On Developments in Nepal and the Stakes for the Communist Movement

[redwinter]

Revolution newspaper (http://www.revcom.us (http://www.revcom.us/)) has just published a series of letters between the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) ranging from 2005-2008. They illustrate a "sharp polemical exchange" that has been taking place between the two parties over the last several years. Here is an introductory article in the new issue of Revolution on the letters, which are available online in English and Spanish at www.revcom.us (http://www.revcom.us).

An Exchange With Historic Stakes

“Many people in the world today are wondering how to evaluate the recent developments with the revolution in Nepal—where, after 10 years of an inspiring People’s War led by the CPN(M), that war has come to an end, the CPN(M) is now the leading Party in the recently elected Constituent Assembly and the Party’s Chairman, Prachanda, is the Prime Minister of the government. Does the current trajectory in Nepal and the course taken by the CPN(M) represent an historic new thing, a victory and breakthrough in advancing the communist revolution in the 21st century, as some have claimed; or—as many others fear—does this represent a setback and betrayal of the goals of the revolution and of the heroic struggle waged to achieve them, and a serious departure from the communist cause that the CPN(M) claims to be fighting for?”

So begins the article which is featured in this issue of Revolution: ON DEVELOPMENTS IN NEPAL AND THE STAKES FOR THE COMMUNIST MOVEMENT: LETTERS TO THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF NEPAL (MAOIST) FROM THE REVOLUTIONARY COMMUNIST PARTY, USA, 2005-2008 (WITH A REPLY FROM THE CPN[M], 2006).


This article is an introduction to a sharp polemical exchange between the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA (RCP, USA) and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) (CPN[M]) over a period of several years between October 2005 and November 2008. This represents one of the most important two-line struggles which has taken place in the international communist movement in many years. There are four letters from the RCP, USA to the CPN(M) and one reply which are now being made public.


These letters address vital differences of line and a struggle which has been unfolding for a number of years. These differences center on three questions: in brief, 1) the nature of the state, and specifically the need to establish a new state led by the proletariat and its communist vanguard; 2) more specifically, the need to establish, as the first step, upon the overthrow of the old order, a new democratic state which would undertake the development of new economic and social relations in the nation free from imperialist domination and feudal relations; and 3) the dynamic role of theory and two-line struggle vs. eclectics, pragmatism and realpolitik. The outlook and orientation, strategic conception and method which any Party takes up—that is, their line—guides its political activity in one direction or another. In two-line struggles like this, the stakes are very high: which line wins out can lead to advance, setback—or even betrayal.


Digging deeply into this article—and the letters from the RCP, USA and the CPN(M)—is serious, and necessary revolutionary work. This two-line struggle requires an approach which comprehends the life and death stakes of its outcome. The approach of our Party, the RCP, USA has been to proceed from communist goals and basic principles of the science of communism, to go into the questions in a thorough and all sided way. Not only does the future of the revolution in Nepal hang ever more precariously in the balance, but only by drawing the lessons from this ideological and political struggle and more deeply grasping what genuine communism is can the revolutionary forces go forward on a correct basis and advance the cause of emancipating all of humanity.


We urge all our readers to study the introductory article and dig into the letters posted on line—and to engage in deep, informed discussion with the Party and others concerning these vital questions of ideological and political line. Come to the presentations which will be sponsored by Revolution Books*—and organize discussions...with your comrades and friends.
This article and the letters need to find their way into the hands of many people– from revolutionaries in the U.S. and others who have been following the developments in Nepal, to immigrants and students from abroad, including from South Asia, to the international communist movement. It needs to get out into the areas of the cities—from the ghettos and barrios to the campuses and scenes of intellectual ferment—and among people of all strata where the revolutionary and communist movement is developing. It needs to reach all those who are searching for a way out of this horror—and the path to real liberation. And, it is an opening for those who are searching for such answers to find out what communism really is and how human society could be organized in a whole different way. This issue of Revolution needs to reach these people and more—and this article and the letters it introduces need to spread throughout society and the world on the Internet.


This line struggle further underscores the historic importance of the Manifesto from the Party, Communism: The Beginning of a New Stage. (http://www.revcom.us/Manifesto/Manifesto.html) As that Manifesto says, the international communist movement is at a crossroads. It confronts the question of whether to be, as the Manifesto puts it, “a vanguard of the future or residue of the past?” The line struggle which is carried out in depth in these letters is both situated within this larger world context and is also a concentration of it. And it is vital for all to engage with this Manifesto...as they study and wrestle with the two-line struggle in relation to the revolution in Nepal. As this issue of the paper gets distributed among all kinds of people, this Manifesto needs to accompany it. With the defeat of the revolution in China and the restoration of capitalism in that country, the first stage of communist revolution in the world ended. And Bob Avakian, Chairman of the RCP, has led in scientifically summing up that experience, building on the monumental achievements and critically summing up the shortcomings—and, on that basis, bringing forward a new theoretical framework for carrying forward communist revolution in the world. This synthesis, as concentrated in this Manifesto, urgently needs to be engaged by all who see the horror of the world the way it is and burn for a different future, free of exploitation and oppression. It represents a source of hope and daring, on a scientific foundation—for masses the world over.


* For events in New York, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay Area, click here (http://www.revcom.us/revbooks/index.html).

[AvanteRedGarde]

The It's Right To Rebel/Monkey Smashes Heaven/ Maoist Third Worldist circles were saying the same over 2 years now. I have to ask why the RCP took so long to come to the same basic conclusion.

Here is one of their early statements, from December of 2006, on Prachanda and the then CPN-M:

[Pardon the extreme, cultural revolution-esque language. - Avante]


Again on the “RIM” Renegades in Nepal

“What is fake is fake. Strip off the disguise!” –Mao Zedong, Instruction, 1967

“We must be good at distinguishing fake supporters of the revolution who are actually reactionaries and douse them away from all our battle fronts, so that we may preserve the victories which are already won and will be won.” –Mao Zedong, Instruction, 1967

Recent developments in Nepal demand some response from the international communist movement. What we are witnessing is the selling out of a People’s War under the banner of “Maoism.” Yet, very few have come forward to speak the truth. At this time, genuine Maoists must step forward to call out the betrayal of People’s War concocted in the so-called “Revolutionary Internationalist Movement.” Real Maoists should not hesitate to come forward and denounce the great betrayal in Nepal and also demand that the imperialist organization known as the “RIM,” connected to this betrayal, be disbanded. IRTR’s earlier condemnations of the Prachanda clique and the “RIM” can be found here:

Two-Line Struggle, 11 Oct 2006:
https://irtr.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2200Disband the RIM, 16 Oct 2006:
https://irtr.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2233Does a Maoist People’s Army Disarm?, 8 Nov 2006:
https://irtr.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2405Kautskyism, 9 Nov 2006:
https://irtr.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2409QuacKKK, Video Against RIM, 11 Nov 2006:
https://irtr.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2420Full Text of SPA Agreement Criticized, 13 Nov 2006:
https://irtr.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2434Prachanda’s (https://irtr.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2434Prachanda%E2%80%99s) Pernicious Path, graphic, 15 Nov 2006:
https://irtr.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2442 Prachanda and Santa Ana, 20 Nov 2006:
https://irtr.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2472
Leaders and Sell-Outs, 25 Nov 2006:
https://irtr.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2493
Fraternal Recognition, Who Counts as Communist? 26 Nov 2006:
https://irtr.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2501
Nepal: Revisionist Treachery, Part 1, video, 26 Nov 2006:
https://irtr.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2496
Lin Biao on Prachanda, 30 Nov 2006:
https://irtr.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2520
Prachanda’s Pernicious Path 2, graphic, 19 Dec 2006:
https://irtr.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2592
Armed Reformism, 20 Dec 2006:
https://irtr.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2596

Rather than going through the details of the various statements by the “RIM” renegades, this document briefly sums up the broad points made in previous discussions as of 20 December 2006. IRTR has other documents exposing in detail the Trotskyist aspect of the “Revolutionary Communist Party” (RCP,USA) and their Fourth International known as the “RIM.” These other documents can be found at irtr.org/forums in the Theory and Marxist Economics forums.

1. Renegade “CP Nepal (Maoist)” rejects New Democracy in practice
For 10 years, the “CP Nepal (Maoist)” has participated in a protracted People’s War and struggled to establish New Democracy. New Democracy is the stage of revolution where the popular classes, led by the proletariat, smash semi-feudalism, comprador capitalism, and imperialism, and carry out the historic tasks assigned to the bourgeoisie in Europe. For 10 years, the masses have struggled for land reform, for a new people’s legal system, new people’s institutions to administer their communities, public education, and so on. For 10 years, the masses have struggled against the caste system and reactionary attitudes toward wimmin and national minorities. For 10 years, the masses have struggled against the semi-feudal and comprador fetters on development. All of these gains are now threatened by those same leaders who once claimed to have championed New Democracy.

The renegades in the “CP Nepal (Maoist)” do not really support New Democracy despite their claims to the contrary. The renegades signed onto “returning the houses, land and properties confiscated in the past” and agreed that the “people’s government, people’s court run by the CPN (Maoist) would be dissolved.” They have signed onto dismantling the people’s institutions of the oppressed, the dual power in the countryside, and even the People’s Army. These renegades have even signed onto reversing land reform. There can be no New Democracy without this new power challenging the old institutions of semi-feudalism.

Since the New Democratic reforms are being reversed and there is no way to secure the New Democratic gains without people’s institutions and a People’s Army, there is no meaningful sense in which the renegades in the “CP Nepal (Maoist)” can be said to be fighting semi-feudalism as a mode of production. It may be true that they are in favor of removing the monarchy, certain feudal political institutions, and the symbols of feudalism; however, they appear to be willing to leave the semi-feudal mode of production in place. This cannot be mistaken for Maoism.

2. Renegade “CP Nepal (Maoist)” rejects the Dictatorship of the Proletariat
“CP Nepal (Maoist)” has openly stated that it is not fighting for socialism. They reject the Dictatorship of the Proletariat in favor of a “21st century democracy.” They go so far as to label past existing socialism as “20th century totalitarianism.” There is nothing new in their approach. They follow in the footsteps of Kautsky’s parliamentarianism and Liu Shaoqi’s class-collaborationist line.

The proletariat does not take hold of the existing state through parliamentary or other means. The existing state is one that is wielded by the reactionary classes against the masses. The state can be wielded by the reactionaries or the proletariat, but not both. There is no war of position to be waged in the reactionary state bureaucracy between reactionary and proletarian interests. A proletarian party does not enter into a power-sharing agreement within the reactionary and repressive state. The state does not stand above class struggle. The interests of the imperialists and their lackeys and the proletariat are diametrically opposed. The proletariat smashes the reactionary state and builds a people’s state led by the proletariat. These renegades reject the Dictatorship of the Proletariat and its consolidation through Proletarian Cultural Revolution. They reject basic Marxism, and they act to propagate non-Marxism in its place throughout the world.

3. Renegade “CP Nepal (Maoist)” rejects People’s War

Like Liu Shaoqi’s collaborationist line, the vile Prachanda clique seeks an end to the People’s War. The 1969 Ninth Congress Report of the Chinese Communist Party states:

After the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japan, when the U.S. imperialists were arming Chiang Kai-shek’s counter-revolutionary troops in preparation for launching an all-out offensive against the liberated areas, Liu Shao-chi, catering to the needs of the U.S.-Chiang reactionaries, dished up the capitulationist line, alleging that China has entered the “new stage of peace and democracy”. It was designed to oppose Chairman Mao’s general line of “go all out to mobilize the masses, expand the people’s forces and, under the leadership of our Party, defeat the aggressor and build a new China”, and to oppose Chairman Mao’s policy of “give tit for tat and fight for every inch of land”, which was adopted to counter the offensive of the U.S.-Chiang reactionaries. Liu Shao-chi preached that “at present the main form of the struggle of the Chinese revolution has changed from armed struggle to non-armed and mass parliamentary struggle”. He tried to abolish the Party’s leadership over the people’s armed forces and to “unify” the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army, predecessors of the People’s Liberation Army, into Chiang Kai-shek’s “national army” and to demobilize large numbers of worker and peasant soldiers led by the Party in a vain attempt to eradicate the people’s armed forces, strangle the Chinese revolution and obeisantly hand over to the Kuomintang the fruits of victory which the Chinese people had won in blood.In April 1949, on the eve of the countrywide victory of China’s new-democratic revolution when the Chinese People’s Liberation Army was preparing to cross the Yangtse River, Liu Shao-chi hurried to Tientsin and threw himself into the arms of the capitalists. [Lin Biao, Ninth Party Congress Report]

Like Liu Shaoqi, these renegades in Nepal liquidate the people’s gains and the People’s Army by throwing themselves at the feet of imperialists and their comprador agents. Mao said that without the People’s Army, the people have nothing. There is no way to defend the people’s gains from reversal without the People’s Army. Yet, like Liu Shaoqi, the vile renegade Prachanda has bargained away the People’s War and with it any hope of liberation for the masses. It is crystal-clear that the Kautsky-Liu Shaoqi-type “RIM” renegades oppose Mao’s line.

4. Crypto-Trotskyism and Liberalism as a so-called “new synthesis”....

[I'll cut it there]

(http://monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com/2006/12/21/again-on-the-%E2%80%9Crim%E2%80%9D-renegades-in-nepal/)

[AvanteRedGarde]

Just to put more context on this, I want to post a couple other more recent MSH articles on this issue. I just seriously find it humorous that the RCP makes a big deal about breaking their silence on their previously fraternal CPN-M (now UCPN), especially when MSH has been covering it pretty extensively from a nominally left position for years now.

As you will see, the RCP is hardly groundbreaking:
Prachanda’s party accused of revisionism in Nepal -Feb, 2009



"Matrika Yadav, previously a member of the of the Central Committee of the First Worldist so-called Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), has been expelled allegedly for “anarchist and undisciplined activities,” according to Dina Nath Sharma after the party’s central secretariat meeting. “I have now quit the Maoist party for good,” Matrika Yadav said on February 11, 2009. Echoing earlier criticisms, he claims that he will start a new Maoist initiative, “I will reorganise the party in a new spirit, accommodating all revolutionary cadres.” When asked whether the People’s Liberation Army will support his cause, he said that the true revolutionaries would.



Matrika Yadav said that the so-called UCPN(M), led by Prachanda, has become a revisionist and reformist force. He claimed that the Prachanda-led party is capitulating to the class enemy, dissolving the People’s Liberation Army, and has “abandoned its revolutionary character and has been entrapped in the whirlpool of the parliamentary parties and practices.” He also said, “the party also bowed down to the pressure of the parliamentary forces and agreed to return the land captured by the peasants and landless people during the conflict.” He accused Prachanda of mishandling the problems in the Tarai-Madhes, “Prachanda’s wrong policy led to the mushrooming of regional Madhesi parties who represent the landlords.” In addition, he complained that Prachanda’s party was ruled by elitism and nepotism from head to toe. He accused the so-called UCPN(M) leadership of allowing non-Maoists, opportunists and careerists into the fold in the name of unity. (1) (2) (3)



Matrika Yadav had come under criticism as Nepal’s Minister for Land Reform and Management from Prachanda’s party earlier, in September 2008, for initiating a movement to recapture land and distribute it to the people. (4) Responding to the criticism back in 2008, he said,”Prime Minister had the compulsion to ensure survival of the government. I had the compulsion to advocate in favour of landless people.” He also added that he will continue to fight for landless people. (5)


Mao said, “without a people’s army, the people have nothing.” It is ironic that so-near the anniversary of the initiation of the people’s war in Nepal, Prachanda has ceded leadership of the People’s Liberation Army and agreed to its de facto dissolution as a people’s army. Prachanda has urged the People’s Liberation Army to act responsibly for peace throughout this process, according to mainstream reports. (6) Prachanda’s organization has ceased being an instrument for revolution in Nepal. As Lenin warned, Prachanda did not capture the reactionary state, the reactionary state captured Prachanda.



MSH does not know enough to judge the politics of Matrika Yadav as a whole. Some of Matrika Yadav’s criticisms of Prachanda’s party echo our own. MSH has long warned of the blatant revisionism within Prachanda’s party. What is needed in Nepal is a Maoist-Third Worldist party that stands absolutely for the global people’s war by the global countryside against the global cities, the Third World against the First World. A party is not scientific if it cannot distinguish friends from enemies. If a party is unable to understand that the entire First World is the enemy of the Third World, then it will inevitably end up as an instrument of reaction; like Prachanda’s party, it will not be able to successfully lead the masses to communism. Only a party led by revolutionary science, by Maoism-Third Worldism, can successfully navigate the obstacles of the current period. "


More revisionism in Nepal.. Juche endorsed as a “road to socialism” -Nov, 2008


"It is hard to keep track of all the revisionism in Nepal. The so-called Communist Party of Nepal is fertile grounds for just about every kind of revisionism known: First Worldism, Kautskyism, Liu Shaoqi-Dengism, Trotskyism and so on. However, recently, they’ve outdone themselves. In a recent article in The Red Star, “Communist” Party member, Krishna Bahadur Mahara, appointed as Minister of Information and Communication in the cabinet headed by Prachanda, praised Juche as “leading to socialism.” (1)



Also, “Kim Ill Sung has developed the Juchhe ideology as a unique contribution to the international communist movement.” Such a claim is a blatant rejection of Maoism as revolutionary science. Prachanda rejected revolutionary science a long time ago. More recently, the leadership in Nepal has moved to drop even their nominal Maoism. That a high level cadre in Prachanda’s cabinet would endorse Juche as a road to socialism is not surprising considering the rampant revisionism in their party. This is yet more confirmation of the moribund nature of the First Worldist so-called Maoist movement, the so-called Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM), in particular. Similar statements about Juche have been made by those in the so-called Communist Party of the Philippines.


That said, Juche is probably a better ideology than other revisionisms floating around in the so-called Communist Party of Nepal. There is much praiseworthy about Juche’s emphasis on self-determination and self-reliance. Self-determination and self-reliance for oppressed nations are a part of Maoism-Third Worldism. If the Third World is ever to defeat the First World, Third World nations will have to implement self-reliant developmental strategies that do not rely on Western capital. Juche forces, in this respect, are better than those forces within the so-called Communist Party of Nepal that seek to implement developmental strategies that coordinate with the imperialists, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Juche, although not a path to socialism and communism, is preferable than compradorism masked by quasi-Maoist rhetoric.


In the long term, the only way path to communism is the most advanced revolutionary science: the fourth stage of Marxism, Maoism-Third Worldism. If the Third World is to ever defeat the First World, then it will need to every weapon available. Nationalist bourgeois dogma like Juche can only take a people’s movement so far before the movement becomes moribund, as is witnessed in Korea. Finding ever new ways to praise the leader is not the kind of ideological innovation that will get us to communism.



Prachanda’s minister promotes the Korean cult of the leader, the people of Korea “address him ‘Father of the motherland’. The immortal contribution to the nation and its people by Kim Ill Sung is directly related with the liberty and independence of the Korean people. The Korean Labor party has adopted the Juchhe ideology as its guiding ideology.” Juche, in the end, can only lead back to capitalism. Today the followers of Juche have sought to implement a “free trade zone” along the northern Korean border. Around 1995 Ford, an Amerikan automobile manufacture, even sought to establish a factory there. In the article Prachanda’s cabinet minister praises Western tourism as well. It is with good reason that Maoists criticized Kim il-Sung during the Cultural Revolution. Maoist-Third Worldists see the necessity of continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat, something that the followers of Juche cannot grasp within the narrow limits of their pre-scientific thinking. And, even though Juche is revisionism, Maoists-Third Worldists stand by the people of Korea, and the state of northern Korea, against imperialist aggression."

[redwinter]

Actually, this particular line struggle between the RCP,USA and the CPN(M) has been going on since 2005...Here is what I find in one of the RCP's letters (all available at http://www.revcom.us/a/160/Letters.pdf)


The RCP is making these letters public at this point based on its assessment of how best to carry the struggle forward to do whatever is possible to save the revolution in Nepal, and to assist others around the world in learning from this experience so as to sharpen the overall understanding of the diverging lines that are becoming evident in the international communist movement. This is no time to mince words: the revolution in Nepal has been sinking into quicksand and will not “self
correct” unless and until there is a conscious and energetic repudiation of the ideological and political line that has led it to this disaster.

In deciding to make these letters public, the RCP is proceeding from the bedrock understanding that communists are not representatives of this or that nation, but of the world proletariat, and that their cause is the cause of emancipating all humanity. Proceeding from this viewpoint, communists should pay particular attention to, and focus political and ideological support and assistance on, those struggles that offer the greatest chances for making revolutionary breakthroughs against imperialism. The RCP therefore has viewed the growth of revisionist views in the CPN(M) with the utmost seriousness and concern, and has worked hard to figure out
how to conduct struggle with the CPN(M) in a way that is consistent with communist principle and would offer the greatest hope for a positive outcome.

Some critics have derided the RCP for its “silence” over Nepal up to this point. But the exchange of views between communist parties and organizations—including at times sharp disagreements over matters of principle—takes place in the context of extremely complex struggle, with monumental stakes, against ferocious enemies; this must be constantly kept in mind by anyone who is serious about advancing this struggle. The RCP has proceeded on the basis of the understanding that, “the work of communists and the revolutionary struggles they lead are matters of profound importance for the masses of people, not only in the particular country immediately involved but indeed in the world as a whole” and that the airing of differences has to be weighed and approached very carefully, because doing so “can easily be of aid to the imperialists and reactionaries who relentlessly seek to crush and annihilate revolutionary struggles and vanguard communist forces.” (From “Stuck in the ‘Awful Capitalist Present’ or Forging a Path to the Communist Future, Response to Mike Ely’s Nine Letters”)

The international communist movement must be full of vigorous debate and struggle, but it is not and should not be turned into a mere debating society. It is only when the RCP had become thoroughly convinced that it was not possible through the channels available to it to persuade the leadership of the CPN(M) to turn aside from the disastrous path it was pursuing that the decision was made to open up the struggle to the broad public.

It is undoubtedly true that the CPN(M) has dug itself a deep hole, and it is getting deeper. To speak frankly, it is very hard indeed for a party to extricate itself from such depths. But communism will never be reached without communists going up against great obstacles and overcoming tremendous difficulties, in order to make unprecedented breakthroughs—and this is what is called for today. The first thing that needs to be done is to accept the fact that the problem is the basic line of the Party. It is the revisionism, and the centrism and eclecticism and promotion of illusions of classless democracy that have led the Party into the swamp, and it is a radical rupture with this that is required. This means above all a reaffirmation of the basic principles and goals of communism, which in Nepal means carrying forward—through revolutionary means and not by attempting to rely on, and promote, gradualist illusions and reformist schemes—the struggle to complete the new democratic revolution as the first step toward socialism and the final aim of communism.

The comrades in Nepal are not alone in facing this challenge, but to make the necessary ruptures will require a definite break with nationalism, empiricism and pragmatism—and, as a particular expression of that, the elevation of one’s practice, with whatever successes it may have involved up to a certain point, as beyond criticism and as more important than the fundamental principles of communism, which are themselves the distillation and scientific synthesis of a vast range of human practice and struggle, in the realm of revolution and in many other dimensions of human thought and activity. As the November 2008 RCP Letter points out:


[T]he belief that the advanced practice of the Nepal revolution has made it unnecessary to learn from advanced understanding from other comrades is part of the pragmatism and empiricism that has, unfortunately, been a growing part of the CPN(M) leadership’s ideological orientation for some time now. Any effort to resolve the crisis in the CPN(M) only “on its own terms,” and on nationalist or empiricist grounds to ignore or resist the advanced revolutionary communist understanding developing elsewhere is to severely handicap the struggle for a correct line. In particular, we sincerely hope that the comrades of the CPN(M) will give serious attention to engaging with the body of work, method and approach, the new synthesis, that Bob Avakian has been bringing forward.
So...I think people really need to get into the content of this whole exchange and study it deeply (especially before a casual dismissal apparently before even reading it)...

[AvanteRedGarde]

I skimmed it yesterday, thank you. I'm still left with one question. Is the Prachanda leadership, which was extolled by the RCP-USA as fraternal for years, now understood by the RCP-USA to be revisionist? What's your opinion?

[Saorsa]

:lol:

[AvanteRedGarde]

I guess Redwinter is merely qualified to republish "major" statements by the RCP, but can't explain or defend such statements or the group which originally put them out- nor does s/he have an opinion of her own. Is this understanding basically correct?

[redwinter]

Avante: I think it should be clear even from skimming the article that the RCP,USA is critiquing the revisionist line that is in command of the CPN(M) from many different directions. I'm not going to keep cutting and pasting relevant sections here for you to answer your questions, just read the polemics and after you've done that, I'd be interested in getting into reflections on them (including yours).

[AvanteRedGarde]

I find it noteworthy that you have a) not responded in any way to the MSH articles, nor b) offered any insights as to what you think (as opposed to the RCP thinks) about the situation in Nepal. Instead you keep referencing the original RCP document. Almost seems scripted.

If you would like to discuss the issue further, I'll start a thread in the MLM group.

[redwinter]

I checked out the only link in your post that worked (the rest were dead) and thought that most of it was just idiotic - saying that Bob Avakian's line is the same as Prachanda's and the cop-jacketing they are trying to pull on both parties. This is highly wrong (in reality) and highly unprincipled - not to mention potentially dangerous - and just totally fucked up whether you agree with either or neither group. Even though in the initial part of their article they make some criticisms of what was going on in Nepal, the bulk of it is a shit-stained scrawl against the RIM, the RCP, and Bob Avakian (all of which is bulked together with everyone else they supposedly oppose) - much of which doesn't make any sense. Avakian wrote a book in the 80s debunking Hannah Arendt's myth of "totalitarianism" and his writings are sharply different than those of CPN(M) leaders - how could they all be the same? It boggles the mind. But don't take my word for it, check the writings out yourself...starting with these letters posted in the first message on this thread.

[AvanteRedGarde]

I beleive that MSH characterizes the root of the problems with the RCP, RIM (possibly defunct?), and UCPN as stemming from the same revisionism: "First Worldism". To be fair, MSH characterizes almost all grouping that don't accept it's 'Maoist Third Worldist,' line as First Worldist.

That issue aside, were not the RCP and the now UCPN fraternal for many years. The idea that the RCP and the UCPN are two peas in a pod seems not far off, despite what differences they may have ran into lately.

[Red Heretic]

RedWinter is right.

Just to speak briefly of the differences between the RCP critique, and the critique of some other dogmato-revisionist and third-worldist forces that have been referenced here...

The RCP has NOT, as other forces have, made flippant critiques that narrowly tried to extrapolate and attack the line of the CPN(M) straight of it's practice. It has not flippantly accused comrades of being revisonists narrowly on the basis of this or that tactic. It has not engaged in sectarian cop-baiting that is completely unprincipled and has no business in our movement.

The RCP critique focuses on the line that is in command, which has led to the current practice. The view of the state (that there can be a state that is neither proletarian nor bourgeois), the ecclectics and "two-into-one" method of resolving contradictions where revisonist lines are mish-mashed with revolutionary ones rather than the revolutionary line winning out, the pragmatism, the nationalism... all of these lines have led our comrades into into the swamp, and it is the responsibility of the whole world communist movement to engage in this line struggle to save the revolution in Nepal.

The revolution in Nepal is a part of the world revolution, and the stakes are very high for the entire communist movement. We should approach this struggle seriously, upholding the advances of the revolution, while struggling for a correct line that can leap out of the swamp.

Everyone needs to study this polemic and the letters between the CPN(M) and the RCP, USA.

[Red Heretic]

Just in case anyone missed them:

On the Developments in Nepal and the Stakes for the Communist Movement:
http://www.revcom.us/a/160/nepal-article-en.html (http://www.revcom.us/a/160/nepal-article-en.html)

Letters to the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) from the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA 2005-2008, (With a Response from CPN(M), 2006):
http://www.revcom.us/a/160/Letters.pdf

[AvanteRedGarde]

RedWinter is right.
The RCP has NOT, as other forces have, made flippant critiques that narrowly tried to extrapolate and attack the line of the CPN(M) straight of it's practice. It has not flippantly accused comrades of being revisonists narrowly on the basis of this or that tactic.

Abandoning people's war, abandoning the people's state, abandoning the people's army- all with the implications of abandoning class struggle. It's the same criticism two years ago.


It has not engaged in sectarian cop-baiting that is completely unprincipled and has no business in our movement.

The specific phrase was "CIA tool." Reading into it, I would say this judgment is based primarily on the RCPUSA's "neither imperialism nor islam" line which objectively works against patriotic resistance from Muslim peoples; as well as RCPUSA's infamous interference with the Peruvian CP during the 90's. There is a saying, 'you don't have to be collecting a check to be doing pig work.' I think what then-IRTR was saying was that the RCPUSA and RIM had a line which serves U.S. by undercutting Third World liberation, the primary vehichle of structural change from the MTWist veiwpoint.


The RCP critique focuses on the line that is in command, which has led to the current practice...

And two years ago, from the CPN-M's practice, IRTR identified such a revisionist line- which is now similarly described by the RCPUSA.


Everyone needs to study this polemic and the letters between the CPN(M) and the RCP, USA.

I'm not even saying that everyone NEEDS THE STUDY THESE POLEMICS BY MONKEY SMASHES HEAVEN!

I'm just saying that the same criticisms have been around. The UCPN is revisionist and are basically setting themselves up to be the Nepali managers of the U.S. empire. Now that the RCP is certain of this, they are finally coming to terms and breaking their silence.

[Red Heretic]

Well, I'd like to hear what other comrades on this board think.

What do other's who have been following the People's War think about these developments?

This needs to be a much more broad discussion! The stakes are quite high.

[Pogue]

Well, I'd like to hear what other comrades on this board think.

What do other's who have been following the People's War think about these developments?

This needs to be a much more broad discussion! The stakes are quite high.

Its a bourgeois state implementing moderate left wing reforms. Been there, done that before, these guys are nothing special and don't represent any significant hope for us. As revolutionaries we should recognise reformism emans fuck all in the long term.

[AvanteRedGarde]

HVSL, please familiarize yourself with the situation before amazing us with your one-liners. The Nepal communists were a month or two from totally destroying the old state. Then they abandoned peoples war and coopted themselves as part of a reconstitued bourgeois state. Sad indeed. Too bad their faternal party, the RCPUSA, didn't call this move out as revisionism and a betrayal of the people when it happened. Oh well, I quess hindsight is 20 20.

[Red Heretic]

Its a bourgeois state implementing moderate left wing reforms. Been there, done that before, these guys are nothing special and don't represent any significant hope for us. As revolutionaries we should recognise reformism emans fuck all in the long term.

I think it's more complex than that though. This was the most advanced revolutionary struggle in the would, and represented the hopes of millions of people around the world. A socialist Nepal that actually smashes the old bourgeois state and constructs a new revolutionary socialist society as a transition to communism would play the role of a base area for the world revolution.

And I don't think that knee jerk flippant reactions are really helpful. We should deeply struggle to grasp and understand the actual political and ideological lines.


Too bad their faternal party, the RCPUSA, didn't call this move out as revisionism and a betrayal of the people when it happened.That's not true. The RCP carried out principled two-line struggle around these line questions since 2005, and all of these struggles are taking place within the context of imperialist encirclement. The RCP opened up public line struggle only when it became clear that this was the only way to save the revolution in Nepal.

[redwinter]

That issue aside, were not the RCP and the now UCPN fraternal for many years. The idea that the RCP and the UCPN are two peas in a pod seems not far off, despite what differences they may have ran into lately.

This would be like saying "The Chinese and Soviet parties were fraternal for many years before the early 60s (when China released its anti-revisionist polemics against the Khrushchev clique) so the idea that they're two peas in a pod seems not far off."

That couldn't be farther from the truth.

I posted earlier in this thread the reasoning given by the RCP,USA for not publishing these letters publicly, and if you look back at other line struggles in the international communist movement (like the Chinese and the Soviets in the 60s, or line struggle within the Communist Party of Peru which played out internationally in the 90s) it was not just thrown out publicly immediately, but there are good reasons not to do stuff like that rashly and on a whim...

Besides that, I think this series of letters is much deeper than anything written up to now on the question of the revolution in Nepal and the lines contending on how to save it. If people want to comment on the content of these letters (http://www.revcom.us/a/160/Letters.pdf), I'd be interested in hearing what people's reactions/opinions are (not just of self-described 'communists' but of the broader readers of this forum).

[Rawthentic]

I recommend people check out the ongoing discussion on these letters here: http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2009/03/23/discussion-thread-the-controversy-over-nepals-maoist-revolution/

Something that strikes me in the overall ignorance of the RCP's letter is its critique of Nepali Maoists' desire to "reach the level of switzerland."

They write:
“A basic question is whether development must come by being more integrated into the capitalist and imperialist system…This is one of the reasons we find it so strange to see the CPN(M) promising the “ten, twenty, forty” to the masses (doubling the gross national product in ten years, doubling it again in the following ten years and “reaching the level of Switzerland” within forty years).”Now why would the Nepali Maoists discuss overtaking Switzerland (instead of say, italy, or south Korea?)

Well, because there IS an analogy to be made. Switerland is a small country, that emerged between great powers in europe. It is a landlocked country made up of huge mountains and steep valleys, with very little farmland gathered in a few border areas. The country has few natural resource, and a very scattered population.

When the Maoists’ leadership of Nepal toured europe several years ago, they visited (and investigated) Switzerland. And they spelled out (in some detail) some things that they thought that a Nepali revolutionary might find interesting about Switzerland. For one thing, over its history, it remained free of both occupation and strategic entanglements with bigger surrounding powers. Second, switzerland (like Nepal) has a great deal of hydro-electric potential (and few other natural resources), and so the possibility of developing of Nepal’s waterfalls as a basis of electification meant that they found aspects of Switzerland’s infrastructure interesting. And finally, Switzerland (unlike almost any other country in the world) does not rely on a standing army — its military defenses are organized as a militia (where every adult man must serve) led by a much smaller core of trained professional soldiers. In this the Swiss bourgeoisie has relied on the difficulty of foreign powers to occupy the high mountains — and their vulnerability to an indigenous resistance. This corresponds with proposals made by the Maoists, that a revolutionary Nepal consider abandoning the model of a standing army, and use its fighters to train large numbers of the people in preparation for mass resistance (especially to the possibility of an Indian invasion, which remains the main military threat to the Nepali revolution and national independence).

In making such statements (which were aimed at explaining in a popular way some of the Maoist plans for New Nepal) were the Maoists confused about the capitalist nature of Switzerland? Uh, no. several times (I remember) they remarked that they were making these analogies and comparisons while understanding quite well that Switzerland is a capitalist country, and that as communists this is not the road they envision taking.

And so, the discussion of Switzerland in Nepalese politics is not really so silly — and not inherently rooted in confusion about the difference between capitalism and socialism. And when communists have been leading socialist societies or major revolutionary movements they have often made such analogies (not just Mao to britain, but Lenin and Stalin discussing things they intended to learn from the U.S.)

* * * * * * *

There are major line questions tied up in such analogies. And it all does ultimately depend on what you mean and what you intend to do. And there has always been a powerful tendency among some revolutionaries from Third World countries to see the socialist revolution (in the third world) as being simply an alternative way to achieve the development denied them by the configurations of the capitalist system.
We can and should discuss whether the Nepali Maoist approach to this is correct — or whether sections of their movement have different approaches on these questions. And discuss whether it is possible to rest economic development (in a poor and isolated future-socialist country) on hydroelectric power (which generally takes huge capital investments and technology that come with political strings attached). But, we can’t even get to that important and substantive discussion, if the whole political air is made murky by such dogmatic, idealist and deceptive methods.

and in this light, I’d like to add that the RCP’s polemics are almost completely devoid of such real-world discussions. Yes, they are right (in one sense) that there is a fundamental question (and matter of overall line) “whether development must come by being more integrated into the capitalist and imperialist system…”

But how do you SOLVE that problem? By simply asserting that you mustn’t be “integrated into the capitallist and imperialist system”? After a hundred years of complex experience, where are the summations and lessons of that? Are such things solved merely by asserting the “principles” (as the RCP says at the end of the Nov 2008 document) — or does that avoid the difficult question of exploring (both in theory and real life) how a small, poor, landlocked country develops a socialist economy (or, if it can’t, what it then takes as its strategic approach for serving the world revolution as a base area.)

My point (in raising this relatively obscure example of the RCP’s repeated discussion of Switzerland in their polemics) is that the whole thing is conducted repeatedly using a very rigid, misleading and categorical “logic” where there is only one thing that you need to know about Switzerland –that it is an imperialist country — and so by a false sequence of logical steps, any communist making analogies to Switzerland MUST be pro-capitalist or at best confused.

and it all builds up to the last paragraph (of the Nov 2008 letter) where (surprise!) the solution (this time as a rope, not just a thread!) is there for the taking in Bob Avakian’s New Synthesis.

And you get the sense that the authors of the RCP polemics are really speculating on the “info diet” — i.e. that a large part of their intended audience are people who will learn ‘the facts’ about Nepal FROM the RCP’s polemic, and will not have independently followed some of the discussions of Switzerland within Nepali politics and so (trapped in the singularity of their solid core) will not have any sense of how deceptive the RCP’s “logic” is.

And I’m raising this because these methods are applied throughout these polemics (and a number of other polemics the RCP has made recently) — and they rest on a misleading combination of dogmatism, mechanical logic and indifference to the actual particularities.

[Saorsa]

Abandoning people's war, abandoning the people's state, abandoning the people's army- all with the implications of abandoning class struggle. It's the same criticism two years ago.

The Maoists have not done any of those things. The People's War has been ended in a military sense, but People's War and revolutionary struggle is much greater than just soldiers with guns. There are reports that the alternative power structures remain in place in a semi-clandestine manner, and the People's Army is still intact, still battle ready, still armed, and this ain't about to change any time soon. Stop making stuff up.

[AvanteRedGarde]

Making stuff up? What world are you living in. As part of the ceasefire, the PLA weapons are stored and locked up and the PLA, those who haven't deserted or who weren't send home at the behest of the west (something like 3,000 'child' soldiers), are stationed at UN monitored camps. This isn't even disputed.

If the structures of peoples power are now existing in a semi clandestine manner, isn't that in many ways a step backwards from 2005?

[ZACKist]

As part of the ceasefire, the PLA weapons are stored and locked up and the PLA, those who haven't deserted or who weren't send home at the behest of the west (something like 3,000 'child' soldiers), are stationed at UN monitored camps.

What do you think of the oft mentioned YCL?

[Saorsa]

Making stuff up? What world are you living in. As part of the ceasefire, the PLA weapons are stored and locked up and the PLA, those who haven't deserted or who weren't send home at the behest of the west (something like 3,000 'child' soldiers), are stationed at UN monitored camps. This isn't even disputed.

Again your making stuff up. Provide a shred of evidence to back up your allegation that PLA soldiers are deserting. The PLA's weapons, apart from those necessary for training and sentry duty, are stored in safes to which the PLA has they key. I'm glad your not disputing that, because it doesn't sound like they're very disarmed to me.


If the structures of peoples power are now existing in a semi clandestine manner, isn't that in many ways a step backwards from 2005?

No. The Maoists have used the opportunities and space provided by the ceasefire to topple the monarchy, and most importantly to do above ground work in the urban areas. This was not possible previously. The Maoists want to win over the urban proletariat, and their election results and the militancy of Maoist-affiliated trade unions shows the massive progress made in this area. Believe it or not, not every People's War is going to play out exactly how the Chinese one did.

I'd recommend you read this (http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2008/04/09/gaurav-the-revolution-in-nepal/) article, in which the Maoists themselves explain their reasons for ending the armed struggle and seeking to move the struggle forward through the ballot. I'm inclined to trust their assessment of the situation more than yours.

[chebol]

Funny, they don't look so very disarmed in the photos in this (http://maobadiwatch.blogspot.com/2009/03/some-pictures-and-thoughts-from-peoples.html) article.

[AvanteRedGarde]

One picture in 2 years, of two cadre on guard. Real impressive. Note that I already admitted that they nominally guarded there own camps. There is no reason to believe, based on my previous statements, that there wouldn't be a couple of cadre standing around with guns at there camp.

Alstair, I'll try to more fully address your statements later if I have time. For now I will ask, who exactly has the keys- and whom do they serve. The masses of Nepal certainly don't. It's doubtful that regular cadre have such keys. Rather it's the upper cadre who have the keys. Who are they loyal too ultimately at this point. The UCPN leadership or their mass constituency.

You should also address the two reported leftist splits. I'll try to post an article on the most recent one.

[redwinter]

There seems to be some confusion over what exactly the crux of the matter is in terms of this debate between the CPN(M) and the RCP,USA. It is not over this or that tactic, negotiation, particular position on one issue or another, or even the ceasefire. It is precisely about political and ideological line. Whether or not the UCPN(M) starts armed struggle again or even brought back the PLA (looking like a pretty remote possibility at this point, but I won't claim to know the future) - this would not in itself signal a change in the basic line of the Party. The line leading the UCPN(M) is the essential problem.

It's worthwhile for comrades to look back at the line struggle that took place around the peace accords in the Peruvian revolution after the capture of Chairman Gonzalo in the 90s to see the differentiation that line makes - and whether you are "negotiating in order to fight" or "fighting in order to negotiate" (appropriate examples of the former are mentioned in an article in the international communist theoretical journal A World To Win #21, 1995, On Negotiations and Turning Points: Let the Lessons of the Past Fire the Way Forward! (http://www.aworldtowin.org/back_issues/1995-21/on_negotiations_turning_points_21_eng.htm), footnotes 2 & 3: the Brest-Litovsk treaty of 1918 and the Chungking negotiations between Mao Tse-tung and Chiang Kai-shek in 1945) - all having to do with what the goal is that you're fighting for.

The questions in dispute shape up around a number of issues; no matter how troubling the tactics are, the key thing is the goal of the Party in general. Negating and attacking the fundamentals of Marxism as "dogmatic" and revising the revolutionary heart out of our theory (such as the Marxist analysis of the state, by claiming it is not a tool of the dictatorship of a class) is revisionism.

As the RCP,USA writes in its March 2008 letter (http://revcom.us/a/160/Letters.pdf) to the CPN(M):


As mentioned earlier, our dispute with the comrades of the CPN(M) did not begin with their decision to sign the Comprehensive Peace Agreement with the Seven Party Alliance, the main representatives (except the king) of the reactionary classes in Nepal. A discussion within the CPN(M) intensified in 2005, which the Party characterized as a “two line struggle.” In particular one of the protagonists in this struggle, Comrade Baburam Bhattarai, published a comprehensive article entitled “The Question of Building a New Type of State” which, in our opinion, represented a basic departure from a correct Marxist understanding of the state, democracy and the proletarian dictatorship. In hopes of contributing to the discussion that was then underway in the Party, we wrote our criticism of that article, along with our criticism of the proposal for the “demobilizing of the PLA and the Royal Nepal Army” and eventually merging them into one.

At more or less the same time our letter was received, the CPN(M) held a Central Committee meeting which resolved the two-line struggle with what represented, in our opinion, the adoption of the line argued in the “New State” article in an eclectic form. The explanation in the resolution of that meeting was that the line adopted of going for a “democratic republic” and a “transitional state” was only “tactical” but that the “strategy” remained one of new democracy, socialism and communism.

This eclecticism in politics and ideology is reflected throughout the writings and actions of the CPN(M) in the past period. To make things even worse, there is an increasing tendency to identify the “federal democratic republic,” which is most definitely a bourgeois republic, with the elimination of exploitation and classes. The tendency toward combining “two into one” is reflected right down to the publication of photos of their leaders smeared with tikka coupled with the explanation that “red is the color of the proletariat.”

Later we will return at more length to the vital question of eclecticism and the tending to combine “two into one”. For the moment we will simply recall Lenin’s words:


“Dialectics are replaced by eclecticism–this is the most usual, the most widespread practice to be met with in present-day official Social-Democratic literature in relation to Marxism. This sort of substitution is, of course, nothing new: it was observed even in the history of Greek philosophy. In falsifying Marxism in opportunist fashion, the substitution of eclecticism for dialectics is the easiest way of deceiving the people. It gives an illusory satisfaction; it seems to take into account all sides of the process, all trends of development, all the conflicting influences, and so forth, whereas in reality it provides no integral and revolutionary conception of the process of social development at all.” (“The State and Revolution,” Collected Works, Vol. 25, p. 405.)[From http://revcom.us/a/160/Letters.pdf]
So again, I think there is a lack of understanding even among people here discussing this, and it would be very helpful to go back and study the letters (http://revcom.us/a/160/Letters.pdf) to really get a sense of what is up for debate here.

[AvanteRedGarde]

[Alastair, try a google search]

http://telegraphnepal.com/news_det.php?news_id=4919

Nepal Maoist 's cadre desertion continues; Matrika' party swells

Matrika Yadav a former Untied Maoists’ Party Central Committee member after initiating unity efforts with Revolutionary Left Wing –a Maoists’ splinter has initiated further moves to unite with yet another revolutionary group-the Kirat Revolutionary Workers Party.

Yadav's progress in this regard is yielding positive results, analysts opine.

Kirat Revolutionary Workers Party (KWP) has been carrying out armed operations in the Eastern Hilly Region of Nepal for a sovereign separate state.
The KWP had attended to talks with the government but repeatedly, as the talks failed, threatened the government to continue carrying out armed operations unless their demand for declaration of Kirat Sovereign State was not met with.

In the meanwhile, the number of United Maoist Party local leaders and cadres in various districts who have joined the Matrika faction of Maoists’ restructured party is swelling.

Dipak Pandey of the United Maoists Party who is also the in charge of Taulihawa Chapter has quit the mother party and joined the Matrika group freshly.
Talking to journalists in Taulihawa, said Mr. Pandey, “We have restructured the Taulihawa Maoists’ Party as requested by Mr. Matrika Yadav, now I am the coordinator of Nepal Communist Party-Maoist”.

“Prachanda has deceived all of us, he is the traitor but yet the revolution continues until the down trodden are liberated”.

“A communist leader who rides a car worth ten million rupees and the one who sleeps in a bed worth one lakh plus can no longer remain as the messiah of the people and thus realizing this hidden truth we have abandoned the Maoist party for good ”, said Pandey.

Analysts claim that if such a trend of desertion continues for long then one fine morning, Prachanda will be left with his Central Committee members only around him.
However, the Maoist spokesperson, Dina Nath Sharma claims that such small events will in no way shake the very firm foundation of the Maoist party led by Comrade Prachanda.

2009-02-27 08:18:39

[AvanteRedGarde]

Also, 3000 soldiers were sent out because the were so-called 'child soldiers.' This alone represented well over 10% of the PLA fighting force before the peace deal.

[NaxalbariZindabad]

Analysts claim that if such a trend of desertion continues for long then one fine morning, Prachanda will be left with his Central Committee members only around him.:lol: I wonder who are these "analysts" (if they ever existed)... It's hard to take this source seriously with that kind of "analysis".

[Saorsa]

One picture in 2 years, of two cadre on guard. Real impressive. Note that I already admitted that they nominally guarded there own camps. There is no reason to believe, based on my previous statements, that there wouldn't be a couple of cadre standing around with guns at there camp.

I'm sure the Maoists are going to be very worried about whether or not they're managing to impress know-it-all 'leftists' in the First World with the state of the PLA.



Alstair, I'll try to more fully address your statements later if I have time.

That would be wonderful, I can't wait.


For now I will ask, who exactly has the keys- and whom do they serve.

The leadership of the PLA cantonments I assume, or other leading members of the Maoist army or party. They serve the workers and peasants of Nepal, and are directly under orders to the leadership of the UCPN (M).


The masses of Nepal certainly don't.

Uh, your point being... Your suggesting they manufacture several million keys and mail them out to every household in the country? Be serious...


It's doubtful that regular cadre have such keys. Rather it's the upper cadre who have the keys.

You find this noteworthy why?


Who are they loyal too ultimately at this point. The UCPN leadership or their mass constituency.

The United Communist Party of Nepal is an entirely different organisation to the United Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). They are loyal to both, and loyalty to one is loyalty to the other. There is no antagonistic contradiction between the Maoist leadership and the working masses of Nepal.


You should also address the two reported leftist splits. I'll try to post an article on the most recent one.

There are splits in every party, especially during times of revolutionary upheaval. There were numerous splits from the Bolsheviks both before, during and after the revolution - that doesn't change the fact that the Bolsheviks were the revolutionary party of the Russian proletariat, just like the UCPN (M) is in Nepal.

I'm probably more informed about the splits from the Maoist party than you are. I've spoken to a guy who's met Matrika Yadav. :P I don't see why you see this as so significant. The situation in Nepal remains very fluid, and it's ridiculous to form arbitrary black and white judgements on what's going on there based on bourgeois media reports, diplomatic press releases and your own dogmas.


So again, I think there is a lack of understanding even among people here discussing this, and it would be very helpful to go back and study the letters to really get a sense of what is up for debate here.

The letters that suggest to the Maoists that they try to learn from Bob Avakian's New Synthesis? Only the shining path of Bob Avakian (may he see a thousand sunsets) can act as the rope to pull the Maoists from the treacherous swamp of revisionism! Follow Bob Avakian - the Leadership we Need! :lol:


or even brought back the PLA

Brought it back from where, exactly? It never went away. :confused:


The line leading the UCPN(M) is the essential problem.

And what is that line, in your opinion?


The questions in dispute shape up around a number of issues; no matter how troubling the tactics are, the key thing is the goal of the Party in general. Negating and attacking the fundamentals of Marxism as "dogmatic" and revising the revolutionary heart out of our theory (such as the Marxist analysis of the state, by claiming it is not a tool of the dictatorship of a class) is revisionism.

The Nepalese Maoists don't claim that. And there has never been a revolution in history that didn't succeed through breaking with the dogmas and blueprints of the past.


[Alastair, try a google search]

That's old news, I read that article shortly after it came out. If you join the external email list of my party, the Spark Discussion List, you can search back through the archives and you'll find that I sent it to there on the 28th of February. You don't know anything I don't. I'm not going to comment on Matrika's split (another middle level leader called Thapa has split seperately as well) other than to say I think it's indicative of it's weight that he's the only CC member to have left. It's up to the Nepalese comrades to sort out what's going on around the split - we can't do it for them.


Also, 3000 soldiers were sent out because the were so-called 'child soldiers.' This alone represented well over 10% of the PLA fighting force before the peace deal.

Freeing them up to join the YCL and take part in other party activities. Do you think they all just went home and forgot about everything? Following this, and also in response to the Army recruiting new soldiers, the Maoists have stated that they are recruiting new troops to the PLA.

[ZACKist]

It seems kind of obvious at this point that the RCP has degenerated into a tiny sect that couldn't lead the few that haven't left their organization out of tin can, let alone lead a revolutionary insurrection in the US.

Also seems to be the case that their dogmatic/sectarian posturing towards Nepal's CP which is actually leading masses of people towards a possible seizure of power hasn't been taken up (and garnered only one response in 2006) by the Nepalese comrades.

Good on them for not being bogged down by the "Party Of Bob Avakian" promotion cult.

[redwinter]

The line leading the UCPN(M) is the essential problem.
And what is that line, in your opinion?


The questions in dispute shape up around a number of issues; no matter how troubling the tactics are, the key thing is the goal of the Party in general. Negating and attacking the fundamentals of Marxism as "dogmatic" and revising the revolutionary heart out of our theory (such as the Marxist analysis of the state, by claiming it is not a tool of the dictatorship of a class) is revisionism.

The Nepalese Maoists don't claim that.

See for yourself, read the CPN(M)'s letter where they specifically say the RCP,USA is just repeating the "ABC of Marxism" and it is "frustrating": http://www.revcom.us/a/160/Letters.pdf

I mean their entire letter (dated July 1, 2006) is mired in this completely eclectic (thus, revisionist) line on democracy and the state...if you want to go further, check out The Question of Building a New Type of State (http://cpnm.org/new/English/worker/9issue/article_baburam.htm) by Baburam Bhattarai from the CPN(M)'s publication The Worker #9 (Feb. 2004), with a sprinkling of cherry-picked Lenin quotes to try to say that if there's not enough multiparty democracy (with bourgeois reactionary parties participating, and socialism itself being "up for a vote") then you get "totalitarianism" and "bureaucracy" -- wow, I guess we throw in the trash Mao's breakthroughs on how class struggle develops under socialism and where the roots of revisionism are? While upholding the "dictatorship of the proletariat" in words (barely) it negates it with some Lenin quote about "proletarian democracy" (taken out of context and twisted in meaning from the point Lenin was making - not about democracy in a bourgeois formal sense with modern-style elections etc, but about the proletariat as a class having control over the direction of society being "a million times more democratic" than capitalist "democracy").

It's pretty much classical liberal worshiping at the altar of bourgeois democracy - instead of 21st century socialism it looks more like 18th century republicanism. The experience of socialist societies is thrown out and Bhattarai suggests that immediately after socialist revolution we could organize the state along the lines of the Paris Commune (!) as well as abolish a standing army to be replaced with people's armed militias. All of this is because the "bureaucracy" was too stifling...something like a bastardization of the worst of the anarchist and Trotskyist misconceptions on the socialist experience.

The icing on the cake is Roshan Kissoon's article "Negation of the Negation" (http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2009/01/negation-of-the-negation/) in the CPN(M)'s online journal Red Star #21 (January 24, 2009). This piece not only rejects all socialist societies as "state capitalist" and openly rejects Marxism itself, but goes on to talk shit about Bob Avakian for going further in communist theory (and to actually come up with a new framework and synthesis to address the kind of questions about contradictions within socialist society that the CPN(M) raised to the RCP,USA in their 2006 letter).

But don't take my word for it: read the letters and Bhattarai's piece yourself, and tell me what you think (not just what some might wish to believe).

It is a painful thing to see so many gains from the people's war get utterly destroyed right before our eyes - and it adds insult to injury when I read people on this forum excited that some tourist dude took a few photos inside one of the "cantonment" concentration camps that the PLA is confined in until they are totally disbanded and perhaps many are fused into the enemy's reactionary Nepal Army, as is planned.

The sad thing is not only that the Central Committee of the CPN(M) pretty much adopted this line in October 2005 shortly after Bhattarai wrote the piece (with a few more mentions of the "final goal" added to lure suspecting comrades in), but that over a decade earlier right nearby in India a polemic had been fought out with K. Venu (at the time a "Maoist" who was putting out a very similar line on socialism after the collapse of the Soviet Union -- and who has since joined the reactionary parliament in India), and Bob Avakian who presented the revolutionary communist opposition to that line (you can read both Avakian and Venu's papers in their entirety online: http://revcom.us/bob_avakian/democracy/).

So yeah, the PDF of the letters (http://www.revcom.us/a/160/Letters.pdf) is 131 pages and it gets much deeper into the lines at stake here (this is hardly the extent of it, but it's addressing the my particular statement you questioned).

[redwinter]

for those who have been following this line struggle, there is an interesting report posted on www.revcom.us about taking out this issue regarding the line struggle between the RCP,USA and the CPN(M) into a South Asian community...

check it out here:
http://www.revcom.us/a/161/Nepal_issue_into_community-en.html

it shows that among broad masses of Nepali and other South Asian immigrants, and people of all nationalities, there is a thirst to learn more about the line struggle going on and the crucial questions of making revolution...

[N3wday]

RedWinter,

The Red Star is not a journal of the UCPN(M), it's only loosely affiliated with them. It's a revolutionary newspaper, not the UCPN(M)'s. The Worker is the only publication that adheres strictly to their line.

*

Just out of curiosity, why do you think the UCPN(M) advocates a militia? Have you ever read any of their theoretical documents that speak to this?

You remember how the letters your party wrote totally rip on the UCPN(M) because they made comparisons between themselves and Switzerland (which supposedly proves they're capitalist scum LOL!!!).

It's because Switzerland is a tiny mountain country surrounded by larger neighbors. How did Switzerland maintain their independence? Oh yeah, a large militia in which everyone in the country is required to go through a minimum of 2 (maybe 3) years of military training and serve for a period of time in order maintain a fighting force large enough to stand a chance in confrontation with larger countries.

What exactly do you think their learning from countries like that? (oh yeah, that's right you think their learning to become "highly parasitic" imperialist countries, lol)