[From The Worker, #1, February 1993.]



POLITICAL LINE OF CPN (UNITY CENTRE)*

Significance of the Three Instruments of Revolution

Our political strategy is to establish a New Democratic republic of Nepal with a people's democratic dictatorship against feudalism and imperialism and on the basis of an alliance of peasants & workers under the leadership of the proletariat. To attain this strategic goal we have to work out the tactics accordingly and orient the organizational works on the same line.

It is clear that the Nepalese New Democratic revolution will be accomplished in a great, difficult, complex and zigzag fashion and in different sub stages, as it has to face the internal and external enemies and hence would be of a protracted nature. This revolution is basically a peasant revolution. Hence it is absolutely necessary for the success of the revolution to concentrate force in rural areas inhabited by 91% of the peasantry to develop class-consciousness among the peasants and to train them in the field of class struggle against feudal land ownership and comprador & bureaucratic capitalism. Priority should be accorded to the works amongst the landless and poor peasant even within the peasantry of rural areas. Because peasants of the lower classes are the main force of the revolution, gravity of works should concentrate on the workers and the lower classes of people in the cities too. Also, adequate attention should be paid to the mobilization of the auxiliary forces of revolution namely the students, teachers, professors, doctors, lawyers, civil servants, intellectuals and small traders to the national bourgeoisie. The strategy of establishing New Democratic power at the central level after smashing the state machinery of the feudal, comprador and bureaucratic bourgeoisie can be fulfilled only by moving forward by capturing power at the local level and by establishing base areas. To develop this task as our central task we should concentrate and consolidate our activities on the same. For this, it is a must to adopt the line of protracted People’s War with a strategy of encirclement of the city from the countryside.

In the Nepalese communist movement a rightist thinking has been dominant that accepts New Democracy as a strategy but follows reformism and parliamentarism as the tactics, that sacrifices the totality of strategy for the partial tactical gain and that regards strategy and tactics as mutually exclusive. Against such thinking we should pay special attention to understand the relations between strategy and tactics in a dialectical manner and to adopt such tactics as to help the strategy. To attain the goal of establishing a New Democratic republic we should carry forward policies:

1. To oppose the monarchical parliamentary multi-party system and to accelerate propagandist agitation in favour of the New Democratic system.

2. To build a revolutionary, militant and new type of Communist Party.

3. To build a revolutionary united front as an instrument of struggle and an embryo of the new power.

4. To lay emphasis on the preparations of People’s War.

5. To develop a patriotic and democratic movement against feudalism, imperialism and Indian expansionism.

6. To accelerate rural class struggle centering around the slogan of land to the tiller and to concentrate main force on the same.

7. To develop class and mass organizations, to establish Party leadership over them and to develop people's movement in favour of their problems.

8. To pay special attention to expand the Party to lower class, oppressed ethnic groups, tribes and depressed castes and to the rural and remote areas.

9. To accord priority to the illegal works and works in the rural areas, to develop as secondary activities the legal and urban works and coordinate the two spheres of activities.

10. To support national liberation, New Democratic and socialist movements all over the world, to emphasize on proletarian internationalism and to develop relations and contacts with the fraternal parties and organizations the world over.

11. To oppose & expose all forms of revisionism.

12. To propagate Marxism-Leninism-Maoism in a systematic manner.

For the success of the New Democratic revolution, it is a must, as taught by Com. Mao, to develop the three instruments of "revolutionary Communist Party, revolutionary united front and people's army". It is evident that is such a revolution the role of the Communist Party and the People’s War would be primary and that of the mass & class organizations and the people's movement be secondary. It is of primary importance to move ahead with a concrete program for the development of these instruments.

I. On the Party

The three instruments of New Democratic revolution can be developed correctly, only in close relations with each other. In the absence of one the other two instruments cannot develop properly. However, among these the Party is primary, which builds & operates the other two instruments. With the unification of the Party we have been definitely strengthened numerically, but if we fail to charter a correct ideological and political line such numerical increase will in the real sense not strengthen but weaken the Party. In this context it is necessary to remember what the great Lenin has said. "…… In the organization the question of membership figures is not that important, as is the objective importance of its policy." Today, our Party has not really been able to rise above the level of peaceful movement and an instrument of electoral platform. The ideological level, consciousness and culture of the (Party) leaders & cadres are much below the desirable.

Objectively we are in need of a Communist Party of a new type. The concept of the Party of a new type has been mentioned by all from Marx to Mao. In our context, by Party of a new type we should understand a Party which would be capable of leading People’s War in the era of imperialist war & proletarian revolution and in the context of a communist movement plagued by Right revisionism. Because, in the present barbaric imperialist era, to lead a revolution unequivocally means to lead People’s War. We should place at number one of our agenda the task of building a militant & revolutionary Communist Party of a new type.

A militant Communist Party of a new type cannot be built by some sweet idealism or through mental exercise alone. For this we need firstly, revolutionary ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism; secondly, revolutionary political line; thirdly conduction of inner-Party struggle and two line struggle in a clear & correct manner; and fourthly, development of class struggle particularly rural class struggle in a revolutionary manner.

It is not possible to build a militant Party of a new type without resolutely struggling against the tendencies that refuse to understand the importance of ideology or which undermine it, that do not accord priority to the task of initiating struggles by breaking reactionary laws and systems, that refuse to undertake the task of preparation & initiating of People’s War in a systematic manner, that hesitate to go to rural areas and lower classes and raise class struggle, that tend to make compromises and keep peace between antagonistic trends within the Party that weaken disciple and against all forms of reformist and revisionist trends.

II. On the Revolutionary United Front

In the Nepalese communist movement there is no dearth of reformist trends that focus on the legal movement and put emphasis only on forging unity-in-action with the various reactionary & Right revisionist political groups, of sectarian & mechanistic trends that only create noises by mechanistic trends that only create noises by mechanistically forging "united front" of their Party cadre alone. But the task of developing it (i.e. united front) under the leadership of the Party and as the instrument of struggle and the seed of new power has been grossly neglected. For this the Party has to pay immediate attention to the task of forging a united front of anti-feudal and anti-imperialist patriotic, democratic and leftist forces as an instrument of developing class straggles primarily in the rural areas and as the seed of (new) power. Special attention should be paid to the task of organizing struggle by creating such a revolutionary united front in the urban areas, too. The movement cannot be freed of reformism as long as the task of giving a practical shape to such a united front is delayed. Also, the (united) fronts created just for their sake without linking them with the concrete plans & programmes of class struggle would be mechanistic and sectarian and hence useless.

The principle function of such a front should be to develop struggles on the basis of people's problems that would gradually break the (limits of) law and the system. At the initial stages, the effective form of such a front would be confined to rural areas and at the local level.

III. The Form of Armed Struggle and the Task of Preparing its Ground

Without armed struggle it is impossible to achieve success in the New Democratic revolution. Even while accepting it in principle because of negligence and lack of clarity shown on the question of its form, organization, preparation and development the Nepalese communist movement has not been able to free itself from the merry-go-round of spontaneity and reformism. Our Party also will not be able to rise above reformism if even today we do not accord primary importance to the task of clarifying the form and general line of armed struggle and going into practice with a concrete programme. Hence we have to think over this subject with due seriousness.

Till now the international proletariat has experienced two fundamentally different conditions as successful & scientifically proved. They are: (1) the strategy of general insurrection of capturing first the city and the central power in the capitalist & imperialist countries, and (2) the strategy of protracted People’s War of encircling the city from the countryside in the oppressed semi-feudal, semi-colonial countries. In the current world situation we have to decide upon a strategy as suited to the general economic, political and social conditions of our country and carry forward organization, struggle and propaganda works accordingly. To remain noncommittal or silent on the question is to fall a victim to spontaneity & inaction and is merely to move towards the quagmire of reformism. Viewing from this perspective,

our Party follows the path of protracted People’s War with the strategy of encircling the city from the countryside, basing on the principle of People’s War as developed by Com. Mao (which is the pinnacle of military science attained by the world proletariat to fight against imperialism). This strategy of armed struggle is the strategy of defeating a powerful enemy by developing from small to big, from simple to complex and from a few to many in the course of revolutionary struggle particularly rural class struggle or revolutionary peasant struggle. It develops in the first stage with strategic defense and tactical offence, when necessarily guerilla warfare has a strategic role, and at this stage open or secret base areas do develop. With a second stage of strategic stalemate and the third stage of strategic offence & tactical defense, it culminates into victory. This is the general line of People’s War during the period of New Democratic revolution. Here we should beware of the tendency of mechanical & blind copying, too. In the specificities of our country and the current world situation the significance of urban mass movements has definitely increased. However, there has been no change in the strategy of protracted People’s War and the question of according priority to the words in rural areas. We should also be clear that only by moving ahead along this general political line we shall be able to find out and probe into the specific laws of the Nepalese revolution. Because, the laws of revolutionary warfare can be found out only by participating in the revolutionary warfare.


* This is an extract from the Political Report adopted by the Unity Congress of CPN (Unity Centre). December 1991.

*    *    *

A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is an act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets & cannon, all of which are highly authoritarian means. And the victorious party must maintain its rule by means of the terror, which its arms inspire in the reactionaries.

-Frederick Engels (1873)