Politbureau, Communist Party Of India (Maoist)
May 20, 2009 (Became available 28th June 2009)
Dear Comrades!
We have been keenly following the recent developments taking place in your country, Nepal. With the CPN(M) emerging as the single largest party in the elections to the Constituent Assembly in April 2008 and the formation of the new government consisting of a coalition of several Parties, some of which are known for their anti-people, pro-feudal, pro-imperialist and pro-Indian expansionist past, an ideological-political debate has arisen in the entire revolutionary camp in India and the world regarding the path, strategy, and tactics pursued by your Party, the CPN(M), in advancing the revolution in Nepal. There have also been reports in the media concerning the proposal of your Party leadership to change the name of the Party by removing the term `Maoist’. All these make it all the more urgent to conduct a deeper debate on the ideological-political line pursued by the CPN(M), particularly after it came to power through elections, after a decade-long people’s war and forming the government with some of the arch-reactionaries who had earned the wrath of the Nepalese masses.
Several issues need to be debated by Maoist revolutionaries in the context of the CPN(M) pursuing a line and policies that are not consistent with the fundamental tenets of MLM and teachings of our great Marxist teachers—issues such as proletarian internationalism; stages and sub-stages of revolutions in semi-colonial semi-feudal countries; understanding of the Leninist concept of state and revolution; nature of parliamentary democracy in semi-colonial, semi-feudal countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America; meaning of rigidity of strategy and flexibility in tactics; and such other related questions. There are also some specific issues raised by your Party in the name of creative application of MLM such as the concept of 21st century democracy or multi-Party democracy, Prachanda Path, South Asian Soviet Federation, fusion theory, and so on.
It is true that Marxism is not a dogma but a guide to action. Those Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries who followed it only in letter and discarded its spirit had failed to understand the essence of Marxism, failed to understand what com Lenin had taught, that is, `concrete analysis of concrete conditions is the living soul of Marxism’. Such dogmatists failed to apply MLM to the concrete practice of revolution in their countries and hence failed to make any real advances in the revolutions in their respective countries. Dogmatism, no doubt, has been a bane of the Marxist Leninist movements and hence the struggle against dogmatism should be an inseparable part of the ideological struggle of the Communist Party.
However, in the name of struggle against dogmatism, there have been serious deviations in the International Communist Movement (ICM), often going into an even greater, or at least equally dangerous, abyss of right deviation and revisionism. In the name of creative application of Marxism, communist parties have fallen into the trap of right opportunism, bourgeois pluralist Euro-Communism, rabid anti-Stalinism, anarchist post-modernism and outright revisionism. Right danger or revisionism in the ICM has emerged as the greatest danger in the period following the usurpation of the leadership of the CPSU and state power in the Soviet Union after the demise of comrade Stalin. Com Mao and other genuine revolutionaries had to wage a consistent ideological-political struggle against revisionism and reformism in the ICM and also within the CPC. However, despite the great struggle waged by com Mao and other Marxist Leninist revolutionaries all over the world against revisionism, it has been the revisionists who had temporarily won and dominated the ICM in the contemporary world. The ideological-political debate over the creative application of MLM to the concrete practice of the revolution in Nepal has to be conducted with a correct grasp of this international struggle ever since the time of com Lenin. ….. Read the rest of this entry »
