India is 'losing Maoist battle'

[chegitz guevara]

So, I wrote the other day that the successes of the Maoist insurgency in India were likely being overstated.

Let me happily admit I was WRONG! :thumbup1:


India is 'losing Maoist battle'

India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh says his country is losing the battle against Maoist rebels.

Mr Singh told a meeting of police chiefs from different states that rebel violence was increasing and the Maoists' appeal was growing.

The rebels say they are fighting for the rights of the poor.

They operate in a large swathe of territory across central India, and in some areas have almost replaced the local government.

More than 6,000 people have been killed during their 20-year fight for a communist state.

'Going up'

"I have consistently held that in many ways, left-wing extremism poses perhaps the gravest internal security threat our country faces," Mr Singh told a conference of Indian police chiefs in the capital, Delhi.

"We have discussed this in the last five years and I would like to state frankly that we have not achieved as much success as we would have liked in containing this menace."

The prime minister said that despite the government's best efforts, violence in Maoist-affected areas was going up.

The prime minister admitted that the Maoists had growing appeal among a large section of Indian society, including tribal communities, the rural poor as well as sections of the intelligentsia and the youth.

Mr Singh said a more sensitive approach was necessary in dealing with the Maoists.

"Dealing with left-wing extremism requires a nuanced strategy - a holistic approach. It cannot be treated simply as a law and order problem."
The rebels operate in 182 districts in India, mainly in the states of Jharkhand, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and West Bengal.

In some areas they have virtually replaced the local government and are able to mount spectacular attacks on government installations.

The rebels say they are fighting for the rights of poor peasants and landless workers.

[Saorsa]

Link to the source?

[KurtFF8]

Let's not forget that the bourgeois also overstates things like this to increase their ability to repress such movements.

While it's quite clear from all accounts, and by statements like these that the Indian bourgeois class feels threatened, they do tend to overstate things. Take a look at what the US government did in the wake of the 9/11 attacks for years: We will lose everything without harsher torture/war/etc.

Although saying "we're losing" certainly is a sign that the Maoist are making them feel quite threatened.

[chegitz guevara]

Indian Government plans massive countrywide military offensive against Maoists, "the gravest internal security threat", described by PM.

Asian Age Correspondent
New Delhi

40,000 sq km under control of Naxals

Sept. 16: The Centre's growing concern over spread of Left-wing extremism stems from the fact that nearly 40,000 sq km area in the Naxal-affected states is in complete control of the banned outfit.

The parliamentary standing committee on home affairs, which met on Wednesday, observed that the 40,000 sq km area in Left-wing extremism states is impenetrable posing a major threat from Naxalites.

Home secretary G.K. Pillai told the first meeting of Parliament’s standing committee on home affairs that the problem of Maoists was growing rapidly and needed urgent action.
The near three-hour meeting of the panel, headed by BJP leader M. Venkaiah Naidu, was briefed by home ministry officials about the overall internal security situation with particular focus on Naxal menace and the threat from insurgents in the Northeast.
Notably, Manipur has been found lacking in action against insurgent groups even as development funds for the Northeast states is believed to be entering the hands of insurgent outfits.

The meeting of the parliamentary panel came a day after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh described Left-wing extremism as the gravest internal security threat and called for a nuanced strategy to tackle the problem.

Countrywide offensive

Sept. 16: The Centre is planning a "countrywide offensive" by security forces to wipe out the Naxal menace in the country. The "action plan" for the proposed offensive was shared by the Intelligence Bureau with the top brass of state police forces during the annual DGPs conference held here.

Sources in the home ministry said that precise intelligence- based operations will be carried out "simultaneously" in various states to free the Maoist stronghold regions as also not allow them to take shelter in other parts of the country. The Intelligence Bureau, which gave its presentation on Left-wing extremism and discussed "specific operational details" of the planned operations, took note of the limitations of state police forces. The IB has proposed to expand the role of the multi-agency centre to enhance intelligence sharing and operational coordination among the police forces in the country.

The setting up of the 200-crore (25 million pounds) Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS) in the country dominated the discussions on Wednesday with the home ministry urging states to fast-track the implementation of the ambitious project.

The modalities and functioning of the National Counter-Terrorism Centre (NCTC) order to strengthen the intelligence sharing and analysing mechanism in the country also came up for discussion during the three-day meet.

Besides, the issue of fake currency entering into the country through porous borders was tackled in a separate session.

The CCTNS project will ensure connectivity among different police stations in the country to share real-time information resulting in improved investigation and crime prevention and better tracking of criminals, suspects, accused and repeat offenders. The CCTNS project covers all 35 states and union territories and includes more than 14,000 police stations.

[KurtFF8]

Well lets hope that the Maoists can withstand such an attack.

It's certainly getting more intense:


Leak reveals India Maoist threat (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8266550.stm)




By Sunil Raman
BBC News, Delhi
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/shared/img/999999.gif
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/46414000/jpg/_46414165_007882175-1.jpg The rebels are fighting for communist rule in several Indian states

The Indian government has obtained a leaked report that reveals the strategy of the country's Maoist insurgents.
The report is formulated by the group's top policy-making body, the politburo.
It calls for attacks on Indian security forces and efforts to stop multi-national corporations from taking over mines in central and eastern India.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh says the insurgency is the single biggest threat to India's security. Maoist violence affects a third of all districts.
Last week, Mr Singh said India was losing the battle against the rebels.
The Maoists say they are fighting for the rights of the poor. They operate in a large swathe of territory across central and eastern India.
More than 6,000 people have been killed during their 20-year fight for a communist state.
'Bitter' fight
Calling upon Maoist cadres to mobilise and carry out "tactical" operations against India's security forces, the 20-page document says that Mr Singh's government is preparing to destroy their resistance.
Accusing the government of linking up with the "imperialist" United States, the Maoist report asks cadres to meticulously plan attacks against symbols of government and to "seize" political power.
Warning its cadres against becoming complacent, the politburo says that India is getting assistance from America and that it should learn from the failure of the Tamil Tigers (LTTE) in Sri Lanka.
It says the LTTE's failure to understand the changing tactics of the security forces eventually led to their defeat.
Maoists argue that big industrial houses, like India's Tata Group, are helped by the government in their attempts to wrest control of mines in eastern India.
The insurgents are calling upon the tribal population to participate in an armed struggle.
Maoist fighters are urged to tell local people that the Singh government wants to subdue them, destroy their culture and loot resources.
"This time the fight will be more long drawn and more bitter than the one against the British imperialist armies," the document says.
Bomb-making
Speaking at recent meetings on internal security India's Home Minister P Chidambaram said Maoists had improved their military and operational tactics.
Besides targeting the police, alleged police informers and so-called class enemies, the rebels are "laying greater emphasis on attacking economic and development infrastructure such as roads, bridges, railways, power and telecommunication networks," he said.
He also warned that the Maoists were making and deploying increasingly sophisticated bombs.
A senior official told the BBC that Mr Chidambaram has been trying to impress upon state governments that they should not take the threat posed by Maoists lightly.
He wants state governments to simplify procedures and increase the recruitment of security forces and use federal funds to buy weapons.
But, as a recent review by the home ministry showed, most states have been slow in understanding the seriousness of the situation.

[Spirit of Spartacus]

This is good news. The Maoists in India seem unstoppable for the moment. They cannot be destroyed as easily as the LTTE.

Naxalbari Lal Salaam!
Inquilab zindabad!

[Mephisto]

Do the Naxalites only have supporters among the rural population and tribal communities or do they gain support from the working class in the bigger cities, too?

[red cat]

Do the Naxalites only have supporters among the rural population and tribal communities or do they gain support from the working class in the bigger cities, too?

As far as I know, they are banned and so they organize the workers in cities through several mass organizations, not directly through the party.

[Mephisto]

But they have support among the urban working class?

[red cat]

Yes.

[red cat]

Which urban working class supports naxalites? I have never heard of any working class support for them. Their base has been mainly in the peasant and tribal communities.

Naturally, an anti Maoist like you won't "hear" from workers that they support some banned communist party. If you did, you would report to the cops. So they won't tell you. Simple.

[Mephisto]

Naturally, an anti Maoist like you won't "hear" from workers that they support some banned communist party. If you did, you would report to the cops. So they won't tell you. Simple.

This was an absolutely useless post and by no means an answer to this important question. I thought you would be able to give us some facts to back up your statements.

[bailey_187]

The Maoists most likely have more support amongst the urban working class than Trotskyites or Ultra-Leftists.

[bailey_187]

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/2100814.cms

[bailey_187]

They don't appear as a threat to the Indian bourgeoisie at all

The head of the bourgeois state would disagree.

[bailey_187]

"They have organised workers of mines and quarries and have waged successful struggles. "

http://www.bangalorenotes.com/naxalites.htm

Or are miners not workers anymore? Public sector workers of UK are the real proletariats of the world!

[red cat]

This was an absolutely useless post and by no means an answer to this important question. I thought you would be able to give us some facts to back up your statements.

Socialist is one of those guys who do not wish to learn, but only to slander a revolutionary movement. Therefore, the way I answer his posts is exactly what he deserves.

You probably don't have any idea of what the state machinery in the third world is like. Here people are arrested and tortured to death by the cops for evenn saying in public that they support the communists(= Maoists).

In this situation, communists cannot even afford a mass-organization that can declare openly that it is affiliated to the communist party, until they have backed it up with enough men from the red army. For example, in India there has been a huge peoples' movement led by them in a place called Lalgarh. It started about a year ago. The state responded first by pouring in private armies, then the government forces themselves. The Indian red army has been able to counter both the attacks successfully, and is presently engaging a huge amount of government forces there.

http://www.bannedthought.net/India/Lalgarh/index.htm

So, it would be very natural to assume that the communist party would keep its working class movement at least semi-clandestine until it can afford insurrection in the cities, which is possible only when they take over in the countryside. From here it is up to you to judge the political-affiliation of several urban mass organizations that conduct workers' movements and campaign to popularize the same issues on which communists happen to be pressing.

However, keep an eye on the leading newspapers and the relevant blogs, and you will get enough evidence in support of my claim. By the way, the Indian government seems to be even more efficient than its Filipino counterpart in suppressing online information.

http://naxalresistance.wordpress.com/

[Mephisto]

The Maoists most likely have more support amongst the urban working class than Trotskyites or Ultra-Leftists.


It says more than thousand words that you take a discussion about the revolutionary process in India only as a opportunity for your petty clamour against other revolutionary leftists.

I never intended to belittle the Naxalites but only to get information about the political and social conditions of their struggle. If you can not provide anything useful to this subject, it would be better to spare us such things.

[Mephisto]

Socialist is one of those guys who do not wish to learn, but only to slander a revolutionary movement. Therefore, the way I answer his posts is exactly what he deserves.

You probably don't have any idea of what the state machinery in the third world is like. Here people are arrested and tortured to death by the cops for evenn saying in public that they support the communists(= Maoists).

In this situation, communists cannot even afford a mass-organization that can declare openly that it is affiliated to the communist party, until they have backed it up with enough men from the red army. For example, in India there has been a huge peoples' movement led by them in a place called Lalgarh. It started about a year ago. The state responded first by pouring in private armies, then the government forces themselves. The Indian red army has been able to counter both the attacks successfully, and is presently engaging a huge amount of government forces there.

http://www.bannedthought.net/India/Lalgarh/index.htm

So, it would be very natural to assume that the communist party would keep its working class movement at least semi-clandestine until it can afford insurrection in the cities, which is possible only when they take over in the countryside. From here it is up to you to judge the political-affiliation of several urban mass organizations that conduct workers' movements and campaign to popularize the same issues on which communists happen to be pressing.

However, keep an eye on the leading newspapers and the relevant blogs, and you will get enough evidence in support of my claim. By the way, the Indian government seems to be even more efficient than its Filipino counterpart in suppressing online information.

http://naxalresistance.wordpress.com/


Thanks for the links!

[bailey_187]

It says more than thousand words that you take a discussion about the revolutionary process in India only as a opportunity for your petty clamour against other revolutionary leftists.

I never intended to belittle the Naxalites but only to get information about the political and social conditions of their struggle. If you can not provide anything useful to this subject, it would be better to spare us such things.

I posted two links.

Sorry though, i read yours and socialist's post and thought you were were trying to belittle the Naxalites as not "real communists" or whatever (socialist is doing this)

[red cat]

Thanks for the links!

No problem.



It says more than thousand words that you take a discussion about the revolutionary process in India only as a opportunity for your petty clamour against other revolutionary leftists.

I never intended to belittle the Naxalites but only to get information about the political and social conditions of their struggle. If you can not provide anything useful to this subject, it would be better to spare us such things.

True. But the way bailey_187 has reacted is in response to the cumulative slandering of the revolution and revolutionaries by these other "revolutionary leftists". I don't think that every person belonging to any other so called "leftist" ideology is a revisionist. In fact, I believe that most of them actually are passionate supporters of communism.

But we cannot remain calm when most of these people unleash their hatred, which has probably been directed away from the ruling classes by their political leadership, on the ongoing revolutions. If they are so sceptical about all this then why don't they visit India or Philippines(where the communist movements are the most powerful now) and verify for themselves? Or better still why don't they start revolutions of their own?

It is a typical feature of human psychology that it makes people draw conclusions independent of reality, just to defend the ideology they were introduced to initially. This must be overcome. Hence, if you are really interested in finding out about these movements, you must take the risk of coming to the third-world and verifying them.

[red cat]

I am indeed learning a lot by the fact that you never answer any of my questions or arguments about basic Maoist theory.:rolleyes:

Good for the Bourgeoisie.

[Rjevan]

Wow, this is what you get for not checking the politics section for one week; of course there was absolutely noting, not one single word about this in the media. Great news! :D

Now let's hope that the Maoists will ward this massive attack off, best of luck to them and hopefully the governemnt will weaken it position only more through this step.

[Mephisto]

So it was a simple misunderstanding and of course, I can understand your reactions.

But the point is, that within the revolutionary left there are enough sectarians (not just within the Tendency I belong to!). So I think those who are interested in an open dialogue between the several revolutionary camps, should try to keep discussions based on facts and hopefully objective analysis and discuss their basic problems with each other in extra threads.

Of course, these basic discussions between the different tendencies of marxism are very necessary and I criticise the maoist theory and movement for many things. But this brings me not away from supporting actual revolutionary movements like, in this case, the Naxalites.

[red cat]

Indeed.:rolleyes:

See? I teach you in a unique manner.

[Outinleftfield]

Even the bourgeois have factions, you know.:rolleyes: One faction of the bourgeois may be scared, but another faction is not (http://jaibihar.com/shiv-sena-bal-thackeray-funding-naxal-activities/75/).

Exactly.

This isn't the first time a faction of the bourgeoisie has tried to start a revolution to gain control and pretend its a pro-worker socialist revolution.

Hitler did the same thing. It hurt some of the bourgeoisie, bankers, the petit bourgeoisie, and anyone who didn't match up to Hitler's racial purity standards, but many corporations benefited.

Part of the bourgeoisie wants maoism so they can be the "national capitalist" class part of the "4 classes theory".

Can any maoist seriously justify this? That completely defeats the purpose of the revolution if you allow any part of the capitalist class to continue stealing labor from workers.

I could understand if you were just leaving it up to the workers, like the capitalists could keep owning the means of production until the workers agree they want to assert their control and get outside help (whether from the state or other groups) if the capitalists dont yield. But having a state that will actively defend unjust capitalist property rights over labor against the workers who produced that labor is wrong.

[Saorsa]

Hitler did the same thing. It hurt some of the bourgeoisie, bankers, the petit bourgeoisie, and anyone who didn't match up to Hitler's racial purity standards, but many corporations benefited.

Lol you're seriously comparing the Maoist-led revolutionary movement in India to the German Nazis? You fail.

[red cat]

Exactly.

This isn't the first time a faction of the bourgeoisie has tried to start a revolution to gain control and pretend its a pro-worker socialist revolution.

Hitler did the same thing. It hurt some of the bourgeoisie, bankers, the petit bourgeoisie, and anyone who didn't match up to Hitler's racial purity standards, but many corporations benefited.

Part of the bourgeoisie wants maoism so they can be the "national capitalist" class part of the "4 classes theory".

Can any maoist seriously justify this? That completely defeats the purpose of the revolution if you allow any part of the capitalist class to continue stealing labor from workers.

I could understand if you were just leaving it up to the workers, like the capitalists could keep owning the means of production until the workers agree they want to assert their control and get outside help (whether from the state or other groups) if the capitalists dont yield. But having a state that will actively defend unjust capitalist property rights over labor against the workers who produced that labor is wrong.

The relatively small size of the proletariat in third world countries, and the huge size of the peasantry, impairs it from seizing power as a single class. But the very existence of the proletariat in a country implies that it can form a united front with other oppressed classes to overthrow imperialism.

Therefore, if the bourgeoisie leads a revolution in a third world country(since the maoist revolutions are far from complete, I won't take into account the incompleteness factor of a bourgeois revolution), it cannot allow the masses to actually take part in class struggle, because then the proletariat would inevitably snatch the leadership of the revolution from the bourgeoisie.

If you carefully go through the material I linked to in my previous post, you will find that even in a small place, the militia that takes part in military action is huge. Of course, bourgeois elements in the communist party will try to seize power, but the masses are educated in Marxism through direct participation in class-struggle and try to resist them.

As the communists seize power locally, they transform the semi feudal - semi colonial economy into a new democratic one, i.e. the economic stages of capitalism are completed under the leadership of the proletariat. This involves transforming the peasantry into the proletariat, and leading it into bitter class struggle against the national bourgeoisie.

[RedScare]

It's interesting that the Maoists are making progress in their struggle, but the dearth of information about life in areas under their control leaves me completely in the dark on how they would behave if they took power.

[chegitz guevara]

The proper response is to support all revolutionary movements, even if they aren't asking you for advice on how to run their revolution.

[scarletghoul]

It's interesting that the Maoists are making progress in their struggle, but the dearth of information about life in areas under their control leaves me completely in the dark on how they would behave if they took power.
Well they are most active in the really undeveloped tribal areas, which do not have internet, so information doesn't get online too easily. However there are a few blogs and stuff with cool up to date info on the movements http://indianvanguard.wordpress.com/ http://southasiarev.wordpress.com/

[pranabjyoti]

Who says that there aren't much supporters of the maoist movement in the city proletariat in India. In India, a democracy(!), you can now get arrested if you were found with just a maoist leaflet. I may also be imprisoned for this writing if someone will diclose my identity to the police i.e. state.

[pranabjyoti]

To those "leftists(!)", who often witch haunt Stalin, please come to India and learn the new "anti-terrorist" (say anti revolutionary) laws. Moreover, the police, para military forces, military often enjoy some over constituional rights. The colonial and feudal legacies can be felt all over the country.
DO YOU KNOW, IN INDIAN DEMOCRACY, IF A MILITARYMAN KILLED ANY NON-MILITARY CITZEN, HE/SHE CAN NOT BE BROUGHT TO COURT FOR JUSTICE. THIS IS THE LAW OF THIS DEMOCRATIC LAND.

[Wakizashi the Bolshevik]

Do the Naxalites only have supporters among the rural population and tribal communities or do they gain support from the working class in the bigger cities, too?
It's a part of Maoist strategy to liberate the countrysides first, surrounding the cities and take those cities only afer the countryside has been secured. So it is probably most support for them comes from the poor rural population.

[Wakizashi the Bolshevik]

The proper response is to support all revolutionary movements, even if they aren't asking you for advice on how to run their revolution.
Amen, comrade.

[scarletghoul]

Yes, the Maoists do have support in the urban areas of India aswell.

[BobKKKindle$]

The proper response is to support all revolutionary movements, even if they aren't asking you for advice on how to run their revolution. ....which begs the question of how we go about defining a "revolutionary movement". My common sense tells me that a revolutionary movement is a movement that seeks to implement fundamental changes in the way societies are organized, i.e. a revolution, with the ultimate aim of obtaining a society of abundance and freedom, known as communism. My knowledge of Marxism tells me that the overthrow of capitalism can only come about as a result of the struggles of the working class, and that communism, as well as the transitional stage between communism and capitalism, must involve workers having control over the means of production, and effectively being in charge of society. Unfortunately, in no country where a Maoist organization has taken power has the working class ever had a major role in the overthrow of the previous regime, and, once they've established themselves in government, these organizations have frequently carried out attacks against the working class, with their leaders transforming themselves into a new ruling class, intent on using the working class as a means to develop the national economy, and enhance their own material privileges. Mao was actually quite honest about what he was doing in China, as he, like his Menshevik predecessors, argued that the CPC would carry out the construction of New Democracy once it had toppled the KMT and established itself as the foremost party in government, under which capitalism would continue to exist with small modifications, and, as a result, the working class would continue to be deprived of power, and suffer exploitation at the hands of the bosses. It is perhaps for this reason that, according to the government's own statistics, the number of businessmen in eight major cities had increased by 27% by the end of 1951, and the average rate of profit was a remarkable 29% in 1951 and 31% in 1953 - hardly evidence of socialist transformation.

In light of the above, what reason do I have to expect revolutionary change from the Maoists in India?

[AnthArmo]

I really do wish I had more information on the Maoist "Revolution". I'm all for Class struggle, and the way in which the maoists are repressed is truely an indictor of the true nature of India's supposed "Democracy".

My concern is wheather this is a genuine Revolution, or just another Coup'de'tat by a Leninist party. If this truely is a rural revolution against the gross inequality seen in India, then great.

If this is a Leninist excuse to take advantage of a mass movement in order to gain power, then I'd prefer it if they failed. I don't want to see yet another Totalitarian regime masquarading as Socialism, we've seen enough of those already.

[BobKKKindle$]

My concern is wheather this is a genuine Revolution, or just another Coup'de'tat by a Leninist party.The core of Lenin's conception of the party is that the most class-conscious section of the working class should form its own organizations, and, by intervening in the struggles that involve the whole of the class, develop the consciousness of the class to the point where it is capable of taking power as an act of self-emancipation. This has nothing to do with a party seeking to bring liberation to people, from above. The Maoists in India to do not reflect Lenin's ideas firstly because the majority of their members are draw from either the peasantry or the ranks of the intelligentsia, and secondly because the way that the party engages with both workers and peasants is characterized by substitutionism, whereby the party sets itself apart from the masses, and reduces their role to one of passive support and ideological consumption. This is of course a reflection of the Maoist tradition - the governmental system of the Chinese state, for example, did not involve delegates who could be recalled by the people who elected them, despite Marx's recognition that this is one of the institutional features that makes a proletarian state different from a capitalist state, and in fact, both, the congresses of the CPC and the sessions of the National People's Congress, at which government policies were supposed to be debated, were held irregularly, with delegates to both frequently being selected from above, instead of being voted for.

[red cat]

....which begs the question of how we go about defining a "revolutionary movement". My common sense tells me that a revolutionary movement is a movement that seeks to implement fundamental changes in the way societies are organized, i.e. a revolution, with the ultimate aim of obtaining a society of abundance and freedom, known as communism. My knowledge of Marxism tells me that the overthrow of capitalism can only come about as a result of the struggles of the working class, and that communism, as well as the transitional stage between communism and capitalism, must involve workers having control over the means of production, and effectively being in charge of society. Unfortunately, in no country where a Maoist organization has taken power has the working class ever had a major role in the overthrow of the previous regime, and, once they've established themselves in government, these organizations have frequently carried out attacks against the working class, with their leaders transforming themselves into a new ruling class, intent on using the working class as a means to develop the national economy, and enhance their own material privileges. Mao was actually quite honest about what he was doing in China, as he, like his Menshevik predecessors, argued that the CPC would carry out the construction of New Democracy once it had toppled the KMT and established itself as the foremost party in government, under which capitalism would continue to exist with small modifications, and, as a result, the working class would continue to be deprived of power, and suffer exploitation at the hands of the bosses. It is perhaps for this reason that, according to the government's own statistics, the number of businessmen in eight major cities had increased by 27% by the end of 1951, and the average rate of profit was a remarkable 29% in 1951 and 31% in 1953 - hardly evidence of socialist transformation.

In light of the above, what reason do I have to expect revolutionary change from the Maoists in India?

There are two possibilties:

1) The Maoists are counter-revolutionaries and your analysis is correct.

2) The Maoists are genuine revolutionaries and your analysis is wrong; thus indicating that either your knowledge of Marxism is at an alarmingly low level, or you are a paid propagandist of the bourgeoisie.

Now let us look at the situation of various classes in the Indian society(that of any other third world country will vary by only small proportions):

At the countryside, big landlords are present. They always enjoy the support of some parliamentary party or the other(the parliamentary "left" included). They have private armies of their own. The local police officers will be either relatives or family-friends. Most notably, all of them belong to the higher castes.

Some member of the landlord's family will take up the career of a civil contractor and will be appointed for developmental projects at exponential bids.

The middle and big farmers: They are also very small in numbers. And in alliance to the land lord and the ruling party.

Peasantry(By peasantry I am referring to the lower peasantry. Middle and big farmers are excluded). More than 80% of the rural population. Mostly landless. The government joke of several land "donation"(from the feudal lords!!) or "redistribution" has resulted in a few getting their stretch of barren lands on which no crops can be grown. Some do own a piece of land. But as the climate in India fails the farmers very often, it is almost always to be found that they have their lands mortgaged and have to pay with most of their produce. Also, the government will not buy crops from farmers. Thus they are forced to sell their crops to merchants at astonishingly low prices. Often, this is a condition they agree to while borrowing money. Another evil is genetically modified crop farming. Initially the farmers were provided seeds, fertilizers and pesticides for very low prices or for free. But after they did away with the traditional varieties they realized that the genetically modified crops do not result in fertile seeds, and do not respond to any traditional fertilizers. Thus they became bound to the MNCs which sold these. Also, local edible plants used to grow in between the crop plants. During the rainy season, the fields would be flooded and the farmers could sell the large amount of fish that they caught. The pesticides have eliminated these plants and fish. Even big local ponds are noe empty and are used for breeding foreign varieties of fish. Another alternative source of income was selling milk, which was also used in household consumption. The government policy of the "white revolution" had Indian scientists coming up with the brilliant plan of cross-breeding friesian, jersey etc. with the "khariar", an indian breed used commonly in central India. To implement this program successfully, almost ALL khariar bulls were castrated. The cross-breeding resulted in offspring that died within their first month, or were extremely unhealthy and infertile. The khariar breed is practically extinct now.

Thus we see, that the peasantry has absolutely no option but to fight back.

Now let's take a look at the cities. About 28% of the population lives in the cities. There is the infintesimally small comprador bourgeoisie and the upper-middle class. A slightly larger middle-middle class. And a huge lower-middle class and a working-class.

The lower-middle class: People earn just enough to support the basic necessities and to send the children to an average government school(this throws them out of competition for the various engineering entrance exams). The workplace is dominated by the bosses belonging to the ruling party. In general their condition is deteriorating t othe verge of being transformed economically to the working class level. So they are mostly supporters of the revolution.

The working class: About 40 to 45% of the population. Ironically, most people are unemplyed. Working as domestic help in middle class homes is a major occupation. This makes them poorer than factory workers and also unable to unite at workplace. A large number of people are drivers of taxicabs and other vehicles which Indians call "auto", "cycle" and "pull"- rickshaws. The vehicles are often owned by some rich businessmen(except probably the "pull" and "cycle" varieties. The industrial proletariat is very small in relative numbers. But due to the imperial nature of capital, as there is even no bourgeois democracy, the proletariat takes to militant actions within the workplace. Worker-police battles are not unknown. However, these struggles are almost always misled by Trots who are employed to control trade unions by the parliamentary parties.

The Indian military consists of 1,414,000 active and 1,155,000 reserve troops. The paramilitary forces are 1,293,300 strong. Plus each province maintains its own police force.
These forces can rapidly reach any area within the city very quickly, and directly shoot at any ongoing movement. Hence, city-insurrections are not possible right now.

Therefore, the Indian Maoists have correctly applied the strategy of rural guerilla warfare, supported by the mass movements in the cities. Those who try to sound revolutionary by claiming that the working class has to engage in primary conflicts concerning the movement, have either mugged up Marxism and have no sense of reality, or deliberately want the defeat of both the revolution and the working class.

[BobKKKindle$]

1) The Maoists are counter-revolutionaries and your analysis is correct.This wouldn't make my analysis correct. It would only make sense to speak of the Maoists as being "counter-revolutionaries" if we were already living under socialism and they wanted to revert back to capitalism, or if, under capitalism, they aimed to restore feudalism - neither of which are true. I view the Maoists as primarily a peasant movement, led by a section of the intelligentsia. I think that this is true not merely for India, but for Maoism in general, as a political phenomenon. In the case of China, by the time the CPC came to power, it was estimated that 93% of party members had joined since the outbreak of war, and 90% of the recruits were of peasant origin, whilst the leadership were drawn either from the ranks of the intelligentsia or other sectors of the middle-class, such as the professions, and even several merchants, such as Zhou Enlai. I've actually quoted those statistics before, but you didn't respond to them. In light of those statistics it seems reasonable to conclude that the CPC was not a party of the working class unless you believe that it is possible for an organization to represent the interests of a class and enable that same class to emancipate itself from oppression, despite having no organic connection with it. I hold that the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself and not the act of an organization that claims to act on behalf of the oppressed, be it a guerrilla band, or an occupying army. This does not mean I reject organizations, but if organizations play a major role in the overthrow of capitalism, they must have an organic link with the mass of the working class, which has never been true of a single Maoist organization.

Now, as for your analysis of India's class structure. I've no doubt that most of the people who live in the countryside endure conditions of terrible poverty of the sort that most people in the developed world and most middle-income countries can't even imagine, let alone have to deal with during the course of their daily lives. One thing you didn't mention that tends to figure quite heavily in most accounts of the Indian countryside is that the prevalence of debt and the falling price of most agricultural products has, in the past decade or so, led to rising numbers of suicides amongst peasant families, often as a result of farmers consuming pesticide - as many as 182,936 during the period 1997-2007 according to some estimates from both Indian and foreign sources, most of these deaths being concentrated in five states, including Maharashtra, where Mumbai is located, and encompassing entire families, not just individuals. However, I'm slightly unsure as to what purpose your analysis of the peasantry was aimed to serve. You seem to have mistakenly assumed that what determines the revolutionary potential of a class is the degree of impoverishment and insecurity, which is why you believe that the peasantry can serve as the driving force behind the overthrow of capitalism in India. However, it was Marx who argued that this assumption is associated with the utopians, e.g. Babeuf, and has nothing to do with a materialist analysis of capitalist society, as, in summarizing their views, he asserted that "[only] from the point of view of being the most suffering class does the proletariat exist for them", by which he meant that the only reason that the utopians considered themselves partisans of the proletariat, insofar as they did, was that they regarded the proletariat as the class that endures the most suffering under capitalism, such that, if there was a class that endured even greater suffering, like the peasantry, they would abandon the proletariat, and associate with the members of that class instead. Marx's view is very different from this. He contends that what makes the proletariat the only class that can introduce socialism is not the fact that it is uniquely impoverished but rather the strategic position that it occupies in relation to the means of production and the ruling class as a result of capitalism's historic development. The development of capitalism has led to a situation where workers are concentrated together in large units of production like factories and offices and are engaged in social production, by which I mean a type of production process that relies on large numbers of people working together and communicating with each other, making use of tools and machinery that need to be combined in order to produce whatever it is that the workers happen to be producing, be it a car, or software. It is because of the social nature of capitalist production that workers have an interest in the social ownership and control of the means of production, by means of the abolition of private property. Their spatial concentration and the key role that the working class plays in allowing the bourgeoisie to accumulate capital and sustain its material privileges also means that workers have the unique ability to challenge the class domination of the bourgeoisie directly, by refusing to sell their labour power, and, if the class is sufficiently advanced, seeking to wrest control of the economy away from the bosses. When the proletariat succeeds in expropriating the bourgeoisie, that is what we call a socialist revolution.

The spatial concentration of the working class in India and other undeveloped countries is especially acute as these countries receive the most modern technology and facilities as a result of their being the major destinations for foreign investment from the countries that comprise the imperialist core, including the United States. The Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, for example, employed 9,000 workers at a single site before it was shit down after the disaster, and was thus larger in terms of the size of its workforce than most enterprises in the developed world, with the exception of a few industrial plants. On this basis it is not fair to say that the working class of India is somehow impotent just because large numbers of workers happen to work in sectors that do not support unionization and collective action in the same way as the industrial sector, and it is also worth noting that in India, as with other countries around the globe, the size of the working class increases with each passing year, as more individuals are forced out of the ranks of the middle class, or are forced to move to the urban areas from the countryside in order to gain paid employment and support their family members. According to this (http://www.counterpunch.org/sainath02122009.html) article, as many as 8 million people quit farming between the two censuses of 1991 and 2001, with a large proportion of this number becoming urban residents, and according to the figures of the Indian government, the net addition of population in urban areas was 70 million during the period 1991-2001, with a growth rate of 31.2% for that decade, and no indication that growth is likely to slow down in the future. This further affirms that the Indian working class is becoming more powerful as a social force. There is however the matter of why the peasantry cannot take the place of the working class, thereby lending legitimacy to the strategy that is being pursued by the Maoists. The key factor that makes the peasantry incapable of playing the revolutionary role that Marxists have traditionally allocated to the proletariat is the fact that the peasantry is, by definition, located in the countryside, such that the most important resources as far as the peasant is concerned are the land, followed by the tools that are used to till the land, such as agricultural machinery, and seeds, amongst other things. This is important because it explains why peasants have historically supported the division of property that is currently concentrated in the hands of landlords and other elements who have an interest in preserving the status-quo in the Indian countryside, thereby creating a class of small-scale farmers, each with their own property, and hostile to socialization. As I noted above, the division of property is impossible for the proletariat, because it is impossible for all of the people who are employed at a factory to divide that factory into individual components for each individual to use on their own - the only way a factory can be made to function and produce goods is if it is managed collectively by all of the people who work there. Trotsky concluded on the basis of the above analysis that whilst it is important for the peasantry to be won over to the side of the proletariat in order to carry out a revolution in a country like Russia, this alliance can only take the form of the peasantry being subordinate to the proletariat, due to its inability to play an independent revolutionary role. The Maoists make the mistake of assuming that a proletarian revolution can be carried out by a class that is not proletarian, and, even in the case of that class, i.e. the peasantry, their approach is based on an elitist divide between the party and those whose interests it seeks to represent.

[ezza_lv]

hureeey! it would be perfect if India could became a communist state, but not like china.. but a real socialist state

[BobKKKindle$]

One last thing - I don't believe for a moment that strikes in India are failing because some Trotskyist party who no-one has ever heard of and yet apparently has impressive representation in parliament is deliberately leading those strikes astray. If strikes are as widespread as you say they are and if there is a tendency for them to lead to confrontation instead of staying within legal channels then that just strengthens what I said above about the Indian working class being a viable source for revolutionary change (the only viable source, in fact) as well as affirming Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution, which holds that, in underdeveloped countries, where the bourgeoisie is unable to carry out democratic tasks, the pursuit of democratic gains by the proletariat will inevitably threaten the interests of the ruling class, whose reaction will force the proletariat to threaten capitalism itself.

[red cat]

You fail to see again that after the Russian revolution, their can be no successful revolution without the working class providing the leadership.
And any instance of emerging capitalism(as in present China) has to be through a counter-revolution that defeats either a new-democratic or socialist revolution. Also, in the third world, the size of the industrial proletariat is RELATIVELY small compared to the overall population. Plus, the seizure of power directly by the proletariat(i.e. the socialist revolution) requires capitalist economy at the first place, accompanied by some amount of bourgeois democracy. This is absolutely absent in the third world.

Since the general class-tendency of even the lowermost stratum of the peasantry would be to acquire land and make its way through the feudal hierarchy, the peasantry as a whole cannot lead the revolution(It is largely transformed into the proletariat in the course of the revolution). That is why the proletariat forms a united front with the all the revolutionary classes to overthrow feudalism and imperialism through the new democratic revolution.

[red cat]

One last thing - I don't believe for a moment that strikes in India are failing because some Trotskyist party who no-one has ever heard of and yet apparently has impressive representation in parliament is deliberately leading those strikes astray. If strikes are as widespread as you say they are and if there is a tendency for them to lead to confrontation instead of staying within legal channels then that just strengthens what I said above about the Indian working class being a viable source for revolutionary change (the only viable source, in fact) as well as affirming Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution, which holds that, in underdeveloped countries, where the bourgeoisie is unable to carry out democratic tasks, the pursuit of democratic gains by the proletariat will inevitably threaten the interests of the ruling class, whose reaction will force the proletariat to threaten capitalism itself.

The various parliamentary communist(?) parties of India who preach that Stalin's line was correct, have somehow managed to make themselves believe that the revolution in India must be a socialist one and must be made by the working class and no one else. Hence they have devoted themselves to "prepare" the working class for this socialist revolution, and have been enthusiastically "preaching" about some revolution for the last six decades. This is nothing but Trotskyism in essence.

[dez]

There was a similar situation in brazil in the 60s/70s.
There were insurgent groups and an authoritharian government.
They set up a similar system, called SNI, but it involved less technology and more indocrination of civilians for the creating of an intelligence network.
I can't help but think that it is exactly what they want to do with this CCTNS, the way they intend to "unite all police forces in india" will most likely be to create a formal command structure and make a counter revolutionary vanguard.

[BobKKKindle$]

You fail to see again that after the Russian revolution, their can be no successful revolution without the working class providing the leadership.Have I failed to see that? I always thought that was one of the basic principles of Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution - that a socialist revolution and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat can only be carried by the proletariat, and that, if the proletariat does enter into an alliance with the peasantry and other class forces due to its numerical weakness in countries like Russian and India, the proletariat must be the leading force, due to the peasantry's lack of independence and coherence as a class. In fact, I'm pretty sure I said that in my last post, as the conclusion of my argument - specifically the bit about the Indian working class being the only viable source of revolutionary change. I'm also unsure as to how you reconcile an emphasis on the leadership of the working class with the strategy that Maoists are pursuing in India, and indeed have pursued in every country where a Maoist party has existed - the strategy of working in the countryside and planning to encircle the cities. The CPC didn't even bother trying to create mass organizations in China's cities (after 1927 of course - before that, the CPC was a major force amongst the urban working class, but we all know how that ended) until they had come under military control, at which point the CPC went out of its way to discourage strikes on the grounds that it would undermine production and frighten the national capitalists whose interests the CPC wanted to protect, and, if I remember correctly, also encouraged KMT officials to remain at their posts in order to maintain public order and deal with any disturbances.


And any instance of emerging capitalism(as in present China) has to be through a counter-revolution that defeats either a new-democratic or socialist revolution.How can China undergo a counter-revolution if it's already capitalist, and always has been? You still haven't explained to me how the events of 1949 can comprise a socialist revolution if the party which came to power during that year contained hardly any people from the urban areas, let alone workers, and if the military victory of that same party did not involve workers seizing control of the means of production or seeking to overthrow the bourgeois state, the apparatus of which largely remained in place. Of course, you will argue that 1949 was just a "New Democratic" revolution but this just introduces further ambiguity as it doesn't tell me much about what China's mode of production was after 1949, who the ruling class was, why it was necessary for the interests of the national capitalists to be protected at the expense of the working class, the point at which China supposedly left New Democracy behind, and how it was possible for China to become socialist without the overthrow of a state.


Also, in the third world, the size of the industrial proletariat is RELATIVELY small compared to the overall populationThe Russian working class made up slightly over 10% of the population in 1917 and yet still managed to carry out the world's first and only socialist revolution without having to subordinate itself to the domination of any "national" bourgeoisie. The Chinese working class briefly held power in Canton, setting up their own Soviet, and going against the interests of the "national" bourgeoisie despite the demands of the Comintern that they avoid "excesses" and maintain the opportunist alliance with the KMT, as I noted in the thread in the history forum, which you still haven't responded to. I fail to see how having a relatively small proletariat requires that workers subordinate themselves to a section of the capitalist class, especially when those workers are concentrated together in large units of production, and therefore capable of threatening the bourgeoisie.


Plus, the seizure of power directly by the proletariat(i.e. the socialist revolution) requires capitalist economy at the first placeIndia is capitalist, though. So was China when the CPC was founded in 1921, so was Russia in 1905. I know you think that all underdeveloped countries are feudal, but, for us Marxists, feudalism does not simply mean that lots of people live in the countryside, or that the distribution of land ownership is very unequal - it is a pre-capitalist mode of production, under which peasants are tied to a specific employer, and are forced to offer military service to the local landlord in exchange for protection, with bonds based on kinship and obligation assuming paramount importance. None of these features exist in India, whereas wage-labour does, hence India is a capitalist economy.


accompanied by some amount of bourgeois democracyIndia is already a bourgeois democracy, so I don't understand why this counts for much. The general experience of the working class in underdeveloped countries however indicates that the bourgeoisie is too closely tied to the state or the remnants of the feudal order to carry out its historic tasks, and that it is afraid of calling a mass movement into being, as such a movement might challenge its own power, as occurred during the 1905 uprising in Russia, and the May 30th Movement in China. This is true even of the so-called "national" bourgeoisie that you see as an agent of revolutionary change, as you'll see if you read my analysis of the May 30th Movement in the history forum. Hence, whenever democratic demands are raised, the bourgeoisie takes the side of the state, and, when the proletariat embarks on democratic demands, it finds itself compelled to shift to socialist tasks in order to defend itself against a hostile reaction from the bourgeoisie.


This is absolutely absent in the third world.So there is not a single country in the whole of "the third world" that is capitalist, or a bourgeois democracy? This is basically a justification for your chauvinist line that workers in countries like India shouldn't be allowed to have a socialist revolution now, rather they should "wait" for a while under the rule of the "national" bourgeoisie, and a socialist revolution should only take place when Maoists decide that the workers are ready.


...have somehow managed to make themselves believe that the revolution in India must be a socialist oneSo, because there are lots of reformist parties in India that use the language of socialism to try and gain working-class support, they must be Trotskyists, and Trotskyists throughout the world can be held responsible for what those parties do, since Trotskyists want socialism, whereas Maoists are content with the rule of the "national" bourgeoisie? Don't you think that people may not always be what they say they are?

*****

By the way everyone, here's an article that shows how weak and impotent the Indian working class is:

50 million strike at privatization, Socialist Worker, 2003 (http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=3801)

[Random Precision]

The various parliamentary communist(?) parties of India who preach that Stalin's line was correct, have somehow managed to make themselves believe that the revolution in India must be a socialist one and must be made by the working class and no one else. Hence they have devoted themselves to "prepare" the working class for this socialist revolution, and have been enthusiastically "preaching" about some revolution for the last six decades. This is nothing but Trotskyism in essence.

What part of "Trotskyism" is it? Where does Trotsky say that workers' parties should "prepare the working class for socialist revolution"- in fact if you read History of the Russian Revolution, you will find out that he held the party often fell behind the demands of the working masses, and stressed the dialectical relationship between the two. The causal relationship leading from the party to the workers is an invention of Stalinism.

And where, most importantly does he say that workers' parties should enter government and put themselves at the head of capitalist exploitation- as the CPI (Marxist), a Maoist party, did in West Bengal and Kerala?

[red cat]

Have I failed to see that? I always thought that was one of the basic principles of Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution - that a socialist revolution and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat can only be carried by the proletariat, and that, if the proletariat does enter into an alliance with the peasantry and other class forces due to its numerical weakness in countries like Russian and India, the proletariat must be the leading force, due to the peasantry's lack of independence and coherence as a class. In fact, I'm pretty sure I said that in my last post, as the conclusion of my argument - specifically the bit about the Indian working class being the only viable source of revolutionary change. I'm also unsure as to how you reconcile an emphasis on the leadership of the working class with the strategy that Maoists are pursuing in India, and indeed have pursued in every country where a Maoist party has existed - the strategy of working in the countryside and planning to encircle the cities. The CPC didn't even bother trying to create mass organizations in China's cities (after 1927 of course - before that, the CPC was a major force amongst the urban working class, but we all know how that ended) until they had come under military control, at which point the CPC went out of its way to discourage strikes on the grounds that it would undermine production and frighten the national capitalists whose interests the CPC wanted to protect, and, if I remember correctly, also encouraged KMT officials to remain at their posts in order to maintain public order and deal with any disturbances.

How can China undergo a counter-revolution if it's already capitalist, and always has been? You still haven't explained to me how the events of 1949 can comprise a socialist revolution if the party which came to power during that year contained hardly any people from the urban areas, let alone workers, and if the military victory of that same party did not involve workers seizing control of the means of production or seeking to overthrow the bourgeois state, the apparatus of which largely remained in place. Of course, you will argue that 1949 was just a "New Democratic" revolution but this just introduces further ambiguity as it doesn't tell me much about what China's mode of production was after 1949, who the ruling class was, why it was necessary for the interests of the national capitalists to be protected at the expense of the working class, the point at which China supposedly left New Democracy behind, and how it was possible for China to become socialist without the overthrow of a state.

The Russian working class made up slightly over 10% of the population in 1917 and yet still managed to carry out the world's first and only socialist revolution without having to subordinate itself to the domination of any "national" bourgeoisie. The Chinese working class briefly held power in Canton, setting up their own Soviet, and going against the interests of the "national" bourgeoisie despite the demands of the Comintern that they avoid "excesses" and maintain the opportunist alliance with the KMT, as I noted in the thread in the history forum, which you still haven't responded to. I fail to see how having a relatively small proletariat requires that workers subordinate themselves to a section of the capitalist class, especially when those workers are concentrated together in large units of production, and therefore capable of threatening the bourgeoisie.

India is capitalist, though. So was China when the CPC was founded in 1921, so was Russia in 1905. I know you think that all underdeveloped countries are feudal, but, for us Marxists, feudalism does not simply mean that lots of people live in the countryside, or that the distribution of land ownership is very unequal - it is a pre-capitalist mode of production, under which peasants are tied to a specific employer, and are forced to offer military service to the local landlord in exchange for protection, with bonds based on kinship and obligation assuming paramount importance. None of these features exist in India, whereas wage-labour does, hence India is a capitalist economy.

India is already a bourgeois democracy, so I don't understand why this counts for much. The general experience of the working class in underdeveloped countries however indicates that the bourgeoisie is too closely tied to the state or the remnants of the feudal order to carry out its historic tasks, and that it is afraid of calling a mass movement into being, as such a movement might challenge its own power, as occurred during the 1905 uprising in Russia, and the May 30th Movement in China. This is true even of the so-called "national" bourgeoisie that you see as an agent of revolutionary change, as you'll see if you read my analysis of the May 30th Movement in the history forum. Hence, whenever democratic demands are raised, the bourgeoisie takes the side of the state, and, when the proletariat embarks on democratic demands, it finds itself compelled to shift to socialist tasks in order to defend itself against a hostile reaction from the bourgeoisie.

So there is not a single country in the whole of "the third world" that is capitalist, or a bourgeois democracy? This is basically a justification for your chauvinist line that workers in countries like India shouldn't be allowed to have a socialist revolution now, rather they should "wait" for a while under the rule of the "national" bourgeoisie, and a socialist revolution should only take place when Maoists decide that the workers are ready.

So, because there are lots of reformist parties in India that use the language of socialism to try and gain working-class support, they must be Trotskyists, and Trotskyists throughout the world can be held responsible for what those parties do, since Trotskyists want socialism, whereas Maoists are content with the rule of the "national" bourgeoisie? Don't you think that people may not always be what they say they are?

*****

By the way everyone, here's an article that shows how weak and impotent the Indian working class is:

50 million strike at privatization, Socialist Worker, 2003 (http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=3801)

Throughout your posts you have stated that China was already capitalist during 1921, which is certainly not the case, as feudal economy complete with warlords and smaller feudal lords was well established in rural China at that time. Needless to say that the peasant was, indeed, tied to land.

As for India and other third world countries, I will again emphasize on the fact that they are not capitalist right now. In my earlier post I did mention that rural India is largely under feudal lords. Feudal relations of production are very much present and are upheld by a rigid caste system. In India feudal lords re called "jotdar" , "bhumihar", "zamindar" etc.

http://www.hrw.org/legacy/wr2k1/asia/india.html

http://www.sos-arsenic.net/english/intro/jotdar.html

There are numerous strikes called by the parliamentary parties. These strikes have participation from all the classes of the society, and the peasants and workers are either forced or brought after promising them a meagre sum. That is not class struggle. Also, the numbers reported are highly exaggerated.

http://www.rediff.com/money/2003/may/19strike.htm

The one you are referring to was organized by the CITU, the labor union of CPI(Marxist), the leading revisionist and undoubtedly one of the most corrupt parties in India. To find out more aboutthem, google with the keywords "singhur", "nandigram" and "lalgarh". It is interesting to note that all the organizers of these so called "strikes" actually support the notorious SEZ bill, which legalizes seizure of land from peasants, forming workers' ghettos and abolishing all labor laws inside the ghettos. These parties have used the anti-SEZ sentiment of workers and peasants only for electoral benefits. So far Indians have not witnessed a single nationwide open workers movement to oppose this bill. It is a safe assumption that had the indian proletariat been strong enough to organize these massive strikes, the SEZ bill would be the first thing to be attacked.

Needless to say, the only political party strictly following a nation-wide anti-SEZ programme is the CPI(Maoist).

[JimmyJazz]

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/2100814.cms

So it sounds like the Maoists' urban support is nothing but a support structure for...the Maoists' rural guerilla tactics.


You fail to see again that after the Russian revolution, their can be no successful revolution without the working class providing the leadership.

Actually I think that was exactly Bobkindles' point.

It certainly is a weird quirk of history that Maoists - who are essentially aligned with Russia's S-Rs in the way they envision revolution (attacks on officials, propaganda of the deed leading to mass revolt), and the class basis they believe it will have (peasantry) - identify themselves ideologically with the Bolsheviks, those merciless opponents and critics of every aspect of S-R ideology and strategy.


The relatively small size of the proletariat in third world countries, and the huge size of the peasantry, impairs it from seizing power as a single class.


Also, in the third world, the size of the industrial proletariat is RELATIVELY small compared to the overall population


Russia 1917:

Population - 60 million (Russia) - 175 million (Russian Empire)

Industrial working class - 1 million (Richard Pipes) - 3 million (Sheila Fitzpatrick)

Industrial WC as a % of total pop -
3m/60m = 5%
1m/60m = 1.7%

Peasantry as a % of total population - 80%


India 2009:

Population - 1.2 billion

Industrial working class - 63 million

Industrial WC as a % of total pop - 5.3%

Service sector working class - 147 million

WC (Industrial AND Services) as a % of total pop - 17.5%


So, counting only industrial workers as workers, and using the highest estimate of the size of Russia's 1917 working class, and dividing it only by the number of Great Russians (not the much larger number of Russian Empire subjects), you still get an Indian working class in 2009 that is 5.3% of the Indian population and a Russian working class in 1917 that is 5.0% of the population.

Obviously, I sympathize with the plight of India's peasantry - as I would have sympathized with the plight of Russia's peasantry at the turn of the century, for whom official, legal "Emancipation" meant anything but. But that doesn't change my analysis of objective class abilities and orientations. As Bobkindles has pointed out: the proletariat has an ability far exceeding its numbers (because of its strategic location wrt the MoP); and the proletariat is oriented differently than the peasantry, towards collectivization of industry rather than towards distribution of land.

[BobKKKindle$]

Throughout your posts you have stated that China was already capitalist during 1921...I'll respond to your other points another time or let someone else respond, but the point about feudalism is important. You and other Maoists are making the mistake of assuming that the word "feudal" can be basically used to describe any country where the majority of the population still lives on the land and is engaged in agricultural production, instead of understanding the term as Marxists so, which is to acknowledge that feudalism is a mode of production that preceded capitalist society, and does not exist anywhere in the world today. Feudalism is characterized by a number of features that distinguish it from capitalism. It is centered around the production of agricultural goods by peasants, but what makes this agricultural production different from agriculture under capitalism is that the peasants do not sell their labour power to a member of the landowning class, nor do they sell the goods that they produce through the market, i.e.they do not engage in commodity production. Instead what occurred is that peasants worked on land that they did not formally own yet nonetheless had the right to use, and, as a result of physical coercion, they were made to hand over part of their produce to the person who owned the land, i.e. the local feudal elite, who theoretically held the land as a gift from the monarch, with the peasants being allowed to keep the remainder of their produce for their own personal consumption, perhaps with a small amount being sold at a local market, depending on locality, and time of year. It should be evident from this description that whereas capitalism involves the extraction of surplus value through economic relationships alone, with the role of the state basically being limited to enforcing contracts, and protecting the property of the ruling class, under feudalism there is a direct convergence of political oppression and economic exploitation, and yet at the same time the role of peasants is different from that of slaves because they are not considered the private property of the ruling class, merely individuals who are legally tied to a particular member of the elite, as I noted in my last post. The obligations of the peasant also extended to performing uncompensated labour on the personal land of the local lord for a set number of days each year as well as providing military service when required, in return for which peasants would often receive protection during periods of hardship, as well as other benefits, such as the right to use local forests for firewood and game, or use the lord's mill to grind their corn.

Urban areas did exist in feudal societies, and yet the legal ties between peasants and the land prohibited large-scale migration between rural areas and the towns, and it was not until the bourgeoisie swept aside the power of feudal elites, and peasants were deprived of access to common lands during the 18th and 19th centuries, that migration began to occur on a large enough scale to provide the growing bourgeoisie with access to a cheap and flexible labour force, at which point it is correct to say that capitalist relations of production had well and truly come into being. The same can be said of India today because the people who do still live on the land are totally enmeshed in commodity production, at least in the case of peasants who are not limited to subsistence farming, and land can be bought and sold freely, with finance capital becoming increasingly important, and there are no coercive apparatuses that force peasants to work for one landowner in particular and remain in the countryside - as is evident from the figures indicating the size of rural-urban migration quoted in one of my previous posts. On this basis, there is nothing feudal about India. The same has been true of China for much longer, as land has been bought and sold freely as a commodity in China since the Qin Dynasty, established in the 2nd century BC. According to Brugger (Brugger, 1981, B&N) China's urban population had already reached 10% of the total by 1900, and of those who remained on the land, an increasing number were engaged in what was effectively wage-labour for small-scale employers, either as agricultural labourers, or as employees of rural enterprises, such as silk looms, porcelain factories, and so on.

If you disagree with my definition of feudalism, then, by all means, explain why your own definition - which seems to basically consist of saying that there are warlords, and that lots of people live on the land - is analytically preferable. By the way, I don't see how the content of the links you provided - the UN saying that the Indian government has a poor human rights record, and farmers dying of poisoning - proves that India or China are feudal in their mode of production.

Even if India is feudal, by the way, which it isn't, there is also the question of why this requires that the working class subordinate itself to the class domination of the "national" bourgeoisie under New Democracy, which you also have not explained.

[Paul Cockshott]

He contends that what makes the proletariat the only class that can introduce socialism is not the fact that it is uniquely impoverished but rather the strategic position that it occupies in relation to the means of production and the ruling class as a result of capitalism's historic development. The development of capitalism has led to a situation where workers are concentrated together in large units of production like factories and offices and are engaged in social production, by which I mean a type of production process that relies on large numbers of people working together and communicating with each other, making use of tools and machinery that need to be combined in order to produce whatever it is that the workers happen to be producing, be it a car, or software.

I suspect you will find that this view owes more to Kautsky or Tony Cliff than Marx. I do not recall any text in which Marx makes that argument

[RadioRaheem84]

Aren't the Maoists a terrorist organization in India? Whats the real news on them? Good or bad? Mixed? It seems like they're another Shining Path.

[pranabjyoti]

India 2009:

Population - 1.2 billion

Industrial working class - 63 million

Industrial WC as a % of total pop - 5.3%

Service sector working class - 147 million

WC (Industrial AND Services) as a % of total pop - 17.5%
Can you tell me the source please. It's beyond my knowledge.

[Paul Cockshott]

India is capitalist, though. So was China when the CPC was founded in 1921, so was Russia in 1905.

No, these countries were all predominantly feudal. The greater part of the surplus labour was extracted by the landlord class not the capitalist class.

[BobKKKindle$]

No, these countries were all predominantly feudal. The greater part of the surplus labour was extracted by the landlord class not the capitalist class.Firstly, I don't regard that as evidence of feudalism, because the share of surplus value being derived from wage-labour in urban areas was steadily increasing as a result of rural-urban migration and capitalist relations of production being in place, and secondly that statement conceals an important point, which is that there was significant intersection between rural and urban elites in the sense that individuals who owned land in the countryside were also likely to employ workers in the cities, to the extent that, when the party passed a new law concerning land reform in October 1947, legitimizing seizures for the first time, and provoking a wave of unrest on the part of poor peasants and landless labourers in the countryside, it had to explicitly forbid the peasants from pursuing landlords into the cities and confiscating the property they held there as well - compelling evidence both of China's capitalist character (at that point, and well before) and the centrist nature of the CPC.

[pranabjyoti]

As an Indian, I will be very very pleased if capitalism is established in India. WHY? BECAUSE IT IS A FEUDAL STATE. Let's taken for granted the fact the Stalin in USSR and Mao is China have developed a capitalist country. Still, probably for that reason, a Stalin or a Mao is very very urgently needed in India now to turn this huge outpost of feudalism into a capitalist one. That will be a great service to the Indian people in general and to the mankind.
CONTRADICTORY? NOT REALLY. IT IS DIALECTIC MATERIALISM. HOW? VERY SIMPLE. This is the age of degredation of capitalism. A veyr essential condition of US and west european capitalist-imperialism the status quo in the tthird world countries i.e. they should remain in their undeveloped, underdeveloped, primitive, feudal phase. By turning them into a capitalist nations, we will just increase the burden on the moribund capitalism and eventually it will sunk under its own burden. How? As the new capitalist countries will try to venture in their way to capitalism from feudalism, they will find that the old imperialist countries have already blocked all possible markets of the world. And I hope you, possibly every marxist know that market is an essential condition for capitalism. So, therefore, due to lack of sufficient market, the capitalism in the new capitalist countries wouldn't flourish and the capitalist there should have to go into confrontation with the imperialist forces and new proletariat will rise from this confromtations.
My dear Trotskyte comrades, so far the time and resources you have spent to fight "Stalinism", "Maoism", if you ever tried to spent a fraction of that even to establish capitalism in the less developed part of the world. You will contribute much more to human civilization than you have so far contributed(!).

[JimmyJazz]

Can you tell me the source please. It's beyond my knowledge.

mainly the CIA world factbook numbers: http://www.theodora.com/wfbcurrent/india/india_economy.html

for total population, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India

[Paul Cockshott]

You and other Maoists are making the mistake of assuming that the word "feudal" can be basically used to describe any country where the majority of the population still lives on the land and is engaged in agricultural production, instead of understanding the term as Marxists so, which is to acknowledge that feudalism is a mode of production that preceded capitalist society, and does not exist anywhere in the world today.

You confuse social formation with mode of production. Any given social formation typically is a combination of modes of production.

You express a Hegelian essentialist view of history as linear succession of forms one after the other.
Reality is more complex.

What distinguishes modes of production is not the historical time period in which they exist but the specific form of extraction of surplus labour.


The specific economic form, in which unpaid surplus labour is pumped out of the direct producers determines the relationship of rulers and ruled, as it grows directly out of production itself and, in turn, reacts upon it as a determining element. Upon this, however, is founded the entire formation of the economic community which grows up out of the production relations themselves, thereby simultaneously its specific political form. It is always the direct relationship of the owners of the conditions of production to the direct producers - a relation naturally corresponding to a definite stage in the development of the methods of labour and thereby its social productivity, - which reveals the innermost secret, the hidden basis of the entire social structure, and with it the political form of the relation of sovereignty and dependence, in short, the corresponding specific form of state(Marx)
The specific form of extraction of surplus under feudalism is groundrent, either in kind, as labour, or as money.

Feudalism is characterized by a number of features that distinguish it from capitalism. It is centered around the production of agricultural goods by peasants, but what makes this agricultural production different from agriculture under capitalism is that the peasants do not sell their labour power to a member of the landowning class, nor do they sell the goods that they produce through the market, i.e.they do not engage in commodity production.

This is surely not sustainable. Do you really contend that in for example 12th century France there was no commodity production?

Commodity production has existed under slavery, feudalism and capitalism. It is not a distinguishing feature of capitalism.

[red cat]

Even if India is feudal, by the way, which it isn't, there is also the question of why this requires that the working class subordinate itself to the class domination of the "national" bourgeoisie under New Democracy, which you also have not explained.

You are right. The primary criterion for any economic system to exist are the production relations that define it.

From the links I posted:

"To the small farmers who cultivate the unclaimed lands to produce ‘Aman’ paddy there, the bands of lathials prove to be a scourge. It is them who act as mercenaries for the jotedars to forcibly take away the crop cultivated by the toil of the small farmers. Thus the jotedars add to their huge stocks of paddy they harvest from their own lands. The lathials –themselves poor people-- play in the hands of the big landowners against their own class of people."

"Caste violence continued to divide the impoverished state of Bihar. There, the Ranvir Sena, a banned private militia of upper-caste landlords that had been operating with impunity since 1994, waged war on various Maoist guerrilla factions, such as the People's War Group (PWG). These guerrilla groups advocated higher wages and more equitable land distribution for lower-caste laborers. The cycle of retaliatory attacks claimed many civilian lives."

In India the peasants are tied to the land by the use of force and charging high interests on loaned money. This has been the primary tactic of the ruling class since the middle of the nineteenth century.

However, capitalism does not encourage capitalistic development worldwide. After it has saturated the markets in its own country, it expands beyond that and finds its way to other countries and changes into imperialist capital. Development of national capital in these countries would overthrow imperialist capitalism. Hence it stops the development of national capital in the colonies through economic and military force.

The working class leads the united front. It does not subordinate itself to the national bourgeoisie.

[Paul Cockshott]

Firstly, I don't regard that as evidence of feudalism, because the share of surplus value being derived from wage-labour in urban areas was steadily increasing as a result of rural-urban migration and capitalist relations of production being in place,

That indicates that china was moving towards capitalism, not that capitalism was already dominant there.





- compelling evidence both of China's capitalist character (at that point, and well before) and the centrist nature of the CPC.


You have to take into account that the Maoists did not claim that China was socialist in 1950, the official position is that it did not step decisively towards socialism until the 1960s.

[red cat]

http://www.bannedthought.net/India/CPI-Maoist-Docs/Founding/StrategyTactics-pamphlet.pdf

[Led Zeppelin]

He contends that what makes the proletariat the only class that can introduce socialism is not the fact that it is uniquely impoverished but rather the strategic position that it occupies in relation to the means of production and the ruling class as a result of capitalism's historic development. The development of capitalism has led to a situation where workers are concentrated together in large units of production like factories and offices and are engaged in social production, by which I mean a type of production process that relies on large numbers of people working together and communicating with each other, making use of tools and machinery that need to be combined in order to produce whatever it is that the workers happen to be producing, be it a car, or software.I suspect you will find that this view owes more to Kautsky or Tony Cliff than Marx. I do not recall any text in which Marx makes that argument



But with the development of industry, the proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more.

[...]

Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers. This union is helped on by the improved means of communication that are created by modern industry, and that place the workers of different localities in contact with one another. It was just this contact that was needed to centralise the numerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one national struggle between classes. But every class struggle is a political struggle.And that union, to attain which the burghers of the Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the modern proletarian, thanks to railways, achieve in a few years.

[...]

The bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a constant battle. At first with the aristocracy; later on, with those portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all time with the bourgeoisie of foreign countries. In all these battles, it sees itself compelled to appeal to the proletariat, to ask for help, and thus, to drag it into the political arena. The bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with its own elements of political and general education, in other words, it furnishes the proletariat with weapons for fighting the bourgeoisie.

[...]

Further, as we have already seen, entire sections of the ruling class are, by the advance of industry, precipitated into the proletariat, or are at least threatened in their conditions of existence. These also supply the proletariat with fresh elements of enlightenment and progress.

[...]

The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by the revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers.
The Communist Manifesto (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm)


The evolution of the conditions of existence for a numerous, strong, concentrated, and intelligent proletarian class goes hand in hand with the development of the conditions of existence for a numerous, wealthy, concentrated, and powerful middle class. The working class movement itself never is independent, never is of an exclusively proletarian character until all the different factions of the middle class, and particularly its most progressive faction, the large manufacturers, have conquered political power, and remodelled the State according to their wants. It is then that the inevitable conflict between the employer and the employed becomes imminent, and cannot be adjourned any longer
Link (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/germany/ch01.htm)

A radical social revolution depends on certain definite historical conditions of economic development as its precondition. It is also only possible where with capitalist production the industrial proletariat occupies at least an important position among the mass of the people.
Link (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1874/04/bakunin-notes.htm)

[BobKKKindle$]

You confuse social formation with mode of production. Any given social formation typically is a combination of modes of production.At a single point in time, this is true, and indeed we can point to the persistence of slavery under capitalism in certain countries such as China and Brazil, but Marx also recognizes that capitalism differs from previous modes of production in that the social relationship that is capital and the existence of multiple competing capitals generates expansionist dynamics that cannot be constrained, by governments or individuals, and it is this pressure to expand geographically and into every possible realm of production that constitutes alienation from the viewpoint of the bourgeoisie, which Marx compares to a sorcerer's apprentice who has conjured a spell and now finds he has no way to assert control over his own creation. This expansionism is relevant to feudalism because it leads to the penetration of rural communities and the subordination of these communities to the imperatives of the market and capital, with the previously-existing social relationships being dismantled by either economic or coercive forces. On these grounds I say that the co-existence of multiple modes of production cannot exist in the long-time now that the force of capital has been unleashed - already we see the attempts of the bourgeoisie to subject even ideas and living things to the rule of the market by imposing copyright on intellectual material, including genomes, not to mention the ongoing creation of new financial instruments to avert a crisis of profitability.


This is surely not sustainable. Do you really contend that in for example 12th century France there was no commodity production?No, not at all, which is why, in my last post, I noted that urban areas also existed under feudalism, and that peasants would often sell part of their produce at a local market once the landlord had subtracted their rent and once the peasant and their family had met personal needs. I also agree with you in saying that what matters is the dominant form of exploitation that takes place when determining whether a society is feudal or capitalist or any other mode of production but what I take issue with is your assumption that it is possible for the surplus value of the peasantry to take the form of money and for that dynamic to be legitimately described as feudalism. If peasants are handing over money to pay interest on loans or to pay the rent on land that is owned by a landlord then that indicates that the primary mode of economic activity for the peasant is commodity production, as, in order to receive the money they need to make those payments, the peasant is forced to orientate their resources and efforts towards the production of agricultural goods that can be sold on the market, at which point they effectively become a capitalist small producer, whose independence is constrained not by a military apparatus as under feudalism, but by the pressures and imperatives of the market system. It is the convergence of political oppression and economic exploitation that defines feudal accumulation.


You have to take into account that the Maoists did not claim that China was socialist in 1950, the official position is that it did not step decisively towards socialism until the 1960s.I am actually aware of this, thank you very much, and of course believe that China has never been anything but capitalist at any point in time. The CPC is basically the same as other movements that have been led by a section of the petty-bourgeoisie in that the main goal of these movements is to attain national independence and to do what the bourgeoisie is unable to do, due to its incompetence and political weakness in underdeveloped nations - develop the forces of production through the intense exploitation of workers and peasants whilst justifying their class rule through the use of socialist and anti-imperialist slogans. The theory of "New Democracy" amounts to a rejection of the Marxist theory of the state, as we shall see shortly...


The working class leads the united front. It does not subordinate itself to the national bourgeoisie. Any section of the bourgeoisie can only exist as long as it owns part of the means of production, because this position of ownership is essentially what makes someone part of the bourgeoisie. Based on this, if the period of "New Democracy" involves protecting the interests of the national bourgeoisie and preventing the class from being abolished as a result of expropriation it necessarily follows that the state will have no choice but to guarantee the right of national capitalists to exploit workers, and may be forced to restrain workers if they seek to seize the property of national capitalists without the support of the party elite, whose role it is to decide on when the working class is ready to leave New Democracy behind. This is not only bad in itself, and demonstrative of how reactionary Maoism is, it also shows that the "bloc of four classes" cannot be under the leadership of the proletariat because the privileged economic position of the capitalists alone gives them the power to subvert policies that they deem inimical to their interests. It is evident from this that what makes the state under capitalism a state that is friendly towards the interests of the bourgeoisie and hence a tool of class domination is not necessarily the fact that it is occupied by individuals who are from the bourgeois class but rather the fact that it operates within the framework of a capitalist economy and so in order to preserve its own interests, must always acknowledge the interests of those who hold economic power - the capitalists. It is impossible to reconcile the interests of the proletariat, and the existence of a proletarian state, with the continued existence of capitalist relations of production in any form, and hence "New Democracy" is theoretically invalid, as well as being politically reactionary.

[Paul Cockshott]

The Russian working class made up slightly over 10% of the population in 1917 and yet still managed to carry out the world's first and only socialist revolution

You have to bear in mind that this was only possible thanks to the unusual circumstances created by a combination of the Great War and a working class movement used to operating in conditions of clandestinity.

Without russian defeat in war there would have been no Feb or Oct revolution.

Should the Indian socialists thus wait for a future massive war in which India is defeated so that they can emulate the Bolsheviks?

[Paul Cockshott]

At a single point in time, this is true, and indeed we can point to the persistence of slavery under capitalism in certain countries such as China and Brazil, but Marx also recognizes that capitalism differs from previous modes of production in that the social relationship that is capital and the existence of multiple competing capitals generates expansionist dynamics that cannot be constrained, by governments or individuals, and it is this pressure to expand geographically and into every possible realm of production that constitutes alienation from the viewpoint of the bourgeoisie, which Marx compares to a sorcerer's apprentice who has conjured a spell and now finds he has no way to assert control over his own creation. This expansionism is relevant to feudalism because it leads to the penetration of rural communities and the subordination of these communities to the imperatives of the market and capital, with the previously-existing social relationships being dismantled by either economic or coercive forces. On these grounds I say that the co-existence of multiple modes of production cannot exist in the long-time now that the force of capital has been unleashed
Sure, but "in the long run we are all dead".



No, not at all, which is why, in my last post, I noted that urban areas also existed under feudalism, and that peasants would often sell part of their produce at a local market once the landlord had subtracted their rent and once the peasant and their family had met personal needs. I also agree with you in saying that what matters is the dominant form of exploitation that takes place when determining whether a society is feudal or capitalist or any other mode of production but what I take issue with is your assumption that it is possible for the surplus value of the peasantry to take the form of money and for that dynamic to be legitimately described as feudalism.

This is a matter of state development. If the state is highly developed and has standing armies and officials to pay, then it raises taxes in money, and in consequence forces the direct producers to sell part of their product for money. The landlord class then tends to commute its labour rents into money rents. We see this in China from a very early stage, hence the general use of token or paper money hundreds of years before it became prevalent in europe.

The same thing was happening in the Eastern Roman emipire as early as the 4th century.




I am actually aware of this, thank you very much, and of course believe that China has never been capitalist at any point in time. .

That is strange as Peking review has just published an article acknowledging that it is capitalist now.

[Paul Cockshott]

The Communist Manifesto (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm)


Link (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/germany/ch01.htm)

Link (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1874/04/bakunin-notes.htm)

Yes but where is the 'strategic position in relation to the means of production' in the above.

There are two key points being made by Marx :

1. That the numerical fraction of the population in the working class is growing.
2. That as a propertyless class it can represent the general interest of humanity rather than its particular interest.
The 'strategic position' is something you get from Cliff not Marx. The peasantry could equally be argued to be strategic in an economic sense s ince the whole of society depends on the food they produce. The Maoists would argue that they are strategic ina military sense.

[Led Zeppelin]

Yes but where is the 'strategic position in relation to the means of production' in the above.

There are two key points being made by Marx :

1. That the numerical fraction of the population in the working class is growing.
2. That as a propertyless class it can represent the general interest of humanity rather than its particular interest.

You missed these key points:


But with the development of industry, the proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more.

The bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with its own elements of political and general education, in other words, it furnishes the proletariat with weapons for fighting the bourgeoisie.

The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by the revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers.

A radical social revolution depends on certain definite historical conditions of economic development as its precondition. It is also only possible where with capitalist production the industrial proletariat occupies at least an important position among the mass of the people.

In other words, Marx is not simply referring to the number of workers increasing, but also to their position and relation to the means of production, which is developed and conditioned by the bourgeois. Basically; what Bobkindles said came straight from Marx.

However, even if it didn't come from Marx, I have no idea why you would say it originated in Cliff, when Lenin, Trotsky, Engels etc. all referred to the same thing as well, and before Cliff did.

For example:


Only the proletariat created by modern large-scale industry, liberated from all inherited fetters, including those which chained it to the land, and driven in herds into the big towns, is in a position to accomplish the great social transformation which will put an end to all class exploitation and all class rule.
Link (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/subject/hist-mat/hous-qst/ch01.htm)

Anyway, here are some more quotes by Marx where he says that the bourgeoisie through its requirements as a class created its own gravediggers in the proletariat, which have that position solely due to their special relation to the means of production (in fact, the proletariat is defined as a class by its relation to the means of production, as are all classes in society...):


Large-scale industry concentrates in one place a crowd of people unknown to one another. Competition divides their interests. But the maintenance of wages, this common interest which they have against their boss, unites them in a common thought of resistance — combination. Thus combination always has a double aim, that of stopping competition among the workers, so that they can carry on general competition with the capitalist. If the first aim of resistance was merely the maintenance of wages, combinations, at first isolated, constitute themselves into groups as the capitalists in their turn unite for the purpose of repression, and in the face of always united capital, the maintenance of the association becomes more necessary to them than that of wages. This is so true that English economists are amazed to see the workers sacrifice a good part of their wages in favor of associations, which, in the eyes of these economists, are established solely in favor of wages. In this struggle — a veritable civil war — all the elements necessary for a coming battle unite and develop. Once it has reached this point, association takes on a political character.
Link (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/subject/hist-mat/pov-phil/ch02.htm)

The development of the industrial proletariat is, in general, conditioned by the development of the industrial bourgeoisie. Only under its rule does the proletariat gain that extensive national existence which can raise its revolution to a national one, and only thus does the proletariat itself create the modern means of production, which become just so many means of its revolutionary emancipation.
Link (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/subject/hist-mat/class-sf/ch01.htm)

Of all the classes that stand face-to-face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes perish and disappear in the face of Modern Industry, the proletariat is its special and essential product.... The lower middle-classes, the small manufacturers, the shopkeepers, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle-class... they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history.
Link (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch32.htm)

[Paul Cockshott]

I still dont see any ref in what you cite to a strategic position with respect to the means of production, the latter appears to me to be an economistic interpellation.




I would also dispute the claim that Marx thought that all classes are defined by a relationship to the means of production. This strikes me as a vulgarisation.

[Farther Lee]

How can this site prove that it is not a capitalist CIA, MI5/6 anticommunist agency? Easy!
They would advocate the slogan of successful workers revolution - “The dictatorship of the proletariat.” This is not the slogan of this site or its perspective.
It is not a revolutionary leadership. You will have to find that in yourselves or elsewhere other than on this site. Read Lenin.

[chegitz guevara]

More news from India

India's unlikely Maoist revolutionary

Kobad Ghandy, a top Maoist leader in India, came from an upper class background before he become one of the country's most wanted rebels. He was arrested in the capital, Delhi, on Monday. The BBC's Prachi Pinglay has this profile.

Kobad Ghandy is an "unlikely revolutionary" - a foreign educated urbanite, he is reputed to like joking and socialising.
But not for him the life of a middle class city professional. Instead he has remained committed to the Maoist cause with "discipline and perseverance" for over 30 years - with over a decade spent underground in various tribal areas, his friends say.

Maoist-linked violence across central and eastern India has killed at least 6,000 people over the past 20 years. The rebels say they represent the rights of landless farmhands and tribal communities.

Mr Ghandy is wanted in various cases, accused of being a member of a banned group, organising demonstrations and writing publicity material for the Communist Party of India (Maoist).

He first became active in socio-political activities in Mumbai (then called Bombay) during the tenure of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

While his initial years are fairly well documented, very little is known about him in later years.
He spoke to the BBC in 2008, describing Indian society as "semi-feudal, semi-colonial" and saying it needed to be "democratised".

Political activities

A Khoja-Parsi by birth, Kobad Ghandy completed his schooling in India's elite Doon school and St Xavier's College in Bombay. He went to London to pursue studies in chartered accountancy.


“Our fight is against land grab and exploitation of the poor, especially focusing on rural India ”

Kobad Ghandy

His friend PA Sebastian told the BBC that it was in England that Mr Ghandy first became involved in political activities.

After returning to Bombay, he was active during Mrs Gandhi's emergency (from 1975-1977), when democracy was suspended.

Mr Ghandy set up the leading rights group, the Committee for Protection of Democratic Rights (CPDR), along with activist friends like Mr Sebastian and reformer Asghar Ali Engineer.

Mr Engineer remembers how they used to meet at the convocation hall of Bombay University once a week at six pm after office hours.
"He was a thorough gentleman and was very strong in his convictions even then. He regarded the ruling Congress party as a clever bourgeois and capitalist party."

Throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s Mr Ghandy's support of communism seemed to increase.

He married activist-academic Anuradha Shanbag and decided to move to Nagpur with her - dedicating themselves entirely to the cause of tribal rights, women's issues and campaigns on behalf of lower caste people and women.


Anuradha, also a staunch activist, lecturer and member of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) died in April last year after a bout of cerebral malaria.

Her brother, the well-known theatre personality Sunil Shanbag, remembers how the couple made the difficult decision to leave Mumbai as "they felt they were needed more in those areas".

"The atmosphere of those days was different. There was a great sense of liberation and all of us were swept in. The CPDR used to book tickets in bulk for our plays and there would [always] be a discussion [afterwards]. There was a bridging at this time between art and politics and Anuradha and Kobad were not narrow-minded ideologues. They were very non-judgmental."

Mr Shanbag said: "His father Adi Ghandy worked in a pharmaceutical company and they lived in an old sprawling flat in Worli. His father was in fact extremely supportive of the cause. He too led a simple life inspired by his son. Kobad had complete support from his family."

'Inequality'

Susan Abraham, another long time friend of the couple, said: "He was committed to the revolution and revolutionary ideals. He came from an upper class background but led a Spartan life. He was tuned with his surroundings. When you see so much inequality, you want so much to change things.

"In the days after the emergency everyone was influenced by activism," she said, explaining the apparent difference between Mr Ghandy's background and the life he chose to live.

Activist and writer Jyoti Punwani says it was far from obvious that he had had an elite schooling or foreign education.

"We could not have guessed he was from all these places. His behaviour was very normal and he even laughed about his time spent at the Doon school. They had a huge house but never showed off money. He was leftist and committed to changing the system. He did all his work by himself and did not keep a servant."

While his jhola (cotton shoulder bag), his self-discipline and his commitment come up often in his friends' memories, they also mention how he loved mixing with people from all walks of life.

"Kobad and Anuradha gave up their lives to work with the poor but never said anything about it. He was always enthusiastic and he liked to mix with people. He could interact with people from every class and make friends and joke about many things. He is the most unlikely revolutionary, he liked to have fun - he was an ideologue but not an intellectual," Ms Punwani reminisces.

A police official who has investigated several cases in areas of Maharashtra state where Maoist rebels are active said that Mr Ghandy was also known by the names Kamal and Azad.

"He is a strong ideologue. He has organised demonstrations and written articles and other publicity material," he said.

"He is a senior in their ranks. Cases are registered against him in Nagpur and Chandrapur. However, charges against him are not of a serious nature," he said.

Mr Ghandy has been remanded in custody and it is not clear if he will be transferred out of Delhi.

Activists who campaign for the release of political prisoners have started rallying to demand that he is given his legal rights.

Mr Shanbag says some sections of the media may have got it wrong about Mr Ghandy.

"Kobad cannot be called a blood-thirsty terrorist as some in the media are calling him. Somebody has to get real."

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/8270400.stm

[Revy]

What we see in Nepal and India seems to be much like Russia and Germany, but I hope it doesn't turn out the same way. The German revolution failed, and the Russian revolution degenerated (shortly after). Hopefully the revolution in India can succeed, but I don't want to see any "stagism" and of course India turning out the same way as China.

[redasheville]

Needless to say that this will be followed by more Trot losers accusing that Maoism is nothing but the national bourgeoisie deluding the masses into overthrowing some other guys etc etc.

A question in advance for them:

What are your beloved comrades doing in these countries?

This is pretty juvenile. Care to address any of the "Trot losers" arguments?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but people with your type of attitude tend to not actually be involved in much organizing.

[red cat]

This is pretty juvenile. Care to address any of the "Trot losers" arguments?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but people with your type of attitude tend to not actually be involved in much organizing.

Please restate the arguments that I haven't addressed.

I don't wish to correct you. You are free to assume anything you like about my political career.:)

[Revy]

This is pretty juvenile. Care to address any of the "Trot losers" arguments?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but people with your type of attitude tend to not actually be involved in much organizing.

red cat is trolling, there's no need to engage seriously with them.

[GracchusBabeuf]

~

[Nwoye]

Needless to say that this will be followed by more Trot losers accusing that Maoism is nothing but the national bourgeoisie deluding the masses into overthrowing some other guys etc etc.

A question in advance for them:

What are your beloved comrades doing in these countries?
with all due respect, get the fuck out of this thread. Bobkindles destroyed maoism and the maoist movement in India just pages ago and you've offered virtually no rebuttal to his arguments. stop trolling and just be quiet. and thanks in advance for the neg rep.

[red cat]

Nice links, anyway.

The masses make the revolution, indeed. But the instances of class struggle observed are nullified by lack of organization on a larger scale. The job of the communist party is nothing but to coordinate class struggle, which in turn develops quantitatively and lastly, qualitatively to bloom into a revolution.

As usual, the rest of your post is devoted to falsification and slandering.

[scarletghoul]

"Parties" and "organizations" don't make a revolution. The working class does. There is plenty (http://beta.thehindu.com/news/states/other-states/article24644.ece) of (http://www.hindustantimes.com/Wildcat-strike-hits-Jet-operations-150-flights-cancelled/H1-Article1-451443.aspx) evidence (http://beta.thehindu.com/news/cities/Kochi/article25102.ece) of (http://www.hinduonnet.com/2009/08/05/stories/2009080553581100.htm) class (http://www.hinduonnet.com/2009/08/05/stories/2009080561452000.htm) struggle (http://www.hinduonnet.com/businessline/2009/01/07/stories/2009010751690300.htm) almost everyday.
Class struggle is useless without any organisation. I mean, whats the point in being a communist if the working class will magically emancipate itself just by struggling without any theory?


Since the Indian government already has the agenda of capitalism, what difference would the workers see since they will continue to be exploited by capitalists under Maoism, except the Maoists are likely to ban strikes too? The current Indian government would very much like to ban strikes since that is what the bourgeoisie would want. The Maoists are likely to to ban strikes and do the work of the bourgeoisie as well as continuing capitalist exploitation. Wtf is this based on? The Maoists have fought tooth n claw against the Indian bourgeoisie. Why is the bourgeois state so worried about them if they are bourgeois themselves? If they're as capitalist as you say they are, why don't the bourgeoisie just let them take over, instead of engaging in war with them? Why do the Maoists bother fighting if they only want to continue capitalism? Are they just trying to be evil? This really makes no sense.


What exactly is going to change? Western supporters of Maoists are mostly middle class fetishists for "third world" revolution carried out in exotic far away lands and are totally ignorant of the reality of class struggle in these so called third world countries.Ok, perhaps you could tell us first hand the account of your life in rural india under maoist tyranny :pp

[KurtFF8]

India prepares for Maoist assault

(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8275249.stm)



http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/46414000/jpg/_46414165_007882175-1.jpg The rebels are fighting for communist rule in several Indian states.

The Indian Home Minister, P Chidambaram, says the government will extend "every support" to states battling left-wing Maoist extremism.
Mr Chidambaram was assessing state security in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand as the government prepares for what it says will be an all-out assault.
About 20,000 troops are being sent to the two states to join 35,000 already stationed there ahead of the offensive.
The Maoists say they are fighting for the rights of the poor.
They operate in a large swathe of territory across central and eastern India.
More than 6,000 people have been killed during their 20-year fight for a communist state.
"The centre is committed to fight Naxalism [Maoism]," Mr Chidambaram said. "We will provide all possible help to... eradicate the left-wing extremists completely," he told reporters here.
The home minister hailed the Chhattisgarh government's efforts to fight Maoists and said all steps to provide "succour to kin of security men killed in the fight against Naxalism" have been taken.
Correspondents say any offensive is not expected to be launched before October.
On Friday Mr Chidambaram met Chhattisgarh Governor ESL Narsimhan to discuss the Maoist threat.
Last week a fierce gun battle between Maoists and the security forces took place in Chhattisgarh. At least seven Maoists were killed and one paramilitary soldier.
India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said earlier this month that his country was losing the battle against the rebels.
Mr Singh told a meeting of police chiefs from different states that rebel violence was increasing and the Maoists' appeal was growing.
The rebels operate in 182 districts in India.

[pranabjyoti]

I thought this was a forum for communists, not capitalists.
Well, in my opinion, this is forum for historical progress and moving to capitalism from feudalism is progress. Socialsim is best but capitalism is better than feudalism. I know well that how indian society is dominated by feudal systems and feudal ideology. A cultural revolution is necessary is uproot the remains of feudal past.

[Random Precision]

:laugh: :D :laugh: :D :laugh: :D :laugh: :D

Oooh, tasty. Have another verbal warning for spam.

[red cat]

Oooh, tasty. Have another verbal warning for spam.

When will you Trots realize that I don't care about your warnings?

And that is not a spam by the way.

[scarletghoul]

Pfft, not every revolution has to be like the Russian Revolution you know. India is in a very differant situation to what Russia was then.

btw India isn't a feudal country. It's partly feudal yeah, but also partly capitalist (and even primitive in some areas). Urban workers and the peasants are both potentially revolutionary forces. There's no reason why an urban insurrection can't occur along with the rural revolution (as in Nepal).

[chegitz guevara]

The problem that I have with the "Trotskyist" argument that only the working class can overthrow capitalism is that it is a "no true scotsman" argument.

Comrade A: Only the working class can overthrow capitalism and establish socialism.

Comrade B: Uhm, the Chinese peasantry overthrew capitalism and tried to establish socialism.

Comrade A: It wasn't really overthrowing capitalism and building socialism because it wasn't the act of the working class.

It's a logical fallacy.

Marx made his arguments before any workers overthrow capitalism and before anyone tried to create socialism. If the real world didn't do what Marx said, that doesn't mean the world is wrong. It means Marx was wrong.

However, I would argue that certain comrades didn't pay close enough attention to Marx. Marx wrote that the Russian peasantry could skip capitalism, if their revolution was the spark for a workers revolution in Europe, that in turn could help develop Russia. Why couldn't the Chinese peasantry skip capitalism with the aid of the Soviet workers?

In addition, Marx and Lenin both wrote that peasantry could overthrow capitalism if led by the worker class. Once the Russian workers overthrew their government and began attempting to build socialism, they served as a revolutionary pole of attraction to all the world's oppressed classes. Once one revolutionary workers' state existed, all the old "rules" go out the window.

Really, what I'm saying is that certain comrades are too mechanistic in their understanding of Marxism. Marx was not a precog. He made predictions based on limited data. We cannot hold reality to Marx's arguments, when dynamic reality has clearly "chosen" a different path.

And it will continue to do so, which is why the Maoists are also wrong when they attempting to dogmatically claim that only Chinese revolution is a model. In fact, every revolution is going to be different. And sadly, because of that fact, Trotskyists and Maoists will unite to denounce them. :(

In fact, both Trotskyists and Maoists have so much to learn from one another. Both groups would come away stronger if, instead of trying to correct each other, they'd actually listen to each other.

Now support the Naxalites and the Maobadi!

[pranabjyoti]

Comrades,
Here I saw some arguments regarding the condition of Russia in 1917 and that of India in 2009. Though I myself really doubts that statistics given here about India in 2009, but lets accept it as "taken for granted".
But, there are other factors involving in the progress of revolution in any country. Russia was and still is a part of Europe and is very much closed to culturally advanced european countries and the people there had already began to adopt the modern (at that time) modern ideologies and feudalism is slowly retreating. Moreover, Russian don't have a colonial past and russian language was then going for its journey to become the language of higher education there (in Russia). But, here in India, the facts are quite different. No Indian language has still been able to become the language of learning science and technology here in India. Old feudal values still very much working in the mindset of even the working class. You can observe very few intercaste marriage even in the working class. Anybody, who claims himself as a revolutionary, should accept the fact that here in India, the real monster that stands in the path of progress is the dying feudalism and its remains.
All asian countries have a very long history of feudalism. During the feudal period of the human history, Asia and asian countries were much more advanced than their european counterparts. That's why anybody can felt the presence of feudalism in almost everywhere in Asia and the first and foremost task of revolutionaries here in Asia is to fight feudalism.
Judging India by just the ratio of industrial workers with peasents and other classes and determining the character of the Indian and perhaps all asian countries will lead to a very DANGEROUSLY WRONG CONCLUSION.

[JimmyJazz]

The problem that I have with the "Trotskyist" argument that only the working class can overthrow capitalism is that it is a "no true scotsman" argument.

Comrade A: Only the working class can overthrow capitalism and establish socialism.

Comrade B: Uhm, the Chinese peasantry overthrew capitalism and tried to establish socialism.

Comrade A: It wasn't really overthrowing capitalism and building socialism because it wasn't the act of the working class.

It's a logical fallacy.

It might be a fallacy if someone said it as a logical absolute, like some sort of syllogistic conclusion. However, I think the assertion is more along the lines of mere observation: "socialism [by any Marxist definition of the word] is not in the peasantry's interests; and we observe that social classes tend overwhelmingly to act in their own interests".

I mean, do you dispute the fact that what the peasantry in Russia wanted was clearly not socialism, and that at certain points they basically had to be fought tooth and nail to achieve collectivization? (I'm not advocating Stalinist agricultural collectivization policies, just making a point that what peasant farmers want is division of land, not collectivization of anything, much less industry).

I for one am totally open to being shown a time and place in history when the peasantry took power and eagerly carried out what Marxists consider the tasks of the proletariat--socialization of industry--despite the fact that they did not work in industry. But personally I don't know of such an example.

And frankly, I think Maoists can be accused of a logical fallacy:

1. Socialism isn't capitalism
2. Maoism leads to something that isn't capitalism
3. Maoism leads to socialism

Maoism is resolutely anti-imperialist. That much is indisputable. But it doesn't mean it's socialist. I mean, what do you consider socialism? Does it have a class basis, or is it just a system that takes care of its poor? Is social democracy socialist?

[BobKKKindle$]

That is strange as Peking review has just published an article acknowledging that it is capitalist now.Sorry, that was a typo on my part - I meant to say that China has never been anything but capitalist, referring to the period since the creation of the PRC in 1949 of course. I have edited my original post.


Comrade B: Uhm, the Chinese peasantry overthrew capitalism and tried to establish socialism.I reject this not "because" the revolution wasn't led by the working class but because there's no evidence to show that China was a socialist country or even came close to being a socialist country at any point in time. On this basis, and, given that we (i.e. the IST and others in that tradition) also believe that other countries where the working class did not play a major role in political change or was subordinated to a bureaucratic leadership also remained capitalist for the duration of the Cold War, despite the claims of their governments, and despite the nationalization of their economies, we say that socialism can only come about as a result of working-class struggle. If the peasantry does take power in a country and succeed in liberating the working class despite them playing no major role in the overthrow of the old regime then I would have to revise this thesis and accept that Marx was wrong when he argued that the "emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself", and that the working class can be liberated by a force other than itself. There has not yet been a single positive example in favour of this, so for the time being I continue to look to the working class as the only force that can overthrow capitalism and build socialism - a scientific conclusion, because it is based on evidence, specifically the fact that peasants have never carried out the socialization of the means of production. It's also wrong to say that the peasant took power in China as the strategy of the CPC was based on restraining the struggles of poor peasants against the landlords and always subordinating social and political change in the countryside to the bureaucratic control of local party administration - in 1946, the policy of the CPC on the land question was to purchase the “excess” land of landlords, calculated on the basis that landlords were permitted 50% more acreage than middle peasants, and 100% more if they had been active in the war against Japan, and then sell it to peasants who had enough money to buy. During the 1930s, policy was even more conservative, as it was limited to rent reductions. Even after the publication of the new law in October 1947, it was the cadres who had the power to confiscate land, whilst the role of poor peasants was limited to deciding how it should be distributed amongst themselves. When that law was published, the CPC was quick to oppose the resulting wave of land seizures which swept across the Chinese countryside, with Mao arguing that peasants who had seized land should not follow landlords into the towns to deliver class justice, rejecting the seizure of industrial enterprises, calling for the reclassification of rich peasants and landlords as "middle peasants", and asserting that poor peasant associations should be required to admit rich peasants, landlords and the “enlightened gentry” into their ranks. Mao summed up this view and revealed his inherent class-collaboration by asserting that the "democratic government" should pay attention to the concerns of "middle peasants, the independent craftsmen, the national bourgeoisie and the intellectuals” instead of just "workers, poor peasants and farm labourers", condemning those who emphasized the class interests of these latter groups as putting forward a "poor peasant-farm labourer line". I've written about this before, and even mentioned it before in this thread, but it's worth going over again just to show that whilst Maoists idolize the peasantry as a social force they always position themselves in a elitist and bureuacratic relationship to the rural poor and do everything they can to limit class struggle.


Once one revolutionary workers' state existed, all the old "rules" go out the window.Another unfair assumption. It needs to be stated that the CPC did not just suddenly find itself in the countryside, and decide to base its activities on mobilizing the peasants, and building rural base areas - that situation was the product of a flawed strategy that was imposed by the Comintern for the duration of the 1920s with Stalin's support and involved the CPC subordinating itself do the domination of the KMT despite the rising level of working-class struggle in China at that time, which led to the creation of China's first Soviet in 1925. I've written about that history extensively in this (http://www.revleft.com/vb/three-worlds-theory-t117599/index.html) thread with no refutation from any Maoists so it needs no repetition here.


In fact, both Trotskyists and Maoists have so much to learn from one anotherThe lessons that can be derived from Maoism and the experiences of Maoist parties, as well as the experience of the CPC in the 1920s, are primarily negative - they include the difference between a united front and a popular front, the dangers and origins of substitutionism, the validity of Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution, and, of course, the fundamental principle that the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself.

[pranabjyoti]

Well, so far, no revolution that has been flourished till today in different countries is an exact copy of any previous revolution. We can say that revolutions have similarities and disimilarities between them. CERTAINLY INDIAN REVOLUTION WOULDN'T BE AN EXACT COPY OF CHINESE REVOLUTION, BUT IT CAN BE SAID THAT THERE SHOULD BE CONSIDERABLE SIMILARITY BETWEEN CHINESE AND INDIAN REVOLUTION.
I can guess that the future revolution in India would be done by both proletariat and peasantry. While the guerilla struggle may continue in the rural and jungle based areas, in the meantime a massive uprising in the cities by proletariat would be the best option. What the maoists are doing is a considerable portion of the preparation of Indian revolution. The other portion that will remain is organizing the city proletariat for massive upheval. The feudal Indian state wouldn't be able to withstand that blow from both side.

[Paul Cockshott]

Bobkindles destroyed maoism and the maoist movement in India just pages ago
For which the Indian govt would no doubt have thanked him.
I suspect you meant to say that you think that he destroyed its arguments intellectually.
But Bobs own arguments rest on a major counter factual - that India is a capitalist economy. In fact it is a combination of slavery, feudalism and capitalism. Millions of dalits for example are essentially slaves.

During the US civil war Marx did not denounce Lincoln for his war on slavery or say that the american working class should not support it because it was not leading to socialism. To denounce the struggle of the Indian revolutionaries against feudalism and the caste system is sectarian in the real historical context.

[Revy]

How is India a feudal country?:confused: India is part of the G-20, the twenty most developed capitalist economies. The workers of India should be overthrowing capitalism, which already exists there.

[red cat]

Another unfair assumption. It needs to be stated that the CPC did not just suddenly find itself in the countryside, and decide to base its activities on mobilizing the peasants, and building rural base areas - that situation was the product of a flawed strategy that was imposed by the Comintern for the duration of the 1920s with Stalin's support and involved the CPC subordinating itself do the domination of the KMT despite the rising level of working-class struggle in China at that time, which led to the creation of China's first Soviet in 1925. I've written about that history extensively in this thread with no refutation from any Maoists so it needs no repetition here.





Ironically, it was Stalin's preferred Comintern policy that resulted in the CPC being transformed into such an incompetent grouping. Stalin persistently argued that the CPC should enter into an alliance with the KMT on a subordinate basis, with CPC members joining the KMT as individuals, instead of seeking a tactical alliance between the KMT and the CPC as organizations. The deputy of the Comintern who was sent to China in 1921, Sneevliet, argued that the KMT was not an organization reflecting the interests of any particular class but embodied the interests of several classes, including the working class, as well as overseas Chinese capitalists, and the bourgeois intellectuals, with the Executive Committee of the International describing the KMT as a "national revolutionary group", and asserting that China's revolution would be based on the peasantry, and limited to a narrow set of democratic demands. From 1924 onwards, by which point bureaucratic degeneration in the USSR had advanced, the KMT recieved extensive military support from the USSR, with Borodin, also sent by the Comintern, transforming the party from a small collection of civilian politicians into an effective military machine. The CPC sought to break from the KMT in 1924 after a strike wave, during which the party was instructed to avoid "excesses" so as to prevent Chinese capitalists from openly siding with the imperialist powers, as they were liable to do if the movement had been allowed to develop beyond its initial nationalist goals; in spite of the CPC's opposition they were forced to continue their alliance, which culminated in the massacres of 1927, when, after entering Shanghai, Chiang Kai-Shek declared martial law, and executed 5,000 communists and trade unionists, many of them publicly executed on street corners. Across the whole of China, party membership fell from 57,900 to 10,000 between 1926 and 1927, and between April and December 1927, some 38,000 militants were killed, and 32,000 imprisoned. Despite this tragic defeat, which was made possible by the imposition of the Comintern's strategy by the KMT - a strategy that was always oppossed by Chinese Trotskyists, such as Chen Duxiu, Zhang Guotao, and others - the CPC was once again in the same subordinate position after 1935, cooperating with the KMT as part of a "united front" against Japan. The bloody and tragic history of the Chinese working class in the 1920s and 1930s shows us that communists must always retain their political independence and never subject themselves to the control of a hostile entity, even when cooperation with broader class forces is desirable for strategic reasons. Stalin and his Chinese supporters were responsible for the events of 1927, and the CPC was never again able to accumulate significant working-class support after that date, vindicating Trotsky's analysis of the Chinese situation.



The CC of the CPC at that period was led by Chen Du Xiu . So, he and the other Trots are to be primarily blamed for the massacres. They also succeeded temporarily in establishing a full-fledged Trot line and isolated the CPC and the proletariat from the peasantry.

When the peasant forces marched on Changsha on May 31 to fight back, again it was Chen Du Xiu who stopped them. Thus it is quite clear that who were actually subordinating the CPC to the GMD.

By 1935 the left-opportunistic line had been defeated. The difference between the CPC's new alliance with the GMD and the old one is that this time, the GMD was subordinated to the CPC. The CPC maintained a distinct line which led the movement. This fact that the GMD was subordinated to the political programme of the CPC is clearly exhibited by the deflection of majority of the GMD soldiers to the PLA.

[red cat]

How is India a feudal country? India is part of the G-20, the twenty most developed capitalist economies. The workers of India should be overthrowing capitalism, which already exists there.

Your logic:

1) G20 = twenty most developed capitalist economies.

2) India is a part of the G20.

3) therefore India is capitalist.

How do you know that G20 = twenty most developed capitalist economies?


The links I posted indicate that feudalism exists in india.

[red cat]

Marx died over 120 years ago. Get over it.

Our Trot friends are not considering this one as spam, I suppose?

[Spirit of Spartacus]

Before I join this discussion, I'd just like someone to define "feudalism" for me.

Because really, the way this discussion is going shows how little the comrades understand the situation in South Asia.

How many of the comrades here have EVER studied the land ownership patterns of pre-colonial India, and the changes which were introduced by the British colonialists?

How many of the comrades here understand how industrialization took place in South Asia during the colonial period?

How many of the comrades understand the policies followed by the post-colonial Indian regime led by Nehru and his successors, especially their industrial policies?

How many of the comrades understand the process by which India has achieved such rapid growth over the past few decades, and the shifts in social forces (including class forces) taking place throughout India?

Really, without having a CLUE on all of this, you have people coming to this thread and going on and on about what the Maoists are and what they aren't, and about how India is feudal or capitalist or whatever.

Sorry, people. In South Asia, we have a phrase for this. When someone tries to present an analysis of a situation which they haven't even bothered to study, we call it "shooting an arrow in the darkness". You MIGHT just get it right, if you're really lucky...theoretically. But most likely, it'll be a total miss.
And that's what's happening here.

We had someone come to this thread and say "Oh I'm going to find out more about the Maoists and see if they want to set up an evil authoritarian Leninist regime in India, or if they want to set up my idealized fantasy vision of workers' communes controlling the whole country."
Now how ridiculous can one get?

So yes, lets begin this discussion again, a little more systematically.
I would like someone here (from whatever side of this "debate"), to explain to me what they mean by saying "there is feudalism in India" or "India is capitalist".

See frankly, most of you are trying to judge a movement in a region which has a history and culture far far away from your own, and a lot what is being said on this thread is Euro-centric bullshit, which is the PLAGUE of Marxism.

[red cat]

We claim that India is semi feudal- semi colonial.

This means that it is actually imperialist capital that is dominating the market. The native managers of the imperialist capitalist system have some capital of their own, which is negligible compared to the former. Other small business-owners exist but are even weaker. Unlike a colony, where typically capital from a single foreign country will dominate the market openly, capital belonging to MNCs operate, and have a political structure that consists of native people. This characterizes a semi-colony.

The countryside is characterized by peasants bound to the land. Feudal lords exist but do not organize themselves to the national level to form a monarchy. Instead, they must subordinate themselves to the imperialist system and open the markets for the same. This characterizes a semi feudal system.

[BobKKKindle$]

The CC of the CPC at that period was led by Chen Du Xiu . So, he and the other Trots are to be primarily blamed for the massacres. They also succeeded temporarily in establishing a full-fledged Trot line and isolated the CPC and the proletariat from the peasantry.This just bears no relation to reality. Chen Duxiu was a full member of the CC as well as being one of the founding members of the party in 1921 along with Mao but there is no basis for saying that the whole of the party was under his personal leadership, or that the strategy of the CPC during the 1920s was consistent with Chen's ideas. Chen was the major opponent of the strategy that was imposed on the CPC by the Comintern whereas Mao was one of its key supporters, and it was this strategy, under which the members of the CPC joined the KMT on an individual basis, and effectively subordinated themselves to the latter organization both ideologically and strategically, that led to the tragic events of 1927, as well as the earlier attacks directed against the CPC. Chen's opposition to the opportunist strategy of the Comintern is demonstrated by the fact that he along with other comrades sought to break the alliance with the KMT after the creation of the Canton Soviet in 1925 as well as the subsequent attack on the CPC but were forced to remain within the alliance as a result of the personal intervention of Stalin and his allies in the Comintern. His opposition and the tensions that existed between him and the leaders of the Comintern is also demonstrated by the fact that the organization was seeking to have him removed from the position of general secretary by encouraging Qu Qiubai, Zhang Guotao, and Tang Pingsha, all of whom had been trained by the Comintern in Moscow (and hence were called the "Moscow Group") to isolate him within the party. They failed to get him removed due to his personal prestige as well as their inability to decide on who would take his place but did manage to get all of Chen's supporters deprived of power, and after this Chen was effectively powerless within the CC, and the party as a whole, despite still bearing formal responsibility for the party's actions. These three individuals were so intent on exercising power that they met before CC meetings to develop a strategy and also ensured that they shared the same views as Borodin, the representative of the Comintern in China.

Chen Duxiu's writings on strategy within the CPC are well worth a read, and are available here (http://www.marxist.com/chen-du-xiu-appeal-comrades-ccp.htm).

The events of 1927 were greeted by Stalin (who, incidentally, also advised the CPC against resuming civil war after the end of WW2) as a vindication of the Comintern's line despite the fact that they involved the destruction of the CPC's urban support base and represented a major defeat for the whole of the Chinese working class, and it was also Stalin who encouraged the CPC to immediately pursue insurrection, and then ally with the left-wing of the KMT in Wuhan - i.e. the "left-opportunist line" you mentioned - both of these strategies resulting in further defeats. Chen, who was by this point firmly associated with the Left Opposition, did oppose these insurrections and his line was effectively vindicated by the fact that they were all carried out as bureaucratic maneuvers by the CPC with a lack of independent initiative from either the peasants or the workers, especially in the case of the Canton Commune, whose leaders were selected by the Comintern, not elected by the workers of Canton. The ongoing subordination of the CPC to the KMT in ideological terms is demonstrated by the conservative nature of the CPC's policy on land throughout the rest of the 1920s as well as the whole of the 1930s, which was basically limited to support for rent reductions, this policy being based on the assumption that it was necessary to protect the interests of rich peasants and landlords in order to prevent them from moving into the hands of the KMT, and, after the two parties resumed their alliance, to avoid threatening what was then recognized as the KMT's core social base. It is true that large numbers of soldiers did deflect to the CPC but this is no way indicates that the CPC's strategy was not based on subordination or that the CPC was a genuine force for revolutionary change, as defection was not limited to conscripts, whose defection merely indicates that they thought the CPC would win and didn't want to risk their lives fighting a bloody civil war, but also extended to generals, many of whom were drawn from a privileged background, and had previously either fought on the side of warlords, or had themselves been minor warlords - in fact the reason that there was no battle for Beijing in 1949 was that the general who was in charge of the city surrendered before the forces of the CPC had reached the suburbs, and, as everyone knows, Zhu De was a general under the command of the warlord Cai E in Sichuan before he became a general for the CPC.


I would like someone here (from whatever side of this "debate"), to explain to me what they mean by saying "there is feudalism in India" or "India is capitalist".These issues have already been discussed - if you think everyone is wrong, then by all means, offer your opinion.

[scarletghoul]

I mean, do you dispute the fact that what the peasantry in Russia wanted was clearly not socialism, and that at certain points they basically had to be fought tooth and nail to achieve collectivization?
In the USSR yes, the agricultural revolution was difficult and required significant violence. But this is precisely because the peasantry was not involved in the revolution and it was a solely proletarian revolution, with the agricultural issue as an after-effect and a coercive measure by the proletariat on the peasantry.

However the PRC conducted land reform (and eventual collectivisation) with much less violence, as the peasentry led the rural part of the revolution. It was their revolution. It was them who took the power. So this made the revolution in the countryside function much more smoothly than it did in USSR. Yeah they didn't jump straight to collective farming, and traditional proletarian socialism could not be established right away in the countryside, however it was still revolutionary and a vital step in the Chinese Revolution.
And this didn't negate the urban proletarian revolution btw (what youd think of as the proper socialist revolution), for that still went ahead. The peasantry's involvement in the chinese revolution in fact helped the proletarian side of the revolution, because China was an overwhelmingly agricultural society, and without peasant participation a nation-wide revolution would have been extremely difficult. (The Communists originally tried to just do a traditional socialist revolution, concentrating in urban areas and neglecting the revolutionary rage of the peasantry. They failed.)

India is not in exactly the same position as China was, but the peasents in India are proving that they are a huge revolutionary force, and I think it would be stupid to leave such a force untapped. The Indian proletariat also surely has a load of revolutionary potential, and certainly they should be a big focus of the communist movement there (though I do not know to what extent communists are active among the urban proletariat there. Perhaps not enough, perhaps enough).

But my point is that the peasentry is clearly full of revolutionary energy, and the peasant revolution should be carried forward as a very important part of the Indian Revolution. It will 1- act as a catalyst to help the urban revolution (provided the Communists dont neglect the proletariat in some bizzarre act of ultra-maoism) and 2- prevent troublesome issues arising in regards to the countryside like in the USSR.

The completion of a rural Peoples' War coupled with Urban Insurrection could very well be a winning formula for the Indian Revolution, as it did in Nepal (whatever you may think of the CPN(M)'s tactics since then).


I for one am totally open to being shown a time and place in history when the peasantry took power and eagerly carried out what Marxists consider the tasks of the proletariat--socialization of industry--despite the fact that they did not work in industry. But personally I don't know of such an example.
Clearly, that is not the direct aim of the rural revolution. It's not the role of the peasentry and no one is saying that it is or trying to make it so. The proletariat can carry out the traditional proletarian revolution. But the revolutionary peasantry should not be neglected, as the rural revolution is also important (though it must take a differant path of development obviously). Mobilising the peasantry enhances the the overal revolution as it supports the urban proletarian struggle and makes revolutionary development of the countryside work much less troublesome.


And frankly, I think Maoists can be accused of a logical fallacy:

1. Socialism isn't capitalism
2. Maoism leads to something that isn't capitalism
3. Maoism leads to socialism
What do you think Maoism leads to (assuming you believe the first 2 points)? Just out of curiosity.


Maoism is resolutely anti-imperialist. That much is indisputable. But it doesn't mean it's socialist. I mean, what do you consider socialism? Does it have a class basis, or is it just a system that takes care of its poor? Is social democracy socialist?
The Chinese revolution and the Indian Revolution were never just about 'taking care of its poor'. It's about empowering the poor (the proletariat and peasants). Just as traditional socialist revolution (in developed countries) is about empowering the proletariat. What these Maoist revolutions have done is adapt it to an undeveloped semi-fuedal country by taking into account the peasantry, and the need to empower the peasantry in the rural areas. We can argue about whether they were really empowered, but that's another issue lol

[scarletghoul]

Well, so far, no revolution that has been flourished till today in different countries is an exact copy of any previous revolution. We can say that revolutions have similarities and disimilarities between them. CERTAINLY INDIAN REVOLUTION WOULDN'T BE AN EXACT COPY OF CHINESE REVOLUTION, BUT IT CAN BE SAID THAT THERE SHOULD BE CONSIDERABLE SIMILARITY BETWEEN CHINESE AND INDIAN REVOLUTION.
I can guess that the future revolution in India would be done by both proletariat and peasantry. While the guerilla struggle may continue in the rural and jungle based areas, in the meantime a massive uprising in the cities by proletariat would be the best option. What the maoists are doing is a considerable portion of the preparation of Indian revolution. The other portion that will remain is organizing the city proletariat for massive upheval. The feudal Indian state wouldn't be able to withstand that blow from both side.
Exactly comrade. The revolutionary rage of the peasants and workers together will be much more effective than simply the workers alone.

[scarletghoul]

How is India a feudal country?:confused: India is part of the G-20, the twenty most developed capitalist economies. The workers of India should be overthrowing capitalism, which already exists there.
It's extremely underdeveloped in much of the country. It's only part of the G20 because it's so big with such a big population, and so even a small part that is industrialised is big compared to other countries.

And yes, of course the workers should overthrow capitalism, but why not let the peasents assist them? Especially seeing how much potential they have to do so

[pranabjyoti]

How is India a feudal country?:confused: India is part of the G-20, the twenty most developed capitalist economies. The workers of India should be overthrowing capitalism, which already exists there.
Do you think that whether a country's nature is feudal or not can be determined by if it's a member of G-20 or not? In parts of India, specially where the Indian aboriginal people lived, the conditions are worse than sub-sahara.

[Spawn of Stalin]

And yes, of course the workers should overthrow capitalism, but why not let the peasents assist them? Especially seeing how much potential they have to do so
Some Trots would have the peasantry on their knees working for the proletariat, even if the peasantry made up the majority. The fact that Trots are willing to base an argument against a progressive revolution in India (and Nepal, for that matter) on something that a German man said nearly two centuries ago explodes any credibility that may have existed on their part. Marx was never a prophet, we should base our actions on his ideas but we cannot exclude individuals from revolutionary activity based on their social status. A look at the number of revolutionaries from bourgeois backgrounds reveals the lack of logic in the argument that "the revolution must be carried out by the workers and only the workers". It is astounding that some so-called Marxists are willing to let the peasantry rot while the workers reap the benefits of their co-operatively owned factories, but of course, we all know these people aren't Marxists, they're just fucking tools who would, given the opportunity, rather side with imperialism than Maoism. Whoever decided that Trots should get a say in how Maoist revolution takes place anyway? They always find something to whine about.

[pranabjyoti]

Actually, in India, the bourgeoisie, that came to power after the end of colonial regime, are a far cry from their european counterparts. In Europe, the bourgeoisie came into power by overthrowing the feudal society and fighting against it with tooth and nail. But, in India, and in other asian countries, the bourgeoisie that came into power were basically a bustard of imperialism and feudalism together. They don't have any intention to wipe out feudalism and its remains from India. That's true for other asian countries. The fight against feudalism takes place in Asia under the leadership of revolutionary parties. The progressive steps taken by imperialism in SouthEast Asia is a result of imperialist fear of revolutionary China. They have rightly guessed that if some progressive changes hadn't been incorporated in SouthEast Asia, it would soon overflooded by revoluton due to its cultural closeness with China.
But, here in the south asian countries, the matters were different. It has very little cultural realtion with China and the chance of quick penetration of revolutionary ideology from China would be very slim. Therefore, the ruling class here hadn't felt the urge to incorporate progressive changes here like SouthEast Asia and if you stay in India, you can felt the presence of feudal mentality on every sphere of the society.
Let's take the charactaristics of Indian bourgeoisie for example. In USA and West European countries, they were inventors themselves and/or searching for new innovative ideas every time. In USA, the maximum time for any family running a business is just 3 generations. But, in India, those businessmen are still running business generation after generations. From their behaviour, if you watch them closely, you will be just can not have any idea about whether they are feudal landlords or entrepreneurs. In short, ther are a far cry from their US and European counteparts. A source of their capital are bank loans, which they will repay very rarely in future. The bank authority and the ruling class are busy to show these loans as "bad debts". Moreover, they have a very impressive record of seizing (thefting) workers wages and other legal pays.
Based on this kind of charactaristics, I am very very curious to know the opinion of the people who want to say that India is a capitalist economy.

[Spawn of Stalin]

Just to clarify, I have met a couple of Trots who can see a degree of progressiveness in the Maoist revolution. While I don't blame Trots for being critical of it, I do wish they some could acknowledge that something good is happening. If IBT can bring themselves to defend DPRK, surely you guys can wait until the Maoists make real change, then pass judgement.

[Paul Cockshott]

Before I join this discussion, I'd just like someone to define "feudalism" for me.

I think that in the context of this discussion it refers to production relations in which peasants are forced to give up a large part of their product, their labour, or the money obtained by selling their product, to a class of landowners. The peasants are often, but not always, also legally bound in some way to their social role, so their labour is unfree. Under conditions where there is general land shortage, the landlord class may be able to dispense with legally binding the peasantry to their role.

[red cat]

I think that in the context of this discussion it refers to production relations in which peasants are forced to give up a large part of their product, their labour, or the money obtained by selling their product, to a class of landowners. The peasants are often, but not always, also legally bound in some way to their social role, so their labour is unfree. Under conditions where there is general land shortage, the landlord class may be able to dispense with legally binding the peasantry to their role.

Correct. Plus the loans etc. which the law requires the peasant to repay to the landlord.

[Paul Cockshott]

Correct. Plus the loans etc. which the law requires the peasant to repay to the landlord.
Yes, that was why I did not specify whether the transfer to the landlord class was legally dressed up as rent or as interest.

[Outinleftfield]

The relatively small size of the proletariat in third world countries, and the huge size of the peasantry, impairs it from seizing power as a single class. But the very existence of the proletariat in a country implies that it can form a united front with other oppressed classes to overthrow imperialism.

Therefore, if the bourgeoisie leads a revolution in a third world country(since the maoist revolutions are far from complete, I won't take into account the incompleteness factor of a bourgeois revolution), it cannot allow the masses to actually take part in class struggle, because then the proletariat would inevitably snatch the leadership of the revolution from the bourgeoisie.

If you carefully go through the material I linked to in my previous post, you will find that even in a small place, the militia that takes part in military action is huge. Of course, bourgeois elements in the communist party will try to seize power, but the masses are educated in Marxism through direct participation in class-struggle and try to resist them.

As the communists seize power locally, they transform the semi feudal - semi colonial economy into a new democratic one, i.e. the economic stages of capitalism are completed under the leadership of the proletariat. This involves transforming the peasantry into the proletariat, and leading it into bitter class struggle against the national bourgeoisie.

And what if some of those peasants feel ready to overthrow the national bourgeoisie and seize control of their land and labor right away? What if they stop giving their labor to the landlords? It sounds like by giving the "national bourgeoisie" rights the maoists are potentially limiting the revolution.

What would be wrong about giving worker ownership(in the case of individually-worked plots individual and shared plots democratic) to the peasants as opposed to letting the landlords lord over them? The bourgeois classes first and primary concern is to continue being able to make a profit. They're not going to encourage the peasants to become radical. Peasants without landlords though would soon see that it is in their interests to form collectives for more efficient production. Landlords and bourgeoisie would just hold back this development since they wouldn't want change as long as they can keep collecting rent.

After a revolution there is no reason to have a peasantry or a proletariat. Both classes exist by definition only by being subserviant to a higher class (landlords and bourgeoisie). The main difference is that the peasants pay a certain amount of labor to the landlords and the proletariat has all labor taken and then given a certain amount back. Instead of allowing continued exploitation both classes should organize into a single class of worker/owners and ban the exploitation of one person over another.

[Outinleftfield]

I'll respond to your other points another time or let someone else respond, but the point about feudalism is important. You and other Maoists are making the mistake of assuming that the word "feudal" can be basically used to describe any country where the majority of the population still lives on the land and is engaged in agricultural production, instead of understanding the term as Marxists so, which is to acknowledge that feudalism is a mode of production that preceded capitalist society, and does not exist anywhere in the world today. Feudalism is characterized by a number of features that distinguish it from capitalism. It is centered around the production of agricultural goods by peasants, but what makes this agricultural production different from agriculture under capitalism is that the peasants do not sell their labour power to a member of the landowning class, nor do they sell the goods that they produce through the market, i.e.they do not engage in commodity production. Instead what occurred is that peasants worked on land that they did not formally own yet nonetheless had the right to use, and, as a result of physical coercion, they were made to hand over part of their produce to the person who owned the land, i.e. the local feudal elite, who theoretically held the land as a gift from the monarch, with the peasants being allowed to keep the remainder of their produce for their own personal consumption, perhaps with a small amount being sold at a local market, depending on locality, and time of year. It should be evident from this description that whereas capitalism involves the extraction of surplus value through economic relationships alone, with the role of the state basically being limited to enforcing contracts, and protecting the property of the ruling class, under feudalism there is a direct convergence of political oppression and economic exploitation, and yet at the same time the role of peasants is different from that of slaves because they are not considered the private property of the ruling class, merely individuals who are legally tied to a particular member of the elite, as I noted in my last post. The obligations of the peasant also extended to performing uncompensated labour on the personal land of the local lord for a set number of days each year as well as providing military service when required, in return for which peasants would often receive protection during periods of hardship, as well as other benefits, such as the right to use local forests for firewood and game, or use the lord's mill to grind their corn.

Urban areas did exist in feudal societies, and yet the legal ties between peasants and the land prohibited large-scale migration between rural areas and the towns, and it was not until the bourgeoisie swept aside the power of feudal elites, and peasants were deprived of access to common lands during the 18th and 19th centuries, that migration began to occur on a large enough scale to provide the growing bourgeoisie with access to a cheap and flexible labour force, at which point it is correct to say that capitalist relations of production had well and truly come into being. The same can be said of India today because the people who do still live on the land are totally enmeshed in commodity production, at least in the case of peasants who are not limited to subsistence farming, and land can be bought and sold freely, with finance capital becoming increasingly important, and there are no coercive apparatuses that force peasants to work for one landowner in particular and remain in the countryside - as is evident from the figures indicating the size of rural-urban migration quoted in one of my previous posts. On this basis, there is nothing feudal about India. The same has been true of China for much longer, as land has been bought and sold freely as a commodity in China since the Qin Dynasty, established in the 2nd century BC. According to Brugger (Brugger, 1981, B&N) China's urban population had already reached 10% of the total by 1900, and of those who remained on the land, an increasing number were engaged in what was effectively wage-labour for small-scale employers, either as agricultural labourers, or as employees of rural enterprises, such as silk looms, porcelain factories, and so on.

If you disagree with my definition of feudalism, then, by all means, explain why your own definition - which seems to basically consist of saying that there are warlords, and that lots of people live on the land - is analytically preferable. By the way, I don't see how the content of the links you provided - the UN saying that the Indian government has a poor human rights record, and farmers dying of poisoning - proves that India or China are feudal in their mode of production.

Even if India is feudal, by the way, which it isn't, there is also the question of why this requires that the working class subordinate itself to the class domination of the "national" bourgeoisie under New Democracy, which you also have not explained.

Interesting point. This raises some questions.

If the so-called "peasantry" relationship to the means of production has transformed and is now exploited in the same way as the proletariat then doesn't that make them not the "peasantry" but the "rural proletariat"?

They are engaged in commodity production and many of them work for a wage. A few might rent land and produce for themselves to sell but then there are businessmen who do this in cities by renting shops already owned by big businesses. That's the "petit bourgeosie" but that's not even most. Most at this point are working for a wage. There may also be a few who can still be called peasants (subsistence farmers) but like the other poster said their numbers are small.

But most of them identify as "peasants" instead of the "proletariat" so class consciousness hasn't spread enough in India. The maoists by encouraging identification as "peasant" instead of "proletarian" aren't helping things. A true revolutionary movement would help spread class consciousness to everyone who works for a wage as a proletarian.

[red cat]

And what if some of those peasants feel ready to overthrow the national bourgeoisie and seize control of their land and labor right away? What if they stop giving their labor to the landlords? It sounds like by giving the "national bourgeoisie" rights the maoists are potentially limiting the revolution.

What would be wrong about giving worker ownership(in the case of individually-worked plots individual and shared plots democratic) to the peasants as opposed to letting the landlords lord over them? The bourgeois classes first and primary concern is to continue being able to make a profit. They're not going to encourage the peasants to become radical. Peasants without landlords though would soon see that it is in their interests to form collectives for more efficient production. Landlords and bourgeoisie would just hold back this development since they wouldn't want change as long as they can keep collecting rent.

After a revolution there is no reason to have a peasantry or a proletariat. Both classes exist by definition only by being subserviant to a higher class (landlords and bourgeoisie). The main difference is that the peasants pay a certain amount of labor to the landlords and the proletariat has all labor taken and then given a certain amount back. Instead of allowing continued exploitation both classes should organize into a single class of worker/owners and ban the exploitation of one person over another.

The peasants are in contradiction principally with the feudal lords. They do distribute the land among themselves after they overthrow feudalism. The national bourgeoisie exists as owners of very small businesses. These are allowed to expand and then nationalized after they have become big enough.

It requires time to explain to the peasantry the benefits of collectivization. The agricultural sector transforms slowly. Until then the proletariat and peasantry remain as different classes.

[chegitz guevara]

You know what saddens me about this thread? There's this great news about the successes of our communist brothers and sisters in India, and our communist brothers and sisters here can only hurl names at each other.

I'm not a Maoist, but their victories are my victories. I'm not a Trotskyist, but their struggles are my struggles. We are all for revolution. All I know for certain about the revolution in my country is that it will not happen the way anyone thinks it will happen. It will have its own logic, its own dynamics. It will not look like anything that has come before it, and nothing that comes after it will look like it. Because of this, Trotskyists, Anarchists, social democrats, revisionists and anti-revisionists will all denounce it.

None of you know what's going to happen or even how to make it happen. This is not a religious debate. We are supposed to be scientific socialists, so start approaching the problem scientifically. Until we can test our ideas in reality, and I don't mean 100 years ago in Russia or 60 years ago in China, but here and now, all of your arguments and all of your definitions are just hypotheses. None of them have been proven correct.

Stop trying to fight the last revolution and fight this one instead. Goddamn dogmatic sectarians!

[Die Neue Zeit]

Hurling names? Post #115 onwards was a theoretical discussion on the economic system of India today.

[red cat]

The Indian revolution resembles the Chinese one a lot. Of course it has got its own defining features, but still...

[cyu]

Stop trying to fight the last revolution and fight this one instead. Goddamn dogmatic sectarians!


I hate people who are against sectarians.

Haha, j/k :laugh:

[manic expression]

You know what saddens me about this thread? There's this great news about the successes of our communist brothers and sisters in India, and our communist brothers and sisters here can only hurl names at each other.

I'm not a Maoist, but their victories are my victories. I'm not a Trotskyist, but their struggles are my struggles. We are all for revolution. All I know for certain about the revolution in my country is that it will not happen the way anyone thinks it will happen. It will have its own logic, its own dynamics. It will not look like anything that has come before it, and nothing that comes after it will look like it. Because of this, Trotskyists, Anarchists, social democrats, revisionists and anti-revisionists will all denounce it.

None of you know what's going to happen or even how to make it happen. This is not a religious debate. We are supposed to be scientific socialists, so start approaching the problem scientifically. Until we can test our ideas in reality, and I don't mean 100 years ago in Russia or 60 years ago in China, but here and now, all of your arguments and all of your definitions are just hypotheses. None of them have been proven correct.

Stop trying to fight the last revolution and fight this one instead. Goddamn dogmatic sectarians!

I wish I could thank this post 10 times.

On the topic itself: (clears throat)

Now that's what I'm talking about! Venceremos, comrades!

[Random Precision]

You know what saddens me about this thread? There's this great news about the successes of our communist brothers and sisters in India, and our communist brothers and sisters here can only hurl names at each other.

I'm not a Maoist, but their victories are my victories. I'm not a Trotskyist, but their struggles are my struggles. We are all for revolution. All I know for certain about the revolution in my country is that it will not happen the way anyone thinks it will happen. It will have its own logic, its own dynamics. It will not look like anything that has come before it, and nothing that comes after it will look like it. Because of this, Trotskyists, Anarchists, social democrats, revisionists and anti-revisionists will all denounce it.

None of you know what's going to happen or even how to make it happen. This is not a religious debate. We are supposed to be scientific socialists, so start approaching the problem scientifically. Until we can test our ideas in reality, and I don't mean 100 years ago in Russia or 60 years ago in China, but here and now, all of your arguments and all of your definitions are just hypotheses. None of them have been proven correct.

Stop trying to fight the last revolution and fight this one instead. Goddamn dogmatic sectarians!

The problem is that there are very real dividing lines in leftist ideology, and at a certain point, one has to say that, they may call themselves communists, but we are not fighting for the same things as they are.

The struggle of the Maoists in India is just such a case. They are certainly based on the poorest, most oppressed members of Indian society. Furthermore, the Indian government is using the fight against the Maoists as an excuse to carry out the neoliberal agenda in all parts of the Indian countryside that they are said to have influence in. People are being killed, having their villages destroyed, moved to concentration camps, raped etc. because they are suspected of being Maoists or Maoist sympathizers. All this is true, without a doubt, and all communists should sympathize with the people the Maoists see themselves as fighting for, and be outraged at government action against Maoists and non-Maoists alike.

But, we simultaneously have to recognize that where the Maoists want to go with their struggle is not where we want to go. Just look at the Maoist responses in this thread, some of which originate in India. The Maoists are of the opinion that India is still a feudal country, and that therefore the revolution must establish capitalism. Unfortunately we cannot escape history here. We know too well that the struggle to establish independent capitalism in a world already dominated by imperialism is futile, and even where it succeeds temporarily, it will soon sink back into subservience toward one or another imperial power. Thus we advocate the world revolution to break free of capitalism, rather than a limited struggle that can only end in futility and the defeat of the working class.

Call that dogmatic sectarianism if you want. I believe it's the only principled revolutionary stance.

[Paul Cockshott]

We know too well that the struggle to establish independent capitalism in a world already dominated by imperialism is futile, and even where it succeeds temporarily, it will soon sink back into subservience toward one or another imperial power.

This is almost certainly wrong on empirical grounds. The probability of this happening to China is vanishingly small. Which imperial power is strong enough to reduce capitalist china to subservience?

But there seems to be a consistent confusion on the part of some posters between Maoism and Dengism. In China, the Maoists were the wing of the CP that pushed to turn the democratic revolution into a socialist revolution, the Dengists the wing that pushed towards a purely nationalist, and in essence capitalist course.

I think it doubtful that the Indian Maoists identify with Deng rather than Mao, but since I have never seen their publications, I suppose one has to consider it as an outside possibility.

[red cat]

But, we simultaneously have to recognize that where the Maoists want to go with their struggle is not where we want to go. Just look at the Maoist responses in this thread, some of which originate in India. The Maoists are of the opinion that India is still a feudal country, and that therefore the revolution must establish capitalism.

There is a qualitative difference between new-democracy and capitalism.


Unfortunately we cannot escape history here. We know too well that the struggle to establish independent capitalism in a world already dominated by imperialism is futile, and even where it succeeds temporarily, it will soon sink back into subservience toward one or another imperial power.

Correct. But the period with the property mentioned had started just after a Russian Revolution. The transformation of China into a capitalist power now, from a semi-feudal semi-colonial state in the 1920's indeed demonstrates that the Maoists had succeeded in completing the new-democratic revolution, after which a counter-revolution occured.

I think that this whole thread contains enough arguments to prove that India is semi colonial- semi feudal. Still we can look at another one.

India couldn't have become capitalist after the Russian Revolution, by your argument(which is correct). But if we believe that India is capitalist now, then we also have to deduce that India was capitalist even under British rule before 1917. But this is false, since the imperialist capital dominating a colony will not allow national capital to exist until it is overthrown forcefully.





Thus we advocate the world revolution to break free of capitalism, rather than a limited struggle that can only end in futility and the defeat of the working class.

Call that dogmatic sectarianism if you want. I believe it's the only principled revolutionary stance.

An interesting point to note is that all this "advocation" of the world revolution has not been able to liberate even a small area in all these years. So it somewhat stinks of disguised opportunism.



But there seems to be a consistent confusion on the part of some posters between Maoism and Dengism. In China, the Maoists were the wing of the CP that pushed to turn the democratic revolution into a socialist revolution, the Dengists the wing that pushed towards a purely nationalist, and in essence capitalist course.

I think it doubtful that the Indian Maoists identify with Deng rather than Mao, but since I have never seen their publications, I suppose one has to consider it as an outside possibility.

In the 70's there was a split between Maoists after Deng took power. The section that held that a counter-revolution had taken place, is now responsible for all the present Maoist revolutionary movements.

[pranabjyoti]

Just look at the Maoist responses in this thread, some of which originate in India. The Maoists are of the opinion that India is still a feudal country, and that therefore the revolution must establish capitalism.
Comrade, where have you find such an argument. The actual argument is EVEN (kindly note the word) establishing capitalism is progress for a country like India. That DOESN'T mean Maoists or any revolutionary party want to establish capitalism in India. As years go on, people on the third underdeveloped world will find that EVEN it is impossible to establish capitalism in their country without fighting imperialism. So even the nationalist will have to turn to be socialists in those countries.
Sorry to say, you have been unable to understand that the backward, semi-colonial, semi-feudal countries are pillars of imperialism. As for China, do you think that the existence of Deng is possible without Mao? No. Isn't it a progress on the world level that communist parties are needed EVEN to establish capitalism in countries. And soon a time will come, when even nationalists of such countries will find that they can not go anywhere other than a socialist state. THAT WILL BE THEIR ONLY OPTION.

[red cat]

And soon a time will come, when even nationalists of such countries will find that they can not go anywhere other than a socialist state. THAT WILL BE THEIR ONLY OPTION.

A small correction. The nationalists remain loyal to the communist party only while they fight the common foes(imperialism, feudalism and comprador bourgeoisie). But as soon as the new-democratic revolution is complete, the nationalists, as representatives of the national bourgeoisie, try to stage a counter-revolution and move the country to capitalism(not socialism), and the communist party must lead the proletariat to violent class-struggle against them in order to establish socialism. The united front exists only till both the classes fight the common enemy.

[pranabjyoti]

A small correction. The nationalists remain loyal to the communist party only while they fight the common foes(imperialism, feudalism and comprador bourgeoisie). But as soon as the new-democratic revolution is complete, the nationalists, as representatives of the national bourgeoisie, try to stage a counter-revolution and move the country to capitalism(not socialism), and the communist party must lead the proletariat to violent class-struggle against them in order to establish socialism. The united front exists only till both the classes fight the common enemy.
Actually, I am talking about the future when the nationalists will found that they have to fight both imperialism and capitalism on the two fronts to establish capitalism in the country. At first, capitalism may help the nationalist to establish capitalism and fight communist parties. But sooner or later, they (the imperialist) will found that they helped in giving birth to another competitor, which at the end wouldn't help imperialism at all.

[chegitz guevara]

India couldn't have become capitalist after the Russian Revolution, by your argument(which is correct). But if we believe that India is capitalist now, then we also have to deduce that India was capitalist even under British rule before 1917. But this is false, since the imperialist capital dominating a colony will not allow national capital to exist until it is overthrown forcefully.

Why would you think that colonies aren't capitalist? The whole purpose of colonies is capitalist exploitation, which obviously cannot happen without capitalism. It's capitalism developed in the interests of another country, but it's still the capitalist mode of production.

Furthermore, even if India weren't capitalist in 1917, why couldn't it be capitalist today? England wasn't capitalist and then it became capitalist.

[pranabjyoti]

Why would you think that colonies aren't capitalist? The whole purpose of colonies is capitalist exploitation, which obviously cannot happen without capitalism. It's capitalism developed in the interests of another country, but it's still the capitalist mode of production.

Furthermore, even if India weren't capitalist in 1917, why couldn't it be capitalist today? England wasn't capitalist and then it became capitalist.
A colony CAN NOT be a capitalist because two capitalist countries are enemies and one capitalist country can not colonize another Colonies should remain in a semi-feudal condition as just supplier of raw material, cheap labor for the colonizers.

[red cat]

Why would you think that colonies aren't capitalist? The whole purpose of colonies is capitalist exploitation, which obviously cannot happen without capitalism. It's capitalism developed in the interests of another country, but it's still the capitalist mode of production.



Since the capital dominating a colony is foreign and imperialist in nature, it must prevent the growth of national capital there, because the latter is capable of overthrowing the former. To achieve this, the imperialist capital must halt all developments of the colonial society. Hence, the national bourgeoisie remains subdued in the form of small business-men and an infintesimally small fraction of the is promoted to be the native managers of the imperialist capital. They are called the "comprador" bourgeoisie, and own a relatively larger capital than the rest of the native bourgeoisie.

The elements of bourgeois democracy and relations of production are introduced during the seizure of political power by the national bourgeoisie. But since the capital in poweer in colonies is foreign. and the owners of the means of production do not challenge, but enforce a semi-feudal regime to prevent the growth of national capital, they do not need to introduce the elements of bourgeois relations of production either. Rather, introduction of the same would be suicidal to them, as it would only result in the developing national capital to afford hiring workers. Thus even the small proletariat that exists in the colonies does not experience the bourgeois relations of production.


Furthermore, even if India weren't capitalist in 1917, why couldn't it be capitalist today? England wasn't capitalist and then it became capitalist.

The November Revolution demonstrated not only to the international proletariat, but also to the national bourgeoisie of every country, the consequences of a Bourgeois revolution in the era of Leninism. Thus, to keep a greater portion of their class interests intact, the national bourgeoisie of no country can complete its revolution, because the very existence of the proletariat(however small it might be) there implies that it will surely use the revolutionary situation to make a socialist revolution. Thus, even if imperialism has been overthrown temporarily, the national bourgeoisie must eventually capitulate to one brand of imperialism or another, to stop this from happening.

Thus, if any country becomes capitalist after 1917, it must have experienced a counter-revolution by the bourgeoisie(as in China). This implies that at some point it had experienced a new-democratic or a socialist revolution, or both. Since this was not the case for India, it cannot be capitalist.

[Saorsa]

This "feudal country" just sent a satellite to the moon (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/24/water-moon-space-exploration-india) that discovered water on it.

I wonder if they used oxen?

The key thing about the use of the term "semi-feudal" to describe countries like India is the bit where it says "semi". What this means is that there are feudal social relations and capitalist social relations, along with feudal institutions and capitalist institutions, co-existing in India today and in countries like it. Countries don't switch from feudal to capitalist overnight, there's generally a long process involving the replacement of feudalistic conditions with capitalist ones.

When people say that India is semi-feudal, they're not denying that there are massively wealthy capitalists and even very advanced capitalist institutions in India, which allow for things like sending things to the moon. Everyone's heard of the IT sector, telecommunications etc. But the vast majority of Indian's still live in essentually feudal conditions, as peasants in the countryside exploited by landlords who maintain power through state backing and the use of private armies.

The worldwide trend is towards people living in urban areas in increasingly capitalistic social relations, but that doesn't chang the fact that feudal social relations exist and will probably continue to exist for some time in places like India.

[red cat]

Technological developments and quantitative properties of the economy can in no way negate the fact that India is semi feudal - semi colonial. Soviet space programme started in the 1930's. Does that in any way imply that the present Indian economy is qualitatively more developed than that of the USSR till 1930? And why are you avoiding the straight-forward argument in my previous post?

[pranabjyoti]

Source (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_India).

[QUOTE=socialist;1560049]So, agriculture accounts for a mere 16.6% of the current economy. An impressive industrial sector also exists that accounts for 27% of the economy. It also has an extensive financial sector (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finance_in_India), which means its on the way to imperialism, going by the Leninist definition. All this does not mean India needs even more capitalism (which means devastation to the environment and the working class), but is very much ready for socialism.
Well, the contribution of the agricultural sector is just 16.6%, but have you any idea what % of the population is related with agriculture. Or it isn't a factor to you. I want to inform you and everybody about the how the huge no. of peasants and agricultural workers lay in the path of worker struggle. The workers, who are associated with the industries and service sector are comparatively in a developed position than the peasants. So, whenever, some kind of workers struggle is under process in the industry or the service sector, the capitalist controlled media often been able to turn the peasants against workers that the "rich" (in comparison to workers) workers are trying to exploit capitalists for demanding pay without "working".
Does sending a probe to moon means everyone has even a square meal everyday?

By stressing the need for capitalism in India, Maoists are just being reformist, as they would just be reforming the already existing relations of capitalism. India today is more industrialized than say Russia in 1917 where the industrial sector contributed to 21% of the economy as compared to 27% currently in India. This is what Lenin declared after the 1917 revolution:
My problem is that you Maoists are never going to declare abolition of landed proprietorship or allow workers' control over the means of production as you believe that capitalism needs to be (re)established.
Kindly inform me when and where Maoists are stressing the need for capitalism in India. What I personally want to say that EVEN capitalism is progress for a country like India.

[red cat]

You conveniently ignored the comparison with 1917 Russia.

You just keep repeating that capitalism is progressive without any evidence for the same. Caputalusm is not progressive in any form today. How can you ignore the massive encironmental damage and exploitation of workers going on in "developing" exonomies like China?

By repeatedly ignoring the fact that India does have a massive industrial base and has achieved lot of progress in technology you are being blind to the facts.


And yet again... No distinction between quality and quantity, nothing in relation to revolutionary theory etc etc.



I dont care how the capitalist media paints workers struggles but the working class is the only revolutionary class in the capitalist epoch and the workers have to emanxipate themselves from capitalism whether Maoists like it or not.


It seems that the only thing you care about is slandering a revolutionary movement. Your stand on this matter is plain and simple counter-revolutionary.



Also this is going to be my last post on this topic.

Good for the thread.

[pranabjyoti]

You just keep repeating that capitalism is progressive without any evidence for the same. Caputalusm is not progressive in any form today. How can you ignore the massive encironmental damage and exploitation of workers going on in "developing" exonomies like China?
In comparison to feudalism, capitalism is progressive in any part of history. None is ignoring the fact the capitalism (in China or anywhere else in the world) is doing massive damage to environment and exploitation of workers. But, feudalism is much more damaging in this regard than capitalism

By repeatedly ignoring the fact that India does have a massive industrial base and has achieved lot of progress in technology you are being blind to the facts.
Doing technological progress is one thing and distributing its fruits to the people are totally two different things. Well, can you tell me how many TOTALLY new inventions have been invented by Indians while they reside in India, very very small. What they have done so far is nothing but some petty up gradation of some old US and Russian technologies. Even Peru had lifted a satellite with rocket a few days ago. In my opinion, countries like Brazil, Argentina and perhaps all countries of Latin America are capable to achieve the same level of space technology development like India with some effort.
And this technological achievement had come with terrible prices. The countries (like USA and the former USSR) have supplied India with basic technologies, but against huge amount of either licensing fee or some other kind of commercial favor.

I dont care how the capitalist media paints workers struggles but the working class is the only revolutionary class in the capitalist epoch and the workers have to emanxipate themselves from capitalism whether Maoists like it or not. Also this is going to be my last post on this topic.
You may not care, but those who are fighting for progress of revolution in India have to care about that. IF YOU ARE REALISTIC ENOUGH, I HOPE THAT YOU CAN UNDERSTAND THAT WITH A HUGE MASS OF IGNORANT PEASANTS AGAINST YOU, THERE IS VERY VERY VERY VERY LITTLE CHANCE OF WIN. In India, the maximum part of population is either peasant or related to agriculture anyhow. Without their support and active participation, revolution in India is just IMPOSSIBLE.

[Paul Cockshott]

You conveniently ignored the comparison with 1917 Russia.



Well the 1917 strategy is not impossible Provided that there is a big war that last several years between say India and China, and that after some years and millions of dead, India looks like she is loosing it, then a 1917 like situation could be created in India.

All this may happen. There is certainly the beginings of a serious arms race between India and China. But on the other hand it may not happen. The problem with the wait for a Great War strategy, is not that it is impossible, but that it is passive.

The Indian Maoists, like those in Nepal, have settled on a strategy that allows them to take the initiative.

[Spawn of Stalin]

I dont care how the capitalist media paints workers struggles but the working class is the only revolutionary class in the capitalist epoch and the workers have to emanxipate themselves from capitalism whether Maoists like it or not. Also this is going to be my last post on this topic.
That's capitalist talk, what a load of anti-socialist babble, what gives you the right to tell us what each class can and can not do? Convenient how you pledged not to post again on this topic, after all, it is just a matter of time before someone comes along with a decent counter-argument. Oh wait, red cat already did, my bad.

[Paul Cockshott]

I am not being sarcastic. The citing of 1917 as an example of proletarian revolution is significant, because that revolution would not have occured except for the Great War.
If you claim that that form of revolution is generalisable to India, then you have to explain how conditions similar to those that brought about the 1917 revolution are likely to re-occur in India.

I do not advocate capitalism in India, but in the process of transition to socialism in India, the full planned model advocated in TNS could not initially be applied except in the state industrial sector. The TNS was directed at the mature socialist economies like the DDR or USSR. Indian transition would have to go via the peoples communes in the countryside. These could plan locally but could not initially be integrated into a national plan. The chapter on Communes in the TNS is the relevant section to this question.

[red cat]

My comparison to 1917 in Russia was in terms of a semi-feudal country undergoing socialist revolution, not a capitalist one, as Stalinist stageists advocate. Back then it was the Mensheviks who wanted Russia to undergo capitalism before socialism.

What did World War I have to do with 1917 Russia being a semi-feudal country? Of course, the war was a major factor in the success of the revolution but that misses the point of a semi-feudal country being able to transform into a socialist society.

Russia was never a colony and the bourgeoisie had already sized power in the month of February.



The Indian economy, like many other current capitalist economies, already operates on the basis of quasi-Stalinist 5-year plans.:laugh: Your posts really are gems!



That being the case, with 75% of the economy being based on non-agricultural sector, I don't see how you can characterize it as being feudal.You don't ? Have a look at my previous posts. A lot of stuff directly follows from the bald guy's theories.



The Maoists with their history of collaboration with the national bourgeoisie are actually virulently anti-working class.Please justify with examples.


Criticizing Maoism from the point of view of the working class is not sectarian. Sectarianism means putting the interest of your sect above those of the working class.It's not sectarian. It is plain and simple counter-revolutionary.

[Wakizashi the Bolshevik]

I'm getting sick of all the "left-Communist" and trotskyist bullshit about denouncing Maoists. They prove their betrayal of Communism time and again, by clearly and without any shame declaring their support for the surpression of the Maoist Revolution! This is an absolute disgrace, simply because they aren't of their sect, the "left-Communists" are willing to drop the Revolution like a brick.

You know what, if a trotskyite Revolution would ever break out (highly unprobable of course), i would give my full support to their case. I swear I would.
But if a Revolution only has a distinct smell of "stalinist" tendencies, "left Communists" are willing to abandon us all.

[Spawn of Stalin]

I'm in complete agreement with Wakizashi, if a Trotskyist vanguard sprung out of the ground tomorrow I would rally behind it because I care about human beings and capitalism makes me sick. What makes me even more sick though, is "Communists" constantly looking for new ways to oppose popular uprisings just because they utilise and see potential in "non-revolutionary classes", and they do so in Lenin's name, he would have been disgusted. You can complain about Maoism until the cows come home, but where are the Trotskyists in India? Where are the left Communists in Nepal? Where were the anarchists when the Chinese were having the one of the greatest revolutions of all time? What are they doing for the overworked, underpaid masses?

[Paul Cockshott]

What did World War I have to do with 1917 Russia being a semi-feudal country? Of course, the war was a major factor in the success of the revolution but that misses the point of a semi-feudal country being able to transform into a socialist society.



It had a lot to do with it. The failure of Russia in the war was due to its backward semi-feudal nature which made it unable to stand up to the more advanced German military. This in turn, after a series of bloody reverses led the predominantly peasant army to mutiny. Without that mutiny, and the disorganisation of the existing state machine, the Bolsheviks could never have taken power.

If you are proposing a working class revolution in India how do you expect the Indian working class to break up the existing state machine?
It is unrealistic to expect that an army largely recruited in the rural areas would spontaneously turn against its officers unless it had been previous defeated in war.
If the army remained loyal to the government, how on earth is a workers revolution in the cities going to succeed?
To propose it is crass adventurism. It is not a risk you are willing to take at home, so why wish it on the Indians.

[BobKKKindle$]

a trotskyite RevolutionI've already made my views on India and feudalism quite clear so I don't think there's any need to post further on that subject, but, just to address this, as a Trotskyist I don't believe that there is such a thing as a Trotskyist revolution and nor do I advocate Trotskyists anywhere trying to seize power. The only kind of revolution that I'm interested in is a socialist revolution that involves the working class seeking to emancipate itself by overthrowing capitalism and the bourgeois state. I don't believe that Maoists are working towards that kind of revolution in India, and I don't think there was ever a socialist revolution in China or any of the other countries where Maoist parties have taken power, including Nepal, because, whilst impressive reforms have been implemented in those countries, workers have never exercised democratic control over the means of production, the state has never been proletarian in character, and the ruling parties have never been organizations of the working class. It is evident from the language of Maoists in this thread as well as the historical record of their tradition that they see a revolution as something that is carried out on behalf of the working class, in the interests of that class, instead of being a process of self-emancipation, whereby the working class transforms itself from a class in itself to a class for itself, becoming the conscious subject of history, to use Marx's formulation.

It is for this reason that Trotskyists oppose Stalinism, which is bureaucratic in terms of its relation to the class. There is also an additional reason as to why Trotskyists find it difficult to support Stalinist parties when they claim to be leading revolutions. When Stalinists ask why Trotskyists were absent from China in the 1930s as well as all the other countries they come out with and why their own parties have frequently been able to dominate the struggles of the working class, the answer more often that not is that these countries did have Trotskyist movements at some point in time, and that Trotskyists did succeed in building up support amongst the ranks of the working class, but those militants were eventually suppressed - that was what happened to Chen Duxiu and his comrades during the 1920s and 30s, and it was also what happened to Sheng-wu-lien during the Cultural Revolution, not to mention the tragedy of Trotskyists in Vietnam and other countries in Asia. Why would we trust the members of a political tradition that has butchered and tortured so many working-class militants?


Please justify with examples.Are you serious? I've addressed the conservative nature of the CPC's agricultural policy in this (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1556004&postcount=97) post. I've addressed the CPC's pro-capitalist policies in this (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1552511&postcount=40) post, and this (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1546331&postcount=6) one. I spent an entire thread addressing the sorry legacy of the CPC's pro-KMT strategy in the 1920s, here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/three-worlds-theory-t117599/index.html). I exposed the reactionary nature of the CPC's foreign policy here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1548408&postcount=25) and here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1550207&postcount=27). I also showed here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1555616&postcount=72) that, in order to make sense, New Democracy relies on allowing the "national" bourgeoisie to continue to exist, which amounts to allowing capitalism to continue to exist and not allowing workers to carry out full expropriation, and that this will inevitably allow the bourgeoisie to challenge whatever political dominance the proletariat is supposed to have, simply by virtue of their wealth.

You haven't responded to a single one of these posts because you know nothing of Chinese history.

[red cat]

I've already made my views on India and feudalism quite clear so I don't think there's any need to post further on that subject, but, just to address this, as a Trotskyist I don't believe that there is such a thing as a Trotskyist revolution and nor do I advocate Trotskyists anywhere trying to seize power. The only kind of revolution that I'm interested in is a socialist revolution that involves the working class seeking to emancipate itself by overthrowing capitalism and the bourgeois state. I don't believe that Maoists are working towards that kind of revolution in India, and I don't think there was ever a socialist revolution in China or any of the other countries where Maoist parties have taken power, including Nepal, because, whilst impressive reforms have been implemented in those countries, workers have never exercised democratic control over the means of production, the state has never been proletarian in character, and the ruling parties have never been organizations of the working class. It is evident from the language of Maoists in this thread as well as the historical record of their tradition that they see a revolution as something that is carried out on behalf of the working class, in the interests of that class, instead of being a process of self-emancipation, whereby the working class transforms itself from a class in itself to a class for itself, becoming the conscious subject of history, to use Marx's formulation.

It is for this reason that Trotskyists oppose Stalinism, which is bureaucratic in terms of its relation to the class. There is also an additional reason as to why Trotskyists find it difficult to support Stalinist parties when they claim to be leading revolutions. When Stalinists ask why Trotskyists were absent from China in the 1930s as well as all the other countries they come out with and why their own parties have frequently been able to dominate the struggles of the working class, the answer more often that not is that these countries did have Trotskyist movements at some point in time, and that Trotskyists did succeed in building up support amongst the ranks of the working class, but those militants were eventually suppressed - that was what happened to Chen Duxiu and his comrades during the 1920s and 30s, and it was also what happened to Sheng-wu-lien during the Cultural Revolution, not to mention the tragedy of Trotskyists in Vietnam and other countries in Asia. Why would we trust the members of a political tradition that has butchered and tortured so many working-class militants?

Are you serious? I've addressed the conservative nature of the CPC's agricultural policy in this post. I've addressed the CPC's pro-capitalist policies in this post, and this one. I spent an entire thread addressing the sorry legacy of the CPC's pro-KMT strategy in the 1920s, here. I exposed the reactionary nature of the CPC's foreign policy here and here. I also showed here that, in order to make sense, New Democracy relies on allowing the "national" bourgeoisie to continue to exist, which amounts to allowing capitalism to continue to exist and not allowing workers to carry out full expropriation, and that this will inevitably allow the bourgeoisie to challenge whatever political dominance the proletariat is supposed to have, simply by virtue of their wealth.

You haven't responded to a single one of these posts because you know nothing of Chinese history.

Of course! When it comes to your version of history, I must confess that we Maoists know nothing of not only Chinese, but of World History.

Your analyses and concepts do seem to be noble at times, and personally I appreciate the trouble you take to deduce and write those, but since these are based on entire falsifications of history(ironically which is the first thing you accuse us of), and no revolutionary experience, these are wrong with high probabilty. Pardon us, we Maoists have this queer tendency to consider only the version of history provided by our revolutionary parties, and as long as we don't find any self-contradiction in it, or notice any flaw in the activities of our parties, we don't care to question it. So we will never become good Trots.

I think that if the revolutions in the Philippines, India, Peru, Turkey etc. fail(which is highly unlikely, especially in the case of the first two), after a few decades we will come to know of so many Trot movements that were "nearly" successful here, but sinc the Trots were butchered etc etc... Obviously, the now existing parliamentary Trot parties will be white-washed into "revolutionary" parties, movements that never existed will be cooked up, and revisionists who are being expelled from the Maoist parties themselves will be worshipped as great heroes.

That is why, we ask for examples from the present Maoist movements, we ask for the reasons for the absence of "revolutionary" Trots from the entire political spectra of the countries experiencing these revolutions, and we also ask as to why exactly are Trots successfully culled by Stalinists every time? If you cannot stop these "capitalist" Stalinist forces, how do you hope to have a revolution in future?

[Paul Cockshott]

Are you serious? I've addressed the conservative nature of the CPC's agricultural policy in this (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1556004&postcount=97) post.

I must have missed your explanation of why Peoples Communes were a conservative agricultural policy. I would be interested in your reasoning.

[peaccenicked]

In my opinion. The left cant see the wood for the trees. It is not a capitalist/socialist question but a imperialist / anti-imperialist question. The battle is against US hegemony and its mafia type influence on the world.
The workers of the world are being ask to overthrow their own regimes but where it has been successful has produced pro American puppets.


Regime change begins at home.

[pranabjyoti]

In the recent Human Development Index yardstick, India, the great country that sent a probe to the Moon has fallen from 128th position to 134th position. Not far away from Afghanistan, Sierra Leone. I want to know the opinion of the people, who still consider it as a "capitalist" country.

[KurtFF8]

uLSwINrpHhc

[Idahoan]

Maoism seems to be doing well, even though many Americans consider it a dead idea.

[red cat]

The Indian ruling class begins setting up the stage for the first countrywide offensive against Maoists by attempting to break the democratic and mass organizations first:

http://www.bannedthought.net/India/Lalgarh/PressReports/2009-10/ProtestArrestOfRDFActivists-091006.pdf

http://www.bannedthought.net/India/Lalgarh/PressReports/2009-10/FocusOnFringe-PM-091006.pdf

http://www.bannedthought.net/India/Lalgarh/PressReports/2009-10/EightMaoistsPickedUp-091006.pdf

http://www.bannedthought.net/India/Lalgarh/PressReports/2009-10/ActionOnMaoistHelpers-091005.pdf

http://www.bannedthought.net/India/Lalgarh/PressReports/2009-10/NGO_WorkersHeld-091005.pdf

http://www.bannedthought.net/India/Lalgarh/PressReports/2009-10/FreshArrests-091007.pdf

[chegitz guevara]

It had to happen sooner or later. I'm surprised they let it stay out of hand for so long.

[pranabjyoti]

Well, in such a scenario, what is the duty of the revolutionaries? I am talking about not only Indian, but also citizens of other countries, who are willing to help revolution. I will also eagerly watch the actions of the people who are talking about "world revolution".

[Spawn of Stalin]

Well, we've already established that Trots are entirely against this revolution, they had no problem with supporting the great "Iranian uprising" recently, yet they dismiss a true Maoist revolution as a non-worker struggle, so you can count out any support from them.

[red cat]

Mephisto's stand seems to be different.

[Spawn of Stalin]

Yeah well maybe it's not Trots, nevertheless there are certainly a number of people who oppose this revolution for incredibly petty reasons, it's quite disgusting.

The problem with this situation is that when the government moves in on the Maoists they are not just going to be fighting some paramilitary, or even an established liberation army, many people involved in this struggle are just normal human beings. It is easy to justify killing "professional revolutionaries", or "terrorists", but these are mostly just deeply oppressed people who want to see some change and they've spent so long waiting for it that they have resorted to violence as this is their only realistic option.

[spiltteeth]

Perhaps we, or some organization, can organize a public demonstration in support of the Maoists?
I think if this news reached them it would hearten them.

[Vargha Poralli]

Yeah well maybe it's not Trots, nevertheless there are certainly a number of people who oppose this revolution for incredibly petty reasons, it's quite disgusting.


What supposed "revolution" we are taking about ?


In the recent Human Development Index yardstick, India, the great country that sent a probe to the Moon has fallen from 128th position to 134th position. Not far away from Afghanistan, Sierra Leone. I want to know the opinion of the people, who still consider it as a "capitalist" country.

What makes Afghanistan or Sierra Leone not a capitalist country ? Or what constitutes to you a "Capitalist Country" ?

For outsiders this line of thought that India is not a "capitalist country" is not new one. This is repeated for almost 80 years to justify the writing off of the Indian working class by the Middle Class leadership of the CPI,CPI(M) and almost all various Maoist outfits. See if you accept India is a capitalist country then by calling yourself a "Communist" you have base your politics on the dirty working masses among the proletariat and the peasantry. So defining India as not a capitalist country gives you an excellent excuse to write off the Indian working class completely and justify your Social Democratic, Neoliberal or Countryside armed adventurism.

Some one mentioned about Indian peasants oppressed and exploited by an non existing Landlord class. In actuality many farmers are exploited by banks/financial instititutions which provide Loans to them, Capitalists who sells pesticides,seeds,diesel,tractor and fertilizers to them and also by capitalists who buy their products - which given their natural properties they cannot bargain much as most of the goods are perishable. Given the agriculture here is based entirely on seasonal Monsoon it is not attractive to investment for capitalists - result you see massive peasant suicide as the loans start gripping their throats.



Those who think Indian working class has no resolutionary potential should definitely take a look at the posts by user Socialist in this thread. There are numerous struggle by workers in various parts against the Indian Bourgeoisie and their government. They are worth noticing for their frequency.

Also the sudden outburst at the tribal and countryside dalits should show another pattern. They too are worth noticing.

If you noticed these two things you would probably understand one missing link in them - a revolutionary organisation for people from both ends. Do the Naxaliets provide that link ? the key lies in the answer to that question. And as an Indian I can assure you that the Naxalites in the Jungles of Chattisgargh,Bihar and Bengal cannot and do not provide that link by the very nature of the strategy they have chosen. They cannot drop the guns and even if they drop Indian govt is not going to leave them alone. Certainly Indiat is not China and Indian government is not KMT.The "war" they are fighting is acutally called as a Phoney war. Both the Naxalaites and the Indian government cannot win it and both cannot lose it. And eventually both of them cannot and will not stop fighting either.

Many old Naxalites like Kanu Sanyal and late Vinod mishra had realised the folly of the early armed uprising in the countryside and its cost and are working hard to establish base among both the workers and peasants.

Indian workers though having revolutionary potential needs allies in theire struggle against Indian Bourgeoisie - whom are available in their own country side.Many movements of the oppressed and exploited people exist an though slowly but steadily they are linking the struggles. There lies the potential of liberation of oppressd and exploited people of India.

[Spawn of Stalin]

What supposed "revolution" we are taking about ?
Revolution, war, uprising, terror campaign, call it what you want, it doesn't matter if you agree with them in principle or not, the Maoists are fighting a revolutionary war, the war is the means, the revolution is the end. If they are ever successful and India became a socialist republic people will talk about what is happening now and they will refer to it as a revolutionary war. Make no mistake, this is a revolution.

[Vargha Poralli]

Revolution, war, uprising, terror campaign, call it what you want, it doesn't matter if you agree with them in principle or not, the Maoists are fighting a revolutionary war, the war is the means, the revolution is the end. If they are ever successful and India became a socialist republic people will talk about what is happening now and they will refer to it as a revolutionary war. Make no mistake, this is a revolution.

Did you read the rest of my Post ?

I assure you there is constant struggle going on in India between workers and peasants on one side and capitalists on the other. The Naxalites are fighting the Indian govt on a different end which has no connection with the struggle of workers Even if they win(which I doubt) the struggle of the Indian workers and peasants is not going to stop at that point since it is not related to the struggle.

[pranabjyoti]

Did you read the rest of my Post ?

I assure you there is constant struggle going on in India between workers and peasants on one side and capitalists on the other. The Naxalites are fighting the Indian govt on a different end which has no connection with the struggle of workers Even if they win(which I doubt) the struggle of the Indian workers and peasants is not going to stop at that point since it is not related to the struggle.
Then kindly tell me which class does the naxalites represent?

[red cat]

What supposed "revolution" we are taking about ?

In case you haven't noticed, the new-democratic revolution in India led by the CPI(Maoist).




What makes Afghanistan or Sierra Leone not a capitalist country ? Or what constitutes to you a "Capitalist Country" ?
Capitalist production relations in all sectors of the economy.




For outsiders this line of thought that India is not a "capitalist country" is not new one. This is repeated for almost 80 years to justify the writing off of the Indian working class by the Middle Class leadership of the CPI,CPI(M) and almost all various Maoist outfits.

Two little questions:

1) See my previous posts for details. How do you explain a qualitative change of a colony to a capitalistic economy after 1917?

2) It is expected that the imperialist ruling class will not move an inch on its own; so that all socio-economic-political contradictions boil down to military contradictions, or in other words, a revolutionary war, in practice. Exactly when did the Indian national bourgeoisie win this war?





See if you accept India is a capitalist country then by calling yourself a "Communist" you have base your politics on the dirty working masses among the proletariat and the peasantry.You have to do what you call "dirty work" whenever you agree to the fact that there exists an exploited class right at the bottom of the economy.

On the other hand, if you call India a capitalist country, you can conveniently stay away from any kind of armed struggle, saving your own hide(an also that of the ruling class) in the process, just confining yourself to trade-union activities which amount to nothing. Hence you can wait till eternity for the workers to get "class conscious", and still call yourself a communist.


So defining India as not a capitalist country gives you an excellent excuse to write off the Indian working class completely and justify your Social Democratic, Neoliberal or Countryside armed adventurism.
Then I guess the naxalites are too eager to find excuses to die in the battle-field, or be tortured to death in police-custody. Poor fools!



Some one mentioned about Indian peasants oppressed and exploited by an non existing Landlord class. In actuality many farmers are exploited by banks/financial instititutions which provide Loans to them, Capitalists who sells pesticides,seeds,diesel,tractor and fertilizers to them and also by capitalists who buy their products - which given their natural properties they cannot bargain much as most of the goods are perishable. Given the agriculture here is based entirely on seasonal Monsoon it is not attractive to investment for capitalists - result you see massive peasant suicide as the loans start gripping their throats.

Semi-feudalism does not necessarily mean that the landlords will exist separately from the centralized state-machinery. They can be a part of it as well. In fact, in vast areas of rural India, the feudal lords do operate unofficial local governments complete with their private armies, while the role of the official government remains practically ineffective until the Maoists have wiped out the feudal lords' armies.

In India, the loans that the farmers have to take to pay these companies is used to keep them bound to their land. Also note that in an agricultural capitalistic mode of production, the workers sell their labour, not produce.





Those who think Indian working class has no resolutionary potential should definitely take a look at the posts by user Socialist in this thread. There are numerous struggle by workers in various parts against the Indian Bourgeoisie and their government. They are worth noticing for their frequency.
As far as our analyses go, that potential is not enough to defeat the government forces right now. In case we are wrong, please prove that by actually leading city insurrections.



Also the sudden outburst at the tribal and countryside dalits should show another pattern. They too are worth noticing.
I guess that is what forms the base support base for the naxalites.




If you noticed these two things you would probably understand one missing link in them - a revolutionary organisation for people from both ends. Do the Naxaliets provide that link ? the key lies in the answer to that question. And as an Indian I can assure you that the Naxalites in the Jungles of Chattisgargh,Bihar and Bengal cannot and do not provide that link by the very nature of the strategy they have chosen. What do you mean by "both ends"? Making a compromise between the oppressing and oppressed classes? Sorry, our Indian comrades definitely don't stand for that.


They cannot drop the guns and even if they drop Indian govt is not going to leave them alone. Why should they drop their guns at the first place? To abandon the revolution, I guess?



Certainly Indiat is not China and Indian government is not KMT.The "war" they are fighting is acutally called as a Phoney war.Yes of course, you can call it a phoney war, a friendly match, tiddly-winks or whatever you like. But please provide some valid reason for your assertions.




Both the Naxalaites and the Indian government cannot win it and both cannot lose it. And eventually both of them cannot and will not stop fighting either.
A permanent stalemate? The present conditions do not indicate that. The rate at which the naxalites are managing to expand their army, and the many blows they are delivering to the govenment troops certainly indicate a revolution within the next decade.





Many old Naxalites like Kanu Sanyal and late Vinod mishra had realised the folly of the early armed uprising in the countryside and its cost and are working hard to establish base among both the workers and peasants.
The two "ex"-naxalites mentioned above successfully liquidated the revolutionary potential of the communists who followed them, and their present party participates in the elections to win seats to the pigsty of the Indian parliament. Only by identifying themselves with naxalism they have managed to have some supporters from the petit-bourgeoisie in the cities(who are vanishing fast after the CPI(Maoist) launched its anti-SEZ struggle). In the villages they have allied iwth the CPI(M), Ranveer Sena etc. and have been accordingly dealt with by the PLGA. They know very well that it is not possible to first establish a 100% mass base and then launch the revolution. That is why these revisionists claim to be doing exactly the same, so that there "tasks" never end and no insurrection ever happens.



Indian workers though having revolutionary potential needs allies in theire struggle against Indian Bourgeoisie - whom are available in their own country side.Many movements of the oppressed and exploited people exist an though slowly but steadily they are linking the struggles. There lies the potential of liberation of oppressd and exploited people of India.I wish those "movements" best of luck from my side. But it seems that class-character prevails over luck, and as I mentioned in one of my posts in another thread, the oppressed masses of India have a certain "genetic" tendency to abandon other movements and follow the Maoists. :lol:

[spiltteeth]

What supposed "revolution" we are taking about ?



What makes Afghanistan or Sierra Leone not a capitalist country ? Or what constitutes to you a "Capitalist Country" ?

For outsiders this line of thought that India is not a "capitalist country" is not new one. This is repeated for almost 80 years to justify the writing off of the Indian working class by the Middle Class leadership of the CPI,CPI(M) and almost all various Maoist outfits. See if you accept India is a capitalist country then by calling yourself a "Communist" you have base your politics on the dirty working masses among the proletariat and the peasantry. So defining India as not a capitalist country gives you an excellent excuse to write off the Indian working class completely and justify your Social Democratic, Neoliberal or Countryside armed adventurism.

Some one mentioned about Indian peasants oppressed and exploited by an non existing Landlord class. In actuality many farmers are exploited by banks/financial instititutions which provide Loans to them, Capitalists who sells pesticides,seeds,diesel,tractor and fertilizers to them and also by capitalists who buy their products - which given their natural properties they cannot bargain much as most of the goods are perishable. Given the agriculture here is based entirely on seasonal Monsoon it is not attractive to investment for capitalists - result you see massive peasant suicide as the loans start gripping their throats.



Those who think Indian working class has no resolutionary potential should definitely take a look at the posts by user Socialist in this thread. There are numerous struggle by workers in various parts against the Indian Bourgeoisie and their government. They are worth noticing for their frequency.

Also the sudden outburst at the tribal and countryside dalits should show another pattern. They too are worth noticing.

If you noticed these two things you would probably understand one missing link in them - a revolutionary organisation for people from both ends. Do the Naxaliets provide that link ? the key lies in the answer to that question. And as an Indian I can assure you that the Naxalites in the Jungles of Chattisgargh,Bihar and Bengal cannot and do not provide that link by the very nature of the strategy they have chosen. They cannot drop the guns and even if they drop Indian govt is not going to leave them alone. Certainly Indiat is not China and Indian government is not KMT.The "war" they are fighting is acutally called as a Phoney war. Both the Naxalaites and the Indian government cannot win it and both cannot lose it. And eventually both of them cannot and will not stop fighting either.

Many old Naxalites like Kanu Sanyal and late Vinod mishra had realised the folly of the early armed uprising in the countryside and its cost and are working hard to establish base among both the workers and peasants.

Indian workers though having revolutionary potential needs allies in theire struggle against Indian Bourgeoisie - whom are available in their own country side.Many movements of the oppressed and exploited people exist an though slowly but steadily they are linking the struggles. There lies the potential of liberation of oppressd and exploited people of India.

I'm not sure I fully understand part of this. Are you saying that the working class and the Naxilites do not share a common interest? And that therefore a common ideological link must be discovered to connect the two?
It seems to me the working class in India is severely limited in its revolutionary activity due to harsh government crackdowns, and that frankly that will never change on its own, so until then the Naxilites are justified in agitating in the countryside, gaining support.
What alternative strategy do you propose?
But I really don't know the entire situation. Thanks.

[Idahoan]

Under capitalist imperialism, India's people are starving. They can't feed themselves, their families, their communities. They are forced into a world they want no part in; a Capitalist filled scum world. They want a better world. They are fighting and using the one thing they have; each other. That bond is so great, the government has no hope of defeating it, much like the Nationalists [Fascists] in China during the civil war. They may seem broken, run down, or near defeat, but is that not the character of all Imperialist propaganda? Chairman Mao changed China. He gave the Chinese people what they wanted most; a future, and self sufficiency. He made his country better, until reformatist Deng ruined such a grand system as was established by Comrad Mao.

The Indian people face many challenges, an imperialist autocracy to the left, a near capitalist if not full capitalist China to the north, and the problems of its own. The Indian people are fed up with Capitalist slavery and are working together! For the first time in their history, the history of divisions, kingdoms, slavery, and oppression, they are throwing off their chains and choosing unity over death!

Revolutionaries are hated in death, loved in life. I truly hope to see a Maoist India-a free and prosperous India-free from oppression, hate, racism, imperialism, and full of equality and where all prosper as one class. One where the peasants and the farmers refuse division, and join hand in hand, and become truly one, and take on the world of capitalism, and such a victory will be theirs. I wish the Indian Maoist revolution well; It is their first, and possibly only chance of having such good things as is possible under Maoism.

[Outinleftfield]

The peasants are in contradiction principally with the feudal lords. They do distribute the land among themselves after they overthrow feudalism. The national bourgeoisie exists as owners of very small businesses. These are allowed to expand and then nationalized after they have become big enough.

It requires time to explain to the peasantry the benefits of collectivization. The agricultural sector transforms slowly. Until then the proletariat and peasantry remain as different classes.

So if there was a small business and the workers there decided to assert control you'd have the 'communist' government go in and suppress the workers for the national bourgeoisie?

Don't get me wrong I don't think capitalism will disappear all at once, but I favor allowing capitalism only as far as passive consent allows it. That is once the workers anywhere, a small subsistence farm, a small shop, anywhere vote to assert their authority over it that authority is enforced by the state or enforcement organizations depending on the monocentric or polycentric nature of enforcement. If the workers in these conditions aren't interested in liberation yet "liberating" them would be like the US trying to "liberate" Iraq. However once they are interested no one should stand in the way of their liberation.

Forcing workers to obey the authority of a parasitic capitalist owner instead of taking control of what is rightfully theres would be a betrayal of socialism and of revolution.

[MaoTseHelen]

Anyone got a status update on how the Naxal offensive went, or has it not gone off yet?

[red cat]

So if there was a small business and the workers there decided to assert control you'd have the 'communist' government go in and suppress the workers for the national bourgeoisie?

Don't get me wrong I don't think capitalism will disappear all at once, but I favor allowing capitalism only as far as passive consent allows it. That is once the workers anywhere, a small subsistence farm, a small shop, anywhere vote to assert their authority over it that authority is enforced by the state or enforcement organizations depending on the monocentric or polycentric nature of enforcement. If the workers in these conditions aren't interested in liberation yet "liberating" them would be like the US trying to "liberate" Iraq. However once they are interested no one should stand in the way of their liberation.

Forcing workers to obey the authority of a parasitic capitalist owner instead of taking control of what is rightfully theres would be a betrayal of socialism and of revolution.

Workers are always "interested" in liberation. In fact, whenever the armed components of the oppressive state machinery are defeated, they do assert political control over the means of production. But in the technical aspects they heavily rely on the bourgeoisie. To eliminate the bourgeoisie the workers have to gain even the technical know-how, and get rid of the bourgeoisie. By "workers' control" in general we mean that the bourgeoisie has been isolated from the means and mode of production in every field.

[Outinleftfield]

Workers are always "interested" in liberation. In fact, whenever the armed components of the oppressive state machinery are defeated, they do assert political control over the means of production. But in the technical aspects they heavily rely on the bourgeoisie. To eliminate the bourgeoisie the workers have to gain even the technical know-how, and get rid of the bourgeoisie. By "workers' control" in general we mean that the bourgeoisie has been isolated from the means and mode of production in every field.

Then why give national bourgeoisie rights? If they do not have the technical know how to make the decisions and planning themselves why not have elected decision-makers who can be dismissed by the workers as they please? Kind of like how there are many capitalist owners who don't actually make all the decisions but instead employ people to figure that out the workers could likewise hire decision-makers if they found a need to do so.

[red cat]

Then why give national bourgeoisie rights? If they do not have the technical know how to make the decisions and planning themselves why not have elected decision-makers who can be dismissed by the workers as they please? Kind of like how there are many capitalist owners who don't actually make all the decisions but instead employ people to figure that out the workers could likewise hire decision-makers if they found a need to do so.
Workers can always dismiss decision makers. The goal is the point where we will not need any decision makers from outside the proletariat.

[pranabjyoti]

Then why give national bourgeoisie rights? If they do not have the technical know how to make the decisions and planning themselves why not have elected decision-makers who can be dismissed by the workers as they please? Kind of like how there are many capitalist owners who don't actually make all the decisions but instead employ people to figure that out the workers could likewise hire decision-makers if they found a need to do so.
Actually, in countries like India and other specially Asian countries, the main enemy is the moribund feudalism and its remains. The national bourgeoisie is a progressive force, while fighting comprador bourgeoisie and the remains of feudalism. By defeating feudalism and its remains, you can eliminate one of the main ally of imperialism.

[pranabjyoti]

Moreover, the small business owners will be defeated and slowly being consumed in the working class as the state owned industrial sector will start to function is full f ledge. I hope we all know that small capital can not compete with big capital in the long run. As time go on, both the industrial and the service sector small business owners (petty-bourgeoisie) will be overrun by well governed industrial sector.

[spiltteeth]

Great video Doc on Indian Maoists
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9187072564744509494&ei=HN3PSvK1Iof6lAfux53oBg&q=indian+maoists&hl=en&client=safari#


An awe inspiring video documentary from the Red areas of India. This film documents the emergence of the Indian revolutionary process, coming as it is in a world of struggle, mass upheaval, rebellion and revolution! This film includes footage of the Vietnamese people's defeat of the US imperialists, the victory and success of the Chinese People's Revolution and massive street rebellions shaking the citadels of imperialism. It shows the overall dialectical development of revolution, both in the oppressed and oppressor nations, shaking the imperialist system's foundations. Today in India, the communist forces are stronger, united within the Communist Party Of India (Maoist), leading the Indian revolution by developing People's War. A must own for anyone who is seriously considering a whole new world. This movie is a saga of heroism and sacrifice in the face of a brutal enemy masquarading as the World's "largest democracy", foundations are being laid for a New Democratic India.

[red cat]

New Ganapathi Interview on the Views of the CPI (Maoist) (http://southasiarev.wordpress.com/2009/10/16/new-ganapathi-interview-on-the-views-of-the-cpi-maoist/)


“We Shall Certainly Defeat the Government”

The supreme commander of CPI (Maoist) talks to Open in his first-ever interview.

....The present stage of strategic defence will last for some more time. It is difficult to predict how long it will take to pass this stage and go to the stage of strategic equilibrium or strategic stalemate. It depends on the transformation of our guerilla zones into base areas, creation of more guerilla zones and red resistance areas across the country, the development of our PLGA. With the ever-intensifying crisis in all spheres due to the anti-people policies of pro-imperialist, pro-feudal governments, the growing frustration and anger of the masses resulting from the most rapacious policies of loot and plunder pursued by the reactionary ruling classes, we are confident that the vast masses of the country will join the ranks of revolutionaries and take the Indian revolution to the next stage.....

[red cat]

http://www.bannedthought.net/India/CPI-Maoist-Docs/Maoist_map_20091026.jpg


The November Offensive



The offensive will be spread over the next five years



A special forces school, a special forces unit and an army brigade HQ will be set up near Bilaspur. The Bde HQ will participate in anti-Maoist ops in the future. The army is looking for 1,800 acres of land to set up the infrastructure.



The IAF is looking for 300 acres for its base



MHA is sitting on a plan to redeploy the Rashtriya Rifles



For now, 27 battalions of the Border Security Force and the Indo-Tibetan Border Police will be moved into Chhattisgarh, Orissa and Maharashtra



The paramilitary forces will be supported by six Mi-17 IAF choppers



The helicopters will have on board the IAF’s special force, the GARUDS, to secure the chopper and conduct combat search and rescue operations



The offensive will be in seven phases. Each phase has been marked areawise as Operating Areas (OAs).



OA-1 involves moving along a north-south axis from Kanker, Chhattisgarh, and on an east-west axis from Gadchiroli in Maharashtra and span the Abuj Marh forests used by the Maoists as a training centre and logistics base

India–The November Offensive (http://southasiarev.wordpress.com/2009/10/23/india-the-november-offensive/)

India: Demand a stop to the Indian governments assault on the CPI-Maoist and adivasis people! (http://southasiarev.wordpress.com/2009/10/23/india-demand-a-stop-to-the-indian-governments-assault-on-the-cpi-maoist-and-adivasis-people/)




http://cms.outlookindia.com/Uploads/outlookindia/2009/200910/20091026/maoist_jungle_bastar_20091026.jpg



(http://southasiarev.wordpress.com/2009/10/23/india-the-november-offensive/)

[Wakizashi the Bolshevik]

Still here in Belgium, you don't hear a single word about it, ever.
Even many people I know within the Worker's Party of Belgium didn't even know it.

[Spawn of Stalin]

Yes, not enough people know about the Indian struggle, I've met some socialists who when I mention the Indian Maoists to just respond with a blank face and a "ummm". If there were more groups which were explicitly Maoist perhaps things would be different.

[red cat]

Many comrades need to know that revolutions are actually taking place in India, Bangladesh, Philippines, Turkey, Peru etc. Without them seeing these happening, we cannot make them realize the possibility of armed revolutions in their own countries. I wonder how many communists in bourgeois democratic countries truly believe that qualitative change is the only way out.

[Paul Cockshott]

Many comrades need to know that revolutions are actually taking place in India, Bangladesh, Philippines, Turkey, Peru etc. Without them seeing these happening, we cannot make them realize the possibility of armed revolutions in their own countries. I wonder how many communists in bourgeois democratic countries truly believe that qualitative change is the only way out.
You have to take into account the fact that armed revolution is not something that has ever occured in a developed capitalist country. There have been armed nationalist movements like the IRA with substantial social bases, but no armed revolution by a Bolshevist or Maoist group.
It is not clear what conditions might bring it about.

[red cat]

You have to take into account the fact that armed revolution is not something that has ever occured in a developed capitalist country. There have been armed nationalist movements like the IRA with substantial social bases, but no armed revolution by a Bolshevist or Maoist group.
It is not clear what conditions might bring it about.
That is because to push objective conditions to that level, all the third world countries need to have revolutions first. But once in France we have seen how a revolution might look like in a developed capitalist country.

[Paul Cockshott]

That is because to push objective conditions to that level, all the third world countries need to have revolutions first. But once in France we have seen how a revolution might look like in a developed capitalist country.


Well one example is Czechoslovakia in 1948, that is probably the closest example we have, with power essentially being secured by social democracy thanks to workers militias.

[red cat]

Well one example is Czechoslovakia in 1948, that is probably the closest example we have, with power essentially being secured by social democracy thanks to workers militias.

Right. That is probably closer than the Paris Commune.

[N3wday]

I'll apologize ahead of time, I don't have time to read all the comments here. But, earlier someone asked about how the Maoists will behave when they take power, citing lack of information to point one direction or the other. I think its informative to look at the People's Committee Against Police Atrocities, the mass organization spawned out of the Lalgarh movement. Things like the Gram committees in the villages—mass democratic organizations composed of leaders voted into their positions that replaced the traditional Panchayat system. The PCPA is directly connected to the Maoists (their spokesperson's brother was one of the head figures, until he was arrested recently).

There's plenty of info on Lalgarh out there, it was one of the first times Indian Maoist leaders allowed themselves to be interviewed in public recent history. Banned Thought is a good place to look, or RevSA. I'm sure Indian Vanguard has tons of info as well.

[spiltteeth]

http://i971.photobucket.com/albums/ae191/spiltteeth/naxsmash.jpg

[chegitz guevara]

Many comrades need to know that revolutions are actually taking place in India, Bangladesh, Philippines, Turkey, Peru etc. Without them seeing these happening, we cannot make them realize the possibility of armed revolutions in their own countries. I wonder how many communists in bourgeois democratic countries truly believe that qualitative change is the only way out.

I beg to disagree. A people's war, guerrilla war, etc. is not a revolution. These merely make a revolution possible. The revolution is the overturning of social relations, and that's not happening outside some small liberated areas. Even in India, where Maoists operate in 25% of the country, only a very small portion of it can be considered liberated.

Right now, we're seeing revolutions in two countries . . . maybe: Nepal and Venezuela. Both might fail. Both might be betrayed or have already been betrayed. Until they fully play out, we don't know.

[red cat]

I beg to disagree. A people's war, guerrilla war, etc. is not a revolution. These merely make a revolution possible. The revolution is the overturning of social relations, and that's not happening outside some small liberated areas. Even in India, where Maoists operate in 25% of the country, only a very small portion of it can be considered liberated.

What I mean to say is that liberation cannot come without armed struggle.



Right now, we're seeing revolutions in two countries . . . maybe: Nepal and Venezuela. Both might fail. Both might be betrayed or have already been betrayed. Until they fully play out, we don't know.I disagree with your position regarding Chavez. He is anything but a revolutionary. As for Nepal, keeping in mind the ongoing two-line struggle in the communist party, I think that Prachanda's revisionism will be overthrown very soon and the party will make fresh moves towards the completion of the NDR.

[pranabjyoti]

There's plenty of info on Lalgarh out there, it was one of the first times Indian Maoist leaders allowed themselves to be interviewed in public recent history. Banned Thought is a good place to look, or RevSA. I'm sure Indian Vanguard has tons of info as well.
If they are websites, kindly put the whole web address.

[red cat]

http://southasiarev.wordpress.com/

http://www.bannedthought.net/

http://sanhati.com/front-page/1083/

http://indianvanguard.wordpress.com/

http://dsujnu.blogspot.com/

[Saorsa]

Right now, we're seeing revolutions in two countries . . . maybe: Nepal and Venezuela. Both might fail. Both might be betrayed or have already been betrayed. Until they fully play out, we don't know.


I disagree with your position regarding Chavez. He is anything but a revolutionary.

I'd include Bolivia in there too. I think it's more correct to think in terms of an unfolding revolutionary process in which classes clash on a wide variety of arenas - political, economic, cultural, military and so on. The revolution doesn't start with the seizure of state power by the oppressed, and it doesn't finish there either. In Nepal and Venezuela the workers, peasants and oppressed have been radicalised and are in the process of challenging the power of the ruling class. I think Nepal's revolutionary process is better off as it is unfolding under the leadership of an explicitly Marxist-Leninist party, but to deny that there is class polarisation in Venezuela and to deny that Chavez and his supporters have helped bring that polarisation into existence ir ridiculous, whether or not you uphold Chavez as a revolutionary.


As for Nepal, keeping in mind the ongoing two-line struggle in the communist party, I think that Prachanda's revisionism will be overthrown very soon and the party will make fresh moves towards the completion of the NDR.

Anyone who thinks that the 2ls in the UCPN (M) is as simple as revisionism vs revolution is hopelessly uninformed, not to mention somewhat arrogant. Prachanda initiated and led a decade long revolutionary armed struggle that has brought Nepal to the brink of revolution and that has brough his party, the UCPN (M) to the position of (arguably) the strongest revolutionary organisation in the world. The Nepali Maoists are debating how to succesfully lead a revolution in one of the world's poorest countries, with next to no national industry, a small and economically backward proletariat, a country sandwiched between China and India, both of whom are hostile to revolution... the Maoists are faced with an incredibly difficult position. It is not as simple as your textbook right/left divide, it's a discussion within the party over how to actually pull this off, in what time frame, with what kind of tactics and with what goals exactly. They are leading a real, living revolution and are dealing with real and very serious questions. If they fuck up, not only will the revolution most likely fail and the world will lose a rare and precious opportunity, but the Maoist leaders will probably all die. So before you go around calling people revisionists from the comfort of your priviliged First World existence, have a think about all that.

Prachanda is only human. He is not perfect. He, like all men and women, makes mistakes, and so do the other leaders anc cadres of the UCPN (M). It is totally possible that he will sell out. However, he has not done so yet and I challenge you to produce any evidence to the contrary that I can't easily demolish. Andd furthermore, there is really nothing to indicate that he will sell out. So hold back the arrogant dismissals of real revolutionaries leading real revolutioons, and try to watch and learn something from the creative, nondogmatic approach of Nepal's Maobadi, which has for the past 15 years or so brought them almost continual success in their efforts to bring about a worker's and peasant's revolution.

No investigation, no right to speak.

[red cat]

Prachanda is only human. He is not perfect. He, like all men and women, makes mistakes, and so do the other leaders anc cadres of the UCPN (M). It is totally possible that he will sell out. However, he has not done so yet and I challenge you to produce any evidence to the contrary that I can't easily demolish.

Why are you equating revisionism with "selling out"? If Prachanda supports a revisionist line even while his intentions remain fully revolutionary, won't that count as revisionism? Any kind of opportunism is defined by the possible practical consequences of the line, not by the intentions of the people who uphold it.

[red cat]

And by the way, not all the criticisms concerning the UCPN(M) come from the first world. Communists from Peru and India have been taking a more and more critical stand on their line as well.

[Saorsa]

Red Cat, you have yet to prove that he is a revisionist or that he is upholding a revisionist line.

[Saorsa]

And by the way, not all the criticisms concerning the UCPN(M) come from the first world. Communists from Peru and India have been taking a more and more critical stand on their line as well.

I'm well aware of the polemics the CPI (M) has made against the Nepalese, I've read all of them and in fact, as Education Officer of my branch of the Workers Party of New Zealand, organised a branch study of one of them. I've also read and studied the polemics the RCP has written, the response the Nepalis made to this, the criticisms Afghani Maoists have made, the Iranian Maoists and so on.

However, the fact that they have recieved criticism from various sectors of international Maoism does not prove your statement - that Prachanda, and by extension the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), is following a revisionist line. Taking a creative, flexible and nondogmatic approach to making revolution is not the same thing as revisionism. Breaking with some aspects of traditional communist practice is not revisionism.

The UCPN (M) is a revolutionary party leading a revolution, and as far as current evidence suggests Prachanda is a revolutionary leader.

[red cat]

What do you think of this?

http://www.bannedthought.net/India/CPI-Maoist-Docs/Nepal/OpenLetterToCPNM-090720.pdf

[pranabjyoti]

Any reply of this open letter given by CPN(M)?

[red cat]

Any reply of this open letter given by CPN(M)?

I don't know of any.

[Saorsa]

No, the Nepalis haven't issued a public reply to it yet. I'll post a more indepth response later.

[red cat]

The UCPN (M) is a revolutionary party leading a revolution, and as far as current evidence suggests Prachanda is a revolutionary leader.

Here I would like to clarify something. Given the history of the CPN(M), its enormous mass-base and the fact that it is constituted of so many hardcore revolutionaries, we should not call it a revisionist party even if the majority of the central committee proposes a line that is apparently revisionist. The Nepalese revolution is still young, and even if the leadership does make mistakes, they have full chances to rectify those and make the revolution. Revisionism in this party is revisionism in a party that actually engages in revolutionary practice. So our criticisms should be constructive rather than denouncing the revolution.

Yes, the Nepalese Maoists are indeed revolutionary.

[Wakizashi the Bolshevik]

Here I would like to clarify something. Given the history of the CPN(M), its enormous mass-base and the fact that it is constituted of so many hardcore revolutionaries, we should not call it a revisionist party even if the majority of the central committee proposes a line that is apparently revisionist. The Nepalese revolution is still young, and even if the leadership does make mistakes, they have full chances to rectify those and make the revolution. Revisionism in this party is revisionism in a party that actually engages in revolutionary practice. So our criticisms should be constructive rather than denouncing the revolution.

Yes, the Nepalese Maoists are indeed revolutionary.
I agree, every Communist should support the Nepalese Revolution, even if he doesn't agree 100% with everything the central committee says.
The most important thing now is the victory of Communism in the Revolution, and we should all support that.

[chegitz guevara]

I think that goes for all revolutions.

[red cat]

Green Hunt: Eight killed in Chhattisgarh (http://indianvanguard.wordpress.com/2009/10/26/eight-killed-in-maoist-violence-in-central-india/)



New Delhi – At least four police officers and four Maoist militants were killed in India’s central state of Chhattisgarh, which was placed on alert Monday amid intelligence reports that the rebels could strike urban areas, officials and news reports said. The police officers from the Central Industrial Security Force were killed Sunday evening when Maoists triggered a landmine blast to blow up their jeep, senior police official RK Vij told reporters.
The explosion took place in a village in the Dantewada district, a stronghold of the rebels, located about 400 kilometres south of the state capital, Raipur.
The police were part of the security force at iron-ore mining facilities at the state-run National Mineral Development Corp.
Security forces also gunned down four Maoist insurgents, including a woman, in three separate shootouts Sunday in thickly forested areas of the state’s Bijapur and Narayanpur districts, the IANS news agency reported.
Meanwhile, security in and around key installations in Raipur was intensified after intelligence reports that Maoists with access to rocket launchers were keen to strike urban areas to halt security operations against them.
With more than 40,000 police and paramilitary troopers planning to raid guerrilla hideouts in the remote, Maoist-dominated areas of the state, the banned Communist Party of India-Maoist was desperate to take the battle to towns and cities, particularly Raipur, officials told the IANS.
“We have gathered enough intelligence inputs in recent days that say Maoists are keen to strike in urban areas of the state, including Raipur at its key government installations, to somehow halt the ongoing operation against them in their strongholds,” a senior official told IANS, requesting anonymity.
Maoist rebels, who said they are leading an armed rebellion to secure the rights of the poor and marginalized, operate in 20 of India’s 28 states. They usually target security personnel and government installations and officials.
At least 2,671 people – including civilians, security personnel and rebels – have been killed in incidents related to Maoist violence in India since 2006, according to Home Ministry data. (dpa)

Maoists gain strength in Orissa (http://southasiarev.wordpress.com/2009/10/27/maoists-gain-strength-in-orissa/)



Bhubaneswar: The Red terror has spread its wings to 22 out of 30 districts in Orissa throwing a serious challenge to the state authority even as chief minister Naveen Patnaik has come back to power in Assembly poll marketing his king-size image of honesty and good governance.
The Leftwing insurgency has grown and the situation has gone out of control now because of the neglect of the deprived section by the state government over the years. The people, largely, have lost faith over state mechanism due to the factors like absence of civil administration in remote areas, collapse of the justice system, exploitation of tribals by contractors and rich people and failure of police to provide minimum security to civilians.
When Naveen led BJD Government banned CPI (Maoists) and few of its frontal wing including Daman Pratirodh Manch, the Revolutionary Democratic Front, the Chasi Mulia Samiti, the Kui Lawanga Sangh, the Jana Natya Mandali, the Krantikari Kisan Samiti and the Bal Sangam on June 9, 2006, the annoyance of Leftwing insurgency was very negligible.
But after 2006, the Red Ultras have expanded their network in at least 22 districts out of 30. The situation is almost alike an all-out war where both the State and the extra-constitutional forces seem to be interlocked in a deadly fight. In fact, BJD Government did not take any steps in the last two-terms to provide employment opportunity to the educated tribal youth, who are currently with the Maoists, resulting the entire situation more critical.
On September 21, 2004, the Maoist Communist Centre of India (MCC), People’s War Group (PWG) and the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) had merged to form the outfit, which has since been wrecking havoc in Orissa and all its neighbouring States including Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal. Likewise, the People’s Guerrilla Army and People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army – the two organisations also unified and became a strong People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army, the militant wing of the outfit.
Taking advantage of Naveen Patnaik Government’s easygoing response to the growth of the Left wing insurgency, the CPI-Maoist) has not only carried out a number of high profile attacks in the State, but has established a precise process of consolidation, what they called ‘Liberated Zone’.
Official data indicates that, while the total number of Maoist-related incidents in Orissa increased to 129 in 2008 from 67 in 2007, fatalities suffered by security forces rose sharply to 76, from just two in 2007. Six south-western districts – Malkangiri, Koraput, Raygada, Kandhamal, Nayagarh and Gajapati – accounted for almost 60 percent of all incidents in 2008. In 2009 till October 15, several attacked have been took place and dozens have been killed including security forces.
In 2006 and 2007, according to security experts of New Delhi based Institute of Conflict Management and Institute of Defense Studies and Analysis, the Leftwing ultras quietly went about with the tasks of political mobilization and expansion of their area of operation, in 2008 the Maoist ‘takeover’ of several areas in south-western Orissa had evidently been completed. This has allowed the extremists a corridor of easy transit between Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. The movement of armed Maoists was noticed along the Ganjam-Kandhamal border in South Orissa.
The dense jungle and hilly terrain of this region proved conducive to Maoist movement. As a result, it was hardly surprising that, when pressure mounted on Maoists in Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, they found it convenient to step up activities in Orissa. But reports of Maoist incidents from districts like Jagatsinghpur, Jajpur, Khurda, Angul, Dhenkanal, all along the eastern region of the State and far from borders along States like Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh, as well as the arrest of a substantial number of Maoists, points at a steady strengthening of their base in the State.
The augmentation of Maoist capacities in Orissa was most dramatically manifested in several high profile Maoist attacks in 2008, three of which targeted on elite anti-insurgency security forces. The first of these was the near simultaneous raids on the district Armoury and the Police Training College at the District Headquarters town of Nayagarh, at the Mahipur Police on February 15, 2008.
The second high profile attack occurred on June 29 when 38 security force (SF) personnel, including 36 belonging to the elite anti-Maoist Greyhounds from Andhra Pradesh, were killed in the Chitrakonda reservoir of Malkangiri District, close to the Andhra Pradesh border. The third major incident occurred on July 16, when CPI-Maoist cadres killed 17 personnel of the Special Operations Group (SOG) of the Orissa Police in a landmine blast, once again in the Malkangiri District in the same year.
They have killed dozens of police informers in Rayagada and Malkangiri districts in recent months. Moreover, the new tactic is being adopted in Malkangiri because Andhra Orissa Border Special Zonal Committee secretary, Sudhakar, has taken the leadership of the Mottu armed squad, which operates in Mottu region of Malkangiri district for the past several months. The rebels have been virtually running parallel Government by creating political vacuum either by killing village headmen or driving out influential persons from the villages.
Interestingly, the leftwing ultras also do not allow Construction of Bridge on the Sileru River which will connect Dantewada district of Chhattisgarh and Malkangiri. The rebels have been prohibiting construction of these two bridges because of police access to the Chitrakonada region, one of the ‘Liberated Zones’ of the leftwing guerrillas. The entire game plan reported to have been prepared by Sabhyasachi Panda aks Sunil, who heads the outfit in Orissa.
Maoist movement is gaining momentum gradually also in various industrial hubs of the State.”The Maoists use “pandemonium in South and assault in North” tactics,” Around 70-80 Naxalites in three groups are roaming around in K Bolang border areas of Sundargarh district and Karampada area close to Sarenda forests of Jharkhand.
Similarly, another group has been moving around Baunsjor area of Jharkhand closer to Biramitrapur police station of Sundargarh. The third group is camping near Raikera of Jharkhand just 10 kilometers away from Nuagaon area of Sundargarh district. It is believed that the Maoists may capture the Mohanadi Coalfields Limited (MCL) mines, sources close to CPI (Maoists) reveal.
Interestingly, the Jajpur division was formed near the industrial corridor. There are around 15 armed cadres in that division. Similarly, the Sambalpur division manages operations in Sudargarh and Keonjhar districts, where both the POSCO and Mittal groups have applied for their proposed steel plants captive area. Apart from Mittal more than 48 mining companies are also active in Keonjhar district. Recently, Maoists activity has also increased in many places like-Anadapur, Ghasipura, Ghatagaon, Badbil, Harichandanpur, Daitari, Telkei and Joda area of Keonjhar district. Out of 20 police stations in the districts, Maoists have presence in nine police stations. The rebels’ organized a meeting at Atei and Rebna forests in April, 2008. Strategically, the rebels have identified Keonjhar districts as funding zone.
“It seems the situation is out of control now. Over the years, Leftwing insurgency violence growing because of the failure of the State Government,” alleged former Orissa DGP Amiya Bhusan Tripathy. The Government must ensure sustainable development in tribal areas, he added.
Another former State Police chief Sarat Chandra Mishra said the police while maintaining balance between security and human rights put in back foot as the rebels did not care for the Human Rights while referring to the historic judgment of Andhra High Court, which says any encounter by police would be, treated a murder.
The issue needs a deeper sociological study to find out a solution, he suggested. “I am admitting that the situation is very tough but steps have been taken to challenge the Leftwing guerrillas,” present DGP Manmohan Praharaj added. Undoubtedly, these incidents reflect strong support base of the CPI-Maoist vis-a-vis poor intelligence of Orissa police . The state police has been consistently failed to collect intelligence in southern Orissa due to complete lack of police- public relationship.
The CPI-Maoist took a decision at the 9th Congress in January 2007 to develop the movement to from present guerilla warfare to mobile warfare and urban warfare as central policy. It is learnt that the central committee has deputed around two hundred Maoist cadres from Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh to Orissa for organization building in Malkangiri, Koraput, Kalahandi, and Nawarangpur. They have been trying to set up a corridor from Kalahandi-Nuapada and Bastar.
Hence, it is clear that Maoists are consistently working overnight to tighten their hold in the state of Orissa. The State government should not treat this issue as a merely law and order problem. Instead, it should be first considered a social and economic problem. A holistic development of the State both in terms of geography, individuals and groups can only offer a permanent solution to this problem.

[red cat]

CPI (Maoist) leader Kisenji speaks on Lalgarh (http://southasiarev.wordpress.com/2009/10/26/cpi-maoist-leader-kisenji-speaks-on-lalgarh/)



‘To establish a liberated area’

Suhrid Sankar Chattopadhyay, Frontline (http://frontlineonnet.com/stories/20091106262202200), October 24, 2009
KOTESWAR RAO, alias Kishenji, is a politburo member of the banned CPI (Maoist) and is in charge of the party’s operations in West Bengal, Jharkhand, Bihar and Orissa. He was drawn into the revolutionary movement when he was doing his B.Sc. (Mathematics) in Karimnagar, Andhra Pradesh. He became a full-time member of the CPI-ML (People’s War) in 1974.
“We plan to spread our movement to north Bengal, the plains of Bihar, the central districts of Orissa and eastern Chhattisgarh,” he told Frontline in an exclusive telephonic interview in which he talked about the Lalgarh movement, the Maoist programme of individual killings and future plans of the Maoist movement.Excerpts:
Do you think the movement in Lalgarh is the fallout of the Singur and Nandigram movements rather than a heritage of the Naxalbari movement?
The movement in Lalgarh is the fallout of the Naxalbari movement, but the movements in Nandigram and Singur also had an impact on the Lalgarh movement and the people of Lalgarh. Such a long and sustained movement on a political issue has never taken place in the history of independent India. The main reason for this is the increase in political awareness among the masses.
At the same time, there is, on the one hand, a worldwide economic crisis and, on the other, Indian multinationals seizing the land and property of the common people. These, too, had a role to play in the eruption in Lalgarh.
And of course the Nandigram and Singur agitations, in which we were also present, are certainly big factors. At present, it is not possible to carry out just a peaceful agitation in West Bengal; along with peaceful agitations there must be huge rallies and meetings involving the direct participation of thousands of people.
There is a view that the Lalgarh movement is a spontaneous tribal movement that became so big that the CPI (Maoist) had to get on to it or be left behind. Your comments.
It is not as if we started doing our groundwork in the region yesterday; we have been doing our groundwork for a long time. The Maoist role and leadership in the area has been a continuous process. But, at the same time, the PCPA [People’s Committee against Police Atrocities] and the Maoist movement are not the same, and it would be incorrect to say that the people of the region have been influenced only by Maoists; they have been very much influenced by the PCPA, too.
But if there were no arrests following the assassination attempt on Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee on November 2 last year, would you have been able to build such a strong movement?
Not something like this. It would have developed in a slow process. But the reaction of the people worked to our advantage – much more than it did in Nandigram or Singur. We didn’t have any demand other than that the police apologise to the people, but the State government did not agree to it. We were left with few options.
Did you at any point think that the movement might not need you?
Yes, I did. We expected a movement after November 2, but nothing so big. I expected the strength of the movement to be around 50 per cent of what it eventually became. But the movement itself has undergone a qualitative change over the months. Earlier, when the villagers protested, they assembled in large numbers with their traditional bows and arrows. Then the combined forces entered the region and many villagers fled.
Subsequently, they all returned and now they are not fleeing anywhere. They are standing their own ground and collecting weapons to strike back. So tell me, where do you think this spirit to retaliate is coming from? Whom do you think the villagers are supporting now?
In 2007, it was decided that the CPI (Maoist) would broad-base its activities and not focus only on individual killings like the earlier naxalite movement. But Maoist killings are being reported almost every other day. So in what way is it different from the old programme?
At that time, annihilation of the class enemy was the only form adopted to bring about the revolution. We have changed that. We say that annihilation is one of the forms. This was not invented by Maoists; we have seen in history that the masses have always allowed it. To us, annihilation is one aspect of our total movement.
It was not a regular feature earlier as you claim. It became a regular feature only after the combined forces entered the region. If you recollect, before the deployment of Central forces, we held a Jana Adalat [people’s court] for 30 CPI(M) people in Madhupur [near Lalgarh].
More than 12,000 villagers attended the trial. The public wanted the death sentence for 13 of those under trial. But Bikas [the Maoist commander of operations in Lalgarh], after hours of persuasion, finally managed to convince the public that the time was not right to mete out such a punishment. Finally, the public agreed that those 13 people be just made to wear garlands of chappals and apologise. The other killings took place only after continued disregard of repeated warnings that were sent to the victims both by us and by the people of the region.
The victims were not just police informers, they practically marched with the combined forces. It is not that we killed only CPI(M) people, we killed members of the Jharkhand Party, too, for helping the combined forces and for joining the Gana Pratirodh [People’s Resistance] Committee; and I would also like to add that there is no difference between the Salwa Judum and the Gana Pratirodh Committee.
We killed the main leaders of the committee. Of the six main leaders of the Gana Pratirodh Committee, three were from the CPI(M) and three from the Jharkhand Party. Here again, we killed them after repeatedly requesting them to desist from forming such a committee. They did not listen to us and we had no other alternative.
The annihilation policy of old and what we do today are not the same. Along with individual assassinations, there are also other forms of actions that we undertake – different kinds of mass movements, social boycotts of culprits, and various developmental works.
In fact, recently, in Shankabanga village [in Purbo Medhinipur], we dug a seven-kilometre canal for irrigation. We have done similar work in many villages.
The CPI (Maoist) had announced that it will spread the movement to new areas following the general elections this year. Which are the areas that have been identified?
North Bengal, the plains of Bihar, the central districts of Orissa and eastern Chhattisgarh. All these are backward areas where multinational companies are trying to penetrate, and the State governments are signing memorandums of understanding with them. The strategic location of these areas will also help us in our movements.
The movement in Orissa is one of the most upcoming movements by our party and it will facilitate a combined consolidation of our movements in the neighbouring States of Jharkhand, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh, bringing as many as 15 districts under our control.
Tell us something about your plans in West Bengal.
Very simply, to establish a liberated area. We decided in 2007 that this [the Jangalmahal] would be a guerilla area. Since then we have progressed a lot, we have already reached out to more than half the population of the region and made it politically aware. I can tell you only so much. Our politburo does not allow us to divulge the tactical aspects of our programmes.
But is there widespread recruitment into your movement from the region?
There has to be recruitment, or else how will the movement grow?
There are reports of fresh plans by your party to try and assassinate the Chief Minister, and even storm Writers Buildings. Your comments.
The media need sensational news, and the police need to justify their fat salaries. Do I really need to elaborate? As I have repeatedly said, to kill Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee was not my decision. It was the decision of the people of Nandigram, the people of West Bengal, and even sections of the liberal bourgeoisie.
Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee, who earlier extended her support to the PCPA’s movement, seems to have distanced herself from it. Your comments.
I have been asking Mamata Banerjee for the last three months to make her stand clear. After the general elections her fortune has soared, but what about the fortune of the “Ma, Mati, Manush” [Mamata’s political slogan of Mother, Earth, and People]? Their situation remains the same. What Mamata Banerjee is doing is indulging in opportunistic politics.
With the State and the Centre now planning to launch a much stronger attack, do you not think that your movement, as it stands today will endanger the lives of thousands of innocent and apolitical villagers?
The state should think about that. People like Manmohan Singh, [P.] Chidambaram and Buddhababu are responsible for the situation as it stands today. Ultimately, they are the ones responsible for the killings. We still want peace, it is the government that does not.
So are you willing to sit for dialogue with the government for the sake of peace?
You are probably the 210th person to ask me this question. Chidambaram and Buddhababu have clearly said there will not be any dialogue; they have already arrayed their forces for war, and still you people from the media keep harping, ‘You will all not survive this’. This is clearly to break the spirit of the common people. I do not understand why you all are continuously asking me this question. It really is not possible for me to provide routine answers to such routine questions. I am standing in a battlefield here.

[red cat]

Interview with CPI-Maoist Leader Ganapathi

VglRBmq-MuU

[scarletghoul]

Perhaps this should be stickied and renamed Naxalite News thread or something?

[chegitz guevara]

I did a little investigating. Turns out, 27.8% of the population of India is urbanized. Of those, the vast majority have to be proletarian, so we can roughly guestimate that there are three hundred million urban proletarians. The capitalist economy of India accounts for 87% of the economy of India (don't know how that was measure).

I think it's fair to state that anyone that calls India feudal has little to no understanding of: India, capitalism, feudalism, Marxism.

Given that, the Trotskyist strategy of organizing the worker class is the one that adheres both closest to orthodox Marxism and is capable of producing a workers state in India. This is not to say I don't support the struggle of our Naxalite comrades. I do. But we should understand that other paths are possible. I support the struggles of all our Indian comrades.

[Spawn of Stalin]

Perhaps this should be stickied and renamed Naxalite News thread or something?
I second that. Especially now that the Indian state are planning to destroy the Revolution.

[red cat]

I did a little investigating. Turns out, 27.8% of the population of India is urbanized. Of those, the vast majority have to be proletarian, so we can roughly guestimate that there are three hundred million urban proletarians. The capitalist economy of India accounts for 87% of the economy of India (don't know how that was measure).

I think it's fair to state that anyone that calls India feudal has little to no understanding of: India, capitalism, feudalism, Marxism.


We have already discussed in this thread why numbers won't matter. No country that wasn't capitalist before the Russian Revolution can become one without experiencing a counter-revolution from socialism or complete new-democracy.

The Indian proletariat is about seventy-million strong and the CPI(Maoist) clearly states in its political programme that this class shall engage in urban movements and exercise control over the revolution through its vanguard-party.

[chegitz guevara]

We have already discussed in this thread why numbers won't matter. No country that wasn't capitalist before the Russian Revolution can become one without experiencing a counter-revolution from socialism or complete new-democracy.

That is just silly. What stops a country from becoming capitalist simply because of the Russian Revolution? Magic?

[red cat]

That is just silly. What stops a country from becoming capitalist simply because of the Russian Revolution? Magic?

It is generally an accepted fact, at least among Maoists, that the Russian Revolution marks the beginning of what we call the "Leninist era of proletarian revolutions".

This era is defined by the following factors:

1) Capitalism has reached its highest stage, imperialism.

2) The proletariat has made its first revolution that managed to defeat the subsequent reactionary invasions and introduce a stable government.

Due to these two factors, the national bourgeoisie of every country have seen what is the immediate consequence of a bourgeois revolution. Now, as the goal of each class is to seize political power, the bourgeoisie ultimately gains nothing on the long run if it completes its revolution. That is why, instead of fully breaking with imperialism, after a certain stage in their movement, they collaborate with some form of imperialism to ultimately form a new comprador bourgeois regime, crush the other revolutionary classes and go back to the semi feudal- semi colonial state.


However, if the proletariat leads a united front of revolutionary classes, then a new democratic revolution is possible. Completion of this revolution in some country means that it has broken with imperialism and eradicated feudalism completely. Note that the the eradication of feudalism destroys any further social basis for this country to become a colony again. After this stage, a counter-revolution can be staged by the national bourgeoisie only by infiltrating and destroying the communist party from within. They do not need to subordinate themselves to imperialism in doing this and in the course of this phenomenon they emerge as a powerful class. So the counter revolution takes the country to capitalism and it tends to become an imperialist country itself.

A somewhat weaker argument to justify our stand points out the fact that most of the third-world countries became independent through "peaceful transfer of power" and retained more or less the same state machinery and social system from the colonial times. The impossibility of a new class seizing power in the process follows directly from Leninism.

[pranabjyoti]

I did a little investigating. Turns out, 27.8% of the population of India is urbanized. Of those, the vast majority have to be proletarian, so we can roughly guestimate that there are three hundred million urban proletarians. The capitalist economy of India accounts for 87% of the economy of India (don't know how that was measure).
I think it's fair to state that anyone that calls India feudal has little to no understanding of: India, capitalism, feudalism, Marxism.
Given that, the Trotskyist strategy of organizing the worker class is the one that adheres both closest to orthodox Marxism and is capable of producing a workers state in India. This is not to say I don't support the struggle of our Naxalite comrades. I do. But we should understand that other paths are possible. I support the struggles of all our Indian comrades.
Very good point. But, there are some problems in the urban uprising. Though, a huge lot of workers are now living in the cities of India, but there are huge amount of petty-bourgeoisie too. Those who are shop-keepers, small businessmen, taxi-drivers, rickshaw pullers (they are free, not working under any company like western countries) and other service providers. The problem with their mentality is something different from western capitalist countries. The very old problems of petty-bourgeoisie is that, he is half bourgeoisie and half-proletariat. India is a backward country and at present, the mentality of these petty-bourgeoisie section is very much REACTIONARY. They know well that don't have sufficient capital to increase the productivity of their production or service. So, they are at present strongly opposing organized labor movement. Their mentality, WE CAN'T HAVE, WHY THEY CAN. As the productivity of the both production and service part of the organized sector is increasing, though most of the fruits have been taken by capitalist, but some part of the increased productivity has been sipped out to the workers in the organized sector. And like most of the workers of the world, they are fighting with capitalists. The petty bourgeoisie section of India at present is a strong opponent of workers struggle from the mentality, which I have told before. Due to this mentality, organizing workers struggle in the cities is tough in India.

[chegitz guevara]

It is generally an accepted fact, at least among Maoists, that the Russian Revolution marks the beginning of what we call the "Leninist era of proletarian revolutions".

Well, let me ask you this, then. If no country can transition from colony to capitalism how then do you explain: South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Ireland, the Czech Republic, Finland, etc. All of these countries were colonies in 1917. Today, they are all advanced capitalist countries. The standard of living of some of these countries even exceeds that of the old imperialist countries, like Great Britain. Some countries, like say, Brazil and China, have not merely transitioned from a colony, but have in fact become imperialists themselves, as defined by Lenin's explanation (exporting capital, monopoly capitalism, etc.).

Dogmatism is getting in the way of your understanding of the world. And, it may lead to pursuing an incorrect strategy (though one that may succeed nevertheless).

[pranabjyoti]

Well, let me ask you this, then. If no country can transition from colony to capitalism how then do you explain: South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Ireland, the Czech Republic, Finland, etc. All of these countries were colonies in 1917. Today, they are all advanced capitalist countries. The standard of living of some of these countries even exceeds that of the old imperialist countries, like Great Britain. Some countries, like say, Brazil and China, have not merely transitioned from a colony, but have in fact become imperialists themselves, as defined by Lenin's explanation (exporting capital, monopoly capitalism, etc.).
Dogmatism is getting in the way of your understanding of the world. And, it may lead to pursuing an incorrect strategy (though one that may succeed nevertheless).
Well, If there was no REVOLUTIONARY CHINA, there wouldn't be any capitalist Taiwan, without RED North Korea, there would be no South Korea, without revolutionary struggles of Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, there would be no capitalist South East Asia.
Actually, these outposts of capitalism is deliberately made by imperialism to prevent the spread of revolutionary ideas. I want to say that, If, in future, there would be a revolutionary India, you can see something like a capitalist Pakistan/Srilanka/Bangladesh etc.

[red cat]

Very good point. But, there are some problems in the urban uprising. Though, a huge lot of workers are now living in the cities of India, but there are huge amount of petty-bourgeoisie too. Those who are shop-keepers, small businessmen, taxi-drivers, rickshaw pullers (they are free, not working under any company like western countries) and other service providers. The problem with their mentality is something different from western capitalist countries. The very old problems of petty-bourgeoisie is that, he is half bourgeoisie and half-proletariat. India is a backward country and at present, the mentality of these petty-bourgeoisie section is very much REACTIONARY. They know well that don't have sufficient capital to increase the productivity of their production or service. So, they are at present strongly opposing organized labor movement. Their mentality, WE CAN'T HAVE, WHY THEY CAN. As the productivity of the both production and service part of the organized sector is increasing, though most of the fruits have been taken by capitalist, but some part of the increased productivity has been sipped out to the workers in the organized sector. And like most of the workers of the world, they are fighting with capitalists. The petty bourgeoisie section of India at present is a strong opponent of workers struggle from the mentality, which I have told before. Due to this mentality, organizing workers struggle in the cities is tough in India.
I would like to make some rectifications.

First of all, it is wrong to classify the rickshaw-pullers and taxi-drivers as petit-bourgeois. They constitute the "semi-proletariat". They occassionally own their vehicles, but are slowly being pushed towards losing that ownership. They also earn nothing more than their subsistence. The same goes with hawkers if you refer to them as small businessmen. The semi proletariat is indeed one of the motive forces behind the NDR.

As for the petite-bourgeoisie, this class consists of mainly middle-class students, intellectuals, professional, government employees etc. The lower portion of this class is also being pushed towards a proletarian existence. So they are also a motive-force behind the NDR.

In the recent years both of these classes have sympathized with the NDR, and we now know that people from these classes have actually participated in clandestine activities and strengthened the rural PPW.

[pranabjyoti]

I would like to make some rectifications.

First of all, it is wrong to classify the rickshaw-pullers and taxi-drivers as petit-bourgeois. They constitute the "semi-proletariat". They occassionally own their vehicles, but are slowly being pushed towards losing that ownership. They also earn nothing more than their subsistence. The same goes with hawkers if you refer to them as small businessmen. The semi proletariat is indeed one of the motive forces behind the NDR.
As for the petite-bourgeoisie, this class consists of mainly middle-class students, intellectuals, professional, government employees etc. The lower portion of this class is also being pushed towards a proletarian existence. So they are also a motive-force behind the NDR.
In the recent years both of these classes have sympathized with the NDR, and we now know that people from these classes have actually participated in clandestine activities and strengthened the rural PPW.
Well, so far about my little knowledge of Marxism, the class identity of any person isn't related to how much he earns, but RATHER HOW HE IS ATTACHED TO PRODUCTION OR SERVICE. Petty-bourgeoisie means, those who have to give their labor but have owned the right to take decision about when and where he can give his labor. A taxi-driver and rickshaw-puller have the right to take decision when and where he will go. While, worker i.e. proletariat doesn't have the right to take any decision about his/her labor.
On his book "who are the friends of the people and how they oppose social democracy", V.I.Lenin clearly marked those "semi-proletariat" as "little dacoits". On contrary, a Govt. employee (which at present constitute most of the organized worker section in India) don't possess any right when he can start his work. He had to attend his office or place of duty in scheduled time and have to perform as per the order of his/her superior. So, in no sense, a Govt. employee can be taken as "middle class" or "petty bourgeoisie".
Here, in the leftist section of India, the term "middle class" is often very confusing to me. Because it relates to persons income rather how is related to the production/service process. IN MY OPINION, THIS IS VERY MUCH UNSCIENTIFIC/UNMARXIST. It totally ignores the productivity question. As per this terminology, there is very few worker in India in the organized sector. Because, those who are working in the organized sector have earned well, at present more than what an average Indian can earn, as salary. BUT, DOES THAT MEAN THEY HAVE BECOME "MIDDLE CLASS" AND AREN'T NOW BELONGING TO THE WORKING CLASS AT ALL? In contrary, the impoverished position of taxi-drivers and rickshaw pullers are due to their incapability of increase the productivity of their production/service. This is a very common feature of the petty-bourgeoisie, because they often lack sufficient capital to increase the productivity of their production and service.

[red cat]

Well, so far about my little knowledge of Marxism, the class identity of any person isn't related to how much he earns, but RATHER HOW HE IS ATTACHED TO PRODUCTION OR SERVICE. Petty-bourgeoisie means, those who have to give their labor but have owned the right to take decision about when and where he can give his labor. A taxi-driver and rickshaw-puller have the right to take decision when and where he will go. While, worker i.e. proletariat doesn't have the right to take any decision about his/her labor.
On his book "who are the friends of the people and how they oppose social democracy", V.I.Lenin clearly marked those "semi-proletariat" as "little dacoits". On contrary, a Govt. employee (which at present constitute most of the organized worker section in India) don't possess any right when he can start his work. He had to attend his office or place of duty in scheduled time and have to perform as per the order of his/her superior. So, in no sense, a Govt. employee can be taken as "middle class" or "petty bourgeoisie".
Here, in the leftist section of India, the term "middle class" is often very confusing to me. Because it relates to persons income rather how is related to the production/service process. IN MY OPINION, THIS IS VERY MUCH UNSCIENTIFIC/UNMARXIST. It totally ignores the productivity question. As per this terminology, there is very few worker in India in the organized sector. Because, those who are working in the organized sector have earned well, at present more than what an average Indian can earn, as salary. BUT, DOES THAT MEAN THEY HAVE BECOME "MIDDLE CLASS" AND AREN'T NOW BELONGING TO THE WORKING CLASS AT ALL? In contrary, the impoverished position of taxi-drivers and rickshaw pullers are due to their incapability of increase the productivity of their production/service. This is a very common feature of the petty-bourgeoisie, because they often lack sufficient capital to increase the productivity of their production and service.

I cannot really recall exactly where Lenin says that in his book.

For a detailed description of the petite-bourgeoisie, see Mao's "Analysis of the classes in Chinese society". Mao clearly refers to the "lower" categories of government employees etc. which means that rank and income also matter. We can surely not put the lowest ranked government employee who support the Maoists and the top bureaucrats who are waging war against Maoists into the same category.

Also, if handicraftsmen can be considered as the semi-proletariat, the term is much more applicable in the case of vehicle-drivers. Rather the latter are much closer to the proletariat.

And by your logic, as in some cases fixed working hours are applicable for managers of big companies too, they also become a part of the proletariat.

While analyzing the class of a person, you have to take into consideration both how and how much he earns.

[red cat]

Well, let me ask you this, then. If no country can transition from colony to capitalism how then do you explain: South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Ireland, the Czech Republic, Finland, etc. All of these countries were colonies in 1917. Today, they are all advanced capitalist countries. The standard of living of some of these countries even exceeds that of the old imperialist countries, like Great Britain. Some countries, like say, Brazil and China, have not merely transitioned from a colony, but have in fact become imperialists themselves, as defined by Lenin's explanation (exporting capital, monopoly capitalism, etc.).

Dogmatism is getting in the way of your understanding of the world. And, it may lead to pursuing an incorrect strategy (though one that may succeed nevertheless).

I will try to analyze the situation of each of the countries you mentioned, as far as my knowledge permits.

Czech Republic:Czachoslovakia declared independence in 1918. Here I will make a rectification, i.e. the Leninist era probably started a bit later than 1917, may be after the civil-war ended. That is why I mentioned the factor of defeating the subsequent reactionary invasions and establishing a stable government.

Ireland: Same

Finland: Soon after the capitalists declared independence, there was a proletarian revolution in Finland in 1918. Finland became fully capitalist after that was crushed.

New Zealand: Look at the local population: it is all white. They are not the original inhabitants of New Zealand. A portion of the imperialists actually stayed there and based their capital in New Zealand itself.

Australia: Same as New Zealand.

South Africa: I am not sure what it is. If it is capitalist then the argument used for New Zealand applies.

Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea: I am not precisely aware of the class compositions of these countries. But yes, we hold that they are semi-colonies too.

[chegitz guevara]

Well, If there was no REVOLUTIONARY CHINA, there wouldn't be any capitalist Taiwan, without RED North Korea, there would be no South Korea, without revolutionary struggles of Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, there would be no capitalist South East Asia.
Actually, these outposts of capitalism is deliberately made by imperialism to prevent the spread of revolutionary ideas. I want to say that, If, in future, there would be a revolutionary India, you can see something like a capitalist Pakistan/Srilanka/Bangladesh etc.

There is probably a good deal of truth in what you say. Nonetheless, certain colonies I think would very likely have become industrial capitalist societies, such as Korea and Singapore. The RoK's level of development owes, I think, more to its proximity to Japan and the diminishing return on investment there than it does its proximity to the DPRK. After all, the DPRK was more industrialized and had a better economy than the RoK until the mid-70s, which was a period of general decline for global capitalism. Singapore owes its development more to its location than anything else, sitting in the middle of the Straits of Malacca.

Nonetheless, accidents of history do not mitigate the fact that it is possible for colonies to become capitalist. And you yourself admit that they can become capitalist if the imperialist states invest in them sufficiently, which means you admit that colonies can become capitalist.

I would also keep in mind that proximity to revolutionary states doesn't necessarily translate into a booming economy. Consider Thailand, the Philippines, Southern Italy, Turkey, Greece, and so on. All of these areas are very important strategically for the containment of the USSR and PRC, yet, they aren't that developed economically.

red cat,

First, I'm a little disturbed at your explanations for New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa. There's nothing inherent in whiteness that makes capitalism automatically successful. Europe and much of the colonial world is filled with white countries that aren't all that well off. Let's take the example of Ireland.

Now, Ireland did get some sort of independence in 1921, The Irish Free State. Nominally, however, it was still part of the British Empire, and basically still a colony. I'm old enough to remember when Ireland's chief export was people. That wasn't that long ago. The population of that country only started going up for the first time since the Great Potato Famine in the 1990s. It would be hard to mistake the Irish (even the "Black" Irish) as anything other than White. Ireland, as a member of the EU, benefited from the equalization payments, so there was a net inflow of investment.

In addition, countries such as Japan (not a colony, but still), Korea, Taiwan, etc., are most definitely not White. The ruling class of Brazil is white, but Brazil is mostly a Black country. The same with South Africa.

I'm sure you didn't mean that in a racist fashion, but I'd shy away from any explanations by skin color.

I'll write about the Czech Republic and Finland after I get back from the bank. :)

Cheers comrades!

[red cat]

What I mean is that in countries like Australia, New Zealand etc. the whole white population migrated from countries where capitalist developments were taking place. So a portion of the imperialist capital might have set up its bases in these colonies where the original inhabitants were few in number, lived in very primitive societies, and were pushed to corners of the land. In this case what we observe is that a portion of the imperialist capital redefining its national identity.

[red cat]

Brazil declared independence in 1824. But given the amount of US economic and political intervention in Latin American countries, I doubt how much capitalist Brazil really is.

[ls]

Capitalism is a world system, of course there are oppressed nations but that does not somehow make them pre-Capitalist.

As for the Indian mode of production, it's an extremely complicated subject that I don't think can be confined to a few paragraphs, I'll try to summarise some time later.

[pranabjyoti]

I cannot really recall exactly where Lenin says that in his book.

For a detailed description of the petite-bourgeoisie, see Mao's "Analysis of the classes in Chinese society". Mao clearly refers to the "lower" categories of government employees etc. which means that rank and income also matter. We can surely not put the lowest ranked government employee who support the Maoists and the top bureaucrats who are waging war against Maoists into the same category.

Also, if handicraftsmen can be considered as the semi-proletariat, the term is much more applicable in the case of vehicle-drivers. Rather the latter are much closer to the proletariat.

And by your logic, as in some cases fixed working hours are applicable for managers of big companies too, they also become a part of the proletariat.

While analyzing the class of a person, you have to take into consideration both how and how much he earns.
In case of managers, you forgot one fact. THEY RETAIN THE RIGHT TO TAKE DECISION. It is a very key factor. So far, some top level management stuff I know, in reality don't have fixed working hours.
Well, they are semi-proletariat means they are semi bourgeoisie too. I hop you too will agree on that fact.

[chegitz guevara]

Most of us consider management to be a middle class.

[red cat]

Capitalism is a world system, of course there are oppressed nations but that does not somehow make them pre-Capitalist.

As for the Indian mode of production, it's an extremely complicated subject that I don't think can be confined to a few paragraphs, I'll try to summarise some time later.

Almost all the Asian, African and Latin American countries exhibit pre-capitalist relations of production. China and Japan are among the few exceptions.

[red cat]

In case of managers, you forgot one fact. THEY RETAIN THE RIGHT TO TAKE DECISION. It is a very key factor. So far, some top level management stuff I know, in reality don't have fixed working hours.
Well, they are semi-proletariat means they are semi bourgeoisie too. I hop you too will agree on that fact.

Power and priviledges increase as you go up the ranks of government employees as well. The lowest level being almost comparable to the proletariat while the topmost level stands next to their imperialist masters.

[chegitz guevara]

Almost all the Asian, African and Latin American countries exhibit pre-capitalist relations of production. China and Japan are among the few exceptions.

The question of whether or not pre-capitalist relations of production exist in a country is irrelevent. Pre-capitalist relations of production exist even in imperialist countries. Slavery, for example, is alive and well in the United States, despite it being completely illegal (except as punishment for a crime). Feudal relations of production continue to exist in parts of Europe. Capitalism, however, is 99% of the economy.

Even in cases where the capitalist sector of the economy is a minority of the whole economy, such as in Russia in 1917, it can still be the most important sector. In most of the world, capitalist relations of production dominate, private property, wage labor, and commodity production are the rule, not the exceptions.

[red cat]

In all the third world countries the vast majority of the population is connected to the agricultural-sector, which displays semi feudal- semi colonial characteristics.

As for the industrial sector, it is mostly comprador capitalism that is prevalent in the cities. So the bourgeois relations of production are not applicable there.

In Russia, the national bourgeoisie was powerful enough to stage its own revolution. This is far from the situation in third world countries. Here the pre-conditions of the proletariat directly organizing and seizing power in the cities are not present. That is why the proletariat must create a united front with the peasantry and first seize power in the countryside, and then liberate the cities only at the last stages of the revolution.

[pranabjyoti]

The question of whether or not pre-capitalist relations of production exist in a country is irrelevent. Pre-capitalist relations of production exist even in imperialist countries. Slavery, for example, is alive and well in the United States, despite it being completely illegal (except as punishment for a crime). Feudal relations of production continue to exist in parts of Europe. Capitalism, however, is 99% of the economy.
Even in cases where the capitalist sector of the economy is a minority of the whole economy, such as in Russia in 1917, it can still be the most important sector. In most of the world, capitalist relations of production dominate, private property, wage labor, and commodity production are the rule, not the exceptions.
Well, as you have said, pre-capitalist relation may exist, but they are not overwhelmingly dominant. The may exist like a vanishing species. But, in the Asian countries, they are very dominant. As for example, does anybody know that Govt. employees in India are still not regarded as workers/employees, as per the constitution of India, they are "servants" i.e. they don't have the legal rights of a workers. They can not form an union, they can not take part in any kind of political activity and even can not stand as a candidate in any kind of election. How can anyone call this country a totally capitalist country?

[chegitz guevara]

In all the third world countries the vast majority of the population is connected to the agricultural-sector, which displays semi feudal- semi colonial characteristics.

This is true, since it is the definition of a Third World country. Yet it is clear that certain countries which were once third world are no longer. South Korea and Taiwan both have majority urban populations. China, became a majority urban population in the last decade (give or take a year).


As for the industrial sector, it is mostly comprador capitalism that is prevalent in the cities. So the bourgeois relations of production are not applicable there.Comprador capitalism is still capitalism. Just because the cars made in Mexico are owned by imperialist corporations doesn't stop the people working in those factories from being proletarians, it does not mean that capitalist relations of production don't dominate the economy. It simply means that capitalist production is developed in the interests of other countries' capitalists rather than for the purpose of developing a national market.


In Russia, the national bourgeoisie was powerful enough to stage its own revolution.This is absolutely wrong. The role the Russian bourgeoisie played in the 1905 and 1917 revolutions was to come in after the workers had made the revolutions, and claim them for themselves. It was the workers who made all three revolutions, 1905, February 1917 and November 1917. As Trotsky pointed out (one of those times he was correct), the Russian bourgeoisie was too weak to carry out its world historic task of abolishing feudalism, that the task must be carried out by the workers.


This is far from the situation in third world countries. Here the pre-conditions of the proletariat directly organizing and seizing power in the cities are not present. That is why the proletariat must create a united front with the peasantry and first seize power in the countryside, and then liberate the cities only at the last stages of the revolution.Now, I'm not going to tell the Indian comrades how to make their revolution. I'm not arrogant enough or stupid enough to do so. They know their own conditions better than I. I doubt the Indian comrades would listen to me regardless.

Looking at India though, it would seem to this outsider it would be easier to win the cities than the whole countryside. The workers are there, at least 70 million of them, probably hundreds of millions more. They are concentrated at the site of production. The conditions in India seem more favorable to me for proletarian revolution than Russia of 1917.

[pranabjyoti]

Looking at India though, it would seem to this outsider it would be easier to win the cities than the whole countryside. The workers are there, at least 70 million of them, probably hundreds of millions more. They are concentrated at the site of production. The conditions in India seem more favorable to me for proletarian revolution than Russia of 1917.
NO. Sorry to say Comrade, the condition of India is quite different from 1917's Russia. Firstly, the world has already changed a lot. Moreover, in 1917, even the soldiers have their right to form organizations like Soviets and so. Even in 2009, even the Govt. employees of India don't have legal rights to form an organization. Soldiers and other armed state personnel are a far far cry. Moreover, in 1917, Russian people had just overthrown Tsarism and the Bolsheviks had taken a leading role in that. That keep them in a pretty good advanced stage to organize workers, peasants, soldiers for revolution. The condition of India is not so at present.

[red cat]

The fact that the capital acting is imperialist or comprador in nature does make difference. For example, if you raise minimum questions ergarding working conditions, salary increment etc. you are either arrested or you are finished off by the local goons. The workers who interact a bit more with each other are spied upon. You don't have any chance to create a progressive trade-union at the first place. Also, the parliamentary parties are not elected. The one which has control over local goons and cops wins by rigging. Any different political voice is termed as "anti-patriotic", "terrorist" etc. and silenced in a most uncivilized manner. These conditions make it impossible to conduct urban insurrections at the initial stages.

[chegitz guevara]

Those conditions sound a lot like the United States 100 years ago . . . and in some cases, today. When I went to a union organizing training school, I met a brother who was almost murdered by an off-duty cop for his union work. The cop was just about to execute him when two on-duty police came on the scene and arrested the cop.

There are progressive trade unions in countries like Brazil, Bolivia, Venezuela, etc. In Brazil and Bolivia, those trade unions were able to help bring down governments (a dictatorship in Brazil). Sure, the resulting bourgeois democratic governments may not be great, but let's not pretend these movements don't exist.

I think you underestimate the revolutionary potential of the Third World proletariat.

[red cat]

What seems like bringing down dictatorships may be just exchanging one bourgeois regime for another. A movement with a different class-character is bound to face more difficulties. And as far as I know in India and Sri Lanka there had been attempts to seize power in the cities. Got brutally crushed.

[Labor Shall Rule]

Also the Maoists have this concept of the Four Classes and New Democracy which would be nothing but a neoliberal paradise for the Indian bourgeoisie. They don't appear as a threat to the Indian bourgeoisie at all. I believe thats the reason why Hindu fundamentalists like Bal Thackeray can support them without fear.

Really?

It's the bourgeois fascist state that is defending precapitalist institutions and property relations in the countryside so as to legitimize a neoliberal paradise that they're trying to enforce through accommodating the traditional landlord class.

Is it not clear to you that a serious radical movement is developing? I know that it's not looking like a reenactment of an Eisenstein film, but it's nevertheless shaking everyone in India and the world right now.

[red cat]

He seems to have changed his opinion now.

[chegitz guevara]

What seems like bringing down dictatorships may be just exchanging one bourgeois regime for another.

Oh, I don't disagree, but all things being equal, would you rather live in a bourgeois dictatorship or a bourgeois democracy? Lenin constantly hammers home the importance of obtaining democracy. He calls it "the light and air" of the workers movement. Without democracy, Lenin says, the workers cannot organize openly, they cannot gain the strength and confidence they need to take political power and create a workers democracy.


A movement with a different class-character is bound to face more difficulties. And as far as I know in India and Sri Lanka there had been attempts to seize power in the cities. Got brutally crushed.And attempts to overthrow certain countries via guerrilla movements have been crushed as well. The FARC seem headed on their way to defeat. The Sendero Luminoso were crushed. I could name quite a few such groups.

The point is that revolutionaries need to be flexible. We need to be able to adapt to changing circumstances, not wed ourselves to one specific tactic come hell or high water, cuz hell and high water always come. This is what the Maobadi should have taught us, if we didn't understand it before.

Now I think it's rather likely that India is going to crush the Naxalites, especially if they try something different.

[red cat]

Oh, I don't disagree, but all things being equal, would you rather live in a bourgeois dictatorship or a bourgeois democracy? Lenin constantly hammers home the importance of obtaining democracy. He calls it "the light and air" of the workers movement. Without democracy, Lenin says, the workers cannot organize openly, they cannot gain the strength and confidence they need to take political power and create a workers democracy.

Of course I would prefer the latter. But in the third world, in spite of the media information of "dictatorships being overthrown", it hardly matters for the proletariat. Every regime is more or less dictatorial towards them.



And attempts to overthrow certain countries via guerrilla movements have been crushed as well. The FARC seem headed on their way to defeat. The Sendero Luminoso were crushed. I could name quite a few such groups.

But the PCP has persisted in the PPW and is quite powerful now. Also, after the initial defeat in India, the Maoists started following the model of PPW and achieved huge success.



The point is that revolutionaries need to be flexible. We need to be able to adapt to changing circumstances, not wed ourselves to one specific tactic come hell or high water, cuz hell and high water always come. This is what the Maobadi should have taught us, if we didn't understand it before.

True. But observe that what Maoists are following in Nepal, Philippines or India are only based on the general model of the PPW. None of them try to follow the Chinese Revolution blindly.



Now I think it's rather likely that India is going to crush the Naxalites, especially if they try something different.

If you evaluate the Maoists' exact strategic and tactical stand, you will know that they are most likely to defeat India.

[Schrödinger's Cat]

....which begs the question of how we go about defining a "revolutionary movement". My common sense tells me that a revolutionary movement is a movement that seeks to implement fundamental changes in the way societies are organized, i.e. a revolution, with the ultimate aim of obtaining a society of abundance and freedom, known as communism. My knowledge of Marxism tells me that the overthrow of capitalism can only come about as a result of the struggles of the working class, and that communism, as well as the transitional stage between communism and capitalism, must involve workers having control over the means of production, and effectively being in charge of society. Unfortunately, in no country where a Maoist organization has taken power has the working class ever had a major role in the overthrow of the previous regime, and, once they've established themselves in government, these organizations have frequently carried out attacks against the working class, with their leaders transforming themselves into a new ruling class, intent on using the working class as a means to develop the national economy, and enhance their own material privileges. Mao was actually quite honest about what he was doing in China, as he, like his Menshevik predecessors, argued that the CPC would carry out the construction of New Democracy once it had toppled the KMT and established itself as the foremost party in government, under which capitalism would continue to exist with small modifications, and, as a result, the working class would continue to be deprived of power, and suffer exploitation at the hands of the bosses. It is perhaps for this reason that, according to the government's own statistics, the number of businessmen in eight major cities had increased by 27% by the end of 1951, and the average rate of profit was a remarkable 29% in 1951 and 31% in 1953 - hardly evidence of socialist transformation.

In light of the above, what reason do I have to expect revolutionary change from the Maoists in India?

That is some fascinating information, actually. Where did you find that information? I'd love to read it. Thanks for the great post.

[RHIZOMES]

Awesome column in the Guardian about the Maoists in India, it disproves this whole Eurocentric Trotskyite notion of the Indian Maoists just being some dudes with guns who are fighting a war on behalf of the oppressed rather than letting them do it themselves. :rolleyes: And how the Maoists are part of a wider revolutionary upheaval of India's poor and downtrodden.



The heart of India is under attack

To justify enforcing a corporate land grab, the state needs an enemy – and it has chosen the Maoists



Comments (113) (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/30/mining-india-maoists-green-hunt?commentpage=1)
Buzz up! (http://uk.buzz.yahoo.com/buzz?publisherurn=the_guardian665&targetUrl=http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/30/mining-india-maoists-green-hunt&summary=%3Cstrong%3EArundhati+Roy%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3 E+To+justify+enforcing+a+corporate+land+grab%2C+th e+state+needs+an+enemy+%E2%80%93+and+it+has+chosen +the+Maoists&headline=The%20heart%20of%20India%20is%20under%20a ttack%20%7C%20Arundhati%20Roy%20%7CComment%20is%20 free%20%7Cguardian.co.uk)
Digg it (http://digg.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.guardian.co.uk%2Fcomme ntisfree%2F2009%2Foct%2F30%2Fmining-india-maoists-green-hunt&title=The+heart+of+India+is+under+attack+%7C+Arund hati+Roy)




http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2008/12/12/1229108034665/arundhati_roy_140x140.jpg (http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/arundhati-roy)


Arundhati Roy (http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/arundhati-roy)
guardian.co.uk (http://www.guardian.co.uk/), Friday 30 October 2009 22.00 GMT
Article history (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/30/mining-india-maoists-green-hunt#history-byline)



The low, flat-topped hills of south Orissa have been home to the Dongria Kondh long before there was a country called India or a state called Orissa. The hills watched over the Kondh. The Kondh watched over the hills and worshipped them as living deities. Now these hills have been sold for the bauxite they contain (http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/oct/12/vedanta-versus-the-villagers). For the Kondh it's as though god had been sold. They ask how much god would go for if the god were Ram or Allah or Jesus Christ.
Perhaps the Kondh are supposed to be grateful that their Niyamgiri hill, home to their Niyam Raja, God of Universal Law, has been sold to a company with a name like Vedanta (the branch of Hindu philosophy that teaches the Ultimate Nature of Knowledge). It's one of the biggest mining corporations in the world and is owned by Anil Agarwal, the Indian billionaire who lives in London in a mansion that once belonged to the Shah of Iran. Vedanta is only one of the many multinational corporations closing in on Orissa.
If the flat-topped hills are destroyed, the forests that clothe them will be destroyed, too. So will the rivers and streams that flow out of them and irrigate the plains below. So will the Dongria Kondh. So will the hundreds of thousands of tribal people who live in the forested heart of India, and whose homeland is similarly under attack.
In our smoky, crowded cities, some people say, "So what? Someone has to pay the price of progress." Some even say, "Let's face it, these are people whose time has come. Look at any developed country – Europe, the US, Australia – they all have a 'past'." Indeed they do. So why shouldn't "we"?
In keeping with this line of thought, the government has announced Operation Green Hunt, a war purportedly against the "Maoist" rebels headquartered in the jungles of central India. Of course, the Maoists are by no means the only ones rebelling. There is a whole spectrum of struggles all over the country that people are engaged in–the landless, the Dalits, the homeless, workers, peasants, weavers. They're pitted against a juggernaut of injustices, including policies that allow a wholesale corporate takeover of people's land and resources. However, it is the Maoists that the government has singled out as being the biggest threat.
Two years ago, when things were nowhere near as bad as they are now, the prime minister described the Maoists as the "single largest internal security threat" to the country. This will probably go down as the most popular and often repeated thing he ever said. For some reason, the comment he made on 6 January, 2009, at a meeting of state chief ministers, when he described the Maoists as having only "modest capabilities", doesn't seem to have had the same raw appeal. He revealed his government's real concern on 18 June, 2009, when he told parliament: "If left-wing extremism continues to flourish in parts which have natural resources of minerals, the climate for investment would certainly be affected."
Who are the Maoists? They are members of the banned Communist party of India (Maoist) – CPI (Maoist) – one of the several descendants of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), which led the 1969 Naxalite uprising (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naxalite) and was subsequently liquidated by the Indian government. The Maoists believe that the innate, structural inequality of Indian society can only be redressed by the violent overthrow of the Indian state. In its earlier avatars as the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) in Jharkhand and Bihar, and the People's War Group (PWG) in Andhra Pradesh, the Maoists had tremendous popular support. (When the ban on them was briefly lifted in 2004, 1.5 million people attended their rally in Warangal.)
But eventually their intercession in Andhra Pradesh ended badly. They left a violent legacy that turned some of their staunchest supporters into harsh critics. After a paroxysm of killing and counter-killing by the Andhra police as well as the Maoists, the PWG was decimated. Those who managed to survive fled Andhra Pradesh into neighbouring Chhattisgarh. There, deep in the heart of the forest, they joined colleagues who had already been working there for decades.
Not many "outsiders" have any first-hand experience of the real nature of the Maoist movement in the forest. A recent interview with one of its top leaders, Comrade Ganapathy, in Open magazine, didn't do much to change the minds of those who view the Maoists as a party with an unforgiving, totalitarian vision, which countenances no dissent whatsoever. Comrade Ganapathy said nothing that would persuade people that, were the Maoists ever to come to power, they would be equipped to properly address the almost insane diversity of India's caste-ridden society. His casual approval of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) of Sri Lanka was enough to send a shiver down even the most sympathetic of spines, not just because of the brutal ways in which the LTTE chose to wage its war, but also because of the cataclysmic tragedy that has befallen the Tamil people of Sri Lanka, who it claimed to represent, and for whom it surely must take some responsibility.
Right now in central India, the Maoists' guerrilla army is made up almost entirely of desperately poor tribal people living in conditions of such chronic hunger that it verges on famine of the kind we only associate with sub-Saharan Africa. They are people who, even after 60 years of India's so-called independence, have not had access to education, healthcare or legal redress. They are people who have been mercilessly exploited for decades, consistently cheated by small businessmen and moneylenders, the women raped as a matter of right by police and forest department personnel. Their journey back to a semblance of dignity is due in large part to the Maoist cadre who have lived and worked and fought by their side for decades.
If the tribals have taken up arms, they have done so because a government which has given them nothing but violence and neglect now wants to snatch away the last thing they have – their land. Clearly, they do not believe the government when it says it only wants to "develop" their region. Clearly, they do not believe that the roads as wide and flat as aircraft runways that are being built through their forests in Dantewada by the National Mineral Development Corporation are being built for them to walk their children to school on. They believe that if they do not fight for their land, they will be annihilated. That is why they have taken up arms.
Even if the ideologues of the Maoist movement are fighting to eventually overthrow the Indian state, right now even they know that their ragged, malnutritioned army, the bulk of whose soldiers have never seen a train or a bus or even a small town, are fighting only for survival.
In 2008, an expert group appointed by the Planning Commission submitted a report called "Development Challenges in Extremist-Affected Areas". It said, "the Naxalite (Maoist) movement has to be recognised as a political movement with a strong base among the landless and poor peasantry and adivasis. Its emergence and growth need to be contextualised in the social conditions and experience of people who form a part of it. The huge gap between state policy and performance is a feature of these conditions. Though its professed long-term ideology is capturing state power by force, in its day-to-day manifestation, it is to be looked upon as basically a fight for social justice, equality, protection, security and local development." A very far cry from the "single-largest internal security threat".
Since the Maoist rebellion is the flavour of the week, everybody, from the sleekest fat cat to the most cynical editor of the most sold-out newspaper in this country, seems to be suddenly ready to concede that it is decades of accumulated injustice that lies at the root of the problem. But instead of addressing that problem, which would mean putting the brakes on this 21st-century gold rush, they are trying to head the debate off in a completely different direction, with a noisy outburst of pious outrage about Maoist "terrorism". But they're only speaking to themselves.
The people who have taken to arms are not spending all their time watching (or performing for) TV, or reading the papers, or conducting SMS polls for the Moral Science question of the day: Is Violence Good or Bad? SMS your reply to ... They're out there. They're fighting. They believe they have the right to defend their homes and their land. They believe that they deserve justice.
In order to keep its better-off citizens absolutely safe from these dangerous people, the government has declared war on them. A war, which it tells us, may take between three and five years to win. Odd, isn't it, that even after the Mumbai attacks of 26/11, the government was prepared to talk with Pakistan? It's prepared to talk to China. But when it comes to waging war against the poor, it's playing hard.
It's not enough that special police with totemic names like Greyhounds, Cobras and Scorpions are scouring the forests with a licence to kill. It's not enough that the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), the Border Security Force (BSF) and the notorious Naga Battalion have already wreaked havoc and committed unconscionable atrocities in remote forest villages. It's not enough that the government supports and arms the Salwa Judum, the "people's militia" that has killed and raped and burned its way through the forests of Dantewada leaving 300,000 people homeless or on the run. Now the government is going to deploy the Indo-Tibetan border police and tens of thousands of paramilitary troops. It plans to set up a brigade headquarters in Bilaspur (which will displace nine villages) and an air base in Rajnandgaon (which will displace seven). Obviously, these decisions were taken a while ago. Surveys have been done, sites chosen. Interesting. War has been in the offing for a while. And now the helicopters of the Indian air force have been given the right to fire in "self-defence", the very right that the government denies its poorest citizens.
Fire at whom? How will the security forces be able to distinguish a Maoist from an ordinary person who is running terrified through the jungle? Will adivasis carrying the bows and arrows they have carried for centuries now count as Maoists too? Are non-combatant Maoist sympathisers valid targets? When I was in Dantewada, the superintendent of police showed me pictures of 19 "Maoists" that "his boys" had killed. I asked him how I was supposed to tell they were Maoists. He said, "See Ma'am, they have malaria medicines, Dettol bottles, all these things from outside."
What kind of war is Operation Green Hunt going to be? Will we ever know? Not much news comes out of the forests. Lalgarh in West Bengal has been cordoned off. Those who try to go in are being beaten and arrested. And called Maoists, of course. In Dantewada, the Vanvasi Chetana Ashram, a Gandhian ashram run by Himanshu Kumar, was bulldozed in a few hours. It was the last neutral outpost before the war zone begins, a place where journalists, activists, researchers and fact-finding teams could stay while they worked in the area.
Meanwhile, the Indian establishment has unleashed its most potent weapon. Almost overnight, our embedded media has substituted its steady supply of planted, unsubstantiated, hysterical stories about "Islamist terrorism" with planted, unsubstantiated, hysterical stories about "Red terrorism". In the midst of this racket, at ground zero, the cordon of silence is being inexorably tightened. The "Sri Lanka solution" could very well be on the cards. It's not for nothing that the Indian government blocked a European move in the UN asking for an international probe into war crimes committed by the government of Sri Lanka in its recent offensive against the Tamil Tigers.
The first move in that direction is the concerted campaign that has been orchestrated to shoehorn the myriad forms of resistance taking place in this country into a simple George Bush binary: If you are not with us, you are with the Maoists. The deliberate exaggeration of the Maoist "threat" helps the state justify militarisation. (And surely does no harm to the Maoists. Which political party would be unhappy to be singled out for such attention?) While all the oxygen is being used up by this new doppelganger of the "war on terror", the state will use the opportunity to mop up the hundreds of other resistance movements in the sweep of its military operation, calling them all Maoist sympathisers.
I use the future tense, but this process is well under way. The West Bengal government tried to do this in Nandigram and Singur but failed. Right now in Lalgarh, the Pulishi Santrash Birodhi Janasadharaner Committee or the People's Committee Against Police Atrocities – which is a people's movement that is separate from, though sympathetic to, the Maoists – is routinely referred to as an overground wing of the CPI (Maoist). Its leader, Chhatradhar Mahato, now arrested and being held without bail, is always called a "Maoist leader". We all know the story of Dr Binayak Sen, a medical doctor and a civil liberties activist, who spent two years in jail on the absolutely facile charge of being a courier for the Maoists. While the light shines brightly on Operation Green Hunt, in other parts of India, away from the theatre of war, the assault on the rights of the poor, of workers, of the landless, of those whose lands the government wishes to acquire for "public purpose", will pick up pace. Their suffering will deepen and it will be that much harder for them to get a hearing.
Once the war begins, like all wars, it will develop a momentum, a logic and an economics of its own. It will become a way of life, almost impossible to reverse. The police will be expected to behave like an army, a ruthless killing machine. The paramilitary will be expected to become like the police, a corrupt, bloated administrative force. We've seen it happen in Nagaland, Manipur and Kashmir. The only difference in the "heartland" will be that it'll become obvious very quickly to the security forces that they're only a little less wretched than the people they're fighting. In time, the divide between the people and the law enforcers will become porous. Guns and ammunition will be bought and sold. In fact, it's already happening. Whether it's the security forces or the Maoists or noncombatant civilians, the poorest people will die in this rich people's war. However, if anybody believes that this war will leave them unaffected, they should think again. The resources it'll consume will cripple the economy of this country.
Last week, civil liberties groups from all over the country organised a series of meetings in Delhi to discuss what could be done to turn the tide and stop the war. The absence of Dr Balagopal, one of the best-known civil rights activists of Andhra Pradesh, who died two weeks ago, closed around us like a physical pain. He was one of the bravest, wisest political thinkers of our time and left us just when we needed him most. Still, I'm sure he would have been reassured to hear speaker after speaker displaying the vision, the depth, the experience, the wisdom, the political acuity and, above all, the real humanity of the community of activists, academics, lawyers, judges and a range of other people who make up the civil liberties community in India. Their presence in the capital signalled that outside the arclights of our TV studios and beyond the drumbeat of media hysteria, even among India's middle classes, a humane heart still beats. Small wonder then that these are the people who the Union home minister recently accused of creating an "intellectual climate" that was conducive to "terrorism". If that charge was meant to frighten people, it had the opposite effect.
The speakers represented a range of opinion from the liberal to the radical left. Though none of those who spoke would describe themselves as Maoist, few were opposed in principle to the idea that people have a right to defend themselves against state violence. Many were uncomfortable about Maoist violence, about the "people's courts" that delivered summary justice, about the authoritarianism that was bound to permeate an armed struggle and marginalise those who did not have arms. But even as they expressed their discomfort, they knew that people's courts only existed because India's courts are out of the reach of ordinary people and that the armed struggle that has broken out in the heartland is not the first, but the very last option of a desperate people pushed to the very brink of existence. The speakers were aware of the dangers of trying to extract a simple morality out of individual incidents of heinous violence, in a situation that had already begun to look very much like war. Everybody had graduated long ago from equating the structural violence of the state with the violence of the armed resistance. In fact, retired Justice PB Sawant went so far as to thank the Maoists for forcing the establishment of this country to pay attention to the egregious injustice of the system. Hargopal from Andhra Pradesh spoke of his experience as a civil rights activist through the years of the Maoist interlude in his state. He mentioned in passing the fact that in a few days in Gujarat in 2002, Hindu mobs led by the Bajrang Dal and the VHP had killed more people than the Maoists ever had even in their bloodiest days in Andhra Pradesh.
People who had come from the war zones, from Lalgarh, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Orissa, described the police repression, the arrests, the torture, the killing, the corruption, and the fact that they sometimes seemed to take orders directly from the officials who worked for the mining companies. People described the often dubious, malign role being played by certain NGOs funded by aid agencies wholly devoted to furthering corporate prospects. Again and again they spoke of how in Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh activists as well as ordinary people – anyone who was seen to be a dissenter – were being branded Maoists and imprisoned. They said that this, more than anything else, was pushing people to take up arms and join the Maoists. They asked how a government that professed its inability to resettle even a fraction of the 50 million people who had been displaced by "development" projects was suddenly able to identify 1,40,000 hectares of prime land to give to industrialists for more than 300 Special Economic Zones, India's onshore tax havens for the rich. They asked what brand of justice the supreme court was practising when it refused to review the meaning of "public purpose" in the land acquisition act even when it knew that the government was forcibly acquiring land in the name of "public purpose" to give to private corporations. They asked why when the government says that "the writ of the state must run", it seems to only mean that police stations must be put in place. Not schools or clinics or housing, or clean water, or a fair price for forest produce, or even being left alone and free from the fear of the police – anything that would make people's lives a little easier. They asked why the "writ of the state" could never be taken to mean justice.
There was a time, perhaps 10 years ago, when in meetings like these, people were still debating the model of "development" that was being thrust on them by the New Economic Policy. Now the rejection of that model is complete. It is absolute. Everyone from the Gandhians to the Maoists agree on that. The only question now is, what is the most effective way to dismantle it?
An old college friend of a friend, a big noise in the corporate world, had come along for one of the meetings out of morbid curiosity about a world he knew very little about. Even though he had disguised himself in a Fabindia kurta, he couldn't help looking (and smelling) expensive. At one point, he leaned across to me and said, "Someone should tell them not to bother. They won't win this one. They have no idea what they're up against. With the kind of money that's involved here, these companies can buy ministers and media barons and policy wonks, they can run their own NGOs, their own militias, they can buy whole governments. They'll even buy the Maoists. These good people here should save their breath and find something better to do."
When people are being brutalised, what "better" thing is there for them to do than to fight back? It's not as though anyone's offering them a choice, unless it's to commit suicide, like some of the farmers caught in a spiral of debt have done. (Am I the only one who gets the feeling that the Indian establishment and its representatives in the media are far more comfortable with the idea of poor people killing themselves in despair than with the idea of them fighting back?)
For several years, people in Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Jharkhand and West Bengal – some of them Maoists, many not – have managed to hold off the big corporations. The question now is, how will Operation Green Hunt change the nature of their struggle? What exactly are the fighting people up against?
It's true that, historically, mining companies have often won their battles against local people. Of all corporations, leaving aside the ones that make weapons, they probably have the most merciless past. They are cynical, battle-hardened campaigners and when people say, "Jaan denge par jameen nahin denge" (We'll give away our lives, but never our land), it probably bounces off them like a light drizzle on a bomb shelter. They've heard it before, in a thousand different languages, in a hundred different countries.
Right now in India, many of them are still in the first class arrivals lounge, ordering cocktails, blinking slowly like lazy predators, waiting for the Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) they have signed – some as far back as 2005 – to materialise into real money. But four years in a first class lounge is enough to test the patience of even the truly tolerant: the elaborate, if increasingly empty, rituals of democratic practice: the (sometimes rigged) public hearings, the (sometimes fake) environmental impact assessments, the (often purchased) clearances from various ministries, the long drawn-out court cases. Even phony democracy is time-consuming. And time is money.
So what kind of money are we talking about? In their seminal, soon-to-be-published work, Out of This Earth: East India Adivasis and the Aluminum Cartel, Samarendra Das and Felix Padel say that the financial value of the bauxite deposits of Orissa alone is $2.27 trillion (more than twice India's GDP). That was at 2004 prices. At today's prices it would be about $4 trillion.
Of this, officially the government gets a royalty of less than 7%. Quite often, if the mining company is a known and recognised one, the chances are that, even though the ore is still in the mountain, it will have already been traded on the futures market. So, while for the adivasis the mountain is still a living deity, the fountainhead of life and faith, the keystone of the ecological health of the region, for the corporation, it's just a cheap storage facility. Goods in storage have to be accessible. From the corporation's point of view, the bauxite will have to come out of the mountain. Such are the pressures and the exigencies of the free market.
That's just the story of the bauxite in Orissa. Expand the $4 trillion to include the value of the millions of tonnes of high-quality iron ore in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand and the 28 other precious mineral resources, including uranium, limestone, dolomite, coal, tin, granite, marble, copper, diamond, gold, quartzite, corundum, beryl, alexandrite, silica, fluorite and garnet. Add to that the power plants, the dams, the highways, the steel and cement factories, the aluminium smelters, and all the other infrastructure projects that are part of the hundreds of MoUs (more than 90 in Jharkhand alone) that have been signed. That gives us a rough outline of the scale of the operation and the desperation of the stakeholders.
The forest once known as the Dandakaranya, which stretches from West Bengal through Jharkhand, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, parts of Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra, is home to millions of India's tribal people. The media has taken to calling it the Red corridor or the Maoist corridor. It could just as accurately be called the MoUist corridor. It doesn't seem to matter at all that the fifth schedule of the constitution provides protection to adivasi people and disallows the alienation of their land. It looks as though the clause is there only to make the constitution look good – a bit of window-dressing, a slash of make-up. Scores of corporations, from relatively unknown ones to the biggest mining companies and steel manufacturers in the world, are in the fray to appropriate adivasi homelands – the Mittals, Jindals, Tata, Essar, Posco, Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton and, of course, Vedanta.
There's an MoU on every mountain, river and forest glade. We're talking about social and environmental engineering on an unimaginable scale. And most of this is secret. It's not in the public domain. Somehow I don't think that the plans afoot that would destroy one of the world's most pristine forests and ecosystems, as well as the people who live in it, will be discussed at the climate change conference in Copenhagen. Our 24-hour news channels that are so busy hunting for macabre stories of Maoist violence – and making them up when they run out of the real thing – seem to have no interest at all in this side of the story. I wonder why?
Perhaps it's because the development lobby to which they are so much in thrall says the mining industry will ratchet up the rate of GDP growth dramatically and provide employment to the people it displaces. This does not take into account the catastrophic costs of environmental damage. But even on its own narrow terms, it is simply untrue. Most of the money goes into the bank accounts of the mining corporations. Less than 10% comes to the public exchequer. A very tiny percentage of the displaced people get jobs, and those who do, earn slave-wages to do humiliating, backbreaking work. By caving in to this paroxysm of greed, we are bolstering other countries' economies with our ecology.
When the scale of money involved is what it is, the stakeholders are not always easy to identify. Between the CEOs in their private jets and the wretched tribal special police officers in the "people's" militias – who for a couple of thousand rupees a month fight their own people, rape, kill and burn down whole villages in an effort to clear the ground for mining to begin – there is an entire universe of primary, secondary and tertiary stakeholders.
These people don't have to declare their interests, but they're allowed to use their positions and good offices to further them. How will we ever know which political party, which ministers, which MPs, which politicians, which judges, which NGOs, which expert consultants, which police officers, have a direct or indirect stake in the booty? How will we know which newspapers reporting the latest Maoist "atrocity", which TV channels "reporting directly from ground zero" – or, more accurately, making it a point not to report from ground zero, or even more accurately, lying blatantly from ground zero – are stakeholders?
What is the provenance of the billions of dollars (several times more than India's GDP) secretly stashed away by Indian citizens in Swiss bank accounts? Where did the $2bn spent on the last general elections come from? Where do the hundreds of millions of rupees that politicians and parties pay the media for the "high-end", "low-end" and "live" pre-election "coverage packages" that P Sainath recently wrote about come from? (The next time you see a TV anchor haranguing a numb studio guest, shouting, "Why don't the Maoists stand for elections? Why don't they come in to the mainstream?", do SMS the channel saying, "Because they can't afford your rates.")
Too many questions about conflicts of interest and cronyism remain unanswered. What are we to make of the fact that the Union home minister, P Chidambaram, the chief of Operation Green Hunt, has, in his career as a corporate lawyer, represented several mining corporations? What are we to make of the fact that he was a non-executive director of Vedanta – a position from which he resigned the day he became finance minister in 2004? What are we to make of the fact that, when he became finance minister, one of the first clearances he gave for FDI was to Twinstar Holdings, a Mauritius-based company, to buy shares in Sterlite, a part of the Vedanta group?
What are we to make of the fact that, when activists from Orissa filed a case against Vedanta in the supreme court, citing its violations of government guidelines and pointing out that the Norwegian Pension Fund had withdrawn its investment from the company alleging gross environmental damage and human rights violations committed by the company, Justice Kapadia suggested that Vedanta be substituted with Sterlite, a sister company of the same group? He then blithely announced in an open court that he, too, had shares in Sterlite. He gave forest clearance to Sterlite to go ahead with the mining, despite the fact that the supreme court's own expert committee had explicitly said that permission should be denied and that mining would ruin the forests, water sources, environment and the lives and livelihoods of the thousands of tribals living there. Justice Kapadia gave this clearance without rebutting the report of the supreme court's own committee.
What are we to make of the fact that the Salwa Judum, the brutal ground-clearing operation disguised as a "spontaneous" people's militia in Dantewada, was formally inaugurated in 2005, just days after the MoU with the Tatas was signed? And that the Jungle Warfare Training School in Bastar was set up just around then?
What are we to make of the fact that two weeks ago, on 12 October, the mandatory public hearing for Tata Steel's steel project in Lohandiguda, Dantewada, was held in a small hall inside the collectorate, cordoned off with massive security, with an audience of 50 tribal people brought in from two Bastar villages in a convoy of government jeeps? (The public hearing was declared a success and the district collector congratulated the people of Bastar for their co-operation.)
What are we to make of the fact that just around the time the prime minister began to call the Maoists the "single largest internal security threat" (which was a signal that the government was getting ready to go after them), the share prices of many of the mining companies in the region skyrocketed?
The mining companies desperately need this "war". They will be the beneficiaries if the impact of the violence drives out the people who have so far managed to resist the attempts that have been made to evict them. Whether this will indeed be the outcome, or whether it'll simply swell the ranks of the Maoists remains to be seen.
Reversing this argument, Dr Ashok Mitra, former finance minister of West Bengal, in an article called "The Phantom Enemy", argues that the "grisly serial murders" that the Maoists are committing are a classic tactic, learned from guerrilla warfare textbooks. He suggests that they have built and trained a guerrilla army that is now ready to take on the Indian state, and that the Maoist "rampage" is a deliberate attempt on their part to invite the wrath of a blundering, angry Indian state which the Maoists hope will commit acts of cruelty that will enrage the adivasis. That rage, Dr Mitra says, is what the Maoists hope can be harvested and transformed into an insurrection.
This, of course, is the charge of "adventurism" that several currents of the left have always levelled at the Maoists. It suggests that Maoist ideologues are not above inviting destruction on the very people they claim to represent in order to bring about a revolution that will bring them to power. Ashok Mitra is an old Communist who had a ringside seat during the Naxalite uprising of the 60s and 70s in West Bengal. His views cannot be summarily dismissed. But it's worth keeping in mind that the adivasi people have a long and courageous history of resistance that predates the birth of Maoism. To look upon them as brainless puppets being manipulated by a few middle-class Maoist ideologues is to do them a disservice.
Presumably Dr Mitra is talking about the situation in Lalgarh where, up to now, there has been no talk of mineral wealth. (Lest we forget – the current uprising in Lalgarh was sparked off over the chief minister's visit to inaugurate a Jindal Steel factory. And where there's a steel factory, can the iron ore be very far away?) The people's anger has to do with their desperate poverty, and the decades of suffering at the hands of the police and the Harmads, the armed militia of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) that has ruled West Bengal for more than 30 years.
Even if, for argument's sake, we don't ask what tens of thousands of police and paramilitary troops are doing in Lalgarh, and we accept the theory of Maoist "adventurism", it would still be only a very small part of the picture.
The real problem is that the flagship of India's miraculous "growth" story has run aground. It came at a huge social and environmental cost. And now, as the rivers dry up and forests disappear, as the water table recedes and as people realise what is being done to them, the chickens are coming home to roost. All over the country, there's unrest, there are protests by people refusing to give up their land and their access to resources, refusing to believe false promises any more. Suddenly, it's beginning to look as though the 10% growth rate and democracy are mutually incompatible.
To get the bauxite out of the flat-topped hills, to get iron ore out from under the forest floor, to get 85% of India's people off their land and into the cities (which is what Chidambaram says he'd like to see), India has to become a police state. The government has to militarise. To justify that militarisation, it needs an enemy. The Maoists are that enemy. They are to corporate fundamentalists what the Muslims are to Hindu fundamentalists. (Is there a fraternity of fundamentalists? Is that why the RSS has expressed open admiration for Chidambaram?)
It would be a grave mistake to imagine that the paramilitary troops, the Rajnandgaon air base, the Bilaspur brigade headquarters, the unlawful activities act, the Chhattisgarh special public security act and Operation Green Hunt are all being put in place just to flush out a few thousand Maoists from the forests. In all the talk of Operation Green Hunt, whether or not Chidambaram goes ahead and "presses the button", I detect the kernel of a coming state of emergency. (Here's a maths question: If it takes 600,000 soldiers to hold down the tiny valley of Kashmir, how many will it take to contain the mounting rage of hundreds of millions of people?)
Instead of narco-analysing Kobad Ghandy, the recently arrested Maoist leader, it might be a better idea to talk to him.
In the meanwhile, will someone who's going to the climate change conference in Copenhagen later this year please ask the only question worth asking: Can we leave the bauxite in the mountain?

[Saorsa]

I'd suggest reading it on the original page, click on the link provided. I cbf going through and putting in paragraph spacing. This is an interesting article that sheds light on both the degree to which caste oppression permeates Indian society and how the members of oppressed castes are turning to the Naxalite struggle to change things.

http://www.mainstreamweekly.net/article1730.html






Musahar-Maoist Combination: Are the Poorest Asserting themselves in Bihar?

Sunday 1 November 2009, by A K Biswas (http://www.mainstreamweekly.net/auteur184.html)
The latest round of agrarian violence reported from Khagaria district’s Icharwa char under Alauli Police Station1 of Bihar, disturbing though it is, it seems, is a powerful attempt by the weakest to ultimately defend themselves by the last option open and/or available to them. The char land in the riverine has resulted in bloodshed: 16 deaths of backward caste members including children. The attackers were Musahars, Bihar’s most illiterate and deprived caste accounting for a two million plus strong army. They boasted of two per cent literacy till 1991. The media report indicated that they were egged on for assertion by the Maoists who have deeply penetrated in the State since sometime. This brings vivid memories of the era of mindless massacres in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s to the minds of watchers of Bihar’s agrarian violence. During these decades, the poor and the landless, mostly Dalits and tribals, suffered in particular without any hope for light at the far end of the tunnel. The exploitative infrastructure invariably belonged to the upper social echelons whereas their victims to the lowest end. The share of Musahars in the violence has been the most staggering.
The violence targeting the Santhals of a sleepy village Rupaspura in Purnea district on November 22, 1971 heralded the era of mass killings in Bihar, perhaps the most bloody in North India since independence. The victims were cheap migrant Santhal labourers, brought from Chota Nagpur (now Jharkhand) during the colonial days by the zamindars for land reclamation, aimed at ushering in a new era of cultivation. Many hired the Mundas and Oraons, besides Santhals, from sylvan Chota Nagpur, in scores of instances across Assam, Bengal and Bihar for the same purposes. The Commissioner for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, the nation’s constitutional watchdog, commented as hereunder on the Purnea carnage in his annual report for 1970-71:
An extremely unfortunate and shocking incident took place over harvesting of standing crop on 22 November, 1971 in the Purnea district of Bihar. A mob of 150 men attacked the Santhals in which 14 were killed and 45 houses were burnt down. Armed with guns and other lethal weapons the mob came in trucks, trailers and station wagons, surrounded the Santhal village; locked the doors of their houses from outside and set fire on them. Those who tried to flee from the inferno were shot dead right there. Many of them including women and children were burnt alive in the leaping fire of their own houses. The attackers inflicted grievous injuries on the Santhals by choppers and other sharp cutting weapons. Tractors loaded with dead bodies were despatched to far off places with an aim to destroy evidences.2
These few lines read as the script for repetitive mind-boggling future carnages the State was destined to witness till the dawn of the new millennium.
Musahars’ Massacre, a Ranveer Sena prelude to Holi in Bihar
The massacre at Khagaria on October 2, 2009 strangely synchronised with the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, the apostle of peace, a fact people might have noted with utter shock and dismay. But this appears as a pattern per se obtaining there in the land of Gautam Buddha, who got salvation under theBodhi tree in Gaya. On March 23, 1997, a hamlet witnessed a brutal carnage of eleven Musahar victims at Haibaspur, barely 25 kilometres off the State’s seat of authority at Patna. A batch of five-to-six Ranveer Sena men dropped in at that nondescript Musahartoli on the eve of Holi, a festival of colours engulfing all, rich and poor, high and low, wealthy and pauper in North India in particular. Posing as guests, the Ranveer Sena cadres had demanded drinks to mark the hospitality and revelries of Holi. The Musahars, too overwhelmed with the unexpected visit of their respectable high caste guests at night, did everything possible within their modest means to entertain them in their huts. At the end of the fun and frolics following bouts of home- brewed drinks, the visitors requested the unsuspected Musahars to accompany them for some distance and guide them out of their village. A dozen or so Musahars walked alongside their visitors in compliance, as desired. Half-a-kilometre away from their hamlet, the wolves in sheep’s clothing threw off their pretension, whipped off their sophisticated weapons and emptied them on the poor hospitable Musahars leading the unprovoked killers as their guides. The field with standing ripe golden wheat crop saw massacres of innocent men in the pre-dawn of the Holi in 1997. The full moon above flooded the entire landscape in glorious ecstasy that night of the bloodbath.
The savage killers made mockery of as well as disgraced India’s time-honoured teaching in hospitality: “atithi devo bhabah [guests are gods]”. The innocent Musahars paid the price for their implicit faith in it. Their atithis brought with them a price tag too dastardly to think with equanimity of mind. Will anybody offer hospitality to the atithi hereafter? The Musahars were suspected by those Ranveer Sena marauders as sympathisers of Naxals. And that earned them a gory lesson.
In an interview to The Times of India, June 13, 1999, the founder of the Ranveer Sena, Brahmeshwar Sharma, in the backdrop of the aforesaid and other carnages, arrogantly declared that Dalits, including women and children, would be annihilated because they provided shelter to “the Naxalite squads”. When asked why children and women were targeted, he quipped: “Hanuman in his fights against Ravana set fire to the whole of Lanka. It is fair if the fight against the demons involves destroying the wombs.” The unborn Dalit children even in their mothers womb were not safe if the Sena had its way. This was the ideological conviction and agenda of the Ranveer Sena. Hitler would have envied the private army’s philosophy of annihilation.
The Ranveer Sena had committed such enormity in 27 instances claiming 262 Dalit men, women and children between April 1995 to September 2000. The following Table-1 shows their gory records.
Some of the days of Ranveer Sena actions were ominous. The massacre on January 25 in Shankarbigha in Jehanabad district, for instance, synchronised with the nation’s Republic Day. It was calculated to send out a chilling message to the Dalits. On Republic Day Indians across the subcontinent and abroad were greeted with banner headlines in their newspapers of the gory massacre in Bihar that morning. Nobody could miss it but nobody rose to the occasion to clamp down on the perpetrators of the crimes it warranted. The Ekwari carnage on December 24, 1996 coincided with the birthday of Jesus Christ, the greatest apostle of humanity. Similarly occasions to celebrate festivals such as Diwali, Raksha Bandhan, Durga Puja etc. too were sometimes black days for the Dalits in some corner or the other of the country.
Table-13
Carnages Committed by Sena Massacres in Bihar
(April 1995 to September 2000)
Sl.No. Date Place and district No. of casualty 1. April 4, 1995 Khopira, Bhojpur 3 2. July 25, 1995 Sarthua, Bhojpur 6 3. February 7, 1996 Chandi, Bhojpur 4 4. March 9, 1996 Pathalpur, Bhojpur 3 5. April 22, 1996 Nanaur, Bhojpur 5 6. May 5, 1996 Nadhi, Bhojpur 3 7. May 9, 1996 Nadhi, Bhojpur 3 8. May 19, 1996 Nadhi, Bhojpur 3 9. May 25, 1996 Morath, Bhojpur 3 10. July 11, 1996 Bathanitola, Bhojpur 22 11. November 26, 1996 Purhara, Bhojpur 4 12. December 12, 1996 Khanet, Bhojpur 5 13. December 24, 1996 Ekwari, Bhojpur 6 14. January 10, 1997 Khanet, Bhojpur 4 15 January 31, 1997 Machil, Jahanabad 3 16. March 23, 1997 Haibaspur, Patna 10 17. March 28, 1997 Akhopur, Jehanabad 4 18. April 10, 1997 Ekwari, Jehanabad 10 19. November 3, 1997 Khadasin, Jehanabad 8 20. November 22, 1997 Katesar, Jehanabad 6 21. December 1, 1997 Lakshman Bathe, Jehanabad 58 22. July 3, 1998 Aiyara, Jehanabad 3 23. January 25, 1999 Shankarbigha, Jehanabad 23 24. February 10, 1999 Narayanpur, Jehanabad 11 25 April 21, 1999 Sendani, Gaya 12 26 June 16, 2000 Mianpur, Aurangabad 35 27 September 10, 2000 Dumariyan, Bhojpur 6 Total toll of 27 massacres 262
The Ranveer Sena was never considered as the gravest threat to internal security as the Maoists/Naxalites now. When a dominant section oppresses, exploits and dehumanises helpless lowly communities it is rarely perceived as an affair serious enough to warrant an immediate powerful intervention. But in the case of self-defence even on the part of the deprived, decimated and discriminated against onslaughts from their aggressors, the language and interpretation assume extraordinary significance! State power justifies strong measures in the name of peace, order and development. No development with deprived millions at the social bottom can be lasting. India can, for developing the top edifice, allow its bottom to be destroyed at its own peril.
Making of a Rebel: Case of an Ordinary Man, Ram Pravesh Baitha
The sleepy town Madhuban, a block headquarters in East Champaran, on June 24, 2005 was startled by simultaneous raids on seven sites, for example, the house of the local Member of Parliament, Sitaram Singh [an ex-Minister too], his petrol pump, Madhuban Police Station, Block Development Office as well as the office of the Anchal Adhikari, a branch each of the State Bank of India and Central Bank of India there. Approximately seven hundred young men and women, it is said, had travelled on foot, rickshaw or tonga to that town situated close to the Nepal border, without anybody’s notice. Their operations on those sites were performed with unfailing precision. The thana was the scene of a gun battle claiming three casualties on both sides, the police as also Naxalites. The operations started at around 12.30 midday and ended by an hour-and-half, if not less. The Maoists melted away after the action in the crowd and again nobody could identify them nor knew their whereabouts. The security forces and district police chased them after they had left. The chase resulted in nothing spectacular to boast.
People, for the first time, in Madhuban as also in corridors of power elsewhere got to hear the name of one faceless Ram Pravesh Baitha. A Naxalite or a Maoist, he was associated with the Madhuban raids. Son of a poor washerman of Madhuban, Ram Pravesh was an ordinary village boy, who had no dreams his neighours could envy. He did not set his ambitions atop the Himalayas. He had graduated from a local college. The resultant elation propelled him to aspire for a job that would bring happiness or end to the miseries of his indigent family. But this did not go well with the local environment marked by feudal intolerance and dominance. The Madhuban Babus in the colonial era were a force to reckon with. Ram Pravesh Baitha was summoned by some of them, beaten up befittingly as his temerity warranted and paraded round the village for flaunting his college education. Ram Pravesh Baitha might be the first Dalit of his village to achieve the distinction as a graduate, which was celebrated in their humble house with friends. In any case, he did not expect humiliation and physical torture at the hands of his feudal neighbours. He might have expected, on the contrary, a pat on his back for his achievement, howsoever meagre it might have been.
Time, wise men say, is a great healer. Slowly he forgot the shabby treatment from his high-brow villagers. Ram Pravesh later enrolled in the MA class in the Baba Saheb Bhimrao Ambedkar Bihar University, Muzaffarpur and in due course cleared it. Simultaneously he was trying to get a job, adequate enough to eke out a living by his education. He had applied here, there and everywhere he was eligible to apply. He faced interview boards in some. In one instance, a few of his friends secured jobs for which he too had tried his luck. He had some hope along with them to make it but did not receive any appointment letter at the end of the day.
Actually Ram Pravesh had qualified himself and was selected for the offer of job in one case. His appointment letter, however, was not delivered when it reached the Madhuban Post Office. By a quirk of coincidence or manipulation, not uncommon in rural India, one and all employees of the Madhuban Post Office belonged to the caste of his tormentors. They thought it proper not to deliver the letter even though it was issued from a government office. The appointment letter was torn into shreds and thrown into the trash can with the contempt a dhobi, Scheduled Caste in Bihar merited! However, Ram Pravesh, sooner or later, came to know of the fate of his call letter to join the service. That sealed his fate. Cheated, he charted a new, perilous path though by common perception. And he did not look back. A Maoist leader today, Ram Pravesh is said to command the whole of North Bihar.
The Prime Minister has termed the Naxalite activities as the single largest threat to the internal security of India. Many in the corridors of power have sound logic as also justification to call them a menace. The security forces all over the country have directed attention to them for their suppression and elimination even by ruthless means.
The security forces’ suspicion of sympathy for the Naxalites and/or Maoists will fall on Dalits and tribals in the main akin to the aforementioned Ranveer Sena ideologue and founder. But the victims are defenceless victims. West Bengal is already a witness to this apprehension. Let it be admitted, without apprehension of contradiction, the country lacks effective grievance redressal mechanisms, much less avenues for upward mobility for the poor, deprived and discriminated. Their stories of empowerment through knowledge and enlightenment backed up by hype is largely aimed to impress the overseas nations, lest India gets a bad name in international forums. The ground realities are certainly not rosy as the hype claims. In development strategies aimed to uplift the Dalit and the tribal, one can discern the fossilised social gulf and stratification that are being attempted to perpetuate.
Dr B.R. Ambedkar was prophetic in his analysis of the Hindu society as well as mind:
The effect of caste on the ethics of the Hindus is simply deplorable. Caste has killed public spirit. Caste has destroyed the sense of public charity. Caste has made public opinion impossible. A Hindu’s public status is his caste. His loyalty is restricted to his caste. Virtue has become caste-ridden and morality has become caste-bound. There is no sympathy to the deserving. There is no appreciation of the meritorious. There is no charity to the needy. Suffering as such calls for no response. There is charity but it begins with the caste and ends with the caste. There is sympathy but not for men of other caste......A Brahman will follow a leader only if he is a Brahman, Kayastha if he is a Kayastha and so on. The capacity to appreciate merit in a man apart from his caste does not exist in a Hindu. There is no appreciation of virtue but only when the man is a fellow caste man.4
The blind Indian hypocrisy for merit, in this context, is best explained by highlighting the case of a meritorious Dalit youth. At the turn of the millennium, Manoharlal’s son cleared the B.Tech examination in Computer Sciences from a prestigious college—REC, Kurukshetra—and was rearing to go for the campus interviews. He was keen not only because he could muster a the sixth position in his college but also due to the hype of good positions available in the Information Technology sector. Big companies came to the campus for interviews. He found his name in none of the selections. All his classmates, inferior in grades as well as IQ, were picked up though in the campus.
Manoharlal, an assistant in the Chandigarh Secretariat of Haryana, was at a loss. He started introspection of his efforts to give the best of education to his son. He educated him in the best of Chandigarh’s schools and colleges and his son landed in the prestigious engineering college in the most-sought-after area, Computer Sciences. Manoharlal called for his son and had a look at the format of CV filled by him and supplied to all companies for campus interview. The career chart of his son was fantastic and he stood a good rank in B.Tech too. He knew that government jobs are fast disappearing and private sector is the emerging area for jobs. But why wasn’t he selected? After several consultations with friends and well-wishers, Manoharlal was advised to delete their caste, Scheduled Caste, from his son’s CV. Lo and behold! All the companies who later interviewed Manoharlal’s son picked him up. I have culled it from The Bhopal Document of the Government of Madhya Pradesh, 20025 to drive home the point that the merit of the Scheduled Castes and/or Scheduled Tribes, count nothing. Top honchos of the India Inc., on camera, shout day in and day out that merit alone counted to them, not the caste of a candidate. But the reality is different.
And now 300 million Indians, who exceed the total US population, are exposed to the danger of genocide from the nation’s security forces. The police and paramilitary offensive underway, aided by the Indian Air Force, aimed to neutralise as well as eradicate the internal security menace, may prove very costly in the end. Robust political will favouring identical determination for eradication of discrimination, inequality and deprivation engulfing the Dalit and tribal is awfully lacking. Rather, the forces of darkness are being nursed by defeating all ameliorative projects and schemes to benefit the deprived and discriminated through huge misuse and burgeoning irregularities in fund use laced by intractable corruption that involves the high and the mighty in the corridors of power, making it impossible to cure the cancer.
References
1. The Times of India, Kolkata, October 3, 2009.
2. Commissioner for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, 20th Report for 1970-71 (in Hindi), p. 152 translated by this writer.
3. Louis, Prakash, People Power: The Naxalite Movement in Central Bihar, Wordsmiths, 2002, Delhi, p. 234.
4. B.R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste, Vol. 1, W & S, pp. 56-57.
5. The Bhopal Document, p. 11.
The author is a former Vice-Chancellor, B.R. Ambedkar University, Muzaffarpur, Bihar. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected]

[chegitz guevara]

Awesome column in the Guardian about the Maoists in India, it disproves this whole Eurocentric Trotskyite notion

Really, comments like this aren't helpful.

[red cat]

Maoist country: Men cook, women patrol (http://indianvanguard.wordpress.com/2009/11/01/maoist-country-men-cook-women-patrol/)






Posted by indianvanguard2010 on November 1, 2009
http://indianvanguard.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/cul.jpg?w=330&h=216 (http://indianvanguard.wordpress.com/2009/11/01/maoist-country-men-cook-women-patrol/cul-2/)

The Laheri ambush on October 8, in which 17 policemen were killed, intelligence sources say, was led by Tarakka, alias Vimala Chandra Sidam, an educated rebel from Kistapur village in Jimalgatta area.


Tarakka’s photographs in the police records show a simple, good-looking woman, quite unlike the hardened image of a resolute guerrilla fighter that one would expect. Her husband, Bhupati, a central committee member, is a technology graduate. Police sources claim they had a love marriage.
A surrendered Maoist in Gadchiroli says that the couple is strongly committed to the Maoist cause and that the duo are idols among the youth in the territory they command. He adds, “In the dalams, there is no discrimination between women and men. Men can be asked to cook and women can be asked to do patrolling. So there’s nothing peculiar about women commanders or cadres.”


In many cases, women follow their Maoist husbands to the rebel camp. The classic case is of Diwakar, a top Maoist rebel: his wife Jyoti joined the cadres after their marriage. Jyoti, who is commander of the Tippagarh dalam, was Diwakar’s first cousin. Their adivasi village had ruled their marriage as improper and ostracised them. A disgruntled and angry Diwakar joined a local Maoist group and rose to higher ranks. Jyoti married him, and his cause.


“Women cadres naturally attract more girls into their fold,” says Chandra, a former Maoist who surrendered with her husband after fighting for the rebels’ cause for 18 years. “We were disheartened by the party’s new policies,” says her husband, whose surrender in 2008 was considered a big setback for the South Gadchiroli division of the Maoists. The two live in isolation, away from their families. “They won’t spare us if we return to our villages,” says her husband, Murali.
The trigger for women taking to arms, Chandra says, is the continued physical and economic exploitation of the adivasi community. “There are many girls who join the Maoists to avenge the exploitation by outsiders and the police,” he says. “The poor adivasi can’t approach any system — political or judicial — where they can plead their plight or seek redress against injustice. Maoists have that system, so the villagers naturally support them.” Chandra says that if the administration and the police approach the villages with honesty and softness, things will change.

‘Women get quick justice’

In the Red territory, Maoists follow a time-tested process of initiating a young villager into their fold. “It starts with regular interactions between the Maoist cadres and children,” says Chandra. The Maoist leaders keep an eye on potential recruits during their visits to villages, she says. “They try to convince us to join the armed revolution, and any incident, such as a policeman beating an adivasi for information after an incident, becomes the push.”

“I was impressed with their talk,” says another surrendered woman Maoist, who lives with her husband near Gadchiroli. “They spoke of revolution, justice and equity to women.” A CPI (Maoist) pamphlet pasted in several villages across Gadchiroli on International Women’s Day reads: “No revolution without winning the class struggle. No freedom to women without revolution.”

The powerful infusion of ideology, says a police officer with years of experience with Maoism, can’t be undermined. “There is a political vacuum, which the police can’t fill. If a woman complains of her exploitation to the police, she may not even get heard, forget getting any justice. All these years after independence, this has not changed. In contrast, if she approaches the Maoists for justice, she gets it immediately. This appeals to her.”

No private life

Several women and men in the ranks get married, but don’t raise children. “It’s not necessary that the husband and wife will remain in the same unit,” says Chandra, who got married when she was a soldier with the Maoists. “Though couples are not expected to raise children, it’s not a rule.”
Recent trends indicate female cadres raising children. Police sources say that after a recent encounter at Saunsari village, they recovered medicines that are generally prescribed during pregnancy. The second indicator: A woman Maoist killed near Murumgaon earlier this month, was found, in the post-mortem, to be pregnant.

At any rate, there is no private life in a dalam, says Chandra’s husband, only a few private moments. “How can you raise children when it’s a war every day?”

Names of surrendered Maoists have been changed to protect identity DNA (http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_daughters-of-mao_1305566)



(http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_daughters-of-mao_1305566)

(http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_daughters-of-mao_1305566)

[red cat]

Centre to launch anti-naxal operations in tri-junctions (http://indianvanguard.wordpress.com/2009/11/01/centre-to-launch-anti-naxal-operations-in-tri-junctions/)




Posted by indianvanguard2010 on November 1, 2009
The tri-junctions which have been identified for the offensive are Andhra Pradesh-Maharashtra-Chhattisgarh; Orissa-Jharkhand-Chhattisgarh and West Bengal-Jharkhand- Orissa.

As Maoists menace continued to be unabated, the government is all set to launch the much-awaited full-fledged anti-naxal operations at three different areas, considered tri-junctions of worst naxal-affected states.

The tri-junctions which have been identified for the offensive are Andhra Pradesh-Maharashtra-Chhattisgarh; Orissa-Jharkhand-Chhattisgarh and West Bengal-Jharkhand- Orissa.
Home Ministry sources said around 40,000 paramilitary personnel will assist the respective state police forces during the operations that will be launched soon.

Almost 7,000 specially-trained troops in jungle warfare are also part of the total strength of the central forces to be deployed for the task.
The Cabinet Committee on Security had already approved the government’s new plan to counter Maoists under which the affected states will have an effective coordination and the police will take a lead role.

The anti-naxal plan also includes Rs 7,300 cr package for unleashing developmental works in areas cleared off the Left-wing extremists.
Officials feel that naxal menace, which now spread to 40,000 sq km area across the country, can be wiped out in a period of 12 to 30 months.
Around 25 lakh people live in areas where Maoists are now having a free run.
The naxalites have killed more than 2,600 people, including civilians, in 5,800 incidents in last three years.
The highest number of incidents of violence has taken place in four worst-affected states — Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand and Orissa — where 2,212 people lost their lives from January 2006 to August this year.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had described Left-wing extremism as the gravest internal security threat and called for a nuanced strategy to tackle the naxal violence.
Home Minister P Chidambaram has said naxalism has spread to 20 states with over 2,000 police station areas in 223 districts partially or substantially affected. The Hindu (http://beta.thehindu.com/news/national/article41634.ece?homepage=true)



(http://beta.thehindu.com/news/national/article41634.ece?homepage=true)

[red cat]

Jharkhand: Produce Maoist leader Ashok Mahato before the court (http://indianvanguard.wordpress.com/2009/10/27/jharkhand-produce-maoist-leader-ashok-mahato-before-the-court/)





Posted by indianvanguard2010 on October 27, 2009

RANCHI: Police on Monday denied charges that security forces have arrested Ashok Mahato, a member of the CPI(Maoist) South Chotanagpur Zonal Committee, and started preparing to combat the bandh called by the Maoists from Tuesday midnight.

Samarji, spokesperson of the South Chotanagpur Zonal Committee, on Sunday released a note to the press, demanding that mahaot be produced in court and before media as they feared that he may have been killed by police in a fake encounter.

The press note claimed that Mahato was arrested on October 2, under Sonahato police station in Ranchi but police have neither produced him in court nor before the media, raising questions about police’s actual intention.
Denying that Mahato had been arrested, Ranchi senior superintendent of police Praveen Kumar, on the other hand, said: "We have produced whoever was arrested on Sunday before the media."
Two persons, Prahalad Mahato and Mangla Kumari with a 9mm pistol and levy posters, were arrested from the Garupiri forest area on the border of Angara PS and Namkum PS here on Saturday.

Two others, Kaleshwar Mahato and Surendar Mahato, were detained but later released after interrogation and proper verification by police as they had no links to the Maoists.
Kumar, however, said they are prepared for the bandh and preparations have been done to prevent any untoward incident in the district. "We have asked police in the rural areas to tighten vigil and regular patrolling will be done on the national and state highways," said Kumar.

Meanwhile, police on Monday intensified search in the forest areas of Angara, Namkum and Rahe blocks to look for the Maoists injured in the police encounter early on Sunday.
"We have specific information through our sources and villagers that at least four Maoists have succumbed to bullet injuries. But their bodies were taken away by the other members of the squad while one body has been recovered," the SSP said.TOI (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/ranchi/Cops-deny-Maoist-charge-of-arrest-brace-for-Red-bandh/articleshow/5165889.cms)



(http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/ranchi/Cops-deny-Maoist-charge-of-arrest-brace-for-Red-bandh/articleshow/5165889.cms)

[red cat]

A ‘liberated zone’ that’s ‘Op Area 1’ (http://indianvanguard.wordpress.com/2009/11/01/a-%e2%80%98liberated-zone%e2%80%99-that%e2%80%99s-%e2%80%98op-area-1%e2%80%99/)





Posted by indianvanguard2010 on November 1, 2009
http://indianvanguard.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/green-hunt.gif?w=330&h=226 (http://indianvanguard.wordpress.com/2009/11/01/a-%e2%80%98liberated-zone%e2%80%99-that%e2%80%99s-%e2%80%98op-area-1%e2%80%99/green-hunt-3/)


The tribal district of Gadchiroli, bordering Chhattisgarh, is one of the most troubled frontiers of the war against Maoists. Some northern parts of the district have been under the red banner since the mid-1980s. They fall in what the Maoists call a ‘liberated zone’.

Now, to reclaim these hilly tracts, the state has assembled a 4,600-strong force. Last week, they took up positions along the 20 police stations dotting the northern border. It’s what the administration is calling “OA1”, Operation Area One.Caught between the battlelines are the tribal people, who feel trapped.

Kothuram Kumoti, a 35-year-old tribal from Tawetola, a small hamlet in northern Gadchiroli where Maoists gunned down 16 policemen on May 21, says several villagers have been interrogated and tortured by the police, a reason the police doesn’t get much help here. “I was thrashed when I refused to remove trees felled by the Naxals to block a road,” he says. “In the battle between the police and Naxals, the biggest casualties are the tribals.”

Kothuram’s apprehension is borne out by a pamphlet recently distributed in the name of Anand Gedam, divisional secretary of the CPI (Maoist). It calls on the local tribals to form village committees “to resist state power” and asks them to be prepared for an armed confrontation.

However, Manoj Sharma, additional SP in charge of the operation, says, “We don’t want a bloodbath.” And then adds: “If they confront us, we will hit back.”

A senior CRPF official, one of the co-ordinators of the central forces, says the coming operation isn’t part of the joint action among the neighbouring states proposed by the Union home ministry. It is, instead, a step before. “We are studying the topography and will be able to launch the operation with the help of local guides by November-end,” he says, adding that this step will take at least three months.

None of this puts the locals at ease. Mainabai Wadde, the 38-year-old sarpanch of Laheri, where Maoists killed 17 policemen this month, says, “People are gripped by fear. Everyone goes to bed by 6 pm and the villages seem like graveyards in the dark.” HT (http://www.hindustantimes.com/A-liberated-zone-that-s-Op-Area-1/H1-Article1-471409.aspx)

(http://www.hindustantimes.com/A-liberated-zone-that-s-Op-Area-1/H1-Article1-471409.aspx)

[ls]

Relating to the earlier points of India being 'semi-feudal'/'feudal' or whatever, the comments section in this ICC article is well worth reading: http://en.internationalism.org/node/2766.

[red cat]

Chidambarambabu… you shun the path of violence: Kishanji (http://indianvanguard.wordpress.com/2009/11/02/chidambarambabu%e2%80%a6-you-shun-the-path-of-violence-kishanji/)





Posted by indianvanguard2010 on November 2, 2009

Kishanji peace sermon to PC

A STAFF REPORTER

Calcutta, Nov. 1: Maoist leader Kishanji today said his outfit did not believe in violence and asked the Union home minister to shun confrontation, seeking to crank up a public relations war in the run-up to a planned security offensive.

In a four-page statement, the guerrilla leader said: “Chidambarambabu… you shun the path of violence. Violence has never been an agenda of our organisation and it will never be. You ask your Congress party and others like the Trinamul Congress and the CPM to shun violence.”

The guerrillas have killed 58 people in West Midnapore alone in the past four months.

Asked earlier about the killings, the Maoists’ military wing chief had said: “The organisation has punished those who betrayed the poor. The government had failed to bring justice to them, we did.”

Kishanji had also claimed that he was considered “soft” within the organisation and had killed “only 50 per cent of those who should have been”.

On Friday, Union home minister P. Chidambaram had offered to include issues like land acquisition, forest rights and development in talks if the Maoists “abjured” violence — a last-ditch bid at peace before a full-blown offensive.

Operation Green Hunt is set to be launched against the rebels in Chhattisgarh and it is likely to cover several states by the year-end. Delhi had earlier stressed the need for the rebels to lay down arms for any dialogue.

Kishanji’s reaction to the offer was ambiguous. He said: “At the same time, you are describing us as the prime enemy and threat to country’s internal security. Now you decide what will be the agenda if we hold a dialogue with the government.”

A senior home ministry official said in Delhi the Maoists had been speaking about “state-sponsored terrorism and violence in different languages at different points of time”.
Almost confirming what the official said, a guerrilla leader called Azad issued a sta- tement in Hyderabad today. “The armed struggle against the oppression of the poor and the tribals is the backbone of our philosophy,” he said, adding that the CPI (Maoist) had the stamina to withstand the combined attack of all forces.

Kishanji said Chidambaram had “rightly ruled out the CPM’s allegations” about the guerrillas’ nexus with Mamata Banerjee.However, he added that Mamata had her own “armed cadres”. “What is your reaction to the thousands of armed cadres of your cabinet colleague Mamata Banerjee?” he asked. TT (http://www.telegraphindia.com/1091102/jsp/bengal/story_11688662.jsp)



(http://www.telegraphindia.com/1091102/jsp/bengal/story_11688662.jsp)

[red cat]

First phase of Operation Green Hunt begins (http://indianvanguard.wordpress.com/2009/11/02/first-phase-of-operation-green-hunt-begins/)

http://indianvanguard.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/cartoon.jpg?w=372&h=292 (http://indianvanguard.wordpress.com/2009/11/02/first-phase-of-operation-green-hunt-begins/cartoon/)





Posted by indianvanguard2010 on November 2, 2009

CHANDRAPUR: The first phase of the much talked about concerted operation against the Maoist rebels’ jungle bases — Operation Green Hunt —has
begun in the Naxal-infested Gadchiroli district. As many as 18 companies of central paramilitary forces (CPMF) have been deployed in key Naxal infested areas identified for the offensive, close to the tri-junction of Maharashtra-Andhra Pradesh-Chhattisgarh.

These CPMF commandos have initiated search operations in coordination with the local security forces in their respective areas, sources in Gadchiroli police have said. The 1,800 CPMF commandos arrived in Gadchiroli on Wednesday last and were subsequently positioned in places identified for their deployment. “The Operation Green Hunt will be quite opposite to the one carried out in Lalgarh, West Bengal. The forces will penetrate Naxaldominated areas, clear and sanitise the locations and hold the territory so that other government agencies could move in to initiate developmental work.

The operations are expected to last around two years, an ample time frame for winning the hearts and minds of local people through developmental activities,” claimed police sources. A CPMF company each has been positioned at 18 bases in the core jungle areas, and they have initiated anti-Naxal search operations in coordination with special action group (SAG) and anti-Naxal special action squads (C-60) of the state security agency.

The companies of Commando Battalion for Resolute Action (CoBRA), specially trained in jungle warfare, are also likely to move into the district in the later stages of the operation. The deployment of helicopters for transportation and rescue operations of troops is also in the offing, sources claimed.

The Naxal movement in Gadchiroli had taken root in 1980 and so far 276 civilians have been killed by Naxalites. As many as 138 cops have laid down their lives while 108 Naxals have been killed in encounters till now. In 2009 alone, 51 cops have been killed in four separate ambushes. Finally, it appears that the time has come for the security forces to launch an assault on the Maoist rebels. TOI (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/nagpur/First-phase-of-Operation-Green-Hunt-begins/articleshow/5187541.cms)

(http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/nagpur/First-phase-of-Operation-Green-Hunt-begins/articleshow/5187541.cms)

[ls]

I don't see what's so hard about using the edit function..

[red cat]

I don't see what's so hard about using the edit function..

Done.

[red cat]

November-issue of People's March

http://bannedthought.net/India/PeoplesMarch/PM2009-11.pdf



http://indianvanguard.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/pm-nove-2009-issue-1101-copy2.jpg?w=331&h=431 (http://sites.google.com/site/vanguardorg/PmNove2009Issue11.pdf?attredirects=0&d=1)

[pranabjyoti]

Hello Comrades,
http://wrathofhephaestus.wordpress.com/
Please go to the above thread and you will find that even in Pakistan, there are peasant revolutionary activity going on. They formed an alliance and against the all powerful tyrant class of Pakistan, the military.

[Matty_UK]

Hello Comrades,
http://wrathofhephaestus.wordpress.com/
Please go to the above thread and you will find that even in Pakistan, there are peasant revolutionary activity going on. They formed an alliance and against the all powerful tyrant class of Pakistan, the military.

That's awesome news. It would be wonderful if the strength of the Naxalites inspired a Maoist movement in Pakistan and Afghanistan, sending the resistance there in a more radical direction. Am I right in thinking that there's a fair few Maoists in Afghanistan? Wishful thinking perhaps, but it's a possibility, particularly if the Naxals become significant enough to bury the notion that communism is dead, and revive it as the ideology of anti-imperialism.

[red cat]

Hello Comrades,
http://wrathofhephaestus.wordpress.com/
Please go to the above thread and you will find that even in Pakistan, there are peasant revolutionary activity going on. They formed an alliance and against the all powerful tyrant class of Pakistan, the military.

I know that there are some good trade-union activities in Pakistan. But is there any proper communist party to guide the masses?
In the 70's and the 80's there were two tendencies, one pro-Soviet and the other Maoist. Both of these were advancing armed struggle and later the pro-Soviet party corrected their line and merged into the Maoist party. But their resistance was crushed and what now remains is the Mazdoor Kisan Party, which is probably lacking a revolutionary line.

Any rectification or updates?

[ls]

Hello Comrades,
http://wrathofhephaestus.wordpress.com/
Please go to the above thread and you will find that even in Pakistan, there are peasant revolutionary activity going on. They formed an alliance and against the all powerful tyrant class of Pakistan, the military.

Well, there have been peasant movements in Pakistan in the past, it doesn't really surprise me thus.

I'm sure there are some (albeit smaller) in Sri Lanka and Myanmar too.

[red cat]

Relating to the earlier points of India being 'semi-feudal'/'feudal' or whatever, the comments section in this ICC article is well worth reading: http://en.internationalism.org/node/2766.

The claim that the countryside is home to "some petty feudal lords", is false. The feudal lords are present almost everywhere, and organize on a national level to provide support for the parliamentary parties and participate in elections. The claim that capital plays an important role in exploiting peasants is true. However, here capital collaborates with feudalism and its exploitation is mostly in the sense that it binds the peasant to a piece of land and forces him to hand over most of the produce. The land-less laborers are the ones belonging to lower castes. They are treated like animals and are supressed by the government forces and the private armies of the feudal lords.

[ls]

Do you wanna provide a source to that, you are arguing with people on that article who live in India themselves.

Oh yeah and I don't think you read all the comments properly, it's not as simple as you're making out.

[red cat]

Do you wanna provide a source to that, you are arguing with people on that article who live in India themselves.

Oh yeah and I don't think you read all the comments properly, it's not as simple as you're making out.

Guess what? The members of the CPI(Maoist) also live in India. Check out what they have to say in their websites.

[ls]

Guess what? The members of the CPI(Maoist) also live in India. Check out what they have to say in their websites.

I have checked out what they have to say and it mostly disinterests me, you can link something or not I don't really care, but your claim is completely redundant and untrue, 'semi-feudal' is an amaterialist joke of a word to use.