CPI Maoist by Harsh Thakor

Democracy and Class Struggle publishes this contribution from Harsh Thakor to further support and debate the future of the Indian Revolution.

The views expressed in this article are those of Harsh Thakor and not those of Democracy and  Class Struggle.


CPI Maoist by Harsh Thakor


It has become a fashion in some revolutionary circles to criticize or condemn the C.P.I.(Maoist) particularly in groups like the C.P.I (M.L) led by K.N.Ramchandran and the C.P.I (M.L) Class Struggle group which upholds the late Kanu Sanyal who term them as  ‘terrorists.’.

The  Rahul foundation  erroneously criticizes the C.P.I.(Maoist) as non-marxist.

The C.P.I.(Maoist ) has defied all odds with their struggle in Dandkaranya their best example.

Irrespective of errors in their military line they have defended armed revolutionary resistance more than any organization in India.

Whatever maybe it’s weaknesses in practice the C.P.I. (Maoist) is the most correct of all revolutionary groups. They have proved how much they are ingrained with the masses.
 
In spite of adverse subjective conditions they have formed revolutionary commitees or ‘Janata Sarkars.’

There is an analytical article in RDF organ Jan Pratirodh by Ajay Kumar which elaborates how democratically the ‘Janata Sarkars’ are created and how they participate in the everyday struggles of the tribals.

The innovations  of the Maoists Are absolutely unbelievable, literally  creating  subjective conditions for their cause. They have defied groups who professed the ‘3 stage theory’ and prolonged armed struggle.

Writers like Bernard d’Mellow or filmmakers like Sanjay Kak testify this phenomena.

In spite of Bernard not accepting India as semi-feudal and colonial he has recognized the depths of their work. within the guerilla Zones. In spite of not following orthodox Marxism-Leninism Mao-Tse Tung Thought they have innovated unique forms of struggle. Forces condemning them are actually speaking against the revolution.

The author some years ago spoke to veteran Comrade Sunder Navalkar who upheld the struggle of the C.P.I.Maoist as the only genuinely correct line apart from their lack of urban work ,wrong stand on supporting nationality struggles as armed struggles and replacing Mao Thought with ‘Maoism.’The Central Team of the C.P.I(M.l) in 1997  inspite of not merging with the erstwhile PW Group or now the C.P.I.(Maoist) defended the movement in Dandkaranya and Bihar and comrades from the T.Nagi Reddy stream that deferred armed struggle who merged into the C.P.R.C.I.(M.L.) tooth and nail defended the C.P.I.(Maoist) as a genuine revolutionary force.

The self criticism made b y the C.P.I.(M.L)Peoples War group in 1980 is of historical importance in the rectification of  the Charu Mazumdar line.

“All forms of struggle are subordinate to, and are guided by the concrete political line. If the concrete political line deviates from the mass line, the forms of struggle cannot but be otherwise….. So in order to negate the line of annihilation, we have to negate the wrong ideology which is alien to Marxism and its consequential political and organisational manifestations. The rejection of other forms of struggle and organisation : Until then the party negated all mass organisations and all other forms of struggle, thereby isolating the party from the masses which made comrades easier targets for the enemy. In order to combat the long-standing revisionist practice of conducting mass struggles on the lines of economism and adopting legal and open forms of organisation as the only form of organisation, our party arrived at a one-sided and wrong formulation that the armed form of struggle is the only form of struggle and armed form of organisation the only form of organisation


 The CPI (ML) peoples war November 1995 conference was major achievement and reflected the great fighting spirit displayed by the organization from 1980 Today forces like The Communist Party of Philippines, the most theoretically correct party since the revolutionary Chinese Communist party led by Mao have recognized the C.P.I.(Maoist) which is significant. The inter-group self criticism of clashes between M.C.C.and P.W in 2001 had historic significance and played major role in the formation of the Maoist Party in 2004

Quoting Gautam Navlakha (Heartland of Rebellion):

 “Those who believe in liberty and equality must rejoice at the remarkable strides Maoists have made and for showing us how far the spirit of serving the people can take us. Critics can find faults, magnify them, over-read them, rulers can try to eliminate them. However one can never deny they are rooted in the people.’ They survive because of this, and they are expanding politically because a significant number of oppressed look to them for help. Its not only about Maoists reaching out to people. People are reaching out to them for help and inviting them to new areas, to assist them in everyday struggles. Therefore, I believe that whether they are dealt a setback or lose their bases or bases here or there, this movement is not going to  be obliterated. They have taken root among the people and if they are pushed from one area they will sprout elsewhere.”

Below I am reproducing a criticism of K.N.Ramchandran’s attack on the C.P.I.(Maoist) published in blog  Workers Dreadnought in March 2011.

K.N.Ramchandran: Some friends will definitely ask: how can you criticize the Maoists when they are shedding so much blood, when their leaders are also killed? How can you criticize them when they are waging a war against the state? Of course, we have respect for the sacrifice of the cadres of CPI(Maoist). That is why we condemned the killings of Shyam and Kishen, and many others like them in the past. Mao has repeatedly advised that we should not waste even a drop of blood, avoid unnecessary sacrifice. But even after more than three decades of their practice, the CPI(Maoist)leadership is not prepared to make an evaluation of their practice so far. In the first wave of left adventurism almost all the ML parties which emerged in 1960s suffered severe setbacks and disintegrated. Later, almost all the Maoist groups in different parts of the world like the Shining Path of Peru were wiped out. The Maoists in Philippines is almost stagnant. In Nepal they succeeded to play a leading role in overthrowing the monarchy only when they changed their line and took mass line.
In India, whatever may be the claims of the Maoist leaders and the propaganda of the state, they are a dwindling force. Not only that, all the former socialist countries have degenerated to capitalist path and the ICM is facing a severe setback. Without taking these aspects in to consideration, and the momentous changes that have taken place during the post-Second World War decades in to consideration, just by waging few squad actions in such a big country like India with more than 1.25 billion people and with such organized and centralized oppressive state machinery, how can the revolution be led forward? If the CPI(Maoist)leadership, impervious to all these factors, continue its suicidal path, can anyone justify them?
 

We are of the view that the leadership should be ruthlessly criticized and they should be asked to change their line if they want to contribute towards revolutionary advance. We are criticizing the CPI(M) leadership more fiercely, as revisionism is still the main danger in the communist movement. The task before the communist force is to take lessons from the past, reorganize the Party and lead the People’ Democratic Revolution forward mobilizing all the revolutionary classes and sections for it. We appeal to their cadres to come out of this anarchist politics and join the revolutionary Marxist-Leninist camp.

Workers Dreadnought: There are some things in this last and closing statement that I will not address: namely K.N. Ramachandran’s tired polemic about ‘squad actions’. K.N. Ramachandran has repeated this line like a mantra for decades and is not apt to change anytime soon. However, I do not think that it is fair to claim that the CPI(Maoist) has made no evaluation of its work in the last three decades, any close observer of the CPI(Maoist) knows that this is not true, and I am confident that a summation document will be produced when the time is appropriate. Whether or not such document will be circulated publicly I do not know. Furthermore, the fact that the party has not disintegrated and has grown, with more areas of work than it did three decades ago, demonstrates its successes. Indeed, failures and setbacks have occurred, and will occur again, but that does not mean to suggest that the party has not learned from its mistakes and this is in fact part of the revolutionary process. As Mao Zedong famously said, “Fight, fail, fight again, fail again, fight again . . . until their victory; that is the logic of the people, and they too will never go against this logic. This is another Marxist law.” All revolutionary movements make mistakes; the question is whether they can learn the appropriate lessons. Indeed, if we were to be terrified of making mistakes than we would be unable to do anything, it would petrify the movement. But, we could ask K.N. Ramachandran who is so proud of his four decades in the ML movement where is his summation of his work and practice. Indeed, why does he feel that he remains a marginal politics both on a national level, and in most regional politics as well?

Finally, the failures of the Shining Path have to be understood in their own context as they have much to do with the situation in Peru, the personal authority invested into the figure of President Gonzalo, the urban strategy that was employed (indeed, if something can be said about the similarities between Peru and India is that leaders tend to be far more vulnerable in urban spaces, and often are arrested there – like the recent arrest in Kolkata of Rama Krishna and four other comrades), and their treatment of their support bases in light of state repression. Regarding the situation in the Philippines, K.N. Ramachandran is simply making stuff up. Indeed, the people’s war in the Philippines has grown steadily, albeit more slowly than some had hoped, with the development of new guerrilla fronts and the growth in the revolutionary mass movement. In the case of Nepal, K.N. Ramachandran demonstrates once again his own revisionist attitudes when he refers to the current politics of the UCPN(Maoist), which they earlier attacked, as being “mass line” when in fact it can be better described as a liquidation of the revolutionary movement.

 
No doubt they have imitated Comrade Mao’s thesis of protracted Peoples War more than any organization since the Telengana Armed struggle. However there is a strong trend to copy the Chinese experience in toto and not differentiate the subjective conditions of India. India may not yet be capitalist and have strong remnants of semi-feudalism but there is a far greater impact of Imperialism on India in the urban and rural areas. The concept of capturing the countryside and encircling the cities propounded by the Chinese Communist Party cannot be mechanically copied. The influx of people into urban   areas is so great as well as the impact of globalisation through multi-nationals.

A clear demarcation of a revolutionary party and mass organization also needs to be made.

The author gives the ideal example of the mass –political forum  ‘Lok Morcha’ in Punjab which although sympathetic  to the Marxist Leninist revolutionary movement never functioned as a front organization of any communist revolutionary faction and defended it’s identity as a democratic mass organization.

Stating this the author does not deny the historical revolutionary contribution of organizations led by  erstwhile PW or MCC groups like the Revolutionary Writers Association(Andhra Pradesh) ,the Nari Mukti Sangh(Bihar) and the Andhra Pradesh Radical Students Union.

The C.P.I.(Maoist) deserves it’s recognition like the International Conference to support the peoples war and by intellectuals like Jan Myrdal but critical evaluation shave to be made. There is a strong tendency of Maoist parties uncritically supporting the current struggle on par with the peoples war in Phillipines or the Peoples War in Peru in the earlier period which is incorrect.

In fact one observation of the author is when summing up the history the C.P.I.(Maoist) mention s the armed struggles of the Peoples War in Andhra Pradesh and Maoist Communist Centre in Bihar  but obliterates the contribution of the C.P.I.(M.L.)Party Unity Group in Bihar(particularly the peasant resistance in Jehenabad)

Thus this analysis basically upholds the military line and not sufficiently the mass resistance movements of the masses. Summing up a revolutionary struggle in perspective of massline in 1989 it stated: “Looking over this entire period it became clear that only in the course of struggle has the organization grown and people become more conscious and seen through the wrong ideology of the exploitative enemy classes. In the course of struggle so much is gained on all sides by the people that seeing these gains and transformations one gets an idea of the bright future that is to come .

However much the exploiting classes may arm themselves and employ specialists, the poor and landless peasants and people who confront them in struggles will go ahead from strength to strength. Along with this struggle isues pertaining to other exploited cases can be taken up and these calls may be approached with our propaganda.

The leadership of the party can only base the struggle on the poor and landless peasants.In the course of mass-based struggle oriented movement different classes combine in the struggle like bone combining with muscle.
 

Against above mentioned injustices  the masses adopt forms of widespread mass –propaganda ,assembly, procession, gherao, demonstration, crop-seizure, wall –poster ,hand-bill distributions ,crop-damage ,exposure of superstitions ,propagation of scientific views etc,against the feudal attacks when no other stage is left-the masses adopt the armed resistance of self –defence.At present ,the mass struggle is on the question of land seizure is being conducted by the worker-peasant organization under the leadership of the party.”
 

In spite of gross errors  in military and mass line it is notable how the peoples War Group avenged  the killing of 250 comrades from 1984-89 and 400 comrades from 1990-1995 by attacking police camps.

In December 1999 the PW group retaliated against the Killing of their 3 leading central Committee members.-namely Shyam, Murali and Mahesh.A revolutionary journal ‘the Comrade’ (C.P.R.C.I.-M.L.) defended the revolutionary resistance inspite of endorsing the T.Nagi Reddy Line. “As expected of a serious communist revolutionary Organization, the Peoples War group undertook a retaliatory, military campaign which reflected a particular revolutionary political purpose and were selectively and specifically targeted to attack the properties of the ruling classes political and administrative reactionaries.

The state and the ruling class forces were completely shaken by the ferocity of the retaliation of the PWG. Particularly at  Darakond village in Vishakapatnam.
Whatever be the might of the reactionary state it could not cow down the communist revolutionaries dedicated to fighting revolution. The PWG took retaliatory actions to a higher stage and several parliamentary politicians fled to the villages. 

However, the communist revolutionaries must be aware that such armed actions of party guerilla squads themselves cannot eliminate the reactionary state and need to win over the admiration of the people who need to voluntarily  participate directly or indirectly in such armed actions. In several protests the PWG is unable to involve the broad masses and only mobilize their members or supporters. A PWG circular too was self-critical explaining their military actions were incorrect as they only organized their own cadre and  failed to deploy adequate opportunities to educate and involve the people.”

The author gives the ideal example of the mass –political forum  ‘Lok Morcha’ in Punjab which although sympathetic  to the Marxist Leninist revolutionary movement never functioned as a front organization of any communist revolutionary faction and defended it’s identity as a democratic mass organization.

Stating this the author does not deny the historical revolutionary contribution of organizations led by  erstwhile PW or MCC groups like the Revolutionary Writers Association(Andhra Pradesh) ,the Nari Mukti Sangh(Bihar) and the Andhra Pradesh Radical Students Union. The C.P.I.(Maoist) deserves it’s recognition like the International Conference to support the peoples war and by intellectuals like Jan Myrdal but critical evaluation shave to be made. There is a strong tendency of Maoist parties uncritically supporting the current struggle on par with the peoples war in Phillipines or the Peoples War in Peru in the earlier period which is incorrect.

Infact one observation of the author is when summing up the history the C.P.I.(Maoist) mention s the armed struggles of the Peoples War in Andhra Pradesh and Maoist Communist Centre in Bihar  but obliterates the contribution of the C.P.I.(M.L.)Party Unity Group in Bihar(particularly the peasant resistance in Jehenabad)

Thus this analysis basically upholds the military line and not sufficiently the mass resistance movements of the masses. Summing up a revolutionary struggle in perspective of massline in 1989 it stated: “Looking over this entire period it became clear that only in the course of struggle has the organization grown and people become more conscious and seen through the wrong ideology of the exploitative enemy classes. In the course of struggle so much is gained on all sides by the people that seeing these gains and transformations one gets an idea of the bright future that is to come .

However much the exploiting classes may arm themselves and employ specialists, the poor and landless peasants and people who confront them in struggles will go ahead from strength to strength. Along with this struggle isues pertaining to other exploited cases can be taken up and these calls may be approached with our propaganda. The leadership of the party can only base the struggle on the poor and landless peasants. In the course of mass-based struggle oriented movement different classes combine in the struggle like bone combining with muscle.
 

Against above mentioned injustices  the masses adopt forms of widespread mass –propoganda ,assembly, procession, gherao, demonstration, crop-seizure, wall –poster ,hand-bill distributions ,crop-damage ,exposure of superstitions ,propogation of scientific views etc,against the feudal attacks when no other stage is left-the masses adopt the armed resistance of self –defence.

At present ,the mass struggle is on the question of land seizure is eing conducted by the worker-peasant organization under the leadership of the party.”
 

Inspite of gross errors  in military and mass line it is notable how the peoples War Group avenged  the killing of 250 comrades from 1984-89 and 400 comrades from 1990-1995 by attacking police camps. In December 1999 the PW group retaliated against the Killing of their 3 leading central Committee members.-namely Shyam, Murali and Mahesh.

A revolutionary journal ‘the Comrade’ (C.P.R.C.I.-M.L.) defended the revolutionary resistance in spite of endorsing the T.Nagi Reddy Line.

“As expected of a serious communist revolutionary Organization, the Peoples War group undertook a retaliatory, military campaign which reflected a particular revolutionary political purpose and were selectively and specifically targeted to attack the properties of the ruling classes political and administrative reactionaries.

The state and the ruling class forces were completely shaken by the ferocity of the retaliation of the PWG. Particularly at  Darakond village in Vishakapatnam.

Whatever be the might of the reactionary state it could not cow down the communist revolutionaries dedicated to fighting revolution. The PWG took retaliatory actions to a higher stage and several parliamentary politicians fled to the villages. However, the communist revolutionaries must be aware that such armed actions of party guerilla squads themselves cannot eliminate the reactionary state and need to win over the admiration of the people who need to voluntarily  participate directly or indirectly in such armed actions.

In several protests the PWG is unable to involve the broad masses and only mobilize their members or supporters. A PWG circular too was self-critical explaining their military actions were incorrect as they only organized their own cadre and  failed to deploy adequate opportunities to educate and involve the people.”