation, by the way, despite the spirit of the legislator, in practice does not fulfill its purposes, and therefore does not prevent the exploitation of which the worker is the victim. In the process of our social struggles the proletariat has had to put forward precise demands in its defense; the textile unions, which are the ones that have been most concerned with this problem up to now, although poorly, have on more than one occasion gone on strike in order to enforce provisions that, being framed in the Law, the managers have refused to comply with. We have capitalists (like the "friend" of the worker, Mr. [Ricardo] Tizón y Bueno) who have not hesitated to consider as a "crime" the fact that a worker has given indications that she was going to be a mother, a "crime" that has determined her violent dismissal to circumvent the provisions of the Law. In the galley shops the exploitation of women is iniquitous. Proof of this assertion can be given by the textile and chauffeur colleagues from Lima, who in a gesture of solidarity supported the claim raised by the staff of the A. Field Company, in 1926. The great increase of small laundries, whose owners, nationals, Asians, or Europeans, who do not hesitate to tighten the oppressive ring around their workers, demands greater attention and help to these comrades. (In 1926, they formed in Lima, their Federation of Laundresses, an entity that disappeared due to the little cooperation that the comrades lent it, and the backwardness of the prejudices of many comrades). The small industries, factories of tin lids, packaging, cardboard boxes, soap shops, fashion workshops, chemical products, (the same War Office, with its work system that serves to sew the garments of the troops at home, paying ridiculous prices), etc., are centers of the ruthless exploitation of women. On the farms, "winnowing,” "clubbing," "picking cotton,” etc., in the mines hauling metals and other tasks, women are treated little less than as beasts of burden. All this accumulation of "calamities" that weighs on the exploited woman, cannot be solved, but on the basis of immediate organization; in the same way that the trade unions have to build their youth cadres; they must create their women's sections, where our future militants will be educated.
The Problem of the Agricultural Proletariat
The living conditions of the great masses of agricultural workers also demand better attention. In its empirical treatment it has been confused with the peasant problem, something that needs to be distinguished in order not to fall into the same error. Who is the agricultural proletariat? The great masses of workers, who give up their efforts, on farms, orchards, farms, plantations, etc., depending on the authority of the “patrón,” exercised by the army of foremen, butlers, prompters and administrators, receiving a daily assignment or "task,” living in miserable hovels, these are the agricultural workers. These workers who have to get up from 4 o'clock in the morning to pass the "roll call” that they work on until the sun goes down, in their tasks of lampmakers, farmhands, irrigators, planters, cane cutters, etc., some for the daily assignment and others for "tasks" receiving daily assignments, from 60 cents for women and young people, up to 2.20 for adults, who have not enjoyed to the present, with very rare exceptions, (hacienda Santa Clara, Naranjal, Puente Piedra), of organizations that watch over their class interests; hence, for the agricultural worker it is the same as if there were no Laws of eight hours, of Accidents at Work, of Women and Children, etc. The agricultural wage earners who work on the farms, (true large estates), miserably exploited, suffering (due to lack of compliance with sanitary provisions) from diseases such as malaria, (which must be declared as an occupational disease), receiving starvation wages, will not be able to alleviate their sufferings, but through their organization. It is not possible in this manifesto to make known all the arbitrariness suffered by the workers of our valleys and farms. The living conditions are so overwhelming and so painful that more than one liberal journalist has reported them in the columns of provincial newspapers, and in Lima in the information of "El Mundo.”
It therefore demands the formation of trade union cadres made up of agricultural workers, in order to give life to the Hacienda Committees, to the "Syndicates of Agricultural Workers.”
The Peasant Problem
The peasant problem has a certain objective similarity with the agricultural problem, in relation to the tasks it represents, at the same time that it is identified with the Indigenous problem, because it is a land problem, therefore its treatment requires special care. There are different types of peasants in the country, the "colono” or "compañero,” who works the land only to split his products or crops with the "patrón,” the yanacón, who takes the land on lease (whose payment is demanded by most of the cotton farmers) and the owner of small plots of land, inheritance of their ancestors, etc. They are different types of peasants, but they have common problems to solve. In our midst there are peasant organizations such as the one that exists in Ica, the "Federation of the Peasants of Ica,” and in Lima, the "General Federation of Yanaconas”; in addition, there are small irrigation societies along the coast. But the great mass of peasants are disorganized, the problems they have to solve are multiple, but the most salient, the most immediate are: low rent of the land, freedom to sow the seed that suits them best, equitable distribution of irrigation water, shortcut to land spoils, assert the right to pay the rent in national currency, etc.; for the focus and resolution of these problems, the peasant organization of the education of the masses in its class role is necessary, and its concentration in peasant leagues, in peasant communities, which tend to the creation of the “National Federation of Peasant Leagues.”
The Indigenous Problem
If the agricultural and peasant problem requires great attention, the Indigenous problem cannot be left behind. When we delve into this problem we will see the connection it has with the agricultural, peasant and mining problem. Hence, when dealing with this problem from the syndical point of view, it has to be done on the basis of organization, of class education, The Indigenous problem is linked to the land problem, and its solution cannot be advanced if it is not on the basis of the organization of the Indigenous masses. The Indian in our mountains works from 6 to 7 months a year, a time that usually lasts the sowing and harvesting of their products. In the remaining months, they dedicate themselves to working, on the mountain estates and mines some time, and other times on the haciendas of the coast, immediately becoming an agricultural worker. This form of temporary emigration concurs in demanding that all the necessary attention be paid to it from the syndical point of view. The trade unions, of the agricultural proletariat, and of the miners, will have a heavy burden in the tasks imposed by the temporary influx of these Indigenous masses, and their education by the union will be all the heavier also the less their sense of class. Therefore, a great deal of work is needed in the communities and ayllus, etc., where libraries should be established, teaching commissions that fight illiteracy, (illiteracy can be said to be a social scourge of the Indigenous race), sports sections, etc. that being in charge of giving prepared classmates, develop an active teaching that tends to train them in their class role, explaining their condition of being exploited, their rights and the means of claiming them. In this way the Indian will be a militant of the trade union movement, this is a soldier who fights for the social liberation of their class. The objective of the communities will therefore be the training of their components, and the federation of all the communities in a single common defense front.
Immigration
The increasing influx of immigrant workers every day demands that this problem not be left aside in the trade union organization either. The trade union organizations cannot be imbued with false nationalist prejudices, because these prejudices entirely favor capitalism, which will always find docile elements among the immigrant comrades to confront them with the "native" workers by making them perform scabbing and strikebreaking. Since we are grouped under principles that tell us "workers of the world, unite," we must proceed to accommodate in our unions all workers, Asian, European, American, or African, who recognizing their condition of being exploited, see in the union their representative and defense organism; it requires that the unions highlight militant commissions that, mixing themselves with the "foreign" workers, study their living conditions and their needs, in order to raise them in the unions, which will defend with all interest the demands of these comrades, including them in the complaint sheets that they present to the companies. In this way we will conquer the masses of immigrant workers, at the same time we will get more than one conscious militant for our organization.
Social Laws
The Peruvian worker up to the present is still not protected by effective social laws. The decree given in 1919, on the eight-hour working day, the law on work accidents, and the law on the protection of women and children, are just attempts of this legislation, The decree of the eight hours that was dragged out, by the solidarity force of the proletariat of the capital in 1919, until now has only been fulfilled in certain sectors, in one or another factory where the workers' organization has prevented its violation, but later, starting with the small factories that exist in Lima, such as packaging, cardboard boxes, shoes, soaps, laundries, fashion workshops, bakery branches, etc., and reaching the largest companies, they all make a clean slate of their provisions. With the process of the rationalization of the industry, this mockery becomes more blatant. The Associated Electrical Companies, in their work, have recently adopted the contract system (which they do not use alone, because as we have already seen, other companies use it) and for this purpose have established a price scale on their various jobs that has been presented to the most qualified or older workers, with the dilemma of their immediate acceptance or dismissal from the work. The worker who accepts this rate in fact becomes a contractor, losing their seniority, at the same time as the few benefits that the legislation accords them. The memorial recently presented by the railway workers also clearly demonstrates the non-compliance by the railway companies with the eight-hour day. The form of payment of some factories and companies (Sagguinetti Dasso, Frederick Snare Comp.) is at the same time another form of mockery on the part of capital. But if we see this in Lima and Callao, let's think now about how the eight-hour day will be fulfilled in the farms, mines, and other industries and companies established in the national territory. The Law on Accidents at Work is no less violated than the eight-hour Law. In the port works of Callao; in the ships of the national merchant navy, in the farms, in the mines, in the oil companies, in short in all the small factories that exist outside the capital, not only is not fulfilled but anyone who tries to make it known to the workers is persecuted with ferocity. The revision and improvement of this Law is something that interests the entire working class. A law given at a time when the demands of life were not those of today, it is clear that it could not establish in an equitable way, the necessary scale of compensation. For example, according to the law, a worker receives 33 percent of his salary as compensation in case of an accident. Now, if we consider the current wage scale, whose average term we can set it at three soles, we will see that the worker receives as compensation, 99 cents a day, (the wage of the peons fluctuates from 60 cents in the sierra, 110 in the haciendas, up to 2 and 2.50 in the capital, and of the skilled workers from 3 to 6 soles a day) amount that cannot satisfy the prosupposition of a household, quite high with the increase in the cost of subsistence. In addition, the Law establishes the maximum salary, in order to comply with it, of 100 soles per month, that is, 4 soles per day, so that in the best of the cases the worker receives, according to the law, 132, an amount that it is necessary to emphasize to what extent it is insufficient for the maintenance of a household. The worker does not have until today any provision to protect them, in the case of illness, (natural) death, old age, dismissal, etc. the adoption of a Social Insurance Law, which provides for all these cases, establishing in the constitution of the funds the contribution in equal parts of the Capitalist and the State, is something that the worker demands and demands when talking about Social Laws, the Law for the Protection of women and children, it cannot be said that it satisfies the needs of proletarian women, nor less that it is respected in its current terms. We have already seen when it comes to this problem, the way women suffer and how they are treated in the factory, workshop, companies, fields, etc. The fulfillment of this is as any other. The law cannot be subordinated to the individual action of the workers, it requires strict provisions, at the same time as the handing over of control to the workers' organization as the only way to make legal rights effective. Moreover, the "Workers’ General Confederation of Peru" is not the only one that adopts this point of view on the laws of our social legislation; it coincides with those that have supported journalistic campaigns, criticizing and publicizing the deficiencies and non-compliance of the same.
Conclusions
Having briefly studied the fundamental problems of our organization, it is appropriate to refer to the question of the legality of the organization that we advocate and promote. The conditions of exploitation and a semi-slavery regime in the nine-tenths of Peru, make the workers think about this question when organizing. Our bourgeoisie has always seen in the workers' organization the "specter" that must put an end to its regime of exploitation, and has created arbitrary legends about it. The Government of Peru, as a signatory to the Treaty of Versailles, has recognized the right of workers to organize trade unions. Moreover, it has established a section in the Ministry of Public Works in charge of the recognition of institutions. The "Workers’ General Confederation of Peru" upholds the principle that the union, in order to exist legally and juridically, needs only the agreement of its members (but this does not prevent it from requesting its official recognition in order to rely on legality). The Confederation demands for the workers' organization in all industries and tasks, the right to legal existence, and the due legal personality, for the representation and defense of proletarian interests. The problems of the working masses, for the rest, cannot be solved or even known if it is not through organization, an organism that expresses its needs, that studies the deficiencies of our social system, that exposes and sustains the claims of all the workers of Peru. The problem of the creation of the Center of the Peruvian proletariat, in addition to its historical justification, has been that of the genuine representation of the exploited class of our country. It is not born by a whim of chance, it is born through the experience acquired in the past struggles and as an organic need of the exploited mass of Peru. The representation of the national worker up to the present has been hidden by false ‘representative’ groups that, such as the Universal Confederation Union of Artisans [Confederación Unión Universal de Artesanos (CAAU)], and the Assemblies of United Societies [Asambleas de Sociedades Unidas (ASU)], (formed by societies of dubious existence, and others lacking the class spirit that animates mass organizations, for the same reason that their activities are concretized into mutualist ones without worrying about economic defense because that is not their role) have attributed such representation without the consensus of those they claim to represent. The representation of the national worker corresponds to a United Center, formed from the bottom up, that is, by organisms born in the factories, workshops, branches, maritime and land enterprises, by agricultural workers and peasants, by the great masses of exploited Indians. A Center that has these elements, which houses the workers' unions of the country, will be the only one that will have the right to speak on behalf of the workers of Peru. The "Workers’ General Confederation of Peru" fulfilling its function as such, specifies the immediate demands for which it will fight with support from the masses of proletarians, in defense of their interests:
a) Respect and compliance with the eight-hour day, for the worker of the city, the countryside and the mines.
(b) A 40-hour working week for women and children under the age of 18.
(e) Broad rights of workers' organization.
d) Freedom of working class printing, papers, assembly and tribune.
(e) Prohibition of the free employment of the work of apprentices.
(f) Equal right to work, equal treatment and equal pay for all workers, adults and young people, without distinction as to nationality, race or colour, in all industries and enterprises; and
g) The "Workers’ General Confederation of Peru,” having explained the process of its creation, and the demands for which it will fight, recommends to all the workers, to the representatives of workers' organizations, that on the day they contact this Center communicating their addresses, explaining their problems to be solved, at the same time agree to their adhesion. It also recommends the discussion and the vote on the draft Regulations (published in "Labor" Nº 9).
The provisional address of the Center is (Calle de Cotabambas Nº 389, Lima), Post Office Box Nº 2076, Lima
LONG LIVE THE ORGANIZATION OF THE WORKERS OF THE CITY AND THE COUNTRYSIDE!
LONG LIVE THE RIGHT OF ORGANIZATION, OF TRIBUNE, OF PRESS, OF MEETING!
LONG LIVE THE EFFECTIVE UNION OF THE WORKERS OF PERU!
LONG LIVE THE "WORKERS’ GENERAL CONFEDERATION OF PERU”!
The Executive Committee
Programme of the Peruvian Socialist Party
The tasks of the socialist internationalist faction in Peruvian politics.6
The program should be a doctrinal statement that affirms:
1.—The international character of the contemporary economy, that does not allow any country to escape from the currents of transformation arising from the current conditions of production.
2.—The international character of the revolutionary movement of the proletariat. The Socialist Party adapts its praxis to the concrete circumstances of the country, but obeys a broad class vision, and the national circumstances themselves are subordinated to the rhythm of world history. The Independence revolution more than a century ago was a solidarity movement of all the peoples subjugated by Spain; the socialist revolution is a joint movement of all the peoples oppressed by capitalism. If the Liberal revolution, nationalist in its principles, could not be actuated without a close union between the South American countries, it is easy to understand the historical law that, in a more accentuated epoch of interdependence and linkage of nations, requires that the social revolution, internationalist in its principles, be operated with a much more disciplined and intense coordination of the proletarian parties. The Manifesto of [Karl] Marx and [Friedrich] Engels condensed the first principle of the proletarian revolution into the historical phrase: "Proletarians of all countries, unite!"
3.—The sharpening of the contradictions of the capitalist economy. Capitalism develops within a semi-feudal people like ours; at a time when, having reached the stage of monopolies and imperialism, all liberal ideology, corresponding to the stage of free competition, has ceased to be valid. Imperialism does not allow any of these semi-colonial peoples, who it exploits as markets for capital and commodities and as warehouses for raw materials, an economic program of nationalization and industrialism; it forces them into specialization, to monoculture (oil, copper, sugar, cotton, in Peru), suffering a permanent crisis of manufactured goods, a crisis that stems from this rigid determination of national production, owing to factors of the capitalist world market.
4.—Capitalism is at its imperialist stage. It is the capitalism of monopolies, of financial capital, of imperialist wars for the monopolization of markets and sources of raw materials. The praxis of Marxist socialism in this period is that of Marxism-Leninism. Marxism-Leninism is the revolutionary method of the stage of imperialism, and of the monopolies. The Socialist Party of Peru adopts it as a method of struggle.
5.—The pre-capitalist economy of republican Peru that, due to the absence of a vigorous bourgeois class and the national and international conditions that have determined the slow progress of the country along the capitalist way, cannot be liberated under the bourgeois regime, enfeoffed to capitalist interests, colluding with gomonalista and clerical feudalism, from the defects and lags of colonial feudalism. The colonial destiny of the country resumes its process. The emancipation of the country's economy is possible only through the action of the proletarian masses, in solidarity with the world anti-imperialist struggle. Only proletarian action can first stimulate and then realize the tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution that the bourgeois regime is incompetent for the development and fulfillment of.
6.—Socialism finds, in the subsistence of the communities as in the large agricultural enterprises, the elements of a socialist solution for the agrarian question, a solution that will partially tolerate the exploitation of the land by small farmers, wherever the yanaconazgo system or small property recommend leaving things to individual management, while progress is made in the collective management of agriculture, the areas where this type of exploitation prevails. But this, as well as the encouragement given to the free resurgence of Indigenous people, to the creative manifestation of their Native forces and spirit, does not mean at all a romantic and anti-historical trend of construction or resurrection of Inka socialism, which corresponded to historical conditions completely overcome and of which only the habits of cooperation and socialism of the Indigenous peasants remain as a factor that can be useful within a perfectly scientific production technique. Socialism presupposes technology, science, the capitalist stage, and it cannot concern itself with the slightest setback in the acquisition of the achievements of modern civilization, but, on the contrary, the maximum and methodical acceleration of the incorporation of these achievements into national life.
7.—Only socialism can solve the problem of an effectively democratic and egalitarian education, by virtue of which every member of society receives all the instruction to which their ability entitles them. The socialist educational regime is the only one that can fully and systematically apply the principles of the united school, the school of work, the school communities and, in general, all the ideals of contemporary revolutionary pedagogy, incompatible with the privileges of capitalist school, which condemns the poor classes to cultural inferiority and makes higher education the monopoly of wealth.
8.—Having completed its bourgeois-democratic stage, the revolution becomes, in its objectives and its doctrine, a proletarian revolution. The party of the proletariat, empowered by the struggle for the exercise of power and the development of its own program, carries out at this stage the tasks of organizing and defending the socialist order.
9.—The Socialist Party of Peru is the vanguard of the proletariat, the political force that assumes the task of its orientation and leadership in the struggle for the realization of its class ideals.
Attached to the program will be published draft theses on the Indigenous question, the economic situation, the anti-imperialist struggle, which, after the discussion of the sections and the amendments to their text introduced by the Central Committee, will be definitively formulated at the First Party Congress.
Following from the manifesto, the Party will address an appeal to all its adherents, to the working masses, to work for the following immediate demands:
Ample recognition of workers' freedom of association, assembly and press.
Recognition of the right to strike for all workers. Abolition of road-work conscription.
Replacement of the law on vagrancy by the articles that specifically addressed the issue of vagrancy in the preliminary draft of the Criminal Code put into force by the State, with the sole exception of those articles incompatible with the spirit and criminal criterion of the special law.
Establishment of Social Insurance and State Social Assistance.
Compliance with the laws on work accidents, protection of the work of women and minors, eight-hour working days in agriculture.
Assimilation of malaria in the coastal valleys to the condition of an occupational disease with the consequent assistance responsibilities for the landowner.
Establishment of the seven-hour working day in the mines and in 105 jobs that are unhealthy, dangerous and harmful for workers' health.
Obligation of mining and oil companies to recognize for their workers, in a permanent and effective way, all the rights guaranteed by the laws of the country.
Increase in wages in industry, agriculture, mines, maritime and land transport to the Guano Islands, in proportion to the cost of living and the right of workers to a higher standard of living.
Effective abolition of all forced or gratuitous labor, and abolition or prosecution of the semi-slave regime in the mountains
Provision on the communities of latifundia lands for distribution among their members in sufficient proportion to their needs.
Expropriation, without compensation, in favor of the communities, of all the funds of the convents and religious congregations.
The right of yanaconas, tenants, etc., who have been working on a plot of land for more than three consecutive years, to obtain the definitive award of the use of their plots, through annuities not exceeding 60% of the current lease fee.
Reduction of at least 50% from this fee, for all those who continue in their condition of sharecroppers or tenants.
Allocation to cooperatives and poor peasants of the lands reclaimed for cultivation by agricultural irrigation works.
Maintenance, everywhere, of the rights recognized to employees by the respective law.
Regulation, by a joint commission, of retirement rights in a manner that does not imply the slightest impairment of those established by law.
Implementation of the salary and the minimum wage.
Ratification of the freedom of worship and religious education, at least in the terms of the Constitutional article and consequent repeal of the last decree against non-Catholic churches. Free education in all grades.
These are the main demands for which the Socialist Party will immediately fight. All of them respond to the urgent demands of the material and intellectual emancipation of the masses. All of them have to be actively supported by the proletariat and by the conscious elements of the middle class.
The freedom of the Party to act publicly, under the protection of the constitution and the guarantees, which it accords to citizens to create and disseminate its press without destruction, to hold its congresses and debates, is a right claimed by the very act of the public foundation of this grouping.
The closely linked groups that are addressing the people today through this manifesto, resolutely assume, with the consciousness of a historical duty and responsibility, the mission of defending and propagating their principles and maintaining and increasing their Organization, at the cost of any sacrifice. And the working masses of the city, the countryside and the mines and the Indigenous peasantry, whose interests and aspirations we represent in the political struggle, will know how to appropriate these demands and this doctrine, fight for them with perseverance and with force, by way of this struggle, the way that leads to the final victory of socialism.
Long live the working class of Peru!
Long live the world proletariat!
Long live the social revolution!
José Carlos Mariátegui, “La nueva cruzada pro-indígena,” Amauta, January 1927, Marxists Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/espanol/mariateg/oc/ideologia_y_politica/paginas/la%20nueva%20cruzada.htm.
José Carlos Mariátegui, “Mensaje al congreso obrero,” Amauta, January 1927, Marxists Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/espanol/mariateg/oc/ideologia_y_politica/paginas/mensaje%20al%20congreso.htm.
José Carlos Mariátegui, “El porvenir de las cooperativas,” Mundial, March 16, 1928, Marxists Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/espanol/mariateg/oc/ideologia_y_politica/paginas/las%20cooperativas.htm#1.
José Carlos Mariátegui, “Verdaderos alcances de la propaganda mutualista,” Labor, January 1929, Marxists Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/espanol/mariateg/oc/ideologia_y_politica/paginas/mutualistas.htm#1.
José Carlos Mariátegui, “Manifiesto de la ‘Confederación General de Trabajadores del Perú’ a la clase trabajadora del país” (Confederación General de Trabajadores del Perú, May 17, 1929), Marxists Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/espanol/mariateg/oc/ideologia_y_politica/paginas/manifiestode%20la%20cgtp.htm#1.
José Carlos Mariátegui, “Programa del Partido Socialista Peruano” (Partido Socialista Peruano, written October 1928, accepted January 1929), Marxists Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/espanol/mariateg/1928/oct/07a.htm#topp.