Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Saturday, February 5, 2011
A Single Spark can Start a Prairie Fire by Mao Zedong - January 1930
[This was a letter written by Comrade Mao Tse-tung in criticism of certain pessimistic views then existing in the Party.]
Some comrades in our Party still do not know how to appraise the current situation correctly and how to settle the attendant question of what action to take. Though they believe that a revolutionary high tide is inevitable, they do not believe it to be imminent. Therefore, they disapprove of the plan to take Kiangsi and only approve of roving guerrilla actions in the three areas on the borders of Fukien, Kwangtung and Kiangsi; at the same time, as they do not have a deep understanding of what it means to establish Red political power in the guerrilla areas, they do not have a deep understanding of the idea of accelerating the nation-wide revolutionary high tide through the consolidation and expansion of Red political power. They seem to think that, since the revolutionary high tide is still remote, it will be labour lost to attempt to establish political power by hard work. Instead, they want to extend our political influence through the easier method of roving guerrilla actions, and, once the masses throughout the country have been won over, or more or less won over, they want to launch a nation-wide armed insurrection which, with the participation of the Red Army, would become a great nationwide revolution. Their theory that we must first win over the masses on a country-wide scale and in all regions and then establish political power does not accord with the actual state of the Chinese revolution. This theory derives mainly from the failure to understand clearly that China is a semi-colonial country for which many imperialist powers are contending. If one clearly understands this, one will understand first why the unusual phenomenon of prolonged and tangled warfare within the ruling classes is only to be found in China, why this warfare is steadily growing fiercer and spreading, and why there has never been a unified regime. Secondly, one will understand the gravity of the peasant problem and hence why rural uprisings have developed on the present country-wide scale. Thirdly, one will understand the correctness of the slogan of workers' and peasants' democratic political power. Fourthly, one will understand another unusual phenomenon, which is also absent outside China, and which follows from the first (that in China alone there is prolonged and tangled warfare within the ruling classes), namely, the existence and development of the Red Army and the guerrilla forces, and together with them, the existence and development of small Red areas encircled by the White regime. Fifthly, one will understand that in semi-colonial China the establishment and expansion of the Red Army, the guerrilla forces and the Red areas is the highest form of peasant struggle under the leadership of the proletariat, the inevitable outcome of the growth of the semi-colonial peasant struggle, and undoubtedly the most important factor in accelerating the revolutionary high tide throughout the country. And sixthly, one will also understand that the policy which merely calls for roving guerrilla actions cannot accomplish the task of accelerating this nation-wide revolutionary high tide, while the kind of policy adopted by Chu Teh and Mao Tse-tung and also by Fang Chih-min [1] is undoubtedly correct--that is, the policy of establishing base areas; of systematically setting up political power; of deepening the agrarian revolution; of expanding the people's armed forces by a comprehensive process of building up first the township Red Guards, then the district Red Guards, then the county Red Guards, then the local Red Army troops, all the way up to the regular Red Army troops; of spreading political power by advancing in a series of waves; etc., etc. Only thus is it possible to build the confidence of the revolutionary masses throughout the country, as the Soviet Union has built it throughout the world. Only thus is it possible to create tremendous difficulties for the reactionary ruling classes, shake their foundations and hasten their internal disintegration. Only thus is it really possible to create a Red Army which will become the chief weapon for the great revolution of the future. In short, only thus is it possible to hasten the revolutionary high tide.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Report by the CARC delegation to Nepal attending the 18th Conference of All Nepal National Independent Students Union (Revolutionary)
Party of the Committees to Support Resistance – for Communism (CARC) - Italy
Via Tanaro, 7 - 20128 Milano - Tel/Fax 02.26306454
e-mail: resistenza@carc.it – website: www.carc.it
National Direction - International Relations Department
Tel. +39 0226306454 - e-mail: carc.ri@libero.it
04/01/2011
Report from Nepal[1]
Kathmandu, 19th December 19, 2010 - A delegation of the CARC Party was invited here in Kathmandu to join the 18th Conference of All Nepal National Independent Students’ Union (Revolutionary) (ANNISU(r)), the most strong student organization in the country, collecting hundreds of thousands of revolutionary students and which is linked to Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) Unified (CPN(m)U).
There were present at the conference the representatives of revolutionary student movements in Punjab and Tamil Nadu (India), of Bangladesh, Bhutan, the Philippines, Norway, Australia, Greece. There were delegates of the Marxist Leninist Communist Party of Turkey and North Kurdistan and from Basic, a revolutionary and progressive magazine in Canada. The delegations remained until 18th December, with the exception of the delegation of Punjab, returned home because of the sudden illness that has killed one of its components.
The Conference showed that the revolutionary movement in Nepal can count on the youth of the country to defend and make advance the revolution. The large support by young people to the revolution and to the CPN(m)U that guides it shows that the Party has so far followed the just line. The ability of a communist party to collect the support of the young people of the popular masses is a sign of its vitality and of the rightness of its own line.
Is the CPN(m)U continuing to follow the just line? Given the importance this party and the revolution in Nepal have in the international communist movement there are many people who ask it. Many think that the CPN(m)U is in a stalemate. Some think that the road taken with the interruption of the armed struggle in 2006 was wrong, even if it led to great popular movement of April 2006, to the subsequent fall of the bloody king and to the end of the monarchy, to the victory of the Maoists who won 40% of seats in the Constituent Assembly. The present stalemate, according to these critics, would confirm their reasons.
In fact, we can speak of stalemate only in the sense that the Maoists and the reactionaries are facing each other so that for a long time no one of them has been able to advance, and the political activity in the country is essentially blocked. We cannot speak of stalemate for the Maoist party, which is developing a two lines struggle at higher and higher levels. The latest developments before the Conference of ANNISU(r) have occurred in the expanded Central Committee meeting that was attended by 6,000 party members in Kathmandu in late November and early December. After the meeting, the unity has not been reached, and indeed three documents were approved, one of the Chairman Prachanda, the others of two vice presidents, Kiran and Battharai.
In the face of criticism and doubts, some of most important leaders of UCPN-M (Krishna Bahadur Mahara, Basanta, Dharmentra Bastala, of the International Department, Ananta, of the Standing Committee, the vice president Prakesh, Rashmi, president of the Youth Communist League) gave the same explanation of the tactics adopted, indicating that the party is not divided on key issues, so as some revolutionary forces fear and as the reactionary forces hope. As still a part of the masses is convinced that the change can be achieved through a peaceful process, the tactic is to bring to exhaust all the possibilities in this sense, practicing all the ways of peaceful mobilization that the masses suggest and follow, showing in practice that "the political power grows from the barrel of a gun", that only revolution can bring progress in the country, freeing it from the chains of feudalism and oppression.
The stalemate between revolutionary and reactionary forces cannot be maintained forever, and indeed must be unlocked in the coming months. Above all, the two lines struggle in the party could not go on indefinitely, putting the party in terms of not being able to intervene timely when, thanks to its action, situation is ripe for a revolutionary passage.
On 17th December there was a meeting of the Party Central Committee that some Politburo leaders have described as very important, marking a qualitative leap in the history of the country as was the passage in 2006, from armed struggle to the struggle with peaceful means. The meeting concluded approving a single document, Battharai’s line was in the minority, Prachanda and Kiran converged and were majority. Their line plans the development of the revolutionary process with all the means that will be needed to move towards the establishment of the Federal People's Republic in Nepal and to face the conspiracies and plots that Nepalese reactionaries are weaving supported and pushed by the Indian government.
In this 17th December, then, it has been done an important step, a leap in quality in the process of construction of the revolution that the Nepalese Maoists demonstrated to be able to lead, as they say, with science and art. We are pleased to have witnessed it and we will do our best to understand its importance, for make it known by the international communist movement, and to make the masses of our country know that Communism is being reborn in the world like is being reborn here in Nepal .
[1] Published on “Resistenza”, January 2011 (http://www.carc.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1000:nepal-la-rivoluzione-avanza&catid=6:resistenza-del-mese&Itemid=11).
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Marxism Leninism Maoism - Basic Course
MARXISM-LENINISM-MAOISM, BASIC COURSE.
CONTENTS
1. Introduction
2. What is Marxism-Leninism Maoism
3. Socio-economic Conditions Leading to
the Birth of Marxism
4. Early Life of Marx and Engels
Until They Became Marxists
5. The Three Sources of Marxism
6. The Basic Foundations of Marxist Philosophy – Dialectical and Historical Materialism
7. Struggle Against Utopian Socialism and the Establishment of Scientific Socialism
8. Marxist Political Economy
9. Marxism Fuses Its Links with the Working Class
10. The Lessons of the Paris Commune
11. Spread of Marxism and Rise of Opportunism
12. Marxism in Russia – Early Life of Lenin
13. Lenin and the Proletarian Party of a New Type
14. Russian Bourgeois Revolution of 1905 – Development of Proletarian Tactics
15. World War I – Opportunism v/s Revolutionary Tactics
16. Lenin’s Analysis of Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism
17. The Great October Socialist Revolution
18. The Formation of the Third International
19. The National and Colonial Question
20. Early Life and Revolutionary Contributions of Stalin upto the 1917 Revolution
21. Socialist Construction – the Russian Experience
22. Fight against Trotskyism and Other Opportunist Trends
23. Tactics During World War II
24. Mao’s Early Years
25. Mao’s Fight Against Right and ‘Left’ Lines and Victory of the Chinese Revolution00
26. The Path of Revolution for the Colonies and Semi-Colonies
27. Mao on Philosophy
28. Mao on The Party
29. Socialist Construction – The Chinese Experience
30. The Great Debate – Mao’s Fight Against Kruschev’s Modern Revisionism
31. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution
32. After The Death of Mao
INTRODUCTION
Most of us revolutionary activists are ‘practical’ people. We feel, “Why bother about ideology, and theory, and such other things, … that is for the scholars and ‘intellectuals’, … the most important thing is to get on with the job”. The lower level activists and members feel that it is sufficient that the CC and the higher committees do study and provide guidance; and often, many members in the higher committees also feel that other work is too pressing to ‘allow’ much time for theory.
On the other hand, there are a few others who feel it is necessary to know every work of the Great Teachers in order to work ‘properly’. They spend a large amount of time in trying to read everything. They also have a tendency to treat everything they read as dogma.
It is necessary to avoid both these attitudes in our study.
All comrades should give sufficient time and attention to study in order to understand the essence of our ideology — Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung Thought. Rather than knowing by heart a large number of books, it is necessary to understand deeply the essential and basic aspects of our guiding ideology.
If we do this and learn to apply it in our day to day work we can greatly improve our practice, both, as individual activists, as well as, of the party as a whole. Very often we understand and analyse the world around us only according to our own limited experiences and therefore arrive at wrong conclusions.
A proper understanding of MLM Thought can help us overcome such errors. At other times a superficial understanding can lead to going by only the letter of certain party decisions and stands and not understanding their essence and spirit. Such mistakes can also be avoided by a deeper grasp of MLM Thought. By our study of MLM Thought, we learn from the positive and negative experiences of World Revolution; we learn to absorb the good in it, and we learn to differentiate between the good and the bad in our own practice. We thus learn to recognise, criticise, and fight all types of opportunism. In short, MLM Thought is a must to mould our practice in the light of theory.
This Basic Course in MLM Thought is intended to present to activists an understanding of the principal aspects of our ideology. Our ideology is, first and foremost, a ‘practical’ theory, meant to be implemented and put into practice. The theory itself emerged in the course of numerous class struggles. It is therefore essential to understand the concrete material conditions and social practice through which the Great Teachers of the proletariat – Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao – discovered and formulated its basic principles. Thus, this book has been presented by relating the historical process of the growth and development of MLM Thought. The basic concepts have been presented in short by, wherever possible, linking to the socioeconomic conditions, main political events and class struggles that gave birth to them. In order to understand any particular aspect in detail, more particular study would be necessary. This Basic Course however is meant to provide an essential basis for understanding the dynamic process of the development of our ideology and in what historical conditions and circumstances certain stands and theory came into being.
Come; let’s begin our study
CONTENTS
1. Introduction
2. What is Marxism-Leninism Maoism
3. Socio-economic Conditions Leading to
the Birth of Marxism
4. Early Life of Marx and Engels
Until They Became Marxists
5. The Three Sources of Marxism
6. The Basic Foundations of Marxist Philosophy – Dialectical and Historical Materialism
7. Struggle Against Utopian Socialism and the Establishment of Scientific Socialism
8. Marxist Political Economy
9. Marxism Fuses Its Links with the Working Class
10. The Lessons of the Paris Commune
11. Spread of Marxism and Rise of Opportunism
12. Marxism in Russia – Early Life of Lenin
13. Lenin and the Proletarian Party of a New Type
14. Russian Bourgeois Revolution of 1905 – Development of Proletarian Tactics
15. World War I – Opportunism v/s Revolutionary Tactics
16. Lenin’s Analysis of Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism
17. The Great October Socialist Revolution
18. The Formation of the Third International
19. The National and Colonial Question
20. Early Life and Revolutionary Contributions of Stalin upto the 1917 Revolution
21. Socialist Construction – the Russian Experience
22. Fight against Trotskyism and Other Opportunist Trends
23. Tactics During World War II
24. Mao’s Early Years
25. Mao’s Fight Against Right and ‘Left’ Lines and Victory of the Chinese Revolution00
26. The Path of Revolution for the Colonies and Semi-Colonies
27. Mao on Philosophy
28. Mao on The Party
29. Socialist Construction – The Chinese Experience
30. The Great Debate – Mao’s Fight Against Kruschev’s Modern Revisionism
31. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution
32. After The Death of Mao
INTRODUCTION
Most of us revolutionary activists are ‘practical’ people. We feel, “Why bother about ideology, and theory, and such other things, … that is for the scholars and ‘intellectuals’, … the most important thing is to get on with the job”. The lower level activists and members feel that it is sufficient that the CC and the higher committees do study and provide guidance; and often, many members in the higher committees also feel that other work is too pressing to ‘allow’ much time for theory.
On the other hand, there are a few others who feel it is necessary to know every work of the Great Teachers in order to work ‘properly’. They spend a large amount of time in trying to read everything. They also have a tendency to treat everything they read as dogma.
It is necessary to avoid both these attitudes in our study.
All comrades should give sufficient time and attention to study in order to understand the essence of our ideology — Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung Thought. Rather than knowing by heart a large number of books, it is necessary to understand deeply the essential and basic aspects of our guiding ideology.
If we do this and learn to apply it in our day to day work we can greatly improve our practice, both, as individual activists, as well as, of the party as a whole. Very often we understand and analyse the world around us only according to our own limited experiences and therefore arrive at wrong conclusions.
A proper understanding of MLM Thought can help us overcome such errors. At other times a superficial understanding can lead to going by only the letter of certain party decisions and stands and not understanding their essence and spirit. Such mistakes can also be avoided by a deeper grasp of MLM Thought. By our study of MLM Thought, we learn from the positive and negative experiences of World Revolution; we learn to absorb the good in it, and we learn to differentiate between the good and the bad in our own practice. We thus learn to recognise, criticise, and fight all types of opportunism. In short, MLM Thought is a must to mould our practice in the light of theory.
This Basic Course in MLM Thought is intended to present to activists an understanding of the principal aspects of our ideology. Our ideology is, first and foremost, a ‘practical’ theory, meant to be implemented and put into practice. The theory itself emerged in the course of numerous class struggles. It is therefore essential to understand the concrete material conditions and social practice through which the Great Teachers of the proletariat – Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao – discovered and formulated its basic principles. Thus, this book has been presented by relating the historical process of the growth and development of MLM Thought. The basic concepts have been presented in short by, wherever possible, linking to the socioeconomic conditions, main political events and class struggles that gave birth to them. In order to understand any particular aspect in detail, more particular study would be necessary. This Basic Course however is meant to provide an essential basis for understanding the dynamic process of the development of our ideology and in what historical conditions and circumstances certain stands and theory came into being.
Come; let’s begin our study
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
A Call for the resignation of Aaron Porter has President of the National Union of Students
A model motion drawn up by the National Union Of Students (NUS) Executive Committee Members will be sent to universities across the country.The document claims Mr Porter should be stripped of his position because he has failed to back the student protests.
It says:
"We the undersigned believe that Aaron Porter should be removed as NUS National President as he is unable to lead the student movement.
"His failure to call or even back another National Demonstration, his refusal to back up his promises of support for occupations, his weak stance on police brutality and his collusion with the Government in identifying cuts means he has lost the confidence of the movement.
"We call on activists to bring motions to their Student Unions calling for his removal and an Extraordinary Conference to do so."
Sean Rillo Raczka, Birkbeck University student union chair who wrote the motion told Sky News there is a strong feeling among activists that the president must go.
He said: "Aaron Porter has not been leading the student movement.
"We have seen people on the streets day after day protesting, but he has done nothing."
An NUS spokesman said: "The NUS National Executive Committee is a 50 member strong elected body so there are bound to be disagreements."
He added: "Aaron Porter is not available for comment on this as he is busy working on other aspects of the campaign."
Aaron Porter has been criticised for his handling of the student protests
SOAS student union has already passed a vote of no confidence motion against Mr Porter in a meeting last Friday.
At least 25 student unions have to pass a motion before a vote of no confidence can be considered.
Source: Sky News
Monday, December 6, 2010
From Monument to Movement - Nickglais Appeal to Students
In this poster Lu Xun calls for the destruction of Confucian mindset
It is very clear that our enemies have seen something new in the current student movement against the fees and cuts but have we ?
To often the Left in Britain is concerned with retaining its monuments rather than developing a movement.
The ritual demonstration from A-B is dead but so is the mechanical politics that led there.
When the bourgeoisie fails to incorporate or hi- jack a protest movement it calls on its labour lieutenants of capital to take us down the old social democratic road of the re-election of a Labour Government - old Labour of course !. This is precisely the mechanical dead end that Wedgewood Benn would take has down - but he is not alone a ragbag of trotskyists and revisionists follow the same well trodden path.
I praise the new youthful vigour of the teenage school students on the demonstrations not because I am bowing to spontaneity but praising creativity - the seeking out of new paths to the future rather than back to the old routine of failure so epitomised by the old "wise" Wedgewood Benn founding father of the Coalition of Resistance.
We need to address the question of how we keep the path to a better future open and not become a monument to the past rather than a movement for the future.
This starts with a recognition of what is new and the politics of developing the new.
This is the stage of learning from the masses and unleashing their creativity to prevent the return of the Social Democratic trap - then the movement will flow - smash the monuments build a movement.
Toward a Mass Line for Britain.
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Clare Solomon in debate on Student Demonstration of 10th November 2010
Clare Solomon, president of University of London Union (ULU), argues for mass protest and direct action on last night's BBC Newsnight, following yesterday's anti-cuts and anti-fees demonstration. Also appearing: Jeremy Paxman, Lib Dem deputy leader Simon Hughes, NUS President Aaron Porter
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Democracy and Class Struggle Television
Watch live streaming video from democracyandclassstruggle at livestream.com
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Spring Thunder Anew: Neo-Robber Baron Capitalism vs. ‘New Democracy’ in India
The white man called you Bhagat Singh that day,
The black man calls you Naxalite today.
But everyone will call you the morning star tomorrow.
—Excerpt from the Telugu poem,
‘Final Journey: First Victory’ by Sri Sri*
It has been a long and tortuous route. Forty-three years ago, a group of Maoist revolutionaries conceived of and embarked upon a revolutionary road that still inspires their political descendants, alarms the dominant classes, and provokes slander and denigration on the part of the establishment left, post-modernists and well-funded NGO bosses. This is the path of protracted people’s war (PPW). It relies on an alliance of the Indian proletariat with the poor and landless peasantry and the semi-proletariat to establish ‘base areas’ in the countryside, run them democratically as miniature, self-reliant states, carry out ‘land to the tiller’ and other social policies there, thereby building a political mass base to finally encircle and ‘capture’ the cities.
The aim is to usher in ‘new democracy’, a transitional stage in which capitalism is moulded to render it more compatible with democracy, thereby aiding the transition to socialism, all under the leadership of a ‘Marxist-Leninist-Maoist party’. One would like to say, ‘It’s been a long time coming’, but even today, the Maoist movement in India is nowhere near its ‘new democratic’ goal—the dawn has been ever elusive. Yet, the dominant classes want it throttled, and the Indian state has recently launched Operation Green Hunt—phase-2 of its present counter-insurgency strategy—to accomplish its task. What has prompted this move?
Overall, can we make any sense of what is going on? We will rely on ‘stylized facts’ derived from the empirical evidence we have at hand, concentrating thereby on the broad tendencies (ignoring individual detail) to throw light on the state’s strategy, the strategy and tactics of the Maoists, their successes and failures, and the interplay of continuity with change, focussing on their resistance to (what we characterize as) neo-robber baron capitalism. We argue that Operation Green Hunt stems from the fact that the movement now threatens neo-robber baron capitalism in its areas of influence—albeit, exaggerated by the dominant classes as so-called ‘Red Corridor’—and the Indian state is therefore bent on asphyxiating it.
State’s Master Plan: Inherent Limits
Low intensity conflict or—if one were to speak plainly—terrorism with politics in command of the repressive apparatus, has been the state’s modus operandi of dealing with the Maoist movement. Complementing this, and taking into account aspects of the concrete in the close nexus of wealth and power at the local level, the state supports, sponsors, and organizes a network of informers and combatants among the civilian population as part of its counter-insurgency strategy. Nevertheless, the stick and the carrot go together. The Indian state, though an instrument of the dominant classes—the big bourgeoisie, foreign capital, the landlords, a section of the rich peasants, and the controllers of the government machinery—is, nevertheless, an arena of class struggle.
Over the period since 1967, laws and policies setting limits to the exercise of the power of the dominant classes have been won largely due to the very struggles led by the Maoists and other progressive forces. The dominant classes, of course, hope that the new rules and regulations and proposed actions will drastically diminish the support base of the Maoist movement. However, those very classes have in turn devised more sophisticated ways of controlling that base, actual and potential. For the very high rate of exploitation, the rampant pillage of Mother Nature, and the devious expropriation of social property that are characteristic of neo-robber baron capitalism have to go on which, in turn, put severe limits on democratic functioning, thereby keeping alive the very raison d’être of the Maoist movement.
Maoists’ Strategy: Unable to Establish “Base Areas”
How have the Maoists built and sustained the movement led by them, when their enemy, the Indian state, especially its repressive apparatus, is so powerful and the Communist Party of India (Maoist) [CPI (Maoist)], the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA), and the agrarian revolutionary movement are still weak? Uneven development, characteristic of capitalism, provides enough room for manoeuvre in the face of many a paramilitary offensive. The Dandakaranya region—the forest area situated in the border and adjoining tribal districts of the states of Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and Orissa—is where the PLGA has established guerrilla zones. These are tracts where the agrarian revolutionary movement is strong, but where the party and its mass organizations are in power only as long as the guerrillas have the upper hand over the state’s forces. Power reverts to the Indian state when they are forced to retreat.
The extensive area of Dandakaranya and beyond to some other parts of the four states just mentioned, and further on to parts of Bihar, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal are being built into a contiguous area of Maoist influence. Of course, the hilly regions with dense forest cover provide the most conducive terrain for the PLGA, followed by backward plain and semi-forest areas with some hilly terrain.
In spreading the movement, when an area is selected, a class analysis is undertaken, the concrete forms of exploitation and oppression are understood, the friends and the enemies of the movement are clearly identified, and the issues to be taken up which constitute the basis of mass mobilization, are decided. For instance, in a predominantly tribal area, the economic basis of mobilization is located within both backward agriculture and forestry. When the erstwhile CPI (Marxist-Leninist) (People’s War) [CPI(ML)(PW)], under the auspices of the Adivasi Kisan Mazdoor Sanghatan (AKMS), began organizing the tribal poor in the then Bastar district of Madhya Pradesh in the early 1980s, the ‘enemies’ were the oppressive forest, revenue and police department officials, and contractors, traders and moneylenders. Where considerable inequality in the distribution of cultivable land prevailed, landlords were also part of the adversaries.
The AKMS took up the question of pattas (instruments of ownership rights) on forestland under cultivation and on cultivable land in forest villages. Where landlords were in charge, the appropriation and distribution of land and grain were on the agenda. As the young, local, militant leaders in the AKMS-organized sanghams gained legitimacy and eventually displaced the village mukhias and other traditional village headmen, they increasingly influenced the decision-making process on local issues, and eventually, the jan adalats (people’s courts), set up by them, settled disputes. The AKMS came to exercise control over the collection and sale of minor produce (for instance, tendu patta) in favour of the poor.
Expectedly, all this exacerbated the contradictions vis-a-vis the landed, the traders, the contractors, and the corrupt forest and revenue department officials, and the organized violence of the oppressors and the state was unleashed against the Maoists (The vigilante force, Salwa Judum, in Dantewara district of Chhattisgarh, formed in May-June 2005, is not without precedent).
Of course, the Maoists anticipate and plan for ‘strategic defence’—the decision to enter an area factors in the terrain with which they familiarize themselves. People’s militia at the village-level and local and special guerrilla squads are organized from the very commencement of their work, and later, upon coordination with other guerrilla zones, platoons and companies are formed, leading to a full-fledged PLGA. In situations marked by a close nexus between political and economic power, which is invariably the case in India’s backward areas, the chances of violent confrontation are high. Indeed, over time, the contradictions with the exploiters and oppressors, already sharp in these areas of backward agriculture and forestry, inevitably get exacerbated manifold with the organization of the oppressed by the Maoists, and when the state sends in its paramilitary forces, a guerrilla war ensues.
The problem, from the Maoist perspective of progress in the PPW, is that they have not been able to turn any of the guerrilla zones into base areas. The latter are areas where the Maoists win the political (and military) struggle and establish a miniature state, where self-reliant economic development on the basis of ‘land to the tiller’, and the promotion of mutual aid and cooperation can, relatively uninterruptedly, be undertaken. It is impossible to advance the ongoing guerrilla war or the further spread of guerrilla zones without the establishment of base areas.
In the plains areas—which are less suitable for guerrilla warfare and the establishment of guerrilla zones—the higher guerrilla units have been unable to continue their operations and gradually have had to move to the forest and hilly areas. Some of the existing guerrilla zones are potential candidates for transformation into base areas, but ‘the enemy’ has to be defeated there and the organs of political power have to then be established, a formidable task in the face of severe repression.
Of course, the present Operation Green Hunt, from the perspective of the Indian state, is intended to turn existing guerrilla zones back into ‘White Areas’ where the writ of a relatively stable, reactionary government runs. And, even if the Maoists were to turn one of the guerrilla zones into a base area, there is no guarantee that it will remain one, i.e., it can revert back to a guerrilla zone. From the Maoist point of view, if they create and sustain a few base areas, the PPW will be able to sustain itself over a long period; in the absence of base areas, the Maoist guerrilla army will not last long or grow—in guerrilla parlance, the base areas are its essential ‘rear’.
There is another aspect of the imperative to establish base areas—the sustenance of mass support. Difficult as it surely is, it is imperative for the CPI (Maoist) and its mass organizations to undertake economic development in the midst of the revolution, for the workers, the poor and landless peasants, and the semi-proletariat cannot be expected to put up with their abysmal living conditions over decades. But this can only take place on a relatively stable basis with the establishment of base areas, which is eluding the Maoists, and the longer this adverse situation prevails the greater the chances of a withering away of the movement’s support base. However, I must mention that within the guerrilla zones, the Maoists have carved out their own domains in particular stretches, which they call guerrilla bases. The latter serve as a sort of ‘rear’, and, if one were inclined to look through rose-coloured spectacles, may be the embryos of future base areas.
The Movement: Evolution and Growth
The present intense phase of the Maoist movement began with the unity of the CPI(ML)(PW) and the Maoist Communist Centre of India (MCCI)—the two main Maoist parties practising armed struggle—to form the CPI (Maoist) in September 2004. The movement’s regeneration has occurred in the context of neo-liberal globalization with, among other things, a spurt in the conversion of agricultural lands into real estate, the setting up of special economic zones, the takeover of the commons, and encroachment of the natural resource base. All these have led to mass distress following the loss of non-market access to the means of subsistence and dispossession through displacement, both essentially without any legal redress for the victims. However, change must not be divorced from its interplay with continuity.
Beginning in May 1967, armed communist revolutionaries led a poor-tribal peasant uprising in Naxalbari that was crushed by the repressive apparatus of the state within a few months, but the movement spread, and 43 years later, the ‘people’s war’ still goes on. In the first phase of the movement, from the late 1960s to the Emergency in the mid-1970s, the revolutionaries organized the poor and landless peasants based on armed guerrilla actions centred on the ‘adventurist’ line of annihilation of class enemies.
But internal differences over strategy and tactics soon led to the fragmentation and debilitation of the original party, the CPI(ML), and the brutal counter-insurgency campaign of the state crushed the movement, the final blow coming with the declaration of Emergency in 1975. What was, however, significant and lasting, although there are no traces of the movement where it all began, was the total rejection by the revolutionary left of the cultural, moral and political values that the establishment left had imbibed, since 1951, from the dominant classes.
With the revival of the movement in the post-Emergency period, all the major factions of the CPI(ML) seemed to have adopted, to a lesser or greater extent, the line of the Andhra Pradesh Revolutionary Communist Committee—that of building mass movements backed by armed squads to defend the gains made by the former. And, paradoxically, in this phase (1977-1990s) it was the CPI(ML)(PW)—although it focused on the building of a people’s army and guerrilla zones in the countryside—that organized legal and open activities through the Rythu Cooly Sangham, as also of students, youth, intellectuals and cultural workers. However, the crushing of these by the state provoked a tendency to assign greater priority to the building of a people’s army and guerrilla zones in the countryside.
Elsewhere, mainly in Bihar, a prominent part of the movement, led by the CPI(ML) (Liberation), made a significant departure from the very core of the basic path that had been conceived by the original CPI(ML). The shift was towards mass movements sans armed struggle, even conceiving of a confederation of mainstream left parties. This, however, landed the party in an identity crisis for the new direction heralded a return to theoretical proximity vis-a-vis the CPI (Marxist), against which the MLs had rebelled in 1967.
Sadly, the change of strategy took the CPI(ML) (Liberation) towards parliamentarianism, which seems to have affected the further development of the party’s mass movements. In any case, it seems to have lost a large section of its mass base with the ‘Mandalization’ and ‘Kashiramization’ of the political agendas of the ‘bourgeois’ parties. The return to armed struggle has been ruled out, at least for the present, given the CPI(ML) (Liberation)’s dismissal of that trend of the movement as ‘anarcho-militarist’.
However, even as we comment on the party thus, we need to add that the unfolding of its strategy of new democratic revolution—via mass movements sans armed struggle—according to its inner logic has encountered severe impediments from the dominant classes. Just like in the case of the CPI(ML)(PW) and its ‘legal’ mass movements of the 1980s, the CPI(ML) (Liberation) could never have been allowed, unhindered by the dominant classes, a free run on its political programme.
Maoist-led Resistance (2004 onwards)
The reverberating slogan of the CPI(ML)(PW) and the MCCI, ‘Naxalbari—ek hi rasta’, seems to have won the day, at least for the foreseeable future, more so after the two parties united to constitute the CPI (Maoist) in September 2004. After the demise of the Soviet Union and the completion of the ‘great leap backward’ to capitalism in China, capitalism on a world scale has taken its gloves off—it has little qualms in resorting to brutal forms of expropriation in the process of accumulation, akin in some ways to what it did at its birth. Accompanying this is the class discrimination inherent in the practice of law where peasants, forced off their lands and denied access to the commons, have virtually no recourse to justice, which reminds me of this 15th century anonymous English ‘fact of the matter’ verse:
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals a goose from off the common,
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from the goose.
Resistance seemed the only way out—in such circumstances, ‘to rebel is justified.’
The Dandakaranya region, rich in natural resources—land, water, forests and minerals—has become one of the main arenas for expropriation of social property by the Indian big bourgeoisie and foreign capital, mediated by the state and union governments. Planned mining and industrial projects, and development of eco-tourist resorts have spurred the construction of highways, roads, railways, hydro-electricity, and an underground pipeline (taking a slurry of iron ore to Visakhapatnam port), which, taken together, constitute, in the official parlance, ‘development’. The identity of the beneficiaries and the victims of this process of capitalist development tell a lot about the character of India’s dominant classes.
In sharp contrast, the Maoists have initiated, albeit in a small way in some pockets in Dandakaranya—considering that they have managed to set up only guerrilla zones, not base areas—a series of popular activities. These include ‘land to the tiller’, mutual aid and cooperatives, the diffusion of modern knowledge about agriculture, together with the distribution of better seeds gathered from elsewhere, the deployment of voluntary labour in the construction of tanks with canal systems, measures to obtain ‘just’ prices for agricultural commodities and minor forest produce, and so on.
However, in the present adverse circumstances, an alternative pattern of industrialization benefiting the victims of neo-robber-baron capitalism can only be conceived of, not implemented. Meanwhile, adivasi livelihoods based on agriculture and minor forest produce are in jeopardy. The mining and industrial projects, the infrastructural facilities, including hydro-electricity, have led/are leading to mass displacement and environmental damage.
Indeed, the classic peasant question of dispossession via class differentiation in the 20th century is now metamorphosing into dispossession through displacement and environmental degradation. At the macro-level, millions of rural people are being rendered proletarians (in the form of casual and contract labour), hungry, malnutrition-ridden, homeless and landless paupers, forced migrants, threatened autochthonous peoples, lumpenproletariat, and so on. Indeed, those who hold on against all odds as poor and middle peasants are forced to grapple with the non-viability of agriculture in the context of higher input prices and freer trade in agricultural commodities under WTO auspices.
Fundamentally, the ‘people’s war’ (of resistance) is about the path of development—the neo-robber baron capitalism in which the poor are the victims or ‘new democratic’ development in which they are the intended beneficiaries. In Dantewara, Bastar and Bijapur districts in Chhattisgarh, in the context of large-scale acquisition of land by corporations in what is a mineral-rich region, entire villages have been evacuated and villagers forcibly herded into camps, from which those who escape are branded Maoists and hunted down. Indeed, the vigilante group, Salwa Judum (SJ), which organized the evacuation and forced herding ‘was created and encouraged by the [state] government and supported with the fire power and organization of the central forces.’
No, this quote is not from a report of one of our civil liberties and democratic rights’ organizations, but taken from chapter four of a 2009 draft report authored by Sub-Group IV of the Committee on State Agrarian Relations and Unfinished Task of Land Reforms, set up by the Ministry of Rural Development, New Delhi. Without mincing words, it refers to ‘the biggest grab of tribal land after Columbus’ in the making as being initially ‘scripted by Tata Steel and Essar Steel who want seven villages or thereabouts each to mine the richest lode of iron ore available in India.’
Operation Green Hunt
However, the land-grab operation, after nearly five years of violent attacks, loot, destruction, intimidation, rape, and killing on an unprecedented scale, and the forcible mobilization of the displaced into SJ ranks, has not succeeded, thanks to concerted resistance by the people and the Maoist guerrillas. However, the very failure has prompted a move to phase-2 of the state’s counter-insurgency strategy. Greater emphasis is now being placed on trained commandos (instructed in jungle warfare) and a larger contingent of central forces, as part of Operation Green Hunt, wherein an attempt will be made to separate, indeed, isolate the tribal peasants from contact with and influence by the Maoist insurgents by creating ‘fortified villages’ or ‘strategic hamlets’ as the US forces tried to do in Vietnam.
Most likely, Green Hunt would concentrate on select guerrilla zones (it has already been launched in south Dantewara [in Chhattisgarh] and the contiguous Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra), and over a period of two, three or five years (claims made by various representatives at the central and state levels) try to wipe out the PLGA and the party’s mass organizations. (As for the party, there have been some press reports suggesting plots to assassinate its top-50 leaders.) Faced with an offensive of this kind, the Maoist guerrillas will likely extend the arena of the struggle, in turn, even daring to organize in the urban areas, but in the process some of the existing guerrilla zones will likely be converted back to ‘White Areas’. Of course, the effectiveness of protests in India and elsewhere and the resistance offered by the tribal people and the Maoist guerrillas would set the limits to the state’s onslaught.
In the absence of base areas, the movement now seems to be in a difficult situation—the Indian state has made it almost impossible for the CPI (Maoist)’s political-cum-military strategy to unfold in accordance with its inner logic. The movement is, of course, a direct consequence of the tragedy of India ruled by her big bourgeoisie and governed by parties co-opted by that class-fraction. Operation Green Hunt stems from the fact that the movement now threatens the accumulation of capital in its areas of influence, defined more broadly by the dominant classes as the so-called ‘Red Corridor’, and therefore, the Indian state is bent on throttling it.
It seems that sections of monopoly capital—including ArcelorMittal, the Essar Group, Vedanta Resources, Tata Steel, POSCO, Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton, and the Sajjan Jindal Group—have given an ultimatum to the state governments concerned and the Union government that they will dump their proposed mining/industrial/SEZ projects if the local resistance to their business plans are not crippled once-and-for-all. Surely, the wealthy oligopolists and financiers interested have friends in high places in Washington, London, Tokyo, Brussels and/or New Delhi.
Taking Sides
As radical democrats, we need to speak out; as between neo-robber-baron capitalism and ‘new democracy’, one cannot pretend to be neutral. Evoking so-called ‘sandwich theory’ that the ‘innocent adivasis are caught in the crossfire’ between the Maoist guerrillas on the one side and the armed apparatus of the Indian state on the other, thereby morally equating the violence of the oppressed and the oppressors, is to endorse what the Indian state is doing—backing the neo-robber barons to the hilt.
Neo-robber baron capitalism is based on the exploitation—appropriation of part of the product of the labour of others—of human beings, the pillage of nature and the expropriation of social property by any-and-all available means, these in the context of a close nexus between business and politics. As a specific form of monopoly capitalism, business strategy/tactics of the larger enterprises in the more monopolistically structured sectors focus ever more on ways and means—indeed, on any-and-all available ways and means—of ‘snatching’ the surplus from relatively smaller enterprises in the more competitive sectors (the latter will be protected in a ‘new democratic’ regime).
In the neo-liberal milieu of deregulation, all these processes are generating inequality on an unprecedented scale. It is not irrelevant that India has the same number of $ billionaires as Germany, although the latter’s GDP is four times the former’s, and Germany’s per capita GDP converted at market exchange rates to US $ is more than 40 times India’s. And, in 2004-05, 77% of India’s 362 million strong unorganized labour force (which makes up most of India’s total labour force) earned less than Rs 20 per day (44 cents at Rs 45 to the $).
A ‘new democratic’ regime—the Maoist alternative to neo-robber baron capitalism—in the main, will abolish landlordism and implement ‘land to the tiller’ in India’s countryside and safeguard India’s sovereignty, dealing with the imperialist powers on an equal footing. It will also confiscate the property of the imperialists and the big bourgeoisie—those at the apex of wealth, power and privilege—and hence, stymie the anti-democratic opposition to socialism from their representatives and backers. From an ecological point of view, the redistribution of income and wealth—as a result of such a programme—will lead to a more just distribution of carbon footprints within the country, and priority will be assigned to satisfying the reasonable needs of all, in keeping with Maoist ethics.
Of course, ‘new democracy’ in India is nowhere yet on the horizon. Nevertheless, the ruling classes and those who govern on their behalf have realized that what they are up against is not merely a guerrilla army backed by a large section of the people in its areas of operation, but a party with a vision and a plan that does all it can to implement, against all odds, and which if successful, will strip them of their wealth, power and privileges.
Evidently then, there is a lot at stake between neo-robber baron capitalism on the one side and ‘new democracy’ on the other—for the neo-robber barons and their representatives, for the adivasis of Dandakaranya and beyond, indeed, for the Indian people, and, for a better world.
Notes
*↩Thema Book of Naxalite Poetry edited and introduced by Sumanta Banerjee, Calcutta, 1987. Bhagat Singh, an Indian anti-imperialist and socialist revolutionary martyr (shaheed) was hanged on March 23, 1931 at the age of 23. Naxalite is what a Maoist in India is generally called. The name derives from the village of Naxalbari in West Bengal where the Maoist movement in India originated in 1967.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Tale of Rebellion of Lalgarh and Jungalmahal
Tale of Rebellion of Lalgarh and Jungalmahal- Watch more Videos at Vodpod.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
