Maoists Gain Influence in Nepal
from Frontlines
ANIKET ALAM
recently in Kathmandu
The Maoists, who have built a strong base in the countryside using ideology and strategy, now feel that a broad political front against the King is a “historical necessity”.
THE Maoist insurgency in Nepal is only 10 years old but has today spread all over the country with most rural areas under its control. “The Maoists contested the first elections held in 1991 and won nine of the 205 seats,” said Pradeep Nepal, standing committee member, Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist Leninist, or UML) in an interview in January in Kathmandu. The Jan Morcha, the party of the Maoists at that time, also won some local authorities.
Armed police posts in Nepalgunj. The Maoists have considerable influence in the town despite the presence of the security forces.
“But the Nepali Congress government and the State authorities did not cooperate with them and blocked all development funds for their constituencies - no schools, no roads, no water works,” Nepal said. Many of the Jan Morcha MPs were from linguistic and ethnic minorities, with their own culture, which is distinct from the Newar-dominated Nepali culture and language. “When their MPs wore their own ethnic dresses they were even stopped from entering Parliament by the police guard posted outside,” Nepal said. The Jan Morcha boycotted the next elections and by 1995, the “people’s war” had been declared by the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), or CPN (M).
There has always been a faction among the Maoists who wanted to continue the armed struggle, and the first recorded attack on a police station was as far back as 1986. Since the revival of the armed struggle in 1995, the Maoist army has grown by leaps and bounds and today it consists of three divisions, nine brigades with 29 battalions. At full strength this should comprise 29,000 soldiers. Government sources in Nepal claim that this army consists of only 8,000 soldiers and a 20,000-strong militia.
Whatever the terms used, a visit to Nepal outside of Kathmandu confirms that it is Maoist arms that hold sway in much of the country.
Nepalgunj is 4 km from the Indian border. It is the main market town and administrative headquarters of the mid-western region of Nepal as well as the headquarters of Banke district. It has a large garrison of the Royal Nepal Army (RNA), the Armed Police and the regular police. Every street corner and road junction has a permanent armed barricade, and heavily armed patrols on foot are a constant reminder of the military presence.
On December 26 last year, the CPN(M) issued a proclamation asking all employees of the Royal Nepal government to stop working and told the people to “boycott” the “old regime”. Since then not one government office has been functional. When this correspondent visited the town in the third week of January, the Appellate Court was absolutely deserted at noon. The judges were all there, but not a single petitioner was present.
Similarly, at the Land Revenue office nearby all the employees were sitting outside and there was not a single member of the public present. The head clerk, visibly scared by the arrival of an unknown person (this correspondent), refused to talk. Another employee said: “We were scared of the Maoists and stopped coming to office as people also were not coming anymore. But Army men came to our homes and threatened us and our families that we would be arrested as Maoists if we did not report for work.”
Thus, government employees are walking a tightrope. They come and sign in at their offices, but immediately go out of the building and sit in the lawns or on the roadside, only to scurry inside when the Army patrol comes for inspection.
It is a difficult tightrope indeed. The government employees are in a tight spot - government employees are regularly arrested or detained without any legal cover by the Army on charges of being Maoists. Despite an armed police post merely 100 metres away, Maoists blasted a room at the land revenue office on January 15 at 1 p.m. as a warning to government employees to follow their diktat.
While the gun, whether of the Maoists or of the RNA, seems to rule the lives of people, it would be incorrect to think that the Maoists’ success is solely because to the gun.
“In Nepalgunj town we have two powers - the Royal government and the Maoists. In the rural areas there is only one government - the Maoists,” says a journalist in Nepalgunj. Most political observers agree that in at least 45 of Nepal’s 75 districts the Maoists hold complete sway. Even in other districts they control the villages with the district town under the control of the Royal government. In a recent newspaper report, the RNA admitted that even in Kathmandu there were about 300 armed Maoists present, though they had only a limited hold on the capital.
In the rural areas of Banke district and neighbouring Bardiya district, the Maoists have taken control of thousands of acres of agricultural land and given it to the landless, says one human rights activist working as a conflict field monitor in Nepalgunj. The journalist explains this process: “The Maoists have made it clear that whatever land a person owns, has to be cultivated by that person’s family. No hiring of labour will be allowed.” He says that those who had hundreds of bighas of land have now left the villages for the relative safety of towns such as Nepalgunj and Kathmandu, leaving the Maoists in possession of their land. “The Maoists have become the biggest landlord in Nepal today,” he says. Previously, much of the land was under the traditional 50:50 sharecropping, with lower-caste communities like Tharus and Kamaiyas actually cultivating the land. “The Maoists with their slogan jiski jot, uski pot (harvest belongs to the actual cultivator) have practically abolished this system,” said the journalist.
The Maoists seem to have built up an entire alternative structure of governance in Nepal. They have their own justice system and have reportedly “arrested” and punished close to 1,000 landlords, government employees, traders and contractors for violating their edicts. Their favourite form of punishment, human rights activists say, is to sentence their prisoners to labour. As they term them shram kaidis (labour prisoners).
The Maoists also collect taxes that range from 5 per cent for the common people to 40 per cent for forest contractors and big businessmen. They have a radio station of their own - the Jana Ganatantrik FM Radio - whose components are carried in baskets and set up on hilltops for transmission.
The Maoists have now started `development works’. In Rolpa district of mid-western Nepal, they are building a 92-km-long mountain highway, with 10,000 people working on it every day, including the shram kaidis. Already, 30-odd-km of this road is ready for use after just three months of work. They have also started a cooperative bank, a medical college and other works. In Rukum district the Maoists have constructed a mini-hydel power station on Sisne lake to supply electricity to a neighbouring village with a few thousand people.
Moreover, the Maoists have proved to be master strategists by building a social base for themselves in the rural areas.
About 25 per cent of the rural population suffers from social discriminations of various forms. While some of them are termed “untouchable”, others face varying degrees of discrimination and social exclusion. The Maoists have banned all these and there have been reports that those found continuing with practices of untouchability and caste exclusion have been punished severely or even killed. This reportedly has created much goodwill for them among the lower-caste populations of the rural areas, especially since the democratic political parties had not addressed the problems of social oppression in the villages after they formed the government in 1991.
In a masterstroke of political savvy, the Maoists have also started giving land to the families of Royal Nepal Army soldiers and police personnel who were killed in combat with them. Their argument is that they were `poor peasants’ who had joined the Royal forces not for ideological reasons but to survive. Therefore, they argue that it is their duty to provide for their families, as they do for the families of their own cadre who were killed in combat.
In a context where most families of soldiers who are killed in combat with the Maoists are yet to receive even one rupee of the compensation announced by the Royal Nepal government, this is a strategy that not only reinforces the moral hold of the Maoists in rural areas but also provides them with a steady stream of recruits.
Pradeep Nepal, who is reported “missing” after the coup.
“Every dead RNA soldier’s family is a potential source of Maoist recruits,” says the journalist.
Strategies such as these have made the Maoists the predominant power in the rural areas of Nepal and given their relatively small army a much larger punch. The reach and ability of the Maoist army was on display twice when it blockaded Kathmandu and there was not much that the RNA, despite its superior arms and manpower, could do to remove it.
Most Nepali observers, both sympathetic to the Maoists and their critics, agree that despite their spectacular successes of the past few years, the Maoists are not in a position to capture state power in Kathmandu merely with the gun. “The geopolitical situation is such that a simple capture of power is impossible,” says Govinda Sharma Bandi, an advocate in the Supreme Court of Nepal.
Not only are India, the United States, the United Kingdom and China firmly against the Maoists, they have not managed to break completely the hold on the people of the democratic parties such as the UML and the Nepali Congress.
“There is no democracy in the Maoist-controlled areas,” said the human rights activist in Nepalgunj. “From their central committee member to the local cadre they all repeat the same words and give exactly the same answers and opinions,” said the activist. Speaking one’s mind can even get one a bullet in the head.
Moreover, there are dissensions emerging within the Maoists. It is commonly accepted that there is an uneasy relationship between the CPN(M) supremo, Pushpa Kamal Dhal, who is known by his nom de guerre Prachanda, and the number two, Baburam Bhattarai, who has a PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Some months ago, Sherman Kuwar, a Maoist central committee member, was captured and killed by the RNA in Saptari district and there were reports that Bhattarai alleged that Prachanda’s people had betrayed Kuwar.
But what is of greater significance is that people in the rural areas are also turning against the Maoists. In Dullu village of Dailekh district, the women residents came out openly against the Maoists and informed the local RNA garrison about the whereabouts of senior Maoists in their area. Most of the leaders were captured and killed. Since then some of the villagers have been attacked by the Maoists and an uneasy calm prevails in the village at present.
According to newspaper reports and human rights activists in Nepal, the women of Dailekh protested against the demands of the Maoists and the imposition of their social edicts. The Maoists would demand workers and soldiers from the village youth and supplies to feed their army, and pass orders on various social customs. One of the orders related to putting sindoor (vermillion on the hair parting on the head) by village women. The Maoists declared it a feudal, patriarchal, practice and said that henceforth either no woman would apply sindoor or all women would apply it, including widows.
It appears that the Maoists also understand their limitations. In a recent statement released to the press after the takeover of executive powers by King Gyanendra, Prachanda called on the “parliamentary parties” to form a united front with the Maoists against this “fratricidal, artificial king” and promised to make the “necessary sacrifice and flexibility” for this. The Maoists have said that a united front with democratic parties against the monarchy and the RNA is “a historical necessity”. Simultaneously, they announced an indefinite countrywide blockade and traffic strike from February 13, the 10th anniversary of their armed struggle.
Today, with the King seeming to return to the autocratic monarchy of the pre-1990 era, it seems that the Maoist demand for a republican government is gaining ground.
In the relatively calmer conditions in January, Pradeep Nepal said: “The Maoists are willing to lay down arms if a political solution is offered where they also have a share in power and the safety and security of their cadre is assured.” He said that if Parliament, which was dismissed by King Gyanendra in 2002, was re-instated and elections for a constituent assembly were ordered, a political solution to the armed conflict was possible.
Pradeep Nepal questioned the wisdom of the Indian policy of blindly supporting the RNA with arms and know-how. “Much of the arms land in Maoist hands and in any case, the RNA has proved itself incapable of resolving the issue militarily,” he says. The only solution is to accept that the Maoists have emerged as a dominant power in Nepal and negotiate a settlement with them, he argues.
Neil Cafferky:
How ironic Moa’s heirs oppose his Nepali co-thinkers. I guess they want to get invited to slap up meals in Washington and Paris more than supporting the struggles of the Nepali workers and peasants. I find the land reforms facinating. Interesting isn’t it that only the Moaists are willing and able to abolish fuedal relations and introduces capitalistic reforms of peasant ownership of the land while all the establishment parties of of the post- 1991 era were able to do was talk.
17 February 2005, 9:49 amsandin0:
It is indeed interesting to watch how China’s government reacts to events in Nepal. While it is formally true, I think it is more complex than to just say that China is against the CPN(M). China’s position on Nepal is that they do not intervene in the affairs of sovereign nations. They have relations with the government in Nepal (i.e. the King), and in order to continue that relation, they don’t support forces trying to overthrow the government. If the CPN(M) comes to power in Nepal, I would guess China would attempt to have relations with their government (whether the CPN(M) would want to have relations with the current Chinese leaders is another question that we don’t yet know the answer to). Clearly the Chinese government’s international policy is a far cry from the overt support to revolutionary forces around the globe from the 1950s to the 1970s. But it is not the Chinese who are the problem for the CPN(M) — it’s the Indian government and the US government that are likely to directly intervene to prop up the king if the king looks likely to fall. And I think it’s fair to assume that whatever the official Chinese government line on Nepal, that there are more than a few people in the Chinese Communist Party who would be very happy to see the CPN(M) win. A CPN(M) victory might have a positive influence in emboldening the left within the Chinese party. Just a thought…
17 February 2005, 10:37 amEinar Schlereth:
Stan Gogg I know and appreciate for a long time. But I never saw this weblog. Looks excellent.
18 February 2005, 3:20 pmFraternally
Einar Schlereth
the burningman:
We are on the verge of the first communist revolution in generations. Growing up in the backwash of socialism’s defeat (and the collapse of the social-imperialist bloc), the importance of this opening cannot be underestimated.
I’m curious how Goff’s brethren at Freedom Road, who have been pushing the “left refoundation” argument, will take to this historic turn of events. Many of them continued to support the Chinese government as it gleefully went about re-establishing capitalism — and have argued against taking out explicitly communist politics for many years now. I can only hope that this will be a wake-up call on what it is that distinguishes revolutionary communism from the socialisty rhetoric of groups like the MST, FARC and other revisionist parties of the world. The “refoundation” party in Nepal, the “United Marxist Leninists,” have been siding with the monarchy (supposedly in defense of “democracy”) against the People’s War since its inception. What this might teach us about the vagueries of such efforts is still to be digested.
Aside from the obvious cross-overs with India and South Asia, the possibilities this opens in China are also provocative. Since the capitalist-roaders installed their grotesque regime of prison labor and counter-revolution, communism has been in the crapper. There is nothing, and I mean literally nothing, communist or “Maoist” about China. They are clearly and totally opposed to the revolution in Nepal as it will help to undermine their already threadbare authority. Imagine publishers in Nepal printing Mandarin texts for smuggling into China over the border with the Tibetan region? If any formerly socialist country has the prospect of a communist revolution, it is China where tens of millions know the difference from their own lived experience.
18 February 2005, 5:38 pmlearningman:
Hope to hear more about the Maoist revolutionary movements in
18 February 2005, 7:56 pmNepal, India, the Philippines and Turkey. They’re growing and
under-reported!
Stan:
I’m feeling a little catty about burningman’s RCP rant, so I’ll try an exercise a little self-discipline to be in compliance with my own rules. I don’t speak for Freedom Road; each member and ally can speak for herself. Freedom Road is not a party, and it has no requirement that people who work in and around it meet some tightwire standard of ideological conformity. Nor does it attempt the apotheosis of its leadership.
FRSO does not hawk newspapers everywhere it goes either. It traces its geneology back to the NCM, as a review of their web site documents will attest, but there is no requirement that anyone accept Chairman Mao or any self-appointed heir thereof as infallible or omniscient.
I defend them because they have been kind enough to publish my military rants, and because their practice NEVER involves trying to colonize the mass movements they participate in. They state their points of view openly, fight for them, then accept the will of collectives and work their asses off to get things done. They have an active and effective transformation program that ensures both membership and leadership includes over-representation from oppressed nationalities and women, and more recently youth.
I doubt you’d find anyone among them, but again I don’t speak for others and we don’t have an Avakian to show everyone the light, who would challenge the idea that China has become capitalist. But that’s a different issue than sovereignty, which I expect most would defend from imperial incursions. Speaking for myself, I don’t think 20th Century socialist movement ever stood a chance of survival because it was embedded in a stable capitalist world system, rendering these nations exceedingly vulnerable to the twin-threats of backwardness and encirclement. That’s a much longer argument than seems appropriate for a blog, but there’s the outline.
What I really feel catty about, though, is this business of the “revisionist” FARC. How does their practice of armed struggle for five decades stack up to the ‘correct line’ of burningman? Sorry, but I will continue to have a difficult time with metropolitan lefitsts passing judgement on the sruggles of others — especially when those others are giving their own highly-financed and US-militarily-assisted imperial surrogates a good, old-fashioned country ass-whipping in the field.
Any damn fool can pull together a clique, or even a national poltical party (like the so-called Communists in Iraq, for example), call it “Marxist-Leninist” yada yada, and work for the containment of the masses. But each of these formations must be evaluated on its own merits, and I don’t mean the merits of its line. Line and fifty cents will get you a cup of shitty filling-station coffee. Do they win victories for the masses? Do they effectively defend the masses? Give a damn if they accomplish that by reciting verses from the Rubayat.
In Nepal, they seem to be winning. In the Philippiines, they seem to be holding their own, too. I don’t know about India and Turkey. Just plain don’t know, and woill appreciate any good analysis (NOT of their line!) I suspect it’s tougher going in those places because of industrializaiton. Mao’s doctrine of People’s War was not a holy writ applicable at all times and places. It was a strategy that worked in a country that was still majority peasant-rural.
Dialectics. And materialism. What a combination! Too bad so many on the left don’t use either.
That’s as catty as I’ll get, and not toward learningman, because I didn’t hear all that dogma from him(?) I am still willing to have a conversation with burningman, too, but please leave all that capitalist-roader stuff home. People who haven’t been exposed to it may drop in and see us as the caricature they have always heard about.
We agree. China is capitalist. What does that mean we do… now? I’m going to keep pushing back against the Iraq occupation, and fighting for Haiti. Then I’m tapped.
Speaking of which, I’ll be away from my desk for almost three weeks after Sunday. See ya in Fayetteville on March 19th.
Cheers all.
18 February 2005, 9:34 pmthe burningman:
Stan — if the rules is “don’t speak directly,” I can do that. I’m excited that a communist revolution is on the verge of victory. I suspect that their “line” has something to do with it because many of the other nominally left-wing parties have been more concerned about getting a place at the table than carrying out a political and social revolution. I also think that being on the border of China and India, while having a history of national sovereignty will mean that the immediate strategic effect will be disproportionate.
I’m also curious how efforts to avoid having hard line discussion will be effected. I know I likely won’t be able to find a “newspaper” article or leader willing to explain the implications because for some reason that is considered taboo in many circles. Still, I have great hopes that many socialists who have reconciled themselves to being effective militants in social movements (metropolitan and otherwise) will begin to seek out more profound opportunities.
I couldn’t agree more about your comment about “line and 50 cents,” but I’d add the caveat that millions of people in struggle without a good line won’t even get the people a cup of coffee. I keep looking at South Africa where the people fought for decades, armed and otherwise, and because of the LINE of the leaders they basically negotiated themselves a position carrying out capitalist austerity for imperialism. And Mandela gets to be hero. Line matters, Stan. It’s not everything — but when the chips are down your cards count.
Your issues with the RCP? Take it up with them. For my own self, I’m reviewing several of Avakian’s recent releases for a number of different publications and the things he is saying I’m not hearing anywhere else. I’m not putting his picture over my mantle, but I’m not going to ignore ANYONE who has their eyes on the prize.
20 February 2005, 12:25 pmStan:
I don’t object to parties, quite the ocntrary, nor to party lines. What I object to is the tendency of small sectarian grouplets to establish absolute ideolgoical conformity and crush intellectual initiative — which seems to go hand in hand with the apotheosis of whatever particualr dead communist — and call that a line. If I understand Lenin’s conception of line, it related to maintaining strategic direction — a reference to a bricklayers line, which has to be moved as the work advances (and in politics, has to adapt to new situations and new discoveries).
Blaming failures of socialist parties to establish socialism strikes me as decidedly un-materialist, a kind of mirror image of great-man history. The Soviet Union and China, imo, were bound to suffer capitalist restoration, because they were obliged by encircelment within a stable capitalist world system to develop using capitalist relations of production… and not insignifcantly, capitalist relations of reproduction.
The only country that has come close to doing otherwise is Cuba, which we should study… though the historical verdict isn’t in there yet either.
Eyes on the prize, yes. But surely the eyes of the FARC carry more practical wieght against imperialism than ANY US-based leftist formation.
The test of a line is not its internal logic, but whether it translates into victory.
20 February 2005, 1:43 pmthe burningman:
I just know I’ve seen more than a few socialists use one rhetoric for activists and an entirely different one when it came time to throw down. I watched a bunch of people who talk militant line up for Kerry during the last election, much as I’ve seen them do it every four years for my whole life. That’s line. Since we’re talking about a Maoist movement, it was their “line” that distinguished them from the “communist” parlimentary left (which supports the feudal state) and enabled them to grow from a small force to the dominant power in Nepal in under 10 years. Once they conscientiously carried out a revolutionary Mass Line, the people moved.
Sectarianism is a drag and a waste. Who is arguing that? Not even the RCP these days — in fact, if you’ve caught what Avakian is arguing in his flurry of releases — it is exactly that communist method “embraces, not replaces” other aspects of human endeavor.
There is a different line out there that says “the movement is everything, the final aim nothing.” Now I support building popular movements with my all. And I’d err on the side of being in a confused movement to holding up in a sect any day. That said, the fact that this has been the choice for so long might be deeply tied to the ass-whooping we got for so long, Stan.
Line isn’t everything, but we’re nothing without a good one, a correct one or whatever new-fangled non-dogmatic language you want to use. Sure I’d support the FARC politically against the other options on the ground in Colombia. Or Chavez and Cuba against Bush. But that’s not going to cut it. We need to get some red flags on the field and pronto with all the “practical weight against imperialism” we can muster.
21 February 2005, 11:47 amsandin0:
Burningman is right to point out the dramatic effect a revolution in Nepal will have on the International Communist Movement, and on the left in general worldwide. It’s very exciting even thinking about it. It will certainly cause many people to call into question their conception of revolution and their ideology and line. I also agree that it would raise questions in many people’s minds about the ‘left unity’ or ‘left refoundation’ approach that many on the left take.
Of course all that remains to be played out; and the CPN(M) hasn’t won yet, and once they win things could go in all kinds of directions. At this point I would put money on them winning, and in the not-too-distant future. But hey, crushing setbacks can occur when things seem on the verge of something big; look at Peru in 1992. What the leadership of the CPN(M) does in the coming months will determine whether we’re looking at a revolution possibly this year, or something in the more distant future, or possibly a crushing defeat. So far they are showing themselves to be very politically astute and have not made major errors. From a distance, it seems to me they have learned from some of the errors of Peru’s Shining Path (most dramatically on the mass line and united front, but on a range of other questions too — hopefully they learned some tactical questions too like when the leadership should move to the capitol!).
On the question of China, all I pointed out was that a revolution in Nepal will have an interesting effect on China (which burningman agrees with), and particularly will have a good effect within the Communist Party of China, bolstering the left within the party with possibly interesting results (which burningman seems to rather disagree with). I asserted that despite the official line of the Chinese Communist Party on Nepal, there are likely large numbers of Chinese CP members who will be very happy to see the CPN(M) win. I hope we’ll get a chance to find out!
21 February 2005, 12:58 pmthe burningman:
Sandin0: you think there are remaining communist elements within the Chinese CP? Are there? Could they be any different than AFL hacks by this point? Between the corruption and decades of rightist ideology, I’d be shocked if there was anything more than the Chinese equivalent of Russia’s Stalin fan club — a pretty grizzly bunch from what I’ve been able to gather. I’ve been looking into the China Study Group here in New York, but the gaping absence of a coherent Chinse left has been hurting the whole world.
I think you’re spot-on about the “lessons learned” from the experience of the PCP/SL. On the other hand, despite their impressive work, the Communist Party of Peru was always on the more dogmatic edge of the ICM, even by Maoist standards. I’ve only had one Nepalese friend and she told me “communism is going to be great in Nepal because we’re all hippies at heart.” She wasn’t a communist, but respected the CPN because “they are from the people.”
I think the big differences, aside from timing and cultural temperament, is that Nepal is hard for the US to intervene in directly, there is an insurgent Maoist movement building throughout South Asia — and the collapse of the Soviet Bloc is a fact, not a shock. When the PCP was building steam, the entirety of the Latin American left was folding up shop to the extent they were able to. The FARC continued in their regions, but certainly wasn’t playing a role in the ICM ideologically or practically. The PCP was totally isolated, demonized and slandered — which added to their dogmatism and so forth, didn’t prepare them for the capture of Guzman.
21 February 2005, 9:36 pmArtemio Bhattarai:
I’m enjoying this back and forth you two are having here, and I really am excited about the prospects for Maoist success in Nepal. Even now, though, I think if we look at life in the FARC liberated areas and the CPN(M) liberated areas, we can see major differences that cut to the differences between the core visions of these two parties. Naturally, those visions are constrained by the objective reality these two parties confront. But their visions are important in shaping what they do with that reality. I’m sympathetic to comrades who see that the FARC is successful and is opposing the US, but I’d like to ask Stan to investigate further just what world these folks are fighting for, and not just stop the analysis at the fact that the FARC is a large and powerful force fighting US imperialism.
Which is to say, that I agree with Burningman that line makes a difference. Which is also why I have to disagree with him on his assessment of this Avakian stuff. The fact is, while Avakian is saying some interesting things, they are so shot through with subjective idealism that they will not lead to anyone’s liberation. And what is interesting about what he is saying is not something he is uniquely responsible for, nor even the most prominent person in the world saying these things. Of course, if the RCP says it to us enough we may start to believe it, especially if we have to hear it over and over from people that we otherwise respect…
Now, this connection between Peru and Nepal is a really interesting thing. Clearly the Nepalese have advanced beyond the Peruvian experience in a number of important ways. Their application of the mass line and the united front are far beyond what the Peruvians did. And while part of this is that they are dealing with a different objective situation, part of it is that they do have a very different line on this stuff. I mean, consider Baburam Bhattarai’s recent statement that without re-evaluating and criticizing the Stalin experience, the ICM will not be able to advance. You would never have heard this sort of thing from the PCP.
I could go on all day about this stuff, but this is getting long enough. But, if I had to pinpoint a basic difference between the CPN(M) and PCP, I’d have to say that the PCP suffered from a good deal of subjective idealism which led them to conceive of the sort of united front they actually needed to take power much too narrowly and to overemphasize what could be done by a relatively smaller group based on their ideological firmness, rather than relying on a broader base of the masses and taking things more slowly. The deeper ties the CPN(M) has forged with a broader range of the masses, and their patience in trying to take Kathmandu on the basis of a more developed level of political support among the masses there (rather than through a military invasion from the countryside), show a profoundly different methodology than that put forward by Sendero.
22 February 2005, 10:35 amArtemio Bhattarai:
Reading over my comment, I just want to clarify that, in using the example of the CPN(M)’s work in the Kathmandu Valley, I am not commenting so much on their policy of urban insurrection complementing the war in the countryside (which they share with Sendero), but on their approach to mass work and moving based on a relatively high level of mass support. So I am commenting on what they are concretely doing in Kathmandu, not on their military line of how urban work complements rural work.
22 February 2005, 10:41 amthe burningman:
I think the strategy of People’s War is flexible depending on the nature of the society. North American Maoists aren’t heading for the Rockies with rifles in hand. Meaning: the important thing is identifying the social base(s) for revolution, the reach of the state and subjective condition of the masses.
The point about Bhattarai criticizing Stalin’s method and impact on the ICM is something I’ve noticed coming from some of the more hard-line Maoists as well and it is seriously making me reconsider my prior disregard of their potential.
Stan’s frustration with the limitations of sectarianism aren’t unique to him. I know exactly what he’s talking about and the inability of the left to get over either being sectarian fruitcakes or, on the other hand, movementists at the periphery of the Democrats has been killing us. Many of the younger radicals have given up on politics altogether and embraced some kind of fuzzy anarchism that thinks meeting process is the answer to defeat.
My hope, my real hope is that the depth of the international crisis will jar the ICM out of its sectarianism and hackery and help kickstart a renaissance of revolution. We aren’t starting from zero.
“The test of a line is not its internal logic, but whether it translates into victory.” I’d just add that the content of the victory counts. Who is winning what?
We don’t need another Mandela or Tito. We need some more Mao and Lenin. Hell, we need better than that!
23 February 2005, 6:54 pmRosa:
what a good discussion. i too am excited about what may happen in nepal. what is happening. the farc is better than the government, but i don’t expect very much from them, just another nationalist third world government. nepal promises much more than that.
28 February 2005, 1:16 pm