On the Student Movement in the United States

The following is the contribution to the 18th International Communist Seminar by Josh Sykes, Freedom Road Socialist Organization

“The youth – the current situation of the youth, the work of the communists among the youth, and the incorporation of new generations in the communist parties”

Brussels, 15-17 May 2009

Freedom Road Socialist Organization has a rich history of work among youth and students. Many of the veteran cadres of our organization were active with the youth of the Black Panther Party, Brown Berets and the Students for a Democratic Society of the 1960s, the Revolutionary Student Brigades in the 1970s, or the Progressive Student Network in the 1980s. Others worked on campuses to organize against South African Apartheid, in the historic Jesse Jackson campaign, or in solidarity with the Central American revolutionary movements. Many also organized Asian American and Pilipino (1) students, or worked in mostly oppressed nationality student formations like the Student Liberation Action Movement (SLAM) in New York. Today, students and youth in Freedom Road continue to do mass student organizing, mainly in the new Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) formed in 2006.


Why should Marxist-Leninists do work among students?

Our line on student work has its roots in the New Communist Movement. Much has changed since then, and we as an organization have learned a lot and gained a lot of experience, but the basic principles remain. As we see it, communists should work among students for three main reasons: 1) in and of themselves, the student movement can strike blows against the U.S. ruling class, 2) the activity of the student movement can spread advanced ideas to society as a whole, and 3) advanced students can take up Marxism-Leninism and join the struggles of the working class.

Furthermore, in our student work FRSO upholds the Mass Line, the view that the masses of the people are the makers of history, and that people learn primarily through experience in cycles of practice-theory-practice. This means that we work in mass organizations, and follow the principle of “from the masses, to the masses,” in work to raise people’s consciousness and understanding.(2) We also understand clearly that, as Mao Zedong said, “The young people are the most active and vital force in society. They are the most eager to learn and the least conservative in their thinking.”(3)

Historical development of the student movement in the U.S.

The student movement in the United States has some characteristics that result from its particular historical development in a large imperialist country. First, since the final turn towards revisionism (Marxism in words and opportunism in deeds) by the Communist Party USA in the mid-1950s, there is no genuine Marxist-Leninist Communist Party in the United States.(4)

But this leadership vacuum was soon filled by revolutionary minded students and youth, who were won to Marxism-Leninism and began a process of building Marxist-Leninist organizations and integrating with workers and oppressed nationalities. Just as many members of the Chinese Communist Party emerged out of the May 4th Movement,(5) so did many members of the New Communist Movement emerge from the struggles of students and youth.

However these new Marxist-Leninist organizations did commit both “left” and right errors. The liquidation or retreat into sects by the largest New Communist organization and the failure to build a new Communist Party resulted in many setbacks in the 1980s and 1990s. Today’s progressive and revolutionary forces are small and scattered as a result. The same goes for the student movement as whole.

There are no powerful Red youth groups, though a plethora of small, Trotskyite youth formations exist. Their practice follows from their theory, however, and so the Trotskyite student formations tend to be sectarian and commandist in their style of work and approach to the masses. Most student activists work in mass organizations alongside anarchists, social democrats, and other radicals. Two of the largest and most significant mass formations today are the Students for a Democratic Society and the Iraq Veterans Against the War.(6)

Students for a Democratic Society

The FRSO currently does most of its student work in a multi-issue, mass student organization, the Students for a Democratic Society. SDS, though majority white, is multinational such that most chapters reflect the composition of the campuses on which they exist. Furthermore, SDS is one of the largest and most active student organizations in the country, with well over a hundred active chapters all over the U.S.

Founded as a national organization in 2006 by students representing a variety of Leftist ideologies, from Marxists to anarchists and radical social-democrats, today’s SDS is named after one of the outstanding student organizations of the 1960s, out of which much of the New Communist Movement of the 1970s was born. The SDS of the 1960s organized in solidarity with working class and oppressed nationality struggles and against the Vietnam war. The new SDS stands in that same tradition.

Since its founding, most of SDS’s work has been in the anti-war movement. SDS has also done important solidarity work with African Americans struggling against national oppression. SDS has worked in the immigrant rights movement, protesting fascist, anti-immigrant speakers on campuses and leading some walkouts for immigrant rights. Revolutionaries in SDS work to build coalitions with oppressed nationality students and youth. SDS also organizes for women’s liberation and for the democratic rights of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) people.

Likewise, SDS also organizes solidarity with working class struggles. When workers at Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago occupied their factory in December 2008, SDSers from throughout the Midwest went to the factory to show support.

Anti-imperialism and the anti-war movement

Freedom Road Socialist Organization members in the student movement work to oppose imperialist war and occupation. Since 2003, most of FRSO’s anti-war organizing has been in opposition to the U.S. war against the people of Iraq, with the main goal of keeping the demand for “troops out now” at the forefront of the movement. Secondarily, we have sought to raise an anti-imperialist pole in the movement (including building support for the Iraqi resistance among the advanced) and to raise the social costs of the war, raising the level of militancy.(7) As the FRSO Student Commission said in a statement in September 2008, highlighting some of our work in SDS,

Members of FRSO have been working in SDS since the first National Convention in Chicago back in 2006. What have we been doing? We have organized militant local chapters. We organized against the war in Iraq, for immigrants’ rights, labor solidarity, in defense of the Jena Six, and more. We are all involved in a lot of local work, and while doing that, we worked hard to build national campaigns. In 2007 and 2008 members of Freedom Road were in the lead of SDS’s work around opposition to the 4th and 5th anniversaries of the U.S. war against Iraq. This led to actions on more than 80 campuses in 2007 and on 90 campuses in 2008, many of which were not associated with SDS before. Through this and other work we’ve brought many new activists and student groups to radical politics and into SDS. We helped organize student contingents in major national marches and we also helped to organize the 2007 and 2008 National Conventions in Detroit and Maryland, and the 2008 SDS Action Camp in Asheville.(8)

Like other social movement in U.S. society, the ebb and flow of the student movement is determined by objective conditions. The election of President Obama, and the developing economic crisis had an overall negative impact on student anti-war organizing, releasing some built up pressure and diverting the attention of some of the intermediate. In our analysis, however, the principle factor in the declining role of the anti-war movement among students and in society as a whole has been due to the relatively lower level of activity of the armed Iraqi national resistance. Simply put, less fighting on the ground in Iraq means less struggle here in the U.S.

As the criminal U.S./Israeli attacks on the Palestinian people in Gaza began last year, students on campuses around the United States held actions in support of the Palestinian people’s struggle and to demand an end to U.S. aid to Israel. Students on campus have played a particularly important role in the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement, by fighting to have their colleges and universities divest from Israel.

Likewise, anti-imperialist students have played a big role in solidarity with Colombian workers, who suffer from brutal exploitation under the U.S.’s Plan Colombia. Colombian Trade Unionists are murdered in the hundreds by death squads funded by U.S. corporations like Coca-Cola, Drummond Coal, and Chiquita Banana. Students have long been in the forefront of the campaign to get Killer Coke off of campuses, and tour

Colombian workers around the country to speak about U.S. military intervention in their country. Understanding this as a question of self-determination, students doing Colombia solidarity work oppose Plan Colombia and “Free Trade”. Students also make up an important part of the annual protests to shut down the School of the Americas, a “counter-insurgency” and death squad training school in the state of Georgia.

Students in SDS have also worked hard on the campaign to free Ricardo Palmera, a leading negotiator of the FARC-EP, now a political prisoner of the U.S. empire as the result of neo-colonial extradition policy.

As public opinion becomes more and more opposed to the war in Afghanistan, the student movement will respond by leading more actions against this war. Already students are leading educational events and protests exposing the ruling class’s interests in subjugating the Afghani people and in propping up a criminal, puppet government there.

The student movement and oppressed nationalities

Throughout the 20th century, the student movement has been and remains today largely divided on national lines. This is the result of continuing oppression of whole nations of people within the United States, including in particular the history of the segregation of the U.S. educational system. Until the historic African American liberation struggles of the 1950s and 1960s, university campuses were virtually all white. As a result of the struggle of African Americans along with Chicanos, Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans, the doors to colleges and universities were opened and programs such as Ethnic Studies began to teach about the history of racism and national oppression in the United States. One example was the united front of oppressed nationality students of the Third World Liberation Front, which led the historic San Francisco State Strike in 1968 and 1969.

As a result of this history, African American, Chicano, Latino, Asian, Native American and other oppressed nationality students tended towards organizing themselves into nationally specific formations.(9) These organizations today include the Black Student Unions (BSUs), MEChAs (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán – Chicano Student Movement of Aztlán), and Asian Student Unions. These organizations began as militant political organizations in the 1960s and 1970s, although most have more recently become mainly social, cultural, and service oriented.

There are a significant amount of oppressed nationality struggles in the U.S. right now, particularly in the immigrant rights movement (which is connected to the Chicano national question in the Southwest). Similarly, in the Black Belt South, where African Americans make up an oppressed nation, there has been significant motion around the case of the Jena Six and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In all of these cases, the majority white sections of the student movement have done some coalition building work and organized to fight back against racism and national oppression.

Students and the economic crisis

Since the further development of the economic crisis, members of Freedom Road have begun to look more closely at ways to fight back against budget cuts and tuition hikes on campuses. As working and poor people lead the fight-back, demanding that the rich pay for their crisis, likewise students are demanding that budgets not be balanced at the expense of accessible education, raising the slogan that “education is a right!”

There is already spontaneous movement amongst students as a wave of protests against cuts to education sweeps the country, including the militant student occupations of New School University and New York University. A recent article in Fight Back! Newspaper highlights some of this motion:

Hundreds of students from City University of New York (CUNY) walked out of class on March 5 to protest Governor Paterson’s proposal to cut funding to education. Jackelyn Mariano, a protester from Hunter College said, “CUNY is made up of working-class students and students of color who really can’t afford to go anywhere else. It was supposed to be free when it opened up, and tuition has been increasing ever since” (Washington Square News, 3/6/09). Hundreds of students from New York University also participated in the rally.

In Arizona, responding to over $300 million in cuts to higher education for 2009, over 2000 students from universities across the state marched on Phoenix in early February. On March 18, over 1000 students gathered in Jacksonville, Florida, to protest hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts to the state’s education system. And in Sacramento, California, thousands of teachers and students from across the state descended on the capital last week to protest massive layoffs and cuts to education.

At Middle Tennessee State University, the university’s steering committee proposed eliminating 44 majors, dissolving some departments, closing the women’s center and day care center, laying off 70 faculty and outsourcing custodial services. The Coalition to Save Our Schools at Middle Tennessee State University has been leading a huge effort with repeated demonstrations of hundreds of students to stop the cuts, including a ‘funeral for higher education’ on Feb. 9 that coincided with the governor’s state of the state address.

In some instances, even student government associations are organizing protests, like at Binghamton University in New York, where over 50 students protested tuition hikes and held signs last week that said, “I chose $UNY ‘cuz it used to be CHEAP” and “Public education must be affordable” (Press Connects, 3/25/09). And at Penn State University in February, the student government organized hundreds of students to protest the governor’s budget proposal that cut $20.3 million from Penn State’s budget while also excluding the university from the Pennsylvania Tuition Relief Act. This move would block many low-income students, and especially oppressed nationality youth, from access to higher education (The Daily Collegian, 2/10/09). (10)

It is important to note that the struggles for immigrant rights and for national liberation overlap in significant ways with the broader struggle for college access. Working class and oppressed nationality demands need to be at the forefront of the struggles against budget cuts and tuition hikes on campuses. It is the programs that were won through struggle by past generations that will be first cut. As public universities move to increase tuition in the current economic crisis, it is oppressed nationality students who will feel the effects most drastically as the doors to higher education are systematically closed to them.

Conclusion

The central task of Marxist-Leninists in the United States today is to build a new Communist Party on a Marxist-Leninist basis. Without a Party guided by the most advanced revolutionary theory it is impossible for the working class to take power and build socialism, which is so desperately needed. Like so many students before them, we want students who join Freedom Road Socialist Organization to transform themselves and eventually to go into the working class and the masses of the oppressed nationalities to help lead the class struggle. Mao Zedong once asked, “How should we judge whether a youth is a revolutionary? How can we tell? There can be only one criterion, namely, whether or not he is willing to integrate himself with the broad masses of workers and peasants and does so in practice. If he is willing do so and actually does so, he is revolutionary.”(11) This was true when Mao Zedong said it in 1939 and it is true today. While they are in school, students and youth must become anti-imperialists, and take up the struggles of the multinational working class and oppressed nationalities and put those demands in the forefront, working to advance the interests of the people and land blows against the ruling class and their cronies. When their time organizing on campus is up, they must transform themselves, go into the working class and the masses of oppressed nationalities, and take up wholeheartedly the class struggle.

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Josh Sykes is a member of the National Executive Committee and co-chair of the Student Commission of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization

Notes

(1) In the 1960s and 1970s many Filipino student organizations adopted the term “Pilipino” in rejection of colonialism and in solidarity with the growing national democratic movement in the Philippines.

(2) See FRSO’s pamphlet Some Points on the Mass Line. http://www.frso.org/about/docs/frsomassline.htm

(3) Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong, p. 290

(4) For more discussion of this, see Harry Haywood, Black Bolshevik: Autobiography of an Afro-American Communist. Chicago, Liberator Press: 1978

(5) On May 4th, 1919, a wave of student protests shook China. “The ‘literary’ revolution became a nationwide complex of manifestos, demonstrations and militant action. New political terms were coined and stirred awareness of the new literature. Satirical essays constructed a new style. Repression could do little against this radicalization… Student societies (among them the New People’s Study Society founded by Mao Tsetung) organized centers for the production and dissemination of Marxist literature.” (Han Suyin, The Morning Deluge: Mao Tsetung and the Chinese Revolution 1893-1954. Boston, Little Brown, 1972. p. 68.)

(6) Though IVAW is made up exclusively of post-9/11 veterans, it is mainly an organization of students and youth, so for that reason it is included here.

(7) http://www.frso.org/about/statements/2007/antiwartasks2007.htm

(8) http://www.frso.org/about/statements/2008/sds-study-struggle-unite-fight.htm

(9) Many nationality specific formations of the 1960s and 1970s like the Black Panther Party, the Chicano groups like the August 29th Movement and the Brown Berets, or Asian American groups like I Wor Kuen or the Red Guards were made up almost entirely of young people but generally did more work in their communities than on campuses. Other nationality specific student groups, like the Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee (SNCC), a major African American organization of the 1960s, also did considerable work organizing in their communities and with non-students.

(10) http://www.fightbacknews.org/2009/03/wave-of-protests-against-cuts-to-education.htm

(11) “The Orientation of the Youth Movement” (May 4, 1939), Selected Works, Vol. II, (FLP English Edition: 1965) p.246.

STOP STATE TERROR IN LALGARH!

STOP STATE TERROR IN LALGARH!

SOLIDARITY WITH OPPRESSED TRIBALS!


PICKET

INDIAN HIGH COMMISSION, ALDWYCH

Thursday 2nd July 2009 3-5 pm

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Called by: Campaign Against Land Grab and Forced Displacement of People

& Indian Workers Association (GB)

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Supported by

Britain South Asia Solidarity Forum

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World People's Resistance Movement (Britain) Launches New Website!

World People's Resistance Movement (Britain) Launches New Website!

To visit our website Click on: www.wprmbritain.org

World People's Resistance Movement (Britain) has launched a new website to promote and unite people's struggle against the British ruling class and the imperialist system in general. This political website supports all anti-imperialist and revolutionary forces and individuals, regardless of their ideology, and informs the people about their statements, articles, leaflets and practical activities. All visitors to the site will have the opportunity to leave comments and join a lively public debate.

WPRM ( Britain ) is a democratic organisation, which supports resistance to imperialism and the revolutionary struggles (e.g. Nepal, India, Bhutan, Peru, Philippines etc.) of the peoples of the world. Its existence is a response to a world where imperialism is on the rampage, bringing nation after nation to ruin, from Afghanistan and Iraq to Somalia and Palestine .

WPRM ( Britain ) supports the right of oppressed nations to self-determination, which includes defending themselves when the imperialist ruling class and their client states wage wars of aggression against them. The oppressed peoples of the world (workers, peasants, women, national minorities, etc.) have the right to rebel against oppression and its root cause – the imperialist system.

In Britain , we need to unite with all those who always support the people's struggle against the imperialist ruling class. We believe that active participation of the British people in the global struggle against imperialism will pave the way for their liberation.

Join us to develop and promote the website to serve the people.

World People's Reistance Movement (Britain)
BM Box 7970 , London.
WC1N 3XX
E-mail: wprm_britain@yahoo.co.uk
Website: www.wprmbritain.org

India bans Maoist communist party

The Indian government has banned the Maoist Communist Party of India as a terrorist group, giving security forces enhanced powers of arrest.

The move provides Indian police with the power to detain members of the party even if they have not been involved in insurgent activity.

Earlier, five states across east and central India were put on a high alert as the Maoists called a two-day strike.

One district in West Bengal briefly fell under almost total Maoist control.

The rebels said the strike they declared was in response to the “war” on people in Lalgarh, West Bengal, where security forces launched an offensive in recent days.

Lalgarh had been under the virtual control of the rebels since November.

But police and paramilitary troops have been attempting to consolidate their grip on the jungle enclave over which they re-established control over the weekend.

Monday’s strike began a day after 11 police officers died in a rebel attack in Chhattisgarh state and two days after 16 policemen were killed in landmine blasts triggered by the Maoists in the same state.

Issuing a high alert for the five states in which the strike was declared, the interior ministry said India’s federal Intelligence Bureau had “specific inputs” that Maoists were planning possible attacks.

“Security forces, as well as economic infrastructure like railways, buses and crowded markets, may be targeted by the Maoists to make their presence felt during the strike,” the interior ministry advisory said.

India’s prime minister, Manmohan Singh, has described the Maoists as the greatest threat to India’s internal security.

The ban on the Communist Party of India (Maoist) comes just a month after the Congress party won a decisive victory in elections – leaving it with no need to turn to communist parties for support in shoring up a coalition.

Correspondents say it is unclear how big an impact the ban will have in the fight against the rebels.

Lalgarh unrest

Villagers in Lalgarh say their young men are being forced by police to hunt for explosives planted by the Maoists.

Bengali artists meeting villagers in Lalgarh
Artists are trying to broker peace between rebels and the government

“They are giving the village boys an S-shaped iron rod each, asking them to hook it to wires sticking out anywhere and pull it. This is dangerous because they will be too close to the explosives if the wires are linked to them,” said Chattradhar Mahato, chairman of the Peoples Committee on Police Atrocities (PCPA), active in the Lalgarh area.

Some of Bengal’s leading artists, including film-maker Aparna Sen, visited Lalgarh on Sunday in a attempt to broker peace between the West Bengal government and the Maoists.

But neither appeared to be in a mood to talk.

“The Maoists have no specific demand, they are just out to create trouble. We have to continue the operations to deal with them,” said Bengal’s chief secretary Ashok Mohan Chakrabarty.

Maoist leader Kishneji told the BBC: “We will show the government what is people’s power. No police or army can crush that.”

Thousands of villagers have fled their homes in the Lalgarh region to avoid getting caught in the fighting, heading towards neighbouring areas of Bankura district.

The Bengal government started the offensive to retake Lalgarh, which had effectively been under Maoist control since November.

The Maoists skilfully harnessed people’s anger over police excesses following an Maoist attempt to kill chief minister Buddha Bhattacharya through a landmine blast, says the BBC’s Subir Bhaumik in Calcutta.

We-will- spread-this- fire-says- the-Maoist- from-Lalgar

We will spread this fire, says the Maoist from Lalgarh
21 Jun 2009, 0848 hrs IST, Sukumar Mahato, TNN

My name is Manoj. It's not the name my parents gave me, but all my comrades call me 'Manoj'. My father's name is Dhiren Murmu. I am his second son


Inspired by Mao Zedong, Charu Majumdar and Kanu Sanyal of the CPI (Marxist) develop a "revolutionary opposition" to the party.
More Pictures
and I am 25. I was born at Bamundanga village in Salboni. I've lived most of my life in this hopeless village.

Our village falls under the Kansijora gram panchayat. The Left Front has been in power here for 30 years. Salboni has always been a CPM stronghold. But, in 30 years, neither the state government, nor the panchayat and Zilla Parishad took any interest at all in developing this area. We might have been living in the Stone Age.

From Naxalbari to Lalgarh: Maoists breed in swamps of hunger and anger | No revolution for old radicals | Blog: Kolkata's missing millionaires and Lalgarh

When it rains here, the dirt tracks turn muddy and we are forced to drag ourselves and our cattle through the muck. We are not able to ride our bicycles or use carts. We don't have clean drinking water. People are forced to drink filthy, yellow water. After sunset, we live in the dark as there is no electricity here. No jobs either. During the paddy season, we work in the fields and then sit idle for the rest of the year. Because we are tribals, no one has bothered to do anything for us.

In 2002, we got tired of being treated like rodents. So, the villagers got together and demanded development in our area. This infuriated the local CPM bosses. The police and Marxists slapped false cases on us, accusing us of working for the People's War Group (PWG). They branded us Maoists. So we began to think we might as well join the Maoists.

Things turned nasty quickly. The former police superintendent of West Midnapore, K C Meena, lodged an FIR against the entire village. Nearly 90% of the men and teenage boys were charged with being Naxalite. We knew what was coming. We had to do something to save ourselves.

I was just 18 at the time. I was in class XII at the local school. But, I too joined in protests against the police. Within days, the police filed a case against me, my father and brother. They accused all of us of working for the PWG. We had nothing to do with the PWG. Our family has always supported the Congress party. In 1998, when Mamata Banerjee formed the Trinamool Congress (TMC), we switched loyalty to her.

One day, police jeeps rolled into our village, picked up people from their houses, bundled everyone into their vehicles and dumped all of us into the Midnapore jail. That was where I first met Maoist leader Sushil Roy. I found the Maoist ideology very appealing. Roy asked me to join the Maoists so that I could help the poor. I liked his ideas. Then I met two PWG leaders in prison. And I realized that neither Congress nor the TMC can stop the CPM's terror. I also realized that under CPM rule, we had lost the right to speak up. It was time to take a stand and speak up.

I joined the Maoists. They gave me a new name, a new identity and a new life. Now, I work for the Lalgarh movement. I joined this great surge of people last year. On November 5, the police arrived here looking for people who had blasted landmines at chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya' s convoy at Salboni. In Lalgarh, the police rounded up innocent tribal women and began to molest and torture them. One woman lost an eye. Others were badly injured. After this incident, we decided to join the Lalgarh movement. It was our party's decision. The Maoists always stand with the deprived. We joined them at Nandigram and Singur. Now, we have joined them in Lalgarh.

It's been easy for us to win the people's support. Most of them have been victims of torture by police. The people listened to us and joined the Peoples' Committee against Police Atrocities (PCPA). Opposition party workers have also supported us. Everybody is rebelling against the CPM cadre and police.

We know the government forces want to crush us. But, we plan to expand our area of influence. As soon as we are able to turn Lalgarh and Junglemahal (a forested area spanning three districts - Bankura, Purulia and West Midnapore) into a Maoist-dominated area, we will apply our ideology here. We will undertake development work for the poor. We will raise money through public donations. And nobody will pay tax to the government anymore.

After victory at Lalgarh, we will expand our fight to the tribal communities of Jharkhand, Bihar, Orissa and Chattisgarh. Our war has just begun.

Resume of a rebel

Once peaceful forest-dwellers, now they challenge the Indian state. Here's a profile of that little-known species, the typical Indian Maoist

Age - 18 to 30 years
Gender - Both male and female
Ethnic stock - Austro-Asiatic (tribal/indigenous people)
Linguistic group - Austro-Asiatic (tribal) and old Dravidian dialects
Income group - Below poverty line ( Rs 12 per person per day)
Occupation - Small peasant, landless labour, jobless, jungle-dweller
Area of operation - UP, MP, W Bengal, Orissa, Bihar, Jharkhand Chhattisgarh, AP, Maharashtra and Karnataka
political affiliation - CPI (Maoist)
other names - Naxalite, Red ultra, terrorist

Maoists by Numbers
Total number 50,000
Number of armed rebels 20,000
Area under control One-fifth of India's forests
Active in 165 of the country's 604 districts

From Naxalbari to Lalgarh: Such a long journey down the road to revolution

1960s
Inspired by Mao Zedong, Charu Majumdar and Kanu Sanyal of the CPI (Marxist) develop a "revolutionary opposition" to the party. They lead a violent Santhal uprising in West Bengal's Naxalbari village in 1967. Later, they break away from the CPI(M). Uprisings are organized in several parts of the country. In 1969, CPI (Marxist-Leninist) takes birth

1970s
The radical leftists fragment and the CPI (ML) becomes weaker across the country. This causes regional groups such as the Maoist Communist Centre, which evolved out of the Dakshin Desh-group, to strengthen in Bihar and Jharkhand and the People's War Group to assume leadership of the armed rebels in Andhra Pradesh and adjoining states

1980-90s
At least 30 Naxalite groups are thought to be active across the country, with a combined membership of around 30,000 activists. But their differences over their perceived "revolutionary"
roles often result in bloody battles. Many groups, particularly in Bihar and AP, are accused of land-grabbing and extortion

2000s
Groups such as the CPI (ML) give up violence, enter mainstream politics and participate in elections. In 2004, the MCC and People's War join hands to form a new entity, the Communist Party of India (Maoist), which is now the biggest armed group ever to challenge the very existence of the Indian state.

The Indian state is mobilizing its forces to crush the just struggle of the tribal people of Lalgarh

Note from Ka Frank:

The Indian state is mobilizing its forces to crush the just struggle of the tribal people of Lalgarh, West Bengal. In the last 24 hours, West Bengal's state police and 11 companies of Central paramilitary forces have started to move towards Lalgarh.

In November 2008, the tribal people (adivasis) of Lalgarh rose up against decades of abuse by the police and goons of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the ruling party in West Bengal. This is the same phoney "communist" party that has tried to give away peasants' lands in Nandigram and Singur, only to be beaten back and exposed by determined struggle.

In recent years, thousands of adivasis in the Lalgarh area have been imprisoned on false charges of having ties with the Maoist insurgency. They formed the People's Committee against Police Atrocities, which has extended its influence to 1,100 villages in the region. Led by the People's Committee, the adivasis have driven the police and CPM cadre out of the area, burning down police camps and digging up roads to prevent the state authorities from re-entering. Activists of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) have played a leading role in the People's Committee and in extending the struggle into new areas.

This is a critical battle for the Indian people and for people around the world. Our voices must be raised against the preparations of the West Bengal state and the central government to drown the struggle in blood.

* * * * * * * *
The following are from the Times of India:

Security forces begin ops to free Lalgarh from Maoists
18 Jun 2009 — Security forces have moved into the restive Lalgarh region to end the three-day siege of Maoists, who have gone on a rampage targeting CPI(M) cadres and leaders, destroying their homes and party offices and setting up barricades to block police entry.

Fifty villages in and around Lalgarh in West Midnapore district have been captured and declared a `free zone' by Maoists.

Setting up their base camps around Lalgarh, central forces along with state police began closing in on Lalgarh early on Thursday morning. Four to five base camps at strategic locations have been set up with the objective not to concede any more areas to the Maoists. Maoists have formed a three-tier human shield with women and children in the vanguard, men behind them and armed naxals forming the rearguard, according to a senior police officer. Sources say the forces want to minimize casualties and will thus move slowly.

"Operation at Lalgarh has started this morning. The operation will be mainly done by the state police but we will be adequately assisted by the Central forces," West Bengal DGP Sujit Kumar Sarkar said.

Asked about the number of forces deployed, Sarkar said the details "cannot be divulged right now".

"But there are adequate (state) forces to restore peace and normalcy in the area. The CRPF will give adequate back up and if needed, they will actively participate, " he said over phone from Kolkata.

Agitating tribals of West Midnapore and adjoining areas have been protesting police "atrocities" on them in the wake of the landmine blast at Salboni which was believed to target the Chief Minister.

The tribals, numbering 2000 under the banner of People's Committee Against Police Atrocities, dug up roads amid reports that they were laying landmines to stop the security forces.

"We will try to shed minimum blood," Sarkar said adding I cannot tell you the exact timeframe (of the operation)."

Five hundred CRPF personnel, including 200 personnel of the elite COBRA trained in anti-Maoist operations, have been deployed to deal with the situation.

Conceding to pressure from the Centre, the state government had ordered the police to lead the operation with assistance from the central forces.

A Question Over Iran: Can the People Make History or Not?

By Mike Ely

There is a self-deceptive politics (among some leftists) that seeks to prettify all kinds of reactionary forces that (for one reason or another) are in opposition to U.S. imperialism — including Islamic reactionaries, Kim Jung Il, “hardline” revisionists of the Li Peng and Eric Honecker type and so on.

And in the process they have a real, almost startling, hostility toward sections of the people who rise up in important if still-inarticulate ways.

My sense is that such politics arise from a despair over actually developing our own revolutionary forces — and a resigned assumption that we have no other alternative but to fall behind any forces (ugly, oppressive, reactionary or not) who (one way or another) who seem to be on America’s shit list.

This is not a uni-polar world with only one defining contradiction. Yes, we understand (and must understand) that the U.S. acts as a central pillar of world capitalism… but it is hardly the only pillar or the only reactionary force.

As someone who remembers this Iranian regime murdering our comrades and drenching the people in blood, it is hard not have a far more nuanced sense of such events. I remember so vividly attended parties of celebration with our Iranian communist comrades, from the Iranian Student Association (ISA) at colleges in the U.S., as they went back to Iran (in 1979) to dive into the revolution — so full of hopes and energy.

And I know now, with real sadness that has never gone away, that many of them ended up in the prisons and torture cells of Khomenei, or wasted on the frontlines of the war with Iraq.

I suspect there is a whole generation of radical activists in the U.S. who don’t know how Iran’s Islamic Republic murdered and tortured communists and leftists in large numbers after the 1979 revolution — to consolidate a very conservative-reactionary god-state. And these victims including many who had based their politics (naively) on forming a “united front against imperialism” with those bloody mullahs-in-power.

The importance of revisiting such history is the importance of not repeating it — and not misunderstanding who the theocrats are, and what they are capable of. And at a moment when they are exposed, hated, de-legitimized, targetted among the people themselves, overwhelmingly because of their own crimes, it would be terrible politics to rally to the Islamic theocrats defense simply because they are also being targetted by the United States and Israel externally. In some ways, those external pressures are part of that “perfect storm” that may reawaken politics within Iran.

We have opposed (and must seek to oppose much more powerfully) the U.S. imperialist threats against Iran — and its whole long-term push to fully dominate the central oil fields of the Middle East. We know that the U.S. and Israel will pursue their geo-political strategies here. And we must understand and oppose those moves.

In many ways the only hope the U.S. has had for a “victory” in Iraq involved (somehow) causing a “regime change” in Iran. In the media, all the talk is about Israel’s fear of nuclear weapons, but there is another more-unspoken issue: the Iraq war has long ago morphed into a U.S.-Iranian power struggle over the control of Iraq (and of this region). And so for the U.S. there are very high stakes in the eruptions in Iran.

But our brains are capable of grasping more than one thread and dynamic at a time — it is not just possible (but inevitable) that great events draw into them the attentions of MANY and DIFFERENT players with many different interests. The U.S. hopes to have a pro-U.S. government emerge from all of this. We all know that. They are intevening in countless ways — seen and unseen. This is undoubtedly true.

But who says that a pro-U.S. outcome is the only possibility? Who says this means that the current government should be supported? Who decided that the people of Iran have no agency, no hopes, no possibility of upsetting that whole table of “choices”?

The world is full of very reactionary governments and forces who are in sharp hostility — but there is certainly no reason to believe that we (or the people generally) always just have to pick to side with one reactionary force over another. Sometimes the clash of oppressive forces create great openings through which radical, secular and even revolutionary forces can emerge, learn, organize and act.

The politics of “lesser evil” is often a politics of lowered sights — a politics so desparing of the possibility of revolution, that real, living, hairy, complex revolution possibilities don’t even enter the thinking. They are there, but you don’t even see them.

In essense, this simplistic approach is an approach that pulls toward a cynical view of people, for their ability to learn and develop politics in complex situations, and which seems rooted in a rather strange attraction to any ugly force in the Third World that seems somehow “hard line.” What kind of a world will that create? What kind of evaluation is that of the forces (who are actually in the field)?

Some have argued that supporting the people in Iran’s streets lack a certain “class understanding.”

Presumably that is because the demonstration in Iran have drawn in urban middle class (but not so many of Iran’s working class and even less of the peasantry). But is that how we understand class? If “the workers” support a U.S. war, and “privileged college students” oppose it — should we be confused by that? Is that kind of crude reductionist “class analysis” we want to uphold?

If Iranian students and urban middle classes are the first to strike out against a brutal and theocratic regime, even if they bring their prejudices and illusions with them — is that so bad or unusual?

History is packed with examples to discuss. (Is the Chinese revolution imaginable without the heavily-urban heavily-educated intellectual movement the 1919 May Fourth Movement. Were the trade union aparatuses automatically right in the French may 1968 events?)

It is a good thing when college students take to the streets against a repressive government (with or without some workers). It is a good thing when secular, urban youth and women march against a theocratic regime that enforces medieval morality, and the veil, and much more (with or without some peasants). It is a good thing when people find their voice in a society that stifled them. And such openings are the path by which radical politics stirs even more widely — including precisely among the working people (who are sometimes slower to move).

A class analysis has many components: One is to approach the countless political questions of our world from the communist point of view of ending all oppression (a view that ultimately is in the interest of those most oppressed and stripped of property). It also looks at the actions of all class in terms of the revolutionary process.

And, finally, what is the “class understanding” in a view that seems to say we are limited to a choice between various capitalist and feudal forces. I.e. that the people of Iran are forced to pick between U.S. or their own ugly, hated ruling class. Is that a “class analysis”?

Someone said to me:

“People opposing these demonstrations have no sense of how revolutions unfold in real life.”

I think there is a lot to this. Often revolution emerges from cracks like this. And revolutionary forces (that will have a role in the future) reach new audiences and forces in events like this. And the forces who drag the people into political life — the Rafsanjanis and Moussavis of history — aren’t always the one who inherit the results.

Will forces within the Iranian establishment try to tame this movement with compromises? Yes. Will they order that demands remain within frameworks of the current system? Yes. Will they send marshals in green armbands into the mass marches to isolate and threaten the more radical, secular and revolutionary forces? Of course.

A great movement is not defined by those who “called it into being.” It is not limited by the forces who officially or temporarily claim to lead it. Its course is not set by those who try to control it. And in all of this, we look for, we popularize the most radical, secular, revolutionary and intransigent forces who ultimately represent the best interests of the people.

In many ways, the people churn up their own interests and programs in great upheavals. They congeal into organizations and trends that will influence a whole generation for decades. They will form the kinds of verdicts (in their own hearts and minds) that forge “a revolutionary people” — for greater challenges and even more sophisticated actions in the future.

We have given up on that future if we were to adopt a narrow, shortsighted politics of always picking between this or that bourgeois player on the scene.

Kasama has just posted this from Reza Fiyouzat:

“The Iranian people sensed a deep fracture within the ruling establishment – something that was clearly expressed in astonishing language and tone, in the televised-for-the-first time live debates between the candidates – and they have ceased their chance to use the divide between their rulers to their own advantage.

“The people may have taken to the streets under the excuse of the elections, and may have been encouraged by the rhetoric of the ‘reformist’ camp in favor of some breathing room in the suffocating political and cultural atmosphere imposed on them, but they have forced the debate further. They are openly, and in millions across the country, questioning the legitimacy of the establishment, represented at the moment by Ahmadinejad. The people, in short, have moved beyond Mousavi and the reformists, but are still willing to go along with the tactics formulated by reformist leaders; for the moment.”

This jibes with both my impression of these events, and my hopes for these events — though we will all learn over time the details of what is happening far below the visible screen. But I do know this: If you look at Iran, any future hope for radical change lie among the people in the streets, not in the bloody military and religious forces running the government.

Source :http://mikeely.wordpress.com/