Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Maoist Information Bullettin

Maoist Information bulletin [Published by International
Department , Central Committee,
Communist Party Of Nepal (Maoist)] extracts below.
Complete Information bulletin can be found at http://krishnasenonline.org/Bulletin/editorial.html


The Worker
Organ of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)
11th Issue Coming soon !
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EDITORIAL
After a gap of many months we are able to bring this issue in your hand; we must apologize to our readers for this delay. It was further more important for us to provide with the latest information regarding rapid political developments especially in Nepal, which we could not be done because of this delay.

After the outstanding development of People's War for ten years, new situation arrived at in Nepal for the joint mass movement in order to overthrow the 239 years old autocratic monarchy and establish `republic'. As a result of ten years of PW and unprecedented 19 days joint mass movement based on the achievement of the PW, a new political situation has been emerged in Nepal. The agenda of election of constituent assembly which was the agenda of only CPN(Maoist) before six years is now major political agenda of the nation. The heroic people of Nepal have already established republic in the street during the Mass Movement-II and it is the responsibility of the eight parties to institutionalize the same through the process of election of the constituent assembly, which it seems far from being achieved. Under a grand design of the foreign and domestic reactionaries, namely, the US imperialists, Hindu fundamentalists of India and monarchists, to sabotage the election of constituent assembly, it was not held in the stipulated time of `mid-June' and it has been rescheduled for November 22, 2007.

Some districts of Terai, plain land of southern part of Nepal adjoing to India, have now become the play ground for all the reactionary elements and use their stooges to fulfill their reactionary ambitions. The immediate aim of this design is to sabotage the process of election of constituent assembly and wipe out the influence of our party from Terai and its long term aim is to separate and split Terai or Madhesh from Nepal and incorporate in Bihar of India. Leadership of the seven parties who are engaged in the politics of appeasement and the interim government which is victim of inaction, there is every possibility that the reactionary conspiracy may succeed to disrupt the process of election of constituent assembly. Only a bold and daring decision of declaring `republic' from the legislature-parliament and go to the election, which only can ensure the election to be held in stipulated date. But pro-US, pro-king and pro-Indian Hindu fundamentalist elements within the leadership of `Seven parties' are causing obstacles in it. Thus we feel that another popular mass movement needs to be launched so that the government and the seven parties will be compelled to agree in declaring `republic' from the legislature which can pave the way for the election of constituent assembly and form a `New Nepal'

Our Party, the CPN(Maoist) thinks that it is going through a new experiment of continuing and developing the revolution through peaceful way in a situation created by the ten years of PW and the successful historic April mass movement. It is quite natural that revolutionaries and oppressed people of the world have their eyes on the political development of Nepal. Definitely Nepal is in the cross road. There are definitely big challenges and big opportunities. Necessity of the hour is to face the challenges and achieve the opportunities.

Revolution in Nepal is the part of the world revolution. Therefore it should serve the world revolution and also deserves support from world revolutionaries. While developing the PW during the last ten years it was felt that the international support was not enough that was required to achieve the nationwide victory of the revolution. It is necessary to fulfill this task during this time of peaceful development of the revolution. Every body can easily see how our party is working hard for the enhancement of our international relations. It will not be any exaggeration to say that we have made a significant achievement in this regard during the last six to ten months.

To enhance the international relation is not only necessary for the nationwide victory but it is essential for sustaining the new state as well. In the event of the US imperialist working day and night to isolate our party, further enhancement of international relation is inevitable both for the victory of the revolution and sustenance of the new state. Who is real friend of our country and the people of Nepal and who is not, can be determined by the role played by them in relation to the development of revolution and its sustenance.

NATIONAL
Madhes at Crossroads
- Sanjay Kumar
Monarchy in Nepal has repressed the Madeshi, a large indigenous population in the plains for ages. The deliberate process of isolating them psychologically and politically began with the myth of misquoted unification by Prthivi Narayan Shah. During Rana, Panchayat and Post 1990 regimes, the autocratic state tried to wash off her moral duties by giving a handful reactionary and feudal Madhesis representation in the state organs. The undemocratic steps of the state hurt the sentiments of the proletarian Madhesis. They got disillusioned and alienated further from the mainstream, thereby generating hatred and anger among the Madhesi people against the state and privileged class.

However, the Madhesis took their plight as destiny and sealed their lips against exploitation, humiliation and discrimination in any form. They could not express their grievances and exchange ideas due to their inability to communicate in the state imposed monolithic Nepali language. The linguistic barrier and incompetence crippled the Madhesi people and caused them to suffer from inferiority complex and helplessness. They looked up Khas speaking hill people as their superior and ruler. Being victimized by the state, they narrowed themselves down to the inferior and ruled. The author still recollects the exploitations and tortures inflicted upon the humble Muslim community in his village in the district of Morang during Panchayat regime. They were often falsely accused and unjustly persecuted for the robberies and crimes committed by the Indian criminals across the border.

A ten-year Glorious People's War led by Nepal Communist Party (Maoist) has shaken the very foundation of the monarchy by polarizing all the marginalized sections across the nation. Nepal has shifted from the homogenized singularity to the heterogenized plurality. The Madhesis have equally taken a leading role in the Maoist's insurgency. They have fully internalized Prachanda Path- blended with the trinity of Marxism, Leninism and Maoism-as the only way to liberate them. Fully armed with Prachanda Path, the present transformed and trained proletarian Madhesis are on the path of making an inclusive federal republic Nepal with right to autonomy and self- determination. Consequently, February Madhesi Movement emerged and forced the reactionary and bourgeoisie political parties like Nepali Congress and UML to move along the republican path.
The royalist, imperialist and other reactionary forces are actively involved with all their muscle and money powers to obstruct the republic-bound nation and hurl it back to the state of violence, chaos and lawlessness. They succeeded in aborting April Uprising to mere 19 days and barred it from turning into a decisive mass revolution by exploiting Congress's and UML' Hamletian dilemmas, pro-Indian and palace policy. In lie of safeguarding and learning lessons from the historic set back, both Congress and UML continue to indulge in derailing the republic track on the pretext of various lame excuses. The Indian extreme Hindu fundamentalists, American imperialists and reactionaries from both inside and outside are resorting to sabotage the upcoming Constituent Assembly poll. They have made Madhes a soft target. In their initiation, coverage and financial assistance, several secessionist and criminal groups are mushrooming in Madhes. They are desperately trying to jeopardize the racial harmony and brother hood existing between hill and Madhes peoples. They are under the false illusion that they will succeed in befooling and blackmailing the Madhesis as usual.
The Madhesis have clearly comprehended that the gory carnage of Gaur was the evil design of the reactionaries. Madhes and Madhises are an integral part of Nepal and no sectarian force can secede it. Class demarcation and feudalism have been deep rooted among Madhesis for ages. Social crimes like casteism, dowry and witchcraft have been imported to the holy land of Madhes from across the Indian Territory due to cultural tieings and open border. The Madhesis have to take a resolution to uproot such social crimes and combat a decisive war under the leadership of the proletarians on the path of Prachand doctrine for their emancipation in particular and all margins in general. The united fight of all proletarians will certainly defeat the bourgeois feudals for once and all If every Nepali takes to their heart the great Madhesi spiritual, "say with pride that we are Madhesis, the sons of the soil, not foreign immigrants", Nepal will truly reflect "Unity in Diversity" with her multi-ethnic, multi-linguistic and heterogeneous rhetoric identities.

INTERNATIONAL
Foreign relation of CPN(Maoist) on the rise
-- Com. Gaurav
It is big news in Nepal these days that Maoist Party is striving very hard to develop its foreign relations. They also make their assessments that it has achieved tremendous success in this regard. The visits made by some of the leaders of our Party to foreign countries and our bilateral talks with the official delegations of various countries including our immediate neighbor and a tested long time friend of our country, China is being cited as the examples. This short article relates to the same subject.

Yes it is true that we are striving very hard to develop and strengthen our foreign relation. During the period of People's War the regime had declared our party a terrorist organization and had approached most of the governments of the world. Based on their relation with the regime some of the governments had listed our party as terrorist organization and some though did not listed but treated us as terrorists. In such circumstances it was not possible for us to develop any king of relation and ties with us. When we negotiated with parliamentary parties to launch a joint mass movement against the autocratic monarchy with the aim of establishing democratic republic and made a series of negotiations including the interim legislature and interim government in which we have significant representation in both. A new political situation has emerged due to this new change in political scenario.

Therefore, our party's international relation was confined to the relation with the fraternal and friendly revolutionary parties and organizations of different parts of the world. Because of the change in the political situation that has given rise to a new possibility of developing revolution with peaceful form of struggle we are obliged to develop state to state relations with various governments which are friendly to our nation and the process that we have decided to adopt to resolve the political crisis and way out for forward development.

We have already brought out our views in open through different mediums. Now we have two aspects of our foreign relationship: fraternal and friendly relations with Maoist and other revolutionary communist parties and organizations and side by side relation with other political forces and the governments of various countries which are friendly to our country and the people of Nepal and supporting the ongoing political process. Therefore the success of out foreign relation can be gauged through both the perspectives.

There is no such significant shift in the development of fraternal and friendly relations with the Communist forces. It is also true that we have come in touch and extended relations with new such forces. As because there is no upsurge of the revolutionary movements led by communists in the world today, this relation will have no such a magnitude to determine or influence the ongoing political developments. But it never means that it does not bear any significance. Unity of the communist revolutionaries has its own significance and deserves to be maintained and developed.

It is true that there is a significant shift in developing relation with various governments which are friendly to our country and supporting the ongoing political process in Nepal and providing help to enhance this process. Frankly speaking we have good relation with all countries of the world except the Bush administration. During the 52 minutes long discussion with the leadership of our Party, the visiting former US president Jimmy Carter opined that it was unjust not to remove the terrorist tag from our party in the given situation that we have a strong presence in the interim legislature and also in the interim government. The relation with the European countries is good enough. We have easy access with them. The recent visits of our leadership including our Chairman have enhanced this relation to further higher level. The heightened relationship of our party with the European countries will definitely create diplomatic pressure to Washington. The Bush administration is thus isolated from the world and from even within US for its flawed policy regarding its relation with our party.

Our relation with China, the immediate neighbor and long tested friend of the Nepalese people has developed enormously within short span of time. The strong statement made by the Chinese Ambassador explaining the policy of his country that `China would never tolerate any foreign intervention in Nepal' at a time when we are facing a threat against the integrity of our beloved motherland is really of paramount importance, which paves the way thus demonstrating that there is ample scope in advancing our relationship at the higher level. The relationship with our other immediate neighbor India is fairly good. The support the separatist elements are enjoying from India, especially from Bihar has definitely caused some problem in Nepal. But the government of India seems not to have any role into it. Our only concern is that the government of India should use its good office to help control the bad situation in Nepal by preventing such elements from getting any support from the Indian soil.
Therefore it will be no exaggeration to say that the foreign relation of our party has been enhanced and it is developing fairly well.

REPORT
Report from Nepal
- C.P.N (Maoist)
"To deal with the question of 'completion' of the bourgeois revolution in the old way is to sacrifice living Marxism to the dead letter"
- Lenin (collected works Vol-24)
The real importance of this precious teaching of the great Lenin was seriously felt in the practical sense in the communist movement in Nepal as the People's War led by the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) CPN{M} entered into the stage of strategic equilibrium from the stage of strategic defense. Though there are plenty of instances of changes of tacks in the history of our party nevertheless, it had not become imperative for the major tactical shift until the people's war reached the stage of strategic offense. By then we have chalked out a new way and have trying to advance revolutionary practice through this labyrinth. Still it is the concrete features peculiar to this historical situation in Nepal that led to this tactical shift. It is doubtless that this situation is borne as the natural consequence of these ten years of heroic armed struggle led by our party.

On several occasions we have brought out our assessment that the domestic situation in Nepal is favorable and ripe to capture central state power in the near future but as all the genuine communist parties engaged in revolutionary practice know that the international situation is quite unfavorable to accomplish new democratic revolution and sustain it, it is obvious that we should try to mobilize justice loving people all over the world in general and the peoples of south Asia in particular to garner support in favor of revolution, improving on the domestic situation in the same spirit. For this we should dare to abandon the course once selected and have the courage to climb the unexplored mountain.

Lenin often quotes a letter written by Engels to F.A.Sorge where the founder of scientific socialism says "Our theory is not a dogma but a guide to action". This we believe validates to any situation and any individual communist party. It is easy to cling to dogmas and memorizing some revolutionary phrases without being engaged in the revolutionary practice. But a genuine communist party should never forget that Marxism teaches us to become critical towards Marxism itself, and only revolutionary practice is a laboratory to know that whether one is upholding Marxism or something else. In the dazzling light of this Marxist principle the C.P.N (Maoist) has been applying Marxism to the concrete situation of Nepal which we believe will further develop this science.

The historic Chunbang meeting of the central committee of C.P.N (Maoist) held in Sept/Oct 2005 has put an indelible mark in the history of the party itself. Before this meeting internecine strife representing two lines was at its peak and it was made public too. The revolutionary masses were quite depressed fearing that it might threaten the very existence of the party's and the reactionary forces were thrilled with ecstasy. But the central committee under the leadership of Com. Prachanda devised the ways and means of turning intra party struggle into a motive force that propelled the party forward. The meeting resolved the intra-party struggle and achieved a new unity applying the method of unity, struggle and transformation and maintaining the dialectical debate. One of the most important decisions taken in this meeting was that the party should forge an alliance with the agitating parliamentary parties despite their unstable and vacillating character in order to isolate and abolish the monarchy.

The question of the abolition of the monarchy comprises a different meaning in the context of Nepal. It is the only reactionary institution which is deep rooted and well organized with more than a one hundred thousand strong army. Because of this reality external and internal forces of reaction have joined hands to prop up the crumbling monarchy and have been trying to convince the vacillating parliamentary forces that once the monarchy is gone there will be no able force remaining to halt the ever growing march of the Maoist force. So the parliamentary forces should break its ties with the Maoist and try to save the monarchy with some change in its form. It's the awareness of the Nepalese people and the tactical movement of our party against the monarchy that forces like the Nepali congress and United Marxist Leninist were forced to maintain conditional ties (even if temporary) with the C.P.N (M).

The C.P.N (M), for one and a half years has taken this compromise. If we seriously study and analyze the concrete condition and character of this compromise it becomes self evident that our policy is neither all alliance and no struggle nor all struggle and no alliance, but combines both. Grasping the teaching of Lenin we have avoided "give money and fire arms to share the loot" instead we have given the bandits money and firearms in order to lessen the damage they can do and facilitate their capture and execution. With this sole intention we had a twelve point understanding against the autocratic monarchy on 22nd of November 2005. As expected this understanding proved as a catalyst to boost the moral of the struggling people all over the country. The big uprising unique in the contemporary world forced the otherwise reluctant king to invite the seven party alliances to choose a prime minister and form a government. The government of the India, U.S and U.K lost no time to welcome this move. This bid to douse the fire was failed as the agitation uninterruptedly moved forward with the clear goal of abolishing the monarchy. Our strong presence and participation was a matter of anxiety for the self claimed messiah of democracy. Finally the government of India, U.S and their lackeys in Nepal hatched a conspiracy and made the king to make another proclamation where he for the first time accepted that the sovereignty of Nepal lies to the Nepalese people. It was clear then only that these interventionists had a tacit understanding with the king and he was assured that they will secure his position and the institution of monarchy will remain in the future dispensation once the resentment of the people will climb down.
After the royal proclamation of 24th April 2006 we tried to advance the movement denouncing the proclamation and exposing the ill design behind it. But there was already a division in the movement since the seven party alliances took it as a victory and formed the government without any delay. In its first meeting itself it passed a resolution that there will be an election of an assembly for a new constitution and called the C.P.N (M) for parleys. That multiplied the illusion and a large section of people expected that the monarchy will be out in the near future.

The political scuffle with the reactionary forces has been intensified during this period. A Political offensive has taken the place of the military strike. The old parliament that was reestablished by royal proclamation was dissolved and a new interim legislature is in existence where 83 members are ours. An interim constitution and the interim government have been formed with our participation. If we look at these happenings superficially it seems that the C.P.N (M) has deviated from the revolutionary path. But if we look back at the history of C.P.N (M) and seriously study the under current it will lead to another conclusion.

Before initiation of people's war a small number of comrades were sent to the then parliament and some of our revolutionary comrades from fraternal parties vehemently criticized for this. Not only that we were expelled from the "Revolutionary International movement". Subsequent development in our part proved that we could initiate the war by protecting revolution from the revolutionary phrases that we used to memorize in the early period. Now we see every possibility to combine protracted people's war with insurrection. The 2nd historic conference of our party adopted a line that there should be a union of protracted people's war and insurrection to accomplish the revolution. We see the present development is leading the Nepalese society to prove the correctness of our ideas that we developed.
From the very beginning we were aware of the road map charted by the domestic and external enemies especially U.S and India. They intended to bring fabricated change in the monarchy, to tame the C.P.N (M) in parliamentary politics and enable a parliamentary party like Nepali Congress become as a dominant force in the country. By hook or by crook they have been trying to achieve this goal. But their every effort has the boomeranged because of the stand taken by the C.P.N (M). Instead of being a parliamentary puppet the people's revolutionary aspirations are being centered in the C.P.N (M). Hundreds of thousands of masses of people are being mobilized and the party influence among the masses is increasing everyday. The desperate activities of slandering the Maoist through various Medias secretly funded by the C.I.A and Raw
and the murdering of our cadres by their vigilante forces amply prove that they are failing in their mission.

The enemy who is attacking our party especially its youth wing the 'Young Communist League' with whatever they find in their hands, has generated mass resentment against the enemies. And our mass line, discipline of our PLA and political line has gathered momentum to prepare the ground for the final insurrection. We are utilizing this transitional phase to spread our mass base and consolidate it, to get rid of our own short comings and bring disintegration in the enemy's camp so that we can give a final blow and usher into the country a new democracy.
Note: This report was presented by the delegation of CPN (Maoist) at the meeting of CCOMPOSA, which was held in last week of June ]

IT'S THE RIGHT TIME TO INCREASE SUPPORT FOR THE DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION IN NEPAL
- Johan Peter Andresen, Leader of the Health Team for Nepal project.
The Health Team for Nepal was formed in 2006. The aim of the Health Team project is to help the poor people in the rural areas of Nepal. The Health Team for Nepal cooperates with the medical department of the People's Liberation Army in order to attain this goal. The health team for Nepal consists of two parts: the medical specialists and the support group
SOLIDARITY
Solidarity With Nepalese Revolution
--Com. Basant
Development of people's revolution in Nepal, which is at the doorstep of seizing central power, has strongly drawn attention of the whole world. On the one hand, the reactionaries of all hues, mainly the US imperialism and the Hindu fundamentalists in India, are doing all they can to sabotage this process before it gives birth to a New Nepal, free from feudalism and imperialism. And, on the other, it has drawn up the working class and the oppressed masses the world over closer than ever before to the struggling Nepalese people, who are desperately waiting to see it happen soon. Furthermore, their deep concern and awareness on how they can play a role to defend Nepalese revolution from external threats is very much inspiring.
Within a few months in the past, there have been various interactive programs, indoor and outdoor, in different parts of the world. Of them, given the geo-political location of Nepal the programs that were organised in India, on the challenges and possibilities facing the Nepalese revolution, do have far-reaching significance. Be it outdoor programs organised in different 17 cities and participated by party activists, and revolutionary and just-loving masses or be it 27 indoor programs held in presence of party leaders from various revolutionary, left and democratic parties and intellectuals all over India has, in deed, revealed how serious and resolute they are on their internationalist duty to defend the revolution in Nepal.
Although it was not possible to get in touch with all of the like-minded parties and intellectuals, what has revealed from these programs is that a good majority of left force in India is very much inspired from the development of revolution in Nepal and is thirsty of its success. They have a deep realisation that given the reactionary Nehru Doctrine, which considers Nepal under its protectorate, and India-locked geographic condition of Nepal it is largely the Indian people who can extend an important helping hand for the success, sustenance and development of Democratic Revolution in Nepal, till the same has been accomplished in India.
Whoever was met with had basically a firm common opinion that the future of revolution in Nepal is basically dependent on how strongly and thoroughly the revolutionary and democratic forces in India develop solidarity movement with it. And their untiring effort to materialise it is really enthusiastic. It is a very good thing for Nepalese revolution. Truly, it has further encouraged the Nepalese people, struggling in their mission to build a new Nepal in the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Coordination Committee of Maoist Parties and Organisation of South Asia

 

PRESS RELEASE
 
CCOMPOSA CALLS ON PEOPLE'S OF SOUTH ASIA TO OPPOSE INDIAN RULERS GROWING INTERVENTION IN NEIGHBOURING COUNTRIES
 
The Indian rulers seek total domination of the countries of South Asia acting as the gendarme of the US in this region. At the recently held SAARC Summit it went so far as to propose a South Asia Parliament seeking to undermine even the existing limited sovereign of the South Asian countries. Earlier they had proposed a common currency for the region to further consolidate its economic hegemony in the region. At the SAARC Summit it continued to push its SAFTA {South Asian Free Trade Association, n order to dominate the markets of the region and allow the unhindered free flow of goods made in India {mostly by the big comprador houses and the TNCs} to all countries of South Asia.
CCOMPOSA CALLS for the disbanding of SAARC and the setting up genuine forums of people to people relations between the countries of South Asia.
Lately the Indian rulers have been even more crudely intervening in the internal affairs of neighboring countries and even more crudely crushing the national aspirations for self-determination of the Kashmiri, Naga, Manipuri, Assamese, etc people.
In Nepal they have been playing an active role to diffuse the democratic aspirations of the Nepalese people and prop up the reactionary elements after isolating the Maoists. They have been instigating the Madheshi people of the Terrai against the Maoists in league with the Nepalese monarchy. Hindu fundamentalists have been particularly active in setting up vigilante gangs to murder activists as happened in Gaur where 28 Maoists were killed. Recently these gangs murdered a Central Committee member of YCL {Young Communist League} in the terrain region together with another comrade. The Indian ambassador has, of late, pro-active roaming in the interiors of Nepal offering large sums of money for schools, hospitals, roads, etc in order to wean away the masses from the influence of the Maoists. In addition the Indian Para-military have fired on and killed the Nepalese of Bhutani origin from returning to their motherland and have been fully involved the US conspiracy to transport 60,000 refugees to the West as some modern day form of slave labour. The US imperialists and Indian rulers have been working to prop up the reactionaries and neutralize the Maoists. CCOMPOSA strongly condemns the role of the Indian rulers in Nepal and demands that they stop meddling in the affairs of Nepal and the India people bring to justice the murderous gangs operating across the Nepalese border.
In Bangladesh the Indian rulers have not only openly backed their stooge Sheikh Hasina but have utilsed the present army-backed caretaker government to push through massive deals for Indian big comprador houses. They have sought help the Tatas to make massive investments there and lately the Mittals have signed a gigantic deal in the energy sector of Bangladesh. The Indian ambassador has been actively acting in the country together with the US ambassador in the dealings between the various political parties and the caretaker government. CCOMPOSA demands that the large natural wealth of poverty stricken Bangladesh be utilized for the development of their own country and not robbed by Indian compradors and the US imperialists.
In Sri Lanka they openly threatened the government when it sought arms from China and Pakistan. The Indian rulers have already imposed humiliating free-trade agreements on Sri Lanka. They have also surreptitiously been assisting the Sri Lanka government to crush the just aspirations of the Tamil people for a Tamil Elam. CCOMPOSA demands the scrapping all these unequal agreements and supports the just struggle of the Tamil people for their self-determination from the jack-boots of the Indian ruling classes.
In addition the Indian rulers continue to maintain and tighten their vice-like grip over the small countries of the region like Bhutan, Sikkim, Malldives, etc and continue their attempts to bully Pakistan utilizing the Kashmir card. Particularly they continue to forcibly maintain the oppressed nationalities within Indian hegemony. Not only does the Indian army of occupation crush their just demands with utmost brutality, they have been pitting one section of the people against the other to drown their just struggles in oceans of blood. This is to be seen in Nagaland, Manipur, Assam, Kashmir and elsewhere. CCOMPOSA demands that the people people of these oppressed nationalites be allowed to determine their own future and the immediate and total withdrawal of Indian army and para-military forces from all these regions.
South Asia has become a burning cauldron of revolutionary, democratic and nationality movements. CCOMPOSA supports all these just movements and calls on the peoples of South Asia to unite against their common enemy and not fall prey to the divisive policies of the rulers and their US imperialist backers in the region.
1) Proletarian Party of Purba Bangla-CC; PBSP (CC) [Bangladesh]
 2) Communist Party of East Bengal(ML)(Red Flag); CPEB (ML)(Red Flag) [Bangladesh] 3) Bangladesher Samyobadi Dal(Marxist-Leninist) BSD(ML) [Bangladesh]
4) Communist Party of Bhutan (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist)  CPB(MLM)
5) Comminist Party of India (Maoist) ; CPI(Maoist)
 6) Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Naxalbari  CPI-ML (Naxalbari) [India]
7) Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist)     CPI(MLM)[India]
8) Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist); CPN(Maoist) [Nepal]

Sunday, July 29, 2007

CPI (Maoist) karnataka press release on anti people land lords bandh call against our party and people

via: email

Exploiting landlords are organizing irrespective of political parties, against peasents and common people of malenaadu with sangh parivaar's mastermind and conspiracy. They are organizing under the name of peace committee to oppose our party in the guise of peace, which we spoiled there; we are destroying family, brotherly and friendly relationships between peasants, workers and landlords there, they are projecting so, for malenaadu. We are the sole reason for violence in malenaadu, they are saying. Before our entry, malenaadu was very nice and peaceful region. There is no such exploitation oppression and violence on peasants and workers in malenaadu they are propagating.

But reality is quite opposite; they are putting efforts to cover their economic, social and cultural exploitation and oppression on common people in the wake of ongoing-armed class struggle. They are having larger land holdings; hundreds and thousands of acres of landholders are there. Areca, coffee, rubber, cashew, elaichi, pepper estates etc are there. They are controlling malenaadu and karavali economically and politcally directly and indirectly also. In this area comprador bureaucratic capitalists like tatas, ABC, tea companies were also having larger presence. Imperialists like Cadburys also there. Other than this after the imperialist sponsored liberalization, privatization, globalization, there were several forest and water, power, mining schemes are upcoming by destroying life of the people, culture, and environment of malenaadu and karavali.

Caste oppression on daliths and adivasis and sex exploitation are rampant. They were treated as second class or third class citizens. In some area they were treated as slaves. Free service is compulsory in few areas and in few feudal and religious institutions. Workers are less paid. Their condition is serious thing, they are provided with pig hut like houses without basic facilities like power water and toilets. Thrashing of workers are still continuing in few places of malenaadu. Majority of people of malenaadu were land less, poor or having small pieces of lands without having records, though applied for it from several years, but still not provided by the government authorities. Now they are threatened by evictions for various imperialist and comprador sponsored forest, water, power etc projects. Government and its authorities are implementing all terror, illusion creation, cunning methods to evict poor peasants from their ancestral home lands. Earlier they used to impose false cases, illegal arrests, tortures, laathicharge, cutting down the paddy, areca, banana and other plants, smashing houses etc like anti people tactics. Now they are terrorizing people by cold blooded murders. Exploiting land lords are supporting all these and opposing people's struggle from the beginning. All these are peaceful for landlords and their agents but for all common and poor people it was peace less and violent against them. People are fighting for peace and social justice for them. Naturally that becomes peace less and violent for exploiting landlords and their agents, sangh parivaar and comprador state.

Now exploiting landlords, goons of sangh parivaar and their agents joined together, as per their class interests, against people and our party, as our party is leading poor and common people. We are organizing adivasi and other exploited toiling people with revolutionary class politics. By that people are waging uncompromising struggle for their life, livelihood and nature.

We are condemning strongly the bundh ca ll against us and people, given by these anti people exploiting elements on 31st of this month. We are warning seriously to all these anti people pro establishment land lords and their agents to stop this immediately. Otherwise they will have to face wrath of toiling and common people. By doing these type activities they can't stop ongoing peoples struggle. So many such attempts of exploiters were utterly failed. Even like well organized and equipped state and feudal elements sponsored selva judum ,thrutheeya prasthuthi committee like reactionary mercenaries were beating back by our people's liberation guerilla army and people in jharkhand ,bihar, chattisghad,maharastra,west Bengal,Andhra Pradesh,etc. In Bidar Raichur of Karnataka also, people fight backed reactionary landlords and their agents by conducting people's courts and implementing people's court decisions including elimination of die hard class enemies. Don't spit skywards it definitely falls on you, the exploiters.

We are appealing all people, all pro people organizations, individuals and democrats to expose and fight conspiracies of exploiting landlords and sangh parivaar combine's anti people and anti democratic acts like bundh against the people and their cause in the name of maintenance of so called peaceful environment, which is for them.

With revolutionary greetings

Gangadhara
for the statecommittee
CPI(MAOIST)
KARNATAKA

Heroic Martyrs of the India's Revolution ( Random Images )

Heroic Martyrs of the India's Revolution ( Random Images )

Com Charu Mazumdhar


Com. Vempatapu Sathyam
10-7-1970


Com. Panchadi Nirmala
22-12-1969


Com. Panchadi Krisha Murthy
27-5-1969


Puli Anjanna (Sagar) APSCS
October 1993


Com. Saroj Dutta
5-8-1971


Hari Bhushan
16-4-83



Swarupa (Jyothi)
Seernaplli 5-2-92



Kongala Sudhakar Reddy



Muralidhara Raju
8-6-86



I.V. Sambasiva Rao (Master), CCM
28 Feb. 1997



Seetha (Nagulakonda)



Chintala Venkata Swamy
(Suryam) APSCM
29-9-1994



Sneha Latha
1-1974



Madhava Reddy
DCM (KNR)



Gaddar at a Martyrs column


Naxalbari Lal Salaam !

Friday, July 27, 2007

Observe Martyrs Week, July 28 - August 3

Source: email

  July 28 is very important day for Indian revolutionary people, on that day of 1972, great revolutionary leader comrade Charumajumdar martyred. He was killed by ruling class forces in the prison.  We are observing that day as martyrs day for commemorating martyrdom of thousands of great revolutionary leaders and masses.com. Charu majumadar and com. Kannai chatterjee were gave turning point to the Indian revolution. They fought revisionism with deadly blows of revolutionary ideology and actions. From naxalbari to till now hundreds and thousands I,e more than 10000, of revolutionaries martyred for the new democratic, socialist and communist cause.reactionary ruling class and its killer force of goons killed them.

    After formation of the merged new party CPI (Maoist), more than 500 revolutionaries killed by reactionary forces. In Karnataka after merger 9 revolutionaries and people killed by the state mercenary forces.
    Com. Shamsher Singh Sheri ; central committee member and politburo member,  martyred from brain fever,. Com. Vadkapuram Chandra Mouli;  central committee member and central military commission member, com. Saroja; district committee member ,com. Padma; state committee member, com Sende Rajamouli; central committee member and Karnataka secretary were caught by the AP police, severely tortured and murdered cold-bloodedly.
    In Karnataka com. Saketh rajan, com. Parvathi, com. Hajima, com Shivalingu,com.Ajith kusubi, com.Umesh sabli, com.Dinakar,com.Chennappa and the struggling poor adivasi people of atyadka and vaderamata com. Parmeshwar,Ramegowdlu,Kaverakka were murdered by state police goons.
  Prior to this chitradurga,s  com.Koganoor Goneppa, com Prasad of kolar, com Bhaskar  of sreekaakulam; who worked in Raichur, com. Buddanna of  raichur    were killed by ruling class forces.
    There were hundreds of such martyrs from central committee members to revolutionary masses, who laid their life for cause of the people and revolution; hundreds of revolutionary people were massacred by state sponsored selva judum,TPC and Sendra goons in Jharkhand, Bihar and Chattisghad. They dreamt to thrown away yokes of feudal, comprador bureaucratic capitalists and imperialism. For making it into reality they personally engaged and sacrificed their life. They made hard and serious efforts for changing this rotten and cruel social system by uncompromising struggle. They chilled their blood and made the revolutionary movement stronger and bigger, that spread into the four corners of the India presently, with giving shining new hopes and confidence among toiling and democratic people of India.
  We are remembering all those great revolutionary leaders and masses heart fully by hailing their martyrdom, dreams and spirits.
  We are paying revolutionary red salutes to all martyrs of Indian revolution with taking oath to fulfill their aspirations by building revolutionary movement stronger.
We are calling all our cadres and revolutionary masses to observe martyrs week with commitment and dedication by taking all good and great revolutionary lessons and spirits from them. Take their dreams, aspirations and ideas among the common and democratic people as they are the real heroes of social change.
Martyrs are immortal. Let their aspirations into reality.
Hold high the revolutionary martyrs and their revolutionary ideas.
Com. Charu majumadar, com. Kannai chatterjee amar hai 
Make a success new democratic revolution of India by building strong revolutionary movement and fighting back enemy offensive.
Let us build strong revolutionary movement in Karnataka by organizing masses and fighting enemy offensive.

Let flower of revolution flourish
Long live great revolutionary path of naxalbari
Long live Marxism,Leninism,Maoism.

With revolutionary greetings

Yours in struggle.
Gangadhara
for the statecommittee
CPI(MAOIST)
KARNATAKA

26/07/07                                                                                                  

Leaflet on Atyadka encounter

Kannada Pamphlet.
Source: email
Click on images to enlarge













Thursday, July 26, 2007

cpi(maoist) karnataka press release on reactionary activities,confiscation,attack on media

  Respectable Editors and representatives of the Media,struggle greetings to you.We are sending this press release regarding Sangh Parivar and Police sponsored programmes against our party and people. Confiscation of research and thought provoking book Aanudeva Horaganavanu  and recent attacks on Journalists in Mangalore and other areas.Regarding the same to publish with consideration.

Yours in struggle.
Gangadhara
for the statecommittee
CPI(MAOIST)
KARNATAKA

25/07/07                                                             _______________________________

  Reactionary Sangh Parivar and state police colluded and hatching conspicuous against the people these anti people goons did serial robbery nearby Agumbe and sent a team to Gore's house near Belthangadi etc. There several such near were conspicuously spreading by these anti people elements. Now they are floating anti people reactionary organizations in the name of peace committee, Jaagrutha Sena etc. Through these they are trying to organize landlords and their agents and creating mercenary killer gangs against the struggling people there. These are all against to the adivasis, daliths, backwards and women. By this they are putting efforts to get support for their reactionary crimes.

  We are appealing to the struggling people and pro people organizations and individuals to expose these conspiracies of police and Sangh parivar, and fight against it by not allowing them to continue their anti people activities.

  Karnataka government confiscated withdrawn book Aanudeva Horaganavanu by acceding to the reactionary swamies and leaders. There were politically motivated demonstrations organized by political and religious leaders, particularly in North Karnataka, in the juncture of transfer of power to the BJP.

  Author himself clarified his version of suspected reality about Basavanna's caste origin and open for freely discussing the same.  But several intellectuals were acted as feudal pandiths without even taking the responsibility of healthy and democratic discussions over the matters raised in the book. Rather than that they tried to get mercy and support of religious leaders and political leaders by using this issue. In this few democrats and progressive intellectuals clearly took position of middle path. They diluted discussions with personal hatred ness. They did not take the responsibility of conducting healthy and democratic discussions.

  In midst of this reactionary atmosphere several democrats and few organizations actively conducted and participated in the discussions with firm standpoints by upholding freedom of expression and democratic discussion.

  Kumara Swamy's coalition govt. confiscated the book after author himself withdrawing it. We condemn this act of government of Karnataka and demanding to withdraw this undemocratic,insane decision immediately.

  Attacks on Journalists and media people are increasing alarmingly. Several Journalists were killed by anti people reactionaries and by the government forces also. Several were arrested under false cases. Hitting and smashing the camera and other valuables is becoming common thing.

In Mangalore, Bengaluru and other parts of the state, ransacking the offices of the media, physically attacking them, destroying their camera, imposing false cases and illegal arrests by the state were increasing. In earlier also sangh parivaar and travelmafia jointly  ransacked an media office with threat.
Recently in Mangalore TV9 office ransacked and attacked it's reporters by the blue film mafia elements.

  We are condemning these attacks on media and demanding to provide all necessary arrangement for the free and democratic functioning of journalists and media people.

Take stringent actions on attackers.
  All these events reveals further  how much democratic, our system is and how much democratic atmosphere prevailing in our society?.

  We are appealing all people and demdocrats to raise their voices and fight it with organizing them selves for the sake protecting whatever rights people achieved through the struggles.                                           

Gangadhara
for the statecommittee
CPI(MAOIST)
KARNATAKA
25/07/07 

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

"Hugo Chavez has an oil strategy... but can this lead to liberation?"

23 July 2007. A World to Win News Service. Following is the first of two instalments of an article by Raymond Lotta reprinted from the 1 July 2007 issue of Revolution, newspaper of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. ( revcom.us) It is a part of a fuller analysis being developed by a writing group about Hugo Chavez and what has been happening in Venezuela since Chavez came to power in 1998.
 
The nature of Hugo Chavez's "Bolivarian revolution" is a highly important and widely discussed issue among progressive and radical-minded people. Chavez has carried out a host of social and economic measures whose stated aim is to empower and improve the lives of the poor and politically disenfranchised in Venezuelan society; he has condemned the US as an imperialist and bullying power; and in 2005 he announced that Venezuela was embarking on a project of   "21st-Century Socialism". At a time when the US is waging its "war on the world" and at a time when the US has been spearheading a pounding and brutalizing neoliberal economic agenda for the countries of the Third World – developments in Venezuela have attracted great interest.
 
But what is the actual programme and outlook of Hugo Chavez, what is the character of the process unfolding in Venezuela, and where is it heading? Does Chavez's programme represent a real alternative to imperialist-led exploitation, a viable road to liberation in today's world? And what is the meaning of socialism in today's globalized world?
 
Our view is that the "Bolivarian revolution" does not represent a fundamental break with imperialism, nor embody a vision or path to truly radical societal transformation. But understanding why this is so is a complex matter requiring close analysis. In the full analysis soon to be published, we discuss the historical factors shaping Venezuela's development, the economic model that Hugo Chavez has been bringing forward, the role of the army and new popular institutions in the "Bolivarian revolution", the social and class forces involved in and leading this movement, and the larger debate about "21st-century socialism" and the real challenges of making revolution in today's world.
 
While we offer this critique of the Chavez project , it in no way cuts against our stand with the Venezuelan people and our total opposition to any attempts by US imperialism to undermine or openly commit aggression against the Chavez regime.
 
This article focuses on Venezuela's oil economy. We start here because oil has been so central to Venezuela's historical domination by imperialism and to Venezuela's economic-social development, and because oil figures centrally in Hugo Chavez's programme to reclaim sovereignty and change Venezuelan society.
 
Our goal is to contribute to understanding, to learn from analysis of others, and to deepen dialogue and debate about these crucial issues.
 
During his electoral campaign for president in 1998, Hugo Chavez took on the old elite this way: "Oil is a geopolitical weapon, and these imbeciles who govern us don't realize the power of an oil producing country." 1 He expressed his strategic thinking about oil in a 2006 interview:
 
"We are today implementing a strategic programme called the Oil Sowing Plan: using oil wealth so Venezuela can become an agricultural country, a tourist destination, an industrialized country with a diversified economy. We are investing billions of dollars in the infrastructure: power generators using thermal energy, a large railway, roads, highways, new towns, new universities, new schools, recuperating land, building tractors, and giving loans to farmers. One day we won't have any more oil, but that will be in the 22nd century. Venezuela has oil for another 200 years." 2 
 
Chavez has spoken often about weaning Venezuela away from excessive dependence on the oil sector. But as the above statements and concrete policy underscore, oil will continue for some time, certainly for the medium term, to be the backbone of the economy and the keystone of Venezuela's foreign policy.
 
What kind of resource?
 
There is no question that Venezuela is rich in oil. Venezuela possesses the largest conventional oil reserves in the Western hemisphere (more than three times the proven reserves in the US); has trillions of cubic feet of natural gas; and has, by some estimates, untapped reserves in the Orinoco belt of the country that may exceed those of Saudi Arabia. Nor is there any question that oil revenues can grow astronomically: the price of oil is approaching near-historic highs, in the range of $65 per barrel.
 
But why is oil as a sphere of investment and as a "petrodollar" financial instrument "black gold"? Oil has become a source of productive and monetary wealth within a certain set of social production relations. The growth and contemporary expansion of world capitalism has produced a profit-based agro-industrial structure that relies heavily and disproportionately on a non-renewable resource, oil, as an essential economic input whose world price has impacted production costs, profits, and competitive advantage. In the post-World War 2 period, new oil-based and oil-related industries like auto, petrochemicals, and plastics, arose. Moreover, the exploration, extraction, refining, and marketing of oil form a highly profitable sector of the world economy. 3 
 
An historical trajectory of oil-fuelled development under world capitalism has been ruinous of human lives and planetary ecology. The production and consumption patterns of the advanced capitalist countries – where 25 percent of the world's population lives but which consume 75 percent of the world's resources – are now culminating in a global climate crisis. A just and rational world economy would neither be organized around a social structure of exploitation and inequality nor be based on this kind of non-sustainable technical-resource foundation.
 
Oil has also become a weapon in world politics. This too is a function of imperialism. Power relations are integral to imperialism. Control over resources yields geo-economic advantage and geo-political domination – in which some powers gain privileged and monopolistic access to resources and the ability to control other economies and states. Oil has been an object of imperialist rivalry, collusion, and conquest, including through local proxy wars. Oil has been a means of propping up and controlling neocolonial regimes awash in oil revenues and corruption, like Nigeria. The modern, imperialist global military machine runs on oil.
 
Oil and Venezuela
 
Venezuela has played a certain historical role in the imperialist international division of labour: as a strategic exporter of oil. And the economic pillar of the modern Venezuelan state system has been the extraction of rents from oil companies, the charge for allowing them to pump oil out of the ground. Over the last half century, oil income has both lubricated a certain kind of growth and development in Venezuela and locked Venezuela in to an international oil economy dominated by Western imperialism.
 
Oil, with its booms and busts, reshaped the economic geography of the country. Caracas, the capital city of Venezuela, more than doubled in size between 1920 and 1936, and doubled again between 1936 and 1950. Then it tripled between 1950 and 1971. The oil economy gave rise to a new middle class dependent on the state and disbursement of oil revenues, while shantytowns of the rural poor spread through and literally seeped into the muddy slopes of western Caracas. Today, almost 90 percent of Venezuela's population lives in the cities and half of the population of Caracas lives in poverty. One measure of oil's distorting effects on the economic and social structure of Venezuela has been the vast growth of the "informal economy" in the cities: the urban self-employed (like peddlers and street merchants) and workers who perform unregistered or "off-the-books" labour and services. 4 
 
Oil has produced and perpetuated a developmental trajectory marked by great economic and social gaps: between the productivity of the petroleum sector and the productivity of the non-petroleum sectors; between the development of the rural and urban areas; and between rich and poor, in the cities and in the countryside.
 
Let's step back. From 1958 to 1998, Venezuela earned some $300 billion in oil revenues. What has this meant for the masses of people in Venezuela, and what kind of development has resulted from subordination to the dynamics of the world imperialist economy and the world oil industry within that?
 
The production of oil has actually stifled any significant industrial diversification. Much of the new infrastructure built between the 1960s and 1980s is decaying for lack of maintenance. Floods and mudslides, aggravated by uncontrolled urbanization, have washed away towns. Health hazards stalk the shantytowns in which 60 percent of Venezuela's urban population lives. The number of people living in official poverty nearly doubled between 1984 and 1995; and, today, more than half of Venezuela's working population works in the precarious informal economy. 5 
 
Hugo Chavez has decried the oligarchic oil economy with its corruption, patronage, and extremes of glittering wealth and grinding poverty. He has spoken of the need to revive the peasant economy. But can a different form of oil economy produce a just and viable alternative to the neoliberal economic model and lead to socialism? And just how different will such an economy be if it requires the massive infusion of foreign investment capital and a gamble in a game of oil markets?
 
A programme that cannot break out of the status quo; a programme wracked with contradictions
 
Chavez has pinned the success of his programme of social equity and diversification of the economy on oil revenues. His main economic order of business, as he repeatedly states, is "sowing the petroleum." This is a phrase and programme that has been part of Venezuela's populist-nationalist politics and discourse since the mid-1930s: the government is to assert greater control over oil revenues, use oil wealth to promote development, and allow more people to share in the oil bounty. Chavez is counting on high and rising oil prices to undergird vast increases in government spending, a growing state presence in the economy, and subsidized prices for certain domestic products (mainly gasoline but also imported consumer goods, including food). In 2004, $1.7 billion of the state oil company's $15 billion budget was allocated to fund social programs; soon thereafter it went to $4 billion a year. 6 
 
Chavez, after having restructured the management of the state oil company, is moving along three tracks to maximize oil revenues to make good on his programme. He is seeking to expand oil production. He is seeking to increase state ownership and the government's share of earnings, royalties, and taxes deriving from foreign-based activity in the hydrocarbon sector (oil, natural gas, and coal). And he is seeking out new markets for oil, both to absorb expanded output and as a cushion against possible US pressure and retaliation. These are not simply technical tools of economic management; they are bound up with a capitalist logic, and are fraught with the contradictions of dependent, imperialist-led development.
 
On the first track, the strategic 25 year Plan Siembra Petrolera (Oil Sowing Plan), in its first phase for 2005-2012, calls for an increase in production from current levels (2006 estimates range from 2.8-3.3 million barrels a day) to 5.8 million barrels of oil per day in 2012. In the gas industry, similar large-scale development is also planned.
 
The Venezuelan state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) estimated in 2006 that this phase of the expansion plan requires some $75 billion to finance new investment. Where is this money coming from? Most will come from the state oil company. Some 25 to 30 percent is expected from external, private sources: borrowings from banks, offset by anticipated oil earnings, and investments by the foreign oil companies operating in Venezuela. 7 
 
Chavez is counting on increased output from the so-called Orinoco Petroleum Belt, a region in the centre of the country that has been the site of major investments by the state oil company and foreign operators, like Exxon-Mobil, ConocoPhillips, and France's Total SA. Since the 1990s these imperialist transnationals have invested more than $17 billion, which may have grown in value to $30 billion. The extraction and processing of this extra-heavy crude oil requires expensive investment in heavy machinery, treatment, and storage complexes. Partial processing of this oil on the spot, to make it liquid enough to flow in pipes, produces enormous amounts of waste material.
 
There is a sharp contradiction. On the one hand, the state must extract financial resources from the oil industry to underwrite its development and social spending plans (and, increasingly, to meet rising popular expectations and shore up the political base of the Chavez regime). On the other hand, the state must invest to maintain the competitiveness of the oil industry as a capitalist enterprise in the international capitalist market.8 
 
Again, there is great tension here. In the last two years, social programmes have absorbed a larger share of the state oil company's budget than has spending on maintenance and new oil capacity. This social spending by the government puts strains on needed investments in the oil sector. To say investments are "needed" is not to make some pure technical statement; rather, investments are "needed" from the standpoint of an oil-exporting economy and the dictates of the world market – improving efficiency and compensating for possible price declines with expanded output. Because Venezuela's wells are so old, output declines 23 percent a year – and so it is necessary to drill new wells just to maintain capacity. 9 There is a pull exerted by competition on the world market, intensified by low levels of investment in Venezuela's oil sector relative to other oil-producing countries, to upgrade and expand the industry, and maintain profitability.
 
If foreign investment comes forth to finance a major share of Plan Siembra, this investment carries with it real control and puts real leverage in the hands of those foreign investors. This is important to bear in mind. Venezuela is not unusual in having formal sovereignty over its oil. Some three-quarters of the world's oil and gas reserves and half of global output are controlled by national state oil companies like Saudi Aramco, Kuwait Petroleum, and the Algerian state company. But the national-state oil companies rely on international finance, work through international trade and marketing channels, and collaborate with the large, Western-based transnational oil companies, like Exxon-Mobil. These transnational corporations and their service company networks have strong competitive advantage: in scale, reach, and core managerial and technological competences, financial capabilities, support by the Western imperialist governments, and the ability to pull up stakes in a country like Venezuela.
 
In terms of the second track: higher tax and royalty payments. In April 2006, Chavez announced his intention to increase PDVSA's share in major projects to 60 percent from 40 percent. The Chavez government is creating new forms of joint ventures (what are now called "mixed companies") with Shell, Chevron, British Petroleum, and others. Oil resources and oil profits are jointly owned in the form of single new enterprises – only now, the Venezuelan government obtains a higher proportion of profits than it had previously, while the foreign oil companies, with heavy investments, benefit from current high oil prices and prospect of profitable new oil fields. At the same time, the government has negotiated with the 22 foreign companies operating in Venezuela to agree to a new tax law that is being enforced retroactively.
 
On May 1, 2007, Chavez made good on his ultimatum to the foreign companies that they accept a larger share of ownership by the Venezuelan government or cease operations. Chavez may be a tough negotiator (and did succeed in getting a larger slice of rising oil revenues from companies who want to stay put in order to recoup the value of their investments and make huge profits). At the same time, to keep these projects alive, to go forward with expansion plans, Chavez must reach some kind of understanding with foreign capital, as these firms are providing essential finance and technology. So the threat of takeover was sweetened with a commitment to compensate the firms. 10 
 
The third track of the oil programme is to restructure Venezuela's external trade relations away from dependence on the US as a market and source of investment capital and technical expertise. Venezuela accounts for some 12 percent of the US's daily oil imports, and plays a certain strategic role in the US's ability to project power in the world. But the other side of the equation is more telling, illustrating an aspect of Venezuela's structural dependency: that 12 percent share of US oil imports accounted for by Venezuela represents 60 percent of Venezuela's total production!11  
 
In seeking to diversify markets, Chavez has opened negotiations with China and has plans to sell Venezuelan oil to China, the world's second-largest energy consumer, and to India as well. But there are high costs of servicing these markets. Venezuela does not have a Pacific port, and large tankers cannot make it through the Panama Canal. So Venezuela would need to construct pipeline through Colombia in order to ship the oil. But shipment to Asia is costly, owing to the long distances involved. Further, China does not have adequate capacity to refine Venezuela's sulphur-rich crude. China is investing substantial sums to increase that capacity, but China is also exploring for oil and gas closer to its shores in the South China Sea and angling as well for deals in the Caspian Sea region.
 
The US connection is a difficult knot for Chavez to cut, especially if oil is to be the centrepiece of development. There is the close proximity of the US market and low transportation costs. There are the refineries in the US adapted to processing Venezuela's oil. And the US continues to be Venezuela's most important trading partner (US-Venezuela trade actually rose 36 percent in 2006). These are among the pressures operating on Chavez to maintain stable economic relations with the US, 12 even if the US has other plans.
 
Part of Chavez's strategy for diversification involves inviting foreign companies from outside the traditional circle of the big Western oil majors to invest in Venezuela's petroleum industry and to participate in his plan for a continental gas pipeline project stretching from Venezuela down to Argentina. These form part of Chavez's efforts to create more multilateral investment and trade links. Chavez is courting companies from India, China, Russia, and elsewhere. Chavez hails investment plans in Latin America as anti-US regional integration.
 
But whether in Venezuela or elsewhere in Latin America, the essence of these projects is: investment by capitalist firms... according to capitalist methods of exploitation...to be measured by capitalist criteria of profitability. These projects have enormous social consequences for local populations, including dislocation of indigenous peoples. And they have enormous environmental consequences. 13 
 
Chavez must assure long-standing Western and new investors of a relatively stable business-receptive environment. It is revealing that the Chavez regime has designated the oil sector a "strategic industry." The state-appointed management tightly controls this sector (and the oil industry is one where worker co-participation, the limits and real nature of which will be discussed in a subsequent instalment of this series, is forbidden).
 
One critical-minded supporter of Chavez has observed, "the joint ventures provide a reality check to those used to only a diet of Chavez speeches...[B]ut in the current circumstances, paradoxically, a Faustian pact with foreign capital may be necessary to keep the forces of imperialism [US pressure and intervention] off Venezuela's back." 14 
 
This captures much of the "best-case" thinking about Chavez's oil-based strategy of development. But this "best-case" thinking rests on a misunderstanding of imperialism. As desirous of genuine social change as many Chavez supporters are, that cold-water splash of "reality check" is worth pursuing further.
 
Modern-day enclave development
 
Imperialism manifests itself not simply through economic bullying or military threat and intervention – and US military action against Venezuela is by no means "off the table". It is also expressed through the structure and functioning of the world economy and the existing economic and social structure of Venezuela, which reflects and reinforces dependency on oil and subordination to the world market.
 
Chavez is perpetuating a form of export-led growth centred on the oil industry. The irrationality of an economy so geared to oil is expressed in the fact that only 20 percent of Venezuela's total oil production enters into the domestic economy. 15 It is expressed in the fact that while Venezuela's state oil company (PDVSA) is the country's single largest employer, with about 45,000 on its payroll, employment in the oil sector accounts for less than 1 percent of Venezuela's total work force. 16 It is expressed in the fact that, despite high oil prices and earnings, official unemployment in Venezuela has ranged from 8 to 15 percent in the Chavez years, with the poverty rate at 30 percent at the start of 2007. 17 
 
This is a profoundly distorted economy: today, the oil sector accounts, and this has been a long-standing pattern, for about one-third of Venezuela's Gross Domestic Product (GDP), 50 percent of the government's revenue, and 80 percent of Venezuela's export earnings. As one of the world's top oil producers, Venezuela is a top emitter of CO2 emissions in Latin America and has the region's highest per capita rate of carbon emissions. 18 
 
The oil-export economy induces a form of "enclave" development. Such development responds to external sources of economic dynamism: the world oil market, conditions of demand in the major imperialist and regional economies, the rhythm and direction of world capital flows, etc. And such capital-intensive mono-export development is a barrier to integrated, all-around agricultural and industrial development in the exporting country.
 
Here it is necessary to elaborate on two related aspects of dependent development: lopsidedness and heightened exposure and vulnerability to the world market.
 
In the oppressed nations, the oil sector requires massive investment in advanced equipment and technology. These technology demands are met disproportionately from outside the economy – much of the advanced technology required by the oil sector is either imported, requiring that foreign exchange be generated to pay for imported capital goods, or obtained through the joint ventures (the foreign oil and oil-service companies involved, like Halliburton, provide the technology in-house or purchase it on the world market).
 
Moreover, much of this technology cannot be widely diffused and adopted throughout the economy to revolutionize social production. This is so for two reasons. First, much of the specialized oil-drilling and oil-engineering technology is not appropriate to overall conditions of social-economic development. Second, even where some of this technology could have useful direct and indirect spin-off applications, there does not exist a broad-based industrial structure to which the benefits could accrue – exactly because the oil focus has constrained broader development.
 
The oil sector is not significantly stimulating new demand for locally produced industrial products, nor is it resulting in a rising socially useful skills level of the overall work force. You do not have a process of agricultural and industrial development unfolding that strengthens local capacity to innovate and adapt technology. These are consequences of enclave-like, oil-based development. 19 
 
Under Chavez, PDVSA, the Venezuelan state oil company, has been seeking agreements with foreign oil companies requiring as a condition of entry that they source (obtain) more oil-service supplies locally. But as oil resources are depleted, and as the extraction and processing of Venezuela's heavy crude and rich-rich oil grows more challenging, new technology requirements appear. And as these requirements are met with even more specialized and sophisticated technology, the technology gaps between the oil sector and the rest of the economy are reproduced on a new level. 20 
 
Meanwhile, the huge port, pipeline facilities, and other infrastructure investments to facilitate the exploration, extraction, and shipment of oil and coal are often out of scale to the needs of the overall economy – again, since they serve these more self-contained, outward-oriented investment projects, like the Orinoco Petroleum Belt plans.
 
As mentioned earlier, the oil sector overall accounts for a very small fraction of total employment. Chevron's huge $3.8 billion investment in the Orinoco Petroleum Belt initially will have created 6,000 jobs – upon completion, the project will only need 700 permanent employees.
 
These are phenomena of the enclave-like character of oil-based development. But here is the rub: the overall agro-industrial structure is profoundly influenced and skewed by the oil sector. There is heightened unevenness as between the productivity and wage levels and technological dynamism of a modern oil sector and other segments of the economy; and, as will be discussed shortly, the oil industry has negative feedback effects on domestic agriculture and food production. At the same time, the build-up of the state-capitalist oil sector strengthens class interests and class forces that have a strong stake in maintaining the dominant macro-economic structure.
 
To develop an agricultural base that could meet the food needs of society, provide rural employment, and develop through mutually reinforcing links with an integrated and balanced industrial structure would require a) a very different allocation and prioritisation of resources serving the needs of the now exploited and oppressed, and b) a break with the economic logic, structure of options, and pressures of the local and world capitalist market system (what Marxists call the law of value).
 
Footnotes
 
1. Cited in Nicholas Kozloff, Hugo Chavez: Oil, Politics, and the Challenge to the US (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), p. 7. No original Spanish-language source available.
2. Greg Palast, "Hugo Chavez," Interview in Z, July 2006. www.zmag.org.
3. See Larry Everest, Oil, Empire, and Power: Iraq and the US Global Agenda (Monroe, Me.: Common Courage Press, 2004).
4. On the growth of Caracas, see Allen Gilbert, The Latin American City (London: Latin America Bureau, 1998), pp. 7-11.
5. See J.P. Leary, "Untying the Knot of Venezuela's Informal Economy," naclanews, December 6, 2006. http://news.nacla.org.
6. US Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, Country Analysis Briefs, Venezuela, June 2004. www.eia.doe.gov.
7. On the 2006-2012 expansion plan and its costs and financing, see the statements and interviews by PDVSA officials at www.pdvsa.com.
8. These kinds of contradictions are pointed to in Fernando Coronil, "Magical Illusions or Revolutionary Magic? Chavez in Historical Context," NACLA Report on the Americas, Vol. XXXIII, No 6, 2000. See this article and also the highly important analysis of the historical development of the rentier oil economy and modern Venezuelan state and various incarnations of plans to "sow the petroleum" in Fernando Coronil, The Magical State: Nature, Money, and Modernity in Venezuela (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).
9. See David Luhnow and Peter Millard, "As Global Demand Tightens, Oil Producer Has Agenda," The Wall Street Journal , August 1, 2006.
10. See Simon Romero and Clifford Krauss, "Deadline Nears in Chavez Fight Against Big Oil," The New York Times , April 10, 2007; Simon Romero, "Chavez Takes Over Foreign Controlled Oil Projects in Venezuela," The New York Times, May 2, 2007. In his July 2006 interview with Greg Palast (see zmag.org), Chavez says about the foreign oil companies, "[W]e don't want them to go, and I don't think they want to leave the country, either. We need each other."  
11. Claude Larsimont, "Hugo Chavez, the Bolivarian Use of Petrodollars and the Oil Market," ESISC Background Analysis 10/05/2006.
12. See James Surowiecki, "The Financial Page: Synergy With The Devil," The New Yorker, January 8, 2007, p. 26.
13. On the environmental and human rights issues posed by Chavez's petroleum and natural gas regional initiatives, see David Hallowes and Victor Munnik Poisoned Spaces: Manufacturing Wealth, Producing Poverty, www.groundwork.org.za , October 2006; "Open Letter to President Hugo Chavez," Sociedad Homo et Natura, posted at www.nadir.org in April 2006.
14. Steven Mather, "Joint Ventures: Venezuela's Faustian Pact with Foreign Capital," Venezuelanalysis.com , September 30, 2006, www.venezuelanalysis.com .
15. Year-end data for 2006 from US Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration.
16. "Venezuela: Minerals," Encyclopedia Britannica Online, www.britannica.com. [back]
17. Bernardo Alvarez, "Venezuela's Global Agenda: Six More Years," April 5, 2007, Venezuelanalysis.com , www.venezuelanalysis.com .
18. Data from US Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, Country Analysis Briefs, Venezuela, September 2006, www.eia.doe.gov]
19. The question of appropriate technology and whether raw materials investments spur linkages to other parts of the economy has been a long-standing topic of research and analysis on the part of radical, dependency, and Marxist theorists. The 2003 report by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, Foreign Investment in Latin America and the Caribbean, 2003 examines patterns of foreign investment in Latin America and questions supposed benefits and spillover effects resulting from natural resources investments.
20. On new oil seismic technology and highly sophisticated secondary and tertiary recovery methods, some of which are now being used in Venezuela, see Jad Mouawad, "Oil Innovations Pump New Life into Old Wells, The New York Times, March 5, 2007.