Monday, July 31, 2017
Venezuelans Vote for Peace
The National Electoral Council announced that voter turnout for the National Constituent Assembly was over 41 percent.
The president of the National Electoral Council Tibisay Lucena has announced that turnout in Venezuela's historic National Constituent Assembly was over 41 percent, indicating that over 8 million people voted in the elections.
"Peace has won. If peace has won, Venezuela has won," she said at a televised press conference. "Despite the violence and threats, Venezuelans were able to express themselves."
Lucena said the CNE had to relocate some voting centers to avoid violence, and that on Tuesday the Indigenous communities will choose its eight remaining representatives. President Nicolas Maduro spoke to a large crowd in Caracas and thanked their support to reach peace in the country.
Maduro said it was one of the highest voter turnouts of the Bolivarian Revolution with 8,089, 320 voting for their representatives "Eight million in the middle of threats, there were states where they crossed rivers and mountains, and they voted," Maduro said.
Sunday, July 30, 2017
The Browder Effect from Russian TV
Democracy and Class Struggle says that Earl Browder was the leader of the US Communist Party during the Roosevelt period and Browderism was one of the early varieties of modern revisionism that attempted to create confusion between capitalism and socialism and exposed by Bill Foster.
His grandson Bill Browder wanted to become as big a capitalist as his grandfather was a "Communist"of the pro capitalist type and Bill Browder was part of the rip off of Post Soviet Russia and the impoverishment of the Russian people to achieve his "big" capitalist status.
Bill Browder says he was "a man possessed" ripping off Russia and living his capitalist dream which was a nightmare for Russian People in the 1990's. guided by Harvard University organised fire sale of Russian People's Assets.
There is much propaganda in the west about the "good man" Browder and we publish this film from Russian TV as an antidote - just as in the past we published criticisms of Earl Browder today we criticize his grandson.
It also shows how the corruption in Russia is contributed to by United States and is not just a home grown product as anti Russia propaganda would have us believe.
When Bill Browder found himself in the 1990's leading the Russian Rip Off he had no problem with corruption of the Russian Privatization Schemes but when things went wrong he got an infusion of morality - its called hypocrisy.
Of Course we are not sympathetic to a capitalist Russia and want to speed all Oligarchs to Hell in 2017 and this film might contribute to that objective as well as exposing capitalist hypocrisy of Bill Browder .
The Restoration of Capitalism in the USSR Part 1
Democracy and Class Struggle welcome the work of young comrades like Finnish Bolshevik and Comrade Lenin above who produce You Tube Videos to explain some of the more complex questions of socialism like the political economy of socialism and expose revisionism.
Saturday, July 29, 2017
Hail the State Conference of the Lok Sangram Manch (RDF) Punjab by Harsh Thakor
HAIL STATE CONFERENCE OF LOK SANGRAM MANCH(RDF) PUNJAB WHICH WAS MAJOR EVENT IN SHAPING THE DESTINY OF THE REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT IN PUNJAB AND SHAPING THE PLATFORM FOR RESSURECTION OF NAXALBARI.SALUTE IT'S RESOLUTE TENACITY IN IGNITING THE SPARK OF REVOLUTION IN PUNJAB IN THE DARK DAYS OF FASCISM.
Report of the Lok Sangram Manch, Punjab (RDF) conference
22-23 July, 2017 Shaheed Nachhatar Singh Hall of Moga was decorated with utmost enthusiasm, by the activists of Lok Sangram Manch, Punjab (RDF). Hall was renamed for 22nd july as Shaheed Avtar Singh Dhudike,Lalinder Singh Lali, Pirthipal Singh Randhawa and Naxalbari martyrs memorial hall and on 23rd july it was named as Shaheed Udham Singh Memorial hall. Not only the hall was decorated with photographs of martyrs, flags and banners but also a big flex was welcoming delegates, guests and viewers right at the bus stand. The Hall building Complex was red with the flags. there was red memorial of martyrs in the corner of hall. 6 years of active activity was going to be reviewed and activists who were actively engaged in these years were working with great excitement. The volunteers were greeting everyone with warm tea. All the preparations were completed by 11 a.m. and revolutionary songs were being played in the hall. R.D.F. national president comrade Varvara Rao was awaited eagerly.
Conference started under the presidency of committee including com. Varvara Rao , com. Ajay, com. Surjeet phul , Com. Dilbag Singh , com. Surinder Kaur Dhudike . The General Secretary of the Lok Sangram Manch, Punjab (RDF) com. Balwant Makhu unfurled the flag in the memory of the martyrs. Everyone observed silence in the memory of the martyrs and comrade Manjit Rode sang the song of the flag. Slogans were raised in memory of the martyrs.
After this addressing the delegates, Comrade Varvara Rao said that Punjab has always been the land of struggles and sacrifices. He hopes that Lok Sangram Manch, Punjab will lead mass revolutionary movement and inspire the people for revolution .
After this, comrade Sukhwinder Kaur read out review report of last five years and 10 months. In her report she presented a brief report of the innumerable activities that have been observed during these years with their positive and negative aspects .
The main activities of Manch were organizing anti imperialism political -cultural programs in the memory of Shaheed Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, Sukhdev, Shaheed Udham Singh, Shaheed Kartar Singh Sarabha and Naxalbadi martyrs every year. These programs have a large presence of the common people and funds were raised from them. Manch has been playing an important role in activities of Anti Operation Green Hunt democratic front. These protest activities are in the form of public mobilization conventions and demonstrations.
The Manch independently mobilizes people's protests against fake police encounters and Operation Green Hunt. Lok Sangram Manch, Punjab has been contributing in all the activities of AFDR Punjab by mobilization.
The Manch mobilized the people against the disrespect of Guru Granth Sahib and raised the issue of the release of the Sikh prisoners. On a common platform including the other revolutionary democratic organizations, Manch organized protest against repression on the Kashmiri people ,murder of SIMI activists after taking them out of jail, the Malkangiri fake encounter, the public conventions against black laws, and against the oppression of women and many other issues.
The Manch has worked for people trapped in the clutches of UAPA and against police repression and helping them in arranging legal aid . The Manch led a strong struggle in favor of minor girl thrown out of the Badal’s orbit bus when it was running, after its employees misbehaved with her and her mother and girl was died. The Manch also joined struggle in Sharuti case of Faridkot by joining the action committee against kidnapping and rape of Sharuti .
It also led struggle of Dalits against repression. It participated in the memorial in remembrance of left wing people. Most importantly, mobilization campaigns have been launched for boycott of all elections. The Manch stood by students during the visit of Seema Azad to Chandigarh and against repression on them in the struggle against fee hike of PU students . The Manch continues to engage in presented activities against all kinds of repression. The delegates held a lengthy debate on the report. The delegates brought to the notice of the state committee about the reports left unmentioned. The report, including the amendments, was passed unanimously.
Furder com.Sukhwinder kaur presented a resolution about problems raised within organization, on the issue of vote boycott policy, fedral structure of Manch , on the issue of staying connected with RDF and on other differences which arose in the organization and some comrades formed a separate organization in the name of Revolutionary People's Front. The delegates, while discussing the report passed the amendments by passing the resolution and passed that the comrades who have left the organization actually have left the understanding of RDF.
Then com. Sukhwinder kaur presented third resolution which was named as “The current situation and our Tasks”. In this resolution, the national and international situation in a brief, and some detailed current situation of state of Punjab was enlightened and a new list of tasks was presented which includes the economic onslaughts after the Modi government came in power and opposition of Operation Green Hunt and communal fascist tendencies and working for the formation and strengthening of constituent organizations of people, Continuing support for religious minorities and nationalities and raising the political level of the people by propagating revolutionary politics and continuing the present programs.
Com. Balwant Makhu conducted the stage and addressed questions of delegates.
Com. Lokraj presented resolutions in the house about onslaughts on tribals, dalits, women, nationalities, religious minorities, Kashmir’s freedom struggle, conviction of Dr GN Saibaba, operation Greenhunt , struggle of Dalits for panchyati land, commitments of Capt. Amrinder singh and about release of political prisioners, house passed all of resolutions. Finally com. Lokraj submitted a 6-year financial report of the state committee, which showed the organization in fiscal deficit. This report has been passed unanimously. Then the state committee presented their weaknesses to the delegates self critically.
After that the panel of the new committee was presented. The five-members new committee was elected unanimously as com. Sukhwinder Kaur State president (representative of Women's liberation front), Comrade Balwant Makhu genral secretary (Representative of Revolutionary Rural Labor Union), com. Piara Singh Patti Cashier ,com. Avtar Singh Feroke Vice-President (Representative of BKU (Krantikari)), com. Lok Raj Mehraj Joint Secretary .
After the session Comrade Varvara Rao lectured the comrades,sister organizations and general public on national and international situation and challenges. He referred to the legacy of Punjab and encouraged the people to take part in revolutionary struggles. He attacked Modi government for its communal hindu fascist and economic onslaught against poor people of India.
In addition to songs and music, on agrarian crisis a very emotional play 'Mirza' was staged.The enthusiastic people and the delegates ended their program by raising revolutionary slogans. Food tea and water was served throughout the program.
Friday, July 28, 2017
The History of the Nuclear Threat from USA to North Korea
Democracy and Class Struggle says with between 600/1000 Nuclear Weapons in South Korea a quarter of the US Nuclear Arsenal pointed at North Korea - North Korea is supposed to ignore and not defend itself - the world is truely turned upside down condemning the North Korean Nuclear Defence Programme.
Thursday, July 27, 2017
The Moscow Trials (Part 1: The Investigation ) (Part 2: Court Proceedings) (Part 3 The Great Purge)
Democracy and Class Struggle welcome these videos by Finnish Bolshevik - the part on the Ukraine and Trotsky strikes a current note - the past is present especially when addressing communist 20th century history.
Truth has always been a process that is revealed over time and looking again at the evidence of Trotsky's lies clarifies the forward movement of the international communist movement.
Wednesday, July 26, 2017
Primordial Traditionalism and René Guénon, Evola and Bannon - the roots of Proto Fascism in USA
Democracy and Class Struggle has published on the US and European rightist links to Hinduvuta Ideology which emerges from
Rene Guenon and Julius Evola.
It should alert those who find this new to the importance of the struggle against Hinduvuta in India and the implications of this ideology worldwide.
The creation of fascist structures and hierarchies flow from this ideology which the right wish to emulate - the caste system that travesty of human rights and existence is for them the height of excellence and socialism their deadly enemy.
SEE ALSO:
http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/free-pdf-book-menace-of-hindu-fascism.html
The Don (Trump) and Consigliere - Anthony Scaramucci becomes the new consigliere for President
Democracy and Class Struggle says you can fill in the blanks in the new White House Structure expect consigiliere verses the chefe Bannon and Preibus.
The Capo's are the Cabinet who constantly assert loyalty to the Don and carry out the deeds - associados are people like Roger Stone.
This could be turned into a good board game.
Conduct martyr’s week from July 28th to August 3rd 2017 all over the country in a grand way! Communist Party of India Maoist
Conduct martyr’s week from July 28th to August 3rd 2017 all over the country in a grand way!
Pay homage to the martyrs who laid down their lives in the People’s War!
Defeat Mission-2017 of the Indian ruling classes in their bid To eliminate the revolutionary movement!
Let us protect the Party leadership from top to bottom and advance the movement!
Declare that the path of People’s War shown by Naxalbari is the only path for the liberation
of the Oppressed masses!
Comrades, Revolutionary Masses!
Laying down one’s life for the people is weightier than the Himalayas. Dying for the exploitive classes is lighter than a feather. Life is most valuable for human beings.
Communist Revolutionaries totally dedicate themselves for the social revolution and for the interests of the people. They work with a strong aim dedicating everything and their life too. Every great change demands sacrifice. That the history of class struggle is the history of sacrifices is as much a fact as that the history of the society is the history of class struggle since the formation of classes.
In our country, since the great Naxalbari Armed Peasant struggle, in the process of New Democratic Revolution for the past 50 years, nearly 15 thousand person starting from the higher level leadership to the activists and revolutionary people down laid their valuable lives.They sacrificed their lives to achieve their aim in the path of Protracted People’s War that the founders of our Party, great leaders and teachers, martyrs Comrade Charu Mazumdar, Comrade Kanhai Chatterjee had formulated.
Since July 2016 until May 2017, 205 comrades and revolutionary masses have laid down their valuable lives in the country-wide fascist, multi-pronged offensive, the war on people – ‘Operation Green Hunt’ that the Indian ruling classes are intensifying with the total support and in the direction of the imperialists, especially the American imperialists.
Out of the martyred comrades, two are CC comrades, 131 are from Dandakaranya, 27 from Bihar-Jharkhand, 35 from Andhra-Odisha border, 6 from Odisha, 1 from Telangana, 2 from West Bengal and 1 from Western Ghats. Fifty-four of them are women cadres and village women.
July 28th is the day of the martyrdom of Comrade Charu Mazumdar and is the day in which thousands of people’s heroes are remembered. The Central Committee of the Party gives the call to grandly celebrate the martyr’s week from July 28th to August 3rd in memory of the martyrs in the past one year and the martyrs in the past five decades, on the eve of the Fiftieth Anniversary of Naxalbari.
In the past one year, the martyrdom of the leaders of Indian Revolution, member of the CC and the Polit Bureau Member Comrade Narayan Sanyal (Vijayda) (80), member of the CC Comrade KuppuDevraj (Ramesh, Yogesh) (62) is an irreparable loss for the revolutionary movement. Comrades Devraj and Ajitha were seriously ill and were going to Kozhikode when they were detained, severely tortured and shot dead in the Neelambur forest area in Kerala on 24th November as a part of ‘Operation Brahmagiri’. 2Comrade Narayan Sanyal breathed his last on the 16th of April in Kolkata due to cancer. Members of State Committee – Senior ComradeRaghunathMahato and Comrade AsishYadav of Bihar-Jharkhand,Comrade Himadri Roy (Somenda, Bighanda) of West Bengal, Comrades Prasad andDaya of AndhraOdishaBorder,
Comrade Ajitha (Kaveri) of Western Ghats are among the martyrs. The martyrs include –
Regional Committee member Comrade SangramMurmu (BJ), District Committee members Comrades Prabhakar, Kiran of AOB, Comrades Prince (Company-1, ERC), Suday (Central Zone), Yatin(Koel-Sankh), Sailesh, AjitYadav of Bihar-Jharkhand, Comrades Jagath (West Bastar), Pali (Darbha), Kailash (EBT) of Dandakaranya, Sub-Zonal committee member Comrade NagendraYadav(BJ), 33 Area Committee members/Platoon Party Committee Members (PLGA Squad/Section, Platoon Commanders and Deputy Commanders) 4 GPC and RPC members, 8 People’s Militia Commanders, 7 leaders and activists of Mass Organisations, scores of PLGA, People’s Militia fighters, Party activists, sympathisers and revolutionary people. Two comrades were martyred in the jail due to ill-health and the negligence of the jail authorities.
Many of the martyrs laid down their lives in fake encounters, covert operations and ambushes of the enemy like in Budhanadi (Koel-Sankh, BJ) and ThelamTumnar (West Bastar, DK). Three comrades were martyred in the attack of the counter revolutionary murderous gang TPC in Palamu of BJ. In the encounters in Ramguda of AOB and Budhanadi of BJ our leadership comrades and our guerilla forces fought heroically, laid down their lives and saved the Party leadership and cadres. In the Sondaha ambush of BJ Comrades Prince and Suday; in Burkapal ambush in DK Comrades Anil (Commander of Pl-, Darbha), Ravi (Commander of Charla LOS, Khammam, Telangana) were martyred fighting with great courage against the Para-military forces. Few other comrades were martyred due to old age, ill-health and snake bite.
Among the women cadres –Senior party activists Comrades Mamatha and Latha (Bharathi), Members Budri, Manjula (Ungi) of AOB, Comrades Hemla Angu (South Bastar), Ramsila (RKB), Sukki, Jogi of Darbha, JagbathiYadav (Sony), Rajbathi of EBT, Anupriya of Koel-Sankh of BJ and other comrades were martyred intheir heroic fight in various encounters. Woman Comrades HemlaAnju, PodiyamSukki,DoodhiGuddi, Ratna, Adame and village women Jyothi Gavade and Hemla Sukmathi were caught by the police, mass raped and murdered. These cannibals inhumanly cut the private parts of some of the women comrades after murdering them.
All the martyrs laid down their lives in the process of fighting back the unprecedented offensive of the government armed forces in Mission 2016 and Mission 2017 in the third phase of Operation Green Hunt.
They are the heroes of the people and martyrs who sacrificed their lives for the interests of the oppressed masses. The martyred central leaders stood firm until their last breath for a long time
overcoming many ebbs and flows, ups and downs and twists and turns, firmly committed to the Party line. The martyrs shed selfishness and identified themselves with the interests of the people and the Party. They demonstrated high Communist values, ideals, courage and dedication.
The Central Committee pays humble homage to all these martyrs who laid down their lives in the People’s War. Let us pledge to fight until the last to make the Indian New Democratic Revolution a success as a part of the World Socialist Revolution. Let us take the movement another step forward with initiative, courage and daring, sacrifice and Bolshevik spirit. On this occasion of the martyr’s week let us remember each and every one of them and learn from their practice. Let us place their ideals before the Party ranks and the people and inspire them to play their role in the revolution.
Since the NDA government in the leadership of BJP came to power fascist offensive of the central and the state governments has intensified much more on the revolutionary movement of the country led by our Party, CPI(Maoist). The movement is sustaining by fighting back this fierce reactionary military offensive in an armed manner and facing the exploitive ruling classes in the social, economic, political, organisational and propaganda fields with appropriate new tactics from time to time. The central and the state governments planned to defeat and eliminate the revolutionary movement in Dandakaranya,
Bihar-Jharkhand, AOB, Odisha, Western Ghats and other places through Mission 2016. In the process of fighting back these counter-revolutionary schemesof the governments we took up political, military and organizational efforts in the last year and defeated Mission 2016. All these efforts include the sacrifices of the martyrs and the revolutionary people in each and every step. They brought successes to our Party and the people in the People’s War with their blood. In this condition the central and the state governments consolidated their gains in the counter-revolutionary offensive in the last year and formulated another vile scheme under the guidance of the imperialists to eliminate the Indian revolution in the coming two to two and a half years by the end of 2018 or by the time of the Parliamentary elections in 2019.
The theoretical and political understanding of the Party ranks has enhanced in the past three years due to the bolshevization campaign taken up to strengthen our Party. Their confidence to fight back the
enemy offensive has increased and they are more active in the People’s War. So they are mobilizing the people on problems of their daily lives, on social, political fundamental issues, against the state violence in a larger way, with the aim to overcome the difficult condition the Party is presently facing. Class struggle is intensifying.
There is improvement in the armed retaliation of our PLGA forces against the enemy forces. Mass base is strengthening. People’s resistance is gradually increasing against the attacks of the enemy.People are resisting when the police illegally arrest the activists of the Party and the Organization, when the police forces kill our Party activists and people in a barbaric manner. They also retaliate when there are mass rapes on women and when they are killed after raping them. When the police indiscriminately fire on the Party activists, PLGA units and the people, behave inhumanely with the dead bodies and take them to the police stations, the people are encircling the police stations. They are fighting with the officers, getting back the martyr’s bodies and conducting their last rites.
Comrades!
We must deeply and comprehensively understand the dialectical relation between the intensifying fascist offensive of the enemy and the economic crisis developing in the country and the world. We
must clearly realize the interrelation between the increasing aggressiveness of the enemy forces and the imperialist interests of the diehard Brahmanical Hindu fascist forces that came to power in the country.
In order to come out of the economic crisis of 2008, the imperialists took up certain policies but they failed. As a result they intensified their offensive across the country. As a part of it the Comprador ruling classes in the leadership of Modi government are implementing the neo-liberal economic policies in a more aggressive manner in the direction of the imperialists. All the Brahmanical Hindu fascist policies of the Modi-Mohan Bhagawat-Amit Shah clique for the past three years are aimed at aggressively implementing the interests of the imperialists and the feudal classes. They are against the oppressed nationalities and oppressed social communities of our country. They are making the
lives of the broad masses in the country miserable.
All the big talk of Modi government about the development of the country in the name of ‘Make in India’, ‘Start up India’ is mere propaganda. The industrial sector of the country is weak even three years after it came to power. Unemployment, hike in the prices of essential commodities, increase in agrarian crisis are exposing the shallowness of this ‘development’. The various schemes it brought forth in the name of elimination of poverty have failed. Modi government recently gave an explanation to the Supreme Court according to which 12 thousand farmers are committing suicide every year due to untimely rains, drought, indebtedness and lack of remunerative prices for their crops. This crisis has intensified and the farmers of Punjab, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat are taking up militant struggles demanding waiver of loans, proper remunerative prices and subsidies.
In the three years of Modi rule, there are increasing attacks of the Brahmanical Hindu fascist forces on the Dalits and Muslims of the country. Presently Modi government has the agenda of banning cow slaughter all over the country. Starting from Dadari in Uttar Pradesh, Saharanpur, Una in Gujarat, Alwarin Rajasthan there were such attacks. In these attacks the Dalits, Muslims, Adivasi and the other oppressed castesmobilized in Una and formulated an action plan to face Hindu Communalism.
Tribal and non-tribal people are waging militant struggles on the problem of displacement. The tribal people of Chota Nagpur in Jharkhand took up large scale struggles against the amendments to
Chotanagpur Tenancy Act and SanthalPargana Tenancy Act.
In Telangana a militant struggle broke out against the government policies to seize tribal lands in the name of ‘harithahaaram’ (green belt).
The anti-displacement struggles of the tribal people took militant form in Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra,Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh and Odisha in the past one year.
After Rohith Vemula’s suicide in Hyderabad, the foisting of ‘sedition’ charges on the student leaders of Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi in 2015, progressive students, Dalit, Adivasi and religious minority students across the country broke into united spate of struggles against the Hindu fascist offensive.
Similarly, this year there was a large scale united movement of the students and professors of Universities and Colleges of 14 states against the attacks of the Hindu Sanghparivar on the progressive students of Ramjas College in Delhi.
Atrocities on women are constantly on the rise. As per the statistics there is violence on women once in every three minutes. Eight thousand women are dying every year owing to dowry killings. There are 50 thousand incidents of atrocities and 40 thousand women are being kidnapped. There are increasing acid attacks, child marriages, forced prostitution, feticide and killing of girl child due to growing feudal,imperialist culture. Women and democrats are taking up these issues all over the country.
Since Modi government came to power in the centre it is absolutely selling off the country to imperialist capital. On the other hand it is instigating national-chauvinist frenzy and fake patriotism. It is employing the provisions of the ‘sedition’ act against the organisations and intellectuals who opposed these reactionary policies. Democratic, genuine patriotic forces are taking up struggle against the indiscriminate attacks of the Hindutva gangs on the people’s civil and democratic rights.
Opposing the anti-labor policies of the Modi government more than 15 crores of workers in the leadership of left Trade Unions carried out a general strike last September.This year 10 lakh government sector bank employees organised a successful country-wide general strike on the 28thFebruary against the amendments in labor laws, outsourcing and other anti-people policies.
In a bid to weaken the leadership of the ongoing militant worker’s movements the worker’s leadership of the Maruti Suzuki Company was put in jail and given life imprisonment. The Working class must fight it back in a united manner.
The government amended the indirect tax system and introduced GST to mold the whole country as a uniform market in the interests of the imperialists and the Big Comprador Bureaucratic Capitalists. With the false propaganda of wiping out corruption big notes were dissolved and the monetary wealth of the people was accumulated in the banks. On the one hand,this has filled the coffers of the giant corporates the funds for the RSS and its affiliated organisations have been increased on the other. This not only put the poor, the middle classes, the peasantry, small traders and small capitalists to great inconveniences but in fact made them bankrupt.
Since BurhanWaniof Hizb-ul Mujahideen was shot dead last July there is an upsurge in the Kashmir national liberation struggle.This is continuing even after the murder of his associate Sabjar Ahmad Bhat this year in May. The people of Kashmir are scaring the state and the central governments with their war with ‘stones’ on the Indian Army and the Para-military forces. All through this year students became a militant part of this struggle. In the North East the National Liberation struggle organisations have consolidated again, formed a United Front and are fighting against the Indian expansionists in a united manner.
A situation has emerged where Workers, Peasants, the Middle classes, the National Bourgeoisie,Oppressed Nationalities, Religious Minorities, Dalits, Adivasis, Women, Students, Youth and others are fighting against Brahmanical Hindu fascism.
There is a clear polarisation of forces in the country.
Brahmanical Hindu fascism became pro-imperialist and a common enemy of the oppressed classes,nationalities and oppressed social communities with its anti-country and outdated reactionary policies.
This and the brewing people’s resistance in various forms to change this situation is a new development in the country’s politics in the past three years.
Comrades,
Our People’s Guerillas wiped out 37 CRPF personnel and injured another 10 in two ambushes in March and April in Sukma district of Chhattisgarh after which a top level meeting was held with Chief Ministers,Police top officials and district Collectors of ten states presided over by the Central Home Minister on 8th of May.
Ruling out the question of deploying the IndianArmy in the areas of our movement, plans for elimination of the movement were formulated under the guidance of military officers.
As a part of it they have decided to –shift the CRPF (LWE) Central Zone Command Centre to Raipur from Kolkata; to establish Unified Commands up to district level;to strengthen Commands at the Tactical-Operational level; to form a committee for better coordination between the state and the central forces; to shift the NaxalSpecial DG office in Raipur to Jagadalpur (Bastar); to expand the intelligence system and strengthen especially human and electronic intelligence; to make this network effectively useful for potential use with real time intelligence through electronic system (UAV, Satellites, GPS, Thermal Imaging, Infrared technology, CC TV cameras, radars and other such things); to utilise Air Force in Operations (Commando force is deployed in helicopters for attack and strafing and to carry out drone attacks); to impart new kind of training for the forces; establish counter-insurgency schools in Sukma and Bijapur districts; to improve coordination between the central and the state forces;to complete roads in the areas of the movement as soon as possible in the protection of Para-military forces and with the help of modern technology;construction of more communications Dobhall Security Adviser K.Vijay Kumarwould guide the campaign for the elimination of Maoists.
The important decision in this meeting was to make surgical strikes. All these reveal the aim to wipe out the revolutionary leadership and the revolutionary subjective forces in Mission 2017. As a part of it they have already announced that they would target civil rights activists, social activists and democrats in the name of ‘white clad’ Naxalites.
Mission 2017 started very aggressively with murderous attacks. In the first five months the police killed 60 village level leaders, local activists and revolutionaries in the areas of our movement in the country.
Mass rapes on women, murder, arson, arrest and torture are being increasingly centralized and made more cruelsince the days of Salwa Judum and Sendra. Life imprisonment is given to the revolutionary masses and the intellectuals who support them, to democrats and traders. Revolutionaries are given death sentence.
History has repeatedly proved that no matter how much the exploitive ruling classes indulge in cruel repression on the people’s struggle, it is bound to fail. So we must take up the immediate task of defeating Mission-2017, protect the Party leadership from the top to the bottom, advance the movement and continue the People’s War-Guerilla War depending on the mass base.
In order to achieve success in this, we have to protect our forces to the extent possible. We have to utilize the weaknesses of the enemy and as soon as we get an opportunity we have to concentrate the PLGA forces. We have to attack the separate units of the enemy forces or divide their forces and attack. We must seize their weapons. For this let us implement the rules and principles of Guerilla War – Secrecy, Speed, Strong Will, Self-defense through change of place, offensive tactics with initiative and intensify and widen the Guerilla War. Let us advance the People’s War one more step forward to achieve the immediate aims of enhancing self-defense, mass base, developing and consolidating our subjective forces, expanding the movement and other such aims with a sacrificing nature.
We have achieved successes in the Guerilla war, in people’s resistance, in the mass movements only through the sacrifices of the martyrs. The ideals they have established are to identify with the people by fighting against the enemy in the interests of people until the last breath and stand as a basis for the People’s War. The oppressed masses of India see their future in the path of the sacrifices of the martyrs.
Let us pledge to make efforts with a strong will by holding aloft their ideals, aspirations and traditions of sacrifice and to achieve our theoretical, political, organizational, military and cultural tasks with a single mind and united practice.
Comrades!
Let us enthusiastically celebrate the martyr’s memorial week in the areas of our movement throughout the country with the immediate task of defeating Mission-2017 implemented with the aim of eliminating the revolutionary movement and protecting the Party leadership from the top to the bottom. Let us mobilise the people in a big scale during this memorial week. Let us propagate the great sacrifices of our dear martyrs among the Party cadres, PLGA forces and the villagers.
Let us hail the ideals of the martyrs through posters, banners, pamphlets, wall writing, road writing and by publishing the histories of the martyrs through booklets and exhibiting their photos in a big way. Let us conduct meetings and rallies in the Village, Area, District/Division/Zonal, SAC/SZC/SC levels, mobilise the masses in a big scale and instill self-confidence in them. Let us commemorate the sacrifice of the martyrs, their courage and daring, their strong will and other such ideals.
Let us inspire and enthuse the people so that they follow their path for building a New Democratic society. Let us give a callto go forward on the path of the martyrs. This is the actual homage we can pay to our dear martyrs.
June 3rd, 2017
Communist Party of India ( Maoist)
CIA Director Pompeo re-affirms assassination is the United States Policy towards North Korea
Democracy and Class Struggle says South Korean President Moon Jae-in has stated in words that he is not interested in overthrow of the North Korean leadership and collapsing of the North Korean State - this however is totally meaningless when Director of the CIA re-affirms such policy and no one can take Moon Jae-in seriously and correctly see's his words as deception and not to be taken seriously.
If President Moon Jae-in wants to improve relations with North Korea he has better bring under control the intelligence agency of South Korea and remove the CIA operations centre in South Korea and stop serving foreign interests and start serving the Korean People.
Tuesday, July 25, 2017
The Crisis Has Matured by Lenin in October 1917
READ THE TEXT OF THIS AUDIO HERE:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/oct/20.htm
Democracy and Class Struggle likes the warm praise by Lenin for John Maclean in Scotland in this article - who see's socialism in the same terms has us.
Many Revolutionaries have forgotten how central the national question in Finland and the Ukraine was to the October Revolution.
After the Agrarian Revolution the National Question was the most important question on the eve of the Russian Revolution.
Our Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks themselves share, and instil into the minds of the people, the false notion that universal suffrage “in the present-day state” is really capable of revealing the will of the majority of the working people and of securing its realization.
Lenin, State and Revolution (1917)
the working class must break up, smash the “ready-made state machinery,” and not confine itself merely to laying hold of it.
Lenin, State and Revolution (1917)
Democracy is a form of the state, it represents, on the one hand, the organized, systematic use of force against persons; but, on the other hand, it signifies the formal recognition of equality of citizens, the equal right of all to determine the structure of, and to administer, the state.
Lenin, State and Revolution (1917)
Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich — that is the democracy of capitalist society.
Lenin, State and Revolution (1917)
The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament.
Lenin, State and Revolution (1917)
The dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the organization of the vanguard of the oppressed as the ruling class for the purpose of suppressing the oppressors, cannot result merely in an expansion of democracy. Simultaneously with an immense expansion of democracy, which for the first time becomes democracy for the poor, democracy for the people, and not democracy for the money-bags, the dictatorship of the proletariat imposes a series of restrictions on the freedom of the oppressors, the exploiters, the capitalists.
Lenin, State and Revolution (1917)
And so in capitalist society we have a democracy that is curtailed, wretched, false, a democracy only for the rich, for the minority. The dictatorship of the proletariat, the period of transition to communism, will for the first time create democracy for the people, for the majority, along with the necessary suppression of the exploiters, of the minority.
Lenin, State and Revolution (1917)
RussiaGate Drowns Out US-Russia Discord
Sanctions against Russia have a 43 year history and they still continue damaging Russia US relations and are counter productive.
US Ambassador to NATO and US Ukrainian Envoy show further Russia United States troubles ahead.
Trump's Been Laundering Russian Mob Money
SEE ALSO:
https://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/trumps-russian-laundromat-by-craig-unger.html
Only the blind cannot see and those in throes of self deception - the Don from Queens has been running a laundry for decades.
1.3 Trillion Flight Capital from Russia since Putin in power - how much entered the Trump Laundromat ?
This 1.3 Trillion dollars is the Russian People' s money robbed by Oligarchs and sent abroad that could be used for education and health services in Russia.
Oligarch's American or Russian have passed their sell by date in 2017.
Monday, July 24, 2017
One Hour of Japanese Communist Music
0:00 (Listen, Workers of the World)
1:52 (The Internationale)
4:45 (Song of the Red Flag)
8:10 (Let's Do Our Best)
10:12 (A Sunny May)
12:12 (Comrades Have Fallen)
17:30 (Katyusha)
19:30 (Korobushka)
22:43 (Song of the Volga Boatmen)
27:30 (Beyond the Field, the Voice of the Mountains)
30:06 (Polyushko-Polye)
32:55 (Suliko)
36:30 (Blue Headscarf)
38:47 (Song of the Motherland)
40:40 (Ballad of Ho Chi Minh)
48:05 (Warszawianka)
50:33 (Moscow Nights)
54:00 (Crucible of Hatred)
56:45 (If the Bell is Familiar)
58:40 (Defend Peace)
THE FORMATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE JAPANESE COMMUNIST PARTY
http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/the-formation-and-development-of.html
Sunday, July 23, 2017
Socialism Utopian and Scientific by Friedrich Engels
Then came the three great Utopians: Saint-Simon, to whom the middle-class movement, side by side with the proletarian, still had a certain significance; Fourier; and Owen, who in the country where capitalist production was most developed, and under the influence of the antagonisms begotten of this, worked out his proposals for the removal of class distinction systematically and in direct relation to French materialism.
One thing is common to all three.
Not one of them appears as a representative of the interests of that proletariat which historical development had, in the meantime, produced.
Like the French philosophers, they do not claim to emancipate a particular class to begin with, but all humanity at once.
Like them, they wish to bring in the kingdom of reason and eternal justice, but this kingdom, as they see it, is as far as Heaven from Earth, from that of the French philosophers.
For, to our three social reformers, the bourgeois world, based upon the principles of these philosophers, is quite as irrational and unjust, and, therefore, finds its way to the dust-hole quite as readily as feudalism and all the earlier stages of society.
If pure reason and justice have not, hitherto, ruled the world, this has been the case only because men have not rightly understood them.
What was wanted was the individual man of genius, who has now arisen and who understands the truth.
That he has now arisen, that the truth has now been clearly understood, is not an inevitable event, following of necessity in the chains of historical development, but a mere happy accident.
He might just as well have been born 500 years earlier, and might then have spared humanity 500 years of error, strife, and suffering.
The Utopians’ mode of thought has for a long time governed the Socialist ideas of the 19th century, and still governs some of them.
Until very recently, all French and English Socialists did homage to it.
The earlier German Communism, including that of Weitling, was of the same school.
To all these, Socialism is the expression of absolute truth, reason and justice, and has only to be discovered to conquer all the world by virtue of its own power.
And as an absolute truth is independent of time, space, and of the historical development of man, it is a mere accident when and where it is discovered.
With all this, absolute truth, reason, and justice are different with the founder of each different school. And as each one’s special kind of absolute truth, reason, and justice is again conditioned by his subjective understanding, his conditions of existence, the measure of his knowledge and his intellectual training, there is no other ending possible in this conflict of absolute truths than that they shall be mutually exclusive of one another.
Hence, from this nothing could come but a kind of eclectic, average Socialism, which, as a matter of fact, has up to the present time dominated the minds of most of the socialist workers in France and England.
Hence, a mish-mash allowing of the most manifold shades of opinion: a mish-mash of such critical statements, economic theories, pictures of future society by the founders of different sects, as excite a minimum of opposition; a mish-mash which is the more easily brewed the more definite sharp edges of the individual constituents are rubbed down in the stream of debate, like rounded pebbles in a brook.
To make a science of Socialism, it had first to be placed upon a real basis
Friedrich Engels
Democracy and Class Struggle says that real basis was outlined by Engels in Chapters 2 and 3 of Socialism Utopian and Scientific chapter 2 called Dialectics and chapter 3 Historical Materialism.
Plekhanov would combine the two into the term dialectical materialism and modern revolutionary socialism was born.
There was debate in 20th Century about Dialectical and Historical Materialism in Academia which was largely historical nit picking over word order materialist dialectic not dialectical materialism but in the real world it advanced in Russia and China and the foundations laid by Marx and Engels were built on and deepened with a new science of the Political Economy of Socialism.
See Also
https://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/robert-owen-and-william-thompson-two.html
https://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/whigs-democrats-and-socialists-by.html
The Trump War Against Mueller the Special Counsel - all Trumpets Sounding from InfoWars to Hannity the Trump Dogs want Mueller Blood
Democracy and Class Struggle is looking forward to the deepening contradictions in the USA's elite as long as they do not spill over into Syria or Iran or North Korea or Venezuela - internal contradictions are the primary contradictions these contradictions are becoming acute in USA by the day.
SEE ALSO:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/when-will-president-trump-fire-robert-mueller/534459/
Arundhati Roy on Saibaba - Free Saibaba Sign the Petition
SIGN THE PETITION TO FREE SAIBABA
https://www.change.org/p/free-saibaba-us-free-dr-saibaba-and-oppose-the-suppression-of-dissent-in-india
MESSAGE FROM SAIBABA'S WIFE ABOUT SAIBABA'S URGENT NEED FOR MEDICAL TREATMENT
https://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/gn-saibaba-in-very-urgent-need-of.htm
Democracy and Class Struggle regard Saibaba as one of India's greatest Sons - he speaks for the those suffering multiple forms of tribal, caste, gender and class and national oppression in India - to know of Saibaba and his story is to know the hypocrisy of Indian "Democracy" in the 21st Century.
Saibaba's existence is the promise of a new India - a truely democratic Socialist India for ALL its Peoples.
Saibaba's imprisonment is our imprisonment and his freedom our freedom.
Release Saibaba NOW !
Saturday, July 22, 2017
Trump's Russian Laundromat by Craig Unger : 1.3 Trillion Flight Capital from Russia since Putin in power - how much entered the Trump Laundromat ?
The Trump Achilles Heel will soon be revealed in full following the Special Counsel Report - Trump is preparing for War with a counter attack on Special Counsel - he is currently turning the soil - we have not seen nothing yet as full blown political war will erupt in USA.
We are moving into a new stage of political conflict in USA which has very little parallel's - we would like to see it as blowback for US interference in 1990's Russia but it is more complex than that - we are dealing with something new.
50 Years of Naxalbari: Some Reflections by Anand Teltumbde in Calicut on June 4th 2017
Democracy and Class Struggle appreciates the work of Anand Teltumbde and we have learnt much from him on the Dalit struggle and the mistakes of the communist movement in India.
In his Calicut speech he makes eleven points about the revolutionary communist movement in India in general and not just the Dalit struggle which we would do well to ponder.
Speech in Calicut on June 4th
50 Years of Naxalbari: Some Reflections
Key Note
Anand Teltumbde
*
Dear comrades,
At the outset I wish to complement and thank you for having organized this commemorative seminar to observe the 50th anniversary of the Naxalbari armed struggle. In the times that the state is so hypersensitive to the words like Naxalites or Maoists that on mere suspicion of being sympathetic to this ideology, it incarcerates people for years in jails and punishes them with life imprisonment or even sends them to gallows, it is heartening to see people courageously coming out to commemorate this glorious moment in India’s history.
The number of people and the scale of the conferences cannot be the gauge to measure their spirit. These things bear a price tag these days. What is important is that such people exist all over India even in these trying times, who give a damn to the state’s terror tactics. They are determined to keep the memory of Naxalbari alive, its flame fluttering so as to pass on the saga of martyrdom and sacrifices of hundreds of thousands of comrades who sacrificed their everything at the altar of revolution to the coming generations. We are fortunate to have some comrades in our midst here who represent them. Before I say anything I wish to say my Red Salutes to these comrades.
It may not be very apt to invoke Milan Kundera who became famous by satirizing the Stalinist regime in Czechoslovakia but what he said is quite apt, “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting”. We will not forget Naxalbari.
People of this country have not forgotten it. If they had, every periodical in the country would not have bothered to take out a special issue or a feature on its 50th anniversary. Media today is purely a business and under the present regime is transformed into a vehicle of its propaganda, paid or unpaid.
If this media observes the memory of this movement which has been an anathema for both its ownership as well as the state, one can only surmise the sizable existence of people who wish to read about Naxalbari; they have not forgotten her.
Naxalbari is a small town in Siliguri sub-division in the northern part of West Bengal, which paradoxically does not show any sign of what is spoken about it in the outside world. Years ago, I had gone there with expectations to see scars of this movement, see the blood stains on its soil and meet people related to those who were killed, jailed and tortured, who would have many tales to tell.
But I was totally surprised to see nothing of it. There was no trace of that spark which lit that prairie fire which would engulf the entire country and would refuse to be doused.
It may be appropriate to briefly recount the making of Naxalbari. It all started in the wake of Sino-India war of 1962, when Comrade Charu Mujumdar, a veteran of the Tebhaga movement in Terai region, had declared that the government of India had attacked China and it was the duty of communists to oppose the war.
During the war the struggle between the conservative and radical wings of the CPI had reached its flashpoints and the party split with the radical separating out from the CPI as CPI (Marxist) or CPM in 1964. Majumdar along with most of the CPI had gone over to the CPM.
The Siliguri Group of the newly formed CPM, led by him, wanted to launch armed revolution on the Chinese pattern. Between January 1965 and May 1967, he wrote eight letters to party comrades analyzing the Indian situation and outlining his views on how to make revolution in India.
These eight letters would be known as Eight Historic Documents among the Naxalites. The main points of these documents were (1) the Indian revolution must take the path of armed struggle, (2) it should be on the pattern not of the Soviet revolution but of the Chinese revolution and (3) the armed struggle in India should take the form of people’s war as advocated by Mao Zedong and not the guerilla war of Che Guevara.
One of the documents gave a call to initiate partisan warfare in the Terai region within six months. Throughout 1966, peasant cells were formed all over the Siliguri sub-division; bows and arrows, and even a few rifles were gathered and liaison was established with the Nepalese Maoists, who were active just a few miles away.
Entire 1966 was full of frantic activity which culminated in a revolutionary Kisan Conference at Siliguri. On 3 March, 1967, a day after the United Front (UF) government in which CPM had partnered with the Bangla Congress assumed power in West Bengal, the seeds of the struggle began to sprout. A group of peasants surrounded a plot of land in Naxalbari region; marking the boundaries with red flags they began harvesting the crop. The 18 March convention signaled the peasant upsurge.
The UF government sought to diffuse the movement by announcing token land reforms. But the Kisan committees responded with forcible takeover of lands from jotedars. Huge procession was organized by Kisan committees with people armed with lathis, spears, bows and arrows and hundreds of red flags, which struck terror in the hearts of landlords. The first clash occurred when a share cropper, Bigul Kisan, was beaten by armed agents of a local jotedar. It sparked off violent clashes. By end May the situation reached the level of an armed peasant uprising. Jyoti Basu, who was the home minister in the UF government, ordered in the police.
On 23 May, the peasantry attacked the police with bows and arrows injuring three of them. One Sonam Wangdi, an inspector of Jharugaon, among them, succumbed to his injuries in hospital after two days. On 25 May, a bigger contingent of police arrived in Naxalbari and retaliated the killing of Wangdi by gunning down nine women and two children. In June the struggle intensified further in the surrounding areas of Naxalbari, Kharibari and Phansidewa.
Firearms and ammunition were snatched from the jotedars. The tea garden workers struck work in support of the rebelling peasants. On 19 July, a large number of paramilitary forces entered the region and in a ruthless cordon and search operations, beat hundreds and arrested over one thousand people. Some leaders like Jangal Santal were arrested, others like Tribheni Kanu, Sobhan Ali, Gorkha Maji and Tilka Maji became martyres and others were driven underground. The Naxalbari struggle as such lasted less than two months but made Naxalbari a metaphor for the people’s armed revolutionary struggle in the entire country.
The uprising was confined to an area of 250 sq miles and could bear no comparison with many violent peasant movements of the past, far less with the armed struggle in Telangana in the early years of independence.
The significance of the Naxalbari movement was that it represented the first experiment with Maoism in India under the leadership of a party wholly committed to the Chinese path. The Communist Party of China, then the center for world revolution, hailed the uprising. On 28 June 1967, Radio Peking broadcast described it as the “front paw of the revolutionary armed struggle launched by the Indian people..” Within a week, the 5th July edition of the People’s Daily carried an article entitled ‘Spring Thunder over India’ stating, “The Chinese people joyfully applaud this revolutionary storm of the Indian peasants in the Darjeeling area as do all the Marxist-Leninists and revolutionary people of the world.” It is this support from the CPC that distinguished Naxalbari from the previous armed struggles, particularly Telangana.
Although the fire at Naxalbari was doused by the military might, it had inspired revolutionaries far and wide. The walls of the college street in Calcutta were plastered with pro-Naxalbari and anti-CPM posters. The radical section of the CPM held a meeting in Ram Mohan Library Hall in Calcutta and formed the ‘Naxalbari Peasants Struggle Aid Committee, which was to become the nucleus of the future Naxalite party. Naxalbari gave a fillip to the peasants struggle in Srikakulam and set aflame Birbhum, Debra-Gopiballavpur, Mushahari and Lakhimpur-Kheri.
The states of West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Punjab, UP, and Tamil Nadu saw a big spurt in Naxalbari-inspired struggles and Maoist formations sprouted in nearly every state of India. Each place of this uprising was left a trail of state terror that devoured scores of martyrs and pushed hundreds of people into jail. But the state could not crush the spirit of Naxalbari, It kept on rising like a proverbial phoenix bird with renewed energy.
*
We need to note that Naxalbari was not the first armed peasant uprising in independent India, nor was it the first attempt at revolution making on the pattern of China. The five year Telangana struggle, first against the Nizam’s rule and then against the Congress regime after Hyderabad’s integration with India, had been ostensibly organized on the Chinese model. The essence of the political line worked out by the units of the undivided communist party in Telangana and Andhra regions was that in India the democratic revolution will take the form of armed guerilla warfare as in China, and not a political general strike of workers and armed insurrection as in Russia.
It envisaged that armed guerilla resistance areas would be developed in several parts of the country, which would then be converted into liberated areas with their own armed forces and state apparatus. Later, the towns would be liberated by these armed forces coming from the liberated areas.
The struggle was called off after a CPI delegation consisting of Ajoy Ghosh, S A Dange, C Rajeswara Rao, and M Basavapunniah had visited Moscow and discussed the inner party crisis with the Soviet leaders. The central committee of the CPSU set up a commission headed by Stalin and with Molotov, Malenkov and Suslov as members for the purpose. What Stalin’s advice was to the Indian communists has now become a matter of controversy between the CPI and the CPM and even other comrades. Rajeswara Rao says that the CPM’s contention that Stalin criticized the Indian communist movement for its failure to save the Telangana armed struggle is absolutely untrue.
Nor is it a fact that Stalin supported the continuance of the struggle till its withdrawal in 1951. On the other hand, P. Sundarayya, general secretary of the CPM, maintains that the CPSU commission felt that in the situation prevailing then it was unfortunate that the Telangana armed partisan resistance could not be defended and continued.
The time had come to withdraw the armed struggle, and it was for the leadership of the Indian communist party to decide on what terms to withdraw it and negotiate, how long it had to be continued to secure suitable terms and when exactly to withdraw the armed resistance.
Whatever the version of Stalin’s advice, the CPI leadership took the decision to withdraw the struggle behind the back of Com D V Rao, the architect of the Telangana struggle as he writes in Telangana Armed Struggle and the Path of Indian Revolution, refuting Sundarayya’s version.
By the time the struggle was withdrawn in October 1951, 10 lakh people were tortured, one lakh jailed and 4000 peasants, labourers, cadres and students were shot dead. As Nizam’s jails were not sufficient, military barracks and open jails were set up to accommodate the arrestee. This was the depth and extent of the struggle. This struggle also had accomplished commendable feats like abolishing begar (vetti) or forced, free labour; almost toppled Nizam’s feudal regime by the time Indian armies arrived in the name of Police Action in September 1948; established Gram Rajyas (village Soviets) in 3000 villages where Nizam’s administrative writ ceased to operate; feudal dictat in respect of levies, extortions, zurmanas, fines, nazranas, were abolished; scaring the tyrants to flee villages; introduced the concept of land ceiling and tenant rights much before the Government of India enacted them; distributed 10 lacks acres of land along with attached cattle, carts and farm implements to the landless peasants; developed small irrigation systems for them; revised farm wages and labour rates; raised an armed force of about 10000 volunteers by late 1948, Guerilla tactics were developed and implemented; controlled petty crimes, usury, liquor consumption by establishing people’s court run on new principles of justice.
However, Telangana did not get any approbation as Naxalbari received from either Russia or China.
*
Naxalbari was fully charged with Chinese spirit. It threw up such slogans as Chin-er chairman, amader chairman (Chairman of China, Mao, is our chairman). The lines from the Red Book (quotations from Mao's writings) were turned into slogans, and became the stuff of legendary posters, such as 'Women are half the sky', 'Students and youth are like the sun of eight or nine in the morning', 'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun', 'Revolution is not a piece of embroidery or a piece of fine art, but the deployment of force by one class over another', etc. These slogans and other rallying cries conjured up a world where people could think that impossible could be made possible, heaven could be made to appear on the earth. They had reverberations in avante garde literature, music, drama, paintings, and even films. Theatre personalities like Utpal Dutt, poets like Birendra Chattopadhyay, Kamlesh Sen, well known essayists like Pramod Sengupta, Amiyo Chakrabarty, story writers and novelists like Mahasveta Devi, and journalists like Samar Sen and Bhavani Roy Chowdhury made the time aesthetically sensitive in a distant sense. Parallel journals like Now, Frontier, Anushtup, Kalpurush– all avant garde initiatives – flourished. Literacy campaigns among peasants, workers, and slum dwellers started. Jails became places of intense self-introspection and learning. They became universities.
*
While we can recount a plethora of such glorious contributions of Naxalbari, and salute the supreme sacrifices of hundreds of thousands of young men and women who kept the fire of Naxalbari burning with their flesh and blood, the fifty years of the ups and downs of this struggle also offers us valuable lessons which we need to consider while observing its 50th anniversary.
By the second half of the 1960s, the eclipse of the euphoria of independence, exposure of the deceitful anti-people policies of the government and the country wide famine created conditions favourable for revolution on the eve of Naxalibari as Charu Majumdar saw. But it may be argued that such conditions characterized by exploitation and mass misery always existed in India and they still do even today. The Marxian theory of revolution categorically states that objective conditions are necessary but not sufficient for social revolution. The social revolution occurs when the subjective factor is combined with objective conditions. Lenin has said that there were revolutionary situations in Russia both in 1859-1861 and in 1879-1880, but no revolutions occurred in those years. This is due to the fact that for the occurrence of a revolution there shall be a juxtaposition of both objective and subjective conditions. Majumdar did not pay attention to this law and presumed that the subjective conditions can be created with the revolutionary violence. He did not pay adequate attention to the process of transformation of class-in-itself into class-for-itself or distinction between the conditions favourable for revolution and revolutionary conditions.
To be fair to him, Majumdar formulated his theory of annihilation of class enemies (known as Khatam, finish or annihilation in Bengali) based on peasant psychology or subjective condition of peasantry. He opined that the peasants have been taking oppression, misery and starvation for centuries. These conditions have resulted in loss of dignity among them. They have even lost the will to rebel against social and economic oppression. The use of violence against their inherited enemies would restore a sense of dignity and self confidence among the peasants.
This kind of argument took Majumdar very close to the theory of revolution in the colonial context as formulated by Frantz Fanon (The Wretched of the Earth), who wrote about similar kind of liberating effect of killing the oppressor. The subjective conditions, he considered as necessary prior to revolutionary action were the consciousness of the leader of the movement in terms of their ideological comprehension to identify contradictions and to evolve strategies and tactics for revolution.
This position taken by him implies that revolutionary condition (and consciousness) is created by revolutionary actions, which draws him closer to the use of Che Guevara, Debray and other Latin American leftist guerillas rather than “Mao Thought”, which emphasizes mass work to create revolutionary conditions.
Che Guevara on the basis of the experience of the Cuban revolution asserts that it is not necessary to wait for the revolutionary situation to develop; a revolutionary situation can be created.
Similarly, Lenin emphasized on the role of party as having professional revolutionaries who guide and streamline the movement indicates the same view that social movements are consciously planned and carried through. Moreover, modern social movements are not only consciously planned in terms of actions; their ideology too has entered the domain of consciousness. Therefore, consciousness ceases to be the mundane consciousness, but the ideological consciousness which is imputed by the ideologically conscious initiators of a movement on the people.
Majumdar’s disregard for the mass organization and his policy of ‘Khatam’ which are today widely criticized basically stem from this theory. These policies were also disapproved by Chinese leaders (Chou En-Lai and Kang Sheng) when a delegation of the CPI (ML) led by its central committee member met with them (Report of 29 October 1970). Majumdar’s theory of guerilla warfare without mass organization on the plea that mass movement and mass organization developed a tendency to function legally and fall a prey to economism was also opposed by Kang Sheng. The Chinese experience was that mass movement and mass organization were the basis of guerilla warfare the absence of which was an obstacle.
Not only for strategic reason but even in principle, it should not require any great person to say that without the mass base, the revolution is futile. Kang Sheng also explained how Lin Piao’ thesis of guerilla war as the only way, which was admittedly followed by Majumdar, was rooted in a specific context of anti-Japan struggle and the questions as to what kind of warfare should be taken up and how the people’s army should develop. The context of Naxalbari obviously was different and hence the thesis would not apply. He also explained that the Naxalite party’s attitude towards trade unions was not proper. Recalling the Chinese experience Chou En-Lai said that the Right opportunists compromised with the big bourgeoisie; on the other hand, the Left opportunist line was of agrarian revolution divorced from the masse. They relied on some vanguards, not on the masses; that is, they did not do painstaking mass work. All these left adventurists methods ended in failure.
The advice of the Chinese leaders to the delegation was: The formulation that party members should not work in trade unions required revision. The theory that the middle peasants should not be allowed to take part in guerilla activities was wrong. They also explained how the policy of annihilation of class enemies was not what Lin Piao meant. Guerilla organization, secret from the masses and from those whose vigilance is necessary, was not proper. Secrecy from party comrades necessarily changed the nature of organization.
The formulation was divorced from the masses and party organization and was dangerous. The norm that ‘comrades whose hands have not been reddened with the blood of the class enemy are not true revolutionaries’ was not proper for it changed the nature of the organization. Thus, most of the notions and formulations of Mujumdar were deprecated by the Chinese leaders.
Both, Chou En-Lai and Kang Sheng also deprecated the party’s slogan ‘China’s chairman is our chairman’, which was derived from an article written by Majumdar that concluded with the declaration, “victory certainly belongs to us because China’s Chairman is our chairman and China’s path is our path” [Liberation, November 1971]. Chou En-Lai criticized it by saying that referring to Mao as the leader of India was against the sentiments of the Indian nation. It is difficult even for the working class to accept it. Kang Sheng disagreed with the slogan as being against the Mao Tse-tung thought. These leaders advised that each party should apply Marxism-Leninism in concrete conditions obtaining in its country. They said, “your path can be worked out only by you”. They conveyed Mao’s instructions that revolution cannot be transplanted.
*
The lesson from 50 years of experience, clearly tells us that without mass base even the armed struggle cannot be sustained. The reliance on arms, therefore, needs to be rethought. It is experienced that invariably mass organizations of the communists are heavily repressed by the state driving them to take up arms and hide in jungles. While that is true, reliance on armed guerillas is not the solution. The state in 21st century is million times powerful in its repressive prowess and arms, howsoever, they are used, do not constitute answer. Even if the circumstances so warrant, they may be restricted to tactical and defensive purpose. It is very necessary to cultivate revolutionary consciousness in the masses which cannot be done without the organic linkage with them.
Paradoxically, the present situation may not appear as dreadful as in 1967 but in fact it is worse on many counts. After the ruling classes’ embrace of the neoliberal economic reforms, the condition of the vast majority of people has been declining fast. The government has been coming out with schemes like food security, which is nothing but to placate the people’s anger and may be likened to the slave owners feeding their slaves well in olden days. People are systematically excluded from every sphere of development. The withdrawal of state from the obligation to provide basic services to people and marketizing them has meant direct deprivation of the masses.
The ideological push of social Darwinism has accentuated inequalities to vulgar limits. Just 1% of the population today controls 58.4% of national wealth. The Gini coefficients, the measure of inequality, makes India as the second most unequal country in the world, just next to South Africa, slated to take over the latter very soon. The 2011-12 Agricultural Census shows that just 4.9% rich farmers control nearly one-third of cultivable land and 56.4% rural households do not own any land. The strategy of the state to contain the mass resentment is by throwing crunches before them and unleashing the state terror. The neoliberal glitter of the towns and cities cannot hide this ugly reality of their slums and rural India, where farmers have been killing themselves in lakhs because of the agrarian distress. The condition of Dalits, Adivasis and religious minorities under the Hindutva onslaught that piggy backed neoliberalism is turning terrible with every passing day.
The objective conditions are so grave but the forces that could resist them are paradoxically in dilapidated state. The naxalite movement that symbolize this resistance is splintered in countess factions, each claiming to be right and bent on proving others wrong. Interestingly, they all swear by Marxism-Leninism-Mao thought, now being called Maoism, characterizing the society similarly (semi-feudal, semi-colonial) and staging the impending revolution as democratic revolution. But for their jargon, it would be difficult to discern the differences between them save for their differential approaches to mass movements and parliamentary politics.
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The initial difference had cropped up within the group concerning the concept of “annihilating of class enemies”, leading to a group insisting upon mass agitation preceding the annihilation process, leaving the AICCCR that preferred an armed revolution without mass support. This was the first fissure in the movement. While Majumdar-led group formed the CPI (ML) party in May 1969, this group, led by Kanhai Chatterjee, started Dakshin Desh or the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) in 1975. A government crackdown along with the death of Charu Majumdar in 1972 led to the disintegration of the CPI (ML). In 1974, a group led by Jauhar, alias Subrata Dutt, formed the CPI (ML) Liberation, as a “course correction” that stressed on mass agitations by agrarian proletariat along with armed struggle. It spread to Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Bihar. However, ideological differences led to further splits in this group, forming CPI (ML) (Unity Organization) headed by N Prasad and CPI (ML) Peoples War Group (PWG) led by Kondapalli Seetharamiah in 1980.
Later, the so called rectification campaigns undertaken to correct past errors, led to further splits. CPI (ML) Liberation adopted mainstream politics in 1982 and registered its first electoral victory in 1989 from Arrah constituency, Bihar, creating deep schisms inside the party. This splitting process inevitably gave way to mergers too, like the CPI (ML) Party Unity (PU) coming into existence as the result of a merger between CPI (ML) (Unity Organization) and the remnants of Charu Majumdar’s CPI (ML) and later merging itself in 1993 with CPI (ML) PW and thereafter with the MCC leading to the formation of CPI (Maoist). Rejecting the earlier principle of following agrarian revolution alone, the new outfit advocated a mass revolution by the proletariat, farmers, tribals, Adivasis and the backward communities in India. The most important objective of the CPI (M) was to seize political power through a protracted people’s war. This is just a glimpse of the process of major splits and mergers, which does not account for the countless groups that exist under the suffix ML.
Right from the beginning the Naxalite movement state has taken it as a law and order issue and not a political problem to be dealt with the security apparatus. Its propaganda machinery painted the naxalites as blood thirty demons and spoke of their blocking its development schemes which were basically aimed at evicting the Adivasis from the mineral rich belts to be given to capitalists. While the urban middle class is taken in by this propaganda, the viewpoint of the naxalites is never heard. With the media which unashamedly carries the writ of the government has aggravated this asymmetry. The government, blatantly in contravention of its own law and constitution, encroaches upon the Adivasi habitat.
The state has termed the movement as the biggest internal security threat and has unleashed its propaganda blitzkrieg among the masses on the one hand and its military might against the Maoists on the other. The Maoists in absence of mass contact to counter the propaganda are increasingly led to militarist bravado adding to the negative propaganda of the government. The state has gone berserk in opening its dirty war on them. Over the past decade most of its senior leadership either being jailed or exterminated, the movement is again facing its worst phase. The state propaganda, however, continues to amplify the Maoist challenge for the political purpose. Maoist movement has turned into another tool for the ruling classes along with Kashmir, which conjures up external threat, Maoists being the internal enemy. So long as the ruling classes continue to fool people on the ploy of nationalism, they would not let go of Kashmir and Maoism.
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While Maoist movement represents the only movement of the downtrodden masses in India, which cannot be annihilated as shown by the history of the last 50 years, the people like us who wish to stand on the side of people should help them see the need to rethink some issues of theory as well as strategy and tactics. Any movement tends to develop inertia that impels it inward in self-justification and prevents to see the things in objectively. People have a role of a coach to perform to correct the process. As an observer of this movement for many years, I would list out issues, which are in no way comprehensive, but may be significant enough to be taken note of.
(i) Indian communist leadership right from the beginning of the communist movement relied on foreign moulds and models and theses and theories but refused to grapple with the ground reality of India. India, by any reckoning, is a unique country in the world with its caste system and diversity, naturally warranting unique theory and model of revolution. But the communists always looked at Russia, Yugoslavia, China, and all over the world for the models to adopt or emulate. They never realize that they lost a revolution because of this attitude of theirs. What a shame to seek advice on whether to continue the glorious Telangana armed struggle from Stalin in Russia and debate thereafter its interpretation? So was the slogan of the Naxalite movement that China’s path was their path or China’s chairman was their chairman. Their literature is replete with the citation and quotation from the outside leaders, smacking of the Brahmanical attitude of their leadership. It is a different matter to learn from the experiences of other revolutions but quite another to emulate them. The communists need to introspect why they could not develop their own model which may rather teach others because of the complexity of Indian society.
(ii) Characterization of the Indian society as semi-feudal and semi-colonial when India stands as the major industrial power and seventh biggest economy in the world.
(iii) The place and utility of Leninist concept of imperialism in the context of Marxist theory. Its overuse in ML literature and discourse effectively abstracts the entire struggle and reflects a kind of disconnect between the reality and the Maoists.
(iv) The useless binaries like 'base and superstructure’ and ‘reform and revolution’, etc. which have done great damage to peoples’ movement everywhere but particularly in India in the context of caste question. Although, the Maoists have refined their position on caste as pervading across base as well as superstructure, they do not realize that they use the term in a doctrinaire manner, which was regretted by Marx and Engels in their own life time.
(v) Admitting past mistakes and condemning dissent/disagreements as revisionism. The Marxists have developed huge repertoire of abuses to castigate those who do not agree with them. They do not realize that Marx’s most favourite maxim was “de omnibus dubitandum’ (doubt everything), which implies that Marxism should be intrinsically flexible to accommodate debate and disputes. It should be capable to constantly revise itself in the light of new data. Instead, Marxists have made it a super-religion, the dictum of which cannot be violated.
(vi) The conception of class that tends to confine itself to the economic aspects. Many pre-capitalist systems live on in residual form even in capitalist society and the classes should be conceived incorporating those. For instance, in India, as they themselves realized but without explicit admission of past mistake, caste should be incorporated within the classes making anti-caste struggle as an integral part of the class struggle. But they kept it away as superstructural aspect giving birth to the duality of caste and class that refuses to die and continues to widen the rift among the Indian proletariat.
(vii) The excessive reliance on arms and consequently violence is self-defeating as it distances itself from masses. Without masses, there is neither any use of revolution nor is it possible. While the use of arms truly depends upon the state response, purely as a tactical device, without mass base, even the use of arms is not really effective.
(viii) While neoliberalism has deepened the livelihood crisis for people, it has also disabled them by its descitization pressure, detaching them as individuals. The middle-classization of people (even of the working class) makes them unavailable for revolution unless the revolutionaries show them their pay-off. The revolutionary strategy should reflect this change that has come in the world.
(ix) The technology-driven world is pushing a paradigm that potentially weakens labour. It has huge implication to the basic theoretical tenets of Marxism beyond its core in dialectical materialism. While there is no imminent need to grapple with this issue, the realization that we are dwelling in such a world may help dampen the sectarianism unfortunately encountered in the movement.
(x) It is important to win confidence of people. The Marxist revolutionary movements have only demonstrated failures. Rather, the rise of the capitalist forces is largely attributable to these failures of the Left. The revolutionary forces should be aware of this fact and strategize to be first time right, so as to build confidence among the masses with small gains.
(xi) The notion that the modern state could be taken head on (even with guerilla strategy) is wrong. The state laced with surveillance technologies, modern weaponry, and fascist attitude is not amenable to old style armed challenge.
While it is true that the Naxalite movement has risen like phoenix bird from ashes with renewed zeal, it should not comfort us. Each time the movement was crushed, it has taken a toll of hundreds of thousands of precious and promising lives of the revolutionaries. The movement cannot afford to ignore the cost it has been paying in blood.
I am aware, all this is going to disturb you possibly to paste some label on me from the repertoire I spoke about. I confess, I do not have any antecedents to qualify myself to make such observations, particularly before the comrades who have sacrificed their lives to the movement. I am rather humbled by their gesture to invite me to speak before them.
Having come and as some of them especially encouraged me to speak my mind out, I mustered courage to put forth my views. It is up to you to consider them or discard them.
Lal Salam!