Brazil – MEPR: Letter of Resignation from the Revista Revolução Cultural/Novo MEPR
We hereby share an unofficial translation of a letter and an introductory note published by People’s Revolutionary Students Movement (MEPR) on September 18.
Introductory Note: We are publishing below a letter from a grassroots activist, breaking with one of the many forms of opportunism in our country, which reached our organization via electronic means. As we have warned from the outset, this “brand-new” organization was born completely mired in the swamp. We heed the call made at the end of the letter: “May this letter circulate among honest activists, who carry within them revolutionary fervor and a genuine will to struggle, as a record of a conscious, harsh, and necessary break; and as a warning about what happens when theory is separated from practice and the revolution is transformed into an empty identity.”
M. – 09/02/2026
“Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production. No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society. Mankind thus inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it is able to solve, since closer examination will always show that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already present or at least in the course of formation.”
Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
Greetings
Through this letter, I hereby announce my resignation from Revista Revolução Cultural and the Novo MEPR. I do so consciously, deliberately, and grounded in the revolutionary theory of the proletariat. To those who will read this: Do not view this as a circumstantial departure, nor as something motivated by personal disagreements, but rather as a necessary break in the face of the accumulation of ideological, political, and organizational deviations that have made any honest continued participation in these spaces untenable.
Marx, in his letters on organization and method, insisted that loyalty to the proletarian cause requires, at certain moments, the courage to break away. Remaining within a structure that progressively drifts away from the concrete reality of the class struggle is not revolutionary discipline; it is collusion.
The most scandalous aspect of this degeneration is the practical denial (even though the idea of an agrarian revolution is vaguely “supported” in theory) of the struggle in the countryside. In a country where the poor peasantry continues to be crushed by latifundium, agribusiness, and State-sponsored paramilitary violence, the complete absence of action, solidarity, and concrete intervention in the countryside is not a “tactical choice,” but an abandonment of a decisive front of the revolution. Lenin, when writing about the late Russian Revolution, warned that any Party that lost its connection with the peasant masses was doomed to become an urban sect.
In this sense, the League of the Poor Peasants (LCP) stands today as a concrete, living, and militant example of the radicalization of the class struggle in the Brazilian countryside. One can (and should) offer critical analyses, but what one cannot do is pretend that it does not exist. It is telling that organizations from other political currents—such as the PCB, the PCBR, and even the Brazilian Revolution (a former faction of the PSOL)—have been able to express concrete solidarity with the LCP in the face of repression, while “the renewers of Brazilian Maoism” systematically refuse to do so.
This refusal cannot be explained by serious strategic divergence, but rather by political disdain and sectarian childishness. Chairman Mao himself (whom you claim to analyze honestly and not mechanistically), when addressing the struggle between different lines, warned that sectarianism is not a sign of ideological firmness, but of an inability to distinguish between antagonistic and non-antagonistic contradictions. Here, sectarianism serves as an excuse for inaction and as an alibi for one’s own practical irrelevance.
It is no coincidence that you have no real presence in any state where the peasant movement has effective strength. Where there is a living struggle, there is no action; where there is risk, there is no commitment; where there are the masses, there is silence. In contrast, there is an abundance of texts, circular debates, and inward-looking ideological performances.
Photos of college students holding toy rifles do exist and are shared with great performative enthusiasm, yet the actual reality—where peasants defend themselves against militias armed by latifundium—remains invisible; this is curious, to say the least…
We return to the old Marx, who already denounced this phenomenon when he criticized socialists who turned the revolution into an “object of intellectual contemplation.”
On the international stage, the situation is no less serious. The struggle of the Palestinian people is treated as a secondary, almost decorative element, subordinated to an artificial hierarchy of struggles—especially when compared to the People’s War in India, a struggle which, I reaffirm, deserves our full solidarity and support. The problem lies not in supporting the CPI (Maoist), but in transforming proletarian internationalism into an arbitrary hierarchy of “more important” and “less relevant” struggles. Reducing Palestine to an afterthought is to deny the global nature of imperialism and to turn internationalism into selective rhetoric.
The relationship with other Maoist movements in the country follows the same logic: gratuitous hostility and political arrogance. Chairman Mao (we return to him) insisted that revolutionary criticism must be grounded in concrete reality and serve unity on the correct basis. What we see here is the opposite: a practice marked by competition, vanity, and the assertion of identity.
Turning to the ideological aspect, I consider it unacceptable to deny the role of the Communist Party of Peru and Chairman Gonzalo in the formulation, synthesis, and dissemination of Maoism. Professor Abimael Guzmán and the General Secretariat of the PCP, by systematizing the protracted People’s War and the militarization of the Party, produced a synthesis based on concrete experience. To erase this is mere historical falsification, albeit one beautifully disguised as “theoretical grounding.” As Gonzalo himself insisted, without a correct line there is no correct practice, and without correct practice, every organization decays.
Negligence regarding the safety of activists is another unacceptable issue. This is not a one-time mistake, but a structural disregard for the basic principles of clandestine operations and the protection of cadres. How can an organization that sets out to build a vanguard Party normalize the exposure of activists and deny the need for (even minimal) military structure and experience? The history of the communist movement shows that organizations that treat security as a mere detail are, in practice, setting themselves up for defeat.
Along with this, I cannot fail to mention the lack of modesty and respect for its own proclaimed ideological principles, evidenced by the acceptance of deviations that I consider unacceptable: open drug use, the normalization of practices that reinforce the commodification of the body, and the production of pornographic content by activists.
In recent times, it has become impossible to ignore the organization’s open slide into an ideological quagmire, marked by an increasingly less-disguised flirtation with postmodern concepts and right-wing sectors of the ICM, under the guise of “theoretical renewal.” Under the pretext of combating “dogmatism,” historical materialism is being abandoned and replaced by relativism, subjectivism, and the fragmentation of contradictions.
This ideological decay is crystal clear in the program and political manifesto of the Novo MEPR—documents that theoretically underpin the organization and explain the motivation behind the split. While they aim to be combative, they do not dare to write a single line against the current government of class collaboration led by the PT in alliance with the liberal right. This silence is a strategy. A manifesto that refuses to name the ruling bourgeois government reveals, without mincing words, its willingness to coexist with it.
To disguise this shameful capitulation, they resort to pseudo-radical verbiage, saturated with revolutionary terms, aggressive slogans, and quotes plucked from the classics of Marxism as if they were mere props. It is nothing but a charade. Their practice is weak, hesitant, and conciliatory; their discourse, hysterical and inflammatory. It is a typical phenomenon of those who shout the loudest precisely to hide their fear of real struggle.
The same dishonesty is expressed in the brazen appropriation of concrete struggles—especially within the student movement in Rio de Janeiro—which are presented as the organization’s exclusive achievements. This amounts to conscious falsification, a deliberate erasure of the contributions of other sectors, and a crude manipulation of collective memory. This behavior does not differ, in essence, from the bourgeois practice of appropriating the work of others: the rhetoric changes, but the method remains the same.
To complement this farce, an arrogant and parochial view of the student movement is constructed, as if certain local experiences were, by definition, superior to all others. This stance denies the national character of the struggle, disparages mobilizations in other states, and reduces the movement to a stage for self-promotion. Marxism has never recognized natural centers of heroism; this artificial hierarchy reveals nothing but political vanity and theoretical poverty.
When one carefully examines these formulations as a whole, the systematic effort to conceal their own flight from the concrete class struggle becomes evident. The harsh reality of the struggle is replaced by lengthy texts, circular debates, and borrowed references—often identical to those used by openly right-wing sectors of the International Communist Movement.
The opportunist claim regarding the June 2013 protests follows this same pattern. They declare themselves heirs to a process they did not understand and were never willing to carry through to its ultimate consequences.
On the strategic front, the confusion is criminal. People speak of the New Democratic Revolution in empty terms, stripped of its essential content: the agrarian revolution. At the same time, false accusations are being spread about alleged directives to retreat in the face of the reactionary offensive. This narrative can only be sustained by those who are completely divorced from reality or by those who consciously lie. The most radical struggle in Brazil takes place in the countryside, where latifundium, Bolsonaro-backed militias, and the old State impose an objective situation of war against the poor peasantry.
Denying this is possible only for those who have always fled the countryside, piling up excuses to avoid serving the masses where repression is most brutal and the struggle most demanding. Contempt for the peasant struggle functions here as a rationalization of one’s own cowardice. Those who fear the hard struggle will never be able to lead a revolution.
Returning to the international arena, the same cheap trick is repeated. The selective glorification of the People’s War in India serves as a smokescreen to hide the complete unwillingness to confront the contradictions within one’s own country. Supporting a distant and well-established struggle requires no sacrifice; it is comfortable. Thus, the prestige of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) is exploited to mask positions that, in practice, are in direct opposition to the line defended by that Party.
There is no support whatsoever from the CPI (Maoist) for the positions taken by the magazine and the N-MEPR. On the contrary: its manifesto and its practice make clear its departure from the line of protracted People’s War and the encirclement of cities from the countryside.
None of this is new. The history of the communist movement is full of similar examples. Over time, these same leaders who today hide behind harsh rhetoric will end up seeking a place within the very institutional bureaucracies they pretend to despise. The script is familiar, and so is the outcome.
In light of these factors, I state with the utmost clarity: my resignation is a necessary political act. I am not abandoning the revolution; I am abandoning a space that has ceased to serve it—or that never truly set out to serve it. To remain would be to betray not only my principles but Marxism itself as the scientific ideology of the proletariat.
May this letter circulate among honest activists, who carry within them revolutionary fervor and a genuine will to struggle, as a record of a conscious, difficult, and necessary break; and as a warning about what happens when theory is separated from practice and the revolution is transformed into an empty identity.
Sincerely, M.
São Paulo – February 9, 2026
