Historical Materialism vs. Historical Determinism

Marx’s outlook on historical development bears no similarity to what could be called historical determinism, or, a fatalistic concept of a mechanically determined predestination. Marx’s dialectical method is opposed to the mechanical method or determinist method in which the subjective, conscious aspect of human activity is totally negated. The materialist conception of history does not argue that man does not make history, but that man makes history within definite parameters set by the inherited conditions of society. Marx says, “men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.” (Eighteenth Brumaire)

Marx’s own practice bears out his opposition to the historical determinist outlook. His role in proselytizing communist ideology, and in building revolutionary organization, coincide fully with his belief that the rule of the bourgeoisie would not fall of its own accord, but only with the conscious, determined efforts of a cadre among the masses of people.

Marx does not state that the communist society is inevitable, but instead points to the systemic crises of class rule, and the role the propertyless proletariat may play in replacing this society with classless, communist society. To Marx, the point was to grasp the essence of historical processes, not in order to imagine the alleged inevitability of this or that future course for society, but to carry out an actual, current revolutionary process fully in accord with historical opportunities. The subjective, conscious aspect of social development, without doubt, functions within a set of constraints. Historical necessity allows for varying possibilities within a certain scope of operation; it does not forecast definite or absolute outcomes. For instance, Marx and Engels do not see revolution as the inevitable triumph of a nascent class. Indeed, revolutions may cause “the common ruin of the contending classes” (Communist Manifesto).

Voluntarism makes the error of ignoring the objective constraints of the conditions inherited from history. Such was the error of the utopian socialists who sought to, parallel with and apart from the ascendant nation-states, affect a kind of communistic relations. Historical determinism makes the error of ignoring the subjective, conscious aspect of history as a process of human self-development. Often revisionists, but also at times genuine Marxists, have adopted a historical determinist stand when proclaiming that an increase in the development of the forces of production will absolutely lead to a corresponding leap to communism, apart from the class struggle in the realm of the superstructure.

In Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach, in which he declares that “the philosophers have understood the world, the point however is to change it,” he answers the criticism that he upholds a mechanical, deterministic worldview. “The materialist doctrine concerning the changing of circumstances and upbringing forgets that circumstances are changed by men and that it is essential to educate the educator himself. This doctrine must, therefore, divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society,” says Marx. Here, he clearly highlights the dynamic role of the subjective element in the making of history, without which, no human development can occur. The materialist conception of history fully accounts for both the objective and subjective factors contributing to social movement.

Works Cited

Marx, Karl. The German Ideology. New York: International Publishers, 1947.

Marx, Karl, and Engels, Frederick. “Theses on Feuerbach.” Marx/Engels Selected Works. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1969. 13-15.

Marx, Karl. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1978.

Continued Revolution under Socialism Means Seizing Power

In 1975, a film was released in China called “Breaking with Old Ideas.” The central plot of the movie surrounds the struggle of working people to gain entrance to an agricultural college, as well the struggle over what role education should serve in a socialist society. My favorite scene in the film is when there is mass meeting concerning the criteria for student admissions, and a revolutionary cadre at the college holds aloft the hand of a young worker, and proclaims, “These calluses are his qualification for admission!” The point here is that educational institutions under socialism must serve the working people, and also must promote overcoming the contradiction between mental and manual labor, and between town and countryside.

There is a weakness in the film, however: until the very end of the movie, it is unclear whether or not the revolutionary forces at the school will win out against the backward school officials. Finally, an official in a government car arrives with a note from Mao Zedong, praising the revolutionaries. The masses erupt in celebration of their victory, and then the film ends. A year after the film was released, a counterrevolutionary military coup was carried out, and the revolutionary leadership was crushed, with little armed resistance. Had many good revolutionaries become too accustomed to looking to the center for strength? Perhaps a more apt film would have portrayed the January Storm in Shanghai during January of 1967. In this uprising, the reactionary-led local Party committee was overthrown, and the revolutionary forces seized control of media, factories, and state offices. They masses did so without getting a note from anyone in Beijing.

“Petitioning the Center” or Seizing Power?

Under Stalin, aggrieved workers and farmers wrote to Stalin, in the hopes of finding relief from the abuses of local officials. The same was true of working people in China under Mao’s leadership. And there is nothing at all wrong with this, in itself. A revolutionary leadership is crucial to the success of socialist revolution and construction. However, such activity alone is insufficient, and is furthermore a great hindrance if the masses of people do not mobilize to actually seize political power for the revolutionary forces, and overthrow those officials carrying out reactionary policies.

On the other hand, there is a real danger from rampant, misdirected “leftism.” Zhang Chunqiao, one of Mao’s closest comrades arrested after the chairman’s death, raised criticism of anarchism, and in particular pointed out the ways in which rightists use ultra-“leftism” to sabotage the Party and socialist society. In other words, legality cannot be completely dispensed with. There must be a legal mechanism to provide channels for revolutionary renewal in society, without opening the door to class subversion and counterrevolution. It will not be an easy task for future socialist states to devise such organizational forms.

Nepal’s Answer

A Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) document states that “(e)xperience has proved that after assuming state power, when various leaders and cadres of the Party are involved in running the state affairs, then there is strong chance that physical environment may swiftly reduce the Party into a bureaucratic, careerist and luxurious class. With intensification of this danger the Party will become more formal and alienated from the masses, in the same proportion. This process when it reaches to certain level of its own development, it is bound to be transformed into counter-revolution. In order to prevent such danger as counter-revolution to happen, it is important to develop further organizational mechanism and system so that Party is constantly under the vigilance, control and service of the proletariat and working masses according to the theory of two-line struggle and continuous revolution.”

The document gives specific policy recommendations as well, calling for “organizing political competition within the constitutional limits of the anti-feudal and anti-imperialist democratic state. Only by institutionalizing the rights of the masses to install an alternative revolutionary Party or leadership on the state if the Party fails to continuously revolutionize itself that counter-revolution can be effectively checked.” It may well be the case that the CPN (Maoist) has gone the furthest of the communist parties to date in assimilating the lessons of the reversals to the cause of socialism, and in understanding how to simultaneously protect a revolution from its enemies while preventing political degeneration resulting from bureaucratization.

Reference: http://cpnm.org/new/English/worker/9issue/document.htm

Dialectical and Historical Materialism

Karl Marx stresses clearly and repeatedly that the materialist conception of history is qualitatively different than the idealist method of historical analysis, which, Marx says, “confines itself to high-sounding dramas of princes and states.” (46) Marx’s criticism of the idealism of his German opponents is aimed at highlighting his historical materialist conception, and specifically its application to the actual struggle of the proletariat to affect revolution.

There can be no contradiction between the “human experience” and human history, because, as Marx points out, human history is a continuity, a process of self-development leading directly into, and explaining, the actual productive relations of society, and these relations’ “efflux,” man’s mental intercourse, world outlook. Marx’s revolutionary party, the communists, could not hope to initiate revolutionary consciousness among the proletarians without being able to posit the class struggle into the context of historical development. Marx’s stress on man’s world-historical acts leads directly to understanding the class struggle of the communists as the self-conscious making of current history.

The German Ideology wittily and clearly attacks the philosophical muck of historical idealism. But the point appears not to be identifying idealism, so much as developing its opposite: historical materialism. Using the materialist method, seeking to analyze concrete productive relationships and processes of development, and in a dialectical way, seeing the dynamic, multi-sided character of this development. But this was to Marx no scholastic exercise, so much as a programmatic expression of the communists, declaring to the world that history is on the side of the proletariat, as the class to end class division once and for all. To Marx, the struggles of class society lead directly to the present, in which the propertyless, socialized working class, combined with mighty productive forces, could and would seize power.

The crux of The German Ideology is its identification of the process of self-development of human society, and its forecast that the communist revolution will qualitatively transform this. “All-round dependence, this natural form of the world-historical cooperation of individuals, will be transformed by this communist revolution into the control and conscious mastery of these powers, which, born of the action of men on one another, have until now overawed and governed men as powers completely alien to them.” (58) Here, Marx highlights the fundamentally heteronomic (dependent) state of man until present, in which the hand of necessity both alienates him from the product of his work, and leads him to ascribe this process of alienation to metaphysical concepts such as “God,” or “fate.” This alienation will be resolved through the revolution, when human creativity will no longer be smothered by necessity and class oppression.

Indeed, the real value of this work is its application of materialism to the analysis of the motion of history, and, from that standpoint, the optimistic forecast of a communist future. Marx’s dialectical method can be applied to physical as well as social science, but historical materialism has perhaps shattered the old, reactionary traditions more than has anything else. Marx transformed the notion of historical development into a “specter,” that has long haunted the exploiting classes, and provided a basis for optimism among revolutionary forces. After the fall of many self-proclaimed socialist states, some bourgeois ideologists, wishing to bury Marx’s contributions once and for all, triumphantly declared “the end of history,” in which all forward motion was said to be a utopian mirage. But the fundamental power of Marx’s analysis here lies in its focus upon the broad, world-historical development of the productive forces, relations, and the correspondent superstructure. The contradictions giving rise to revolutionary crises cannot be covered over with any idealist philosophy, and, ultimately, the conscious, willful mastery of human creative and productive power foreseen by Marx will be realized.

Works Cited

Marx, Karl. The German Ideology. New York: International Publishers, 1947.

Forty Years Since Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution

Yesterday marked the 40th anniversary of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR). It was on that day that the Communist Party of China (CPC) adopted the “Circular of the Central Committee of the CPC on the GPCR.” The tide had turned against the revisionist, right-wingers in power, and the revolutionaries had seized the initiative. The central committee dissolved the revisionist-led group that was formerly in charge of the development of the Cultural Revolution, and decided to set up a new Cultural Revolution Group comprised of leading revolutionaries. The circular enumerated the principal errors of an “outline” drawn up by revisionist group being dissolved, and these were applicable to the entire bourgeois headquarters in the Party, led by Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping. Below are quotations from the circular, followed by comments.

“Instead of encouraging the entire party boldly to arouse the broad masses of workers, peasants, and soldiers, and the fighters for proletarian culture so that they can continue to charge ahead, the outline (the rightist, dissolved Cultural Revolution group’s document) does its best to turn the movement to the right.”

Comment: The revisionists were afraid of the masses. Practically the first thing they did when they came to power was to eliminate the “four big freedoms” in the constitution which protected the masses’ right to speech and to strike.

“The outline lays special emphasis on what it calls 'opening wide'. But playing a sly trick it grossly distorts the policy of 'opening wide' expounded by Comrade Mao Tse-tung at the party's National Conference on Propaganda Work in March 1957 and negates the class content of 'opening wide'. It was in dealing with this question that Comrade Mao Tse-tung pointed out: 'We still have to wage a protracted struggle against bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideology. It is wrong not to understand this and to give up ideological struggle. All erroneous ideas, all poisonous weeds, all ghosts and monsters, must be subjected to criticism; in no circumstance should they be allowed to spread unchecked.' Comrade Mao Tse-tung also said, 'To "open wide" means to let all people express their opinions freely, so that they dare to speak, dare to criticize, and dare to debate.' This outline, however, poses 'opening wide' against exposure by the proletariat of the bourgeoisie's reactionary stand.”

Comment: The reactionaries wanted to stifle the masses of working people and the youth, but wanted to “open wide” for the sake of the old and new exploiters and exponents of exploiting class ideology and politics. Deng Xiaoping’s slogan in the late 1970’s was to “emancipate your mind.” He meant this as a signal to the reactionaries that they could spew all sorts of backwardness without fear of criticism from the masses. In short, they want the intelligentsia to be comfortable and at ease, while the masses are forced off the stage of history, forced to defer to the “technocrats.”

“Just when we began the counter-offensive against the wild attacks of the bourgeoisie, the authors of the outline raised the slogan: 'everyone is equal before the truth'. This is a bourgeois slogan. Completely negating the class nature of truth, they use this slogan to protect the bourgeoisie and oppose the proletariat, oppose Marxism-Leninism, and oppose Mao Tse-tung's thought.”

Comment: A criticism must be raised here: there is a truth which is independent of class. But, Marxist materialists know that the absolute truth cannot be ascertained at any given moment. Human beings can only obtain relative truth. Marxism provides the scientific framework to best approximate the truth, and to continuously challenge that which inhibits perception of the truth. On the other hand, the criticism is aimed at the political aim of the revisionists’ slogan, which is to negate the superiority of Marxism over the pragmatic ideology upheld by them.

“Chairman Mao often says that there is no construction without destruction. Destruction means criticism and repudiation; it means revolution. It involves reasoning things out, which is construction. Put destruction first, and in the process you have construction. Marxism-Leninism, Mao Tse-tung's thought, was founded and has constantly developed in the course of the struggle to destroy bourgeois ideology. This outline, however, emphasizes that 'without construction, there can be no real and thorough destruction'. This amounts to prohibiting the destruction of bourgeois ideology and prohibiting the construction of proletarian ideology. It is diametrically opposed to Chairman Mao's thought.”

Comment: This is a critical point. The GPCR was a real revolution, but the revisionists wanted it to be a sterile, academic affair. They didn’t want the old things and ways of thinking destroyed. In one of Mao’s first articles, on the peasant movement of Hunan, he states:

They fine the local tyrants and evil gentry, they demand contributions from them, and they smash their sedan-chairs. People swarm into the houses of local tyrants and evil gentry who are against the peasant association, slaughter their pigs and consume their grain. They even loll for a minute or two on the ivory-inlaid beds belonging to the young ladies in the households of the local tyrants and evil gentry. At the slightest provocation they make arrests, crown the arrested with tall paper hats, and parade them through the villages, saying, "You dirty landlords, now you know who we are!" Doing whatever they like and turning everything upside down, they have created a kind of terror in the countryside. This is what some people call "going too far", or "exceeding the proper limits in righting a wrong", or "really too much". Such talk may seem plausible, but in fact it is wrong. First, the local tyrants, evil gentry and lawless landlords have themselves driven the peasants to this. For ages they have used their power to tyrannize over the peasants and trample them underfoot; that is why the peasants have reacted so strongly. The most violent revolts and the most serious disorders have invariably occurred in places where the local tyrants, evil gentry and lawless landlords perpetrated the worst outrages. The peasants are clear-sighted.
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The revisionists feared the revolutionary fury of the masses. They wanted to preserve their bureaucratic privilege. They wanted to become a new exploiting class, like the ruling revisionists in the Soviet Union. The GPCR was all about preventing that from happening. It was a “Hunan peasant movement” of the 1960’s.

May 16th Circular

May 17th, 2006: 26th Anniversary of the Initiation of the People’s War in Peru

Twenty-six years ago, the Communist Party of Peru launched a tremendous blow for communism and revolution, and against imperialism, by launching revolutionary war. There have been many twists and turns since that time, but the struggle of the revolutionary forces under the leadership of the PCP has been an experience of supreme sacrifice and heroism. The contribution of the PCP to the international communist movement cannot be underestimated. It provided critical ideological leadership at a time of confusion and disarray stemming from the loss in China following the death of Mao Zedong.

Below are Peruvian revolutionaries during the 1980’s.


“Communist Party of Peru (PCP)” Pro-“Peace Accord” Faction Favors Alan Garcia for President

Unfortunately, since “peace accords” were proposed by a group within the PCP in 1993, the unity of the PCP was shattered, and multiple groups claim leadership in the name of the Party.

An underground representative of the “PCP” pro-“peace accord” faction gave the French news organization AFP a statement. Gabriel Uribe, “PCP south-central committee spokesperson” said, “It is our fervent desire that the black campaign against Humala crushes him at the ballot box so that he and his followers are driven to our camp.” He articulated the belief that Garcia’s reign would reignite the crises of bureaucrat-capitalism - the ones that in 1993 PCP leader Abimael Guzman allegedly praised Alberto Fujimori for mitigating.

The speaker further intoned: “It is not in our plans to retake to arms.” Uribe said that, now, armed struggle in Peru is “a burden for the people.” He further insisted that the Peruvian state accept the nearly 13-year old “peace proposal” allegedly put forth by Abimael Guzman, which would declare amnesty for all revolutionary prisoners of war and political prisoners. Yes, war is a “burden.” But so are imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucrat-capitalism.

Below, the banner behind Gabriel Uribe calls for a “political solution to the problems derived from the internal war.” Now they do not even call it a people’s war. It is Mao Zedong, appearing on a poster behind Uribe, who said that to bury the gun it is necessary to pick up the gun.


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Lenin and Science

Upholding scientific method is one of the characteristics that distinguishes communist, scientific socialist thinkers from those with idealist and utopianist conceptions. Let us take up the example of Lenin, for instance.

Lenin acknowledged the universally revolutionary role of scientific method. Particularly, Lenin acknowledged the crucial role that science, technology and the accumulation of capital played in terms of allowing for the oppressed nations to transcend feudalism and imperialist domination. Science is a key not only to achieving material abundance, but also serves to challenge ossified class and productive relationships. Soviet policy under Lenin aimed to raise the cultural and technical level of the proletariat to the level of the workers who were engaged in engineering and other technical work with the objective of eliminating the differences between mental and physical labor. In both theory and practice, Lenin was committed to scientific method.[1]

It is only certain false friends of the national liberation struggles that would, perhaps in the name of a false “anti-imperialism” or of “zero growth,” adopt an anti-science, anti-capital accumulation standpoint. But this is not the standpoint of Lenin. The question of the role of scientific method is a demarcation between scientific socialism as upheld by Lenin, and the various utopian socialist currents of thought. Some revolutionary-minded people see scientific endeavor and its technological product as an optional, secondary political matter for a new society as compared with the simple redistribution of existing wealth. However, Lenin understood the absolute value of developing the material base of production as the prerequisite for class liberation. While Lenin held that, for the nations oppressed by imperialism, the stage of bourgeois-directed capitalist development need not follow liberation from imperialist-dictated semi-feudalism, he did not hold that the period of capital accumulation analogous to capitalist development could be bypassed. That is, Lenin held that, due to the emergence of imperialism, the bourgeoisie in the oppressed nations could not fulfill what has been understood by Marxists to be their historical task, the development of material abundance, and that completing this task would fall to the proletariat and its allies. While Lenin held that a semi-feudal nation could chart a course of socialist development without going through a capitalist stage, never did he negate the necessity for building up mighty productive forces with scientific workers at their core.

Ted Kazcynski provides an extreme yet succinct demonstration of Luddite, utopian opposition to scientific method and technology. His “manifesto” proclaimed:

The system needs scientists, mathematicians and engineers. It can't function without them. So heavy pressure is put on children to excel in these fields. It isn't natural for an adolescent human being to spend the bulk of his time sitting at a desk absorbed in study. A normal adolescent wants to spend his time in active contact with the real world. Among primitive peoples the things that children are trained to do are in natural harmony with natural human impulses. Among the American Indians, for example, boys were trained in active outdoor pursuits -- just the sort of things that boys like.[2]

Here, Kazcynski makes clear that he sees science as a burden alien to the so-called “natural” man, exemplified by the indigenous Americans and their more “natural human impulses” of physical activity. Indeed, this line of thought hearkens to the national socialist cult of so-called “physical culture.”[3] Kazcynski precludes the idea of non-alienated universal labor, and instead projects a cult of a bestial “nature.” Science, however, has a potential to serve as an egalitarian force and to challenge customary authority by shattering axiomatic agreements about what is known. The shattering of customary agreements and underlying assumptions is the dialectical process by which new knowledge comes into being through scientific discovery. It is this discovery, this human self-development that Kazcynski eschews in favor of “natural human impulses,” of unconscious “active outdoor pursuits.” Scientific socialist thinkers see science as a uniquely human, even voluntarist endeavor to willfully transform humankind’s world, and, as a derivative effect of this, recognize that the exercise of scientific method serves to continuously challenge the existing social, axiomatic assumptions.

With regard to science in today’s political arena, if Lenin were to condemn anyone as furthering the cause of imperialism, it would be those Luddites and utopianists who wish to deprive the peoples of the oppressed nations access to the technology necessary to develop the productive forces. Lenin would condemn Earth First ecologists, who proclaim “a new biocentric paradigm based on the intrinsic value of all natural things: Deep Ecology. Earth First believes in wilderness for its own sake.”[4] Lenin would condemn Kazcynski. Lenin would uphold the central role of science in the cause of human freedom.

Endnotes
[1] See Lenin’s slogan, “Communism equals Soviet power plus electrification” as embodying Lenin’s commitment to the role of technical improvements in the process of building socialism.

[2] Kazcynski, Ted. Industrial Society And Its Future, Paragraph 115.

[3] See Mein Kampf, in which Hitler argues that sporting and physical pursuits are superior to study.

[4] Earth First: An Introductory Primer.

“Racial” Nationalist Agenda of the U.S. Right: Demographic Panic

Fox News presenter John Gibson gave a wild rant about the “dangers” of whites in the U.S. not reproducing enough to preserve white majority in the country. Such talk is a clear expression of the racist, national chauvinist ideology of the “Minutemen,” the “angry white men,” the “post-9/11 Americans” and other assorted fascists and proto-fascists whites in the U.S. Gibson’s rant is entitled “Do Your Duty, Make More Babies.” We soon enough find that he is talking only to whites and not other nationalities in the U.S.

Gibson says that the need to have more babies is “a lesson drawn out of two interesting stories over the last couple of days. First, a story yesterday that half of the kids in this country under five years old are minorities. By far, the greatest number are Hispanic. You know what that means? Twenty-five years and the majority of the population is Hispanic. Why is that? Well, Hispanics are having more kids than others. Notably, the ones Hispanics call ‘gabachos’ -- white people -- are having fewer.” Gibson makes clear that it isn’t “Hispanics” who need to have more babies, but rather just whites. It is clear when he intones that in 25 years “the majority of the population is Hispanic,” the anticipated response from the white audience is one of fear and dread. Also, it is of interest to note that he demonstrates that “Hispanic,” a term the rightists use, divides into two parts: the indigenous and mestizo people of color on the one hand, and the white, Spanish-descended people on the other. The latter point is important because the rightist “minority outreach” attempts are in fact largely aimed at white “Hispanics,” who do not share the national oppression of Chicanos in this country, for instance.

The real politics driving the anti-immigrant movement is a fear of the end of white majority in the population. Indeed, the emergence of a majority population of oppressed nations and nationalities would make clear the settler-colonial roots of this country, and further expose the true nature of the Euro-American imperialist ruling class. Certainly, that the indigenous and mestizo peoples have roots in the North American continent perfectly exposes the sham, ludicrous nature of U.S. whites campaigning against “immigration” into the country on whose land the blood of so many indigenous people was spilled--at the hands of white settlers.

Gibson sums up, “To put it bluntly, we need more babies,” and suggests the battle cry of “procreation not recreation.” Gibson, like white “racial nationalists” generally, believe that U.S. whites have “gone soft”; that is, they are too fearful of sacrifice and too dedicated to personal amusement to serve as useful foot soldiers for a resurgent, aggressive imperialism. That’s what the “post 9/11” mentality is all about: systematically imbuing the ideological foundations for a mass, fascist movement among whites. But progressives and revolutionaries are fighting this and going on the ideological and political offensive. “Bush Step Down and Take Your Whole Program With You,” indeed. And take John Gibson too.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200605120006

Imperialism Is the Main Enemy of the People of Iran

There has also been much criticism from Maoist forces, including from Iranian Maoists, of Iran’s using its “defiance” of the so-called “international community,” i.e., imperialism, with regard to the fabricated “nuclear crisis,” to gain public favor at home.

It is a lesson of the Iraq war that disarming before imperialism only invites aggression. It is the lesson of the north Korean “crises” over the years that arming in the face of imperialist threats raises the costs to imperialism of launching aggression, and averts war. Of course, ultimately, people and not weapons are principal. People’s war is a “magic weapon” in the face of a better-armed enemy. But it must also be remembered that China under the leadership of Mao Zedong pursued and acquired a nuclear weapons deterrent. In 1964 it successfully tested an atom bomb. Three years later, in the midst of the Great Cultural Revolution, it successfully tested a hydrogen bomb. It launched its own satellite, which transmitted the tune “The East Is Red.” The achievement of military parity with Israel on the part of a regional state outside the orbit of imperialism would have the effect of aiding the Palestinian national liberation struggle, and would also serve to, once again, raise the price imperialism has to pay for launching wars of aggression.

Communists should resolutely oppose unequal treaties like the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which serve to maintain the military hegemony of imperialism in the world. Revolutionaries should not accept the credo of the ruling classes about “weapons of mass destruction.” Imperialism has no hesitation in acquiring and indeed in using all manner of weapons in pursuing its strategic objectives. What the imperialists fear is the proliferation of more powerful weaponry internationally, not just in the hands of the third world governments, but also and especially in the hands of the masses of people in those countries.

The Iranian regime is without doubt a reactionary one, of the worst variety. It is a regime with the blood of countless progressives and revolutionaries on its hands. But it also without doubt that Iran, at the present time, is directly in contention with international forces of imperialism, which are threatening war against the people of Iran. It is the foremost duty of communists in the heart of imperialism to oppose aggression against peoples, nations, and also countries under threat, such as Iran.

Article on Indian Revolution

The following article from the British press is worth reading in its entirety. It gives a clear picture of the change in strategic posture by the Indian ruling classes. They now see the communist revolutionaries leading people’s war as the principal threat to their class dictatorship, overshadowing the various nationalist struggles within India, as well as the struggle in Kashmir.

The ruling classes have a so-called development strategy for India. It is a strategy of neo-liberal economic policy that leaves India a neo-colony, with literally hundreds of millions of workers and peasants mired in destitution. This is precisely the social base for revolution in India.

The reactionaries have set up a militia called Salva Judum, which ironically means “Peace March.” It is a gang of thugs creating a white terror by indiscriminately killing people in guerrilla zones, and enslaving many of them in “strategic hamlets” in the evil tradition of the Vietnam War. It is said that revolutionaries are the fish and the masses are the sea in which they swim. This hamletization seeks to the “drain the sea” in order to encircle and suppress the revolutionaries. As the article shows, it is the Indian state and ruling classes which are oppressing the peasants of India, and it is the people’s army which is fighting to free them.

Inside India's hidden war: Mineral rights are behind clashes between leftwing guerrillas and state-backed militias

Forty young men and women in ill-fitting army fatigues, clutching flintlocks and pistols, stand in the shade of a mango tree. Beside them flaps a red flag emblazoned with a hammer and sickle.

In a show of strength, the soldiers creep up on imaginary enemies through long grass. Armed with weapons and the opinions of the doctrinaire left, these guerrillas, or Naxalites as they are known, are part of a hidden war in the middle of India's mineral-rich tribal belt.

The Naxalites are heirs of the revolutionary ideology of Mao Zedong. Unlike their ideological cousins in Nepal, the guerrillas are not prepared to consider exchanging the bullet for the ballot box. Across a wide swath of India, from Andhra Pradesh in the south to the Nepalese border, there are daily reports of underground armies hijacking trains, mounting audacious jailbreaks and murdering local politicians.

Last month the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, described the rebels as "the single biggest internal security challenge ever faced by our country". Nowhere is this conflict more acute than in the dense forests of southern Chhattisgarh state, the scene of violent land disputes and social clashes. In the past year the state has armed thousands of villagers with guns, spears and bows and arrows. Child soldiers are often ranged against opponents of similar age. In Chhattisgarh a battalion of Indian paramilitary forces has backed this militia, known as Salva Judum (Peace March), against the Naxalites, turning the forest into a battlefield.

Entire villages have been emptied as tribal communities flee from the burnings, lootings and killings. The civil conflict has left more than 50,000 people camping under tarpaulin sheets without work or food along the roadsides of southern Chhattisgarh.

Campaigners say that the reason why the government has opened a new front in this battle lies beneath Chhattisgarh's fertile soil, which contains some of the country's richest reserves of iron ore, coal, limestone and bauxite. Above live some of India's most impoverished people: semi-literate tribes who exist in near destitution.

India's biggest companies have moved stealthily into the forest areas, buying up land and acquiring the rights to extract the buried wealth. Last year the Chhattisgarh government signed deals worth 130bn Indian rupees (£1.6bn) with industrial companies for steel mills and power stations.

The Naxalites have begun a campaign against such industrialisation, which the state sees as necessary to create jobs and provide the raw materials for economic growth.

Watching his "troops" conduct military exercises is Gopanna Markam, company commander in the People's Liberation Guerrilla Army, whose rank is denoted by the AK-47 in his hands. He says the "exploitation" needs to be stopped. "The government is bent upon taking out all the resources from this area and leaving the people nothing."

These are no idle threats. Police estimate there are 4,500 armed leftwing guerrillas in Chhattisgarh. In recent months they have attacked mines, blown up electricity pylons and torched cars used by contractors. They have set up "people's courts" to punish, and in some cases execute, those deemed to be capitalist collaborators.

The guerrillas' aim is violent revolution. Their political wing, the Communist party of India (Maoist), operates underground and has an armed presence in almost half of India's 28 states. The cadre fervently believes that India's feudal traditions, ingrained caste hierarchy and skewed land ownership provide fertile ground for rebellion. "The path ahead will become more difficult for us but we know history is with us," said Commander Markam.

The Naxalites argue that they have brought order if not law to the area - banishing corrupt officials, expelling landlords and raising prices at gunpoint for harvests of tendu leaves, used to wrap bidi cigarettes. They finance their operations by levying "taxes" of around 12% on contractors and traders.

In the tribal areas, officials estimate half the population supports the Naxalites, through choice or coercion. Two-thirds of the forests have been off-limits to government staff. In many districts 40% of police posts are unfilled and a quarter of doctors' positions are vacant.

Mahendra Karma, a state politician of tribal heritage, said the Naxalites have "collapsed the social, economic and traditional administrative structure" and tribes now are "backward people who want to go forward with industry".

Although Salva Judum is widely seen as his brainchild, Mr Karma says the movement was a result of "spontaneous anger bursting through".

The first signs of this anger were seen last June, when thousands of villagers marched with police in the village of Kortapal, where the Naxalites had abducted several government supporters. A fierce gun battle followed, with many running for cover in the forest. The village today is deserted and many of the houses have been vandalised.

This policy of emptying villages where there is support for Naxalites has been implemented across southern Chhattisgarh, with the attacks becoming bolder and bloodier. The response has been equally devastating. In February the Naxalites blew up a truck carrying Salva Judum workers back from a rally, killing more than 50 people.

In March a series of lightning raids led to tit-for-tat disappearances, beheadings and shootings. Ten days ago the bodies of 13 villagers who had protested against the guerrillas were found dead. Human rights groups say the conflict has claimed more than 150 lives this year.

"[Naxalites] have developed sophisticated strategies. We have recovered rocket launchers, mortar shells and machine guns recently," said the state police intelligence chief, Sant Kumar Paswan.

In the areas controlled by the Salva Judum, teenagers with bows and arrows guard roadblocks and Indian paramilitary forces patrol the refugee camps.

While the soldiers say villagers come seeking refuge from the violence, the tribals tell a different story. They claim that the camps are, in reality, prisons.

The guards in Bhairamgarh camp brought out captured Naxalite political agents, known as Sangam, for the Guardian to interview. Each told a story of state-backed terror. A mob of government supporters invaded their village backed by armed soldiers who opened fire on "Naxalite houses". A battle ensued and the guerrillas, outgunned, fled.

Once an area has been "cleansed", the homes of those used by leftwing guerrillas are destroyed and their owners brought to the camps.

"I was a Sangam. People were getting shot and homes burnt every day. I had no choice but to come here," said Buddram, who used to farm around Kortapal.

In the camps, fear stalks the inhabitants. The men have to report daily to the police station. Twice a day they queue up for a roll call and a drill.

Families are supposed to build their own makeshift houses. Without the state providing food or medicine, the displaced villagers say, anyone who can work is forced to do so for 50 rupees a day digging roads through the forest.

Caught in the crossfire are thousands of innocent villagers. Clutching her baby to her chest, Jamli recounts how the Salva Judum militia kidnapped her and seven friends as they travelled to a market. "We were told we had to come to the police station. Once we reached there we were kept overnight and driven to this camp where we were told if you leave you will be killed," she said. "I was alone until my husband arrived a week later and he is trapped here too. We are not Naxalites. We have no homes here, just these tents."

A third of Chhattisgarh's 21 million people are aboriginals, mostly from the Gond tribe. Experts say that the situation is in danger of turning into an "African-style" conflict over minerals, with refugees herded from one camp to another, dying of illness, hunger and thirst.

Pradeep Prabhu, a tribal campaigner, said the basic problem was one of land rights. In India everything below the ground belongs to the state, not the people who live above it.

"States like Chhattisgarh are seething with anger over this issue. The issue came up in parts of Africa where it has caused so much mess."

Backstory

The Naxalites, a name taken from Naxalbari district in West Bengal where the movement began in 1967, have spread to 160 of India's 604 administrative districts. In the 1960s they won the approval of Beijing, but China has since denounced the guerrillas.

The Naxalites functioned outside the parliamentary system, organising uprisings among landless workers in West Bengal, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh. They spread to the mineral-rich areas of Orissa, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. The two armed wings, People's War Group (PWG) and the Maoist Communist Centre, combined 18 months ago to form one front: Communist party of India (Maoist).

With a force of 15,000 soldiers, it controls an estimated fifth of India's forests. The eventual aim is to capture the Indian state.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/india/story/0,,1770612,00.html

Communist Party of Peru (PCP) in the Reactionary Peruvian Media

The Peruvian reactionary media have for years made a big point of stressing that “the Senderistas (PCP supporters) have been defeated” and that “subversion is almost totally wiped out.” It must be stressed that the Peruvian state and its allied media have always spread massive disinformation about the PCP and the people’s war it has led since 1980. For instance, PCP leader Abimael Guzman, also known as Chairman Gonzalo, was “captured” many times according to media reports, prior to his actual capture in 1992. The media have always grossly overestimated Maoist battle casualties, while minimizing blows against the old state to the extent possible. They have also falsely attributed the massacres by government forces to the PCP (See “Anatomy of a Government Lie: The True Story of the Shining Path and the Ashaninka Indians at: http://www.csrp.org/rw/rwash.htm ).

The reactionary media’s disinformation was particularly damaging in the period after the capture of Abimael Guzman and other important PCP leaders in 1992, and especially after the alleged request by Guzman for the PCP to dismantle the red base areas and lay down arms. But despite the tremendous difficulties, and the apparent capitulation by important sectors of the PCP, the popular war to this day continues, and red political power still exists in the remote countryside.

The following item from the reactionary press shows that the people’s war is still a threat to the old state, and that the armed struggle, along with political agitation, is still pursued:

“Peru.com: 2006/5/3) the Police Front of the Huallaga relays that two subversives of the Communist Party of Peru (PCP)-Sendero Luminoso (SL), were captured at kilometer 4 of the highway Federico Basadre, when went to the town of Aucayacu.“According to CPN Radio, Carlos Juan Celestine Advíncula (18) and Rubén Silva Huamanta (27), were preparing to board a motorcycle on the referenced highway at the time of being arrested by the agents of order.“In their possession was a grenade, a slow wick, four sticks of dynamite and 31 photocopied pamphlets with the motto ‘Don’t Vote, Wage People’s War!,’ as well as a booklet in which reference is made to the anniversary of the beginning of the armed warfare.”

Link

Disinformation concerning “innocents” aside, the following item demonstrates that the armed forces under the PCP exercise the ability to strike out at counterrevolutionaries:“(Peru.com: 2006/4/22) The remnants of the Shining Path have initiated a ferocious hunt to take revenge for the death of Héctor Aponte Sinaragua, Comrade Clay, who was killed the 19th of February. For that reason they have assassinated to date five innocents in the Alto Huallaga, these being confused as being informants of the Police, according to Police director, Luis Montoya Villanueva.”

Link

That the Defense Minister sees fit to relay the following, whether true or not, belies the alleged nonchalance of the reactionaries concerning the people’s war:“Peru.com: 2006/5/2) the leadership of the remnants of the Shining Path has begun to assassinate several of their members that wish to lay down the arms, according to Minister of Defense, Marciano Rengifo, referring to intelligence information.”

Link

The media serving the old order in Peru have not ceased their lies and slanders against the PCP and the people’s war. That is, if anything, good evidence that the specter of popular revolution still haunts the ruling classes of Peru, and that the people are indeed still making revolution.

Recent Photo of Peruvian Maoist Fighters

White Racists “Love America”…and Hate Third World Immigrants

Laura Courtney, a presumably white woman of Louisiana, writes the following to her local newspaper: “It is our job as Americans to protect the very fabric on which this great country of ours was built. It is time to put an end to the illegal immigrants and the threat they pose to our country’s heritage and way of life.” Putting aside the genocidal implications of putting “an end to” millions of people, this statement sums up the thinking of many millions of white people in the United States concerning immigration from third world countries. These people believe that the influx of people from third world countries threatens the social, political, cultural, and economic dominance of white Americans; that is, the whites’ “American way of life” is thereby threatened.



The sign shown above says “European Immigrants Made the U.S.A.” Think about that for a moment. Firstly, the sign should be commended in the respect that it implicitly acknowledges that there is no such thing as an indigenous white person in the U.S. But it is not nearly descriptive enough in this regard. His sign would be more on the mark if it said “European Settler Colonialists Made the U.S.A.” The Europeans who came to the U.S. did so leaving a wake of indigenous people’s blood and enslavement wherever they settled, right from the beginning of the colonization in 1492.
But, more fundamentally, one must ask: What did the Euro-Americans “make?” The Euro-American ruling class did indeed “make,” and thereafter dominate the social system practiced in the U.S. There is no doubt about that. And so the sign should in fact say “European Settler Colonialists Made the U.S.A. Social and Economic System.” That is something for which a parasite can rightly be proud. And a parasite is what, in class terms, a large portion of the social base of the white “anti-immigration movement” is.
Bush, in his political campaigning, refers to the concept of “ownership society.” What this really represents is a strategic attempt on the part of the ruling class to extend the social basis for imperialist rule by creating more system “stakeholders.” In recent years, there has been an increase in individually-managed stock portfolios, for instance. The relative privileges accruing to the upper section of the white working class have contributed to its crystallization as a “labor aristocracy” and as a potential mass social basis for fascism. (For one expansive view of the labor aristocracy, though not necessarily entirely correct, see the “Eighth Route Readers Club” class analysis at: http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/texts/ClassStructure.html ) Bob Avakian says the following in his work Conquer the World: “But it's (economism) so much the worse when you're talking about it in an imperialist country with not only a powerful labor aristocracy, but broad, thoroughly bourgeoisified strata, where it would be stretching it to even describe a lot of the so-called economic struggle as struggle and certainly stretching things to call it any kind of significant struggle.” It is the bourgeoisified stratum of white workers that is at the heart of the racist anti-immigrant movement.



Many leading liberals in the U.S. are cynically attempting to straddle the divide between the white anti-immigrant nativists on the one hand, and those defending the rights of immigrants on the other, by simultaneously criticizing Republican proposals to enhance criminal penalties for immigration law violations and calling for a crackdown on those hiring the labor of undocumented immigrants. They hope in this way to simultaneously appear as being “anti-illegal immigration” and “anti-racist,” and to win support for people of color and racist whites at the same. But, at the most basic level, many of them share a belief that there is indeed an “illegal immigration crisis,” and that it threatens the allegedly legitimate interests of the relatively privileged sectors of the non-immigrant working class. They share a position of defending the U.S. borders as being just and legitimate, and they certainly share a desire for the U.S. to continue its international hegemony.



The movement for the rights of immigrants, both documented and undocumented, stands opposed to the basic class interests of the bourgeoisie and its allies in the labor aristocracy, both in their “Democratic” and “Republican” expressions. Progressives must strongly support unconditional amnesty for all immigrants. Revolutionaries and communists must also recognize that the U.S. border is an imperialist border, an oppressive border, and that it has no legitimacy. They must be anti-imperialists and must recognize that “Oppressed Nation Labor Made the U.S.A. Material Wealth.”