Dialectical materialism considers that every phenomenon forms a unity of opposites, the latter being in struggle, in opposition. This is the law of contradiction, the universal law of eternal and inexhaustible matter on the road to Communism. In this context, the term « contrary » is often equated with « opposite ». In his philosophical notes, Lenin said:

« Strictly speaking, dialectics is the search for contradictions in the essence of things themselves. »

« Development is the ‘struggle’ of opposites. »

The terms contrary and opposite are easily interchangeable, and in fact it is easy to switch from one term to the other, with the idea that they are equivalent.

In the French language, there is a great deal of ambiguity in the definition of the two terms; we tend to define something contrary as opposed, and something opposed as a contrary, even if there are nuances, depending on the context.

The basis of these nuances is as follows. “Oppose” is a term from Latin, meaning to place towards, in front of, i.e. to place opposite, against. There is an idea of face to face. Contradiction is what contradicts; the term also comes from Latin. There is an idea of cancellation.

The Latin languages and Russian follow the same pattern; in German, the term contradiction is widerspruch (wider meaning against, spruch meaning to say); the term gegensatz, opposition, in the strict sense means counter-sentence or anti-sentence. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels use the term widerspruch, but in the sense of gegensatz; the distinction is not operative.

Mathematical language, on the other hand, makes an apparently clear distinction, but we can see that it comes to the same thing.

The opposite of 1 is -1, -2 for 2, -3 for 3, and so on. The opposite is set against, and we find the idea of face to face: facing1 is -1, facing 2 is -2, and so on.

The contradiction is called the « inverse ». The inverse refers to a number that can be multiplied by itself to arrive at 1: 0.2 is the inverse of 5, because 5 x 0.2 = 1; 0.01 is the inverse of 100, because 0.01 x 100 = 1, and so on.

This inverse actually contradicts a number, because it prevents it from reaching 1, i.e. it prevents it from forming a unit, from being itself. The inverse annuls the number, annihilates its identity, contradicts it. Here we find the idea of a counter-affirmation to an affirmation.

However, if we think in terms of tension and conflict, it’s hard to see at first sight any difference between contrary and opposite, even in the mathematical language. There are always two aspects facing each other, and one cannot exist without the other.

The terms of opposite and contrary are thus closely related, even interchangeable, because they have in common the fact that they signify negation. The existing nuances have to do with the modalities of this negation, but their substance is common: their dialectical relationship, both linked (and therefore positive) and negative.

These negative nuances are found again and again in any language that seeks to describe material processes. For example, we speak of a headwind [in French a “contrary wind”] to say that the wind intervenes and opposes the initial movement, forming a cancellation.

The word “opposed” implies the idea of resistance, of an obstacle: we say that we have faced opposition. There is a strong idea of tension. However, we can interchangeably say “on the contrary” or “in the opposite direction”.

It is useful here to turn to the Chinese language. The term of contradiction originally chosen in Chinese by Mao Zedong, Mao-dun, is made up of 矛, meaning spear, and 盾, meaning shield. It is based on an old story told by Han Fei Zi (280 – 233 BC):

« A person, eager to sell his spear and shield, praised the excellence of the latter in these terms: ‘Its resistance is such that nothing can dent it. This shield is absolutely impenetrable ».

Turning to the spear, he continued: « Its point is so sharp that there is nothing it cannot pierce. It is omnipenetrating.

– How can your spear penetrate your shield?

The man didn’t know what to say. He had contradicted himself. Logically, an absolutely impenetrable shield and an omnipenetrable spear cannot go together.”

Here we have a contradiction, something contradicts something else, there is a cancellation, even though the idea of spear and shield also implies tension, and therefore opposition.

There are other Chinese expressions worth noting, such as 一分為二, yifenweier, meaning one becomes two, each thing has two sides, etc. 对 立 统 , duili tongyi, meaning the unity of opposites; 相 反 相 承, xiangfan xiangcheng, meaning to oppose and promote each other; 两點論, liangdian lun, which can be translated as the theory of two points.

All these expressions were used in People’s China during the time of Mao Zedong, particularly at the time of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. They are useful for showing that the term contradiction does not in itself adequately capture complementarity and tension; conversely, the notion of opposite does not capture the unity of the two poles, which is much more apparent with the term contradiction.

In concrete terms, contradiction and opposite form two aspects of the same contradiction/opposition, the two terms coming together and repelling each other.

If we want to avoid such back-and-forth, the expression « two-point theory » seems more abstract at first sight, but it allows us to set out the dialectical operational framework. The expression was used in an article for the fiftieth anniversary of the Communist Party of China, published simultaneously in the Renmin Ribao (the People’s Daily), the Hongqi (the Red Flag, the theoretical organ) and the Jiefangjun Bao (the Daily of the People’s Liberation Army).

This 1971 document retraces the history of the Party, with the struggles of two lines, between the red line and the black line at each stage, from the revolutionary war to the construction of socialism and the struggle against the forces of capitalist restoration, including the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution launched in 1966, while stressing that several such revolutions were needed.

The long conclusion deals with learning well and mentions the importance of the two-point theory:

« We have to follow the two-point theory, not the one-point theory. While focusing our attention on the main trend, we need to take note of the other trend that may be masked.

We must take full account of and firmly grasp the main aspect and at the same time resolve one by one the problems raised by the non-main aspect.

We need to see the negative aspects of things as well as their positive aspects. We have to see the problems that have already arisen and also anticipate the problems that we haven’t yet perceived, but which could arise. »

Hsueh Li clarified this in a 1972 article, The Two-point Theory, where he explained from the outset that:

« What is the theory of the two points? It is what we usually call dialectical materialism; it is the Marxist-Leninist theory of the fundamental law of the universe.

Chairman Mao gave us a comprehensible and penetrating explanation in his On Contradiction ».

After recalling the fundamentals of dialectical materialism, he concludes as follows:

« Managing to carry the two-point theory and go beyond the one-point theory is not simply a question of method, but of worldview. The two-point theory belongs to the proletarian world-view and the one-point theory belongs to the world-view of the bourgeoisie and all the exploiting classes.

Without exception, the thinking of people living in a class society is marked by class and is invariably influenced by the political orientation of the class to which they belong.

Even if people do not belong to the exploiting classes, they are inevitably affected by the idealism and metaphysics universally existing in class society.

This is why every person in the revolutionary ranks must see to it that every idealistic and metaphysical point of view is eliminated from his mind, and must make constant efforts to reshape his subjective world while changing the objective world.

Only in this way can the two-point theory be sustained and the one-point theory overcome. »

The expression « two-point theory » allows us to avoid focusing on the idea of annulment that the term « contradiction » may abstractly imply. – and it’s worth noting that the Chinese revisionists went so far as to say that it was necessary to accept the existence of contradiction, to accept negative things, and so on.

The expression « two-point theory » also avoids the use of the term « opposition », which loses sight of unity and runs the risk of refuting even the unity of opposites, in a leftist mode.

What’s more, the expression « theory of two points » immediately underlines the existence of two aspects, which is important at a time when the bourgeoisie seeks to deny dialectics, as evidenced by the nihilistic refutation of the existence of man and woman.

It allows you to change its own state of mind while at the same time transforming reality: have I followed the two-point theory correctly, have I seen the two aspects correctly, using the main trend to see which way to go?

In this way, the expression puts the emphasis on practice: it’s a good equivalent to the terms contradiction and opposition, which are themselves « two points ».

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Marxism was born with the workers’ movement; it consists of the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, but also of their political action, with the First International and the birth of German social democracy. What we are talking about here are particular people, in a particular country, with particular ideas. And because of the dimension of these ideas of these people in this country, it is the universal that has prevailed and throughout the world, Marxism has been recognised as right by the workers’ movement. As right, not just for Germany, but for all countries.

Other ideas appeared and were added to Marxism, placing themselves within it, developing it through obstacles, difficulties and conflicts. Similarly, ideas developed in Russia and China have been recognized as having value not just for those countries, but for all countries. Lenin and Mao were references throughout the world.

Is it so then that we have to consider that the process could go on like this ad infinitum, that others could be added, that Marxism would continue to develop in this way? Of course, but then we have to recognize that this is no longer Marxism. Marxism would still be the basis, but there would be so many additions, so many deepenings, that Marxism would be unrecognisable.

It would be Marxism, but transformed. Already at the time of Lenin, Marxism had been profoundly transformed compared to the time of Marx, and it’s the same with Mao.

There was an interesting discussion on this subject in the 1990s between French Maoists and representatives in France of the Communist Party of Peru. The latter explained that to understand Marxism, you first had to understand Maoism, because Maoism was the most advanced form of Marxism. For the French communists, it seemed to be the other way round: it was by understanding Marxism well that one arrived, quite naturally, at Maoism. In a sense, both are naturally right, because it is a contradiction. However, if it is a contradiction, then it is a productive one.

It is precisely by turning towards this productive nature that we can overcome the separations between Marxism, Leninism and Maoism and grasp the unity of substance, which allows us to see that they are one and the same thing, and not three things with which we have to « come to terms ».

Mao Zedong had already foreseen what we must call the death of Marxism, not in the sense that it would be outdated, useless and had had its day, but in the sense that it was now material that had become part of something more developed.

Mao Zedong said with profound accuracy and a far-reaching historical perspective that:

« The world is infinite.

Both in time and space, the world is infinite and inexhaustible. Beyond our solar system, there are many stars that together form the Milky Way. Beyond this galaxy, there are many other galaxies.

Viewed globally, the universe is infinite, and viewed narrowly, the universe is also infinite.

Not only is the atom divisible, but so is the atomic nucleus, and it can be divided ad infinitum (…).

All individuals and all specific things have their births, their developments and their deaths.

Every person dies because he is born. Human beings must die, and Chang San (editor’s note: equivalent to Smith) being a man, he must die.

No one can see Confucius, who lived 2,000 years ago, because he had to die.

Humanity was born, and therefore humanity must also die. The Earth was born, and so it too must die.

However, when we say that humanity will die and the Earth will die, that’s different from what Christians say about the end of the world.

When we talk about the death of humanity and the death of the Earth, we mean that something more advanced than humanity will replace it, and this is a higher stage in the development of things.

I said that Marxism also had its birth, its development and its death. That may sound absurd.

But since Marx said that all things that develop have their death, how could that not be applicable to Marxism itself?

To say that it will not die is metaphysics.

Naturally, the death of Marxism means that something higher than Marxism will come to replace it. »

The death of Marxism that Mao Zedong is talking about here is the birth of dialectical materialism. Does this mean that dialectical materialism itself will die, disappear? Of course it does; dialectical materialism will suffer the same fate as Marxism: it will fade away to make way for a deeper understanding of the world. It will be dialectical materialism that has undergone a qualitative leap.

When will this happen? Most certainly in the decades following the unification of humanity and the systematisation of dialectical materialism at world level. There will be then such a deepening, such a development of nuances, that differences will appear and the law of contradiction will apply to dialectical materialism itself.

But we are not there yet, of course. What we need, for the time being, is for humanity to assimilate the fundamentals of dialectical materialism and to know how to apply them in practice, or rather: for dialectical materialism to be taken up as a world view by more and more people, until it is generalized throughout society.

Socialism will triumph when the proletariat understands the contradiction which both binds and opposes it to the bourgeoisie, and when the law of contradiction is grasped in everyday life, in scientific experimentation and the sciences, in industrial production and its conception, in the arts and letters.

This is a new era in which, the more connections are understood, the more connections are developed, the qualitative leap reaches maturity and is realized.

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1. Dialectical materialism is the affirmation of the inexhaustible nature of eternal matter, which obeys the law of contradiction.

2. « Marxist philosophy considers that the law of the unity of opposites is the fundamental law of the universe. This law operates universally in nature, in human society and in human thought. Between the opposing aspects of contradiction, there is both unity and struggle, and this is what drives things and phenomena to move and change ». (Mao Zedong, On Contradiction)

3. The PMD’s raison d’être is the systematization of dialectical materialism in all fields, at the personal level and throughout society, in a unified humanity living in harmony with planet Earth recognized as a Biosphere.

4. Dialectical materialism is carried forward by the proletariat, the class that transforms reality and unifies humanity, generating the socialist mode of production that abolishes all exploitation and oppression.

5. The PMD represents the vanguard of the proletariat, and its main activity is to generate and direct class struggles for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the establishment of the working class as the ruling class, systematizing the dialectical materialist vision of the world.

6. The PMD’s main theoretical references are Stalin’s Dialectical Materialism and Historical Materialism and Mao Zedong’s On Contradiction.

7. The PMD’s main historical references are the historical existence of the USSR from the October Revolution of 1917 to 1952, that of the People’s Republic of China from its foundation in 1949 to 1976 (mainly with the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution), that of the Communist Party of Peru from 1980 to 1992 (with the affirmation of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism).

8. The PMD stresses that the beginnings of humanity, with agriculture and animal husbandry, established an unequal relationship with Nature and placed women in a situation of inferiority: this implies cultural revolutions to liberate the female psyche and correct the relationship with Nature, particularly with animals.

9. The PMD’s approach is the two lines struggle, in all areas: recognising the contradiction, asserting the red line against the black line, and strengthening the red line until it wins.

10. The PMD stresses the importance of collective optimism, historical enthusiasm, personal self-sacrifice and revolutionary romanticism; it combats pessimism, anti-social isolation, selfish vanity and insensitive indifference.

11. The PMD is a revolutionary organisation; membership is by co-option of at least three of its members. The compartmentalisation of its structures is the rule, the secrecy of the organisation the principle. To be a member of the organisation means to be active in a PMD organisation, to apply the resolutions adopted and to observe its own discipline.

12. The PMD operates according to the dialectic of centralisation and democracy. This democratic centralism implies that the leading bodies at all levels are elected by democratic consultation at congresses and that between congresses, the member of the PMD must submit to the organisation, the minority to the majority, the lower level to the higher level and the whole Party to the Central Committee.

13. If a member commits an offence against Party discipline, the Party organisation of the echelon concerned, within the limits of its powers and according to the case in question, will apply one of the following sanctions: warning, reprimand, removal from Party duties, observation, exclusion from the Party.

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On the occasion of this new first of May, the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Center of Belgium and the Communist Party of France (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist) express their confidence and enthusiasm for the growing affirmation of the second wave of the world revolution.

The first wave had given birth, a hundred years ago, in March, 1919, to the Communist International; the second will realize the objective of this one: the world unification and the realization of socialism on all the planet.

The formation of a World Socialist Republic is unavoidable in the 21st century. The realization of the complete unification of Humanity, on the basis of socialist relations in the economy and throughout society, is certain. There can be absolutely no doubt about it.

The resolution of the environmental problems, by establishing dialectical relations of humanity with the planet considered as a biosphere, is inevitable. The understanding of the nature of living matter and its respect goes hand in hand with the dialectical materialistic understanding of the general evolution of the eternal and infinite universe.

We affirm that the mastery of dialectical materialism and its fundamental theses on the universe are the very basis for understanding reality and transforming it.

It is undeniable that this still requires formidable initiatives. Mao Zedong had spoken in the 1960s of the next fifty to one hundred years, when humanity would experience upheavals like never before. We are precisely in this period and it is about being on the front line. We are as the vanguard of the working class in Belgium and France.

We say: there will be no capitulation, no turning back, no modification of the ideological fundamentals, nor revision of the main principles. We are fully aware of the complexity of the tasks incumbent upon us, but we will be able to assume them, with vigor and the greatest sense of responsibility. We are full of optimism about the future: the triumph of Communism corresponds to the movement of the universe itself. The proletariat is the most revolutionary class in history.

It is true that in the imperialist metropolis, the recomposition of the proletarian fabric is still an ongoing process, which does not follow a linear path and still requires an extremely important substantive work. There is still a titanic job to do in this area. We believe, however, that we have grasped the necessary general guidelines. In this sense, our two organizations are fully engaged in this struggle to ensure that the proletariat recovers itself and goes back to the reconquest of its identity, which has undergone profound changes due to the increase of the productive forces, beyond deep deformations, significant errors.

This process of recomposition of the proletarian fabric corresponds to the emergence of the second wave of the World Revolution. And the capitalist mode of production, both in Belgium and in France, experiences such internal problems, because of its historical limits, that it is less and less able to freeze social relations by means of the apparatus of State and corruption of a large part of the proletariat. This had led, since the 1950s, to the displacement of the main contradiction in the zone of storms: Africa, Latin America, Asia. We are now in a new period.

There is also the reaffirmation of the communist ideology that arises historically, through the maturation of class conflicts and especially the driving role of diffusion played by our organizations. Here we affirm very clearly that the explanations we provide of dialectical materialism are the decisive weapons to have the necessary tools, in the theoretical and practical, intellectual and material fields, to make advance the Cause. It is not a question of a side aspect or a philosophy accompanied by simple demands, but of the hard core of the communist affirmation.

It goes without saying, however, that it would be wrong to consider unilaterally that the proletarian-bourgeois contradiction has already resumed its natural course. It is very far from being the case. The ideological, cultural, social and political remains of the 1950-1980s are still widely present. The years 1990-2010 were also marked by a strengthening of many aspects of the capitalist mode of production, due to technological progress, the collapse of the bloc dominated by Soviet social-imperialism and integration into the capitalist world economy of China which became social-fascist.

In this sense, it is incorrect to consider a movement like the « yellow vests » in France other than as an expression of the capitalist crisis in general and the petty bourgeoisie in particular. There is a scissors phenomenon where everything between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is crushed. This phenomenon is also parallel to many others who, similarly, express the fear of seeing capitalism not being longer able to ensure social peace, to give free rein to small capitalists, to neutralize the working class.

Petty-bourgeois interpretations of the massive ecological crisis and the terrifying ecocide it causes, the catastrophic aggravation of global warming, the dramatic animal condition, are also the terrorized expression of the middle layers of capitalism taken between the hammer of proletarian demands and the anvil of capitalism. They are actually phenomena corresponding to the historical limit of capitalism. The time of its world overtaking has arrived.

Discourses on a « finite world », on the need to move to « sustainable » economic development, to adopt a more « sober » way of life, are nothing more than an attempt to curb the wheel of History. Fascism also reappears more strongly as a requirement for a step back in time. Calls to be more « reasonable » are always more numerous within the parasitic intellectual layers. All this catastrophism is fundamentally foreign to who has understood the magnitude of the changes underway, their scale.

In reality, matter is inexhaustible and we know a time of general transformation, both of social life and of humanity’s relationship with the rest of matter. In order to live up to this process, we must liberate the productive forces by adopting the principles of socialism in all fields. This is what will establish productive dynamics for the whole of life in the Biosphere that is the planet, announcing in the medium term the process of spatial colonization and the ever greater diffusion of life.

This requires a great capacity for self-criticism, in relationship to the old way of life. Only collectivism is able to break the individualism and selfishness that characterize the initiatives and dominant values in the capitalist mode of production. Only a perspective based on the notion of totality, of the whole, of universalism, can allow society not to fall under the blows of ultra-individualism, of its capricious consumption, of its contempt for all morality and all social requirement.

The capitalist mode of production, in perdition, also produces only cultural horrors and ideological poisons. Contemporary art, moral relativism, the most outrageous cynicism, the cult of excessive egos and futile appearance, subjectivist literature, dissonant music as a value in itself or repetitive and simplistic music with simple harmonies… Capitalism takes advantage of the overproduction of capital to overrun ever more aspects of everyday life.

This is vain, however. The masses feel fundamentally alien to all this decadence, even if some sectors being more or less important may be fascinated or momentarily disoriented. The masses are on the side of transformation and culture, openness and development. Fixations on identity, material fetishism, superficiality, are essentially foreign to them. Here, the future opposes itself to the celebration of an idealized past, Socialism to the decadence of « culture » in capitalism, to that anticapitalist romanticism that is fascism.

In Belgium and France, the battle is therefore the one to free the initiatives of the masses, to raise their consciousness and their organizational capacities. The avant-garde opens here spaces and, starting from workers’ centrality, forms the movement bringing the emergence of the People’s Democracy as a strategic proposition. It is a question of making falter the dominant system, of shaking it, go to its assault for the establishment of a new State. We must be certain of victory here.

Long live the working class, the most revolutionary class in history!

Long live its ideology: dialectical materialism, today Marxism-Leninism-Maoism!

People’s war up to Communism!

Long live the second wave of the world revolution!

Marxist Leninist Maoist Center of Belgium

Communist Party of France (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist) 

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This First of May of this year has a particular significance : 50 years ago happened the student revolt of May 1968 in France, which produced a popular movement all around the country which brought more than ten millions workers to go on strike.

It produced also numerous revolutionary organisations – which historically are summed up onto the label of “Leftism” – trying to relaunch the revolutionary process broken by the triumph of Revisionism, following the Coup in the Soviet Union in 1953. It stood in full convergence, as the revolt of the youth, as the call of Revolution, with the Great Cultural Proletarian Revolution in China.

The value of May 1968 in France – and also in others countries, with different forms -, the value of the revolutionary experiments of the 1970’s in general, the negative aspect of the ideological influences of the petty-bourgeois and the universities (with the students but also the teachers), must be understood in a proper way.

On this First of May 2018, we call to learn the lesson from the past. The historical value of May 1968 is a part of the world revolutionary heritage, as it shows that, how strong a bourgeois modern society can be in organizing its institutions and its ideological-cultural controls, it is condemned to fail.

There is always a way to break the system maintaining the masses into a passive attitude; there is always a way to open spaces for the revolutionary conscience. In this sense, the main lesson from May 1968 is the workers autonomy, i.e. the autonomy of the working class, the non-dependence to the institutions and in particular of the trade-unions.

The main trade-union, the CGT, dominated by the Revisionist “Communist” Party, played a major role to block the alliance between student and workers, to reduce the struggle to an economical one. It was a part of the institutions in itself. This is the great lesson of May 1968, which corresponds to the changing of form of the bourgeois society since the productive forces have been developed after 1945. This stresses of course the subjective aspect.

The ability to break with the forms of thinking and acting spread by the bourgeoisie requires a high ideological-cultural level. This was a new situation for the Communists in the imperialist countries. If May 1968 had such an echo, it was also because the Russian October revolution of 1917 and the Chinese Democratic Revolution of 1949 belonged to societies which were not that much developed, both in the biggest country of the World and the most populous country of the World.

May 1968 in France appeared, therefore, as a major rupture in a bourgeois modern society, something of a new kind. We must never forget that the rebellious youth understood then that the question was the one of everyday life. Class struggle was not reduced to an economical question, but was understood as it is really : a struggle concerning each aspect of life, because the revolution touches the mode of production, of organizing society, of permitting the faculties of each person to develop themselves.

This is why we say that the key of May 1968 is that the revolutionary Party interacts with the wide masses through the workers autonomy : this was understood in the genuine Maoist experiences after May 1968, in France, in Germany, in Italy, in Belgium. This is the way to build the new state, to organize the rupture at the scale of society with the ruling ideology. This is the real sense of Maoism.

And this real sense was carried by the Red line, on the contrary of the Black Line, which pretended to be anti-Revisionist insofar as it proposed the revolutionary model of the 1920’s, when in fact it was a Trade-unionist, Legalist, formalist trend. On this First of May 2018, we call to understand this fact : because of the temporary failure of the Red Line in the 1980’s-1990’s, the last remains of the Black Line still existing today pretend to have formed in the 1960’s-1970’s the correct line, to be the real Maoist movement.

This is not true and there is still the need for a “back to the roots” proletarian movement, recuperating the heritage from the past and the Leading Thought which emerged then. We say : there won’t be any revolutionary process in any country, if is not understood the two-line struggle from the 1960’s-1970’s.

Even if often the Red Line tended to move to subjectivism, it was on the correct path ; the Black Line has nothing to propose but a Neo-Syndicalist, formal, strategy, full of clichés, with absolutely no cultural and ideological value. The French example from May 1968 is here very clear, as there was :

– a Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of France -PCMLF, which was Legalist, Neo-Syndicalist, moving more and more across a lot of splits to Reformism, Hoxhaism, a pro-Deng Xiaoping line ;

– a Union of Young Communists (Marxist-Leninist) – UJC (ml), which became the Proletarian Left – GP, being the most famous organization from the 1960’s-1970’s because of its activity, its quest for the worker’s autonomy.

This two line struggle existed in fact all over the world, for example through the contradiction between the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Communist Party of India (MarxistLeninist), the Türkiye İhtilalci İşçi Köylü Partisi and the Communist Party of Turkey / MarxistLeninist, the Revolutionary Youth Movement II and the Revolutionary Youth Movement I, etc.

It was during this two-line struggles that emerged Siraj Sikder, Akram Yari, Ibrahim Kaypakkaya, Gonzalo, Charu Mazumdar… as Guiding Thoughts in their own country.

As we know, the Red Line was not able to succeed in its initiative, even if it marked the history of its country, on the contrary of the Black Line. It is obvious, for example, that even if they failed, the Black Panther Party and the Weathermen marked American History, whereas the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, did not. The reason for the failure can now be correctly understood, fifty years afterwards.

The Red line, then, overestimated the question of the subjective aspect, believing that the revolutionary process would only be a question of a few years ; it was not before the beginning of the 1980’s that appeared the understanding that the revolutionary process would be protracted in itself. The Red Line, also, was not able to recuperate correctly Dialectical Materialism.

The continuity of Marxism-Leninism defined by Stalin through the Great Cultural Proletarian Revolution, through Maoism, was not apprehended in a proper manner, permitting leftist-subjectivist and rightist-liquidationnist to emerge.

The history of the Red Line is, therefore, often marked by instability and the brutal triumph of liquidationnism. We have to understand that it was the price to pay to discover the new situation.

For this reason, there is no fetishism to be made, neither of May 1968 nor of the experiences made then and afterwards. This would bring in the hands of subjectivism again, even if the main risk, still today and because of the development of the productive forces, is still the loss of the subjective aspect. Here, we have to remember that numerous actors of May 1968 became part of the institutions, especially in the intellectual and cultural fields.

And the modernist part of the bourgeoisie used also the shaking from May 1968 to promote liberalism, individualism, the refusal of any “conservative” value which means of any value at all, etc. Each sequence of class struggle must be properly understood in relationship with the sequences before and after it, and of course with the main goal : the conquest of power.

We say for this reason : let’s learn, on this First of May, 2018, from May 1968!

Marxist Leninist Maoist Center of Belgium

Communist Party of France (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist) 

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This 7th of November 2017, we celebrate the hundred years of the October revolution, which in 1917 led Russia to socialism, through an armed insurrection followed by a civil war between the red and the white armies.

We say that this path is still valid today ; in each capitalist country, a revolutionary upsurge must be led by the avant-guard revolutionary party, mobilizing the masses so that they take the power in destroying the old state in a necessary violent way.

The insurrection, i.e. the taking of the central power, is the revolutionary task of the real communists; the goal is not to reform or to ameliorate capitalism, but to overthrow it. The old state can not be amended, it has to be destroy and replaced by the power of the soviets, the socialist state.

The nature of the work of the Communists, therefore, must be conform to this revolutionary goal. The aim of the work of the Communists is to mobilize the masses for the global upsurge! The people in arms must be the New State!

The communists must therefore be aware of the capacity of repression of the old state and its allies, like the fascists and the mafia; they must understand the characterization of each period to work properly along the dialectics of legality and illegality. Moreover, and we say that this is the main key of the question, each aspect must be seen in relationship with the goal of taking power, which means that each revolutionary process has to be evaluated from the point of view of the People’s War: the confrontation old state/masses.

It is not a question of finding a “magic” tool of intervention, be it armed propaganda or electoralism. It is always a question of evaluating each situation according to the strategic goal of the armed insurrection, with the taking of the central power.

Each “victory” which does not correspond to this task is incorrect, on any fields (economy, politics, culture, etc.). A victory means moving forward in direction of the strategical goal. Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. It means also that the way is a political one. Revolutionary politics is only possible through a guiding thought, i.e. a correct position on the history of a given country, to show the correct path to realize the revolutionary contradiction.

We wish to stress here that the specific conditions for the October Revolution certainly won’t repeat itself, as the People’s War happened only after the insurrection, through the civil war. What shall happen more surely is a revolutionary process in which the taking of the central power occurs only at the end, like for the Chinese revolution.

When we say : “the goal is still the insurrection !”, we don’t mean by that that the insurrection would be the beginning of a revolutionary process, but only its climax. The revolutionary activity does not consist in the accumulation of forces, to organize a “coup”. The revolutionary activity exists only as a general process, in which a New Power is build, replacing by violence the old one.

With this in mind, we want to stress the importance of understanding the principle of People’s Democracy, which consists in the broad alliance of the anti-monopolies force, against war and fascism. The revolutionary goal of taking the central power belongs to the strategical offensive of the revolution, but a strategical equilibrium may be historically necessary in the situation where fascism and war are the main political aspect. In fact, this may be even the rule for the revolution in the imperialist countries.

A last point we wish to stress, is that it is impossible to separate the October Revolution from the USSR under the leadership of Stalin. Stalin was the leader of the socialist construction in the first socialist state in the world; defending the October revolution is defending Stalin, defending Stalin is the defending the October revolution.

The reason for that is that the very sense of the October revolution is the foundation of the new socialist state. Revolution means the victorious emergence of a new state. This is a basic learning of dialectical materialism. This is why, as the very nature of the state is depending of the revolutionary process, it is not possible to understand the question of the state without understanding that it is a practical one.

That’s why historically Karl Marx had to wait the Commune of Paris of 1871 to understand the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat; that’s why Lenin understood the form of the new socialist state through the revolutionary process itself.

In August 1917, Lenin explains, in the preface to the First Edition of The state andrevolution, the actual nature of the topic he’s studying then, in the period between the February  revolution and the October revolution to come :

“First of all we examine the theory of Marx and Engels of the state, and dwell in particular detail on those aspects of this theory which are ignored or have been distorted by the opportunists. 

Then we deal specially with the one who is chiefly responsible for these distortions, Karl Kautsky, the best­ known leader of the Second International (1889­-1914), which has met with such miserable bankruptcy in the present war. 

Lastly, we sum up the main results of the experience of the Russian revolutions of 1905 and particularly of 1917. 

Apparently, the latter is now (early August 1917) completing the first stage of its development; but this revolution as a whole can only be understood as a  link in a chain of   socialist  proletarian revolutions being caused by the imperialist war. 

The question of the relation of the socialist proletarian revolution to the state, therefore, is acquiring not only practical political importance, but also the significance of a most urgent problem of the day, the problem of explaining to the masses what they will have to do before long to free themselves from capitalist tyranny.”

Lenin Thought is born as expression of the Russian revolution and permitted to have a better understand of the nature of the state. As Stalin explained it in The Foundations of Leninism :

“Some   think   that   the   fundamental   thing   in   Leninism   is   the peasant question, that the point of departure of Leninism is the question of the peasantry, of its role, its relative importance. This is absolutely wrong. 

The   fundamental   question   of   Leninism,  its   point   of   departure, is not the peasant question, but the question of the dictatorship of the proletariat, of the conditions under which it can be achieved, of the conditions under which it can be consolidated.  The peasant question, as the question of the ally of the proletariat in its struggle for power, is a derivative question.”

What Stalin points here is the universal aspect in the particular situation of Leninism as expression of the Russian revolution. This is because of this correct understanding that Stalin follows directly, as leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks), Lenin in guiding the new state in the socialist construction.

It is not possible to separate Lenin from Stalin and Stalin from Lenin, as Stalin is the successor, the one who noted that Leninism was a development of Marxism, the one who led the Party in the deepening of the socialist construction, of the socialist state. We find here the background the basic difference between Marxism and anarchism, Marxism and opportunism. The state is neither to negate, nor to reform. The state is to be built on a new foundation.

This is the principal aspect of the teaching coming from October 1917. It is not only a question of overthrowing the old state, which is a revisionist reduction of Leninism to a mechanical
conception of power. It means : from the avant-guard opening the ideological revolutionary space, being able to synthesize antagonism, organizing the most advanced elements seeking class autonomy, generate revolutionary mass organisms, build the new power, until the insurrection!

Marxist Leninist Maoist Center of Belgium
Communist Party of France (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist)

November 2017

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Genuine revolutionaries don’t commit suicide, they struggle for life, defending the revolutionary evolution of society, the dialectical development of matter. Full of joy and happiness, they carry a fighting spirit, the will of the upsurge, the revolutionary thought carrying a systematic criticism of the reactionary aspects.

This is also the reason why Gonzalo, as he reconstituted the Communist Party of Peru, rejected the principle of hunger strike. The proletariat does not commit suicide ; it is the future of the word !

There is never no reason for any capitulation – the struggle continues until victory !

For this reason, we wish to stress here the historical signification of the murders of Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe, political prisoners of the Red Army Fraction, in the night of the 17th of October, 1977. Those murders form a major political event in the frame of the struggle between revolution and counter-revolution in the imperialist metropoles.

It was a major reactionary blow against the upsurge that appeared after the anti-revisionist struggle which followed the movements of the year 1968 in France, in Italy, in Germany, in the United States, for the retaking of the revolutionary path with the goal of overthrowing the bourgeoisie.

The Red Army Fraction contributed in a major way to this process, putting the revolutionary identity at the center of the struggle. No acceptance of the daily imperialist order can be made by the Communists ; the hostility against the values of the capitalist system is a duty.

Even if the Red Army Fraction went too far in this question of identity and fell in subjectivism, it understood the nucleus of something really important when it said in 1972 :

“The exploitation of the masses in the metropole has nothing to do with Marx’s concept of wage labourers from whom surplus value is extracted.

It is a fact that with the increasing division of labor, there has been a tremendous intensification and spread of exploitation in the area of production, and work has become a greater burden, both physically and psychologically.

It is also a fact that with the introduction of the 8-hour workday—the precondition for increasing the intensity of work—the system usurped all of the free time people had. To physical exploitation in the factory was added the exploitation of their feelings and thoughts, wishes, and utopian dreams—to capitalist despotism in the factory was added capitalist despotism in all areas of life, through mass consumption and the mass media.

With the introduction of the 8-hour workday, the system’s 24-hour-a-day domination of the working class began its triumphal march—with the establishment of mass purchasing power and “peak income” the system began its triumphal march over the plans, desires, alternatives, fantasies, and spontaneity of the people; in short, over the people themselves!

The system in the metropole has managed to drag the masses so far down into their own dirt that they seem to have largely lost any sense of the oppressive and exploitative nature of their situation, of their situation as objects of the imperialist system. So that for a car, a pair of jeans, life insurance, and a loan, they will easily accept any outrage on the part of the system.

In fact, they can no longer imagine or wish for anything beyond a car, a vacation, and a tiled bathroom.

It follows, however, that the revolutionary subject is anyone that breaks free from these compulsions and refuses to take part in this system’s crimes.

All those who find their identity in the liberation struggles of the people of the Third World, all those who refuse, all those who no longer participate; these are all revolutionary subjects—comrades.”

This vision is one-sided and the Red Army Fraction orientated itself in the direction of Third-Worldism instead of taking the direction of a general criticism of capitalist everyday life.

The RAF didn’t understand, for example, the contradiction between cities and countryside, the ecological signification in the relationship between humankind and nature, the importance of the animal question.

Nevertheless, the reason for this is of course lying in the historical situation then, as a main aspect. Moreover, the RAF leaders were murdered really quickly, having not the time to develop their reflections about imperialism.

In fact, the West-German state didn’t nothing else than proceeding of the physical liquidation of revolutionary cadres and leaders. The thesis of “suicide” was, accompanying those murders, an operation of psychological warfare, to negate the political identity of the RAF prisoners, to block the formation of a revolutionary line.

Another very important revolutionary figure, Ulrike Meinhof, was already killed in her prison cell on the 9th of May, 1976, with the West-German state already speaking of suicide to mask its counter-revolutionary murderous activities.

The murders of the 18th of October 1977 followed this liquidation line, in a tradition which is the one of National-Socialism against the democrats and the revolutionaries. And it is to note that the RAF prisoner Irmgard Möller was found stabbed by a knife in that night ; she always denied that she tried to suicide herself.

There are also many facts underlining the absurdity of the West-German thesis : Andreas Baader was killed by a fireweapon from a distance of between 30 and 40 centimetres, there was no gunpowder traces on Jan-Carl Raspe’s hands, there were neither no fingerprints on either Andreas Baader’s or Jan-Carl Raspe’s gun, etc.

Moreover, Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe were subjected at that time to a total isolation in the the Stammheim Prison near the city of Stuttgart, in West-Germany.

This difficult situation followed the kidnapping by the Red Army Fraction, at the beginning of September, of Hanns Martin Schleyer, former SS Untersturmführer, main secretary of the president for the economical integration of the “Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia” into Nazi Germany, then President of the Confederation of German Employers’ Associations and the Federation of German Industries.

This kidnapping was itself followed with the hijack of Lufthansa Flight 181from Palma de Mallorca to Frankfurt by a Palestinian armed group on the 13th of October, 1977, which led to a military failure ; Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe are pretended to have killed themselves following this, this even if they were in total isolation and placed under total supervision.

But, as we said, genuine revolutionaries don’t commit suicide. They fight because they know that the New become more powerful, the Ancient weaker. This is a law of history, the law of matter itself in its dialectical movement.

And the murdered prisoners of the Red Army Fraction were at that time leading a very aggressive defence strategy on trial. This is precisely what was considered as a main danger by the West- German state.

It was the strategical proposal of the revolution that the West- German state tried to kill with the murders of Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe.

We wish to precise here that it doesn’t mean that we endorse the totally erroneous hijacking of a plane and the killing of the pilot Jürgen Schumann. Such an action has nothing to do with genuine proletarian politics ; it is an expression of the non-correct third-worldism vision of the world, which we already criticized in a joint document.

And this is also an argument against the counter- revolutionary thesis of suicide : the Red Amy Fraction was always very proud of the support made by a Palestinian armed unit by hijacking of the plane, and this until the end in 1998 ; the RAF understood it as a convergence of the world revolutionary struggle. In this sense, even a military defeat wouldn’t be a reason to considered as a significant blow on the side of Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe.

This was indeed a subjectivist error ; the RAF tried to find at another level what was to search in the national frame, moving from Proletarian Internationalism to subjectivism. But this tendency to subjectivism should not hide its contribution about the question of underlining the revolutionary identity in the imperialist metropoles!

Marxist Leninist Maoist Center of Belgium

Communist Party of France (marxist leninist maoist)

18th of October 2017

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“We humans are mere fragments of time and heartbeats, but our deeds will remain for centuries stamped on generation after generation. We will people the Earth with light and happiness.” Gonzalo

History produces revolutionary leaders, people who breaks with the ideology dominating their epoch, denouncing injustice, studying the roots of the problems, paving the way for a revolutionary solution. They are the synthesized product of class struggles, like they synthesize class struggles.

Those leaders are not interesting as individuals in such, even of course respect is to be done for their accomplishment and their human ability to carry a break that others were not able to make.

Those leaders are interesting as they express the correct Thought to follow to be able to change the situation. It is the principle of the Guiding Thought, which we explained in an historical common document in Spring 2013.

In November 2016, we explained also the basis of Lenin Thought, which are carried notably in the following documents of Lenin : Guerrilla Warfare (1905), Lessons of the Moscow Uprising (1906), Leo Tolstoy as the Mirror of the Russian Revolution (1908), The Development of Capitalism in Russia (second preface).

Lenin Thought was the direct expression of the Russian situation, of the understanding of the Russian society, of its historical needs. In 1934, as 29 volumes of Lenin works were published, the following writers were for example quoted by Lenin : Mikhaïl Saltykov-Chtchedrine 320 times, Nikolaï Gogol 99 times, Ivan Krylov 60 times, Ivan Tourgueniev 46 times, Nikolaï Nekrassov 26 times, Alexander Pouchkine 19 times, Anton Tchekhov 18 times, Alexander Ostrovsky 17 times, Gleb Ouspensky 16 times, Ivan Gontcharov 11 times.

It is a good expression of the connection with the Russian culture and situation. The October Revolution was, in 1917, the expression of Lenin Thought.

In the same way, the Chinese revolution was the expression of Mao Zedong Thought. And in each country, history produced revolutionary leaders who begin a revolutionary process.

For this reason, we wish to stress the importance of rejecting the double attack on Gonzalo which happened ideologically in France those last few days.

As leader of the Communist Party of Peru, which launched a Peoples’s War, Gonzalo understood the principle of the Guiding Thought. It permitted him to explain that Maoism was a third stage of Marxism, after Leninism.

There is no other “Maoism” that has been defined. All others attempts are without any sense, a weak construct. Historically, the concept of “Marxism-Leninism-Maoism” comes directly from Gonzalo.

There is therefore no historically sense in translating in French and publishing, like it was done those last few days, a translation of a “Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Basic Course”, made by people who joined afterwards the Communist Party of India (Maoist).

This can only be an attempt to negate the role of Gonzalo and the signification of its teachings. Gonzalo’s name doesn’t even appear in this document. But what appears is the concept of “MLM Thought”, which is of course an attempt to skirt the question of the Guiding Thought based on a national frame.

It is any way well known historically that in India, like in the Philippines, there is a huge tradition of refusing Maoism in name of Mao Zedong’s Thought, the main parties in those both countries participating for this reason for a long time to the international congresses organized by the revisionist Workers’ Party of Belgium.

It shows very well that a Maoism, not accepting the only definition of Maoism, the one of Gonzalo, is only “Mao Zedong’s Thought”. When the Communist Party of the Philippines hails North Korea, it show that its Maoism is incorrect.

It is also erroneous that the Marxist–Leninist Communist Organization – Proletarian Way produced a document against Gonzalo, accusing him of capitulation, whereas he is in jail since his arrest in September 1992, 25 years ago.

Such an accusation, published those last days, is based only on what the enemy accepts to say about him, and this is for this reason a clear break with the revolutionary tradition of not criticizing an arrested comrade in the hands of the counter-revolution.

There is also a great naivety to explain that Gonzalo is a traitor, when he’s still in total isolation, in a tiny cell. When somebody capitulates, he’s put forward by the reaction.

The production of fake letters of capitulation is nothing new either : it was already made for the revolutionary leader Thomas Münzer in Germany in 1525.

As said, it is basic teaching of the revolution that the reaction is not to be trusted.

And in its accusation, the Marxist–Leninist Communist Organization – Proletarian Way affirms that the Communist Party of Peru said that Gonzalo Thought would be a new stage of marxism. This is of course not true at all and it shows that the Marxist–Leninist Communist Organization – Proletarian Way doesn’t know or understand the Communist Party of Peru.

And how can it be else, when the Marxist–Leninist Communist Organization – Proletarian Way believes that all countries in the world are capitalist (and not capitalist or semi-feudal semi-colonial), that Stalin was a counter-revolutionary, rejecting the universal character of People’s War ?

It’s also strange to see the Marxist–Leninist Communist Organization – Proletarian Way denouncing the “capitulation” of Gonzalo, when it has itself supported Prachanda, the revisionist leader of Nepal, until the end of its capitulation.

This is here good example, because genuine revolutionaries have foreseen Prachanda’s errors at a very early stage. There is no such thing like a genuine revolutionary leader who, suddenly, capitulates.

This is why we can’t trust the German state when it says that Ulrike Meinhof killed herself in her prison cell, or when the social-imperialist USSR said that the great Greek leader Nikos Zachariadis killed himself in exile. These are lies.

In the same way, it is a question of trust in the movement of History not to believe in Gonzalo’s capitulation. His arrest, like he said, is only a “bend in the road” for the Peruvian revolution.

Such a bend can take time, exactly like the revolution in the imperialist countries is knowing a strategical retreat since the wave of the 1960’s-1970’s, when anyway Asia, Africa and Latin America became the “storm centers of world revolution”.

What counts, in such situation, is that the revolutionaries unite themselves in avant-garde parties in each country, defending the revolutionary traditions and struggling against Revisionism and subjectivist interpretations coming from outside the historical revolutionary current.

This, to be ready for the next great wave of the World Revolution.

Marxist Leninist Maoist Center of Belgium
Communist Party of France (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist)

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This May 1, 2017 is marked by the historical strengthening of the tendency to imperialist war. Each camp polishes its weapons, strengthens its capacity for action, promotes nationalism.

The United Kingdom tumbles to the exit of the European Union with the Brexit; in India, Narendra Modi organizes a regime in which Hinduism turns to fanaticism.

In the United States, it is Donald Trump, that coarse, narrow billionaire who took the lead ; in Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has reinforced, in a generalized manner, his prerogatives as president relying on religion.

China is strengthening its armaments, having just launched an aircraft carrier built in complete independence; North Korea is multiplying missile tests with the aim of endowing them with nuclear warheads. In the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte leads the country with extreme nationalist populism; Japan increased its military budget for the fifth time in 10 years, reaching a record 1% of GDP.

This tendency is general, both in the capitalist-imperialist countries and in the semi-colonial capitalist bureaucratic countries. The crisis inherent to capitalism can not be resolved and the conquest of profit requires more exploitation within and more tendency to interventionism.

There is no other way out except a rush forward, the march towards war.

The price to pay, in case of incapacity to assume this orientation, is the collapse: countries like Libya and Iraq already do not exist any more, dismembered by the others; Afghanistan and Venezuela are swinging into chaos, while between 2011 and 2015, Brazil experienced more deaths by voluntary homicide than in Syria, which is experiencing a widespread war.

Given this background, on the first of May 2017, we therefore call the masses of Belgium and France to be constantly and thoroughly vigilant about the electoral progression of Marine Le Pen.

Its electoral success in the first round of the French presidential elections, with 7.7 million votes, reinforces indeed a double trend of historical importance.

There is in France a tendency towards nationalism and corporatism, that is to say the complete submission to capitalism in the name of the economic efficiency of the country.

But there is also a tendency to expansionism, to the strengthening of the capacity to project outwards – which is the basis of imperialism.

And the historical situation of the Belgian nation is known: it is marked by weaknesses in terms of its cultural unification. Consequently, France inevitably tends to seek to satellite a part of Belgium: Wallonia, even Brussels itself.

There is a convergence of interests between French imperialism and the Flemish fare right, which would both benefit from a negation of the Belgian nation, dismembering it to form real fiefs.

We would like to emphasize that it is not a question of seeing a plot or of imagining a French invasion, but of grasping a fundamental tendency which is based, on the one hand, on the expansionist needs of French capitalism in crisis, on the other on the attempt of Flemish capitalists to form fiefs, where nationalism would grant them political supremacy.

There is here an explosive situation, and this is even truer as the European Union, this capitalist utopia of a pacified Europe, collapses ever more under the blows of the selfish national interests, which is typical of imperialism.

Capitalists have promised progress and peace, but each national capitalism in crisis knows only one, inevitable, way out : fascism internally and war on the outside, whereas the world has already seen the destructive consequences of this historic law, with the First and Second World Wars.

The Belgian question does not attract the attention of Marine Le Pen alone: it can be seen that in the first round of the French presidential elections of 2017, all the « sovereignist » or nationalist candidates already had expressed a favorable opinion on the integration of Wallonia into France.

Marine Le Pen has already frankly approached the issue in July 2011, and this was especially easy as the Flemish far right Flemish is very close to her:

“If Belgian is going to split, if Flanders pronounces its independence, which seems more and more credible a possibility, the French republic would do well to welcome Wallonia into its heart. The historical and fraternal ties which unite our two peoples are too strong for France to abandon Wallonia.”

In 2010 already, Nicolas Dupont-Aignan spoke of “daring to clearly tell to our Walloon friends that France would welcome them with open arms”; Jean-Luc Mélenchon explained that he was “a “rattachiste” as they say. If the Flemings leave, if Belgium evaporates, then, let the Walloons come with us.”

It is also the case of François Asselineau (“in the hypothesis – at present not very probable, but not improbable either – in which the “rattachiste” (or “reunionist”) current ended by rallying a majority of French-speaking voters, French should accede to this majority demand”).

It goes without saying that the French expansionist attempts to profit from the profound Franco-Belgian friendship to justify themselves historically. It is very important to unmask such an undertaking, in order to truly strengthen genuine encounters between peoples, in a long process that will ultimately lead to the World Socialist Republic.

However, it is clear that, in any case, no progressive process can exist on the planet without being carried by the working class, without breaking with the growing power of the monopolies, without being able to break the forces that develop fascism.

The Communists must therefore be at the forefront of the anti-fascist struggle, knowing that the inevitable evolution of capitalism led to the formation of two camps: the camp of fascism, the camp of popular democracy, the latter being the natural terrain for the Communists .

Of course, this demands the ideological capacity not to yield to the pseudo-revolutionary demagogy of leftism, which is opposed to anti-fascism considered here as a “compromise” protecting bourgeois institutions.

Leftism is mistaken here, for nothing is static in society, because of the inherent instability of capitalism in crisis. The battle for democracy carries within it, inevitably, the break with the power of the monopolies, which is being strengthened in an ever more tyrannical way.

During this process, it will be a historic task for the Communists to organize the masses in general on the democratic ground of anti-fascism, with the unavoidable military confrontation of reaction and revolution.

For this reason, there is the task for the Communists to know the historical heritage of anti-fascist struggle, in particular the Spanish, Greek, Italian, German, Belgian and French experiences.

The war of the people against fascism will inevitably be the historical sequence to come, which will sweep away the attempt of capitalism to maintain itself in spite of its entirely decadent and destructive nature.

It is evident, therefore, that the question of the environment will be a particularly important detonator in the mobilization of the masses. This is part of the process of dialectical materialistic understanding of the world that the masses will experience in their ever more frontal opposition to capitalism knowing only the path of confrontation and destruction.

It is a whole new era that opens here, allowing a new undeniable impetus to the revolution, on the condition of grasping reality adequately, of knowing well the historical characteristics of its own country.

That is why, on the first of May, we affirm that the future belongs to the masses, not to fascism, and that the organized masses will be able to wage war against the anti-democratic forces seeking to prevent them from mastering their destiny, to establish the socialist society which corresponds to their needs.

Marxist Leninist Maoist Center of Belgium

Communist Party of France (marxist leninist maoist)

First of May 2017

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Ten years ago, on November 21, 2006, the World Revolution knew a setback with the capitulation of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), which ceased its People’s War to accept a “comprehensive Peace Agreement” with the government.

At the time of the capitulation, the People’s War in Nepal began indeed to be world known. It controlled up to 80 percent of the country, after ten years of armed struggle where the Revolution presented itself as strategic proposition for the entire masses. The People’s Liberation Army, strong of 30, 000 combatants, went on from victory to victory.

Maoism, as leading ideology from the People’s War, was in a process of spreading all over the world, with in the background the historical advances made by the Communist Party of Peru, whereas in India there was a strong reorganization which brought the founding of the Communist Party of India (Maoist).

The capitulation was a terrible betrayal from this situation in development. Deeply influenced by the eclectic tendencies of the Maoist current called Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) fell into a pragmatic-machiavelic line.

This was strongly intensified by the decadent way of life of its leadership, corrupted by the imperialist lifestyle, what brought a spirit of acceptance of the social and democratic “improvement” by imperialism considered as a unified globalized system.

The idea of a general victory was abandoned, as it was thought that both India and China, and also the USA, would block any further development. The city of Kathmandu was not considered as possible to be taken; the army, on the contrary of the police, seemed supposedly unbreakable.

Therefore, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) precipitated itself in the possibility of an alliance with the parliamentarian political parties which, in the situation of crisis where the Monarchy took all the control of the country, accepted to form a Republic, in exchange of the end of the People’s War.

This was just a new laying out of the semi-feudal semi-colonial nature of the country, but the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), hoping for a quick integration, self-intoxicated itself, with the “people’s revolt” as phantasmagoria.

In fact, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) already imagined that it found a new method combining insurrection and people’s war.

After the capitulation, it continued its idealist innovations with the revisionist theory of a multiparty constitution, where all political parties were considered as anti-feudal, because they were opposed to Monarchy, where therefore the destruction of the old state was conceived as not possible and even not necessary, as the general democratization, with the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) being the major force in the country, would be unavoidable.

This concept of “democratization” was not new: it was a mere renewal of the revisionist thesis of Karl Kautsky and Maurice Thorez in the imperialist countries.

More precisely, it is what was professed by all the revisionist currents in the third world during the 1960’s-1990’s period, pretending to make a front with the national bourgeoisie to reform the country, when there were in reality trying to build a new bureaucratic bourgeoisie serving Soviet Social-imperialism.

Nowadays, as there is no Soviet Social-imperialism any more, such a tendency can only lead to the subordination to imperialists or expansionist semi-colonial powers. In Nepal, it is easy to see that Prachanda became the lackey of India.

And of course, as the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) became a part of the world system of exploitation and oppression, it was strongly supported in its capitulation.

Naturally, the electoral victory of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) was greeted all over the world by all the revisionist forces. The calls to support the Nepal Revolution grew always more as soon as the peace agreement were signed. There were even groups appearing calling to support the People’s War in Nepal, when it was already over.

Revisionists won prestige of this and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) profited from this in keeping being considered as revolutionary.

But this was sadly not all. The vast majority of the forces upholding Maoism supported this process.

Instead of considering that the peace agreement was the end of the process transforming the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) in a revisionist party, it was considered that it was only the beginning of it.

Years after the peace agreement, it was still spoken of a “complicated” situation and it was explained that still everything was possible, that a “red line” was growing, a new party in constitution, etc.

Ten years after the peace agreement, we can see that this was fully erroneous. There was no such thing like a “red line” in the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) which became revisionist, because the black line entirely won precisely with the “comprehensive Peace Agreement”.

A proof of it is the fact that all the tendencies and splitter movements which quitted the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) still thought that it was correct to reach such an agreement.

The “people’s revolt” was only a false dream masking the capitulation; it was a trick to occupy the radical sectors of the masses, to estrange them to scientific socialism. The calls for a “red line” in the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) formed an impediment to this understanding.

The forces who have pretended to “defend” the achievements of the Nepalese Revolution, the possibility of its continuation, have in fact helped to block any self-criticism in Nepal. They prevent a dialectical materialist perspective of the history of Nepal, of the conditions of class struggle.

It was correct to denunciate what consisted historically in a capitulation. Prachanda was not only an opportunist, he was a revisionist and the systematic criticism of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) should have been done immediately at the time of the “Peace Agreement”, to liberate the forces in Nepal wanting to move to a scientific socialist understanding of the situation.

This was also very important to protect Maoism. The situation in Nepal helped widely the Revisionist currents, in particular Hoxhaism, to maintain the accusation that Maoism was an “armed struggle without perspective”, a petty-bourgeois trend. Rejecting these slanders was only possible with a general Maoist condemnation of Prachanda and the position of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) with the “Peace Agreement”.

That’s why we say, ten years of the Nepali capitulation, that it is important to learn from it. It helps to understand the Maoist teachings on the question of the state, on People’s War, on the principle of bureaucratic bourgeoisie. It shows the nature of forces pretending nowadays to be Maoist, when they were converging with the revisionist line of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist).

This is particularly the case of the Maoist Communist Party of Italy and the Revolutionary Communist Party of Canada. Both were at the very heart of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement and very close to the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). They accompanied the process to the “Peace Agreement”: it is easy to see from their positions at that time.

It is important to see that there was in Nepal in December 2006 , in presence of many Maoist parties, an international Seminar “on Imperialism and Proletarian revolution in the 21st century”. Nevertheless, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) had then already signed the “Peace Agreement” and developed all its theories about “multiparty democracy”.

Was it then not already time to denunciante the revisionist line of Prachanda, the capitulation of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)? Ten years after, it is clear that yes.

Learn from the defeat in Nepal, which is only a bend in the road of the World Revolution!

Defend Maoism against Revisionism, but also against connivance and convergence with Revisionism!

Uphold the principle of the armed ocean of the masses! People’s War until Communism!

Organization of the workers of Afghanistan (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, principally Maoist)
Marxist Leninist Maoist Center of Belgium
Communist Party of France (marxist leninist maoist)
November 2016

=> documents in English

April 1, 1986 : Communist Party of Nepal – Mashal tries without success to launch an armed process against the elections. In Kathmandu the statue of King Tribhuvan is painted black and a number of police posts attacked.

April 9, 1990 : the ban on political parties is lifted.

November 9, 1990 : a new constitution is promulgated.

November 19-20, 1990 : merger of the Communist Party of Nepal (Mashal), the Communist Party of Nepal (Fourth Convention), the Proletarian Workers Organisation, the Communist Party of Nepal (Janamukhi). The name of the new organization is Communist Party of Nepal (Unity Centre).

April 6, 1991 : violent incidents around the general strike, the police kills a dozen people.

May 12, 1991 : the United People’s Front Nepal, generated organism of the Communist Party of Nepal (Unity Centre), becomes the third largest party in the parliament with 9 seats (UML : 68 seats, Nepali Congress : 110 seats).

May 22, 1994 : process of splitting of the Communist Party of Nepal (Unity Centre), with Puspa Kamal Dahal, known as Prachanda on one side, Nirmal Lama on the other.

March, 1995 : the Third Plenum of the Communist Party of Nepal (Unity Centre) abandons elections and the organization becomes the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist-Centre), under the leadership of Prachanda and Baburam Bhattarai.

September, 1995 : the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist-Centre) adopts the principle of People’s War, for which three fronts are organized : the Sindhuli, Kavre and Sindhupalchok Districts in eastern Nepal, the Gorkha and Lamjung Districts in central Nepal, the Rolpa, Rukum and Jajarkot Districts in midwestern Nepal. The state answers with the two-months during “Operation Romeo”, arresting more than 130 people without warrants, nearly 6,000 others being driven out of their villages, raping dozens of women.

February 4, 1996 : Baburam Bhattarai representing the United People’s Front Nepal, presents a forty-point list of demands to Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba.

February 13, 1996 : the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) launches the People’s War. It is present with Committees in 35 of the 75 Districts of the country, having three kind of organizations : the Radak Dal i.e. the Fighting Groups, the Gaun Surakcha Dal i.e. the Village Defence Groups and the Swayamsewaka Dal i.e. the Volunteer Groups. At the beginning, the arms are a 303 rifle, some homemade guns and the nepali knives called Khukhuris. 6,000 actions are made in 15 days, belonging to four types : propaganda, sabotage; guerilla actions, execution of class enemies.

May 26, 1998 : the Police begins the operation “Kilo Sierra II” in Rukum and Rolpa.

November 27, 1998 : the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) calls to develop base areas.

August 7, 2000 : the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) rejects peace talks offer.

January 22, 2001 : the State announces the formation of the Combat Brigades called Armed Police Force.

February 2001 : Second National Conference of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), which adopts Prachanda long strategic document : “The Great Leap Forward: An Inevitable Need of History”. This will be called “Prachanda Path”.

“Through the internal contradiction of the imperialists, unequal development and distribution as per the inherent character of capitalism, the development of this objective situation will lead to the revolution in any country in Asia, Africa and Latin America, and its international importance is just evident. It magnificently justifies Mao’s analysis that Asia, Africa and Latin America shall be the storm centres of revolution. These characteristics clearly indicate that 21st century shall be the century of people’s wars, and the triumph of the world socialist system. Apart from this, it also shows that there has been a significant change in the prevailing concept of model of revolution after 1980. Today the fusion of the strategies of armed insurrection and protracted people’s war into one another has been essential. Without doing so, a genuine revolution seems almost impossible in any country (…).

Actually, the new situation clearfy indicates the change in the nature of strategic difference that occurred between armed insurrection and protracted people’s war generally until the Eighties of 20th century.

There should be no confusion at all that basically, the developed imperialist countries must essentially pursue the path of armed insurrection and the oppressed countries of the third world protracted people’s war even today.

But the change occurred in the world situation as mentioned above has created a situation that necessarily links the characteristics of armed insurrection and protracted people’s war with one another, and, moreover, there is a need to do so.

Because of this situation of the development, it has been almost impossible to successfully advance the strategy of protracted PW of encircling the city with villages and building base areas in any third world country, without pursuing several characteristics of armed insurrection from the beginning.

The military line of general armed insurrection contains some fundamental characteristics such as continuous intervention by the political party of the proletariat at the centre of reactionary state on the ground of political propaganda right from the beginning, training the masses including the workers with continuous strikes and street struggles on the basis of revolutionary demands, developing works in the military force and bureaucracy of the enemy in a planned way, waging intensive political struggle against various revisionist and reformist groups from the central level, and, lastly, seizing the central state power through armed insurrection in appropriate International and national situation, etc. It is evident that the proletariat of a third world country should concede and apply the above-mentioned characteristics of general armed insurrection, too.”

Mai 28, 2001 : Prachanda gives an interview to A World to Win, produced by the Committee of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement.

“The rapid development of people’s war is inevitable today after this leadership problem is solved through intense struggle against alien tendencies in the proletarian movement, mainly right revisionism. For the masses there is no alternative to rebellion and revolution, given the objective background of exploitation, repression and poverty prevalent in the semi-feudal and semi-colonial countries of the Third World (…).
Taking the synthesis of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, the highest expression of conscious class struggle, as our starting point, we delved into serious study We made a particularly fervent study of the ideological struggle that erupted in the process of the development of the Communist Party of Peru, the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA and in other countries (…).

The Party has been striving to develop the people’s army according to the universal principles of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism: « without a People’s Army, the people have nothing », « political power grows out of the barrel of a gun », and « armed sea of masses », which are requirements for the revolution.”

June 1 2001 : Gyanendra becomes king, as officially Prince Dipendra went mad and killed ten members of his family, including his brother the king, committing himself suicide. Dipendra was since the beginning of the year sent two times by the king as emissary to negociate with the the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist).

July 22, 2001 : Sher Bahadur Deuba becomes Prime Minister and calls to peace talks.

July 25, 2001 : general ceasefire.

August 30, 2001 : first round of peace talks, in Kathmandu.

September 13-14, 2001 : second round of peace talks, in Bardiya district.

November 13, 2001 : third round of peace talks, in Kathmandu.

November 21, 2001 : the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) stops the peace talks, following by daring attacks police and military posts in forty-two districts, attacking for the first time the Royal Nepalese Army, in particular in Ghorahi (Dang District) with a 1,100 strong unit.

November 26, 2001 : the government declares the state of emergency and the Royal Nepalese Army is mobilized.

May 7, 2002 : the USA announces counter-insurgency support.

May 15, 2002 : Great-Britain proposes counter-insurgency support, followed by India.

May 22, 2002 : the King Gyanendra dissolves the Parliament.

October 4, 2002 : the King Gyanendra takes control of the governement.

January 29, 2003 : general ceasefire.

April 27, 2003 : first round of peace talks, in Kathmandu.

May 9, 2003 : second round of peace talks.

August 17, 2003 : third round of peace talks. 17 cadres and 2 others persons are killed in a fake encounter at Doramba.

August 27, 2003 : the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) withdraws from the peace talks.

December 17, 2003 : the Royal Nepalese Army announces the killing of 1056 Maoists since the end of the ceasefire.

April 2004 : during the last months, 11 out of the 95 Central Committee members of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) have been arrested in India.

January 31, 2005 : Bhattarai is kept temporarily in custody and condemned with others cadres, following his refusal to centralize the People’s War and to launch an anti-India campaign, and his use of Nepali mainstream media in December 2004 to promote a “note of dissent”.

February 1, 2005 : the King Gyanendra and the Royal Nepalese Army take the control of the state.

April 29, 2005 : end of the emergency state.

June 20, 2005 : the Seven Party Alliance calls the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) to stop the people’s war and to join against the king.

September 3, 2005 : the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) announces a three-month unilateral ceasefire.

September 2005 : in France, the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist) begins the publishing of a series of articles about Nepal with Nepal : “lead the Revolution till the end or be defeated by sugar-coated bullets ?”, followed in October by “The Nepalese Revolution at a turning point : dare the new or « reform » the country?”.

“In most of the « Third World » States, there is a more or less « democratic » constitution, which does not prevent the State from being a fascistic State, dominated by imperialism, bureaucratic bourgeoisie sold to that imperialism and great landowners.

What does uniting traditional political parties then mean, since those parties are useless, discredited as pretending to be progressist but having done nothing against the fascistic State that they even characterised as democratic, and having always opposed People’s War? (…)

One cannot speak of « vacillating » parties whereas those parties always supported the fascistic State, against People’s War.

The CPN(m) is a Vanguard, it built on its fight against those traditional political parties’ opportunism, what is the point of reviving them whereas they are historically supplanted?

It is not possible to assert on the one hand that People’s War in Nepal has entered the strategic offensive phase, and on the other hand to stop the armed struggle precisely while the old State has to be destroyed.

The CPN(m) questions the fact that the Party leads the Army and the Front, after having built those three forms in turn. It places the Army under the guidance of the United Front, and subordinates the Party’s policy to the United Front, which is a questioning of the revolutionary principles.”

October 2005 : the Chunwang Baithak Central Committe meeting of the the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) adopts the principle of the “democratic republic” instead of the “people’s republic” goal.

November 15, 2005 : the Communist Party of Nepal (Marxist–Leninist–Maoist) founded in 1981 reunifies his two factions, forming the Communist Party of Nepal (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Centre).

November 22, 2005 : the Seven Party Alliance and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) sign a 12 point agreement, calling for peace and the holding of a Constituent Assembly.

February 10, 2006 : Prachanda gives a long interview to the Indian newspaper The Hindu.

“We want to analyse the experience of revolution and counter-revolution in the 20th century on a new basis.

Three years ago we took a decision in which we said how are we going to develop democracy is the key question in the 21st century. This meant the negative and positive lessons of the 20th century have to be synthesised in order for us to move ahead.

And three years ago we decided we must go in for political competition. Without political competition, a mechanical or metaphysical attitude will be there. So this time, what we decided is not so new.

In August, we took serious decisions on how practically to build unity with the parliamentary political parties. We don’t believe that the people’s war we initiated was against, or mainly against, multiparty democracy. It was mainly against feudal autocracy, against the feudal structure.”

“That when we go for state power and are in power, then we will not do what Stalin or Mao did. Lenin did not have time to deal with issues of power. Although Stalin was a revolutionary, his approach, was not as scientific as it should have been, it was a little metaphysical, and then problems came.

We also evaluated Mao in the plenum. If you look at his leadership from 1935 to 1976 – from when he was young to when he was old and even speaking was difficult – must he remain Chairman and handle everything? What is this?”

“We must accept this ground reality. We have mentioned democratic republic and constituent assembly, with the understanding that we should be flexible given the balance in the class struggle and international situation. This is a policy, not tactics. This is a necessary process for the bourgeoisie and the national capitalists alike, let alone the middle-class.”

“In the multiparty democracy which comes – interim government, constitutional assembly and democratic republic – we are ready to have peaceful competition with you all. Of course, people still have a doubt about us because we have an army.

And they ask whether after the constitutional assembly we will abandon our arms. This is a question. We have said we are ready to reorganise our army and we are ready to make a new Nepal army also. So this is not a tactical question.”

“The weapons of both sides should be put together and both the armies should be transformed into one under the supervision of the United Nations or another reliable agency. (…)

The army will be formed according to the results of the election. This is what you should be clear about. We will accept it if the constituent assembly says we want monarchy. We are flexible even that far. We will accept it even if the people say we want an active monarch. “

February 2006 : in France, the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist) defines Prachanda as the “follower of modern revisionism”, because of his position in his interview to The Hindu.

April 21, 2006 : several hundred thousand people fills the 27-kilometre long Ring Road that surrounds Kathmandu and Lalitpur, in the frame of the mass movement launched by the Seven Party Alliance and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), with a 19 days general strike.

April 25, 2006 : the Seven Party Alliance stops the movement in accepting the Prime Minister post and the reinstall of the Parliament.

April 26, 2006 : the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) announces a three-month ceasefire.

May 3, 2006 : the Seven Party Alliance announces a ceasefire and the beginning of peace talks with the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist).

May 18, 2006 : the Royal Nepalese Army becomes the Nepali Army, the state adopts secularism.

May 26, 2006 : first round of peace talks between the government and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), who decide both of a 25-point Code of Conduct.

June 16, 2006 : first media appearance of Prachanda in 35 years of political activity, at the Prime Minister’s residence, in presence of the Seven Party Alliance leaders, after having being brought by helicopter to Kathmandu from the Kaski District.

June 17, 2006 : eight-point agreement between the government and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), consisting in the formation and interim constitution and governement, the dissolution of both the Parliament and the parallel Maoist government structures, the United Nations supervision of the arms management of the Nepali Army and the People’s Liberation Army.

June 2006 : CPI(Maoist) spokesman Azad gives an interview to People’s March.

“Firstly, we are greatly perturbed by the proposal put forth by comrade Prachanda in his various interviews that his party was committed to multiparty democracy, which will be practiced not after the revolutionary seizure of power by the proletariat but within the semi-colonial semi-feudal society. The 2003 Plenum document was quite vague regarding CPN(Maoist)‘s concept of multiparty democracy or political competition, i.e., whether it is applicable after the seizure of power by the revolutionary party or prior to seizure itself (…).

Moreover, we find that comrade Prachanda and the CPN (Maoist) had turned the tactics to the level of strategy and path of the world revolution in the 21st century. Thus, in his interview to The Hindu comrade Prachanda stressed that the Maoists‘ commitment to multi-party democracy is not tactical but the result of a lengthy ideological debate within the party over three years.”

August 27, 2006 : the Colombian Unión Obrera Comunista (MLM) adopts a resolution about Nepal, “giving a fraternal and internationalist call to the leading comrades of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) so that they take again in consideration their engagement with the parliamentarian republic and bourgeois democracy, which are the completed instruments of bourgeois dictatorship”.

November 13, 2006 : Communist Party of India (Maoist) releases a document called “A New Nepal can emerge only by smashing the reactionary state! Depositing arms of the PLA under UN supervision would lead to the disarming of the masses!!”.

“The agreement to deposit the arms of the people’s army in designated cantonments is fraught with dangerous implications. This act could lead to the disarming of the oppressed masses of Nepal and to a reversal of the gains made by the people of Nepal in the decade-long people’s war at the cost of immense sacrifices (…).

The CC, CPI(Maoist), as one of the detachments of world proletariat, warns the CPN(Maoist) and the people of Nepal of the grave danger inherent in the agreement to deposit the arms and calls upon them to reconsider their tactics in the light of bitter historical experience (…).

Even more surprising is the assertion by the CPN(Maoist) that their current “tactics” in Nepal would be an example to other Maoist parties in South Asia. Comrade Prachanda had also given a call to other Maoist parties to reconsider their revolutionary strategies and to practice multiparty democracy in the name of 21st century democracy.

Our CC makes it crystal-clear to CPN(M) and the people at large that there can be no genuine democracy in any country without the capture of state power by the proletariat and that the so-called multiparty democracy cannot bring any basic change in the lives of the people. It calls upon the Maoist parties and people of South Asia to persist in the path of protracted people’s war as shown by comrade Mao.”

November 21, 2006 : a Comprehensive Peace Agreement is signed by the government and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist).

November 2006 : the Colombian Unión Obrera Comunista (MLM) adopts a resolution calling “to struggle against the opportunistic betrayal of the direction of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)”.

December 26-30, 2006 : the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) organizes an international Seminar “on Imperialism and Proletarian revolution in the 21st century” at the 114th birthday of Mao Zedong. Are notably present representants of the Communist Party of Afghanistan (Maoist), the Communist Party of Bhutan (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist), the Communist Party of India (Maoist), the Communist Party of Iran (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist), the Communist Party of the Philippines, the Maoist Communist Party of Italy, the Maoist Communist Party of Turkey/Kurdistan, the Revolutionary Communist Party of USA. A press communiqué is published at the end.

“The international seminar on ‘Imperialism and Proletarian Revolution in the 21st Century’, organised as part of celebrating the tenth anniversary of the initiation of the People’s War in Nepal, has been successfully completed with the participation of 14 Maoist parties and organisations.

The seminar was held at a historic juncture where the Nepali people are marching forward to a decisive victory over their enemies and when US imperialism, the main enemy of the people of the world, is getting bogged down in its wars of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

February 13, 2007 : big mass rally of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) in Kathmandu.

February 2007 : the Chilean Unión de Revolucionarios Comunistas (MLM) publishes a long document called « In Nepal has been consumed a great revisionist betrayal”, where Prachanda is presented a someone having “deviated like Bernstein and Kautsky”, the opportunist line existing already since years in the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist).

“November 21, 2006 will be remembered as a disastrous day in the history of the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat and the people of Nepal. This day will remain in the history of the international communist movement as a day of betrayal mlm principles.”

February 23, 2007 : the Communist Party of Nepal (Marxist–Leninist–Maoist Centre) joins the the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist).

April 1, 2007 : formation of an interim government, with five members of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist).

April 1, 2007 : publication in the Red Flag, organ of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Canada, of an article called “What is the situation of the revolution in Nepal?”.

“Developments over the last year in Nepal, after more than 10 years of armed struggle that shook the foundations of the old regime and won admiration from millions of exploited people and proletarians around the world, did not go without generating debates within the international communist movement—and within forces supporting revolution in that country.

Many wonder about the decisions made by the leadership of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) (CPN[M)]) and the future of their revolution. Important Maoist parties like the Communist Party of India (Maoist) and Communist Party of the Philippines publicly expressed their dissent with the Nepali comrades.

Other parties or organizations, whose actual existence is slight of outside the Internet, [We refer here to a small group called “Parti communiste marxiste-léniniste-maoïste” of France.] profited from hardships occurring in the normal course of a revolutionary process, like the one going on in Nepal, to launch a wild campaign against the leadership of the CPN(M), and even against other parties and organizations (notably the Committee of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement) who would not follow their appeal to publicly condemn what they call “Prachanda revisionism” (from the name of the main leader of the Nepali party).

We have clearly set ourselves apart from this childish position, a position which shows a total misunderstanding of the complexity of a revolutionary struggle which is taking place outside of some webmaster’s cozy apartment. In many places there are individuals and collectives of all kinds who have no revolutionary experience, or even the slightest idea of its strategic requirements, but who nonetheless aspire to confused revolutionary ideals. Such groups or individuals will sometimes be attracted to a certain revolutionary symbol. Some will, however, never go beyond this stage.

Many romanticized the revolution in Nepal, seeing images of armed fighters and acts of open rebellion, and praised the CPN(M). But the recent tactics applied by the Maoist party and the appearance of new images, such as Prachanda no longer a charismatic mysterious revolutionary leader but shaking hands with Prime Minister Koirala, have disappointed them. Their narrow militaristic and romanticized vision of revolution prevents them from understanding that both kinds of activity are part of the same process, and that this process in and of itself always remains essentially political.

That being said, developments from the last year are raising serious issues, some of which are actually linked to important principles.

At this point, as a Maoist organization that has supported the revolutionary process in Nepal since its beginning, and acting as a detachment of the international communist movement, the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) submits the following considerations:

1. The revolution in Nepal constitutes the most advanced revolutionary experience of the last 10 years for the international proletariat. The application of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism to the conditions of Nepal by the CPN(M) allowed the country’s revolutionary masses to rapidly progress and win one victory after another.

The revolutionary process in Nepal also brought forward the whole international communist movement. It confirmed the accuracy of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and of the strategic path of protracted People’s War.

Revolution in Nepal demonstrates the Maoist thesis, according to which the people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history; it once again proves the necessity of a solid revolutionary leadership embodied by a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist vanguard party linked to the international communist movement.

2. Tactical decisions made by the CPN(M) over the last 18 months are in continuity with the orientation developed by this party, which allowed the revolution to progress up until now.

Our first impression is that these decisions are not surprising; the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) is following the plan it adopted when it first declared the People’s War. From the outset, the CPN(M) clearly indicated that, within the class composition of Nepal, the main enemy of the Nepali people was made up of feudal landowners and of comprador bourgeoisie and their imperialist allies in the US and India; and that to ensure their domination, these reactionary classes relied, politically, on a monarchist type of state which supports the entire structure of oppressive relations in Nepali society.

On the basis of concentrating all revolutionary forces to attack one enemy at a time, the CPN(M) decided to target feudal monarchy, and demanded the formation of a constituent assembly that would create a democratic republic. It fought to initiate a united front with the forces opposed to monarchy—including some hesitant forces that it carefully brought into the camp of revolution (even if only temporarily).

3. These tactical decisions and this step in the revolutionary process has, however, raised a number of questions that should be mainly answered by the CPN(M). One of them is about the important military issue which will determine what force will become dominant at the end of this political process. The peace accord of November 2006 did not force the People’s Liberation Army to give up their arms, as some claim, but simply put them in warehouse.

During a conference in New Delhi on February 3rd, 2007, Comrade Gaurav, finally freed after more than three years in prison, and now assuming leadership of international relations for the CPN(M), explained that the People’s Liberation Army would need only an hour to fully mobilize itself (eKanpitur.com, 2007/02/03).

The question of how the national army will be disbanded if the Maoists win the elections in the constituent assembly still remains open. Party leader Baburam Bhattarai recently raised the idea that the national army could be “substantially reduced” and replaced by a people’s militia (eKantipur.com, 2007/02/09).

However, until elections are held and the Maoists can proceed with building a new country, the conditions of the peace accord, even if they have not neutralized the armed capacity of the People’s Liberation Army, have still placed the forces of the enemy in an advantageous position, since only part of their troops, weapons and supplies, equivalent to that of the PLA, were set down in the same way.

The national army currently possesses enough surplus strength, in strict military terms, to intervene in the electoral process and perhaps even stage a coup d’état. If they did so, however, it would go against the spirit and word of the peace accord, and the legitimacy of the revolutionary forces would be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt; then, the PLA would be in a far better position to pick up arms to defend the integrity of the free democratic process.

More generally, the transitional process, which the CPN(M) hopes will abolish the monarchist state once and for all and lead to a democratic republic as a step towards New Democracy and socialism, remains scattered with obstacles. The path towards revolution in any given country never follows a straight and predictable line. It can not be claimed that each step must follow another with a kind of historic determinism.

The key is for the revolutionary proletariat, embodied in its vanguard party, to lead the process, to accumulate its strength and at each step act according with the reality of the situation, forging and breaking class alliances, advancing and withdrawing, and realizing the tasks necessary for the next step. It is the greatest hardship any revolutionary party will confront.

As a supporter of the CPN(M) told us not too long ago, the closer the party gets towards seizing power, the more it progresses in transforming society through revolution, and the more its margins of error narrows. When the People’s War was initiated in 1996, the party could afford to make mistakes (relatively, of course).

A single defeat, or a single failure, could not lead to the consequences that it can now, as millions of people have put their hopes in the revolution.

4. Nothing is settled; everything is still possible. We are of the opinion that nothing is final, nothing has been set in stone, for the revolution in Nepal. We clearly reject the point of view of those pretending that a bourgeois line has triumphed within the party and that the revolution has been defeated.

The revolutionary movement in Nepal is more alive than ever.

The masses are involved by the millions, in one way or another, in the revolutionary process.

They benefit from the contribution of a trained and combat-proven vanguard party which has proven its mastery at military and political tactics; each compromise made during the course of the People’s War, and each cease-fire, allowed it to accumulate its forces, isolate the enemy and put the revolutionary camp in a better position. This, however, does not give any guarantee about the future. The party (as well as elsewhere), as the leading center of the revolution, is obviously where the bourgeois line is going to redevelop.

In 1957, eight years after the triumph of Chinese Revolution, three years of New Democracy and four years of socialist construction, Mao Zedong wrote: “Class struggle is by no means over. The class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, the class struggle between the various political forces, and the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie in the ideological field will still be protracted and torturous and at times even very sharp.

The proletariat seeks to transform the world according to its world outlook, and so does the bourgeoisie. In this respect, the question of which will win out, socialism or capitalism, is not really settled yet.” (On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People) We believe that in Nepal, the matter of knowing who will win is not yet resolved.

5. The challenges for revolution in Nepal are shedding light on a certain number of difficulties and weaknesses within the revolutionary forces and the world proletariat.

From the beginning, the CPN(M) was always very aware of the dialectical link which unites revolution in Nepal and world revolution. It also grasped the importance of relating the revolution in Nepal with the world revolution, even if it involves mainly internal factors specific to Nepal.

This relation begins with revolution in South Asia, particularly in India, which constitutes the most immediate and dominant foreign influence in Nepal. The CPN(M) has spent a lot of effort unifying Maoist revolutionary forces in the region. It put forward the strategic idea of a Federation of Soviet Republics of South Asia as a means of establishing and consolidating socialism in each of the region’s countries.

At the international level, the CPN(M) participates with the efforts of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (the RIM) to develop the world revolution and people’s resistance, and build Marxist-Leninist-Maoist vanguard parties and organizations everywhere in the world, as well as a global revolutionary leading center.

In the short run, because of the current international context characterized by imperialist war and the USA’s hegemonic imperialist offensive (since the fall of Soviet social-imperialism, and in particular since the September 11, 2001 attacks), proclaiming, establishing and maintaining a Communist-led revolutionary regime represents a gigantic challenge that can never be overcome alone by Communists in a single country. This challenge belongs to Marxist-Leninist-Maoists, to revolutionary and anti-imperialist forces all over the globe.

6. In this context, solidarity with revolution in Nepal is more necessary than ever. We must continue to support Nepal’s revolutionary masses; in fact, our solidarity with them must strengthen. This does not exclude debate and discussion on the orientations of the CPN(M).

Not in the least bit. Comrades from Nepal openly participate within the international communist movement, so that the worldwide revolution can be strengthened by their experience, and vice-versa—not in a literal way, but in a very real and concrete manner. And if there is a single concrete revolutionary movement in the world, it is in Nepal. This revolution belongs to us all: it is the revolution of the world’s oppressed people.

The Maoist conception of revolution excludes any unconditional submission to some “father party.” Thanks to the revisionists, this deviation, which has always plagued the international communist movement, has brought disastrous results in the past. It has been vigorously fought against by Mao and the Chinese Communists, and today is rejected by the CPN(M) and genuine Marxist-Leninist-Maoist forces.

What revolutionaries in Nepal need, what they are righteously asking from us, is that we take the revolution’s issues at heart; that we defeat our fears and our monotonous inaction and lack of resolve, which has become the characterization of far too wide a portion of the international communist movement. They ask that we openly debate with them, in the spirit proletarian internationalism. They ask that we go forward, decisively, on the road to revolution.

We must not underestimate the impact these advances will have on revolution in Nepal, including on the possibility for revolutionaries there to proceed to the next step towards socialism. Let’s be clear that for our part, our commitment is firm and our solidarity remains indestructible for our comrades in Nepal.” 

August 3, 2007 : Fifth Expanded Meeting of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) in Kathmandu, with more than 2 000 cadres.

August 20, 2007 : Prachanda and Bhattarai both produce two separate statements with 22 demands concerning the elections, notably the Republic, the seizure of the king’s properties, the democratisation of the Nepali Army and its merger with the People’s Liberation Army, the payment of Rs. 100,000 (€1,100) to the families of fallen Maoist fighters.

September 17, 2007 : the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) quits the Government.

December 15, 2007 : the Seven Party Alliance accepts to call Nepal a republic at the time of the first sitting of the new assembly just after the elections and to use the proportional system.

December 30, 2007 : the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) joins the Government.

January 8, 2008 : the “Comité de Solidarité Franco-Népalais” (French-Nepalese Solidarity Committee) explains having be founded on the 15th of December, 2007, to “make known the progressive anti-feudal, anti-imperialist and democratic process” in Nepal.

March 2008 : the Chilean Unión de Revolucionarios Comunistas (MLM) publishes a document called “Declench the people’s war in the world, combat prachandist revisionism in the ICM”.

“The Communists (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist) in the world have to join their forces to counter the revisionist trend of the 21st century arose within Maoism, whose visible head is today Prachanda.

It becomes necessary for this to develop a wide international debate to expose these new revisionists, to ward off the danger that appears and develops right opportunistic lines right wanting to abjure the path of PW and to regroup around prachandiste revisionism.

Nowadays in the ICM (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist), voices were raised to strongly condemn the betrayal of prachandists. There are others who defend it by ignorance, or because they fully embrace its liquidators views. Finally, there are those who remain silent by opportunism or because they are wavering.”

February 28, 2008 : rally in the front of the US consulate in Montreal by the Revolutionary Communist Party of Canada in support of the “Nepalese People’s Republic”.

April 10, 2008 : elections of the first Nepalese Constituent Assembly. The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) receives 38,1% of the votes, the Nepali Congress 19,1%, the Communist Party of Nepal (UML) 18%.

April 13, 2008 : declaration of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Canada “greetings the victory of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)”.

“To the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist),

To Comrade Prachanda and all militants and all the activists of the party,

Dear comrades,

It is with great joy and renewed proletarian internationalists feelings that we welcome the resounding victory that you just won, in the frame of the election to the constituent assembly that will end the monarchy and the old regime in Nepal (…).

You just take the next step – a critical step – towards the construction of a new Nepal. No doubt the road to total liberation of the people of Nepal and the establishment of a revolutionary regime will be strewn with obstacles.

The imperialist powers who claim to be masters of the world and the reactionary forces that defend and enjoy the old world order, are sure to hatch plots and conspiracies to prevent the triumph of the revolution. The invaluable experience that you have accumulated over the past 12 years and the unfailing determination of the revolutionary Nepalese masses allow you to move forward and overcome, until the final victory. Know that on this road, you can still count on our militant solidarity.

Having participated in the first international brigade road construction Martyrs in Rolpa district, our party was a privileged witness of your success and your determination. The historic victory that you just won encourages us to continue the fight with more vigor.”

April 24, 2008 : the Communist Party of India (Maoist) expresses his point of view on the elections in Nepal.

“The election results in Nepal have proved once again the overwhelming anger of the masses against the outdated feudal monarchic rule in Nepal, against the Indian expansionist’s bullying and domination of Nepal, against US domination and oppression, and are a reflection of the growing aspirations of the Nepali masses for democracy, land, livelihood and genuine freedom from imperialist and feudal exploitation (…).

The real test, however, begins now after the CPN(M) taking over the reins of power. It is a fundamental tenet of Marxism that no radical restructuring of the system is possible without the smashing of the existing state. It is impossible to make genuine changes in the system through measures initiated “from above”, i.e. through state decrees and laws (…).

The CC, CPI(Maoist), suggests to the CPN(Maoist) to beware of the conspiracies of the imperialists led by the US imperialists, the Indian reactionary ruling classes, and the feudal comprador forces of Nepal to engineer coups, political assassinations, creation of artificial scarcity through economic blockades and sabotage, and subversion of the democratic process, and calls upon it to be fully prepared to confront these reactionaries by armed means (…).

The CC, CPI(Maoist) sees immense possibilities in present-day Nepal to carry forward the revolutionary programme by firmly relying on the masses and intensifying the class struggle for genuine land reforms and against imperialist/expansionist domination of the country, while guarding against all reactionary plots and schemes. This is possible if the main leadership of the Maoist party does not become part of the government but concentrates on the principal task of continuing the class struggle by mobilizing the masses.”

May 10, 2008 : the French Maoist Communist Party hails the electoral success of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist).

« Our party welcomes your success in the elections of April 10, 2008. This is primarily the result of ten years of people’s war (…). You borrow a path for some is not orthodox, but you are not alone on the path to communism. « 

June 19, 2008 : the Red Star, published by the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), has an ad for Toyota on his cover. This was already the case in Ferbuary March, for example. Nepal Telecom and the internet provider Ncell did also such ads.

January 1, 2009 : publication in the Red Flag, organ of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Canada, of an article by Samir Amin, called “Nepal: a promising revolutionary breakthrough”.

January 12, 2009 : the Communist Party of Nepal (Unity Centre–Masal), coming partly from the Communist Party of Nepal (Unity Centre–Masal) where the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) comes from a split, joins the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), which becomes the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), still mostly known as Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist).

February 1, 2009 : Kiran responds to an interview called “The street struggle is connected with the peace process” in The Red Star, published by the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist).

“How are you evaluating the unity between CPN-Maoist and CPN (Unity Centre-Masal)? Our party had already made decisions to make single pole of the revolutionary parties and organization. It is the beginning of the unity among the revolutionaries. This unity will certainly fulfill its responsibility for the nation and the people that is to accomplish the revolution (…).

Is the street struggle related to the future insurrection? The street struggle is connected with the progress of the peace process. The three fronts: the government, CA and street: are complementary. However, the front of struggle can take another bend if the anti-people and the reactionary powers create obstacles incessantly against writing constitution and the peace process.”

February 16, 2009 : Kiran publishes an article called “The Mandate Expressed in People’s War”, The Red Star.

“Right before 12 years, Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-M) had brought a historical initiation of the people’s war to establish a New State Power by assaulting over the old state power on 13th February. The day has been established as the momentous day for the Nepalese people. Now, we are going to celebrate the day as the entrance of the 13th year all over the country. At this moment, it is necessary to be serious for the adoption and the implementation of the expressed mandate of the great people’s war remembering the commitments committed before the initiation of the people’s war.

Now, we are advancing ahead in the peaceful process through between the historical process of the ten year long people’s war and nineteen days people’s movement. The goal of the great People’s War is to move ahead to the direction of Socialism and Communism by establishing the New Peoples Republic in Nepal. At present, we are advancing ahead energetically to the direction to built new Nepal through the election of the constituent assembly (CA) as the starting point of achieving the goal.”

May 4, 2009 : Prachanda resigned from the post of Prime Minister after being impeached by the president Ram Baran Yadav from the Nepali Congress to dismiss Nepalese Chief of the Army Staff Rookmangud Katawal.

October 12, 2009 : the World People’s Resistance Movement interviews Chandra Prakash Gajurel “Gaurav” in England.

“When our party talks about multiparty competition or democracy, we are talking about our concept of ‘21st Century Democracy’. The difference here however is that in China there was a condition, all anti-feudal and anti-imperialist forces had to cooperate with the CCP. This was the precondition. But now our party is talking about allowing those political parties to compete even with the UCPN(M).

In China there was a precondition, they were not allowed to compete but had to cooperate. In elections they made some sort of compromise or negotiation and they fixed candidates by consensus. In some constituencies the other parties put forward their candidate and the CCP did not. And in most other seats they did not have a candidate but supported the candidate of the CCP. But here in Nepal today we are talking about competition. All those political parties will be allowed to compete with the UCPN(M). We can have direct elections with those parties and the Maoists. That is the difference.”

December 15, 2009 : the French Organisation Communiste Marxiste-Léniniste Voie Prolétarienne published the document “Long live the revolution in India and in Nepal!”.

“Since five years, the Asian continent is the heart of the world revolution (…).

In Nepal, it is the Maoists (Unified Communist Party of Nepal Maoist) who won the support of the majority of the population and organized the popular uprising that brought down the monarchy.

Today, at their initiative, a new wave of popular uprisings has just started in the country to remove from power the bourgeoisie still powerful in the economy, the government and the army, especially as it has the strong support the major powers, neighboring India in the first place. In the complex situation of a tiny circled semi-feudal country, in the debate and the line struggle, the Nepalese Maoists advance toward the democratic revolution (…).

We Marxist-Leninists and Maoists of Proletarian Way, France, assure our Indian and Nepalese comrades of our support. They are the ones that sustain today the hope of the world revolution!”

29 March 2009 : the Revolutionary Communist Party of the USA makes public an exchange of letter with the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), where its policies is criticized.

July 24, 2009 : the Communist Party of India (Maoist) writes a 24 pages Open Letter to the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist).

“We are sending this Open Letter to your Party so as to conduct a polemical debate both within your Party and the Maoist revolutionary camp worldwide.

This step has become necessary because of the very serious developments that have taken place in the course of development of the revolution in Nepal that have a bearing on our understanding of imperialism and proletarian revolution as well as the strategy-tactics to be pursued by Maoist revolutionaries in the contemporary world; there is also serious deviation from the ideology of MLM. Hence these are no more the internal matters concerning your Party alone (…).

The UCPN(M) leader has directly assured the comprador bourgeois-feudal parliamentary parties that his Party is ready to have peaceful competition with all of them.

And by describing this decision on multiparty democracy as a strategically, theoretically developed position comrade Prachanda has brought a dangerous thesis to the fore—the thesis of peaceful coexistence with the ruling class parties instead of overthrowing them through revolution; peaceful competition with all other parliamentary parties, including the ruling class parties that are stooges of imperialism or foreign reaction, in so-called parliamentary elections; abandoning the objective of building socialism for an indefinite period; and opening the doors wide for the feudalcomprador reactionaries to come to power by utilizing the backwardness of the masses and the massive backing from domestic and foreign reactionaries or the bourgeois and petty bourgeois forces to hijack the entire course of development of society from the socialist direction to capitalism in the name of democracy and nationalism.

Overall, com. Prachanda’s conclusions regarding multiparty democracy creates illusions among the people regarding bourgeois democracy and their constitution (…).

The fusion theory of the CPN(M) had undergone further deviations in the five years since it was first proposed, and by 2006 it became the theory of peaceful competition with the reactionary parties and peaceful transition to people’s democracy and socialism.

From a fusion of people’s war and insurrection Prachanda’s eclectic theory had assumed the form of negotiations and diplomatic manouevring. One of the major reasons for this change was the incorrect assessment of the contemporary world situation and the conclusion that the neo-colonial form of imperialism is now taking the form of a globalised state (…).

Our CC appeals to the leadership and ranks of the UCPN(M) to undertake a deep review of the wrong reformist line that the Party has been pursuing ever since it has struck an alliance with the SPA, became part of the interim government, participated in the elections to the CA, formed a government with the comprador-feudal parties, abandoned the base areas and demobilized the PLA and the YCL, deviated from the principle of proletarian internationalism and adopted a policy of appeasement towards imperialism, particularly American imperialism, and Indian expansionism.”

October 21, 2009 : Indra Mohan Sigdel Basanta gives an interview to the World People’s Resistance Movement.

“First of all I would like to say it was not a struggle between two individual leaders. Comrade Prachanda is our Chairman; he has been leading our party and revolution for a long time. Comrade Kiran is a senior leader, even senior to Comrade Prachanda.

Sometimes in the outside world it is said that it is a struggle between Prachanda and Kiran, but this is a wrong way of looking at. Definitely lines come from certain comrades and in our case comrade Prachanda and comrade Kiran are such leaders who have stood as unity and struggle of opposites i.e. they have dialectical relationship.

The way this has been reported in the external media is wrong and is aimed at dividing our party. They projected that Comrade Prachanda was a soft-liner and Comrade Kiran was a hard-liner. This kind of projection was always there because the reactionaries do not want our party to remain united. They want to destroy it.

The reality is that the principal aspect between them is unity. If they did not have unity how could they lead our party together for so long years? But because they are the products of our society they have different ways of thinking so the differences in certain issues arise.”

Avril 29, 2010 : the French Maoist Communist Party publishes an article in support of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist).

“There is a debate about the theories espoused by some of the leadership of the UCPN-Maoist. Our Party has already expressed some criticisms and reservations. However, we must always move from the assessment of what is primary and what is secondary.

Today, what is primary is supporting the mass movement led by the Maoists in Nepal. UCPN-Maoist has demonstrated that he had not abdicated imperialism and expansionism. In this delicate phase, our duty is to support the popular initiative against the reactionaries.”

June 16, 2010 : Netra Bikram Chanda “Biplap” publishes the article Can We Go Ahead? In The Red Star.

“Nepal is only nation, in the contemporary world, where there is political leadership of the revolutionaries and the entire nation is in the hands of the proletarian class. The leadership of the revolutionaries is not only from the point of view of number; rather, it is because of political, ideological agendas.

Constituent Assembly (CA), people’s new constitution, federalism, land-reform, special rights, national independence and new national army are the agendas and the conceptions put developed and fore 4 warded by UCPN Maoist. Nepalese people have their active participation and a strong support on them. The intellectuals, traders and businessmen and even the security forces have their support on it.”

May 27, 2011 : publication in the bulletin Partisan of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Canada of an article calledd “Difficult situation for the revolution in Nepal”.

“It is difficult to predict how the Maoists of Nepal comrades shall resolve these contradictions; rumors of a split of the party are also increasingly strong. Time will tell what will become of the red flag flying over Mount Everest; but we remain confident that the revolutionaries of Nepal will lead the revolution to victory.”

September 2, 2011 : the “Comité de Solidarité Franco-Népalais” (French-Nepalese Solidarity Committee) begins to take a critical stance about the situation in Nepal stopping its activity two weeks later.

“Two important news reached us from Nepal. Unfortunately, they are the sign of a great danger for the revolution rather than a sign of recovery of the revolutionary struggle.

First, Baburam Bhattarai was elected prime minister. He is the representative of the reformist line in Nepal. He’s for the establishment of a bourgeois parliamentary democratic republic he sees as a necessary step towards a people’s republic landing stages. He seems ready for any compromise to stop for good the revolutionary process.

Secondly, key containers containing the arms of the People’s Liberation Army have just been handed to the Special Committee for Integration, meaning de facto surrender of the PLA. All keys have been made except in a cantonment in Kailali, where the deputy commander said he had received no formal directive from the party.”

September, 2011 : in France, the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist) publishes a document called “Line, tendency, fraction and the question of Nepal”.

“For the so-called maoists and real trotskyists, nothing happened in Nepal with the peace agreement in 2006. This is because they looked the phenomena from above, and not from below. And they look it from above because they have a mechanical conception of the Nepali revolution.

They don »t understand that the Nepali revolution progresses in spiral, and so that the people »s war can suffer huge defeat if its development is not correctly understood by the avant-garde. Only the fact that the Nepali revisionnists like Prachanda pretend that they have invented a “tactic” is a proof of their non understanding of the scientific laws of dialectical materialism (…).

A line is the expression of life (for the red line) or death (for the black line), its ideological synthesis has a high level, because it is question of path for the phenomena. It is what is called a crisis. A line is so an expression not of a tactical problem, but of a strategical one. For this reason, there are not two lines in the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (maoist).

They are two tendencies, tendencies that disagree on many points, and now so many that they become openly opposed, and so fractions, open and public tendencies. But both were favourable of the peace agreement, both pretended to “choose” the path of people’s war, instead of understanding people’s war as the insurrection of matter.

Both accepted prachandism in the 2000 »s, with the promotion of “socialism of 21st century”, the rejection of the dictatorship of proletariat under the direction of the Communist Party (in name of “democracy”), etc.”

September 23, 2011 : the French Maoist Communist Party publishes a document called About the line struggle within the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)

“Under these conditions, there are two possibilities.

1. Complete surrender, total renunciation to the prospect of insurgency. It has been five years that the Party has been engaged in these transactions, with no significant progress to solve the issue of “power”. What do the masses think about all this? They are either in expectation for the better, or disappointed for the worse. 

2. The resumption of the revolutionary fight, which involves mobilizing the masses. “One divides into two” and not “two combine into one”. One has to choose. The rightist line must be denounced to the masse; the only way is to return to the masses because the masses make history and at the same time suffer when their leaders take false, flickering or liquidationist, revisionist positions.”

November 2011 : the Colombian Unión Obrera Comunista (MLM) publishes a document called “About the betrayal in Nepal and the role of the so-called red Fraction”, explaining that there is no such things in the prachandist party.

December 26, 2011 : Joint declaration called “The International unity of the communists requires the defeat of revisionism and centrism!”

“It has appeared that the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) – CPN (M), being a RIM member, has raised in the name of Maoism against Marxism Leninism Maoism, clutching a revisionist platform of renunciation of destroying the old reactionary state, of betraying the People’s War by renouncing to it, by disarming the people, by dismantling the bases of popular power already conquered and by dissolving its People’s Liberation Army in the reactionary army of exploiters, and finally by merging with the revisionist party Mashal in the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) – UCPN (M), and by compromising with all others opportunist parties to defend the class dictatorship of the landlords, the bourgeoisie and imperialism, and to serve to run over the people.

It is likewise evident that the Committee of the RIM has, remaining silent facing the revisionist line and the betrayal carried out by the CPN (M), resigned in practice the role of being the international leading center, and compromising the prestige of the RIM (…).

Against such a need that requires to differentiate and to break completely with opportunism, rises again the familiar centrist tendency known in the history of communist movement for its « conciliator » role between Marxism and revisionism. A centrist tendency, headed today by the Communist Party (Maoist) of Italy, direct continuation of the centrism in the RIM yesterday, and mainly in its Committee.

In the open bourgeois degeneration of prachandism, the centrists, who yesterday praised his theory, ignored the treason in Nepal and supported bourgeois parliamentarism of the UCPN (M), declare today themselves to be against Prachanda, but actually without breaking with prachandism.

They remain supporters of a fraction of prachandism that no longer recognizes Prachanda as leader, but Kiran. They repudiate the current symbolic acts of Bhattarai and Prachanda in the surrender of the revolution, but deny the revisionist nature of the party and escape its responsibility in the real political betrayal of People’s War conducted in the Peace Agreement of 2006.

Centrism both reconciles and calls « red » a fraction of the revisionist right in Nepal, and fights angry against the revolutionary communists whom are called « dogmatic-revisionists » and « opportunistic liquidators » for their struggle against revisionism and centrism.

It fears the complete rupture, ideological, political and organizational, with the revisionist line of the UCPN (M), a condition without which it is not possible to conceive a true revolutionary line in Nepal, able to return to the People’s War and lead it, to conquer the triumph of the Revolution of New Democracy in the whole country.”

December 26, 2011 : the Maoist Road blog made by the Maoist Communist Party of Italy answers to the joint declaration.

“leftist-cyber maoists make a joint declaration.. what is their real objective ? They attack to ‘PCm Italy’ but their real ennemies are the possibility to save and advance nepal revolution and the rebuilding of an real international mlm organisation with parties and organisations that make the revolution in the praxis.”

June 19, 2012 : founding of the Communist Party of Nepal – Revolutionary Maoist, led by Mohan Baidya “Kiran”.

July 1, 2012 : Mohan Baidya “Kiran” explains his position at a press conference.

“Yes, we are in the RIM. There are many different parties in the RIM (…). We used to be involved in the decision making in the RIM. The RIM is actually not operative at this moment (…).

We did not leave Prachanda and Baburam but they left us. We did not separate from the party as well but they split themselves ditching the political ideological line of the party. Therefore, now the issue of their class categorization is a real bizarre. An independent political line of Prachanda and Baburam has come to an end. What should we label those who are the puppets of foreign reactionaries and expansionism? It is not possible to join neck together with the puppets (…).

We are not ambiguous about whether to go for People’s War or People’s Revolt. Firstly, we will revolt for new democracy against parliamentarianism. We don’t acknowledge parliamentarianism.

The democratic republic, the aged-decayed parliamentarianism of which all the parties here sing the retro song of democracy deafeningly, that democracy has completely failed, the Constituent Assembly has also failed. Therefore, as an alternative, in the interest of the country and the people we move ahead to establish New Democratic Republic in Nepal against Feudalism, Imperialism and Neo-Colonialism. This is our key agenda.

To attain this goal, if asked how we move ahead, both ways, legal and underground, a revolutionary party can utilize every essential method. We came to the peace negotiation honestly. When we arrived only the Maoists had to make all the compromises but now we don’t compromise up to this excess.

So, that is beyond doubt, if necessary– People’s War or People’s Revolt, anything can happen, this is the key issue.”

August 31, 2012 : the Communist Party of India (Maoist) publishes a document called “Hail the formation of Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist”.

“The CC, CPI (Maoist) is sending its warmest revolutionary greetings to you and all the CC members and the entire rank and file of the CPN-Maoist on the formation of the new revolutionary party in Nepal after a prolonged internal ideological and political struggle against the opportunist and neo-revisionist leadership within the party who betrayed the Nepalese revolution and by demarcating and making a break with them.

Even while the Nepal Revolution reached the stage of strategic offense, the UCPN (Maoist) leadership assessed the national and international situation subjectively, took erroneous tactics which themselves led the party get bogged down in the quagmire of parliamentarianism with capitulationism uninterruptedly since end 2005 (…).

Revolutionaries may still be present in the neo-revisionist Prachanda-Bhattarai faction of the party, so your stand of continuing internal struggle and keeping the doors open till the Congress is correct (…).

We end this letter with the great hope that CPN-Maoist would uphold revolutionary traditions of the great oppressed masses of Nepal and Proletarian Internationalism and fulfill the dreams of thousands of great martyrs of Nepal revolution.”

October 2012 : the TKP/ML from Turkey releases a document called “The Nepalese Revolution in the Clasp of Reformism and Revisionism”.

“The UCPN (M) successfully led a people’s war in Nepal and is currently at a historical threshold, facing the question of whether or not to continue with the revolution. In the struggle against the revisionist line that is dominant in the party, comrades, especially those in the leadership positions, are taking an active stance in the discussions, expressing their opinions and criticism openly, even publicly for sometime now. This course of action is further proof that situation is extremely serious (…).

The « peaceful transition » theory, advocated as a method of seizing state power, in fact aims to preserve the existing mechanism. The system is preserved, only this time masters with the « revolutionary » or « socialist » mask have come to power.

The « populist » or « revolutionary » governments that came to power through elections or similar methods, and once through coups that took place with the involvement of social-imperialists, never brought about a fundamental change in the reign of ruling classes. Another dimension of the issue is the abstract concept « democracy » that forms a basis for the dreams about « peaceful transition. »

The understanding that defines democracy as a supra-class concept, a common system that is isolated from classes, finds its ground in the assessment of « geniality » regarding imperialism. It is argued that imperialism, which collectively carries the humanity to more advanced standards and optimally develops the productive forces, contains legitimate possibilities for peaceful transformation of the system owing to the virtues of « democratic » regimes that it has established or assisted the establishment of in many countries.”

January 4, 2013 : the Revolutionary Communist Party of Canada hails the 7th congres of he Communist Party of Nepal – Revolutionary Maoist, led by Mohan Baidya “Kiran”.

“Montreal, January 4, 2013

Mohan Vaidya ‘Kiran’ president

Ram Bahadur Thapa ‘Badal’, General Secretary

Organisatory Central Committee

Communist Party of Nepal – Maoist

Dear comrades,

On behalf of the Central Committee and all supporters of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Canada, please convey our warmest revolutionary greetings to all comrades participating in the historic Seventh National Congress of your party. Even if we can not be physically present, know that we are with you and that our solidarity is acquired to you (…).

Since 1996, our party, and the organizations that preceded it, has always supported the proletariat and the revolutionary masses of Nepal and the Maoist vanguard party. We’re very proud to have participated in the first international Martyrs road construction brigade in fall 2005 in the Rolpa district.

The example of the people’s war in Nepal has also led us to undertake a process unit with the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM), that we have unfortunately been unable to complete before the disappearance of this organization.”

January 16, 2013 : a Marxist Leninist Maoist National Liaison Commission (USA) sends a Letter of Solidarity and Greetings to Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist.

“We are most excited and delighted to know that the comrades of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), after years of struggle against the Prachanda-Bhattarai revisionist clique, are forging again a party of steel to complete revolution in Nepal.

The Prachanda-Bhattarai revisionist clique had indeed not only derailed the revolutionary people’s war in Nepal but had confused the entirety of the revolutionary movement with their liquidationist treachery.

In Nepal this clique had attempted to surrender the People’s Liberation Army to the enemy, it had locked up the fighting comrades, seized their weapons, and negotiated their liquidation with the reactionary state.”

February 15, 2013 : the Organization of the Workers of Afghanistan (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, principally Maoist) produces a document called “Either Prachanda Or Mohan Baidya (Kiran) Means More Revisionism!”.

“Bringing forth the theory of fusion of two different kinds of strategies which was held by CPN (M) in its second national conference in 2001 was the beginning for a deeply deviationist line. However, formally this party betrayed the revolution from 2005-2006 on, but, one should consider the theoretical and ideological roots for this.

The so called theory of two different kinds of strategies which is also called “the model of fusion”, according to Prachanda is legitimate due to:

““The rapid development of science and technology, especially in the area of electronic field has brought about completely new model in regard to forwarding revolution in each country and in the world in the form of fusion of the strategies of protracted people’s war and general armed insurrection based on the above analysis.”

In such a manner, revisionism rejected the universality of PPW, and denied its strategic sufficiency.

“Reviving” the model of armed insurrection was not the point of interest for Nepali revisionists. It was a mask for overthrowing the strategy of PPW. They found no “better” means rather than escaping towards reviving an insurrectionist myth for discarding strategy of People’s war.

“Model of fusion” was not more than eclecticism. As MLM forces uphold, today, in all over the world, it is only the PPW which is the international strategy of proletariat. Denying PPW equals to denying and discarding Maoism. Discarding Maoism equals to discarding communism and future of the world.”

April 13, 2013 : constituted by different break away groups, the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified) joins the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist).

July 14, 2013 : the Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan expresses its view about the situation in Nepal, in a A Documentary Summary Analysis of the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist.

“It seems that the initial optimism about a profound and comprehensive position by the faction under Kiran’s leadership within the Unified Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist [UCPN-M]––the faction that, after the “national convention of the revolutionary faction of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist” in June 2012, has emerged as the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist [CPN-M] against Prachanda-Bhattarai revisionism––did not have a strong basis.

Despite the CPN-M’s recent congress we have not received or been able to study the documents it produced. Thus, we do not deem it necessary to produce a final and detailed conclusion regarding this party. However, even with close scrutiny of the CPN-M’s pre-congress we can find particular ideological and political positions that indicate the repetition of the deviations of the UCPN-M in a different form and shape.”

November 19, 2013 : second Nepalese Constituent Assembly election. The Nepali Congress receives 29,8% of the votes (2,694,983 votes), the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist–Leninist) 27,55% (2,492,090 votes), the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) 17,79% (1,609,145 votes).

November 29, 2014 : split in the Communist Party of Nepal – Revolutionary Maoist, as the secretary Netra Bikram Chand leaves and founds the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist).

May 19, 2016 : merger of the UCPN-Maoist, the majority of CPN-Revolutionary Maoist (but without Kiran), a faction of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) (but without Netra Bikram Chand) and 7 others organizations. The name chosen is CPN Maoist Centre, with Prachanda as chairman.

July 12, 2016 : Baburam Bhattarai, who left the UCPN Maoist in september 2015, founds the Naya Shakti Party (New Force Nepal), on a line of “good governance”.

June 16, 2016 : merger of the Communist Nucleus Nepal party led by Hemanta Prakash Oli and CPN Maoist (Revolutionary) led by Bhupendra Neupane, as Communist Nucleus Nepal.

August 3, 2016: Following the resignation of the Prime Minister, member of the Communist Party of Nepal (UML) favorable to China, Prachanda takes his succession, supported by India and the Nepali Congress.

=> documents in English

In the famous painting “The School of Athens” by the Renaissance painter Raphael, we can see Plato and Aristotle as the central figures: Plato points his index finger to the heavens, calling to see beyond matter, whereas Aristotle points down to earth with his hand.

Five hundred years afterwards, we can see that we have the same contradiction between idealism and materialism. The images of the religious barbarians pointing to the heavens with their index to justify their senseless killings staged in sordid videos have caused a terrible trouble in the democratic minds.

The spectre of the Middle Ages, of antiquity with its slavery and its murders, shows his ugly face. It is a challenge to progress, to the cause of humanity advancing in culture, rationality, science. It is an attack against the dignity of civilization.

And it didn’t happen by accident, or because imperialist countries organize “conspiracies” : the roots for barbarity are based on the semi-feudal semi-colonial nature of the majority of the countries in the world today.

Only in a few countries did capitalism manage to develop itself in its natural way, moving from its liberal form to the domination of the monopolies, becoming imperialism, in a complex process, across twist and turn.

In the others countries, where the majority of the people of the world lives, religions and nationalism as strong irrational tools used to mobilize the masses in a reactionary way, because society is driven by a bureaucratic bourgeoisie, born from the submission to imperialist countries, and allied to different feudal forces which maintained their structures.

Hundred years ago, there was the Armenian genocide, and still it is not recognized by the Turkish state despite the fact that its new government is Islamist: it is because the bureaucratic capitalism in this country has become more powerful, but still depends on the alliance with feudal forces made at the very beginning of the secular regime.

We can see the same process in India, with the successes of the Hinduist most reactionary forces taking the control of the government; the urbanization of the country and the development of bureaucratic capitalism do not abolish semi-feudalism, on the contrary!

Semi-feudalism has only change its form. That explains also why Islamism could become such a strong force in countries like Tunisia, Iraq, Syria, Egypt : beyond the secular form of the regime previously, the foundation of it is semi-feudal semi-colonial.

Inter-imperialist struggles play here of course a major role, imperialists supporting bureaucratic factions acting to favor them against others,

During the 1960’s-1980’s, the peoples of the world had to struggle against the partition of the world of the two superpowers – the USA and the social-imperialist USSR – now they have to understand in the same way the bloody games played by imperialists, even trying to divide countries, like in Ukraine for example.

The general crisis of capitalism can only bring more inter-imperialist struggles, more imperialist wars. In the imperialist countries themselves nowadays, selfishness and individualism are used to promote nationalism and its desire to transform the country in an aggressive fortress in the context of “globalization”. Despair provokes escape in drugs and alcohol, pogromist postures, trends to merge nationalism and “socialism”.

At the same time, multiple are the aggressions which disfigures the Earth on a global scale: from climate change to tremendous deforestation, from massive urbanization to the acidification of the ocean.

The world masses are aware of this, but they don’t find a way to be united and to choose the path of the red star. The lack of a communist strategic proposal disorients the world masses, which want real democracy, but don’t know how to achieve it.

In this context, such a position of retreat of the world revolution permits capitalism to modernize itself, in particular in the dependent countries, where feudalism change its form, to be more conform to the development of bureaucratic capitalism. In the same way that we find a difference between a superpower like the USA and the imperialist countries of the second category – like France, Germany or England – we find according to that differences among the dependent countries.

Whereas a country like Iraq falls into the horror of feudal murders, a country like Brazil knows an agro-industrial development through a bureaucratic capitalism acting to serve the imperialist interests.

Semi-feudal semi-colonial countries like Qatar and Saudi Arabia play an open aggressive policy, helping reactionary forces ideologically and materially to establish factions supporting them; the Arab spring was no “revolution”, but a battle between bureaucratic bourgeoisies. This shows the correctness of Akram Yari and Siraj Sikder’s thesis on the possibility for an oppressed country to be a colonizing force and to have an expansionist character.

Everything obeys to the law of dialectics, and this evolution testifies of the development of the productive forces, in such a manner however that it means more exploitation, more oppression, more imperialist wars, that it’s a threat to the nature on our planet, to the possibility of a happy life, full of joy and culture, for the world masses.

Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to believe that this negative aspect is the major trend in our world. In each country, they are people working to understand the situation in a scientific way. They try to analyze the current situation, be it on the international level as on the national level.

When they are genuine revolutionaries, as the product of the class struggles of their own country, when they understand that they must be in the tradition of the International Communist Movement, then they do contributions that permit to move in the direction of producing a guiding thought.

This question of the guiding thought is the most important one in each country. As the Communist Party of Peru explained it in the document “On Gonzalo’s thought” :

“Revolutions give rise to a thought that guides them, which is the result of the application of the universal truth of the ideology of the international proletariat to the concrete conditions of each revolution; a guiding thought indispensable to reach victory and to conquer political power and, moreover, to continue the revolution and to maintain the course always towards the only, great goal: Communism.”

In the famous interview he gave, the leader of the Communist Party of Peru, Gonzalo, tells us here also:

“In Engels’ view, it is necessity that generates leaders, and a top leader, but just who that is is determined by chance, by a set of specific conditions that come together at a particular place and time. In this way, in our case too, a Great Leadership [Jefatura] has been generated. This was first acknowledged in the Party at the Expanded National Conference of 1979.

But this question involves another basic question that can’t be overlooked and needs to be emphasized: there is no Great Leadership [Jefatura] that does not base itself on a body of thought, no matter what its level of development may be.

The reason that a certain person has come to speak as the Leader of the Party and the revolution, as the resolutions state, has to do with necessity and historical chance and, obviously, with Gonzalo Thought.

None of us knows what the revolution and the Party will call on us to do, and when a specific task arises the only thing to do is assume the responsibility.”

The first of May is an historical day: it is the one of the pride of working class, the one of the honour of the red flag. The word as we know it is full of sufferings and of transformations, the main aspect of our epoch is the production of guiding thoughts, which are carried by revolutionaries to build the revolutionary paths in each country.

Such a revolutionary path consists in People’s War: the armed mass mobilization to break the old state and install the new one, carrying the revolutionary program of New Democracy in the semi-feudal semi-colonial countries, of Socialism in the capitalist countries.

It is here to stress the importance of the theory to defend all the communist conceptions, against all the tendencies to make “compromise” with imperialist values, to integrate post-modernist conceptions, to promote ultra-leftist positions, to negate the teachings of the Communist International especially in the lessons of the People’s Front against Fascism.

The epoch of decay of capitalism is a tormented one; only a strong ideological headquarter can face the many faces of opportunism, reformism, fascism, of the counter-revolution. We remember here what happened to the heroic people’s war in Nepal, which was betrayed.

The consequences for the Nepali masses are terrible; their cause was stabbed in the back by revisionism. The terrible earthquake that just happened near Kathmandu brought many deaths that could have been avoid with another social development allowing more robust constructions; we have to remember also here the intolerable and dramatic situation of the Nepali workers working in Qatar.

It is important to note that nowadays, centrists having tried to mask the revisionism in Nepal, protecting its leader Prachanda and his “peace agreement”, do everything they can to avoid any criticism. Genuine Maoists have said as soon as 2006 that there was a major problem in the line of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), whereas centrists still greeted the “people’s war” years afters there was no people’s war any more and when it was clear since long that revisionism had won there.

The position of centrists about Nepal testifies here their negation of the concept of bureaucratic bourgeoisie; this shows the importance of dialectical materialism as a science.

We wish here to emphasize the following elements :

1. Contradiction is the only fundamental law of the incessant transformation of eternal matter. Dialectical materialism is the science of understanding this law and the ideological core of the communist movement.

2. Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement. Spontaneity doesn’t lead to revolution; there is a need for a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Communist Party that firmly applies independence, autonomy and self-reliance.

3. The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. The masses make history and the Party leads them through the direction of a guiding thought, application of the communist ideology to the concrete conditions of a given country.

4. Capitalism in its liberal form became imperialism characterized by the hegemony of the monopolies, tending to fascism and imperialist wars. The building of an united antifascist People’s Front, as underlined by the Communist International, forms the condition for the democratic foundation for establishing socialism as dictatorship of the proletariat.

5. Capitalism which is being developed in the oppressed nations by imperialism along with different degrees of underlying feudalism, or even pre-feudal stages, is bureaucratic. The New Democratic Revolution, as a joint dictatorship based on the worker-peasant alliance, smashes the semi-feudal elements, opening the way to overthrow bureaucratic capitalism, as democratic foundation for establishing socialism.

6. The three instruments of the revolution are the Party, the army and the united front, understood in the frame of People’s War as the universally valid military theory of the international proletariat. Invincibility of the People’s War is inevitable as it represents the new against the ancient, as obligatory resolution of an antagonistic contradiction.

7. The communist ideology prevails in all the intellectual and cultural fields, through socialist realism in the arts and literature and Marxist philosophy i.e. the law of contradictions in science. Taking power means to take it at all levels of society, as shows it the masterful example of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

Maoism is not a “tool” to support rebellion, but the materialist understanding of a situation and therefore the revolutionary application of the communist cause by the proletariat: class struggle, conquer and to defend power with the People’s War in each country, as part of the world socialist revolution!

On this First of May, 2015, we call therefore again the basic positions of the genuine communists:

Long live Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, long live Maoism as the most develop form of dialectical materialism!

Uphold, defend and apply, principally apply, Maoism !

Struggle for the generation and the application of the guiding thought in each country, to initiate and develop the People’s War!

People’s War until Communism!

Organization of the workers of Afghanistan (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, principally Maoist)

Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Center [Belgium]

Communist Party of France (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist)

=> documents in English

On the First of May, the Communist Party of India (Maoist) merged with the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Naxalbari, and the Communist Party of India (Maoist) became practically the center of the international grouping called “Maoist Road”.

Therefore, “comrade Ajith”, leader of the former CPI(ML) Naxalbari, saw its conception of Maoism recognized by the Communist Party of India (Maoist) and its position becomes the one of the Maoist Road. Works of “comrade Ajith” were also translated in Italian for the First of May, which was important because the main protagonist, historically, of Maoist Road, is the maoist Communist Party of Italy.

It is interesting to see what Ajith says, because its line struggles precisely with what we have put forward in France those last years.

We have promoted the inevitability of Communism and the necessity of the Thought, following the teachings of Gonzalo and the Communist Party of Peru. Studying our country, we considered that must be defended Humanism, the absolute monarchy, Enlightenment, as progressive aspect of the contradiction of 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.

Ajith, on his side, rejects the relativism of Avakianism, which consists in idealism (with communism as a kind of “best option”), but rejects also our position, showing in fact that the substance of his position is in itself the same as Avakianism, or better said, as post-modernism.

What does Ajith says? In the review “Naxalbari”, in August 2013, in a long document called “Against Avakianism”, Ajiths says numerous things that make the things very clear.

For example, he says the following, trying to save post-modernism, which is nevertheless a terrible enemy of our ideology:

“We have noted that Marx and Engels were not totally free of Enlightmentalist influences.

How does Avakian fare in this matter? Today, compared to even Mao’s time, we are enriched with a new awareness of the contradictory essence of Enlightenment and its scientific consciousness.

Post-modernist trends have made significant contributions in this matter. Though their relativism led them to an ahistorical rejection of the Enlightenment and modernisation, the critical insights they offer must be synthesised by Marxism.

The contributions made by theoreticians of the Frankfurt school are also to be acknowledged. The necessity to distinguish the emancipatory aspect of the Enlightenment from its overarching bourgeois, colonial nature and thrust is one important lesson that we must derive.”

Ajith says that Marxism should “synthesize” -he means integrate – the “critical insights” elaborated by the post-modernist trends about Enlightenment and modernisation. We say precisely the contrary:

* Enlightenment is the progressive ideology of the bourgeoisie, which was not unified and therefore there were different trends: for example in France, there was the radical, atheist trend of Diderot, and the deist one of Voltaire. Enlightenment had no “contradictory essence”, but differences reflecting the different fractions of the bourgeoisie;

* The struggle against “modernisation” is the one of romanticism, with all its variants, going from Islam with Khomeini or Sayyid Qutub, to Hinduism, nationalism, etc. – it is not our struggle. On the contrary: we are for “modernisation”, for the integration of the world in a single entity, crushing the elements of the past. We believe in progress.

This last point is important because post-modernism propagates a lot a criticism of “technology”, of the “modern world”, expressing a petty-bourgeois fascination for the small production.

Ajith says something corresponding to this point of view:

“Furthermore, scientific consciousness itself must be critiqued in order to separate its rational content from the influence of Enlightenment values seen in it.

These are particularly manifested in the claim made about modern science as the final word, the disparaging of pre-modern thought and practices on that basis and a utilitarian approach on

the human-nature relation. In the oppressed countries, the belittling of traditional knowledge continues to be a dominant aspect of the comprador modernisation, developmental paradigm.

Mao’s approach on the critical appropriation of Western, modern ideas and technologies, the rich lessons of the attempts made in Revolutionary China to synthesis traditional knowledge with modern sciences and its mass practice during the Cultural Revolution offer a sound starting point for a Maoist synthesis. It has the penetrating observations made by Marx and Engels on the human-nature interaction as guidance.”

On our side, we worked a lot about the “human-nature interaction”, upholding the concept of “Biosphere” developed by the Soviet scientist Vernadsky, but also in defending ecology and a non-conflictual relationship to animals.

But it doesn’t mean that we “regret” the “traditional knowledge”, which in fact has mostly disappeared since long and is now an ideological tool for the nationalist reaction. If we take a look at those who use the concept of “pre-modern thought and practices”, we will find only populists, defenders of romanticism.

In fact, Ajith defends the same path as the populists in pre-Soviet Russia. And indeed, here is what he says about India, his country:

“Finally, the Marxist conception of historical advance doesn’t imply in any way that human societies must invariably progress along the schematic trajectory of tribal-slave-feudal-capitalist social formations.

It has advanced through diverse paths. For instance, though the societies in the South Asian sub-continent had various forms of slave exploitation, they never had a stage of slavery akin to that of Egypt or Rome. (In this context, the concept ‘shudra-holding mode of production’ advanced by the martyred Maoist activist intellectual Saket Rajan of the CPI (Maoist) demands deeper study.

There is also the example of the region that later took shape as Keralam. Here, tribal societies directly became caste-feudal kingdoms, where adiyalatham (slave-like trading and exploitation of Dalit castes and some Adivasi tribes) existed in a symbiotic relation with tenant exploitation.”

What Ajiths says here is totally wrong, and reflects a non understanding of the process which happened in India. It is very significant that he doesn’t speak about Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.

Because to say that in India there was no “stage of slavery akin to that of Egypt or Rome” is easily understood as false if we see how Brahmanism transformed itself in Hinduism.

In fact, Ajith underestimates India’s history and doesn’t see that Buddhism was the form of pre-bourgeois ideology at that time, closely related to the principle of absolute monarchy (here we find the famous figures of Ashoka and Kautilya). It was a threat for feudalism.

It is therefore just absurd to say that “tribal societies directly became caste-feudal kingdoms”: in fact, the process was organized from the top by “Hinduism” as historical trend in India, the “Aryans” integrating people in new ruling castes in the south, to crush Buddhism.

Let’s quote here our article “Indian Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism – 10 : unification and glaciation of Indian society” :

“Eventually, the ideological vigour of Hinduism led the feudal forces of the south to join Hinduism, through the integration of the feudal lords into the kshatriya caste and the instruction of priests, and a whole history was “written” about all this, to connect it with northern culture.

This was a pure ideological construction, and in reality, the south of India never knew four castes, but only a traditional two level system, with feudal lords and priests on one side, and the oppressed masses on the other.

Another variant was applied to the tribal areas that were integrated; in such cases, Hinduism had to adapt itself, which gave birth to tantricism, i.e. magical variants.”

India’s historical path is absolutely not different of the rest of the world. The position of Ajith can only lead, like Frantz Fanon could have done it in Algeria, to a post-modernist support of the national bourgeoisie in semi-colonial semi-feudal India.

It is logical, when we see the post-modernist position of Ajith, that he rejects both inevitability of Communism and the principle of Thought.

In a strange manner, Ajith rejects the fact that Mao Zedong defends inevitability (a fact that Avakian recognizes, but rejects). But everybody knowing Mao Zedong knows that he upholds dialectical materialism, and therefore inevitability. We must see here that Ajith never speaks about it, he never speaks about the eternal matter, the infinite universe, thought as reflect of the movement of matter, socialist realism, etc. etc.

Like Avakian, Ajith considers “Maoism” as a toolbox, and reduce Marxism to Historical Materialism using a “dialectical” philosophy, “produced” by Mao making a rupture with Stalin. That’s why he just doesn’t understand the principle of Thought.

Here is what he says:

“The Avakianists blame everyone who resists this as opposing the development of proletarian ideology itself. Therefore, in order to complete the repudiation of Avakianism, we must examine the process, dynamics, of ideological development. This also becomes unavoidable in the wider context of views that hold the development of Thought or Path as essential for the success for every revolution.

Recently a concerted attempt is being made to propagate this view within the international Maoist movement. [See ‘The International Project: Guiding Thought Of Revolution: The Heart Of Maoism’, jointly promoted by the OWA (MLM, principally Maoist), CPMLM – Bangladesh and CPMLM – France and supported by the MLM Center of Belgium. An Open letter to the ICM from these parties states, “At our epoch, Maoism, as Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, synthesis of the ideology of working class, can only exist as a guiding thought in each country, forging the avant-garde in correspondence with the inner contradiction of the country, unleashing People’s War.”]

It was first advanced by the PCP and later on reiterated by the CPN (Maoist).

Every creative application of MLM, leading to the successful development of a revolution (that is an application tested through practice), will surely give rise to a deeper grasp and insight of MLM. It will even contribute new concepts or ideas, which will enrich MLM. But it is not necessary (inevitable) that these contributions will represent a new ‘Thought’. It is even less necessary that they will represent a leap to a new stage, i.e., an all-round development of MLM.”

It is very clear here that Ajith doesn’t understand at all what a Thought is and even, that he has not study this question. In the document “Guiding Thought Of Revolution”, some Thoughts are presented, with a biography of their biographies.

But it is not said that these Thoughts represent a leap to a new stage. On the contrary even: a Thought represent the correct application to a country of the universal ideology.

The only special case is here Gonzalo Thought, which had such a high level that it helped understanding Maoism.

Nevertheless, it is not a question of “new concept or ideas”, to “enrich MLM” or whatsoever. Thought means: in a given country, history and culture are understood and a path for the revolution is formulated.

The Chinese comrades explain this in saying:

“History shows that the bourgeoisie first took hold of ideology and prepared public opinion before it seized political power from the feudal landlord class. Starting from the period of the “Renaissance,” the European bourgeoisie persistently criticized feudal ideology and propagated bourgeois ideology. It was in the 17th and 18th centuries, after several hundred years of preparation of public opinion, that the bourgeoisie seized political power and established its dictatorship in one European country after another.

Marx and Engels began propagating the theories of communism more than a century ago. They did so to prepare public opinion for the seizure of political power by the proletariat. The Russian proletarian revolution culminated in the seizure of political power only after decades of preparation of public opinion. Our own experience is even fresher in our minds. When the Chinese proletariat began to appear on the political scene, it was weak and unarmed. How was the revolution to start? It started with the propagation of Marxism-Leninism and the exposure of imperialism and its lackeys in China. The struggle of the Chinese proletariat for the seizure of political power began precisely with the May 4th cultural revolution.

In the final analysis, the history of the seizure of political power by the Chinese proletariat is a history of Mao Tse-tung’s thought gripping the masses of workers, peasants and soldiers. As the masses have aptly put it: “Without Mao Tse-tung’s thought, there would have been no New China.” By integrating Marxism-Leninism with the practice of the Chinese revolution, Comrade Mao Tse-tung, the great revolutionary standard-bearer, changed the whole face of the Chinese revolution.” (Long Live the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, 1966)

This is precisely what Ajith doesn’t face, according to us. Maoism is for him Historical Materialism + a toolbox of concepts. According to us, Historical Materialism is only a section of Dialectical Materialism: each country is a part of the World Revolution, and the World Revolution is a part of the whole matter moving to Communism.

=> documents in English

How does the world look, in 2014? Iraq, Syria, Ukraine, Libya, Mali, Afghanistan, Egypt… In more and more countries, there are attempts to destabilize governments, so that the ruling clique is thrown out, in order that a new one comes. It means here: a governing bureaucratic bourgeoisie is changed, when anyway feudalism remains unaffected.

The reason for that is easy to understand: capitalism can not overcome its internal crisis, owing to the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. It means that it will come to more and more imperialist interventions, to more and more inter-imperialist contradictions, which express themselves up to war, and also to always more poverty, more national and social demagogy, and this up to Fascism as “the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital”.

In the background, it also means that, in essence, barbarism anchors itself more and more. Indifference, subjectivity, individualism, spirit of competition, etc. are the values that are presented as “coherent” and “normal”, while on the other side consolation is given by religions, irrationality, retreat into subcultures, etc.. The culture is also increasingly under attack, in the name of the expansion of the capitalist market, as well as the nature anywhere in the world, on behalf of the urgency of capital accumulation.

Nevertheless, this is only one aspect of reality. We are living a period, which is on the one hand temporarily, and which finds itself on the other side in a context of an “epoch of 50 to 100 years”, because the 21st century will be the one of the world revolution.

“President Gonzalo teaches us that in the process of the world revolution to sweep away imperialism and reaction from the face of the earth there are three moments: 1st, the strategic defensive; 2nd, the strategic equilibrium; and 3rd, the strategic offensive of the world revolution.

He reaches this conclusion by applying the law of contradiction to the revolution since contradiction rules everything and all contradictions have two aspects in struggle; in this case revolution and counter-revolution (…).

Our conceptions is of a long-term process with the conviction of reaching Communism even if it means passing through a series of twists and turns and the reverses that will necessarily occur (…). As Communists, we should see not only the specific moment, but the long years to come.” (Communist Party of Peru: the International Line, 1988)

In this sense, we say that it is a historical necessity to know the history of his own country, to defend the democratic aspects and to synthesize the revolutionary aspects, as a guiding Thought to open the way for the Revolution, until victory in the People’s War, under the banner of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, ideology of the proletariat which can only be worn by the genuine Communist Party.

It would therefore be wrong to let oneself be impressed by things like the canonization, this week, of the popes John XXIII and John Paul II, which intends to spread superstition, or from the current intensive propaganda in Afghanistan about the elections, which only goal is to reinforce the colonial stand.

It is also the case with the false promises about improvements of the work conditions in Bangladesh, one year after the collapse of the Rana plaza building, and the recent elections made by a regime without and with its bourgeoisie opposition with greed for power. Directly and indirectly, those reactionaries are forcing people to take more and more superstition, backwardness and blindness.

This is the same with the next European elections, where the radical reformists will get some success in Belgium, but where in France the far rights will celebrate electoral victories.

These are just attempts to keep a system alive, that is already at the end, which is already condemned historically.

Therefore we call: Proletarians and oppressed people and nations of the world, unite!

PEOPLE’S WAR UNTIL COMMUNISM!

Organization of the workers of Afghanistan (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, principally Maoist)

Communist Party Marxist-Leninist-Maoist [Bangladesh]

Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Center [Belgium]

Communist Party Marxist-Leninist-Maoist [France]

First of May, 2014

=> documents in English

The positions of the MPP and the CPMLM [F]

One of the main question in the International Communist movement nowadays, and in fact since the 1960’s, is the one of the reconstitution of genuine Communist Parties.

On this occasion, we never documented or formulated in a clear way a difference of approach between the CPMLM [France] and the MPP, the Communist Party of Peru’s generated organism for the work abroad.

Let’s present it here in four points, easy to see.

1.What happened in the oppressed countries and in the imperialist countries

In the 1950’s, or even earlier, the Communist Parties formed following the wave of the 1917 revolution and then members of the Communist International began to degenerate; with revisionism’s success in 1953 in the Soviet Union, the process was nearly completed.

The word “nearly” plays here an amazing role. Indeed, the anti-revisionists formed in the 1960’s “fractions” in the revisionist Communist Party, considering that the process of degeneration was only nearly completed.

Soon expelled, they formed new parties, mostly called “Marxist-Leninist Communist Party”.

In Asia, Africa and South America, this happened solely in this way.

But in the imperialist countries, some others parties, considered as “leftists” by the others, didn’t follow this approach. They considered that they had to form a Communist Party of the time of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

They considered that a rupture was needed with the precedent revisionism, that a “reconstitution” was not enough, a cultural and ideological leap was needed. 

In the imperialist countries, the result was that there were two kind of parties:

– “ML” parties that followed a legal or a semi-legal way, refusing armed struggle and that very soon became hoxhaists;

– organizations claiming Maoism and developing an approach deeply influenced by spontaneism, practicing armed struggle, before collapsing very quickly, at least ideologically: the French Proletarian Left, the Italian Red Brigades, the (West-)German Red Army Fraction, the US Weather Underground, the Japanese Red Army, etc.

2.Two approaches

The people claiming Maoism in Italy, in Germany (West, but also East), or even in France after some experiences, considered that the communist organization had to be rebuild.

They didn’t form a “fraction” inside the Communist Party, which continued to exist in all the imperialist countries, and continue to exist even today in some countries like France or Greece.

They tried to “revolutionize” the model in the imperialist countries, and didn’t succeed : they collapsed very soon ideologically, or even at the organizational level; only some splitter groups managed to continue their clandestine activities, like for example the Red Army Fraction, but with Maoism having been abandoned. 

So, what appears is the following: either there would be the need to reform a “red” fraction to organize a rupture with the “old” revisionist “Communist” Party, or to recreate an ideological rupture.

3.The French example

In France, at the beginning of the 1990’s and until recently, there were three conceptions that existed in the question of the reconstitution:

– the semi-revisionists tried to recreate a “red” fraction and being expelled they all proceed to a reconstitution of a Party, but it didn’t work, because culturally and ideologically, no rupture was done;

– the spontaneists only proceeded to the valorization of the rupture of the past, mostly on the armed level, but not able to forge a real high ideological level;

– the CPMLM affirmed that the thought is the main aspect, after having considered that it was the key to understand the failures of the reconstitution.

4.Struggle through fraction or through ideology? The positions of the MPP and the CPMLM [F]

During the 2000’s and until today, the positions of the CPMLM [F] and the MPP were always very near.

Nevertheless, the CPMLM [F] didn’t accept that the MPP didn’t criticize openly prachandism, or participated at international conferences with what  would become the center of international centrism: the Maoist Communist Party of Italy.

The line of the MPP was always: let’s be the red fraction, there should be no active rupture, the responsibility must come to the prachandists.

The result was that the prachandists could take easily the control of the Co-RIM, with then the post-prachandists taking the lead, killing softly Maoism.

Why that? Because what counts is not a “tradition” or an “historical current”, but ideology. 

What counts is not a formal reconstitution of a Communist Party who only then works on the question of “thought”, but the dialectic construction of the Party / generation of the Thought.

This is how revolutionary organizations should be evaluated. Do they move in direction of the generation of the thought, or not?

=> documents in English