Archive for the ‘Maoism’ Category
Posted by kasama on May 25, 2012
What is capitalism? How is socialism actually different? How can we recognize when capitalist society comes at us in “socialist” disguise?
One focus of analysis and debate has always been the Soviet Union — where over seventy years there was close examination of the nature of the USSR, and where those debates had widespread implications politically.
The following article is one of the sharpest arguments made for the view that the Soviet Union came to be dominated by a class that was literally and fully capitalist. It takes the form of a polemic with two scholars (Al Szymanski and David Laibman) who strongly argued that the USSR remained socialist and could not possibly be capitalist.
Even today, a generation after the dissolution of the USSR — this debate remains extremely rich in lessons. The question remains sharply posed about what, after all, is the socialism we are aiming at, and whether to accept (and mythologize) oppressive societies that maintain a fiction of socialist state ownership.
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This article emerged as part of a larger communist theoretical project conducted by Maoists in the early 1980s. And that project still represents, in some important ways, a positive example for the communist theoretical projects that o urgently need to be taken up now.
This essay first appeared in Revolution magazine #52, Summer 1984. (Revolution is a now-defunct political and theoretical journal published by the Revolutionary Communist Party,USA from 1979 until 1994) Revolution #52 contained a number of analytical pieces on the nature of Soviet society.
We have already published on of those Rev52 essays here on Kasama previously: Mike Ely’s “Against lesser evil thesis: Soviet imperialist military doctrine .”
This article was recently made available by Banned Thought. It is also available here on Kasama in printable pdf form.
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Notes toward an analysis of the Soviet bourgeoisie
by Lenny Wolff and Aaron Davis
If the Soviet Union is capitalist, then where is the bourgeoisie? The defenders of the Soviet Union constantly return to this question, and use it to argue the nonexistence of any Soviet bourgeois class. Their line of argument proceeds along two interrelated tracks.
First, they claim that the “logic” of the socialist mode of production—by which they essentially mean state ownership of the means of production—rules out the generation within socialist society of either bourgeois relations or a bourgeoisie. Thus the restoration of capitalism is rendered logically impossible, short of an invasion by imperialists or a counterrevolution by dispossessed exploiters. Second, they list characteristics that are said to typify a capitalist class and then point to the alleged absence of any such phenomena in the Soviet Union to deduce the nonexistence of a Soviet bourgeoisie.
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Posted in >> analysis of news, imperialism, Krushchev, Maoism, Marxist theory, Socialism, Soviet history, working class | 1 Comment »
Posted by Mike E on May 13, 2012
The 9 letters to Our Comrades was an opening shot of Kasama’s project. These essays sketch a fundamental critique of the Revolutionary Communist Party’s turn toward cultism.
In another sense, it also represent a critique of a more general set of problems within the organized left. It is a critique of failure to deeply engage reality, and a corrupting sense of grandiosity.
Now these 9 essays are available in both main e-book formats.
Click here for the new e-book versions
Previously available forms:
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Posted in >> analysis of news, 9 Letters, Kasama, Kasama videos, Maoism, mass line, methodology, Mike Ely, New Com. Movement, podcasts, RCPUSA, theory, truth and class truth | 1 Comment »
Posted by Mike E on January 30, 2012
The road is tortuous, the future is bright
“One of the inflexible tasks of any communist organization (and any communist leadership) is to help train everyone (both the communists at all levels, but also the supporters of the movement) to evaluate choices by these criteria: Where does it lead? Who does it serve?
“And one of the difficult tasks in moments of struggle is to apply those criteria consciously, in the midst of great pulls, demagoguery and confusion.”
by Mike Ely
Pham Binh writes in the nearby discussion of Unsettled questions:
“It’s not true that ‘line is key.’ Lines can change. Control from below and the ability to adapt are key. Unfortunately there is no vaccine against political/organization degeneration.”
This discussion reminds me that we have to work to develop a common language. The word “line” is being referenced here in some very different ways. To even engage possible differences (over what is “key”), we have to start by explaining what we each mean by the word “line.”
Here, if I am guessing correctly, Pham Binh is using the word “line,” as it is often used in many corners of the left: Line is a word used to describe political positions. As in: “What’s your line on the war?” or “What is their line on Puerto Rican independence?” And in that usage, it is reasonable to say that specific policies can come and go, and are therefore not decisive in preventing betrayal or defeat.
By contrast the Maoist concept of line, answer the questions “where are we heading, what do we serve?” And the phrase “line is key” is an assertion that in complex struggle, the key question is to evaluate things in terms of where it leads, and what goals it will advance. And in that sense, I would suggest that vigilant attention to overall line (i.e. direction and goals) is key to preventing defeat, reversal, betrayal and getting lost.
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Posted in >> analysis of news, communism, Maoism, Marxist theory, mass line, Mike Ely | 125 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on January 25, 2012
by Mike Ely
Chegitz writes:
“…no form of organization is immune from degenerating into something awful.”
And he gives the example of the collapse of the Socialist Party (which he has been part of) — which was constructed along different (more loose and anarchic) lines than the mini-parties we have otherwise been discussing.
I think Chegitz’s point is true, and its implications are worth exploring.
And this includes forms like the commune or soviet forms of governance by representative mass democracy — which solve some problems, but exist in the context of dynamics that inevitably create new and ongoing problems. And it is true for the vanguard party, both in the forms we are familiar with, but also in future forms of core organization that we might imagine or build.
Pointing out the organizational problems with previous mini-parties (and their peculiar versions of democratic centralism) also does not mean there is are necessarily organizational solutions to those problems.
If you have evidence of a form of organization producing troubling dynamics — the solution may involve some other form of organization, but let’s not assume that changes of form provide some simple, definitive corrective.
There may be better forms (political procedures, habits, structures) — better for our purposes, better for our particular moment or our current stage of development — but the solution (to becoming exhausted, uncreative, marginalized, ossified, cultish, even corrupt) isn’t necessarily (or simply) to imagine some pre-figured and presumably immune alternative form(s).
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Posted in >> analysis of news, communism, Maoism, mass line, Mike Ely, vanguard party | 14 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on January 24, 2012
The ideas of the rank-and-file are more than just raw material for leadership decision-making. Democracy involves elements of real power and ongoing accountability.
by Mike Ely
How should communists and revolutionaries be organized? Even asking that ruffles some feathers — since some communist currents have considered this a “settled question.”
Well, we should un-settle it — problematize it — for the simple reason that the idea of a single “universalized” model of revolutionary organization has been a bad idea.
Its flaws and illusions have been revealed over the last decades — including in the grandiosity and self-delusion of various small self-declared “parties” within the U.S.
There are a number of issues involved — which we are only starting to touch on. But for now, we are exploring the communist organizational concept of “democratic centralism” (DC) — both what it means and whether it should be embraced as a common approach.
We have discussed how it got “settled” in the discussions of the new-born Third Communist International (between 1921 and 1924) and how the form of democratic centralism was further modified — especially in the “Bolshevization” campaigns of the late 1920s.
Now, Let’s go beyond the historical question of how specific organizational structures and processes got codified (“settled”) — let’s explore some of the concepts that pass as “settled,” their justifications and lessons.
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Posted in >> analysis of news, comintern, communism, Communist Party, Mao Zedong, Maoism, Mike Ely, Soviet history, Stalin and Stalinism, vanguard party | 106 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on January 11, 2012
Armed farmers block road in India
by Mike Ely
A great many of us attracted to revolutionary politics in the U.S. (and similar “developed” countries) often see radical change through the prism of our surrounding society — where feudalism has been largely absorbed into capitalist agriculture, and where only a small-and-declining proportion of the working classes are on the land.
So when revolutionaries in the third world (for example: India, Nepal, Peru, Turkey) talk of the political tasks facing both communists and the people because of major feudal elements — the discussion often seems a bit strange. Their discussion involves problems of genuine national independence, village-level land reform, basic industrial development, basic infrastructure (roads, sewage, electrification…), ending the patriarchy of peasant life… burning questions that aren’t concerns of any revolutionary movement in the U.S.
And meanwhile the face of the Third World is changing — rapidly — with profound implications for the politics, economics and revolutions of today’s world. Islands of imperialist-style production (and even social structures with broad bourgeoisified strata etc.) are emerging in former colonial areas and anchoring regional markets — within South Africa, Bangalore in India, Singapore in Southeast Asia, Hong Kong and Shanghai in China, even in their own way, Israel and Dubai within the still impoverished Middle East. And tremendous transformations are happening in third world agriculture — including capitalist development (dams, factories) and capitalist farming that are changing the face of village life and provoking powerful resistance.
S0, for many reasons, revolutionaries in the U.S. need to understand the conditions, theories and history of Third World revolution. I want to open the discussion here by simply sketching some ongoing controversies and peeling back to show some ways they affect our global political unities and theoretical challenges.
Capitalism or socialism: Two roads in the poorer countries
Jan Makandal gave us one place to start when he wrote in a nearby discussion:
“A theoretical error made by the proponents of the bourgeois revolution stage, they identify two antagonistic modes of productions capitalism, however deformed and dominated it is, and feudalism as two modes of productions existing equally thus the concept of semi. This identification is a mechanical approach of contradictions. In the reality contradictory phenomenon always exist in struggle, even on their relative correspondence, and the objective of these struggle are for dominance and annihilation of the opposite and as materialist we do need to understand all the prevailing tendencies to understand the direction and the path this annihilation is going and mostly qualitatively. For example, most of those feudal landlords are heavily indebted to capitalist. For me even in most of those social formation feudalism is strong but it is stagnant as well and capitalism is deformed, dominated but emerging.
“So inside these social formation I would not deduct that they are semi feudal and semi capitalism but recognize the existence of these two modes of productions and as well recognize capitalism as dominant and making it the dominant elements to deal with into those social formations. Concluding no to bourgeois revolutions, an opportunist and revisionist political line but yes to a revolution under the leaderships of the proletariat.”
Jan is (i believe) critiquing a concept Mao developed– “semifeudal semicolonial” — which Mao used to describe conditions in China in the 1920s and 1930s, and which have since been applied(by Maoists) to other countries in the Third World. Mao’s initial analysis was an important breakthrough — in ways that will become clear. And it is still a controversial one today — for reasons that Jan makes clear.
I welcome that Jan is broaching these questions… and i want to address some points he raises.
So lets start here: So what does this mean, “semifeudal, semicolonial,” and what kind of a strategic revolutionary road has that been connected with over the last century? And how does it relate to the changing forms of global oppression today?
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Posted in >> analysis of news, Afghanistan, China, CPI(Maoist), India, Maoism, Marxist theory, methodology, Mike Ely, Nepal, peoples war, Socialism, UCP Nepal (Maoist) | 21 Comments »
Posted by kasama on November 11, 2011
by Mike Ely
CWM writes:
“I can appreciate the desire to limit the critique of the RCP to what Mike calls “questions of line” (i.e., their ideas).”
There is a debate here about “the high plane of two line struggle” — something I have argued strongly for. I want to take a second to clarify this term “questions of line.”
I understand why CWM equates line simply with “their ideas” — but that is not exactly how I would look at it.
What road are we on?
Sometimes, on the left, people say “what is your line on this? What is your line on that?”
This is not what I mean by line. To me (and to Maoists generally) line is a matter of examining “where does this lead?” It is like a surveyor’s tool that projects forward.
It is an approach to methods, policies, theoretical “packages” — that asks the questions: where does this lead? who does it serve? what will come from taking this road?
You have to consciously fight to get things considered and decided on that basis. And only by posing and deciding things on that basis can a communist program come forward, and gain support broadly among key sections of the people.
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Posted in >> analysis of news, Kasama, Maoism, mass line, Mike Ely | 14 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on November 8, 2011
by Mike Ely
Louise Thundercloud writes:
“I heard Ralph Nader praise “the brave founding fathers , who settled this land”. I thought I would throw up listening, but I have run into that kind of stuff in many cases in this movement.”
Many people have been trained to think of the settler/slaveowners of the early U.S. as “their” founding fathers. And Louise is deeply correct that this is mistaken, and has ongoing implications for politics. History is not just about the past, but about the present.
This country was founded in genocide and slavery. It was built and maintained by some of the most vicious exploitation imaginable — obviously of kidnapped Africans but also of impoverished immigrants from Asia and Europe who were herded into mines, and mills.
And it is not just that the “founding fathers” were slave traders, capitalists, and slave owners (and therefore not “ours”) — but (more controversial even) their very political system, constitution and even their concepts of property, authority, law, and morality were all deeply marked by this exploitative, expansionist and genocidal nature.
They are not “our” founding fathers — but the founders of the empire we now confront, and within which we seek to act as an increasingly conscious and determined force of negation.
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Posted in >> analysis of news, communism, Kasama, Maoism, mass line, Mike Ely | 9 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on October 22, 2011
Cleansing and reclaiming the red flag
The following is an important and highly controversial document from the previous communist movement (of the 1970 and 80s). This is an argument against socialist revolution attempting to reclaim patriotism or nationalist symbols in a country like the United States. The essay was part of a major theoretical effort by the Revolutionary Communist Party in the period of 1979-1984 to break with rightist and patriotic legacies within the international communist movement. It contains extensive sections written by Bob Avakian during this period — one of the times when a younger Avakian was still pressing the envelope of communist thinking and making creative contributions.
This essay was first published in 1980 and has been unavailable for decades. It has been republished by the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line. It is part of an archival project making documents of the “New Communist Movement” available to revolutionaries today for study, evaluation and summation.
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On the Question of So-Called “National Nihilism”:
You Can’t Beat the Enemy While Raising His Flag
Can revolution in the U.S. today come wrapped in the American flag? Can we “claim it as our own”? Should a revolutionary party be motivated by a desire to “save America. . . from her rulers and for her people”? Can a class-conscious revolutionary in the U.S. “have pride in the true history of this country”? These are questions which have posed themselves again and again in the development of the revolutionary movement in the U.S. and are doing so today. In fact, similar questions of national pride and patriotism have historically been very important in the advances–and setbacks–of the international communist movement.
Earl Browder, the naked revisionist former leader of the Communist Party, USA gave his infamous answer to these questions in the mid-1930s when he coined the phrase “Communism is 20th Century Americanism” and said that the CPUSA was carrying on the revolutionary tradition of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and the like. Unfortunately, when all was said and done, Earl Browder was right about the CPUSA (though most certainly wrong about genuine communism) because the CP had completely taken up the program and outlook of bourgeois democracy. Such a stand may be American and definitely is bourgeois, but for a communist it is a thoroughly counter-revolutionary one, especially here in the imperialist USA in this, the era of proletarian revolution.
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Posted in >> analysis of news, comintern, Lenin, Maoism, Marxist theory, RCPUSA, Socialism, Stalin and Stalinism, V.I. Lenin | 25 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on September 29, 2011
Selucha points out this coming event.
Mao’s Little Red Book: A Global History
DATE: October 21-22, 2011
PLACE: 2223 Fulton Street, 6th Floor Conference Room
SPONSORS: Center for Chinese Studies and Institute of East Asian Studies
Description
This conference takes up the global history of Quotations from Chairman Mao—perhaps the most visible, ubiquitous, and enduring symbol of twentieth-century radicalism. Conference participants will examine the production and adaptation of the “little red book” in China, as well as its circulation, appropriation, and impact around the globe. The pocket-sized Quotations from Chairman Mao was probably the most printed non-religious book of the twentieth century and by the late 1960s became the must-have accessory for red guards and revolutionaries from Berkeley to Bamako. The little red book’s worldwide circulation, in dozens of languages, is a testament to its historical importance, but until now there has been no serious scholarly effort to understand the Quotations as a global historical phenomenon.
Posted in China, Cultural Revolution, Mao Zedong, Maoism, Peru | 3 Comments »
Posted by kasama on September 26, 2011
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| Karl Marx arrested in Brussels |
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This historical sketch was written fourteen years ago for the 150th anniversary of the Communist Manifesto. It has since been published in many places and languages.
This is the story of how the revolutionary communist movement first emerged from the fusion of deep theoretical work and fearless revolutionary practice. And we are sharing it to inspire the work for a fresh fusion of revolutionary theory and practice that is so urgently demanded today.
* * * * * * * * *
by Mike Ely
In mid-February 1848, a new communist pamphlet rolled off the presses of a small print shop on London’s Bishopsgate. It was written in German and entitled Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei.
Copies were rushed off to the mainland of Europe. Uprisings and disturbances had broken out in most of the main population centers of the continent. Small cores of revolutionary activists were waiting for a high-powered declaration that could guide their work and rally people to a thoroughgoing revolutionary movement.
The bold opening lines of this pamphlet threw down a challenge:
“A spectre is haunting Europe–the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre…. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the spectre of communism with a manifesto of the party itself.”
This work was quickly translated into many languages of Europe and the Americas. In English it became known as the Communist Manifesto. In one early English version, published in 1850, the previously unknown authors were listed for the first time: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.
While countless other documents and manifestos of those days lie forgotten and dust-covered in library archives, this Manifesto lives, studied intensely in slums, jungle base areas, and even classrooms all over the world — still inspiring and training one new revolutionary generation after another.
The Communist Manifesto is the visionary founding document of the modern communist movement. Here is the story of how the Manifesto came to be.
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Posted in communism, England, Germany, Karl Marx, Maoism, Marxist theory, Mike Ely, revolution, Socialism | Leave a Comment »
Posted by kasama on September 26, 2011
The following appeared on the Observers France site. Thanks to radical eyes for suggesting that we post this.
Modern-day Maoists worry Chinese authorities
A group of Maoists commemorating the 35th anniversary of Mao Zedong’s death in the northern Chinese city of Taiyuan was violently broken up by police. Chinese authorities have no patience for these Mao-lovers, who seem to have forgotten the former communist leader’s authoritarian streak and retained only the idyllic vision of a fairer society. One Chinese Maoist gives us his account.
The unrest occurred on September 9, when several dozen Maoists gathered in Taiyuan, chanted revolutionary slogans and delivered inflammatory speeches based on Mao’s Little Red Book. At the end of the demonstration, police tried to arrest the leader of the movement. Other protesters rallied to protect him, shouting “Long live Chairman Mao!” Nine people were arrested, but the organiser managed to escape. Most participants were active members of the website “Utopia”, the biggest leftist forum on the Chinese Web.
Posted in >> analysis of news, China, Maoism | 4 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on September 24, 2011
“It is possible to organize non-revolutionary movements without revolutionary journalism. Trade unions do it all the time. There are lots of organized movements (of right and left) that draw people into motion without fundamentally (or all-sidedly) challenging the assumptions of the current society….
“To organize (over time) a more sweeping revolutionary challenge to the whole capitalist system, and to the social relations built on the basis of capitalism, it is necessary to promulgate a more systematic critique of current society and politics — and that requires communist reporting and analysis.”
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By Mike Ely
In a recent discussion here on Kasama the question was raised about what is communist journalism. What do we communists see as the link between preparations for revolution (in the U.S.) and our reporting on widespread events.
Needed to consciously change the world
The starting point for communist revolutionaries is this:
For oppressed people to change the world in very specific and positive ways they need to understand the world. We Maoists have a saying: “Know things to change things.” And like many Maoist sayings this is deceptively simple and pithy — and has several larger discussions coiled within it.
We all are part of changing the world all the time — but we rarely do so in ways consciously connected to liberation.
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Posted in >> analysis of news, Kasama, Maoism, Mike Ely, V.I. Lenin | 1 Comment »
Posted by Mike E on September 24, 2011
Yesterday we posted a series of theoretical documents from the journal Causa M-L – the product of communist revolutionaries in Chile from 1979-1981, when the PCR of Chile was playing an important role summarizing Chile’s experience with the Pinochet coup and China’s experiences with the 1976 capitalist restorationist coup.
We have now received information about a second archive of documents from the Revolutionary Communist Party of Chile. The following documents are part of the preparations to regroup communists after the collapse of the worldwide Maoist movement (following the death of Mao). It involved a series of efforts to identify what was valuable and essential to being communists — at that time. It formed the basis of what ultimately became the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement. And its experiences (pro and con) are potential valuable as communists internationally seek to regroup — in specific countries and internationally).
This helps in the construction of a history of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement — and the complex contributions and influences exercised by active players in different parts of the world (including this Chilean party, the Communist Party of Peru (Shining Path) and the RCP in the U.S.) The Chilean party, and its leading figure at that time, Jorge Palacios, was a particularly important force for a fresh and creative assessment of the communist politics inherited by Maoists worldwide.
Here are the documents:
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Posted in >> analysis of news, Chile, Communist Party, Kasama translations, Maoism, Marxist theory, theory | 6 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on September 23, 2011
Issue #28
Theoretical work of Chile’s Revolutionary Communist Party is now available — as they summed up their experiences in the Allende years, the Pinochet coup, and the international communist movement.
This work is available here, on Kasama, in Spanish — as a series of pdfs. These essays are from the period of the late 1970s to 1981 — when the RCP of Chile was seeking to help regroup the international communist movement, and thinking through the implications of events in China after the rise to power of Deng Xiaoping and his pro-capitalist politics.
(One of the articles deals with Pinochet going on a state visit to China.)
RCP Chile: Open Letter to the Communist Party of China (English)
We would like to thank those who did the work of making this material available and Rosa Blanc.
The journal Causa M-L is in Spanish. We would welcome English translations of key articles.
Background:
The great radical upsurge of Chile’s people in the early 1970s, included a number of revolutionary currents that grew, even as the electoral-socialist Allende government came to power.
Among them was the Revolutionary Communist Party of Chile — which was formed as a Maoist party in 1966 and played an important role in the events that followed, including the resistance to the 1973 U.S.-backed fascist coup led by General Augusto Pinochet.
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Posted in >> analysis of news, Chile, communism, Communist Party, Maoism, Marxist theory | 3 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on September 7, 2011
Путешествие в столицу маоистов (+фоторепортаж)
Джим Вейлл
В непальских автобусах есть места – и места. Одни едут на сидениях с откидывающимися спинками и подголовниками. Для других отведено любое пространство, куда можно втиснуться: в проходах, на подлокотниках, на бордюрчике возле водителя, даже на крыше автобуса. И причина тому, конечно же, деньги. Перевозчики хотят взять столько пассажиров, сколько возможно – и получить максимально возможную прибыль. Но, в отличие от европейцев, непальцы не брезгуют близких телесных контактов. Совершенно незнакомые люди во время поездки кладут головы друг другу на плечо, и не считается оскорблением, если вы обопретесь спиной на чьи-то ноги. К тому же, похоже, что и само распределение мест здесь происходит весьма произвольно. Кто-то возьмет билет на определенное место, кто-то просто займет место раньше других – но никаких препирательств по этому поводу не возникает. Таким образом, в автобусе торжествует общинный эгалитаризм – люди совместно переживают легкий дискомфорт, как физического, так и социального плана. Раньше думал: в обществе нового типа у каждого будет свое мягкое сидение – или все будут разделять поровну тяготы обыденной жизни?
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Posted in >> analysis of news, Jim Weill, Kasama translations, Maoism, UCP Nepal (Maoist), winter has its end blog | Leave a Comment »
Posted by kasama on September 4, 2011
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| Torch rally against surrender, photo credit: Eric Ribellarsi |
The following interview with Biplab (Netra Bikram Chanda), a leading member of the Maoist party in Nepal, was conducted the week before Baburam Bhattarai’s election. At that momentarily the left and right wings of the Maoists were (briefly) working together to weaken the current party chairman Prachanda (obviously for different reasons). That situation ended when Bhattarai moved to disarm and dissolve the People’s Liberation Army.
Things have changed and events have moved quickly in the days since this interview was given. However it still gives a sense of the struggle over the future of Nepal’s revolution within the Maoist party.
It first appeared on Winter Has Its End (WHIE).
WHIE: Very sharp differences have emerged in your party over army integration. Could you explain those to us?
BIPLAB: We have a two-line struggle going on in our party over the integration of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). This struggle has mainly been targeted at Baburam Bhattarai, but at the moment it has become focused on Prachanda. Prachanda is claiming that we can go forward by accepting the integration proposals of the reactionary forces in Nepal.
They are ready to dissolve, not integrate, the People’s Liberation Army which fought for 12 years, into the Nepal Army.
It is amazing that the Nepal Army has put forward proposal about integration. Their proposal gives them leadership and disintegrates the People’s Liberation Army under it. The PLA is treated not as soldiers of Nepal. It suggests that the PLA step aside into local bureaus, and become unarmed forest guards. Prachanda is accepting their proposal.
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Posted in >> analysis of news, Maoism, Nepal, Prachanda, UCP Nepal (Maoist), winter has its end blog | 4 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on September 1, 2011
Kiran, Vice chairman of Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist):
“….the meeting of Army Integration Special Committee… made a surprising and suicidal decision of handing over the weapons containers and their keys 7:00PM today.
“This decision will lead to disarming and dissolving of People’s Liberation Army. We condemn this decision and humbly request the discarding of this decision of surrender immediately.”
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The following is a statement by Mohan Baidhya (nom de guerre: Kiran).
Kiran’s faction of the Nepal’s Maoist party is calling for a mass gathering in Kathmandu’s Ratna Park. Eric Ribellarsi also reports that were were plans for blockading the roads leading into Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital. It is, of course, unclear what will actually happen. We will share reports on developments.
This statement first appeared on Winter Has Its End. Thanks to Bikkil Sthapit for the English translation.
Kathmandu: September 1, 2011
Our party has always remained firm about the commitments to drafting a new constitution and army integration in regards to the Comprehensive Peace Accord. We’ve already envisioned that both tasks must be completed simultaneously. Without any doubt, army integration is one of the vital parts of peace process.
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Posted in Maoism, Nepal, UCP Nepal (Maoist) | 2 Comments »
Posted by kasama on September 1, 2011
Defiant. photo: Eric Ribellarsi
She sang:
“We cannot surrender.
We cannot become traitors.
We cannot kill our own dreams.
We cannot give our arms to the enemy.
We cannot betray the revolution.”
This first appeared on the Winter Has Its End site for revolutionary journalism.
by Liam Wright
I lifted my eyes as I wiped a streak of sweat from my face. The place was packed. About a thousand people crammed into a theater meant to hold nine hundred. The center aisle was filled with people perched on impromptu seats all the way to the back row. Some stood peering through the entryway. Up top, the balcony was filled to the brim as well. And… it was hot.
We had traveled overnight out of the mountains, on an eleven hour bus ride to get to Butwal, a small city in the sweltering lowland Terai region of Nepal. This city is an historic spot. It is the place where the renowned Nepalese warriors, known as Gorkhas, defeated the British East India Company in 1816, maintaining Nepalese independence.
It seems only appropriate that we would come here, a place where Nepal had fought so decisively for sovereignty long ago, to see a performance organized by a section of the Maoist’s who want to fight to continue their revolution now. The performance, Samana or Resistance, we were told was, “both a call to the people and a warning to our leaders.”
The whole way over I was excited. I’d been mulling over this for a bit. How would the Nepalese revolutionaries go forward? How would they settle the debate over whether to dissolve their People’s Liberation Army or not? Would they move to break through? To go for power? Or would those among the Maoists party’s leadership who want to consolidate a capitalist democracy win the day?
This program promised to give us a hint of how the revolutionaries among the Maoists planned to tell the people: “We’re going to move. Be ready.” We were told that the program is going on tour through forty-five places in all, each with a couple showings. If each is overflowing like this, they were going to reach a lot of people.
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Posted in art, comedy, communism, dance, Liam Wright, Maoism, music, Nepal, Prachanda, revolution, UCP Nepal (Maoist), winter has its end blog | 1 Comment »
Posted by kasama on August 29, 2011
In the last months the EROL archives has posted a rich new body of past communist writings. (EROL is the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-line) We extend special thanks to Paul Saba, whose work is so important to our ongoing project of communist summation.
The following is one of the few existing histories of the RCP,USA. It is that organization’s own history — though this document has been buried and forgotten by the organization that wrote it.
We will now make it available for critical summation.
There is a lot to say about the real strengths and real weaknesses of the previous communist movement. To even start to understand them, we all need a common sense of what that history was, and how it was viewed (at that time) by those involved.
This essay was written in the wake of the RCP’s split with the RWH — over an economist view of work in the working class, and over a (relatedly) conservative view of what constitutes socialism and our revolutionary goals.
There are many levels on which to approach this document, and many ways in which to assimilate it. For now, we in Kasama are simply offering it for study and discussion — as part of the appropriation of previous communist history, and as part of the reconception based on that experience.
(We would like to make this available in pdf format. If you create such a pdf, share it with us, and we will post it as a pamphlet.)
Important Struggles in Building the Revolutionary Communist Party,USA
by Bill Klingel and Joanne Psihountas, leading members of the Central Committee of the RCP
This history is written in the light of the struggle against the Jarvis-Bergman clique, opportunists (led by Mickey Jarvis and Leibel Bergman) who attempted a revisionist coup to seize leadership of the RCP, and failing that tried to wreck, and then led a split from, the Party in the winter of1977-78. In the course of this struggle, it became clear that a summation of not only the current struggle, but of previous line struggles that went into forging a vanguard of the U.S. proletariat would be extremely valuable. This summation was originally written as an internal document of the RCP and on the basis of discussion within the Party, it has been rewritten in some parts for publication.
Opposition and struggle between ideas of different kinds constantly occur within the Party; this is a reflection within the Party of contradictions between classes and between the new and the old in society. If there were no contradictions in the Party and no ideological struggles to resolve them, the Party’s life would come to an end. (Mao Tsetung, “On Contradiction,” Selected Works, Vol. 1, p. 317.)
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Posted in >> analysis of news, communism, Maoism, New Com. Movement, RCPUSA | 12 Comments »
