Book review: Was Mao really a monster?

(Above: "Mao Zedong will live forever in our hearts!")

The continued attacks by anti-Communist academics and authors on the reputation and standing of Mao Zedong continue unabated. Indeed, they will last as long as there is a bourgeois class trying to prevent socialist revolution, or having failed to prevent it, trying to undermine it in order to restore capitalism.

Mao Zedong’s standing reached its highest point in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

He advocated a selfless life of service to the people, and required Party and government officials to periodically spend time working alongside the masses in order to remould outlooks that expressed bureaucratic and elitist attitudes towards the poor.

He utilised the method of proletarian cultural revolution in an effort to continue the revolution under the conditions of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

His standing recognised his special efforts to avoid the ossification of the revolutionary spirit after 1949 and the personal and political degeneration that had characterised the Soviet Union after the death of Stalin.

All of this had a world-wide influence on working class activists and youthful rebels of that time.

Jung Chang’s book Wild Swans was among the first of a plethora of anti-communist writings by disaffected Chinese authors.

After a while, the market for this sort of literature was so well established in the West that any hack writer of the Mills and Boon variety could have written a Cultural Revolution sob-story to formula.

But such writings did not entirely diminish the standing of Mao Zedong.

So two big guns have been aimed specifically in his direction.

The first was Li Zhisui’s ghost-written “insider” account The Private Life of Chairman Mao: The Memoirs of Mao's Personal Physician. Li had worked for a time as one of Mao’s doctors and wrote the book after defecting to the US.

The gutter press of the capitalist class carried lurid extracts from Li’s book purporting to show that Mao was a vile, sex-obsessed tyrant responsible for the murder of untold millions of his country men and women.

Jung Chang thought that the blackening of Mao’s reputation did not go far enough.

Together with her ex-Trotskyite husband Jon Halliday she concocted a hate-filled diatribe called Mao: The Unknown Story.

The book became a best-seller and once again, the capitalist press went into a feeding frenzy on its salacious and contemptible rantings.

So lacking in any objectivity - even from a bourgeois perspective – were these rantings that academic journals and literary reviews began distancing themselves from the book and its authors.

In fact, capitalist publishing house Routledge has put together a collection of these critiques under the title Was Mao Really a Monster? The academic response toChang and Halliday’s “Mao: The Unknown Story”.

The problem with this collection (with a few honourable exceptions) is that whilst the authors undertake the comparatively easy task of demolishing The Unknown Story as a concocted and dishonest presentation, they largely do so from the point of view of restoring credibility to attacks on Mao. By and large they do not defend Mao from attack. By and large they try to convince readers that there is a convincing and credible bourgeois attack on Mao that can only be damaged by association with the endless torrent of vomit that spews forth from the pages of Chang and Halliday’s poison pens.

Consider these statements from some of the authors in the Routledge collection (and note that they are all critical of aspects of the Unknown Story:


Delia Davin writes: “no honest person… would wish to be cast as an apologist for him. ..terrible human suffering” p. 20

Andrew Nathan (and we will come back to him!) writes: “we already knew that Mao was selfish and ruthless” p. 22

Jonathon D. Spence, usually a person who writes with considerable interest and insight about China, states in relation to Li Zhisui’s “more measured” presentation of Mao: “Dr Li presented a Mao who was …erratic and dictatorial…not especially talented intellectually.. .(with) cruelties…sprung sometimes from random whims…The comparatively measured tone of Li’s book encouraged acceptance of its main claims.” P. 37

Gregor Benton and Steven Tsang write: “We do not disagree that Mao authored atrocities and suffering and that he bullied and murdered party members and others to advance his or the party’s cause.” P. 54

Timothy Cheek states that Unknown Story is “a Maoist denunciation of Mao himself..(in the ) florid style of the Cultural Revolution” p. 55. He adds “Chang and Halliday sound a clarion call to bring Mao to account for his crimes”.

Geremie R Barme observes that “anyone…can sympathise with the authors’ outrage over the atrocities of the time…” p. 75. He, like Spence, is also taken in by Li Zhisui’s falsehoods: “I would recommend rather the work of a true insider, the treat-and-tell account produced a decade ago by Mao Zedong’s physician, Dr Li Zhisui.” P. 79

Alfred Chan, in an otherwise reasonable essay, writes: “No sensible person would want to act as an apologist for Mao and his autocratic and paranoid ways…” p. 108

Chen Yungfa adopts Cheek’s viewpoint: “Like Mao himself, they explain historical facts immoderately, falsely, and with distortion….” P. 115

Finally, Arthur Waldron writes that “Mao delighted in personal cruelty…Mao was the greatest mass murderer of the twentieth century…this is the book that will wreck Mao’s reputation beyond salvage…it is long past time for such an airing…the Chinese people…serve as Mao’s slaves…an honest reconsideration of Mao Zedong and his poisonous legacy…” pp170-175

Lowell Dittmer and Bill Willmott have essays that don’t set out to attack Mao by attacking The Unknown Story for its embarrassing lack of credibility.

And Mobo Gao and Jin Xiaoding alone of the contributors actually present coherent defences of Mao Zedong in their respective contributions.

Now, to go back to Andrew Nathan and Li Zhisui. Nathan wrote the introduction to Li Zhisui’s book. He was involved in the shaping of Li’s disgusting attacks on the integrity and character of Chairman Mao. For that reason alone, it is simply amazing to find him in this collection.

Historical justice really demands that Nathan and Li be placed in the same dock of literary judgement as Chang and Halliday.

Li’s book is as equally vicious and concocted a slander of Mao Zedong as the Chang and Halliday book.

For those interested to do so, access this critique of Li’s assisted scribblings here and make your own judgement:

http://chinastudygroup.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/manufacturing-history-xulin-dong.pdf

Bo Xilai and China's Maoist Party

Bo Xilai, the current Chongqing Municipality Party Secretary, is the son of Bo Yibo, a veteran member of the Chinese Communist Party who was denounced in the Cultural Revolution, emerging again after Deng Xiaoping's rise to supreme leadership.

Bo Xilai has recently taken a hard stand against corruption and gangsterism in Chongqing. He has also promoted a "red culture", singing Cultural Revolution era songs and sending text messages to millions of Chongqing citizens quoting his favourite quotations from Chairman Mao (left).

He also had a three hour meeting recently with the leaders of last year's Chongqing taxi strike.

You can read some of the English commentary on this phenomenon here:

http://www.boxun.us/news/publish/chinanews/Bo_Xilai_s_Anti-Mob_Campaign_in_Chongqing_Challenges_Hu_s_Rule_by_Empty_Rhetoric.shtml

and here:

http://www.smh.com.au/world/a-second-chapter-for-red-utopia-20091016-h157.html

To add to this intriguing insight into Mao's legacy and how the current leadership - including Bo Xilai himself - respond, I have translated this piece from an original Chinese post on the Cultural Revolution Research website .

I can't verify the accuracy of its reports, and I am open to criticism for the hurried translation and any mistakes I've made with it, but you'll get the gist. It refers to the formation of a Chinese Communist Party (Maoist) and the crackdown on it by its supposed mentor, Bo Xilai.

From a distance it's hard to make any real judgement, and the Chinese internet is full of hoaxes, but I offer it for what it is worth, and if more comes to hand I'll have a go at translating that too.
.....................
The Chinese Communist Party (Maoist) on the Declaration on the October 15 Counter-revolutionary Incident in Chongqing


Leftists establish Mao Zedong Communist Party

They support the appointment of Bo Xilai as General Secretary

Recently, Bo Xilai, secretary of the Chongqing Municipality, has presided over a vigorous campaign to combat black societies (triads), attracting great attention everywhere, but also stirring up a complex power struggle within the Communist Party. The ultra-left Maoists have been waiting to go into action, wanting to push Bo into the leadership for the overthrow of the existing system and the restoration of a Maoist line, but they have met with failure.

A princeling of the Communist Party and filled with wild ambition, Chongqing Municipality Party Secretary Bo Xilai has used "promoting red culture" and "hitting the black" to create his own image and attack his political opponents whilst drumming up support for his own career and has recently won loud acclaim from the Maoists who look upon him as "Mao Zedong reborn" and having maintained a "liberated zone" in Chongqing whilst in the remainder of the country there has been a "complete restoration of capitalism". On the occasion of Mao’s birthday in December of last year, the Maoists issued a "Notice to the People of the Whole Nation" announcing that they had already established a "Chinese Maoist Communist Party" and that its members had unanimously elected Bo Xilai general secretary.

After the October 1st National Day, dozens of Maoist Party members throughout the nation considered the situation to be excellent and new Maoists found hope in the leadership. They gathered at the Chongqing "liberated zone", but contrary to their expectations, their Maoist Party general secretary unexpectedly ordered the Chongqing Public Security Bureau to arrest them, and until now only a few have been released and repatriated to their places of origin.

Bo Xilai initiated the "red culture movement" in Chongqing: singing red songs, sending SMS’s of Mao’s Little Red Book, encouraging the reading of red literature from the Mao era, and studying Mao era models such as Jiao Yulu (left) and Wang Jingxi(below, left, meeting Maozedong and Zhou Enlai).


For the past two months he has conducted a vigorous and high-profile fight against Chongqing’s triads and uncovered the protective umbrella placed over the triads by the head of the Chongqing Justice Department Wen Qiang, again drawing the attention of the whole nation.

These two things caused Bo Xilai to leap into becoming the "spiritual leader" of the Maoists. On Maoist websites there was such nauseating praise as "national hero", "people’s politician", "the people’s beloved Party Secretary Bo", "long-tested communist fighter", and even shouts of "Long live Party Secretary Bo!"
There is a poem, "Bo Xilai, your mother the motherland and the people call you back to Beijing" saying that Chongqing under Bo’s government is the "Yan’an of the 21st century" and "China’s new Holy Land of the revolutionary spirit", and that "Bo Xilai not only belongs to Chongqing, he belongs to all China and should return to Beijing", the meaning of all of which is that Bo Xilai should aspire to Zhongnanhai and become the supreme leader of the Communist Party.

Formally established in January of this year, the entire Chinese Maoist Party supported Bo Xilai as general secretary.

After it was established, the Maoist Party not only posted the "Notice to the People of the Whole Nation" and the "Constitution of the Chinese Maoist Communist Party", but also distributed them as leaflets in Shanghai and other big cities. This "Notice to the People of the Whole Nation" refers to the three decades of China’s reform and opening to the West as thirty years of capitalist restoration, saying the "Chinese nation has already arrived at its most critical hour", and called for the overthrow of the current revisionist clique (the Chinese Communist regime), saying "It is right to rebel!", "Down with the bureaucrat-comprador traitors! Down with the running dogs at the top!" and calling out "Pursue them and wipe them out!" and wanting them to be "strangled in the cradle"....

Owing to the review of troops on October 1 this year, there was the phenomenon of the resurrection of Mao Zedong with, for example, the singing of "The East is Red" and the raising of Mao Zedong Thought for a short time etc, and moreover, with the launching of the red culture movement by Bo Xilai, the Maoists were very excited, and reached the stage at which they could come out into the open, racing off to the new revolutionary Holy Land of Chongqing to convene a congress for October 1 2010.

According to the news, more than 30 Maoists arrived in Chongqing to hold a meeting for exchanging experiences and to prepare for the October 1 congress. Although the Chinese Communist Party had already held its 17th Congress, the Maoists would only recognise the 9th and 10th Congresses held during the Cultural Revolution and believed that after the 10th Congress the Party had already become revisionist, and would not contradict this recognition (the first meeting to exchange experiences was in another revolutionary holy place, Xibaipo).

The host for this revolutionary exchange meeting was a Maoist organisation called "The Chongqing Mao Zedong Thought Study Society". They held memorial meetings for Mao’s birth and death and carried out commemorative activities for Mao on Qingming Festival.

Taking part in the preparations for the October 1 Congress was a very arrogant Professor Ma from Nanjing University who once enjoyed running the Mao Zedong Thought study class of the rural model village of Nanjie esteemed by the Maoists, and who had already run it for four terms, because he had energetically developed the organisation was finally expelled by the Nanjie Village head.

When the Maoist Party members were all gathered in the liberated area of Chongqing discussing matters of great importance, their beloved Party General Secretary Bo was feeling overwhelmingly ill at ease. On October 15, the Chongqing Public Security Bureau set out and arrested more than 30 of them, and the person in charge of the Chongqing Mao Zedong Thought Study Society, Xu Jiansheng, had his house searched that afternoon by the PSB who took several items including CDs from his computer. At the time, Xu Jiansheng was not at home, but he was grabbed the next day.

The latest news is that some of the youngsters from outside Chongqing who were arrested have been released, but Xu Jiansheng and another backbone member of the Chongqing Mao Zedong Thought Study Society, Wei Long, have been officially detained and charged by the authorities with "manufacturing terror and poisoning people’s minds".

As this matter goes online, the Maoists have had a big shock, accusing Bo Xilai of pretending to love what he really fears, and of being a two-faced person. It has also been revealed that Mao Zedong’s grandson Mao Xinyu has also condemned Bo Xilai. There were also some who spoke in defence of Bo Xilai, saying that he had been made to act against his conscience. And some insightful people said that to have Bo Xilai singing red songs was good and hitting the triads was also good, but no matter whether he’s acting under a red sign or a black sign, both are for the sake of fishing for even greater power.


(Above, some of the 166 Mazeratis, Bentleys and Mercedes seized under Bo Xilai's crackdown on triads in Chongqing).



(Above, 20 millian yuan, wrapped in waterproof oilskins and retrieved from a pool where it had been hidden by former Chongqing Justice Department Director Wen Qiang, a corrupt element exposed by Bo Xilai's crackdown).

Solidarity with the workers of the processing plant „Yanovskaya” in the city Krasny Luch/Ukraine

On September 30 a request was issued for messages of support for the workers of a processing factory in the Ukraine. The message reads:

The request for solidarity to the workers of the processing plant „Yanovskaya” in the city Krasny Luch/Ukraine

From July 2nd to July 18th the workers of the private processing plant „Yanovskaya» in the city Krasny Luch (Lugansk region, Ukraine) were on strike for their demand to pay out the wage debts for some past months as well as for 2008. The workers, in their majority women, founded a strike committee and an independent trade union and under their leadership even blocked the railway leading to the plant. The result of this strike and the blockade was pay out of their wages for March and partly April 2009. And all participants in the strike who were dismissed before by the management were employed again on their former workplaces.

However, after that the local authorities together with the plant management started to take revenge on the strikers by taking up the chase again. The proprietors decided to get rid of the organizers of the protest with any random means and to stop any attempt of a workers’ struggle for their rights in the future. They instituted legal proceedings against the organizers of the strike, demanded to recognize the struggle of the workers as “illegal” and to punish them.

The trial against the activists was launched on 28 July and will be renewed on October, 9. With criminal means the leaders of the strike committee and the union leadership of the plant Anatoli Moskaljov and Anna Antroptschenko are prosecuted.

We emphatically protest against this repression and demand to stop any legal and criminal prosecution of the workers’ activists of the enriching plant „Yanovskaya“!

We ask to send letters of protest to the following addresses:

1) High Court of the Ukraineul. P. Orlika 4Kiev, Ukraine, 01024;e-mail: supcourt@scourt.gov.ua

2. Chief Public Prosecutor of the Ukraineul. Riynitskaza 13/15Kiev, Ukraine, 01001

3. State Regional Administration of the District LuganskPl. Geroev VOV 3Lugansk, Ukraine, 91016;e-mail: gubernator@loga.gov.ua

Solidarity messages send, please, to the address: rabochkom@ua.fm

Yours faithfully,Coordination Council of workers` movement of Ukraine (KSRD)Edition of the newspaper « Worker`s Action»http://proletar.org.ua

I sent a message to the High Court and the State Regional Administration of the District Lugansk, and also forwarded a short message directly to the Coordination Council of the Workers’ Movement of Ukraine at rabochkom@ua.fm

That message reads:

I have sent the following message to the Ukranian authorities as per your request:

I emphatically protest against the repression of the workers’ activists of the enriching plant „Yanovskaya“ and demand that the Ukrainian authorities stop any legal and criminal prosecution against them!

Workers of all countries, unite!

(name)
Australia

Greetings to the Yanovskaya workers: dare to struggle, dare to win!

................................
A couple of days ago, I received a message in reply:

Dear comrade Michael!

Many thanks for your solidarity!

We have already given your letter and his translation to active workers of processing plant "Yanovskaya" in the city Krasny Luch. Your help has caused the hottest words of gratitude.

We inform you details on session of court taken place October, 9. The judge did not expect, that their comrades from abroad begin to support active workers of "Yanovskaya". The judge has not risked to sentence, and has decided to tighten cause again. The judge has declared carry of judicial hearing for October, 30.

We with you still have time for carrying out of the even greater and strong campaign of solidarity! Let's connect to it new comrades and we shall finally achieve a stop any legal and criminal prosecution of organizers of strike on plant „Yanovskaya“!

Long live solidarity!

Yours faithfully, Coordination Council of workers` movement of Ukraine (KSRD)Edition of the newspaper « Worker`s Action»http://proletar.org.ua

What a great democratic weapon the internet is, allowing workers around the world to support each other so quickly!

Holloway ambiguous, Marathon unhappy

As this website has predicted, SA Resources Minister Holloway has avoided pulling the plug on Marathon Resources, and has instead offered a 12-month exploration license for the company at Arkaroola.

However, there are restrictions on where and how and with whose approval any exploration is to occur.

These restrictions mark a partial but important victory in the campaign to protect Arkaroola from mining in general, and from Marathon’s proposed uranium mine in particular.

However, they do not yet go far enough. Before adding further comment, here is the statement released last Tuesday, 6 October 2009 by Paul Holloway, Minister for Mineral Resources development in the SA Government:

Stricter conditions for Marathon exploration
News Release
www.ministers.sa.gov.au
Hon Paul Holloway
Minister for Mineral Resources DevelopmentMinister for Urban Development and PlanningMinister for Small Business

Tuesday, 6 October 2009

Minister for Mineral Resources Development Paul Holloway said today Marathon Resources remains suspended from major exploration activity on its northern Flinders Ranges tenement despite being offered a subsequent exploration licence that includes tough new conditions.

Mr Holloway says the subsequent licence has been offered to Bonanza Gold, a subsidiary company of Marathon Resources, for an initial term of one year with additional licence conditions.

“These conditions include the requirement for both the Director of Mines and Chief Executive of the Department of Environment and Heritage to jointly approve all (emphasis in original - servethepeople) exploration activities,” he says.

“Early consultation with Arkaroola Management has also been formalised in the new conditions.

“Marathon will need to agree to these new stringent conditions if it wishes to accept the licence extension.”

The Northern Flinders Ranges area has long been identified as having high prospectivity for copper, gold, uranium and other metals. The area is also now recognised for having high prospectivity for the development of geothermal energy. But it is also recognised as an area of unique scenic beauty.

Mr Holloway says a balance has to be struck between the need to preserve environmentally sensitive areas and unique landscapes, including those with high tourist values, with the desire to fully explore the State’s resources potential.

“A comprehensive Environmental Management Framework for the Northern Flinders Ranges is now being developed to achieve this strict oversight of exploration and potential resource development,” Mr Holloway says.

“The framework will guide allowable mineral and energy exploration activities in this environmentally and culturally iconic part of South Australia.”

Mr Holloway says this collaborative project being finalised by the Department for Environment and Heritage and Primary Industries and Resources S.A. identifies sensitive areas that should be excluded from any future exploration and mining.

“There are some parts of the Arkaroola area that should never be open to mining,” he says.

“And there are other parts where mining activity should be heavily restricted to ensure environmental features are not disturbed.”

Mr Holloway says it is essential South Australia has a secure, stable and consistent legislative framework to attract high-risk mining investment to this State.

“Attracting this sort of investment is all the more critical in the current world financial environment,” he says.
Mr Holloway says Marathon’s activities in 2007 involving unauthorised disposal of waste also brought to light some deficiencies in compliance and enforcement provisions of the Mining Act.

Despite the breaches identified in 2007, Bonanza Gold and Marathon remain in compliance with the Mining Act 1971 and conditions of their licence, and are entitled to apply for a subsequent licence.

“A number of changes to the legislation being drafted will strengthen the compliance and enforcement provisions of the Mining Act and the ability of PIRSA to better regulate activities on mineral tenements, including exploration licences,” he says.

“The subsequent licence will only be granted for an initial one year term and all ground disturbing exploration activity on the tenement, which includes Arkaroola, will remain suspended at least until proposed amendments to the Mining Act come into force.

“I am confident that the additional stringent licence conditions, a strengthened regulatory framework and the development of the Environmental Management Framework for the Northern Flinders Ranges will ensure this iconic and mineral-rich region is sensitively managed.”


………………

The positives in this statement are that Marathon “remains suspended from major exploration activity” and that a new license is only offered on conditions that “all exploration activities” be jointly approved by two government departments, giving the Department of Environment and Heritage a say for the first time.

“Early consultation” with the Spriggs as managers of the Sanctuary is also a condition, although experience of “consultations” is that they are generally only a procedural formality provided for window-dressing purposes.

Even so, Marathon’s management cannot be said to have reacted with glee to the announcement. A sour grapes statement from the company indicated only that it would “assess’ the license proposal and respond to the Government within 21 days (see http://www.marathonresources.com.au/pdf/091012_Offer_for_extension_of_Licence.pdf ).

Of particular note in Holloway’s press release is the observation that “some parts of Arkaroola should never be open to mining”.

Our belief is that if this applies to any part of Arkaroola, it must certainly apply to the Mt Gee site, but that, in any case, the integrity of the Sanctuary can only be protected by declaring the whole area off-limits to mining.

It would be perfidious in the extreme if, prohibiting Mt Gee from being the site for a mine, the Government, having bought time until after the next State election in March, and having lulled people into a false sense of security, was to subsequently allow mining in areas less visible to tourists. Marathon has already indicated that it believes that there are such areas.
Their data shows the "hot areas" and has plenty off them out of sight (other side of the hill) of the famous Ridge Top Tour, including the backside of Mt Painter, an area with enormous heritage value of gemstone quality mineralogy.

Marathon’s sour grapes are our sweet nectar, but there’s many a slip ‘twixt the cup and the lip….

Derivatives - what would Chairman Mao have Thought?

The global capitalist crisis is still being played out. Even if there is some movement towards a recovery, it is a movement characterised by twists and turns, a recovery in which speculative and parasitic finance capital is more or less successfully resisting the social democrats who believe that future prosperity rests on regulation of the sector.

Here in Australia we have sheltered from the storm under the protective umbrella of Chinese resource purchases…actual purchases of the ores themselves, and more recently, some fairly aggressive purchasing of resource sector private companies.

However, the umbrella is not without its own holes.

Having “opened to the outside world” for three decades, (a cute phrase that lets the US off the hook for the cordon sanitaire and blockades that it maintained against China through the fifties and sixties), China has lost some of its financial sovereignty and is only just realising its vulnerability as part of the imperialist world economy.

This is particularly so in respect of derivatives, those arrangements through which companies try to take advantage of fluctuations in commodity prices or, at the least, protect themselves if the fluctuations head consistently south.

The derivatives industry is huge. The Swiss-based Bank for International Settlements recently estimated that the value of global derivatives contracts was 1.14 quadrillion dollars. Can’t visualise that? Look at this post of mine for some idea of what it means.

So how does the derivatives industry relate to China?

Keen to participate in the global economy, some of the biggest state-owned enterprises (SOEs) seem to have forgotten their socialist origins and their responsibilities to the Chinese people.

They have embraced the get-rich-is-glorious-regardless-of-how-you-do-it ideology of those “pragmatists” who set the pace for much of what happens in China and have entered into the shady world of derivatives perhaps not fully understanding the pitfalls underlying speculative capital transactions.

Mushtaq Kapasi was a derivatives dealer employed by Western banks to get into the pants of Chinese companies. He confessed that “Many Chinese firms had little experience with complicated financial products such as derivatives before they bought billions of dollars worth of these investment products” (Confessions of Chinese Derivatives Deals Pt. 1).

He cites the example of China Eastern Airlines.

“Quite sensibly,” he writes, “the airline bought derivatives that would pay if oil became more expensive. But to make the hedge cheaper in the short term, China Eastern agreed that if oil prices dropped past a certain point, then it would have to pay double what the bank would have to pay if the price of oil went up. After the oil bubble burst last year, the company admitted these derivatives cost them 6.2 billion yuan – and obliterated their profits for 2008.”

In the end Kapasi pulled out of the derivatives game in China having observed too many international banks conning Chinese firms, state-owned and otherwise, with what he called “tricky products”.

The scale of losses suffered by Chinese firms has shaken officialdom.

The State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) concedes that 28 SOEs have taken out derivatives contracts and that most have suffered losses to such beneficial institutions as Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs Group, J.P. Morgan Chase and Co, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley.

As Lenin said in a somewhat different context, What is to be done?

SASAC has authorised the SOEs to begin withholding payments to the banks; indeed six SOEs are believed to have begun legal proceedings to break their contracts.

One school of thought holds that this is a bad move that will tarnish China’s business reputation; another holds that the banks know that they took advantage of Chinese inexperience with derivatives and will accept the loss of the contracts in return for continued involvement with other lucrative projects in China.

At least the SOEs have the Chinese government to support them. As Kapasi noted, however, “Most small investors are not as lucky…Many are linked to markets that could go haywire at any time. Chinese derivative holders would then face enormous costs that many can’t afford.”

Meanwhile, I read in a recent Women of China magazine the case of a teacher in Yunnan Province who has paid the tuition fees of her poverty-stricken students so that they can keep attending school.

I guess that's the difference between serving the people and serving big capital….

Port Augusta: corporate protectors versus climate protesters

(Map, above, shows Port Augusta at the top of the gulf, and both Leigh Creek and Copley sandwiched between Lakes Torrens and Frome)

A small contingent of protesters calling for the closure of the polluting coal-fired Port Augusta power station last weekend were easily outnumbered by the corporate world’s protectors, the state police.

About 50 supporters of the Climate Camp Organising Collective took the 3-hour road trip from Adelaide to Port Augusta. They held a community forum on Friday night and marched on the power station the following morning.

In a farcical display of state overkill, more than 150 police were deployed, including mounted police and the dog squad.

The corporate protectors stopped the climate protesters after they had marched some 2 kilometres to the power station. At this point protesters in t-shirts and thongs (footwear variety) deposited 350 red bottlebrush flowers on the road, symbolising the 350 parts per million of atmospheric carbon that climate scientists say is the upper limit to maintain a safe climate.

Several Climate Camp representatives were then escorted by weapons-toting police to the front gate of the power station, where they hoped to present the company with a Community Decommission Order requiring the immediate closure of the plant. However, no company personnel were prepared to accept the Order.


The action occurred as part of a four day climate camp where a range of workshops were held to discuss the science and politics of climate change, including the need for an immediate switch to renewable energy. Participants emphasized the need for a just transition for workers in the region and that more jobs could be created in renewable energy than are currently provided by the power stations.

Climate Camp activists were careful not to demonise workers at either the power station or the Leigh Creek coalfields. CFMEU (Mining Division) national secretary Tony Maher had cautioned activists about this at a day-long Climate Change conference organsied by SA Unions and attended by over 100 union delegates on the Thursday before the weekend protest.

However, the power stations themselves (Northern and Playford B) certainly deserve community anger as they are among the most polluting and inefficient in Australia.


Originally owned and operated by the state government through the Electricty Trust of South Australia, they were leased to private enterprise as Flinders Power in 2000 by the then state Liberal government. In June 2006, multinational investor Babcock and Brown (20% is owned by German bank Bayerische Hypo und Vereinsbank ) acquired Flinders Power and continues to operate it and the Leigh Creek coal mine through a wholly-owned subsidiary, Babcock and Brown Power despite the parent company declaring bankruptcy last March.

An interesting aside to the power plant protest was the deliberate lie put out to the media and to Climate Camp organisers that Flinders Power would agree not to run the Leigh Creek coal train for the duration of the climate camp at Port Augusta. The coal train is up to 3 kilometres long and is said to be the longest in the world.

According to ABC News on Friday, “Flinders Power says it has cancelled coal train deliveries due this weekend because the train runs at night and the driver may not see any protesters if they walked onto the rail tracks.”

This was also conveyed in a special bulletin authorised by Police Assistant Commissioner Graeme Barton which said “As a result of Operation Climate Camp SA 2009 emissions protest at Port Augusta, Flinders Power agreed that the longest coal train in the world would not run on Saturday or Sunday”.

Yet Flinders Power did start the train rolling towards Port Augusta on Sunday morning. It didn’t arrive because one of the engines was derailed at about 10am outside Copley, not far from Leigh Creek.

The deceit of trying to run the train behind a screen of lies, and the truth of its derailment, was revealed by an astute and enterprising 14-year old Victorian school girl on holidays in the Flinders Ranges in this piece for the Coober Pedy Regional Times: http://cooberpedyregionaltimes.wordpress.com/2009/09/27/derailment-of-leigh-creek-coal-train-enroute-to-port-augusta-power-station/

The revelation led Climate Camp activists to state that “Future South Australian Climate Change Camps are less likely to undergo negotiations with police due to the deliberate abuse of our trust.”

Book Review: "The Ancient Ship" by Zhang Wei

Zhang Wei’s The Ancient Ship was written in 1987 and only recently translated into English. It was published by Harper Collins last year.

Set in the fictional Shandong town of Wali, the novel explores the enduring culture and psychology of the Chinese people.

The plot is non-linear and events move into and out of and around certain events in the first forty years of the People’s Republic of China. Although these events, as a background to the ancient patterns of the struggle for survival in Wali are almost inconsequential, they also have profound repercussions.

Although the reader might identify the struggle for land reform, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, the Sino-Vietnamese war and the “reform and opening up”, these milestones in the history of contemporary China are unmarked, their anonymity serving to deny, for the author, that linear time has any meaning or relevance for the ebb and flow of Chinese life.

Liberation in 1949 and the period of the Five Year Plans are referred to in passing as “By then an earthshaking change had occurred in our land, characterized mainly by pervasive turmoil. The people were confident that it would take only a few years to overtake England and catch up to America” (p. 9).

The masking of such familiar milestones and the moving backwards and forwards between them simultaneously upsets the Western mind’s reliance on a linear time structure and brings to the fore a concentration on what the author sees as innate Chinese characteristics that are as much a part of the Chinese mind as ancient walls and ancient ships are part of its landscape.

The dominating motif of the novel is an imposing and ancient glass noodle factory. Its presence is felt in the same way as the distillery in Red Sorghum and the silk dyeing plant in Ju Dou. In so far as Wali might be a microcosm for all of China, the factory can be taken to symbolise China’s industrial infrastructure: the struggle for control of the factory between the Sui and Zhao clans mirrors the struggle for control of the means of production unleashed by Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms.

Although his family has lost its control of the factory to the Zhaos, Sui Baopu sits at his machine each day, ignoring events in the village and refusing younger brother Sui Jiansu’s earnest calls for rising up against the Zhao’s and reclaiming the factory. Baopu represents a compliant working class, still in the grip of the Communist Manifesto, but unable or unwilling to follow its call to action.

Their uncle, the seafaring Sui Buzhao further blurs the reality of time, suffering delusions about being in the company of, and having conversations with, the Ming Admiral Zheng He whose navigating manual fulfils his spiritual needs just as the Manifesto does for Baopu.

Surrounded by corruption, a lone Party street committee secretary rails against the abuse of power by higher ups and always pays for his tickets to the movies. This quality, together with Buzhao’s unexpected act of selfless heroism at the novel’s end, is the key to the town’s survival and growth and is the human equivalent of the underground waters that promise to rejuvenate the town’s dying river.

It is impossible not to be fascinated by the detail of work in the noodle factory and the minutiae of life in the town. This novel was a best-seller in China and rightfully so.

Radioactive dust storm...coming your way!

“What do we do when this dust is radioactive?”

Two days ago, residents of the mid-north of South Australia reported that it was raining mud.

They were referring to the fact that a massive dust storm had been whipped up in advance of a rain front that had overtaken it and rained down through it.

That dust storm moved east, plunging Broken Hill into blackness, as captured on this home movie on Youtube:

It then hit Brisbane and then Sydney as these amazing photos by ninemsn photographer Shaun Davies show.

People living in the path of this massive dust storm have got to start asking their friends, their workmates, families and politicians the question in boldface above, namely, “What do we do when this dust is radioactive?”

That’s because BHP-Billton is going to turn its underground mine at Roxby Downs, Olympic Dam, into the world’s largest open cut uranium mine. I won’t take up space here detailing the implications of this. You can go to these links to two earlier posts on the topic of dust storms and radioactivity:

http://mike-servethepeople.blogspot.com/2008/12/advertiser-image-of-dust-storm-last.html

http://mike-servethepeople.blogspot.com/2008/12/olympic-dam-dust-and-radiation.html

And check out film-maker David Bradbury's views on the Coober Pedy Regional Times website:

http://cooberpedyregionaltimes.wordpress.com/2009/09/25/filmmaker-david-bradbury-red-dust-dump-originating-at-woomera-is-grave-concern-for-public-health/

Health in the US: Goin' Down Slow

I get a fair few hits from the US on this blog, and I don’t want to convey the impression that I’m anything but an outside observer of conditions in that country. However, I’m totally bemused by the furore that has erupted over Obama’s plan to improve the health system. Nearly every advanced capitalist economy has some form of universal or public health system, yet the rabid right paints this entirely acceptable-to-capitalism measure as a form of socialism or…God forbid!.....communism.

But wait a minute! Wasn’t it that socialist text, the Bible that advised Christians “If someone takes your coat, give him your cloak as well; if he makes you go a mile with him, go with him two”?

Yet what we’ve seen is a pack of fundamentalist white Christians saying that they don’t want to pay taxes for a public health system because the main beneficiaries will be the poor, the Latinos and the blacks.

Gotta love that…the most selfish and unchristian nation on the planet. What was that about camels passing through the eye of a needle…..

Reminds me of the way Mance Lipscomb (left) commented on his rendition of St Louis Jimmy Oden’s 1941 record “Goin’ Down Slow” when he played it in 1972. The dying narrator of the song is left to fend for himself, even by his doctor. There was nobody to go the extra mile for him or help him out with his medical costs. By the time he gets a message to his mother, he is already dead and gone.

Some of those opponents of Obama’s health reforms still have that mentality: if you’re poor, that’s your own fault, and if you can’t pay up front for medical help then too bad….die for all I care!

(You can get onto Youtube and search for Going Down Slow and find Mance doing a different version, as well as versions by other blues artists.)


Yes I done had my fun,

If I don’t get well no more

I done had my fun people,

Don't get well no more

My health is failing,

And I'm goin' down slow

Want you to write my mama,

Tell her the shape I'm in

Please write my mama,

Tell her the shape I'm in

Tell mama to pray for me,

Forgive me some my sins.

(Break)

Mama don’t send no doctor,

He can't do no good

Mama don’t send no doctor,

He can't do no good

It's all my fault mama,

I didn’t do the things I should

Next train south
You can look for my clothes on board
Next train south mama
Look for my clothes on board
You don’t see my body mama
All you can do is moan

(Spoken) My ma had to moan…

Mama don’t you worry
Cos this is all in my prayer
Mama please don’t worry
This is all in my prayer
You know your son is dead
Goin’ out of this world somewhere

(Spoken) Well that’s as true a song as I’ve ever played. It’s a story about a confession of a boy that was sick and he done strayed away from home and didn’t let anybody know where he was at until he got down and had TB and so he had to see a doctor. The doctor told him he had to send for somebody to get him theirselves. “Well,” he said, “I got a mother. I can write her and tell her the shape I’m in.” All the verses are as true as I’m looking at you.

Book Review: “Raising My Voice” by Malalai Joya

The military leaders of US imperialism are currently pressuring the Obama Administration and its allies, including Australia, to increase troop strength in Afghanistan.

This demand must be vigorously resisted and all foreign troops in Afghanistan withdrawn immediately.

Why? The answer is in the recently-published autobiography of Malalai Joya, a courageous and fiercely independent woman who toured Australia a couple of months ago.

Standing on a platform that espouses an end to foreign occupation of her country, and a secular democracy with full rights for women, Malalai Joya was elected to represent the men and women of her home province of Farah in western Afghanistan in that country’s parliament.

She was illegally stripped of her right to represent her electorate following her outspoken criticism and exposure of the fundamentalists and warlords who sit in the parliament and collaborate with US imperialism. “…war criminals wear the mask of democracy and sit in our Parliament where they are free to pass an amnesty bill to ensure they will never be brought to justice”, she writes on p. 240.

Joya spares no time on President Hamid Karzai, accusing him of weeping crocodile tears when she details to him the suffering of the people, yet working with warlords, fundamentalists and opium lords like his own brother Wali Karzai to prolong their suffering and to betray the women of Afghanistan in particular,

Indeed the corrupt electoral process that allowed warlords and criminals to bribe and intimidate their way into the parliament has been further exposed with confirmed widespread ballot-rigging in the recent Presidential elections.

The Afghan government is simply a corrupt dictatorship full of women-hating Islamic fundamentalists who differ from the Taliban only in that they are prepared to serve as puppets for US imperialism.



(This child was bombed by the US imperialists in Bala Baluk village of Malalai Joya's home province of Farah. On 5th May 2009, the US airstrikes targeted people’s homes, killing more than 150, mostly women and children. This is another war crime but Pentagon shamelessly includes Taliban as the perpetrators too and announces the civilian deaths being only 12!)

And what does Malalai Joya see as the real purpose behind the so-called “war on terror”? She clearly believes that “its real purpose is for the United States and its allies to establish permanent bases to serve their strategic aims…They would like to stay in Afghanistan forever, so they can keep military bases and a presence in the region…to counteract China’s influence in particular. The superpower would prefer to keep the situation unstable so they can stay indefinitely and use and occupy our country as part of a big chess game” (p. 237-8).

In addition to strategic geo-political considerations, control of resources and the routes along which they flow are cited: “Central Asia is also very rich in oil and natural gas resources. One of the reasons that NATO wants to stay in Afghanistan is to ensure the West has better access to these riches…The West does not want these resources flowing through Iran or Russia” (p. 238).

Malalai Joya’s book is rich in detail of the conditions under which the poor and disenfranchised sections of the people live. It also shows the extraordinary lengths to which Joya herself must go to outwit the assassins who have tried a number of times to kill her.

In the final pages of the book, she calls upon the international community to end the war; to send real humanitarian aid; to demand an end to the rule of the warlords; and to withdraw all foreign troops. She acknowledges that there will still be years of fighting after foreign troops leave, but maintains that only the people of a given country can secure their own independence and freedom. Their power, she says, “is like the power of God” (p. 104).

(For further information, see the links to the Malalai Joya Defence Committee and the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan in the column to the right.)

When ships are going nowhere, neither is capitalism

Here, on a sleepy stretch of shoreline at the far end of Asia, is surely the biggest and most secretive gathering of ships in maritime history.

Their numbers are equivalent to the entire British and American navies combined; their tonnage is far greater. Container ships, bulk carriers, oil tankers - all should be steaming fully laden between China, Britain, Europe and the US, stocking camera shops, PC Worlds and Argos depots ahead of the retail pandemonium of 2009. But their water has been stolen.

They are a powerful and tangible representation of the hurricanes that have been wrought by the global economic crisis; an iron curtain drawn along the coastline of the southern edge of Malaysia's rural Johor state, 50 miles east of Singapore harbour.

The paragraphs above are from an article in the British Daily Mail titled “Revealed: The Ghost Fleet Recession.”

You can click on this link for the full article:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1212013/Revealed-The-ghost-fleet-recession.html

The article is a sobering reminder of the fact that the so-called “green shoots of recovery” are a long way from developing in mature plants of renewed prosperity.

The image of empty ships “equivalent to the entire British and American navies combined” stuck in a great oceanic parking lot for want of goods to be carried between continents emphasises the downturn in productivity which has led to unemployment and hardship being visited on the working classes of developed and developing nations alike.

It is the reality behind probably the most honest of a whole series of “economic indicators” used by economists to analyse and predict economic activity.

This is the Baltic Dry Index, a daily average of the prices to ship raw materials across the seas. Because it measures the demand for the movement of raw materials, it can be sued to predict production trends. It is a trade in shipping contracts between real users and lacking in incentives for speculative investors.

The Baltic Dry Index plunged 93% between June 2008 and January 2009 and has made two attempts at recovery, only to slip back each time. As an honest indicator of activity in the shipping world, it provides no material signs of global economic recovery.

It indicates that the crucial element in the response of capitalism to recurrent crises of overproduction is the large-scale, wanton and wasteful destruction of productive capacity.

There must be a better system than this!

Book Review: Yu Hua's "Brothers"

Yu Hua came to prominence as an author in China with his first works, including To Live which was filmed by no less than Zhang Yimou.

Brothers is his first work in a decade. It is a long novel, more than 650 pages in English translation, and covers the years from immediately before the Cultural Revolution up to the present.

The “brothers” are actually step-brothers and totally loyal to and supportive of each other as they develop through adolescence and into adulthood.

This occurs during the years of the Cultural Revolution and Yu Hua embraces to the full the genre of “scar literature” for this phase of his book, painting the decade-long period as one of unremitting cruelty and indifference. (“Scar literature”, or “literature of the wounded”, emerged around 1978 as intellectuals and bourgeois rightists who had been struggled against during the Cultural Revolution sought through literature to win sympathy under the conditions of the Deng ascendancy. With the publication of Jung Chang’s notorious Wild Swans, the genre and its associated creations created a market niche in the West.)

Of the two brothers, Baldy Li is the more prominent, both as a character and as a literary device. He is developed into a latter-day Ah Q, Lu Xun’s 1921 character propelled by an over-arching ego into the self-delusion that every defeat he suffers is some kind of spiritual victory. In Baldy Li’s case, however, he really does succeed – at some things at least – and that merely compounds his self-delusion because these are ultimately not the things that are most important to him.

The other brother, Song Gang, is modest and unaffected and tries desperately to stay loyal to both his brother and his wife only to be eventually destroyed by both of them.

The undoing of the relationship between the brothers occurs as China enters an era in which to get rich is glorious. With little apparent leadership or guidance from the Communist Party, this pursuit of enrichment becomes a source of social corruption and moral decay.

This is not a book for the faint-hearted: the language that comes from Baldy Li is, shall we say, rural, and the exploration of moral decay verges on the gynaecological.
Someone is always being beaten up or physically and verbally abused.

A best-seller in China, the book has attracted great controversy. Some of this revolves around its alleged lack of realism. This is to misunderstand the nature and purpose of satire. Should Jonathon Swift be dismissed because a race of tiny people pegs out his hero, Gulliver?

Yu Hua is holding a mirror to Chinese society, but like the old distorting mirrors that we all remember laughing at ourselves in at the Show, its absurdities and exaggerations are essential to enabling his (Chinese) readers to see what their society has become in the very capitalist “socialist market economy”.

Exposing the crassness of the market economy does not necessarily make this a book that serves a progressive social purpose.

The author practiced as a dentist before taking to writing. He worked for a living, but not as a proletarian worker and he has no positive proletarian role models in this book.

The two characters who most obviously display qualities such as courage and compassion are Song Gang’s school teacher father, the son of a landlord, and Mama Su who runs a roadside stall selling steamed buns.

Working people yes, and working people of low social status and low income, but people whose work is outside of the industrial proletariat and who really epitomize the outlook of an impoverished petty-bourgeoisie.

It is really this class, at the mercy of China’s new rich, but unlikely to be the standard-bearers of a resurgent socialist movement and perhaps fearful still of the power of the working class, for whom this book is written.

Lu Xun is unlikely to be displaced from his pedestal as China’s greatest modern writer by Yu Hua: Lu Xun only took some tens of pages to create the enduring Ah Q and his writings served the cause of the revolutionary emancipation of the workers and peasants, led by the Chinese Communist Party.

Nevertheless, Baldy Li serves a contemporary purpose in exposing the foibles of China’s embrace of capitalism, and he would enjoy the fact that his creator has had such success – and controversy -with this book.

Nepal: Maoists form embryonic parallel government

(Posted by n3wday on September 4, 2009
This article was posted on Nepal News.)

Maoists form ’shadow’ cabinet.

The Unified CPN (Maoist) has formed 18 departments resembling the ministries of the government.

A meeting of the party’s Joint National People’s Movement Committee on Sunday formed the departments. Many of the departments are coordinated by party leaders who were ministers in related ministries in the Maoist-led government.

Dr Baburam Bhattarai, who was the finance minister in the previous government, is the coordinator of the Planning and Finance Department.

Likewise, Giriraj Mani Pokhrel, the former health minister coordinates the health department and former tourism minister Hisila Yami coordinates the tourism, physical infrastructure and science department.

Along with the central departments, the Maoists have also decided to form local bodies.

Maoist leaders say, the departments and the local bodies will not function as a parallel government yet, but can be converted to one if such situation comes.

“It will not be parallel as of now, but the people can form their own local bodies if need be,” said Lokendra Bista, coordinator of the newly formed agriculture and cooperatives department.

Nepal's Binod: We have to accomplish insurrection

(Members of World People’s Resistance Movement from Britain and Ireland conducted this interview in Nepal. )

“At this moment when there is no experience of revolution in the 21st century, when there is no advanced proletarian revolutionary movement in the world, when this country is encircled and governed by Indian expansionism, at this moment against imperialism and expansionism, we have come to the decision that we have to accomplish insurrection. This is the important outcome of this meeting.”

WPRM: Can you introduce yourself please?

Com. Binod: My name is Comrade Binod. I am a Central Committee member and secretary of the state council for Mahakali state, which comprises seven districts in the far west of Nepal.

WPRM: Can you tell us about the recent Central Committee meeting and its implications for the coming weeks and months?

Com. Binod: In the life of the party, this Central Committee meeting has been unusual from the point of view of ideology and debate. We have received an opportunity, and we are proud that this meeting has been very unusual because it has taken place amid the deep curiosity of the proletariat in Nepal as well as the world over. This curiosity is positive. At the same time, the imperialists and reactionaries also have an expectation. Amid this we have carried out a great meeting, and made decisions which have made us proud to talk about this meeting.

WPRM: And what are these decisions?

Com. Binod: At this moment when there is no experience of revolution in the 21st century, when there is no advanced proletarian revolutionary movement in the world, when this country is encircled and governed by Indian expansionism, at this moment against imperialism and expansionism, we have come to the decision that we have to accomplish insurrection. This is the important outcome of this meeting.

WPRM: So insurrection can be carried out in this situation?

Com. Binod: Certainly there is a negative situation; an unfavourable situation for revolutionaries. But there is no other mightier force than the people, and the Nepalese people are so mighty. Because of this, these people can bring us success. We have the ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism (MLM) and we have a good and clear organisational setup, we have a team of leaders who want to fight, we have a class, a nation and a region which has been heavily suppressed. We have the commitment to win victory, the commitment to synthesise our understanding to a new height.

Certainly there are serious obstacles put in front of the Nepali people by the Americans, but we have commitment, courage and the confidence to overcome those obstacles. What we see now within the UML, a revisionist party, is that their cadres have lost confidence with their leaders and their line. At the same time within Nepali Congress, a reactionary party, many cadres have also lost confidence with their leaders and their line. The monarchists have already lost their leadership and also the Terai nationalist forces have seen their leadership divided.

We have a glorious history. You are British, and we have a glorious history of Ghorkali forces that defeated the British Army in many places. As descendants of that, our people are equipped with the weapons of MLM and the blood that is flowing in Nepal is now working for the purpose of socialism and communism.

When we initiated the People’s War we were only 70 or 75 people. Even at that time we had the courage and confidence that we could conquer the world, that the revolutionary forces, the proletariat, could conquer the world. We had some fear about whether our party was going to be destroyed, or whether, like UML, it would become a revisionist party, whether it would vacillate on the revolutionary path. But through the process of great debate we have come to a higher level of understanding and we see that the victory of the proletariat is inevitable.

We have a deep feeling that today no-one can make this party a reactionary or vacillating party. We are not only capable and experienced in leading People’s War but also in leading line struggle and taking the party to a higher level of debate. That has been proved in this meeting.

WPRM: How does the UCPN(M) feel about the current UML led coalition government?

Com. Binod: Our senior leader Baburam Bhattarai said that the Nepali people have given the responsibility of being a driver to the Maoists, as a conductor to the Nepali Congress and as a caretaker to the UML. But now the caretaker has taken the place of the driver and the driver is in place of the caretaker.

In Nepalese tradition there is a fable about Dakchyaprajapati, who has the body of a human being and the head of a goat, which is set in a wrong direction, pointing backwards. This government is like that. Objectively we understand this government like that, but politically this government is designed by Nepali Congress. In the objective reality of Nepal, this government has been constructed in order to destroy the Nepali revolution, the UCPN(M) and the aspirations of the Nepali people. But this government is like a scarecrow. In the beginning the birds think this might be a man. Then when the bird realises this is not a man then it sits on the head of the scarecrow. At the moment this government is like a scarecrow. The Nepali people understand that it is set up by Indian expansionism and they are not afraid of this. So it is not so important to talk about this government, but as far as MK Nepal (the PM) is concerned, he has time and again over the last few years prepared his trousers and his daura-suruwal (a type of Nepali dress). He has been prepared many times but had never before had this opportunity. Now he has got his opportunity. But this time there is a big possibility that his chair will fall down before his clothes get dirty.

WPRM: Now Prachanda is talking about a new government being formed, how will this come about?

Com. Binod: This new government will assure civilian supremacy and national sovereignty, giving immediate relief to the people and with the purpose of insurrection. We have carried out many preparations in order to convince the international community that it is necessary to have power, in order to convince Nepalese society this government will be formed. Certainly, this government will be formed to organise insurrection, having convinced the international community that we want a new society, and to convince the revolutionary forces that we want to make revolution, to convince the people that we are going towards a new society, to convince anti-imperialist and anti-expansionist forces that we are taking this society forwards.

WPRM: How exactly will this new government come into being?

Com. Binod: The main basis is the Nepalese people. It will come about through the struggle of the Nepalese people, through strong intervention against the parliament and the organisation of a United Front amongst the nationalist and democratic forces within parliament and involving all sections of people and civil society.

We understand that one section of UML is not happy with this government. The main section of the leadership is also not happy with this government. The Madhesi party has split and the Madhesi people are also not happy with this government. Even the honest people within Nepali Congress believe that without the Maoists the new constitution cannot be written. The people who are in favour of civilian supremacy and national sovereignty are also not happy with this government. The majority within this parliament agrees on the question that the step of the president (to overrule then-PM Prachanda’s decision to sack General Katuwal) is unconstitutional and unjust.

These parliamentary forces are afraid even to debate this issue, this motion on the step of the president. Therefore this government is defunct because the practice has been shown that the parties are split and the parliamentary members are protesting. This kind of government cannot be accepted for a long time. It is defunct and is losing morality, confidence and honesty. It is set up against the people and so cannot sustain itself for long time.

WPRM: The deadline for writing the constitution is in nine months, is it possible to write it in time and what will happen if it is not?

Com. Binod: The constitution would certainly have been written if there was no struggle between opposite classes. But this struggle is happening as a political struggle. The other classes would like to write a constitution according to their class interests, we would like to write a constitution according to our class interests. The possibility of the constitution being written is low. At that time there is the possibility that a new class situation might emerge. We are taking the issue very seriously in order to meet the challenges that might come up in those conditions. In this situation we are trying to organise the masses for rebellion, through insurrection of the masses.

The reactionaries didn’t want Constituent Assembly elections, but on the backs of the masses they were obliged to hold them. They didn’t want a republic, but on the back of the people the republic was established. Those elements who once put a bounty on our heads and propagated that we are terrorists have now been forced to recognise us as a political party because of the force of the people, as has the US imperialist force who also called us terrorists.

No such event has before taken place in history, where ‘terrorists’ have been recognised like this. These kind of unimaginable things have happened on the back of the force of the masses. We believe that on the back of the force of the masses, the constitution can also be written, a constitution favourable to the masses, but the possibility of that kind of constitution being written is very low at the moment.

WPRM: Many Maoists around the world are concerned that the party has given up the armed struggle, the PLA are in cantonments and the party now has the plan to merge the two armies together, the PLA and the Nepali Army (NA). What is the role of the PLA now in the struggle for revolution in Nepal?

Com. Binod: The PLA is under the control of UNMIN and a special team, the Army Integration Committee. But practically the PLA is under the control of the Maoist party. Even though the weapons are in containers, the key of those containers is in our hands. We talked to the lower members of the NA and we found that the behaviour within their army is like from the 12th or 14th centuries, feudal behaviour is being carried out. The leadership of the NA is from a very backward class, from feudal leadership. If we do things carefully then there is a big possibility that the bitterness between officers and soldiers could be maximised. Obviously as long as the NA is around, insurrection or victory cannot be achieved. Hence, the question of integration is not that the PLA is being diluted into the NA. The NA should be diluted into the PLA. The meaning of the policy of army integration is not in the dissolution of the PLA but in the dissolution of the NA, to transform the NA and turn it into a PLA. That is why Nepali Congress and UML are always afraid of army integration.

WPRM: Mao said that after 1949 the dangers of sugar-coated bullets are more dangerous than the real bullets from the war before. How does the UCPN(M) understand this?

Com. Binod: Certainly this situation is grave, but it is not out of our hands and the situation can be made positive. Why has the situation developed in the world where millions of people worked to establish a socialist state and then again the same people came to power and later removed that state away. Why is that? Why do the same people who were once deeply respected reach the point of denouncing the state? There are still certain citizens who fought for Marxism who are now really afraid of Marxism. While we were talking to youth from Eastern Europe, youth working for human rights organisations, I talked to them and asked why there is no attraction towards Marxism among the masses of Eastern European countries.

Why do British people, where Marx said the first revolution would take place, still support the rejected parliamentary system? Why was the Chinese revolution demolished very easily after the death of Mao Zedong? We have to answer these crucial questions standing on the unprecedented history of the 21st century.

We feel we can meet the many challenges put forward in the present world. We will continue developing our understanding, our theory, having in the present given answer to these questions; these crucial questions. Based on dialectical materialism and based on democratic centralism, based on safeguarding participation in state power and control over state power, we can accomplish and meet the challenges of state power and control. Communists believe that the stability of capitalism is in motion. We believe that those who are most scientific are Marxist-Leninist-Maoists. But to some they look dogmatic and unscientific. Those who are most reactionary are capitalist-imperialists, which to them looks more dynamic and more forward-moving. The crucial question is why it looks like that. We have to answer this question.

WPRM: The UCPN(M) has developed a theory of elections taking place after New Democratic Revolution and during the stage of socialism. Can you give us your thoughts about this?

Com. Binod: Based on the experiences of Soviet Russia and China, we have understood that the economic and social rights of the masses are not only important, but the political rights of the masses, the personal liberty of the individual, are also very important. With the participation of the masses in state power, state power can go autocratic; state power can become another type. Certainly the dictatorship of the proletariat has to be established and systematised. While we are systematising the dictatorship of the proletariat we should not be cut off from the relationship with the masses. So the dictatorship of the proletariat should be approved directly by the masses.

This does not include pro-feudal, pro-imperialist, pro-expansionist forces, or comprador bureaucrats. It does not include anti-feudal ideologies. Not from those kinds of people, but from people that are really oppressed, those who, if they lose state power, will lose everything. We understand that socialism is an exercise of political ability of the individual to safeguard the dictatorship of the proletariat. That kind of society is, we believe, socialist society. Leninist socialism as defined in the period of Stalin contained something wrong somewhere, so we believe and we hope that we can correct this practice.

The control, the observation and the intervention of the masses against the state, has to be guaranteed. In one certain sphere, our correct leadership, our correct party line, cannot mean a direct corridor to revolution. The whole thing has to be tested time and again. Then the instrument of the state is the people, and the people must have the right to test it. That is our definition of socialism as we understand it.

Families first, Senator Fielding?

Family First Senator Steve Fielding just doesn’t get it.

The following is a press release on new regulations proposed for the union-busting Australian Building and Construction Commission:


MEDIA RELEASE Thursday, September 10 2009

REPORT RECOMMENDS RED TAPE TO PROTECT UNIONS

Today’s Senate report into the Australian Building and Construction Commission makes a point of adding more red tape instead of addressing thuggery on worksites across the country, Family First Leader Senator Steve Fielding.

“For too long thugs have disrupted vital infrastructure projects and we don’t want a return to the old days,” Senator Fielding said.

“We’ve seen plenty of problems on the West Gate Bridge and the Royal Children’s Hospital projects because of thuggery and unlawful behaviour.

“People should be able to go to work without the threat of being bashed simply because they don’t belong to a particular union.

“There needs to be a tough cop on the beat like the ABCC. We don’t want to end up with a toothless tiger.”

Family First has prepared five amendments to the government’s legislation:

1. Keep tough penalties for unlawful industrial action
2. No sunset clause on coercive powers
3. No “switching off” of coercive powers on individual projects or worksites
4. Businesses to retain power to take immediate action to stop unlawful industrial activity
5. Safeguarding the independence of the new ABCC

“We’re spending billions of dollars on infrastructure and at the same time the government is talking about watering down the ABCC,” Senator Fielding said.

“This will cost the economy an enormous amount if we don’t get it right. This is the wrong time to weaken the ABCC.

“My door is open for negotiation with the government because I’m not confined by anti-union ideology like the coalition.

“But if the Rudd Government doesn’t seriously consider my amendments there is no way I can vote for their legislation.”
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Very interesting isn't it! Fielding misses the point entirely.

Firstly, if there is thuggery, it can be dealt with by existing laws. In the case of the West Gate Bridge, the ABCC brought serious charges against a number of CFMEU officials and members, and Gillard went to town on the basis of these charges, talking of innocent workers being chased through the streets of Melbourne by balaclava-wearing union thugs threatening violence. However, when the police looked through the evidence, all but a couple of minor charges relating to misconduct and traffic offences were dropped. The law as it stands is quite competent to deal with any allegations of misbehaviour for which there is real evidence. There is no need for an additional “tough cop on the beat”.

Why do we pay $32m a year for an ABCC which slanders unions, yet does nothing about the real corruption and violence in the industry? It is an entirely partisan outfit that leaves bosses who engage in corrupt payments to continue doing so; that leaves bosses who maim and kill building workers to continue doing so.

Why has it never investigated the likes of Michael McGurk, this murdered property developer in NSW who has extensive ties to the Labor Party and was a major financial contributor to them? Why hasn't it investigated on-site bullies who push workers into unsafe practices in order to get jobs finished ahead of time?

Why is Fielding putting corporate profits first instead of the interests of working families?