Biplab’s report on recent Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)

Central Committee meeting
The Red Star, December 5, 2009

Central Committee Decisions with its Special Importance–Netrabikram Chanda, Com. Biplab
Biplab is a member of the Secretariat of the UCPN (Maoist) Central Commitee

Our party central committee meeting concluded after 25 days. The meetng has taken very important decisions and conclusions on the following subjects related to the political movement of Nepal and to the party organization itself. The importance of these decisions is as follows:

1. The conclusions and the decisions related to the political movement
We took a long and serious debate on the solution of extraordinary political situation on the revolution and the counter-revolution, ideology of proletariat, and the bourgeoisie, national independence and foreign intervention. Through the long debate, we came to the conclusion that the correct solution of the existing political crisis of the nation can be found only after building a new concept of republic, constitution, united front, federalism, a national united government, and the mass-struggle, and we have taken some of the new decisions on them also. We are assured that the recently taken decisions will give solution to the existing problems.

1.a. People’s Federal Republic
Our party has reached the conclusion that a new concept about the republic is necessary. According to it, the party has taken a decision to use People’s Republic in place of Democratic Republic. This, in reality, is the only decision that will be able to take the political crisis to a solution. The problems and the crisis that are increasing in the country day by day are mainly the outcome of the present state power, state machinery of the bourgeois republic, though there are other secondary reasons. The expectation of the people for emancipation is not possible until and unless a drastic change in the state system is brought.
It is a true reality that the establishment of the republic is an important historical phenomenon. However, it was compulsory that the establishment of republic had to arouse some important queries and they have. Especially after the establishment of the republic, the primary questions were who would be the owner of the republic, whom the republic should serve and what will be the characteristics of republic, that are obvious.
Our party has considered the democratic republic as a transitional republic (neither the bourgeoisie’s nor the people’s). It meant that the emphasis would be given to transfer the transitional republic into People’s Republic and establish the people as the owner of the republic. Our party made efforts with its hard work from the declaration of the republic to the constitutional action taken over the then Army-Chief Rukmangad Katawal by the elected government. Many struggles were held. However, the effort became fruitful due to the Imperialist, Expansionist and their lackeys.
Rather, the declared republic has lost its transitional character and has adopted bourgeois character after the interference of the step of the President, building of a puppet government and the foreign intervention. Bourgeois class has been the owner of this republic. The republic, instead of being the republic of the people (mainly the peasants and the workers), has been changed into the republic of handful comprador capitalist and the feudal lords. There will be no security of the rights of the people, rather there will be repression over the rights of the people. By viewing this, the conclusion of the political programme taken by our party about the bourgeois republic and the given slogan to establish People’s Republic instead of it is crystal clear and correct.

1. b. Constitution of the People’s Federal Republic
The issue of drafting a new constitution has been the central essence of the current political debate. In the context of the ongoing debate, our party has taken a decision to draft the constitution of the People’s Federal Republic (People’s Republic) and put it forward in the Constituent Assembly. Due to being the representative of the vanguard of the proletarian class and the leadership of the working people, the proposal has its historical importance from the responsibility to propose the best proposal for the protection of the rights of the People’s Constitution as the basic law of the nation. This makes laws on the form of the state, system of leadership, fundamental rights of the people, sovereignty of the nation etc.
The processes of the basic law and the other laws and the acts are being changed according to the condition of the state and the situation of the political struggle run there. This process is also going to be repeated many times. However, our constitution and laws are never written is favour of people and the nation. Rather, the constitution and the laws were, made as the means to fulfil the interest traditional powers and the contemporary state in the meantime, our attention has been paid towards the condition from where the turning will be either in favour of people or in favour of the status-quo bourgeoisie.
We are conscious that the would-be constitution should not be as the means to serve bourgeoisie and status-quo. For that, we should propose People’s Constitution when it is tabulated. A debate should be in the Constituent Assembly (CA)meeting to pass the people’s constitution and, more over, progressive and anti-bourgeois along with the forces of people’s federal republic should advance together for writing people’s constitution.
The other alternative is that the Maoist party and the pro-republican forces with the masses of the people should launch the struggle through street and CA to write people’s constitution. In this way, the expected people’s constitution can be written through CA. Otherwise, the suitability of the CA to build constitution will be concluded here at the point.

1. c. The privilege of autonomous states and its declaration
Our party has a crystal clear concept that the form of the state should be federalism. It is the democratic right of the federal states. The would-be constitution should guarantee the right of privilege. In the process of concretizing this issue, the party has taken extra more decision about it. According to the decision, the autonomous states would get their rights over the natural resources of their own states. Along with it, in the political sector, the decision has been taken for privilege for a certain period and on the basis of priority, thereafter, like that the party has taken a decision to carry the country into a federal structure before writing constitution. If it is impossible due to the bourgeois parties UML and NC, the declaration of the federal states will be held all over the country. This decision has a historic importance.

1. d. United Front of patriotic and leftist forces
Different types of united fronts are being made and dissolved according to the situation of political contradiction and political movement. Indeed, the united front is decided to be formed on the base of contradiction in between state power and the people. In the past, it was necessary to make united front in between the people and the anti-monarchy forces. However, that type of contradiction has taken place. Thus, the present contradiction is between the comprador capitalist and feudalists protected by the foreign powers and the Nepalese people. In other sense, the contradiction is in between Bourgeois Republic and the People’s Republic. This type of new contradiction has created a situation to make new type of united front and our party has taken a solid decision on it. We have called this type of united front the united front of the patriotic, republican and leftist forces.

1. e. United National Government
Our party has passed the proposal of dissolution of the puppet government and the formation of united national government. It is known to all that the government under the leadership of Madhav Nepal is illegal-offspring of foreign boss and the puppets of the nation. It has no political, moral or constitutional right. The formation of this type of government is the burden over the Nepalese people and, simultaneously, a shame for Nepalese people before the international community. This government has weak ground, less quality and incapability. It is running through remote-control. The power centres which are directing the government are in the preparation of war and oppression over Nepalese people.
Therefore, to prolong the duration of the puppet government is to create a favourable environment to impose fascism. On the other hand, the decision and the mandate of the people is that UCPN Maoist should lead the state power and draft a new constitution. Only by implementing this mandate, is it possible to keep peace. Therefore, the puppet government should be dissolved soon and a new united national government should be formed under the leadership of UCPN Maoist or the appropriate representative.

2. Decisions about party organization
It was necessary for us to response or give new conclusion about the inner party struggle. We had to respond the criticisms by the fraternal parties and the people and respond to the concerned actors worrying about the evils in our party. We ought to have centralized our attention to build proletariat party and we might have conducted a debate on it. We actually did at last, and we reached to the height to form multi-post system that is the formation of standing committee, building of 15-point code of conduct and a high level commission to transform and unite the party into a new height.

2. a. Multi-post Leadership System
We have deeply realized the necessity of a new organizational leadership system for our party according to the size, responsibility and the aim. We have thousands of whole-timer party members. Millions are working in the field in the mass organisations. Voters are more than 4 million. Million of well-wishers and supporters are even in the migrant lands and every corner of the world from India, Middle-East, Europe and most of the area countries. There are dozens of fraternal parties in the word.
Likewise, people have given UCPN-Maoist the responsibility to lead state power and to draft a new constitution. They have given us the responsibility of restructuring the entire state power and to protect the nationality and guarantee the right of nationality, women, workers, peasants and intellectuals. This means the responsibility to change the bourgeois republic into People’s Republic.
We have to reach our ultimate goal of communism by transforming the nation in to workers and laborious people’s nation, people’s rule from bourgeois rule, independent country from dependent and free from intervention of the foreign powers, and reach to the final goal through new People’s Democracy and socialism. All these tasks are not possible through the old structure of the state power. The leadership of the party organization should be according to the political objective and the political plan. For this, we should make and erect the organization and leadership system. We did do it .we made the departments with their full rights. We made Chairman, Vice-Chairman, General Secretary and Secretary.

2. b. New United Front
We have decided to make a new United Front in the context of the changed situation. We have brought a clear concept about it to build united front of patriots, republicans, leftist and progressive forces under the leadership of UCPN- Maoist. For the recent purpose, we have thought to work under the banner of United National People’s Movement to take initiative for building comprehensive front. The movement will help the Nepalese people to be united and advance against foreign interference, encroachment of interim constitution and the conspiracy hatched by the counter revolutionaries.

2. c. A 15-point Code of Conduct and High Level Commission
Central Committee has built a 15-point code of conduct and a high level commission to make transparent the living style of the party leaders and eliminate the suspicion and anxiety aroused among the cadres and the people due to the utilization of sources, means and facilities where there is party access. This code of conduct will be able to give a revolutionary foundation to the people by making clear vision about private property, financial activities, utilization of source and means, family and political ethics.
Conclusion: In brief, Nepal is now in the bend of transformation into People’ s Republic from Bourgeois Republic. A conscious shake-up is necessary to transform it. People’s insurrection is necessary to alter bourgeois dictatorship because qualitative development is not possible without break-through. It is possible in Nepal. For that, UCPN-Maoist and united people front should play a strong and historic role. The leaders, cadres, patriots, republicans and leftist forces should be united to complete this golden potentiality.

“I Am the Real Patriot [Desh Bhakt]”

Kisenji Interview on Armed Struggle, Peace Talks and People’s Democracy
Tusha Mittal, Tehelka, November 13, 2009

In this interview, underground Maoist leader Kishenji speaks on issues such as peace talks, armed struggle, the party’s sources of funding, the difference between people’s democracy and India’s formal democracy, and the goals of the CPI (Maoist).
With unmistakable pride, he says he’s India’s Most Wanted Number 2. CPI (Maoist) Politburo member Mallojula Koteshwar Rao alias Kishenji, 53, grew up in the interiors of Andhra Pradesh reading Gandhi and Tagore.  It was after understanding the history of the world, he says, that he disappeared into the jungles for a revolution. During search operations in 1982, the police broke down his home in Peddapalli village. He hasn’t seen his mother since, but writes to her through Telugu newspapers.  After 20 years in the Naxal belt of Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh, he relocated to West Bengal. His wife oversees Maoist operations in Dantewada [a district in southern Chhattisgarh] . Now, at a hideout barely a few kilometres from a police camp in Lalgarh, he reads 15 newspapers daily and offers to fax you his party literature. If you hold on, he’ll look up the statistics of war on his computer. Excerpts from a midnight phone interview:

Tell me about your personal journey. What made you join the CPI (Maoist)?
I was born in Karimnagar in Andhra Pradesh (AP). In 1973, after a BSc mathematics degree, I moved to Hyderabad in to pursue law. My political journey began with my involvement in the Telangana Sangarsh Samiti, which has been pressing for a separate Telangana state. I launched the Radical Students Union (RSU) in AP. During the Emergency in 1975, I went underground to take part in the revolution. Several things motivated me: Writer Varavara Rao, who founded the Revolutionary Writers Association, India’s political atmosphere and the progressive environment in which I grew up.
My father was a great democrat and a freedom fighter. He was also vice-president of the state Congress party. We are Brahmins, but our family never believed in caste. When I joined the CPI (ML),my father left the Congress saying two kinds of politics can’t survive under one roof. He believed in socialism, but not in armed struggle. After the Emergency ended in 1977, I led a democratic peasant movement against feudalism. Over 60,000 farmers joined it. It triggered a nationwide peasant uprising.

The Home Minister has agreed to talks with CPI (Maoist) on issues like forest rights, land acquisition and SEZs [Special Economic Zones]? Why did you reject his offer? He’s only asking you to halt the violence.
We are ready to talk if the government withdraws its forces. Violence is not part of our agenda. Our violence is counter violence. The combat forces are attacking our people every day. In the last month in Bastar, the Cobra forces have killed 18 innocent tribals and 12 Maoists. In Chhattisgarh, those helping us with development activities are being arrested. Stop this; the violence will stop. Recently, the Chhattisgarh DGP [Director-General of Police] called the 6,000 Special Police Officers of Salwa Judum a force of pride. New recruitment continues. These people have been raping, murdering and looting tribals for years. Entire villages have been deserted because of the Salwa Judum. The government can say whatever it likes, but we do not believe them. How can they change policy when they aren’t even in control? The World Bank and America is.

On what conditions will you de-escalate violence?
The PM should apologise to the tribals and withdraw all the troops deployed in these areas. The troops are not new, we have been facing State terror for the last 20 years. All prisoners should be released. Take the time you need to withdraw forces, but assure us there won’t be police attacks meanwhile. If the government agrees to this, there will be no violence from us. We will continue our movement in the villages like before.

Before it agrees to withdrawing troops, can you give the State assurance you won’t attack for one month?
We will think about it. I’ll have to speak with my general secretary. But what is the guarantee there won’t be any attack from the police in that one month? Let the government make the declaration and start the process of withdrawing. It shouldn’t be just a show for the public. Look at what happened in AP. They began talks and broke it. Our Central Committee member went to meet the AP Secretary. Later, the police shot him for daring to talk to the government.

If you really have a pro-people agenda, why insist on keeping arms? Is your goal tribal welfare or political power?
Political power. Tribal welfare is our priority, but without political power we cannot achieve anything. One cannot sustain power without an army and weapons. The tribals have been exploited and pushed to the most backward extremes because they have no political power. They don’t have the right to their own wealth. Yet, our philosophy doesn’t insist on arms. We keep arms in a secondary place. We faced a setback in AP because of that.

The government says halt the violence first, you say withdraw the troops first. In this mindless cycle, the tribal people you claim to represent are suffering the most.
So let’s call international mediators then. Whether it’s Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal or Maharashtra, we never started the violence. The first attack always came from the government. In Bengal, the CPM [Communist Party of India (Marxist)] cadre won’t let any non-party person enter villages under their control. Police has been camping in the Lalgarh area since 1998. In such a situation, how can I press for higher potato prices and drinking water? There is no platform for me to do that. When the minimum wages in West Bengal were Rs 85 per day, people were being paid Rs 22. We demanded Rs 25. The Mahabharat [war] began when the Kauravas refused to grant the Pandavas even the five villages they asked for. The State refused our three-rupee hike. We are the Pandavas; they are the Kauravas.

You say violence is not your agenda, yet you’ve killed nearly 900 policemen in the past four years. Many of them came from poor tribal families. Even if it is counter violence, how is this furthering a pro-people goal?
Our battle is not with the police forces, it is with the State. We want to minimise the number police casualties. In Bengal, many police families actually sympathise with us. There have been 51,000 political murders by the CPM during the last 28 years. Yes, we have killed 52 CPM men in the last seven months, but only in retaliation to police and CPM brutality.

How is the CPI (Maoist) funded? What about the allegations of extortion?
There are no extortions. We collect taxes from the corporates and big bourgeoisie, but it’s not any different from the corporate sector funding the political parties. We have a half-yearly audit. Not a single paisa is wasted. Villagers also fund the party by voluntarily donating two days’ earnings each year. From two days of bamboo cutting in Gadchiroli we earned Rs 25 lakh. From tendu leaf collection in Bastar we earned Rs 35 lakh. Elsewhere, farmers donated 1,000 quintals of paddy.

What if a farmer refuses to donate?
That will never happen.

Because of fear?
No. They are with us. We never charge villagers even a paisa for the development activity that we initiate.

What development have you brought to Maoist-dominated areas? How has life improved for the tribals of Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand?
We’ve made the people aware of the State’s real face, told them how rich people live and what they’re deprived of. In many of these areas the tendu leaf rate used to be one rupee for 1,000 leaves. We got it hiked to 50 paise per leaf in three districts of Maharashtra, five districts of AP and the entire Bastar region. Bamboo was sold to paper mills at 50 paise per bundle. Now the rate is Rs 55. But these victories came after we faced State resistance and brutality. In Gadchiroli alone, they killed 60 people on our side, we killed five.
The CPI(Maoist) also sends medical help to 1,200 villages in India almost daily. In Bastar, our foot soldiers are proficient doctors, wearing aprons, working as midwives in the jungles. We don’t give them arms. We have 50 such mobile health teams and 100 mobile hospitals in Bastar itself. Villagers go to designated people for specific illnesses: for fever go to Issa, for dysentery to Ramu and so on. There is so much illness in these areas that there are not enough people to pick up the dead bodies. We give free medicines to doctors for distribution among the people. The government doesn’t know that the medicines come from their own hospitals.

If the State sends civil administration to the Naxal belt, will you allow it?
We will welcome it. We want teachers and doctors to come here. The people of Lalgarh have been asking for a hospital for decades. The government did nothing. When they built one themselves, the government turned it into a military camp.

What is your larger long-term vision? Outline three tangible goals.
The first is to gain political power, to establish new democracy, socialism and then communism. The second is to make our economy self sufficient so we don’t need loans from imperialists. We are still paying off foreign loans from decades ago. The debt keeps increasing because of the devaluation of our currency. It will never be repaid. This is what the World Bank wants. We need an economy that works on two things ¡ª agriculture and industry. First, the tribals want land. Until they own their land, the State will exploit them. The people should be entitled to a percentage of the crop depending on their labour. We are not opposed to industry; how can there be development without it? But we should decide which industries will work for India, not America, not the World Bank. Instead of big dams, big industries, we’ll promote small-scale industries, especially those on which agriculture depends. The third goal is to seize all the big companies ¨C from the Tatas to the Ambanis, cancel all the MoUs [Memoranda of Understanding] , declare their wealth as national wealth, and keep the owners in jail. Also, from the grassroots to the highest levels, we will create elected bodies in a democratic way.

But look at the history of communist governments the world over. They became as oppressive as the ones they overthrew. There are ample examples of coercion and absence of dissent in Maoist regimes. How is this in the best interest of the people?
These are all stories spread by the capitalists. People in the villages are dying by the hundreds, but all our doctors want to live in the cities. All our engineers want to serve Japan or the IT sector. They reached their positions using the nation’s wealth. What are they doing for my country? The State cannot insist you become a doctor. But if you do, it should insist you use your skill for two years in the villages. How oppressive the State is depends on who is controlling the reigns of power.
We want to have a democratic culture. If there is no democracy, ask the villagers to start another revolution and overthrow us. In an embryonic form, we already have an alternative democratic people’s government in Bastar. Through elections, we choose a local government called the revolutionary people’s committee. People vote by raising their hands. There is a chairman, a vice-chairman, and there are departments ¨C education, health, welfare, agriculture, law and order, people’s relations. This system exists in about 40 districts in India at present. The perception that Maoists don’t believe in democracy is wrong.
What exists in India today is formal democracy. It’s not real. Whether it’s Mamata Banerjee, or the CPM, or the Congress party, it is all dictatorship. We negotiated the release of 14 adivasi women in Bengal to show the world who the State is keeping in jail; to expose their real face.

If you believe in democracy, why do you shun the democratic process that already exists? The Maoists in Nepal contested elections.
To create a new democratic State, one has to destroy the old one. Nepal’s Maoists have compromised. What elections? There are 180 MPs with serious criminal charges. More than 300 MPs are crorepatis [someone who is worth more than 10 million rupees]. Do you know the US Army is already conducting exercises at a base in Uttar Pradesh? They openly said they can take the Indian Army with them wherever they want. Who allowed them this audacity? Not me. I am opposing them. I am the real desh bhakt (patriot).

What kind of nation do you want India to be? Pick a role model.
Our first role model was Paris. That disintegrated. Then Russia collapsed. That’s when China emerged. But after Mao, that too got defeated. Now, nowhere in the world is the power truly in the hands of the people. Everywhere workers are fighting for it. So there is no role model.

When communism hasn’t worked elsewhere, why will it work for India? China now admits Mao’s theories were fallible. In Nepal, the Maoists are already seeking foreign investment.
What the Maoists in Nepal are doing is wrong. Following this path will only mean creating another Buddhadeb [the "Marxist" Chief Minister of West Bengal] babu. We have appealed to them to come back to the old ways. Wherever socialism or communism took root, imperialism tried to destroy it. Of course, Lenin, Mao, Prachanda ¨C all have weaknesses. After winning the Second World War, Lenin and Stalin replaced internal democracy with bureaucracy. They disregarded the participation of the people. We will learn from their mistakes. But capitalism too has had to stand up after being shot down. How can you say that capitalism has been successful? Socialism is the only way out.

But in power, you could be as fallible as the Nepal Maoists or the CPM?
If we change, the people should start another krantikari andolan (revolution) against us. If the ruler ¡ª no matter who ¡ª becomes exploitative, then the people need to stand up to demand their democracy. They should not have blind faith in a Kishenji, or a Prachanda or a Stalin. If any neta or party deviates from their own ideology, then end your faith in them and revolt again. The people should always keep this tradition alive.

Have you ever faced any personal dilemmas? Is violence the only way you can mount pressure on the State?
I believe we are trying to do the right thing. We are waging a just war. Yes, there can be mistakes along the way. Unlike the State, when we make mistakes, we admit it. The beheading of Francis Induwar was a mistake. We apologise for it. In Lalgarh, we are trying different strategies. We have recently made concrete development demands and given the government a November 27 deadline. We’ve asked for 300 borewells and 50 make-shift hospitals. I have also knocked on the doors of Left Front parties ¨C Forward Bloc, RSP, CPI and even CPM. I’m even in touch with ministers within the Bengal government. I’ve spoken to the Chief Minister himself.

The CM office has rubbished this.
I have spoken to the CM. I told him to stop State brutality and said we have mailed our development demands. He said he is under pressure from his own party and from Home Minister Chidambaram.

Why isn’t the police able to catch you?
In eight states, there are day and night search operations on for me. I’m India’s Most Wanted Number 2. In 1,600 villages in Bengal, people are currently on night guard to ensure the police can’t find me. There are 500 policemen in a camp 1.5 kilometres from where I am right now. The people of Bengal love me. The police have to kill them before they can get me.

The Home Secretary recently alluded to China giving you arms. Is this true?
Clearly, he doesn’t know the basics of our philosophy. To win a war, you need to know your enemy. Our position is diametrically opposite to China. I thought Chidambaram and Pillai were my competition, but never imagined I have such low-standard enemies. They are flashing swords in the air. Victory will be ours.

What is your opinion of the Lashkar-e-Taiba? Do you support their war?
We may support some of their demands, but their methods are wrong and antipeople. LeT should stop its terrorist acts because it cannot help accomplish any goals. You can only win by taking the people along with you.

CAPITALIST CRISIS MAKES SOCIALISM NECESSARY

Statement on the 20th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall
By Prof. Jose Maria Sison, Chairperson, International Coordinating Committee International League of Peoples’ Struggle 9 November 2009

Since the fall of the Berlin wall on 9 November 1989, the world capitalist system has sunk deeper into crisis. It is now undergoing its most severe crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s, with some commentators calling the present crisis “the Greater Depression” in terms of its effects on the jobs and livelihood of the workers and peoples of the world. After emerging as the world’s sole superpower in the wake of the collapse of the former Soviet Union, the US itself is wracked by a severe crisis and is further plunging the world with it. The imperialists and its propagandists perorate on how value and value-creation in the economies of the socialist states and then the modern revisionist regimes were distorted by the state bureaucracy. Now all the countries of the world in varying degrees are reeling from a crisis driven by unbridled private greed under the slogan of “free market globalization” involving the fantastic accumulation of immense wealth by the financial oligarchy and monopoly capitalists through unrelenting super-exploitation of the working people, financial manipulation and the berserk generation of fictitious capital.
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the social conditions of the workers and peoples of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union have plummeted under the conditions of unbridled capitalist exploitation, oppression and violence. Poverty levels have risen due to massive unemployment and depressed incomes. Inflation has been cutting down the value of wages, pensions and savings. State investment in production and job creation has been significantly reduced. Public allotment to education and other social services has plummeted. The educated have difficulties finding work and illiteracy is spreading.
The workers’ and peoples’ health have taken a beating, causing severe malnutrition, stunting growth among the youth and shortening the average life span of people. The number of children living in the streets and left to fend for themselves in these very cold countries has multiplied. The suicide rate has grown among them by significant percentages. The situation of the street children and society at large is being further aggravated by the current financial and economic crisis. The anger and discontent of the workers and peoples of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union are becoming manifest in different ways.
Parties of the Left are becoming popular and are gaining strength in national elections. The workers and people are speaking out against the accelerated escalation of exploitation, oppression and violence of the big bourgeoisie. Survey after survey shows that the people feel they are plunging deeper into poverty and that they are increasingly disillusioned and angry with capitalism and its unfulfilled promises. With the onslaught of the current economic and financial crisis, there is rising interest in and study of Marxist and progressive writings.
The imperialists and the local ruling classes are responding to this by deflecting the workers and peoples from the class struggle and anti-imperialist solidarity by promoting divisions and hatred based on chauvinism, racism, ethnocentrism and religious bigotry. The Comecon is gone. But all the former revisionist-ruled countries are now in the tight grip of the US-controlled world capitalist system and are caught up in the turmoil of the gravest economic crisis since the Great Depression.
The crisis is whipping up fascism and aggressive wars. The room for inter-imperialist competition has become more cramped and more intense, with Russia and China joining in as big power players.
The Warsaw Pact is gone. But the NATO has been expanded as to include the former revisionist- ruled countries in Eastern Europe, reaching the borders of Russia. Most of the former revisionist- ruled countries are potential hotbeds of fascist repression and aggressive wars as already indicated by the violent disintegration of Yugoslavia by a series of wars instigated by the imperialists and by wars involving Chechnya and Georgia. Mercenary forces from the former revisionist- ruled countries have been deployed by the NATO to distant lands like Iraq and Afghanistan.
The crisis of monopoly capitalism has brought ever-greater suffering among the workers and peoples of the world. The imperialist- controlled multilateral agencies underestimate world hunger when they report that only 1 billion people go hungry out of the more than six billion human population. They say that this is the largest number of people going hungry in history, and the same number of people suffer from malnutrition.
This situation is bound to get worse, as world economic output is predicted to decrease this year, the first time since World War II. The contraction of employment is estimated to last for another eight years. The number of people living on less than $2 per day will increase by hundreds of millions. Decreasing demand for consumer goods, semi-manufactures and raw materials impacts heavily on millions of workers and peasants in neocolonial economies. The workers and peoples of the world are waging various legal and illegal forms of organized action to protest the anti-people policies of imperialism.
International gatherings of the monopoly capitalists, the finance oligarchy, and heads of imperialist states have become occasions for mass protests by indignant workers and peoples in the meeting areas and in various countries. Countries assertive of national independence are exposing and lambasting the dictates and impositions of imperialism.
Armed revolutions for national liberation and democracy are continuing and gaining strength in the Philippines, Colombia, India, Peru and Turkey. The people of Iraq and Afghanistan are waging armed resistance against the occupation and colonization of their countries by the US. The armed forms of struggle are bound to grow in strength and advance as a result of the intensification of the crisis of monopoly capitalism.
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the workers and peoples of Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union and the world have undergone ever worsening economic and social conditions. They see monopoly capitalism as an evil and bankrupt system that is destroying the world’s productive forces and is inflicting immense suffering on the people. Monopoly capitalism is igniting the people’s desire for socialism. So long as imperialist oppression and exploitation persist, the people fight for national and social liberation. It is farthest from the truth that monopoly capitalism is the end of history.
The utter bankruptcy of monopoly capitalism and its descent to ever more barbarous forms of plunder and aggression drive the people to fight for their rights and for a bright socialist future. The workers and peoples of the world are called upon to persevere in the struggle for genuine socialism, against monopoly capitalism that is now in the throes of its worst crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
The crisis of the world capitalist system makes socialism necessary for humankind. Contrary to the claims of the imperialists and their propagandists that socialism fell in 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall has actually meant the collapse of the modern revisionist regimes in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and the completion of the restoration of capitalism. It is the end result of the revisionist betrayal of socialism started by Khruschov in 1956 and completed by Gorbachov in the years of 1989-91.
The history of socialist countries from the Bolshevik victory of 1917 up to 1956, and from the founding of the People’s Republic of China up to 1976 shows great leaps in the advancement of the social, economic, political, cultural and defense situations of the workers and peoples of those countries.
The poverty, hunger, joblessness, and the cruelties of exploitation and oppression before the victory of the socialist revolution were overcome. The great victories in socialist construction and revolution were achieved despite imperialist wars of aggression and economic and military blockades and subversion. The rise of modern revisionism in socialist countries and elsewhere reversed all the great achievements of socialism.
Advances in the situation of the workers and peoples were slowly but surely eroded, and pre-revolutionary forms of exploitation, oppression and violence were restored. Together with criminal syndicates in the so-called free market, the modern revisionist big bourgeoisie grew fat on bureaucratic corruption and enjoyed the lifestyles of the rich and famous, while the workers and peoples suffered from the decrease in food, jobs, savings and social services.
As workers and peoples grew restive and began clamoring for reforms, the ruling revisionist regimes imposed severe political repression. In Eastern Europe, and in East Germany especially, this condition fueled the mass protests that brought about the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
The revisionist regimes in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union peacefully gave up power and gave way to the legalization of their bureaucratic loot, the barefaced restoration of capitalism and the blatant privatization of state assets. Since Nikita Khrushchov’s reign in the Soviet Union, genuine proletarian revolutionaries the world over have called the ruling regimes in the Soviet Union and its satellite states in Eastern Europe as modern revisionists, who mouth socialism but practice capitalism. They have predicted that it will not take long before capitalism reveals itself bare-faced in these countries.
The fall of the Wall has shown how accurate their predictions are. The modern revisionists in these countries have since exposed themselves as pseudo-communists and anti-communists. It is modern revisionism, not socialism, which fell with the Berlin Wall and delivered the workers and peoples of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe into the even more predatory and violent rule of barefaced capitalism. The revisionists had earlier undermined, eroded and destroyed socialism.
Since 1989 up to the present, imperialism and its well-paid propagandists in the mass media and academe have tirelessly repeated their line on the fall of the Berlin Wall. They have misrepresented the revisionist regimes as socialist and boasted that their fall meant the futility of socialism and the end of history with capitalism and liberal democracy. They have touted the jump from the frying pan of revisionist- ruled state monopoly capitalism to the flames of barefaced capitalism as the beginning of development and democracy. But the imperialist powers are incomparable in discrediting monopoly capitalism through their unbridled plunder and wars of aggression and the recurrent and increasingly severe crisis.
The workers and peoples of the world are subjected to ever-increasing exploitation, oppression and violence and are impelled to wage resistance, seek national and social liberation and aim for the attainment of socialism.
The present crisis, which has been generated by the US-directed policy of neoliberal “globalization” in the last three decades, incites the people to struggle for socialism. The world capitalist system continues to sink deeper into crisis. It is devastating jobs and livelihood of the workers and peoples of the world. The profuse use of public funds to bail out the big banks and corporations in the military industrial complex is building bigger bubbles than ever before. These are bound to burst and cause a steeper fall in the crisis.
The US and its imperialist allies have generated the global financial and economic crisis, have plunged the world into a state of economic depression and have aggravated and deepened the conditions for state terrorism and aggressive wars. The combination of state monopoly capitalism and monopoly capitalism in imperialist countries is responsible for the unprecedentedly greatest devastation of productive forces through the most rapacious forms of private profit-taking and private accumulation, including the wanton creation of fictitious capital. We are in the era of modern imperialism and proletarian revolution. Further economic crisis, social disorder, state terrorism and imperialist wars of aggression are in prospect.
These are the objective conditions for the rise of revolutionary movements for national and social liberation led by the working class.

CPI-Maoist to step up war to capture power in India

Mon, Jul 27 02:43 PM

Raipur, July 27th Indian Maoists, described by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as the country’s greatest security challenge, have come up with an audacious plan to seize political power by stepping up ‘armed resistance’ and inflicting ’severe losses to the enemy forces’ all over the country.
At the same time, the outlawed Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) is telling its guerrillas to learn a lesson from the decimation of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka and not to be overconfident.
The CPI-Maoist programme is part of a 20-page secret policy document that was decided by the party’s leadership at an undisclosed forested area last month. Dated June 12, IANS has a copy of the document.
The CPI-Maoist has warned that its new war against the Indian state will be ‘more long drawn and more bitter’ than the struggle India waged against British colonial rule for ’seizure of political power’.
The document, ‘Post-Election Situation, Our Tasks’, is in English. It outlines how and where the Maoists need to step up attacks with a changed strategy, keeping in mind the setbacks suffered by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
Under the sub-heading ‘Immediate Tasks’, it says the entire party and its armed wings need to carry out ‘tactical counter-offensives and various forms of armed resistance and inflict severe losses to the enemy forces’.
‘Attacks should be organised with meticulous planning against the state’s khaki and olive-clad terrorist forces, SPOs (Special Police Officers), police informants, and other counter-revolutiona ries and enemies of the people.
‘These attacks should be carried out in close coordination with, and in support of, the armed resistance of the masses; these should be linked to the seizure of political power and establishment of base areas; it is the combined attacks by all the three wings … and the people at large that can ensure the defeat of the enemy offensive.
‘In order to defeat the new offensive by the enemy and to protect the gains of People’s War, it is very essential to rouse the masses throughout the country (to) stand up in support of the struggles in Dandakaranya, Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Karnataka and other places’.
Dandakaranya mostly covers Chhattisgarh’ s mineral rich Bastar region as well as India’s most thickly forested Abujhmar hills where police believe the CPI-Maoist has a military headquarters and hideouts for its leaders.
The document makes several references to the LTTE, which the Sri Lankan military crushed in May, ending one of the world’s longest running insurgencies.
It says that ‘the setback suffered by the LTTE has a negative effect on the revolutionary movement in India as well as South Asia and the world at large’.
‘The experience of LTTE’s setback in Sri Lanka is very important to study and take lessons. The mistake of the LTTE lay in its lack of study of the changes in enemy tactics and capabilities and an underestimation of the enemy along with an overestimation of its own forces and capabilities. ‘
The CPI-Maoist asks its guerrillas to ‘create more difficulties to the enemy forces by expanding our guerilla war to new areas and intensifying the mass resistance in the existing areas so as to disperse the enemy forces over a sufficiently wider area’.
At the same time, the party has said there was a need to ‘protect the leadership and preserve party cadres and fighters by avoiding unnecessary losses’.
It wants ‘weaknesses in the existing mechanism’ rectified ‘by avoiding everything likely to be exposed to the enemy through betrayers, arrested persons and party records’.
The CPI-Maoist has gone on the offensive in recent months, slaughtering police and paramilitary forces in Chhattisgarh and other states.
The Maoist movement in India began in 1967 in West Bengal’s Naxalbari village because of which the rebels came to be known as Naxalites. Though hundreds of Maoists have been killed since then, they continue to operate in several states.

New Pamphlet: A Revolution at the Brink: Stand With Nepal

by the FIRE Collective in Houston (USA)

Today, seemingly a world away, the population of a small, oppressed nation is engaged in an ongoing revolution that is straining and maneuvering for a decisive victory. Rather than pursuing a rigid path in a sterile and dogmatic way, these revolutionaries have employed a diversity of tactics — from a people’s war to political negotiation to mass protests — aimed at freeing the country’s people. Their thinking is fresh, and they’ve wedded creative innovation with a movement committed to socialism and worldwide liberation from capitalism and imperialism.
They deserve our active political work. We need to help break through the mainstream media whiteout — so more people here in the U.S. can see the ways this revolution is radically changing society, and so we can stop the U.S. government from intervening in Nepal while falsely branding revolutionaries there as terrorists.

Nepal: Toppling Kings and Castes
Nepal is a small country bordered on three sides by India and by China on its fourth frontier. The country is predominantly rural. Exploited peasants of many ethnicities and cultures represent 90 percent of the total population.
Nepal’s monarchy emerged in 1768 to unify the country as a kingdom. This autocratic and theocratic royal family and military force ruled the largely feudal society until revolution arose to oppose it. Through compromises the monarchy made in the face of first the British colonialists, and later the Indian state, the country functioned as a semi-feudal, semi-colonial system in which most Nepalis suffered the worst indignities and crushing poverty. The country was an absolute monarchy until 1990, and even then, the poverty and oppression of the feudal system and the monarchy remained through the slightly varied form of a parliament subordinate to both the king and Indian expansionist interests.
On February 13, 1996, guided by its leader Prachanda, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) launched a planned countrywide military insurrection. The Maobadi, as they are called in Nepal, started their revolution with thousands of initial actions, liberating Rolpa and Rukum, two extremely impoverished neighboring districts in Nepal that are home to the Kham Magar nationality. Nepal’s ruling class, royals and the police responded with repression against peasant populations.
As the revolution continued to advance through this repression, deep divisions within the monarchy and between political parties emerged. King Birendra did not send the royal army against the Maobadi, and resisted those in his own family who (with Indian backing) demanded intervention. And then he (and most of the royal family) died in a palace massacre in 2001 that brought his brother, Gyanendrah, to the throne. Kings in Nepal have historically made claims of divine right, but this new king claimed to be the re-incarnated Hindu god, Vishnu, with an openness that was shocking and extremely anti-democratic. The king sent in the Royal Nepal Army (RNA), terrorizing the people in ways that had not been seen.
Over ten years, the people’s war won many victories, liberating 80 percent of the country’s land, developing new forms of people’s power, people’s courts, new forms of cooperation like the people’s communes, and much more. They formed new autonomous people’s governments in the countryside with deep roots among the poor farmers. In response, the monarchy, police and military burned peasant villages, committed mass rape, censored the press, dissolved the toothless parliament, and, at times, disconnected mobile phones and the Internet — and carried out numerous other repressive measures.
Through an intense struggle over how to confront this situation, the Maobadi decided they had a unique possible opening to unite with broad new forces entering the struggle. They helped turn the revolt against this particularly hated king into a revolutionary challenge to the ideas and institutions of the monarchy itself. The Maobadi called for a ceasefire, and they went into the cities to organize the people there who had previously been kept away from their revolution. They negotiated temporary alliances with parliamentary forces who had opposed the revolution, but who had since come under attack by the monarchy.
And shortly after, in April 2006, people hit the streets demanding an end to the monarchy, even while the king issued orders for protesters to be shot on sight. That movement shook the entire country, and forced Gyanendrah to restore the parliament he had previously dissolved and step down from power. Nepal became the world’s youngest republic. The monarchy was toppled by a combination of the ten-year people’s war and a loose and diverse alliance of progressive people in the urban areas.
The Maobadi launched a process (since 2006) where the struggle has focused on what the new Nepal would be — a parliamentary republic integrated in a corrupt Indian-style parliamentary system subordinate to the world capitalist system, or a people’s democratic republic on the socialist road with an electoral system. This struggle has been waged through sharp political offensives and contestation, but without armed struggle, while the whole process has rested on the existence of a People’s Liberation Army, representing a fundamental challenge to the military and the reactionary plans for the future. The effort has also forwarded the very radical concept of a Constituent Assembly — a historic gathering of elected representatives to envision and create a New Nepal, to fight through which future would replace the monarchist past — as a special and temporary and potentially revolutionary institution for debating and choosing between bourgeois democracy and people’s democracy.
Elections to this Constituent Assembly were held, and the Maobadi took part in these as a tactical step, winning a plurality in the elections. People celebrated in the streets.
The elections and the Constituent Assembly were part of solving the ongoing Nepali crisis by pushing forward the revolutionary process under new conditions. However, the army remains, and forms the basis for the current state (and for the current government in Kathmandu). Although the monarchy is now abolished, the army refuses to bow to civilian control. The current (inevitable and foreseeable) stalemate has not been mainly “a failure” of that process, but the way people would learn, through living experience, who stood for what. The Royal Nepal Army (now renamed the Nepal Army) has contested fundamental change in feudal relations and it has continued to repress the people. And Barack Obama and the U.S. have supported the army’s defiance of legitimate civilian control, encouraged a military/royalist coup, labeled the Maobadi “terrorists, ” sent trainers for commando units and the officer corps, and most likely conducted other intrigues that have not yet been exposed, despite the fact it is clear the Maobadi are leading a major struggle against injustice with the support of millions of people, and are not terrorists at all.

The Resistance, The Revolution
Nepal’s revolutionaries say they are applying the Maoist strategy of New Democratic Revolution and they say they innovate in tactics. They have broken with orthodoxy, but not their radicalism. They have created a sub-stage within the larger strategy — alternating the armed offensive with political offensive. They were able to quickly move from a countrywide insurrection to revolutionary people’s war, and then to mass political mobilizations, quickly shifting their tactics while openly debating their strategy of New Democratic Revolution.
Around the country, the Maobadi advocate for women’s equality in Nepal, including reproductive freedom and property rights, condemning the sex trade, and an end to arranged child marriages that were happening. The revolution is challenging the ways traditional society has oppressed young people through arranged marriages, harsh discrimination by caste and forbidding of inter-caste marriages. Taking to heart’s Lenin’s idea that “the measure of any revolution is the degree to which it liberates women,” and saying “without the participation of women, no revolutionary movement in this world has succeeded nor will succeed in the future,” the Maobadi organize campaigns against domestic violence and educational programs intended to orient women to see themselves as full participants in society and struggles. In addition, a new generation is demanding a right to have love matches (to choose its own marriage partners). Such revolutionary changes to the culture, as well as breaking down the caste system, have won wide support for the Maobadi. Here we have a society where it has historically been illegal for women in some areas to eat before their husbands, where women were legally the property of their husbands, and where women are now playing leading roles in the revolution and its party.
The Maobadi were a critical part of the diverse 2006 People’s Movement or Jana Andolan, a broad coalition movement that ended monarchic rule. The effort also put into place a peace accord and the ascension of Maobadi to Nepal’s Constituent Assembly. However, while they were in the assembly, the Maobadi have been kept out of control over the actual state apparatus because a hostile feudal army existed undefeated. Nepal will remain oppressed by imperialism until the Maobadi and the people end this army’s power.
The people’s war and the emergence of the People’s Liberation Army made possible the mass movement that toppled the monarchy in 2006. However even as elected representatives of the people debated how to form a New Nepal – it has become clearer the still-undefeated Nepal Army remains a key obstacle to radical change. That army high command has refused to accept civilian control. And while the Maobadi were for a while heading the elected government — they were acutely aware they did not yet dominate the state (or control the army forming the key remaining institution of that old state.)
From the essay “No Revolution Can Be Replicated, But Developed,” Basanta of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) [new name of the CPN(M)] explained the organization believes, while there are general truths governing revolution, each revolutionary struggle also has its own character and needs.
Basanta wrote:
“Comrade Mao has taught us that ‘Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.’ It is a general truth for any revolution and a revolutionary party. In due course, gun is decisive to make a revolution victorious. But it is possible only when the party of the proletariat fights ideologically and politically in all fronts and crushes all the strategies that the imperialism and domestic reaction enforce to prevent revolution in the given country. In the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution, the enemy strategy has been to make use of various measures that can prevent the development of revolutionary consciousness among the masses. To abort revolution in its embryo, the measures that the imperialist system has been making use of are psychological warfare, cultural war, enemy infiltration to carry out destructive activities in the party of the proletariat, economic and political reforms to confuse the revolutionary masses, network of NGOs and INGOs to entrap petty bourgeois circle in the reformist mirage, foreign employment, religious superstition etc. Armed suppression and genocide is its final resort after the revolution is born. In short, the enemy fights a total war. Unless one can revolutionize masses by waging ideological war to crush such measures, no people’s war, even if initiated, can attain its goal.” [NGOs are non-governmental organizations that perform social services and develop political networks with international funding.]
The Maobadi resigned from the national government in May, 2009 (i.e. from government posts heading key ministries and the post of prime minister) when the army refused to obey their commands to reorganize its high command. The Maobadi wanted to help make it clear to the people that government office, without control over the army, would be a farce or worse, and would be courting a coup. And the UCPN(M) openly started to organize new mass protests and talk about preparing a communist insurrection.
From the beginning of the 2006 peace process, the Maobadi organized their ongoing struggle at two levels (from the streets and villages, and from within their elected posts in the assembly and government) while the People’s Liberation Army awaits and trains in camps scattered throughout the country. In this complex and rapidly developing position, which has all along had elements of highly contested “dual power,” the Maobadi have been fighting to create the conditions for a successful seizure of overall power – so the revolution can press through, and the uprooting of ancient oppressions can take place. This is necessarily taking the form of preparing the people (and the People’s Liberation Army fighters) for new storms, and in particular new uprisings focused on overall countrywide victory and state power.

Why Nepal Matters
The Maobadi have put forward a vision in which a new socialist Nepal could be the catalyst for world revolution and a struggle uniting South Asia.
This is a time when far too many progressive people have lost hope over the very idea of a radically new society. The Nepali revolution speaks to and leads millions. It confirms a real-but-radical revolutionary mass movement is possible.
Through the revolution, the Maobadi are challenging unequal power relations in South Asia, in ways destined to impact imperialism and capital worldwide. Western powers sense the revolution’s popular power, and have supported pro-monarchy and pro-U.S. forces with weapons and aid to India. Will Nepal be the next victim of U.S.-supported destabilization? Support for the revolution is important to defending this remarkable movement.

What You Can Do
Stay informed. Nepal’s revolution is still in process, and is threatened by forces opposed to the liberation of Nepal’s people. Websites like Revolution in South Asia are sharing news as it happens.
Share this material. Pass the word about the revolution in Nepal by sharing this information with others.
Educate yourself & others. As revolutionary organizer from the Kasama Project, Mike Ely, writes, “Here it is: A little-known revolution in Nepal. Who will we tell about it? What will we learn from it? What will we do about it?”
There need to be teach-ins and solidarity campaigns that go up against the media white-out surrounding this struggle. Our collective wants to be part of organizing that, and encourages others to take up new solidarity work as well.
Defend this revolution. As the U.S. calls these revolutionaries terrorists, politically conscious people should be here to defeat those lies. When more repression comes down on the revolutionaries of Nepal, there should be mass mobilization in the country orchestrating it. Let’s unapologetically stand with the struggle of the Nepali people.
Revolutionaries are Not Terrorists! Take Nepal’s Maobadi off the U.S. Terrorist Lists!
Victory to Nepal’s Communist Revolution! All Power to the People!