"We Will Spread This Fire" – The Maoists of Lalgarh, West Bengal, India

This is a great interview. There is a huge movement of Maoists that has sprung up in West Bengal along the border with Jharkand in Eastern India. Maoists are already everywhere in Jharkand, but there are not that many of them in West Bengal. One reason is that the Left is big in West Bengal, but it’s also useless. The CPI (Marxist) has been in power as part of the Left Front for 30 years and for the people of Lalgarh, nothing good has happened. Prior to that, there were 30 more years of nothing. I figure this crowd has had 60 years to fix this mess in India and they don’t have a damn thing to show for it. All over India, 7 Apologists for the system say these things take time. Truth is, you wait your whole lifetime for these promises that will never occur because they are not on the state’s agenda. In the last 15 years, India’s economic growth has been explosive but the rate of malnutrition remains at 4 This CPI-M is a fake Communist party if there ever was one. These tribals are said to be outside the caste system, but that does not mean that they are treated well. Their social status is down near Untouchables nevertheless. In recent days, the Maoists have almost completely taken over the Lalgarh region. The result was an invasion of about 1,000-1,500 troops, police and CPI-M goons. They won’t defeat the Maoists, but this does not look good. We will spread this fire, says the Maoist from Lalgarh 21 Jun 2009, 0848 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 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. 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 9 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 – Uttar Pradesh, MP, West Bengal, Orissa, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Andra Pradesh, 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.

For Justice, a River of Blood

Repost from the old site. Basically an argument for the “just war” concept. Or at least a rivulet. Abimael Guzman, imprisoned leader of the Shining Path guerrillas in Peru, famously said that for the revolution to succeed, “Peru would have to cross a river of blood”. Much of the civilized world was horrified by this bloodthirsty statement, but was he onto something? I would argue that the vast majority of social progress achieved in the past 150 rivers has unfortunately occurred only after rivers of blood were shed. Or at the very least trickles. To but it bluntly, people had to die. They had to get hurt and die. It’s sad that it has to be that way, but it seems that that is just the way it is. Powerful people do not give up stuff just because they wake up in a good mood one day or go to church, find God and start feeling guilty. Here in the US, Blacks only gained their liberation in the context of a devastating Civil War in which 100,000’s of Americans shed their blood and lost their lives. Haitians only got rid of slavery by rising up and killing every single one of 25,000 Frenchmen on the island. For Algeria to blast free of colonialism and to shock the French out of the colonial habit, 1 million people, including 25,000 Frenchmen, died. Britain only chucked colonialism after British soldiers died in Malaysia, India, Palestine and other places. Does anyone think even a modicum of a Palestinian state would exist had Palestinians not taken up the gun? Without the armed struggle of the Iraqi guerrillas, US troops would have overrun Syria and possibly Iran by now. The Basque Country has the considerable autonomy it does today only after 800 Spaniards died in the ETA’s armed struggle. Land reform was only instituted in South Korea, Japan and Taiwan after the war to ward off the threat of Communism from North Korea and China. Apartheid is gone in South Africa and one man one vote democracy is in its place for the most part only due to an armed campaign by the ANC stretching over decades. US workers only got rights after bloody strikes in which workers were killed by goon squads. The social market that James Schipper praised in Europe in earlier comments is also the project of massive labor union mobilization in Europe. I would also argue that it was created by devastating the European Right, first by killing 10 million of them (10 million dead fascists in WW2), next by making rightwing ideology toxic for many years after the war, and finally by revolutionary pressure from the Far Left before and after the war, which led the business sector to seek out a class compromise and a social contract, mostly to ward off revolution. Even the Swedish model mostly came into play in the 1930’s when the nation was wracked by violent, radical and revolutionary labor actions all up and down the land. This so rocked the business and ruling classes that the Swedish model was created as a lesser evil alternative to ward off revolution. Most do not realize that Swedish society was not very liberal during the 1930’s. People are misled by the fact of Sweden’s neutrality in the war to think that Swedes themselves were neutral. Most of the middle classes and certainly the business classes were firm Nazi supporters. Furthermore, I understand that Swedish businesses continued to supply the Nazis well into the war. In Costa Rica, radical pressure helped create Costa Rican social democracy, now deteriorating after Reagan ordered the Costa Ricans at gunpoint in the 1980’s to get rid of it. After WW2, Costa Rica outlawed the Communist Party, killed 6,000 Communists, instituted a social democracy to buy off social unrest and got rid of the military as a rather interesting way to top it off. Without revolutionary pressure in 1946 and the bodies of 6,000 Communists, Costa Rican social democracy may never have occurred. Mexico today has some semblance of socialism and a land reform that enables to poor to own small plots and at least survive and eat if they cannot find work only because 20 million Mexicans died during Pancho Villa’s revolution that put Mexican feudalism in the grave forever. Most do not realize that Mexico was actually a horrible and truly feudal society as late as 1910. Yet it was. In the same way, in El Salvador now, one can at least farm a small plot, eat and survive, something often not possible before the Revolution started. For that meager reform, 70,000 people died and Salvadoran feudalism was crushed, possibly forever. Lenin said power never gives up without a fight. And most social reforms in capitalism have come on the heels, tragically, of a river of blood. Or at least a small stream. Without pressure from below by revolutionaries and radicals, it is uncertain how many of the progressive social contracts in place in the world would exist.

The Left Opposition In China

Repost from the old site about Leftist opposition to the present Communist Party ruling China, who they see as going too far in the direction of capitalism. Here in the West, we don’t get to hear much about the Left opposition inside China, or better yet, inside the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). For all the MSM tells us, it may as well not even exist. So this document, from an Old Guard CCP member who is a member of the Left Opposition in the party, is interesting. What do they want? What are their beefs with the present regime? I really don’t have time to analyze this document now, so I will just throw it out there and let you all go at it. His critique of the present regime is trenchant, though. This is a classic Marxist document full of typical Marxist language, though, so for those who can’t handle such things, you might want to forgo reading it. I’m not taking a position on the Left opposition in the party right now except to say that they raise some interesting critiques about the present day party. I’m curious about what sort of economic outcomes the Left’s project would result in. Recall that under Mao, China had economic manufacturing growth of 1 These are some of the achievements of the Chinese revolutionaries under Mao. We all know the costs – the media never tires of telling us. Translated from the website Hongqiwang.

Some Thoughts Regarding Our Future Revolution by a Revolutionary Old Guard

Wei Wei

After 30 years of Reform it is time for the real Communist Party to draw its conclusions. Changes in the past 30 have meant that capitalism has basically been restored in China. The principal contradiction in our country is still the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, but the principal aspect of the contradiction has changed from the proletariat to the bourgeoisie. A new revolution is now facing the proletariat and the working masses. The basis of the revolution before us is upholding the great banner of Mao Zedong’s continuing revolution and carrying out the great socialist revolution against corruption, against selling out our country and against capitalist restoration. The dictatorship of the proletariat no longer exists; therefore, our continuing revolution is no longer one being waged with the dictatorship of the proletariat. Instead, our continuing revolution is being waged against the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The road ahead will be difficult and have many twists and turns. Our revolution’s main targets are the capitalist roaders and cliques of revisionist traitors within the Party who have seized the power from our Party. The revisionist groups are false communists who continue to hold onto the titles and stature of the Communist Party. They have not thrown it away, because by inheriting the Party’s title, they fool people and legitimize their rule. During the 17th Party Congress they held up the Thoughts of Deng Xiao-ping, Jiang Ze-ming, and Hu Jing-tao as an independent theories and uses them as guiding principles against Marxism, Leninism, and Mao Zedong thought. The reason why they mentioned Marx, Lenin, and Mao in the Party Charter was because they feared that without using them as a cover they would lose their legitimacy, which would lead to their downfall. Therefore, they will continue to name and refer to Marx, Lenin, and Mao to use as cover until the end. The targets of our revolution are the bureaucratic and comprador bourgeoisie this is the essence of their class nature. They have wildly sold out the interests of our country and our people, and recently started opening up the financial sector of our economy, thus handing over the economic lifeline of our nation to the foreigners. What they have done is beyond what reasonable people can understand. Their behavior shows that their connection with foreign powers run so deep that their interests can no longer be separated. They have already moved their families and assets abroad. They have sold themselves and their country out completely to act as slaves of foreigners. They launched large-scale privatization movements and sold off State owned enterprises. Through the recently passed “Asset Ownership” law they raised the salaries of those in charge of the remaining State enterprises to very high levels. This means that qualitative changes have taken place. In terms of national consciousness they cannot even match (Russia’s) Vladimir Putin. Putin has at least dared to stand up to the United States. These people have lost all national aspiration; the way they try to appease the foreigners is comparable to how the officials acted in the Qing dynasty. The State apparatus is totally corrupt. After our revolution succeeds we can no longer use the old State apparatus. We have to completely smash the State apparatus just like Lenin said in the State and Revolution. However, we need to understand that there are still many un-corruptible and exemplary Communist Party members. They will be our main strength. The proletariat or the working class is still the leading class of our revolution. Among them, migrant workers are new additions. Peasants and working intellectuals are still trusted allies of the working class. It has been proven from our social practice that the proletarian class has shown unshakable faith in socialism, because their fate is so closely connected to that of socialism. A worker poet, Wang Xue-zhong, wrote a poem called “The State Enterprise – Our Mother.” Who else could write a poem like that? Only workers have such affection toward socialist State enterprises. The Communist Party that the revolutionary Left wants to rebuild is a genuine Marxist revolutionary Communist Party which engages in struggle. We need to declare that the real Communist Party is the one that follows Marxism and Mao Zedong Thought. We are fighting against revisionists and bureaucratic and comprador bourgeoisie cliques. They are traitors who seized power from the Party and who have betrayed the revolutionary line of Marxism and Mao Ze-dong. They are false communists and are corrupted and qualitatively different from the real communists. This could lead to a problem. The masses in our country have been protesting against the many injustices they face – if a sudden incident inflames the people, the anger of the masses could bring the demise of both the real and the false communists. Such a danger exists, because the masses now regard the Communist Party as negative. However, what the masses want to destroy is the corrupted Communist Party, which has been selling out our country and is only interested in enriching itself. They do not want to destroy the Communist Party of Mao’s era. Therefore, in our propaganda to the masses we need to clearly distinguish the real Communist Party from the false Communist Party. We need to begin to use the terms “real” Communist Party and “false” Communist Party and explain the difference between them in our writings and talks. Otherwise the masses may try to destroy the real with the fake, like what had happened in Hungary. If that moment arrived, it would be too late for us to try to explain. For example in the June 4th incident, the majority of students and masses were protesting against corruption, but the ultra right leader Fang Li-zhi used the masses and the protest ended in tragedy. Our slogan should be: We are the real Communist Party which represents the suffering masses. We are not the false Communist Party which represents the corrupted bourgeoisie! What we want is socialism based on public ownership. In the past, when we talked about returning to Mao’s revolutionary line, some people misunderstood and thought that that we wanted to return to the past completely. We need to admit that in the past we were not able to fully realize the masses’ right to supervision. Our goal now is to rebuild a new and even better socialist country following the principles of the Paris Commune. We need to promote real socialist democracy at a high level. Only proletarian democracy is real democracy in the broadest sense. People and the masses should have the right to practice management, supervision, and elections, and have the right to impeach. We need to reduce the wage differentials and to limit bourgeois rights. These are principles of the Paris Commune. In terms of forming a united front, we need to understand that our society is made up of three main forces. The first is revisionists who have the political power, the second is the proletariat and revolutionary masses, and the third is the ultra Right, which organized the Xi-shan Conference 1. Because the bureaucratic and comprador bourgeoisie have been selling off our country, some people on the Left may think that we should unite those on the Right to fight those in power. We need to distinguish who our worst enemies are. The main difference between the revisionist clique and the ultra Right is the revisionists are still wearing the cloak of communism, and in doing so, sometimes write articles that on the surface sound correct. However, if the ultra Right seizes power, they will ruthlessly and bloodily suppress the masses. Those big capitalists, such as Wang Zhao-jun, who attended the Xi Shan Conference, hate communists in their bones and they are anti-communist to the end. The current regime let these people get rich first and then welcomed them into the Party. They thought that doing so would win their gratitude. But the fact is, these people are full of hatred toward the Communist Party and they are hastily trying to construct legal proceedings to get rid of it. The ultra Right is these people’s political representatives. In the future we will be fighting the ultra Right to gain power. We on the Left are the common enemy of both the revisionist clique and the ultra Right. Our united front slogans should be: Unite everyone on the left under the banner of fighting against capitalist restoration. We will communicate with each other to exchange our views and give mutual support and encouragement. We will find common ground and not to be bogged by minor differences. All patriots untie under the banner of fighting against those who sell out our country. All people unite under the banner of fighting against corruption. Currently there is a strong tendency for government officials to deceive people. They have the advantage of all of the power and run the propaganda machine. The media shows that they frequently visited miners’ family when accidents happen shedding tears in the homes of workers and peasants. Their acting has confused some young people. Acting is one thing but we need to pay attention to what they actually do. After the 17th Party Congress these people took another step toward the Right. They insisted on continuing the Reform and sold off the last few State owned enterprises. They forced more lay-offs, cut more workers’ tenure, and further forced those who used to be the masters of the enterprises into wage labor. They are now going into realm of “labor laws”. What they are doing is the same as American politicians who send soldiers to fight in Iraq and then go to the war front holding platters of turkey to thank them. They choose not to make public or mention or criticize anti-communist articles written by Xie Tao, a leading anti-communist. They invited Li Rui, an open anti-communist, anti-Maoist to the 17th Party Congress. They ignored four letters written by Wang Zhao-jun in Anhui Province challenging the Communist Party. On the other hand they arrested Zhang Qian-fu and sent him to jail for memorializing Mao Zedong. They shut down many websites on the Left. Isn’t it clear what they really represent? What they call liberated thinking is in fact abandoning the three principles: abandoning Marxism and Mao Zedong Thought; abandoning workers, peasants and the masses; and abandoning revolution. On the other hand, what they are leaning on are: the private market economy, the selling off of our country and domestic and foreign bourgeoisie, and the corrupt State machine to carry their fascist dictatorship. Some people say that old cadres are privileged among the proletariat, because they have benefited from Third Plenary of the 11th Party Congress. They have received higher wages and are enjoying a good life, satisfied with their good health and peaceful old age. This is also true of intellectuals and other white-collar workers; they are happy about the current situation and think it is better than the past. They are satisfied with the current regime. It is true that the old cadres are being treated well. Their expenses are being paid, but they are also being isolated. They do not know how to use the internet and have trouble understanding the real situation in our country. We should do more propaganda work with them. After all, they lived through the struggles of earlier revolutionary times. They still have the ability to tell right from wrong. The majority of them are firmly against corruption and against selling off our country. We on the Left basically agree on the nature of the Reform. Within us there are still differences on what the correct tactics should be. What are the correct tactics that will lead us to victory? The correct tactics have to follow the correct overall strategy. Strategy is a matter of principle. We cannot go against principle, but tactics can be applied with flexibility. Revolution does not negate struggles within the legal system. We on the Left should use every opportunity to fight the ultra Right in all battles. For example, people such as Li Rui, Xie Tao, and Yuan Ruo-fei are shameless, poisonous traitors and spies. On the other hand we also need to firmly oppose the Reform. Some suggest that we should make use of Deng and what he said – but Deng was a devious cheater and the root of all problems. We should not quote what he said anymore, lest we further confuse the masses and lead them in the wrong direction. We should, instead, expose and tear open the falseness and pretense of these cheaters. We should do this on the internet and anywhere we can express what we think and propagate our views in order to win over the masses and expand our battlefields. When we do our propaganda we should refuse to follow our opponents’ lead and avoid arguing in the framework that they define and set forth. Our Slogans: Because of the nature of our revolution, our slogans are clear and will create heart-felt excitement: We raise high the banner of Mao Zedong’s continuing revolution. We will carry forward the great socialist revolution against revisionism, selling out our country, and the restoration of capitalism. (See point 6 for coalition slogans.) Of course we do not just shout slogans. We need to do a lot of difficult work. In the past Deng Zhong-xia dressed himself as a worker and went to workers’ homes to visit and to wait. Eventually he organized the big strike in Hong Kong that shook the world and turned Hong Kong (Fragrant Harbor) into a Foul Harbor. Another example is the heroic strike led by Lin Xiang-qian. The reason that the Left is weak and being ignored is because we have not connected with the proletarian class and the great masses. We still do not have strong leaders. A few years back when there was a group protest in Da-qing, workers demonstrated their extraordinary capabilities, organizing for an orderly occupy an office building in Da-qing. The economic status of the proletarian class determines that they are revolutionary and the most radical class. In order to move forward, intellectuals must ally themselves with workers and peasants. We are now under the fascist dictatorship. We are not allowed to speak up. We need democracy. Lenin said that there is no pure democracy, there is only class democracy. We do not want bourgeois democracy. Americans say, “We can curse out our President in the streets.” However, when the American government sent troops to fight in Korea and Vietnam, to bomb Iraq and send Americans there to die, they had to obey! What we want is democracy of the proletariat, the real democracy of the broad masses. The Communist Party is the vanguard of the proletariat and it must be supervised them. If the proletariat do not have the right to supervise and impeach Party representatives, then we are powerless when the Party Central Committee adopts revisionism. Who says that whoever becomes the Party Secretary will have a higher level of understanding of Marxism? It is a joke to think whoever becomes the Party Secretary will also be a theoretician and can equal Chairman Mao! The position of Party Secretary is merely a job. The class as a whole needs to have power and political consciousness. Only class can supervise the Party and manage the Party. Only when we reach that level of democracy the proletariat can control the Party and is the Party able to lead the proletariat. Then we will no longer be afraid of the Party’s Central Committee becoming revisionist. This is our great historical lesson. They posses the machine of dictatorship on all fronts the military, the political machine, the legal system and the media First they arrest you and give you a talking to (the lightest penalty), then they put you under surveillance We face many difficulties, and we need to again carry out revolution. This should be a ground up mass movement. We will organize the working class to smash those in power. If we do not succeed the first time, there will be a second time and a third time. We need to do painstaking mass work. People want revolution; if they do not yet have the political consciousness, they will develop it. They will want revolution in the future, and we need to trust the masses. Both the subjective and the objective conditions have not yet reached maturity, so we have to be careful and not become too anxious. We need to work underground and establish various kinds of study groups in many locations and hold discussion sessions and forums. We will create favorable conditions and work hard on mass work to raise the political consciousness of the masses. There will be a day when the conditions reach maturity we can connect all the different segments in society and become a Party. Once the loose groups are organized, there is no force that can stop us.

Update on Conditions in Nepal

This is an excellent piece on the events in Nepal. I am not sure how much you all know about what is going on in Nepal. A Maoist party led a revolution for 11 years that killed about 13,000 people. The upshot was the end of the Nepalese monarchy (the only officially Hindu state and the only Hindu monarchy on Earth) and laying the groundwork for a true parliamentary and democratic system. Elections were held, and the Maoists won a plurality of 4 The decision to end armed struggle was not taken lightly. The leadership, centered around a man named Prachandra, decided pragmatically to give it up and try for power in democratic elections. This caused a huge uproar in Maoist circles worldwide, as they were accused of selling out and parliamentary cretinism. The hardliners advocated that the Maoists should continue armed struggle until they seized state power and then install a dictatorship of the proletariat. Prachandra has made many eclectic statements, rejecting much of Communist history as old hat and not relevant to today’s conditions in which the USSR is gone, China hardly supports revolution and imperialism controls the globe. He has said that the party is committed to democracy and that if they help the people as much as they hope to, they should be re-elected over and over. This is step in the right direction. The dictaproles have committed lots of crimes and killed, tortured and imprisoned so many people, one wonders why people still support such a formation. My own party, the CPUSA, in its theoretical journal, says that it now believes that socialism requires “complete democracy.” For the US, the CPUSA has always advocated what Gus Hall called “Bill of Rights Socialism.” That is, if they were in power, we would have complete civil rights as we do now and the party would have to stand for election regularly. As high-ranking party member told me that the reason for that was because Americans are used to civil liberties and no Communist party could succeed in the US without acknowledging that. My party also supports the Chinese Communist Party, which is using lots of capitalism. There is just a whole lot of rethinking going on in Left circles these days. One of the parties behind the furor over the Nepalese Maoists is a US Maoist party called the RCP-USA, the Revolutionary Communist Party. This is a small party that has never been able to do much of anything in the US. They have been issuing ferocious denunciations of the Nepalese Maoists for “selling out.” I and many others think this is ridiculous. The Nepalese party has actually fought a successful revolution and is in power in the government. The RCP has never been able to accomplish anything. Who are they to tell the Nepalese what to do? The rest of the piece should be pretty self-explanatory. It looks like much of the non-Maoist 6 What’s particularly disgusting is the behavior of other Nepalese Communist parties, who have refused to work with the Maoists and have lined up behind feudalism, the monarchists and reaction. These parties were in parliament for over a decade during the 1990’s and were never able to accomplish a damned thing. Talk about useless. The Madhesis are an indigenous group in the South down by the Indian border. The Terai are another indigenous ethnic group in the same region. They are analogous to the scheduled tribes of India and are at the bottom of the totem pole. The whole matter of the Madhesis and Terai is very confusing – a partial overview is here. The Madhesis formerly resided in India, but the border moved when King Shah of Nepal conquered the southern border region 250 years ago from an Indian princely state. The Madhesis are so named because this region is both where the Buddha, revered by Buddhism, was born, and were the Hindu religion says Lord Sita, heroine of the Ramayan Epic, was born. The Madhesis have been living in that region for possibly thousands of years. See the comments at the end of the site for more. Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) or CPN (UML) is the name of one of the sellout Communist parties. Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) or UCPN (M) is the Maoist party. Nepali Congress (NC) is a useless middle of the road party modeled after India’s Congress Party. It either supports monarchism and feudalism or it won’t fight them. Right now, the Maoists are out of power and are saying that they will not cooperate with the new government.

Nepal’s Revolution At Crossroads

By Walter Smolarek

26 May, 2009

Nestled in the Himalayas, the little-known nation of Nepal has been set ablaze. Massive demonstrations, strikes, and the possibility of armed struggle characterize the tremendous upheaval that has come about in the world’s newest republic. The peasants, the workers, the slum dwellers, and all other oppressed people are standing up in an effort to finish off what remains of the feudal system that has exploited them for so long. The past month has been a decisive period in Nepal’s revolution, and it’s important to cut through the ruling class distortions and understand what really went on. Before reading this, I would encourage you to familiarize yourself with the general situation by reading my last article on the subject as this analysis does not include any background information.

UCPN (M)’s Time in Government

When Prachanda became Prime Minister of Nepal, many thought that the liberation they had struggled for had finally come. The Maoists’ vision for New Nepal was crystallized in their budget, presented in late 2008. It included provisions for a literacy program, women’s empowerment, building vital infrastructure, redistributing land to the peasantry, and eliminating poverty (1). In addition, one of UCPN (M)’s major goals was to integrate their People’s Liberation Army into the Nepalese Army, in order to complete the peace process and neutralize the threat posed by this traditionally royalist force. However, what transpired in the following months was, despite some significant positive steps, a disappointment for many. The blame for the government’s inability to carry out their programs rests, however, not with the Maoists, but with the reactionary opposition and their weak-willed “ally”, the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist). The Nepali Congress, representing the views of the Nepalese capitalists who began moving closer and closer to the feudalists (with the support of Indian expansionism and US imperialism), obstructed the day-to-day activities of the new Republican government. The Maoists should have been able to overcome this impediment, but they relied on CPN (UML) for a majority in the Constituent Assembly. This vital partner, as the months went by, became more and more counter-revolutionary as the aggressively anti-Maoist K.P. Oli rose to a position of great influence within the party. As the seemingly endless political deadlock ran on, many began to wonder if this frustrating period had eroded some of the mass support for UCPN (M). A definitive answer was given after the April 10th by-election held in six districts in Nepal. It turned out that confidence in Prachanda’s government had increased rather than decreased. The Maoists previously held two of the six vacated seats and won three by prevailing in what used to be a Nepali Congress stronghold (2). With this renewed mandate, the revolutionary government went about tackling the issue of army integration, which had been delayed due to resistance by the right-wing leadership of the Nepalese Army.

The Soft Coup

Fed up with the Army’s flagrant disregard for the constitution and commands from the Ministry of Defense, the Maoist government requested that Chief of Army Staff (the highest ranking officer in the armed forces) Rookmangud Katawal submit a written clarification explaining why he had disobeyed direct orders. In the most arrogant way, Katawal dragged his feet and gathered political support from right-wing political parties like the Nepali Congress and the Oli faction of the CPN (UML) as well as foreign powers, especially India. The capitalists, the feudalists, the military, and the imperialists began to unite to preserve the status-quo; the elites were closing ranks. In response to these outrageous political moves, Prachanda fired the insubordinate Katawal on May third. The next day, the will of the democratically elected government was overturned in what many are calling a “soft” coup. President Yadav of the Nepali Congress, who occupies a largely ceremonial role that his party managed to acquire due to disunity between the two major communist parties, grossly overstepped his authority and instructed Katawal to continue as head of the Nepali Army. Stripped of the power vested in him by the people of Nepal, Prachanda resigned from his post and vowed to intensify the struggle against anti-change elements. This was carried out, and is being carried out, simultaneously in both the Supreme Court and in the streets. The former is somewhat of a formality done in order to emphasize the anti-democratic nature of the Maoists’ opponents. The demonstrations, however, are highly successful, with thousands of people turning out daily all over the nation and especially in the capital, Kathmandu. Participating are not only affiliates of UCPN (M) but workers and students of all stripes. In addition, the Maoist legislators held demonstrations in the Constituent Assembly itself, making it impossible for the state to function during this crisis. This set the backdrop for the political wrangling that ensued following the Prime Minister’s resignation.

Forming a New Government

As high-level talks went on between the parties, three proposals emerged. First, there was the possibility of another Maoist-led government. Those backing this solution included (obviously) UCPN (M), the faction of the MJF loyal to party Chairman Upendra Yadav, and several small left-wing parties. The large and militant mobilizations also aided the drive for Maoist leadership. The other main option was a CPN (UML) led government, a notion supported strongly and immediately by the Nepali Congress. Proponents persuaded the TMLP and Sadbhavana Party (two of the less progressive Terai-based parties) early on and began working on the MJF. It managed to split the party between those that supported Yadav and those that supported the pro-UML parliamentary leader Bijay Kumar Gachchhedar as well as ascertain the support of a few left-wing groups with grudges against the Maoists. Finally, there had been talk of forming a national unity government including the UML, NC, UCPN (M), and the Madhesi parties. While this idea was supported tacitly by the faction of the UML aligned with the party’s leader Jhalanath Khanal against Oli, it was largely the product of frustration at the political deadlock and panic at the outpouring of support for the Maoists. After three weeks of negotiations and demonstrations, the political elite had managed to impose the second option, a UML-led government, on the nation. Having cajoled enough of the smaller parties into supporting their agenda and having been able to bypass the Maoist demonstrations within the Constituent Assembly, Madhav Kumar Nepal (an ally of K.P. Oli) was sworn in as the new Prime Minister on May 25th after a vote boycotted by UCPN (M) the previous day.

What Lies Ahead

And so the revolution is at a crossroads. The collapse, or more accurately the overthrow, of Prachanda’s government is certainly a setback. On the one hand, there lies the path to demoralization and defeat, but along the other path is opportunity. The supporters of the new government are eclectic to an extreme, with very little ideological common ground. When taking the oath of office during the days of the monarchy, the Prime Minister would do so “in the name of God”. When Prachanda took office, he took the oath “in the name of the people”. M.K. Nepal skipped this section entirely, taking the oath in the name of nobody (3). Hardly anything is more emblematic of his government’s politically destitute nature, held together by nothing more than an opportunist desire to derail the process of change. Provided that the Maoists maintain their pledge to not cooperate with this puppet regime, the UML administration will, in all likelihood, prove to be ineffectual and serve as a catalyst for an intensified struggle on the streets. The events of the last month have laid bare the dictatorial character of both the feudalists and the proponents of traditional parliamentarianism. It has become even clearer that if the impoverished and exploited majorities are to live a life with dignity, a fundamentally different society under a fundamentally different system is required. This society is called New Nepal; this system is called socialism.

Notes

Maoist’s New Nepal: Industrial Capitalism in the Name of Socialism Maoist Candidate Santosh Budhamagar Elected CA Member From Rolpa PM Nepal Sworn in, Inducts Two UML leaders in Cabinet

Interview With a Bhutanese Maoist Leader

This is a reprint from another blog, an interview with a leader of the Bhutanese Maoists who are beginning an armed insurgency against the Bhutanese state.

A little background: Actually, in some ways, this is a racial conflict. About 100 years ago, many Nepalese moved into Southern Bhutan as immigrants. Apparently this immigration was completely legal, as in they were not illegal immigrants. The majority of the people in Bhutan were more Mongoloid Asian types, Buddhists who phenotypically resemble Tibetans and speak a Tibeto-Burman language. The Nepalese were Hindus speaking Nepali, an Indo-European language.

Phenotypically, Nepalese are very unusual. They are on the border between Caucasians and Asians. Some more resemble Caucasians and some more resemble Asians. Most of the ones who moved into Southern Bhutan were more Caucasian types. Anyway, at some point, they become 6

A few decades ago, for some unknown reason, the monarchy simply ethnically cleansed most of the Nepalese out of the country and so ended up with a more mono-ethnic and monocultural state. Furthermore, the Nepalese were forbidden from returning. They have been festering in refugee camps ever since, and have been growing more and more radical. Soon a Maoist party was born and it developed a huge following in the camps. Very huge! In the past few years, they have began an armed struggle inside Bhutan, but there have only been a few incidents. Apparently they are laying the groundwork for people’s war, which they claim they have not yet began.

Sushil claims that the Bhutanese state is feudal or semi-feudal, and I think he is probably correct. The entire region remains feudal to semi-feudal – India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and even Afghanistan. The feudalism tends to cut across ethnic and religious boundaries and seems to be a regionalism. Recall that Tibetan was actually feudal until the Maoists took over in 1949 and overthrew the feudal monarchy.

In this region, the feudal monarchs usually use religion, as such folks always do and have always done, to enforce feudalism. The Hindu monarchs in Nepal claimed tied closely into their Hindu Gods. More or less the same with the Dalai Lamas in Tibet, similar to the divinely appointed religous-political monarchs that ruled in Europe for so long.

I figure if you throw a bunch of humans on an island, after a while, the strongest will kill and or subject the weaker ones. Some total prick will rise up, call himself ruler – king – whatever, somehow gather up 9

This group has connections to Maoists in Nepal who now form a huge portion of the government (4

An Interview with Comrade Sushil of the Communist Party of Bhutan (Marxist-Leninist- Maoist), the party which is waging armed struggle against the Monarchy in Bhutan. Talks about tactics, strategy and aims of the party.

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Saturday, May 23, 2009

The following Interview was conducted at some point in the previous few weeks. It occurred somewhere in the area of the Indian-Bhutan border.

Lal Salam Blog: Thank you very much for meeting with me. So are you from Bhutan?

Comrade Sushil: Yes, from Bhutan.

Lal Salam Blog: From the Bhutanese refugee camps?

Comrade Sushil: Uhh, actually people think that all our party are from the refugees, but i am from Bhutan. I have spent allot of time in India, working, but then also in Bhutan and then in Nepal working for the party as well.

Lal Salam Blog: So you are a cadre of the Communist Party Bhutan (Marxist Leninist Maoists)?

Comrade Sushil: Yes i am a member of the Communist Party of Bhutan (Marxist Leninist Maoist). I have been a member since 2003 and i have worked actively as a whole timer since the same year. I joined the party from within Bhutan.

Lal Salam Blog: What is the history of the Party?

Comrade Sushil: The CPB (MLM) was established on the 7th of November 2001, and the announcement of the Party was on the 22nd of April 2003. From this time the party has been working with the exploited people in Bhutan. The people are all exploited by the regime, so our party has been working with all the people, mainly in rural areas, but in urban areas also. Mostly we work with the people in the villages.

Lal Salam Blog: So what are the problems in Bhutan? What sort of oppressions are forced on the people of Bhutan?

Comrade Sushil: The biggest problem is the feudal monarchy. Because of this monarchy the problems are created. Peoples standard of living has been kept backwards because of the Monarchy. In a third world country like Bhutan, this is because of feudalism. This feudalism is the main problem of Bhutan. This is why the Communist Party, our glorious party, is working to overthrow the regime, and to overthrow feudalism.

Lal Salam Blog: So the goal of the Party for now is to throw out feudalism from Bhutan?

Comrade Sushil: Definitely. The main aim of our party is to overthrow feudalism and to establish the peoples rule in Bhutan.

Lal Salam Blog: So you would like to establish a People’s State in Bhutan? Is that what you would have replace the King?

Comrade Sushil: We should not understand like this. We should replace the king with a Proletarian Dictatorship. Our aim, our hope, no our dream is to establish a New Democratic Socialism. Only after that can we achieve our ultimate goal, which is to achieve communism. It is not only our goal to throw out the king and overthrow feudalism in Bhutan, but to establish a peaceful society that can achieve socialism and communism.

Lal Salam Blog: Last year your party started a Peoples War in Bhutan…

Comrade Sushil: No. We have not initiated a protracted peoples war in Bhutan. Since our parties establishment we have however had many rural peoples class struggles and these struggles have used different means. In different ways we have launched many struggles and programs, and we have the aim of reaching a level where we can launch a Protracted Peoples War.

Last year we did initiate some armed struggles, which is only a factor of the rural class struggle. Much of the media proclaimed this as the beginning of the Peoples War, but we are not at that phase. We are trying to reach the level of Peoples War, but we have not yet reached it, and are preparing for it. We do not know how long this will take, it will depend on many factors.

Lal Salam Blog: So there will be more attacks, more bombs and more armed actions in the future?

Comrade Sushil: Certainly. We are preparing for this. There will be more armed struggle. Without the armed struggle, we cannot change the situation in our country. We cannot change the state power. We will one day take the state power, but for now we are in preparation, making networks with the peasants and in the cities, training, preparing for the struggle.

Lal Salam Blog: Do you think Peoples War can be successful? Bhutan is already a very brutal state. As many as a sixth of the population lives in exile and the state has beaten, attacked, arrested and even raped and murdered those it perceives to be political activists?

Comrade Sushil: Our parties thought is that only by waging the armed struggle and the Peoples War can we win the liberation of our exploited people. I believe so. Thousands of people have been evicted from Bhutan, we are very aware of this. Why were they evicted? They were evicted after political activism and movements. They were evicted because the people in the southern belt had a high political consciousness. This is totally not a refugee problem, this is a political problem. It is a problem of a brutal monarchy and a restrictive feudal system. Without destroying these institutions we cannot solve these problems.

Our party is launching this armed struggle to liberate the exploited people and we know that one day we will be successful. This is a long term plan, it will take many preparations, and without this and without correct politics we cannot be successful. We have this ideology, the Marxist-Leninist- Maoist and this is a political weapon. With this weapon we believe that one day we will be successful.

Lal Salam Blog: So have you learnt much from the experiences of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) and their experiences in Nepal? Are there close or special links between your parties?

Comrade Sushil: We do not have special or direct links with this party. But, and also like communists all around the world, in Peru, India or the Philippines we have ideological links. These places all have communist parties leading revolution through the armed struggle, and with all of them we have ideological links and an ideological relationship.

That means we support them ideologically and they support us ideologically. We have a relationship with the CP Nepal (Maoist) , but also with the CP India (Maoist) who are also waging an armed struggle. We don’t receive any physical support, or anything like that, but we should understand that we are all communists, and we are all internationalists, and we receive and give moral support.

Lal Salam Blog: What does your party think about Prachanda Path and the Nepali Maoists synthesis? It has been controversial to some international communists.

Comrade Sushil: About this Prachanda Path. It is something we should study. And also it is not only a thing to be studied, it has shown it has the ability to guide workers actions. I don’t want to comment more because the ideological things i have had not sufficiently studied, and till now our party has not discussed at length Prachanda Path.

Lal Salam Blog: The Maoists in Nepal have given up their Peoples War and taken a new tactic in pursuing the Constituent Assembly elections. Is this a correct tactic in your parties opinion?

Comrade Sushil: In regards to the UCPN (M) we do not think that they have given up their goals. We think they are pursuing another way, another tactic to establish a peoples state. We don’t think they have established the proletarian dictatorship. So we, our party, does not think that they have achieve state power. We too will go for a Constituent Assembly at first, and only after that can we step or jump or leap forward to a New Democratic revolution.

In the context of the Maoists we don’t think they have state power, and are still struggling for it. It is a fact that the future shows you which path you must take, you can only pick your path depending on the concrete situation you face. We will also move for a constituent assembly elections and a new state, but without establishing the proletarian people at the center of this new state then it cannot reach higher and improve the lives of the people. We think that the Maoists of Nepal face similar situations to us, and have similar actions, so we will continue to watch closely.

Lal Salam Blog: So a Constituent Assembly is a tactic that you are interested in for change in Bhutan?

Comrade Sushil: Actually it is the tactics and strategy of communist parties in the third world. Third world countries are semi-colonial and semi-feudal. So without a New Democratic Socialism stage we cannot reach socialism. So we are in this revolution, it is a peasant revolution we can say. So to reach our aims, to some extent we should aim for a Constituent Assembly, and this is our main slogan and the main aim of the present situation in our revolution.

That is not our only slogan, and out only goal, and it isn’t the only thing that we campaign around with the peasants and people of Bhutan. And we don’t want or aspire to another bourgeois constitution, but we need a constitution that is in favor of the oppressed and poor people of Bhutan.

Lal Salam Blog: Last year the government of Bhutan held elections, in a very restricted and controlled way, but the western media still presented this as a opening up and of “democracy”. If there was to be a more open electoral system, would the CPB (MLM) pursue peaceful politics through elections?

Comrade Sushil: WE think there is only one path to real democracy in Bhutan. We don’t believe in the current “democracy” this is well known. And we don’t think that this system can lead to real democracy. The international community has its formula and they see votes and call it democracy- but there is no such thing in Bhutan and it is not possible to impose a real democracy from the outside into Bhutan.

Any “democracy” that the regime brings into practice itself will be done in such a way so that real power continues to be restricted and kept in the hands of the old order, and not in the hands of the mass of exploited people, so that this “democracy” could not be used against the regime. Even if the regime cast out the king, it would not fundamentally change it. Our party will not make compromises with that order. We wont co-operate with their agenda, we have another agenda that is contradiction to theirs.

We are going to establish the rule of all the people while they just want to exploit them. There is this contradiction between the people and the regime. Our party struggles because of that. If they were to try and set up a “democracy” for then when we should not be a part of it. When i say this it does not mean that we are militarists. The people want peace, and don’t want to live in terror but this regime suppresses and exploits the people, they already live in terror. It is not a hobby to carry out armed struggle, it is our only option the liberation of our people.

Lal Salam Blog: Bhutan is such a tiny country, and it has very close relations, with India in particular. If you care to reach peoples war, do you think India would interfere to defend its interests?

Comrade Sushil: On this the whole party is very much conscious. But in the present situation India is not so dangerous to Bhutan. China is quite dangerous. 11,500 square kilometers of Bhutan’s lands have been occupied and taken by China. So we are surrounded by two very large and powerful countries, who are always looking to interfere into Bhutan. They have two ways of interfering. Political intervention and direct intervention. There are Indian Army camps established in Bhutan. There are several big barracks. We have known this but we don’t think they will intervene directly.

Maybe at some point in the future. There will be political intervention, and we can try to counter this with our allies by rousing grassroots support for our cause in India. We are already doing this. If they try to intervene militarily it will be a heavy cost for them, a bloody and long civil war. Also the regime and the fuedalists don’t want this. They want to defend their borders, protect his kingdom. We also want to establish the sovereignty of Bhutan, so we will always fight foreign influence, from India as well as China.

Lal Salam Blog: I understand that your party has allot of support amongst the refugees in Nepal.

Comrade Sushil: We are not just a party for the refugees. We have support where ever our people are.

Lal Salam Blog: So in India, Nepal and Bhutan?

Comrade Sushil: Yes.

Lal Salam Blog: And your party does work amongst all the communities of Bhutan and across the whole country, not just in the southern Belt that is largely Nepali speaking?

Comrade Sushil: The southern belt is not only Nepali speaking, but there are people from many communities there as well. Myself i haven’t been to the north as yet, our party does work there, but i have been working in the south and also in the east. In allot of people, and in the media there is allot of confusion. The CPB (MLM) is not just a party in the refugee camps, and not just Nepali speaking. We have cadres of many ethnic backgrounds, and our party works all over Bhutan.

Lal Salam Blog: For the refugees in Nepal is it true your party favors repatriation in Bhutan rather then resettlement in third countries?

Comrade Sushil: It is not that our party policy is just to return people to Bhutan. It is not a solution. Liberating the people of Bhutan is the only real and long term solution to this problem. We are not for resettlement, and we are not for repatriation in Bhutan without changing anything else. Moving people around like they are animals is not a solution. That is our position. There needs to be a political solution to this, and only then can the refugees get their rights.

Some people have said our party was created to agitate for the repatriation of refugees, this is not the case. Our party was established within Bhutan and amongst the people. We are in favour of all the oppressed people.Only understanding the problem of the refugees as a problem of the political structure of Bhutan that we can find a solution. Our party was not established for the refugees, but for all the Bhutanese.

Khmer Rouge Supporters on the Internet

Pretty incredible stuff. Name of group: Group For the Study of the Theories of Pol Pot. Quote:

We work to understand the ideology of Brother Number 1, so that they can be used to achieve Year Zero on world scale.

Wow, yikes. They do have a lot of cool, and rare, period photos though, along with some very obscure party documents from the period.

A Maoist Spector Haunts the Indian Capitalist World

This article is by Arindam Chaudhuri, an expert on India’s Maoist movement. This movement is really starting to grow a lot. They have minimum of 25,000 members under arms, are well-armed, have lots of money, and have many female members. They operate in military formations and wear full military uniforms. They are especially big in Chattisargh, Jharkand, Orissa, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and Bihar in a belt along the eastern part of the country. They have the most support among the scheduled tribes and untouchables in the jungles and mountains. These are the most backwards and neglected parts of India. Racially, many of the Maoists and their supporters are more Dravidian or darker-skinned South Indian stock. Some definitions: Salva Judums are the paramilitary death squads that the state has set up to fight the Maoists. CRPF jawans are also some sort of state paramilitary counterinsurgency force. Naxals and Naxalites are names for Indian Communists, typically Maoists these days. The name stems from an uprising called the Naxalite Rebellion in 1969. SEZ’s are some kind of Special Economic Zones that the state is setting up for foreign investment. The Maoists are usually dead set against them because much peasant land is confiscated without compensation in making these areas. Tata and Mittal are two giant corporations that are involved in the SEZ’s. I am not familiar with the Chattisargh Massacre, but it looks like about 60 peasants were killed by Salva Judums. Chattisargh is one of the most backwards parts of India and it and Jharkand are Ground Zero for the insurgency. I support these folks very critically, mostly because no one else seems to have any logical plans about how to solve India’s horrible problems. Since 1995, India’s rate of malnutrition has stayed the same at around 5 If the Maoists can help India, let’s see what they can do, but if they ever get in power, I hope they don’t kill too many people. It’s true that they can be quite brutal, and I’m against that, but if you withdraw support for all insurgencies that are brutal, you end up not being able to support anyone. Further, most states are pretty nasty in war too. War’s an ugly business, and hardly anyone fights fair.

Mark my words, the day is not far when they (Maoists) will rule a grand majority of India. These 200 districts will become 400 in no time, and inch towards more. No government in India will be able to stop their growth through police, Salva Judums or army.

– Arindam Chaudhuri, management guru and author of The Great Indian Dream. Arindam Chaudhuri – It’s not the Maoists, but India’s crony capitalism that is responsible for the Chattisargh Massacre. If you have been following popular media, then you must by now be of the viewpoint that Naxalites are India’s largest growing menace; and you must be pitying the 60 plus people left dead in the Chhattisgarh massacre, thanks to the Naxalites. The truth, however, is not that simple. The Naxalite movement in India is growing; that’s a truth. They are a menace to the Centre; that’s a truth. But Naxalites a menace to India? Well, perhaps this is farthest from the truth. In cities where we lead a cushy life, Naxalites are far from a menace. In the interiors where they rule, they aren’t really considered a menace either. They rule the Indian villages and backward areas – well, that’s an understatement – they are the emperors of a third of Indian districts today. Yes, 200 out of the 600 odd districts in India are today under Naxalite rule. They rule there not because they are a menace. They rule there not just by force. They rule there because people in these places support them in a majority and believe in them; because the Naxalites are the brave armed revolutionaries in their lives who give them food, money and land snatched from the rich land owners and exploiters. Naxalites do kill when these rich protest; and at times are involved in atrocities as well. . . But on the whole, they are the only revolutionary group in this country at the centre of whose agenda are the poor and deprived. Their methods may involve violence, but then worldwide, all uprisings and revolutions have been violent. To the people against whom they fight, they are villains – terrorists if you may call them – but the people for whom they fight, they are the heroes. And these Naxalites in India are there to stay and grow. Mark my words, the day is not far when they will rule a grand majority of India. These 200 districts will become 400 in no time, and inch towards more. No government in India will be able to stop their growth through police, Salva Judums (the Chhattisgarh version of State-backed armed forces of villagers and common men) or army. The police in this country have no loyalty for the Central leadership, and would too willingly hand over their arms to the Naxalites; police station after police station, at every given opportunity. For the police, their life is too precious, and many actually believe in the Naxals. On the other hand, the army will march on the streets while the Naxals fight from the jungles and places inaccessible by road. So even the army stands no chance as has been proven in the North-East. Yes, the army might succeed if it uses the aerial route to bomb and create an internal war throughout India. No government in India will ever be able to do so. That leaves us with the criminal experiment of forcing the common people to become SPOs – Special Police Officers – by giving them some pathetic basic training in arms, the way Salva Judum is doing. This method has failed miserably earlier in North-East and Kashmir and is sure to fail everywhere, including in Chhattisgarh. More importantly, the method in itself is criminal in nature and leaves the people-soldiers with nowhere to go – like in Chhattisgarh where villages after villages have been emptied and people have been brought to camps where they are given one small windowless room per family to stay in. The connection is ironic! When the State finds its own police machinery ill-equipped and dying, they conjure up a scheme where, instead of the police officers, those are the villagers – very often child soldiers – who have to confront Naxalites during their attacks, and die. More pathetically, it’s a trap from which the villagers can’t come out. If they go back to their villages where they had their land etc., they will be alone and would be killed by Naxalites for having become members of Salva Judum. And if they stay, they will die in any case in a confrontation, or out of hunger itself – since in the camps, the government doesn’t even provide them with proper meals, and keeps them in near destitute conditions. In Dantewada district of Chhattisgarh itself (where the recent massacre took place), there are 20 Salva Judum camps with about 60,000 occupants living in utterly inhuman conditions, where they get food for about five days in a week, and the rest two days, go hungry. The camps, of course, have no toilets or bathrooms. And worse, they have to share the facilities with CRPF jawans (Naga battalion) who, after evening hours, get drunk and start inhuman torture on these people, women mainly. Rapes and abortions galore and the people have absolutely no voice. And on 15 March 2007, the Naxalites, who were looking for their chance to get back, attacked and left about 60 dead – more than two-thirds were these helpless people forcibly made to vacate their land and join this inhuman camp with the legal approval of the Centre and State. Were the police innocent? Well, it depends; if you call the bribe seeking, soul selling perpetrators of the State’s crime machinery `innocent’, that is. But yes, those members of Salva Judum were innocent victims of this criminal governance. And this is just one case, many more will follow soon while we condemn the Naxalites blindly. Who then is to blame? Clearly our Prime Ministers and Finance Ministers of successive governments. Let’s take this year’s budget for example. For the `land loot schemes’ of the government – popularly known as the SEZs – there has been an allocation of Rs 90,000 crore. For various subsidies that have gone into the corporate kitty, there has been another Rs 2,35,000 crore (that is, a shamelessly gross Rs 3,25,000 crore for the minuscule top rich in India). Guess how much has been allocated then for unemployment eradication programmes that were to guarantee at least ‘100 days job’ per person if the government meant to remove unemployment seriously. Well, against a most urgent requirement of about Rs 2,25,000 crore, the allocation is a meager Rs 11,000 crore. If the poor in a country are left to die out of hunger, curable diseases and poverty, Naxalites will rule. The only way to defeat them is for our governments to believe in fact in what the Naxalites are fighting for – food, health and employment. Till our governments allocate enough for such causes, many more Chhattisgarh carnages will happen; and unfortunately, I won’t be able to blame the Naxalites, or even call them terrorists. It’s the State that is monstrous, and those are our Prime Ministers and Finance Ministers who have to realise the importance of working for the poor for the real future of India. Right now, they are instead busy giving thrust to crony capitalism – helping a few industrial houses acquire more and more land and public property. Chhattisgarh is no exception – while villages are being emptied, people are being uprooted and shifted to their Salva Judum death camps, with their mineral and iron-ore rich lands left behind being handed over to the Tatas and Mittals. And as long as India’s crony capitalism and heartless journey towards being a slave of the rich continues, long will live the Naxalite movement in India. Fortunately or unfortunately . . .

Mao Messed Up

I think an assessment of Mao ought to be made on a scientific basis, beyond politics. Anti-Communists and rightwingers have an extremely poor record as far documenting this sort of thing, so I almost want to dismiss everything they say.

Probably the best sources would be leftwingers or even Communists who also happen to be some sort of China scholars. To the detriment of Mao, a number of Leftists, socialists and Communists who are also China scholars are starting to contribute some very negative things about Mao.

The good side is quite clear. Life expectancy doubled under Mao, from 35 to 70, from 1949 to 1976, in only 27 years. Supporters of fascism and Hitler are challenged to provide evidence that Hitler’s rule benefited anyone. Nazism was at core a death cult. Life expectancy collapsed in Germany under Hitler and in all of the regions that were occupied by Nazis. Nazism wasn’t about improving life for the common man at all; it was about war and endless war and endless extermination of the less fit.

Communism, with the exception of Pol Pot’s rule, where life expectancy collapsed in Cambodia and 1.7 million died, has been quite a bit different. Most Communist regimes have killed people, but at the same time seem to have saved many lives, often millions of lives. So it gets hard to tally things up.

I suppose pro-Communists would say that the many deaths were necessary in order to save so many lives. That’s an interesting argument and ought to be taken up. Was there a way to save so many lives without killing millions of people? I hope there would be, but I’m not sure.

Pre-China Mao was vastly deadlier than China under Mao. The life expectancy figures make this clear. Czarist Russia was 3 times deadlier than the USSR under Lenin and Stalin. This is where this “greatest killers of all time” crap runs into the mud. If the death rate was 3 times higher per year under the Czar than under Stalin, just how was Stalin the worst killer of all time?

Same with Mao. I don’t have good figures, but once again, it looks like Nationalist China in the 1920’s, 30’s and 40’s was 3 times deadlier per year, or maybe more, than Maoist China. If the death rate collapsed under Mao, how was he the worst killer ever? The truth is there are plenty of ways to kill a man. You can kill him with a bullet or by sending him to a camp, or you can kill him by disease and lack of food, the silent and uncounted method that the capitalists prefer.

Nevertheless, an accounting of deaths under Mao needs to be done. Just glancing at the data here, it’s already looking like Mao was way worse than Stalin. Way worse.

The initial consolidation of power in China was brutal. Whether the landlords were killed by the party or by the peasants is not that relevant. Mao said that 700,000 landlords were killed, and even he thought that was too many. China scholars think it is higher, from 1-4 million. I would dismiss the 4 million figure, but anywhere from 700,000-3 million is possible. Further research is needed here.

The Anti-Counterrevolutionary Drive of 1950 followed, an attempt to uncover supporters of the Nationalists and counterrevolutionaries. Tens of thousands were killed, or possibly up to a million, let’s call it 20,000-1 million. Further research is needed.

Anti-Christian Campaigns of the 1950’s. These were launched against mostly Christians, but also other religions. “Many thousands” are said to have died. Definitely some further work is necessary here.

Anti-Counterrevolutionary Campaign of 1953. Mao said, “9

The Great Leap Forward Famine happened between 1959-1961. Unlike the fake Holodomor of 1932-33, it’s looking more and more like most of the blame for this horrible catastrophe can be laid at the feet of Mao himself. The man was a fanatic. He was told that there was a famine, and in early 1959, he backtracked on some of his crazy ideas, while he blamed subordinates for the famine.

Then there was the Lushan Conference in May 1959. Mao accused Peng Dehuai, a critic of the Great Leap, of conspiring against him. Peng was purged, and the Great Leap went was ordered to go ahead full speed. If there had been no Lushan Conference, there would have been no famine. There followed two years of catastrophe, in which there was overprovisioning of grain from the peasants which was then stored in warehouses in cities, where it rotted or was exported for scarce foreign currency.

Much of the problem was that local officials were wildly exaggerating harvests, hence the overprovisioning at the state level. They thought that with bumper harvests, they could take grain from the countryside to the cities without problems. But there were no bumper harvests. Harvests had collapsed. Finally in 1961, the state figured out that it had screwed up royally and started mass importing grain. Caravans of grain trucks flowed to the countryside, and the famine was over. But many were too weak to even walk to the trucks to get the food.

Mao is blamed for an atmosphere of terror that led underlings to fake bumper crops where none had occurred. With no democracy in the party, no one wanted to contradict Mao. Mao himself had some utterly idiotic ideas, which he was allowed to implement due to lack of party democracy. After the Great Leap, the party realized it had screwed up bad. Even Mao knew that. The Cultural Revolution was in a lot of ways Mao’s attempt to regain face after getting egg on his face in the Great Leap.

As far as deaths during the Great Leap, this is still up in the air. Even Maoists admit that there were 15 million excess deaths in the period. Some of the higher figures use preposterous accounting techniques whereby people who had never even been born were counted as “deaths.” Tell me how that works. Nevertheless, the figure may be higher than 15 million. At any rate, it’s the worst famine in modern world history, and it’s a permanent blot on Mao’s record.

The Cultural Revolution was sheer insanity. Many received poor educations as schools were shut down. Many cultural relics and buildings were destroyed, and a good part of China’s cultural heritage was smashed up.

People were killed and hounded all over China for little or no reason. Red Guards rampaged all over China, torturing, humiliating, imprisoning and murdering all sorts of people, including local party officials, teachers and even university professors. When someone was hounded, the humiliation went on every day and there was no escape. No one would dare to come to your side, not even your spouse. Deng Xiaoping’s son was tossed out of a window and paralyzed from the waist down.

Red Guard factions battled each other in cities across China with weapons looted from local Army depots. Sometimes Army units joined in. Red Guards in one city would attack Red Guards in another city. Women and children were murdered and kids were even buried alive. Enemies were cannibalized in one area. Ridiculous, insane and anarchic, right? Sure.

In some parts of China, victims of the Red Guards are still angry. The Red Guards are still around, older now, but still living in the villages alongside their victims. Their former victims hate them. Lawsuits have been brought against former Red Guards, but the courts have thrown them out.

From a Communist POV, one of the most tragic things about all of these persecutions and killings, when one reads the details of the individual cases, is that many of the victims were not even counterrevolutionaries. Many were dedicated, hard-working Communists and revolutionaries, often devoted Maoists. Lord knows why they were purged and victimized.

The insanity and anarchy of the Cultural Revolution is one reason why the Party wants to keep a tight reign on power. China descends pretty quickly into wild and deadly anarchy.

Lately, I’ve been reading a lot of Chinese Communist Party publications and the theses and dissertations by students at Chinese universities, which tend to toe the party line. As a rule, the Cultural Revolution is regarded as a big mistake by ultra-Left forces, and the Party definitely wants to avoid such messes in the future. I’ve even some some Party critiques of the Great Leap, though not much is said about that. It’s clear that the high ranks of the Party regard the Great Leap as a disaster.

There continue to be some very serious human rights abuses in China, as this 89 page report from Human Rights Watch reports. Even from the POV of a Communist, some of the abuses of these petitioners seem just flat out wrong. There doesn’t seem to be any legitimate Communist reason to be attacking a lot of these poor petitioners.

Surely in a Communist system, petitioners should have the right to protest uranium pollution of rivers, corrupt officials abusing their posts and stealing land, etc. In what way are these folks counterrevolutionaries?

But it’s not true that everyone who protests in China goes to jail. There are around 100 public protests every single day in China, often involving large groups. Only a few of them get arrested, harassed, beaten, tortured or jailed. But I guess you never know when your card will come up.

The fact that some of the harshest critiques of Mao’s crimes, excesses and stupidities are coming out of the Chinese Communist Party itself shows that slamming Mao can be done within a socialist, Leftist or Communist framework.

Can it be done in a Maoist framework? This I’m not so sure of. The Party will not come out and make public its findings on Mao as the USSR did with Stalin because the party continues to wave the banner of Mao and practically rules under his name and visage. It’s possible that slamming Mao would so delegitimize the party that it might be fatal for the CCP. It’s a tough call. For the anti-Semites, I have a homework assignment for you. Since Mao was a Communist and Communism is Jewish, obviously Mao was a Jew. Please uncover the secret Jewish connections of Mao and his closest supporters in the CCP.

Commies Killed More Than Hitler Redux

We went over this quite a few times on the old blog, but since this crap keeps recrudescing on the Right, we may as well continue to hammer away at it. From an interesting, but disgusting, article by Steve Sailer, effectively ruined, as are most of his posts, by his inability to turn off the rightwing talking points no matter what he is writing about. Sailer is like the Christian kooks, who, no matter what the conversation is about, always manage to return the conversation to their evangelical bullshit within 10 minutes. Steve just can’t shut the rightwing trap. Here is the poop:

Lenin, Stalin, and Mao slaughtered even more tens of millions in the name of equality than Hitler murdered in the name of inequality. And, as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn has pointed out, the doctrine of “class origins” transformed “egalitarian” mass murder into ethnic genocide since there is no sharp line between family and race.

Boy, rightwingers just can’t shut up about this, can they? Never mind that he’s quoting the fascist Solzhenitsyn (and he spelled his name wrong), but this whole line has a particularly nasty genesis. After the war, in trying to prove that Hitler was no big deal and Stalin was way worse, Ukrainian Nazis (Excuse me! Ukrainian nationalists! Wait. Is there a difference?) developed a lie called The Holodomor, a lie that was originally started by the Nazi Randolf Hearst and his Nazi buddies in Germany in the early 1930’s. The lie stated that Stalin deliberately killed 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, no wait, 7, 8, oh forget it, God knows how many Ukrainians by deliberate starvation. It’s not true. Nobody was deliberately starved to death. There was indeed a famine in all of the USSR, especially the Ukraine, in 1932 and 1933. The number of dead is not known. The state made many errors, including initially denying that it was happening, to a chaotic response to the tragedy. The Ukrainians were rebelling against the state. They destroyed 5 The USSR did seize the grain crop, because the country needed to eat and the Ukrainians were destroying everything in sight. Ukrainians were mass deported to Siberia, and 390,000 died. It was a bad time. The people were weakened by hunger and there were disease epidemics due to primitive sanitation and lack of effective drugs. This is what killed most of the people, not starvation. Most of the pictures of “starving Ukrainians” were faked, and those photos were actually from a famine in 1921. Mark Tauger has also presented good forensic evidence of a wheat rust epidemic. There was also a terrible famine in China during the Great Leap Forward that may have killed 15 million people, mostly due to disease once again. Once again, this was not intentional, unless idiocy is intentionality. The primary cause of the famine was overprocurement by the state. Capitalism kills 14 million people ever year by direct starvation and attendant illnesses all over the globe. Shall we tally up these body piles and compare them to Hitler, Stain, Mao and whatnot? The chips are down, capitalist punks. That means you, Sailer. Leaving aside famines, we really need to look at direct killings.

Leader         Deaths     Period      Years
Hitler          52M*      1933-1945   12
Lenin/Stalin    2.5M**    1921-1953   32
Mao             2.4M?***  1949-1976   27

*Figure from here. Hitler also started a war for no reason that ended up killing ~45 million people. Whether you want to count that or not is up to you. I count 12 million dead in camps and 40 million dead in a war that he started. **See Getty 1993 for the most accurate estimate to date of deaths under Stalin. In 1990, the USSR archives were opened up. The Soviets had kept track of everyone who died due to executions, population transfers and in the camps, year by year. The deaths in the camps include 900,000 common criminals, but I guess the anti-Communists want to throw those in too. There is no academic consensus whatsoever for 20, 30, 40, 43, or 110 million deaths under Stalin. Furthermore, these figures usually include “10 million” for the fake “Ukraine intentional famine” that never happened. As noted below, capitalism starves 14 million people to death every year. If we can’t tally these against the capitalists, we can’t tally them against Stalin. The Sovietologists are currently fighting it out in the academic journals. Those arguing for a higher figure are basically saying, “Commies lie.” There never was any rational basis for the figures of tens of millions killed under Stalin. Those figures were produced by Nazis and Nazi sympathizers, the CIA and the MI6. They were just pulling figures out of thin air. By the way, that wonderful 110 million figure comes from the fascist Solzhenitsyn, a man lionized by the West. Peacetime figures for political deaths in the USSR 1921-1953 are:

Executions:                 900,000
Deaths in the gulag:        1.2M
Dekulakization Ukraine:     390,000
Totals:                     2.5M

***2.4 million is my estimate for Mao, and those are just known deaths. The Chinese have not yet opened up their archives, and unfortunately it is possible that deaths under Mao were a lot higher. Mao himself admitted that 700,000 landlords were killed in the early years. The Party allowed the local peasants to put them on trial and the people sentenced many of them to death. Many were horrible criminals who had been abusing the peasants for many years, but one can argue whether they needed to die. There were 1 million excess deaths in the Cultural Revolution. We have no accurate figures for deaths under Mao from 1953-1966, although 700,000 is a good minimum. We also have no accurate figures for deaths in the Chinese gulags. We will have to wait until the Chinese open their books in order to find out the real number who died under Mao. The 77 million figure tossed around lately, the product of a lunatic new book, has absolutely no basis in reality whatsoever. Furthermore, it includes famine deaths in the Great Leap Forward, listed as an incredible 39 million. As I note below, capitalism starves 14 million people to death every year. Shall we count these deaths against the capitalists? Ok, as you can see, the evil Commies absolutely did not kill tens of millions of people. Who did? No one, unless you count the European War that Hitler started that killed ~45 million or so. Hitler killed 42 million in 12 years or 3.5 million/year. Mao, Lenin and Stalin combined killed 4.9 million over 59 years, or 83,000/yr. Ok, now who is the worse killer? Who killed more? Hitler. Mao, Stalin and Lenin combined were not able to exceed Hitler’s totals, and they had 10 times more years to do it again. Hitler was 42 times worse of a killer than Mao, Stalin and Lenin combined. The crap like Steve’s above is usually followed by some jibe about “more being killed in the name of equality than were killed in the name of inequality.” Of course, rightwingers, lovable and cuddly folks that they are, just can’t get enough inequality. They consume inequality for breakfast, lunch and dinner and they’re still hungry. What they hate more than anything else is anyone trying to even the score just a tiny bit. Making the world a little more fair than the cruel hand of fate fetishized by the Right supposedly “goes against human nature.” That’s dubious right there, and Adam Smith himself disagreed. In his book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith noted that capitalism was incapable of providing for essential aspects of human society, such as compassion towards one’s fellow man, sympathy, mutual sympathy , and any type of fairness or justice in society. Since the market could not provide these things, their provision was left up to politics, or the state. Politics is only unnatural; it’s deadly, genocidally deadly. Any attempts to create a little justice or fairness in the human jungle are apparently doomed to end up in mass murder. So don’t you dare mess with that invisible hand of the market. If it’s market versus politics, the market wins hands down. The same market that starves 14 million people every year. The same market that kills 10 million kids a year. The same market that blew up the US economy and is threatening to take the world economy down with it. The blind faith of the Right boggles the mind.

References

Coplon, Jeff. January 12, 1988. In Search of a Soviet Holocaust. The Village Voice. Grover Furr’s website. Coplon, Jeff. March 1988. Rewriting History – How Ukrainian Nationalists Imposed Their Doctored History on High School Students CAPITAL Region. Douglas Furr’s website. Davies, R. W. and Wheatcroft, Steven G. 2004. The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931-1933. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Getty, J. Arch, Ritterspoon, Gabor T. and Zemskov, Viktor N. 1993. Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-war Years: A First Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence American Historical Review 98:4, 1048-49. Souza, Mario. Lies Concerning the History of the Soviet Union. North Star Compass website. Tauger, Mark B. 1991. The 1932 Harvest and the Famine of 1933. Slavic Review 50:1, pp. 70-89. Tottle, Douglas. 1987. Fraud, Famine, and Fascism: the Ukrainian Genocide Myth from Hitler to Harvard. Toronto: Progress Books.
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