Maoist Internationalist Movement Formally Breaks With Nepalese Revolution

I normally do not comment on the group known as “Maoist Internationalist Movement” (MIM). However, it is interesting that in a new document published in their newspaper (Link), MIM has taken a position that they will no longer support or publicize the struggles led by Maoist parties that recognize the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) as a fraternal party, or that do not support MIM’s class analysis of the U.S. or, specifically, its summation of the Chicano national question. Though the document does not name any parties or organizations, it specifies that it is referring to those waging people’s war currently.

It is clear that MIM is repudiating the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) [CPN(M)] and the decade-long people’s war it has been leading. The CPN(M) has always viewed the RCP as a fraternal party united in the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM). This is not a new thing. What is new is that MIM, in an over-the-top sectarian fashion, is breaking off support for any group that will not hew to its anti-RIM line. The implication from MIM is that it opposes any party in the RIM, which it refers to as “the RCP=U$A Comintern.” (Link) The MIM document states: “…anyone tolerating the Mujahedin or the RCP=U$A need not bother calling themselves comrades of ours. If that is not public, they can forget thinking they are making a contribution to the imperialist country struggle.” Furthermore, the document states that MIM will henceforth “demand reciprocity” in giving its support to other parties’ struggles - including people’s wars led by other parties. With this, MIM has disavowed all parties leading people’s war, including those outside RIM, such as the Communist Party of India (Maoist), and the Communist Party of the Philippines, which do not extend “reciprocity” to MIM, and maintain friendly relations with RIM parties. Finally, MIM threatens that “(a)ll organizations that MIM deems not to have met the challenges of this period now find web pages related to their struggle removed from our website.” At this time, there is no listing for Nepal under MIM’s “country index” (Link) Indeed, all articles formerly listed under MIM’s www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/countries/nepal directory have been removed from the MIM website. Such is the spirit of “proletarian internationalism” as understood by MIM.

Interview with Comrade Prachanda

Nepal's Kantipur television interviewed Comrade Chairman Prachanda of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). Below are selected excerpts. In the interview, Comrade Prachanda puts forward a vision for a new-type people's democracy in which the national capitalists will have a place at the table of the multi-class rule characterized by Mao Zedong's concept of new democracy. The remarkable tactical flexibility of the Nepalese communists, coupled with their firm defense of basic communist principles, has allowed them to make such impressive gains:

Q. You have suddenly landed on the liberal political ground from a violent political base, especially after the 12-point understanding with the seven parties. What were the reasons behind the understanding?

Prachanda: Our political base was not that rigid. Ours is a party which had to wage a People's War for just rights despite entering Parliament. We were the third largest party in Parliament.... We lawfully tried to raise some issues- issues related to nationality, people's daily requirements and democracy- even back then. We are not rigid. What we said even after starting the People's War is that we are not communists of the traditional type. Even after the start of the People's War, we have always been ready to accept the people's verdict. We had told the government during the very first peace talks let's hold constituent assembly elections; that the solution to our problem lay there. We were never into rigid politics. We were very much wide and flexible.

Q. You took up arms for political change. Isn't that rigid?

Prachanda: To take up weapons is just a form of politics. I don't think you become rigid once you take up arms. Taking up weapons is also a form of flexibility.

...

Q. How optimistic are you (about peace talks)? Do you doubt (Nepalese Prime Minister) Girija Prasad Koirala's honesty?

Prachanda: Rather than Koirala's honesty, how he will run the politics is the major thing. In my first meeting with him three years back, I had told him "You accept a republic, we will accept multiparty. Then the country will become new. Let's make a new Nepal." He had replied immediately, "Congress cannot go for a republic right now." He is still where he was three years back. He mentioned ceremonial king only yesterday. But this ceremonial thing doesn't work in Nepal. This proves how much rigid he is. This concept of a ceremonial king will not work- one, because of the army, and two, because of the king's own character.

Q. Do you personally feel that the talks will be successful?

Prachanda: I don't think the seven-party leaders are in favour of making the talks successful. And I don't think the international power centres, too, are in favour of giving Nepal and Nepalis a forward-looking exit from the current crisis by making the talks successful. To tell you directly, I haven't seen the signs for the talks to be successful. But again, the Nepali people want the talks to be successful and our party, too, wants the same. It depends on how much the people's and our party's initiatives can be taken forward. The talks will be successful if the pressure can be increased.

Q. What kind of republicanism is it that you have been talking about?

Prachanda: There shouldn't be the parliamentary republicanism, which is in practice in other countries, in Nepal. That doesn't solve the problem. There's no question of an autocracy. We need a republicanism of our own kind.

Q. You have envisioned a people's republic, no?

Prachanda: Mao Zedong's People's Republic cannot fulfill the needs of today's world. It cannot address today's political awareness appropriately. Mao said cooperative party theory; we called it competitive party theory. We have said let's move ahead from the conventional People's Republic and develop it as per the specialties of the 21st century.

Q. You do not follow the old concept of communism?

Prachanda: Definitely not. What happened without competition? In the USSR, Stalin gave no place to competition and went ahead in a monolithic way. What was the result?

Q. Let's talk about the economy. The 21st century world is a free-market world. How do you see the open market economic policy?

Prachanda: The economy should not be given a free rein in the name of a free market. We should take the middle way. Words like liberalisation and globalisation are being much touted these days. But if you look at it closely, the very supporters of these theories have not implemented it in their own countries. The most powerful countries and America themselves have not implemented it. They have referred it to the poorest countries. Competition has been referred to undeveloped countries. We are against that policy. It's not right.

Q. The country's resources haven't increased. The number of mouths to feed has. In such a situation, do you think the country's development is as easy as you are saying?

Prachanda: I think development is not that difficult a thing. The main thing is what policies and plans the state adopts and what kind of programmes it brings forward for the millions of people. This is the main thing. One hundred years back, we were very much self-dependent. We were not economically weaker than others. If you compare us with many countries of the world, you will know that we are not weak. Others kept progressing and we kept going downhill. We have serious problems in the policies adopted by the state. What I think is if the state has the right programmes and vision, then there are only 200 million mouths but 400 hands. If the 400 million hands are put to work in the right way, imagine where this could take the country in 10 years.

However, we have to cut down certain things to save money. I have been saying that we do not need this 90 thousand-strong army. We can cut it down by 80 thousand. 10 thousand is enough. And then see how much capital we will have. It's not out of any personal grudge that we want to abolish the monarchy. They have amassed hundreds of billions of rupees. Imagine the kind of capital we will have if that is nationalised. Won't miracles happen if we then mobilise the 400 million hands? We can earn millions from our herbs. We have so much Yarchagumba. Let's open processing factories where it is found. Thousands will get jobs and we can earn hundreds of millions of rupees. Money will start growing there.

...

Q. Business people, industrialists and entrepreneurs are a little concerned about you. Their fear is if you can give them so many problems as a powerful party, you will squeeze them once in power.

Prachanda: We encourage those who want to develop industries in the country, create jobs, make profits and invest the profits in the country. We are organising a national meet of the capitalists. There, we will invite even those who disagree with us. We want that Nepal's capital does not go outside. We are clear that there will be no development in Nepal unless the capitalists can make some profit. But let that profit not be through exploitation and let it also not go abroad. We are also going to propose to the capitalists to invest where the most profit can be made. We should introduce a strict law to stop those who earn here and deposit the money in America or India.

Breaking Gender’s Chains

The question of gender is dealt with as sharply as that of class in the 1954 film “Salt of the Earth,” a movie about the struggle of Latino miners against their racist exploiters. The lead characters, Ramon and Esperanza Quintero, live on mining company land and must buy their necessities from the mining company stores. They eke out a subsistence living, and furthermore, as a result of national oppression, have worse conditions than the white miners.

It is understandable why the McCarthyite reactionaries despised this film and persecuted its producers. “Salt of the Earth” is a damning indictment of class, national, and gender oppression. In the film, after a mining strike breaks out, and the courts bar the workers from picketing the mine, the miner’s wives step forward, against their husbands wishes, to man the picket and continue the struggle. The women must convince their husbands to put aside their patriarchal notions so that man and woman can jointly wage the struggle against the class enemy.

The women do not hesitate to physically resist an assault by the police, and forcefully assert their demands. The women change themselves in the course of their struggle, and set aside the chains of tradition that bound them as women. As Esperanza Quintero deepens her political work, she becomes much more at ease, and positively beams with happiness because she knows her cause is just.


In Salt of the Earth, for the sake of the class struggle, Ramon Quintero sets aside male right, and his wife Esperanza sets aside traditional female submissiveness.

This example in “Salt of the Earth” brings on the general question of gender as a social construct, and how communists who uphold science must also reject bio-determinism, or the ideology that biology means destiny. The dominant concepts of gender are not principally determined by biological characteristics of male and female sex, but rather they are rooted in the existing social system presided over by a ruling class. Engels outlined how the female sex suffered a “historical defeat” when male right was established and women’s productive roles were subordinated to those of men. It is true that biological sex characteristics played a role in this initial emergence of patriarchy; in particular, women’s role in menstruation, childbearing, and nursing of children may have imposed certain disadvantages vis-à-vis men. But by no means do such characteristics justify patriarchy, nor do they at all mean that it is somehow “natural” for women’s roles to be determined by their reproductive system. In short, communists say, “women are not incubators.”

Communists recognize that human beings are differentiated from animals by virtue of their consciousness and their ability to remake the world - and themselves - to serve the interests of humanity. What is “natural” is that which serves human freedom. That which inhibits the participation of men or women in social life and their development is not to be enshrined for all time as sacred, but it should instead be transcended. This transcendence, this struggle to push the borders of freedom ever-forward against alienation and necessity, represents the basic nature of men and women as conscious beings. And there is no gender identity in that.

Men must struggle to renounce male right, to recognize women as their equals in every realm, and to reject the anti-social, oppressive notions of manhood. Women must join with men and assume the social stage as the co-equals of men, putting aside all inhibitions based on reactionary, submissive notions of womanhood. Socially-understood concepts of gender - as opposed to biological sex - will in some form exist throughout the course of class society, including under socialism. It is not possible to know whether or not gender will exist in a classless society, but I do not believe it will exist in a form at all similar to those yet seen. Men and woman will work side by side - in non-alienated labor - to brighten the horizons for humankind. Whole new vistas of human relations will open up, and the chains of gender will fall away.

No Way Out in Iraq for U.S. Imperialists - Only Defeat Lies Ahead

The imperialist media are trumpeting the purported “death” of al-Queda of Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as a supposed great victory in their phony “war on terror.” We have heard this same song again and again. But the fundamental facts of this unjust and immoral occupation keep crashing down on the aggressors and their media handmaids, and so they will yet again. Oppression breeds resistance. The Iraqi people have not and will not submit to the plans of imperialism to turn their country into a vassal and a showcase of so-called Westernization.

But let us address the case of Zarqawi, and his role in the Iraqi political scene. Al-Queda of Iraq is not the main enemy of the Iraqi people – the U.S. imperialist occupation forces are; however, it must be made absolutely clear that Zarqawi is a reactionary, an enemy of the people of Iraq. Zarqawi’s group has hindered, and not helped the consolidation of an all-Iraqi resistance to occupation. We saw glimmers of this potential unity during the genocidal siege of Falluja in 2004. While this predominantly Sunni city was being bombarded around the clock, Iraqi Shia Muslims lined up to donate blood to the victims of the slaughter. Link Also, the Shia Muslim Sadrist movement stepped up its struggle against occupation forces. The Zarqawi group’s indiscriminate attacks against non-Sunni segments of the Iraqi people plays very well into the plans of imperialism to exercise its strategy of divide and rule. Zarqawi’s notion of religious war against infidels bears an ideological similarity to Bush’s Christian fascist “crusade.”

Children are continually targeted by the U.S. imperialist occupation forces

It appears that the main forces of the Sunni religious fighters in Iraq have rejected Zarqawi’s strategy of killing masses of non-Sunni Iraqis. In early April, numerous media sources including BBC relayed reports from a leading pro-al-Queda figure that Zarqawi had been removed from his leadership position due to dissatisfaction with his war strategy and tactics, and had been replaced by an Iraqi figure. Link If Zarqawi was indeed killed, it is quite possible that Zarqawi was betrayed by his colleagues so that the U.S. could accomplish their task of eliminating him.

When Saddam Hussein was captured in late 2003, the imperialist media were overjoyed - they were certain that “now that they didn’t have to be afraid of Saddam coming back to power,” Iraqis would come out in support of the occupation forces. Of course, in reality, the resistance only at this time began to crystallize into a formidable force militarily. Saddam Hussein’s freedom in Iraq was actually a brake on the development of the struggle, because so many Iraqis did not wish to be identified with Ba’athism politically. So too Zarqawi’s presence has been a brake on the struggle, alienating the masses with reactionary attacks on the rights of the people and mass killings at places of worship, and so on.

The imperialist spokespersons are now flush with a seeming “victory” by allegedly liquidating one individual, who, as noted, has been detrimental to the development of the fight against imperialist occupation. If the real strategists of imperialism actually believe such talk, they are seriously deluded, and lack clear heads. This is a struggle which has no victory for U.S. imperialism. Some ruling class forces already recognize this, and are calling for “Iraqization,” and the withdrawal of U.S. forces to nearby Kuwaiti and Qatari bases, from which they can bomb and kill at a safe distance.

But no matter which strategy the U.S. adopts, it cannot achieve the objectives delineated by Bush, and that is because the Iraqi people will not accept it. The masses are the makers of history. Countries want independence, nations want liberation, and people want revolution. In war, people, and not weapons, are the principle aspect. This was a lesson taught to U.S. imperialism by the people of Indochina - others will forever accept the job of re-teaching that lesson, if need be.

Cultivate the Critical Spirit, Make Working People Masters of Society

“Mounting the Platform to Criticize Lin Biao and Confucius”


In a revolutionary society, people must have ease of mind to wage criticism. The understanding of “contradictions among the people” must be very expansive - broader than that understood during the previous, first wave of proletarian revolution.


“The Workshop Is a Battlefield”


The workplace must cease to be a place in which working people are subordinated - they must become masters of society, and as part of that, must assume a leading role in places of production. This mustn’t merely be a slogan: the right to strike and to recall management must be legally protected. As revolutionary shipping workers said in China, “Be Masters of the Wharf, Not Slaves to the Tonnage!”

Reactionary Student Movements under Socialism and Revisionism

Recently, I have been studying the ways in which student movements were used to topple the revisionist regimes in Eastern Europe in 1989, as well as how earlier right-wing student movements were aimed at subverting real socialism. Though the states in the region were not socialist in nature in 1989, I believe that the experience in these countries has implications for future socialist experience.

After Khrushchev attacked Stalin and the bulk of Soviet socialist experience in 1956, old and new reactionaries throughout the socialist countries (most of which were now in the process of restoring capitalism) took this as a signal and opening to attack the whole edifice of socialism, albeit sometimes under a “socialist” cover. The Hungarian events of 1956 are the most extreme expression of this. In this case, communists were viciously persecuted, Marxist books were burned, old fascists appeared openly and attacked police and state officials, reactionary clergy mobilized their flocks to loot and burn, and so on. In China during 1956, Mao had called for “one hundred flowers to bloom, one hundred schools of thought to contend.” The bourgeois rightists took advantage of this to agitate against the basic constitutional premises of socialism in China. Their aim was to replicate the Hungarian events in China. Mao quickly launched a campaign against the rightists, and made clear that democracy was for the people, but the organs of state power would defend socialism when contradictions with political elements became antagonistic in nature. By doing so, he maintained the political initiative for the communists in Chinese society, while in the European countries, which were changing color, the parties were politically and ideologically passive, failing to mobilize the masses and instead relying on secret police and law enforcement measures alone.

The student movements in Eastern Europe during 1989 were essentially reactionary in nature.* While the regimes against which they were agitating were not socialist, the protesters represented new and old bourgeois elements who were profoundly dissatisfied with the constraints on their political and economic activity which were largely a relic of the previous socialist order. They represented “experts” and “technocrats” who were no longer content to be paid significantly less, relatively speaking, than their Western counterparts. Incomes in Czechoslovakia, for instance, were quite egalitarian by international standards. Taking all this into account, there is a similarity between the rightist student movements of 1956-1957 and those of 1989, and a lesson for future socialist states.

Gorbachev and his clique were instrumental in engineering the dissolution of the revisionist order in Eastern Europe. They made a strategic decision as the ruling class of Russian imperialism that they could do better without what they perceived as the fetters imposed by their phony socialism. They endorsed those in the ruling parties in Poland and Hungary who wished to pursue multi-party, bourgeois politics, and openly go over to social democracy. The problem for Gorbachev, et al., was that there were Brezhnevite remnants in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria. In Romania, Ceausescu was also not about to let go of the pretense of socialism. And so, the Soviet political agents, including KGB, encouraged and managed the political activity of various “democratic socialist” groups in these countries. In East Germany, the main group was called “New Forum,” which now is a part of the Green Party. In Czechoslovakia, social democrat Dubcek, the Communist Party leader who was overthrown in the 1968 Soviet invasion, was wheeled out.

At the beginning of October 1989, the crusty revisionists felt secure in their positions of power. In East Germany, leader Honecker was preparing festivities for the 40th anniversary of the republic. There was political resistance to the wind of “perestroika” coming both from Moscow and from the West. Soon, demonstrations began occurring, in which the participants called for “free speech” and for “socialism with a human face.” Slowly but surely, with the active intervention of the Soviet authorities, party leaderships in Eastern Europe were purged of those resisting “new thinking,” and concessions were made to the student-centered opposition. Suddenly, the protesters stopped talking about “socialism,” and instead sensed the weakness of the “communists,” and they began to strike at the heart of the legitimacy of their rule. Soon, the ruling parties, stripped of all leadership and sense of cohesion, stripped themselves of their leading state roles, and removed references to socialism and Marxism-Leninism from their respective state constitutions.

There is a lesson in this for future socialist states. The reactionary student movement is a favorite tool of internal and external class forces seeking to subvert socialism. It first parades as supportive of socialism and even as supportive of the Communist Party. We saw this in China’s right-wing Tienanman counterrevolutionary riots of April 1976, in which students upheld “socialism” and the deceased right-wing Premier Zhou Enlai, while beating up workers’ militia and slandering Mao and his closest comrades. Under socialism, the rightists don’t generally dare to openly oppose socialism, because this would provoke mass mobilization to defend revolutionary gains. Instead, they slowly eat away at the political foundations of socialism, seeking to confuse and disorient revolutionaries, until they have achieved their goal.

Future socialist states must learn from this experience. They must, first of all, adhere to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, continue the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat, wage successive cultural revolutions, and make the working people masters of society and not slaves to their labor. But furthermore, the socialist state must never conciliate with old or new reactionaries. It is fine to allow reactionary ideas to be expressed; in particular, this may serve as a good lesson by negative example. But the socialist state must also not hesitate to impose dictatorship over those who seek to restore the old order. All the student movement “liberalism” is a smokescreen, for they would unleash white terror given the opportunity. Future socialist states must prevent the emergence of new reactionary elements in academia and technical fields by keeping the working class in charge, ensuring that universities are filled with children of workers, and insofar as practical, integrating study with application through real-world work. Communists must assume a leading role in society. But the crux of this role is not legal-administrative, it is political and ideological. They must be the most active element politically, continuously mobilizing people and shaping public opinion. The Hungarian experience of 1956 is a good example of the consequences of ceding political ground and retreating into administrative affairs.

*Some Maoists may think that the collapse of revisionism in Eastern Europe was at least a democratic victory over “social-fascism,” but I do not agree. While now in these countries there is greater democracy in some areas, such as rights of assembly, speech, and the right to strike, in other areas, there is less freedom, such as with social guarantees, workplace democracy, and so on.

Human Reason and the Struggle against Alienation and Necessity

Through reason - the application of the powers of consciousness -humanity struggles to transform itself and his world. The question of the nature of human reason, in turn, leads to the question of what is the human nature, from which springs such reason. Concepts of human nature removed from historical conditions are functionally apologia for the status quo, for they impute to an ahistorical, universal human nature the effects of historically specific, oppressive social relations. Marx, in contrast to such views, postulates an essential relationship between human nature and its historical context. Reason, as such, is, likewise, not to be viewed apart from relevant historical context. This is exactly why, within the context of class society, human reason interacts with the class struggle. The ideological representation of systems of thought changes with changes in the social system. That which is constant, by contrast, is the reasoned struggle against alienation, for self-development.

Marx states that, “human power is its own end.” (1) By this, Marx stresses the ongoing struggle for human self-development, and sovereignty over the physical world. While class struggle will come to an end with the advent of communism, the contradiction between freedom and necessity will not. To Marx, this fight, to roll back the margins of necessity, represents the constant “thread,” running throughout human development, from pre-class society onward into the communist future. The human beings are not born as a tabula rasa; rather, they express their specific human character through their productive labor, and through grasping the world-at-large. Marx said that humankind must become a collection of individuals “with an all-round development, one for whom various social functions are alternative modes of activity.” (Das Kapital) If full play is given to this natural bent, then a conscious, determined fight against class oppression will be the result. Indeed, if the exercise of human reason is a process leading to the expansion of human power, then alienation of labor is its greatest hindrance.

The inherent power of human reason, spanning the stages of social development, is of a decisively revolutionary character. By apprehending social relations, and fighting the systemic causes of alienation, humanity strives to attain freedom to pursue universal (non-alienated) labor. This fight must, under present class society, tend toward communist revolution. The end result of this revolution is no utopia, no final state of fixed laws and relationships. In fact, communism is an endless series of successively higher states of human self-development, distinguished from earlier forms of society by the elimination of alienation - the “all-round development” about which Marx talks, is pursued.

In order to determine whether the view of human reason upheld by Marx, the one by which humanity apprehends the world in order to transform it, actually is “right,” or, conforms to reality, one need only point to the entirety of human history, which is a story of the struggle of humanity to become more self-aware, to become more aware of the world and the relation between the subjective and the objective realms, and finally, to transform this world and humanity itself, in order to transcend the hindering burdens of necessity and alienation.

Endnote

1. Quoted by Raya Dunayevskaya in Philosophy and Revolution 1973 (173)

Maoist Mass Rally Mobilizes Hundreds of Thousands in Katmandu

Party workers prepare for today’s great rally by decorating the capital with the working people’s flag.



Party workers cover the city with posters heralding the victories of the people’s war and the democratic movement. Comrade Prachanda is seen in the posters.



The Nepalese youth were prominent in organizing for the success of the rally. Organizers wore t-shirts bearing the image of Party leader Comrade Prachanda.



Today’s rally was attended by more than 200,000 people, according to bourgeois news media.



The Party flag belong’s not only to the working people of Nepal, but to those of the whole world.



Comrade Mahara, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) chief negotiator, addressed the mass rally. He warned against plots to restore the autocratic monarchy, and to scuttle the people’s demand for a constituent assembly to determine the destiny of Nepal.



The revolutionary Nepalese people are filled with determination to forge a new Nepal, free of national, class, and gender oppression, in the service of the world revolution.