The Worker, #6, October 2000
ARTICLE
INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE "GUIDING THOUGHT OF THE PARTY"*-Com. Baburam BhattaraiAs the proletariat is essentially an international class, the development of the science of proletarian revolution invariably takes place in the course of ideological struggle & class struggle going on at the international level. We should understand that the "Guiding Thought" of our Party is also a link in the chain of development of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism at the international plane.During the lifetime of Marx & Engels, the originators of the science of proletarian revolution, Marxism was developed in the course of vigorous struggle against various kinds of non-proletarian trends, principally anarchism & at the later stage, reformism. However, after the death of Marx & Engels two major currents of "Marxism" appeared as a result of the change & struggles in both the objective & subjective worlds together with the development of capitalism into imperialism. One was the revolutionary current, & the other , a revisionist reformist current. The revolutionary current, upholding the class character of the state, violent revolution, dictatorship of the proletariat & continuous revolution developed under the leadership of principally Lenin, Stalin & Mao into Marxism-Leninism-Maoism (MLM). On the other hand, the reformist & revisionist current preaching above-class state, peaceful transition, formal democracy, etc. kept on degenerating under -the leadership of Bernstein, Kautsky, Khruschov & others and ultimately reached to Yeltsin's naked liquidationism (open capitalism). The experiences (of the revolution) from the ,Paris Commune via the Russian October Revolution to the Great Chinese Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) confirmed that whereas the creative application of the basic postulates of the proletarian revolution according to the changing objective conditions lead to the innovative development of Marxism reaching to the heights of MlM, the abandonment or attempt at revision of the fundamental postulates of the science of revolution led to its ultimate dissolution or conversion into an instrument of counter-revolution. By the end of the twentieth century the incidents of Counter-revolution in all the socialist countries of yesteryears including Russia & China under the leadership of the revisionists, corroborated that the MLM developed till the period of Mao is the only authentic science of proletarian revolution and all the rest are mere vulgarisation of Marxism. After the death of Com. Mao & the Chinese counterrevolution in 1976, Communist Parties associated with the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM) like the one in Peru & some other Maoist Parties continued with the application of MLM their respective countries. As an integral part of this revolutionary International proletarian movement, our Party. CPN (Maoist), has applied the revolutionary science of MLM in Nepal and in this course the "Guiding Thought of the Party" has crystallised.
Right here it is essential to correctly grasp the utmost stress given by our Party in advancing further from the experiences of the GPCR of China, the highest pinnacle of this science so far, while defending, implementing & developing MLM. Because, the real root of the "Guiding Thought of the Party" is in the. GPCR, and without grasping its basic essence it is impossible to comprehend the "Guiding Thought of the Party". The inevitability of the Communist Party as the vanguard of the proletariat for (leading) the revolution, and the dictatorship of the proletariat (or people's democratic dictatorship) as the form, of transitional state leading towards stateless communism; are the fundamental ideological tenets of MLM. Leaving aside the revisionists & reactionaries, who discard these very basic doctrines, if we talk of only the revolutionary communist camp, who uphold both of these tenets, the uppermost concern of Marxism of the new stage became the scientific solution of the bitter paradox seen in the past of the origin of a new bureaucratic capitalist class from within the Communist Party & the socialist state and the incidents of counter-revolution under the leadership of the same class in all the places including Russia & China. In other words, the search for an appropriate method of ensuring that the Communist Party remains a genuine vanguard of the proletariat and that the socialist (or New Democratic) state remains a means of dictatorship of the proletariat & it advances towards final withering away, came to be a very critical issue within Marxism-Leninism by the time of Com. Mao. Certainly, such a method could not be any readymade formula, but could only be a scientific (or consistent with revolutionary dialectics) process. The GPCR, or the concept of "continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat", developed under the leadership of Com. Mao, was such a scientific method invented during that 'exploration, which, in essence, raised "Marxism-Leninism" to ..Marxism-Leninism-Maoism".
Now, let us go back a bit further and review the development of the international communist movement (ICM). The concept of the organisation of the Communist Party as. the vanguard of the proletariat & that of the socialist state (Soviet power) as the form of dictatorship of the proletariat was developed under the leadership of Com. Lenin at the beginning of twentieth century. However, partly due to lack of prior experience & partly, to put in Com. Mao's words, due to some metaphysics in Com. Stalin's thinking, some errors & lapses were committed by Com, Stalin while implementing them for the. first time in history in the Soviet Russia. Com. Stalin, on the one hand, could not correctly grasp that until there are classes in society there would be (reflection of) classes within the Communist Party & the socialist state and there would be class struggle in newer forms and (he) visualised the Communist Party as a monolith, and, on the other, he relied more 'on the technical & bureaucratic methods rather than on active participation of the Glass. & the masses while fighting against the no" proletarian trends & forces within the Party & the state. Apart from this, on the question of socialist construction a form of economic determinism was. prevalent and one-sided emphasis was placed on central planning & control, which stifled the initiative of the labouring masses. As a result, despite Comma. Stalin's great contributions in the defence & advancement of the proletarian Party & state during his lifetime, after his death, in the absence of a process of generating revolutionary successors, it could not be continued, and both the Party & ,the state were captured by Khruschovite counter-revolutionaries.
In this very historical context Comma. Mao initiated an attempt to view, grasp & solve the problems of ICM in a new way. For that matter, during the period of the Chinese New Democratic revolution, too, he had discarded several of the mechanistic directives of the Third International under the leadership of Comma. Stalin, and created new models (e.g.., the Yenan model) of revolution & socialist construction. In this process, particularly after the counter-revolution in Soviet Union in 1956, he accelerated the quest & initiation of the new path of socialist construction in China (i.e., emphasis on advancement of the relations of production rather than on the productive forces, balanced development of agriculture & industry, small industry & big industry, rural areas & urban areas, etc., under the policy of "walking with two legs", & so on), and launched campaign is like the "Great Leap Forward". To prepare ideological foundation for the same he produced such important theoretical works as "On Ten Great Relationships", "On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People", "A Critique of Soviet Political Economy", etc. Thus, together with the attempt at ushering in a new type of revolution & application of mass line in the sphere of economic base, from 1965 onwards the GPCR was launched to bring about revolutionary upheavals in the superstructure of the Party & the state, which created all-round revolutionary storm of world-shaking nature in China until Com. Mao's death in 1976. When we delve into its depth & analyse the GPCR, the third in succession after the Paris Commune & the October Revolution & the highest pinnacle of the world proletarian movement, the real essence of GPCR is found to be the application of mass line in favour of proletarian ideology & politics in the two-line struggle & class struggle (both before & after the revolution) continuously going on inside the Party, the state & the society. In other words, whereas the "goal" of the GPCR was to pilot continuous revolution under the leadership of the proletariat in all the spheres of the superstructure (principally, the Party & the state ), mass line was its "method" or "form". In this context it is particularly important to recollect, on the one had, the much propagated slogans of "it is right to rebel", "it is revolutionary to go against the tide", "bombard the headquarter", etc., &, on the other, the organisation of revolutionary committees, congresses, etc., in the light of the Paris Commune, and the creation of mechanism of the best exercise of proletarian democracy to put the Party & the state in constant vigilance of the class & the masses, along with such slogans as "put politics in command", "boldly arouse the masses" etc. This paved the way to motivate the revolutionary cadres & the masses to rebel against opportunism & reaction & to generate millions of revolutionary successors. Though, in spite of all this, there was counter- revolution even in China after Com. Mao's death, the concept of this continuous revolution, put into practice only for a short period, firmly establishes the scientific truth that there would be revolution after counter-revolution & socialism would transit towards communism only through a series of revolutions & counter-revolutions, and in that sense, it has an epoch making significance. Hence. when we talk of advancing further from the GPCR as the starting-point & of creative application & development of MLM today, we should principally understand it as conducting a continuous two-line struggle within the Party & class struggle outside {the Party), with proletarian ideology & politics in command, and as making mass line its primary basis or medium.
In this context it is worth recollecting that, particularly in the initial stage or immediately after the revolt against & breaking away from Khruschovite revisionism in the Sixties & the Seventies, the Maoist revolutionaries almost all over the world had the
tendency of upholding from the GPCR only the aspect of "struggle" and "rebellion" against opportunism and reaction and of not being able to grasp its inseparable, and from the practical point of view more important, aspect of "mass line". Because of this there were serious weaknesses among them of getting splitted into innumerable minuscule groups and of getting afflicted with sectarianism & dogmatism, and thus, though they were quite advanced in the realm of "theory", they had become almost nonentities organisationally & as a force. This affliction is still found among some of the "Maoist" Parties in the world today. However, in the later stage, there developed a thinking & practice of unifying both the (component parts of) "rebellion" & "mass line" and the Maoist movement could once again grow into a leading revolutionary force in the world. Our Party -the CPN (Maoist), the 'Nepalese People's War & the "Guiding Thought of the Party" are the latest link in the chain of this positive development.Viewed from the objective aspect of the international situation, the new upsurge in the revolutionary communist movement now after the world-wide wave of counter- revolution, should also be seen as the objective result of the new wave of crisis faced by world imperialism starting with the mid-Seventies and its reaching the worst point since World War II in the Nineties. Since the oppressed countries of the Third World in the periphery of world imperialism, like Nepal, have become the storm centres of revolution, it has enabled the Maoist People's War in Nepal to advance in leaps & bounds and in that process facilitated the distillation of the "Guiding Thought of the Party" through the application of MLM. We should not overlook this international objective condition of development, too, because great revolutions & great thoughts in the world are generated & fostered during the times of world-wide objective crises.
No political party can possibly lead a great revolutionary movement to victory unless it possesses revolutionary theory and a knowledge of history and has a profound grasp of the practical movement.Mao Tse- Tung {"The Role of the Chinese Communist Party in the National War)
We are Marxists, and Marxism teaches that in our approach to a problem we should start from objective facts, not from abstract definitions, and that we should derive our guiding principles, policies and measures from an analysis of these facts.
Mao Tse- Tung {"Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art")
Naturally every party leadership wants to see successes, and this is quite a good thing. But there are circumstances in which one must've the courage to sacrifice momentary success for more important things. Especially for a party like ours, whose ultimate success is so absolutely certain, and which has developed so enormously in our own lifetime and before our own eyes, momentary success is by no means always & absolutely necessary.
Frederick Engels {"Letter to A. Bebel, June 20, 18737
We must have faith in the masses and we must have faith in the Party. These are two cardinal principles. If we doubt these principles, we shall accomplish nothing.
Mao Tse- Tung {"On the Question of Agricultural Co-operation)
* This is an extract from Com. Bhattarai's article "On the Guiding Thought of the Party" (in Nepali), published in Dishabodh Monthly (Nepali) No. 7, August 2000.
The Worker (No-6) # October 2000 [Scanned and formatted by INSOF]