Long Live Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought or Maoism!

Harsh Thakor 1. Introduction

We have to remember the immortal contributions of Comrades like Marx,Lenin,Stalin and Mao Tse Tung. The achievements of U.S.S.R from 1917-1956 and China from 1949-1976 are unprecedented in the history of mankind. Socialist U.S.S.R was responsible for the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War 2.Under Stalin it made strides in the field of health, education ,industrial production and employment which no capitalist country could even compare with. Similarly particularly during the Cultural Revolution under Mao China had created the revolutionary democratic Society ever created in mankind which incorporated a revolution within a Socialist Society itself. Mao Tse Tung made a historic contribution to the development of Marxism-Leninism in the spheres of philosophy, practice and Theory. It was Mao who developed the first military line of the proletariat in semi-colonial third world countries through his work on protracted peoples War..Com Mao created the most democratic society in the history of mankind in the Chinese revolution from the Socialist to the stage of the Cultural Revolution. Mao was the first Marxist to recognize the need for continuing class struggle under the dictatorship of the Proletariat. He thus founded the theory of continuous revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat. We may call it Mao Zedong Thought or Maoism. In the Great proletarian Cultural Revolution the C.C.P made epoch path breaking innovations and experiments never witnessed before in mankind. The formation of revolutionary Commitees created an entirely new revolutionary form of power and the proletariat enjoyed democracy as never before in history. Ranks were abolished in the army. The most innovative forms experiments ever witnessed in mankind were made in the fields of industrial production,agriculture,education and medicine. A deviationist trend within the Marxist-Leninist Movement are the distortions of the polemics of Comrades Marx,.Lenin,Stalin and Mao Tse Tung . Bov Avakian has morally sold the roots ideology of Marx, Lenin and Mao in his new Synthesis which goes to the extent of questioning the very basic concepts of Marx and Engels. He totally rejects the basic standpoints of the Cultural Revolution in China or the Russian Revolution It is ridiculous to evaluate that Bob Avakian has taken Marxism-Leninism to a higher stage than Mao Tse Tung Thought or Maoism. Mao Tse Tung Thought or Maoism as a higher stage was only established after Mao launched the Cultural Revolution where he implemented his theory of continuous revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Kasama trend almost reduces Com Stalin to a non-Leninist and all Maos ideology as an anti-thesis of Stalinism and an ideology divorced from Leninism. The Kasama project is one of the greatest ever Marxist-Leninist projects to create a forum for debate or dissent which has been lacking in the history of the Communist Movement They have built one of the most progressive websites projecting debates in the I.C.M. and portraying the great achievements of the Cultural Revolution .However they deviate from strong theoretical foundations in concept of party-building. They morally reject the Leninist vanguard party concept .No doubt Mike Ely has produced some lucid original writings on the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and peoples war he has also condemned Stalin from an un-marxist point of view and fostered the ideas of new left ideologues like Alan Badiou.

Maoist third worldism is propogated by the Leading Light Communist Organisation (LLCO)that advocates that the entire first world working class is reactionary and only the third world proletariat is revolutionary. It also upholds Lin Biaos line as the revolutionary line in the G.P.C.R as against that of Com.Mao Tse Tung. The 4th trend that is ultra erroneous is that which calls the Maoist CCP from 1966-76 as Lin Biaoist in the name of opposing concept of protracted Peoples wars and rejects the 1963 C.P.C line.. Represented by K.N.Ramchandran of the C.P.I.(M.L.).The same trend condemns Stalins view and line of Socialism in one country and also his view on nationality question. This is a neo-Trotskyite position which blames Stalins line for concentrating on U.S.S.R as a base for Social Revolution. The fifth deviationist trend is that of the New Left propogated by Loius Althusser,Alan Badiou ,Charles Bettleheim etc.Infact Joseph Ball beautifully states that there writing s could be kept aside for a summer vacation . The 6th trend is that which upholds Lenin and Stalin as Marxists but fail to recognize Mao as a genuine Marxist Lenist.Forces like Revolutionary Democracy are the principal advocates of this trend which uphold Enver Hoxha.

2. DISSENT WITHIN SOCIALIST SOCIETY-NEW SYNTHESIS

Bob Avakian makes an important contribution in his analysis that dissent is required within a Socialist Society. This was valid as in USSR and even in China in the period of the Cultural Revolution, sufficient scope of debate or dissent was not promoted. This was particularly true when you analyze the attacks on musicians, artists and poets in the G.P.C.R period and the repressions and suppression of dissent in the Stalin era.Infact we needed a forum where even the ideas of Marx,Lenin,Stalin or Mao could be criticized without threatening the Socialist State. Comrade Mao attempted to rectify all this in the GPCR but again there was unjust persecution of artists ,writers or intellectuals and the creation of a personality cult. We have a classical cases when Rosa Luxemburg demanded the right for Opposition to exist in the U.S.S.R in the 1920s and the launching of the hundred flowers bloom in China . We must remember the huge range of ideas that persisted within the Russian Socialist Movement and that in 1957 Mao initiated the hundred Flowers campaign ,inviting criticism of the rightist forces, which led to tremendous dissent. We may not agree with the works of views of Boris Pasternak,Alexander Solzhenityn,Roy Mededev in Russia,Milovan Djilas, but I dont think it was progressive to ban them.I particulary oppose the banning of novelDr.Zhivago in 1958.Einstein and Freud too had some reactionary political views but yet made immortal contributions.It is significant that Stalinist Russia banned the works of Freud and Einstein. During the G.P.C.R no space was given for criticism of Maoist ideology and bourgeois intellectuals were harshly attacked. The author finds the the analysis of Raymond Lotta below as one of one of the most significant and progressive notes as we need to assimilate all types of scientific ,artistic and philosophical ideas to initiate a critical approach. Here it must be said that there has been a problem in previous socialist societies. There has been a tendency to see intellectual activity that is not directly serving or linked to the agenda of the socialist state at any given time as not that importantor as disruptive of that agenda.Now in bringing forward this understanding and pointing to these weaknesses, Avakian has been retracing the experience of proletarian revolution in the intellectual and scientific realms. In his re-envisioning of socialism, Bob Avakian has been emphasizing the role of dissent in socialist society. Avakian has said that dissent must not only be allowed but actively fostered, and this includes opposition to the government.

Avakian has written that it would be a good thing to allow even reactionaries to publish some books and speak out in socialist society. This would contribute to the process through which the masses of people would come to know the world more fully and be able to sort out more thoroughly what does and does not correspond to reality, and what does and does not correspond to their fundamental interests in abolishing exploitation, oppression, and social inequalities. This is an important way in which the masses will be better able to take part in running society and transforming that society and the world as a whole toward the goal of communism. However Avakians concept lacked structure and ideologically veered towards revisionism, rejecting peoples wars worldwide and the obliterating the ideology of Leninism or Maoism from its constitution claiming that everything cannot be evaluated only from a class or proletarian point of view. He virtually negated deploying class struggle through this standpoint. Avakian has usurped the theories of Marx and Lenin on the relationship of theory with practice and drifts into idealism. Let alone Mao or Lenin,Avakian is critical of even Marx and Engels basic philosophy. Infact there was no Leninism without fundamentals of Marxism. Infact negating the ideology of Marx and Engesl attacks the very root s of Leninism which developed into Maoism. It is like promoting theory of evolution relegating Darwin or theory of relativity rejecting Einstein. It lacks class-analytical, proletarian perspective negating revolutionary democratic perspective of previous Socialist Societies particularly that in the G.P.C.R. It advocates combining the ideas of John Stuart Mill!I also feels he is harshly critical of comrades like Chiang Ching in the arts and drama arena in the G.P.C.R.,literally looking down on outstanding revolutionary innovation. Below I am posting an excerpt of the New synthesis of R.C.P.U.S.A Lets take the question of having an official ideology, which has been a feature of previous socialist societies. Now, as I said, the Party does have to lead in socialist society, and the Party itself has to be unified around communist ideology, which enables it to lead people to correctly understand and transform reality. The Party, however, is a voluntary association. But what happens if everyone in society, in the Party or not, has to profess agreement with this ideology in order to be heard, or even to just get along? Well, the fact is that most people are not going to really take this up as their outlook in the direct aftermath of revolution, fresh out of capitalist society. Bob Avakian has used the metaphor of a parachute to describe how things become compressed at the time of the revolution, how society splits into two polesone fairly tightly adhering to the revolutionary camp, and the other defending reaction. But after the revolution that compressed character of the peoples pole opens back out, like a parachute. As Avakian wrote in The Basis, the Goals, and the Methods of the Communist Revolution, after the revolution has come to power: ... There has to be a leading ideologyand the difference in socialist society is that well openly express it, rather than mask it the way the capitalists dobut the people who arent sure they agree with it should feel free to say so and the people who dont agree should definitely say so and it should get debated out. A similar principle has to be applied to politics. On one level, the Party has to take initiative and mobilize people, and unleash them around key objectives. It has to set the terms of debate. And yes, this can be and has to be a lively and inspiring and mind-opening processand it has been in the past, not only in China but at least for the first decade and a half or so in the Soviet Union.

The solid core will set the terms and the framework. But within that, its going to unleash and allow the maximum possible elasticity at any given time while still maintaining powerand maintaining it as a power that is going to communism, advancing toward the achievement of the 4 alls, and together with the whole world struggle. Now theres going to be constraints on the solid core at any time in doing that, including what kinds of threats youre facing from imperialism. Sometimes youll be able to open up pretty wide, and sometimes you may have to pull in the reins; but strategically, overall, youre mainly going to be trying to encourage and work with the elasticity, trying to learn from it and trying to figure out how you lead things so that it all becomes a motive force that is actually contributingeven if not so directly or immediately, in the short run but overall contributing to where you want to go. And its going to be challenging and complex and full of risk figuring this out. Thats why Avakian talks so much about going to the brink of being drawn and quarteredand SEEKING to do that! The role of dissent is INTEGRAL to this model of socialism, even as there are ways at any given time that it would radically complicate the whole thing. Again, unless you are ready to go to the brink of being drawn and quartered and drawn and quartered refers to a torture where they pull your limbs in four different directions!your solid core will end up very brittle...and the elasticity wont be very...well, elastic. And just to be very clear: this is a strategic concept which is not the same asand should not simply be identified with, or reduced tobeing pulled in a lot of different directions by a lot of different challenges, or having a lot of different tasks to do. This conception of "going to the brink of being drawn and quartered" is speaking to something much different, something more complex, more profound and strategically important than that. In addition to dissent of this kind, Avakian has also brought forward for discussion as part of this model the ideas of: contested elections where key issues facing the state are vigorously debated out with real stakes; a constitution (including the constraints that it puts on the Party); an expanded view of individual rights; the existence of civil society, with associations that are independent of the government; and a whole new way of tackling the contradiction between mental and manual labor, including a different view on the role of intellectualsall of which I can only mention here, but would be eager to go into during the question period. One last question on this point: who IS the solid core? The solid core is not identical to the Party and its not identical to the proletariat, in some kind of monolithic way. At any given time the solid core represents a minorityin the first phases of socialist society, its those firmly committed to the whole objective of getting to communism; and then youve got various gradations of people, from different classes and strata, grouping themselves in relation to that. The solid core has to have roots in the proletariat, and the leadership has to constantly bring forward and unleash new people from among those who are on the short end of the contradictions left over from capitalismfor example, people who were not trained in mental labor in the old society, or women from various strata (as well as men) who want to push forward womens emancipation. But the proletariat itself is not a static thingit contains a lot of diversity and undergoes very dynamic change both from its participation in all spheres of society and from the whole process of living with and transformingand learning fromthe middle strata. You have different classes and you have various levels of commitment to the communist project, and youre trying to work with that contradictionbut not from the top down. This is about unleashing a process and then getting into the process with the masses. This is very different from previous conceptions, which rested on a sort of reified view of the proletariata view which confuses the world-historic role of the proletariat as the

class embodying the new relations of production with the individual people who happen to be in that class at any given time. As I touched on earlier in the discussion of class truth, this reification of the proletariat was reflected in a lot of emphasis on the class origins of people in evaluating their opinions and putting them into positions of leadership or responsibility, and held that if workers and peasants were in such positions, you were somehow guaranteeing against revisionism. This was very pronounced with Stalin, but also found expression with Mao and the Chinese Revolution in different ways. The author upholds the basic correctness of this outstanding class-polemical essay written by Ajith(C.P.I.M.L-Naxalbari) from 2013 issue of journal Naxalbari which brilliantly refutes the above ideological view of Avakian and his New Synthesis..However I still feel that inspite of endeavours like rectification campaign in 1957 and Great Democracy movement in the G.P.C.R the spirit of dissent and debate was not sufficiently fostered and intellectuals and artists were harshly persecuted with left sectarianism being predominant. Learning from the experiences of the Soviet Union and rupturing from wrong thinking Mao developed the theory of continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat. He pointed out how bourgeois right provides the soil for the emergence of new capitalist elements. Putting politics in command and taking class struggle as the key link the communists had to mobilise the masses in struggle to revolutionise production relations and the superstructure and thus restrict and gradually eliminate bourgeois right. This was the general approach put forward for the advance towards communism. In close relation to this Mao also dealt with the problems of socialist democracy. A number of articles in the 5thvolume of Maos Selected Works demonstrate his approach on the problems of the dictatorship of the proletariat and socialist democracy.152 One of the most important mistakes made in the Soviet Union was an approach that tried to keep everything under administrative control and gave no room for dissent. In contrast to this Mao was advancing a radically new approach. He insisted on protecting the dictatorship of the proletariat and the leading, institutionalised, role of the party. But he also insisted on great democracy. Mao wrote, Two alternative methods of leading our country, or in other words two alternative policies, can be adopted -- to "open wide" or to "restrict". To "open wide" means to let all people express their opinions freely, so that they dare to speak, dare to criticise and dare to debate; it means not being afraid of wrong views or anything poisonous; it means to encourage argument and criticism among people holding different views, allowing freedom both for criticism and for counter-criticism; it means not coercing people with wrong views into submission but convincing them by reasoning. To "restrict" means to forbid people to air differing opinions and express wrong ideas, and to "finish them off with a single blow" if they do so. That is the way to aggravate rather than to resolve contradictions. To "open wide", or to "restrict"? We must choose one or the other of these two policies. We choose the former, because it is the policy which will help to consolidate our country and develop our culture.153 Great democracy, the right to dissent, was not restricted to the people alone. Those from the bourgeoisie too were allowed this, so long as they didnt indulge in counterrevolutionary acts. During the Rectification Campaign of 1957, their articles attacking the Communist partys leading role and socialism were published without censorship. Where correct, their criticisms were accepted. Even when they were exposed of instigating antisocialist activities and branded as bourgeois Rightists they were not arrested or deprived of their rights, except in exceptional cases. The Left was encouraged to ...freely air views and hold debates not only with the middle

but also openly with the Rightists and, in the villages, with the landlords and rich peasants.Great democracy was conceived as an important means of mass supervision over the state and the party. As Mao explained, Great democracy can be directed against bureaucrats too ... Now there are people who seem to think that, as state power has been won, they can sleep soundly without any worry and play the tyrant at will. The masses will oppose such persons, throw stones at them and strike at them with their hoes, which will, I think, serve them right and will please me immensely. Moreover, sometimes to fight is the only way to solve a problem. The Communist Party needs to learn a lesson. Whenever students and workers take to the streets, you comrades should regard it as a good thing. The workers should be allowed to go on strike and the masses to hold demonstrations. Processions and demonstrations are provided for in our Constitution. In the future when the Constitution is revised, I suggest that the freedom to strike be added, so that the workers shall be allowed to go on strike. This will help resolve the contradictions between the state and the factory director on the one hand and the masses of workers on the other. After all they are nothing but contradictions. Taking lessons from the Rectification Campaign, Mao observed, In the course of this year the masses have created a form of making revolution, a form of waging mass struggle , namely, speaking out freely, airing views fully, holding great debates and writing bigcharacter posters. Our revolution has now found a form well suited to its content.157 This emphasised that opening wide was a strategic orientation of the proletarian state, not a temporary expedient to flush out Rightists. It took a leap during the Cultural Revolution. In view of this Maoist approach what is new in Bob Avakian, other than a partial exposition of Maoist methods? The RCPs letter states, Bob Avakian has recognised and emphasised the need for a greater role for dissent, a greater fostering of intellectual ferment, and more scope for initiative and creativity in the arts in socialist society. The claim is that Avakian is talking about room for dissent and ferment on a far greater scale, with different elements and dynamics to it. Well, he and his believers have certainly been talking about all sorts and forms of dissent in socialist societies. But in substance there is nothing there thats qualitatively advanced compared to Maos teachings and its practice in China, particularly during the Cultural Revolution. Lets take the question of having an official ideology, which has been a feature of previous socialist societies. Now, as I said, the Party does have to lead in socialist society, and the Party itself has to be unified around communist ideology, which enables it to lead people to correctly understand and transform reality. The Party, however, is a voluntary association. But what happens if everyone in society, in the Party or not, has to profess agreement with this ideology in order to be heard, or even to just get along? Well, the fact is that most people are not going to really take this up as their outlook in the direct aftermath of revolution, fresh out of capitalist society. Bob Avakian has used the metaphor of a parachute to describe how things become compressed at the time of the revolution, how society splits into two polesone fairly tightly adhering to the revolutionary camp, and the other defending reaction. But after the revolution that compressed character of the peoples pole opens back out, like a parachute. As Avakian wrote in The Basis, the Goals, and the Methods of the Communist Revolution, after the revolution has come to power: .. Quoting Com Ajith of C.P.I.(M.L.) Naxalbari from 2006 journal New Wave "Any state represents the political power of the ruling class; its means of imposing its class interests. Precisely for this reason, we cannot extend the criticism on monolithic concept of

party to the state. It is by its very nature monolithic. State power cannot be decentralised. In fact, this argument on decentralising power,picked up by Venu from Gandhi, was a sharp example of idealist views on the state. The state, by its nature, also necessitates some institution that guarantees the continuation of this class interest. The institution of monarchy in feudalism and permanent bureaucracy and army in capitalism are examples. But such institutions,standing above society as an alienated force,are not acceptable to the proletarian state since it has the task of giving back this alienated power to society. Yet, being a state, it cant avoid having an institution that guarantees (or strives to guarantee) the continuation of the proletariats class interest. The solution necessitated by circumstances,and later on theorised, has been the overall commanding position of the party within the state system in socialism; the institutionalised leading role of the party in the dictatorship ofthe proletariat. There is no point in wishing away this lesson of history. Recently, views have been advanced on incorporating the principle of allowing dissent, of allowing positions advocated from non-communist positions, in socialist society. They call for the active involvement and initiative of wide sections if they dont adhere to the communist ideology,or may even object to aspects of the partys line and policy. This is correct. But, for all the claims being made, there is really nothing new in this. Similar ideas on allowing opposing ideas to contend are already well contained in Mao work pioneering work On Handling Contradictions Among the Masses, where the philosophical and political basis is argued out. It laid the basis forhis famous call Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom,Let a Hundred Thoughts Contend. The limits in actually implementing these policies are also a part of the historical experiences of the dictatorship of the proletariat. They have to be addressed concretely. That is, not just at the level of approach and method but also in terms of the state system. Ideological struggle was not sufficient to drive back the Rightist offensive that opened up during the late 1950s in China while letting a hundred flowers bloom. They had to be backed up by exercising proletarian dictatorship. This was facilitated by the leading position of the party in the state system. Let us recollect Rosa Luxembourgs criticism against the Bolsheviks for suppressing dissent. She certainly had a point in drawing attention to the stifling of political life under conditions where opposition is suppressed. But, in the given conditions, sticking to this as a matter of principle would have led to the destruction ofthe new born proletarian state. Lenins position on exercising the dictatorship of the proletariat through the party was a shift from his earlier position that acceded to the possibility of the opposition coming to government by winning a majority in the Soviet. It was forced by the fierce struggle against the danger of counter-revolution. In a different context and in relation to the question of involving the masses in running the state, Mao too had to rule out the Commune. Yet, the elective principle of the Paris Commune in forming new organs of power had been one ofthe cardinal points of the 16 point Circular that guided the GPCR. This indicates a real contradiction a communist party in power will have face, the contradiction between its orientation and its concrete application in different circumstances.

It emerges from the contradiction between the unique task the proletarian state has of creating conditions for its own extinction and what it has in common with all states as an instrument of coercion. Both these aspects must be addressed. The commanding position of the communist party is indeed a decisive control over political power, in the sense that other parties are excluded from control over decisive instruments of the state. This is true even when power is exercised by drawing more and more of the masses into running the state and conditions for its final withering away are being promoted. The attendant dangers are also apparent. Apart from the new and old bourgeois elements that will make their way into the ruling communist party, the rotten baggage and bureaucratism inevitably engendered by any institutionalised role will also push away from the goal of advancing to communism. Both Lenin and Mao were aware of this and tried to develop structures and methods to tackle it. We must make further advance in this direction for two reasons. Proposals on allowing other political parties to compete with the communist party for government power do not square with the bitter lessons of history. Capitalist roaders, inevitably linked to imperialism, will get to power. Similarly, rotating sections of the party allows for checking bureaucratisation. But what about the line of those exercising power or those due for their turn? Should those with a badline also get their turn, as a matter of principle? And who gets to control the army? With regard to the socialist state system the crux of the matter is the institutionalised leading role of the communist party. As mentioned earlier, this was a product of circumstances. There is nothing in Marxism which says that this is the only solution.But, so long as those circumstances continue to exist, Marxism must insist on one thing- the new alternative must be capable of dealing with the compulsions that made such a role for the communist party in the socialist state system necessary. All the forms of proletarian rule known till now, the Commune,Soviets and Revolutionary Committees, were thrown up by the tumultuous advance of the revolutionary masses making history. This will be true of the future also. The defeats suffered by socialism have inspired Maoists to scale new heights. The new wave of revolution will certainly throw up newer and better forms of the dictatorship of the proletariat, more advanced than the Soviets and the Revolutionary Committees. It will create new forms better able to exercise the all-round dictatorship over the bourgeoisie by drawing in the masses into running the state and arming them to create a sea of armed masses. Learning from the experiences of the Soviet Union and rupturing from wrong thinking Mao developed the theory of continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat. He pointed out how bourgeois right provides the soil for the emergence of new capitalist elements. Putting politics in command and taking class struggle as the key link the communists had to mobilise the masses in struggle to revolutionise production relations and the superstructure and thus restrict and gradually eliminate bourgeois right. This was the general approach put forward for the advance towards communism. In close relation to this Mao also dealt with the problems of socialist democracy.

Quoting the R.C.P.(U.S.A.)It also needs to be pointed out that the "criterion of practice," as commonly understood by much of the Maoist movement (and as D'Mello promotes it in his article), is founded on a narrow and impoverished definition of "practice" as immediate and direct experience, with theory only an empirical generalization of such practice. Social practice does not just consist of the experience of one's own immediate struggle there is the importance of the experience, "practice," of the struggle internationally and historically. Here, too, it is worth remembering that the practice of the GPCR and the Soviet and Chinese revolutions more generally remains far and away the most important experience from which to examine previously existing understanding and to develop new theory. Quoting Ajith The tendency to envision or explain reality in a fashion suited to ones views or immediate political, organisational needs has been present in the ICM for long. It became particularly pronounced during the Comintern period and was compounded by Stalins metaphysical errors. Mao broke away from this. He insisted on Seeking truth from facts and declared No investigation, no right to speak. Through his philosophical works and practice, he reiterated the Marxist position on the independent existence of objective reality. All ideas are ultimately derived from it. And that is where they must be tested for their veracity. In the course of critiquing Avakianism we have repeatedly seen how its adherents bend words so that opposing views become amenable to their polemics. This is an acute manifestation of the tendency to explain reality in a fashion suited to ones views. However, without the slightest of scruples, Avakian asserts that he is digging out instrumentalism and that this is his unique contribution. Moreover, Mao too is accused of the sin of sanctifying instrumentalism. The proof is supposed to be seen in the May 16 circular issued during the Cultural Revolution. According to Avakian it asserted that ...there is such a thing as proletarian truth and bourgeois truth... Lets take a look at that circular. This is what it said, Just when we began the counter-offensive against the wild attacks of the bourgeoisie, the authors of the outline raised the slogan: 'everyone is equal before the truth'. This is a bourgeois slogan. Completely negating the class nature of truth, they use this slogan to protect the bourgeoisie and oppose the proletariat, oppose MarxismLeninism, and oppose Mao Tse-tung's thought. In the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, between the truth of Marxism and the fallacies of the bourgeoisie and all other exploiting classes, either the East wind prevails over the West wind or the West wind prevails over the East wind, and there is absolutely no such thing as equality. The accusation of the Avakianists is centred on the words class nature of truth.. Objective reality is equally the same for the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Therefore, attributing a class nature to it opens the path to instrumentalism. That is his argument. But is that all there is to it? The May 16 circular was opposing the capitalist roaders argument that everyone is equal before the truth. What exactly was being indicated by truth in that context? Reading down, one sees that this was not about objective reality. It was about ideologies, thinking. When the bourgeoisie in the party said that everyone is equal before the truth they were not debating the existence of objective reality irrespective of class. They were demanding that the proletarian state must allow equal space to bourgeois views. This is why the circular insisted that there cannot be equality in the struggle between the truth of Marxismand the fallacies of the bourgeoisie. The Next Front Nepal makes a criticism of a part of Ajiths analysis below upholding postmodernism.

Com Ajith Today, compared to even Maos time, we are enriched with a new awareness of the contradictory essence of Enlightenment and its scientific consciousness. Postmodernist 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 Next Front,Nepal: Ajith has admired the contribution of Frankfurt School with highly enthusiasm. We cant accept and appreciate the post-theories like post-modernism and post- Marxism. We disagree with the above mentioned views by Com. Ajith. Postmodernism has not made any significant contribution to understand Enlightenment as well as the Communist movement. . What for Com Ajith admires the Frankfurt School, the founder organ of neo-Marxism ? There are various trends within neoMarxism . Among them, Frankfurt School is more devious and dangerous. Their critical theory discards Marxism as deterministic view and they prefer Nietzsche and Freudian Psychology . Below I am posting an article from the workersdreadnought which makes a most analytical critique of Avakians new synthesis showing that in essence it s ideas are what other new left ideologues like Louis Althusser had already advocated. However I am critical that he attacks the polemics and practice of Comrades Lenin, Mao and Stalin by upholding multi-party system, literally de-linking Stalin from Mao by wrongly equating even Avakian with Stalin!It is an ideal example of intellectuals trying to merge New Left ideas with Marxism-Leninism which is an erroneous trend. .Neverthless WD is correct analytically that all the Socialist Societies needed greater democracy and upholds peoples wars worldwide unlike Bob Avakian.

Workersdreadnought:
Avakian argues for retaining and sustaining of a lively debate in which the communist party would spark a series of initiatives of key objectives and try to mobilise the masses around them, whilst still maintaining a leading ideology (which should be the same as or similar to the objective truth that Avakian continues to believe in). Avakian is modest enough to recognise that this was the case in the early years of the USSR, and in China. I must add a caveat here as I think we need to be more specific than Avakian is about China because we cannot say that this lively debate was allowed at all times during the life of Mao, and often became a poor parody of the kind of consciousness-raising project that is truly needed. Where Avakian thinks that he has made a real contribution is in regards to the relationship to spontaneity from below. He argues that spontaneity from below has largely been underemphasised or constricted in China and the USSR alike, where the process and goals of socialist transformation are clearly demarcated by the party and all deviations from it were considered dangerous and stifled. Indeed, Wolff argues that you actually need intellectual ferment to understand the world. Ferment, debate, experimentationintellectual airgives you a window into all of whats churning beneath societys surface at any given time, and the possible roads to resolution and advance opened up by that churn; it helps you see where you may be proceeding wrongly, or one-sidedly. Without this, the dialectic between the Party and the massesbetween leaders and ledwould tend to be too one-way; the critical and creative spirit would grow blunt, on both ends. First of all, I cannot, and neither can any of you (unless your perhaps a Hoxhaite), but agree with this and Avakian because this has been the lived experience of the communist movement in numerous times and places. Avakian of course is forced to admit, despite the fact that it seemingly contradicts his earlier claim that this has been underemphasized during the GPCR, that this actually did take place during the GPCR. second of all, I thinks

that there is a problem with this however, which demonstrates a tension within Avakians concept of the solid core with a lot of elasticity, the elasticity of objective truth. On one hand the solid core is supposed to posses, according to Avakians radical epistemology, objective truth, not relative truth, and a deep conviction in the goal of communism. But on the other hand the civil society and other non-party political elements may actually be able to demonstrate where the solid cores objective truth is wrong and teach the solid core something. This would mean to suggest that one actually does not posses absolute objective truth, and that the radical epistemology that Avakian has developed overlooks the necessary caveats that other Marxist theorists had to add to their own conceptions of objective truth. Indeed, this is why I think Maos idea of mass line which neither absolutises objective truth as Avakian does, nor relativises it as postmodernists do, but rather partializes truth in the way that Althussers notion of science operates, is more correct. In Avakians conception of the solid core with a lot of elasticity, the revolutionary masses would be asked to be asked to participate in revolutionary initiatives and debate, but always whilst knowing that thy are not part of the solid core. This I believe would actually result in the kind of constriction that Althusser warns us about. Also, one must ask the correlated question as to whether the relationship of solid core to the masses would not simply reproduce the same tensions that we have seen historically in which the cadres of the solid core can actually stop listening to the masses because they are not part of the solid core? This is then closely related to the fact that Avakian does not believe that a socialist society would have several political parties involved in this revolutionary process, and consistently describes the dictatorship of the proletariat as being based around the ideology of THE party or more narrowly, THE solid core. This of course means that Avakian is fundamentally unwilling to rupture with the experience of the USSR and China, and still advocates the single-party state. One could even go further and say that Avakian identifies a state in which a small cabal, the solid core, in effect runs the state. As Wolff says in regards to having an official state ideology, Now, as I said, the Party does have to lead in socialist society, and the Party itself has to be unified around communist ideology, which enables it to lead people to correctly understand and transform reality. Now I am not sure whether I actually agree with this reassertion of THE party. I think it is less and less likely in the current context that there will be a singular communist party that will actually lead the revolution on its own. Even in the case of the Bolsheviks this was not the case and the majority of people will actually belong to other organisations (Left SRs or Mensheviks or anarchists) or no organisations at all, and the revolution will be a temporary congealment of these various trends around one political goal. Indeed, this concept lies at the heart of the United Front, which whilst being ostensibly lead by the Communist Party, allows the Communist Party to organise with other important political elements that remain outside of the Communist Party due to ideological and political differences. Avakian deals partially with this problem, for example, in the realm of ideology, but stills assumes that there is THE communist party which is leading the entire process. This I think has to actually be placed into question, not only historically, but also in the current conjuncture in which there are a multiplicity of communist organisations which agree to the broad contours of revolutionary Marxism, but may be ideologically committed to Left Communism or Trotskyism or a multiplicity of other tendencies. I definitely do not think we can return to the period of the early Russian revolution in which other parties were banned or repressed, or hollowed out in the case of China, or simply slaughtered in the case of Vietnam. And we need to think more carefully than I can do here about strengthening this concept even further. The idea of multi-party socialism that the Nepalese comrades have put forward, for example, can be interpreted to assume the existence of a new democratic constitution which provides some legal limits to the ideology of other parties i.e. anti-

capitalism, anti-feudalism, anti-imperialism etc, but then allows for a number of parties to exist within this political realm that compete for the political loyalties of the masses. This tension regarding the singular nature of the party is present when Wolff argues that part of this model the ideas of: contested elections where key issues facing the state are vigorously debated out with real stakes; a constitution (including the constraints that it puts on the Party); an expanded view of individual rights; the existence of civil society, with associations that are independent of the government; and a whole new way of tackling the contradiction between mental and manual labor, including a different view on the role of intellectualsall of which I can only mention here, but would be eager to go into during the question period. First of all, the similarities between Avakians own conception and that of the Nepalese conception of multi-party socialism are striking. However, where the differences lies is that it becomes clear that when Avakian means contested elections, he does not mean multiparty contest elections, but rather a much more limited electoral franchise which is limited to issues which can be voted on. The question of elections for heads of state is actually left out, and I think is telling. The solid core itself remains unelected, and hypothetically is even unelected by the party as the party itself is not identical to the solid core. Second of all, I am not sure how this radically differs from the experience in the USSR in the early years of the revolution where trade unions were allowed to be independent of the party, or even the active distribution of non-Bolshevik newspapers produced by other political groups, or the contestation of elections for different local level bodies. What Avakian simply seems to be doing is reasserting this limited experience, with a whole series of caveats, and once again claiming that it is something that he has pioneered. Indeed, it becomes clear that Avakians new synthesis does not really offer a substantially new notion of democracy and dictatorship than what has experienced and theorised before before, rather all he does is absolutise the principles that Lenin and Mao advocated for but were unable to implement because of the on-the-ground realities like the misinterpretation of these principles by cadres etc. However, this absolutisation is simultaneously undercut by the capacity to suspend the elasticity principle in special cases. In effect Avakian has made the same gesture that many many others before him have made, including Stalin. The only difference remains that whereas Stalin was able to demonstrate his commitment to these principles, and their suspension, Avakian has yet to be tested. And indeed, Avakians idea of solid core has a troubling authoritarian potentiality in-built. Additionally, one cannot point to a proper summation of the historical experience of communism in the USSR and China (although I think Charles Bettelheim does much of the work regarding the USSR). Furthermore, unfortunately by claiming this as being an innovation of Avakians, the RCP,USA simply obscures the history of the communist even further for its own members and does not allow for a fuller appreciation of the historical experience of socialism around the world, and more dangerously in part assumes/adopts a bourgeois caricatured version of the past from which the RCP,USA has ruptured from. Finally this conception of the solid core with a lot of elasticity demonstrates a tension in Avakians radical epistemology as Avakians objective truth would be rendered simply a partial truth if he admits that criticisms and lessons from below may need the solid core to augment their idea of truth (hence rendering it not the objective truth) and/or result in the formation of a new solid core which may not overlap with the former solid core.

3. Stalin
Today inspite of his inconsistencies and errors we have to defend Com.Stalin tooth and nail. True he commited gross errors but we have to uphold his role in winning the world War and

saving the first Socialist State. Personally I feel Stalin made greater errors than what Mao evaluated but that no way should make the Communist camp slander Stalin as a revisionist from the mid-1930s.. The author supports the general approach of intellectuals like Joseph Ball and Grover Furr. And complements the defence of journal revolutionary Democracy of Stalin. True he made gross errors but critiques forget the situation he faced ,encircled by Imperialist countries and their agents.I.agree innocent party members were wrongly executed ,dissent suppressed with police paradigm and no democratic movement initiated from below But these were problems encountered in the 1st ever Socialist Society. Remember the conspiracy of the Bukharinists and Trotskyites to overthrow Stalinist U.S.S.R..Arguably we may have to more critical of the supression of dissent or wrong methods of dealing with opposition but we must do it in analytical method. Revolutionary sections are incorrect if they totally justify the great purges as the most democratic trials. Significantly no great revolutionary leader of a maoist movement be it Gonzalo.Sison or Charu Mazumdar rejected Maos 70/30 upholding of Stalin. On one extreme we have a trend that fails to recognize any of Stalins errors like Revolutionary Democracy and on the other we have those who treat him morally as a non Leninist. Charles Bettleheim is right when he states that Stalin pace sole emphasis on the productive forces but neglected the superstructure,upholding the Maoist analysis.Later however in his research Bettleheim veered towards revisionism. Mike Ely states :The reason the Soviet Union developed the way it did was not simply because they had an idea of a one-party state but also because the polarization from which they emerged was a particularly punishing one: they seized the cities for socialism, but had little root among the majority of the population (the peasants), and in the course of the civil war, the flower of the working class revolutionary generation died at the front. This created particularly severe choices and you found one part of the population arming itself to impose the socialist society on other (and rather large) parts.In some ways, Soviet society remained a society locked in civil war and the side of the revolutionaries found themselves deporting, jailing and silencing large numbers of people. That is not great conditions for the flowering (and preservation) of socialism. So in some ways, I think that the one-party state emerged from the particular conditions of that Russian revolution. conditions that also framed the decline of forward revolutionary energies, and produced conditions in which capitalism was restored (without visible resistance within the party or the population) This reflects the view of the trend of Kasama on Leninism itself, unable to defend the polemical aspects of the Bolshevik party and Lenins policies.The first Bolshevik state was created and defended because of Lenins ideology which developed the concept of the proletarian party and combated liberalism. There was explicitly a policy (high in Stalins government) of punishing ten to make sure one doesnt go free. There was a terrible rachetting up of harshness, so that the punishment for a casual remark could be denunciation, imprisonment and worse. (Should someone disappear into prison for saying I wish the Tsar was back? Mao, by contrast, said that people should be allowed to make such remarks without fear.) There was in the 1930s USSR a conscious policy of mopping up i.e. asusming that the time had come to remove everyone who had ever been suspect, or a problem, or had gotten some taint on their record (support for non-bolshevik parties in their past, involvement with an internal opposition, travels or relatives abroad, history of making trouble, and so on.)The heaviest means were directed in ways that dragged down large

numbers of people for no justifiable reason while terrorizing the rest.Who (among the people) would want to participate in Soviet politics after that? And those that did were trained to be the most servile yes-men and cautious careerists. Not only is that unjust, but it is deadly for the revolutionary process (for the existance of a revolutionary people to carry forward the revolution). I dont think the purges themselves are some kind of rosetta stone that tell us all we need to know. We are focusing on these purges of 1937-38, because they are a stark example of the previous communist approach to their own history not because those purges are themselves the single decisive event of this history. I think the study of the Soviet experience needs to study the whole arc It is not so simple that a period of red terror condemns the revolution (though it has to be sharply debated whether the purges were an example of red terror against reactoinaries). I think that the politics and directions of the 1930s should (overall) be sharply criticized (based on what we now know about socialism, about preventing the restoration of capitalism, and about the events in the Soviet Union). But it is not a matter of raw numbers of execution alone all of this has to be seen in context (of isolatin, of Nazi threat, of the weaknesses of the Soviet state, of the extreme urgency of preparing national defense, the large swaths of resentful and angry people, etc.) Soviet Revolutionary said This kind of essay is what is wrong with Communists today. It is pure through and through Trotskyite opportunism, masquerading as anti-revisionism but in reality attacking the legacy of the USSR.It seems Ely does not understand what Lenin taught us: the resistance of the bourgeoisie will increase tenfold with their overthrow. Kasama just wants to hug cuddle and lecture the counterrevolutionaries that must be smashed.Why does Kasama attack Comrade Stalin like this? What do they gain from it? They claim to be about defending Communism from the ultra-leftist RCP, and you claim to uphold the legacy of the USSR, yet you only concentrate on the negatives of the Soviet Union. If this is how you feel about Stalin, then why do you even bother CLAIMING to uphold the USSR from 1924 to 1953? You obviously see Comrade Stalin and the Bolsheviks as a new oppressor who should have been carefully kept far far away from revolutionary preparations and future state power.Communism is under attack in all institutions of education. we have the DUTY to defend the Soviet legacy of Comrades Lenin & Stalin. How can we defend our legacy if we are just providing more ammunition for the capitalists to attack us with our own words? This essay helps only capitalists. Mike Ely: The repressions of the late thirties were no small matter. There were executions in the hundreds of thousands, and most of them were on false charges. IN quite a number of cases, people were arrested and killed for (a) having made anti-government statements, (b) having been at one time or another in an oppositional movement, (c) having been denounced by someone for being an oppositionalist. I think we need to decide (once and for all): Do we think that mass arrests and executions on flimsy evidence is defensible for socialists or not? Do we think that people deserve prison and execution for merely having oppositional views (oppositional views inside the communist party, or oppositional views outside the party.)

1. Joseph Ball; 2. Theres a lot I could say here, like asking if a memo from an MVD Colonel to Khruschev, allegedly in 1954, is enough to prove that Stalin was responsible for 681,692 deaths, when it is accepted that Khruschev tried to gather as much archival evidence as possible to make Stalin look bad as part of his power struggles. Quoting Scott Harrison of massline The glorification of the authority of Stalin went to wildly extravagant extremes, and collective leadership eventually became a totally empty phrase, especially at the top level. As has often been remarked, the Party became synonymous with the Central Committee, the Central Committee became synonymous with the Politburo, and the Politburo became synonymous with Stalin. Whatever Stalin said was law, and even beyond mere law, practically the word of God. Nothing that Stalin said or did could be criticized, or even questioned, whether within or outside of the Party. Such an approach to leadership is not scientific, and it is not Marxist. On the one hand, socialismconsidered as a socio-economic systemadvanced considerably and was consolidated in the Soviet Union while he was in charge, and the overt enemies of socialism were warded off internally and externally. These were no small accomplishments. But on the other hand, it is clear that as the years went by he more and more failed to rely on the masses and to lead the masses in the revolutionary transformation of society; he often confused broad sections of the masses with the enemy, and was responsible for the murder of massive numbers of innocent people including large numbers of honest workers and revolutionaries; and while socialism advanced for a while under his leadership, the transformation of social relations was then halted, and the development of socialism came more and more to be seen as mere increase in production (what we might call "socialist Economism"). Stalin thus committed many crimes against the people and the revolution. This is another erroneous evaluation like the later wrings of Bettleheim which blames Stalin for crimes and reduces him to a non Leninist.It links Stalinism to Kruschevite revisionism just like the Kasama group. 4. Refuting multi-party sytem

The sweeping victories of the Socialist Revolution,The Great Leap Forward, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China were unprecedented in history and can be attribute to Comrade Maos persistence with upholding the Leninist Principles of the party as the vanguard as opposed to multi-party sytem or independence of mass organization sfrom the party.. True there were opposing factions of revisionist nature like Lin Biao ,Liu Shao Chi Etc ,but the struggle against them through mass campaigns was led by Leninist the proletarian party. It was the revolutionary trend within the proletarian party that fought the Lin Biaost forces politically and the rise of Lin Biao or Liu Shao Chi cannot be attributed to the lack of a multiparty System. Below I am posting a debate on kasama blog between Mike Ely and Joseph Ball. Mike Ely:First, let me say, as an introduction that I dont believe that multiparty competitive elections are a form that all future socialist society need universally adopt. I think that it is not possible to assert or assume any single form of state organization. Capitalist politics have many forms constitutional monarchy, electoral democracy, fascism etc. And I assume that socialism will have a great many diverse forms over its

historical transition and it already has had quite diverse forms already starting with the Paris Commune, the Russian Soviets, the stages of Stalin-era state, and the many Chinese forms from Chingkang mountains to the Cultural Revolution. But I am interested to see an experiment in such an electoral form in some future revolution including the one that the Nepali Maoists want to initiate. Competitive electoral democracy may not be possible or appropriate in some countries or in some revolutions or in some moments there may not be other parties able to participate in such a process. But I would not rule it out, either. Besides competitive electoral democracy, there may be other radical forms of socialist democracy we should consider (or invent together with the people): commune forms, cultural revolution style formations, and perhaps even yet-unimagined forms made possible by modern communications. I think there may also be future cases where a party-state remains the only option possible though even there our experience shows we would need to incorporate radical new proposals for popular input and supervision. (An example from history: In 1918, Lenin tried to have a coalition government with the Left Social-Revolutionaries, but that coalition broke down over signing a peace treaty with Germany. Then a Left SR shot Lenin. The assassin declared that Lenin was restoring capitalism and caving in to imperialism. In other words, you can try to have a broader approach, but sometimes you dont find viable partners in the actual political moment. Does Joseph Ball want to argue that this Russian attempt was wrong in principle, because the Left SRs were inherently a bourgeois party rather than a quite radical peasant-andmiddle-class party? Was Lenin violating the dictatorship of the proletariat by bringing them into the government? Was Mao wrong in bringing a wing of the left GMD into his 1949 government? Hasnt previous communist theory held that a worker peasant alliance in early USSR, or even a broader governmental united front in China can be a form of the dictatorship of the proletariat?) Joseph Ball:

1. Its sometimes claimed that the multi-party elections in this system will take place under the dictatorship of the proletariat. But this makes no sense at all. If its a dictatorship of the proletariat how can you allow bourgeois parties to compete for power with the party of the proletariat? It is absurd to believe that elections could routinely take place between two parties both with a proletarian line. The proletariat has a common interest. Its vanguard should be encouraging unity not institutionalising a split so we can blindly copy bourgeois democracy. Multi-party democracy has a material basis in capitalism because different factions of the bourgeoisie have different selfish interests. Not so the proletariat. The proletariats essential interests can only be realised by the liberation of all humanity. Essentially, it has no selfish interests (though of course proletarians may act selfishly due to false consciousness or embourgeoisement). Where the proletariat does split, it is between socialist roaders and capitalist roaders. Some Maoists talk as if this split should be institutionalised by encouraging different parties and factions. This is ridiculous! A split between capitalist roaders and socialist roaders is by its nature class warfare. It is not some friendly expression of opinion. How can those taking the socialist road set up institutions that give their enemies a potential power base? Does the bourgeoisie do such a thing? No, they only tolerate phony communists. Real communists (and even many militant reformists) are rapidly suppressed in the bourgeois system. The proletariat can get rid of bad party leaderships by exercising power in the organs of revolutionary power and

through inner-party struggle, if they are members of the Communist Party. They can achieve this only if they actually express power by becoming the administrators of the state and all society. This will make them a thousand times freer than Bhattarais halfbaked reformist schemes for multi-party competition. 2. Joseph The proletariat has a common interest.

Ball:

Therefore, (by deduction) it can only have one party. And further, it would be wrong to split into two parties. The bourgeoisie (which has rivalries and competing interests inherently) can have multiple parties, but we can have only one. Further (by logical deduction from that initial assertion), a plan for a multiparty election under socialism must be a plan for allowing the supposedly overthrown bourgeoisie itself to repeatedly contest for power. Then comes the second assertion: Allowing the bourgeoisie to organize and contest for power is inherently opposed to a dictatorship of the proletariat. Finally, if you scan that list of assertions and deductions, you get presented with a conclusion that the plan for multiparty elections violates the principle of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

5.Conclusion
It is one of the most erroneous lines in the International Communist Movement to blame Com.Mao Tse Tung for errors. Remember the G.P.C.R. was the first revolution of its kind.The Leading Light Communist organization upholds Lin Biao and is critical of Mao from 1969 claiming he capitulated to revisionism. Mao fought for the Socialist line till his death. The chief deviation in the reign of Lin Biao as a military commander was the excessive power in the hands of the Peoples Liberation army and their deployment against civilians. Earlier Lin had made an important contribution in the Socialist education Movement and the building of the P.L.A.Maoist revolutionaries have to condemn Lin Biaos wrong political methods and conspiracy and remember the important mass revolutionary movement led by the Gang of 4 Criticizing Lin Biao and Confucius .The very rise of figures like Lin Biao and Liu Shao Chi have to be studied .Just because Lin had such a leading position cannot credit him with the succeses of the G.P.C.R. Liu Shao Chi was head of the state from 1956 but his line was for over a decade opposed to that of Maos.Later Lin virtually opposed the revolutionary Committees and the cultural Revolution Movements. It must also be mentioned that some of the greatest mass movements of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution took place after 1970 like the Tachai Commune in 1975.The Gang of 4 of ,especially Chiang Ching made some of the most extraordinary proletarian innovations in art, culture and politics. The author feels that the Gang of 4 displayed strong left sectarian tendencies towards the end and were unable to carry out the mass line inspite of making great efforts.William Hinton reported the left sectarian sloganeering of the Gang which even Mao was critical of .The cult was not only the cause of Lin Biao but because of the nature of the struggle and problems inherent in the nature of the struggle. Remember it was the first revolution of its kind. There were achievements in revolutionary democracy unprecedented in the history of mankind..He fought for the Socialist line till his death and whatever Lins earlier positive contribution supporting Lin Over Mao would virtually be endorsing capitulationism. The fact that Lin Biao was elected as a successor shows the weakness of the then C.C.P. in the mass line. The chief deviation in the reign of Lin Biao as a military commander was the excessive power in the hands of the Peoples Liberation army and their deployment against civilians. Earlier Lin had

made an important contribution in the Socialist education Movement and the building of the P.L.A.Maoist revolutionaries have to condemn Lin Biaos wrong political methods and conspiracy and remember the important mass revolutionary movement led by the Gang of 4 Criticizing Lin Biao and Confucius .The very rise of figures like Lin Biao and Liu Shao Chi have to be studied .Just because Lin had such a leading position cannot credit him with the succeses of the G.P.C.R. Liu Shao Chi was head of the state from 1956 but his line was for over a decade opposed to that of Maos.Later Lin virtually opposed the revolutionary Committees and the cultural Revolution Movements. It must also be mentioned that some of the greatest mass movements of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution took place after 1970 like the Tachai Commune in 1975.The Gang of 4 of ,especially Chiang Ching made some of the most extraordinary proletarian innovations in art, culture and politics. The author feels that the Gang of 4 displayed strong left sectarian tendencies towards the end and were unable to carry out the mass line inspite of making great efforts. The author is however grossly opposed to the concept of factions or multi-party system as advocated by Rosa Luxemburg, R.C.P.Canada, or Kasama. The most significant error in Mao's China was the glorification of the Personality cult.Rangakyakaam brilliantly elaborates on this in her writings. There were also excesses commited on artists and intellectuals.Scott Harrison in his site on masslinelinfo superbly analyses this aspect."There was also inability to maintain the correct relationship between the vanguard party and the mass organizations chiefly represented by the peoples communize or revolutionary committees. Greater revolutionary democracy had to be created within the mass organizations with greater independence from the vanguard communist party. Excessive power was awarded to the Peoples Liberation Army. The author overall feels insufficient revolutionary democracy was developed in Erstwhile Socialist U.S.S.R.and China, where insufficient democracy was created in the peoples organs of revolutionary power be it Soviets or Communes. I recommend readers to read the late Comrade Harbhajan Singh Sohis document written in 1982 on the 'General Line of the International Communist movement and Mao Thought' which is the best theoretical analysis in defence of Mao Tse Tung Thought written since 1978 No Comrade polemically defended Mao Tse Tung thought as analytically as Com.Harbhajan SinghSohi.He also recommends the writings of Coms. Gonzalo,Jose Marie Sison ,Ajith(C.P.I-M.L.Naxalbari) ,Joseph Ball and Scott Harrison.(massline blog)Gonzalo and Sison superby defend Stalins role and Maos teachings on peoples war and G.P.C.R.while Harrison analytically assesses s mass line and personality cult in Socialist Societies.I also recommend democracyandclasstruggle blog(Nick Glais) for readers..In my view Com Gonzalo was the greatest Marxist-Leninist Maoist after Mao Tse Tung.Under Gonzalos leadership the greatest peoples war since that of China was fought in Peru while Jose Sison was the percusor of the soundest practice of mass line since the Chinese Revolution by the Phillipines party. Below are excerpts from an article by Comrade Harbhajan Singh Sohis on Mao Tse Tungs 86th birthday published in proletarian path in March 1980.It brilliantly combats the wrong trends of the present day and It verifies that Mao Tse Tungs thought and practice was a continuation of Leninism and not a separate entity. Today powerful forces have sprung from within the international Communist Movement to derail or deviate it from its established general line and principles..In this great trial and strength between Marxism Leninsm and Opportunism, the battle around the estimation of Mao Tse Tung and Mao Tse Tung Thought is crucial. Feverish attempts are being made in categorical as well as veiled fashion by various opportunist quarters to denigrate the name and teaching s of Com.Mao Tse Tung.Confronted with this temporarily formidable

opposite, the revolutionary aspect of international communist movement is being impelled to develop nad supercede it through struggle. The gradually increasing number of genuine Marxist-Leninist parties and groups who boldly come forward against heavy odds,in defence of the glorious revolutionary practice of Mao Tse Tung and Mao Tse Tung Thought,is the manifestation of this phenomenan and a testimony to the inexhaustible vitality of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse Tung Thought. Mao Tse Tung integrated the universal truth of Marxism-Leninsm with the concrete practice of the Chinese revolution.In grasping and solving the complex fundamental problems of national democratic revolution of semi-colonial and semi-feudal China and of its transition to socialist Revolution. Carrying forward the teachings of Lenin and Stalin on the colonial revolution,he dissected the native bourgeoisie ,studied the chrasterictics of its segments, drew a clear cut demarcation between the big bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie treating the former as a target and the latter as aformer ally of the revolution in its first stage preceding the Socialist Stage;concretely solved the peasant question by providing proletarian leadership to the agrarian revolutionary movement and relying on the peasantry as a main force in the national democratic revolution:ensured the consummation of the national democratic revolution and the transition to the Socialist Revolution by charting out a course of maintaining the independence of the proletariat as a political force, forging the workerpeasant alliance under the leadership of the proletariat, establishing the hegemony of the proletariat over all the political forces engaged in the revolution, including the national bourgeoisies, thus making it new democratic Revolution,in its political character. Moa Tse Tung critically absorbed the first experience of the proletariat of building Socialism in USSR and the loss of proletarian state power there, and drew illuminating conclusions for steering the development of socialist revolution in ChinaIn the historical period of socialism there are still classes, class contradictions and class struggle, there is he struggle between the Socialist Road and the Capitalist RoadHence he brought forward the foremost position occupied by class contradictions in proplelling social development throughout the historical period covered by Socialist Society, and laid down the cardinal precept that for properly appreciating and tackling problem sof the development of Socialist Society proletarian revolutionaries must proceed by taking class struggle as the key link. He stressed the great significance of thoroughgoing changes in the relations of production and the superstructure for greatly boosting the development of productive forces during periods of revolutionary transition of society. He pointed out that Socialist Society being a long historical period of revolutionary transition, calls for unrelenting revolutionary effort to adapt the relation sof production to the constantly emerging requirements of the development of productive force s,and transform the superstructure to bring it in tune with the Socialist economic base, so as to consolidate and develop the latter. He further observed that as every socialist transformation in the relation sof production and the superstructure corrodes the socialist basis, influence and power of the old exploiting classes and new bourgeoius elements, it encounters frantic resistance. And, this class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie gets intenes expression on the political front.Hence the paramount importance for political revolution. Moa pointed out that after the smashing of the bourgeois political resistance,the chief representative s of the bourgeoisie are found to be hiding within the Communist party itself-the party persons in authority taking the Capitalist Road-against whom the sharp class struggle has to be directed. To achieve all-round socialist revolution in ideological, political and economic spheres and to defend and consolidate the dictatorship of the

proletariat, Mao exhorted the proletarian revolutionaries to rely on the revolutionary masses of the people and revolutionary mass movements bringing into full play their creative initiative and genius. The glorious decade of the Great Proletraian Cultural Revolution lead by the proletarian revolutionaries headed by Mao Tse Tung,witnessed the practice and maturing of this theory of continuing revolution under the condition sof dictatorship of the proletariat,marking a great leap forward in the revolutionary experience and achievements of international proletariat. We do not subscribe to the notion of infallibility of great revolutionary persons,no MARXIST DOES.Mao Tse Tung, like other great teachers of the International proletariat Marx,Engels,Lenin nad Stalin cannot be free of errors and inadequacies.But such errors and inadequacies ,if noticed,are to be analyzed ina total and historial perspective,on the basis of Marxism-Leninsm Mao Tse Tung Thought and to enrich it.Whoseover ventures to challenge the validity of Mao Tse Tung Thought, as an inalienable part of MarxismLeninism must come to grips with this ideological edifice as a whole, especially his contribution s to Marxist philosophy.