Source: kasama
'I listened to this audio presentation by Tithi Bhattacharya and I'd like to respond to some points.
The overall thesis is that Maoist politics are defunct, and that they replace the emancipation of the working class by the working class itself with guerrilla units leading a guerrilla war.
Ms. Bhattacharya assumes that “in a conflict between a guerrilla army and a fully functioning state, it is not a mystery who will win”.
Is it? Guerrilla warfare has developed for hundreds of years, from Spanish resistance to the Roman invasion onwards. It can in fact win out, so long as it remains connected to the people's struggle, as the people themselves are the ones who carry it out.
But further, the idea that guerrilla warfare was the most that Maoists have accomplished is equally false. The Chinese didn't defeat the KMT and the Japanese soley by relying on guerrilla units. They had a standing and well disciplined military force in the millions that fought pitched battles, using aircraft, artillery and everything available to them.
Ms. Bhattacharya essentially blames the Naxalites for the brutality of the Indian state, calling the Indian state's butchery as evidence of the failure of 'Maoist politics'. She consistently portrays Maoists as bloodthirsty criminals who “rule the regions...at the point of their guns”.
By the end of it, I was baffled. Ms. Bhattacharya goes on to claim that Maoism is the reason why the Indian left is isolationist, and even fails to develop an internationalist politics. Considering that Maoist politics spread throughout Asia, in South America and Africa, it is unclear where the evidence is for this claim. She also used Prachanda as an example of a “ Maoist leader”, completely ignoring the divisions and contest within the Nepalese communists that consider Prachanda and his 'path' as revisionist. Although this presentation was from 2012, the political divisions between Prachanda and others in Nepal have been developing clearly for some time.
The speaker conflates 'party' with an anti-proletarian organization, assuming what amounts to a charge of 'authoritarianism' of the party over the proletariat, instead of a unity of the proletarian with the party. This is further demonstrated in the argument that 'all that stands in the way between the Adivasi and the mining corporations is the armed Maoist guerrilla.'The mistake here, and note it well, is the absence of any discussion of Protracted Peoples War.
The current struggle by the Communist Party of India (Maoist) is a protracted peoples war. The whole purpose of this is to use the military engagements, the military organization to transform the tribal societies not only into fighting units against the Indian state, but for the people themselves to be leading this struggle. The CPI-M cadre are facilitators, trainers in this fight, but not the primary people on the front lines. The point of this is that the people, by leading the war, lead themselves, emancipate themselves. This is to develop 'dual power', or the emergence of an alternative state apparatus to the Indian state. The resulting military organization develops sophisticated tribal associations, peoples justice, etc.
So the charge that the party is somehow denying or controlling the Adivasi people, which is what Ms. Bhattacharya's argument really amounts to, is not only ludicrous, but outright offensive to the people on the front lines. The Adivasi are not some helpless ignorant tribal mass: they have embraced these politics as their own. It should be stressed that the actual leadership of the CPI-M includes Adivasi people.
But why are military means being used in the first place? Although Ms. Bhattacharya consdiers Mao's quote that "political power grows from the barrel of a gun" as some ultra-leftist phrase mongering, the fact remains that in places like Chhattisgarh, to speak of revolution is to speak a death wish. It is the conditions that necessitate military struggle and political struggle becoming realized in unity. It is hardly ultra-left to recognize that military conflict is an essential component to the proletarian revolution. Put another way by Clausewitz (who both Lenin and Mao studied intensely) “War is politics by other means”.
I guess, I'm baffled by what is seen as the alternative? Were the people not supposed to use military engagement to overthrow the monarchy in Nepal? Or as A.Roy puts it, if non-violence is essentially theatre, who is going to applaud a hunger strike in the middle of a jungle?
The most that the speaker's arguments amount to is that the Maoists are somehow denying agency of the poor, and trying to use them into some sort of “bloodbath” fight against the Indian state. This just simply isn't the case.
My last point. The crux of the argument against Maoist politics was the charge that Mao's political theories were essentially theories of failure, that after the CCP lost the cities, the tactical maneuvers necessary to save themselves (going to the peasantry, forming red base areas, etc) were elevated to a matter of new-found principle.
This sounds reasonable at first. But although the speaker doesn't consider the China in the 1920s-1949 semi-colonial or semi-feudal, and thinks by citing the number of workers that went on strike in the 1920s is proof of this, it highlights her misconception of what semi-colonial/semi-feudal means.
Semi-feudalism as a concept wasn't developed by Mao. It comes from Mariátegui. Mao developed this idea further. Mr. MLM Mayhem examines this idea in more detail: here.
Semi-feudalism doesn't mean that there isn't a working class. It instead attempts to grasp the complexities and uneven development of a 'periphery' nation. Periphery meaning outside the centers of imperialist power, able to be controlled by the imperialist powers.
Asia in general had been influenced by, then progressively dominated by, European imperialist power since the 15th century. The idea that Mao's strategy of revolutionizing land relations between peasants and landlord/comprador class only started because the CCP were butcherd by the KMT in the 1920's is silly. Its an essential component to establishing a sovereign nation from imperialist control and was in place well before the outbreak of civil war. Mao's document on classes in Chinese societies was written in 1926, before the Chinese Civil War began, and Mao's analysis of the peasant class as ally to the proletariat is already present. This was before the move towards red base areas, and thus, the crux of the argument against Maoist politics by the speaker is essentially void.
Although the arguments in this presentation give the impression of serious research, unfortunately the analysis remains superficial. It continues an unfortunate tradition in the left of rhetoric over substance, amounting to a refusal of real political engagement.
editor note: fixed some bad formatting in this article that was causing it to display incorrectly.
