Tuesday, November 14, 2006
CPN(M) - Worker #10
The Worker, #10, May 2006
Article
"Often, correct ideas can be arrived at only after many repetitions of the process leading from matter to consciousness and then back to matter, that is, leading from practice to knowledge, and then back to practice. Such is the Marxist theory of knowledge, the dialectical materialist theory of knowledge."
—Mao Tse-tung, Where Do Correct Ideas Come From? (May 1963)
The People's War (PW) led by the CPN (Maoist) in Nepal has completed its historical ten years. Internationally, in the 30 years after the demise of Mao and, internally, in the 237 years after the formation of a centralized feudal state under the leadership of Prithvi Narayan Shah, these ten years have been the most significant years. Hence the task of analysis and synthesis of its varied dimensions from different angles is underway, and it will continue in the days to come. Among these, the aspect of creative application of the science of proletarian revolution of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism (MLM) in the concrete conditions of the present day world and Nepal and the synthesis of the developed set of ideas during the process as 'Prachanda Path', is the most significant achievement in these years. To constantly uphold the Maoist dictum of 'Whether the ideological and political line is correct or not, decides everything' as a guiding principle, is the characteristic feature of this epochal PW. As a result of this, in these ten years the PW has not only developed in a fast pace and enforced multi-faceted revolutionary transformation of the Nepalese society caught in stagnation and decay since ages, but it has also taken up the cudgel against world imperialism spearheading the so-called 'endless war' against 'terrorism' and has successfully developed into a centre of hope for the freedom-loving people of the world. Particularly, in the context of the serious counter-revolutionary setbacks faced by the revolutions of the 20th century one after another and in the light of the vicious ideological offensive against the fighting masses of the world launched by the imperialist opinion makers in the name of such regressive formulations as 'end of history', 'end of ideology', 'clash of civilization', 'post-modernism' etc., the CPN (Maoist) under the leadership of Chairman Prachanda has resolved that only through the defence, application and development of MLM can a new revolutionary wave be created in the 21st century. Hence foremost priority has been accorded to the ideological work. It is, therefore, utmost imperative that while making a review of the historic ten years of the PW special stress be given to the analysis of its ideological aspect.
Ideological Development Highlighting the historico-materialist concept of ideological development and its class character, in the famous 'Manifesto of the Communist Party', Marx and Engels had said:
"Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that men's ideas, views and conceptions, in one word, man's consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and in his social life?
"What else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual production changes its character in proportion as material production is changed? The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class."
Thus, it is evident that the consciousness or idea born as a result of interactive reflections of the material and social world in human brain keeps on transforming or developing in accordance with the pace of transformation of the material and social world in constant motion. Moreover, in a class divided society, idea or outlook is formed according to the position of the individual in social relation of production, and it keeps on transforming or developing in steps with the changes in relation of production or social life. Thus, pointing out that correct ideas do not fall from the sky but develop during the course of physical and social struggle, Mao had said: "Where do correct ideas come from? ... They come from social practice, and from it alone; they come from three kinds of social practice, the struggle for production, the class struggle and scientific experiment." ["Where Do Correct Ideas Come From?", 1963]
Mao also elucidated that ideas do not develop as a direct reflection of matter in a mechanical and simplistic manner, but as an initial leap from matter to consciousness and again another leap from consciousness to the development of new material world, which would keep on repeating endlessly leading to continuous development of ideas. From this, it follows that during the process of class war or people's war, which is the highest form of class struggle, the application and development of revolutionary ideas, too, would take place in corresponding height and speed. This truth should be correctly grasped by the proletarian revolutionaries.
In this context, one has to be cautious about two types of deviations from two opposite poles on the question of development of revolutionary ideology, and focus on the principled and creative development of MLM. Firstly, it is the rightist revisionist deviation, which discards the fundamental principles of the science of revolution in the pretext of development of ideology and of getting creative. The proclaimed revisionists ranging from Bernstein to Deng in the International Communist Movement and from Rayamajhi to the UML in Nepal, abandon the basic tenets of MLM, like class concept of the state, inevitability of use of force in revolution, dictatorship of the proletariat, continuous revolution, etc., and commit the crime of converting MLM into a bourgeois trade-mark just to hoodwink the working class. This is not development of science and ideology but its abandonment, and is thus a naked form of liquidationism. Another tendency related to this but masquerading in a 'left' cloak is the tendency of militant pragmatism, which focuses on the parts rather than on the whole and highly exaggerates them. This ultimately serves revisionism. Secondly, there is the tendency of dogmato-revisionism, which reduces the science of revolution into a lifeless dogma and a religious sect in the pretext of defending the ideology and remaining principled. This rightist conservative tendency appearing in a 'left' guise and represented by Enver Hoxhas internationally and by Mohan Bikram Singhs in Nepal, does not acknowledge the need to develop the ideology and science in keeping with the motion of time and place and keeps on chanting as formulae certain ideas developed in a different context, which ultimately leads the ideology and the revolution to liquidation. Contrary to both of these erroneous and harmful tendencies, creative MLM firmly upholds its basic principles and attempts to apply and develop the ideas in keeping with the times by making concrete analysis of concrete conditions.
The CPN (Maoist) has been waging relentless struggle against all kinds of revisionism and dogmatism and hammering on creative application and development of MLM through the process of the great PW for the past ten years, and the set of ideas developed in the process has been synthesized as MLM and Prachanda Path. Moreover, the Party has been seriously practicing the dialectical process of solving new problems of revolution through the development of ideas and further developing and enriching the ideas from the new experiences of revolution.
Historical Process of Development
In order to understand the process of development of ideas during the past ten years of the PW, it is necessary to pay attention to the phase of preparation prior to the initiation of the PW, too. As MLM is basically a science of history and it has an international character, it is only after correctly identifying and defining its historically proved universal laws first that its further application and development is possible. Accordingly, it may be useful to have broad review of the important decisions of the Party from the Unity Congress held in December 1991 to the Central Committee Plenum in September-October 2005. It is axiomatic that Com. Prachanda has played the leading role in this process of ideological synthesis as he has remained first the General Secretary and then the Chairman of the Party throughout this period.
The period from 1991 to 1996 was basically the period of ideological and material preparation for the PW. During this period a vigorous struggle was waged particularly against revisionism, nationally and internationally, to defend the revolutionary spirit of MLM and to prepare ground for its application in the specificities of Nepal and present day world. In this context, the Unity Congress held in 1991 fundamentally prepared the main ideological base of the revolution by upholding Maoism as the developed, higher and third stage of Marxism-Leninism. It also formulated the general line of the revolution by upholding the politico-military line of protracted PW. These decisions were of historical significance in the fight against Right revisionism, which was the main danger then. Also, struggle was waged against sectarian and mechanical dogmatist thinking, which was though a lesser evil, and in the specificities of Nepal a policy was pursued to develop countrywide mass movement as a subsidiary means of preparation for the PW through the United People's Front (UPF) and to make a limited use of parliamentary and local elections. These ideological and political decisions and practice were quite challenging and of far-reaching significance in the context of application and development of creative and revolutionary MLM, while fighting against both Right revisionist and dogmatic thinking. After three years of this practice and vigorous struggle against rightist liquidationism within the Party, the revolutionary political line of the Party was established among the general masses throughout the country.
In this process, the resolutions of the Third Extended Meeting (EM) of the Central Committee (CC) of the Party organized in February 1995 on initiating the PW were another important milestone in the development of the revolutionary ideas. Two decisions of the Third EM were particularly significant in the development of the ideas. Firstly, it was about grasping the law of development of society not in a reformist way as gradualism but in a revolutionary dialectical way as leap of quantity into quality through shock, rupture and catastrophe. This was also the question of initiating the PW in a planned manner. There was quite a serious debate among the top leadership of the Party on this issue. Secondly, it was about the question of application of the line of protracted PW in the concrete historical, geographical, social, political and economic condition of Nepal and about working out the series of strategy and tactics accordingly. The most important aspect of this issue was that the PW in Nepal would not be rooted in one area for quite long, like Chinkangsan in China, and then expand to other areas but it would be initiated from more than one area and it would require the defense of a continuous political intervention at the central level. This has been emphatically proved by the experiences of the past ten years.
In addition to this, the seven-point ideological commitments of the Party made in the First Plan of the initiation and the well-known 40-points demand presented by the UPF on the eve of the initiation of the PW constitute a correct fusion of the strategy and tactics of revolution. "Our Commitments for the Historic Initiation of the PW" [see, Some Important Documents of the CPN (Maoist), 2004] worked out in October 1995 lays down the broad ideological framework for the march from New Democratic Revolution (NDR) via Socialism and Continuous Revolution to Communism in seven points, and the 40-points demand presented on February 6,1996, provides the minimum programme of the NDR in a legal and popular language. The policy of strategic firmness and tactical flexibility manifested in them has now become a very important dimension of the developed set of ideas of 'Prachanda Path', and without correctly grasping this the essence of 'Prachanda Path' cannot be fathomed.
On completion of this process of preparation, the revolutionary PW was formally initiated on February 13, 1996 (Fagun 1, 2052 B.S.) as a great rebellion of the exploited and the oppressed masses in the form of countrywide military and non-military actions. It was an epochal event to transform revolutionary ideas into a material force and contribute towards further development of ideas. This is amply reflected in the 'Appeal' to the masses issued by the Party Central headquarters on the occasion. (See, ibid.) The process of initiation of the PW and the ideology and politics behind it were substantially different and in some form of rupture from the traditional thinking and process. The periodic plans for continuation and development of the PW formulated since then ensured the continuous process of making leaps from ideas to actions and again from actions to ideas.
The Fourth EM of the Party held after two and a half years of the historic initiation of the PW in September 1998 synthesized the important experiences of class struggle and ideological struggle and passed important resolutions, principally on the development of base areas in the specificities of Nepal and centralization of leadership in the revolutionary movement and the Party. Making an objective assessment of the problems faced by the PW particularly after the demise of Mao, in different countries of the world due to the ideological obfuscation on the question of guerilla zones and base areas, the EM stressed that the question of base areas or the creation of new local people's power is the key question in any PW. Subsequently, it resolved to develop base areas within one's own specificities and for this to create wide mass base on the basis of ideological leadership of the Party, armed strength of the People's Army and revolutionary mass line. This was a significant step in the development of revolutionary ideas. Similarly, the question of development of unified and centralized leadership in the Party, People's Army and the United Front was related to the question of fusion of democracy and centralism, organizationally, and of necessity and freedom, philosophically, which has been under consistent debate in the International Communist Movement, too. This was also related to the further development of the theory of continuous revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat during the Great Proletarian Cultured Revolution (GPCR) under Mao's leadership. The debate conducted within the Party during this period had contributed significantly in the overall development of revolutionary ideas.
Then ensued a vigorous ideological struggle against a petty-bourgeois Right opportunist tendency masquerading in 'left' garb, which was indigenously branded as 'Alok tendency'. Also, the class struggle developed in leaps and bound.
It this background, the historic Second National Conference of the Party was convened exactly after five years of the initiation of the PW in February 2001, which made certain decisions of epochal nature and resolved to synthesize the developed set of ideas as 'Prachanda Path'. Firstly, after making a serious review of the International Communist Movement, it was resolved to rectify particularly the monolithic and metaphysical shortcomings of the Third International and Com. Stalin and to advance from the postulates of the GPCR under Com. Mao. Secondly, a thorough and critical review of the Nepalese society and the history of the Nepalese communist movement was made and the Party, i.e. the CPN (Maoist), was acknowledged as the highest synthesis of all revolutionary currents since 1949. Accordingly it was resolved to develop a new type of revolutionary Party and a People's Army and revolutionary United Front under its leadership. Thirdly, in keeping with the ever changing world situation and the specificities of Nepal it was decided to fuse certain aspects of the strategy of armed insurrection to the military strategy of protracted PW from the very beginning. Also the concept of development of a South Asian Federation was formulated. Fourthly, taking into consideration the existing national and international balance of political forces, an immediate tactical slogan of a broad political conference, interim government and Constituent Assembly was advanced, which later became the principal, political agenda of the whole country. Thus the resolutions of the Second National Conference represented a great leap in the ideological, political, organizational and, military fields and proved to be an historical milestone in the development of revolutionary ideas.
Immediately after the conclusion of the Second National Conference the crisis within the reactionary state was further hastened, which culminated in the infamous palace massacre of June 1, 2001. This was followed by the first truce and negotiation with the old state. In the meantime, a formal announcement of the formation of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), and United Revolutionary People's Council, an embryonic form of Central People's Government Organising Committee, was made. The breakdown of the negotiations in November 2001 was followed in quick succession by declaration of a state of emergency by the old state, deployment of the Royal Nepal Army (RNA) against the PW, qualitatively higher military actions by the PLA throughout the country, further intensification of the crisis of old state manifested in the dissolution of the parliament in May 2002 and a direct royal takeover in October 2002, the second truce and negotiations with the old state and massive countrywide mass mobilization by the Party. In this light, another historic Plenum of the CC of the Party was held in Rolpa in May-June 2003. This Plenum adopted a document of monumental significance on 'The Development of Democracy in the 21st Century'. After making a critical review of the experiences of revolution and counter-revolution in the 20th century, the document advocated the need to ensure the supervision, intervention and control of the masses over the Party, army and the state in order to march along the path of continuous revolution after making the revolution, and for this advanced the concept of practicing a multi-party competitive system within the stipulated constitutional framework. This was a new milestone in the development of revolutionary ideas.
Another Plenum of the CC held in August 2004 declared the PW to have entered into the third and last stage of the strategic offensive. However, the inability of the Party to manage in a proper manner the inner struggle brewing within the Party for some time led to very unhealthy developments particularly after the Politbureau meeting held in January 2005. Nevertheless practicing the correct method of revolutionary dialectics of converting the negative into positive, the plenum of the CC convened in September-October 2005 resolved to make 'revolution within revolution' and achieved new unity on a new basis by raising the whole proletarian ideology to a new height. Further the plenum made certain bold decisions of longterm significance. This was in essence another historical milestone in the development of revolutionary ideas.
Firstly, the resolution made an objective assessment of the present day globalized imperialism and advanced the conception that only by taking a worldwide initiative of revolution in the new context that the revolution in a particular country can be accomplished and defended. Secondly, it was resolved that the proletarian character of the Party, army and state needed to be preserved by constantly launching a revolution within the revolution in the spirit of the GPCR not only after accomplishing revolution but even earlier than that. In this context it was further affirmed that, among other things, the undeclared tradition of a lifelong tenure of the authoritative leadership in the Party and the state should be done away with and the chain of a new leadership should be groomed well in time. Thirdly, keeping in mind the prevailing political balance of power in the country and the international situation it was decided to take special initiative to implement the immediate tactics of multi-party democratic republic, which prepared the ground for concluding the 12-point understanding with other parliamentary political parties to spearhead the anti-monarchy mass movement. Fourthly, an assessment of the causes of setbacks met by almost all the revolutionary PWs since Mao's death particularly after their reaching the stage of strategic offensive was made and it was resolved not only to fuse the military strategies of protracted PW and general insurrection but also to attempt to develop a new military strategy in keeping with the new situation. It has also been agreed to launch a great debate within and outside the Party over all these new proposals before a final decision is made in the forthcoming Congress of the Party.
A series of face to face interviews granted by Chairman Prachanda to selected national and international media on the historic occasion of completion of ten years by the PW in February 2006 (See, for example, the interviews to Kantipur and The Kathmandu Post from Nepal, The Hindu from India and the BBC World Service television network from London) and his expositions particularly on the question of development of democracy and the immediate tactics of democratic republic, have contributed significantly to establish the newly developed set of ideas at the international level and among the general masses. Thus, it is evident that the development of revolutionary ideas is proceeding amidst the vigorous class struggle and inner-Party struggle generally since the time of preparation of PW and particularly during the past ten years of the ongoing PW. Also, it needs to be correctly grasped that in the initial and weaker stage of the movement the thrust was on the defence of the fundamental principles of MLM and with the gradual development and unfolding of new problems in the movement, the focus shifted more on the development of the ideas. As Chairman Prachanda played the main leadership role during this entire process, it was obvious that the developed set of ideas was concretized and synthesized as 'Prachanda Path'.
Important Dimensions of the Developed Set of Ideas Some of the important dimensions of the developed set of ideas, namely MLM and Prachanda Path, which is advancing in the furnace of class struggle and ideological struggle, may be enumerated as follows:
a. The sphere of philosophy
The most scientific and advanced philosophy to date for cognition and transformation of the material and social world is dialectical and historical materialism, which is the philosophy of struggle of the proletariat. However, philosophy itself has a class character and along with the change in the material and social world new dimensions are added in the understanding of the laws of philosophy. In this context, the main aspect of development of ideas in the field of philosophy during the practice of the past ten years is to uphold and develop the 'critical' and 'revolutionary' spirit of dialectics as stressed by Lenin after launching vigorous struggle against the metaphysical, idealist, empiricist agnostic, mechanical materialist and other distortions in grasping and practicing materialist dialectics.
Firstly, the development of nature, society and human consciousness takes place not in a gradual evolutionary or reformist way as claimed by vulgar evolutionists but in a leap from quantity into quality and in a break in continuity. This is the basic principle of revolutionary dialectics on the law of development. The correct application of this law in class struggle and further enhancing its understanding is a very significant achievement. This has been clearly enunciated in the resolution proposed by the then General Secretary Com. Prachanda and adopted by the Third EM, thus:
"Marxism is a philosophy of struggle. The law of development according to Marxist dialectics is that each process of development in nature, society and human thought takes place through struggle of opposites and its obvious result will take the form of a leap. Any thought that sees any kind of development process as an ordinary addition subtraction schema and as a gradual evolution would be exposed as bourgeois evolution by the Marxist. It is clear that transformation from one process to another process does not take place gradually, but through leap, through qualitative change, through revolution". [op. cit. p.22]
Accordingly, it is particularly noteworthy that plans for various political and military struggles have been made in terms of big push and the inner struggles occurring occasionally within the Party are solved in terms of rupture and transformation. In this sense, just for convenience, 'Prachanda Path' may be termed as philosophy or ideology of leap.
Secondly, fundamental premise of materialist dialectics is to regard unity of opposites as the basic law of being of matter or consciousness and to accept that everything divides into two and there is a continuous process of unity-struggle-transformation between the opposites. However, in the matter of grasping this law, on the one hand, there is the monolithic view which rejects the existence of the opposites and, on the other, there is the pluralistic view which denies that the opposites are not independent of each other but interdependent and they transform into each other in particular conditions. Because of this many deviations and problems have occurred in the international and the Nepalese communist movement. Fighting against both of these metaphysical and erroneous thinkings, the past ten years have seen finest practice of materialist dialectics in the form of vigorous struggles at times and unity with transformation at other times in regards to the opposite forces and tendencies both within and without the Party. This is not merely a question related to simple practical matters but a very significant question of ideology and philosophy. It is important to grasp that the key to overall development of MLM lies in this very question.
Thirdly, among the contradictions or opposites, it is always one aspect that is principal and the others are secondary, and correct identification is made through concrete analysis of concrete conditions. However, the metaphysical thinking does not make the analysis of this difference and it does not see the other one while seeing one, or sees both as equal. This causes a great damage to the revolution either from getting one-sided, mechanical and sectarian or being liberal and eclectic. Contrary to this, 'Prachanda Path' has always stressed on differentiating the contradictory aspects into principal and secondary, and goaded to 'stress' on the principal aspect and to 'pay attention' to the secondary aspect, or to make a dialectical (and not mechanical) interpenetration or fusion of the two. Clarity on this ideological question is imperative to advance the revolution by maintaining correct balance between the contradictory aspects of theory and practice, military and non-military struggle, centralism and democracy, war and negotiation, class question and national-regional-gender question, tasks in urban and rural areas, open and underground work, strategy and tactics, leadership and cadres, Party and army or united front, the question of nationalism and democracy, etc. In this sense, one should not mind if somebody simplifies and calls 'Prachanda Path' as the theory of fusion. Of course, if the two aspects are seen as equal or the interrelation between them is taken as stable or permanent, it would be eclecticism, and some people may even charge 'Prachanda Path' with this. However, dialectical fusion is within the fundamental law of unity of opposites and is quite revolutionary, and hence has no relation with eclecticism.
Fourthly, among the contradictory aspects like matter and consciousness, productive forces and production relations, reality and possibility, necessity and freedom, etc., the former is principal and latter is secondary. However, they are never independent of each other and in particular conditions the latter aspect assumes primacy over the former. The mechanical materialist or idealist tendency that fails to grasp this dialectical interrelationship or that one aspect transforms into the other has created great havoc in the revolutionary movement. Assessing the experiences of the past revolutions and counter-revolutions in the International Communist Movement and particularly those of the GPCR, which remained incomplete, the CPN (Maoist) has made considerable stride in the ideological development on this issue during the course of class struggle and inner-Party struggle in the last ten years. It is important to note that the basic political concepts of 'Prachanda Path', like revolution within revolution, continuous revolution after making the revolution, development of democracy in the 21st century, ensuring a chain of revolutionary successors while the authoritative leadership is still alive, etc., have emanated from this thinking.
b. The sphere of political economy
As, political economy basically deals with the laws of development of society and ascertains class relations at the national and international level, it plays a crucial role in the development of the revolutionary movement. Hence 'Prachanda Path' has made significant ideological development in this sphere during the past ten years of rapid stride of the PW.
Firstly, the PW was initiated within the analytical framework that the contradiction between imperialism and oppressed nations and people is the principal contradiction at the global level and that the ever aggravating imperialist crisis as foreseen by Mao in his famed dictum 'The coming 50 to 100 years will be the years of great upheavals' is preparing a favorable objective basis for world proletarian revolution. By the end of the ten years since then the Party has made significant advancement in the theoretical understanding of new characteristics of globalized imperialism and its impact in the strategy of proletarian revolution. On this, the resolution adopted by the CC plenum held in September-October 2005, says: "The attention of the proletarian revolutionaries of the 21st century must be focused seriously on the fact that the analysis that Lenin and Mao had made on imperialism and a number of concepts they had developed on its basis regarding proletarian strategy have lagged behind. Following the Second World War, the inter-imperialist rivalry and Lenin's analysis on the nature of war that continues among them to divide and redivide a certain part of the world and the proletarian strategy built up on its basis, and following the Cold War, the situation of the analysis of Three Worlds made by Mao, even though in a tactical sense, do not basically exist. The condition of the US imperialism, which is advancing as a globalized form of state, has caused Lenin's and Mao's analyses on this to lag behind in the same manner as the development of imperialism in Lenin's time had made Marx's then analysis and strategy, based on his analysis of capitalism, that revolution will take place firstly & simultaneously in the developed capitalist countries of Europe, to lag behind. This is the principal issue for developing MLM and determining new proletarian strategy in the 21st century." Pointing towards the new proletarian strategy the Resolution further says: "The necessity of developing the concept of South Asian Soviet Federation in the 21st century as put forward by the Second National Conference of our Party to the concept of World Federation and waging the national liberation, democratic and socialist movement in each country, accordingly, is the burning necessity of today." There is no doubt that this new analysis of imperialism and proletarian revolution has contributed further in the development of MLM.
Secondly, the historico-materialist interpretation of the Nepalese society, the analysis of bureaucratic capitalism born out of the illicit relations between feudalism and imperialism, the analysis of Kathmandu-centric, unequal and dependent development and that of the oppression of different nationalities and regions, class differentiation of peasants and the analysis of urban-rural, divide, the analysis of unequal relation with India and large scale labour migration, etc., have made significant contribution in working out correct strategy and tactics of revolution. These experiences would be quite valuable in the development of revolutionary ideas.
Thirdly, some of the new economic policies applied and developed during the course of the past ten years of PW are: to make the slogan of 'Grasp revolution and promote production' as the principal slogan of economic development keeping in mind the utterly fragmented means of production due to the predominantly mountainous geography and backward forces of production; to lay the foundation of labour-intensive, self-reliant, balanced and planned development with a view to firstly prepare a New Democratic economic base and then to move towards socialist transformation; to attempt a progressive transformation of the basically rural and agriculture-based economy through cooperatives, collectives and socialization, etc. Though still in the primitive stages, the implementation and development of these policies can be expected to contribute significantly in building the economic base of a society freed from feudalism and imperialism.
c. The sphere of scientific socialism or politics As the development of the ideas of the proletarian class takes place basically during the course of the class struggle, it is obvious that during the past ten years of class war utmost ideological development has taken place in the realm of politics related with class struggle or scientific socialism. It is well known that now the PW has crossed the stages of strategic defence and equilibrium and reached the third and final stage of strategic offensive, most of the country except the limited urban areas is liberated by the revolutionary forces, and various forms of people's power are under operation in the liberated areas. In this situation it is imperative that important ideological development be made on such cardinal issues as development of new type of Party, army and state and the nature of proletarian power.
Firstly, the key question of revolution is the question of state power. Moreover, the central task of revolution is to forcibly destroy the old state with the means of new type of Party organized as the real vanguard of the proletariat and an army and a broad revolutionary united front under its leadership and to create a new state as the joint dictatorship of all the progressive classes under the leadership pf the proletariat. This issue has not only been corroborated by the experiences of the past ten years but also some new insights have been gained on it. At a juncture when the proletarian revolutions of the 20th centuries have consecutively faced counter-revolutionary setbacks and when modern revisionist trends like Euro-communism, bahudaliya janabad (multi-party democracy) etc. have spread the ideological poison of peaceful transition everywhere , it is a matter of great ideological significance to prove in practice the fundamental postulates of MLM like 'Everything else is an illusion except political power' and 'Power flows out of the barrel of a gun'. This has been amply proved by the fact that the initiation of building a people's army was made with the simple fighting squads and defense squads firmly rooted in the dictum of 'The people without an army have nothing of their own', and now a division-level People's Liberation Army (PLA) which puts proletarian politics in command and is equipped with the ultra-modern weaponry has been raised. As a result of the ten years of PW fought on the basis of this, PLA, and with the broad participation of the masses, various strata of people's power are in operation in large parts of the country after the destruction of the old state apparatus there and the revolutionary movement is now moving in a fast pace towards the capture of power at the centre. It should be acknowledged by all that this accomplishment of the ten years of PW is the most significant and decisive issue in the defence, application and development of MLM.
Secondly, creative development in the realm of military line of the proletarian revolution is another important ideological development during this period. There has been discernible sectarian and mechanistic deviation from both the right and left perspectives in the understanding and application of the dialectical interrelationship between war and politics inherent in the scientific formulation of 'War is politics by other (i.e. violent) means' developed from Clausewitz through Marx and Lenin to Mao. Rectifying this, the PW was initiated and after the initiation various types of negotiations and political initiatives were constantly and successfully undertaken in the service of the war. This amply substantiates the point (i.e. dialectical interrelation between war and politics). The significance of the resolution of the Third EM, which stated that in the present context of unprecedented development and expansion of communication technology imperialism can be defeated only by advancing the revolutionary war as 'total war', is particularly noteworthy here. Another very significant aspect in the development of the revolutionary military line is the question of fusion of the strategy of protracted PW and that of the armed insurrection in the present context of the international and national situation and of developing a new military line. The Second National Conference had advanced the proposition that in the semi-colonial and semi-feudal countries like Nepal some aspects of the strategy of armed insurrection ought to be fused with the general strategy of the protracted PW. The CC plenum of September-October 1961 has gone still further and resolved that the very strategy of protracted PW needs to be further developed to cater to the necessities of the 21st century. In particular, several decades on it is seen that the protracted PWs launched in different countries have faced obstacles or got liquidated after reaching the state of strategic offensive and imperialism has attempted to refine its interventionist counter-insurgency war strategy as a 'long war'. In this context, if the revolutionaries do mechanistically cling to the 'protracted' aspect of the PW at any cost, it would in essence play into the hands of imperialism and reaction. Hence the latest proposition of 'Prachanda Path' that the proletarian military strategy also needs to be further development is quite serious and of long-term significance. It may be noted that this proposition is firmly based on the concrete experiences of the successfully advancing PW now at the stage of strategic offensive and is aimed at further advancing and defending it. It has no relation with any open or veiled opportunism that does not initiate any type of PW or prepare for it, or in essence, rejects it.
Thirdly, there is the question of developing a broad revolutionary united front under the leadership of the proletariat to make revolution in a society divided into multiple classes and with the preponderance of extra-class exploitation and oppresson, like national, regional, gender, caste etc. Similarly, the issue of working out different stages and sub-stages of revolution to reach the final goal of socialism and communism is also quite challenging. The experiences gained and ideas developed in these fields are substantial and significant. In this context, positive experiences of mobilising in the revolutionary movement different anti-feudal and anti-imperialist/expansionist classes along with people under national and regional oppression, women under patriarchal oppression and dalits (so-called untouchables) under Hindu caste oppression in a broad united front under the leadership of the proletariat in the specific semi-colonial and semi-feudal condition of Nepal, could be useful and worthy of emulation for all. The experiences of organizing revolutionary united front in the form of United People Front (UPF) both at the central and local levels from the time of preparation for the PW and then in the form of United Revolutionary People's Council (URPC) as the means of struggle and people's power after the birth of local base areas and autonomous regions, have also been typical. On the other hand, the political thinking of the CPN (Maoist) to forge tactical alliance with anti-monarchical parliamentary forces to materialise the immediate tactics of democratic republic is also a novel idea. For, in the specific condition of Nepal, where the feudal monarchy equipped with military power is the main obstacle for revolution, this tactics is important to complete the bourgeois democratic revolution and advance towards socialism and communism. In sum, it is evident that the policy of strategic firmness and tactical flexibility practiced with success during the past ten years is an important component in the development of MLM and Prachanda Path.
Fourthly, the proletarian state powers in the past were destroyed primarily due to the internal crisis without any external attack or intervention. Hence the question of exercise of democracy in the Party and the state happens to be a key question, subjectively. Thus the proposition to develop democracy according to the specificities and needs of the 21st century is perhaps the most important theoretical proposition of 'Prachanda Path' so far. In this context, the resolution on "Historical Experiences And Development of Democracy in the 21st Century" proposed by Chairman Prachanda and adopted unanimously by the CC of the Party in May-June 2003 is of historical significance. The proposal to develop necessary mechanism for ensuring general masses, supervision intervention and control over the Party, army and state, both before and after the revolution, so as to prevent their bureaucratic distortions and to ensure constant proletarianisation and for this to go for multi-party competition within specific constitutional framework, is definitely a novel idea and is in rupture with the traditional thinking and modality. Moreover, the proposal to deploy one section of the Party for mass work and the other section for running the state, instead of involvement of the whole Party in state affairs, and to handover responsibilities to the revolutionary successors in time, rather than the main authoritative leadership running the Party and the state throughout his life, are of far-reaching significance. These propositions could play an important role in correcting the inherent weaknesses and limitations of the proletarian Parties and states of the 20th century and in creating a new upsurge of world proletarian revolution. In that sense, these propositions could be a milestone in the overall development of MLM. However, one has to be cautious that development of democracy here does not mean promotion of formal and hypocritical bourgeois democracy. On the contrary, it is the question of transforming formal democracy into real democracy.
Problems And Prospects
On the occasion of completion of ten glorious years of moving heaven and earth by the Nepalese PW, its achievements on different fields, particularly those in the realm on of development of the science of MLM, are definitely worth celebrating. Every revolutionary should contribute wholeheartedly to further enrich these set of ideas synthesized as 'Prachanda Path' by churning in the furnance of class struggle and inner-struggle. This advanced idea nurtured by the blood, sweat and tears of tens of thousand of martyrs and innumerable leaders, cadres and masses of the people, is a common property of all revolutionaries. Hence everybody should strive to defend this from the onslaughts and distortions of revisionism and dogmatism and convert it into a weapon of liberation of the world proletariat in the 21st century. Somebody has aptly said, "Science is not a sacred cow. Science is a horse. Don't worship it. Feed it." We, too, should attempt to enrich this advanced idea not by worshipping it but by feeding it with the experiences of class struggle and inner-struggle. Let us all take a vow on this on the occasion of completion of ten years of initiation of great upheaval in the Nepalese history and proletarian liberation movement. The success of proletarian movement in the 21st century will depend on whether we can further enrich and develop the ideology of MLM.
"We must bear in mind that any popular movement assumes an infinite variety of forms, is constantly developing new forms and discarding the old, and effecting modifications or new combinations of old and new forms. It is our duty to participate actively in this process of working out means and methods of struggle."
—Lenin, Revolutionary Adventurism, LCW-6
The Worker, #10, May 2006
Article
EPOCHAL TEN YEARS OF APPLICATION AND
DEVELOPMENT OF REVOLUTIONARY IDEAS
Baburam Bhattarai DEVELOPMENT OF REVOLUTIONARY IDEAS
"Often, correct ideas can be arrived at only after many repetitions of the process leading from matter to consciousness and then back to matter, that is, leading from practice to knowledge, and then back to practice. Such is the Marxist theory of knowledge, the dialectical materialist theory of knowledge."
—Mao Tse-tung, Where Do Correct Ideas Come From? (May 1963)
The People's War (PW) led by the CPN (Maoist) in Nepal has completed its historical ten years. Internationally, in the 30 years after the demise of Mao and, internally, in the 237 years after the formation of a centralized feudal state under the leadership of Prithvi Narayan Shah, these ten years have been the most significant years. Hence the task of analysis and synthesis of its varied dimensions from different angles is underway, and it will continue in the days to come. Among these, the aspect of creative application of the science of proletarian revolution of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism (MLM) in the concrete conditions of the present day world and Nepal and the synthesis of the developed set of ideas during the process as 'Prachanda Path', is the most significant achievement in these years. To constantly uphold the Maoist dictum of 'Whether the ideological and political line is correct or not, decides everything' as a guiding principle, is the characteristic feature of this epochal PW. As a result of this, in these ten years the PW has not only developed in a fast pace and enforced multi-faceted revolutionary transformation of the Nepalese society caught in stagnation and decay since ages, but it has also taken up the cudgel against world imperialism spearheading the so-called 'endless war' against 'terrorism' and has successfully developed into a centre of hope for the freedom-loving people of the world. Particularly, in the context of the serious counter-revolutionary setbacks faced by the revolutions of the 20th century one after another and in the light of the vicious ideological offensive against the fighting masses of the world launched by the imperialist opinion makers in the name of such regressive formulations as 'end of history', 'end of ideology', 'clash of civilization', 'post-modernism' etc., the CPN (Maoist) under the leadership of Chairman Prachanda has resolved that only through the defence, application and development of MLM can a new revolutionary wave be created in the 21st century. Hence foremost priority has been accorded to the ideological work. It is, therefore, utmost imperative that while making a review of the historic ten years of the PW special stress be given to the analysis of its ideological aspect.
Ideological Development Highlighting the historico-materialist concept of ideological development and its class character, in the famous 'Manifesto of the Communist Party', Marx and Engels had said:
"Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that men's ideas, views and conceptions, in one word, man's consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and in his social life?
"What else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual production changes its character in proportion as material production is changed? The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class."
Thus, it is evident that the consciousness or idea born as a result of interactive reflections of the material and social world in human brain keeps on transforming or developing in accordance with the pace of transformation of the material and social world in constant motion. Moreover, in a class divided society, idea or outlook is formed according to the position of the individual in social relation of production, and it keeps on transforming or developing in steps with the changes in relation of production or social life. Thus, pointing out that correct ideas do not fall from the sky but develop during the course of physical and social struggle, Mao had said: "Where do correct ideas come from? ... They come from social practice, and from it alone; they come from three kinds of social practice, the struggle for production, the class struggle and scientific experiment." ["Where Do Correct Ideas Come From?", 1963]
Mao also elucidated that ideas do not develop as a direct reflection of matter in a mechanical and simplistic manner, but as an initial leap from matter to consciousness and again another leap from consciousness to the development of new material world, which would keep on repeating endlessly leading to continuous development of ideas. From this, it follows that during the process of class war or people's war, which is the highest form of class struggle, the application and development of revolutionary ideas, too, would take place in corresponding height and speed. This truth should be correctly grasped by the proletarian revolutionaries.
In this context, one has to be cautious about two types of deviations from two opposite poles on the question of development of revolutionary ideology, and focus on the principled and creative development of MLM. Firstly, it is the rightist revisionist deviation, which discards the fundamental principles of the science of revolution in the pretext of development of ideology and of getting creative. The proclaimed revisionists ranging from Bernstein to Deng in the International Communist Movement and from Rayamajhi to the UML in Nepal, abandon the basic tenets of MLM, like class concept of the state, inevitability of use of force in revolution, dictatorship of the proletariat, continuous revolution, etc., and commit the crime of converting MLM into a bourgeois trade-mark just to hoodwink the working class. This is not development of science and ideology but its abandonment, and is thus a naked form of liquidationism. Another tendency related to this but masquerading in a 'left' cloak is the tendency of militant pragmatism, which focuses on the parts rather than on the whole and highly exaggerates them. This ultimately serves revisionism. Secondly, there is the tendency of dogmato-revisionism, which reduces the science of revolution into a lifeless dogma and a religious sect in the pretext of defending the ideology and remaining principled. This rightist conservative tendency appearing in a 'left' guise and represented by Enver Hoxhas internationally and by Mohan Bikram Singhs in Nepal, does not acknowledge the need to develop the ideology and science in keeping with the motion of time and place and keeps on chanting as formulae certain ideas developed in a different context, which ultimately leads the ideology and the revolution to liquidation. Contrary to both of these erroneous and harmful tendencies, creative MLM firmly upholds its basic principles and attempts to apply and develop the ideas in keeping with the times by making concrete analysis of concrete conditions.
The CPN (Maoist) has been waging relentless struggle against all kinds of revisionism and dogmatism and hammering on creative application and development of MLM through the process of the great PW for the past ten years, and the set of ideas developed in the process has been synthesized as MLM and Prachanda Path. Moreover, the Party has been seriously practicing the dialectical process of solving new problems of revolution through the development of ideas and further developing and enriching the ideas from the new experiences of revolution.
Historical Process of Development
In order to understand the process of development of ideas during the past ten years of the PW, it is necessary to pay attention to the phase of preparation prior to the initiation of the PW, too. As MLM is basically a science of history and it has an international character, it is only after correctly identifying and defining its historically proved universal laws first that its further application and development is possible. Accordingly, it may be useful to have broad review of the important decisions of the Party from the Unity Congress held in December 1991 to the Central Committee Plenum in September-October 2005. It is axiomatic that Com. Prachanda has played the leading role in this process of ideological synthesis as he has remained first the General Secretary and then the Chairman of the Party throughout this period.
The period from 1991 to 1996 was basically the period of ideological and material preparation for the PW. During this period a vigorous struggle was waged particularly against revisionism, nationally and internationally, to defend the revolutionary spirit of MLM and to prepare ground for its application in the specificities of Nepal and present day world. In this context, the Unity Congress held in 1991 fundamentally prepared the main ideological base of the revolution by upholding Maoism as the developed, higher and third stage of Marxism-Leninism. It also formulated the general line of the revolution by upholding the politico-military line of protracted PW. These decisions were of historical significance in the fight against Right revisionism, which was the main danger then. Also, struggle was waged against sectarian and mechanical dogmatist thinking, which was though a lesser evil, and in the specificities of Nepal a policy was pursued to develop countrywide mass movement as a subsidiary means of preparation for the PW through the United People's Front (UPF) and to make a limited use of parliamentary and local elections. These ideological and political decisions and practice were quite challenging and of far-reaching significance in the context of application and development of creative and revolutionary MLM, while fighting against both Right revisionist and dogmatic thinking. After three years of this practice and vigorous struggle against rightist liquidationism within the Party, the revolutionary political line of the Party was established among the general masses throughout the country.
In this process, the resolutions of the Third Extended Meeting (EM) of the Central Committee (CC) of the Party organized in February 1995 on initiating the PW were another important milestone in the development of the revolutionary ideas. Two decisions of the Third EM were particularly significant in the development of the ideas. Firstly, it was about grasping the law of development of society not in a reformist way as gradualism but in a revolutionary dialectical way as leap of quantity into quality through shock, rupture and catastrophe. This was also the question of initiating the PW in a planned manner. There was quite a serious debate among the top leadership of the Party on this issue. Secondly, it was about the question of application of the line of protracted PW in the concrete historical, geographical, social, political and economic condition of Nepal and about working out the series of strategy and tactics accordingly. The most important aspect of this issue was that the PW in Nepal would not be rooted in one area for quite long, like Chinkangsan in China, and then expand to other areas but it would be initiated from more than one area and it would require the defense of a continuous political intervention at the central level. This has been emphatically proved by the experiences of the past ten years.
In addition to this, the seven-point ideological commitments of the Party made in the First Plan of the initiation and the well-known 40-points demand presented by the UPF on the eve of the initiation of the PW constitute a correct fusion of the strategy and tactics of revolution. "Our Commitments for the Historic Initiation of the PW" [see, Some Important Documents of the CPN (Maoist), 2004] worked out in October 1995 lays down the broad ideological framework for the march from New Democratic Revolution (NDR) via Socialism and Continuous Revolution to Communism in seven points, and the 40-points demand presented on February 6,1996, provides the minimum programme of the NDR in a legal and popular language. The policy of strategic firmness and tactical flexibility manifested in them has now become a very important dimension of the developed set of ideas of 'Prachanda Path', and without correctly grasping this the essence of 'Prachanda Path' cannot be fathomed.
On completion of this process of preparation, the revolutionary PW was formally initiated on February 13, 1996 (Fagun 1, 2052 B.S.) as a great rebellion of the exploited and the oppressed masses in the form of countrywide military and non-military actions. It was an epochal event to transform revolutionary ideas into a material force and contribute towards further development of ideas. This is amply reflected in the 'Appeal' to the masses issued by the Party Central headquarters on the occasion. (See, ibid.) The process of initiation of the PW and the ideology and politics behind it were substantially different and in some form of rupture from the traditional thinking and process. The periodic plans for continuation and development of the PW formulated since then ensured the continuous process of making leaps from ideas to actions and again from actions to ideas.
The Fourth EM of the Party held after two and a half years of the historic initiation of the PW in September 1998 synthesized the important experiences of class struggle and ideological struggle and passed important resolutions, principally on the development of base areas in the specificities of Nepal and centralization of leadership in the revolutionary movement and the Party. Making an objective assessment of the problems faced by the PW particularly after the demise of Mao, in different countries of the world due to the ideological obfuscation on the question of guerilla zones and base areas, the EM stressed that the question of base areas or the creation of new local people's power is the key question in any PW. Subsequently, it resolved to develop base areas within one's own specificities and for this to create wide mass base on the basis of ideological leadership of the Party, armed strength of the People's Army and revolutionary mass line. This was a significant step in the development of revolutionary ideas. Similarly, the question of development of unified and centralized leadership in the Party, People's Army and the United Front was related to the question of fusion of democracy and centralism, organizationally, and of necessity and freedom, philosophically, which has been under consistent debate in the International Communist Movement, too. This was also related to the further development of the theory of continuous revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat during the Great Proletarian Cultured Revolution (GPCR) under Mao's leadership. The debate conducted within the Party during this period had contributed significantly in the overall development of revolutionary ideas.
Then ensued a vigorous ideological struggle against a petty-bourgeois Right opportunist tendency masquerading in 'left' garb, which was indigenously branded as 'Alok tendency'. Also, the class struggle developed in leaps and bound.
It this background, the historic Second National Conference of the Party was convened exactly after five years of the initiation of the PW in February 2001, which made certain decisions of epochal nature and resolved to synthesize the developed set of ideas as 'Prachanda Path'. Firstly, after making a serious review of the International Communist Movement, it was resolved to rectify particularly the monolithic and metaphysical shortcomings of the Third International and Com. Stalin and to advance from the postulates of the GPCR under Com. Mao. Secondly, a thorough and critical review of the Nepalese society and the history of the Nepalese communist movement was made and the Party, i.e. the CPN (Maoist), was acknowledged as the highest synthesis of all revolutionary currents since 1949. Accordingly it was resolved to develop a new type of revolutionary Party and a People's Army and revolutionary United Front under its leadership. Thirdly, in keeping with the ever changing world situation and the specificities of Nepal it was decided to fuse certain aspects of the strategy of armed insurrection to the military strategy of protracted PW from the very beginning. Also the concept of development of a South Asian Federation was formulated. Fourthly, taking into consideration the existing national and international balance of political forces, an immediate tactical slogan of a broad political conference, interim government and Constituent Assembly was advanced, which later became the principal, political agenda of the whole country. Thus the resolutions of the Second National Conference represented a great leap in the ideological, political, organizational and, military fields and proved to be an historical milestone in the development of revolutionary ideas.
Immediately after the conclusion of the Second National Conference the crisis within the reactionary state was further hastened, which culminated in the infamous palace massacre of June 1, 2001. This was followed by the first truce and negotiation with the old state. In the meantime, a formal announcement of the formation of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), and United Revolutionary People's Council, an embryonic form of Central People's Government Organising Committee, was made. The breakdown of the negotiations in November 2001 was followed in quick succession by declaration of a state of emergency by the old state, deployment of the Royal Nepal Army (RNA) against the PW, qualitatively higher military actions by the PLA throughout the country, further intensification of the crisis of old state manifested in the dissolution of the parliament in May 2002 and a direct royal takeover in October 2002, the second truce and negotiations with the old state and massive countrywide mass mobilization by the Party. In this light, another historic Plenum of the CC of the Party was held in Rolpa in May-June 2003. This Plenum adopted a document of monumental significance on 'The Development of Democracy in the 21st Century'. After making a critical review of the experiences of revolution and counter-revolution in the 20th century, the document advocated the need to ensure the supervision, intervention and control of the masses over the Party, army and the state in order to march along the path of continuous revolution after making the revolution, and for this advanced the concept of practicing a multi-party competitive system within the stipulated constitutional framework. This was a new milestone in the development of revolutionary ideas.
Another Plenum of the CC held in August 2004 declared the PW to have entered into the third and last stage of the strategic offensive. However, the inability of the Party to manage in a proper manner the inner struggle brewing within the Party for some time led to very unhealthy developments particularly after the Politbureau meeting held in January 2005. Nevertheless practicing the correct method of revolutionary dialectics of converting the negative into positive, the plenum of the CC convened in September-October 2005 resolved to make 'revolution within revolution' and achieved new unity on a new basis by raising the whole proletarian ideology to a new height. Further the plenum made certain bold decisions of longterm significance. This was in essence another historical milestone in the development of revolutionary ideas.
Firstly, the resolution made an objective assessment of the present day globalized imperialism and advanced the conception that only by taking a worldwide initiative of revolution in the new context that the revolution in a particular country can be accomplished and defended. Secondly, it was resolved that the proletarian character of the Party, army and state needed to be preserved by constantly launching a revolution within the revolution in the spirit of the GPCR not only after accomplishing revolution but even earlier than that. In this context it was further affirmed that, among other things, the undeclared tradition of a lifelong tenure of the authoritative leadership in the Party and the state should be done away with and the chain of a new leadership should be groomed well in time. Thirdly, keeping in mind the prevailing political balance of power in the country and the international situation it was decided to take special initiative to implement the immediate tactics of multi-party democratic republic, which prepared the ground for concluding the 12-point understanding with other parliamentary political parties to spearhead the anti-monarchy mass movement. Fourthly, an assessment of the causes of setbacks met by almost all the revolutionary PWs since Mao's death particularly after their reaching the stage of strategic offensive was made and it was resolved not only to fuse the military strategies of protracted PW and general insurrection but also to attempt to develop a new military strategy in keeping with the new situation. It has also been agreed to launch a great debate within and outside the Party over all these new proposals before a final decision is made in the forthcoming Congress of the Party.
A series of face to face interviews granted by Chairman Prachanda to selected national and international media on the historic occasion of completion of ten years by the PW in February 2006 (See, for example, the interviews to Kantipur and The Kathmandu Post from Nepal, The Hindu from India and the BBC World Service television network from London) and his expositions particularly on the question of development of democracy and the immediate tactics of democratic republic, have contributed significantly to establish the newly developed set of ideas at the international level and among the general masses. Thus, it is evident that the development of revolutionary ideas is proceeding amidst the vigorous class struggle and inner-Party struggle generally since the time of preparation of PW and particularly during the past ten years of the ongoing PW. Also, it needs to be correctly grasped that in the initial and weaker stage of the movement the thrust was on the defence of the fundamental principles of MLM and with the gradual development and unfolding of new problems in the movement, the focus shifted more on the development of the ideas. As Chairman Prachanda played the main leadership role during this entire process, it was obvious that the developed set of ideas was concretized and synthesized as 'Prachanda Path'.
Important Dimensions of the Developed Set of Ideas Some of the important dimensions of the developed set of ideas, namely MLM and Prachanda Path, which is advancing in the furnace of class struggle and ideological struggle, may be enumerated as follows:
a. The sphere of philosophy
The most scientific and advanced philosophy to date for cognition and transformation of the material and social world is dialectical and historical materialism, which is the philosophy of struggle of the proletariat. However, philosophy itself has a class character and along with the change in the material and social world new dimensions are added in the understanding of the laws of philosophy. In this context, the main aspect of development of ideas in the field of philosophy during the practice of the past ten years is to uphold and develop the 'critical' and 'revolutionary' spirit of dialectics as stressed by Lenin after launching vigorous struggle against the metaphysical, idealist, empiricist agnostic, mechanical materialist and other distortions in grasping and practicing materialist dialectics.
Firstly, the development of nature, society and human consciousness takes place not in a gradual evolutionary or reformist way as claimed by vulgar evolutionists but in a leap from quantity into quality and in a break in continuity. This is the basic principle of revolutionary dialectics on the law of development. The correct application of this law in class struggle and further enhancing its understanding is a very significant achievement. This has been clearly enunciated in the resolution proposed by the then General Secretary Com. Prachanda and adopted by the Third EM, thus:
"Marxism is a philosophy of struggle. The law of development according to Marxist dialectics is that each process of development in nature, society and human thought takes place through struggle of opposites and its obvious result will take the form of a leap. Any thought that sees any kind of development process as an ordinary addition subtraction schema and as a gradual evolution would be exposed as bourgeois evolution by the Marxist. It is clear that transformation from one process to another process does not take place gradually, but through leap, through qualitative change, through revolution". [op. cit. p.22]
Accordingly, it is particularly noteworthy that plans for various political and military struggles have been made in terms of big push and the inner struggles occurring occasionally within the Party are solved in terms of rupture and transformation. In this sense, just for convenience, 'Prachanda Path' may be termed as philosophy or ideology of leap.
Secondly, fundamental premise of materialist dialectics is to regard unity of opposites as the basic law of being of matter or consciousness and to accept that everything divides into two and there is a continuous process of unity-struggle-transformation between the opposites. However, in the matter of grasping this law, on the one hand, there is the monolithic view which rejects the existence of the opposites and, on the other, there is the pluralistic view which denies that the opposites are not independent of each other but interdependent and they transform into each other in particular conditions. Because of this many deviations and problems have occurred in the international and the Nepalese communist movement. Fighting against both of these metaphysical and erroneous thinkings, the past ten years have seen finest practice of materialist dialectics in the form of vigorous struggles at times and unity with transformation at other times in regards to the opposite forces and tendencies both within and without the Party. This is not merely a question related to simple practical matters but a very significant question of ideology and philosophy. It is important to grasp that the key to overall development of MLM lies in this very question.
Thirdly, among the contradictions or opposites, it is always one aspect that is principal and the others are secondary, and correct identification is made through concrete analysis of concrete conditions. However, the metaphysical thinking does not make the analysis of this difference and it does not see the other one while seeing one, or sees both as equal. This causes a great damage to the revolution either from getting one-sided, mechanical and sectarian or being liberal and eclectic. Contrary to this, 'Prachanda Path' has always stressed on differentiating the contradictory aspects into principal and secondary, and goaded to 'stress' on the principal aspect and to 'pay attention' to the secondary aspect, or to make a dialectical (and not mechanical) interpenetration or fusion of the two. Clarity on this ideological question is imperative to advance the revolution by maintaining correct balance between the contradictory aspects of theory and practice, military and non-military struggle, centralism and democracy, war and negotiation, class question and national-regional-gender question, tasks in urban and rural areas, open and underground work, strategy and tactics, leadership and cadres, Party and army or united front, the question of nationalism and democracy, etc. In this sense, one should not mind if somebody simplifies and calls 'Prachanda Path' as the theory of fusion. Of course, if the two aspects are seen as equal or the interrelation between them is taken as stable or permanent, it would be eclecticism, and some people may even charge 'Prachanda Path' with this. However, dialectical fusion is within the fundamental law of unity of opposites and is quite revolutionary, and hence has no relation with eclecticism.
Fourthly, among the contradictory aspects like matter and consciousness, productive forces and production relations, reality and possibility, necessity and freedom, etc., the former is principal and latter is secondary. However, they are never independent of each other and in particular conditions the latter aspect assumes primacy over the former. The mechanical materialist or idealist tendency that fails to grasp this dialectical interrelationship or that one aspect transforms into the other has created great havoc in the revolutionary movement. Assessing the experiences of the past revolutions and counter-revolutions in the International Communist Movement and particularly those of the GPCR, which remained incomplete, the CPN (Maoist) has made considerable stride in the ideological development on this issue during the course of class struggle and inner-Party struggle in the last ten years. It is important to note that the basic political concepts of 'Prachanda Path', like revolution within revolution, continuous revolution after making the revolution, development of democracy in the 21st century, ensuring a chain of revolutionary successors while the authoritative leadership is still alive, etc., have emanated from this thinking.
b. The sphere of political economy
As, political economy basically deals with the laws of development of society and ascertains class relations at the national and international level, it plays a crucial role in the development of the revolutionary movement. Hence 'Prachanda Path' has made significant ideological development in this sphere during the past ten years of rapid stride of the PW.
Firstly, the PW was initiated within the analytical framework that the contradiction between imperialism and oppressed nations and people is the principal contradiction at the global level and that the ever aggravating imperialist crisis as foreseen by Mao in his famed dictum 'The coming 50 to 100 years will be the years of great upheavals' is preparing a favorable objective basis for world proletarian revolution. By the end of the ten years since then the Party has made significant advancement in the theoretical understanding of new characteristics of globalized imperialism and its impact in the strategy of proletarian revolution. On this, the resolution adopted by the CC plenum held in September-October 2005, says: "The attention of the proletarian revolutionaries of the 21st century must be focused seriously on the fact that the analysis that Lenin and Mao had made on imperialism and a number of concepts they had developed on its basis regarding proletarian strategy have lagged behind. Following the Second World War, the inter-imperialist rivalry and Lenin's analysis on the nature of war that continues among them to divide and redivide a certain part of the world and the proletarian strategy built up on its basis, and following the Cold War, the situation of the analysis of Three Worlds made by Mao, even though in a tactical sense, do not basically exist. The condition of the US imperialism, which is advancing as a globalized form of state, has caused Lenin's and Mao's analyses on this to lag behind in the same manner as the development of imperialism in Lenin's time had made Marx's then analysis and strategy, based on his analysis of capitalism, that revolution will take place firstly & simultaneously in the developed capitalist countries of Europe, to lag behind. This is the principal issue for developing MLM and determining new proletarian strategy in the 21st century." Pointing towards the new proletarian strategy the Resolution further says: "The necessity of developing the concept of South Asian Soviet Federation in the 21st century as put forward by the Second National Conference of our Party to the concept of World Federation and waging the national liberation, democratic and socialist movement in each country, accordingly, is the burning necessity of today." There is no doubt that this new analysis of imperialism and proletarian revolution has contributed further in the development of MLM.
Secondly, the historico-materialist interpretation of the Nepalese society, the analysis of bureaucratic capitalism born out of the illicit relations between feudalism and imperialism, the analysis of Kathmandu-centric, unequal and dependent development and that of the oppression of different nationalities and regions, class differentiation of peasants and the analysis of urban-rural, divide, the analysis of unequal relation with India and large scale labour migration, etc., have made significant contribution in working out correct strategy and tactics of revolution. These experiences would be quite valuable in the development of revolutionary ideas.
Thirdly, some of the new economic policies applied and developed during the course of the past ten years of PW are: to make the slogan of 'Grasp revolution and promote production' as the principal slogan of economic development keeping in mind the utterly fragmented means of production due to the predominantly mountainous geography and backward forces of production; to lay the foundation of labour-intensive, self-reliant, balanced and planned development with a view to firstly prepare a New Democratic economic base and then to move towards socialist transformation; to attempt a progressive transformation of the basically rural and agriculture-based economy through cooperatives, collectives and socialization, etc. Though still in the primitive stages, the implementation and development of these policies can be expected to contribute significantly in building the economic base of a society freed from feudalism and imperialism.
c. The sphere of scientific socialism or politics As the development of the ideas of the proletarian class takes place basically during the course of the class struggle, it is obvious that during the past ten years of class war utmost ideological development has taken place in the realm of politics related with class struggle or scientific socialism. It is well known that now the PW has crossed the stages of strategic defence and equilibrium and reached the third and final stage of strategic offensive, most of the country except the limited urban areas is liberated by the revolutionary forces, and various forms of people's power are under operation in the liberated areas. In this situation it is imperative that important ideological development be made on such cardinal issues as development of new type of Party, army and state and the nature of proletarian power.
Firstly, the key question of revolution is the question of state power. Moreover, the central task of revolution is to forcibly destroy the old state with the means of new type of Party organized as the real vanguard of the proletariat and an army and a broad revolutionary united front under its leadership and to create a new state as the joint dictatorship of all the progressive classes under the leadership pf the proletariat. This issue has not only been corroborated by the experiences of the past ten years but also some new insights have been gained on it. At a juncture when the proletarian revolutions of the 20th centuries have consecutively faced counter-revolutionary setbacks and when modern revisionist trends like Euro-communism, bahudaliya janabad (multi-party democracy) etc. have spread the ideological poison of peaceful transition everywhere , it is a matter of great ideological significance to prove in practice the fundamental postulates of MLM like 'Everything else is an illusion except political power' and 'Power flows out of the barrel of a gun'. This has been amply proved by the fact that the initiation of building a people's army was made with the simple fighting squads and defense squads firmly rooted in the dictum of 'The people without an army have nothing of their own', and now a division-level People's Liberation Army (PLA) which puts proletarian politics in command and is equipped with the ultra-modern weaponry has been raised. As a result of the ten years of PW fought on the basis of this, PLA, and with the broad participation of the masses, various strata of people's power are in operation in large parts of the country after the destruction of the old state apparatus there and the revolutionary movement is now moving in a fast pace towards the capture of power at the centre. It should be acknowledged by all that this accomplishment of the ten years of PW is the most significant and decisive issue in the defence, application and development of MLM.
Secondly, creative development in the realm of military line of the proletarian revolution is another important ideological development during this period. There has been discernible sectarian and mechanistic deviation from both the right and left perspectives in the understanding and application of the dialectical interrelationship between war and politics inherent in the scientific formulation of 'War is politics by other (i.e. violent) means' developed from Clausewitz through Marx and Lenin to Mao. Rectifying this, the PW was initiated and after the initiation various types of negotiations and political initiatives were constantly and successfully undertaken in the service of the war. This amply substantiates the point (i.e. dialectical interrelation between war and politics). The significance of the resolution of the Third EM, which stated that in the present context of unprecedented development and expansion of communication technology imperialism can be defeated only by advancing the revolutionary war as 'total war', is particularly noteworthy here. Another very significant aspect in the development of the revolutionary military line is the question of fusion of the strategy of protracted PW and that of the armed insurrection in the present context of the international and national situation and of developing a new military line. The Second National Conference had advanced the proposition that in the semi-colonial and semi-feudal countries like Nepal some aspects of the strategy of armed insurrection ought to be fused with the general strategy of the protracted PW. The CC plenum of September-October 1961 has gone still further and resolved that the very strategy of protracted PW needs to be further developed to cater to the necessities of the 21st century. In particular, several decades on it is seen that the protracted PWs launched in different countries have faced obstacles or got liquidated after reaching the state of strategic offensive and imperialism has attempted to refine its interventionist counter-insurgency war strategy as a 'long war'. In this context, if the revolutionaries do mechanistically cling to the 'protracted' aspect of the PW at any cost, it would in essence play into the hands of imperialism and reaction. Hence the latest proposition of 'Prachanda Path' that the proletarian military strategy also needs to be further development is quite serious and of long-term significance. It may be noted that this proposition is firmly based on the concrete experiences of the successfully advancing PW now at the stage of strategic offensive and is aimed at further advancing and defending it. It has no relation with any open or veiled opportunism that does not initiate any type of PW or prepare for it, or in essence, rejects it.
Thirdly, there is the question of developing a broad revolutionary united front under the leadership of the proletariat to make revolution in a society divided into multiple classes and with the preponderance of extra-class exploitation and oppresson, like national, regional, gender, caste etc. Similarly, the issue of working out different stages and sub-stages of revolution to reach the final goal of socialism and communism is also quite challenging. The experiences gained and ideas developed in these fields are substantial and significant. In this context, positive experiences of mobilising in the revolutionary movement different anti-feudal and anti-imperialist/expansionist classes along with people under national and regional oppression, women under patriarchal oppression and dalits (so-called untouchables) under Hindu caste oppression in a broad united front under the leadership of the proletariat in the specific semi-colonial and semi-feudal condition of Nepal, could be useful and worthy of emulation for all. The experiences of organizing revolutionary united front in the form of United People Front (UPF) both at the central and local levels from the time of preparation for the PW and then in the form of United Revolutionary People's Council (URPC) as the means of struggle and people's power after the birth of local base areas and autonomous regions, have also been typical. On the other hand, the political thinking of the CPN (Maoist) to forge tactical alliance with anti-monarchical parliamentary forces to materialise the immediate tactics of democratic republic is also a novel idea. For, in the specific condition of Nepal, where the feudal monarchy equipped with military power is the main obstacle for revolution, this tactics is important to complete the bourgeois democratic revolution and advance towards socialism and communism. In sum, it is evident that the policy of strategic firmness and tactical flexibility practiced with success during the past ten years is an important component in the development of MLM and Prachanda Path.
Fourthly, the proletarian state powers in the past were destroyed primarily due to the internal crisis without any external attack or intervention. Hence the question of exercise of democracy in the Party and the state happens to be a key question, subjectively. Thus the proposition to develop democracy according to the specificities and needs of the 21st century is perhaps the most important theoretical proposition of 'Prachanda Path' so far. In this context, the resolution on "Historical Experiences And Development of Democracy in the 21st Century" proposed by Chairman Prachanda and adopted unanimously by the CC of the Party in May-June 2003 is of historical significance. The proposal to develop necessary mechanism for ensuring general masses, supervision intervention and control over the Party, army and state, both before and after the revolution, so as to prevent their bureaucratic distortions and to ensure constant proletarianisation and for this to go for multi-party competition within specific constitutional framework, is definitely a novel idea and is in rupture with the traditional thinking and modality. Moreover, the proposal to deploy one section of the Party for mass work and the other section for running the state, instead of involvement of the whole Party in state affairs, and to handover responsibilities to the revolutionary successors in time, rather than the main authoritative leadership running the Party and the state throughout his life, are of far-reaching significance. These propositions could play an important role in correcting the inherent weaknesses and limitations of the proletarian Parties and states of the 20th century and in creating a new upsurge of world proletarian revolution. In that sense, these propositions could be a milestone in the overall development of MLM. However, one has to be cautious that development of democracy here does not mean promotion of formal and hypocritical bourgeois democracy. On the contrary, it is the question of transforming formal democracy into real democracy.
Problems And Prospects
On the occasion of completion of ten glorious years of moving heaven and earth by the Nepalese PW, its achievements on different fields, particularly those in the realm on of development of the science of MLM, are definitely worth celebrating. Every revolutionary should contribute wholeheartedly to further enrich these set of ideas synthesized as 'Prachanda Path' by churning in the furnance of class struggle and inner-struggle. This advanced idea nurtured by the blood, sweat and tears of tens of thousand of martyrs and innumerable leaders, cadres and masses of the people, is a common property of all revolutionaries. Hence everybody should strive to defend this from the onslaughts and distortions of revisionism and dogmatism and convert it into a weapon of liberation of the world proletariat in the 21st century. Somebody has aptly said, "Science is not a sacred cow. Science is a horse. Don't worship it. Feed it." We, too, should attempt to enrich this advanced idea not by worshipping it but by feeding it with the experiences of class struggle and inner-struggle. Let us all take a vow on this on the occasion of completion of ten years of initiation of great upheaval in the Nepalese history and proletarian liberation movement. The success of proletarian movement in the 21st century will depend on whether we can further enrich and develop the ideology of MLM.
"We must bear in mind that any popular movement assumes an infinite variety of forms, is constantly developing new forms and discarding the old, and effecting modifications or new combinations of old and new forms. It is our duty to participate actively in this process of working out means and methods of struggle."
—Lenin, Revolutionary Adventurism, LCW-6
# posted by Sentinel : 11:07 AM
CPN(M) - Worker #10
The Worker, #10, May 2006
Document
Dear Comrades,
From both the angles of class struggle and inner struggle, our Party has today arrived at a crossroads full of challenges and opportunities. The main factors behind today's possibilities and challenges are the multi-dimensional impact and the result of the ten years of People's War. It is only by developing a correct ideological and political line by way of objectively evaluating the basic principles of MLM, the experience of history and the power balance between present domestic and external classes that the Party will be able to face the challenges before us today. In this sense, it is clear that this meeting of the Central Committee will be of far-reaching significance.
1. On the World Situation On Imperialism and the Proletarian Revolution Imperialism in its course of development has been acquiring new forms and shapes though its capitalist class essence remains the same. The main specificity of today's imperialism has been to exploit and oppress the broad masses of people of the earth, economically, politically, culturally and militarily, in the form of a single globalized state. The world that had been influenced, on the one hand, by the wave of national liberation, democratic and socialist movement around the Second World War and, on the other hand, by the inter-imperialist rivalry during the cold war, has now been entrapped in the sole hegemony of US imperialism.
Owing to main factors, like the defeat of new democratic and socialist states that were developed in the course of the first wave of World Proletarian Revolution in the power struggle against the state-owned bureaucrat capitalism, the establishment of economic and mainly military superiority of US imperialism over other main imperialist countries, the control of multinational finance capital on the national capital and economy of the third world countries and the intensification of worldwide cultural intervention by means of the monopoly in information technology etc., the aforesaid hegemony has been maintained. As a consequence of this form of globalized state of US imperialism, the international values and norms, methods and rules and structures that were developed after the Second World War have been weakening. Following 9/11, US imperialism, by raising a stern question of either 'you are with us or against us' before every nation or group based on ideology, declared war openly. In spite of worldwide protests, the fascist intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq and the all-round threat against a country or political movement that is in line with their own national interest or fundamental ideological conviction, have been undoubtedly justifying the aforesaid facts.
This fascist form of US imperialism, in its essence, has been erected upon the foundation of a serious ideological crisis. Being divorced from a number of bourgeois values that they had until the 70s, and encouraging sheer religious blindness, the imperialist ringleaders are attempting to rule now. The fact that it has to sustain on medieval blind ideology in a context when science has acquired all-round development in the 21st century, and the declaration of so-called 'crusade' against so-called 'terrorism' by George Bush, reveal the depth of ideological crisis of imperialism. From this, the historical rationale due to which imperialism has come up viciously against the progressive and scientific aspiration of today's masses becomes clear.
To whatever degree the publicity of this new form of globalized imperialism is made as a new era of human being's progress, the innumerable living facts, experience and practice have proved it to be nothing other than a new, naked and contemptible form of colonization. The process of a handful of capitalists becoming trillionaire and billions of poor being trapped in poverty has intensified after the 90s, and the statistics of the World Bank too has clarified that the gap between rich and poor has become appalling. Today, the living standard of 1.6 billion of people has declined qualitatively than that of 90s. Children, who could be saved from preliminary treatment, are dying, 30 thousands a day. More than 800 million people are suffering from malnutrition and two-third of this figure cannot survive beyond 40. Forget about education, 250 million children from the third world are forced to work as child-slaves to manage two time meal. Tens of thousands of young ladies are being pushed into prostitution daily. Hundreds of millions of unemployed youths are wandering as modern slaves in the globalized labour market for their livelihood. In this way, the imperialist new world order of privatization, liberalization and globalization confirms the only fact that it has been intensifying the process of frying huge majority of the masses in the world in a single earthen pot.
Another important aspect that needs to be paid attention to is that the US imperialist's globalized state, which has been developed by establishing its military bases in 140 countries, has inevitably made worldwide resistance and rebellion necessary and possible qualitatively. Today, any national liberation, democratic or socialist movement is not possible to succeed in any country of the world unless it does not advance as an inseparable part of the world people's resistance. In no time in the history had the objective situation been prepared as broadly as now for the practical application of the great proletarian principle of internationalism. From the people of the United States of America to those of all the continents in the world are being victimized by the same kind of globalized imperialist exploitation, oppression and aggression. From the resistance developing in Iraq, as a new Vietnam, and Afghanistan to the revolutionary movements in Nepal, India, Peru, Turkey and Philippines; to the chain of people's protest and discontent rising from the masses of the people in America to those in Europe, the US imperialism and their agents, the domestic rulers, have been the only common enemy of the people everywhere.
In South Asia, revolutionary democratic and national liberation movements against the expansionist Indian ruling class, which has been kneeling down before US imperialism, are intensifying. In this context, the formation of C.P.I. (Maoist) through the unification of two important parties leading people's war since long deserves special mention. Also the contradiction deepening, since some time, between the Nepalese autocratic feudal monarchy and the Indian ruling class is important to take into account. Chinese revisionist capitalist rulers that have been achieving economic growth by submitting their market's key to US imperialism are involved in a tricky process of expanding their influence in South Asia.
The aforesaid objective situation clarifies the maturity of material environment in which people's new socialist world order can be established by destroying the imperialist world order completely. But, however critical situation it may be objectively, imperialism will not collapse spontaneously or by its own. For that, along with scientific ideological leadership, conscious pressure and use of force is imperative. Historically proven scientific fact is that that kind of leadership is not possible from any other class, community or ideology except from international proletarian class and its revolutionary ideology. But, in the present transitional situation, when the first wave of World Proletarian Revolution has been over in the 20th century itself and a new wave is in the horizon, the proletarian movement too is facing the challenge of developing ideology. The problem of leadership in the world proletarian movement is inseparably linked with this challenge.
The attention of the internationalist revolutionaries of the 21st century must be focused seriously on the fact that the analysis done by Lenin and Mao on imperialism and a number of concepts they had developed on its basis regarding proletarian strategy have lagged behind. Following the Second World War, the inter-imperialist rivalry and Lenin's analysis on the nature of war that continues among them to divide and re-divide a certain part of the world and the proletarian strategy built up as well on its basis; and following the cold war, the analysis of the situation that Mao made on Three Worlds, even though in a tactical sense, do not basically exist now. The situation of US imperialism, which is advancing as a globalized state, has caused Lenin's and Mao's analysis to lag behind in the same manner how the development of imperialism in Lenin's time had made Marx's analysis and strategy then, based on his analysis of capitalism, that revolution will take place firstly and simultaneously in the developed European countries, to lag behind. This is the principal issue for developing MLM in the 21st century and determining new proletarian strategy. Without focusing attention on this question, no challenges of the world revolution now can be confronted.
However, it should not be made to mean that the contradictions among different imperialist powers and reactionary cliques have been over. Definitely, this contradiction also exists and will exist and the proletariat must pay attention to it. Nevertheless, today's world is being decided not by this but by US imperialism, on the one side, and the world-struggle against it, on the other. The necessity of developing the concept of South Asian Soviet Federation in the 21st century to the concept of World Federation and waging every country's national liberation, democratic and socialist movement under it is the burning necessity of today.
Following Comrade Mao's death and restoration of capitalism in China, the International Communist Movement, on the one hand, mainly fell prey to different forms of right revisionism and, on the other, to mechanical dogmatism, which, by eulogizing old things and experiences, prattles them only. Even now, struggling against these trends in the International Communist Movement, overall development of MLM is necessary. It is clear that development is possible only by applying the scientific weapon of dialectical materialism. It is necessary to grasp the fact that dialectical materialism is a means to constantly develop proletarian ideology against bourgeois pluralism and dogmato-revisionism.
Certainly, the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM), which has come forward with a resolve of defending, applying and developing the basic principles of MLM, has played important role ideologically. But, extensive study, debate and struggle is necessary for it to take on the role of a real leadership for the world revolution by developing it to the level of New Communist International capable of facing the challenges of the 21st century.
Grasping firmly the reality that the necessity, possibility and importance of international movement has increased in the particularity of present world imperialism, our glorious party, the CPN (Maoist), as a Party successfully leading People's War since the past ten years, has a big responsibility on its shoulder to develop ideology and International Communist Movement. Accepting the reality that our party's international role had been weak in the past compared to what should have been, it is necessary now to heighten our initiative towards that direction. Grasping the reality that the future of Nepalese revolution is inseparable from the development of the international movement, the Party must develop a concrete working plan.
2. On The Evaluation Of Domestic Situation And Party Tactics a) The People's War that was initiated under the leadership of our party to resolve the contradiction between the Nepalese people and the state power of feudal, bureaucrat and comprador bourgeoisie class based on the coalition of feudalism and imperialism, has brought forward, in the period of ten years, a wide-ranging change in the power balance of national politics. The old state has been wiped out from the entire rural area of the country whilst national and regional autonomous republics and local powers, though in the primary stage of their development, have taken birth. These people's powers, in line with the specificity of Nepal, are advancing gradually towards the direction of forming central government of People's Federal Republic. The People's Liberation Army, entering into the stage of strategic offensive after it crossed the strategic defensive and equilibrium stages against the enemy's military strength, has already implemented its first plan. Today, this is the principal aspect of domestic situation.
b) When the ideological synthesis that the second national conference of our party had developed and the political and military tactic it had put forward led the development of People's War to further intensification and greater qualitative height, then the contradiction between the liberal and diehard sections of the old state also got intensified. The first explosion of that contradiction went off in the form of the dreadful Narayanhiti (Palace) Massacre. That massacre, in its essence, was the result of conspiracy, rebellion and victory acquired by the diehard section of the state under the leadership of obstinate feudal element against the liberal section and group. The fact that the massacre was deliberated mainly against the people's war and the achievement of historical mass movement in 1990 as well has been as clear as daylight. Our party had then made a political analysis that there was support of foreign reactionary power mainly US imperialism to the fake King Gyanendra and his feudal clique behind the massacre. Today, even when Gyanendra Shahi, through a coup has imposed autocratic monarchical military dictatorship in the country, the pressure that US imperialism, which thinks of itself as the supplier of democracy the world over, has been creating pressure on the parliamentarian political parties to surrender before the autocratic monarchy justifies more brilliantly that our erstwhile analysis was correct. Realizing seriously the reality that the massacre was also targeted against the parliamentarian parties participating in the old state, our party had immediately appealed to the parliamentarian parties and civil society and taken initiative for joint work and front against feudal autocracy. However, the appeal and initiative could not take a concrete form because of the class character, short sightedness and momentary interest of the major parliamentarian parties. Today, after about four years, mainly after the royal coup of Feb 1, 2005, with the pressure of situation, the environment and possibility of building such an alliance has immensely increased and the Party is taking initiative to its capacity towards that direction.
c) To coordinate well the political and military intervention and use correctly the contradiction between different groups of the enemy has been an inseparable part of our tactic. Evaluating objectively the international balance of power and experience of the five years of people's war, the second national conference of our Party took up a decision of all party conference, interim government and the election of constituent assembly as a political tactic. Before the positive impact of this tactic had reached to its climax, the Narayanhiti Massacre was staged and it brought about a huge change in the political scenario of the country. The party centre, developing its political tactic in the new situation, emphasized on the necessity of interim government, election of constituent assembly and institutionalised development of republic. In that very context emphasizing to enhance the movement unitedly in favour of constituent assembly and republic, the Party had furthered discussion with different parliamentarian parties at the central level. Noteworthy to mention is that the then slogan of republic was neither a slogan of new democratic republic nor that of bourgeois parliamentarian one. In fact and in essence, that slogan was the one of multiparty republic that by means of constituent assembly could bring about an extensive change in the state structure by addressing the problems related with class, nation, region and sex prevailing in the country. The summary of what kind of changes in the state structure that the Party has sought through constituent assembly has been clarified in the proposal the negotiation team had presented on behalf of the party. It is clear that the same slogan of republic was later spelled as democratic republic by adding a popular terminology - 'democratic'.
d) Now the slogan of interim government, election of the constituent assembly and democratic republic that our party, taking into account the international and domestic balance of power, has formulated is a tactical slogan put forward for the forward-looking political way out. Remaining clear on the principle that the tactic must serve strategy, our party has viewed the democratic republic neither as the bourgeois parliamentarian republic nor directly as the new democratic one. This republic with an extensive reorganization of the state power as to resolve the problems related with class, nationality, region and sex prevailing in the country, would play a role of transitional multiparty republic. Certainly, the reactionary class and their parties will try to transform this republic into bourgeois parliamentarian one, where as, our party of the proletariat class will try to transform it into new democratic republic. How long will be the period of transition, is not a thing that can right now be ascertained. It is clear that it will depend on the then national and international situation and state of power balance. As for now, this slogan has played and will play an important role to unite all the forces against the absolute monarchy dominant in the old state, for it has been a common enemy for both revolutionary and parliamentarian forces. Both of the understandings that the slogan of constituent assembly and democratic republic is a pure political and diplomatic manoeuvring to be never applied or as a strategic slogan to be never changed i.e. to be applied in any condition, are wrong.
In the concrete condition of today, our party can establish its leadership in the movement only by going forward firmly, actively and responsibly in the question of organizing interim government, electing constituent assembly and establishing democratic republic with extensive reorganization in the state power and with the force of struggle by uniting entire republican forces against the feudal autocratic monarchy. After the collapse of the monarchy dominant in the old state, this slogan can play a role of forward-looking political way out for the peaceful resolution of civil war. This slogan addresses correctly the people's aspiration of change and peace for it can open up a door of peaceful resolution of civil war, and as a consequence can play a positive role for the preparation of insurrection too. So, party must take up active initiative unitedly to make this process reach a logical conclusion.
e) The unilateral cease-fire that the centre had declared for three months has established party's conviction, sense of responsibility and sensitiveness towards democratic political way out and aspiration of peace of the masses of people from a new height. The heartily welcome and positive repercussion from all the political forces and the masses of all levels and sects, in and outside of the country that, along with forward-looking political way out, aspire for peace has further inspired our party to go more responsibly ahead. Most important thing is that the cease-fire, tearing out Gyanendra Shahi's mask of peace, has made the war-mongering, criminal and autocratic look hidden within it naked and exposed before the broad masses and world community as well. Gyanendra Shahi, who has been unable to show his criminal face in the general assembly of United Nations, staging a drama of walking on foot within a high security cordon, is now entertaining his nearby people by uttering stupid things like 'something unwanted things are being done with foreign money in the country' with his sycophant officials. Even while requests are being made from the entire intelligentsia and broad masses in the country and from the UN to the world community to work in favour of peace and political way out, Gyanendra Shahi and his absolute feudal coterie, cowardly propagating that 'the ceasefire cannot be believed' has instructed the royal army at this time to be active in killing, arresting and torturing Maoist cadres and people all across the country. Also the fact that the motive hidden behind this was to stupidly cover up his absolute and bloodthirsty face by forcing us to call off cease-fire soon and, in turn, propagating all of this was a conspiracy has now been exposed before the entire Nepalese people and the world. Where as, our party is determined to accomplish its responsibility of forward-looking political way out and people's aspiration of peace without being provoked by the enemy. Now, the feudal clique of national betrayer and people's traitor Gyanendra Shahi, hiding inside the mask of foreign intervention and nationalism, is going ahead towards the direction of unleashing a dreadful massacre against the real multiparty nationalism and democratic movement in Nepal. The situation is becoming so piercing that a danger of big storm in the capital and big cities has been visualized in the near future. A time-bell is ringing for the history to take a big turn.
In this situation, our party of the proletariat, determining own tactics and reaching the climax of its rigidity and flexibility, must be able to accomplish its role in the history. In the situation, which changes in moments, if the party of the proletariat, in a real sense, fails to build up a headquarters capable to take up any risky decision of whatever kind and party rank and army, which can implement that decision firmly with no condition, the storm not far away can wreck everything. That storm will not take note of any kind of dogma and insistence. Party engenders a danger of loosing its credibility in the history if we cannot establish our control over the events by changing our moves immediately in line with the intense development of objective events. At this time, all the political parties in our country are entering into a major acid test of the history. The verdict of who will turn into ash and who will pass well in this acid test will take place very ruthlessly. Therefore, in this crucial moment it is necessary to have a strong unity for the party to keep oneself prepared fully.
f) Party must not and will not allow the historic truth falling in shadow that the main specificity of imperialism and proletarian revolution is the alliance of feudalism and imperialism. The economic, political and military assistance the ruling classes of US imperialism and Indian expansionism have granted to the royal army, subservient to the feudal palace, to oppress the democratic movement of the people has forcefully justified that historic fact in the Nepalese context also. Even after Feb 1, 2005, the pressure that the US imperialism has created upon the political parties for an agreement with the feudal monarchy sustaining with the support of pure royal army terror clarifies the depth of that alliance.
Even while wide public opinion has been built up today in favour of constituent assembly election, it is clear that the pressure of foreign power centres is working from behind the failure of 7 political parties to abandon the collaborationist slogan of restoration of parliament. The slogan of reinstatement of parliament in the present condition of Nepal can act not only as a loophole for the parties to agree with the King but also as a weapon of the King to save himself at last stage. The reason behind continuing with such situation seems to be a phobia of imperialists and, to a great extent, parliamentarian party leaders, that the Maoists might acquire upper hand when constituent assembly and republic is taken up directly. Here, they have been insisting the People's Liberation Army, under our party leadership, and weapons to be the main problem. One can easily understand the secret behind the saying that feudal and imperialist leaders cannot believe us until we come in peaceful politics by abandoning People's War, in other words, until we surrender, but the same kind of saying from the leaders of parliamentarian parties, who talk of full democracy or republic, can be said ridiculous only.
To shut eyes on the historical necessity of dissolving and disarming the royal army that has been defending absolute monarchy by booting down people's democratic movement and its achievement since 250 years, in general, and past six decades, in particular, becomes moving around feudalism and imperialism. In the history, no republic has been established ever without dissolving and defeating the army subservient to monarchy and Nepal cannot be an exception to it. In the context when our party, with a deep sense of responsibility towards people and the democracy, has been declaring to reorganize army according to the result that comes through the election (peaceful) of constituent assembly under the supervision of UNO or any trustworthy international institution, the fact that the people's army is not an obstruction for peace and democracy but is a means of it is clear. While arriving at the latest cease-fire, party's sensitivity towards people's aspiration of peace and political way out has been further clear. In spite of this, in the context of the imperialist exertion to materialize coalition between the absolute monarchy and parliamentarian parties, Gyanendra Shahi's cruel and feudal obstinacy to crush down all with the strength of royal army and major parliamentarian leaders' unclear, political indecision and collaborationist behaviour, our party must not and will not be trapped in a subjective illusion that republic will emerge through constituent assembly after the monarchy collapses with no trouble and easily. Unless the backbone of royal army is broken by raising people's war to a new height, unless a consolidated unity is developed in the party by developing its own ideology, policy, plan, program and command and unless people's power and people's relation is developed on the basis of people's education, to expect a change from others is wrong. Our party will not lag behind in the tactic of uniting all forces who can be united for a political way out, but while doing so will never deviate from the duty of firmly advancing our independent revolutionary initiative further. Grasping the reality that the development of people's war has made the possibility of forward-looking political way out strong, the whole party, People's Liberation Army and people's powers, and consolidating them, will be centralized to raise people's war to a new height.
3. On Party Rectification And Consolidating People's Relation Today, our Party and the People's War under Party's leadership has become a big challenge for the imperialists and reactionaries the world over. Likewise, our movement has become a big source of inspiration for the proletariat, workers and liberation-loving masses of people all across the world. As an obvious consequence of this situation they have qualitatively increased pressure to deviate our Party and People's War from its revolutionary objective and to annihilate it. Although, the sympathy of the revolutionary masses all over the world towards our movement has been increasing, but that has not yet developed in the form of a movement against the imperialist and reactionary sabotage and intervention. In this way, the fact is clear that the situation of our Party and movement has come at a crossroads of much piercing, challenging and great possibility.
Although challenges and possibilities have a number of external aspects, ultimately the main reason behind development or deterioration of the party and movement is internal. Continuous process of the systematic development of ideological and political line, consolidated, dynamic, militant and unified organization in agreement with that line and solid people's relation which no enemy can break, are the bases of development and victory of the Party and movement. Despite all adversities and challenges, our party had initiated the great People's War with that ideal and sacrifice of thousands of revolutionary heroes and heroines dedicated to that spirit and ideal has brought the party and movement up to today's height.
But, some serious indications of deviation from that proletarian spirit and ideal are being noticed in the Party today. As a consequence of MLM and Prachanda Path, becoming personal petty bourgeois showing and chewing tusk in the field of ideology, of developing anarchy, regionalism, sectarianism, groupism, bureaucracy in the field of organization, of increasing more formal and mechanical relation with the people and use of force than the sense of service, a situation in which people are feeling to have been exploited and oppressed by us has developed, and in places it has exploded too. In order to face the challenges of national and international situation, there is a need of much devotion, conviction and unity in the party, but right at this time, our party has been divided into many petty bourgeois small groupings. The place of ideological, collective and voluntary proletarian discipline has been gradually occupied by sectarian discipline. Because of such kinds of sectarian groups, instead of helping one another to advance by way of open and hearty debate, criticism and self-criticism, very much harmful petty bourgeois thinking and working style of satire and exposition internally to one another is in the rise. The decisions of rectification and revolutionary transformation have been limited in the Party central headquarters, Standing Committee, Politburo and resolutions of the Central Committee and there has been a vigorous petty bourgeois transformation in practice and style of work. Post-greediness and careerism in the party have so increased so much that the culture of pressure, threat, servility, oiling and bargaining has started to be institutionalised. Having lost the patience of working for the Party and people by carrying out a particular responsibility, everyone's anxiety and concern has started being expressed in the haste of occupying higher posts one after another. A thinking that, let any good political and military work be successful only under my leadership and let that success take me up to the higher posts or let the failure push down others to lower posts is gradually going to be a general danger. The self-centred individualism is growing so much that a situation, in which one does not see others, is being created. Economic anarchism, extravagance, corruption and opportunist thinking are burgeoning and, for that too, contest to occupy higher posts is begin. A trend of collecting donation wherever he/she wants and hurting people on one's wish has spread up to the lower ranks. A situation, in which the value of money exchanged with the blood and sweat of the people has been diminishing more one goes higher, is not less shameful. Instead of working hard to transform people and raise his/her consciousness by giving ideology and politics and winning their heart with the sense of service, a trend of forcing people to do according to one's wish with the force of baton and threat has been increasing. Instead of taking necessary actions after fulfilling a minimum process of class and political analysis, incidents of killing people recklessly or with a very much weak reason are increasing. While trying to implement forcefully the hard and fast rule, instead of sorting out good and bad aspects in people's traditional customs, cultures and production systems, averting bad aspects patiently by raising consciousness through teaching and encouragement and preserving the good ones, a danger of people in places being terrified of and helpless from ourselves has been noticed. By way of mounting the process of becoming different from his/her living standard, behaviour and conduct from the masses once one becomes a party member and a whole-timer, a situation, in which people think of the party cadre as a man not of his class but of another class, has been developing.
As a result of people's powers becoming formal, mechanical and casual only, people's relation has been eventually weak. A trend of thinking Party as a state and of focusing to acquire position in the Party other than serving and mobilizing people effectively by staying in the power is growing all across the country. The shameful defeat of our party candidates in the election we have organized in our strong base area is the burning negative consequence it has provided. People are gradually seeing a big difference between the Maoists of yesterday and today.
Only the aforesaid short description clarifies the seriousness of problems developing in the Party and movement. Why such kinds of problems are developing in a great proletarian revolutionary party of the 21st century and in the great people's war it is leading? What can be the remedies and methods to resolve them, from where and how to start--these questions are very serious. Why excesses worse than three excesses and five excesses appeared in the Communist Party of China after the central power had been captured, are appearing in our party before capturing the central power? If we fail to give correct answer and correct solution to these questions it is sure that we will gradually liquidate our Party and movement because of our own weaknesses than by US imperialism and military terror of Gyanendra Shahi.
In the course of party building, great Lenin had said that the revolutionary party of the proletariat is different from that of bourgeois and petty bourgeois, in the sense that it does not fear to disclose openly and mercilessly its own weaknesses and the party that cannot dare to become cruel towards own weaknesses cannot be a scientific and proletarian party. Credibility of party of the proletariat inherits in the courage of accepting openly the weaknesses of that kind and advancing ahead by taking lessons from them. Though the enemies and opportunists make thousands of efforts to gain from such acceptance; this is the only way that goes on making the party of the proletariat further steeled and invincible. The law of science is such that consistency with the pace of development can be maintained in this way only. Real recognition of the problem represents the commencement of its resolution.
Party must pay attention to the three wrong outlooks that appear while discussing the aforesaid problems. One outlook is the petty bourgeois right liquidationism that sees darkness in all sides, follows the path of pessimism (liquidation) saying that after having heaped up so much of problems in the Party now no transformation of it is possible and everything has gone ashtray. People, who fall prey to this kind of trend, by cursing the Party, movement and the leadership and enjoy the idealist self-satisfaction that oneself is the most correct, do not follow the path of struggle but escape from the problems. Second outlook, which does not prepare oneself to accept problems correctly, sees that everything is going on in order and Party is gaining victory or conceiting to be so, is the narrow left-extremism of the same petty bourgeois outlook. Those who fall prey to this kind of outlook become stubborn to go ahead without looking left or right. This trend finally gives rise to a situation, in which one hits head at the rock. Third outlook is the outlook that cannot make any outlook or what is called vacillationist outlook. Those who fall prey to this kind of outlook cannot reach at any conclusion on what is correct and what is not and what to do and what not to do. These kinds of people, who take up all the things as correct whomever they hear from or take up everyone's things as wrong and do not to know what is correct, remain in agnostic condition. Among the aforesaid three wrong outlooks, the main problem for the party and movement now is the first wrong outlook.
Here, it is evidently clear that proletarian revolutionary outlook is to correctly identify the problem and firmly and patiently struggle for its resolution. With this clarity of outlook, it is now required to centralize our attention in search of reasons behind the problems and their solution.
On class origin
The level of development of productive forces and production relation, in a semi-feudal and semi-colonial Nepal, is very much weak. Self-sustaining fragmented agricultural production is the main economic foundation of the entire rural area of Nepal. The process of a huge section of active young population of the rural region being recruited in foreign army, becoming gate-keeper, coolie and kitchen-servant and landing up in prostitution for their livelihood has been developing as a tradition from around the Sugauli Treaty with British-India. The fragmented production system and nominal money that comes from foreign country was obvious to go on making the consciousness of people in the entire rural area very much petty bourgeois and self-centred. From around 1950, because of the increasing impact of political movement and gradual development of education political knowledge went on developing in a big section of petty bourgeois class in the rural area also. Naturally the section that realized to have been oppressed and exploited by the state power centred in Kathmandu and the rural exploiters, feudal and impostors, and the educated section conscious towards their right, has filled up the entire rank of our party leadership from top to bottom.
As great Lenin said, the whole section of the petty bourgeois class reaches to a certain limit of rebellion because of the atrocity instigated upon them but cannot show collectivity, devotion, patience and sacrifice necessary beyond that limit. Though it comes forward from the standpoint of knowledge and logic but from the angle of consciousness and tradition it becomes difficult for them to become free from the self-centred individualist sectarianism built on the foundation of fragmented production system. Our party and people's war arrived comparatively easily up to the level of revolt against the old state but now the challenge of building up a new power is out of the capacity of petty bourgeois class. It is the character of the petty bourgeois class to rule in the same way or acquire benefit out of it or raise status from it while trying to avenge the unjust and oppression the old state carried on him yesterday. From the angle of class and ideology, the crux of the problem seen now in our party is hidden in this. To build a new power under the leadership is not a question that can go ahead without having made a leap from petty bourgeois consciousness to the proletarian one.
On the Question of Class Upgradation
Following the construction of new state (in whatever level of development it may be) after destroying the old one, naturally all the excesses existing in the society enter into the Party and movement. There remains status and prestige and plenty of economic and material means and resources in the state. That objective environment tries to push even those people, who are heading for proletarian transformation, towards the direction of bureaucrat capitalism. In this sense, this is not the problem only of our party that has seized power in the rural areas but is a part of the problem that had severely appeared in Russia and China after capturing the central power and that had even led finally to counter-revolution. Here, the fact that Lenin had to viciously expose distortion, discrepancy and corruption spread in the Soviet Power after five years of accomplishment of the great Russian October Revolution and that Mao had to initiate the Cultural Revolution having failed in struggles against the entire excesses in China is noteworthy. Without taking into account the depth of class and ideological problem, some of the people make fake efforts to escape from the problem or remain untouched by easily laying defects on the head of the leadership. Of course, this kind of thinking cannot grasp the theory of class struggle and dialectical and historical materialism. In fact, the serious indications of aforesaid problems are coming in the continuity of the problems that the great leaders and parties in the world and International Communist Movement were facing soon after the seizure of power. It is sure that these problems will not decrease but will increase more even after we capture Kathmandu militarily tomorrow. The fact that revolution and counter-revolution go on simultaneously has been historically proved.
On the Subjective Reasons
Because of the reasons like, inadequacy in ideological, political and cultural teaching, training, publication and propaganda, inadequacy in the development of necessary policy, rule, code of conduct and their effective implementation and inadequacy in the necessary organizational structure to control and follow up the policy and instruction, no sufficient interference has been possible to resolve problems. What can be a proletarian revolutionary methodology for the solution, finally? Only by waging a new revolution with the spirit of cultural revolution, can we have a real, dynamic and prolonged solution. This ideological revolution, which will be waged within the Party and movement, will be a revolution waged by means of great debate in the ideological, political, organizational and cultural field. The purpose of this great debate will be to make the party reach at a higher synthesis and centralization, make the party organizationally dynamic and energetic and consolidate people's relation by developing mass line. This debate will be based upon the purpose of transforming but not of undressing leaders and cadres of the party. It will be conducted with the strength of study, logic and debate. By specifying the concrete goal of Party Congress, the great debate will be conducted at least for a period of one year. Gathering in different levels, conferences and political and military activities will be organized with a goal of making success the forthcoming Party Congress as a great milestone of the proletariat. For that, this meeting of the Central Committee must first of all take a historical decision of sacrifice to transform oneself for a new revolution. The fate and future of the Party and revolution, to a great extent, will depend upon the preparedness of this Central Committee to push forward a new and higher process by rupturing from the continuity.
4. Short Evaluation Of Inner Party Struggle In the dawn of strategic counter-offensive, the doubts and inner-struggle among responsible comrades, while coming at the second PB meeting from the first one and the CC meeting, reached to its climax. Later on, the whole inner-struggle spilled out publicly. Though not in the formal sense, it was felt that the Party, in fact, had reached to the threshold of split. There existed no situation where one had to abide by any limit to expose other. It started being felt everywhere that the inner struggle went out of party control.
From the aforesaid situation inside party, certainly a wave of pleasure and feast started taking place among the ringleaders of US imperialism and feudal clique of Gyanendra Shahi, who came forward through February 1, 2005 coup, where as a situation of serious concern and pain appeared from the supporters of Party and revolution, well-wishers and the broad masses, and from entire political forces in and abroad against feudal autocracy to the revolutionary and 'left' forces. A clear demarcation between friends and foes appeared in two sections forcing to split and unite.
Following the PB decision regarding action, discussion with serious concern started taking place on the foresaid situation that had developed when interaction was going on between Comrade Laldhoj and Comrade Rahul and the central headquarters. Just before Comrade Laldhoj and Comrade Rahul visited India, criticizing and self-criticising responsibly and sentimentally in a meeting with the central headquarters, a conviction and agreement of changing bad into good was affirmed. The central headquarters publicized consciously the unhealthy inner-struggle according to that conviction and agreement and appealed the masses to help it as a specific exercise of democracy and a specific process in the development of ideology. The central headquarters decided to send Comrade Laldhoj accompanied by Comrade Amar Singh with a responsibility of having talks with different sections and it was publicly announced and this, to a certain extent, brought the situation under control.
In this way, when the affairs were going ahead positively after Comrade Laldhoj and Comrade Rahul reached India, though different angles of distrust and doubts existed, exactly at that time the royal army publicized the unfortunate Tape case, and that almost shattered the positive process, which was in the making. And it provided ground for very bitter and baseless allegation and counter allegation of 'pro-King' and 'pro-India'. This situation again "encouraged" the imperialists and Gyanendra Shahis and "discouraged" the friends.
Right at that time, seven political parties and among them too the main parliamentarian parties were requesting the central headquarters to organize discussion against the absolute monarchy. It was necessary to fulfil that responsibility in any condition because of the specific necessity of struggle.
In that situation, thinking for several days and discussing with available comrades, the central headquarters, pledging to make maximum effort to save the Party from split and reach to agreement with the forces against absolute monarchy, decided to visit India at any cost. The inspiration that the leadership, in sensitive moments, must take up a courageous move to turn the history in positive direction had worked behind this decision.
In India, serious discussion took place with leaders of different political parties, intellectuals from civil society, a number of intelligentsias of India and Nepal, journalists etc. Certainly, it played a positive role to turn the external struggle towards positive direction. In addition to this, several discussions and serious interactions mainly with Comrade Laldhoj and other responsible comrades made stronger the basis of party unity. What those discussions and interactions clarified was that Comrade Laldhoj and other comrades were not for split, there remained no basic difference, even though there were differences in emphasis and angle in some questions related with ideology of protracted nature, kind of thinking on tactics against the absolute monarchy, party could be carried forward more unitedly in the sensitive moment of history by criticizing and self-criticizing, verbally and in written, the weaknesses emerged from several doubts in the past. Reaching that conclusion, through several rise and fall, the central headquarters, with suggestion from all the comrades of the Standing Committee and available PBMs and CCMs, reinstated Comrade Laldhoj and Comrade Rahul in the earlier responsibility. Following long debates, it was clear that the danger mentioned in the past PB meeting, in which it was pointed out that Comrade Laldhoj and Comrade Rahul could deviate ideologically, politically and organizationally, did not exist and could not be proved. And on the resignation that Comrade Ashok had presented to ease the process of investigation, he was logically reinstated to his previous responsibility of Polit-Bureau because his involvement could not be proved.
In this way, keeping at centre the interest of revolution and movement and defeating entire conspiracies of class enemies to split the party, we have succeeded to advance movement by protecting unity. It is necessary for the Central Committee and the whole party to work hard to raise it higher by consolidating this unity. Entire assessment of the past events of inner-struggle and overall ideological synthesis on its basis will be appropriate things to do in the forthcoming Congress. What needs to be understood deeply here is that whatever mistakes one had committed subjectively, party's determination to sacrifice for revolution by maintaining unity, even after the inner struggle had gone publicly and reached to a climax, will play a role of new experience in the history of International Communist Movement. This experience that we have acquired in applying Marxist dialectics to change negative into positive and bad into good is sure to be a question of far-reaching significance. Mainly, this experience will play an important role to enrich party by way of developing new ideas.
5. Short Evaluation Of The First Plan Of Counter-Offensive From the viewpoints of both positive and negative experiences, one year of the first plan of counter-offensive was very much important. Definitely, the uneasy situation of inner struggle developed in the party centre caused several obstacles in implementing the plan and gave rise to substantial loss in the party. In the dawn of implementing first plan, after the CC meeting, the martyrdom in Siraha of responsible comrades of the CC, Comrade Sherman Kunwar (Vishal) and Comrade Mohan Chandra Gautam (Kumar), while moving on their way to field, stunned the whole party. Even then, the political and military tasks, which the plan had directed, were implemented. The reality that the successful and forceful initiation of this plan of counter offensive that forced the feudal mafia of Gyanendra Shahi to come out nakedly and brought the country to a threshold of decisive struggle against feudalism, signifies the objective achievement of it.
Following the CC meeting, meetings, gatherings and trainings organized in different levels of Party, army, front and departments basically brought about uniformity in understanding the CC decisions regarding counter-offensive. Achieving uniformity in understanding and completing the necessary preparations, the sequence of political mobilization and military actions went forward according to the plan. Taking Highways in Terai region as the main site, the first phase of the plan of decentralized offensive, was accomplished more forcefully and successfully than anticipated.
All the three divisions of the PLA under three commands of the country, within this phase, raised up mobile and positional warfare to a new height by building, one after another, a series of successful and courageous raids on the royal gangsters in the Terai and the highways. New records of counter-offensive that had started, under the central command, from a big attack of multidimensional importance at Krishna Bhir, the vicinity of Kathmandu, to the well-known attack that, along with series of attacks under western command, smashed the so-called Ranger Battalion of enemy at Pandun of Kailali, the courageous offence that horrified the enemy at Mathuradanda of Argha under the central command and the violent attacks carried on almost in all the highways during the later part of this phase under the eastern command, elucidate the greatness and height of the initiation of counter-offensive. The PLA, confining royal gangsters to their barracks for months by chasing them off from the Terai and highways, not only proved its offensive power and superiority but, in fact, succeeded to control those places too. It becomes clear that the feudal gang of Gyanendra Shahi, as the last and stupid attempt to maintain its existence, had taken up a move of February 1 on February 1 itself, after the PLA had hassled the royal gangsters through hundreds of big or small raids and the feudal old state fell into chaos as a result of party's political intervention and mass mobilization. However, the success of this phase clarifies that the initiation of counter-offensive that the PLA had taken on, was very much exclusive and great.
The royal coup of February 1 and the fascist ban, arrest and terror brought commotion in the media, including entire political parties, civil societies and human right activists in the capital, district headquarters and towns. In that situation, the party centre, exposing forcefully the fascist move of Gyanendra Shahi, appealed on February 1 itself, to all the parliamentarian forces, civil societies and broad masses for a united resistance against it. The three-day Nepal Bandh (general shutdown) planned immediately and the indefinite wheel-blockage called from February 1 acted as a strong slap on the royal power. Our party that immediately resisted the royal coup was established worldwide as the only force to do so. The royal coup was opposed politically not only from all over the world but also a number of power centres even declared to stop military assistance being supplied to the royal state. The fake attempt that royal terrorists had made to claim the takeover as a necessary step for peace and democracy against "terrorism" could not be established. Slowly, the Party's interaction with parliamentarian parties advanced in India in a clandestine way and it is clear that the effort to develop joint activity with political forces is being carried on. However, the move of February 1 brought about a big regressive change in the old state and politics of the country.
With some minor changes in the military plan of Party, the process of centralized big military actions was pushed forward. In the course of its preparation we lost one contingent of the PLA, which had achieved big successes in Terai, under the western command, and one of the promising commanders of the PLA Comrade Jeet, in Ganeshpur, devoid of information and correct knowledge of the real objective situation and within a huge counter-encirclement of the enemy coming with a new strategy and conspiracy. Adverse geographical situation, lack of correct information and some subjective assessment that had emerged out of enthusiasm developed within the PLA seem to be the main reasons behind that loss. That loss, in which more than three dozens of fighters, including Comrade Ject, and dozens of modem weapons were lost at one incidence, has been established as the biggest loss in the history of the PLA. Naturally, the enemy propagated that incident as a big success of theirs. In fact, the sacrifice of Ganeshpur front and fighters including Comrade Jeet taught a lesson to the Party that the war has now reached a new level and only by developing new strategy can the enemy be defeated.
In the overall process of development of the PLA, a dialectical sequence of defeat followed by victory and victory followed by defeat exists from the very beginning. In this plan of counter-offensive too, this sequence appeared from a new height. A contingent of fighters, who had horrified enemy at Krishnabhir almost in the same manner as in Ganeshpur, were defeated at Bhirpusta in Lamjung, lacking right coordination and good survey. In the situation, when there was a psychological pressure of Ganeshpur and Bhirpusta incidents, when enemy's fortification was strong, the central headquarters, taking into account of the necessity to succeed in a centralized big action in any case, presented a plan to attack by gathering selected forces from the western and central command. Khara action in Rukum was the result of that plan. But, because of the main reasons by which no necessary uniformity could be earned among the main commanders in relation to understanding positional war and implementing the spirit of the plan, no correct report of the front could reach the commanders and no adequate coordination and confidence could be established among them, Khara battle too could not acquire victory. In this battle, in which the PLA had to retreat in the situation when enemy was close to defeat and PLA was close to victory, decentralized thinking and a psychology was developed that the commanders and fighters of one side thouiht as if they had to retreat without fighting and other side thought as if they had to retreat because other side did not fight as they did. Even after the central headquarters summed it up, individual explanations clarify that the problem remains in the Party, not the PLA. The experience of that battle forced and is forcing the central headquarters to think on the seriousness of problem within the Party itself. Regarding the Khara battle, another aspect that needs to be paid attention to is whether the enemy had devised necessary preparation beforehand by having knowledge of the plan through penetration. However, Khara battle was an intensive offensive carried out on our part and so proved the propaganda of enemy that PLA does not have strength to carry out centralized raids to be wrong. And the PLA acquired important lessons for the next battles. The general expression of the fighters and courageous raids that the PLA carried out in different places against the enemy of big strength clarify the fact that no negative impact of the Khara battle on the morale of the PLA had developed. Even then, the Party failed to achieve political gain from this. In Khara raid and the battles that followed, more than six dozens of fighters, including another promising commander Comrade Basanta, sacrificed their lives.
In the centralized action, to which the Eastern Command had to accomplish after the aforesaid experience of Khara, efforts were made to attack by taking lessons from there too. Accordingly, the Eastern Command decided to raid enemy's camp at Bandipur in Siraha and two other places as its cover. The intense offensive carried out according to the plan created a big wave. This courageous raid carried out in Terai ridiculed Gyanendra Shabi's false claim that law and order has developed. In spite of great efforts of the fighters no good amount of arms could be seized due to strong fortification, plain topography and shortage of time. However, it does not minimize the political and military importance of that action. The Eastern Division of the PLA, scaling new height of prudence, valor and sacrifice, acquired big victories and achievements in other courageous battles that took place in different places against the royal gangsters, coming up with the strategy of encirclement and annihilation.
The decentralized actions that followed the centralized ones have been accomplished all across the country. Among those the successful and courageous attack taken place at Argha, under the Central Command, was the qualitative one. In that courageous attack, another promising commander Comrade Jwar and another commander Comrade Janak attained martyrdom. Likewise, other actions under the eastern command and the western command are significant.
In spite of these efforts and successes in centralized and decentralized actions, there was imbalance because it could nowhere attain the result that the plan had anticipated. But a situation in which the enemy could conceit was continuing. Shattering that imbalance and self-satisfaction and in a way to make the world know, the PLA division under the Western Command, exhibiting height, strength and heroism, scaled a new record at Pili in Kalikot. This division, which had taken lessons from the defeats of Ganeshpur, Khara and Rambhapur front, settled accounts with interest from that battle. Capturing all arms and weapons, crushing entire enemies and detaining 60 royal soldiers, the PLA, in the new situation, has given a message of new height that it is the legitimate army, which respects Geneva Treaty and protects people in Nepal and that the Royal Army, in a real sense, is the terrorist that murders and disappears people. In fact, the Pili action, as the culmination of centralized actions under this plan, prepared well a strong base to impair Gyanendra Shahi and his terrorist feudal gangster by means of political offensive of unilateral ceasefire. In this sense, it is clear that its political significance is very wide.
In addition to aforesaid military actions, the waves of shutdown, blockade, strike etc. organized on behalf of the party, state, mass organizations, different fronts etc. clarify the continuous process of political intervention. Amid this, the significance of continued political intervention carried out in national and international level, on the part of central headquarters, is evident.
Among other important actions carried out under this plan include the sabotage of Gamgadhi, the district headquarters of Mugu, the sabotage and jail break to free dozens of revolutionary fighters and other prisoners at Dhangadhi in Kailali, series of courageous attacks carried out in the cities like Nepaigunj and Butwal, successful and courageous raid triggered at Sankhu police post within Kathmandu, sabistrict headquarters, jail break and release of prisoners etc. Apart from this, innumerable numbers of guerrilla actions, big and small, have been accomplished all across the country. Under this plan, the initiation of constructing 'Martyr Road', 91 Km long, within the central base area and extensive participation of masses has a multidimensional significance. The construction of this 'Martyr Road', which has been well-discussed in the national and international level is not only opening up a door of development in the base area but also has exemplified party's political picture and objective before all.
Even though positive initiatives mentioned before, in totality, remain principal, some very negative incidents too came into sight under this plan. Those negative incidents and tendencies have been discussed in the rectification chapter. Some major incidents that need to be mentioned here include the serious discontent surfaced against the party in Dailekh, the white terror in Kapilbastu, the bus incident in Chitwan, people's discontent appeared in some parts of Makwanpur and Dhading and some uncomfortable incidents appeared within party and outside in Terai. It is not necessary to discuss them in detail because the shortcomings behind such incidents have already gone through the process of self-criticism and public actions.
In this way, with these entire experiences of successes and failures, what can be concluded is that the first plan of counter-offensive has been basically successful.
The Worker, #10, May 2006
Document
RESOLUTION OF CENTRAL COMMITTEE POLITICAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL RESOLUTION
Develop ideological and political line and consolidate party unity! Firmly grasp mass line and develop strong relation with the masses! Take forward more firmly the political and military counter-offensive against the monarchical old feudal state!Dear Comrades,
From both the angles of class struggle and inner struggle, our Party has today arrived at a crossroads full of challenges and opportunities. The main factors behind today's possibilities and challenges are the multi-dimensional impact and the result of the ten years of People's War. It is only by developing a correct ideological and political line by way of objectively evaluating the basic principles of MLM, the experience of history and the power balance between present domestic and external classes that the Party will be able to face the challenges before us today. In this sense, it is clear that this meeting of the Central Committee will be of far-reaching significance.
1. On the World Situation On Imperialism and the Proletarian Revolution Imperialism in its course of development has been acquiring new forms and shapes though its capitalist class essence remains the same. The main specificity of today's imperialism has been to exploit and oppress the broad masses of people of the earth, economically, politically, culturally and militarily, in the form of a single globalized state. The world that had been influenced, on the one hand, by the wave of national liberation, democratic and socialist movement around the Second World War and, on the other hand, by the inter-imperialist rivalry during the cold war, has now been entrapped in the sole hegemony of US imperialism.
Owing to main factors, like the defeat of new democratic and socialist states that were developed in the course of the first wave of World Proletarian Revolution in the power struggle against the state-owned bureaucrat capitalism, the establishment of economic and mainly military superiority of US imperialism over other main imperialist countries, the control of multinational finance capital on the national capital and economy of the third world countries and the intensification of worldwide cultural intervention by means of the monopoly in information technology etc., the aforesaid hegemony has been maintained. As a consequence of this form of globalized state of US imperialism, the international values and norms, methods and rules and structures that were developed after the Second World War have been weakening. Following 9/11, US imperialism, by raising a stern question of either 'you are with us or against us' before every nation or group based on ideology, declared war openly. In spite of worldwide protests, the fascist intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq and the all-round threat against a country or political movement that is in line with their own national interest or fundamental ideological conviction, have been undoubtedly justifying the aforesaid facts.
This fascist form of US imperialism, in its essence, has been erected upon the foundation of a serious ideological crisis. Being divorced from a number of bourgeois values that they had until the 70s, and encouraging sheer religious blindness, the imperialist ringleaders are attempting to rule now. The fact that it has to sustain on medieval blind ideology in a context when science has acquired all-round development in the 21st century, and the declaration of so-called 'crusade' against so-called 'terrorism' by George Bush, reveal the depth of ideological crisis of imperialism. From this, the historical rationale due to which imperialism has come up viciously against the progressive and scientific aspiration of today's masses becomes clear.
To whatever degree the publicity of this new form of globalized imperialism is made as a new era of human being's progress, the innumerable living facts, experience and practice have proved it to be nothing other than a new, naked and contemptible form of colonization. The process of a handful of capitalists becoming trillionaire and billions of poor being trapped in poverty has intensified after the 90s, and the statistics of the World Bank too has clarified that the gap between rich and poor has become appalling. Today, the living standard of 1.6 billion of people has declined qualitatively than that of 90s. Children, who could be saved from preliminary treatment, are dying, 30 thousands a day. More than 800 million people are suffering from malnutrition and two-third of this figure cannot survive beyond 40. Forget about education, 250 million children from the third world are forced to work as child-slaves to manage two time meal. Tens of thousands of young ladies are being pushed into prostitution daily. Hundreds of millions of unemployed youths are wandering as modern slaves in the globalized labour market for their livelihood. In this way, the imperialist new world order of privatization, liberalization and globalization confirms the only fact that it has been intensifying the process of frying huge majority of the masses in the world in a single earthen pot.
Another important aspect that needs to be paid attention to is that the US imperialist's globalized state, which has been developed by establishing its military bases in 140 countries, has inevitably made worldwide resistance and rebellion necessary and possible qualitatively. Today, any national liberation, democratic or socialist movement is not possible to succeed in any country of the world unless it does not advance as an inseparable part of the world people's resistance. In no time in the history had the objective situation been prepared as broadly as now for the practical application of the great proletarian principle of internationalism. From the people of the United States of America to those of all the continents in the world are being victimized by the same kind of globalized imperialist exploitation, oppression and aggression. From the resistance developing in Iraq, as a new Vietnam, and Afghanistan to the revolutionary movements in Nepal, India, Peru, Turkey and Philippines; to the chain of people's protest and discontent rising from the masses of the people in America to those in Europe, the US imperialism and their agents, the domestic rulers, have been the only common enemy of the people everywhere.
In South Asia, revolutionary democratic and national liberation movements against the expansionist Indian ruling class, which has been kneeling down before US imperialism, are intensifying. In this context, the formation of C.P.I. (Maoist) through the unification of two important parties leading people's war since long deserves special mention. Also the contradiction deepening, since some time, between the Nepalese autocratic feudal monarchy and the Indian ruling class is important to take into account. Chinese revisionist capitalist rulers that have been achieving economic growth by submitting their market's key to US imperialism are involved in a tricky process of expanding their influence in South Asia.
The aforesaid objective situation clarifies the maturity of material environment in which people's new socialist world order can be established by destroying the imperialist world order completely. But, however critical situation it may be objectively, imperialism will not collapse spontaneously or by its own. For that, along with scientific ideological leadership, conscious pressure and use of force is imperative. Historically proven scientific fact is that that kind of leadership is not possible from any other class, community or ideology except from international proletarian class and its revolutionary ideology. But, in the present transitional situation, when the first wave of World Proletarian Revolution has been over in the 20th century itself and a new wave is in the horizon, the proletarian movement too is facing the challenge of developing ideology. The problem of leadership in the world proletarian movement is inseparably linked with this challenge.
The attention of the internationalist revolutionaries of the 21st century must be focused seriously on the fact that the analysis done by Lenin and Mao on imperialism and a number of concepts they had developed on its basis regarding proletarian strategy have lagged behind. Following the Second World War, the inter-imperialist rivalry and Lenin's analysis on the nature of war that continues among them to divide and re-divide a certain part of the world and the proletarian strategy built up as well on its basis; and following the cold war, the analysis of the situation that Mao made on Three Worlds, even though in a tactical sense, do not basically exist now. The situation of US imperialism, which is advancing as a globalized state, has caused Lenin's and Mao's analysis to lag behind in the same manner how the development of imperialism in Lenin's time had made Marx's analysis and strategy then, based on his analysis of capitalism, that revolution will take place firstly and simultaneously in the developed European countries, to lag behind. This is the principal issue for developing MLM in the 21st century and determining new proletarian strategy. Without focusing attention on this question, no challenges of the world revolution now can be confronted.
However, it should not be made to mean that the contradictions among different imperialist powers and reactionary cliques have been over. Definitely, this contradiction also exists and will exist and the proletariat must pay attention to it. Nevertheless, today's world is being decided not by this but by US imperialism, on the one side, and the world-struggle against it, on the other. The necessity of developing the concept of South Asian Soviet Federation in the 21st century to the concept of World Federation and waging every country's national liberation, democratic and socialist movement under it is the burning necessity of today.
Following Comrade Mao's death and restoration of capitalism in China, the International Communist Movement, on the one hand, mainly fell prey to different forms of right revisionism and, on the other, to mechanical dogmatism, which, by eulogizing old things and experiences, prattles them only. Even now, struggling against these trends in the International Communist Movement, overall development of MLM is necessary. It is clear that development is possible only by applying the scientific weapon of dialectical materialism. It is necessary to grasp the fact that dialectical materialism is a means to constantly develop proletarian ideology against bourgeois pluralism and dogmato-revisionism.
Certainly, the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM), which has come forward with a resolve of defending, applying and developing the basic principles of MLM, has played important role ideologically. But, extensive study, debate and struggle is necessary for it to take on the role of a real leadership for the world revolution by developing it to the level of New Communist International capable of facing the challenges of the 21st century.
Grasping firmly the reality that the necessity, possibility and importance of international movement has increased in the particularity of present world imperialism, our glorious party, the CPN (Maoist), as a Party successfully leading People's War since the past ten years, has a big responsibility on its shoulder to develop ideology and International Communist Movement. Accepting the reality that our party's international role had been weak in the past compared to what should have been, it is necessary now to heighten our initiative towards that direction. Grasping the reality that the future of Nepalese revolution is inseparable from the development of the international movement, the Party must develop a concrete working plan.
2. On The Evaluation Of Domestic Situation And Party Tactics a) The People's War that was initiated under the leadership of our party to resolve the contradiction between the Nepalese people and the state power of feudal, bureaucrat and comprador bourgeoisie class based on the coalition of feudalism and imperialism, has brought forward, in the period of ten years, a wide-ranging change in the power balance of national politics. The old state has been wiped out from the entire rural area of the country whilst national and regional autonomous republics and local powers, though in the primary stage of their development, have taken birth. These people's powers, in line with the specificity of Nepal, are advancing gradually towards the direction of forming central government of People's Federal Republic. The People's Liberation Army, entering into the stage of strategic offensive after it crossed the strategic defensive and equilibrium stages against the enemy's military strength, has already implemented its first plan. Today, this is the principal aspect of domestic situation.
b) When the ideological synthesis that the second national conference of our party had developed and the political and military tactic it had put forward led the development of People's War to further intensification and greater qualitative height, then the contradiction between the liberal and diehard sections of the old state also got intensified. The first explosion of that contradiction went off in the form of the dreadful Narayanhiti (Palace) Massacre. That massacre, in its essence, was the result of conspiracy, rebellion and victory acquired by the diehard section of the state under the leadership of obstinate feudal element against the liberal section and group. The fact that the massacre was deliberated mainly against the people's war and the achievement of historical mass movement in 1990 as well has been as clear as daylight. Our party had then made a political analysis that there was support of foreign reactionary power mainly US imperialism to the fake King Gyanendra and his feudal clique behind the massacre. Today, even when Gyanendra Shahi, through a coup has imposed autocratic monarchical military dictatorship in the country, the pressure that US imperialism, which thinks of itself as the supplier of democracy the world over, has been creating pressure on the parliamentarian political parties to surrender before the autocratic monarchy justifies more brilliantly that our erstwhile analysis was correct. Realizing seriously the reality that the massacre was also targeted against the parliamentarian parties participating in the old state, our party had immediately appealed to the parliamentarian parties and civil society and taken initiative for joint work and front against feudal autocracy. However, the appeal and initiative could not take a concrete form because of the class character, short sightedness and momentary interest of the major parliamentarian parties. Today, after about four years, mainly after the royal coup of Feb 1, 2005, with the pressure of situation, the environment and possibility of building such an alliance has immensely increased and the Party is taking initiative to its capacity towards that direction.
c) To coordinate well the political and military intervention and use correctly the contradiction between different groups of the enemy has been an inseparable part of our tactic. Evaluating objectively the international balance of power and experience of the five years of people's war, the second national conference of our Party took up a decision of all party conference, interim government and the election of constituent assembly as a political tactic. Before the positive impact of this tactic had reached to its climax, the Narayanhiti Massacre was staged and it brought about a huge change in the political scenario of the country. The party centre, developing its political tactic in the new situation, emphasized on the necessity of interim government, election of constituent assembly and institutionalised development of republic. In that very context emphasizing to enhance the movement unitedly in favour of constituent assembly and republic, the Party had furthered discussion with different parliamentarian parties at the central level. Noteworthy to mention is that the then slogan of republic was neither a slogan of new democratic republic nor that of bourgeois parliamentarian one. In fact and in essence, that slogan was the one of multiparty republic that by means of constituent assembly could bring about an extensive change in the state structure by addressing the problems related with class, nation, region and sex prevailing in the country. The summary of what kind of changes in the state structure that the Party has sought through constituent assembly has been clarified in the proposal the negotiation team had presented on behalf of the party. It is clear that the same slogan of republic was later spelled as democratic republic by adding a popular terminology - 'democratic'.
d) Now the slogan of interim government, election of the constituent assembly and democratic republic that our party, taking into account the international and domestic balance of power, has formulated is a tactical slogan put forward for the forward-looking political way out. Remaining clear on the principle that the tactic must serve strategy, our party has viewed the democratic republic neither as the bourgeois parliamentarian republic nor directly as the new democratic one. This republic with an extensive reorganization of the state power as to resolve the problems related with class, nationality, region and sex prevailing in the country, would play a role of transitional multiparty republic. Certainly, the reactionary class and their parties will try to transform this republic into bourgeois parliamentarian one, where as, our party of the proletariat class will try to transform it into new democratic republic. How long will be the period of transition, is not a thing that can right now be ascertained. It is clear that it will depend on the then national and international situation and state of power balance. As for now, this slogan has played and will play an important role to unite all the forces against the absolute monarchy dominant in the old state, for it has been a common enemy for both revolutionary and parliamentarian forces. Both of the understandings that the slogan of constituent assembly and democratic republic is a pure political and diplomatic manoeuvring to be never applied or as a strategic slogan to be never changed i.e. to be applied in any condition, are wrong.
In the concrete condition of today, our party can establish its leadership in the movement only by going forward firmly, actively and responsibly in the question of organizing interim government, electing constituent assembly and establishing democratic republic with extensive reorganization in the state power and with the force of struggle by uniting entire republican forces against the feudal autocratic monarchy. After the collapse of the monarchy dominant in the old state, this slogan can play a role of forward-looking political way out for the peaceful resolution of civil war. This slogan addresses correctly the people's aspiration of change and peace for it can open up a door of peaceful resolution of civil war, and as a consequence can play a positive role for the preparation of insurrection too. So, party must take up active initiative unitedly to make this process reach a logical conclusion.
e) The unilateral cease-fire that the centre had declared for three months has established party's conviction, sense of responsibility and sensitiveness towards democratic political way out and aspiration of peace of the masses of people from a new height. The heartily welcome and positive repercussion from all the political forces and the masses of all levels and sects, in and outside of the country that, along with forward-looking political way out, aspire for peace has further inspired our party to go more responsibly ahead. Most important thing is that the cease-fire, tearing out Gyanendra Shahi's mask of peace, has made the war-mongering, criminal and autocratic look hidden within it naked and exposed before the broad masses and world community as well. Gyanendra Shahi, who has been unable to show his criminal face in the general assembly of United Nations, staging a drama of walking on foot within a high security cordon, is now entertaining his nearby people by uttering stupid things like 'something unwanted things are being done with foreign money in the country' with his sycophant officials. Even while requests are being made from the entire intelligentsia and broad masses in the country and from the UN to the world community to work in favour of peace and political way out, Gyanendra Shahi and his absolute feudal coterie, cowardly propagating that 'the ceasefire cannot be believed' has instructed the royal army at this time to be active in killing, arresting and torturing Maoist cadres and people all across the country. Also the fact that the motive hidden behind this was to stupidly cover up his absolute and bloodthirsty face by forcing us to call off cease-fire soon and, in turn, propagating all of this was a conspiracy has now been exposed before the entire Nepalese people and the world. Where as, our party is determined to accomplish its responsibility of forward-looking political way out and people's aspiration of peace without being provoked by the enemy. Now, the feudal clique of national betrayer and people's traitor Gyanendra Shahi, hiding inside the mask of foreign intervention and nationalism, is going ahead towards the direction of unleashing a dreadful massacre against the real multiparty nationalism and democratic movement in Nepal. The situation is becoming so piercing that a danger of big storm in the capital and big cities has been visualized in the near future. A time-bell is ringing for the history to take a big turn.
In this situation, our party of the proletariat, determining own tactics and reaching the climax of its rigidity and flexibility, must be able to accomplish its role in the history. In the situation, which changes in moments, if the party of the proletariat, in a real sense, fails to build up a headquarters capable to take up any risky decision of whatever kind and party rank and army, which can implement that decision firmly with no condition, the storm not far away can wreck everything. That storm will not take note of any kind of dogma and insistence. Party engenders a danger of loosing its credibility in the history if we cannot establish our control over the events by changing our moves immediately in line with the intense development of objective events. At this time, all the political parties in our country are entering into a major acid test of the history. The verdict of who will turn into ash and who will pass well in this acid test will take place very ruthlessly. Therefore, in this crucial moment it is necessary to have a strong unity for the party to keep oneself prepared fully.
f) Party must not and will not allow the historic truth falling in shadow that the main specificity of imperialism and proletarian revolution is the alliance of feudalism and imperialism. The economic, political and military assistance the ruling classes of US imperialism and Indian expansionism have granted to the royal army, subservient to the feudal palace, to oppress the democratic movement of the people has forcefully justified that historic fact in the Nepalese context also. Even after Feb 1, 2005, the pressure that the US imperialism has created upon the political parties for an agreement with the feudal monarchy sustaining with the support of pure royal army terror clarifies the depth of that alliance.
Even while wide public opinion has been built up today in favour of constituent assembly election, it is clear that the pressure of foreign power centres is working from behind the failure of 7 political parties to abandon the collaborationist slogan of restoration of parliament. The slogan of reinstatement of parliament in the present condition of Nepal can act not only as a loophole for the parties to agree with the King but also as a weapon of the King to save himself at last stage. The reason behind continuing with such situation seems to be a phobia of imperialists and, to a great extent, parliamentarian party leaders, that the Maoists might acquire upper hand when constituent assembly and republic is taken up directly. Here, they have been insisting the People's Liberation Army, under our party leadership, and weapons to be the main problem. One can easily understand the secret behind the saying that feudal and imperialist leaders cannot believe us until we come in peaceful politics by abandoning People's War, in other words, until we surrender, but the same kind of saying from the leaders of parliamentarian parties, who talk of full democracy or republic, can be said ridiculous only.
To shut eyes on the historical necessity of dissolving and disarming the royal army that has been defending absolute monarchy by booting down people's democratic movement and its achievement since 250 years, in general, and past six decades, in particular, becomes moving around feudalism and imperialism. In the history, no republic has been established ever without dissolving and defeating the army subservient to monarchy and Nepal cannot be an exception to it. In the context when our party, with a deep sense of responsibility towards people and the democracy, has been declaring to reorganize army according to the result that comes through the election (peaceful) of constituent assembly under the supervision of UNO or any trustworthy international institution, the fact that the people's army is not an obstruction for peace and democracy but is a means of it is clear. While arriving at the latest cease-fire, party's sensitivity towards people's aspiration of peace and political way out has been further clear. In spite of this, in the context of the imperialist exertion to materialize coalition between the absolute monarchy and parliamentarian parties, Gyanendra Shahi's cruel and feudal obstinacy to crush down all with the strength of royal army and major parliamentarian leaders' unclear, political indecision and collaborationist behaviour, our party must not and will not be trapped in a subjective illusion that republic will emerge through constituent assembly after the monarchy collapses with no trouble and easily. Unless the backbone of royal army is broken by raising people's war to a new height, unless a consolidated unity is developed in the party by developing its own ideology, policy, plan, program and command and unless people's power and people's relation is developed on the basis of people's education, to expect a change from others is wrong. Our party will not lag behind in the tactic of uniting all forces who can be united for a political way out, but while doing so will never deviate from the duty of firmly advancing our independent revolutionary initiative further. Grasping the reality that the development of people's war has made the possibility of forward-looking political way out strong, the whole party, People's Liberation Army and people's powers, and consolidating them, will be centralized to raise people's war to a new height.
3. On Party Rectification And Consolidating People's Relation Today, our Party and the People's War under Party's leadership has become a big challenge for the imperialists and reactionaries the world over. Likewise, our movement has become a big source of inspiration for the proletariat, workers and liberation-loving masses of people all across the world. As an obvious consequence of this situation they have qualitatively increased pressure to deviate our Party and People's War from its revolutionary objective and to annihilate it. Although, the sympathy of the revolutionary masses all over the world towards our movement has been increasing, but that has not yet developed in the form of a movement against the imperialist and reactionary sabotage and intervention. In this way, the fact is clear that the situation of our Party and movement has come at a crossroads of much piercing, challenging and great possibility.
Although challenges and possibilities have a number of external aspects, ultimately the main reason behind development or deterioration of the party and movement is internal. Continuous process of the systematic development of ideological and political line, consolidated, dynamic, militant and unified organization in agreement with that line and solid people's relation which no enemy can break, are the bases of development and victory of the Party and movement. Despite all adversities and challenges, our party had initiated the great People's War with that ideal and sacrifice of thousands of revolutionary heroes and heroines dedicated to that spirit and ideal has brought the party and movement up to today's height.
But, some serious indications of deviation from that proletarian spirit and ideal are being noticed in the Party today. As a consequence of MLM and Prachanda Path, becoming personal petty bourgeois showing and chewing tusk in the field of ideology, of developing anarchy, regionalism, sectarianism, groupism, bureaucracy in the field of organization, of increasing more formal and mechanical relation with the people and use of force than the sense of service, a situation in which people are feeling to have been exploited and oppressed by us has developed, and in places it has exploded too. In order to face the challenges of national and international situation, there is a need of much devotion, conviction and unity in the party, but right at this time, our party has been divided into many petty bourgeois small groupings. The place of ideological, collective and voluntary proletarian discipline has been gradually occupied by sectarian discipline. Because of such kinds of sectarian groups, instead of helping one another to advance by way of open and hearty debate, criticism and self-criticism, very much harmful petty bourgeois thinking and working style of satire and exposition internally to one another is in the rise. The decisions of rectification and revolutionary transformation have been limited in the Party central headquarters, Standing Committee, Politburo and resolutions of the Central Committee and there has been a vigorous petty bourgeois transformation in practice and style of work. Post-greediness and careerism in the party have so increased so much that the culture of pressure, threat, servility, oiling and bargaining has started to be institutionalised. Having lost the patience of working for the Party and people by carrying out a particular responsibility, everyone's anxiety and concern has started being expressed in the haste of occupying higher posts one after another. A thinking that, let any good political and military work be successful only under my leadership and let that success take me up to the higher posts or let the failure push down others to lower posts is gradually going to be a general danger. The self-centred individualism is growing so much that a situation, in which one does not see others, is being created. Economic anarchism, extravagance, corruption and opportunist thinking are burgeoning and, for that too, contest to occupy higher posts is begin. A trend of collecting donation wherever he/she wants and hurting people on one's wish has spread up to the lower ranks. A situation, in which the value of money exchanged with the blood and sweat of the people has been diminishing more one goes higher, is not less shameful. Instead of working hard to transform people and raise his/her consciousness by giving ideology and politics and winning their heart with the sense of service, a trend of forcing people to do according to one's wish with the force of baton and threat has been increasing. Instead of taking necessary actions after fulfilling a minimum process of class and political analysis, incidents of killing people recklessly or with a very much weak reason are increasing. While trying to implement forcefully the hard and fast rule, instead of sorting out good and bad aspects in people's traditional customs, cultures and production systems, averting bad aspects patiently by raising consciousness through teaching and encouragement and preserving the good ones, a danger of people in places being terrified of and helpless from ourselves has been noticed. By way of mounting the process of becoming different from his/her living standard, behaviour and conduct from the masses once one becomes a party member and a whole-timer, a situation, in which people think of the party cadre as a man not of his class but of another class, has been developing.
As a result of people's powers becoming formal, mechanical and casual only, people's relation has been eventually weak. A trend of thinking Party as a state and of focusing to acquire position in the Party other than serving and mobilizing people effectively by staying in the power is growing all across the country. The shameful defeat of our party candidates in the election we have organized in our strong base area is the burning negative consequence it has provided. People are gradually seeing a big difference between the Maoists of yesterday and today.
Only the aforesaid short description clarifies the seriousness of problems developing in the Party and movement. Why such kinds of problems are developing in a great proletarian revolutionary party of the 21st century and in the great people's war it is leading? What can be the remedies and methods to resolve them, from where and how to start--these questions are very serious. Why excesses worse than three excesses and five excesses appeared in the Communist Party of China after the central power had been captured, are appearing in our party before capturing the central power? If we fail to give correct answer and correct solution to these questions it is sure that we will gradually liquidate our Party and movement because of our own weaknesses than by US imperialism and military terror of Gyanendra Shahi.
In the course of party building, great Lenin had said that the revolutionary party of the proletariat is different from that of bourgeois and petty bourgeois, in the sense that it does not fear to disclose openly and mercilessly its own weaknesses and the party that cannot dare to become cruel towards own weaknesses cannot be a scientific and proletarian party. Credibility of party of the proletariat inherits in the courage of accepting openly the weaknesses of that kind and advancing ahead by taking lessons from them. Though the enemies and opportunists make thousands of efforts to gain from such acceptance; this is the only way that goes on making the party of the proletariat further steeled and invincible. The law of science is such that consistency with the pace of development can be maintained in this way only. Real recognition of the problem represents the commencement of its resolution.
Party must pay attention to the three wrong outlooks that appear while discussing the aforesaid problems. One outlook is the petty bourgeois right liquidationism that sees darkness in all sides, follows the path of pessimism (liquidation) saying that after having heaped up so much of problems in the Party now no transformation of it is possible and everything has gone ashtray. People, who fall prey to this kind of trend, by cursing the Party, movement and the leadership and enjoy the idealist self-satisfaction that oneself is the most correct, do not follow the path of struggle but escape from the problems. Second outlook, which does not prepare oneself to accept problems correctly, sees that everything is going on in order and Party is gaining victory or conceiting to be so, is the narrow left-extremism of the same petty bourgeois outlook. Those who fall prey to this kind of outlook become stubborn to go ahead without looking left or right. This trend finally gives rise to a situation, in which one hits head at the rock. Third outlook is the outlook that cannot make any outlook or what is called vacillationist outlook. Those who fall prey to this kind of outlook cannot reach at any conclusion on what is correct and what is not and what to do and what not to do. These kinds of people, who take up all the things as correct whomever they hear from or take up everyone's things as wrong and do not to know what is correct, remain in agnostic condition. Among the aforesaid three wrong outlooks, the main problem for the party and movement now is the first wrong outlook.
Here, it is evidently clear that proletarian revolutionary outlook is to correctly identify the problem and firmly and patiently struggle for its resolution. With this clarity of outlook, it is now required to centralize our attention in search of reasons behind the problems and their solution.
On class origin
The level of development of productive forces and production relation, in a semi-feudal and semi-colonial Nepal, is very much weak. Self-sustaining fragmented agricultural production is the main economic foundation of the entire rural area of Nepal. The process of a huge section of active young population of the rural region being recruited in foreign army, becoming gate-keeper, coolie and kitchen-servant and landing up in prostitution for their livelihood has been developing as a tradition from around the Sugauli Treaty with British-India. The fragmented production system and nominal money that comes from foreign country was obvious to go on making the consciousness of people in the entire rural area very much petty bourgeois and self-centred. From around 1950, because of the increasing impact of political movement and gradual development of education political knowledge went on developing in a big section of petty bourgeois class in the rural area also. Naturally the section that realized to have been oppressed and exploited by the state power centred in Kathmandu and the rural exploiters, feudal and impostors, and the educated section conscious towards their right, has filled up the entire rank of our party leadership from top to bottom.
As great Lenin said, the whole section of the petty bourgeois class reaches to a certain limit of rebellion because of the atrocity instigated upon them but cannot show collectivity, devotion, patience and sacrifice necessary beyond that limit. Though it comes forward from the standpoint of knowledge and logic but from the angle of consciousness and tradition it becomes difficult for them to become free from the self-centred individualist sectarianism built on the foundation of fragmented production system. Our party and people's war arrived comparatively easily up to the level of revolt against the old state but now the challenge of building up a new power is out of the capacity of petty bourgeois class. It is the character of the petty bourgeois class to rule in the same way or acquire benefit out of it or raise status from it while trying to avenge the unjust and oppression the old state carried on him yesterday. From the angle of class and ideology, the crux of the problem seen now in our party is hidden in this. To build a new power under the leadership is not a question that can go ahead without having made a leap from petty bourgeois consciousness to the proletarian one.
On the Question of Class Upgradation
Following the construction of new state (in whatever level of development it may be) after destroying the old one, naturally all the excesses existing in the society enter into the Party and movement. There remains status and prestige and plenty of economic and material means and resources in the state. That objective environment tries to push even those people, who are heading for proletarian transformation, towards the direction of bureaucrat capitalism. In this sense, this is not the problem only of our party that has seized power in the rural areas but is a part of the problem that had severely appeared in Russia and China after capturing the central power and that had even led finally to counter-revolution. Here, the fact that Lenin had to viciously expose distortion, discrepancy and corruption spread in the Soviet Power after five years of accomplishment of the great Russian October Revolution and that Mao had to initiate the Cultural Revolution having failed in struggles against the entire excesses in China is noteworthy. Without taking into account the depth of class and ideological problem, some of the people make fake efforts to escape from the problem or remain untouched by easily laying defects on the head of the leadership. Of course, this kind of thinking cannot grasp the theory of class struggle and dialectical and historical materialism. In fact, the serious indications of aforesaid problems are coming in the continuity of the problems that the great leaders and parties in the world and International Communist Movement were facing soon after the seizure of power. It is sure that these problems will not decrease but will increase more even after we capture Kathmandu militarily tomorrow. The fact that revolution and counter-revolution go on simultaneously has been historically proved.
On the Subjective Reasons
Because of the reasons like, inadequacy in ideological, political and cultural teaching, training, publication and propaganda, inadequacy in the development of necessary policy, rule, code of conduct and their effective implementation and inadequacy in the necessary organizational structure to control and follow up the policy and instruction, no sufficient interference has been possible to resolve problems. What can be a proletarian revolutionary methodology for the solution, finally? Only by waging a new revolution with the spirit of cultural revolution, can we have a real, dynamic and prolonged solution. This ideological revolution, which will be waged within the Party and movement, will be a revolution waged by means of great debate in the ideological, political, organizational and cultural field. The purpose of this great debate will be to make the party reach at a higher synthesis and centralization, make the party organizationally dynamic and energetic and consolidate people's relation by developing mass line. This debate will be based upon the purpose of transforming but not of undressing leaders and cadres of the party. It will be conducted with the strength of study, logic and debate. By specifying the concrete goal of Party Congress, the great debate will be conducted at least for a period of one year. Gathering in different levels, conferences and political and military activities will be organized with a goal of making success the forthcoming Party Congress as a great milestone of the proletariat. For that, this meeting of the Central Committee must first of all take a historical decision of sacrifice to transform oneself for a new revolution. The fate and future of the Party and revolution, to a great extent, will depend upon the preparedness of this Central Committee to push forward a new and higher process by rupturing from the continuity.
4. Short Evaluation Of Inner Party Struggle In the dawn of strategic counter-offensive, the doubts and inner-struggle among responsible comrades, while coming at the second PB meeting from the first one and the CC meeting, reached to its climax. Later on, the whole inner-struggle spilled out publicly. Though not in the formal sense, it was felt that the Party, in fact, had reached to the threshold of split. There existed no situation where one had to abide by any limit to expose other. It started being felt everywhere that the inner struggle went out of party control.
From the aforesaid situation inside party, certainly a wave of pleasure and feast started taking place among the ringleaders of US imperialism and feudal clique of Gyanendra Shahi, who came forward through February 1, 2005 coup, where as a situation of serious concern and pain appeared from the supporters of Party and revolution, well-wishers and the broad masses, and from entire political forces in and abroad against feudal autocracy to the revolutionary and 'left' forces. A clear demarcation between friends and foes appeared in two sections forcing to split and unite.
Following the PB decision regarding action, discussion with serious concern started taking place on the foresaid situation that had developed when interaction was going on between Comrade Laldhoj and Comrade Rahul and the central headquarters. Just before Comrade Laldhoj and Comrade Rahul visited India, criticizing and self-criticising responsibly and sentimentally in a meeting with the central headquarters, a conviction and agreement of changing bad into good was affirmed. The central headquarters publicized consciously the unhealthy inner-struggle according to that conviction and agreement and appealed the masses to help it as a specific exercise of democracy and a specific process in the development of ideology. The central headquarters decided to send Comrade Laldhoj accompanied by Comrade Amar Singh with a responsibility of having talks with different sections and it was publicly announced and this, to a certain extent, brought the situation under control.
In this way, when the affairs were going ahead positively after Comrade Laldhoj and Comrade Rahul reached India, though different angles of distrust and doubts existed, exactly at that time the royal army publicized the unfortunate Tape case, and that almost shattered the positive process, which was in the making. And it provided ground for very bitter and baseless allegation and counter allegation of 'pro-King' and 'pro-India'. This situation again "encouraged" the imperialists and Gyanendra Shahis and "discouraged" the friends.
Right at that time, seven political parties and among them too the main parliamentarian parties were requesting the central headquarters to organize discussion against the absolute monarchy. It was necessary to fulfil that responsibility in any condition because of the specific necessity of struggle.
In that situation, thinking for several days and discussing with available comrades, the central headquarters, pledging to make maximum effort to save the Party from split and reach to agreement with the forces against absolute monarchy, decided to visit India at any cost. The inspiration that the leadership, in sensitive moments, must take up a courageous move to turn the history in positive direction had worked behind this decision.
In India, serious discussion took place with leaders of different political parties, intellectuals from civil society, a number of intelligentsias of India and Nepal, journalists etc. Certainly, it played a positive role to turn the external struggle towards positive direction. In addition to this, several discussions and serious interactions mainly with Comrade Laldhoj and other responsible comrades made stronger the basis of party unity. What those discussions and interactions clarified was that Comrade Laldhoj and other comrades were not for split, there remained no basic difference, even though there were differences in emphasis and angle in some questions related with ideology of protracted nature, kind of thinking on tactics against the absolute monarchy, party could be carried forward more unitedly in the sensitive moment of history by criticizing and self-criticizing, verbally and in written, the weaknesses emerged from several doubts in the past. Reaching that conclusion, through several rise and fall, the central headquarters, with suggestion from all the comrades of the Standing Committee and available PBMs and CCMs, reinstated Comrade Laldhoj and Comrade Rahul in the earlier responsibility. Following long debates, it was clear that the danger mentioned in the past PB meeting, in which it was pointed out that Comrade Laldhoj and Comrade Rahul could deviate ideologically, politically and organizationally, did not exist and could not be proved. And on the resignation that Comrade Ashok had presented to ease the process of investigation, he was logically reinstated to his previous responsibility of Polit-Bureau because his involvement could not be proved.
In this way, keeping at centre the interest of revolution and movement and defeating entire conspiracies of class enemies to split the party, we have succeeded to advance movement by protecting unity. It is necessary for the Central Committee and the whole party to work hard to raise it higher by consolidating this unity. Entire assessment of the past events of inner-struggle and overall ideological synthesis on its basis will be appropriate things to do in the forthcoming Congress. What needs to be understood deeply here is that whatever mistakes one had committed subjectively, party's determination to sacrifice for revolution by maintaining unity, even after the inner struggle had gone publicly and reached to a climax, will play a role of new experience in the history of International Communist Movement. This experience that we have acquired in applying Marxist dialectics to change negative into positive and bad into good is sure to be a question of far-reaching significance. Mainly, this experience will play an important role to enrich party by way of developing new ideas.
5. Short Evaluation Of The First Plan Of Counter-Offensive From the viewpoints of both positive and negative experiences, one year of the first plan of counter-offensive was very much important. Definitely, the uneasy situation of inner struggle developed in the party centre caused several obstacles in implementing the plan and gave rise to substantial loss in the party. In the dawn of implementing first plan, after the CC meeting, the martyrdom in Siraha of responsible comrades of the CC, Comrade Sherman Kunwar (Vishal) and Comrade Mohan Chandra Gautam (Kumar), while moving on their way to field, stunned the whole party. Even then, the political and military tasks, which the plan had directed, were implemented. The reality that the successful and forceful initiation of this plan of counter offensive that forced the feudal mafia of Gyanendra Shahi to come out nakedly and brought the country to a threshold of decisive struggle against feudalism, signifies the objective achievement of it.
Following the CC meeting, meetings, gatherings and trainings organized in different levels of Party, army, front and departments basically brought about uniformity in understanding the CC decisions regarding counter-offensive. Achieving uniformity in understanding and completing the necessary preparations, the sequence of political mobilization and military actions went forward according to the plan. Taking Highways in Terai region as the main site, the first phase of the plan of decentralized offensive, was accomplished more forcefully and successfully than anticipated.
All the three divisions of the PLA under three commands of the country, within this phase, raised up mobile and positional warfare to a new height by building, one after another, a series of successful and courageous raids on the royal gangsters in the Terai and the highways. New records of counter-offensive that had started, under the central command, from a big attack of multidimensional importance at Krishna Bhir, the vicinity of Kathmandu, to the well-known attack that, along with series of attacks under western command, smashed the so-called Ranger Battalion of enemy at Pandun of Kailali, the courageous offence that horrified the enemy at Mathuradanda of Argha under the central command and the violent attacks carried on almost in all the highways during the later part of this phase under the eastern command, elucidate the greatness and height of the initiation of counter-offensive. The PLA, confining royal gangsters to their barracks for months by chasing them off from the Terai and highways, not only proved its offensive power and superiority but, in fact, succeeded to control those places too. It becomes clear that the feudal gang of Gyanendra Shahi, as the last and stupid attempt to maintain its existence, had taken up a move of February 1 on February 1 itself, after the PLA had hassled the royal gangsters through hundreds of big or small raids and the feudal old state fell into chaos as a result of party's political intervention and mass mobilization. However, the success of this phase clarifies that the initiation of counter-offensive that the PLA had taken on, was very much exclusive and great.
The royal coup of February 1 and the fascist ban, arrest and terror brought commotion in the media, including entire political parties, civil societies and human right activists in the capital, district headquarters and towns. In that situation, the party centre, exposing forcefully the fascist move of Gyanendra Shahi, appealed on February 1 itself, to all the parliamentarian forces, civil societies and broad masses for a united resistance against it. The three-day Nepal Bandh (general shutdown) planned immediately and the indefinite wheel-blockage called from February 1 acted as a strong slap on the royal power. Our party that immediately resisted the royal coup was established worldwide as the only force to do so. The royal coup was opposed politically not only from all over the world but also a number of power centres even declared to stop military assistance being supplied to the royal state. The fake attempt that royal terrorists had made to claim the takeover as a necessary step for peace and democracy against "terrorism" could not be established. Slowly, the Party's interaction with parliamentarian parties advanced in India in a clandestine way and it is clear that the effort to develop joint activity with political forces is being carried on. However, the move of February 1 brought about a big regressive change in the old state and politics of the country.
With some minor changes in the military plan of Party, the process of centralized big military actions was pushed forward. In the course of its preparation we lost one contingent of the PLA, which had achieved big successes in Terai, under the western command, and one of the promising commanders of the PLA Comrade Jeet, in Ganeshpur, devoid of information and correct knowledge of the real objective situation and within a huge counter-encirclement of the enemy coming with a new strategy and conspiracy. Adverse geographical situation, lack of correct information and some subjective assessment that had emerged out of enthusiasm developed within the PLA seem to be the main reasons behind that loss. That loss, in which more than three dozens of fighters, including Comrade Ject, and dozens of modem weapons were lost at one incidence, has been established as the biggest loss in the history of the PLA. Naturally, the enemy propagated that incident as a big success of theirs. In fact, the sacrifice of Ganeshpur front and fighters including Comrade Jeet taught a lesson to the Party that the war has now reached a new level and only by developing new strategy can the enemy be defeated.
In the overall process of development of the PLA, a dialectical sequence of defeat followed by victory and victory followed by defeat exists from the very beginning. In this plan of counter-offensive too, this sequence appeared from a new height. A contingent of fighters, who had horrified enemy at Krishnabhir almost in the same manner as in Ganeshpur, were defeated at Bhirpusta in Lamjung, lacking right coordination and good survey. In the situation, when there was a psychological pressure of Ganeshpur and Bhirpusta incidents, when enemy's fortification was strong, the central headquarters, taking into account of the necessity to succeed in a centralized big action in any case, presented a plan to attack by gathering selected forces from the western and central command. Khara action in Rukum was the result of that plan. But, because of the main reasons by which no necessary uniformity could be earned among the main commanders in relation to understanding positional war and implementing the spirit of the plan, no correct report of the front could reach the commanders and no adequate coordination and confidence could be established among them, Khara battle too could not acquire victory. In this battle, in which the PLA had to retreat in the situation when enemy was close to defeat and PLA was close to victory, decentralized thinking and a psychology was developed that the commanders and fighters of one side thouiht as if they had to retreat without fighting and other side thought as if they had to retreat because other side did not fight as they did. Even after the central headquarters summed it up, individual explanations clarify that the problem remains in the Party, not the PLA. The experience of that battle forced and is forcing the central headquarters to think on the seriousness of problem within the Party itself. Regarding the Khara battle, another aspect that needs to be paid attention to is whether the enemy had devised necessary preparation beforehand by having knowledge of the plan through penetration. However, Khara battle was an intensive offensive carried out on our part and so proved the propaganda of enemy that PLA does not have strength to carry out centralized raids to be wrong. And the PLA acquired important lessons for the next battles. The general expression of the fighters and courageous raids that the PLA carried out in different places against the enemy of big strength clarify the fact that no negative impact of the Khara battle on the morale of the PLA had developed. Even then, the Party failed to achieve political gain from this. In Khara raid and the battles that followed, more than six dozens of fighters, including another promising commander Comrade Basanta, sacrificed their lives.
In the centralized action, to which the Eastern Command had to accomplish after the aforesaid experience of Khara, efforts were made to attack by taking lessons from there too. Accordingly, the Eastern Command decided to raid enemy's camp at Bandipur in Siraha and two other places as its cover. The intense offensive carried out according to the plan created a big wave. This courageous raid carried out in Terai ridiculed Gyanendra Shabi's false claim that law and order has developed. In spite of great efforts of the fighters no good amount of arms could be seized due to strong fortification, plain topography and shortage of time. However, it does not minimize the political and military importance of that action. The Eastern Division of the PLA, scaling new height of prudence, valor and sacrifice, acquired big victories and achievements in other courageous battles that took place in different places against the royal gangsters, coming up with the strategy of encirclement and annihilation.
The decentralized actions that followed the centralized ones have been accomplished all across the country. Among those the successful and courageous attack taken place at Argha, under the Central Command, was the qualitative one. In that courageous attack, another promising commander Comrade Jwar and another commander Comrade Janak attained martyrdom. Likewise, other actions under the eastern command and the western command are significant.
In spite of these efforts and successes in centralized and decentralized actions, there was imbalance because it could nowhere attain the result that the plan had anticipated. But a situation in which the enemy could conceit was continuing. Shattering that imbalance and self-satisfaction and in a way to make the world know, the PLA division under the Western Command, exhibiting height, strength and heroism, scaled a new record at Pili in Kalikot. This division, which had taken lessons from the defeats of Ganeshpur, Khara and Rambhapur front, settled accounts with interest from that battle. Capturing all arms and weapons, crushing entire enemies and detaining 60 royal soldiers, the PLA, in the new situation, has given a message of new height that it is the legitimate army, which respects Geneva Treaty and protects people in Nepal and that the Royal Army, in a real sense, is the terrorist that murders and disappears people. In fact, the Pili action, as the culmination of centralized actions under this plan, prepared well a strong base to impair Gyanendra Shahi and his terrorist feudal gangster by means of political offensive of unilateral ceasefire. In this sense, it is clear that its political significance is very wide.
In addition to aforesaid military actions, the waves of shutdown, blockade, strike etc. organized on behalf of the party, state, mass organizations, different fronts etc. clarify the continuous process of political intervention. Amid this, the significance of continued political intervention carried out in national and international level, on the part of central headquarters, is evident.
Among other important actions carried out under this plan include the sabotage of Gamgadhi, the district headquarters of Mugu, the sabotage and jail break to free dozens of revolutionary fighters and other prisoners at Dhangadhi in Kailali, series of courageous attacks carried out in the cities like Nepaigunj and Butwal, successful and courageous raid triggered at Sankhu police post within Kathmandu, sabistrict headquarters, jail break and release of prisoners etc. Apart from this, innumerable numbers of guerrilla actions, big and small, have been accomplished all across the country. Under this plan, the initiation of constructing 'Martyr Road', 91 Km long, within the central base area and extensive participation of masses has a multidimensional significance. The construction of this 'Martyr Road', which has been well-discussed in the national and international level is not only opening up a door of development in the base area but also has exemplified party's political picture and objective before all.
Even though positive initiatives mentioned before, in totality, remain principal, some very negative incidents too came into sight under this plan. Those negative incidents and tendencies have been discussed in the rectification chapter. Some major incidents that need to be mentioned here include the serious discontent surfaced against the party in Dailekh, the white terror in Kapilbastu, the bus incident in Chitwan, people's discontent appeared in some parts of Makwanpur and Dhading and some uncomfortable incidents appeared within party and outside in Terai. It is not necessary to discuss them in detail because the shortcomings behind such incidents have already gone through the process of self-criticism and public actions.
In this way, with these entire experiences of successes and failures, what can be concluded is that the first plan of counter-offensive has been basically successful.
# posted by Sentinel : 11:00 AM
