CPN (Masal) to merge with UCPN (Maoist)

[mosfeld]

CPN (Masal) to merge with UCPN (Maoist)

The 'reconstituted' CPN (Masal), a fringe communist party, is going to formally merge with the UCPN (Maoist) soon.

A meeting of the leaders of both the parties Monday decided to unite the two parties, citing ideological proximity.
They, however, decided to take decisions on organisational matters in the next meeting.

Earlier, a number of fringe communist parties including the Janamorcha Nepal and a section of Rastriya Janmorcha had merged with the Maoist party

http://www.nepalnews.com/main/index.php/news-archive/2-political/10228-cpn-masal-to-merge-with-ucpn-maoist.html

[RED DAVE]

The [CPN(Masal)] considered Nepal as a semi-feudal and semi-colonial country. The party identified the proletariat, peasants (ranging from poor to rich), petty bourgeoise and national capitalists as friendly classes, and saw feudal landlords and comprador-bureaucratic capitalists as class enemies.(emph added)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_Nepal_%28Masal%29_%28historical %29

RED DAVE

[Widerstand]

(emph added)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_Nepal_%28Masal%29_%28historical %29

RED DAVE

Emphasis corrected:


The [CPN(Masal)] considered Nepal as a semi-feudal and semi-colonial country. The party identified the proletariat, peasants (ranging from poor to rich), petty bourgeoise and national capitalists as friendly classes, and saw feudal landlords and comprador-bureaucratic capitalists as class enemies.

[RED DAVE]

What is your point, Widerstand? Mine is that this party that wants to merge with the UCPN(ML) carries the same Maoist ideological baggage: that it is okay for a revolutionary party of the working class and peasantry to make an alliance with the bourgeoisie. This is a principle completely at odds with the theory of Marxism and was explicitly repudiated by the Bolsheviks, when this possibility was offered as a possibility after the February Revolution.

RED DAVE

[Widerstand]

What is your point, Widerstand? Mine is that this party that wants to merge with the UCPN(ML) carries the same Maoist ideological baggage: that it is okay for a revolutionary party of the working class and peasantry to make an alliance with the bourgeoisie. This is a principle completely at odds with the theory of Marxism and was explicitly repudiated by the Bolsheviks, when this possibility was offered as a possibility after the February Revolution.

RED DAVE

I was merely putting the focus back on "petty bourgeois" that you for whatever reason put on "rich". I agree with you.

[scarletghoul]

Great news :)
What is your point, Widerstand? Mine is that this party that wants to merge with the UCPN(ML) carries the same Maoist ideological baggage: that it is okay for a revolutionary party of the working class and peasantry to make an alliance with the bourgeoisie. This is a principle completely at odds with the theory of Marxism and was explicitly repudiated by the Bolsheviks, when this possibility was offered as a possibility after the February Revolution.

RED DAVE
How many times.

Nepal is not Russia.

2010 is not 1917.

The correctness of an idea is not determined by whether or not it is the same as Lenin's idea.

Besides the comintern under Lenin's leadership made asian communists ally with the bourgeois revolutionaries anyway, so even on the ridiculous and stupid ultra-leninist reasoning you are wrong-

The revolution in the colonies is not going to be a communist revolution in its first stages. But if, from the outset, the leadership is in the hands of a communist vanguard, the revolutionary masses will not be led astray, but go ahead through the successive periods of development of revolutionary experience. Indeed, it will be extremely erroneous in many oriental countries to try to solve the agrarian problem according to pure communist principles. In its first stages, the revolution in the colonies must be carried on with a programme which will include many petit-bourgeois reform clauses, such as division of land, etc. But from this it does not follow that the leadership of the revolution will have to be surrendered to the bourgeois democrats. On the contrary, the proletarian parties must carry on vigorous and systematic propaganda of the soviet idea, and organise peasants’ and workers’ soviets as soon as possible.
Just one of many similar statements made by Lenin. Your position is in fact more like that of MN Roy who wanted just a purely proletarian revolution in the third world countries, and whose ideas were largely rejected by the comintern in favour of Lenin's because they were ultraleft and inpracticle

[RED DAVE]

Great news :)
How many times.

Nepal is not Russia.Wow! Thanx for that. I thought that "Nepal" was just another way of spelling Russia.


2010 is not 1917.I never would have known that: I thought that in mathematics 2010=1917.


The correctness of an idea is not determined by whether or not it is the same as Lenin's idea.Right. Lenin was wrong on at least one occasion. He should have had Stalin exiled to some terrible, godforsaken place like New Jersey. :D


(besides the comintern under Lenin's leadership made asian communists ally with the bourgeois revolutionaries anywayThe only cases I know of are Turkey and China. Both these turned out to be wrong.


So even on the ridiculous and stupid ultra-leninist reasoning you are wrong.)I am far from an "ultra-leninist." What I am saying is that the principles of Leninism, not Stalinism or Maoism but Leninism, clearly reject the kind of cross-class collaboration that the UCPN(M) is engaged in.

If what they are doing leads to a workers and peasants state, I will have been proved wrong. If it leads to state and/or private capitalism, you will be wrong. Maoists have been lying about what Mao did for 60 years. Let's see, if I'm right, you'll tell the truth. I know I will if I'm wrong.

RED DAVE

[penguinfoot]

The correctness of an idea is not determined by whether or not it is the same as Lenin's idea.

Of course not, but the Maoist policy of New Democracy or the bloc of four classes has never led to socialism, anywhere, ever, so why assume that it would or will be effective in Nepal?


The revolution in the colonies is not going to be a communist revolution in its first stages....

There is nothing in that quote or any other part of the supplementary document (which emerged at the 2nd Congress of the Comintern out of the debates between Lenin and M.N. Roy) the quote is taken from that suggests that Lenin ever thought that the working class should enter into the kind of alliances that later manifested themselves in China and in other oppressed nations under the guidance of the Comintern - that is, alliances that involved the parties of the working class giving up their independence and subordinating themselves to the bourgeois-nationalist movement. Lenin instead describes the formation of Communist Parties as the "foremost and necessary task" of revolutionaries and he explicitly goes on to say that the workers of oppressed nations can reach communism, "not through capitalist development, but led by the class-conscious proletariat of the advanced capitalist countries". The consistent emphasis of Lenin's arguments is that the building of Communist Parties should not wait until the oppressed nations have freed themselves from imperialist domination or developed their economies on a capitalist basis and that these organizations, once formed, should not let themselves be lulled into the position of passively supporting movements under the command of the bourgeoisie, but should energetically advocate the class interests of the working class. These arguments stand in direct contrast to everything that Stalin came to argue during the course of the Chinese Revolution as his position was that the working class would have to wait until the KMT had carried out the goals of the bourgeois-democratic revolution.

[Barry Lyndon]

Of course not, but the Maoist policy of New Democracy or the bloc of four classes has never led to socialism, anywhere, ever, so why assume that it would or will be effective in Nepal? Blah Blah Blah Defeatism Defeatism I am right everyone else is wrong Blah Blah Blah Blah

Get off Revleft, your late for a cocktail party with your CIA buddies. You'll have your 'real workers revolution' with their help.

[penguinfoot]

Get off Revleft, your late for a cocktail party with your CIA buddies. You'll have your 'real workers revolution' with their help.

By all means, explain what is/was socialist about China at any point in its history. Go on, I dare you. Also, I don't know if you're aware of this, but one of the ironies of Stalinism is that Stalinists and the likes of the CIA have always been in agreement on the most important judgements - which is that countries like the PRC are/were socialist.

[Lyev]

I will add to what others have said, against scarlet, with this passage below, which sums succinctly Lenin's position on an alliance with Asian (or in fact any other) bourgeoisie, speficially pertaining to a struggle against imperialism (original article (http://home.flash.net/%7Ecomvoice/29cOutline.html)):
Many in the left believe that if one identifies a struggle as a bourgeois-democratic one, it means that one intends to trail behind the ordinary bourgeoisie. This was not Lenin's conception, either in a democratic revolution in a more developed country or an anti-imperialist struggle in a dependent country. He regarded that the proletariat was the only consistent fighter for democracy, that the peasantry (and entire petty-bourgeoisie) had a tendency to vacillation, and that the ordinary bourgeoisie was a source of instability and treachery. He wrote concerning China in 1912 that "The chief representative, or the chief social bulwark, of this Asian bourgeoisie that is still capable of supporting a historically progressive cause, is the peasant. And side by side with him there already exists a liberal bourgeoisie whose leaders, men like Yuan Shih-kai, are above all capable of treachery; yesterday they feared the emperor, and cringed before him; then they betrayed him when they saw the strength, and sensed the victory, of the revolutionary democracy; and tomorrow they will betray the democrats to make a deal with some old or new 'constitutional' emperor. "(9) (http://home.flash.net/%7Ecomvoice/29cOutline.html#N_9_) In 1920 he wrote about the bourgeoisie in the national movement of most of the backward and colonial countries, "perhaps even in most cases", joining forces with the imperialist bourgeoisie "against all revolutionary movements and revolutionary classes". (10) (http://home.flash.net/%7Ecomvoice/29cOutline.html#N_10_)

Sources
(9) "Democracy and Narodism in China", Collected Works, vol. 18, p. 165. (Text (http://home.flash.net/%7Ecomvoice/29cOutline.html#T9))
(10) "Report of the Commission on the National and Colonial Questions", Collected Works, vol. 31, p. 242. (Text (http://home.flash.net/%7Ecomvoice/29cOutline.html#T10))Edit:
Get off Revleft, your late for a cocktail party with your CIA buddies. You'll have your 'real workers revolution' with their help.This is fantastic comrade, thank you.

[scarletghoul]

If what they are doing leads to a workers and peasants state, I will have been proved wrong. If it leads to state and/or private capitalism, you will be wrong. Maoists have been lying about what Mao did for 60 years. Let's see, if I'm right, you'll tell the truth. I know I will if I'm wrong.

RED DAVE
Yeah, I guess that's what this comes down to. There is a stubbornness in this debate which can only be solved by the practical results. I hope so anyway, but i got a terrible feeling the debate will be about the (wrong) idea of 'state capitalism' lol

Of course not, but the Maoist policy of New Democracy or the bloc of four classes has never led to socialism, anywhere, ever, so why assume that it would or will be effective in Nepal? lol great way to argue with a maoist, taking it for granted that china etc was never socialist..


There is nothing in that quote or any other part of the supplementary document (which emerged at the 2nd Congress of the Comintern out of the debates between Lenin and M.N. Roy) the quote is taken from that suggests that Lenin ever thought that the working class should enter into the kind of alliances that later manifested themselves in China and in other oppressed nations under the guidance of the Comintern - that is, alliances that involved the parties of the working class giving up their independence and subordinating themselves to the bourgeois-nationalist movement. Lenin instead describes the formation of Communist Parties as the "foremost and necessary task" of revolutionaries and he explicitly goes on to say that the workers of oppressed nations can reach communism, "not through capitalist development, but led by the class-conscious proletariat of the advanced capitalist countries". The consistent emphasis of Lenin's arguments is that the building of Communist Parties should not wait until the oppressed nations have freed themselves from imperialist domination or developed their economies on a capitalist basis and that these organizations, once formed, should not let themselves be lulled into the position of passively supporting movements under the command of the bourgeoisie, but should energetically advocate the class interests of the working class. These arguments stand in direct contrast to everything that Stalin came to argue during the course of the Chinese Revolution as his position was that the working class would have to wait until the KMT had carried out the goals of the bourgeois-democratic revolution.
This long paragraph is all straw man: I am not talking about Stalin/Comintern's policy of the mid 20s (indeed, most maoists agree that it was a mistake). We are talking about the Maoist strategy which is very different. The CPC since 1927 was not 'lulled into the position of passively supporting movements under the command of the bourgeoisie'; there was a little thing called the chinese civil war. The CPC fought long and hard against the reactionary elements of the bourgeoisie. Same as the UCPN(M).

[scarletghoul]

But yeah, i'm tempted to edit my previous post and replace the writing with a huge facepalm, because my main point in the post before that was not to argue on the historical details of Lenin's ideas but precisely to emphasise how thats the most fucking stupid useless idiotic frustrating annoying undialectical dogmatic etc way of evaluating the Nepali comrades' line. (the lenin quote bit was just a bonus i felt like addin after)

[penguinfoot]

lol great way to argue with a maoist, taking it for granted that china etc was never socialist..

Again: if you want to argue to the contrary and explain the ways in which China was socialist, at any point, then do so. No Maoist has yet faced up to the challenge.


This long paragraph is all straw man: I am not talking about Stalin/Comintern's policy of the mid 20s

In your original post you asserted that Lenin also supported alliances with the bourgeoisie as a response to a point from RD. I responded to that. You have yet to show how or when Lenin advocated enduring alliances with the bourgeoisie - as opposed to some forms of cooperation around particular struggles in order to advance the strategic interests of the working class.


(indeed, most maoists agree that it was a mistake)

This is problematic. Zhou Enlai, in his essay The Communist International and the CCP, summarizes the period 1919-1927 by saying that "in this period the Communist International was helpful to the Chinese revolution, although it made mistakes on a few questions of principle", then going on to spread a number of lies about the original leadership of the CPC, such as the allegation that Chen Duxiu believed that the immediate revolution would be led by the bourgeoisie, when actually he was an advocate, along with the rest of the founding leadership, of remaining independent from the KMT.


We are talking about the Maoist strategy which is very different. The CPC since 1927 was not 'lulled into the position of passively supporting movements under the command of the bourgeoisie'; there was a little thing called the chinese civil war.

What are you talking about? This is the first time the Chinese Civil War has been mentioned in the thread.


The CPC fought long and hard against the reactionary elements of the bourgeoisie. Same as the UCPN(M).

Let's put the issue of whether the CPC did this aside for the time being. You seem to be arguing that there are reactionary and progressive elements of the bourgeoisie, this is also the distinction that underpins concepts like New Democracy, which are embraced by the UCPN(M) as well as the main body of the Maoist movement, and lie behind their support for the parliamentary state (hence the fact that they have spent a considerable length of time agitating for the removal of the prime minister and have not taken action against the state apparatus in spite of the current parliament's blatant inability to agree on a constitution, this lack of agreement being the root cause of the current impasse) and consistent statements in favor of making Nepal a viable destination for investment and encouraging economic growth in cooperation with the private sector. Can you provide a basis for this distinction, that is, can you define who the progressive elements of the bourgeoisie are, including what it is that makes them progressive?


(the lenin quote bit was just a bonus i felt like addin after)

It wasn't "a bonus" at all, because it didn't show what you wanted it to show, which is that Lenin supported alliances with the bourgeoisie in the same way that the Maoist tradition does.

[scarletghoul]

By all means, explain what is/was socialist about China at any point in its history.
Let's see.. workplace democracy, the Shanghai Commune, making government officials do manual labour, struggle sessions, etc etc. Tell me, in what precise sense do you see China as capitalist ? Or is it just cuz everyone knows they was evil n repressive


Also, I don't know if you're aware of this, but one of the ironies of Stalinism is that Stalinists and the likes of the CIA have always been in agreement on the most important judgements - which is that countries like the PRC are/were socialist.
lololololol trotsky n hitler agreed that stalin was the baddie and had to go lololo
Difference is Stalinists/CIA were right, Trotsky/Hitler was wrong.

[penguinfoot]

Let's see.. workplace democracy, the Shanghai Commune, making government officials do manual labour, struggle sessions, etc etc. Tell me, in what precise sense do you see China as capitalist ? Or is it just cuz everyone knows they was evil n repressive

You haven't given substance to any of these features of the Chinese polity, either in terms of explaining what they mean, or how they made the PRC socialist. When exactly did the PRC exhibit workplace democracy in light of the dramatic changes workplace organization underwent throughout the history of the PRC up to 1978 and in what way did any of these forms of workplace democracy make the PRC socialist when they were present? By the Shanghai Commune, do you mean the body that was briefly established as a result of a working-class insurrection in 1927, which is what historians mean when they refer to the Shanghai Commune, or do you mean the body that is more commonly called the Shanghai People's Commune, which emerged in Shanghai in January of 1967? By government officials being made to do manual labour, which government officials do you mean, and why is this a sign of socialism? By struggle sessions, do you mean the beatings of landlords that were carried out during the course of the land reform movement, or do you mean the interrogations of cadres during the early stages of the Cultural Revolution? What do any of these events and phenomena have to do with socialism? There is a complete lack of substance and analysis here.

As for why I think that China was capitalist at all points from 1949 onwards (and before), it's because Marx described capitalism as a system of generalized commodity production under which the producers do not exercise control over the labour process and are dominated by the products of their labour activity, and these features manifested themselves in China throughout the Maoist period - goods and services were produced for the purpose of exchange and were therefore commodities, workers did not collectively decide how to allocate resources and produce goods, both because of a lack of internal democracy (consider how far apart sessions of the NPC and congresses of the CPC took place) and the fact that the PRC was situated in a capitalist world-system that resulted in planners having to adjust their decision-making in order to compete with more powerful capitalist states, and most fundamentally, China did not exhibit an advanced productive apparatus, which made it impossible for China to obtain socialism, because socialism can only be built on the basis of material abundance.

[scarletghoul]

Again: if you want to argue to the contrary and explain the ways in which China was socialist, at any point, then do so. No Maoist has yet faced up to the challenge.
100s of millions of maoists have faced up to that challenge. read a fucking history book you selfrighteous prick.


In your original post you asserted that Lenin also supported alliances with the bourgeoisie as a response to a point from RD. I responded to that. You have yet to show how or when Lenin advocated enduring alliances with the bourgeoisie - as opposed to some forms of cooperation around particular struggles in order to advance the strategic interests of the working class.
my more important assertion was that this type of debate is a load of useless fucking shit. ill dig up some more lenin to back this up later when i can be arsed to indulge this crap


This is problematic. Zhou Enlai, in his essay The Communist International and the CCP, summarizes the period 1919-1927 by saying that "in this period the Communist International was helpful to the Chinese revolution, although it made mistakes on a few questions of principle", then going on to spread a number of lies about the original leadership of the CPC, such as the allegation that Chen Duxiu believed that the immediate revolution would be led by the bourgeoisie, when actually he was an advocate, along with the rest of the founding leadership, of remaining independent from the KMT.
oh wow you sure do shoot down this point by saying that someone else once made the same point and also said something that you claim to be untrue. lol

fuckin hell seriously


What are you talking about? This is the first time the Chinese Civil War has been mentioned in the thread.
this is exactly the problem with you. we were talking about maoist strategy. it should go without saying that the chinese civil war is a central example of this. at least, much more fucking relevent than stalin's strategy.


You seem to be arguing that there are reactionary and progressive elements of the bourgeoisie,
Yes. In countries like Nepal or old China, certainly. The most obvious example of course is the petty-bourgeoisie.


(hence the fact that they have spent a considerable length of time agitating for the removal of the prime minister and have not taken action against the state apparatus in spite of the current parliament's blatant inability to agree on a constitution, this lack of agreement being the root cause of the current impasse) and consistent statements in favor of making Nepal a viable destination for investment and encouraging economic growth in cooperation with the private sector.
Christ, do you have any idea how to look past the thin outer layer of anything ?? You really think a party would really mobilise millions on protests general strike and so on just for the demand of one man resigning, etcetc ?? There is more to it than that..


btw sorry if i come across as an arrogent nobhead ive been in a shit mood lately and this thread is full of the most stupid frustrating non-points ever written lolol

[Barry Lyndon]

scarletghoul-

Those Asians just have hive minds, of course they can't have workplace democracy! *sarcasm*

[penguinfoot]

100s of millions of maoists have faced up to that challenge. read a fucking history book you selfrighteous prick.

I've read accounts by Maoists, and they follow the same structure as you - pointing to various features of life and government in the PRC as evidence that China was socialist or a revolutionary force without presenting all of these features in their full complexity or explaining exactly why they made the PRC socialist. The weakness of the Maoist tradition is even more stark in their inability to provide explanations of how capitalism was restored in either the USSR or China except by resorting to accounts that make it seem as if capitalism can be restored simply as a result of a change in political leadership and that restoration can take place without the working class realizing what is happening or seeking to resist.


oh wow you sure do shoot down this point by saying that someone else once made the same point and also said something that you claim to be untrue. lol

I don't understand what you mean. You claimed that most Maoists oppose the Comintern's strategy in the 1920s. I disagreed, not because I think you were totally wrong, but because I think there are also many Maoists who have expressed support for Comintern strategy. I cited Zhou Enlai as an example of this and cited the essay where he does praise Comintern policy.


this is exactly the problem with you. we were talking about maoist strategy. it should go without saying that the chinese civil war is a central example of this. at least, much more fucking relevent than stalin's strategy.

It's problematic to equate Maoist strategy with the Chinese Civil War because the strategies pursued by the CPC after April 1927 and up until the formation of the second united front in 1937 were a result of both the continued role of the Comintern in Chinese radical politics and the decision-making of party activists other than Mao, so that it was Li Lisan, for example, who was at the centre of the formation of the PLA and the launching of offensives against cities such as Nanchang immediately after the CPC's defeat at the hands of the KMT, with Zhang Guotao likewise being one of the party's main military leaders up until the end of the Long March, even whilst Mao was gaining in political strength. There is also the complex history of the 28 Bolsheviks. It's absurdly teleological to see the post-1927 history of the CPC as the history of Maoism or to assume that Mao was destined to become the leader of the CPC. To the extent that the 1930s and 40s did witness a distinctively Maoist approach to the problems of Chinese politics, moreover, it's debatable as to whether there was ever a coherent Maoist strategy as such, because Mao's ideas and decisions were at least partly rationalizations of or responses to the conditions in which the CPC found itself, so that Mao's On Contradiction, for example, was written as a way of making sense of the CPC's entry into the second united front, and the ways in which it was forced to moderate its agricultural policies in order to make the alliance work after having fought the KMT over the past ten years and adopted radical policies against landlords in Jiangxi. Mao's thought is, as a whole, characterized by eclecticism and incoherence.


Yes. In countries like Nepal or old China, certainly. The most obvious example of course is the petty-bourgeoisie.

If Mao was referring to the petty-bourgeoisie when he spoke about the national or patriotic bourgeoisie he would have called the bloc of four classes the bloc of three classes - the proletariat, the peasantry, and the petty-bourgeoisie. Mao called it the bloc of four classes because he believed that the national bourgeoisie was distinct from the petty-bourgeoisie. You have not yet detailed who or what the national bourgeoisie consists of.


There is more to it than that..

By all means, point to the concrete measures that the Maoists are deploying to overthrow the state rather than take control of it.


Those Asians just have hive minds, of course they can't have workplace democracy! *sarcasm*

Do you have the bottle to respond to the debate in the history forum, or are you as ignorant as you appear?