Response to "Thapa" on Wang Ming line revised May 5, 2006 There was a comment in a non-MIM discussion group called IRTR by someone calling himself "Thapal" about the nature of discussion regarding international parties upholding Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. "Thapal" or "Thapa" said no one should be sitting on their hands in the united $tates, regarding issues inside the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), because the u.$. imperialists do not sit on theirs.
We should not hesitate to answer any question given the international nature of finance capital and world market. US imperialists are answering plenty of questions in nepal for the ruling class factions. Working class protagonists should not draw artificial lines and sit with their hands tied and delegate responsibility to only the local communists. Particlularly, at a theoretical level, wide ranging discussion should be undertaken/encouraged.
[Actually this point by MIM on Thapa is a slight overstatement. Now the statement says that comrades should not avoid questions of theory or international exploitation. This we agree with because some aspects of theory will be universal.] Thapal's line confuses two issues in a way to benefit the international influence of the Wang Ming line. Expose the u.$. role in Nepal and even unearth things that even the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) does not know about the united $tates is what the ideal Maoist comrades inside imperialist country North America borders would do. We should certainly listen to any MIM mascot or ex- mascot before we listen to u.$. imperialists. When it comes to questions in Nepal, though, the proper reference point is how MIM compares with the CPN(Maoist) or even non-Maoist parties in Nepal, not how MIM compares with imperialists. In the West, we have believers in "Eastern spirituality" who need to believe that Nepal is a certain Shangri-la. We also have utopians who need to believe they know the conditions in Nepal from a few dogma lessons from an organization that stole our name. It's a lot easier and quicker to "act" when no investigation is necessary. Since MIM is not utopian or CIA, we're not pretending we've conducted an investigation into conditions in Nepal. Only enemies of the Maoist scientific approach would do so. U.$. politics in Nepal we at MIM should know, based on the overall trajectory of the u.$. imperialist system and whatever specific knowledge we've managed to gather. Who the hell should be leading inside the People's War in Nepal is something we can only say up to a limited point--when the comrades in Nepal cross the line and abandon Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. Russia was mostly peasant when it had its revolution, so when Wang Ming copied the Russian Revolution and brought it to China in the 1930s, he was doing far less damage than the idiot imperialist country people who talk like they were peasants in order to dumb down Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. There is a huge gap in conditions between the imperialist countries and Nepal. Only the most childish versions of Trotskyism would hold the Maoist equivalent of the belief in a mass line internationally applied by one nation's party. Nor does this mean we cannot criticize the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). If comrades in any distant land start spouting for Deng or Hua Guofeng, we show them the proverbial door. The reason for that is that the struggle against Deng is now a part of the universal (international) treasury of Marxism-Leninism- Maoism. Nothing for or against Prachanda Path is part of the universal treasure of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. There is nothing from Mao on what to say about Nepal in 2006 on the specific conditions--except that the comrades in Nepal themselves must study them. Now, it is true, that questions start to calibrate across-the-board the more we investigate them. We cannot be calling a journalist "proletarian" in the united $tates and "petty-bourgeois" in Nepal if the journalist in the united $tates is better off than the journalist in Nepal. That would be a typical Amerikkkan nationalist move covering for exploitation. This very practical test should tell any Third World Maoist leader right away that MIM must be correct, especially since there is no question of any semi-feudal remnants in the imperialist countries. Ask any Third World Maoist leader where the line between urban petty-bourgeoisie and proletariat in her country is, and we will find it is way lower than what imperialist country so-called Marxists are counting. As far as MIM knows, the CPN(Maoist) does calibrate these questions according to neighboring experiences. According to the bourgeois press, Nepal is 80% peasant involved in agriculture like China was when Mao came to power. It is the imperialist country parties that are out of whack on "Marxism-Leninism-Maoism," other than MIM and its allies. If anyone has any evidence otherwise, we'd like to hear it and we'd like to hear about the urban petty-bourgeoisie in Nepal and how the CPN(Maoist) describes it. The struggle against Wang Ming was not just a small historical occurrence. It in fact reached the level of philosophy for Mao. His major essay "On Contradiction" said of the Wang Ming idealists, "They search in an over-simplified way outside a thing for the causes of its development, and they deny the theory of materialist dialectics which holds that development arises from the contradictions inside a thing. Consequently they can explain neither the qualitative diversity of things, nor the phenomenon of one quality changing into another." Mao further said:
As opposed to the metaphysical world outlook, the world outlook of materialist dialectics holds that in order to understand the development of a thing we should study it internally and in its relations with other things; in other words, the development of things should be seen as their internal and necessary self- movement, while each thing in its movement is interrelated with and interacts on the things around it. The fundamental cause of the development of a thing is not external but internal; it lies in the contradictoriness within the thing.
So when we say that Mao wanted us to study internal conditions of countries, we are only saying what Mao already elevated to the question of dialectical materialism itself. MIM cannot say it has studied Nepal internally. So we cannot claim to be applying dialectical materialism to Nepal. It's unfortunate that the organization that stole our name mimics some organizing section of the 4th International. We urge the genuine communists of the world to renounce the past errors of Cominternism. Ironically, it is the united $tates and other imperialists that seem unchanging lately, and we can search for the causes of change in imperialism externally for that reason. In addition, because the imperialists gorge themselves on other countries, their attempt to make those countries internal to themselves does create an internal basis of change for the thing called u.$. imperialism. For example, in losing the Vietnam War, the U.$. imperialists had to ship the Vietnamese reactionaries and some ethnic minorities with them by helicopter out of Vietnam and eventually to the united $tates. This is a real world indication that at least part of Vietnam was indeed internal to u.$. imperialism by any definition. When the imperialists retreated they found it irresponsible and bad for their future relations with future allies to be found leaving their allies in the lurch. So this means in fact that part of Vietnam was already internal to u.$. imperialism and we can locate the sources of change in that attempt by imperialism to gorge itself with Vietnam. Likewise, today, U.$. troops are in Iraq, but those troops are very much a factor in change internally to u.$. imperialism. And if those troops are important to internal changes in imperialism, can the Iraqi troops that patrol with them as lackeys be considered not a factor in internal conditions of the united $tates? This is what taking colonies accomplishes. No matter how we regard imperialism and what we should count as internal to it, most of the world's countries fit a model more like Mao's China. Change does not come about by adopting the correct universal dogma, but by applying it in local conditions. That was the essence of Mao's fight with Wang Ming, part of Stalin's fight with Trotsky and Kim Il Sung's fight with flunkeyists from other countries. Improper attention to the study of social conditions leads to lazy reliance on political poetry as a substitute for science. Selecting Marxism-Leninism-Maoism to lead the communist revolution is important, but it is less than half the battle. Applying Marxism-Leninism-Maoism by knowing conditions and what really generates movement and change is the more difficult part.