Video: India’s Red Corridor

this is a media report on the Maoists’ Red Corridor running south through the center of India from close to the northern Nepali border. It discusses the attempt of the Indian government to hold their corrupt parliamentary elections in areas of growing revolutionary activities.

Thanks to Maoist Revolution e-list.

Joseph Ball’s Concerns about Line of Maoist Party in Nepal

Kasama is publish a series of pieces critical of the Maoist strategies of Nepal. Posting them does not imply agreement with the analyses. And we will be posting some pieces soon that take a different view. This piece originally appeared on Joseph Ball’s website.

My Concerns Over the Line of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) 

By Joseph Ball

For the past four years I have been a supporter of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). However, in common with many other Maoists I have serious reservations about the line that the leadership of the UCPN(M) has put forward since 2003, in relation to multi-party competition. I believe that the endorsement of a system of multi-party competition by a communist party, whether or not this is meant to occur under the dictatorship of the proletariat, will lead to that party adopting a revisionist line. This is because this line does not identify the appropriate means for the proletariat to exercise power. The only way the proletariat can exercise power is by taking control of the state and society at all levels. Proletarians must progressively take over all the tasks involved in the management, government and administration of the state, the economy and the rest of society including those areas of the superstructure in which ideology and culture are developed. The ordinary worker must learn to become an administrator or an enterprise manager or an ideological theorist. Distinctions between experts and non-experts must be broken down. In this way, the class distinctions that still exist in socialism will be overcome as society advances to communism.

The initial stage in this process is the establishment of revolutionary organs of power. In the Soviet Union such tasks were carried out through the Soviet. In China the form that eventually was settled on, during the Cultural Revolution, was the Revolutionary Committee. There is no good reason at all why any Communist party should encourage different classes or factions in society to set up political parties to compete for power. While multi-party competition fulfils some purpose for factions of the bourgeoisie who wish to have some forum to settle their differences, it can only ever be a charade for the proletariat. As I was finishing this article some fairly serious criticism of the of the UCPN(M) was published by the Revolutionary Communist Party (USA). My article should not be seen as a complete endorsement of everything said there. However, I do believe that all Maoists, especially those of us who have supported the line of the UCPN(M), would benefit from serious study of the line of the RCP-USA and Bob Avakian on issues related to what constitutes true revolutionary change, the nature and limitations of democracy and the class nature of the state. I believe it is wrong for Maoists to simply dismiss this line as dogmatism and refuse to enter into proper discussion on these issues.