The Maoists in India and Nepal....terrorists or freedom fighters? [Archive]

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RadioRaheem84

28th December 2009, 17:12

To see revolutionary action in Nepal and India is great and I am happy that the oppressed classes in both nations are struggling for economic independence but what is the truth behind both of these groups. I am sure that they're separate in goal and nature but I keep hearing reports of child soldiers, terrorist plots, killing of civilians, beheadings, and so on. Is any of this true? What can we decipher as media propaganda and truth?

Muzk

28th December 2009, 17:23

Nothing, yet. I havn't heard a thing of all this in my country's media anyways.

They will probably start a new CCCP lol

bailey_187

28th December 2009, 18:58

redwinter

28th December 2009, 20:17

People, let's remember who the real terrorists are: the imperialists. The imperialist ruling class of the USA currently reigns supreme as number one enemy of the people of the world (though there are plenty of runners-up). Whether it's the millions that they've killed and those they're killing as I type this, the institutionalization of a worldwide network of secret torture chambers, recruiting thousands of children in high schools to join their terrorist military gang to go across the world and kill people, runnning a society that objectifies women in a million different ways, or having the mere audacity to call itself the "leader of the free world" -- any one of these things would be reason enough to sweep this system from the face of the earth.

Sorry to go a little "off topic" here but people need to contextualize this shit.

Want to finish with a quote from Frederick Douglass, 1852:

“What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?

“I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.

“To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.

“There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.

“Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.”

Monkey Riding Dragon

28th December 2009, 23:46

Bailey's response provides all the clarification that should be required and redwinters contextualized it. Surely we can stand with our comrades in India in their yes genuine fight for a different and much better future in which we all have our own role to play.

(As for our Nepalese "comrades", I cannot honestly say I identify with their current line, but I do think they deserve to be defended against these sort of ridiculous, slanderous attacks.)

RadioRaheem84

29th December 2009, 01:40

(As for our Nepalese "comrades", I cannot honestly say I identify with their current line, but I do think they deserve to be defended against these sort of ridiculous, slanderous attacks.)

Why do you disagree with them?

Sand Castle

29th December 2009, 06:00

child soldiers- IIRC they both have age restrictions but they are not always followed. Anyway, child soldiers are not conscripted.

terrorist plots- well they dont blow themselves up in the middle of busy markets. Although the ambushing and shooting of police is classed as terrorism which they do do so....

beheadings - I think one policeman was beheaded who was taken as a POW by the CPI(M) but it has been condemned by leadership as called a mistake.

This is correct. I'm reading a book about the Nepali Maoists right now. It's called "Himalayan People's War" by Michael Hutt. It is a few years old, but it's still worth reading.

Even the Royal Nepal Army (old name) recruited teenagers. I think teenagers are old enough to know what they're doing. Michael Hutt's book never mentions the Maoists forcing children to fight, unlike Joseph Kony and the LRA.

As for killing civilians, well, the Nepali government during the insurgency days would always blame the Maoists for that. It is usually the capitalist-feudalist police that kills civilians. Amnesty International has even reported this. Civilians often get caught in the crossfire between Maoists and police, there isn't much that can be done about that. The Maoists would also kill or arrest their leading political opponents during the war. Not average people, the leaders. Since these politicians are the ones leading the anti-insurgency campaigns and exploiting the people, killing/arresting them is no different than attacking George W. Bush, in my opinion.

Patchd

29th December 2009, 06:11

With all due respect, this thread belongs in the Politics (http://www.revleft.com/vb/politics-f14/index.html) forums, I will move the thread there when I wake up so those interested in carrying on the discussion will see this post and will know where to go to find it.

EDIT: Ok, thread moved.

Vladimir Innit Lenin

29th December 2009, 16:52

Guerilla warfare in a less developed country such as Nepal, where there is a less certain political structure, shall we say, as opposed to the 'liberal democracies' that have been more or less stable in the West for an umber of years, is a tactic which one can defend. The Capitalists will call it terrorism, obviously, to blacken the name of what is an opposition movement. However, it is clear that what is going on in Nepal and some provinces in India is genuine Maoism. Not that I am a Maoist myself, but one must understand that if you decry all guerilla warfare as 'terrorist' and such like, then nothing will ever get achieved in less developed countries.

RadioRaheem84

29th December 2009, 16:56

NaxalbariZindabad

29th December 2009, 19:13

I once assisted to a conference given by a guy who went on the International Road Building Brigade (http://rwor.org/a/033/building-future-nepal.htm) in 2005.

He said that during the people's war, pretty much all children in Maoist-controlled areas received rudimentary training concerning explosives, more precisely they were trained to recognize different types of landmines, so they would not step on them or try to touch them, and instead report them to a nearby adult/Maoist. According to this guy giving the conference, that's where a great deal of the "child soldiers" or "forced child soldiers" rumor came from... :rolleyes:

Another thing he said was that, many Western journalists who met PLA fighters thought many fighters were underage, while in fact the journalists were underestimating their age simply because some peoples in Nepal have different morphologies, sometimes shorter than "Western standards", and hence may appear younger then their real age to foreigners.

Lastly, yea there were surely a few people underage in the PLA. In a guerrilla army with tens of thousands of fighters plus hundreds of thousands of militia supporters during a vicious civil war, it may be hard to keep tabs on that all the time, and I'm not sure if all recruits had photo ID to present. Plus, if a seventeen-year-old grew up in misery in Nepal, supports communism, had his family killed by the RNA etc., I guess it would be a bit unfair to refuse him if he wants to join the PLA, at least for logistical, non-combat tasks. You get the idea. But in any way, there were never massive underage recruitment, much less forced recruitment. When you hear "Maoists put children on the frontline" this is all monarchist liars propaganda relayed by shitty imperialist media.

NaxalbariZindabad

29th December 2009, 19:13

By the way (and I know we shouldn't take example on imperialist armies, I'm just saying this to expose imperialist double standards) imperialist armies recruit underage people. The Canadian army for example recruits sixteen-years-old.

From the Canadian army recruiting website:

BASIC ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS

Be a Canadian citizen;
# Citizens of another country who have landed immigrant (Permanent Resident) status in Canada may also be considered for enrolment when the CF has need of their skill, when the position cannot be filled by a Canadian citizen, and if the national interest would not be prejudiced. However, only under exceptional circumstances will authority be granted to enrol a citizen of another country.

Be 17 years of age (with parental/guardian consent) or older;
# junior level Military College applicants must be 16 years of age;
# you may be enrolled in the Reserves providing you are 16 years of age (with parental/guardian consent);

# Meet the minimum education requirements for your entry plan and/or occupation;this can vary from Grade 10 (Sec III in Quebec) for combat arms occupations to a university degree for the Direct Entry Officer entry plan.

Monkey Riding Dragon

29th December 2009, 19:26

Originally posted by RadioRaheem84:
Why do you disagree with them [the Nepalese "Maoists"]?Because since late 2005, they've turned to an eclectic approach to the resolving of line questions. This crucial mistake has led them to abandon their revolutionary people's war (which they had been winning!) in favor of "tactically" establishing and moreover actually joining and heading up a bourgeois republic (rather than a people's republic). Having been predictably expelled from said government, they now exist in a state of disarray, with revisionism of all sorts running rampant throughout the party. The party leader, Prachanda, for example, has recently explained that he is "not an atheist". As far as I can tell, there is little hope in this situation, though of course we should be fervently struggling with them over what is the problem and what is the solution.

RadioRaheem84

29th December 2009, 19:36

But what were their aims to begin with? I am really new to the Maoist concept. How does it differ from Marxist-Leninism besides it being more agrarian than for the urban proletariat? Do they support farm collectives? What?

Monkey Riding Dragon

29th December 2009, 19:47

NaxalbariZindabad

29th December 2009, 20:48

child soldiers, terrorist plots, killing of civilians, beheadingsYou forgot that Maoists are also cannibals.

(source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_India_%28Maoist%29#Using_cannib alism_to_strike_terror_among_tribals)

Cooler Reds Will Prevail

29th December 2009, 22:02

Maoism is a qualitative further development of Leninism. I attempted to very briefly sum up the core, most distinct components of Maoism here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/maoism-t121714/index.html?p=1590664#post1590664), as did several other people. In terms of what a correct line would have looked like in an applied form in Nepal, the Maoist revolutionaries should have continued to pursue their people's war through to its conclusion, with the seizure of power and the establishment of a people's republic that would work through a transitory process of new democratic revolution that would open the door to socialism.

You're forgetting what the objective reasons were for the end of the people's war. Remember what happened in Peru? The PCP fought to "strategic equilibrium" with the state and eventually lost, largely (in my opinion) because they were never able to build any presence in the cities (along with the bad jefatura line, etc.). Other than their base area of Raucana, they had very little urban presence outside of Ayacucho. The Nepali Maoists realized this and saw that as long as they kept up people's war they could never build a base in Kathmandu, which is integral to any seizure of power in that country. The entry into the political process was a way of giving 'legitimacy' to the party so that they could build in Kathmandu without having to be underground. Consequently, the UCPN(M) is in a much better position to take power than they were 3 or 4 years ago.

The situation in Nepal is much more complex than just a two-line struggle that some revisionist clique of the party is winning. I think the entry into the political system was done intentionally to discredit the system among those on the fringes of the revolution who felt that a compromise solution among the UML, NC, and UCPN(M) was best.

This is a good piece on Nepal from a couple months ago that basically sums up my views on it: http://thefirecollective.org/Nepal/a-revolution-at-the-brink-stand-with-nepal.html

Saorsa

29th December 2009, 23:10

Because since late 2005, they've turned to an eclectic approach to the resolving of line questions.

Not true. Frankly I much prefer the approach the Maobadi have taken to two-line struggles to that traditionally taken by Marxist-Leninists. They have put unity-struggle-unity into practice, and in the line struggles between Kiran/Gajurel and Prachanda/Bhattarai, they have chosen to merge their positions and seek compromises that allow the party to emerge stronger and more united than ever, rather than trying to either silence dissent or split like ML and Trotskyist parties usually do.

This approach is also more in line with that of the Bolsheviks for most of their existence. When Zinoviev and Kamenev came out on the eve of the insurrection openly revealing the Bolshevik's plans and denouncing them, calling instead for a coalition govt of the left parties, Lenin didn't call for them to be expelled or silenced. The Bolsheviks always tolerated internal dissent, disagreement and was very much a multi-tendency party. And the Maoists in Nepal have been very clear on this - a party without struggle is a dead party.

This crucial mistake has led them to abandon their revolutionary people's war (which they had been winning!) This is an uninformed and highly misleading statement. People's War is by it's very nature more than a military struggle, it is a struggle on every front imaginable, involving every section of the masses that can be mobilised. Tactics have to change depending on the situation, and the Maobadi have been very clear on the reasons for their change in tactics. It's only dogmatic RCP types like yourself who refuse to listen.

http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2008/04/09/gaurav-the-revolution-in-nepal/ (http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2008/04/09/gaurav-the-revolution-in-nepal/)

Peoples War from Strategic Defensive

So this was the situation and the People’s War developed according to the theory of comrade Mao Zedong. The People’s War started from strategic defensive, without arms and without an army and it developed to the higher state, from strategic equilibrium to strategic offensive. In the course of 10 years of People’s War we have developed a very strong People’s Liberation Army. Because we are in the concluding stage of strategic offensive, the task of the revolution is to seize central political power, a countrywide seizure of power. Hence, we had to capture Kathmandu, which is the capital of Nepal. We had to capture the capital and the major towns as well as some district headquarters.

Our People’s Liberation Army is right at the gate of Kathmandu valley. If you have ever gone to Kathmandu, there is one place called Tangot, it is the main gate to enter Kathmandu. Here there was a big police station, in which we annihilated almost two dozen armed forces without any loss from our side, and so we captured Tangot. Right after that we entered into the process of this negotiation.

Many revolutionaries, many Maoists and our comrades have raised one question. You reached the gate of Kathmandu, why was it necessary to enter into the peace process? That is a big question.

War to the Gates — Why Then Change Tactics?

True, we had liberated 80% of the countryside and we had reached up to the gate of Kathmandu. But in order to seize countrywide power, for countrywide victory, our strength was not enough. The Royal Nepalese Army (RNA) was confined to their barracks, they could seldom come out. Whenever they were carrying out actions against our forces, they could just suddenly come out of their barracks, go 4-5 kilometres away from the barracks and encircle a village, and kill each and every person they found before returning. The next day they would propagate that they had killed a number of Maoists from the People’s Liberation Army.

Actually, they were not able to kill our force. They killed the common people. That was their practice for almost one year, since one year back. On the one hand, the RNA could not actually inflict any defeat on our People’s Liberation Army. On the other hand, we were not able to capture their big barracks. They were well fortified, especially with the help of US military experts. They used land mines to surround the barracks, and they used barbed wire. We tried many times but we failed to capture their barracks. That was the situation militarily. We were in a stagnant position militarily. We were trying to make a breakthrough but were not able to capture the barracks, because they were well fortified, and they had lots of modern weapons supplied by India and also helicopters. We were unable to achieve further military victory.

That was the military situation and so far as the political situation is concerned we enjoyed the support of the urban people, but it was not to the level that was required for general insurrection. The support was there, but finally to capture the city and the capital it was necessary to carry out insurrection, revolt. The support provided by the masses was not at a sufficient level in the cities including Kathmandu, because the masses were divided. Some supported Nepali Congress, other people supported other parties and the level of support of the masses was not enough that was required to achieve the final victory. So this was the political situation.

A Plan for Broadening Political Support

So in the midst of this situation we decided that in order to get further support from the masses our party should take some other initiatives to gather further strength. Otherwise the war would remain in a stagnant situation. Neither the enemy could defeat us, nor could we defeat the enemy. That was the situation. For how long could we continue this situation? War has its own dynamics, it cannot stay still for a long time, for example, if we cannot win victory, the enemy will eventually be able to defeat us. We had to take a new initiative. According to the dynamics of war you have to find a new way to maintain a dynamic situation, we should not be in a static situation in a war for long.

In those circumstances our party decided to take different steps, other political manoeuvres. Our party worked out alternative political tactics of going to the negotiations. Right from the beginning we explained People’s War as a total war. Sometimes there is a wrong notion among Maoists that People’s War is simply the war in which we confront the opposite army, the confrontation between two armies, but this is not true. People’s War is different. People’s War is a total war. We are confronting the enemy on all fronts, including the military front as well as the political front, economic front and also cultural front. On different fronts we have to fight the war, so it is a total war.

in favor of "tactically" establishing and moreover actually joining and heading up a bourgeois republic (rather than a people's republic).

The Maobadi have also been very clear, and if you paid any attention to their actual lines rather than parroting the bourgeois media and it's slanderous attacks on them you'd know this, that the stage of consolidating the bourgeois democratic republic has ended. The struggle is now for a People's Republic, and the principal contradictions are now with the comprador-bourgeoisie at home and Indian expansionism and US imperialism abroad.

http://krishnasenonline.org/main/news.php?pname=Theredstar&id=51&cata_name=Opinion (http://krishnasenonline.org/main/news.php?pname=Theredstar&id=51&cata_name=Opinion)

And this, from Comrade Bhattarai's recent and incredibly important interview with the WPRM, genuine Maoists who practice internationalism, unlike the RCP. I doubt you've read it, and I urge you to read it in full.

There are some ambiguous features in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. Our understanding, the revolutionary party’s understanding, was that after abolishing the monarchy and establishing a bourgeois democratic republic, the proletarian party would take the initiative and launch forward the struggle towards New Democratic Revolution. We knew the bourgeois forces, after the abolition of the monarchy, would try to resist, and our main contradiction then would be with the bourgeois democratic parties. This we had foreseen. So we have not said that after the abolition of the monarchy we’ll stop there. We never said that. What we have said is that we would align with the bourgeois democratic parties to abolish the monarchy, and after the abolition of the monarchy then the contention would be between the bourgeois forces and the proletarian forces. A new field of struggle would start. That was clearly stated in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, the subsequent interim constitution and other documents we passed.

After the Constituent Assembly elections, when our party emerged as the largest force and we abolished the monarchy, there was a lot of enthusiasm among the masses of the people. Our party’s tactical line had been correctly implemented. That gave a tremendous force to the basic masses of the people and our support greatly increased. For the time being we cooperated with the interim government also, because by participating in that coalition government we thought we could work within the bureaucracy, within the army, within the police and within the judiciary, in order to build our support base through those state structures, which would help us for future revolutionary activities. With that in mind we participated in the coalition government. After the abolition of the monarchy, when the main contradiction would start with the bourgeois democratic forces, then our struggle took a new turn.

After April 2009 [when Prachanda resigned from government], that phase of the Constituent Assembly and implementation of the bourgeois democratic republic was more or less complete. Our understanding is to now carry on the struggle forwards to complete the New Democratic Revolution. So again we made a tactical shift, showing that from now on our major fight would be with the bourgeois democrat parties who are backed by imperialism and the expansionist forces. With this thinking our party left the government and now we are focusing on the mass movement, so that now we could really practice what we have been preaching. That means the fusion of the strategy of PPW and the tactic of general insurrection. What we have been doing since 2005 is the path of preparation for general insurrection through our work in the urban areas and our participation in the coalition government.

But what one should not forget was that we had never ever surrendered the gains of the PPW, what we had gained during the ten years of struggle. We had formulated the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), we had our base areas, we had a lot of mass support, and all this we have been able to preserve. But we have not been able to convey to our comrades outside the country that the gains of the People’s War were never surrendered. The PLA is still with us, and the arms we collected during that war are still with us within the single-key system, monitored by the United Nations team, but basically the key is with us and the army is with us and we have never surrendered. This shows we have not abandoned the path of PPW. What we have done is suspended that part of the activity for some time and focused more on the urban activities so that we could make a correct balance between the military and political aspects of struggle. After some time we will be able to combine both aspects of PPW and general insurrection to mount a final insurrection to capture state power. We would like to stress that we are still continuing in the path of revolution, but the main features we tried to introduce were to make a fusion between the theory of PPW and the tactic of general insurrection. After coming to the peaceful phase I think whatever confusion there was has been mitigated and people realise we are still on the revolutionary path.

Now we are preparing for the final stage of the completion of the New Democratic Revolution. In a few months when the contradiction will sharpen between the proletarian and bourgeois forces, maybe there will be some intervention from the imperialist and expansionist forces. During that time we may again be forced to have another round of armed clashes. Our party is already aware of that and we have decided to again focus on the basic masses of the people both in urban and rural areas. To strengthen those mass bases we have formed the United National People’s Movement, which will be preparing for both struggle in the urban areas and to strengthen our mass base in the countryside. In the decisive stage of confrontation with the reactionary forces we could again combine our bases in the rural areas and our support in the urban areas for a final assault against the enemy to complete the revolution.

I would like to say we have never abandoned PPW, the only thing is that there has been a tactical shift within the strategy. This is one point. The other point is that being a Maoist we believe in continuous revolution. Revolution never stops. Even when one stage is completed, immediately the new stage should be continued. Only that way can we reach socialism and communism. That is a basic tenet of Maoism. Being a Maoist, this reasoning of continuous revolution can never be abandoned. We are still in the course of PPW, though the tactics have shifted according to the nature of the time. But there is a confusion in the international community of proletarian forces, and we would like to clarify this, but I think this thing can be better done in practice than in words. Anyhow we are confident we can convince our comrades who have some doubts about our activities that we are still pursuing the path of revolution. We will complete the revolution in a new way and we have to show that revolution is possible even in the 21st century. And Nepal can be a model of revolution in the 21st century.

This crucial mistake has led them to abandon their revolutionary people's war (which they had been winning!) This is an uninformed and highly misleading statement. People's War is by it's very nature more than a military struggle, it is a struggle on every front imaginable, involving every section of the masses that can be mobilised. Tactics have to change depending on the situation, and the Maobadi have been very clear on the reasons for their change in tactics. It's only dogmatic RCP types like yourself who refuse to listen.

http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2008/04/09/gaurav-the-revolution-in-nepal/

Peoples War from Strategic Defensive

So this was the situation and the People’s War developed according to the theory of comrade Mao Zedong. The People’s War started from strategic defensive, without arms and without an army and it developed to the higher state, from strategic equilibrium to strategic offensive. In the course of 10 years of People’s War we have developed a very strong People’s Liberation Army. Because we are in the concluding stage of strategic offensive, the task of the revolution is to seize central political power, a countrywide seizure of power. Hence, we had to capture Kathmandu, which is the capital of Nepal. We had to capture the capital and the major towns as well as some district headquarters.

Our People’s Liberation Army is right at the gate of Kathmandu valley. If you have ever gone to Kathmandu, there is one place called Tangot, it is the main gate to enter Kathmandu. Here there was a big police station, in which we annihilated almost two dozen armed forces without any loss from our side, and so we captured Tangot. Right after that we entered into the process of this negotiation.

Many revolutionaries, many Maoists and our comrades have raised one question. You reached the gate of Kathmandu, why was it necessary to enter into the peace process? That is a big question.

War to the Gates — Why Then Change Tactics?

True, we had liberated 80% of the countryside and we had reached up to the gate of Kathmandu. But in order to seize countrywide power, for countrywide victory, our strength was not enough. The Royal Nepalese Army (RNA) was confined to their barracks, they could seldom come out. Whenever they were carrying out actions against our forces, they could just suddenly come out of their barracks, go 4-5 kilometres away from the barracks and encircle a village, and kill each and every person they found before returning. The next day they would propagate that they had killed a number of Maoists from the People’s Liberation Army.

Actually, they were not able to kill our force. They killed the common people. That was their practice for almost one year, since one year back. On the one hand, the RNA could not actually inflict any defeat on our People’s Liberation Army. On the other hand, we were not able to capture their big barracks. They were well fortified, especially with the help of US military experts. They used land mines to surround the barracks, and they used barbed wire. We tried many times but we failed to capture their barracks. That was the situation militarily. We were in a stagnant position militarily. We were trying to make a breakthrough but were not able to capture the barracks, because they were well fortified, and they had lots of modern weapons supplied by India and also helicopters. We were unable to achieve further military victory.

That was the military situation and so far as the political situation is concerned we enjoyed the support of the urban people, but it was not to the level that was required for general insurrection. The support was there, but finally to capture the city and the capital it was necessary to carry out insurrection, revolt. The support provided by the masses was not at a sufficient level in the cities including Kathmandu, because the masses were divided. Some supported Nepali Congress, other people supported other parties and the level of support of the masses was not enough that was required to achieve the final victory. So this was the political situation.

A Plan for Broadening Political Support

So in the midst of this situation we decided that in order to get further support from the masses our party should take some other initiatives to gather further strength. Otherwise the war would remain in a stagnant situation. Neither the enemy could defeat us, nor could we defeat the enemy. That was the situation. For how long could we continue this situation? War has its own dynamics, it cannot stay still for a long time, for example, if we cannot win victory, the enemy will eventually be able to defeat us. We had to take a new initiative. According to the dynamics of war you have to find a new way to maintain a dynamic situation, we should not be in a static situation in a war for long.

In those circumstances our party decided to take different steps, other political manoeuvres. Our party worked out alternative political tactics of going to the negotiations. Right from the beginning we explained People’s War as a total war. Sometimes there is a wrong notion among Maoists that People’s War is simply the war in which we confront the opposite army, the confrontation between two armies, but this is not true. People’s War is different. People’s War is a total war. We are confronting the enemy on all fronts, including the military front as well as the political front, economic front and also cultural front. On different fronts we have to fight the war, so it is a total war.

in favor of "tactically" establishing and moreover actually joining and heading up a bourgeois republic (rather than a people's republic). The Maobadi have also been very clear, and if you paid any attention to their actual lines rather than parroting the bourgeois media and it's slanderous attacks on them you'd know this, that the stage of consolidating the bourgeois democratic republic has ended. The struggle is now for a People's Republic, and the principal contradictions are now with the comprador-bourgeoisie at home and Indian expansionism and US imperialism abroad.

http://krishnasenonline.org/main/news.php?pname=Theredstar&id=51&cata_name=Opinion

And this, from Comrade Bhattarai's recent and incredibly important interview with the WPRM, a group of genuine Maoists who practice internationalism, unlike the RCP. I doubt you've read it, and I urge you to read it in full.

There are some ambiguous features in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. Our understanding, the revolutionary party’s understanding, was that after abolishing the monarchy and establishing a bourgeois democratic republic, the proletarian party would take the initiative and launch forward the struggle towards New Democratic Revolution. We knew the bourgeois forces, after the abolition of the monarchy, would try to resist, and our main contradiction then would be with the bourgeois democratic parties. This we had foreseen. So we have not said that after the abolition of the monarchy we’ll stop there. We never said that. What we have said is that we would align with the bourgeois democratic parties to abolish the monarchy, and after the abolition of the monarchy then the contention would be between the bourgeois forces and the proletarian forces. A new field of struggle would start. That was clearly stated in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, the subsequent interim constitution and other documents we passed.

After the Constituent Assembly elections, when our party emerged as the largest force and we abolished the monarchy, there was a lot of enthusiasm among the masses of the people. Our party’s tactical line had been correctly implemented. That gave a tremendous force to the basic masses of the people and our support greatly increased. For the time being we cooperated with the interim government also, because by participating in that coalition government we thought we could work within the bureaucracy, within the army, within the police and within the judiciary, in order to build our support base through those state structures, which would help us for future revolutionary activities. With that in mind we participated in the coalition government. After the abolition of the monarchy, when the main contradiction would start with the bourgeois democratic forces, then our struggle took a new turn.

After April 2009 [when Prachanda resigned from government], that phase of the Constituent Assembly and implementation of the bourgeois democratic republic was more or less complete. Our understanding is to now carry on the struggle forwards to complete the New Democratic Revolution. So again we made a tactical shift, showing that from now on our major fight would be with the bourgeois democrat parties who are backed by imperialism and the expansionist forces. With this thinking our party left the government and now we are focusing on the mass movement, so that now we could really practice what we have been preaching. That means the fusion of the strategy of PPW and the tactic of general insurrection. What we have been doing since 2005 is the path of preparation for general insurrection through our work in the urban areas and our participation in the coalition government.

But what one should not forget was that we had never ever surrendered the gains of the PPW, what we had gained during the ten years of struggle. We had formulated the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), we had our base areas, we had a lot of mass support, and all this we have been able to preserve. But we have not been able to convey to our comrades outside the country that the gains of the People’s War were never surrendered. The PLA is still with us, and the arms we collected during that war are still with us within the single-key system, monitored by the United Nations team, but basically the key is with us and the army is with us and we have never surrendered. This shows we have not abandoned the path of PPW. What we have done is suspended that part of the activity for some time and focused more on the urban activities so that we could make a correct balance between the military and political aspects of struggle. After some time we will be able to combine both aspects of PPW and general insurrection to mount a final insurrection to capture state power. We would like to stress that we are still continuing in the path of revolution, but the main features we tried to introduce were to make a fusion between the theory of PPW and the tactic of general insurrection. After coming to the peaceful phase I think whatever confusion there was has been mitigated and people realise we are still on the revolutionary path.

Now we are preparing for the final stage of the completion of the New Democratic Revolution. In a few months when the contradiction will sharpen between the proletarian and bourgeois forces, maybe there will be some intervention from the imperialist and expansionist forces. During that time we may again be forced to have another round of armed clashes. Our party is already aware of that and we have decided to again focus on the basic masses of the people both in urban and rural areas. To strengthen those mass bases we have formed the United National People’s Movement, which will be preparing for both struggle in the urban areas and to strengthen our mass base in the countryside. In the decisive stage of confrontation with the reactionary forces we could again combine our bases in the rural areas and our support in the urban areas for a final assault against the enemy to complete the revolution.

I would like to say we have never abandoned PPW, the only thing is that there has been a tactical shift within the strategy. This is one point. The other point is that being a Maoist we believe in continuous revolution. Revolution never stops. Even when one stage is completed, immediately the new stage should be continued. Only that way can we reach socialism and communism. That is a basic tenet of Maoism. Being a Maoist, this reasoning of continuous revolution can never be abandoned. We are still in the course of PPW, though the tactics have shifted according to the nature of the time. But there is a confusion in the international community of proletarian forces, and we would like to clarify this, but I think this thing can be better done in practice than in words. Anyhow we are confident we can convince our comrades who have some doubts about our activities that we are still pursuing the path of revolution. We will complete the revolution in a new way and we have to show that revolution is possible even in the 21st century. And Nepal can be a model of revolution in the 21st century.

And below is more information on their actual line, taken from a document a Maoist leader published on one of their websites recently documenting the outcome of their debates about how to move forward.

1.a. People\\\'s Federal
Republic- Our party has reached to the conclusion that a new concept about
the republic is necessary. According to it, the party has taken
a decision to use People\\\'s Republic in place of Democratic Republic. This, in
reality, is only the decision that is/will be able to take the political crisis
to a solution. Because, the problems and the crisis that are increasing in the
country day by day are mainly the out come of the present state power, state
machinery or the bourgeois republic;
though there are other secondary reasons. The expectation of the people for
emancipation is not possible until and unless the drastic change in the state
system is brought.

It is a
true reality that the establishment of the republic is an important historical
phenomenon. However, it was compulsory
that the establishment of republic had to arouse some of the important queries
and they had. Specially, after the establishment of the republic, the primary
questions like who would be the owner of the republic, whom the republic should
serve and what will be the characteristics of republic, that are obvious.

Our party had considered the democratic republic as a transitional
republic (neither bourgeoisie nor the people’s). It meant that the emphasis
would be given to transfer the transitional republic into People’s Republic and
establish the people as the owner of the republic. Our party made efforts with
its hard work from the declaration of the republic to the constitutional action
taken over the then Army-Chief Rukmangad Katawal by the elected government.
Many struggles were held, however, the effort became fruitful due to the
Imperialist, Expansionist and their lackeys. Rather, the declared republic has
lost its transitional character and has adopted bourgeois character after the
interference of the step of the President, building of a puppet government and
the foreign intervention. Bourgeois class has been the owner of this republic.
The republic, instead of being the republic of the people (mainly the peasants
and the workers), has been changed into the republic of handful comprador
capitalist and the feudal lords. There will be no security of the rights of the
people rather there will be repression over the rights of the people. By
viewing this, the conclusion of the political programme taken by our party
about the bourgeois republic and the given slogan to establish Peoples Republic instead of it is crystal clear
and correct.

I can provide further information if you like to show what their actual line is on the bourgeois democratic republic that has arisen since they succeeded in abolishing the monarchy, and I can provide further information on their explanation for why they have changed their tactics. You, as a militarist and a dogmatist, cannot seem to understand what the MLM conception of revolution is, and instead assume it to be seizure of power through a linear series of military victories. As Bhattarai rightly points out, in his explanation of their new tactics, 'if you don’t take note of the existing balance of forces, both politically and militarily in the country and outside, firstly it will be difficult to capture state power and secondly even after capturing state power it will be difficult to sustain it.'

You want revolution to happen in a straight line, with plenty of quotes from your favourite members of the Marxist pantheon being thrown about and all the revolutionary party's plans laid out for everyone to see. Luckily for the people of Nepal and indeed the whole world, the American RCP and it's members are not in charge of the Nepali revolution. I still find it hilarious though that in your 'polemic' against the Maobadi your party urged them to adopt Avakian's new synthesis as a solution to all their problems! :lol:Which ideological development has had more succeess and been tested against the conditions more succesfully, the RCP's 'New Synthesis' or the Maobadi's Prachanda Path?

Having been predictably expelled from said government, they now exist in a state of disarray, with revisionism of all sorts running rampant throughout the party. This is a highly arrogant statement to make, not to mention a completely inaccurate one. First of all, they were not expelled. Prachanda resigned, in a move that came as a shock to the Nepali media and most of the Nepali political establishment, who had never seen a politician willingly relinquish power before! The participation in the government, as has been made clear, was a tactical move on the Maobadi's part to weaken the state structure from within and expose to the masses in practice, before their open eyes, that change cannot come from within the halls of parliament. Avakian and the other dogmatists can write articles that nobody reads all they want about how it requires revolutionary mass action to radically change society and that the ruling class will never allow change to take place peacefully. This is Marxism ABC, and Marxist intellectuals like ourselves know this in our headsw. But the Maobadi have gone a step further, and have shown to all Nepalis, even to the most illiterate uneducated peasant or labourer, that change cannot come through parliament. Their participation in the government, their attempts to push forward their revolutionary programme, their efforts to break the power of the feudalist military institution and put it under the control of the people, an effort they took in full knowledge that it would be unsuccesful, has clearly shown to the toiling masses of Nepal that the establishment in their country will not allow change.

The struggle in Nepal at the moment revolves around the drafting of a new constitution. Everything rests upon this, the Constituent Assembly exists for that purpose alone and the politics of the nation are consumed by this question. What is a constitution? A constitution, as the Maobadi put (http://krishnasenonline.org/main/news.php?pname=Theredstar&id=51&cata_name=Opinion) it, is "the basic law of the nation. This makes law on the form of the state, system of leadership, fundamental rights of the people, sovereignty of the nation etc."

A struggle around the drafting of a new constitution is not just some bourgeois war of words. It is a struggle around how everything should be, a struggle around who should power in society and how they should exercise it. It is a struggle that necessitates the drafting of a new social contract, and thus triggers a determined resistance from those who benefit from the current arrangement. The struggle over a new constitution in Nepal is a struggle between radically different visions of society - the Maobadi's "People's Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal", and the status-quoists "Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal". The word "People's" is an important one, as it sums up the difference between the two visions. The Maoists want a radically democratic, decentralised system of government in which the workers and peasants hold political power and in which the rights to food, shelter, employment, healthcare, basic freedoms etc are constitutionally guaranteed, and where society is organised in such a way as to ensure these constitutional guarantees are met.

The reactionaries and status-quoists oppose all this, and seek to preserve the existing state of affairs with some cosmetic changes. Recently (http://www.thehimalayantimes.com/fullNews.php?headline=Few+takers+for+Maoist+propos als++&NewsID=216819) the Constitutional Committees of the Constituent Assembly made their final votes (http://www.nepalnews.com/main/index.php/news-archive/1-top-story/3086-constitutional-committee-finalises-key-provisions-in-new-constitution-through-voting-.html) on the various proposals (http://www.thehimalayantimes.com/fullNews.php?headline=Contentious++constitutional+ +concerns+put+to++vote%2C+settled&NewsID=217381) put forward. (http://www.myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=13284)The Maoists put forward most of the proposals, and almost every one they put forward was defeated. They don't hold an absolute majority in parliament (although a leader of the Nepali Congress recently stated (http://www.kantipuronline.com/2009/12/24/National/India-Koirala-behind-Maoists-rise-Khadka/305054/) that if elections were held tomorrow the Maoists could win up to a two-thirds majority while his own party would face serious losses!). What they do have though, is veto power over the consitution. It requires a 2/3 majority to pass, and the Maoists have 40% of the Constituent Assembly. Not a single word can be passed without their approval, and as far as I can see they have no intention of allowing a status-quo constitution to be passed. Their threats to declare the constitution from the streets are not empty ones, and they are not insignificant ones. It is highly likely that the deadline for passing the constitution early next year will pass, and then shit's really going to hit the fan. There will be calls to dissolve the CA, to impose presidential rule backed up by the military, and everything from the Interim Constitution to the Comprehensive Peace Accords will be thrown into doubt.

So the struggle over the constitution is not an inconsequential one. It is a life and death struggle which has the attention of millions of Nepalis, and it is a struggle between two visions of two very, very different worlds.

Revisionism is not running rampant throughout the party. Their commitment to revolution and capturing state power is as firm as ever, and the Maobadi are working under the operative principle of 'strategic firmness, tactical flexibility'. To attack the Maobadi for changing their tactics and being flexible and pragmatic in their approach is not only ridiculous, it is fundamentally anti-Leninist. As Lenin said in his classic work, 'Left-Wing Communism':
"To carry on a war for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie, a war which is a hundred times more difficult, protracted and complex than the most stubborn of ordinary wars between states, and to renounce in advance any change of tack, or any utilisation of a conflict of interests (even if temporary) among one’s enemies, or any conciliation or compromise with possible allies (even if they are temporary, unstable, vacillating or conditional allies)—is that not ridiculous in the extreme? Is it not like making a difficult ascent of an unexplored and hitherto inaccessible mountain and refusing in advance ever to move in zigzags, ever to retrace one’s steps, or ever to abandon a course once selected, and to try others? ...
(http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch08.htm)

(http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch08.htm)
...The more powerful enemy can be vanquished only by exerting the utmost effort, and by the most thorough, careful, attentive, skilful and obligatory use of any, even the smallest, rift between the enemies, any conflict of interests among the bourgeoisie of the various countries and among the various groups or types of bourgeoisie within the various countries, and also by taking advantage of any, even the smallest, opportunity of winning a mass ally, even though this ally is temporary, vacillating, unstable, unreliable and conditional. Those who do not understand this reveal a failure to understand even the smallest grain of Marxism, of modern scientific socialism in general. Those who have not proved in practice, over a fairly considerable period of time and in fairly varied political situations, their ability to apply this truth in practice have not yet learned to help the revolutionary class in its struggle to emancipate all toiling humanity from the exploiters. And this applies equally to the period before and after the proletariat has won political power. " (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch08.htm)

The Western revolutionary left urgently needs to study this work again and come to grips with Lenin's arguments in it. Lenin was above all a brilliant tactician, as was Mao after him, and one of the great reasons for their success was that they played their enemies of against each other, as Lenin talks about in the second paragraph above. There was no dogmatic, eternal struggle against all the reactionaries at once. The Bolsheviks and the CPC formed tactical alliances even with sections of their enemies. The Chinese Communists merged the People's Army with the KMT's forces to fight the Japanese, and ended up stronger for it. The whole basis of Mao's bloc of four classes theory is the classic Maoist principle of 'uniting all those who can be united', which can perhaps itself be seen as the application of Mao's theories of guerilla warfare to the realm of political manouvering. In guerilla warfare, you choose your battles and opponents very carefully. You don't attack except in situations where victory is probable, and when you do attack you concentrate your forces and attack with superior numbers, and if possible superior firepower. The same goes for politics - why should the Maoists have bitterly fought the monarchy, the bourgeois parties and Indian expansionism all at once until they won? For one thing, they'd probably still be fighting a long, bitter and bloody war, with Nepal becoming another Columbia or Afghanistan. Bhattarai has recently come out with some fascinating quotes about how the Maboadi are concerned about exactly that, and that they don't want Nepal turning into another Afghanistan. (http://www.nepalnews.com/main/index.php/news-archive/2-political/2789-war-is-being-thrust-upon-us-bhattarai-says.html) Any why should they? If by changing their tactics and the form of their struggle they can prevent India from sending troops across the border, or more likely just closing the border and letting Nepal starve, why should they not do this?

Their strategy since 2006 can be seen reasonably simply. By aligning with the bourgeois parties and seeking at least cordial relations with India, they were able to isolate and ultimately bring down the monarchy. That phase is now over. Their new struggle is against the bourgeois parties, the Nepal Army and India, for 'civilian supremacy' and 'national independence' (there has been (http://www.myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=13396) a very recent shift (http://www.thehimalayantimes.com/fullNews.php?headline=National+independence+must+f or+civilian+supremacy%3A+Kiran&NewsID=217007) in their slogans, with the new main emphasis (http://www.ekantipur.com/the-kathmandu-post/2009/12/25/top-stories/Maoists-gear-up-for-exposure-campaign/3394/) of their protests being opposition to Indian interference in Nepal and defence of Nepali nationalism).

They are a disciplined, unified and tightly run organisation with thousands of fulltime party activists, and they also maintain a very healthy internal democratic culture. This is not 'ecclecticism', this is a living organisation that reflects the contradictions in society around it. To the supporter of a monolothic organisation like the RCP with it's ridiculous cult of personality around Avakian, this must be a culture that's difficult to appreciate.

The party leader, Prachanda, for example, has recently explained that he is "not an atheist". If I'm thinking of the same quote as you, that was from months ago, it's not so recent. And since when did Maoists trust the bourgeois media's negative statements about revolutionary leaders? It could have been a statement misinterpreted or distorted in so many ways.

As far as I can tell, there is little hope in this situation, though of course we should be fervently struggling with them over what is the problem and what is the solution.No, our primary role should be to support them and their revolution. Honestly people like you must go through life so depressed! When there's a real, living breathing revolution taking place on the other side of the world, your gut reaction isn't hope and inspiration or even solidarity, it's pessimism. You start out with the belief that the Maoists have sold out the revolution, and you search eagerly for any information that supports this view, rather than doing a concrete analysis of the concrete conditions and how the Maobadi are navigating their way through them.

The Maobadi already responded (http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2009/03/23/communist-party-of-nepal-maoists-responds-to-rcp-critique-june-2006/) to your polemic against them (written in 2005, and thus hopelessly out of date), and in my opinion decked it. Your party has totally failed to live up to it's internationalist duties, has allowed the RIM to stagnate and has assumed an arrogant, idealist and downright ridiculous position of pushing Avakian, the leader of a small sect in the USA, down the throats of mass revolutionary parties. If anything, the RCP should be adopting Prachanda Path!

redwinter

29th December 2009, 23:17

On India, people should read this article from A World To Win News Service: India's Operation Green Hunt: A Looming Crime (http://www.revcom.us/a/187/AWTWNS_India-en.html) -- about a "cleanup" operation that the Indian ruling class is trying to conduct against the Maoists there -- and keep posted on the www.revcom.us website for updates on the struggle there. But it's typical to see that the Indian government is claiming that the CPI(M) forces are "terrorists" when in fact Manmohan Singh's criminal regime is the one conducting bloodthirsty and murderous attacks on the people there, and the CPI(M) forces are gaining support from the masses.

Regarding Nepal, I would refer people to the Letters to the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) from the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, 2005-2008 (With a Reply from the CPN(M), 2006) (http://www.revcom.us/a/160/Letters.pdf) to get a sense of this historic, life-or-death line struggle within the international communist movement regarding the revolution in Nepal.

I'm going to quote at length from an article printed in Revolution newspaper on this that gives a pretty brief but thorough explanation of what has gone down there -- and also touches on the original question concerning our internationalist duty as communists everywhere to support revolution all over the world, but also to regard the revolution in any particular country around the world as our own responsibility as well, and to be able to criticize the course of comrades if they're flushing all the gains of the ten year heroic people's war down the toilet.

Revolutions, and especially revolutions of the oppressed led by genuine communists, are all too rare in the world today—a world which cries out desperately for such revolutions. Whenever a struggle emerges that is aimed at opposing the hold of imperialism on even a small part of the globe, and when that revolution has the goal of transforming fundamental relations that have a grip on humanity today, the success or failure of that struggle is of great importance and has profound implications. In February 1996, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) dared to begin such a struggle, launching a revolutionary People’s War and raising the red flag of communist revolution on “the roof of the world.” This raised the hopes of not only the people in Nepal and that region of the world, but of all those who are yearning for this kind of liberating struggle to be undertaken, and to achieve a new revolutionary state power, in many more places all over the world. At a time when people have been sold the lie that communism is dead, and that there is no real possibility of breaking free from the death-grip of imperialism (and relations of exploitation and oppression in general), when it is constantly repeated that there is no viable alternative to the monstrous system of capitalism-imperialism, many people were greatly inspired by the daring and lofty goals that these revolutionaries had taken up.

For 10 years battle raged back and forth in the Himalayan kingdom, but despite vicious repression, the revolutionary forces grew, as they drove the armed forces of the old state out of most of the countryside and set up red base areas where peasants, ethnic minorities, women and millions of other oppressed got a first taste of real liberation. The stated goal of the People’s War was to oppose the monarchy that had ruled Nepal for over 200 years, to establish a new democratic state—a state which would result from the overthrow and defeat of imperialism and feudalism, and other reactionary forces aligned with imperialism and feudalism, and which would represent and embody the rule of the proletariat, led by its communist vanguard, heading an alliance with the masses of the peasantry and other classes and groups that had been united in the struggle against imperialism and feudalism—and then to carry forward the revolution to socialism and communism. This was explicitly seen by the CPN(M) as part of, and as contributing to, the world revolution.

This was given political and ideological support by revolutionary communists through-out the world, including the RCP,USA. Our Party made significant efforts to popularize the heroic struggle and the communist aims of this rising of the most oppressed masses in Nepal, led by the comrades of the CPN(M). We followed closely the twists and turns of the People’s War and the revolutionary new things that the struggle brought forward. And we paid attention to how the leadership was applying the basic principles of Marxism to the concrete conditions they were confronting, with specific focus on the fact that they were popularizing the final goal of communism and the establishment of revolutionary state power as the necessary next step toward that final goal; how new democracy—as opposed to bourgeois democracy— was being aimed for; how they envisioned the united front under the leadership of the proletariat; and questions of strategy for winning the revolution and establishing a new, revolutionary state power.

As the revolution advanced, it not surprisingly encountered new difficulties and challenges that centered on how to actually accomplish winning state power, how to transform the economy of a backward country in a world dominated by imperialism and especially threatened by the powerful neighboring countries of India and China (the latter no longer a socialist country but a reactionary state ruled by communists in name but capitalists in fact), and how to forge a united front drawing in the middle strata of society while maintaining the focus on the revolutionary goals and continuing to provide communist leadership. These are the kinds of challenges that any genuine revolutionary struggle will encounter, and there are never simple solutions, or ready-made formulas, that can be applied to solving these complex problems. In this context, in the larger context of the defeat of the first stage of communist revolution in the world (which came to an end with the reversal of the revolution and the restoration of capitalism in China, shortly after the death of Mao Tsetung in 1976), and in response to the need to further develop, in theory and practice, a new stage of communism capable of meeting these challenges, struggle emerged over what the actual goals of the revolution should be and how to achieve them.

Our Party paid attention to all of these developments, in accordance with our fundamental internationalist orientation—our understanding of the responsibilities of all communists to approach revolution as a process of world-historic struggle which must aim for, and finally achieve, communism on a world scale. From this standpoint we became increasingly alarmed at the direction the CPN(M) leadership was taking, both in its theoretical formulations and in the related abandoning of the original objectives of the revolution. These disagreements centered on: 1) the nature of the state, and specifically the need to establish a new state led by the proletariat and its communist vanguard, as opposed to a strategy centering on participating in, and what amounts to “perfecting,” the reactionary state (minus the monarchy, in the case of Nepal); 2) more specifically, the need to establish, as the first step, upon the overthrow of the old order, a new democratic state which would undertake the development of the economic base and corresponding institutions of the nation free from imperialist domination and feudal relations, based on new production and social relations brought forward through the course of the People’s War, as opposed to establishing a bourgeois republic which focuses on developing capitalism and finding a place within the world imperialist network; 3) the dynamic role of theory and two-line struggle (struggle within communist parties and among communists generally over questions of ideological and political line), vs. eclectics, pragmatism and attempts to rely on “tactical finesse” and what amounts to bourgeois realpolitik—maneuvering within the framework of domination by imperialism (and other major powers) and the existing relations of exploitation and oppression.

With regard to each of these three decisive dimensions, the leadership of the CPN(M) has increasingly insisted on the wrong view and approach, which has tragically led them to the abandonment and betrayal of the cause they were initially fighting for. In the face of these very disheartening developments, we have been faced with the need to carry out sharp struggle against this disastrous course, and we have consistently sought the best and most appropriate means to make our criticisms known to the CPN(M), and to the parties and organizations that make up the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM)—to carry out this struggle in a way that would actually be of political and ideological assistance to the revolution and would not aid the imperialists and reactionaries, who are the bitter enemies of the emancipation of the oppressed (and ultimately all humanity) and are constantly seeking to divide, defeat and crush the forces of revolution and communism.

In approaching this line struggle, the RCP has proceeded from the understanding that communists the world over not only have the responsibility to apply the science of communism to the problems of making revolution in “one’s own” country but also, to use Lenin’s words, to support “this struggle, this, and only this line in every country without exception.” It is the duty of communists to understand to the best of their ability the crucial questions of political and ideological line as they take place on an international level, and to do everything in their power to help the revolutionary communist line defeat the influence of revisionism (betrayal of communism in the name of communism) in every country, and all the more so when the outcome of the struggle over ideological and political line has so much immediate impact on a very advanced revolutionary struggle such as that taking place in Nepal.

This two-line struggle has been conducted in a serious and disciplined way. Even as the CPN(M) took further steps toward the destruction of the revolution it had been leading, the RCP,USA continued to carry out the struggle privately, in light of the fact that the CPN(M) had made clear it favored such an approach, and with the aim of limiting the ability of the imperialists and other enemies to speculate on differences in the communist ranks and of creating the most favorable conditions for the CPN(M) itself to debate and struggle out these line questions. Unfor-tunately, the CPN(M) leadership has failed to really respond to, or to engage in any substantive way with, the fundamental questions at issue during this whole period, instead insisting that the heart of the matter is tactics, and not basic principles and strategic orientation, from which tactics must and will flow. In effect, they have dismissed criticisms over these fundamental questions with a repeated message that was itself a gross expression of pragmatism and empiricism: We appreciate your concerns, but there is no need to worry—trust us—we have been successful so far, so what we are doing now must be right.

At this point, however, developments in the CPN(M), and in particular the further acceleration of the revisionist degeneration of its line, have made it necessary to conclude that the policy, so far carried out by the RCP, of only conducting this struggle privately, is no longer correct. We believe it is necessary at this point to make this struggle public, with the aim of enabling the revolutionary movement throughout the world, and people who support revolution and communism (or who are wrestling with the question of whether revolution and communism are not only necessary but possible), to have as accurate and full an understanding as possible of the nature and development of this crucial two-line struggle.

(source: http://www.revcom.us/a/160/nepal-article-en.html)

Saorsa

29th December 2009, 23:39

and to be able to criticize the course of comrades if they're flushing all the gains of the ten year heroic people's war down the toilet.They have not done that and are not doing that, and I challenge you to provide evidence and argument that will prove me wrong.

rom this standpoint we became increasingly alarmed at the direction the CPN(M) leadership was taking, both in its theoretical formulations and in the related abandoning of the original objectives of the revolution.Slander. They have not abandone the 'original objectives' of the revolution. There's nothing to back this up.

These disagreements centered on: 1) the nature of the state, and specifically the need to establish a new state led by the proletariat and its communist vanguard, as opposed to a strategy centering on participating in, and what amounts to “perfecting,” the reactionary state (minus the monarchy, in the case of Nepal); I think Bhattarai has already made clear how wrong your party's uninformed assumptions are on this issue. The Maoists do not have a strategy of perfecting the state, they have a strategy of destroying it, and have been employing a wide variety of flexible tactics for the past 15-20 years to achieve this.

2) more specifically, the need to establish, as the first step, upon the overthrow of the old order, a new democratic state which would undertake the development of the economic base and corresponding institutions of the nation free from imperialist domination and feudal relations, based on new production and social relations brought forward through the course of the People’s War, as opposed to establishing a bourgeois republic which focuses on developing capitalism and finding a place within the world imperialist network;

Our party had considered the democratic republic as a transitional
republic (neither bourgeoisie nor the people’s). It meant that the emphasis
would be given to transfer the transitional republic into People’s Republic and
establish the people as the owner of the republic. Our party made efforts with
its hard work from the declaration of the republic to the constitutional action
taken over the then Army-Chief Rukmangad Katawal by the elected government.
Many struggles were held, however, the effort became fruitful due to the
Imperialist, Expansionist and their lackeys. Rather, the declared republic has
lost its transitional character and has adopted bourgeois character after the
interference of the step of the President, building of a puppet government and
the foreign intervention. Bourgeois class has been the owner of this republic.
The republic, instead of being the republic of the people (mainly the peasants
and the workers), has been changed into the republic of handful comprador
capitalist and the feudal lords. There will be no security of the rights of the
people rather there will be repression over the rights of the people. By
viewing this, the conclusion of the political programme taken by our party
about the bourgeois republic and the given slogan to establish Peoples Republic instead of it is crystal clear
and correct.

3) the dynamic role of theory and two-line struggle (struggle within communist parties and among communists generally over questions of ideological and political line), vs. eclectics, pragmatism and attempts to rely on “tactical finesse” and what amounts to bourgeois realpolitik—maneuvering within the framework of domination by imperialism (and other major powers) and the existing relations of exploitation and oppression. I don't even know what the RCP is trying to say here. The Maobadi have a much greater degree of internal democracy and 2ls than the RCP does. When was the last time the RCP even had a 2ls? I'm sure there are plenty of disagreements behind the scenes, but following Avakian's self-coup within the party I don't think there's been any real struggle carried out it an open manner. I fail to see the dichotomy between 'tactical finesse' and 2ls, perhaps you could explain this point more clearly to me? I don't want to respond when I don't fully understand.

With regard to each of these three decisive dimensions, the leadership of the CPN(M) has increasingly insisted on the wrong view and approach, which has tragically led them to the abandonment and betrayal of the cause they were initially fighting for. Rhetoric, slander and arrogant dismissal of the world's strongest revolutionary organisation and it's leadership, whose tactics and strategy have brought consistent success for almost 15 years.

In approaching this line struggle, the RCP has proceeded from the understanding that communists the world over not only have the responsibility to apply the science of communism to the problems of making revolution in “one’s own” country but also, to use Lenin’s words, to support “this struggle, this, and only this line in every country without exception.” It is the duty of communists to understand to the best of their ability the crucial questions of political and ideological line as they take place on an international level, and to do everything in their power to help the revolutionary communist line defeat the influence of revisionism (betrayal of communism in the name of communism) in every country, and all the more so when the outcome of the struggle over ideological and political line has so much immediate impact on a very advanced revolutionary struggle such as that taking place in Nepal.I suspect the UCPN (M) find your constant criticisms more annoying than enlightening.

This two-line struggle has been conducted in a serious and disciplined way. Even as the CPN(M) took further steps toward the destruction of the revolution it had been leading, Which steps were these exactly?

the RCP,USA continued to carry out the struggle privately, in light of the fact that the CPN(M) had made clear it favored such an approach, and with the aim of limiting the ability of the imperialists and other enemies to speculate on differences in the communist ranks and of creating the most favorable conditions for the CPN(M) itself to debate and struggle out these line questions. Unfor-tunately, the CPN(M) leadership has failed to really respond to, or to engage in any substantive way with, the fundamental questions at issue during this whole period,They were probably a wee bit busy actually leading a revolution.

instead insisting that the heart of the matter is tactics, and not basic principles and strategic orientation, from which tactics must and will flow. In effect, they have dismissed criticisms over these fundamental questions with a repeated message that was itself a gross expression of pragmatism and empiricism: We appreciate your concerns, but there is no need to worry—trust us—we have been successful so far, so what we are doing now must be right. I fail to see what's unreasonable about this. Their tactics have consistently worked for a long time. There has been no fundamental departure from their strategy, only a shift in tactics - this is just a fact. And considering the small size and even smaller relevance of the RCP to the class struggle in the states, I have to wonder which of the two organisations we should take more seriously.

Also, pragmatism is not a dirty word. Pragmatism means to adopt tactics that fit the situation best at any given time. Pragmatism is misued by the right wing to dismiss the left (be pragmatic! work within the system! join the labour party etc), but we should not assume that to be pragmatic is in any way a bad thing.

Saorsa

29th December 2009, 23:49

In terms of what a correct line would have looked like in an applied form in Nepal, the Maoist revolutionaries should have continued to pursue their people's war through to its conclusion, with the seizure of power and the establishment of a people's republic that would work through a transitory process of new democratic revolution that would open the door to socialism.

Why would you know better than people like Gajurel, Kiran, Bhattarai, Prachanda, Biplap and so on what is and is not possible in Nepal? They did not want to try and conquer Kathmandu at riflepoint. Partly because they didn't have the military strength to take RNA barracks, but also because they didn't want to invite foreign intervention turning their country into 'another Afghanistan' and because they didn't want to pull a Pol Pot and conquer the working class, rather than inspire it to achieve it's own liberation.

Indefinite war without flexibility of tactics didn't work in Peru. Why should it work in Nepal? Nepal was never just a People's War, the Maoists sought and won political support from the masses before launching the war. And you know how they did this? They took part in bourgeois elections in places like Rolpa, and eventually earned the electoral support of the people and were elected to parliament! If your accusing Prachanda and co of being revisionists for changing their tactics and prioritising unarmed political struggle over violence, then you must think they were revisionists from the start! :lol:

RadioRaheem84

30th December 2009, 01:38

http://nepaldocumentary.com/Multimedia.aspx

The child soldiers thing is a big issue to me and it looks like there is more evidence suggesting that the horror stories of conscripted children might be true.

Look not only is there probably an imperialist campaign to denounce the Maoists but also a liberal one that tries to examine the brutality of third world movements. Sometimes I hate liberals more than anyone else. These smug self righteous asshats never truly see the struggles of people in the third world, but would rather just find a moral dilemma that's juicy enough to win them academic acclaim. Even though I hate their motives, I cannot just shrug this away.

As far as third world movements to morally back and self determination is concerned, for now, I am sticking with the Zapatistas. All others will have to wait until further examination.

RadioRaheem84

30th December 2009, 01:58

I was really hoping that the Nepalese Maoists were better than the Indian Maoists (they are by far, but that doesn't say much). The CPI though is really a terrorist group, I mean even if half the stories about them are false, they represent a strain of Communism that I am just not interested in at all. I think it's sad though that this is what most people will see as the forefront of the leftist struggle against neo-liberalism in the new century. Then again whats going on in Latin America is really good and more legitimate, yet gets routinely harassed as terrorist in the Western press.

I guess I am becoming more of an anarchist in my journey and have found a more broader appeal for libertarian socialism.

Saorsa

30th December 2009, 02:20

A girl grows up in utter poverty. Her house leaks when it rains, is draughty when it's windy, smells in the heat and offers little protection from the cold in the winter. From an early age she works in the family plot, desperately trying to salvage enough food from the hostile earth to help keep the family alive for one more year. She never gets much education, never learns to read and lives in ignorance of pretty much everything outside of what she experiences in day to day life. In her early teens she is married off to an older man, an alcoholic who abuses and beats her. She has to live with the man's family, who also beat her and generally treat her like shit. She's never owned anything much, and both the family she was born into and the one she's been sold off to do not own the land they work. At the age of 15, having already been married for a year or two, she starts hearing about guerillas who fight for the poor and landless. Guerillas who treat women as equals, and preach a doctrine of equality, prosperity and justice for all. Intrigued, she attends a meeting they organise in her village, and goes away desperate to learn more about their ideas.

A week later, the army show up. They unload off their trucks and disperse throughout the village. They'd heard about the Maoist meeting in the village, and they want to teach the villagers a lesson - don't associate with the Maoists or else. They rampage from house to house. Her father is killed, her mother and sisters raped, and the soldiers steal the recently harvested crops that the villagers had worked so hard to produce. Her husband and her new family are all dead. She has nothing left, and noone to turn to.

Shortly before her 16th birthday she runs away and joins the Maoists. She's taught to read, treated as an equal to men, eventually given a rifle and given the opportunity to fight for freedom.

Why shouldn't she be able to?

This story is made up, but also true. There are thousands upon thousands of stories like this one from Nepal, and other countrys too. The Western concept of child soldiers is both hypocritical and a means to demonise liberation movements. The People's War was a total war. The Royal Army didn't discriminate with it's brutality - it would go into the countryside and murder, rape and pillage it's way around. Classic counter-insurgency stuff. Everyone, young and old, was caught up in the revolutionary war whether they liked it or not. That's the nature of these things.

Why should an arbitrary age (16, 18, whatever) determine whether the girl in the story should have been allowed to join the revolution or stay in misery for the rest of her life?

The PLA is not like the Lords Army in Uganda or whatever. They didn't abduct children, drug them, force them to kill and turn them into monsters. Children who signed up (they may have been orphaned and literally had nowhere else to go) were given roles like cooks, or carrying equipment, or cultural troupes. In a country with a life expectancy that hovers around 60, where girls often married by the age of 13 or younger, these PLA fighters weren't children. They were, and are (they're still in the cantonments, still very much part of the PLA) conscious of who they are and what they're doing.

Nepalis in the countryside wouldn't have proper documentation to even know their age, let alone be able to accurately tell someone else what it was. And since the PLA took in a lot of runaways, what if they just didn't bring it? Should the commander have said 'sorry you look under 25, go home and get your ID?"

It's a revolution not a pub :lol:

By 14 I had a rough idea that capitalism was fucked and the world needed to be changed. By 16 I was a convinced Marxist-Leninist. I'm past my 18th birthday now and I don't think I'm any more or less of a revolutionary than I was then.

Even in that documentary you linked to, most of the young revolutionary fighters say things like 'youth like me fought in the People's Army so that every Nepali could have food, clothing and shelter'. Frankly, if that's what your after, I don't care whether your 15, 18 or even 13, I'd still give you a rifle if I could.

Saorsa

30th December 2009, 02:22

I was really hoping that the Nepalese Maoists were better than the Indian Maoists (they are by far, but that doesn't say much). The CPI though is really a terrorist group, I mean even if half the stories about them are false, they represent a strain of Communism that I am just not interested in at all. I think it's sad though that this is what most people will see as the forefront of the leftist struggle against neo-liberalism in the new century. Then again whats going on in Latin America is really good and more legitimate, yet gets routinely harassed as terrorist in the Western press.

It's understandable that you could feel this way considering most of the information we recieve about revolutionary movements comes frm the bourgeois media, but the Communist Party of India (Maoist) is not a terrorist group. I'd be interested to discuss why you think this about them and exactly what stories you've heard...

Saorsa

30th December 2009, 02:41

Radioraheem mate, I've just watched the video you linked to. Asha the 13 year old 'child soldier' has nothing to say but good things about the Maobadi. Her story is that when she travelled back to her home village with the Maoists her mother kidnapped her and married her off to an older man whose family abused her to the point where she became suicidal.

Also, she doesn't even mention fighting. She was an artist, helping paint propaganda for the party.

Frankly I'm fucked off with the liberal who made that documentary. It ends with the line from Asha (which I'm willing to bet was taken out of context) "If I had not joined the Maoists, I would not have been forced to marry at such a young age. I would not have suffered so much".

Firstly it's dubious whether this is true or not. Secondly, if thousands of women like her hadn't joined the PLA, Nepal wouldn't be on the verge of a revolution that will abolish gender inequality!

She was in the party, not the army. And while sure, 13 year olds shouldn't have to take such risks and be caught up in such a potentially traumatising situation, in Asha's context it was the lesser of two evils by far. The home life she returned to sounds far more traumatic than her time with the Maobadi.

RadioRaheem84

30th December 2009, 02:43

RadioRaheem84

30th December 2009, 02:47

It's understandable that you could feel this way considering most of the information we recieve about revolutionary movements comes frm the bourgeois media, but the Communist Party of India (Maoist) is not a terrorist group. I'd be interested to discuss why you think this about them and exactly what stories you've heard...

Me too because I really think that of all places, India would be a great front in the struggle for real democracy. Most of the stuff I've researched is from the mainstream media but I just cannot see how one can be bias in the midst of a terrorist campaign of blowing up targets and killing civilians.

Saorsa

30th December 2009, 02:47

The girl interviewed said that she was forced into a marriage with an older man and he beat her. Now of course this is more of a cultural, personal matter rather than one that directly reflect the Maoists but I would've thought that the Maoists in Nepal would've supported her and fought for her.

Well we can't know all the details of what happened and why the Maoist cadre who said she's come back for Asha never came back. It's entirely possible the Maoist woman was shot, or was unable to come back due to the war. Travel wasn't always easy for obvious reasons...

Indirectly though, the Maobadi definitely did and definitely are fighting for Asha, and millions of women like her.

I would like to know what the point of the documentary is then. Seems more like a typical liberal mediator attempt to document the struggles between the right wing army and the guerillas.

I think you've hit the nail on the head. Oh, the people are caught between two stones, poor helpless little brown people who need our white liberal pity...

Saorsa

30th December 2009, 02:55

Me too because I really think that of all places, India would be a great front in the struggle for real democracy. Most of the stuff I've researched is from the mainstream media but I just cannot see how one can be bias in the midst of a terrorist campaign of blowing up targets and killing civilians.

I think the line between terrorism and revolutionary warfare can be drawn on the basis of who these attacks are tagetting and why. If you launch indiscriminate attacks on civilians in order to kill and injure as many civilians as possible (if this is your conscious aim), then what your engaged in is terrorism. If your aim is essentially to create a spectacle of violence with no regard for the people and their lives, that's terrorism.

Blowing up the car a government minister is travelling is not terrorism. It's a legitimate act of revolutionary warfare. Killing a policeman, or a soldier, or a landlord, or a cadre of a ruling class party etc is not terrorism.

The Naxalites (as the Indian Maoists are known, after the village of Naxalbari where the first explosion of people's war was heard back in the 60s) don't target civilians as part of a deliberate policy to create a spectacle. They actually denounced the Mumbai terror attacks. Sometimes civilians may get caught in the crossfire, it's true, but that isn't a deliberate policy and I'd suspect the Naxalites have a far better record on civilian casualties than just about any other armed group.

They do bomb targets, but they're reactionary targets. And they kill people, yes, but the people they kill are reactionaries.

Saorsa

30th December 2009, 02:59

Indian Maoists on the Mumbai terror attacks (http://southasiarev.wordpress.com/2009/01/23/indian-maoists-analysis-of-attacks-on-mumbai/)

NaxalbariZindabad

30th December 2009, 10:23

I watched the "Girl Child Soldier's Story" clip. The guys who made the movie are ridiculous. They show someone who joined the Communist Party at 13-yo and say she's a child soldier. Since when is the Party the same thing as the Army?? With that kind of logic, there must be thousands of former child soldiers in Nepal. :laugh: Oh wait, that's exactly what they're saying at the end of the clip:

There are more than 12,000 former child soldiers in Nepal. Girls make up 40% of these former soldiers.

These girls are desperately in need of support to not only recover from the traumas of war but also to face the challenges of rebuilding their lives at home. For more information on how to help girl soldiers in Nepal or to donate to the cause, log onto nepaldocumentary.com

There is no basis whatsoever for this. I wonder what kind of idiocy the makers of this "documentary" would say to justify their statistic of "12,000 child soldiers" if they were confronted about this. Something along these lines probably "well... we saw it on Wikipedia, but the page has changed since that time..."

This thing looks more like a scam for money than a real scientific documentary.

RadioRaheem84

30th December 2009, 17:46

This thing looks more like a scam for money than a real scientific documentary.

It looks more like a "morally superior" liberal attempt to take advantage of a civil war by pretending to be the "voice of reason" in the midst of madness. It's clearly an attempt to gain academic recognition. I don't doubt that there probably are horror stories as neither side is perfect but the Maoists of Nepal have virtually a clean record by third world anti-oppression movement standards.

Liberals can be so annoying sometimes.

RadioRaheem84

30th December 2009, 19:22

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d9799a5a-0bdc-11dd-9840-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1

What is this all about?

Nepalese communists going neo-liberal?

chegitz guevara

30th December 2009, 19:30

People, let's remember who the real terrorists are: the imperialists.

While this is true, we should never use it to excuse or downplay our own side's excesses. Groups like the Sendero Luminoso and the Khmer Rouge set us back, but identifying our movement with senseless violence against the oppressed as well as the oppressors.

Cooler Reds Will Prevail

30th December 2009, 21:38

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d9799a5a-0bdc-11dd-9840-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1

What is this all about?

Nepalese communists going neo-liberal?

Hey Raheem,

If you check out the date of that article, it's from April '08, which was when the Maoists were trying to convince the other parties that the CPN(M) could be a trusted partner in building a bourgeois democratic republic. It was part of the process of playing enemies against each other, as this was around the time the monarchy was abolished. Alastair's wonderful posts go into this concept in a lot more detail. We can see pretty clearly now that embracing capitalism is not on their agenda at all, and in reality, never was.

scarletghoul

30th December 2009, 23:51

If you want to get an idea of the conditions in Naxal-affected areas in India, how the Maoists and state forces act, why people are joining the Maoists etc, a great book to read is Red Sun: Travels in Naxalite Country by Sudeep Chakravarti, a bourgeois writer who is certainly not a Maoist at all but who records what's happening pretty well. It was written about 2 years ago, and a hell of a lot of stuff has happened since then, but it's still worth reading.

RadioRaheem84

31st December 2009, 16:54

RadioRaheem84

31st December 2009, 16:57

Hey Raheem,

If you check out the date of that article, it's from April '08, which was when the Maoists were trying to convince the other parties that the CPN(M) could be a trusted partner in building a bourgeois democratic republic. It was part of the process of playing enemies against each other, as this was around the time the monarchy was abolished. Alastair's wonderful posts go into this concept in a lot more detail. We can see pretty clearly now that embracing capitalism is not on their agenda at all, and in reality, never was.

So they essentially lied to make their enemies trust them? Right?

Thanks for the clarification though. I mean I guess it's better they play politics than actually advocate for neo-liberalism.

chegitz guevara

1st January 2010, 02:10

Actually, I think there was a real policy debate being carried out openly in the CPN(M), which is something unique in modern communist parties.

Cooler Reds Will Prevail

3rd January 2010, 12:03

So they essentially lied to make their enemies trust them? Right?

Thanks for the clarification though. I mean I guess it's better they play politics than actually advocate for neo-liberalism.

I mean it's obviously not ideal that they play politics and such but, given their circumstances they have little choice. Fortunately for the people of the world, they seem to be exceedingly good at playing politics.

Let me give you an example. I don't remember exactly how the situation went, but a while back the UN was attempting to verify how many troops the PLA had, and on that basis I think they were to determine how much more they would be allowed to recruit (Alastair maybe you know this situation better?). Anyway, the Maoists purposefully deceived the UN and the other large parties in Nepal into thinking they had a significantly larger army than they actually did, allowing them much more breathing space for recruitment and such. Funny enough, shortly thereafter Prachanda taunted the other parties and boasted about their deception in a speech.

Like I said, exceedingly good.

But I think also that comrade Chegitz has a point, that the Maoists have been much more public about the line differences within the Party and often times these manifested themselves in seemingly contradictory statements. Recently, it seems that the Party has taken a very unified stance on a lot of these questions and I think it is largely to do with the fact that they have successfully struggled out a lot of the contradictions within the Party organization and among the leadership. I believe, however, that this has been a secondary aspect to the intentional deception of the enemy. What mainly convinces me of this is the fact that Baburam Bhattarai was one of the leaders that was supposedly advocating a capitalist turn a few months ago to win trust within the establishment and now has come to dismiss basically all of that through recent interviews. It leads me to believe that he, as the main economist of the Party from my knowledge, was intentionally misleading the NC and UML.

Saorsa

3rd January 2010, 12:11

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EoQYZ2oa6M

Prachanda claimed the video was a fake but tbh I've always hoped (and assumed really) that it was true. Brilliant stuff :-)

Basically the deal was that following the peace accords, the PLA was confined to cantonments. If the video is true, the Maoists claimed they had 30,000 plus fighters when in reality the standing PLA was only about 7 or 8 thousand (plus a whole shitload of local revolutionary militias). That meant they were able to put a whole heap of extra people into the cantonments to be supported by the state, who could then devote their time to preparing themselves physically, mentally and ideologically for the struggle to come.

It may all be a fraud. Either way it doesn't matter too much. But if it is true, sheer brilliance man