Did Nepal's Maoists ban strikes?

[Saorsa]

(http://comradealastair.wordpress.com/)

Did the Maobadi ban strikes? (http://comradealastair.wordpress.com/2010/01/02/did-the-maobadi-ban-strikes/)

leave a comment » (http://comradealastair.wordpress.com/2010/01/02/did-the-maobadi-ban-strikes/#comments)
http://comradealastair.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/nepal-maoist-may-day-1.jpg?w=604&h=453 (http://comradealastair.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/nepal-maoist-may-day-1.jpg)Workers affiliated to Maoist unions rally for May Day 2009


Nepal’s Maoists are often accused of being anti-worker, Stalinist, bourgeois nationalist and so on by many on the Western ‘left’, particularly anarchists and Trotskyists. As ‘evidence’ towards this, it is often claimed that while in government earlier this year, they ‘banned strikes’.


Let’s set the record straight.



The Maoists never banned strikes. All the militant, class struggle fighting unions are Maoist unions, and since their change in tactics in 2006 and the shift of the struggle to the urban areas the Maoists have essentially taken over the trade union movement in Nepal, as well as the bulk of the student unions. They regularly lead strikes for both political issues and bread and butter issues like pay and conditions. They have strongholds amongst the teachers, hotel workers, petrol workers, workers in many SEZs and industrial zones, hospitality workers, and more. They never stopped leading strikes – they just called a three day general strike across Nepal!


The Maoists briefly put forward a proposal to temporarily ban strikes in certain key sectors. This was at a time when the country had no electricity for most of the day, there was a food shortage and strikes and bandhs called by reactionary parties were causing chaos and undermining the Maoist-led government.


http://comradealastair.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/nepal-maoist-may-day-2.jpg?w=604&h=453 (http://comradealastair.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/nepal-maoist-may-day-2.jpg)Workers marching behind the banner of the Maoist hospitality workers union, May Day 2009.


In Nepal, strikes are enforced with violence. Bandhs are called regularly by political groups and factions are supporters of the bandh roam the streets enforcing it with batons. If you can muster enough supporters to do that you can shut an area down fairly easily. In most cases the Maoists seem to be the only ones capable of mustering the support to enforce a bandh with any success, but it’s actually not a voluntary thing. So the UML, NC and even royalist affiliated unions and the parties themselves were capable of shutting down (or at least seriously interfering with) production with or without mass support amongst the workers, and when the Maoists were in government they were doing this with great enthusiasm.


Which leads on to the next point. Strikes in Nepal are never just issues of workers vs bosses. All the unions (as far as I’ve seen) are affiliated to political parties. Strikes are not just called by workers through their unions, they’re called by the workers affiliated to this or that political party, in consultation with that political party. You can disagree with this if you prefer the idea of independent workers unions doing their own thing, but these are the facts on the ground. Strikes are as much about a struggle between different political factions as they are about a struggle between workers and bosses.
http://comradealastair.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/nepal-maoist-may-day-3.jpg?w=604&h=453 (http://comradealastair.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/nepal-maoist-may-day-3.jpg)Women workers march behind a Maoist banner


It’s not a case of the hotel workers, and the teachers, and the bus drivers or whatever each having their own unions, it’s a case of the Maoist union, the UML union, the Nepal Congress Union, and so on. You never read about militant strikes being led by any unions other than Maoist ones, and I see no reason why the bourgeois media would simply ignore the other strikes. The Maoists are at the forefront of the class struggle in Nepal.


In a recent strike in a big industrial zone in Nepal (http://www.myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=11964), the workers began as part of a union affiliated to the UML. But as the strike dragged on, they became increasingly frustrated with the collaborationist, reformist attitude of their union, and ended up leaving it en masse to join a Maoist union instead, which eagerly picked up their cause and threw it’s resources behind their strike. This says a lot I think about the relationship the UCPN (M) has with the working class.


So when we talk about that brief (and yes, in my view, wrong) proposal by the Maoists to ban strikes it should be seen in this context. The reactionary parties were calling bandhs to undermine the government. These were having an effect on the country, which was just a total fucking mess. The economy was in shambles and there were shortages of all kinds of basic goods. So when the Maoists talked about temporarily banning strikes in some sectors, my guess is it was a ploy by them to prevent their political opponents from using their ‘unions’ to undermine the government and try and make the Maoists look bad by causing shortages and chaos.


Needless to say, the idea was briefly reported on then disappeared. The Maoists have continued to lead strikes all over the place, and the bourgeoisie in Nepal are quite pissed off (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=12950) about it. I suspect pressure from the unions affiliated to the party helped put the idea away.


The Maoists are not anti-worker. The hundreds of thousands of Nepalis that have marched in support of the Maoists in the past few weeks are workers. And when the Maoists topple the government they’re going to build a Nepal where the workers hold political and economic power.

[ReggaeCat]

what's happening to nepal?i mean is there something bad(not meaning the system) something like iran???some1 explain :)

[Wanted Man]

Ah, so never banned strikes.

They just temporarily banned strikes because they feared shortages. Thanks for the clarification.

Read it again.

[Saorsa]

Ah, so never banned strikes.

They just temporarily banned strikes because they feared shortages. Thanks for the clarification.


You either didn't read the article or didn't read it properly. There was a proposal to temporarily ban strikes, which was never implemented. It never happened. Their unions never stopped taking strike action.

That's my point. What so many people don't seem to grasp is the fundamental thing here - the 'ban on strikes' never happened.

[Saorsa]

what's happening to nepal?i mean is there something bad(not meaning the system) something like iran???some1 explain

A revolution is unfolding under the leadership of the UCPN (M). In about three weeks they're launching an indefinite general political strike (ironic consider what this thread is about :lol:) to bring down the government.

Things are moving very quickly towards a collision between the revolutionary forces and the reactionary parties and the army.http://www.revleft.com/vb/../revleft/smilies/001_smile.gif

[Luisrah]

Nepal’s Maoists are often accused of being anti-worker, Stalinist, bourgeois nationalist and so on by many on the Western ‘left’, particularly anarchists and Trotskyists.
I almost stopped reading there

[Pogue]

Alistair I think the main issue here would be why the Nepelase Maoists would have wanted to ban strikes, and then to what extent this decision could be forced upon the working class, if at all. If it was just a tactical proposal, that couldn't be forced in unless say, ratified by the workers in their unions themselves, then the debate we're having is where the desire to ban strikes would fit into Maoist strategy, which you could outline for us. If they could impose it from above, then we're debating that first question and also the second one: Why is it they could impose this upon the working class? I think thats the essence of the problem here.

[Saorsa]

I stopped reading there

Erm why?

[Luisrah]

Erm why?

(I corrected it to almost)

Because when western anarchists and trotskyists claim that BS, I don't feel like reading the rest of the article.
But the rest was interesting though.

[Saorsa]

Alistair I think the main issue here would be why the Nepelase Maoists would have wanted to ban strikes, and then to what extent this decision could be forced upon the working class, if at all.

Right. Well, I've explained that in part in the OP, but the basic reasons they put the proposal forward for all political parties to stop calling bandhs and strikes for a wee bit was because in response to the labour disputes the Maoist unions were causing, the reactionary parties were calling bandhs and strikes wherever they could to undermine the Maoist-led government. The country wasn't functioning. They wanted a bit of stability to try and make sure everyone could have enough food and the hospitals could have electricity for a while.

I think it was a wrong proposal. But the thing people don't seem to realise is that the ban on strikes was reported on by one or two media outlets just the one time, then never mentioned again. It was never implemented and never happened.

As to whether it could have been forced on the working class, the working class would probably have been cool with no bandhs being called for a month or two. Daily life gets pretty difficult when your not allowed to drive or even bicycle anywhere a couple of days a week, and electricity is being shut off for most of the day every day.

However, the militant section of the working class aligned with the Maoists obviously didn't accept it, as it kept on taking strike action just like it always had.


If it was just a tactical proposal, that couldn't be forced in unless say, ratified by the workers in their unions themselves, then the debate we're having is where the desire to ban strikes would fit into Maoist strategy, which you could outline for us.

I don't think it does fit into their overall strategy. An urban insurrection would be quite difficult without any strike action taking place. It was a purely tactical action being discussed between various groups that never got put in place. It was considered and then rejected.


If they could impose it from above, then we're debating that first question and also the second one: Why is it they could impose this upon the working class? I think thats the essence of the problem here.

I don't think anyone can impose just about anything on the working class when it's willing to stand up and fight back. The Nepali working kicked out it's king only a couple of years ago, it's able to look after itself.

[Saorsa]

Because when western anarchists and trotskyists claim that BS, I don't feel like reading the rest of the article.
But the rest was interesting though.

OK. I'm not an anarchist or a trotskyist though.

[Pogue]

So is there any means by which the Maoist leadership could ever impose a ban on strikes if the working class didn't want it?

[Luisrah]

OK. I'm not an anarchist or a trotskyist though.

I didn't say you were.
And this isn't an offense to anarchists and trotskyists, because I know cool anarchists and trotskyists, but THOSE guys are more like sectarian fools

[Saorsa]

So is there any means by which the Maoist leadership could ever impose a ban on strikes if the working class didn't want it?

In theory, I suppose they could. But in theory, looking to the future if there's a mass revolutionary anarchist organisation, or if there's some kind of mass IWW-style red union, it could also impose a ban on strikes if the working class didn't want it. In both cases I suppose you'd need to do it at the point of a gun.

The thing is though, of course they can do it hypothetically. In practice, I doubt they either would or could, they'd totally lose legitimacy amongst their urban support base.

[ReggaeCat]

are we talking about a revolution??about that socialist flame rising up again??

[chegitz guevara]

Nepal is in the midst of a revolution right now. Whether that revolution will carry forward from bourgeois to proletarian is the struggle taking place in Nepal right now. The Nepalese Maoists are carrying forward a strategy of building the proletarian forces while keeping the bourgeois forces off balance. Unless India intervenes, or the Maobadi do something stupid (and their actions to date lead me to believe they are among the smartest comrades we have), 2010 will likely see a socialist workers' republic established in the Himalayas.

[pranabjyoti]

Can anybody here want to support that kind of "strike", that the "workers(!) of Venezuela" launched after Chavez came back to power after the coup failed? I hope they also support the "strikes" that was launched in Petrograd after the Bolsheviks had taken power.

[chegitz guevara]

Let's support strikes by white workers to keep Black people out, or strikes by men to keep women out. After all, all strikes are good!

[Andrei Kuznetsov]

To Marxist critics of the UCPN(M) on this point: One of the first things the Bolsheviks did after seizing power was suppressing a pro-White strike in Petrograd. How do you think that would have affected the revolution if it had been allowed to go unchecked just because it was a strike by workers? And Chegitz makes a good point about how strikes can be utterly reactionary, especially here in the U.S.

[ReggaeCat]

im sorry but i need a history lesson..what white strike???what workers strike after chavez???anybody can explain??unhistoric I am:blushing:

[Luisrah]

im sorry but i need a history lesson..what white strike???what workers strike after chavez???anybody can explain??unhistoric I am:blushing:

Well from what I know, there was civil war between the Whites and the Reds in Russia, I'm guessing that the Whites were the counter-revolutionary.
The Reds won.

[ReggaeCat]

Well from what I know, there was civil war between the Whites and the Reds in Russia, I'm guessing that the Whites were the counter-revolutionary.
The Reds won.

uhm..that war...i thought it was after the civil war that the whites striked...ok i knew about that war..xD

[Saorsa]

After the Bolshevik revolution huge numbers of white collar workers didn't cooperate with the new order. Bank workers for example - the first withdrawals the Bolsheviks made from the banks were done at gunpoint!

And in South Africa, the Rand Rebellion. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rand_Rebellion) White mineworkers went on strike against wage cuts, but also specifically against how the mineowners were carrying this out - by hiring more black workers and elevating some blacks to being supervisors. They struck against black workers being superior to them.

The CP at the time in South Africa actually put forward the slogan "Workers of the world, unite and fight for a white South Africa!", which lead to the Comintern getting pissed off and forcing it to orientate towards the blacks.

A lot of anarchists and trots have a very utopian idea of the working class and how it engages in class struggle. It's nt as simple as workers vs bosses all the time.

[cb9's_unity]

The Maoists in Nepal should be wary of any group that even proposes the banning of any strikes.

And lets remember that one can object to a strike without banning it or actively putting it down. If a sector of the working class is being influenced by conservative or bourgeois party's it doesn't make them an enemy, it simply means they are not yet class conscious. The point of the working class movement is not to combat any political ideology, it is to combat the bourgeoisie itself. So even if a member of the working class chooses to follow bourgeois ideology they must still be respected as a member of the working class.

I know very little about the situation in Nepal (so criticism of anything i'm saying is welcome). If its true that this ban never went into place it is both a good and bad sign. It is bad that there is a section of the Maoist movement that thinks political affiliation is more important than class affiliation. It is good that this section clearly does not have the power to implement any of its anti-worker beliefs.

[Saorsa]

So we should have respected members of the Gestapo or the SS because they are from a working class background? Or members of the KKK? Or imperialist soldiers, or police officers?

Ideology and political allegiance, particularly in a situation like Nepal, is more important than your making out.

[Atlanta]

well I admit I was worried after the cease fire and the CPN entered the government that they would end up abandoning struggle....but im happy they haven't
which industries went on strip the support the reactionaries?

and the strikes in Venezuela were where the workers were already on strike and the strikes were crushed by the 36 hour Carmona dictatorship, when Carmona was beaten the strikes resumed.

[cb9's_unity]

So we should have respected members of the Gestapo or the SS because they are from a working class background? Or members of the KKK? Or imperialist soldiers, or police officers?

Ideology and political allegiance, particularly in a situation like Nepal, is more important than your making out.

I should have clarified somewhat (though you are ignoring the rest of my argument), by respecting I mean recognizing that they still parts of the working class and entitled to the same rights as class conscious workers. Respected probably wasn't the perfect word but I was hoping it would be understood in the context of the rest of what of what I said.

I didn't mean that we had to give them our respect in general. The main point of what I was saying was that we can not suppress any section of the working class just because of what they are saying. A worker has the right to strike for whatever reason they want.

[Saorsa]

A worker has the right to strike for whatever reason they want.

That's the real disagreement though. Of course they don't. Because by that logic, white workers have the 'right' to go on strike against black authors being read in schools. Or against black workers being promoted to being supervisors.

You have to get out of this rigid mindset of viewing revolutionary struggle as being pretty much entirely workers vs bosses in the workplace. It's as much a political struggle, a struggle between different visions, as it is a struggle over property relations. And it's only the combination of all these different struggles that can bring about a revolution.

The workers right to strike does not give all strikes a progressive nature, and it does not give the workers involved in the reactionary strikes the 'right' to do what they're doing. White workers do not have the right to strike against black workers. And unions affiliated to counter-revolutionary political parties do not have the right to call strikes and bandhs and disrupt basic services in order to undermine a government led by a party that is struggling to overturn oppression, exploitation and inequality.

Railroad workers in counter-revolutionary dominated unions, following the Bolshevik revolution, did not have the right to stop food from reaching Petrograd and Moscow.

Every action workers take is not 'right' because it's taken by workers. Workers often take actions and even go on strike in a way that is against the interests of the class struggle as a whole, actions that can fly in the face of a much larger movement of militant, advanced workers. It's happened in every country. So when larger, more revolutionary worker's movements suppress the actions of a smaller, backward section of their class that's not something to be seen as 'reactionary'. It's part of the revolution.

I don't think the UCPN (M) has to 'prove' itself to Western communists before it somehow 'earns' your approval. Our goal should be communist revolution and a movement that succesfully defeats the state and seizes political power, not some workerist adulation of everything workers ever do.

[cb9's_unity]

It is interesting that you are damning 'trots' and anarchists for claiming that the Maoists are taking away workers rights to strike in Nepal. But then you defend the concept of taking away a workers right to strike.

The terms "progressive" and "reactionary" are useful but subjective terms. By your definition anything that opposes the Maoist movement is "reactionary", even if this opposition is by workers.

The basis of the working class state is that it needs to be held accountable by the workers. Workers need to be free to challenge their government and if necessary strike against it. You have gone to extremes to try to prove your point; racism is reprehensible by any group that is doing it. However unless I am uninformed these strikes don't seem to be racially motivated. The only way a working class movement can succeed is if it is dominated by class conscious individuals who recognize that class is that only legitimate dividing line in society and that line must be abolished. For that reason any working class with immediate revolutionary potential is seriously unlikely to be majorly threatened by a racist movement within itself.

The working class gains its right to power not because of what it says, but because of its relation to the means of production. You are claiming that we can suppress groups simply for their political beliefs, ignoring what class they belong to. The problem with this is that anyone can claim that any group is "reactionary" and against the workers interest as a whole. If a party were to bureaucratize and a few party members were to take power for themselves there would be nothing stopping them from claiming that a truly progressive group was in fact "reactionary" and ban them for being so; they would already have precedent for using force against other workers. Simply being a member of the largest working class party doesn't give the right to use force against other working class sections.

To place a ban on strikes would be to use force against a smaller section of the working class based only on political beliefs. Its a case of the class conscious actually drawing lines between the working class. They are deciding what section of the working class gets what rights and deciding what section of the working class gets different rights. Theoretically your ideas would allow the whites in society to take away rights from the blacks if they deemed them "reactionary". And even taking away the rights of the railway worker is dividing people of the same class.

You say that my theory rests too much on the idea of "boss vs. worker" but yours relies too much on "progressive vs. reactionary (or bourgeois or right wing or whatever label you want to put on it)". Right now in Nepal it may very well be that there are sections of workers that are influenced by reactionary elements. However it is all too possible that one day the lines between reactionary and progressive will become blurred. Any dissident section of the Maoist movement would be liable to be called "reactionary" and their rights infringed. The past has shown us that socialist party's can dissolve when one faction denies "the progressive nature" of the other. Starting the precedent of denying workers rights because of their political affiliation only gives individuals within party's and governments the tools to oppress the working class.

I apologize if you want a pure revolution never tinged by any sort of reactionary elements, but that will never happen. Reactionary elements within the working class must learn to be class conscious by their own free will instead of denial of their rights. They will be a nuisance, but we can only ensure the success of class unity by allotting every worker the same rights.

Thus any precedent that impedes on the reactionary workers right to strike endangers the progressive workers right to strike. And that endangers the revolution as a whole.

[Cooler Reds Will Prevail]

With all due respect, comrade cb9, this post is wrong in virtually every way that matters.



The terms "progressive" and "reactionary" are useful but subjective terms. By your definition anything that opposes the Maoist movement is "reactionary", even if this opposition is by workers.

No, that's not what Alastair is saying at all. Let's look at the facts on the ground in Nepal. There are three main political forces: The Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), the Nepali Congress, and the Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist-Leninist). The latter are, in the most basic sense, counterrevolutionary. This should not be a point of debate for any of us, seeing as how the NC and UML have resisted even the most basic changes to the structure of the Nepali state that would benefit workers and peasants in the country. That leaves, out of the major forces, the Maoists as the revolutionaries. Nobody is suggesting that there are not other, non-Maoist revolutionaries in the country, all I am suggesting is that they are largely irrelevant in the political scene and in terms of wielding any sort of influence and power.


The basis of the working class state is that it needs to be held accountable by the workers. Workers need to be free to challenge their government and if necessary strike against it. You have gone to extremes to try to prove your point; racism is reprehensible by any group that is doing it. However unless I am uninformed these strikes don't seem to be racially motivated. The only way a working class movement can succeed is if it is dominated by class conscious individuals who recognize that class is that only legitimate dividing line in society and that line must be abolished. For that reason any working class with immediate revolutionary potential is seriously unlikely to be majorly threatened by a racist movement within itself.

You write as if you didn't read a word of Alastair's OP. I don't think it's that hard to understand: Unions in Nepal are virtually all under the wing of one or another political parties. Workers aren't generally the ones that call the strikes, it is generally the political parties that call upon the workers under their influence to do so. Therefore, seeing as how we concluded that the two non-Maoist political forces in the country are both counterrevolutionary, strikes led by them will be necessarily toward counterrevolutionary ends given the current political climate. Workers involved in these strikes are either being coerced into action by a party apparatus or union leadership, or they are fundamentally not class-conscious as they support one or another party that has no intention of heading toward communist revolution. In doing so, they are holding back the progress of the revolutionary workers that have come under the leadership of the UCPN(M). The analogy of racial strikes was just an example, but let me ask it more clearly: Do workers, simply by virtue of being workers, have an inalienable right to strike for whatever ends they desire? If a small group of reactionary workers (or workers led by a reactionary party) in a particularly critical industry decide to strike for a very counterrevolutionary purpose, is it not the role of the class-conscious workers and working class organizations to fight back against them?


The working class gains its right to power not because of what it says, but because of its relation to the means of production. You are claiming that we can suppress groups simply for their political beliefs, ignoring what class they belong to. The problem with this is that anyone can claim that any group is "reactionary" and against the workers interest as a whole. If a party were to bureaucratize and a few party members were to take power for themselves there would be nothing stopping them from claiming that a truly progressive group was in fact "reactionary" and ban them for being so; they would already have precedent for using force against other workers. Simply being a member of the largest working class party doesn't give the right to use force against other working class sections.

Your argument here misses a fundamental point. You write that we shouldn't be able to "suppress groups simply for their political beliefs, ignoring what class they belong to." While I agree on a certain level, you're also forgetting that simply belonging to a class does not signify that one represents the interests of that class. Should we be able to suppress a strike by workers under the wing of fascists? I'd obviously argue yes. As Alastair mentioned, there seems to be a very pervasive, mechanical view of the working class in relation to a revolutionary situation, where different groups of workers can only possibly represent different types and levels of revolutionary activity and are never reactionaries to be resisted. Without repeating too much about what Alastair said, I'd like to reiterate that a revolution is not as simple as workers against bosses and is a political battle where forces will line up on either side. It will not be a clean split between proletariat and bourgeoisie; some of the proletarians will line up with the reactionaries and some of the bourgeoisie will join forces with the revolution. The reactionary proletarians will be the foot soldiers of the old state and will need to be resisted and fought against regardless of how they manifest themselves, whether that be as an army or as a union. The unions in Nepal under the wing of the NC and the UML strike for the reactionary aims of two parties that want to consolidate the rule of the bourgeoisie. This is not difficult to grasp, and frankly I'm dumbfounded that you've taken such an idealist view of the working class.


To place a ban on strikes would be to use force against a smaller section of the working class based only on political beliefs. Its a case of the class conscious actually drawing lines between the working class. They are deciding what section of the working class gets what rights and deciding what section of the working class gets different rights. Theoretically your ideas would allow the whites in society to take away rights from the blacks if they deemed them "reactionary". And even taking away the rights of the railway worker is dividing people of the same class.

This is precisely where you're missing the fundamental point. The class conscious are not drawing any lines; the line have already been drawn. I don't know how much clearer it can be said comrade: The Nepali Congress and the UML are two obviously reactionary parties that have political control over unions and manipulate these unions for their own ends. In your idealized world there is no contradiction but of one class against another in a most rudimentary sense. The working class in Nepal is already divided; there are those that support proletarian revolution and those that do not.


You say that my theory rests too much on the idea of "boss vs. worker" but yours relies too much on "progressive vs. reactionary (or bourgeois or right wing or whatever label you want to put on it)". Right now in Nepal it may very well be that there are sections of workers that are influenced by reactionary elements. However it is all too possible that one day the lines between reactionary and progressive will become blurred. Any dissident section of the Maoist movement would be liable to be called "reactionary" and their rights infringed. The past has shown us that socialist party's can dissolve when one faction denies "the progressive nature" of the other. Starting the precedent of denying workers rights because of their political affiliation only gives individuals within party's and governments the tools to oppress the working class.

That may very well be the case in the future, which is why I'm opposed to the party-state concept (as are the Maobadi). But what exactly would you propose be done now? Support any and every strike for any reason? Give a small section of the proletariat under the wing of reactionary parties the right to threaten the mass movement of revolutionary workers and peasants?


I apologize if you want a pure revolution never tinged by any sort of reactionary elements, but that will never happen. Reactionary elements within the working class must learn to be class conscious by their own free will instead of denial of their rights. They will be a nuisance, but we can only ensure the success of class unity by allotting every worker the same rights.

Thus any precedent that impedes on the reactionary workers right to strike endangers the progressive workers right to strike. And that endangers the revolution as a whole.

Nobody's saying we want a pure revolution; we know very well that shit gets messy. But the revolutionary forces are precisely that, the revolutionary forces, which is not defined purely by one's class orientation.

But beside that, you're still forgetting something. The measure NEVER TOOK PLACE!

[Wanted Man]

Very interesting discussion to read. But by this time, I'm wondering if you (cb9) even read the original post. Here is a significant section:


In Nepal, strikes are enforced with violence. Bandhs are called regularly by political groups and factions are supporters of the bandh roam the streets enforcing it with batons. If you can muster enough supporters to do that you can shut an area down fairly easily. In most cases the Maoists seem to be the only ones capable of mustering the support to enforce a bandh with any success, but it’s actually not a voluntary thing. So the UML, NC and even royalist affiliated unions and the parties themselves were capable of shutting down (or at least seriously interfering with) production with or without mass support amongst the workers, and when the Maoists were in government they were doing this with great enthusiasm.


Which leads on to the next point. Strikes in Nepal are never just issues of workers vs bosses. All the unions (as far as I’ve seen) are affiliated to political parties. Strikes are not just called by workers through their unions, they’re called by the workers affiliated to this or that political party, in consultation with that political party. You can disagree with this if you prefer the idea of independent workers unions doing their own thing, but these are the facts on the ground. Strikes are as much about a struggle between different political factions as they are about a struggle between workers and bosses.

Also, you might want to find out what a bandh is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandh

When reactionary union organisations (in Nepal: affiliated with monarchists, Nepali Congress, etc. in other countries potentially Christian, social-democratic, or liberal unions) call a strike in order to fight the revolutionary forces, that is not just "a nuisance".

As the first post described, in Nepal, strikes are apparently enforced in the street with batons. In that case, the reactionaries would not necessarily need the support of the masses to muster a large enough minority of people to terrorize fellow workers into submission, with the express intent of restoring the reactionary parties back to power. In that case, if the revolutionary forces respond, people are not being repressed for simply having certain "political beliefs", but for the side that they actually take in the class struggle, and for the actions that they take in doing so. It's not one-sided repression, but struggle.

In that case, arguing for the revolutionary forces to "do nothing", because the reactionaries have the "freedom" to mobilise their supporters and terrorize the population, would be extremely foolish. It's funny that you're accusing someone else of wanting a "pure revolution", but it's obviously a lot more "purist" to insist that every single worker needs to come to terms with revolutionary ideas om his own, and that it is therefore wrong to impinge upon the "right" of violent mobs to terrorize the community at the behest of the bosses as soon as said mobs include any workers. Surely you're not seriously arguing that.


It is interesting that you are damning 'trots' and anarchists for claiming that the Maoists are taking away workers rights to strike in Nepal.
He's not damning "trots and anarchists" for anything, he is making a statement of fact: that some of them have repeated the suggestion that "Maoists have banned strikes" as "evidence" that the Maoists are reactionary. He then goes on to try and set the record straight. It's just a way of introducing the subject. Why not name the people who make these claims (part of "the western left", predominantly trotskyists and anarchists), when they clearly do make them? It's important to always talk openly and honestly about people's political backgrounds, rather than avoiding it so as to avoid offending people.


But then you defend the concept of taking away a workers right to strike.
Not exactly. He said that the momentary, never implemented suggestion from SOME maoist representatives that there should be no strikes or bandhs in certain sectors is clearly wrong. I would be inclined to agree with this, because Nepal is not currently socialist, and if the Maoists would seriously support using state power against striking workers, it would have obvious implications.

However, what he did say is that it is not unjustified to fight back against attempts to force a strike that objectively serves the cause of the bourgeoisie. Why? Because a strike (just like a trade union, a party, etc.) is not simply a pure expression of working-class power, but an instrument in class struggle that can be pointed in both directions. Like in Russia, where the White Army would call strikes against the Bolshevik government, the uprising of the "Left Social-Revolutionaries", etc. Of course, all of these events are even more hotly-debated than the proposal in Nepal. For fun, try starting a thread on "Kronstadt" in the History forum here! :cool:

Anyway, a massive strike where the working class is united can strengthen a fragile revolutionary process, whereas a strike without mass support, but enforced violently can threaten it, and contribute to turning the tide, crushing the revolution, and depriving it of any power. And in that case, should the Maoists try to call a strike of their own, there can be no doubt that the reactionaries would send in the police, force people back to work, and shoot protesters on the street.

[cb9's_unity]

To Culture of a Peachy Nation and Wanted Man, It is clear that both of you have extensive knowledge about the situation in Nepal. It is also clear that you have almost no understanding of the debate that is going on between me and CA.

You both have made flat out inaccurate claims about what I have said and what I believe. Both of you have not seemed to grasp the idea that I understand that there was never a ban on strikes.


I know very little about the situation in Nepal (so criticism of anything i'm saying is welcome). If its true that this ban never went into place it is both a good and bad sign. It is bad that there is a section of the Maoist movement that thinks political affiliation is more important than class affiliation. It is good that this section clearly does not have the power to implement any of its anti-worker beliefs.

My whole argument has been based around the assumption that these bans never took place. You both have chosen to ignore that I never claimed the bans ever happened. However thanks to your informative posts I would have certainly reworded that paragraph. A worker being forced to strike is very different then a worker striking on their own free will.

What you have both failed to recognize is that the debate between me and CA quickly stopped being about the situation in Nepal specifically. Instead the debate became about one sentence of mine which CA tried to refute and then I defended.


A worker has the right to strike for whatever reason they want.

That's the real disagreement though. Of course they don't.

From there the debate was simply about whether A worker has the right to strike for whatever reason they want. I didn't claim that those in Nepal were infringing on the right. I'll also thank again Wanted Man for pointing out that some workers are being forced to strike, I have only said that a worker has the right to strike for whatever reason they want. If they are being forced into striking then they are being forced to do something against their will. Any group that forces the working to strike against their will must be suppressed.


This is precisely where you're missing the fundamental point. The class conscious are not drawing any lines; the line have already been drawn. I don't know how much clearer it can be said comrade: The Nepali Congress and the UML are two obviously reactionary parties that have political control over unions and manipulate these unions for their own ends. In your idealized world there is no contradiction but of one class against another in a most rudimentary sense. The working class in Nepal is already divided; there are those that support proletarian revolution and those that do not.

At this point I think you may not have read almost anything of what I wrote. Nearly everything i wrote in the section you quoted was dealing with the understanding that there will be reactionary segments of the proletariat. So when you say "In your idealized world there is no contradiction but of one class against another in a most rudimentary sense" I have to assume that you have no understanding about what I was actually saying. When I said "Thus any precedent that impedes on the reactionary workers right to strike endangers the progressive workers right to strike" did I not recognize there was more conflict in society that just class against class? My whole last post was about how to deal with division between the proletariat!

I could write more but both of your posts are arguing against what you think i'm saying instead of what I'm actually saying. If you wanted to critique my first post in this thread I would have surely accepted the criticism and I again thank you for giving me more knowledge about the subject.

However I still stand with my statement that a worker has the right to strike for whatever reason they want. I know CA disagrees with me but I am not fully certain as to where WM and Peachy stand. I think it is dangerous to put down any strike where workers are freely striking against their government. CA disagrees.

Putting down a reactionary strike freely organized and carried out by workers is nothing more than a quick fix. Setting a precedent of putting down workers strikes against the government can only be dangerous later on in a revolution. And any revolution that is seriously threatened by strikes freely organized by workers is a revolution that clearly has not matured and is not in a position for immediate and long term success. It is less than ideal that some workers will remain reactionary longer than others, but it is idealist to believe that suppressing them with force will make them class conscious or remove their reactionary potential. Force clearly has its uses against the bourgeoisie but force against the working class will not solve any long term problems and may even aggravate them; keeping with that idea, groups that force workers to organize strikes against their will must be suppressed. Nothing I have said in this paragraph is meant to imply that the Maoists in Nepal are opposed to what I have said.

I apologize that the thread has gone off topic, it happens on revleft sometimes.

[chegitz guevara]

Don't apologize. It's been a very informative discussion.

[leninpuncher]

Right. Well, I've explained that in part in the OP, but the basic reasons they put the proposal forward for all political parties to stop calling bandhs and strikes for a wee bit was because in response to the labour disputes the Maoist unions were causing, the reactionary parties were calling bandhs and strikes wherever they could to undermine the Maoist-led government. The country wasn't functioning. They wanted a bit of stability to try and make sure everyone could have enough food and the hospitals could have electricity for a while.

If you look at the easily available figures, you'll see that the vast bulk of opposition parties supported the Maoist efforts to ban public sector striking. This explanation holds no weight.

[Saorsa]

If you look at the easily available figures, you'll see that the vast bulk of opposition parties supported the Maoist efforts to ban public sector striking. This explanation holds no weight.

Well duh. The proposal would have included the Maoist-affiliated unions as well, of course they'd support that. The Maoists were basically saying "look, if you lot stop calling strikes and bandhs in these sectors for a certain time period, we will too. Nice wee compromise, you guys cool with that"?

I hope that helps you to understand what's going on a bit better.

[Saorsa]

Just to help people understand what a bandh means in practice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g39xZSN28ok&feature=related

The Maoists are the only people capable of pulling off a nationwide bandh, but other groups can still do it in various areas. Banndh enforcers roam the streets with sticks and force any businesses that are open to shut their doors.

It's not the same as a general strike in the sense we understand it.

[N3wday]

I'd like to raise a hypothetical regarding strikes.

Let's say a revolutionary group has gained state power. The populace of a neighboring country is currently engaged in revolutionary warfare and are close to seizing power, but need more weapons or ammunition. Their struggle is hanging in the balance over this.

So, the revolutionary country commits to send weapons to their neighbors, but a small clique of railway workers opposed to the revolution go on strike in conjunction with the ruling class in the neighboring country going on an assault. Would you argue that their right to strike at that moment for explit political ends supercedes the internationalist responsibility to support working class armed struggle when in a position to do so?

[ls]

Just to help people understand what a bandh means in practice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g39xZSN28ok&feature=related

The Maoists are the only people capable of pulling off a nationwide bandh, but other groups can still do it in various areas. Banndh enforcers roam the streets with sticks and force any businesses that are open to shut their doors.

It's not the same as a general strike in the sense we understand it.

Hold on a second, businesses? So you mean that you have shop and other businessowners unionised into white-collar unions?

[Saorsa]

Hold on a second, businesses? So you mean that you have shop and other businessowners unionised into white-collar unions?

What?

No.

I mean what I said. Maoist supporters go around and force any shops that are open (and most won't be) to close. I don't quite understand how you took the mental leap you did there.

[ls]

What?

No.

I mean what I said. Maoist supporters go around and force any shops that are open (and most won't be) to close. I don't quite understand how you took the mental leap you did there.

You said 'businesses' which could mean quite a lot of things, if you meant just shops you should have said. In any case, shopowners are petit-bourgeois, do the Maoists have them unionised?

[Saorsa]

No. They have a sister organisation for entrepeneurs, small businesses and shop owners etc that support them, but it's unrelated to any of their unions. And I don't think it's very big lol

Watch the video to see what a bandh looks like. Revolutionaries take to the streets and force any shops still open to close.

[Ret]

Nepal’s Maoists are often accused of being anti-worker, Stalinist, bourgeois nationalist and so on by many on the Western ‘left’, particularly anarchists and Trotskyists. As ‘evidence’ towards this, it is often claimed that while in government earlier this year, they ‘banned strikes’.

Let’s set the record straight.
Yes, let's do that; as author of what I believe is the original source of info for what Comrade Alistair calls the "Western 'left'", let's clarify; my article was called "Nepal: victory turns sour" - (sorry, not enough posts yet to post links). It stated in the first sentence "...the Maoist leadership agrees to banning strikes." Not that they had banned strikes. This article was then reposted by some persons unknown elsewhere with the title "Maoists Ban Strikes". So my article was accurate and can't be lumped in with a blanket condemnation of "Western 'leftists'" - having posted on threads where the article is linked to, CA should know this and take the accuracy of the source article into account before making blanket condemnations.


They have strongholds amongst the teachers, hotel workers, petrol workers, workers in many SEZs and industrial zones, hospitality workers, and more.
My understanding about SEZs is that the first ever in Nepal was proposed to open in Feb 2009 in Bhairahawa in southern Nepal - as far as I know that didn't happen (correct me if I'm wrong). So I don't think there are "many SEZs", it would seem unlikely there's any.


I think it was a wrong proposal. But the thing people don't seem to realise is that the ban on strikes was reported on by one or two media outlets just the one time, then never mentioned again. It was never implemented and never happened.Wrong - after the Maoists stated their intention to ban strikes in Jan 09 they restated it in April 09 and it was reported in the mainstream press and I also wrote a libcom article on it. CA is apparently a very regular or daily reader of the Nepali press, so strange if he seems to have missed this - but then he says he knows how many times it was reported, so maybe he didn't miss it - perhaps not strange that he might not see fit to report it.


So when we talk about that brief (and yes, in my view, wrong) proposal by the Maoists to ban strikes it should be seen in this context. The reactionary parties were calling bandhs to undermine the government. These were having an effect on the country, which was just a total fucking mess. The economy was in shambles and there were shortages of all kinds of basic goods. So when the Maoists talked about temporarily banning strikes in some sectors, my guess is it was a ploy by them to prevent their political opponents from using their ‘unions’ to undermine the government and try and make the Maoists look bad by causing shortages and chaos.

This is wrong and CA should surely know it is; the maoists in government, with full co-operation from other parties, were putting the legislation through the necessary processes to put it on the books in preparation for introducing SEZs. The 4 yr old legislation had been drafted by an earlier government; so CA's 'explanation' for the proposal above is myth. This was explained in my original source article - if CA feels qualified to make blanket condemnations of those who criticise Nepali maoists surely he would have read that article so know that what he claims above is inaccurate? Further; my post reproduced below was made on a thread about claims that maoists were paying widows to marry which then developed into a debate on the strike ban; CA posted on the same page just below my post and said he would reply later about this issue but never did. So why is he now repeating the same invented myths and lies maoists keep trotting out - here, on Kasama etc - to try and excuse the embarassing intended strike ban; when he has already read their factual refutation on the earlier thread?

My earlier post;

Why do the Maoists never get the facts right about what they pretend to refute? All the pro-maoist 'explanations' and defences here (and much elsewhere) of the proposed Nepal maoist strike bans are talking nonsense - if they bothered to take their blinkers off and read the linked articles they could find the truth of the matter. But perhaps the truth has a bad taste... The legislation had nothing to do with public sector strikes by rival parties, nor was/is it aimed only at public sector strikes - this is made clear in my articles, so stop pretending otherwise (can't link directly to articles, as haven't posted enough);

Originally Posted by libcom
Maoist governmental Finance Minister Dr Baburam Bhattarai tried to justify a ban;
Now, to create a vibrant industrial economy, is in the interest of both the management and the workers. But this reality is not sinking in their minds. This government is playing its role in creating a healthy relationship between the two. [...]

The workers shouldn't resort to bandas and strikes. If this understanding is honoured we'll have a healthy environment in the days to come.

Q: So the party wants to ensure that whenever there is a labour dispute, legal recourse should be taken?

Bhattarai: Yes. At least for some time, there should be no bandas and strikes in the industrial, health, education sectors, on the major highways, in the public utility sectors. The government is trying to build political consensus on this issue.
[...]
KATHMANDU, Jan 22: After four years of finalizing the draft, the cabinet on Thursday endorsed Special Economic Zone (SEZ) Act, paving way for the implementation of the SEZ projects in the country. [...]
...the Act treats SEZ as a land where other domestic laws related to labor and industries would not be applicable. It has mooted an autonomous SEZ Authority to oversee its operations.

The source stated that the ratification of the Act, which had so far lingered due to the differences over the tighter labor provisions, had became possible after the seven parties recently agreed not to launch strikes in the industries or disturb productions.

“The Act allows workers to unite and practice collective bargaining, but prohibits them from undertaking activities that affect production and normal operations of industries,” said the source. It also allows the entrepreneurs to hire workers on a contract basis.SEZ's are industrial Zones common in Asian countries set up with preferential conditions for employers - eg, tax concessions, strike bans - to attract foreign and local capitalists; hyper-exploitative zones. Some months later Bhattarai restated the intention to ban strikes in some sectors;

Quote:
"We are in a new political set-up and it demands a new outlook in business and industries also," said Bhattrai. He assured entrepreneurs that the private sector would remain a key economic player in the country. He asked business communities to explore fields of competitive advantage.

Nepal is in political transition and there are many problems in trade and commerce sector. "The government knows the problems and is working to solve them," Dr Bhattarai said. The government has been providing subsidies in fuel to industries from the second half of March.

Furthermore, the government is planning to restrict bandhs [street protests] and strikes in industries and essential commodities. "Such regulations will come soon," he assured.
(Himalayan Times online - Apr 10 2009)No mention of 'sabotage strikes' by other rival parties - there was a consensus among all parties on this disciplining of workers as exploited labour power. So stop making up false excuses.

Recently on another revleft thread - originally about Bangladeshi garment workers' struggles in SEZ zones - Maoists were queueing up to express 3rd worldist solidarity with the workers there. But when Nepal Maoists seek to introduce the same kind of hyper-exploitation SEZ zones for the Nepali working class they make up all sorts of excuses and fictions. On that thread the Maoist strike ban also came up and I replied;



As far as I know, the strike ban was never passed into law, it was just expressed as intended legislation (as I made clear in my articles). In Jan 2009 the Nepal Cabinet "endorsed" the legislation - and in April (shortly before leaving govt.) Maoist finance minister Dr Bhattrai, speaking to Nepal's International Chamber of Commerce, promised "Such regulations will come soon". The Maoist Minister was referring to a law drafted by a pre-Maoist govt. that he intended to make operational. But Prachanda, when in govt., was reported as already trying to use his influence to stop bandhs for some time ('bandh' can variously refer to street protests, strikes, shutdowns/blockades etc).


Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal has announced several times that bandas are henceforth banned. No one listened to him. Everyone thought, "They did it when they were underground, now it's our turn." You now have the absurd situation where political parties in the coalition, organisations affiliated to the ruling parties call for shutdowns.
Nepali Times - ISSUE #441 (06 MARCH 2009 - 12 MARCH 2009)On the other thread I also commented on the further double standards of Maoists here;


... when someone quotes the mainstream press as part of a criticism of Maoists he dismisses it with 'well the bourgeois press would say that' - but on the Nepal sticky thread he and others are happy to cheerlead bourgeois press reports that are interpreted to be flattering to the Maoists. [...]

The Maoists were quoted months apart in the media expressing the same intentions to ban strikes - they never issued any denial or claim of being misquoted after the first mentions nor the second. And, as you should already know, Nepali Maoists have never been slow to take aggressive action against newspapers who they feel misrepresent them. To ignore knowledge of such facts and instead only continue to repeat discredited invented myths can only cast doubt on Comrade Alastair's reliability as a general source of information.

[Yehuda Stern]

chegitz, that comparison of strikes by workers for wages and working conditions to strikes in favor of racist / chauvinist oppression is really brilliant, by the way.

[Saorsa]

Thanks for your post Ret. Before I begin addressing your specific points, I think we should outline what my article was saying and what's being discussed here. You have critiqued some minor factual inaccuracies in my article, and I'm grateful for that as it means I can correct them. But the fundamental points I made - that strikes and bandhs were never banned in Nepal, that strikes and other worker class struggles in Nepal are today overwhelmingly led by the Maoists, and that the Maoists have a mass base of support amongst the urban working class - remain unchallenged and 100% correct.

You are nitpicking at various slipups in the text without adressing my fundamental arguments. I suspect that's because the facts on the ground in Nepal don't tend to support the anarchist line that the Maoists are just 'red capitalists' who have either betrayed the masses already or are in the process of doing so.

Anyway, here we go.


Yes, let's do that; as author of what I believe is the original source of info for what Comrade Alistair calls the "Western 'left'", let's clarify; my article was called "Nepal: victory turns sour" - (sorry, not enough posts yet to post links). It stated in the first sentence "...the Maoist leadership agrees to banning strikes." Not that they had banned strikes. This article was then reposted by some persons unknown elsewhere with the title "Maoists Ban Strikes". So my article was accurate and can't be lumped in with a blanket condemnation of "Western 'leftists'" - having posted on threads where the article is linked to, CA should know this and take the accuracy of the source article into account before making blanket condemnations.My critique was never of your specific article. It was always a criticism of the mistaken idea common amongst anarchists and Trotskyists that the Maoists banned strikes. I fail to see any other way my article could be interpreted. I originally posted it without a link to your Libcom post, but added it after discussing the article with various people who suggested that I do so. Your post is usually referred to as 'evidence' by people labouring under the delusion that the UCPN (M) banned strikes (or made any serious moves to do so), so blame them for not reading it properly, not me. I have read your article several times and I am fully aware of what it says. I apologise for lack of clarity here.


My understanding about SEZs is that the first ever in Nepal was proposed to open in Feb 2009 in Bhairahawa in southern Nepal - as far as I know that didn't happen (correct me if I'm wrong). So I don't think there are "many SEZs", it would seem unlikely there's any.Your totally correct, and I'm thankful that you pointed this out. This was a minor factual inaccuracy in my article which I'll remove. I follow Nepal fairly closely, but I'm human and I make mistakes. Thanks for pointing this one out to me. However, my point in that paragraph stands - the Maoists have a massive base of support amongst the urban working class in Nepal.


Wrong - after the Maoists stated their intention to ban strikes in Jan 09 they restated it in April 09 and it was reported in the mainstream press and I also wrote a libcom article on it. CA is apparently a very regular or daily reader of the Nepali press, so strange if he seems to have missed this - but then he says he knows how many times it was reported, so maybe he didn't miss it - perhaps not strange that he might not see fit to report it.Right, so rather than being reported on once it was reported on twice. I'll update my article to reflect that. But what does this prove? Other than the fact that I don't have a 100% accurate knowledge of everything the Nepali media posted online in English in the past year, not really a whole lot. Strikes were never banned and the Maoists continue to be the ones leading strikes in Nepal. Class conscious workers continue to rally to the Maoist banner. All my arguments remain correct and unchallenged, and I'd rather you didn't make me out to be some kind of Machiavellian liar.


This is wrong and CA should surely know it is; the maoists in government, with full co-operation from other parties, were putting the legislation through the necessary processes to put it on the books in preparation for introducing SEZs. The 4 yr old legislation had been drafted by an earlier government; so CA's 'explanation' for the proposal above is myth. This was explained in my original source article - if CA feels qualified to make blanket condemnations of those who criticise Nepali maoists surely he would have read that article so know that what he claims above is inaccurate?Your line here is an assertion of opinion, not fact. I cannot read the minds of the Maoist leadership and neither can you, but what I did was attempt to explain why they would have supported a temporary (and it was always clearly intended to be temporary - as Bhattarai said in the interview you referred to, the ban was to be for 'some time', not permanently) ban on strikes and bandhs at the same time as they are leading plenty of these themselves.

We do not have very much information on the proposal to ban strikes. We certainly do not have enough to conclusively say that it was preparation for the introduction of SEZs. Perhaps you should remove your own blinkers and stop seizing every scrap of text you find to justify your view of the Maoists, and instead take a positive and humble attitude of trying to learn from the most succesful revolutionary movement in decades. But no, sectarians will be sectarians, and utopian liberals will be utopian liberals.


Further; my post reproduced below was made on a thread about claims that maoists were paying widows to marry which then developed into a debate on the strike ban; CA posted on the same page just below my post and said he would reply later about this issue but never did. I apologise for this. There are number of times in the past that I've said I'd reply to a post when I had time and then never did. I forgot - it's as simple as that. I'm currently in a minimum wage labouring job with irregular hours, and most of the time when I get home I'm not really in the mood for spending the few hours a day I have to myself locked in an online argument. Sometimes I am, but usually I'm not. So frankly, if your going to get snarky about me not replying to your post you can get fucked mate. I don't know what you do for a living and I'm not going to judge the speed of your replies because of that. I think your attitude here is indicative of your attitude to Nepal - this is what i think the situation is, this is what I think it should be, FIRE ALL GUNS.


So why is he now repeating the same invented myths and lies maoists keep trotting out - here, on Kasama etc - to try and excuse the embarassing intended strike ban; when he has already read their factual refutation on the earlier thread?Haha :lol:

I'm not espescially embarassed by it. I think it was a mistaken line, but meh, it's not that big a deal. I mean, who am I supposed to be embarassed in front of? Western anarchists and Trotskyists? The UCPN (M) is shaking the very foundations of state power in Nepal and a confrontation is building up there the likes of which the world hasn't seen in a very long time, and all you lot can do is sit in front of your computers in the first world and seize on every bourgeois media article that indicates the Maoists are doing something you disagree with.

I'm challenging you here and now to tell everyone reading this where exactly I've lied. I made a grand total (that have been pointed out so far) of two mistakes, both of which will be corrected. Those were not lies. Where have I lied? And furthermore, which of my fundamental points that I listed at the beginning of this post are false, and how do you intend to prove that they are false?

Ret is proceeding from totally the wrong starting point, and as a result is finishing up in totally the wrong place. The correct approach would be to start by analysing the concrete practice of the Maobadi over a long period of time, working out what direction is being taken and how it's being taken, and establishing to the best of his abilities what is actually taking place in real life in Nepal and basing his conclusions on this.

But instead of taking this approach, Ret is taking the incorrect approach of starting from the public statements of the Maoist leadership as reported in the bourgeois media, cherrypicking articles that cast the Maoists in a light we as leftists would consider to be negative. More than this - he is commiting the basic unscientific error of starting research with his conclusion already made. Ret starts from the position that the Maoists are counter-revolutionary, and thus desperately searches for information to back this up. And naturally, those who seek find. Contradiction is present in everything, including of course a mass revolutionary organisation, and there will always be bad lines and bad practices found if you search hard enough. The question is, which of these is the primary aspect, positive or negative? In the context of this discussion, when we are discussing the contradictions within the UCPN (M) and the revolutionary process it is leading in Nepal, with a particular focus on it's role in the urban working class, how does this contradiction play out? Of the positive and negtative aspects present in everything, which is primary?

Nepal's Maoists, as I have clearly documented here and elsewhere, are in the forefront of the class struggle in Nepal. The vast majority of strikes taken by workers for increases in wages and conditions, for bread and butter issues, are organised through Maoist-affiliated unions. There may be a vast conspiracy within the Nepali media to not report on strikes carried out by non-Maoist unions, but frankly I find it rather unlikely. I have never read a Nepali news article about a succesful and militant strike being carried out by a union affiliated to any party other than the Maoists in the past year, and while that's not to say such strikes never happen and it's not even to say such strikes have not been reported on, considering how closely I follow news from Nepal it says a lot. The Maoists unions never, ever stopped leading strikes, and the Maoists call bandhs quite regularly. They called one today (http://www.myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=13771) in fact, after some of their cadres were murdered in an attack by paramilitaries the Maoists claim were trained and armed by the state.

Another thing to keep in mind is that a bandh is not a strike. It is quite different. I've never set foot on south asian soil so all my information is from other sources, and as a result I should certainly not be taken as the definitive authority on this, but from all the research I've done some things have become clear. A bandh in Nepal is when a political group calls a shutdown of an area to advance it's political agenda. Strikes are when workers withhold their labour power from the employer. A bandh is when a political group informs the people that the shops, schools and factories will not be opening and that no vehicles will be allowed on the streets - bandh literally means closure, and that's exactly what it is. If the party has mass support like the Maoists, most people will probably voluntarily observe the bandh. But even if it doesn't have mass support, people will still be forced to observe the bandh because if they drive their scooter to work bandh enforces will knock them off it, set it on fire and beat them up. A bandh is not in any way inherently an act of class struggle called by class-conscious proletarians in opposition to their exploiters. It is when a political group says "your not going to work or else". The Maoists called massive rallies during their bandhs which hundreds of thousands of people took part in, I've seen no reportage of any similar mass rallies being called by other groups, indicating that they can't mobilise the numbers for them. But despite this, all they need to do is put their youth wings on the streets with clubs and even if they can't shut an area down, they can still seriously disrupt daily life. The police don't seem to deal as harshly with bandhs called by non-Maoist groups either, surprisingly enough.

They have been spreading their organisation influence and control throughout the labour movement. They have been, in many areas, creating a labour movement worth mentioning. They have been organising strikes left, right and centre. You cannot prove me wrong on this, because it's a basic fact. If it's demanded of me I'll go and find links to prove this, but anyone can establish this for themselves by going through the archives of Nepali media sites and investigating the situation themselves. And these activities over the past few years have not just been about defending the bread and butter conditions of the working class in some economist manner. These activites have been about preparing the ground for an urban insurrection in which the revolutionary forces defeat the state and the reactionary forces, seize power and build a revolutionary society. It's no coincidence that many of their union organisers, YCL leaders and student political leaders were former PLA commanders sent into the cities. The revolutionary war never ended, it's form just changed, and it's still going on.

In the very first footnote to your piece on Libcom, you translated bandh as "a Nepali word literally meaning 'closed' - i.e. strikes and public protests in Nepal."

This is not the case. A bandh is not a strike, and it's not a coincidence that in the interview you referred to Bhatarrai clearly made a distinction between the two. Such inaccurate reporting and such basic lack of knowledge and understanding of the concrete situation in Nepal indicates that frankly, you don't know what your talking about, and as you so eloquently put it, 'casts doubt on [your] reliability as a general source of information.'

We can only conclude this. When the Maoists called for an end to bandhs and strikes temporarily in certain sectors, they were not conspiring with the reactionary parties to prevent the conscious self-organisation of the working class. They were calling a truce with these parties in order to ensure the country could function and have food, electricity and other basic services. You do not know what a bandh is, and inaccurately thought it was the same as a strike. You do not understand what is happening in Nepal and your entire analysis of the situation should be treated for what it is - the bitter, hostile sectarianism of an uninformed Western anarchist.

[Saorsa]

chegitz, that comparison of strikes by workers for wages and working conditions to strikes in favor of racist / chauvinist oppression is really brilliant, by the way.

Come on Yehuda, usually your much better than this. The point chegitz and others (including myself) have been making in this thread is that there is no inalienable "right" to strike, devoid of context, existing in the ether, handed down from god or whatever. Workers do not have the "right" to go on strike for counter-revolutionary reasons that retard the overall class struggle, and play into the hands of the capitalist class.

There's basically two positions here and no inbetween. The first options is that workers have the inalienable right to go on strike for any reason whatsoever by simple virtue of being workers. This means that when workers go on strike against women being allowed into the workforce, or against black authors being taught in schools, they have the 'right' to do this and the woman/black people in question have to respect this inalienable 'right'.

The only other option is that workers don't have the inalienable right to strike for whatever reasons they choose, simply by virtue of being workers. That would mean that regardless of whether the majority of male white workers in a coal mine oppose women/blacks being allowed in, it is still right for women/blacks to be allowed in and wrong, something to be opposed and if possible defeated,for these workers to take this strike action. Why? Because it is more important for white, male workers to unite with blacks and women than it is for them to unite with each other around shared prejudices.

This should be common sense. But sadly, the Western left is in a pretty sad state and these questions are much more muddled than they need to be and should be.

[chegitz guevara]

chegitz, that comparison of strikes by workers for wages and working conditions to strikes in favor of racist / chauvinist oppression is really brilliant, by the way.

You've utterly missed the point. As revolutionaries, we don't support all the strikes made by workers. I doubt you'd join a strike by Israeli workers to keep Palestinians out of their work place.

During a revolutionary situation, revolutionary workers have a right to ban strikes. The Bolsheviks did just that, many times, even legitimate strikes, in order to save the revolution. The needs of the revolution outweigh the right to strike.

[pranabjyoti]

The problem with anarchists, trotskytes and other armchair revolutionaries is that "they first made the shirt and then want to shape the body to fit the shirt", while any kind of common sense just says the opposite. But, why do they say and "do" so opposite to common sense? Because, they are "good" in criticism of revolutionaries but very very very bad in doing any kind of REAL revolutionary activity.

[ls]

This should be common sense. But sadly, the Western left is in a pretty sad state and these questions are much more muddled than they need to be and should be.

I love the irony here. The irony that you are what most people would consider a 'westerner' whereas he is from the middle-east, try and work these things out before you make condescending remarks like that in future.

You haven't refuted what's been said about proposing SEZs at all, I would like to see you do that. Also


No. They have a sister organisation for entrepeneurs, small businesses and shop owners etc that support them, but it's unrelated to any of their unions. And I don't think it's very big lol

I thought this might be the case, I've heard all this talk about "organising the urban petit-bourgeois" by Bhattarai before. It is quite reactionary behaviour really, also I would like to see how much support and how big this essential 'sister organisation' is and whether they too are called out on bandh duty.

[Saorsa]

I love the irony here. The irony that you are what most people would consider a 'westerner' whereas he is from the middle-east, try and work these things out before you make condescending remarks like that in future.

I wasn't targetting Yehuda personally, I have a lot of respect for him and his politics usually aren't too shit for a Trotskyist. :lol: In future ls, when I make a comment about the Western 'left' and not a specific person, it's safe to assume that I am in fact referring to the Western 'left' and not in fact a specific person. Again, common sense...

And just as an aside, Israel certainly isn't a Third World country, and while it's not a subject I've thought about in a great deal of depth I think there's definitely a case to be made for including Israel in the West. I mean, geographically New Zealand is less "Western" than Israel. The 'West' is a pretty dumb phrase really.


You haven't refuted what's been said about proposing SEZs at all, I would like to see you do that.

What's to refute? There aren't any. When some concrete details emerge about SEZs I'll happily discuss that, until then we're just crystal ball gazing.


I thought this might be the case, I've heard all this talk about "organising the urban petit-bourgeois" by Bhattarai before. It is quite reactionary behaviour really, also I would like to see how much support and how big this essential 'sister organisation' is and whether they too are called out on bandh duty.

A: I really don't think it's essential. But it's probably very useful.

B: It's not reactionary in any sense of the word.

[ls]

And just as an aside, Israel certainly isn't a Third World country, and while it's not a subject I've thought about in a great deal of depth I think there's definitely a case to be made for including Israel in the West. I mean, geographically New Zealand is less "Western" than Israel. The 'West' is a pretty dumb phrase really.

It is a kind of dumb phrase, but Israel is not a western country just because it is largely a product and proported by western imperialism.


What's to refute? There aren't any. When some concrete details emerge about SEZs I'll happily discuss that, until then we're just crystal ball gazing.

What did you write?


The Maoists briefly put forward a proposal to temporarily ban strikes in certain key sectors. This was at a time when the country had no electricity for most of the day, there was a food shortage and strikes and bandhs called by reactionary parties were causing chaos and undermining the Maoist-led government.

In a recent strike in a big industrial zone in Nepal, the workers began as part of a union affiliated to the UML. But as the strike dragged on, they became increasingly frustrated with the collaborationist, reformist attitude of their union, and ended up leaving it en masse to join a Maoist union instead, which eagerly picked up their cause and threw it’s resources behind their strike. This says a lot I think about the relationship the UCPN (M) has with the working class.

I am pretty sure this 'big industrial zone' was an SEZ by the sounds of it, in any case I think you pretty much defeat the first part yourself, with the second part from your article.

Proposing to ban strikes is never a route that should be explored by a workers party, certainly not proposing to ban strikes in whole sectors, were these sectors even white-collar ones? I highly, highly doubt it. We are supposed to bring workers over to our side, not rule over them and implement bans on whole sectors, nothing like that at all.


A: I really don't think it's essential. But it's probably very useful.

B: It's not reactionary in any sense of the word.

How is it not reactionary? Organising and especially, relying on the petit-bourgeois to do progressive political work for the workers is not a good idea at all, it will backfire. We should be getting the petit-bourgeois to organise themselves away from the workers, requisitioning resources when it is necessary and generally, controlling and keeping watch over them.

[NaxalbariZindabad]

How is it not reactionary? Organising and especially, relying on the petit-bourgeois to do progressive political work for the workers is not a good idea at all, it will backfire. We should be getting the petit-bourgeois to organise themselves away from the workers, requisitioning resources when it is necessary and generally, controlling and keeping watch over them.

:confused: That doesn't make any sense to me. Could you try to explain more precisely:

Why is organizing people from middle classes reactionary?
Why are you writing that the Maoists are "relying on the petit-bourgeois to do progressive political work for the workers"? What do you mean by that?
Why should contacts between petit-bourgeois and workers avoided?
What is your criticism of the UCPN(M) concerning the middle classes; what should they stop doing, and what should they do instead?

[Ret]

If I'm to do this properly ...

[Ret]

... really need...

[Ret]

... to get to...

[Ret]

25 posts, so I'll be able...

[Ret]

... to post the links...

[Ret]

... to the articles...

[Ret]

the fundamental points I made - that strikes and bandhs were never banned in Nepal, that strikes and other worker class struggles in Nepal are today overwhelmingly led by the Maoists, and that the Maoists have a mass base of support amongst the urban working class - remain unchallenged and 100% correct.I never sought to challenge any of these things, as my post made clear.


You are nitpicking at various slipups in the text without adressing my fundamental arguments. I never gave any indication of wanting to debate the merits or faults of maoism all day, if that's what you mean - though I have done that elsewhere; http: (http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2009/01/29/prachanda-nepalese-people-will-seize-power/#comment-11628)//mikeely.wordpress.com/2009/01/29/prachanda-nepalese-people-will-seize-power/#comment-11628 (http:////mikeely.wordpress.com/2009/01/29/prachanda-nepalese-people-will-seize-power/#comment-11628) (My intervention begins at comment 33.) I just wanted to, yet again, correct the misleading claims of maoists on the intended strike ban.


Quote:
Wrong - after the Maoists stated their intention to ban strikes in Jan 09 they restated it in April 09 and it was reported in the mainstream press and I also wrote a libcom article on it. CA is apparently a very regular or daily reader of the Nepali press, so strange if he seems to have missed this - but then he says he knows how many times it was reported, so maybe he didn't miss it - perhaps not strange that he might not see fit to report it.

Right, so rather than being reported on once it was reported on twice. I'll update my article to reflect that. But what does this prove? Other than the fact that I don't have a 100% accurate knowledge of everything the Nepali media posted online in English in the past year, not really a whole lot. Strikes were never banned and the Maoists continue to be the ones leading strikes in Nepal. Class conscious workers continue to rally to the Maoist banner. All my arguments remain correct and unchallenged, and I'd rather you didn't make me out to be some kind of Machiavellian liar.Rather than call you a liar I actually said perhaps you chose not to report something.


This is wrong and CA should surely know it is; the maoists in government, with full co-operation from other parties, were putting the legislation through the necessary processes to put it on the books in preparation for introducing SEZs. The 4 yr old legislation had been drafted by an earlier government; so CA's 'explanation' for the proposal above is myth. This was explained in my original source article - if CA feels qualified to make blanket condemnations of those who criticise Nepali maoists surely he would have read that article so know that what he claims above is inaccurate?
Your line here is an assertion of opinion, not fact. I cannot read the minds of the Maoist leadership and neither can you, but what I did was attempt to explain why they would have supported a temporary (and it was always clearly intended to be temporary - as Bhattarai said in the interview you referred to, the ban was to be for 'some time', not permanently) ban on strikes and bandhs at the same time as they are leading plenty of these themselves.


We do not have very much information on the proposal to ban strikes. We certainly do not have enough to conclusively say that it was preparation for the introduction of SEZs. We do, and this is where your whole argument falls down - that was the role of the 4 yr old proposed legislation the maoists resuscitated, to be in permanent legal effect with no time limit- as explained in quotes in my article you say you've read several times. The maoists also stated more general non-legal pleas to stop strikes in wider industries 'for some time'. Those are two separate facts, but both indicative of maoist attitudes to labour discipline when they were in government.


Further; my post reproduced below was made on a thread about claims that maoists were paying widows to marry which then developed into a debate on the strike ban; CA posted on the same page just below my post and said he would reply later about this issue but never did.

I apologise for this. There are number of times in the past that I've said I'd reply to a post when I had time and then never did. I forgot - it's as simple as that. I'm currently in a minimum wage labouring job with irregular hours, and most of the time when I get home I'm not really in the mood for spending the few hours a day I have to myself locked in an online argument. Sometimes I am, but usually I'm not. So frankly, if your going to get snarky about me not replying to your post you can get fucked mate.
I wasn't "snarky" or bothered about your non-reply - but - in light of this thread - just observing that you didn't reply there where you would've had to deal with the facts of the SEZ legislation.

I'm challenging you here and now to tell everyone reading this where exactly I've lied. I made a grand total (that have been pointed out so far) of two mistakes, both of which will be corrected. Those were not lies. Where have I lied? And furthermore, which of my fundamental points that I listed at the beginning of this post are false, and how do you intend to prove that they are false?I said you repeated lies, such as the misleading 'explanation' of the intended ban - whether intentionally or not I don't know, but you've read things that contain info about the SEZ bill that you chose to ignore in your 'explanation' of the intended strike ban. To omit relevant facts you're aware of certainly gives a deceptive picture of the subject. I'll leave that to the opinions of others as to whether that is lying.


Ret is proceeding from totally the wrong starting point, and as a result is finishing up in totally the wrong place. The correct approach would be to start by analysing the concrete practice of the Maobadi over a long period of time, working out what direction is being taken and how it's being taken, and establishing to the best of his abilities what is actually taking place in real life in Nepal and basing his conclusions on this.Why assume I haven't done that? My conclusion is just very different from yours.

But instead of taking this approach, Ret is taking the incorrect approach of starting from the public statements of the Maoist leadership as reported in the bourgeois media, cherrypicking articles that cast the Maoists in a light we as leftists would consider to be negative. More than this - he is commiting the basic unscientific error of starting research with his conclusion already made. Now who's mindreading? I think your conclusions about anyone who criticises maoism are 'readymade'.


Rather than considering using government power to ban them, the maoists are certainly calling more strikes since they're out of government - no surprise there.
I have never read a Nepali news article about a succesful and militant strike being carried out by a union affiliated to any party other than the Maoists in the past year, and while that's not to say such strikes never happen and it's not even to say such strikes have not been reported on, considering how closely I follow news from Nepal it says a lot. You missed this recent nationwide one;

Petroleum Workers call off their strike

Posted On - 05/11/2009
August 18- Katmandu. Petroleum workers called off of their strike and returned to work after fulfilling their demands. Nine points agreement is signed between Nepal Petroleum workers union and Bagmati Zonal petrol association dealers in Labor Ministry.
Gokarna Khadka, president of Nepal Petroleum Workers´ Union. He further said they would continue protest outside capital zone to get their demands fulfilled.

GEFONT affiliated Union NEPWU had called on the strike across the country since Saturdays putting 15 points demands.

They have been spreading their organisation influence and control throughout the labour movement. .... You cannot prove me wrong on this, because it's a basic fact.I wouldn't dispute - and have never done so - that maoists have made inroads into trade unionism - but, to broaden the picture; other unions have reported much intimidation by maoists;

a report from 2008
seven GEFONT leaders were injured in the brutal attacked by the members of the Maoist Trade Union (ANFTU) on 2 January 2008. The fracas erupted after the workers leaders came for dialoged with Babu Ram Panth, the Manager of Pokhara Noodles Private Limited, for the re-instatement of 12 workers sacked from the company illegally earlier.

All factories in the Pokhara Industrial area remained close against the attack of GEFONT leaders. GEFONT also organized a protest rally against the brutal attack. "No one should minimize our strength, our responsible manner doesn’t mean of our weakness" – said comrade Surya Mohan Subedi addressing the corner meeting.

Hundreds of workers from the industrial area joined the rally and chanted against the Maoist terrorism. Later the rally was converted in to the corner meeting in Amarsing Chock, Pokhara.
http://www.gefont.org/ebulletin_detail.php?id=16#e_113

In 2007;
Maoist attack on GEFONT union members: As local leaders of the Independent Transport Workers Association of Nepal (ITWAN-GEFONT) were collecting dues from members on 16 October, they were suddenly and viciously attacked by more than 90 members of the Maoist All-Nepal Trade Union Congress (Revolutionary) – with the result that several GEFONT members were badly injured or kidnapped. Bidur Karki, Secretary of the Department of Education of GEFONT and the Central Committee General Secretary of ITWAN was one of those who were seriously injured, and he was hospitalised. Others suffering from injuries and/or abduction by the Maoists were Deepak Poudel, NEC member and Bagmati Zonal chief, Naran Nath Luintel Bagmati NEC member & CUPPEC secretary, Thakur Shrestha Zonal Committee member, Balgopal Thapa Joint Secretary of Central Committee of the Independent Press Union (IPWUN-GEFONT), Ms. Kripa Karki Central Committee member, Ms. Sunita Bidhathoki Central Committee member of Nepal Independent Hotel Workers Union, and finally Gayatri Niroula, Rameshwar Dhungana, Khem Dahal and Govinda Magar who are all NEST-GEFONT members.

GEFONT reported an attack on the GEFONT chair of the Koshi Zone on 14 October, and the kidnapping of Nimesh Chhetri from the Nepal Rickshaw Pullers’ Union in the district of Morang. Sanjib Tamang and Bhupendra Rai of ITWAN-GEFONT in the district of Dhankuta were also reported kidnapped. The Democratic Confederation of Nepalese Trade Unions (DECONT) has also reported that it has had problems with Maoist unions.

On 18 November, the attacks by the Maoists continued against GEFONT at the Bhrikuti Pulp and Paper Nepal Ltd. plant in Gaindakot, Nawalparasi district of Western Nepal, where Mr. Tika Ram Paudel, the Central Treasurer of the Nepal Independent Chemical & Iron Workers’ Union (NICIWU) and Mr. Shree Mahato, NICIWU Vice-president of the Bhrikuti Pulp and Paper Nepal Limited, were brutally attacked by a group of Maoists.
http://survey07.ituc-csi.org/getcountry.php?IDCountry=NPL&IDLang=EN

In the very first footnote to your piece on Libcom, you translated bandh as "a Nepali word literally meaning 'closed' - i.e. strikes and public protests in Nepal."

This is not the case. A bandh is not a strike, ....
...a bandh is not a strike. It is quite different....
You do not know what a bandh is....Wrong;

"During a Bandh, a large chunk of a community declares a general strike, usually lasting one day. While often it means the closing down of a major marketplace of a city for the day, there have been instances of entire Metros coming to a standstill."
..... A bandh is not the same as a Hartal, which simply means a strike: during a bandh, any business activity (and sometimes even traffic) in the area affected will be forcibly prevented by the strikers. However, in states where bandhs are banned, Hartals may be identical to bandhs except for the name.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandh
and it's not a coincidence that in the interview you referred to Bhatarrai clearly made a distinction between the two. Such inaccurate reporting and such basic lack of knowledge and understanding of the concrete situation in Nepal indicates that frankly, you don't know what your talking about, and as you so eloquently put it, 'casts doubt on [your] reliability as a general source of information.'Wrong. I'm aware of the difference between 'hartal' and 'bandh'. But your definition is too simplistic; bandhs are demonstrations done by those who have to usually stop their labour to do so; they're also intended to stop others working. It's a bit like saying that in the West a picket line is not a strike. You don't generally have bandhs without strikes, so my given definition is correct; "strikes and public protests". (But maybe I should have been more precise for the sake of pedantic hairsplitters.) The term is commonly used interchangeably in Nepal now, partly perhaps cos so many strikes are at present party political rather than just about the economic interests of workers;


Nepal bandh ends after 4 pm
Friday, 01 January 2010 10:27

Nepal stepped into New Year 2010 not with a celebratory bang but with a nationwide general strike (bandh) jointly called by various organisations representing indigenous and ethnic communities on Friday, demanding implementation of Convention 169 concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples by the International Labor Organization (ILO).http://www.nepalnews.com/main/index.php/news-archive/1-top-story/3189-nepal-begins-2010-with-nationwide-strike.html (http://www.revleft.com/vb/.http://www.nepalnews.com/main/index.php/news-archive/1-top-story/3189-nepal-begins-2010-with-nationwide-strike.html)There's a site called 'nepalbandh' - but, reflecting present common usage of 'bandh' - they also report on their site simple labour stoppages which aren't 'bandhs' in the literal sense, such as this;

Call for Indefinite Strike in the Offices of Nepal Oil Corporation (NOC) - Day 6

Bandh Called By
All Nepal Petroleum Workers Association (ANPWA)

Reason
All Nepal Petroleum Workers Association (ANPWA) have called for Indefinite Strike in the Offices of Nepal Oil Corporation (NOC) saying that the petroleum entrepreneur did not fulfill their demands.
http://www.nepalbandh.com/event_view.php?id=1480

Further examples from Nepali press;

Bandh hits normal life for 2nd consecutive day as govt warns strike could put peace in peril
Monday, 21 December 2009 10:42

Normal life throughout the nation continues to be adversely affected on the second day of the general strike called by the Unified CPN (Maoist) on Monday.

Maoist cadres take out torch rally at Putalisadak, Kathmandu, Monday evening, on the second day of their three-day nationwide general strike. nepalnews.com.ANA
Like on Sunday, the first day of the strike, Kathmandu's streets look deserted with no vehicular movement. Long as well as short distance public transportation as well as private vehicles has not operated. Many people are walking on the road to reach their destination, while others have chosen to postpone their work due to lack of transportation.

Cadres of UCPN (Maoist) and its sister organizations gathered in various places to impose the bandh.
http://nepalnews.com/main/index.php/news-archive/2-political/3009-bandh-hits-normal-life-for-2nd-consecutive-day-as-govt-warns-strike-could-put-peace-in-peril.html
Maoist strike paralyses life in Nepal, 6 dozen arrested
TNN 20 December 2009, 05:54pm

Six dozen people were arrested from different parts of Nepal, vehicles vandalised and industries and restaurants attacked as Nepal’s Maoists on Sunday began enforcing a three-day bandh that paralysed the nation and closed down transport, industries, markets as well as educational institutions. .........
Though the Maoists said they would not call off the strike, the government also remained equally resolute. “A responsible party should realise that strikes, which cause hardship to the people, is not the way to reach an agreement,” the prime minister said after arriving at Kathmandu. “I am requesting the Maoists to call off the strike and return to dialogue.”


We can only conclude this. When the Maoists called for an end to bandhs and strikes temporarily in certain sectors,
they were not conspiring with the reactionary parties to prevent the conscious self-organisation of the working class. All the parties 'conspired' with the maoists to agree this legislation.
They were calling a truce with these parties in order to ensure the country could function and have food, electricity and other basic services. You're now doing that mind-reading you warned us against earlier. But you're wrong. You conflate two different things; they called for an end to strikes 'for some time' in certain sectors. But they also proposed to enact legislation to permanently restrict workers' rights in SEZs - which you avoided mentioning.
In comments below the article on your blog, you claim;

I’ve seen no evidence there were any major changes being proposed to industrial law. This was a temporary proposal to be enacted by the government, not any kind of legislative reform.http://comradealastair.wordpress.com/2010/01/02/did-the-maobadi-ban-strikes/Yet you say you 'read my article several times' where it quotes;

KATHMANDU, Jan 22: After four years of finalizing the draft, the cabinet on Thursday endorsed Special Economic Zone (SEZ) Act, paving way for the implementation of the SEZ projects in the country. [...]
...the Act treats SEZ as a land where other domestic laws related to labor and industries would not be applicable. It has mooted an autonomous SEZ Authority to oversee its operations.http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=1357So how is that not evidence that you've seen?? It's as good "evidence" as the press reports you regularly post. So - again - it's your claims, not mine, that are dishonest. So how can you say "I’ve seen no evidence there were any major changes being proposed to industrial law"???

In my later article reporting the reporting the maoists' restating their intention to ban strikes I quoted;

Now Maoist finance minister Dr Bhattrai has told Nepal's International Chamber of Commerce that the promised strike ban will soon be operational;
Quote:

"We are in a new political set-up and it demands a new outlook in business and industries also," said Bhattrai. He assured entrepreneurs that the private sector would remain a key economic player in the country. He asked business communities to explore fields of competitive advantage.

Nepal is in political transition and there are many problems in trade and commerce sector. "The government knows the problems and is working to solve them," Dr Bhattarai said. The government has been providing subsidies in fuel to industries from the second half of March.

Furthermore, the government is planning to restrict bandhs [street protests] and strikes in industries and essential commodities. "Such regulations will come soon," he assured.
(Himalayan Times online - Apr 10 2009)http://libcom.org/news/nepal-maoists-restate-intention-ban-strikes-other-news-10042009The reference to "regulation" is a clear intention to legislate on the issue. So if you somehow missed it before now you've seen the evidence. The maoists have always been quick to act against newspapers who say things they don't like - they never have claimed this report was inaccurate or refuted it so far. Contrary to what Alastair says or claims he 'has seen'- the maoists clearly stated an intention to legislate to ban strikes.

You do not know what a bandh is, and inaccurately thought it was the same as a strike. You do not understand what is happening in Nepal and your entire analysis of the situation should be treated for what it is - the bitter, hostile sectarianism of an uninformed Western anarchist.What is revealing about your responses and those of most online maoists is that - rather than just dealing with the facts and opinions - you constantly try to discredit the individuals who make them with name-throwing, applying of dismissive labels etc. A typical Stalinist-type tactic, but still as unconvincing. I think I showed above who is making misleading staements about the strike ban and who's confused about whether bandhs are strikes and about how the word is commonly used by Nepalis and Hindi speakers. I have been to Nepal, and have had recent contact with those who live there, so my comments are not as uninformed as you ignorantly assume. I am at least as well informed as you are - as you say, you've never been there, you just read and interpret the online info, like lots of other people of various opinions.

PS - I see that nearly all of your article is word-for-word from this video statement by CPN; are you the author of that CPN statement or did you just not bother making clear in your article that you are quoting rather than composing?
http://partisan-news.blogspot.com/2010/01/did-nepali-maoists-ban-strikes.html
(http://partisan-news.blogspot.com/2010/01/did-nepali-maoists-ban-strikes.html)

[Ret]

PS - sorry to all about getting to the 25 post mark like that, but there were a lot of links in the post.

[ls]

:confused: That doesn't make any sense to me. Could you try to explain more precisely:

People who own small businesses are exploiters and have significantly different class interests to those that don't, people who are 'self-employed' may sometimes be able to be classed as non petit-bourgeois, although they often are. I assume that you are talking about these kinds of people, we must clarify exactly what these people are, shopowners which comrade alastair mentioned are definitely petit-bourgeois no doubt about it! They will mostly want to force workers' wages down, make them work for longer etc, it is material fact.


Why is organizing people from middle classes reactionary?

Getting them to organise themselves indepently in their own petit-bourgeois councils, then and most importantly, exercising workers' control over them when they attempt flex their class interests. This is not at all reactionary, on the contrary, it is extremely progressive. Working with people such as shopowners during strikes, to control workers and others however is definitely reactionary, it's class collaborationism.


Why are you writing that the Maoists are "relying on the petit-bourgeois to do progressive political work for the workers"? What do you mean by that?

See my criticisms above, I never said they exclusively do this either, but it is an element that is worthy of criticism IMO and it's something that Barburam Bhattarai mentioned as a good thing himself, which worried me even then.


Why should contacts between petit-bourgeois and workers avoided?

Uuhm.. class-collaborationism?


What is your criticism of the UCPN(M) concerning the middle classes; what should they stop doing, and what should they do instead?

Ah. Now, my criticisms of the UCPN(M) essentially span out from a wider context, it is necessary for me to critique other things first, essentially, I think the idea of taking power in the way they did led to the things I describe, they are symptoms, rather than they were "doing well until this or that".

[NaxalbariZindabad]

Answer to ls:

First, one thing I think we should both acknowledge is that we know really little about how the various Maoist organizations are structured and how they work on the ground in Nepal. So basically we're arguing about something we don't know.

Nevertheless, it seems to me there might be problems in your theoretical assumptions.

I disagree that Maoist supporters coming from middle classes should be organized separately from other supporters. Revolutionaries coming from petit-bourgeois or even bourgeois backgrounds should be admitted in the Party if they want to join. The UCPN(M) probably has a large majority of its members coming from the peasantry, plus a fraction of workers. I don't think that admitting a small proportion of communist intellectuals, students, shop-owners, lawyers, engineers etc. from the cities in the Party would be a bad thing. On the contrary, I think it could give new capacities, resources and influence to the movement. But then again, I have no reliable information about the UCPN(M)'s membership composition and neither do you.

I don't think that contacts between people from different classes is inherently class-collaborationism like you're saying, I think it depends on what these people do, it depends on the political line. Many workers can be counter-revolutionary and many petit-bourgeois can be revolutionary.

As for revolutionaries who wanna help but are not committed enough to join the Party, my understanding is that there are many different mass organizations linked to the UCPN(M), which are often based on profession. So if that's what you mean by organizing social strata independently, then it's already partly working like that in the Nepalese Maoist movement. For example, there's an association for Maoist journalists, and a association for Maoist restaurant workers; an association for teachers, and another for industrial workers etc.


Working with people such as shopowners during strikes, to control workers and others however is definitely reactionary, it's class collaborationism.

:confused: Are you accusing the UCPN(M) of inciting shopowners to repress workers during bandhs? Actually it's the other way around: the shopowners who don't respect bandhs are getting repressed by Maoists.

I still don't really see what you're criticizing. Is it that the revolutionary taxes / landgrabs are too low for the bourgeois & petit-bourgeois? That the Maoist workers unions are not active enough? That not enough bosses get beaten up? Something else?

[ls]

Answer to ls:

First, one thing I think we should both acknowledge is that we know really little about how the various Maoist organizations are structured and how they work on the ground in Nepal. So basically we're arguing about something we don't know.

Yes, I'd would imagine I'm probably less knowledgable on the subject than you, but thanks for your omission, I'm not pretending to know more or less than anyone on this, in fact, I'm mostly going on the stuff that you lot have already linked, the articles on libcom, what barburam bhattarai has said himself and what al-jazeera and some nepalese bourgeois news sources say, as well as some blogs.


I disagree that Maoist supporters coming from middle classes should be organized separately from other supporters. Revolutionaries coming from petit-bourgeois or even bourgeois backgrounds should be admitted in the Party if they want to join.

This is a fundamental point to address, it really depends on what they do, it really does depend on just that. I'm not really sure it's appropriate for owners of say, a shop that employs quite a lot of workers to join the revolutionary party out of fear that he is otherwise going to be repressed, as his repression would probably be the correct thing to do for the workers. Perhaps people who are of a petit-bourgeois background, ie from parents who were in this or that and now the younger guy has a bit of control over his parent's business, his allegiances should be inspected carefully and he should be engaged in open discussion, perhaps he should be admitted perhaps not, I think it should be voted on if there is any doubt arising as to whether he should or shouldn't be. For those such as journalists, again I think perhaps there would be doubt among workers in the party and it should be addressed.

Do you see where I'm going? I'm being fluid and not inflexible here - it is a theoretical question and an important one.


The UCPN(M) probably has a large majority of its members coming from the peasantry, plus a fraction of workers.

Yes, this is what I believe.


I don't think that admitting a small proportion of communist intellectuals, students, shop-owners, lawyers, engineers etc. from the cities in the Party would be a bad thing. On the contrary, I think it could give new capacities, resources and influence to the movement. But then again, I have no reliable information about the UCPN(M)'s membership composition and neither do you.

Only to an extent, the 'power' of which you speak, should come primarily from the workers and secondary to that, the peasants. There should be few exceptions in accepting communist intellectuals and lawyers (students need to be looked at separately, they are not petit-bourgeois, bourgeois or proletariat necessarily, each case needs special examination).

Also, when you say 'communist intellectuals', I am really not keen on this, I am also aware that the leadership of the UCPN(M) has been proven to be quite bourgeois and petit-bourgeois too in this sense, perhaps alastair can debunk this but I've seen it mentioned many times without any refutement. A party's leadership should clearly be run by a central committee of highly class-conscious workers.


I don't think that contacts between people from different classes is inherently class-collaborationism like you're saying, I think it depends on what these people do, it depends on the political line. Many workers can be counter-revolutionary and many petit-bourgeois can be revolutionary.

Don't you think that the petit-bourgeois have significantly different class interests on the whole? It may not inherently be class-collaborationist at first, but it will lead to that if uncontrolled. At a stage where revolution looks inevitable, there should definitely be firm control over petit-bourgeois membership in the party and also, over what they generally are doing. They are certainly not to be trusted, their material inclinations to party unity sway like the wind and they change their reasons for remaining in it.


As for revolutionaries who wanna help but are not committed enough to join the Party, my understanding is that there are many different mass organizations linked to the UCPN(M), which are often based on profession. So if that's what you mean by organizing social strata independently, then it's already partly working like that in the Nepalese Maoist movement. For example, there's an association for Maoist journalists, and a association for Maoist restaurant workers; an association for teachers, and another for industrial workers etc.

Unlinking people by profession is actually not a good idea, this is kind of division of labour, it's essentially what capitalists have used in the past to stop workers organising effectively, so you are effectively hurting yourselves. Different bodies for youth and students are fine, there are a few exceptions like that which can be effective, but otherwise, division of actual kinds of labour is fundamentally not socialist.


:confused: Are you accusing the UCPN(M) of inciting shopowners to repress workers during bandhs? Actually it's the other way around: the shopowners who don't respect bandhs are getting repressed by Maoists.

And by the UML, are they pro-worker for repressing shopowners in bandhs? I don't like the fact that other side do this myself, it shouldn't be run like that, workers from the shops themselves if anyone should be closing their shops and telling their owner what to do, if I am not confused, it doesn't work like that, it works by other workers telling every shop to shut.


I still don't really see what you're criticizing. Is it that the revolutionary taxes / landgrabs are too low for the bourgeois & petit-bourgeois? That the Maoist workers unions are not active enough? That not enough bosses get beaten up? Something else?

I think that fundamentally, the Maoists are class-collaborationist, they have done a lot extremely questionably unsocialist things and haven't explained them beyond saying "it is the New Democratic Revolution and we are practising new tactics", sometimes there are mistakes but these should be understood as mistakes and that they were wrong and shouldn't be repeated, I doubt that the UCPN(M) is going to say anything like that.

[Saorsa]

I never sought to challenge any of these things, as my post made clear.

Which is the important thing here. For all your criticisms of various public statements from Maoist leaders, various words on paper and commitments they have made in words, their actual practice tells a different story to what your accusing them of.

We do not judge an individual by his words, but by his actions. The same applies to organisations and movements. When judging the Nepali Maoists, we should not judge them by commitments they have made on paper (such as strike bans, SEZs etc), but rather by their actual practice.

The Maoists have made heaps of paper commitments to the bourgeois parties in the past few years. When they signed the peace accords, they made a major promise to return all the land they seized during the war and distributed to the peasants. This hasn't happened. In fact, in the past few weeks in particular there's been a wave of Maoist land seizures throughout rural Nepal!

The Maoists have said a lot and acted completely differently. The PM of Nepal commented on this a wee while ago, expressing frustration at how the Maoists say one thing and do completely another. The reason the Maoists have made all these paper commitments to reassure the bourgeois parties is because they needed the peace accords so they could openly organise everywhere in Nepal, and particularly in the cities. As a recent post on Kasama by a man who's spent a whole lot of time in Nepal said;


The semi-feudal (and bureaucrat capital/NGO) ties that bind backward Nepalis to the ruling class have been thoroughly undermined by the freedom to organize throughout Nepal enabled by the peace agreement and coalition government and far fewer will vote for the status quo parties as required by their “patrons” in any future election while far more will vote for the Maoists. (Some estimates fear two-thirds Maoist majority). It is the reactionaries that are afraid of the consequences of the peace agreement, not the Maoists and consequently the reactionaries who fear the “neutralization” (ie democratization) of the Nepal Army that would result from the integration they agreed to, not the Maoists. (However the reactionaries also fear the consequences of resuming the war and that fear should certainly be encouraged).


I never gave any indication of wanting to debate the merits or faults of maoism all day, if that's what you mean

We're not really discussing Maoist ideology here. We're discussing (or at least I'm trying to get us to) in concrete terms the trajectory of the UCPN (M) in real life in Nepal, and whether or not it's on a revolutionary path. I've provided huge amounts of evidence for months that it is, and you've made a handful of assertions that it isn't and provided some evidence of words the Maoists have spoken to the bourgeois parties, as reported by the bourgeois media, to try and back this up.


I just wanted to, yet again, correct the misleading claims of maoists on the intended strike ban.

I fail to see how you've done this. You've made plenty of assertions, pointed out that there are media reports stating that there was a proposal to create an SEZ earlier this year, and you've asserted that this was the reason the Maoists proposed a temporary ban on strikes. You haven't either 'corrected' or 'proven' anything.


We do, and this is where your whole argument falls down - that was the role of the 4 yr old proposed legislation the maoists resuscitated, to be in permanent legal effect with no time limit- as explained in quotes in my article you say you've read several times. The maoists also stated more general non-legal pleas to stop strikes in wider industries 'for some time'. Those are two separate facts, but both indicative of maoist attitudes to labour discipline when they were in government.

I have already covered their reasons for these 'pleas', and explained the situation that would have prompted them to do so. As for the former, we have no evidence that anything has happened other than a proposal while they were in parliament to create an SEZ of some kind. It has not, as far as we can be aware, been implemented. Until the Maoists actually do attack workers rights in real life in any way at all, I think we should treat such paper commitments as being in the same basket as their commitment to return the land they seized to it's original landlords.


I said you repeated lies, such as the misleading 'explanation' of the intended ban - whether intentionally or not I don't know, but you've read things that contain info about the SEZ bill that you chose to ignore in your 'explanation' of the intended strike ban. To omit relevant facts you're aware of certainly gives a deceptive picture of the subject. I'll leave that to the opinions of others as to whether that is lying.

And where do you think I'm repeating this from? The explanation is based on my own analysis, which is based on everything I've been able to observe taking place in Nepal over the past few years. Feel free to think I'm deliberately omitting facts to paint a false picture of what's happening, but frankly I don't see either the mythical strike ban or the nonexistent SEZs as being all that significant.


You missed this recent nationwide [strike led supposedly by non-Maoist petroleum workers;

A source for this would be nice, because I've found plenty (http://www.zeenews.com/news583694.html) of (http://www.thehimalayantimes.com/fullNews.php?headline=Maoist+workers+strike+afflic ts+Eastern+region+&NewsID=197593) evidence (http://97.74.124.92/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=12296) that the petrol workers strike was led by the All Nepal Petroleum Workers' Union, which is actually affiliated to the Maoists. There was also a major strike at the same time led by their hotel workers union.


I wouldn't dispute - and have never done so - that maoists have made inroads into trade unionism - but, to broaden the picture; other unions have reported much intimidation by maoists;

:lol:

You're making my points for me. The GEFONT and DECONT, the two 'union' confederations you've stated are the victims of 'intimidations', are the union confederations affiliated to the reactionary UML and Nepal Congress parties respectively.

If revolutionary workers choose to take violent action against backward elements of their class, I fail to see why this is a bad thing. You can disagree with the actions of the advanced elements of the proletariat if you wish, but it's up to the workers and peasants of Nepal to decide on what tactics they use, not us.


Wrong. I'm aware of the difference between 'hartal' and 'bandh'. But your definition is too simplistic; bandhs are demonstrations done by those who have to usually stop their labour to do so; they're also intended to stop others working. It's a bit like saying that in the West a picket line is not a strike.

Did you really just use the fact that Wikipedia describes a bandh as a strike to try and prove me wrong? :confused: You're scraping the bottom of the barrel...

And no, it's really not like saying a picket line is not a strike. A picket line made up of striking workers is of course a strike. Now if these same striking workers went into the city along with their supports and prevented traffic from moving, forced every business they passed to close it's doors and generally shut the entire city down to the best of their abilities, that would be a bandh. They are two very different things.


You don't generally have bandhs without strikes, so my given definition is correct; "strikes and public protests". (But maybe I should have been more precise for the sake of pedantic hairsplitters.) The term is commonly used interchangeably in Nepal now, partly perhaps cos so many strikes are at present party political rather than just about the economic interests of workers;

There's a basic logical fallacy here. Just because every bandh includes strikes does not mean that every strike is a bandh, this should be obvious. Just because cakes usually contain egg yolk does not mean that a fried egg is a cake! :lol:

Your trying to cover up the fact that your just uninformed about the political situation in Nepal, and you don't understand what's taking place there. Surface level, dogmatic analysis tends to put you in that position.



In comments below the article on your blog, you claim;


I’ve seen no evidence there were any major changes being proposed to industrial law. This was a temporary proposal to be enacted by the government, not any kind of legislative reform.http://comradealastair.wordpress.com...i-ban-strikes/

Yet you say you 'read my article several times' where it quotes;


KATHMANDU, Jan 22: After four years of finalizing the draft, the cabinet on Thursday endorsed Special Economic Zone (SEZ) Act, paving way for the implementation of the SEZ projects in the country. [...]
...the Act treats SEZ as a land where other domestic laws related to labor and industries would not be applicable. It has mooted an autonomous SEZ Authority to oversee its operations.http://myrepublica.com/portal/index....s&news_id=1357

So how is that not evidence that you've seen?? It's as good "evidence" as the press reports you regularly post. So - again - it's your claims, not mine, that are dishonest. So how can you say "I’ve seen no evidence there were any major changes being proposed to industrial law"???

*sighs*

Because as I have pointed out several times, the proposed ban on strikes and the discussion around SEZs were two seperate things, and there is no evidence to indicate that there is a link between the two. You have put forward assertions that the Maoist leadership proposed the temporary ban on strikes in certain sectors as part of their nefarious plot to introduce SEZs (which was probably the reason they started the People's War in the first place, naturally), but you cannot prove this because basically, it isn't the case.


In my later article reporting the reporting the maoists' restating their intention to ban strikes I quoted;


Now Maoist finance minister Dr Bhattrai has told Nepal's International Chamber of Commerce that the promised strike ban will soon be operational;


"We are in a new political set-up and it demands a new outlook in business and industries also," said Bhattrai. He assured entrepreneurs that the private sector would remain a key economic player in the country. He asked business communities to explore fields of competitive advantage.

Nepal is in political transition and there are many problems in trade and commerce sector. "The government knows the problems and is working to solve them," Dr Bhattarai said. The government has been providing subsidies in fuel to industries from the second half of March.

Furthermore, the government is planning to restrict bandhs [street protests] and strikes in industries and essential commodities. "Such regulations will come soon," he assured.

(Himalayan Times online - Apr 10 2009)http://libcom.org/news/nepal-maoists...-news-10042009

The reference to "regulation" is a clear intention to legislate on the issue. So if you somehow missed it before now you've seen the evidence. The maoists have always been quick to act against newspapers who say things they don't like - they never have claimed this report was inaccurate or refuted it so far. Contrary to what Alastair says or claims he 'has seen'- the maoists clearly stated an intention to legislate to ban strikes.

That was from a statement Bhattarai gave when speaking to the Chamber of Commerce, at a time when he was Finance Minister in the Maoist-led government. The Maoists chose to leave that government about a month later. As I have already stated several times (in reasonably simple and easy to understand language), the Maoists say one thing when talking to the bourgeois parties and bourgeois bodies like the Chamber of Commerce, then do completely another. We judge them by their deeds, not by their words.

And basing your argument on the world 'regulation' reveals just what shaky ground your on. This was a speech Bhattarai gave in Nepal, which was transcribed by a bourgeois journalist in Nepali, then translated into English (probably by somebody else) and only then posted on the internet. We have no idea what he actually said, let alone what he actually meant, and anyone who's ever used Google translator knows how easy it is for original meaning to be lost in translation.


What is revealing about your responses and those of most online maoists is that - rather than just dealing with the facts and opinions - you constantly try to discredit the individuals who make them with name-throwing, applying of dismissive labels etc. A typical Stalinist-type tactic, but still as unconvincing.

Right. I'm not the one who began accusing other people of deliberately distorting facts, not replying (I note that you chose not to reply to my reply to your bit about me not replying fast enough :lol:), and generally being dishonest. The inaccurate and meaningless use of the term 'Stalinist' here is an example of how hypocritical your little tantrum is.


I think I showed above who is making misleading staements about the strike ban

I'm not sure that you did to be honest, but believe what you will.


and who's confused about whether bandhs are strikes and about how the word is commonly used by Nepalis and Hindi speakers.

Mate, I've clearly shown (using quotes from your writings and a detailed explanation of the differences between a bandh and a strike) that you are not so much confused, but simply ignorant about what a bandh is. You didn't know what it was, you've continued to offer confused and inaccurate statements about what it is, and you basically don't know what you're talking about. You can take that as personal abuse if you like (although I'm not sure how I can personally abuse the name 'Ret' when I don't know anything about the person behind it), but it's just the way things are. You haven't done your research.


I have been to Nepal, and have had recent contact with those who live there,

With the former in mind, it amazes me how little you understand what's going on there. Still, there are none blinder than those that choose not to see.


PS - I see that nearly all of your article is word-for-word from this video statement by CPN; are you the author of that CPN statement or did you just not bother making clear in your article that you are quoting rather than composing?

I wrote it myself, did it read like an official party document to you? I have no idea who the beardy Castro wannabe that makes the 'Maoist news' videos on youtube is, but he saw my piece on Kasama and inaccurately assumed it to be a statement released by the CPN. I assume he meant the UCPN (M).

This (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CZ1xf0RwjU) is the original video Castro McBeard posted. As I've pointed out, you should do your research properly and only then should you comment. Because otherwise, your snarky and uninformed comments like the one above tend backfire on you. It's understandable that you make mistakes like these, I did just that in the article that triggered this debate (my references to SEZs and saying the strike ban was reported on once, rather than twice as it in fact was). So no need to feel too cut up about it. But as a man who knew his shit once said, 'no investigation, no right to speak'. Maybe you should engage with this guy's thought a bit more :)

[Saorsa]

I think that fundamentally, the Maoists are class-collaborationist, they have done a lot extremely questionably unsocialist things and haven't explained them beyond saying "it is the New Democratic Revolution and we are practising new tactics", sometimes there are mistakes but these should be understood as mistakes and that they were wrong and shouldn't be repeated, I doubt that the UCPN(M) is going to say anything like that.

ls, this entire paragraph means nothing. You've just thrown a whole heap of buzzwords around without concretely criticizing any specific actions of the UCPN (M). I'm keen as to have a discussion with you in concrete terms about what the Maoists are doing, but you haven't said what a single one of these 'extremely questionably unsocialist things' are.

[ls]

Most of the main criticisms stick in some way or another.

OK, like I said, proposing to ban strikes in sectors, proposing SEZs, believing that the peasantry will be the revolutionary class, having those from a petit and bourgeois proper background in the party leadership, there is also speculation of unfair tax collections not just in Nepal but among the Nepalese community of poor workers in India, Hong Kong and other places.. where were we.. parliamentarianism, seemingly believing that the urban petit-bourgeois can be revolutionary, imposing strikes on people via bandhs which could be detrimental to some of the poor workers' pay - and I've seen little to tell me that these are democratically decided upon.

[Saorsa]

OK, like I said, proposing to ban strikes in sectors, proposing SEZs,

These, I think, have already been covered in this thread.


believing that the peasantry will be the revolutionary class,

They don't think this. Goddamit, why do people post stuff like this without doing their research? Marxist-Leninist-Maoists do not and have never said that the peasantry is the revolutionary class, they have always said that the proletariat is the revolutionary class that leads the revolution. However, Maoists are also practical and pragmatic, and realise that in a country where the working class is tiny and most people are peasants, and where the major struggle will thus necessarily be an anti-feudal struggle waged by the peasants, it's a bit silly to ignore the question of the peasantry and instead focus on seizing power in an urban coup that then imposes it's power on the countryside. Cos that worked so well in Afghanistan...

If a party in a country where the vast majority of the population are peasants is, as a reuslt, mostly made up of peasant members, that does not make it in any way unsocialist. If you argue that ls, I'm looking forward to seeing you denounce the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of the Ukraine as a counter-revolutionary peasant petit-bourgeois blah blah movement.


having those from a petit and bourgeois proper background in the party leadership,

Ffs. I suppose we should discount the contributions of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky etc on our side of the fence and Bakunin, Kropotkin, Berkman etc on yours because they weren't proletarian enough. This is workerist crap.


there is also speculation of unfair tax collections not just in Nepal but among the Nepalese community of poor workers in India, Hong Kong and other places..

The key term there being speculation. A revolution needs money to happen, and the Maoists collected (and probably still do collect in some areas) revolutionary taxes to fund their rebellion. They conduct donation drives to raise funds for various causes they're backing, and so on. Feel free to believe the bourgeois rubbish that the poor helpless workers and peasants are forced to donate and wouldn't do so otherwise, after all the Maoists only seized control of 80% of the countryside because everyone was terrified of being mutilated and eaten alive by them.


where were we.. parliamentarianism,

The basic motive force of history is the contradiction between the existing level of productive forces and the production relations within society. At a certain stage this contradiction sharpens and there is a break with the old relationship and a leap to the new one. We call this social revolution. That leap necessarily confronts a certain force, because every set of productive relations is backed by a state, and the state means basically the organised force of the army.

To break with the old mode of production and leap into a new one, you have to break all the relations within the state backed by the army. And that inevitably requires the use of force. This is a law of history and a basic principle of MLM which nobody can revise. If you revise or abandon it then you are no longer a Marxist. There is no question of our party ever ending this basic principle. (http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2009/12/12/interview-with-nepals-bhattarai/)


seemingly believing that the urban petit-bourgeois can be revolutionary,

I don't see why the owner of the local medicine and herbs shop in some shitty little village in Rolpa shouldn't be allowed to join and support the Maoist movement if he is convinced that they're genuinely trying to change society for the better. And I don't see why lawyers shouldn't be able to join. Hell, in Nepal most students could probably be classified as petit-bourgeois, most ordinary people couldn't afford to send their kids to uni. A rickshaw puller who owns his own cart could be seen as petit-bourgeois, should he not be able to join? Your dogmatic focus on labels doesn't work in reality.


imposing strikes on people via bandhs which could be detrimental to some of the poor workers' pay -

I suppose then that if a minority of workers in a workplace vote against strike action, they should be allowed to scab? After all, we'd be imposing strike action on them otherwise, which could be detrimental to their pay :O

I suppose you also oppose closed shops, and support the right of workers in a city in the West to scab if a general strike is called there. This is liberal rubbish.


and I've seen little to tell me that these are democratically decided upon.

The Maoists are a democratic organisation. Their unions have elections and appoint officers from these. You haven't seen much to indicate that the poor helpless wee workers are being dictated to undemocratically, why should you assume that the Maoists unions are run undemocratically?

[ls]

These, I think, have already been covered in this thread.

They were proposed, this is what matters really.


They don't think this. Goddamit, why do people post stuff like this without doing their research? Marxist-Leninist-Maoists do not and have never said that the peasantry is the revolutionary class

..

However, .. the major struggle will thus necessarily be an anti-feudal struggle waged by the peasants, it's a bit silly to ignore the question of the peasantry and instead focus on seizing power in an urban coup that then imposes it's power on the countryside. Cos that worked so well in Afghanistan...

It shouldn't be done by an 'urban coup', it probably has to be an armed insurrection. We know all the things that need to be built - workers' councils, redguards etc, it's not some abstract idea that apparently didn't work in Afghanistan, yeah there is a majority of peasants in Afghanistan but should we say that the major struggles there don't happen in the city even during this war? Are you saying just that? That the urban workers and what they are doing, basically don't exercise massive control over public opinion all the way out in the USA and the UK?


If a party in a country where the vast majority of the population are peasants is, as a reuslt, mostly made up of peasant members, that does not make it in any way unsocialist. If you argue that ls, I'm looking forward to seeing you denounce the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of the Ukraine as a counter-revolutionary peasant petit-bourgeois blah blah movement.

I am fully open to conceding that the RIAU got this wrong, because they did.

Makhno failed to properly mobilise workers in Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhya and as a result was driven out of the first, incredibly important one.

Looking at history, Makhno failed on the whole. Who would dispute this? He had correctly mobilised the urban workers, he might have even won over Lenin and Trotsky and could possibly have had influence in the Bolshevik party eventually, contributing to its left factions to stop its bureaucratic degeneration. He was willing to go as far as to send delegates to Bolshevik committees and to try helping out workers in some of the cities after all.


Ffs. I suppose we should discount the contributions of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky etc on our side of the fence and Bakunin, Kropotkin, Berkman etc on yours because they weren't proletarian enough. This is workerist crap.

I'm afraid that nothing is perfect in history. The people can come from a more middle-class background and still be workers economically you know, becoming a Professional Revolutionary after being a worker is absolutely fine, even if one does come from a "good home", I don't think this is "workerist" at all. We need the most class-conscious workers to form the vanguard, it is essential.


The key term there being speculation. A revolution needs money to happen, and the Maoists collected (and probably still do collect in some areas) revolutionary taxes to fund their rebellion. They conduct donation drives to raise funds for various causes they're backing, and so on. Feel free to believe the bourgeois rubbish that the poor helpless workers and peasants are forced to donate and wouldn't do so otherwise, after all the Maoists only seized control of 80% of the countryside because everyone was terrified of being mutilated and eaten alive by them.

No, I read quite clearly that they steal from shopowners and other petit-bourgeois as well, that is absolutely fine. There is nothing that says they don't do it to workers as well though.


The basic motive force of history is the contradiction between the existing level of productive forces and the production relations within society. At a certain stage this contradiction sharpens and there is a break with the old relationship and a leap to the new one. We call this social revolution. That leap necessarily confronts a certain force, because every set of productive relations is backed by a state, and the state means basically the organised force of the army.

To break with the old mode of production and leap into a new one, you have to break all the relations within the state backed by the army. And that inevitably requires the use of force. This is a law of history and a basic principle of MLM which nobody can revise. If you revise or abandon it then you are no longer a Marxist. There is no question of our party ever ending this basic principle. (http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2009/12/12/interview-with-nepals-bhattarai/)

You linked me this before and.. I read it, can't you make an argument yourself?


I don't see why the owner of the local medicine and herbs shop in some shitty little village in Rolpa shouldn't be allowed to join and support the Maoist movement if he is convinced that they're genuinely trying to change society for the better. And I don't see why lawyers shouldn't be able to join. Hell, in Nepal most students could probably be classified as petit-bourgeois, most ordinary people couldn't afford to send their kids to uni. A rickshaw puller who owns his own cart could be seen as petit-bourgeois, should he not be able to join? Your dogmatic focus on labels doesn't work in reality.

You've completely overlooked my point, completely. It is about A) the workers in the party choosing who is actually petit-bourgeois or not and not you and B) it is about materially examining both their actual class and also their class interests. If workers voted in a lawyer to the party, who would I be to stop them? If workers decided not to vote in a rickshaw puller because he had a petit-bourgeois mentality and thus petit-bourgeois class interests - who would I be to deny him from being disallowed in?


I suppose then that if a minority of workers in a workplace vote against strike action, they should be allowed to scab? After all, we'd be imposing strike action on them otherwise, which could be detrimental to their pay :O

This is an idiotic thing to say.


I suppose you also oppose closed shops, and support the right of workers in a city in the West to scab if a general strike is called there. This is liberal rubbish.

What the fuck? You support closed shops? Are you saying this [b]for real?

Jesus fucking christ, I hope you are joking and that you know what you are talking about, if not please read this: http://onebigunion.info/1929/12/the-closed-shop-and-industrial-liberty/.


The Maoists are a democratic organisation. Their unions have elections and appoint officers from these. You haven't seen much to indicate that the poor helpless wee workers are being dictated to undemocratically, why should you [B]assume that the Maoists unions are run undemocratically?

OK, I am asking how exactly this works, provide me some links and details, I am interested.

[Ret]

Jan 2009
Faced with the unrest, Maoist Party leader and Nepalese Prime Minister Prachanda proposed to fellow politicians a ban on all public sector strikes, to which the seven major parties all agreed. In a recent press interview, just prior to the agreement, the Maoist governmental Finance Minister Dr Baburam Bhattarai tried to justify a ban;

Q: The business community's concerns are exactly what you stated. One, they say, the government's attitude to labour issues leaves a lot to be desired and that labour problems are getting worse. Second, there cannot be high growth until there is an adequate supply of power.

Bhattarai: I wouldn't say the situation is getting worse. Things were much worse in the past. But the people wanted very fast recovery; that hasn't happened. Things are improving but not to the desired level. Both the management and workers have a common interest now, for the development of the economy. They both fought against the feudalism, autocracy and monarchy. Now, to create a vibrant industrial economy, is in the interest of both the management and the workers. But this reality is not sinking in their minds. This government is playing its role in creating a healthy relationship between the two. There were some disputes, especially regarding the minimum wage issue. This has been solved. So what I appeal to the management is that they should provide the minimum wage. The workers shouldn't resort to bandas and strikes. If this understanding is honoured we'll have a healthy environment in the days to come.

Q: So the party wants to ensure that whenever there is a labour dispute, legal recourse should be taken?

Bhattarai: Yes. At least for some time, there should be no bandas and strikes in the industrial, health, education sectors, on the major highways, in the public utility sectors. The government is trying to build political consensus on this issue.
http://www.kantipuronline.com/interview.php?&nid=175026

[...]

KATHMANDU, Jan 22: After four years of finalizing the draft, the cabinet on Thursday endorsed Special Economic Zone (SEZ) Act, paving way for the implementation of the SEZ projects in the country. [...]
...the Act treats SEZ as a land where other domestic laws related to labor and industries would not be applicable. It has mooted an autonomous SEZ Authority to oversee its operations.

The source stated that the ratification of the Act, which had so far lingered due to the differences over the tighter labor provisions, had became possible after the seven parties recently agreed not to launch strikes in the industries or disturb productions.

“The Act allows workers to unite and practice collective bargaining, but prohibits them from undertaking activities that affect production and normal operations of industries,” said the source. It also allows the entrepreneurs to hire workers on a contract basis. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=1357

According to CA, the above means there is no evidence to show a link between SEZs and any intended strike ban. Which - when faced with the evidence - is about as convincing as his other arguments.



Now Maoist finance minister Dr Bhattrai has told Nepal's International Chamber of Commerce that the promised strike ban will soon be operational;
Quote:

"We are in a new political set-up and it demands a new outlook in business and industries also," said Bhattrai. He assured entrepreneurs that the private sector would remain a key economic player in the country. He asked business communities to explore fields of competitive advantage.

Nepal is in political transition and there are many problems in trade and commerce sector. "The government knows the problems and is working to solve them," Dr Bhattarai said. The government has been providing subsidies in fuel to industries from the second half of March.

Furthermore, the government is planning to restrict bandhs [street protests] and strikes in industries and essential commodities. "Such regulations will come soon," he assured.
(Himalayan Times online - Apr 10 2009)According to CA this is not any evidence at all that legislation was intended to ban strikes. Really convincing, huh? Even more convincing that he conveniently left the very existence of this evidence out of his strike ban article.


Did you really just use the fact that Wikipedia describes a bandh as a strike to try and prove me wrong? You're scraping the bottom of the barrel...You're desperately scraping the bottom of the barrel with such lame attempts to discredit a wealth of evidence on common usage in Nepal contradicting your comments on bandhs and strikes. Those who can read can judge for themselves. I showed examples aplenty how Nepalis commonly refer to Bandhs as strikes - whilst acknowledging that not all strikes are bandhs, contrary to what you pretend I said. As anyone can go back and read, regardless of your desperate attempted distortions.

Wrong. I'm aware of the difference between 'hartal' and 'bandh' ...
There's a site called 'nepalbandh' - but, reflecting present common usage of 'bandh' - they also report on their site simple labour stoppages which aren't 'bandhs' in the literal sense,
But you have a cosmetic exercise to fulfill and any dishonest trick will do; to try to justify/excuse the anti-working class statements by Nepal Maoists. In 'explaining' the strike ban controversy you conveniently ignored the explicit statements about SEZs and an intention to ban strikes. CA's first excuse was that it was a wrong policy - now he's invented the idea that - cos it was said to the Chamber of Commerce - it was only said to fool the bosses. The fact that, a year later, the maoists have never denied it or explained it as you have tried to now - that they didn't mean it literally - is revealing.

The reference for the oil strike is the GEFONT website; http://www.gefont.org/activity_detail.php?id=558 - that strike was reported in August, while you refer to a strike in December. It's possible GEFONT lost members or different factions of oil workers have different affiliations. It doesn't mean I'm wrong though (happy to be corrected if I am). But the fact that maoists beat up other workers for belonging to a different union or just for not following the maoists is seen as a good thing by CA - so that's how 'class consciousness' and solidarity develops. So now we know the maoist definition.


I don't know what you do for a living and I'm not going to judge the speed of your replies because of that. ... [then goes on about what a prolly job he has...] [...]
(I note that you chose not to reply to my reply to your bit about me not replying fast enough ),I posted the following earlier, unfortunately screwed up the formatting so didn't separate it, so it appeared in middle of another quote, so you prob. missed it;

I wasn't "snarky" or bothered about your non-reply [on another thread] - but - in light of this thread - just observing that you didn't reply there where you would've had to deal with the facts of the SEZ legislation.If I understand you right (apologies if not, but can't see any other 'sense' to the comment); I didn't reply to your attempted prolier-than-thou comments about "speed of reply" because to stoop to such cheap attempts to gain credibility in an argument and to try to discredit an opponent smacks of desperation and is embarassing to see, though revealing. But, in any case, the facts don't bear out your lame insinuations - and even if they did, that in itself would fail to invalidate my arguments. The main reasons I can so quickly (not that quickly?) reply right now are 1) I have plenty of info files on my PC, and 2) I'm recovering from an industrial injury at present.

the proposed ban on strikes and the discussion around SEZs were two seperate things, and there is no evidence to indicate that there is a link between the two.
Keep the disinformation and lies coming... just read the quotes above! Yet you omitted to even mention them and their information in your article. Previously CA called the intended strike ban "a mistaken line" - now it's become just a clever ploy to fool the bosses. Story keeps changing.

You ignore in your reply that I showed;
1) you claimed you read my article "several times".
2) The article contains clear evidence of an intention to legislate to ban strikes.
3) You then claimed that;

I’ve seen no evidence there were any major changes being proposed to industrial law. This was a temporary proposal to be enacted by the government, not any kind of legislative reform.http://comradealastair.wordpress.com...i-ban-strikes/How is reading my article not seeing evidence of "changes being proposed to industrial law" and "legislative reform"??? That is a lie you have inadvertently revealed by your own contradictory statements. (Even the feeble excuse that the translation might not be exact can't cancel out the news quotes as some kind of evidence.) But that's what happens when you're carrying out a cosmetic exercise and attempted whitewash to hide the truth. How do you think the Maoist-led government would "enact" this proposal without legislation??? Total bullshit, damned by your own words.

CA says, in excuse of the Nepal maoists anti-strike statements; "We judge them by their deeds, not by their words." - (though he also posts regular updates of their latest verbal statements as some kind of valid evidence of something; and if the translations are really as bad as he claims - when it suits his argument - it would be pointless posting so much from that source). So CA's latest defence of maoists' intentions to ban strikes is that we cannot believe what they say; agreed, and - as illustrated above - nor can we believe their apologists, such as Comrade Alastair.

[Saorsa]

Firstly. Bhattarai's statement referring to strikes and bandhs, as has been pointed out several times, was a proposal for a temporary end to these. There is no other way to interpret it. So that part does not in any way support your assertion that the Maoists were moving to ban strikes so as to implement SEZs.

Secondly, the bit you've helpfully put in bold;


The source stated that the ratification of the Act, which had so far lingered due to the differences over the tighter labor provisions, had became possible after the seven parties recently agreed not to launch strikes in the industries or disturb productions.

Does not describe any kind of legislative change. It describes an agreement reached between the parties, which fits perfectly into my own argument - that the 'ban on strikes' was a truce called between the Maoists and the reactionary parties, in order to try and get the economy functioning properly.


Furthermore, the government is planning to restrict bandhs [street protests] and strikes in industries and essential commodities. "Such regulations will come soon," he assured.
(Himalayan Times online - Apr 10 2009)

According to CA this is not any evidence at all that legislation was intended to ban strikes. Really convincing, huh? Even more convincing that he conveniently left the very existence of this evidence out of his strike ban article.

I'm not 100% sure what you're trying to say here. Nobody's ever denied that there was a proposal to temporarily ban strikes and bandhs in certain sectors. This, and the controversy surrounding it, has been dealt with already. What we're discussing now are your assertions that the main reason this ban on strikes was proposed was so that the Maoists could then happily build SEZs. The above quote, with it's reference to 'regulations', is not evidence of that.


You're desperately scraping the bottom of the barrel with such lame attempts to discredit a wealth of evidence on common usage in Nepal contradicting your comments on bandhs and strikes. Those who can read can judge for themselves. I showed examples aplenty how Nepalis commonly refer to Bandhs as strikes - whilst acknowledging that not all strikes are bandhs, contrary to what you pretend I said. As anyone can go back and read, regardless of your desperate attempted distortions.

Look, the fact of the matter here is that a strike (or hartal) and a forcible closure of an entire area (or bandh) are two different things. You gave a sloppy definition of what a bandh was, and I called you up on this. They are similar, and when Nepali journalists are translating their articles into English they may well choose to refer to a bandh as a general strike, as that's the closest English term or concept to bandh. But bandhs and hartals are not the same thing, regardless of whether the term is used interchangeably. Glad we've come to a consensus on this.


But you have a cosmetic exercise to fulfill and any dishonest trick will do; to try to justify/excuse the anti-working class statements by Nepal Maoists. In 'explaining' the strike ban controversy you conveniently ignored the explicit statements about SEZs and an intention to ban strikes.

Which anti-working class statements, and how are they anti-working class?

It isn't about conveniently ignoring the SEZs. The facts are, there is no evidence to conclusively prove a link between the proposal to stop calling strikes and bandhs for a period, and the proposals being discussed to create an SEZ.


CA's first excuse was that it was a wrong policy - now he's invented the idea that - cos it was said to the Chamber of Commerce - it was only said to fool the bosses.

What are you talking about? Your just getting confused here. I have always said and continue to say that any ban on strikes or bandhs in the context of a situation where the reactionary state power still exists is wrong, and I assume your referring to the part in my article where I said this. The reference to Bhattarai's speech to the CoC and the comparison between this and the Maoist's paper commitments to things like returning seized properties was totally separate to this. I don't see what this sentence is trying to prove, perhaps you should explain more clearly.


The fact that, a year later, the maoists have never denied it or explained it as you have tried to now - that they didn't mean it literally - is revealing.

Eh? Why would they have denied or explained it? For one thing, they have much higher priorities right now than reassuring Western leftists of what they're doing. And secondly, the period they're in hasn't changed. They're still working in the context of the peace accords, an arrangement which at this point suits them very well, and they obviously can't just lay out all their plans in the open. It's always struck me as crazy that so many on the Western left expect them to do this. It has no historical precedent.


The reference for the oil strike is the GEFONT website; http://www.gefont.org/activity_detail.php?id=558 - that strike was reported in August, while you refer to a strike in December. It's possible GEFONT lost members or different factions of oil workers have different affiliations. It doesn't mean I'm wrong though (happy to be corrected if I am). But the fact that maoists beat up other workers for belonging to a different union or just for not following the maoists is seen as a good thing by CA - so that's how 'class consciousness' and solidarity develops. So now we know the maoist definition.

Well, it's certain that they have in some sectors. I posted evidence to this in my article, workers are leaving the GEFONT and joining Maoist unions. And as I have stated over and over again, the GEFONT is not just a union confederation, it is the union confederation under the control of the reactionary UML party, which has been actively resisting all attempts to make anything more than cosmetic changes to the social structure of Nepal. It's an integral part of the UML apparatus and deserves to be treated as such. I don't see what the problem is here.


If I understand you right (apologies if not, but can't see any other 'sense' to the comment); I didn't reply to your attempted prolier-than-thou comments about "speed of reply" because to stoop to such cheap attempts to gain credibility in an argument and to try to discredit an opponent smacks of desperation and is embarassing to see, though revealing. But, in any case, the facts don't bear out your lame insinuations - and even if they did, that in itself would fail to invalidate my arguments. The main reasons I can so quickly (not that quickly?) reply right now are 1) I have plenty of info files on my PC, and 2) I'm recovering from an industrial injury at present.

It wasn't about being 'prolier-than-thou'. It was about explaining why I did not reply then. Perhaps I reacted in a way I shouldn't have, but it pissed me off when it seemed you were implying that I deliberately avoided replying because I knew your o-so-powerful arguments would destroy mine, or something. Glad that's sorted.


Keep the disinformation and lies coming... just read the quotes above! Yet you omitted to even mention them and their information in your article. Previously CA called the intended strike ban "a mistaken line" - now it's become just a clever ploy to fool the bosses. Story keeps changing.

You ignore in your reply that I showed;
1) you claimed you read my article "several times".
2) The article contains clear evidence of an intention to legislate to ban strikes.
3) You then claimed that;

So when somebody disagrees with your interpretation of 'evidence', they become a liar and a peddler of disinformation... How Stalinist is that? :rolleyes:

The story does not keep changing at all. As anyone who's read my posts on this website can attest to, both arguments, that the strike ban was mistaken but never happened and that the Maoists have been doing a bloody good job of exploiting contradictions within their enemies ranks to advance their own efforts, are quite consistent with what I've been saying for a long time. The two arguments run alongside each other, and do not represent me changing my line. Please stop being dishonest, it doesn't help your attempts at argument.


How is reading my article not seeing evidence of "changes being proposed to industrial law" and "legislative reform"??? That is a lie you have inadvertently revealed by your own contradictory statements. (Even the feeble excuse that the translation might not be exact can't cancel out the news quotes as some kind of evidence.) But that's what happens when you're carrying out a cosmetic exercise and attempted whitewash to hide the truth. How do you think the Maoist-led government would "enact" this proposal without legislation??? Total bullshit, damned by your own words.

They could quite easily have enacted it without legislation, and all the evidence that even you have provided points towards this conclusion. All they needed to do, as the quote you put in bold earlier indicated, was reach an agreement with the other parties to stop using their 'unions' to call strikes and bandhs if in return the Maoists did the same. This isn't that hard to grasp.


CA says, in excuse of the Nepal maoists anti-strike statements; "We judge them by their deeds, not by their words." - (though he also posts regular updates of their latest verbal statements as some kind of valid evidence of something; and if the translations are really as bad as he claims - when it suits his argument - it would be pointless posting so much from that source).

Mate, your argument rested on one word, regulation. In a case like that, it's perfectly reasonable to bring up the issue of mistranslations, and it's one I've always been clear about even when I post news articles from Nepal. Anything we get from there should be taken with a mountain of salt, and you have to try and read between the lines and identify the trends taking place over time if you want to get any idea of what's going on. You, on the other hand, seem to think you can pull an article out and use it as 100% reliable evidence, even when the argument you claim it supports (Maoists anti-worker, Maoists anti-strike blah blah) is contradicted by a much, much larger pile of evidence from other sources.

The Maoists themselves have been quite clear (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=13844) about how shitty their country's media is, and how little it should be trusted. In the absence of many other sources of information we still have to go to the media most of the time, but they should be treated with a lot of skepticism.

I'll probably write more later.

[Ret]

What we're discussing now are your assertions that the main reason this ban on strikes was proposed was so that the Maoists could then happily build SEZsThat wasn't my assertion - but the SEZ legislation the maoists and other parties were processing did contain curtailment of workers' rights in those Zones.

But I think the differences have been expressed as clearly they are going to be on this thread and most differences will remain, so don't intend to pursue it endlessly. Future history will reveal much...

[chegitz guevara]

The problem with anarchists, trotskytes and other armchair revolutionaries is that "they first made the shirt and then want to shape the body to fit the shirt", while any kind of common sense just says the opposite. But, why do they say and "do" so opposite to common sense? Because, they are "good" in criticism of revolutionaries but very very very bad in doing any kind of REAL revolutionary activity.

This is equally true of Maoists. It's a bad habit we are all in.

[Saorsa]

Fair enough Ret. For what it's worth, while we continue to sharply disagree, it was a good debate and I think a lot of worthwhile political points came out of it. Sorry if it got overly heated at some points!

[Saorsa]

Mike Ely made a post on Kasama which I think adds a lot of value to this discussion.



Mike E said (http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2010/01/05/unraveling-a-lie-no-nepals-maoists-didnt-ban-strikes/#comment-19986)

January 9, 2010 at 6:10 pm
A few brief thoughts:

1) It is a serious problem for revolutionary movements that their enemies have strategies for destabilization. Such destablization has often included waves of strikes organized by reactionary parties. The overthrow of Allende in Chile was prepared by waves of CIA financed strikes.

2) In other words, strikes are not automatically or inherently expressions of some pristine worker self-determination. They can be the spearhead of counterrevolution — as surely as a commando raid.

3) It is a bit mechanical to transfer concepts from a western context. For example, many comments on this assume that South Asian bandhs are somehow self-activating worker strikes or trade union activities. In fact bandhs are political shutdowns where a party declares that busienss as usual stops in an area — and then demonstrates its strength and support by seeking to carry out that shutdown. This affects small business people, youth in school and (in some cases) factories — but it is not some simple “working class strike” — it is explicitly political, and tied to specific political programs. (In India for example bandhs have been tied to the actions of quasi-fascist Hindu chauvinists parties etc.)

4) Discussing an action is hardly the same as making moves toward that action. And it is a bit strange for people who support wide open debate of policy to complain that the Maoists debated organizing a ban of strikes, and then didn’t do it. And that they discussed such policy disputes openly. Why is this so wrong? And why is discussing-but-discarding a policy option treated as if they adopted it? It is a good thing that the Maoists conduct so much of their debate in public (and it is unusual, and one would think something generally deserving support). And it is a good thing that they are reluctant to simply and quickly use the means of state suppression when facing very real and very deadly dangers of political and economic destabilization.

5) There is nothing sacred about strikes. They are not inherently sacrosanct (especially in situations of mass upheaval) and they are hardly inherently expressions of mass democracy or self determination. If reactionary forces mobilize to shut down business in key industries of Nepal — there is no divine law or transendent principle that requires revolutionaries to stand by and tolerate the actions. Such reactionary events can be opposed by political means (debate, going yourself to the people and arguing for an opposing course) or it can (in extreme situations) require armed actions (as when strikes were used during the October revolution to try to isolate Red Petrograd and Moscow with railroad shutdown organized by conserative forces within the trade unions).

Let me give a personal example:

When I worked as a coal miner there were thousands of strikes — wildcat strikes in the 1970s that were illegal and very powerful. Most were just. All rested on an almost religious respect for picket lines. People with grievances would stand at the mine and ask everyone “to go home in solidarity.”

This was quite fine, and quite unusual for the U.S. working class. And we communists were neck deep in these events (as you can imagine).

But…

Not all the strikes were progressive. There were two strikes in particular worth mentioning:
One, in 1973 was a rather stubborn wave of strikes in the Kanawha Valley against progressive teachings in schools (the teaching of Black literature, sex education, drug education etc.) Preachers in three cornered hats would stand at major mines calling on miners to strike.

In another case, wives of forement picketed a series of mines organizing a strike against women entering the mines as coal miners.

In the RU/RCP, we discussed what to do. Should we go to strike rallies, and strongly argue that these causes were wrong and not deserving of support? Should we confront the racist pickets and organize people to refuse to strike — and even consider threatening or busting up those racist gatherings at our mines and going into work?

In that discussion we decided that it was (overall) a bad idea to undermine the tradition of respecting pickets (which had an overall very positive role in the coalfields). But that we needed to aggressively oppose these strikes politically — putting out literature widely exposing their nature, mobilizing progressive forces to join us in confronting the reactionaries at their own rallies, etc.

Now, should someone then write an article that said “Coalfield Maoists Plan to Cross Picket Lines”? Would it be fair to equate this debate with “moves to break up picket lines”? Did we deserve to be denounced with headlines that said “Maoists plan scabbing”?

[NaxalbariZindabad]

(I apologize in advance if my English is weird sometimes)


I'm not really sure it's appropriate for owners of say, a shop that employs quite a lot of workers to join the revolutionary party out of fear that he is otherwise going to be repressed, as his repression would probably be the correct thing to do for the workers. Perhaps people who are of a petit-bourgeois background, ie from parents who were in this or that and now the younger guy has a bit of control over his parent's business, his allegiances should be inspected carefully and he should be engaged in open discussion, perhaps he should be admitted perhaps not, I think it should be voted on if there is any doubt arising as to whether he should or shouldn't be. For those such as journalists, again I think perhaps there would be doubt among workers in the party and it should be addressed.You seem to be giving advice to the Nepalese Party so they don't accept bad elements or petit-bourgeois troublemakers. It seems you don't know what a communist party is. (I mean a real communist party like the UCPNM and the CPI-Maoist, not revisionist parties, lousy sects in the West, or social-fascists.) Nobody joins out of "fear of being repressed". You cannot just waltz in there. You need to be a committed and sincere revolutionary, ready to die for the cause, who often devoted years of his/her life to the struggle before you can even ask to join.

I never saw the constitution of the UCPN(M), but here's an excerpt from the CPI-Maoist's constitution (http://maoistrevolutioninindia.blogspot.com/2007/11/cpimaoist-documents-party-constitution.html), to give an idea of how it works to join a communist party:


Article - 6: Any resident of India, who has reached the age of 16 years, who belongs to worker, peasant, toiling masses petty-bourgeoisie classes or any other revolutionaries, accepts Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as his/her guiding ideology in day to day activities, accepts Party Programme and Constitutions, actively participates in party activities under any one of the party unit observing discipline, prepare to face the danger encountered in that course and agree to pay regularly membership fees and levies that are decided by the party unit may become a party member. Party membership will be renewed every year.

Article - 7: Generally party members are admitted as individuals, through a primary party unit. Every applicant for membership must be recommended by two party members; they must have thorough knowledge about him/her and provide all the necessary information to the party. And the applicant for party membership should do so formally.

Article - 8: Concerned primary unit will investigate the applicant and it will be done secretly with in party as well as among masses. Essentially the application must be recommended by concerned party cell/unit and letter on approved by next higher party committee. The applicant will be admitted into the party as a candidate member. After candidate membership is given, he/she should be observed for a minimum period of six months- for applicants from working class, landless-poor peasants and agricultural laborers; one year for middle peasants, petty-bourgeoisie and urban middle class; and two years for those coming from other classes. From AC to all other higher party committees will also have the right to give new membership, while following the same method.

Article - 9: No one from exploiting classes will be admitted in to the party unless he/she hands over his property to the party and should deeply integrate with the masses.

Article - 10: Proven renegades, enemy agents, careerists, individuals of bad character, degenerates and such alien class-elements will not be admitted into the party

Article - 11: Generally party members will be admitted from activist groups organized for party activity working under the guidance of party unit. They must be involved in party activities as decided by the concerned party unit at least for six months before admitting them as candidate member.

Article - 12: By the end of the candidature period, the concerned party unit after reviewing can give full membership or his/her candidature can be extended for another six months, by explaining the reasons. This decision should be reported to the next higher committee. Higher committees may change or modify the decision taken by the lower committee. Zonal/Dist. committee must approve the new membership. SAC/State Committee will finally approve.
I am also aware that the leadership of the UCPN(M) has been proven to be quite bourgeois and petit-bourgeois too in this senseWhy do you say the UCPN(M) leaders are "quite" bourgeois/petit-bourgeois? What is this proof you talk about?


Unlinking people by profession is actually not a good idea, this is kind of division of labour, it's essentially what capitalists have used in the past to stop workers organising effectively, so you are effectively hurting yourselves. Different bodies for youth and students are fine, there are a few exceptions like that which can be effective, but otherwise, division of actual kinds of labour is fundamentally not socialist.Fundamentally not socialist? Why is that? Don't you see the need for, say, a group like the Maoist-affiliated All Nepal Petroleum Workers' Union? Couldn't it be useful for workers to organize in their own workplace and have links with others with a similar job so they can lead the struggle according to their particular conditions? Or do you suggest to merge this union with, say, the pro-Maoist All Nepal Transport Workers Union, or the All Nepal Peasant's Association? What would be the need for that? Would it be practical? There are already umbrella organizations to coordinate the largest mobilizations, like the All Nepal Trade Union Federation, the United National People's Movement, and the Party itself, plus the mass fronts for women, youth, students, ethnic groups, the village, area, district committees, etc.

The Party is already a mix of revolutionaries from pretty much all professions. As I understand it, the idea of mass organizations is to get people who are supportive of the revolution but not enough committed to join the Party, to organize anyway and be useful for the movement. By setting up mass organizations targeting specific conditions of oppression faced by different groups, it puts a more "concrete face" on the revolutionary movement. That way, taxi drivers in Katmandhu don't only come into contact with UCPN(M) propaganda talking about more general revendications and socialism, but also with propaganda from a local Maoist transport workers group addressing their specific conditions and grievances. It's the kind of thing that has always proved effective for reaching and recruiting workers and oppressed people, in Nepal and elsewhere. And of course, the mass organizations can unite together, promote revolution together etc.

From afar and without that much info, this seems like a good model to me. What would you suggest instead? Just one party and two or three mega-mass-organizations?


proposing to ban strikes in sectorsThe Maoists discussed with the UML and Congress a temporary truce regarding calling bandhs. I don't see what the problem is. The Maoists didn't say they wanted to abandon their tactics of bandhs forever, they just considered stopping using it for a while if it would get the reactionary parties to take a break too because those shutdowns were causing too much problems for the population at that particular moment (shortages of different types). You can see they never wanted to abandon this means of struggle forever as there were lots of Maoist-called bandhs in the past weeks. Again, what the Maoists suggested was some sort of temporary "ceasefire" between the parties. From afar, I don't see any problem per se with this tactic. Our Nepalese comrades surely had good reasons to consider it.


believing that the peasantry will be the revolutionary classWhy are you saying this? At least provide one quote from UCPN(M) documents that leads you to imagine that.


having those from a petit and bourgeois proper background in the party leadershipThere are probably UCPN(M) leaders coming from petit-bourgeois backgrounds, so what? As Com. Alastair wrote, does this mean you reject Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky + Bakunin, Kropotkin, Berkman for this reason too?


imposing strikes on people via bandhs which could be detrimental to some of the poor workers' paySince you're posting on a place called RevolutionaryLeft, I suppose you support some sort of revolution. What kind of revolution would that be exactly? From your posts, it would seem to be a revolution without any workers losing a part of their pay, or worse, getting badly hurt or dying. How is that possible?


I read quite clearly that they steal from shopowners and other petit-bourgeois as well, that is absolutely fine. There is nothing that says they don't do it to workers as well though.You're absolutely right: there is nothing that says that Nepalese Maoists don't steal from workers. There is also nothing that says they don't kill people for fun. Or that they don't eat the hearts of their defeated enemies. Why don't you accuse them of these crimes too, since "there is nothing that says they don't do it"?


You linked me this before and.. I read it, can't you make an argument yourself?Com. Alastair quoted this to show that UCPN(M) documents clearly state their support for revolutionary politics and refusal of parliamentarianism. He made an argument based on facts while you're throwing baseless accusations. If you think the UCPN(M)'s political line leads to parliamentarianism, prove it. Prove it with official Maoist documents or with a serious analysis of your own.


If workers voted in a lawyer to the party, who would I be to stop them?Two days ago you wrote: "I've heard all this talk about "organising the urban petit-bourgeois" by Bhattarai before. It is quite reactionary" So it seems you have now changed your mind about excluding petit-bourgeois revolutionaries. Good ;-)

[Saorsa]

For the record ls, Prachanda, the Chairman of the party, used to be a school teacher, i.e. proletarian, before he became a fulltime political organiser.

[ls]

(I apologize in advance if my English is weird sometimes)

No problem, your english is very good and the fact you speak it so well as a second language is pretty cool. :)


You seem to be giving advice to the Nepalese Party so they don't accept bad elements or petit-bourgeois troublemakers. It seems you don't know what a communist party is. (I mean a real communist party like the UCPNM and the CPI-Maoist, not revisionist parties, lousy sects in the West, or social-fascists.) Nobody joins out of "fear of being repressed". You cannot just waltz in there. You need to be a committed and sincere revolutionary, ready to die for the cause, who often devoted years of his/her life to the struggle before you can even ask to join.

How does this work in practice for the UCPN(M), don't you think that a "troublemaker" can essentially bully party members into putting in a good word for them?


I never saw the constitution of the UCPN(M), but here's an excerpt from the CPI-Maoist's constitution (http://maoistrevolutioninindia.blogspot.com/2007/11/cpimaoist-documents-party-constitution.html), to give an idea of how it works to join a communist party:

There's no actual mass vote on joining? Also
Article - 12: By the end of the candidature period, the concerned party unit after reviewing can give full membership or his/her candidature can be extended for another six months, by explaining the reasons. This decision should be reported to the next higher committee. Higher committees may change or modify the decision taken by the lower committee. Zonal/Dist. committee must approve the new membership. SAC/State Committee will finally approve.

That hardly seems democratic to me in fairness, the principle vote should be those concerned locals who ideally, come to a consensus on the decision, although a majority vote with reasons would be fine as well.


Why do you say the UCPN(M) leaders are "quite" bourgeois/petit-bourgeois? What is this proof you talk about?

"Prachanda was born in Dhikur Pokhari, a in the Kaski District,[7] some 140 kilometres (87 mi) west of Nepal's capital Kathmandu.[8][9][10] Prachanda spent much of his childhood in the Chitwan district. He is from a upper caste, Brahmin, and landlord family. He received a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture (BSc-Ag) from the Institute of Agriculture and Animal Science (IAAS) in Rampur, Chitwan, and was once employed at a rural development project sponsored by USAID, the project site being Jajarkot.[11]"

"Early childhood

Baburam Bhattarai was born in a village called Belbas in Khoplang VDC of Gorkha District. He was born in a middle class peasant family. He has three sibilings; one elder sister, one younger sister and one younger brother. He completed his secondary school education from Amar Jyoti Janata Secondary School in Luintel, Gorkha, also known as Luintel School. It is coincidence that during the people's war, his younger brother who works in Nepal electricity authority, was arrested many times in place of him
[edit]Academic Life

Bhattarai had the highest score (national topper) in the national School Leaving Certificate (SLC) in 1970. In 1972, he was a national topper in the Intermediate Science exams (I.Sc.)[1]."

Correct me if I'm wrong on any of this, I am quite openly quoting from wikipedia.

You tell me what class other high rankers like Comrade Kiran come from? :-P


Fundamentally not socialist? Why is that? Don't you see the need for, say, a group like the Maoist-affiliated All Nepal Petroleum Workers' Union? Couldn't it be useful for workers to organize in their own workplace and have links with others with a similar job so they can lead the struggle according to their particular conditions?

Why do you need separate unions for this? Having separate sections in one union would do fine, that's a better way or organising IMO and having shop stewards networks as well, you can better link people together.


Or do you suggest to merge this union with, say, the pro-Maoist All Nepal Transport Workers Union, or the All Nepal Peasant's Association? What would be the need for that? Would it be practical? There are already umbrella organizations to coordinate the largest mobilizations, like the All Nepal Trade Union Federation, the United National People's Movement, and the Party itself, plus the mass fronts for women, youth, students, ethnic groups, the village, area, district committees, etc.

No no, I'm not saying 'mass fronts' for women, youth and students are bad, but I think that having federations is akin to the model here.

After all, what's so wrong with having a TUC (trade union congress) in which all sections of industry are 'linked' to it?

Well I'll tell you what's wrong, it's a division of labour, do you think that it's incredibly easy to link struggles through a central organisation with others federated to it? It's much easier if they are all separate entities within one mass union.


The Party is already a mix of revolutionaries from pretty much all professions. As I understand it, the idea of mass organizations is to get people who are supportive of the revolution but not enough committed to join the Party, to organize anyway and be useful for the movement. By setting up mass organizations targeting specific conditions of oppression faced by different groups, it puts a more "concrete face" on the revolutionary movement.

Only to an extent, dividing labour up into massively different sections is not going to make it anymore of a mass organisation though.


From afar and without that much info, this seems like a good model to me. What would you suggest instead? Just one party and two or three mega-mass-organizations?

Pretty much actually, it has proven quite effective in the past. I think bigger organisations with factions, tendencies and separate entities struggling together as a unified whole would be much better than, although it may surprise you, federated sections split along divisions of labour.


The Maoists discussed with the UML and Congress a temporary truce regarding calling bandhs. I don't see what the problem is. The Maoists didn't say they wanted to abandon their tactics of bandhs forever, they just considered stopping using it for a while if it would get the reactionary parties to take a break too because those shutdowns were causing too much problems for the population at that particular moment (shortages of different types).

As I said, it is symptomatic and not a problem in and of itself, this kind of legislation should never even be on the table. If you want to draw a parallel, the revolutionary insurrectionary army of ukraine proposed and voted on mandatory conscription, I completely disagree with this, but it was a problem that surfaced because the RIAU leadership was mostly of a poor peasant, and partly of a petit-bourgeois background, also they didn't organise workers in the cities properly.


Why are you saying this? At least provide one quote from UCPN(M) documents that leads you to imagine that.

It seems to me that the constitution requires a significant amount of donation, I don't have any quotes from the UCPN(M) constitution right now but I will get some later.


There are probably UCPN(M) leaders coming from petit-bourgeois backgrounds, so what? As Com. Alastair wrote, does this mean you reject Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky + Bakunin, Kropotkin, Berkman for this reason too?

Marx was actually quite poor for a large amount of time, you know. The others were useful, but I don't really think they had any place in leadership, I'm not saying they weren't all extreme contributors to the revolutionary left movement in general though.


Since you're posting on a place called RevolutionaryLeft, I suppose you support some sort of revolution. What kind of revolution would that be exactly? From your posts, it would seem to be a revolution without any workers losing a part of their pay, or worse, getting badly hurt or dying. How is that possible?

Those are incorrect conclusions, of course I realise workers must die, lose pay and be oppressed to levels never before witnessed before revolution will come about, however, when it is avoidable, which imo it was in what I said, then we should work to.. well, avoid it.


Com. Alastair quoted this to show that UCPN(M) documents clearly state their support for revolutionary politics and refusal of parliamentarianism. He made an argument based on facts while you're throwing baseless accusations. If you think the UCPN(M)'s political line leads to parliamentarianism, prove it. Prove it with official Maoist documents or with a serious analysis of your own.

Prachanda resigned after his intentions clashed with the president's, I think that says more than any UCPN(M) document.


Two days ago you wrote: "I've heard all this talk about "organising the urban petit-bourgeois" by Bhattarai before. It is quite reactionary" So it seems you have now changed your mind about excluding petit-bourgeois revolutionaries. Good ;-)

Nope, wrong again, I wouldn't be too happy if they voted for it, for your information. However, I am willing to accept some small things as mistakes and attempt to rectify them, but some lawyers might be allowed in provided they were completely committed to providing us with a good means of struggle and providing they weren't A) exploiting anyone B) did not own any property unfairly. Essentially, they would need to renounce and understand their petit-bourgeois position and definitely renounce their mentality. Workers must come first and lead the struggle, the petit-bourgeois have no part to play in the leadership and must be subservant.


For the record ls, Prachanda, the Chairman of the party, used to be a school teacher, i.e. proletarian, before he became a fulltime political organiser.

He comes from a higher caste and also worked for US AID, as I've pointed out, essentially I would say the way he runs the party is symptomatic of this.

[Saorsa]

He comes from a higher caste and also worked for US AID, as I've pointed out, essentially I would say the way he runs the party is symptomatic of this.

Class is not a genetic trait handed down from your parents. It is determined by one's relationship to the production process. Prachanda, as a school teacher, sold his ability to work and did not exploit the labour of others. Teachers are proletarian.

And what do you mean the way he runs the party? The UCPN (M) is probably the most democratic mass revolutionary organisation I've ever heard of, party cadre can have articles published in affiliated newspapers accusing Prachanda of being on a revisionist or reformist path without repercussions.

[ls]

Class is not a genetic trait handed down from your parents. It is determined by one's relationship to the production process. Prachanda, as a school teacher, sold his ability to work and did not exploit the labour of others. Teachers are proletarian.

Obviously it isn't genetic, but I think one's mentality can be shaped quite easily by it, are you saying he never worked for US AID? I can understand that he worked as a teacher, but for how long in comparison to working for US AID?


And what do you mean the way he runs the party? The UCPN (M) is probably the most democratic mass revolutionary organisation I've ever heard of, party cadre can have articles published in affiliated newspapers accusing Prachanda of being on a revisionist or reformist path without repercussions.

:confused: And you think there should be repercussions?

[Saorsa]

Obviously it isn't genetic, but I think one's mentality can be shaped quite easily by it, are you saying he never worked for US AID? I can understand that he worked as a teacher, but for how long in comparison to working for US AID?

No, I'm not denying it. But I don't think you can seriously accuse him of being a US imperialist stooge because he worked for US AID. Chances are he just wanted to be involved in a development project in his country, I don't think it's a very big deal. And if he was selling his labour power to US AID and not exploiting the labour power of others in the process, it's still proletarian.


And you think there should be repercussions?

Erm, no... The point I was making was that if the UCPN (M) was a party under the undemocratic totalitarian control of a clique of leaders, there would be repercussions. Being able to criticize the leadership is a very important litmus test for any democratic organisation.

[Saorsa]

http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2008/08/16/prachandas-long-walk-rise-of-a-rebel/

Prachanda’s Long Walk: Rise Of A Rebel

Posted by Mike E on August 16, 2008

The revolutionary Maoist leader Prachanda has now become the Prime Minister of Nepal — by isolating the National Congress and its intrigues. And the same time, in this complex situation, Nepal still has two armies facing each other, and a great (potentially hostile) power, India, across a long and indefensible border.

In honor of Prachanda’s selection as Prime Minister, his close party collaborator, Baburam Bhattarai, said: “Today is a day of pride and it will be written with golden letters in the history of the nation.” Bhattarai predicted that Prachanda would be a leader “for a new era”, comparable to Lenin or Napoleon.

by Anand Gurung for Nepal News
A glimpse at Prachanda’s childhood years and then as a devoted teacher during his younger more salad days before he turned into active politics might help in knowing the person behind the name Prachanda who is better known to the rest of the world as a leader of a violent Maoist insurgency in the strategically important place between India and China — one who was the most elusive underground leader in the world till two years back with many in Kathmandu doubting if he even exists because, according to an editor of a leading English weekly, “so little was known about him during the first five years of the war” and who, rather uncomfortably, sits over/on top of so many transformations the nation has changed in the matter of two years.Born into a poor peasant family from Tanahun near Pokhara in December 1954, Chhabi Lal Dahal, as Prachanda was known then, was the eldest of eight children.When he was just 6 years, the family was resettled, like hundreds of thousands of others from the mountain and hilly region of central and northern Nepal, in the cleared jungles of Terai flat-lands as part of the then King .

Mahendra’s “nationalistic policy” to assert control in the restive south. Although malaria had just been eradicated, life in Chitwan, where the family had ended up, was not far better than the impoverished hills from where the families were lured to come here.

Wild-animals prowling in the nearby jungles were heard of attacking people, but it was the merciless money-lenders who made the lives of resettled families miserable amid the far-off government that never really cared for their plight.

But even during those difficult times Prachanda’s father managed to raise his big family largely on subsistence-farming. Being the eldest, Prachanda was supposed to help his father in the fields to support the large family, but instead his father insisted he get good education and, much like many poor Nepali family hoped, grow up to become a “big person”. Childhood friends as well as former neighbors remembers Prachanda as a “kind-hearted boy” who couldn’t stand injustice.

“He really cared for the poor people in the village,” said Prachanda’s father Mukti Ram Dahal in a rare interview with Time Magazine back in 2004 when Maoist insurgency was still at its peak, “He used to share his food with them and tell us we shouldn’t exploit them.”

Belonging to a Brahmin family, which is considered “higher caste” by orthodox Hindus, Prachanda even used to readily mingle with lower-caste Dalit, or “untouchables” -something that was quite against the traditional societal set up of that time, giving a glimpse of a future revolutionary in the making.

Impressed by his generosity that went well with his gentle nature and handsome physique, his teachers changed his name to Pushpa Kamal, meaning ”Lotus Flower”. After passing his high school examinations (SLC) from Narayani Biddhya Mandir School the same year his deputy Dr Baburam Bhattarai topped it, Prachanda came to Kathmandu to join Patan Campus from where he finished his Intermediate in Science (ISc).

He was strongly influenced by Communist ideology while still in school, but it was only while studying in Kathmandu that he came into contact with the country’s senior communist leaders and started becoming active in leftist politics. By the spring of 1981 he became a member of a small communist party named CPN (Masal) which was on the verge of suffering a split.

Thereafter, Prachanda came back to his hometown Chitwan to enroll in the US-funded Agriculture College in Rampur, a hotbed for student politics during the party-less Panchayati era, and from there finished his graduation. While growing up he had seen all the pains his poor but very hard-working parents went through to raise the big family as well as support his studies. In the village he had also seen how the rich lived their life in luxury while the poor had to live in a hand-to-mouth existence.
“From my childhood, I came to feel the meaning of poverty and inhuman exploitation,” he once told an interviewer. The growing economic divide including the discriminations against lower castes Dalits he encountered first hand from childhood filled him with this immense sense of injustice which inspired him to commit his entire life to the mission of replacing the ‘bourgeoisie’ state with a ‘proletariat’ one through armed struggle.

His college friends say that everyone who met him would be very quickly impressed by his personality and passion for the things he held up to his own heart and would patiently listen to what he had to say. Especially, what struck them was his absolute confidence that the armed struggle inspired by Maoists would eventually triumph and bring about the desired change in the society, a belief which would later distance him from the senior communist leaders whom he used to admire and respect.

After finishing college in 1976 he went to Arughat in Gorkha district to teach in a local school, as it was mandatory for every college graduate to teach in one of the government designated school for one year. However, Prachanda spent the next two and a half years teaching in the school, during which time he earned a great deal of respect from both the students and their parents alike for the devotion to the teaching job.

In an article published in the Nepali Times, Satrughan Shrestha, a former student of Prachanda, remembers “Dahal Sir” as a talented teacher who stood out because he seemed to take his job of mentoring very seriously. So much so that in the evening he would drop by at the homes of his students to see if they were having any problems with homework. Apart from this, he also ran classes for illiterate adults once every week, use to show new farming techniques to the local farmers, and also get them acquainted with communist philosophy through the stacks of books by Marx, Lenin and Mao he used to keep under his bed.

After leaving the teaching job, he returned to Chitwan and briefly worked for a US funded project, and in the year 1978 started actively engaging in party politics, becoming a “whole timer” and a year later member of his party’s Chitwan district committee. He climbed the political ladder rapidly in the next couple of years, becoming the chairman of the party’s student wing in 1983 and a central member a year later.
Coming into the year 1990, when democracy was restored in the country, he had been entrusted with the post of general secretary of the party. But by that time the fissures in the party had grown to such an extent that it suffered a vertical split. This and the disagreement he had with his party’s senior leader on ideological grounds later forced him to set up his own party with the name CPN (Maoist) in the year 1995. After a full one year preparing for the armed struggle, Prachanda declared the start of people’s insurgency in 1996, and the rest, as they say it, is all history.

In the subsequent one decade, he led his party through violent insurgency in which the lives of 15,000 Nepalese were lost. Often times, his party cadres were involved in brutal tactics that led then government as well as governments of India and US to label Maoists as terrorists. Taking a cue out of the insurgency inspired by Comrade Gonzalo in Peru in the name of Senduro Luminoso, the violent insurgency in Nepal led to the rapid downfall of democracy that was restored in Nepal in 1990.

During the time he led the insurgency, Prachanda deftly played his cards – sometimes siding with the opposition parties to corner the ruling ones, sometimes talking about having working relation with monarchy and sometimes forcing the parties into his fold to isolate the same monarchy. He succeeded in creating irreparable rift among the parliamentarian parties.

It was after then King Gyanendra dismissed elected government to start his direct rule in February 1, 2005 that Prachanda – who was till then saying he was willing to hold talks with master (meaning the King) than the servants (meaning then government) – made an about turn. After months of wooing and negotiations, Prachanda signed 12-point pact with mainstream parties in November of 2005 in New Delhi – the capital of India – that he could finally isolate the monarchy and bring about an environment where the People’s Movement of April, 2006 was able to force the King to relinquish power.

And after two months of further wheeling and dealing, the CA election took place, which catapulted his party into the single largest party albeit without clear majority

[ls]

No, I'm not denying it. But I don't think you can seriously accuse him of being a US imperialist stooge because he worked for US AID. Chances are he just wanted to be involved in a development project in his country, I don't think it's a very big deal. And if he was selling his labour power to US AID and not exploiting the labour power of others in the process, it's still proletarian.

Did I call him a US imperialist stooge? No. I simply said he worked for US AID, he worked because he thought "poor people" need help, I find that kind of annoying myself, it is indicative of a certain mentality, it does not make him a stooge and I'm pretty sure you realise that wasn't my point. If you honestly didn't, apologies.


Erm, no... The point I was making was that if the UCPN (M) was a party under the undemocratic totalitarian control of a clique of leaders, there would be repercussions. Being able to criticize the leadership is a very important litmus test for any democratic organisation.

Well, let's put it this way. The original Maoists used a certain clause to accuse people of 'economism' when they raised fair criticisms, I believe this was used against people who participated in the Shanghai commune. It does seem to me that 'Maoist self-criticism' only goes as far as the leaders want it to. The only real proof I have is that criticism by the head of the breakaway party, that we were discussing in the 'nepal news' thread, which you labeled as 'ultra-leftist', when he was minister for land, Prachanda heavily attacked him for his criticism. It is hardly just me criticising the UCPN(M) mate, there are others ranging from monkey smashes heaven through to the most pro-USSR people.

[Ravachol]

In theory, I suppose they could. But in theory, looking to the future if there's a mass revolutionary anarchist organisation, or if there's some kind of mass IWW-style red union, it could also impose a ban on strikes if the working class didn't want it.

How exactly can an anarcho-syndicalist union 'impose' a ban on strikes if the associated workers do not desire this? That's beyond me.



A lot of anarchists and trots have a very utopian idea of the working class and how it engages in class struggle. It's nt as simple as workers vs bosses all the time.

No decent Anarchist would claim that we have to voice sentiments originating directly from the working class without analysis. That's an accusation often wrongly levelled against Anarchists, Syndicalists and the Workerist left. If the working class engages in class struggle, it engages in class struggle, period. Obviously strikes called for by reactionary parties or segments of the working class purely to sabotage a revolutionary project aren't class struggle but that isn't the issue discussed here. The issue is whether or not strikes can and/or will be called of in a top-down model, which leaves a big potential for the future surpression of class struggle by an emering degenerated bureaucracy.

[N3wday]

There's no actual mass vote on joining?

*I just want to briefly intervene. I was scanning the comments and saw this question. Sorry if it's been addressed already, I won't have the opportunity to catch up on the entire discussion for another day or two.*

I'm not sure how such a thing would be conducted... This is especially true regarding underground parties involved in revolutionary warfare. For example, who would qualify as part of the "mass" who would be voting? Direct supporters and collaborators of the CPI-Maoist? Or just those underground and directly engaged in warfare? How would people be able to make an informed decision in order to vote? The party has thousands of members, would the candidate be passed around through different guerrilla camps so everyone would have a chance to meet her/him and formulate an opinion (security problem)? Would the persons real information be circulated throughout the entire party, amongst all of its membership? Couldn't this also be a huge security concern? What if an informant leaked that information to an organization like Salwa Judum, which then did something like kidnapped a family member and demanded information?

Conditions of warfare and conditions of peace have very different criteria for determining how people are admitted to a revolutionary group. In Nepal, the Maoists have enough power to protect their members from the more crude tactics of reactionary groups, this isn't so with India. Which, I believe would render comparing the two party's behavior now (regarding this topic) as problematic (maybe not when both were at war).

Just a thought... I'm not sure how mass votes would ever work though. Take Nepal where the UCPN has tens of thousands of members (and millions of supporters). Would everyone drop what they were engaged in to vote every time someone was interested in joining? Wouldn't that create an incredible amount of red tape?

Anyway, perhaps I'm wrong. But, those are the first things that popped into my mind when I ran into this section of the discussion.

[Yehuda Stern]

Alastair

You're also usually much better than justifying the suppression of the working class, but then I guess we all have our low points. Clearly workers do not have an inalienable right to strike - as chegitz helpfully pointed out, Marxists can't support a strike to ban black / female / Palestinian etc. workers from a workplace.

So I guess we just proved that the working class doesn't always have the right to strike. But then, not all cars are blue, but quite a few are. In other words - where's the proof that the decision of the Nepalese Maoists to ban strikes was legitimate?

Let's look at the facts here - the Nepali Maoists find themselves in a far more favorable political situation than the Bolsheviks were in, well, ever probably. And yet the revolution in Nepal advances far more slowly than the Bolshevik revolution did. One could easily come to the conclusion that the Maoists' power is what holds the revolution back instead of pushing it forward, kind of like what Chavez is doing in Venezuela (and I realize he is yet another holy cow of most of the petty-bourgeois left). That means that a ban on strikes would be one more way for the Maoists to suppress working class radicalism.

Somehow, I don't find such a goal to be very supportable.

pranabjyoti

Look, I'm sure you're feeling great repeating drap Stalinist nonsense, but frankly, I'm an anti-Zionist revolutionary in Israel and my life is far from peachy. So keep the bullshit about "armchair revolutionaries" to yourself, because from my experience with people who talk like you, you'll never have to worry about the consequences of "being active" as long as you live.

[ls]

*I just want to briefly intervene. I was scanning the comments and saw this question. Sorry if it's been addressed already, I won't have the opportunity to catch up on the entire discussion for another day or two.*

I'm not sure how such a thing would be conducted... This is especially true regarding underground parties involved in revolutionary warfare. For example, who would qualify as part of the "mass" who would be voting? Direct supporters and collaborators of the CPI-Maoist? Or just those underground and directly engaged in warfare? How would people be able to make an informed decision in order to vote? The party has thousands of members, would the candidate be passed around through different guerrilla camps so everyone would have a chance to meet her/him and formulate an opinion (security problem)? Would the persons real information be circulated throughout the entire party, amongst all of its membership? Couldn't this also be a huge security concern? What if an informant leaked that information to an organization like Salwa Judum, which then did something like kidnapped a family member and demanded information?

Conditions of warfare and conditions of peace have very different criteria for determining how people are admitted to a revolutionary group. In Nepal, the Maoists have enough power to protect their members from the more crude tactics of reactionary groups, this isn't so with India. Which, I believe would render comparing the two party's behavior now (regarding this topic) as problematic (maybe not when both were at war).

Just a thought... I'm not sure how mass votes would ever work though. Take Nepal where the UCPN has tens of thousands of members (and millions of supporters). Would everyone drop what they were engaged in to vote every time someone was interested in joining? Wouldn't that create an incredible amount of red tape?

Anyway, perhaps I'm wrong. But, those are the first things that popped into my mind when I ran into this section of the discussion.

They have a thing about 'primary local' units conducting the joining process for new members. I take this to essentially mean the local sector (ie in a town it would be the town's local section of the party) conducts the investigation into their life, views etc. I don't think this is the right way of going about it at all personally, there should be more involvement of the wider regional councils deciding and pointing out if this person has had shady involvement in anything before.

They talk about "the masses inside the party" and how they can ask questions about the new member, but I think the question should be - do you know of this person (asked throughout the party in general, raised as a small point during each discussion at every council, this wouldn't be too much hassle for the party). If anything bad comes up then obviously that should be investigated, just letting people in if they say this and that and letting the most local unit investigate them is pretty much asking for trouble imo.

[NaxalbariZindabad]

According to recent bourgeois news reports, Maoist-affiliated organizations have promised to retaliate against a strike protesting "People's Republic and federalism" in eastern districts:


Janamorcha shut down eastern districts against federalism

UDAYPUR, JAN 13 - Continuing with their agitation against federalism, the Rastriya Janamorcha has called for a shutdown of eastern districts on Wednesday.

Normal life in Udaypur, Gaighat, Beltaar, Katari, Rampur, Murkuchi has been crippled due to the shutdown.

Transportation has come to a virtual standstill, while academic institutions, markets, and industries have remained shut.

The RJM cadres have poured on to the streets from early today and have been demonstrating in the roads since early this morning.

Meanwhile, security in the district has been tightened following the UCPN (Maoist) affiliated Kirat Rasrtiya Mukti Morcha central committee and Janawadi Worker's Party announced to retaliate against the RJM strike.

The RJM have already enforced banda in the capital along with other districts against the federalism this month.

According to party Chairman Chitra Bahadur KC, the People's Republic and federalism will instigate ethnic and communal violence in the country and claimed that his party has been struggling to save the country from disintegration.

http://www.ekantipur.com/2010/01/13/top-stories/Janamorcha-shut-down-eastern-districts-against-federalism/306292/In other news, Maoists just called an indefinite shutdown in Parsa, to protest against the murder of one of its local leaders:


Maoist leader shot dead in Bara; Bara, Parsa closed

A Unified CPN (Maoist) leader has been shot dead in Bara last night.
Rajesh Mandal, 30, in charge of the Maoists' Bhojpura Rajya Samiti, Parsa area no. 2, died on the spot when he received two rounds of bullets at about 8.30 pm, Tuesday.

A caller, who identified himself as a member of an underground armed outfit Terai Army, owned up the murder.

Locals have protested against the killing. They have vandalised and torched some vehicles including those of the police alleging involvement of police in the incident.

Maoists have called an indefinite Parsa bandh demanding compensation to the family of the killed, and declaration of martyr. Bara has also been closed in protest of the killing.

In a similar shoot out in Bara, a few days ago, three Maoist cadres had been killed and two others had been injured.

http://www.nepalnews.com/main/index.php/news-archive/19-general/3447-maoist-leader-shot-dead-in-bara.html