vimingok posted:They weren't aggressively pursuing it they had no choice as the two communist state governments in a neoliberal country. Maybe cite one or two instances for what you have in mind.
if they had no choice but to do that stuff then why become a state government in the first place?
sovnarkoman posted:unless perry anderson misled me gandhi was into some kind of soft hindutva or some shit
Yeah fascism has always lurked under the surface of Indian nationalism, which is hard to conceive for a third world nation until you realize there are 200 million Muslims in India and 200 million more dalits. With 100 million more indigenous people the nation is basically half categorically oppressed people. Add in that the division between Pakistan and India is arbitrary and was extremely violent it's hard to even call India a nation, somewhat like if Africa had been divided into a few blocs based on French or British occupation.
vimingok posted:They weren't aggressively pursuing it they had no choice as the two communist state governments in a neoliberal country. Maybe cite one or two instances for what you have in mind.
Nandigram in 2007 is the most obvious and famous incident where the left front coalition sent cpi-m party cadre to assault, harass, rape and murder peasant resistance to SEZ acquisition, culminating in the order to have police open fire, conducting mass killings of the peasantry in the service of neoliberal land seizure
but this wasn't some isolated aberration, just the most egregious example of a long tendency of the left front government in seeing neoliberal land reform as a central plank of development in west bengal, not merely some unenthusiastic concession to the centre. this is a good recent paper on the subject: producing local neoliberalism in a leftist regime
cars posted:We are sadly the real deal
babyhueypnewton posted:if you want to be in power you have "no choice" but to be its agent and associate yourself with all of its features, not just the ones you think are progressive.
It cuts both ways, indeed all kinds of ways. If you choose not to participate in reform on the principle of letting revolutionary sentiment build up for the long term, you're morally obliged to associate with and commit entirely to revolution if/when. That is my point. I doubt I can do that because the long-term for India isn't that long. It's not any more just a position I'm taking while the material implications of that position act at a distance.
Do you really believe Narasimha Rao was helpless during the Babri Mosque riots? Even if that were true, which it isn't, who else but the Congress created the conditions for it? India is one of those countries where the "left" implemented neoliberalism, there's really no excuse for thinking so crudely about the lesser evil like Americans do.
The USSR were encouraging reformism to the CPI-M already in the 50s. There was no Comintern and iirc the Cominform was disbanded in the 60s. India's nat-bourg were their strategic partners aiding in their own imperialist value transfer with India and other countries. The Congress is not the "left". The actual left did not independently decide to implement neoliberalism. Of course they were guilty of being in that position to begin with but that is different. Narsimha Rao wanted to conduct land reforms in Andhra in the 80s after the Kerala and Bengal models with Soviet support. He turned neoliberal after, not before the USSR's collapse. He and the Congress in general could have done a lot to stamp out Hindutva and the RSS/BJP, they didn't because it was in their interest to ignore or tentatively support it. The CPI-M also could have done a lot more to oppose it, but didn't because of the class/caste character of its leadership, which again relates back to choosing reformism etc. The CPI-ML and CCCRs were stuck in the British era and failed to understand the implications of the agro-dairy revolutions. Mazumdar was a bourgeois adventurist who stupidly believed PB students killing their dads' friends will get ppw started.
And while we're at it the CPI-M was doomed the moment it lined up with the Congress and Muslim League during WW2. The Congress turned into a force of imperialist reaction when it chose not to rebel during WW1, then after WW1.
Yeah fascism has always lurked under the surface of Indian nationalism, which is hard to conceive for a third world nation until you realize there are 200 million Muslims in India and 200 million more dalits. With 100 million more indigenous people the nation is basically half categorically oppressed people. Add in that the division between Pakistan and India is arbitrary and was extremely violent it's hard to even call India a nation, somewhat like if Africa had been divided into a few blocs based on French or British occupation.
Well I can at least agree with that, if you mean the constructs of India and Hinduism were always infused with the character of the lower bourg and middle classes. That said I don't think there is anything like an 'Indian'/'Hindu' -fascist class structure.
blinkandwheeze posted:Nandigram in 2007
Singur in 2006
Years after liberalisation and Jyoti Basu's tenure.
the left front coalition sent cpi-m party cadre to assault, harass, rape and murder peasant resistance to SEZ acquisition, culminating in the order to have police open fire, conducting mass killings of the peasantry in the service of neoliberal land seizure
Most/all parties in India stamp out peasant resistance, that doesn't in itself make them neoliberal. Buddhadeb's clique were neoliberals but the alternative to them was armed revolt against the Indian government by one state. The centre de facto mostly controls state budgets, they needed to attract investment, if they didn't someone else (Modi in this case) would. Arguably all legal political parties in India were neoliberal since their inception, but what point is that making?
I can't access the paper you linked.
vimingok posted:Years after liberalisation and Jyoti Basu's tenure.
they were absolutely consistent with the later developments under basu's tenure. basu & somenath chatterjee were both clear in the necessity of introducing government reforms to aggressively promote west bengal as a hospitable environment for foreign capital. the 1994 policy statement of the left front government declared its intent to take full advantage of liberalisation policies. the 15th party congress in 1995 declared the need for the left front to adjust its policies toward the expansion of private capital in state sectors.
the suppression of peasant resistance absolutely is dedicated to the enforcement of neoliberalism if it is done to the end of expansion of private capital and foreign investment in the wave of 90s liberalisation. i don't think that even needs to be substantiated.
you can find the paper i referenced on sci-hub
as for your flippant comment about charu majumdar, while the degeneration into violent impulses of the cpi-ml were roundly criticised by the maoist movement, they did not undo the years of tireless and foundational struggle mazumdar contributed. far better to be on the side of adventurism than the side of the police basu & his party directed to execute peasant women and children at naxalbari.
Edited by sovnarkoman ()
sovnarkoman posted:r/communism and r/communism101 is full of praises of cpi-m and anti naxal comments which i guess followed the dengist invasion lol
it's good they've pushed back against anti-Stalin propaganda and continually support liberation movements/governments in the global south. i do think their constant praise of the CCP could be a bit more balanced considering the mixed priorities of the government
blinkandwheeze posted:vimingok posted:Years after liberalisation and Jyoti Basu's tenure.
they were absolutely consistent with the later developments under basu's tenure. basu & somenath chatterjee were both clear in the necessity of introducing government reforms to aggressively promote west bengal as a hospitable environment for foreign capital. the 1994 policy statement of the left front government declared its intent to take full advantage of liberalisation policies. the 15th party congress in 1995 declared the need for the left front to adjust its policies toward the expansion of private capital in state sectors.
1995. You keep saying "aggressively" without defining what that means. What is the reference point?
the suppression of peasant resistance absolutely is dedicated to the enforcement of neoliberalism if it is done to the end of expansion of private capital and foreign investment in the wave of 90s liberalisation. i don't think that even needs to be substantiated.
Suppression of peasant resistance is something that Indian parties with any kind of power do in general. I wasn't disagreeing that the Buddhadeb government's land seizures were neoliberal I was providing the actual context it was happening in that you are consistently ignoring in favour of hyperbole. Yes reformism and neoliberalism both suck, what is your point and what exactly in my posts is it directed against?
as for your flippant comment about charu majumdar, while the degeneration into violent impulses of the cpi-ml were roundly criticised by the maoist movement, they did not undo the years of tireless and foundational struggle mazumdar contributed. far better to be on the side of adventurism than the side of
His analysis was ridiculous and wrong ffs. And imo his conception of the use of violence was borderline psychopathic. I can just about imagine the ressentiment felt by the legions of declassed lower bourgs during that specific period. What else would lead him to manipulate sharecroppers and PB adventurists into risking their lives against a stable bourgeois state that could count on the loyalties of emerging capitalist PBs and bourgs. He made things up in his head, ignored the aspects of his own class character which blinded him to everything important and called that communism. He was around for a quite a while, and despite what I've said about him he did his share of good work. But in all that time he had nothing to say about gender, caste, competing US and Soviet imperialisms, long-term mass organising, just feudal warlords and their lackeys vs everyone else as if 1960s India = 1940s China and ppw just needed a chosen one bold enough to ignite it.
The tribal Naxalite movement survived and had thrived to the extend it has despite, not because of Mazumdar's stupidity. I'm not even blaming Mazumdar for the failure of revolutionary communism at the time. It was inevitable given the class and caste character of the initial leadership of *both* the CPI-M and its rival offshoots, and the conditions which created such leaders to begin with.
the police basu & his party directed to execute peasant women and children at naxalbari.
Which was part of their agreement with the Congress, pacify or wipe out all revolutionary sentiment within WB and their party. What is your point, that this and other well known, internet-assembled events you mentioned wholly discredits them as a communist party as well as their entire history? Yes the CPI sucks and always has, a lot of other things suck and they can't be judged independently of one another or none of us would be posting here to paraphrase another post itt. Mazumdar's adventurism was objectively worse than the CPI-M's reformism.
In general it's difficult to making a better argument against reformism than just gesturing to the sheer cartoonish evil of the cpi-marxist in power
Redistributing land to millions of sharecroppers and subordinating capital to labour only to then be pwnd by the capitalists moving elsewhere with the centre's blessing, and finally getting pwnd by Modi and Mamata in a doomed attempt to reclaim urban PBs. Hard to get more e-vil than that.
sovnarkoman posted:r/communism and r/communism101 is full of praises of cpi-m and anti naxal comments which i guess followed the dengist invasion lol
And lol to you too friend but can you explain why tf a subreddit is relevant here or anywhere else?
vimingok posted:And lol to you too friend but can you explain why tf a subreddit is relevant here or anywhere else?
it s a trend i noticed lately and one of the posters arguing with you mods those subreddits and also mentioned something similar in another thread. i dont know much about indian communist factions to say anything substantial just like any other topic in the world
sovnarkoman posted:vimingok posted:And lol to you too friend but can you explain why tf a subreddit is relevant here or anywhere else?
it s a trend i noticed lately and one of the posters arguing with you mods those subreddits and also mentioned something similar in another thread. i dont know much about indian communist factions to say anything substantial just like any other topic in the world
Ok, sorry. I thought you were comparing my posts with right-dengism or whatever made up online shit.
vimingok posted:1995. You keep saying "aggressively" without defining what that means. What is the reference point?
open and enthusiastic embrace of neoliberal land reform as a central plank of development in west bengal. this is the government you are staunchly denying as neoliberal, under basu's tenure:
The State Government welcomes foreign technology and investments … It recognises the importance and key role of the Private Sector in providing accelerated growth.
… a number of Multinational Corporations (MNCs) have long been successfully operating in the State … .A welcome development is that a good number of Non-Resident Indians (NRIs), MNCs directly or through foreign Governments and Indian Industrial Houses have, in the recent past, shown special interest in coming to West Bengal.
the 1994 platform led to appointment of representatives of private industry to development boards and the formation of direct party committees dedicated to expediting decisions related to privatisation. international consulting firms were brought in to determine the prospects for private industrial development. party officials launched foreign tours and public relation campaigns dedicated to promoting west bengal as a site of private investment. somenath chatterjee, cpi-m leader appointed to chairman of the west bengal industrial development corporation, was given effectively free reign to determine industrial policy, quoted here:
Unfortunately there is still the feeling among a section of the industry: Why should we go to a communist-led state? This should prompt us to be more aggressive in projecting West Bengal. We must attract private capital. I don’t see any alternative.
vimingok posted:I wasn't disagreeing that the Buddhadeb government's land seizures were neoliberal I was providing the actual context it was happening in that you are consistently ignoring in favour of hyperbole. Yes reformism and neoliberalism both suck, what is your point and what exactly in my posts is it directed against?
i've been providing context that you have repeatedly ignored -- the later militant enforcement of neoliberal land reform was a clear development and consequence of the shifting policy intention of the left front well under basu's tenure. a government and leadership you staunchly deny as being neoliberal in spite of their open, clear and enthusiastic embrace of neoliberal policy
again as for mazumdar's legacy, all that's worth pointing out here is that the naxalite movement continued and continue to recognise the overwhelming force and foundational role of mazumdar's achievements. he is universally seen as a visionary and forefather by the maoist movement, in spite of the near universal critique of the degeneration of the cpi-ml in the annihilation campaign. the movement simply would not exist without the years of patient and foundational organisation work he launched while the reformist parties were suppressing by force the pleas of the tribal and landless.
vimingok posted:Mazumdar's adventurism was objectively worse than the CPI-M's reformism.
this is absolutely not true under any circumstances. even if we were to take the most unsentimental and politically neutral reading of the situation, the cpi-m's participation in counterinsurgency has led to rivers of blood that dwarf by far the consequences of the cpi-ml's guerilla efforts. that the campaigns of terror against the peasantry are more quotidian does not make them any less abhorrent.
seeing the regional leaders and executioners of vast campaigns of state terror against the most desperate and vulnerable as somehow just victims of circumstance is of the same impulse the leads you to see endorsement of the doddering hitler Joseph Biden as a somehow progressive road, i think.
blinkandwheeze posted:vimingok posted:1995. You keep saying "aggressively" without defining what that means. What is the reference point?
open and enthusiastic embrace of neoliberal land reform as a central plank of development in west bengal. this is the government you are staunchly denying as neoliberal, under basu's tenure:
The State Government welcomes foreign technology and investments … It recognises the importance and key role of the Private Sector in providing accelerated growth.
… a number of Multinational Corporations (MNCs) have long been successfully operating in the State … .A welcome development is that a good number of Non-Resident Indians (NRIs), MNCs directly or through foreign Governments and Indian Industrial Houses have, in the recent past, shown special interest in coming to West Bengal.
What does "open and enthusiastic" mean? Those quotes are from 1994, 2 years after liberalisation and the USSR's collapse. Being forced to adopt neoliberal policies by events beyond a state government's control cannot imo be described as enthusiastic or aggressive promotion. Why do you keep ignoring this context? The only reason I can think of is that without it you don't really have an argument, because you were misrepresenting mine to begin with.
Anyway I browsed through the paper you pulled those quotes from. Immediately before those quotes, the paper says:
While agrarian reforms and decentralisation measures did improve rural income (Chakravartyand Bose2013), the impact on the state’s overall economy was limited. Between 1980 and 1990, per-capita SDP growth in West Bengal was extremely sluggish, registering one of the lowest rates in thecountry (Table 1), and a declining industrial sector (Tables 2and 3).Irrespective of such stagnating conditions, the post-1991 era of Indian liberalisation was a com-plete antithesis to Left ideology. The CPIM mounted a well-constructed critique of the new economicpolicies (NEP), the allegations ranging from a moral betrayal of the socialist dream to selling out the nation to foreigners (Das 2018). And yet, in spite of politically denouncing the NEP at every opportu-nity, as the Left Front leader the CPIM seemed to accept that some positives indeed came out of it,particularly by abolishing the licencing system of industrial allocation. The 1992–93 West Bengal Economic Review even acknowledged that freeing the industrial sector from the compulsion to seeklicenses has indeed increased investment proposals for the state (Pederson 2001).
... which bears out what I am saying and what you originally disagreed with me about.
vimingok posted:blinkandwheeze posted:vimingok posted:None of them defended neoliberalisation or soft Hindutva, which was very far from enough no doubt.
this is just obviously wrong, the cpi-m & left front governments have had years of aggressively pursuing neoliberal development & sez land acquisition on the state level
They weren't aggressively pursuing it they had no choice as the two communist state governments in a neoliberal country. Maybe cite one or two instances for what you have in mind.
again as for mazumdar's legacy, all that's worth pointing out here is that the naxalite movement continued and continue to recognise the overwhelming force and foundational role of mazumdar's achievements.
The tribal Naxalite movement doesn't have online debates about how important various Naxalite leaders are/were to the JDPON. I'd imagine groups recognise local figures as their founders-leaders and primary influences. Anuradha Ghandy's 'Scripting Change' is probably the most famous Naxalite work and it (correctly) addresses caste, gender and the unique struggle of the adivasi nations. She was active in Maharashtra and in the course of her time with them she pointedly did not command them to attack a powerful, stable bourgeois state with no reliable material or popular base of support to speak of. So it makes sense that her book doesn't mention Mazumdar or his opinions.
he is universally seen as a visionary and forefather by the maoist movement
If that were true they would be operating throughout India, trying to kill class enemies and convince farmers to join them, and consequently get slaughtered by the well -fed and -equipped and unsympathetic army/police. Instead they are doing what little they can to defend their nations against the mighty exarchs of Babylon. Mazumdar's infantile and misguided opinions about what class struggle should look like in India are irrelevant to the actual struggle they are undertaking irregardless what they might think about him.
the cpi-m's participation in counterinsurgency has led to rivers of blood that dwarf by far the consequences of the cpi-ml's guerilla efforts.
That is not true if only because the stupid, violent outlook of people like Mazumdar is inseparable from what led to those rivers of blood. I mean the guy thought the 1965 war was kind of like WW2. Enacting President's rule is a piece of cake and the central government as a norm has never balked at it when its authority was fundamentally questioned. Yeah, things really do suck very bad for 80-90% of Indian people. Doesn't mean the PB chosen one's absence is the only thing standing between them and communism.
that the campaigns of terror against the peasantry are more quotidian does not make them any less abhorrent.
I agree, but the alternative to collaboration with the centre as envisioned by Mazumdar was objectively worse because it was baseless and imo suffused with the worst kind of upper-caste masculine psychopathy if not outright fascoid bloodlust. Conditions in 1960s India were not remotely compatible with revolution. That would be *now*, as in the next decade. The correct approach in the 60s would have been to educate people about what they were fighting and why, and developing a correct analysis. The revolution when/if it comes will not overthrow a functional Indian state. And its much more likely to arise out of the Hindutva ranks of lumpen and nowadays increasingly lumpenised middle-caste proletarians than the disorganised left parties and trade unions.
seeing the regional leaders and executioners of vast campaigns of state terror against the most desperate and vulnerable as somehow just victims of circumstance is of the same impulse the leads you to see endorsement of the doddering hitler Joseph Biden as a somehow progressive road, i think.
I didn't call them victims and I've clarified what I was getting at with the Biden stuff. Please stop misrepresenting things I'm saying on literally the same page.
MarxUltor posted:Biden really could have used today to work on reaching out to "the youths" and normalizing the stutter they're trying to use as cover for his dementia with a four-twenty-twenty-twenty greeting but he's a prohibitionist and I guess whoever runs the deepfake program is a loser too
biden doesn't celebrate that 4/20, he celebrates the other 4/20
vimingok posted:What does "open and enthusiastic" mean? Those quotes are from 1994, 2 years after liberalisation and the USSR's collapse. Being forced to adopt neoliberal policies by events beyond a state government's control cannot imo be described as enthusiastic or aggressive promotion.
what the hell is this bizarre pedantic argument. they publicly aligned themselves with the liberal reforms, solidified them as a central plank of their developmental policy and forced through measures dedicated to expediting and expanding them. party leaders actively agreed with and promoted these measures. what is the confusion here?
vimingok posted:Anyway I browsed through the paper you pulled those quotes from. Immediately before those quotes, the paper says:
what on earth is your point here? yes, the 92-93 economic review and earlier policy openly opposed liberal reforms, preceding their complete embrace and public support of them in 94. how does this do anything but undermine your argument -- the left front was perfectly capable of taking an oppositional attitude to the directives of the centre. up until the point that they increasingly agreed with and advocated for these directives, making them a central part of the party platform
vimingok posted:The tribal Naxalite movement doesn't have online debates about how important various Naxalite leaders are/were to the JDPON. I'd imagine groups recognise local figures as their founders-leaders and primary influences.
they don't have 'online debates' but they have decades of party publications, journals, pamphlets, statements and declarations. the briefest and most immediate look at these publications will make clear that they see mazumdar and kanhai chatterjee as the founders of their struggle. they continually address mazumdar as fore-founder and beloved teacher of their movement. your imagination is not sufficient when you can easily take a look at what parties like the cpi-maoist have to say about themselves and their history
vimingok posted:If that were true they would be operating throughout India, trying to kill class enemies and convince farmers to join them, and consequently get slaughtered by the well -fed and -equipped and unsympathetic army/police.
this is what maoists in india are doing. they have directly launched a people's war against the indian state. they regularly launch small squad guerilla offensives on the bourgeois security state and large landholders while recruiting lower-caste and tribal tenant farmers. what purpose is there in infantilising the movement, seeing them as merely desperately defensive, when they openly see themselves as conducting a protracted campaign of insurgency against the state?
again, mazumdar's excesses towards the collapse of the cpi-ml were soundly criticised and the lessons incorporated into the living movement. kanhai chatterjee, at the time opponent of mazumdar's annihilation line, is openly seen as a foundational leader. but at no point do the naxal parties see the annihilation of class enemies as a fundamentally wrong principle -- merely that mazumdar's annihilation line was unconstrained and disconnected from the broader class struggle. the line of the maoist movement is that annihilation of class enemies must be connected to their broader campaigns, not to be disavowed entirely. as can be seen by their decades of guerilla offensives against the security state and their lackeys. these parties are recruiting the peasantry into a people's war against the indian state, i'm not sure what ambiguity could possibly exist there
vimingok posted:That is not true if only because the stupid, violent outlook of people like Mazumdar is inseparable from what led to those rivers of blood.
the violent counter-insurgency campaigns against peasant resistance occurred long before and after leaders like mazumdar. the entire movement he worked to launch was a response to the slaughter of peasantry commanded by the ostensibly communist government. as you've repeatedly stated yourself, suppression of peasant organisation by force is just something that parties in power do. putting decades of rape, torture and execution on a mass scale as reactive to minor occurrences of left adventurism is pathetic
swampman posted:this page is like watching koko the gorilla fail to chokeslam that kitten
all my 5s
blinkandwheeze posted:vimingok posted:What does "open and enthusiastic" mean? Those quotes are from 1994, 2 years after liberalisation and the USSR's collapse. Being forced to adopt neoliberal policies by events beyond a state government's control cannot imo be described as enthusiastic or aggressive promotion.
what the hell is this bizarre pedantic argument. they publicly aligned themselves with the liberal reforms, solidified them as a central plank of their developmental policy and forced through measures dedicated to expediting and expanding them. party leaders actively agreed with and promoted these measures. what is the confusion here?
No confusion on my end. You're rephrasing "adopted neoliberal policies" and acting like that is the same as your argument ie the CPIM governments did not 'not defend neoliberalism' as I say but instead 'aggressively pursued it for years'. It's a semantic argument for sure, but I didn't start it.
vimingok posted:Anyway I browsed through the paper you pulled those quotes from. Immediately before those quotes, the paper says:
what on earth is your point here? yes, the 92-93 economic review and earlier policy openly opposed liberal reforms, preceding their complete embrace and public support of them in 94. how does this do anything but undermine your argument -- the left front was perfectly capable of taking an oppositional attitude to the directives of the centre. up until the point that they increasingly agreed with and advocated for these directives, making them a central part of the party platform
They were clearly not capable, as state governments (so far we've only discussed 1 out of 2), of opposing the general tide of liberalisation sweeping the country due to factors neither they nor the country qua comprador-bourgeois state could stem or resist. The alternative was to declare republics and start a war they would lose before it even started. Which is why they reversed their positions after a year. Ideologically speaking the only correct option for them would have been to lose power as a natural consequence of failing to function properly as state governments especially wrt urban and rural PBs + attached electorate, and begin the long, arduous work of organising a committed mass base. It sucks that the prosperous upper-caste leadership decided against that. It also sucks that the reality of imperialism creates these impossible situations for third world communist parties, isolated parts of which are conceived as fetid little petri-dishes that western misery-porn academics like the one in that paper build their careers contemplating.
vimingok posted:The tribal Naxalite movement doesn't have online debates about how important various Naxalite leaders are/were to the JDPON. I'd imagine groups recognise local figures as their founders-leaders and primary influences.
they don't have 'online debates' but they have decades of party publications, journals, pamphlets, statements and declarations.
Whatever Naxalite literature you've read on the internet isn't coming from anyone connected to illegal activity, who are unfortunately the only reliable sources of info about their respective groups. Ghandy was an academic but the book I mentioned is a collection of her writings published posthumously by friends on the outside. And it says nothing about either of those people, because their surnames tell me that they were Bengali brahmin landlords cast into the dustbin of history by the post-WW2 imperialist world order. There isn't and never has been a contiguous Maoist movement in India. There are overlaps in ideological and tactical goals but 'Naxalite' is ultimately just a loosely defined term used by people not in the movement. It makes sense that Mazumdar would be a well-known and respected figure among the groups in West Bengal but even they do not adhere to his thought because their struggle against the Indian state is primarily about their sovereignty in their own lands, same as all the other adivasi nations. That does not automatically make it a united struggle of all adivasi nations if only because that would be impossible under current and past conditions. It certainly is not a struggle by all Hindu middle and poor peasants + the undifferentiated mass of other oppressed people experiencing 'class hatred' towards a powerful feudal class which is what Mazumdar envisaged without any basis in reality. The latter type of struggle would be stupid and suicidal to put it mildly, so it makes sense they aren't waging it.
this is what maoists in india are doing. they have directly launched a people's war against the indian state. they regularly launch small squad guerilla offensives on the bourgeois security state and large landholders while recruiting lower-caste and tribal tenant farmers. what purpose is there in infantilising the movement, seeing them as merely desperately defensive, when they openly see themselves as conducting a protracted campaign of insurgency against the state?
No they are attacking the forces of the bourgeois state which are operating within small, remote, disconnected areas of tribal resistance which they control and generally originate from. These are defensive operations of very limited scope and there is nothing infantilising about pointing out that obvious fact.
at no point do the naxal parties see the annihilation of class enemies as a fundamentally wrong principle
Doesn't follow that this idea derives specifically from Mazumdar for the Naxal groups and/or parties, if only because *everyone* acts according to this principle.
vimingok posted:That is not true if only because the stupid, violent outlook of people like Mazumdar is inseparable from what led to those rivers of blood.
the violent counter-insurgency campaigns against peasant resistance occurred long before and after leaders like mazumdar. the entire movement he worked to launch was a response to the slaughter of peasantry commanded by the ostensibly communist government. as you've repeatedly stated yourself, suppression of peasant organisation by force is just something that parties in power do. putting decades of rape, torture and execution on a mass scale as reactive to minor occurrences of left adventurism is pathetic
Naxalbari happened during an INC-led coalition where Basu was home minister, which dissolved shortly afterwards for that and other reasons in favour of president's rule.
lo posted:i can't say i know much about india but i don't really understand the repeated assertion in vimingok posts that the collapse of the ussr meant that the indian communists had no real choice but to enact neoliberalisation. in a situation like that where socialism is on the retreat globally is it not even more important than it otherwise would be to resist this sort of thing? it doesn't sound like they even attempted resistance or obstruction or anything like that, they capitulated to it totally.
Like I said the power and scope of state governments are de facto at the pleasure of the centre/ruling party. Any plans the CPIM governments had would require funds they would have to raise independently, in their own relatively small and poor states. They couldn't force businesses or investors to operate on their terms, couldn't regulate prices, interest rates and duties, print currency, pass laws, receive aid from sympathetic foreign countries (the ostensibly sympathetic one had collapsed and was allied with the comprador state anyway) etc etc. What would resistance have looked like according to you?
Edited by vimingok ()
vimingok posted:You're rephrasing "adopted neoliberal policies" and acting like that is the same as your argument ie the CPIM governments did not 'not defend neoliberalism' as I say but instead 'aggressively pursued it for years'. It's a semantic argument for sure, but I didn't start it.
they were not merely forced to adopt such measures, they openly agreed with and defended such measures, adopted them as central planks of the party platform and pushed through their own initiatives at the local level to independently solidify and expedite them. this was nothing less than enthusiastic support -- and led to the following years of violent and militant suppression and displacement of the peasantry in service of private land acquisition. if you want to make some pedantic point about how this isn't enough to qualify as aggressive pursual (what possibly could qualify as that on your own terms, anyway?) then fine -- but the idea that they didn't defend neoliberalism is completely absurd by any metric.
vimingok posted:Whatever Naxalite literature you've read on the internet isn't coming from anyone connected to illegal activity, who are unfortunately the only reliable sources of info about their respective groups.
this is just a bizarre and stupid conception. illegal activities are conducted by parties which publish their perspective as a necessary process of building a revolutionary communist party. these are not mindless militants with purely clandestine motives but political organisers with developed and published political views
you've contrived this completely bizarre scenario in your head which justifies never having to actually read about the people you're discussing, and can be free to make up whatever you like about them. anuradha ghandy was a dedicated member of the cpi(maoist) which continues to enthusiastically uphold mazumdar's legacy and commemorate his martyrdom every year, ffs. you're imposing your half-thought reflexive dismissals on people who simply do not share them in any way, and using the same reflexive dismissal to even allow material existing that could prove you wrong
no, there is no contiguous maoist movement in india, which is why i have been careful to talk about 'parties' in the general sense. but it's nevertheless clear that the largest and most significant actors in the struggle uphold mazumdar and see themselves as in the tradition of his thought. read any cpi(maoist) documents, please.
vimingok posted:No they are attacking the forces of the bourgeois state which are operating within small, remote, disconnected areas of tribal resistance which they control and generally originate from. These are defensive operations of very limited scope and there is nothing infantilising about pointing out that obvious fact.
they have been repeatedly dedicated to expanding their influence and exporting political struggle outside their base areas, with varying levels of success. again, they are openly waging protracted people's war agains the state. it can be easily confirmed that these actions are not relegated to the villages. the prisons, police stations and armouries of district headquarters have been constant targets
vimingok posted:Naxalbari happened during an INC-led coalition where Basu was home minister, which dissolved shortly afterwards for that and other reasons in favour of president's rule.
basu as home minister directly ordered the police suppression. yes it's true that the united front was not cpi-m led but their party officials were the relevant authority in this case
vimingok posted:Like I said the power and scope of state governments are de facto at the pleasure of the centre/ruling party. Any plans the CPIM governments had would require funds they would have to raise independently, in their own relatively small and poor states. They couldn't force businesses or investors to operate on their terms, couldn't regulate prices, interest rates and duties, print currency, pass laws, receive aid from sympathetic foreign countries (the ostensibly sympathetic one had collapsed and was allied with the comprador state anyway) etc etc. What would resistance have looked like according to you?
you just pointed out that they could have begun 'the long, arduous work of organising a committed mass base', but they didn't and became neoliberals instead. so there was a choice open to them, one that they didn't take.
Anyway the allegation that the years of leadership and complicity over the overwhelmingly brutal campaign of suppression against the most desperate and vulnerable is objectively preferable to minor circumstances of guerilla adventurism decades ago is some of the most vile sh*t i've seen posted on this forum.
blinkandwheeze posted:Anyway the allegation that the years of leadership and complicity over the overwhelmingly brutal campaign of suppression against the most desperate and vulnerable is objectively preferable to minor circumstances of guerilla adventurism decades ago is some of the most vile sh*t i've seen posted on this forum.
Ok, so you're saying go ahead and reëlect Emperor Hirocheeto? Boy am I glad to see the red-orange alliance thriving in the DYTD forum 
blinkandwheeze posted:vimingok posted:You're rephrasing "adopted neoliberal policies" and acting like that is the same as your argument ie the CPIM governments did not 'not defend neoliberalism' as I say but instead 'aggressively pursued it for years'. It's a semantic argument for sure, but I didn't start it.
they were not merely forced to adopt such measures, they openly agreed with and defended such measures,
I didn't say they were forced, I said they 'did not defend neoliberalisation or soft Hindutva' aka the liberalisation process and the existing mechanisms of oppression it relied on, and 'had no choice as the two communist state governments in a neoliberal country'. Of course they defended their own decision to adopt neoliberal policies. That is substantially distant from what you're trying to push, which is that they actively wanted liberalisation and (therefore) enthusiastically adopted it tout court once enacted. The CPIM's 90s neoliberal turn wasn't part of a grand scheme that they laid in the 70s "because slippery slope of reformism".
vimingok posted:Whatever Naxalite literature you've read on the internet isn't coming from anyone connected to illegal activity, who are unfortunately the only reliable sources of info about their respective groups.
this is just a bizarre and stupid conception. illegal activities are conducted by parties which publish their perspective as a necessary process of building a revolutionary communist party. these are not mindless militants with purely clandestine motives but political organisers with developed and published political views
These militants aren't doing illegal things on the side, they are at war with a large and powerful state within its own borders. And again, they do not belong to a single party or have a uniform view of the history, founders and doctrine of the broad Maoist movement for reasons I've already mentioned. Not only do they lack the means to distribute pamphlets and magazines covering the diverse pockets of adivasi resistance all over the country, they wouldn't do so if they could because that would fundamentally compromise their security as guerrilla soldiers fighting a war of attrition, which btw they are steadily losing.
you've contrived this completely bizarre scenario in your head which justifies never having to actually read about the people you're discussing, and can be free to make up whatever you like about them. anuradha ghandy was a dedicated member of the cpi(maoist) which continues to enthusiastically uphold mazumdar's legacy and commemorate his martyrdom every year, ffs. you're imposing your half-thought reflexive dismissals on people who simply do not share them in any way, and using the same reflexive dismissal to even allow material existing that could prove you wrong
Ghandy was dedicated to the semi-legal dalit and later illegal Gondi resistance movements/insurgencies in Maharashtra that she participated in. Not to a Bengali upper-caste revolutionary who had nothing to say about those struggles. Which is why she doesn't mention him in the only published collection of her writings, she mentions leaders relevant to the specific movements in which she participated. You seem to think all-Maoist congresses take place yearlong where they make compulsory pledges to Mazumdar and everything he wrote or said ever, and you're mistaken.
no, there is no contiguous maoist movement in india, which is why i have been careful to talk about 'parties' in the general sense. but it's nevertheless clear that the largest and most significant actors in the struggle uphold mazumdar and see themselves as in the tradition of his thought. read any cpi(maoist) documents, please.
D V Rao, founder-member of the APCCCR, examined the relevance of Maoist ppw in the peasant rebellions of Andhra Pradesh decades before Naxalbari. Moreover, he rejected Mazumdar's adventurism. It's unlikely the average adivasi militant in Telangana simultaneously upholds both Rao and Mazumdar, or even knows who Mazumdar is.
https://www.frontierweekly.com/articles/vol-50/50-31/50-31-Centenary%20of%20D%20V%20Rao%20and%20Nagi%20Reddy.htmlSince the death of Mao tse Tung no Communist leader made such a sound and concrete analysis and thesis of the agrarian revolutionary line or massline as D V Rao in his lessons of the 'History of the Telengana armed Struggle' and 'Path of Indian Revolution'. He most dialectically explained how base areas were made and volunteer squads created to link with mass movements. He differentiated the nature and practice in plain areas and forests. Arguably no practice or line was so close to the Chinese path as practised by D V Rao in Telengana and later with TN in Srikalulam. DV brilliantly defended the polemics of protracted people’s war as against insurrection. He explained how deploying strategy of insurrection would be suicidal in the Indian context and did not blindly copy the Chinese or Russian path. Today what is needed is to imbibe the teachings of TN and DV in accordance with the prevailing conditions.
No communist revolutionary group implemented the mass line as correctly as the organisations led by DV, namely the Unity Centre of Communist Revolutionaries of India, formed in 1975.He strove to bring about the principled unity of communist revolutionaries in India exchanging mutual criticism with leaders like Satya Narayan Singh and Chandra Pulla Reddy. He produced exemplary theoretical writings assessing the left adventurist line of Charu Mazumdar as well as Chandra Pulla Reddy and the rightist S N Singh trend. He exposed the negative aspects of the Charu Mazumder line at its very roots. Sadly after 1979 DV virtually undid all his positive practice by upholding the 3 worlds theory and taking the party to the path of participating in elections and openly projecting the party banner. The rightist deviation in the UCCRI (ML) in 1979 led to a total reversal in the building of the party and the massline in India with the upholding of the theory of 3 worlds. Later a series of splits took place inaugurated by late Harbhajan Sohi of Punjab and later Viswam creating a new set of permutations and combinations of groups in later periods.
vimingok posted:No they are attacking the forces of the bourgeois state which are operating within small, remote, disconnected areas of tribal resistance which they control and generally originate from. These are defensive operations of very limited scope and there is nothing infantilising about pointing out that obvious fact.
they have been repeatedly dedicated to expanding their influence and exporting political struggle outside their base areas, with varying levels of success. again, they are openly waging protracted people's war agains the state. it can be easily confirmed that these actions are not relegated to the villages. the prisons, police stations and armouries of district headquarters have been constant targets
Of course they're targeting prisons and armouries in or around their base areas. That's what I just fucking said! How is that an offensive war against the entire bourgeois state apparatus? They are killing or trying to kill local politicians who run on anti-naxal agendas, not Modi or the Gandhis.
vimingok posted:Naxalbari happened during an INC-led coalition where Basu was home minister, which dissolved shortly afterwards for that and other reasons in favour of president's rule.
basu as home minister directly ordered the police suppression. yes it's true that the united front was not cpi-m led but their party officials were the relevant authority in this case
What are you a Congress propagandist now? Basu made the decision on behalf of the INC, which imposed president's rule the next year. Basu is still guilty of murder, but as reformist agent of the actual bourgeois state. Moreover, Basu's, and other CPIM leaders' participation or complicity in suppression does not implicate the entire CPIM or its history or the Kerala government or the successful and as yet unprecedented land reforms and labour policies of both governments up to and even beyond liberalisation, which is what you're implying with comments like the 'cartoonish evil of the CPI-Marxist in power'.
Anyway the allegation that the years of leadership and complicity over the overwhelmingly brutal campaign of suppression against the most desperate and vulnerable is objectively preferable to minor circumstances of guerilla adventurism decades ago is some of the most vile sh*t i've seen posted on this forum.
Why are you lying? I said the CPIM governments' peaceful elimination of feudal-colonial remnants from the British era and redistribution of land to millions of sharecroppers is objectively preferable specifically to Mazumdar's misguided adventurism which caused thousands of deaths. I'm very pointedly not saying that it is preferable to all guerilla adventurism from decades ago.
lo posted:vimingok posted:Like I said the power and scope of state governments are de facto at the pleasure of the centre/ruling party. Any plans the CPIM governments had would require funds they would have to raise independently, in their own relatively small and poor states. They couldn't force businesses or investors to operate on their terms, couldn't regulate prices, interest rates and duties, print currency, pass laws, receive aid from sympathetic foreign countries (the ostensibly sympathetic one had collapsed and was allied with the comprador state anyway) etc etc. What would resistance have looked like according to you?
you just pointed out that they could have begun 'the long, arduous work of organising a committed mass base', but they didn't and became neoliberals instead. so there was a choice open to them, one that they didn't take.
They had no choice as state governments, e.g. giving a corporation what it wants to get it to invest in industry in their states instead of forcing it to come and operate on their terms. The correct choice would also mean lack of power, and I've explained why they're guilty of not choosing that.