Statement from Communist Party of India (M-L) NAXALBARI

Dear Comrades, Lal Salam! We greet you on this historic occasion and apologise for not being able to participate directly. Please accept this message instead. Mao Tsetung has taught us the decisive importance of a correct ideological, political line. The history of your party itself stands testimony to this. With a correct line, it could rebel against the Teng Siao Ping revisionists who seized power through a coup in 1976, destroyed the historic advances made through the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and restored capitalism in socialist China. Thus, persisting on the path laid down by Mao Tsetung, your party played an important role in the international struggle to uphold the banner of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism in the wake of this setback, the struggle that led to the formation of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM). Further on, by deepening the struggle to uphold and apply Maoism, your party ruptured from dogmato-revisionist views that blocked revolution. It forged a correct line and boldly initiated the people’s war. The great gains of this glorious war, “creation of People’s Liberation Army, establishment of base areas and people’s government, role played by workers, peasants, women, indigenous nationalities and Dalits, and the awareness developed in this whole process”, were principally the gains of the correct line followed by your party. Today most of them are lost. This is the outcome of the subversion of the Maoist line and the imposition of a revisionist line by the Prachanda-Bhattarai clique. In both its advances and setbacks, the history of the international communist movement and its national contingents confirms the truth ‘The correctness or incorrectness of the line decides everything’. You have revolted against the Prachanda-Bhattarai revisionist line. This Congress is the child of that revolt. It has the task of deepening the struggle against Prachanda- Bhattarai revisionism, consolidating the gains, forging a correct line and chalking out concrete plans for retaking the revolutionary road in the midst of the complex political situation in your country. The successful accomplishement of this task is mainly a matter of summing up the lessons of your own struggles, both the people’s war and the line struggle within the party. But it obviously will not be restricted to that alone. As a contingent of the international communist movement you will also draw on its wider experiences and lessons. Here we would like to share an important lesson synthesised by the founder leader of our party, comrade Charu Mazumdar. Critically analysing the numerous revolts against the rightist leadership, he pointed out how centrist elements repeatedly blunted and betrayed them. He warned that “Centrism is the stepping stone to revisionism” and called on the rank and file to root it out. Centrism can appear in many forms. But its essence is always the same - it fails to take ideological struggle to its revolutionary conclusion. It blocks the communists from making a complete rupture from the wrong line, methods and practice. Ultimately, it smuggles back the rotten old stuff dressed up in new garb. Therefore, the struggle against revisionism must be extended to exposing and rupturing from centrism by digging out its concrete manifestations. This is the lesson we have learnt from the history of the communist movement in our country. We hope it will be of use to you during your deliberations in this Congress. When it was following a correct line, your party had complete faith in the masses of Nepal and throughout the world. This was the bedrock strength of the people’s war it led. Fully relying on the masses and internationalist ties with other Maoist parties, this revolutionary war succesfully inflicted significant defeats on internal reaction and foiled the machinations of imperialism and Indian expansionism. The Prachanda-Bhattarai clique tried their best to cut off these sources of strength. Reliance on proletarian internationalist ties with Maoist parties in South Asia and elsewhere was increasingly undermined and replaced by diplomatic manoueveres to cosy up with Indian expansionism and imperialism. At one time, reliance on the boundless revolutionary will and patriotism of the Nepali people was sought to be replaced by the Prachanda faction with reliance on the Chinese state as a counter to Indian expansionist/ US imperialist threats. This deviation was inevitable. Revisionism can never dare to rely on the masses. It can never draw strength from proletarian internationalism. Conversely, tactics or policies that rely on diplomatic relations with reactionary states instead of placing faith on the masses, tactics that give more importance to cosying up with revisionist and reactionary parties than proletarian internationalist ties with fraternal Maoist parties, inevitably reflect some grave ideological defect. The matter is not in the gloss, the sweet talk justifying this in the name of ‘tactical moves’ or something else, but in its ultimately liquidationist essence. This is an important lesson we have learnt from the bitter setback suffered by the Nepalese and international Maoist movement through the treachery of the Prachanda-Bhattarai clique. We put this before you in the belief that your Congress will be able to deal with this issue thoroughly, since you have experienced it directly. Your Congress is being held at a time when the world situation is bearing out the words of the 2012 Special Meeting of RIM Parties and Organisations which noted that “The devastations of imperialist globalisation, wars of aggression and the devastating economic crisis of the imperialist system and its impact on proletarians and the broad masses have awakened worldwide a wave of struggles and revolts. In this context a potential new wave of the world proletarian revolution develops and emerges, with the people’s wars led by Maoist parties as its reference points and strategic anchor.” The global financial crisis has thrown the imperialist economies into recession. Third world powers like China and India, who earlier had seemed capable of holding out, are also caught in its grip. Reactionary rulers throughout the world throw the whole weight of the crisis on the backs of the people. And the peoples of the world are out on the streets, in one country or the other, to resist and beat back this attack. But their heroic struggles, including the Arab revolts that brought down decades old dictatorships, are being subverted. They fail to achieve radical, revolutionary, change. Revisonism and dogmatism pick on these failures to justify their own pessimist conclusions. But Maoists see the great potential for revolution indicated by this turmoil. They understand the huge responsibility they have in unleahing this potential by hoisting the banner of MLM in words and deeds. What is true of the world is true of South Asia also. In this region Indian expansionism is the central pillar of reaction. Since it is now openly backed by US imperialism, it has become even more arrogant and aggressive. Its aggravated intervention in Nepal’s political affairs and other crimes it has committed, and is committing, against your country are well known. Indian expansionism dominates over the nations and peoples of South Asia politically, economically and culturally. Its attempt to armtwist the Maldivian government to protect Indian bureacrat capitalist interests is a recent example. The intensified exploitation and oppression carried out by the Indian ruling classes inside India is the other side of their reactionary face. Within this, the massive ‘war on the people’ it has launched to destroy the people’s war led by the CPI(Maoist) stands out as a focal point. This is so because this revolutionary war stands up as the biggest obstacle to the plans of the Indian ruling classes who want to further open up the country to intensified imperialist, bureaucrat capitalist penetration in accordance to the needs of globalisation. The exploitation and oppression of the Indian ruling classes within India and in neighbouring countries has always drawn forth fierce resistance from the people. This continues to be so. Along with the deep anger of the masses against the ruling classes of their own countries, this goes to intensify contradictions and promotes the grounds for revolution. Today, while assessing the situation in South Asia we must also take note of a new factor - the growing contention between Indian expansionism (backed by US imperialism) and Chinese expansionism. This is not limited to South Asia. It extends to South East Asia. It must be analysed in relation to the US imperialism’s strategic plans to retain and bolster its domination in these regions and the Pacific against any threat that could arise from China. So far as South Asia is concerned, this contention has created opportunities for the comprador rulers of smaller countries to either stand up to Indian expansionist pressures or drive better bargains. This causes problems for the Indian state and upsets some of its plans. To that extent it can be of indirect use to the nations and peoples of South Asia in their struggles against Indian expansionism. But, being disciples of Mao Tsetung, we must never forget his words: “beware of the wolf entering from the backdoor, while driving away the tiger from the frontdoor.” The Chinese ruling classes are as reactionary as any other comprador state. Their history is as bloody as that of any other exploiter. Following the coup in 1976, they imprisoned and murdered thousands of Maoists, including the valiant fighters comrades Chiang Ching and Chang Chun Chiao. While they amass billions, the vast majority of the Chinese masses rot in poverty. Their revolts against such inhuman conditions are suppressed by brute force. The Chinese workers are forced to slave for imperialist transnational corporations in the most oppressive labour relations enforced and protected by the Chinese state. Obviously, this ‘wolf’ ever be a genuine friend of the revolutionary people in any country? Today, it is very important that the Maoists have clarity on this and educate the people. In the 1970s and ‘80s, the erstwhile Soviet social imperialists infiltrated and subverted various revolutionary movements by offering diplomatic and material support. Those bitter experiences teach us that Mao’s warning must be taken up as a guideline by all of us while chalking out our strategy and tactics in today’s People’s Voice { 23 } South Asia, within the context of the expansionist contention developing here. The potential for revolution is bright. But the subject weakness of the Maoists stands out. Their internationalist organisations, the Revolutionary Internationalist Movemement (RIM) and the Co-ordinating Committee of Maoist Parties and Organisatons of South Asia (CCOMPOSA), have become defunct. The revisionism of the Prachanda- Bhattarai clique was joined by the revisionism of Bob Avakian in destroying the RIM. The former is extremely exposed because of its open surrender to reaction. But many are confused by Avakian’s post-MLM revisionism because it is camouflaged in a lot of Marxist verbiage. Yet the fact is that it is no less dangerous. It insists on imposing Avakianism as the guiding ideology of the international communist movement thus liquidating its MLM base. So the genuine Maoists are faced with the task of fighting against both these varities of neo-revisionism and reorganising their international organisations. In the past, your party contributed immensely to the strengthening of internationalist ties and the formation of the RIM and CCOMPOSA. These internationalist Maoist organisations became a reality through ‘unity of the like-minded’. They could purposefully promote MLM and aid revolution, instead of becoming empty resolutionshops, precisely because of their common ideological foundations. We can never forget this valuable lesson. Today, the world is witness to numerous progressive, democratic forces and trends who are opposed to imperialist globalisation and particularly to US imperialism. This affords grounds for various levels or forms of broad unity. But that cannot replace the international organisation of Maoists. In fact, such broader unity of anti-imperialist forces calls for the vanguard role of a Maoist international organisation. We take this opportunity to once again place before you the call made by the 2012 Special Meeting of the RIM Parties and Organisations – “Today, facing the crisis and the collapse of the RIM, we must rebuild the international organization of MLM parties and organizations on the basis of the positive and negative experiences of the RIM. The current situation presents the need to unite in this new organization all the MLM parties and organizations, inside and outside the RIM, for a political and organizational leap. This is necessary to put the communist movement at the height of the class struggle in the new century.” Addressing the need for broader unity, it has also noted that “The international organization of MLM communists is and should be the core of a front, of an international anti-imperialist alliance of the proletarians and oppressed peoples.” Dear comrades, We hope we haven’t taken up too much of your time. The communists and revolutionary masses in Nepal and throughout the world look up to you with great expectations. Let this be a decisive moment in the history of your party and of the international Maoist movement. We end this message, wishing you all success in accomplishing the tasks you have taken up with communist greetings Central Organisation Committee, Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) NAXALBARI January 9, 2013