Saorsa
20th February 2010, 12:16
Living Revolution or Sterile Orthodoxy: Questions Around Nepal (http://kasamaproject.org/2010/02/19/living-revolution-or-sterile-orthodoxy-questions-around-nepal/)
Posted by Mike E (http://mikeely.wordpress.com/) on February 19, 2010
by Mike Ely
Many points have been raised have been raised in the sharp debate over the 4 Reasons (http://kasamaproject.org/2010/02/08/eyes-on-the-maobadi-4-reasons-nepal%E2%80%99s-revolution-matters-2/) article and on the major recent statement (http://kasamaproject.org/2010/02/09/nepal-major-maoist-analysis-of-situation-tasks-ahead/) by the Maoist leadership in Nepal.
If you step back, you will notice that every attempt to rally and mobilize support for the living revolution in Nepal is met by a cascade of cranky and muttered complaints — basically that the Nepalis are not following some pre-ordained script, and that you can’t be making a communist revolution without those specific pre-ordained scripts (and this muttering comes from various circles entranced in a fixed orthodoxy — which sometimes proclaims itself as Maoist, or as Trotskyist, or as newly minted) .
Thirty years ago, the following was embraced by the main Maoist forces within the U.S.:
“It can be… said that it is even a law of revolution, and especially of proletarian revolution, that in order for it to succeed in any particular country, the struggle in that country and those leading it will have to depart from and even oppose certain particular conceptions or previous practices which have come to be invested with the stature of ‘established norms’ in the revolutionary movement.”
I have since developed differences with the specific author (http://kasamaproject.org/pamphlets/9-letters/) of those words (http://openlibrary.org/b/OL4435088M/Mao_Tsetung%27s_immortal_contributions), but I agreed with thode thoughts in 1979, and agree with them today.
Here are some comments (taking up issues in no particular order).
Ringing a Bell or Crying Wolf?
Joseph Ball writes:
“Many times since 2006 we have heard that this or that dispute over the political process in Nepal would lead to revolution.”
I think this is basically a strawman. I have never heard any claims that one or another crisis would lead to revolution. By contrast, what I have heard (and said) is:
a) That a vanguard party is trying to use a series of political collisions to prepare their own ranks and the broader people for a seizure of power;
and
b) that a future crisis or collision could become the opening through which that decisive test of strength (between two armed and opposed forces) could erupt. (And not “erupt” in some spontaneous way, but erupt because the developing preparations for insurection by the Maoists or for a military coup by the Royalists were carried out.)
The seizure of power is not merely an act of will (though the will to power is needed) — it also requires a broad sense among the masses of people that a new leap is needed, and large numbers of people need to be willing to sacrifice (including by killing and dying ) to make such an advance. You can’t create such a mood just by willing it into being, or by proclaiming your own convictions — you have to engage the living fabric of actual politics and help transform-and-lead the maturation of the ingredients for an insurrection.
Some people are perpetually confused by (a) the fact that some leaders of the Maobadi do not seem to be inclined toward a seizure of power (and advocate indefinite postponement) and (b) the fact that most leaders of the Maobadi are not explicit in proclaiming that they are plotting to overthrow the government and crush the military in the foreseeable future.
By contrast to such people, Maoists are generally not surprised to discover (a) that there are two lines sharply contending within a large revolutionary party that is approaching such a major decision and (b) that serious revolutionary forces want some “element of surprise” to cloak their specific preparations.
Many of us have been ringing a bell (http://kasamaproject.org/2010/01/24/nepal-ringing-the-bell-loudly/) — urgently, with some real frustration — but we have not been “crying wolf.” No one says there WILL BE a revolution in nepal — at a particular date, or within a particular time frame.
Here is what I recently wrote:
“The Nepali Maoists are preparing right now (i mean over the next few weeks) for what-may-be a decisive military/political confrontation with the reactionary government and army.
“The insurrection they have been preparing so carefully and so long may take place over the next two months.
“The Maoists are seeking to mobilize the people (based on the understanding that their enemies will be wanting to act closely with Indian intrigues, and can be isolated by exposing those intrigues.) Their Indian, Nepali and American enemies understand this. Their revolutionary core base knows this. And we need to know it.”
This is the truth. There are nodal points ahead — including the deadline for a stalemated constitutional crisis. And there may (may!) be an attempt at power in the context of future crises — just as there may (may!) be an attempt at a coup. And just as an attempted coup may (may!) prove part of the conditions (like Kornilov (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavr_Kornilov)’s coup in 1917 Russia) for new advances of revolution or it may be the final event in the drama (like Pinochet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet)’s coup in Chile 1973).
Or, of course, events may stumble on for a while. Or something else may happen.
But the fact is that the current situation — defined by dual power, paralysis and the mounting impatience of all camps — cannot go on forever. Some crisis will (it is quite likely) precipitate a test of strength, and certaily all sides in Nepal are now (righyt now!) preparing for such a still-hypothetical-but-likely moment.
And we too, however far away we are, need to prepare too. And we are very UN-prepared. And part of the problem is a stubborn dogmatism that history has imprinted on the very brains of far too many communist comrades. Part (a secondary and temporary and soon-completed part, I hope) of such preparation is the criticism of very passive “wait and see” attitude among people who have forgotten (or never known) how internationalists and communists should act.
We are looking at the first ripening revolutionary situation in sixty years, where a very radical communist force (leading millions) has a chance to seize power, and we (as a world movement) are woefully unprepared to act, or speak, or defend, or mobilize around this very specific and important movement.
Part of our inability (our lagging) has to do with overall weakness of the world movement… a material weakness. A revolutionary crisis containing a truly revolutionary party is a rarity — and a ripening chance at power is a great opportunity for mobilizing, training, encouraging and regrouping a whole new generation of communist revolutionaries worldwide. But our weakness is not just a material one (or an objective problem of being scattered and disorganized). Another part of our current weakness comes from a terribly pervasive problem of line — a result of too many communists have been confined and trained within dry, exhausted, sectarian sandboxes — so that some of us can’t even recognize a living revolution when we finally see one.
That line struggle (that struggle against this dogmatic line) is itself part of both training new communists and rushing to meet our collective responsibilities.
On the Transitional Demands of Revolutionaries
Joseph Ball:
“I don’t think its a very good idea for Marxists to try to create a revolutionary situation by pushing for reforms the system can’t or won’t meet anyway. This approach tends to give the initiative to the reactionaries who can pick their own time to launch coups or mass round-ups of communists. I don’t really think this is exactly what the UCPN(M) is doing in any case. I think they’re just trying to win reforms.
This issue hasn’t been discussed enough. And that issue is transitional demands.
Every successful revolution in history has had a moment when key demands of the people become the banner for the seizure of power. Millions of people don’t simply fight and die for the ultimate goals of revolution — for communism, socialism and classless society, as concepts. They are willing to fight, and even die, when they cannot live the old way and rally to a real, existing political force dedicated to communism, socialism and classless society.
“Bread, Peace and Land” in the Russian revolution is a crucial example — where the heartfelt demands of millions became sharply focused (in the midst of a world war and social collapse) and where ONLY the communist victory could resolve those demands.
In ordinary times, the demand for “bread” is hardly (as we all know) a revolutionary demand… but under those specific conditions it was a cry of the people against all the old (and new) ruling forces. And under those specific conditions the demand for “peace” (meaning an end to the fighting with Germany) was a demand that only the Bolsheviks were willing to carry out (and the Kerensky government, though “left” and “socialist” in name, had isolated itself precisely because it was uncompromising in its determination to fulfill Russia’s wartime commitments to the Anglo-American imperialist war bloc). And at the key moment of the revolution, Lenin abandoned the Bolsheviks own program for agrarian revolution, adopted the far more popular program of the Socialist Revolutionary Party — and said to the peasant base of that SR party that the communist revolution represented the only way to achieve their deep desire for “land” (i.e. for the seizure of feudal estates by the poor farmers).
There are moments when such transitional demands come to the fore — and in fact the emergence of such demands is part of the symptom of a revolutionary situation.
And in Nepal, a sophisticated work is being done — of crafting the sentiments of the people (for a peace process, for a constitutional New Nepal, for a democratic peoples military, for an end to feudal and caste outrages) into a program of transitional demands through which, and for which, the final seizure of state power will be carried out. I believe those transitional demands are forming around civilian control of the military, around the federated end to the oppression of national minorities, around the desire for a radical new and democratic constitution. Those are demands that up until now have been debated in the context of the post-2006 peace process, and now can only be resolved by a new leap in political power — opening the door to agrarian revolution and socialism.
This forging of transitional demands needs to be contrasted with something else, something rather different:
Some leftist political forces believe in developing a “transitional program” in non-revolutionary times where they (rather mechanically) invent a series of demands that (they believe) the ruling class cannot ever grant. There is a fantasy at work here: The idea is that you build big mass movement around those transitional demands, and build the enthusiasm of the people for those demands (essentially) radical reforms, and then…. when the system reveals increasingly that it will never grant them, the people then (supposedly) may “make revolution” (overthrow the state) to achieve that series of economic and social reforms.
Such demands of a transitional program include “30 for 40″ or “Jobs for all” or “Jobs not War,” and so on…and are familiar to anyone who as observed the left.
The theory of transitional program is particularly associated with Trotskyism. Trotsky’s own “Transitional Program (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transitional_Program)” in the 1930s was a foundational concept/document of his (rather still-born) 4th International.
In my view, the theory of transitional programs in non-revolutionary times is (rather precisely) an expression of the kind of economism that Lenin criticized in “What is To Be Done? (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/)” — specifically it is a politics of “lending the economic struggle a political character” and imagining (falsely) that the political struggle for such demands will “become” a revolutionary one. It is a theory of hoping that movements for reform will adopt revolutionary means. And it is a theory that deeply underestimates the degree to which explicitly revolutionary and socialist ideas need to be struggled for (and ultimately embraced) among the advanced sections of the people — it is a theory of revolution without expecting the maturation of a consciously revolutionary, partisan and pro-communist section of the people.
But there is a world of difference between inventing (as a gimmik) such a strategic “theory of transitional program” in non-revolutionary times and the development of specific and historically-rooted transitional demands within a ripening revolutionary situation.
There are people who insist that the Nepali Maoists (as a party) are not seriously considering and planning a revolution. (And this is what Joseph means when he says: “I don’t really think this is exactly what the UCPN(M) is doing in any case. I think they’re just trying to win reforms.” )
Here is my suspicion: I believe that when (if!) the day comes when a seizure of power is carried out (countrywide) in Nepal, those same people (by their entrenched political logic) will announce “Oh well, there may have been a seizure of power, but it was done in the name of the 2006 ‘peace process,’ in the name of the new constitution, and not in the name of agrarian revolution and socialism…. so it doesn’t count as a real revolution.”
After all, what is the criterion of truth: tightly-held orthodox assumptions or living political practice?
Critical Thinking or Whateverism
NSPF writes:
“If learning from Nepal or anywhere else that has had some success in something is used as a back door to reintroduce the same phenomena, it would be a disaster. For me, any learning process always involves critical appraisal.”
I want to agree with this.
Our movement simply has to get beyond “whateverism” — where we pick leading parties or figures and act like “whatever” they say is a prophetic revelation (and even a universal truth). History (including any analysis of the best a century of socialist revolution has accomplished) is not kind to this “whateverist” approach — or to those who adopt it.
Everything divides into two.
Why would uncritical thinking be a “disaster” as NSPF writes?
Because you can promote creative innovative thinking religiously, and if you do that you have promoted religion not creative innovative thinking.
Lenin (for example) was a great innovator who broke many of the “rules” of his own movement, discarded many of the entrenched assumptions and methods, and (on that basis) managed to lead a historic breakthrough for socialism. However often Lenin’s lifework was taught, presented, described in a dogmatic way — and so often (in the name of codifying Leninism, and in the name of treating it as universal in an overreaching way) people were taught not to question rules of their new Leninist movement, or its new emerging and soon-entrenched assumptions. The movement created by Lenin became a movement that was too often led by sycophants and yes-men (like Thorez, or Wang Ming, or Browder, or Thaelmann, or…) — often chosen by their conformism and subordination, not by their ability to independently analyze or creatively lead.
On the other hand, a critical appraisal does not mean that our main approach to everything is criticisms.
It means we appraise things in a way that systematically compares theory to reality, situates the particular in context, discerns the limited applicability of particular insights, anticipates the relative untruth within important truths…. or, as Mao said “study critically, test independently.”
Let’s not forget, sometimes you study something using very critical thinking and methods, and (at the end of your process) conclude “Wow, this is great!” Not all critical thinking leads to criticism and distain. Sometimes critical thinking leads you to defend shocking new innovations against those who (uncritically) stand on the ground of past assumptions.
Does New Thinking Always Suck?
Joseph Ball writes:
“So many times in my life-time I have heard communist parties and Marxist thinkers claim they have developed some wonderful new approach to Marxism. The old British Communist Party did this, we had ‘reform communism’ (Gorbachovism), before that there was ‘Euro-communism’ and so on. Every time those that opposed these deviations were accused of living in the past and not wanting to try a new approach to building socialism. But what were these wonderful ‘new things’. Basically, they were bourgeois parliamentary democracy and market economics. In fact the ‘new things’ were really very old things, the ideas of the original founders of bourgeois democracy and the original theorists of capitalism like Adam Smith. Mao, by upholding something ‘old’-the line of Lenin as upheld by Stalin in the USSR created a very new thing-the Cultural Revolution that brought very positive benefits for the proletariat and peasantry of China. The UCPN(M) as a whole ditched the approach of Cultural Revolution for the old bourgeois ways.”
To be blunt: Virtually every phrase here is wrong. And more, Joseph is defending a world outlook that is mistaken in a deep way. It creaks with conservative impulses and orthodox suspicions. It is old (very old) in instinct and culture.
And it is historicall wrong: While some revisionist forces in the communist movement certainly proclaimed new approaches (Krushchev, Bernstein, Eurocommunists etc.) it is also true that revisionists have often strutted their orthodoxy and promoted conservative views based on such orthodoxy (Kautsky (http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/index.htm), Hoxha (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hoxha/index.htm), Gus Hall (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gus_Hall), Wang Ming (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Ming) and the other “28 1/2 Bolsheviks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/28_Bolsheviks)” in China, and so on.)
It is not true that you can tell a counterrevolutionary because they attempt new approaches (!!), or that you can identify the true revolutionaries because they defend orthodoxy.
Furthermore, no revolutionary advance has been made without major breaks with orthodoxy.
Mao was highly unorthodox (within a Comintern that enforced orthodoxy, often by brutal means). His main opponent during the revolutionary period (i.e. Wang Ming) was highly orthodox — and was promoted by the comintern precisely because of that orthodoxy. A great deal of Mao’s political polemics in the 1930s and 40s, culminating in the great Yenan ideological campaign, was to fight for the creative application (and new DEVELOPMENT) revolutionary theory to new and complex and particular conditions. New Democracy? Who had heard of that? Peoples war? Who had heard of that? Two line struggle? Who had used that concept? On down the line.
Perhaps this view becomes most clearly mistaken in the following characterization:
“Mao, by upholding something ‘old’-the line of Lenin as upheld by Stalin in the USSR created a very new thing-the Cultural Revolution that brought very positive benefits for the proletariat and peasantry of China.”
No.
Mao developed something new by summing up the experience of Lenin and especially Stalin and breaking with many assumptions (assumptions about classes, socialism, class struggle under socialism, about the correctness of parties, about the inherent class nature of vanguard parties, about where the bourgeois resides, about how to confront restoration, about the class nature of restorationists, about the relationship of antagonistic and non-antagonist contradictions, on the mythology of “monolithic party,” and much more).
The cultural revolution was not an act of orthodoxy (in ways that seem to obvious to elaborate here) — but an act of shocking innovation. If you read Hoxha’s “Reflections on China” you get a clear “WTF” sense of how the orthodox were outraged and literally scandalized by the cultural revolution — and how deeply they saw this as a violation (even a betrayal) of the most basic assumptions of the previously-existing socialist camp and the then-existing communist movement.
It is not true that the application of revolutionary theory lies simply in the defense of orthodoxy. On the contrary, application of revolutionary theory involves both the defense and development of that theory — in ways that involve both affirmation and negation.
The onesided insistance on “defending” inherited theory (whether it is Kautsky posing as the orthodox Marxist, or Hoxha posing as the orthodox Leninist-Stalinist, or others today posing as the orthodox Maoists) — that onesided insistance is a form of destroying Marxism, reducing it from a creative engagement to a quasi-religious orthodoxy. No revolution can be prepared or waged based on such orthodoxy. And none ever has been.
To put it baldly: In our moment this is particular sharp — because the pull of irrelevance and impotence often takes the form of privileging communist continuity over communist discontinuity.
Finally, I also completely disagree with this view:
“The UCPN(M) as a whole ditched the approach of Cultural Revolution for the old bourgeois ways.”
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) was a revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat — it was shaped (in form and goals) by the continuation of revolution (and the prevention of restoration) under conditions of socialism. The UCPN(M) is in the culminating moments of a New Democratic Revolution (which in its essense emerged from a semifeudal and semicolonial society — and is deeply marked, in form and goals, by those condition.)
It is true as some have provocatively raised, that we can (even before a victorious revolution) learn important things from the Cultural Revolution — in how, for example we conceive of socialism, or form organs of popular power, or view mental manual contradictions etc. It’s not like “we learn from Mao on New Democracy now, and only learn from Mao on Cultural Revolution later.”
But i think it is simply wrong to accuse the UCPN(M) of such abandonment (especially without evidence, and especially when that accusation is made in the context of an argument for rather rigid orthodoxy, that can ONLY have the result of denying the very innovations of Mao and turning him into a cardboard defender of previous theory.)
On Multi-Party Socialism
John C writes:
“On Mike’s 4 points: I’m in philosophical agreement, even if I don’t agree with every specific point he makes, especially on the question of multi-party governance. Merleau-Ponty asked the famous question, in “Adventures in the Dialectic”, who is going to tell the Party when it’s wrong? That’s a fundamental question, and a serious one, but I see no particular reason to think that the answer is to let feudal and capitalist parties use socialist democracy to openly organize counterrevolution.”
John raises a number of important points… and we have not discussed them enough.
First, I suspect that John misunderstands my views, which are (in the 4 reasons (http://kasamaproject.org/2010/02/08/eyes-on-the-maobadi-4-reasons-nepal%E2%80%99s-revolution-matters-2/)):
“The Maobadi say they have the courage “to climb the unexplored mountain.” They insist that communism needs to be reconceived. They believe popular accountability may prevent the emergence of arrogant new elites. They reject the one-party state and call for a socialist process with multi-party elections. They question whether a standing army will serve a new Nepal well, and advocate a system of popular militias. And they want to avoid concentrating their hopes in one or two leaders-for-life, but instead will empower a rising new generation of revolutionary successors.”
You will note that I don’t make a personal statement here — I simply describe what the Maobadi are doing, without expressing a verdict. And, in fact, I think we should be explaining broadly to people what the Maobadi are doing, without feeling the compulsion to add (at each point) what we (personally or collectively) think about it.
I don’t believe that all ideas need to come with labels “poison” or “approved” or “suspect.” Sometimes you can just describe ideas.
If I am asked what i think, about the idea of competitive elections in a socialist Nepal… I would say several things:
1) I would welcome such a great experiment. We need to get beyond one model of socialist politics — the one forged in 1930s Russia. Capitalism has many different political systems in history (parlimentary democracy, constitutional monarchy, fascist dictatorship, military junta, chaotic “failed state,” Hanseatic city-state, Napoleonic empire, and more). Why should socialism only have one form? I think the forms of socialist state will prove to be highly diverse (while holding a few core elements in common). And I see no reason, in principle, why a socialist state (or two) can’t have competitive multi-party elections. And no reason why we can’t welcome and then learn from such an attempt.
2) I think John misunderstands the Maobadi’s theory. They put forward the provocative idea of overthrowing an existing “mainstream” of politics and forging a new diverse “mainstream” of socialist politics. They are not calling for continuing the current (corrupt and reactionary) array of parties — but developing (through revolution) a new array.
And let’s not forget, Nepal is a country with a very broad revolutionary movement that has at times embraced (in coalition) very diverse social forces, and in which a great number of different competing radical parties exist (often with communist self-identification).
Alastair correctly points out:
“The Maoists have been quite clear that their vision of multi-party democracy does not extend to feudal and comprador parties.”
The Maobadi specifically have mentioned (in documents posted on Kasama’s sites), that they do not consider the Congress party (for example) as a party that would participate in the new “mainstream.”
3) The U.S. have never had “multipary” politics — and it is hard to imagine that it will adopt the forms and assumptions of European parlimentary politics at this late date. After two hundred years of two-party electoral democracy in the U.S. — and after all that experience with the use of elections to legitimate oppressive order and popular disempowerment — it is hard to imagine that socialism may not adopt some other, new forms of political democracy. (May!) In other words, I do not believe that this approach of multiparty competitive elections is some new universal model for all socialist countries. And I disagree with the occasional Nepali statements that this is some new universal innovation that is applicable everywhere.
Some Very Basic Observations
Hari writes:
“UCPN MAOIST have played a very creditable role to heighten the history of international communist movement. in this suffocating 21st century capitalistic world its really harsh to sustain and institutionalize the achievements of the revolution so i think Nepali communist movement deserves a international support to resist against the growing imperialism.”
I deeply agree on all points here: That the UCPN(Maoist) has contributed greatly to heightening the practice of the ICM, that this has happened in an international situation which is quite hostile (and which has demoralized some other forces who have retreated to self promotion or mere propaganda activities). That they have worked to institutionalize achievements of the revolution — i.e. find the ways to actually construct revolutionary structures of power and ongoing transformation. And finally that this movement deserves international support — and that this will be support in the context of growing imperialist intervention.
Yes.
Posted by Mike E (http://mikeely.wordpress.com/) on February 19, 2010
by Mike Ely
Many points have been raised have been raised in the sharp debate over the 4 Reasons (http://kasamaproject.org/2010/02/08/eyes-on-the-maobadi-4-reasons-nepal%E2%80%99s-revolution-matters-2/) article and on the major recent statement (http://kasamaproject.org/2010/02/09/nepal-major-maoist-analysis-of-situation-tasks-ahead/) by the Maoist leadership in Nepal.
If you step back, you will notice that every attempt to rally and mobilize support for the living revolution in Nepal is met by a cascade of cranky and muttered complaints — basically that the Nepalis are not following some pre-ordained script, and that you can’t be making a communist revolution without those specific pre-ordained scripts (and this muttering comes from various circles entranced in a fixed orthodoxy — which sometimes proclaims itself as Maoist, or as Trotskyist, or as newly minted) .
Thirty years ago, the following was embraced by the main Maoist forces within the U.S.:
“It can be… said that it is even a law of revolution, and especially of proletarian revolution, that in order for it to succeed in any particular country, the struggle in that country and those leading it will have to depart from and even oppose certain particular conceptions or previous practices which have come to be invested with the stature of ‘established norms’ in the revolutionary movement.”
I have since developed differences with the specific author (http://kasamaproject.org/pamphlets/9-letters/) of those words (http://openlibrary.org/b/OL4435088M/Mao_Tsetung%27s_immortal_contributions), but I agreed with thode thoughts in 1979, and agree with them today.
Here are some comments (taking up issues in no particular order).
Ringing a Bell or Crying Wolf?
Joseph Ball writes:
“Many times since 2006 we have heard that this or that dispute over the political process in Nepal would lead to revolution.”
I think this is basically a strawman. I have never heard any claims that one or another crisis would lead to revolution. By contrast, what I have heard (and said) is:
a) That a vanguard party is trying to use a series of political collisions to prepare their own ranks and the broader people for a seizure of power;
and
b) that a future crisis or collision could become the opening through which that decisive test of strength (between two armed and opposed forces) could erupt. (And not “erupt” in some spontaneous way, but erupt because the developing preparations for insurection by the Maoists or for a military coup by the Royalists were carried out.)
The seizure of power is not merely an act of will (though the will to power is needed) — it also requires a broad sense among the masses of people that a new leap is needed, and large numbers of people need to be willing to sacrifice (including by killing and dying ) to make such an advance. You can’t create such a mood just by willing it into being, or by proclaiming your own convictions — you have to engage the living fabric of actual politics and help transform-and-lead the maturation of the ingredients for an insurrection.
Some people are perpetually confused by (a) the fact that some leaders of the Maobadi do not seem to be inclined toward a seizure of power (and advocate indefinite postponement) and (b) the fact that most leaders of the Maobadi are not explicit in proclaiming that they are plotting to overthrow the government and crush the military in the foreseeable future.
By contrast to such people, Maoists are generally not surprised to discover (a) that there are two lines sharply contending within a large revolutionary party that is approaching such a major decision and (b) that serious revolutionary forces want some “element of surprise” to cloak their specific preparations.
Many of us have been ringing a bell (http://kasamaproject.org/2010/01/24/nepal-ringing-the-bell-loudly/) — urgently, with some real frustration — but we have not been “crying wolf.” No one says there WILL BE a revolution in nepal — at a particular date, or within a particular time frame.
Here is what I recently wrote:
“The Nepali Maoists are preparing right now (i mean over the next few weeks) for what-may-be a decisive military/political confrontation with the reactionary government and army.
“The insurrection they have been preparing so carefully and so long may take place over the next two months.
“The Maoists are seeking to mobilize the people (based on the understanding that their enemies will be wanting to act closely with Indian intrigues, and can be isolated by exposing those intrigues.) Their Indian, Nepali and American enemies understand this. Their revolutionary core base knows this. And we need to know it.”
This is the truth. There are nodal points ahead — including the deadline for a stalemated constitutional crisis. And there may (may!) be an attempt at power in the context of future crises — just as there may (may!) be an attempt at a coup. And just as an attempted coup may (may!) prove part of the conditions (like Kornilov (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavr_Kornilov)’s coup in 1917 Russia) for new advances of revolution or it may be the final event in the drama (like Pinochet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet)’s coup in Chile 1973).
Or, of course, events may stumble on for a while. Or something else may happen.
But the fact is that the current situation — defined by dual power, paralysis and the mounting impatience of all camps — cannot go on forever. Some crisis will (it is quite likely) precipitate a test of strength, and certaily all sides in Nepal are now (righyt now!) preparing for such a still-hypothetical-but-likely moment.
And we too, however far away we are, need to prepare too. And we are very UN-prepared. And part of the problem is a stubborn dogmatism that history has imprinted on the very brains of far too many communist comrades. Part (a secondary and temporary and soon-completed part, I hope) of such preparation is the criticism of very passive “wait and see” attitude among people who have forgotten (or never known) how internationalists and communists should act.
We are looking at the first ripening revolutionary situation in sixty years, where a very radical communist force (leading millions) has a chance to seize power, and we (as a world movement) are woefully unprepared to act, or speak, or defend, or mobilize around this very specific and important movement.
Part of our inability (our lagging) has to do with overall weakness of the world movement… a material weakness. A revolutionary crisis containing a truly revolutionary party is a rarity — and a ripening chance at power is a great opportunity for mobilizing, training, encouraging and regrouping a whole new generation of communist revolutionaries worldwide. But our weakness is not just a material one (or an objective problem of being scattered and disorganized). Another part of our current weakness comes from a terribly pervasive problem of line — a result of too many communists have been confined and trained within dry, exhausted, sectarian sandboxes — so that some of us can’t even recognize a living revolution when we finally see one.
That line struggle (that struggle against this dogmatic line) is itself part of both training new communists and rushing to meet our collective responsibilities.
On the Transitional Demands of Revolutionaries
Joseph Ball:
“I don’t think its a very good idea for Marxists to try to create a revolutionary situation by pushing for reforms the system can’t or won’t meet anyway. This approach tends to give the initiative to the reactionaries who can pick their own time to launch coups or mass round-ups of communists. I don’t really think this is exactly what the UCPN(M) is doing in any case. I think they’re just trying to win reforms.
This issue hasn’t been discussed enough. And that issue is transitional demands.
Every successful revolution in history has had a moment when key demands of the people become the banner for the seizure of power. Millions of people don’t simply fight and die for the ultimate goals of revolution — for communism, socialism and classless society, as concepts. They are willing to fight, and even die, when they cannot live the old way and rally to a real, existing political force dedicated to communism, socialism and classless society.
“Bread, Peace and Land” in the Russian revolution is a crucial example — where the heartfelt demands of millions became sharply focused (in the midst of a world war and social collapse) and where ONLY the communist victory could resolve those demands.
In ordinary times, the demand for “bread” is hardly (as we all know) a revolutionary demand… but under those specific conditions it was a cry of the people against all the old (and new) ruling forces. And under those specific conditions the demand for “peace” (meaning an end to the fighting with Germany) was a demand that only the Bolsheviks were willing to carry out (and the Kerensky government, though “left” and “socialist” in name, had isolated itself precisely because it was uncompromising in its determination to fulfill Russia’s wartime commitments to the Anglo-American imperialist war bloc). And at the key moment of the revolution, Lenin abandoned the Bolsheviks own program for agrarian revolution, adopted the far more popular program of the Socialist Revolutionary Party — and said to the peasant base of that SR party that the communist revolution represented the only way to achieve their deep desire for “land” (i.e. for the seizure of feudal estates by the poor farmers).
There are moments when such transitional demands come to the fore — and in fact the emergence of such demands is part of the symptom of a revolutionary situation.
And in Nepal, a sophisticated work is being done — of crafting the sentiments of the people (for a peace process, for a constitutional New Nepal, for a democratic peoples military, for an end to feudal and caste outrages) into a program of transitional demands through which, and for which, the final seizure of state power will be carried out. I believe those transitional demands are forming around civilian control of the military, around the federated end to the oppression of national minorities, around the desire for a radical new and democratic constitution. Those are demands that up until now have been debated in the context of the post-2006 peace process, and now can only be resolved by a new leap in political power — opening the door to agrarian revolution and socialism.
This forging of transitional demands needs to be contrasted with something else, something rather different:
Some leftist political forces believe in developing a “transitional program” in non-revolutionary times where they (rather mechanically) invent a series of demands that (they believe) the ruling class cannot ever grant. There is a fantasy at work here: The idea is that you build big mass movement around those transitional demands, and build the enthusiasm of the people for those demands (essentially) radical reforms, and then…. when the system reveals increasingly that it will never grant them, the people then (supposedly) may “make revolution” (overthrow the state) to achieve that series of economic and social reforms.
Such demands of a transitional program include “30 for 40″ or “Jobs for all” or “Jobs not War,” and so on…and are familiar to anyone who as observed the left.
The theory of transitional program is particularly associated with Trotskyism. Trotsky’s own “Transitional Program (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transitional_Program)” in the 1930s was a foundational concept/document of his (rather still-born) 4th International.
In my view, the theory of transitional programs in non-revolutionary times is (rather precisely) an expression of the kind of economism that Lenin criticized in “What is To Be Done? (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/)” — specifically it is a politics of “lending the economic struggle a political character” and imagining (falsely) that the political struggle for such demands will “become” a revolutionary one. It is a theory of hoping that movements for reform will adopt revolutionary means. And it is a theory that deeply underestimates the degree to which explicitly revolutionary and socialist ideas need to be struggled for (and ultimately embraced) among the advanced sections of the people — it is a theory of revolution without expecting the maturation of a consciously revolutionary, partisan and pro-communist section of the people.
But there is a world of difference between inventing (as a gimmik) such a strategic “theory of transitional program” in non-revolutionary times and the development of specific and historically-rooted transitional demands within a ripening revolutionary situation.
There are people who insist that the Nepali Maoists (as a party) are not seriously considering and planning a revolution. (And this is what Joseph means when he says: “I don’t really think this is exactly what the UCPN(M) is doing in any case. I think they’re just trying to win reforms.” )
Here is my suspicion: I believe that when (if!) the day comes when a seizure of power is carried out (countrywide) in Nepal, those same people (by their entrenched political logic) will announce “Oh well, there may have been a seizure of power, but it was done in the name of the 2006 ‘peace process,’ in the name of the new constitution, and not in the name of agrarian revolution and socialism…. so it doesn’t count as a real revolution.”
After all, what is the criterion of truth: tightly-held orthodox assumptions or living political practice?
Critical Thinking or Whateverism
NSPF writes:
“If learning from Nepal or anywhere else that has had some success in something is used as a back door to reintroduce the same phenomena, it would be a disaster. For me, any learning process always involves critical appraisal.”
I want to agree with this.
Our movement simply has to get beyond “whateverism” — where we pick leading parties or figures and act like “whatever” they say is a prophetic revelation (and even a universal truth). History (including any analysis of the best a century of socialist revolution has accomplished) is not kind to this “whateverist” approach — or to those who adopt it.
Everything divides into two.
Why would uncritical thinking be a “disaster” as NSPF writes?
Because you can promote creative innovative thinking religiously, and if you do that you have promoted religion not creative innovative thinking.
Lenin (for example) was a great innovator who broke many of the “rules” of his own movement, discarded many of the entrenched assumptions and methods, and (on that basis) managed to lead a historic breakthrough for socialism. However often Lenin’s lifework was taught, presented, described in a dogmatic way — and so often (in the name of codifying Leninism, and in the name of treating it as universal in an overreaching way) people were taught not to question rules of their new Leninist movement, or its new emerging and soon-entrenched assumptions. The movement created by Lenin became a movement that was too often led by sycophants and yes-men (like Thorez, or Wang Ming, or Browder, or Thaelmann, or…) — often chosen by their conformism and subordination, not by their ability to independently analyze or creatively lead.
On the other hand, a critical appraisal does not mean that our main approach to everything is criticisms.
It means we appraise things in a way that systematically compares theory to reality, situates the particular in context, discerns the limited applicability of particular insights, anticipates the relative untruth within important truths…. or, as Mao said “study critically, test independently.”
Let’s not forget, sometimes you study something using very critical thinking and methods, and (at the end of your process) conclude “Wow, this is great!” Not all critical thinking leads to criticism and distain. Sometimes critical thinking leads you to defend shocking new innovations against those who (uncritically) stand on the ground of past assumptions.
Does New Thinking Always Suck?
Joseph Ball writes:
“So many times in my life-time I have heard communist parties and Marxist thinkers claim they have developed some wonderful new approach to Marxism. The old British Communist Party did this, we had ‘reform communism’ (Gorbachovism), before that there was ‘Euro-communism’ and so on. Every time those that opposed these deviations were accused of living in the past and not wanting to try a new approach to building socialism. But what were these wonderful ‘new things’. Basically, they were bourgeois parliamentary democracy and market economics. In fact the ‘new things’ were really very old things, the ideas of the original founders of bourgeois democracy and the original theorists of capitalism like Adam Smith. Mao, by upholding something ‘old’-the line of Lenin as upheld by Stalin in the USSR created a very new thing-the Cultural Revolution that brought very positive benefits for the proletariat and peasantry of China. The UCPN(M) as a whole ditched the approach of Cultural Revolution for the old bourgeois ways.”
To be blunt: Virtually every phrase here is wrong. And more, Joseph is defending a world outlook that is mistaken in a deep way. It creaks with conservative impulses and orthodox suspicions. It is old (very old) in instinct and culture.
And it is historicall wrong: While some revisionist forces in the communist movement certainly proclaimed new approaches (Krushchev, Bernstein, Eurocommunists etc.) it is also true that revisionists have often strutted their orthodoxy and promoted conservative views based on such orthodoxy (Kautsky (http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/index.htm), Hoxha (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hoxha/index.htm), Gus Hall (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gus_Hall), Wang Ming (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Ming) and the other “28 1/2 Bolsheviks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/28_Bolsheviks)” in China, and so on.)
It is not true that you can tell a counterrevolutionary because they attempt new approaches (!!), or that you can identify the true revolutionaries because they defend orthodoxy.
Furthermore, no revolutionary advance has been made without major breaks with orthodoxy.
Mao was highly unorthodox (within a Comintern that enforced orthodoxy, often by brutal means). His main opponent during the revolutionary period (i.e. Wang Ming) was highly orthodox — and was promoted by the comintern precisely because of that orthodoxy. A great deal of Mao’s political polemics in the 1930s and 40s, culminating in the great Yenan ideological campaign, was to fight for the creative application (and new DEVELOPMENT) revolutionary theory to new and complex and particular conditions. New Democracy? Who had heard of that? Peoples war? Who had heard of that? Two line struggle? Who had used that concept? On down the line.
Perhaps this view becomes most clearly mistaken in the following characterization:
“Mao, by upholding something ‘old’-the line of Lenin as upheld by Stalin in the USSR created a very new thing-the Cultural Revolution that brought very positive benefits for the proletariat and peasantry of China.”
No.
Mao developed something new by summing up the experience of Lenin and especially Stalin and breaking with many assumptions (assumptions about classes, socialism, class struggle under socialism, about the correctness of parties, about the inherent class nature of vanguard parties, about where the bourgeois resides, about how to confront restoration, about the class nature of restorationists, about the relationship of antagonistic and non-antagonist contradictions, on the mythology of “monolithic party,” and much more).
The cultural revolution was not an act of orthodoxy (in ways that seem to obvious to elaborate here) — but an act of shocking innovation. If you read Hoxha’s “Reflections on China” you get a clear “WTF” sense of how the orthodox were outraged and literally scandalized by the cultural revolution — and how deeply they saw this as a violation (even a betrayal) of the most basic assumptions of the previously-existing socialist camp and the then-existing communist movement.
It is not true that the application of revolutionary theory lies simply in the defense of orthodoxy. On the contrary, application of revolutionary theory involves both the defense and development of that theory — in ways that involve both affirmation and negation.
The onesided insistance on “defending” inherited theory (whether it is Kautsky posing as the orthodox Marxist, or Hoxha posing as the orthodox Leninist-Stalinist, or others today posing as the orthodox Maoists) — that onesided insistance is a form of destroying Marxism, reducing it from a creative engagement to a quasi-religious orthodoxy. No revolution can be prepared or waged based on such orthodoxy. And none ever has been.
To put it baldly: In our moment this is particular sharp — because the pull of irrelevance and impotence often takes the form of privileging communist continuity over communist discontinuity.
Finally, I also completely disagree with this view:
“The UCPN(M) as a whole ditched the approach of Cultural Revolution for the old bourgeois ways.”
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) was a revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat — it was shaped (in form and goals) by the continuation of revolution (and the prevention of restoration) under conditions of socialism. The UCPN(M) is in the culminating moments of a New Democratic Revolution (which in its essense emerged from a semifeudal and semicolonial society — and is deeply marked, in form and goals, by those condition.)
It is true as some have provocatively raised, that we can (even before a victorious revolution) learn important things from the Cultural Revolution — in how, for example we conceive of socialism, or form organs of popular power, or view mental manual contradictions etc. It’s not like “we learn from Mao on New Democracy now, and only learn from Mao on Cultural Revolution later.”
But i think it is simply wrong to accuse the UCPN(M) of such abandonment (especially without evidence, and especially when that accusation is made in the context of an argument for rather rigid orthodoxy, that can ONLY have the result of denying the very innovations of Mao and turning him into a cardboard defender of previous theory.)
On Multi-Party Socialism
John C writes:
“On Mike’s 4 points: I’m in philosophical agreement, even if I don’t agree with every specific point he makes, especially on the question of multi-party governance. Merleau-Ponty asked the famous question, in “Adventures in the Dialectic”, who is going to tell the Party when it’s wrong? That’s a fundamental question, and a serious one, but I see no particular reason to think that the answer is to let feudal and capitalist parties use socialist democracy to openly organize counterrevolution.”
John raises a number of important points… and we have not discussed them enough.
First, I suspect that John misunderstands my views, which are (in the 4 reasons (http://kasamaproject.org/2010/02/08/eyes-on-the-maobadi-4-reasons-nepal%E2%80%99s-revolution-matters-2/)):
“The Maobadi say they have the courage “to climb the unexplored mountain.” They insist that communism needs to be reconceived. They believe popular accountability may prevent the emergence of arrogant new elites. They reject the one-party state and call for a socialist process with multi-party elections. They question whether a standing army will serve a new Nepal well, and advocate a system of popular militias. And they want to avoid concentrating their hopes in one or two leaders-for-life, but instead will empower a rising new generation of revolutionary successors.”
You will note that I don’t make a personal statement here — I simply describe what the Maobadi are doing, without expressing a verdict. And, in fact, I think we should be explaining broadly to people what the Maobadi are doing, without feeling the compulsion to add (at each point) what we (personally or collectively) think about it.
I don’t believe that all ideas need to come with labels “poison” or “approved” or “suspect.” Sometimes you can just describe ideas.
If I am asked what i think, about the idea of competitive elections in a socialist Nepal… I would say several things:
1) I would welcome such a great experiment. We need to get beyond one model of socialist politics — the one forged in 1930s Russia. Capitalism has many different political systems in history (parlimentary democracy, constitutional monarchy, fascist dictatorship, military junta, chaotic “failed state,” Hanseatic city-state, Napoleonic empire, and more). Why should socialism only have one form? I think the forms of socialist state will prove to be highly diverse (while holding a few core elements in common). And I see no reason, in principle, why a socialist state (or two) can’t have competitive multi-party elections. And no reason why we can’t welcome and then learn from such an attempt.
2) I think John misunderstands the Maobadi’s theory. They put forward the provocative idea of overthrowing an existing “mainstream” of politics and forging a new diverse “mainstream” of socialist politics. They are not calling for continuing the current (corrupt and reactionary) array of parties — but developing (through revolution) a new array.
And let’s not forget, Nepal is a country with a very broad revolutionary movement that has at times embraced (in coalition) very diverse social forces, and in which a great number of different competing radical parties exist (often with communist self-identification).
Alastair correctly points out:
“The Maoists have been quite clear that their vision of multi-party democracy does not extend to feudal and comprador parties.”
The Maobadi specifically have mentioned (in documents posted on Kasama’s sites), that they do not consider the Congress party (for example) as a party that would participate in the new “mainstream.”
3) The U.S. have never had “multipary” politics — and it is hard to imagine that it will adopt the forms and assumptions of European parlimentary politics at this late date. After two hundred years of two-party electoral democracy in the U.S. — and after all that experience with the use of elections to legitimate oppressive order and popular disempowerment — it is hard to imagine that socialism may not adopt some other, new forms of political democracy. (May!) In other words, I do not believe that this approach of multiparty competitive elections is some new universal model for all socialist countries. And I disagree with the occasional Nepali statements that this is some new universal innovation that is applicable everywhere.
Some Very Basic Observations
Hari writes:
“UCPN MAOIST have played a very creditable role to heighten the history of international communist movement. in this suffocating 21st century capitalistic world its really harsh to sustain and institutionalize the achievements of the revolution so i think Nepali communist movement deserves a international support to resist against the growing imperialism.”
I deeply agree on all points here: That the UCPN(Maoist) has contributed greatly to heightening the practice of the ICM, that this has happened in an international situation which is quite hostile (and which has demoralized some other forces who have retreated to self promotion or mere propaganda activities). That they have worked to institutionalize achievements of the revolution — i.e. find the ways to actually construct revolutionary structures of power and ongoing transformation. And finally that this movement deserves international support — and that this will be support in the context of growing imperialist intervention.
Yes.