Translation made to facilitate communication among the global working class, by Veredas Criticas, 07/03/2023. The original text can be found here: "Entrevista Clandestina"
Carioca, the pseudonym through which he presented himself in a back alley to us, in Banhado, São Jose dos Campos, in May of last year, arrives wearing a coat full of pockets and jeans, his face covered by a black sanitary mask. He sits at the table where we are and puts on a red armband. Our meeting was arranged through an email he left with us on that occasion. He arrives 8 minutes late.
09/05/2022, 4h38 p.m
Greetings from Nova Democracia, Carioca.
C: Greetings, comrades. Can we begin? I only have three minutes.
Alright. Carioca, who are you and what do you do in life?
C: I am a communist who has decided to serve the people with all my heart.
What does it mean to "serve the people with all your heart"?
C: To serve the people with all my heart is to dedicate my life to the Communist Cause and New Democracy!
What is the Communist Cause? And what about New Democracy?
C: The Communist Cause is the cause of all the exploited beings on Earth, and if there is life in the Universe and other exploited beings out there, it includes them too. Communism is a comprehensive process towards the complete abolition of private ownership of the means of production and the end of class exploitation. Since this process cannot happen overnight, although it moves forward through leaps, we are building a New Democracy to put an end to Imperialism, primarily American Imperialism, in our territory.
So, you're saying there are National Revolutions and an International Revolution underway? How can we perceive them?
C: Yes, in all countries around the globe. Get closer to the popular movements, whether they are student, housing, rights, environmental, land, scientific, or artistic movements, and you will soon realize the presence of organized democrats and revolutionaries guided by the Communist Idea.
Do you have any kind of guide?
C: We do: Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
Why "Marxism-Leninism-Maoism"?
C: Marx, together with Engels, was responsible for laying the foundations of the materialist interpretation of society in its entirety, discovering that the Motor of History is Class Struggle.
In his work "Capital," Marx dissects the functioning of the current mode of production, capitalism. For the first time, the movement of capital was exposed in its entirety, without the veil of fetishism that obstructed humanity's vision.
Lenin, building on Marx, analyzed capitalism in its final form, imperialism, which precedes the International Communist Revolution. The world has never been so similar to what Marx and Lenin prophesied: the increasing concentration of money and power in the hands of a few central countries.
Mao Zedong, drawing from Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin, creatively applied Marxism-Leninism to the Chinese reality, providing us with a series of fundamental concepts to deal with the contradictions generated by capitalism anywhere in the world.
Thus, we take the teachings of these Leaders of the Proletariat as Guides, always considering the particularities of each place.
Which historical events appear to you as the greatest references? What are the reasons?
C: The Paris Commune, for being the first proletarian government in history; the Russian Revolution, for being the first revolution in the era of imperialism; and the Chinese Revolution and its Cultural Revolution, for enabling the creation of a hundred schools that competed with each other.
They didn't turn out so well.
C: What does it mean for something to turn out well?
To endure over time.
C: They endured, even though everything solid melts into air and just causes generally lose in the ring of History. This conversation, for example, is proof that they turned out well!
How so?
C: You understood what I said, comrades. Without the communists and democrats, we would be in a dirty and completely dystopian factory at this time, merely leaving it to go to sleep, if even that! Your brother would be there too, instead of being at school, Bernardo.
Our time is running out.
Yes. Could you leave some advice for those who believe in these stories you just told?
C: If there's something we can take as dogma, it's that every movement contains internal contradictions, and that is what democrats and communists need to pay attention to. Contradictions are the driving force of reality.
Why such haste?
C: Haste is bad, you're right. It's actually terrible. But in our country, there is an ongoing military-civil coup, aimed at trying to prevent our progress. Several important tasks have been delegated to me. You were one of them (laughs). We need to buy time before the Old Bourgeois-Landlord State delivers its coup de grâce to the remaining non-clandestine democratic spaces.
I would like to spend more time with you, but time is pressing, comrades. I must go.
Goodbye, Carioca.
C: Goodbye! See you soon! Long live the Brazilian Revolution!
He gets up, removes the red armband, and leaves the library, looking suspicious, with his steps marking ten minutes to ten. Emphasis added.
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