Maoist leaders preparing for line struggle

[Saorsa]

Maoist plenum to discuss separate papers

REPUBLICA

KATHMANDU, Oct 12: The Maoists have decided to take separate political documents prepared by the top three leaders -- Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal and Vice chairmen Mohan Baidya and Dr Baburam Bhattarai -- to the party plenum, scheduled to begin from November 14 in Gorkha district, for debate and discussion.

A meeting of the top office bearers took a decision to this effect recently.



The last central committee meeting of the party had decided that Chairman Dahal would accommodate the views expressed in the separate documents prepared by Baidya and Bhattarai and prepare a new one for presentation at the plenum. As per the decision, the vice-chairmen duo will present their documents at the plenum if they are not satisfied with Dahal´s new document. “The leaders agreed to take the separate documents to the plenum as that would be more democratic,” said Maoist politburo member Narayan Sharma.

In the past, party chairman Dahal mixed the lines floated by Baidya and Bhattarai, but both leaders have strongly pushed for their own line this time around and are against the “fusion of ideas”.

“The plenum will consider all the lines floated by the leaders. The line that gets a majority will be the official line of the party, while the views that fall in minority will also be recorded in the party´s history,” said Sharma, who is close to Baidya.

Leaders say the plenum, slated for November 14 in Gorkha, holds special significance as Baidya and Bhattarai are preparing to challenge Dahal´s new document.

“Both Baidya and Bhattarai are against diluting their views, and have so far rejected the idea of fusing them,” said a Maoist leader close to Bhattarai.

With the party plenum approaching, senior Maoist leaders have stepped up exercises to woo party cadres.

Leaders close to Dahal, Baidya and Bhattarai are busy meeting party cadres in Kathmandu and in the districts to consolidate their own factions.

The separate documents presented by the top three leaders in the last Central Committee meeting have been sent to party district and state committees.

Dahal holds sway in Sindhupalchowk, Nuwakot, Kavre, Chitwan, Rukum, Morang, and Dang, among other districts, while Bhattarai enjoys majority support in Dolakha, Rupandehi, Bara, Parsa, Makawanpur, Pachthar and Taplejung. Similarly, Baidya holds sway in most districts of Maoist Magarat and Bheri-Karnali.

The top three Maoist leaders are at loggerheads over the party´s general line and choosing the principal enemy. Bhattarai is for institutionalizing the political achievements made so far and completion of the peace process, while Baidya is for launching a “people´s revolt” to realize the communist political goals. Dahal´s position is vague at best; he is for preparing grounds for an immediate revolt and pushing agendas for the peace process simultaneously.

Likewise, Dahal and Baidya are for declaring India the party´s principal enemy, while Bhattarai is for making “domestic feudalism” the principal enemy.

http://www.myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=24296

[RED DAVE]

The top three Maoist leaders are at loggerheads over the party´s general line and choosing the principal enemy.

[1] Bhattarai is for institutionalizing the political achievements made so far and completion of the peace process ...

[2] Baidya is for launching a “people´s revolt” to realize the communist political goals.

[3] Dahal´s position is vague at best; he is for preparing grounds for an immediate revolt and pushing agendas for the peace process simultaneously[;]

[4] Dahal and Baidya are for declaring India the party´s principal enemy[;]

[5] Bhattarai is for making “domestic feudalism” the principal enemy.

http://www.myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=24296So, if the article is correct, in Maoist terms, we have a "left" represented by Baidya, a "right" represented by Bhattarai and a "center" represented by Dahal.

[A] The time spent fucking around with the bourgeois capitalist parliamentary system has brought out the fissures in the Maoist party.

Interesting that there is no mention of imperialism as a global system in any of the programs, only of the threat of India and "domestic feudalism."

[C] There is no mention of independent action by the working class.

[D] What a fucking mess.

[B]RED DAVE

[DaringMehring]

So, if the article is correct, in Maoist terms, we have a "left" represented by Baidya, a "right" represented by Bhattarai and a "center" represented by Dahal.

[A] The time spent fucking around with the bourgeois capitalist parliamentary system has brought out the fissures in the Maoist party.

Interesting that there is no mention of imperialism as a global system in any of the programs, only of the threat of India and "domestic feudalism."

[C] There is no mention of independent action by the working class.

[D] What a fucking mess.

[B]RED DAVE

It was a fucking mess in Russia too. The 1870s, 1905 went down to defeat. Multitude of groups and lines.

It's not necessarily about the Party and the Party line. The masses will either activate, and turn the Party into the tool they need --- or they won't.

Remember, the Bolsheviks went from a small fragment of the big revolutionary movement, to fighting for the state power in a matter of months. No reason not to be hopeful that some Lenin won't emerge in Nepal out of the Maoists (Baidya?) at the head of the advanced revolutionary workers.

[RED DAVE]

No reason not to be hopeful that some Lenin won't emerge in Nepal out of the Maoists (Baidya?) at the head of the advanced revolutionary workers.Every reason to believe that no such leader emerges. A great revolutionary like Lenin is the product of extensive revolutionary experience which s/he learns from studies and reflects on.

What we are seeing in Nepal is Maoists being true to their own. Not one of these party leaders is putting for the working class as the leading class of the revolution.

RED DAVE

[A Revolutionary Tool]

Every reason to believe that no such leader emerges. A great revolutionary like Lenin is the product of extensive revolutionary experience which s/he learns from studies and reflects on.You don't think any of the Maoists have extensive revolutionary experience? I mean really how ignorant is that for you to say? The party spent 10 years fighting a revolutionary war, a very successful one where they almost took the entire country. When it comes to revolutionary experience I think these people have more experience than Lenin had. I mean seriously how the hell can you even make such ignorant statements?


What we are seeing in Nepal is Maoists being true to their own. Not one of these party leaders is putting for the working class as the leading class of the revolution.
RED DAVE
How do you even know this?

[Homo Songun]

Well Red Dave, we are quite familiar with your somewhat axiomatic assertions by now, such as "Not one of these party leaders is putting for the working class as the leading class of the revolution", or that there is "no mention of imperialism as a global system in any of the programs", and so on. But their website (http://www.google.com/#q=site:ucpnm.org) for example does mention the role of the proletariat and imperialism in many different places, and at some depth.

Of course, I don't know the situation on the ground with their print media, although I have a few back issues of their theoretical journal which generally jibes with what you see on the web, albeit in a little more depth and detail. So either you haven't really studied their actual line (as opposed to some Maoist strawman of Tony Cliff Thought perhaps?) or, you have examined it, and your position is that they are just big fakers ("No true Scotsman..."), which is just as logically shaky.

[A Revolutionary Tool]

Well Red Dave, we are quite familiar with your somewhat axiomatic assertions by now, such as "Not one of these party leaders is putting for the working class as the leading class of the revolution", or that there is "no mention of imperialism as a global system in any of the programs", and so on. But their website (http://www.google.com/#q=site:ucpnm.org) for example does mention the role of the proletariat and imperialism in many different places, and at some depth.

Of course, I don't know the situation on the ground with their print media, although I have a few back issues of their theoretical journal which generally jibes with what you see on the web, albeit in a little more depth and detail. So either you haven't really studied their actual line (as opposed to some Maoist strawman of Tony Cliff Thought perhaps?) or, you have examined it, and your position is that they are just big fakers ("No true Scotsman..."), which is just as logically shaky.
The website you linked was google...

[RED DAVE]

United Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) website (http://ucpnm.org/english/index.php) (in English)

RED DAVE

[RED DAVE]

Back to Nepal:


The top three Maoist leaders are at loggerheads over the party´s general line and choosing the principal enemy.

[1] Bhattarai is for institutionalizing the political achievements made so far and completion of the peace process ...

[2] Baidya is for launching a “people´s revolt” to realize the communist political goals.

[3] Dahal´s position is vague at best; he is for preparing grounds for an immediate revolt and pushing agendas for the peace process simultaneously[;]

[4] Dahal and Baidya are for declaring India the party´s principal enemy[;]

[5] Bhattarai is for making “domestic feudalism” the principal enemy.

http://www.myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=24296So, if the article is correct, in Maoist terms, we have a "left" represented by Baidya, a "right" represented by Bhattarai and a "center" represented by Dahal.

RED DAVE

[Monkey Riding Dragon]

The left-right-center analysis provided above is correct, in my view. I would be very glad to a victory for the Kiran (a.k.a. Baidya) line come out of this. VERY glad. In all honesty, I don't know that any of these comrades really has it completely right. I worry about the whole strategy of trying to fuse people's war together with the October model. My greatest fear is that such an attempt will inevitably wind up the same way things did in China during the late '20s: with the destruction of whole sections of the party with each urban revolt attempt. But the main thing at this point by far is that the party get back on the revolutionary road. The decision to ditch eclectic decision-making methodology (the "fusion of ideas") is by itself a major step forward and indeed a correction of the underlying methodological problem that led to the current line. Let's hope it's not too late already. We'll know it is if the Bhattarai line (which is straight-up revisionist) wins out. That would be an unacceptable outcome. Prachanda (a.k.a. Dahal) is not the worst factor here, but he is actively enabling the perpetuation of this situation.

Again, it's important to stress what a shift to the Kiran line would represent: a shift from Menshevik politics to Bolshevik politics. I use that analogy a lot because the UCPN(M) officially is oriented toward finishing their revolution by way of applying the October model. But the point is that they haven't authentically been of that orientation in practice up to now, but rather of the Menshevik approach which seeks rapprochement with the bourgeois republic following the defeat of the monarchy. A victory for the Kiran line would represent a concrete break with that approach and a recognition that it was wrong from the beginning. That's the most important thing right now; that the party regain its revolutionary orientation. I have strong doubts that the people's war + October model = success formulation can actually work out, but even if it doesn't, we'll have learned a historic lesson to that effect through this. I, of course, hope I'm wrong. In either event though, the revolutionary struggle in Nepal, if carried through to conclusion, would still essentially have been a people's war: 80% people's war, 20% October model. (I assess those percentages based on the fact that they liberated 80% of the country during the people's war phase, and thus 20% remains.) If these comrades...the ones that actually are comrades, that is...genuinely believe, based on their obviously much greater experience with Nepal's distinctive internal conditions, that concluding the revolution by way of applying the October model is actually a correct approach in their case, then we should support their efforts to that end.

People often try to look at events as one great logical continuum of progress, persisting always forward without interruption. This is often the way, unfortunately, comrades often look back on the people's war in China as well. For example, many look to the year or so that the Chinese Communists, immediately following World War 2, attempted to form a national unity government with the Kuomintang and conclude that that was logically consistent with the overall trajectory of revolution. In reality though, people's war was only resumed (now in a different form: specifically now a war of liberation rather than a war of resistance) after a major line dispute within the party was resolved with the victory of the revolutionary side. It wasn't all one logical progression: there was interruption and line struggle. That's the way the real world works. It became increasingly clear to the Chinese Communists that if they persisted down this road of working within a national unity government they would be destroyed...and so the revolutionaries won out and people's war was resumed in a different form. The situation in Nepal today is vaguely similar to this...except that in Nepal they've been on the national unity government kick for much longer than the Chinese Communists were after WW2, which has more acutely posed the danger of either a complete lapse into revisionism and/or outright destruction a la the experience of the Indonesian Communists in the 1960s in trying to carry out a similar approach. That danger is now concentrated in the Bhattarai line. This fact highlights the importance of the Maoist instruction to "lean to one side" of such disputes. I believe this principle should apply not just internally, but everywhere. We should all recognize what the most advanced and correct position is and support that against the alternatives. Many, many comrades here make no attempt to do this.

[DaringMehring]

Your dichotomy of "people's war" and "october model", reminds me of the peasant vs. worker dichotomy, and hence national liberation vs. socialist revolution, and new democracy vs. workers' power. So while I also support Kiran I don't think it's right to dismiss the "october model." The workers have to play the leading role. Peasant guerillas with guns won't make socialism any more than parliamentary games will.

[Saorsa]

We should all recognize what the most advanced and correct position is and support that against the alternatives.

And how exactly are we supposed to do that from our computer chairs in the West?

[Monkey Riding Dragon]

Saorsa:

Our role is obviously very minimal. What we're mainly looking at here from where we're sitting is the matter of promoting correct publicity and correcting our understanding of the situation and the politics involved so that we gather the correct lessons from this experience ourselves.

DaringMehring:

You speak of "national liberation vs. socialist revolution" and "new democracy vs. workers' power" as if they're necessarily opposing poles. In reality, national liberation struggles, if led by the (authentic) party of the proletariat, are proletarian struggles. It is in the interest of the proletariat to be victorious in the acquisition of state power. In many countries, this yes means turning to the peasantry as the primary fighting force toward that objective. In any case, the Maoist approach is to turn to the social base for revolution. In feudal conditions, the social base of the society in question is the peasantry, not the proletariat. Likewise, feudal conditions necessitate a distinct, democratic transition stage into socialism. You can't simply "skip" whole historical stages by sheer willpower. Even in the case of Russia, they learned this lesson the hard way and had to temporarily take a step back to the democratic stage. But new democratic revolution is a "new" form of democracy because it is proletarian democracy, not bourgeois democracy. Again, whether a rural rebellion is a proletarian revolution is a matter of what class leadership that rebellion has.