Historical presentation of the subject:
The communist movement of Nepal has historically been greatly inspired by the Indian communist movement. This inspiration is only natural, given that the conditions of India and Nepal are extremely similar. The basis on which both Nepali and Indian society exist are extremely close to each other. One need only recall the fact that the Communist Party of Nepal was founded in India to realize the influence the Indian communist movement has had on the Nepali communist movement. This influence is also due to another factor; that being, that the political actors in India have sought to influence Nepal. The Nepali Congress was founded by those trained by the Indian Congress. Even on the land question, the Nepali communists adopted a stance similar to that of the Indian communists. However, though still similar, the approach to the land question in India and Nepal now necessarily diverge, given the divergence in conditions between the two countries.
What is the land question? The land question concerns ownership of land, particularly in relation to agricultural land. This has also been referred to as the agrarian question. How should land be dealt with during the course of and following the social revolution? This is the land question.
The resolution to the land question for the Nepali communists up to now has been dogmatically memorized and considered suitable for Nepal, without considering Nepal’s concrete conditions. The program of the Nepali communists has been that of the redistribution of land, up to this day, many communist parties call for the redistribution of lands to the peasants. This was taught to the Nepali communists by the Indian comrades, who themselves learned it from the Chinese comrades, who in turn learned it from the program of the Bolsheviks.
The program of the Bolsheviks had been that of the redistribution of land to the peasants. Stalin writes, as far back as 1906 as follows:
“We have seen that neither “socialization,” nor “nationalization,” nor “municipalization” can properly meet the interests of the present revolution.
How should the confiscated land be distributed? Into whose ownership should it be transferred?
Clearly, the land which the peasants confiscate should be transferred to the peasants to enable them to divide this land among themselves. This is how the question raised above should be settled. The division of the land will call forth the mobilization of property. The poor will sell their land and take the path of proletarianization; the wealthy will acquire additional land and proceed to improve their methods of cultivation; the rural population will split up into classes; an acute class struggle will flare up, and in this way the foundation for the further development of capitalism will be laid.”
The Leninist program of land redistribution developed due to the correct understanding of Russia’s conditions as semi-feudal, and thus requiring an agrarian revolution. Furthermore, Lenin drew up the conception of the two roads of capitalist development in the countryside. These being, the Prussian road and American road. The Prussian development of capitalist relations in the countryside occurred through a process in which the junker landlords of Prussia became bourgeois. They were no longer feudal landlords who extracted surplus-labor through rent in kind or money rent; rather, they became owners of the land who engaged in wage-labor relations. The American road on the other hand was that of agrarian transformation ‘from below’. This process involved ownership of the land by those who tilled it.
Lenin understood that due to the autocratic nature of Tsarism, the American road in Russia could only occur through a violent sundering of feudal ties. This is why the program of the Bolsheviks was, correctly, that of land redistribution. The worker-peasant alliance — crystallized in the iconic hammer and sickle — was thus the core of the Bolshevik revolution.
During the transition from the NEP to socialism, the question of land was once again raised. Stalin correctly understood that the conditions in the Soviet Union were appropriate for the transition to socialism, he thus broke with the New Economic Policy. He led the initiation of the policy of collectivization. The kulak was liquidated as a class and soviet society entered socialist transition. Thus through the policy of collectivization, the socialization of land was achieved; the expropriators expropriated, and the peasants were united with the land in a higher social plane.
The Maoist approach to the land question is based on the Leninist program. The Maoists have historically been advocates of the line of redistribution. Land reform was carried out throughout China during the period of the New Democratic revolution. The Chinese people’s war was an agrarian revolution, a revolution of area-wide seizure of power and the peasants — led by the proletariat — were the chief force in the struggle against the compradors and landlords.
The policy of land redistribution was put forward in India by the CPI, CPI-M and eventually, the CPI-ML. The Nepali communists who learned about Marxism through the Indians also adopted this line, that of the redistribution of land. For instance, it is well known that, inspired by the Naxalbari movement in India, the Jhapa revolt was fomented by the CPN; it was created by the hatred felt by the peasants toward the landlords who refused to give the peasants their due as was mandated by the Royal Government in 1964. Furthermore, economic semi-feudalism persisted in the countryside of Nepal, which was one of the great challenges faced by the Nepali masses. This economic backwardness is what fanned the flames of what eventually erupted into a great prairie fire, i.e., the great 10-year people’s war!
Over the course of the people’s war, dual power was constructed and land taken by those who tilled it. Great excitement and hope had taken hold of the broad masses of the Nepali people. The people’s committees were the future, they were new Nepal in embryonic form. However, as we all know, new Nepal never came, the promise made to the millions of Nepalese was fraudulent, and the hopes of the Nepalese masses were crushed.
The people’s war ended almost 20 years ago. Today, much has changed, yet much remains unchanged. Yet, this much is certain, our practice has proved that the methods used during the people’s war are no longer working, the slogan, land to the tiller has become insufficient to mobilize the peasants. The question now, is why?
Land to the tiller: The changed conditions of Nepal
The slogan “land to the tiller” was one of the major slogans of the previous century which helped rally people behind the banner of the communists. Today, however, this slogan no longer has the same effects. This indicates a change in the consciousness and psychology of those in the countryside. We, as Maoists, understand that a change in consciousness is necessarily a product of the change in social conditions. The failure of the slogan of land to the tiller, it no longer being the rallying cry it once was, also necessarily has certain social causes.
The key factor causing the slogan to lose its appeal is simply the fact that landlessness is less pervasive than it used to be. Previously, and particularly prior to the people’s war, relations in the countryside were decidedly feudal. Rents paid to the feudal landlords were the primary way in which surplus-labor was extracted. The feudal system wherein the land was not owned yet tools and implements regardless of their primitiveness were owned was predominant in agriculture. And so, the primary concern was the union between the peasants and the land which they worked but did not own.
Today conditions are different. On the one hand, rural landlessness has subsided. On the other hand, where there are landless farmers they are not peasants but instead rural proletarians. They are divorced not only from the land but more importantly also the tools with which they work that land. The rural population engages in wage-labor for the agrarian capitalist which hires them who then sells the commodity so produced in the market. It is simply industrial capital and not semi-feudalism in the proper sense. The bonds of feudalism and serfdom which seemed so strong have been torn asunder by the power both of the people and of the commodity economy.
First, of course, the generalization of the money form tore apart feudal ties. As Engels explains in Anti-Duhring, the money-form as the most generalized form of the value-form is the solvent which dissolves all hitherto existing modes of production and supersedes it, incorporating it, into capitalism. In Nepal a mix of the Prussian and American path to bourgeois agrarian evolution has occurred. On the one hand, the people’s war demolished the feudal landholdings and redistributed it among the peasants leading to the creation of petit bourgeois farmers. However, a lot of the land which was distributed to the peasants was recaptured after the people’s war through various means. And so, people have been compelled into servitude as an agrarian wage-slave.
We see regardless that peasants as such, those who own instruments of labor but not the land are rare. Instead in agriculture, we see three classes emerging: 1) The petit bourgeois farmer, this can be subdivided further, 2) the agrarian capitalist, 3) the rural proletariat.
In this context, we are compelled to ask: is the slogan “land to the tiller” going to be effective? For the petit bourgeois farmer already owns the land he tills. And the rural wage-laborer’s primary concern is not ownership of the land (alone). To go from a wage-laborer to a land-owner is a retrogressive act. As this simply enlarges the class of petit bourgeois farmers at the expense of the rural proletariat.
Instead the real solution here is the negation of the negation. It is the reunion of the class alienated from the means of production (including land) with the means of production, as a whole, a higher union. To give to the wage-laborer a parcel of land is to transform them into a petit bourgeois, which is contrary to Marxism. Marxism recognizes that the petit bourgeoisie is a vacillating class which can only barely be trusted. As such, and though we recognize an alliance with the petit bourgeoisie as valid, transforming wage-laborers into the petit bourgeoisie is not valid. Not only is it not valid, it is also ineffective as a rallying cry!
Redistribution or Socialization?
So, the question essentially amounts to, what character ought the agrarian transformation take. It is clear that bourgeois commodity relations dominate the countryside. The oppression and exploitation faced in the countryside is no longer of a really feudal character; instead we are seeing the rise of petit bourgeois farmers who sell their produce and of the agrarian capitalist who exploits the labor power of the small-holder or landless farmer. It should be clear thus that the policy of redistribution is therefore completely reactionary. Unlike Russia, China or even Nepal prior to the people’s war, feudal land relations which made the policy of redistribution effective and necessary no longer prevail today.
A two-fold policy therefore ought to be utilized with respect to the countryside. Firstly, the petit bourgeois proprietors ought to retain their holdings. From the view of the class struggle, the petit bourgeois proprietor, is the most numerous class ally of the proletariat for the upcoming struggle. The feudal peasants are a dwindling class. They no longer form the crux of the agricultural laborers. To ally with them against landlordism, or to say that we must ally with them against landlordism is much akin to trying to find a black cat in a black room during the darkest night of the year where there is no cat! It is simply put to grope blindly at a vestige of what once was. Feudal landlordism was once a great evil that plagued all corners of the country. Today however, landlordism proper, has all but disappeared. Therefore, it is not the peasant but the petit bourgeois farmer who is the greatest ally of the proletariat in the struggle against imperialism. Given this fact, the proletariat and its party, the communists must concede to them their land, which it must not encroach upon through force and coercion. Doing so would be a left-deviationist error of the Luxemburgist type.
This of course is not to say that we must allow them to accumulate and enrich themselves and transform themselves into kulaks. That would contrarily be a right-opportunist error of the Bukharinist type. Instead, the road must be that which Lenin laid out and which Mao implemented. The policy with regard to the petit bourgeois farmer must be that of cooperation. There must be an incentive, through taxes, to enable the farmers to combine into agricultural cooperatives, which, as has been shown by the Chinese experience, have the potential to become rural soviets/communes. The policy here ought to be that of uncoercive formation of cooperatives and ultimately soviets. This is the policy that ought to be employed regarding the petit bourgeois farmers, who are not a sharp threat to the revolutionary transformation of society and who are in fact the most numerous and populous ally of the proletariat in the transformation of society. This is the only way to prevent both Luxemburgist-leftist and Bukharinist-rightist errors.
The other policy is that regarding the agricultural capitalist. During the period of the people’s war, the question of what to do with the agricultural capitalist was almost irrelevant. This is since, the agricultural capitalist as a class essentially did not exist: he was the feudal landlord. The same applied to the Chinese New Democratic Revolution, there was no proper class of agricultural capitalists, and so the only viable policy was that of redistribution. However, in Nepal today, the former feudal landlords have largely become agricultural capitalists who hire wage-labor.
What then ought to be the policy of the New Democratic Revolution in Nepal with respect to the agrarian capitalist? It can be nothing but enmity. The Agrarian proletariat and the petit bourgeois farmer are both in contradiction and even in antagonism with the class of agrarian capitalist. Moreover, as has been demonstrated, they hold the two levers of production which are most desired by the rural proletariat i.e., the subject of labor (land) and the instruments of labor. In order to be able to truly organize the masses and be one with them and lead them, we must do away with reservations of calling the agrarian capitalist our class enemy. The agrarian capitalist is the real oppressor and domineer in the countryside. They are moreover, enmeshed completely with financial institutions (finance-capital). They are dependent on finance-capital and thus are the rural lapdogs of finance-capital.
Here, there will be those who would seek to give an olive branch to the agrarian bourgeoisie to say: “We cannot be enemies with them.” In this camp of course fall the Biplavites who have completely fallen into the ranks of electoralism, class-collaborationism and parliamentary cretinism. Yet, to not declare them our enemy, to not struggle against them would, beyond the simple fact of being class-collaborationist treason, would only weaken the revolutionary communists. The proletariat who are ever mindful of the actions of all political actors would recognize this as nothing but an act of treason. And why should they support a party who engages only in revolutionary phraseology but refuses to really struggle for their interests? It must be remembered that the New Democratic Revolution is the democratic revolution of a new type, the democratic revolution led by the proletariat. And without the participation of the proletariat, without their support, we move not one millimeter forward in our endeavors.
Does it suffice though simply to call the agrarian capitalist our class enemy? It does not. What matters is what we decide to do programmatically. Here, as has been mentioned above, the policy of redistribution of bourgeois property is retrogressive. Redistribution of land is akin to returning from factory production to manufacture in an industrial setting, not only is it retrogressive, it is, to put it bluntly, reactionary. Marx called not for petit bourgeois socialism, but for communism. The correct policy here therefore, is the forceful seizure of land by the proletariat and the socialization of land and the products of the land. The correct policy is that of socialization. By doing this the rural proletariat creates rural soviets which are the economic and political levers of social life. The dictatorship of the proletariat and petit bourgeoisie here then, becomes an established fact.
Therefore, the policy of land redistribution is largely incorrect. This is due to the bourgeoisification of agriculture. And the correct policy in terms of agriculture is socialization on the one-hand and the creation of cooperatives on the other.
The views presented here in this article are writer,s personal views .
No comments:
Post a Comment