The Naxalite movement: A Political and economic critique.

(Paper presented by Stevensen, 2007 October, at revolutionary-left.com.)

Brief about the social dynamics of India:

As a developing nation, India possesses some striking singularities. What are these?
These are, a growing economy, a springing up of modern cities and isolated rural areas where life is little different from what it was ages ago. Also deserving to be included is a clear decline of the dominant share of the contribution of agriculture to the GDP from what it was even a decade or two ago. Unlike Europe, India is a vast and hugely populated nation. At the extreme ends there are two kinds of lives lead by the populace in this nation. One, by the privileged city man (here I must mention that the demarcation in city life has grown more pronounced, a burgeoning few have actually substantially increased their standard of living but along with that has also come an increase in the number of squatters and people living in slums, an estimate shows that one quarter of India’s population lives in cities, and 60% of these live in slums. (1)), with the new comforts that the growing economy has brought in and the other by the rural village man who remains to a very large extent untouched by such comforts and now slowly loosing his once powerful grasp over the society he once had by virtue of the dominance of agriculture in the national income. It still however remains a very powerful dominance. Among the village peasants there exists again sharp class differences. We have in the rural areas the classic class differences based on the appropriation and nature of fertile land.

People’s war in India:
Marxist guerillas have been carrying on protracted people’s war in the rural districts in many districts in India for quite some decades now. Alternatively they have grown and shrunk with time, a purely natural phenomenon in any protracted guerilla movement. However this juncture, this decade is going to be a most crucial juncture for these movements. This is going to be a time for the final showdown. In places like Peru the showdown has already happened and the movement has suffered massive damage and in places like India the point of the final conflict is fast approaching. On one hand there are a lot of things that are impressive about these heroic movements. The assault on the shining path was carried out by the realization that the guerillas could take over the capital Lima in the immediate future. In India at the latest count almost one fifth of the total districts in the nation are under the active influence of the guerillas (2). That should be some cause for cheer for it does point to the growing strength of the movement. However, if we were to look at the general nature of the protracted people’s war in India critically, we will find that in this rise of the strength, lies hidden some alarming signs for such movements. At the very outset of this article I must say that to me there seems to be some fundamental glaring errors in the theory behind these movements. It is perfectly logical for someone to believe otherwise and I have no issues against persons holding such views. However it bears no argument that none of the many such movements has succeeded till date in realizing its objectives. The lives of the people who are the source of sustenance for such movements are infinitely too precious to be trifled with; that I do believe is a common ground for all concerned. I will venture to demonstrate in the course of this article that the gains that these movements have made can still be utilized well and with amazing success if we take into cognizance the new factors which such movements anywhere must deal with.

Impact of the current socio-economic dynamics on the classes:

We must first determine the conditions that gave rise to the birth of these movements. The inspiration of a host of such movements in the developing world has been the Chinese revolution and aptly they have been termed as Maoist revolutionaries. At that time the society of these nations were largely agrarian based, industry was nascent and far lagging behind the present scale. The contribution to the whole of the economy of agriculture was whopping (a close comparison may be drawn from the present day economy of Nepal, where the contribution of agriculture to the national economy is around 96 %.). What has happened in the intervening decades? The contribution of agriculture to the economy has reduced considerably. The share of industry has increased. This has had manifold impacts. What are they?

Firstly, the bourgeoisie classes have been able to reap the benefits of such industrialization. They have been able to have a better standard of living and thus as a result have incurred the benefits of such, namely, better education, access to jobs and things like that.
Secondly and more importantly there has been a concentration of jobs for the educated bourgeoisie in one or two key sectors in the new economy. In India, for example, the dominant employment generator for the bourgeoisie middle class is the software sector. Thirdly, the balance of material forces has shifted rapidly in India. The shift in GDP contribution from agriculture to industry (technically speaking the service sector) has already been commented upon earlier, what is also of equal importance is the shift in the qualitative impact of this segment upon the economy.

The vanguard of the villages:
Now, I say that as a movement, the protracted people’s war in India has misread the ground situation and are on the wrong theoretical path. First I will try to demonstrate why I think the movement is theoretically flawed. It is an axiom of revolutionary Marxism that flawed theory will show up in the results achieved. Till date the protracted people’s war in India has failed to capture any large village of significant importance anywhere in India, leave alone the cities. Of their classic dream of surrounding cities from the countryside, there is no evidence of any lower rung city being captured and retained for an arguably long period of time till date. They assure their cadres, it will happen soon but years have passed into decades and for all their promises, the leaders have nothing to show beyond dominance in extreme rural villages. The question begs to be asked, how long shall a war last, however protracted it might be. Victory and defeat in such conflicts are incidental, for a true revolutionary army is never really defeated if the ideas it fought for are preserved after defeat. We still remember El Che’s fatal Bolivian campaign, the proof of the victory of his ideas, which are more powerful than military victories, is its appeal to countless men and women who were born decades after his death. The protracted people’s war has not been able to come up with any such novel idea. Each successful revolutionary movement has produced one new central idea which was the product of the specific situation that the revolutionary forces encountered at that specific period in time, be it the alliance of the workers and the peasants in the Soviet Union, the predominant role of the peasantry in china or the guerilla foco theory in Cuba. Does the protracted people’s war movement in India have any new idea that the ground situation in India alone has produced? The answer most clearly is no. That is the clearest indication that the theoretical path being pursued by the protracted people’s war in India is erroneous. No two epochs in history have ever been similar and a movement that seeks to incorporate the Chinese model of revolution in India is essentially flawed because the ground situation in India today and china then are absolutely different. If replication of a successful revolutionary strategy were all that was concerned, then Mao would have parroted the soviet strategy of the alliance of the workers and the peasants instead of placing the peasant class at the vanguard of the Chinese revolution. The people’s war movement in India seems to be aping the strategies of a historical figure whose chief lesson was not to ape any erstwhile successful strategy but to formulate one based on the current ground situation.

Now we will apply a bit of material dialectics and elementary mathematics and thus find out for ourselves just how much in the blind are the theoreticians of the people’s war in India today. We shall take as our starting assumption that the people’s war in India has managed to capture the class support of the poor and landless peasants. This too, I shall venture to disprove qualitatively later in this article. However, if for the moment we assume the last but one statement to be true, we still find the people’s war to be representating a sector that contributes less than 20% to the nation’s GDP(3) and whose contribution is going to decline further. Granted that even now the agricultural workforce accounts for around 60% of the total workforce, still this very fact shows how erroneous is the strategy of banking on the rural peasant class as a vanguard revolutionary class. What this fact does show is that as a class the peasant class is inefficiency ridden, over resourced and quite incapable of dreaming beyond a piece of private property. If land distribution were to be the sole aim of a revolution then we might as well end up as Russian narodniks instead of revolutionaries. An over resourced class whose say is dwindling can never be the basis for a successful vanguard. Which class am I talking about here? The entire peasant class? No, I am talking about the poorer and landless peasant as a separate class, distinct from the middle and rich farmers. The middle and rich farmers have long since been known to extract their demands through parliamentary vote bank politics. Are the leaders of the people’s war movement in India going by numbers? But these numbers tell a different tale. The poor and landless peasants are technologically, socially and politically too backward to be the vanguard class. Per person their contribution to the GDP must be lowest among the whole labor workforce in the nation. Huge numbers in this case does not represent an opportunity; rather they are pointers towards huge class inefficiency. Their dreams can at most lead to land redistribution but can they lead to socialism? The answer I think is proved to be no. They can be alliance material as a class but they can never ever be vanguard material. The impact of pushing this class as the vanguard class is bound to be leadership in remote villages with little or no effect in even large villages, leave alone the cities. For, as an ‘impact’ class, as masters of technology, as a class with acute political consciousness, this class at this point of time in India is nowhere. Qualitatively as well as quantitatively (here I am considering the number of cadres from the class in question ready to wage a revolutionary struggle) they cannot represent the class most prepared to tackle capitalism. I feel that the leaders of the people’s war have failed to look relatively at numbers here; they have missed the huge negative correlation currently existing between numbers (workforce) and results (GDP contribution). A look at this class in absolute terms will present a completely opposite and wrong picture than a relative one, and as dialecticians we must measure things objectively and yet relatively. Why Marx placed the proletarians and Mao, the peasants as the vanguard is due to the same reason, namely, they saw in that class at that point of time, the class not only most numerous, but also and most importantly this; that the said class was the dominating factor in the contribution to the economy of the nation as a whole. A vanguard class must above anything else possess the keys to the economy of the nation. This is a most vital point which the leaders of the people’s war movement in India have failed to realize and for this they are paying a heavy price. Dialectically, the synthesis of the contradictory classes must result in something that is of most vital importance to the function that the synthesis serves. Agricultural contribution to GDP, which is the synthesis, is not the most vital component of the economy, thus, where the synthesis is not primary, the contradiction over the relations to the means of production has no value at all.

The vanguard of the villages and its dilemmas:

We shall stick for a few moments more with material dialectics and deduce from them the unique dilemma of the vanguard of the villages. Dialectically speaking, the vanguard class is in opposition to the bourgeoisie class and possesses the keys to the economy of the nation. The synthesis should give rise to better and just living conditions for the masses as a whole. Now let us see the unique dilemma faced by the vanguard of the villages, the People’s war movement if we hold the above synthesis to be valid. Let us say, for example that the government decides to build a road connecting a remote village over which the People’s war has control to the nearest major city. For the people’s war’ leaders this is a menace, for it can already visualize in its mind’s eyes army trucks rolling in to through the roads to wrest control of their ‘Liberated Zone’. To this end the naxalites have no other option; they are forced to oppose the construction of the road. Now, the peasants of the village have a doubt. Did not the naxalites promise them a betterment in the condition of their lives? Is not the essence of class struggle? If so, then does not the opposition to the construction of the road negate the promise of the naxalites? Definitely the construction of the road will ease the lives of the people pf the villages. Now, our naxalites are on a very sticky wicket. What is the motive of their class struggle? To attain better lives for the masses and yet actions like this run contrary to their aims. Can anything be said in defense of such an action? Yes, that the proposed road may crush the naxalites of the region. So what do they do? It is always an axiom of dialectics that the interests of the vanguard class and the party representing the vanguard class can never be contradictory. If it appears so, then most definitely, the party has wrongly identified its interests. The interest of the Marxist party is solely guided by one cardinal law, the interests of the vanguard class, when the two collide; it is for the party to introspect and not the masses. In India, the People’s war have done things the other way round, they have placed the interests of the party above that of the class which it claims to represent. That is erroneous and totally undialectical. When the bourgeoisie government decides to improve the lot of the masses, it is always as a result of the growing influence of the naxalites. A road, a bridge and some similar sort of activity is undertaken to negate the spread of the naxalites. However, that is dialectically valid, because this act of the bourgeoisie government is a result of the contradiction felt by it and which it tries to alleviate. However, every bourgeoisie government is doomed to failure purely because of its class nature. A road is a pitiful problem, unimportant to say the least. What should be the step of the naxalites in such a situation? To accept the road and plump now for other concessions from the government and at the same time make the masses aware that it is only as a result of the struggle of the naxalites that the government has been forced to turn its attention to this hitherto neglected little hamlet. Demands must flow quickly, surely Marxists can not run out of demands for ultimately every small step will eventually lead to the vociferous demand of the suppression of capital as a tool. One laughable assertion is possible though, that the government will in order to counter the influence of the naxalites meet all the demands of the naxalite, for if there is no demand to be met there need not be any naxalites either. In such an event the government will have become unconsciously a Marxist party, fulfilling the demands of the vanguard class that the naxalites themselves are the vanguard of. Such an event is dialectically impossible given the class origins of the bourgeoisie nature of the government. In all of mankind’s history this has never happened. At best, the bourgeoisie government can dole out pitiful concessions like the building of a few roads and the like without ever daring to strike at the roots of the central problem, the problem of the ravages of free and unbridled capitalism, for it is the ravage of this very capital that is the power base of the bourgeoisie government.
The only reason why the naxalites should oppose such activities is astonishingly simple. Amongst the poor illiterate village folk they think they are the masters of the situation, instead of learning from the masses and molding their actions in accordance with the demands of the vanguard class they claim to represent they try to manufacture a situation that will keep them in power, as masters of all that they survey. That is nihilistic and dialectically horrendous. Surely, the naxalites are not here to play Robin Hood but rather to determine that no such apocalyptic figure be needed in the future. Again I state, if the synthesis appears incorrect and not what is sought for then definitely the elements of the contradiction are not central and neither for that matter are they dialectical.

We will now turn to another aspect, an aspect more recently seen amongst the naxalites, that of individual assassination. Attempts have been made on the former chief minister of a state in India and some political figures have been rendered ‘revolutionary justice’ by the naxalites. This runs totally in contradiction to Leninism. Many a times, the architect of the Soviet Union has said, the policy of individual terror is wrong and flawed, revolutionary justice is against a class as a whole and not against an element of the class. Stupid assassinations like this will only make martyrs of the men so disposed of, that is not what we want. Firstly, the vanguard class must triumph and then and only then can we eliminate the criminals from the bourgeoisie classes. Individual terror and killings are entirely anti-Leninistic in approach and hence entirely undialectical. The dialectics is between the classes and not the individuals. Firstly, we must win the heads of the masses, convince them of the guilt of the perpetrators, without this the targeted killing of an individual, however corrupt he may be is lunacy and not Marxism.

It is only the incorrect appraisal and an obstinate refusal to budge from their erroneous theoretical position, an entirely unmarxist, undialectical rigidity bordering on the fringes of lunacy and horrible pride that inhibits the People’s war from admitting their faults and he who can not admit his fault can never ever solve his dilemmas. Cadres have given their lives for the cause, there is some talk that the younger generation of cadres is miffed at the slow pace of the progress of the movement, is it not worthwhile then to question the theoretical basis of the movement? If no, then we are left only with the option of questioning the dedication of the cadres. That I am not prepared to do, for to me the blood of the cadres who have given their lives for the cause matters. I believe that men have given their lives for something and that something is important and worth achieving.

The new vanguard:

Now if we accept the last statement as an axiom, where does this leave us? This leaves us most definitely with the task of finding the class or an alliance of classes that can act as the vanguard. We shall return to elementary mathematics again. Let us look at the sector which contributes the maximum to the GDP, without a doubt it is the services sector, with around 55% contribution to the GDP (4). ‘Services’ is a very broad term, for it involves various domains of operations which are quite unrelated to each other. Drilling down further we find the following distribution of contributors, arranged in descending order as per their respective contribution to the GDP (5).

Table 1: Sector wise contribution to GDP
Read the below columns as:
Sector, Contribution to the GDP, %contribution to the GDP,

Industry

1. agriculture, forestry & fishing 656051, 17.5252012
2. mining & quarrying 102152, 2.728803635
3. manufacturing 609596, 16.28424094
4. electricity, gas & water supply 73135, 1.953667611
5. construction 259223, 6.924667795
6. trade, hotels, transport and 968677, 25.87643236
communication
7. financing, insurance, real estate 540160, 14.42938534
& business services
8. community, social & personal 534479, 14.27762783
services
9. GDP at factor cost 3743472, 100

Now the figures are more revealing. It is clear as to which class can form the vanguard class. The vanguard class is going to arise from the cities and not from the villages. The vanguard class is going to arise from the workers engaged in trade, hotels, transport and communication, the vanguard is going to arise from the real estate and business services sector and of course, the vanguard is going to arise from the manufacturing sector. Picture the salesman selling the same stuff in the hot sun or bitter cold, day after day, being shooed away by numerous closed doors and the recipient of managerial barrage at the end of each day that is always too long for him. Picture the truck driver, opium laded, in order to stay awake in the long nights. Picture the retail store helper, standing for long hours, filling up the coffers for the store bosses. Picture the construction worker, risking his life on tilting buildings and never knowing where his next work is going to spring from. And last of all picture our noble proletarians from the manufacturing sector. Add to this the proletarians from the mining sector and you have the vanguard ready, but enough of emotional pictures, I present below the figures of the workforce employed in the above sectors combined, and while I do so, remember, I have still not touched on the poor peasants who though definitely not the vanguard class but yet most definitely are alliance material. Without them our movement might collapse. They are most significant in only as much as they are allies but a communist party knows how crucial our allies are and only because of the fact that we are no less crucial to them. Some more mathematics is required at this stage. We will start from our baseline which is figures for the workforce for the years 1997 through 2002(6).

Table 2: Projection of work opportunities 1997-2002
Read below columns as (See table keys)
1, 2, 3, 4,

Agriculture 3.9, 238.32, 262.5
Mining & Quarrying 7.2, 2.87, 3.54
Manufacturing 8.2, 43.56, 48.22
Electricity 9.3, 1.54, 1.93
Construction 4.9, 14.74, 17.03
Wholesale & Retail Trade 6.7, 34.78, 41.67
Transport, Storage & Communication 7.3, 11.96, 14.57
Financing, Real Estate,
Insurance and Business Services 8.5, 4.55, 5.68
Community, Social and Personal Service 7.1, 38.98, 46.41
All Sectors 6.5, 391.3, 441.5


(Table keys: 1- Sector, 2- GDP growth in % P.A (1997-2002), 3- Work opportunities in millions (1997), 4- Work opportunities in millions (2002)).
We will work from this baseline to project with reasonable accuracy figures pertaining to the workforce till the year 2012.

Table 3: Projection of work opportunities 2007 & 2012
Read below columns as (See table keys)
1, 2, 3, 4,

Agriculture 2.0, 289.1, 318.4
Mining & Quarrying 4.3, 4.4, 5.4
Manufacturing 2.0, 53.4, 59.1
Electricity 4.6, 2.42, 3.03
Construction 2.9, 19.7, 22.7
Wholesale & Retail Trade 3.6, 49.9, 59.8
Transport, Storage & Communication 4.02, 17.7, 21.6
Financing, Real Estate,
Insurance and Business Services 4.5, 7.09, 8.8
Community, Social and Personal Service 3.5, 55.2, 65.7
All Sectors 2.4, 498.1, 562.1

(Table keys: 1- Sector, 2- Compounded growth rate for work opportunities in
% P.A (1997-2002), 3- Work opportunities in millions (2007), 4- Work opportunities in millions (2012)).


The close proximity in cities, a condition created by the bourgeoisie itself will force the workers of the vanguard classes to come into daily contact with each other. Together they are a great force, a force that cannot be stopped and most crucially a force that the bourgeoisie can not afford to ignore. This is indeed the situation of a final showdown. The service sector workers are the most crucial blocks of the economy. They can strike hardest at the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie can not afford to let them assert their rights without a conflict, and there in lies the great opportunity of forming a vanguard capable enough, purely by material considerations, of striking a death blow to the bourgeoisie. This alliance of the manufacturing proletariat and the service sector proletariat must be the vanguard class that the communist party will be the eventual vanguard of. The model of operations for a Marxist party in India is then reversed completely from what the people’s war has been doing and continues to do. It is from the cities, agitated and demanding of their rights as espoused by the manufacturing and service sector proletariat that the revolution must start. The poor peasants are already ours; they will join in, not out of compulsion, but out of conviction. The lead must come from the cities, from these sectors that jointly provides for more than 65% of our GDP and will employ no less than 30% of the workforce. These then should be the vanguard, for it is in their hands that the economy lies and like in all cases of parasitic capitalist growth, these are the sections most discriminated against. The curious reader can refer to the following excellent paper on real wages of workers in the manufacturing sector post liberalization, ‘Trade liberalization and real wages in the organized manufacturing industries in India’, Biswanath Goldar, Institute of economic growth, University of Delhi enclave, to ascertain for himself the fall in real wages for the same. If we add the landless peasants we definitely cross the 80% figure of contribution to GDP and the percentage of workforce of the vanguard with its allies now stands at not less than 60%. Manufacturing and the retail sector alone will employ more than 20% of the workforce, near about the same as of now. Dialectically this vanguard alliance stands in contradiction to the bourgeoisie, this alliance drives the economy and this alliance is destined to re-write the class dynamics of India. Qualitatively, this alliance is or can be made most easily conscious of the great ideology that we are so proud to call ours, quantitatively, the consciousness of being the drivers of the economy will inspire them to the realization of their importance and of their eventual victory over the bourgeoisie that so dominate them. The power of this alliance lies thus, in their numbers as well as their importance to the economy, a combination which is dialectically sounder than the combination of numbers and a dwindling contribution to the economy, as currently being pursued by the naxalites in India. Yes, I am convinced this is the alliance that is most suited.
(All assertions made in the preceding paragraph are deduced from the tables 2 through 3. A pessimistic estimate has been made to account for the poor and landless peasants among the total percentage of agricultural workers; I have assumed 50% of all agricultural workers are either poor or landless peasants.)

But how is a Marxist party going to build this grand alliance of the service sector proletariat and the manufacturing proletariat? And who is going to lead the alliance, the service sector proletariat or the manufacturing proletariat? What is the role of our allies, the landless peasants? These questions are of enormous importance and shall be answered presently.

The vanguard of the vanguard:

The communist party is the vanguard of the revolution. The communist party plays the role of inculcating class consciousness in the vanguard classes. The manufacturing proletarians have a history of exposure to some sort of socialistic propaganda, bur at the same time they are wary of being duped by political parties who have long worn the garb of communist/socialist parties only to hurtle from one rotten compromise to another. Strike action or for that matter any sort of affirmative action by the proletarians demands lost of sacrifices and the bitterness of betrayal is long felt, transcending generations. The communist party first of all has to win the trust of the proletarians. This can only be done if the party stands steadfastly by the demands made by it in the interests of the proletarians. For this two things become essential, firstly, the proletarians must be aware of the existence of a political party and know its demands. This is where again and again we return to the issue of propaganda. Leaflets and a cheap newspaper are a must. The publications must address in as straightforward and as simply as possible the demands of the political party. We are not engaged in intellectual debates with the intelligentsia, we are communicating to the proletarians, and we are articulating their demands and legitimate desires. This fact has to be kept in mind in our publications. Publications must be localized and in the local dialect. Walls of factories and retail outlets must be plastered with our leaflets. The stage where a national picture emerges is far away to start with. Analysis shall have to be made and issues shall have to be raised which are local in nature so that the local proletarians see in our demands a reflection of the betterment of their lives. Issues must be portrayed accurately and simply. Salaries of the top management against that of the proletarians against value generated must be explained simply and truthfully. Insurance benefits which again is a function of the premium and thus in the last case a function of wages must be put forth. Access to basic human needs or the lack of it must be made a demand of. The party must compete in parliamentary elections. Parliamentary elections will give us the medium through which to articulate our demands. Demands like minimum wages, social benefits, and taxation for the rich should be quantitatively expressed. This is the starting point, from here gradually we must proceed to expose the capitalist mode of production for what it is, namely a system that ensures capital prominence over the needs of the majority, a system that ensures benefits against capital as a result of which the accumulation of capital by a few discriminates against the rights of the toiling masses. Firstly though, the local and immediate demands must form the basis of the manifesto of the party. We must state clearly in our election manifesto, this is what the minimum as well as maximum salary ought to be, this is how much tax the respective slab of people must pay, this is how much the spend on social benefits should be for the toilers, this is how much the maximum work hours should be and likewise. Figures and demands should be measurable. The current scenario of merely qualitative demands for the same by the political parties exist precisely because the bourgeoisie parties by their class nature can never commit to an absolute figure when there exists no intention of fulfilling the same. From these demands the party shall build the sinews of tomorrow. It is impossible to launch unions in the existing scenario, the ground work for that has to be done first in order to achieve the same, I repeat, we must start from scratch. The struggle through trade unions will only materialize when the proletarians themselves realize the slogans and demands of our party, so first of all communication and more communication, effective and simple and provoking must be addressed to the proletarians. Parliamentary participation gives us such an avenue. The unemployed are a great source of power to the communist party. We must explain to them clearly the strategy, with live examples, of how the capitalist system seeks the legitimate work of three men from one and how this is what creates the unemployment in society. To articulate all these demands and fight for them, a vanguard is needed. The communist party is that vanguard which realizes the consciousness of the toilers and hence so shall its role be. Education of the literate and advanced workers in the ideological sphere is then a must to inculcate the communist ideology in them. It is only when the sinews of the party are built up in this fashion, shall we be capable of talking and explaining in terms of classes, the communist ideology. This process will draw in the sincere intelligentsia as well as the students. The process, slow to start with will transform itself into something unstoppable within a reasonable span of time. I am not expecting parliamentary capture of power, but this route of parliamentary elections shall open for us the venue and means of the violent struggle that is most likely to be waged by the bourgeoisie with their increasing desperation. Our vanguard classes shall have realized the importance of the party and more importantly, the consciousness of the right to demand rights shall have seeped in which now is much submerged by bourgeoisie propaganda. It is useless for an educated man to have higher social benefits through higher wages when the right to education itself is constrained by the existing wage structure of the capitalists.

The second thing, I shall not even try to prove, for it is an axiom in itself. The party must remain by the side of the proletarians at all costs, specially when a struggle has been launched. The initial posture of the party, the initial struggles will determine the fate of the party. We are asking the proletarians for their trust and we must prove to be worthy for the same to them. It is inconceivable that we build an urban based, proletarian party which can not stand firm in the face of crackdown and oppression.

This is the kind of work that the Marxist party shall have to do in order to build the grand alliance of the vanguard.

We shall now turn to the second question, who shall lead the alliance, the manufacturing proletarians or the service sector proletarians? I will state the answer straight, both together shall lead the alliance. Wherever the manufacturing proletariat is strong, it shall take the lead and vice versa. Haven’t the mining proletarians taken the lead in so many struggles for the proletariat? There is no essential difference between the retail store worker and the ordinary salesman to that of the construction worker or the lathe machine worker, save for the quality of labor. The modern cities put these classes in close contact and these classes of people are already aware of the labor of the others. The back breaking labor and the exploitation are a common factor for all of these proletarians. In most places it will be easily determined, as naturally as a fish swimming for the first time, who will take on the gauntlet of the leadership of the vanguard. By dint of the strength, both numerical and the scope for the movement, the lead in the struggle will be naturally taken by the more mature section of proletarians. That is not an issue. What is an issue is that all these classes must together realize that they are fighting against a common enemy, namely, the capitalist class.

Our allies, the landless peasants will be with us. If the Russian revolution has taught us anything, it is this. They will most readily identify with the exploited proletarians rather than the wealthy farmers. They are essential alliance materials. I may go so far as to say that without our allies victory is impossible. These are our natural allies, they will form our village sinews, and we need them. As our struggle in the cities reaches its climax our allies, the poor and the landless peasants need to rise up in armed revolt against the wealthy farmers in the remote villages. This will be a double blow to the class enemy, and one from which he will never recover. Our allies by rising at the correct time can only add to our strength but they will always be alliance material and their class energy, the hunger for land needs to be channeled by the urban vanguard class. This is the significant role of our allies.

The vanguard of the vanguard:

Now we come to a principal part of the proposed new vanguard alliance. If we have a Marxist party, striving from scratch, building up its sinews in the urban cities then one fact is of primary derivation from such a situation. The party has to be formed as a legal unit. It can under no circumstances be an underground party particularly during the fledgling years of the party. We must remember that with its true class preservation instincts, the bourgeoisie will seek the slightest excuse to crush the party, especially in the initial years. Now, what does this mean? Very simply, that the party will have to first exhaust the means for peaceful struggle before embarking on the route to violent class struggle. Depend on it, however, that I do not see the slightest chance of parliamentary resolution of our class interests, but for the party to have the necessary sinews to engage in any sort of violent class struggle firstly and most primarily, we must have adequate members, cadres ready to act at the party’s bidding. This can not start by violence. Should the people’s war metamorphose into this avatar, it is needless to say that some sort of arrangement has to be worked out which will entail arms surrender or monitoring of existing arms. This is bound to provoke extreme reactions. However, arms will not win us the day, minds will and to that end we must first broaden the base of the party, form the new vanguard class which is not possible without taking the above route. It will be most instructive to study the manner in which the Nepal Maoists have reached such an agreement. I published an article detailing months in advance the course which the Nepal Maoists would take if they were to analyze the situation along the same lines as me and events have proved me correct. When the time comes and the people are with us, we will have all the arms in the world. Remember, we are fighting for ideas; guns are the means through which they will flow to us but most definitely not the means in itself. In the fight for ideas, first and most importantly we must be able to convince the masses of the validity of our ideas and thence and only thence can we launch the fight to attain the same. Yes, comrades I am calling for a legal Marxist entity to be launched first, this groundwork, and this fight for ideas will determine the course of our political, economic and armed struggle. This will take time, but as material dialecticians we must let time choose its own course and pace.

Only one other danger seems possible to me, that during the period of parliamentary struggle, bourgeoisie elements will creep into the party who will become so much enamored of the power and glories of the parliaments, that they will cease to and ultimately hesitate to take the course of armed struggle as and when the situation so materializes. That is no danger worth considering however, for it is in the period of parliamentary politics that the strictest vigilance needs to be maintained on the rank and file of the party. A party is not a Marxist party if its leaders wilt to the flimsiest of temptation that is bound to arise during the parliamentary phase of existence. As such, this danger needs to be combated by a strict monitoring of the assets of the party leaders, their life styles and ultimately by swift and decisive purging of the party rank and leaders of the unscrupulous elements.
Parliamentary participation and repeated purging will be the two most decisive strategies in the immediate future.


Through the periscope

In the future I see only two possible courses of action available to us, Marxists. One, the naxalites themselves change their theories and adapt with time showing the flexibility that is the great hallmark of Marxism, to the new class dynamics of the times. Thence, they themselves may become an urban oriented Marxist party. The years of experience will stand them handy. The rural areas already significantly under their influence by decades of struggle will be ready to arise at the appropriate moment to support their urban colleagues. They have the dedication, they have the resolve and they have the will, what they do not have is of course, the correct appraisal of the ground reality that is India today.

Two, a fresh party is formed along the lines suggested in this article who take up the cudgels in the cities. In this case sooner or later the naxalites will be forced to acknowledge the correctness of the Marxism of this group and will have to play a secondary role to the new party.

By dint of sacrifice, the naxalites should be the vanguard of a successful revolution in India. However, sacrifice for the theoretically incorrect ambitions have never been rewarded by history and this is the fate that waits the naxalites as of today. If they be a little concerned about the cadres who have given up their lives for the cause, if they feel their blood burden, there is till time for the leaders to mend their ways.

References
1- http://www.dfid.gov.uk/pubs/files/sl...-factsheet.pdf
2- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naxalite
3, 4 & 5- Central Statistical Organization, Government of India, Estimates of GDP at factor cost by economic activity.
Unless otherwise mentioned, the source of all figures is the Central Statistical Organization, Government of India, Estimates of GDP at factor cost by economic activity. Simple mathematical calculations have been performed based on the first table for all economic data and figures.
6 - http://indiaonestop.com/unemployment.htm#opportunities