Red Star is organ of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), an organization upholding Marxism-leninism and Mao Zedong, but rejecting Maoism and the Communist Party of India (Maoist).

The CPI(ML) is one of the important organizations of ICOR (International Coordination of Revolutionary Parties and Organizations), an “International” build around the Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany, violently anti-Maoist.

In number 26 – March 2012 of Red Star, one can read an article entitled “Our differences with the Maoist Trend: Genesis and Present Contradiction”. This article is an open aggression of the CPI(Maoist), but not only: it also attacks Maoists in imperialist countries.

For this reason, an answer is here necessary, in particular when we can see that the CPI(ML) helps the counter-revolution in spreading a totally false interpretation of what is Maoism.

The reason why the CPI(ML) does that is really easy to understand. The CPI(ML) is a revisionist party rejecting dialectical materialism. For this reason, Mao Zedong is considered just as a good theoretician that helped to understand in a better way Marxism-Leninism in some fields.

For this reason also, the CPI(ML) writes in a false manner the history of the Indian communist movement of the 1960's. Indeed, the real CPI(ML) from the time of his founder Charu Mazumdar had a line which was the same as the communists in China about India (which is resumed in the famous Spring thunder article).

The CPI(ML) – Red Star needs to erase this part of history, explaining so the differences among Marxists-Leninists came afterwards, in the 1970's. And as it is revisionist, it explains that India “changed”, that it is now under a “neo-colonial” rule. Which is the same point of view as the USSR had on India in the 1970's.

This is a basic lesson from history that, in the 1960's-1970's, the revisionists considered the oppressed countries as under a neo-colonial rule, which meant that an alliance was searched with a “left bourgeoisie”.

On the contrary, the anti-revisionist forces explained that the oppressed countries were semi-colonies, which means that the bourgeoisie was too weak and that a new democratic revolution was necessary, destroying the feudal column that permitted the situation to exist like this.

When we know this, it is easy to see that the CPI(ML) – Red Star upholds the revisionist point of view. How it came to this? Mainly through hoxhaism: hoxhaism explains that oppressed countries are capitalist countries. One main ancestor of the CPI(ML) – Red Star – the CPI(ML) – Red Flag – had a half hoxhaist half revisionist point of view of India. It was near for this reason of parties like “Bolsevik Partizan” of Turkey/North Kurdistan.

For the CPI(ML) – Red Star today, like for the the CPI(ML) – Red Flag yesterday, India is a capitalist country submitted by imperialism – a neo-colony.

For this reason, the article “Our differences with the Maoist Trend: Genesis and Present Contradiction” is not serious when it says:

“After CRC-CPI (ML) was reorganized as CPI (ML) Red Flag in 1987, the unity talks and joint activities at mass front level with them further strengthened.

During 1991-94 period, three rounds of top level unity talks were held with PWG which ultimately failed due to differences on approach towards (a) neo-colonization and the changes taking place in relations of production in the agrarian front under it, (b) towards Three World Theory,(c) towards Bolshevik style party building, (d) towards building of class/mass organizations and (e) towards utilization of all forms of struggle, as PWG stuck to its sectarian positions including upholding armed struggle as only form of struggle.”

To see things like that is merely pragmatic – technical, it is a pure negation of the ideological question. Which brings us here to the reason of this article.

The CPI(ML) – Red Star spreads the lie that “Maoism” is an invention of Lin Piao. But as the Communist Party of Ecuador (Reconstruction) noted in a recent article, Lin Piaoism promoted a world people's war where the cities are the imperialist countries, not People's War in a oppressed country as the revolutionary strategy.

People's War in a oppressed country was promoted by red China itself, not Lin Piao. That's why the CPI(ML) – Red Star pretends upholding Mao Zedong, but in fact reject red China's position, which is clear when the article explains:

“But with the publication of the book: Long Live the victory of People’s War, by Lin Biao in 1966, a sectarian line started coming to dominance in China, which was ‘waving the red flag to destroy the red flag’. While claiming to uphold Cultural Revolution, it suppressed the mass upsurge developing as a part of it based on Mao’s call, using the military.

In the course of the tortuous class struggle developing in this period, the correctness of the Leninist teaching that the right and left deviations are two sides of the same coin and both ultimately serve the imperialists and their lackeys was being proved once again.

This book characterized the state and society in all Asian, African and Latin American countries as semi- colonial, semi-feudal, similar to pre-revolutionary China.

It started advocating that the era of Leninism, the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution which was upheld by the Marxist-Leninist forces until then is over, and a new era of ‘total collapse of imperialism and worldwide victory of socialism’ had emerged, with Mao Tsetung Thought as the Marxism-Leninism of the new era.

The Chinese Path of people’s war, which Mao and the CPC leaders had repeatedly explained till then as a practice developed in the unique conditions of China was put forward as the strategic line applicable for all these countries.

Following Naxalbari Uprising, the Beijing Daily published the article: Spring Thunder over India advocating this line.

While this article gave tremendous enthusiasm to the Communist Revolutionaries (CRs) in India who were fighting against the neo-revisionist line of the CPI(M) leadership, it contained an approach which negated the concrete conditions developing in the Asian-African-Latin

American countries under neo-colonization imposed by the US led imperialist camp after the Second World War .”

The problem here is not only that the CPI(ML) – Red Star makes an assimilation of Lin Piaoism and true Maoism, but also that introduces the concept of “neo-colonization”, used in a traditionally revisionist interpretation.

This is necessary for the CPI(ML) – Red Star to pretend that India is not semi-colonial any more and so doesn't need People's War, and the goal for it is to negate that the New Democratic Revolution must be made.

When the CPI(ML) – Red Star explains in a wrong way that Maoism is Lin Piaoism which considers that armed struggle is the only struggle, the goal is to negate that the revolution must be totally lead by the revolutionary party.

The CPI(ML) – Red Star is a “revolutionary syndicalist” party, it has the same line as the false Maoists that we call centrists, like the “Maoist Communist Party of Italy”.

Indeed, what says the article could be written by the “Maoist Communist Party of Italy”:

“So, even when the proletariat and the masses are revolting in US or Greece or Italy or elsewhere, the Maoists in these countries are only interested in whiling away their time, speculating how to start guerilla warfare there.

They fail to analyze how the people’s upsurges broke out in North Africa and in West Asia and what should be the approach of the Communist forces towards them. In spite of the further intensification of the corporatization of agriculture following the second generation green revolution, bringing vast changes in the agricultural field in India, they still call it semi-feudal and still uphold the principal contradiction as the one between feudalism and the masses of the people.

They mechanically repeat that the resolution of this contradiction will resolve all contradictions and lead to capture of political power. ”

It is then logical that the CPI(ML) – Red Star supports prachandism as an intelligent adaptation, and so did the “Maoist Communist Party of Italy”.

Where does this revisionist conception comes from?

From the non-understanding that revolution is not a mechanical process, but the insurrection of matter: matter in movement gives birth to the Party which leads the process in conformity with the needs of matter in transformation.

As “guerilla warfare” means changing matter in the highest manner, then logically it is what interest communists the more.

In the same way, the CPI(ML) – Red Star has not understand at all what was meant when Maoism says that a country is semi-feudal semi-colonial. An oppressed country can have a strong bureaucratic capitalism, which is the main force – but this force can not exist if the countryside is not feudal, because imperialism needs a weak local capitalism, which can be only if the countryside is paralyzed at this level.

Imperialism needs the semi-feudal aspect the most, because it weakens the development of society, because the reactionary ideological components are stronger, because the democratic elements are attacked by it, etc.

That is why the semi-feudal aspect is the main aspect, even if bureaucratic capitalism can be really strong!

And the CPI(ML) – Red Star can not say, like hoxhaist usually pretend, that the feudal ideology in India is just a simple remain from the past!

And the article is ridiculous when it says that:

“it is systematically transforming and integrating the agrarian sector to the international finance capital system. ”

Because it is the proof that the semi-feudal aspect dominates, even if there is a modernization!

There is no capitalist agrarian sector, but a capitalism from the top, in the style of the Junkers in Germany historically, or like Colombia today following the point of view of the UOC(MLM).

This is what the CPI(ML) – Red Star does not understand, because its line is revisionist, its approach totally populist.

The CPI(ML) – Red Star upholds “Mass Line”, like the centrists do, saying the Maoists do “nothing”.

But in fact, Maoists are synthesizing the red nucleus of the revolution: the revolutionary thought that will be used by the masses of a country as the ideological weapon to change themselves and the country they're living in.

This is the real mass line – not “revolutionary syndicalism” and populism!