Revolutionary Social Change in Colombia: The Origin and Direction of the FARC-EP

The following is a description of the exciting new book Revolutionary Social Change in Colombia: The Origin and Direction of the FARC-EP by James J. Brittain to be released in February, 2010 by Pluto Press. Professor Brittain will be available to speak about the book: 

Compared to other Latin American countries, minor socio-political analysis has been given to contemporary Colombia. This lack of investigation is perplexing due to Colombia’s geographical and socioeconomic importance worldwide. The Andean country has one of the largest reserves of fossil fuels in the world, it is home to the longest running civil war in the hemisphere, it has the second highest number of internally displaced persons on the planet, it remains one of the most inequitable countries in the region, and is the poster-child of the international drug trade. Amidst such conditions, Colombia also holds a unique and interesting history of resistance against dominant political-economic interests.

At the helm of this decades-long struggle has been the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias Colombianas-Ejército del Pueblo, FARC-EP). Regarded by some as the largest and most powerful political-military force in Latin American history, modest research has been conducted on the FARC-EP and lesser still accessible to the public. With what little is propagated, much depicts the insurgency as nothing more than an outdated ideologically-lacking guerrilla movement violently enmeshed in Colombia’s narcotic industry.

Attempting to fill a much-needed void, Revolutionary Social Change in Colombia evaluates the unique theoretical and pragmatic composition of the insurgency and its relation to radical social change within Colombia. As the FARC-EP continues to be a symbolic power both regionally and globally, it is important to analyze where and why this organization came into existence and whether the insurgency has the potential to create conditions for an emancipatory transformation of Colombia. After spending the greater part of ten years analyzing the FARC-EP in both text and person, James J. Brittain addresses the question of who the FARC-EP are, what they are doing in Colombia, and if this insurgency can assist in the creation of a social and political revolution of, by, and for those marginalized in Colombia.

PFLP: U.S. is not a mediator, but an enemy of the Palestinian people

The following is from the website of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a Marxist-Leninist organization in Palestine fighting for national liberation and socialism:

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine said on November 3, 2009 that the Palestinian Authority, and all Palestinian parties, must immediately end any and all illusions about the United States or its president, Barack Obama, and instead reject its “negotiations” based on surrender and rely on the Palestinian people and their resistance, unity and national rights.

Letter from Harry Haywood to the POC from the new Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism Online

A new Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism Online has been launched  as part of the Marxists Internet Archive. It includes a history of anti-revisionist politics and an archive of anti-revisionist documents and newspapers. The new encylcopedia is divided into sections by country. The U.S. section includes “The First Wave of Anti-Revisionism: 1946-1958” and “Second Wave: The POC, 1956-1962” with two more sections in the works: “Third Wave: 1960-1969″ and “Fourth Wave: Maoism and ‘The New Communist Movement,’ 1969-1989″.

Here is an important document from the encylopedia of anti-revisionism by Harry Haywood, the great communist theoretician of the African American national question:

Letter from Harry Haywood to the Provisional Organizing Committee

Class Struggle, theoretical journal of the October League (Marxist-Leninist), No.1, Spring 1975

October League (M-L) Introduction: Harry Haywood is a veteran Black Marxist-Leninist, now living in Detroit. He has spent several decades as a leading member of the Communist Party USA and as a fighter against modern revisionism.

In 1928 and 1930, Haywood helped draft the Resolutions of the Communist International as well as the position of the CP on the Afro-American national question. His thoughts on this question were summed up in his famous book, “Negro Liberation.”

Haywood broke from the CPUSA in the late 50’s after the party had thoroughly abandoned the revolutionary struggle for socialism and Black liberation. Along with other anti-revisionists, he helped form the Provisional Organizing Committee (POC). The POC, like many of the new communist organizations of today set as its main task, the building of a new Marxist-Leninist party.

The POC failed in this first attempt at a new, anti-revisionist party. Haywood’s letter upon leaving the POC shows some of the reasons why it failed and serves as a lesson to those who might try to follow in the ultra-“left” footsteps of these sectarians.

The Tactics of General Insurrection and Protracted People’s War in Nepal

The following article is from Dissident Voice:

Nepal: The Tactic of General Insurrection
by Gary Leupp / November 2nd, 2009

[N]ow we are focusing on the mass movement… [N]ow we [can] really practice what we have been preaching. That means the fusion of the strategy of PPW [Protracted People’s War] and the tactic of general insurrection. What we have been doing since 2005 is the path of preparation for general insurrection through our work in the urban areas and our participation in the coalition government.

– Maoist leader Baburam Bhattarai, interview with the Britain-based World People’s Resistance Movement, October 26, 2009

Today (November 1) Nepal’s Maoists initiate, with torch rallies in Kathmandu, a mass movement to bring down the regime. This is the regime that succeeded the one their chair Prachanda headed as prime minister from August 2008 to May 2009–a compromise arrangement, always understood to be temporary and transitional, that collapsed when the Nepali Army refused to take orders from the Maoist prime minister.

30th Anniversary of the Greensboro Massacre

On November 3rd, 1979, the Workers Viewpoint Organization (which would become the Communist Workers Party) held a anti-Klan rally in Greensboro, North Carolina. Five WVO cadres were killed by the Ku Klux Klan with the assistance of the Greensboro Police. The following is an excellent documentary about the Greensboro Massacre, called “Greensboro’s Child“.

The Beloved Community Center, Greensboro Justice Fund, and other organizations in Greensboro are hosting a conference and other events to commemorate the “30th Anniversary of the Tragic Killing of Five Labor and Community Organizers by Klan and Nazis in 1979″ from Nov. 4-7th.

Claudia Jones: Marxist Pioneer of Black and Proletarian Feminism

Claudia Jones was born in Trinidad in1915 but migrated to Harlem in 1924. She became active in the Scottsboro struggle. She became a leader of the Comunist Party in the 1940’s, until she was indicted under the Smith Act (under which teaching Marxism was illegal) and imprisoned in 1955. She was then deported to London, where she lived and worked until her death 1965. She was buried beside of Karl Marx.

To get an idea of her importance, read her article, “An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Women” (PDF), which analyzed the situation of black women from a Marxist viewpoint, and which was her major contribution to feminist thought.

Arundhati Roy on Maoism and Democracy in India

This is a 5-part series where writer/activist Arundhati Roy speaks on “Indian Democracy In A State Of Emergency”

Revolution in the Philippines and Marxist-Leninist Study

I have put together a comprensive study guide, broken up by subject, and shorter list of ten essential classics of Marxism-Leninism, all with the intention of making Marxist theory accessible, comprehensible, and practical, so that it may be used as weapon in the class struggle. In the same vein, here is an excerpt from Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought as Guide to the Philippine Revolution by Armando Liwanag, Chairman of the Communist Party of the Philippines (1993) that also sheds some light on questions of Marxist study.

In 1959, a few young men and women, independent of the old merger party of the Communist and Socialist Parties, started forming study circles to read and study the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao Zedong that could be gotten from secret collections. They initially did so amidst the open and legal studies about the problems of national independence and democracy. The Marxist-Leninist works that they read included the Communist Manifesto, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Wages, Prices and Profit, The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, Two Tactics of Social Democracy, State and Revolution, The Foundations of Leninism, the Analysis of Classes in Chinese Society and Talks at the Yenan Forum on Art and Literature.

The most avid students of Marxism-Leninism read and studied Das Kapital, The Dialectics of Nature, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, History of the CPSU (Bolsheviks), Short Course; the first edition of the Soviet-published Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism and the Selected Works of Mao Zedong. The volumes of the selected works of the great communists began to reach the Philippines in 1962. To get hold of Marxist reading materials in the period of 1959-62 was by itself an achievement in view of the anticommunist hysteria and repressive measures since the end of World War II.

The objective of the beginners in the study of Marxism-Leninism was to seek solutions to what they perceived as the fundamental problems of the Filipino people, use Marxism-Leninism to shed light on the history and concrete circumstances of the Filipino people and find ways to resume the Philippine revolution and carry it out until victory. In the study of Marxism-Leninism, with special reference to the Philippine revolution, they sought to grasp the three components of Marxism, which are materialist philosophy, political economy and scientific socialism as laid down by Marx and Engels, developed by Lenin and Stalin and further developed by Mao Zedong.

The beginners in the study of proletarian revolutionary theory were exceedingly receptive to Mao’s teachings because of their proven correctness and success in so vast a country neighboring the Philippines and their recognized applicability to the Philippines. The most read works of Mao Zedong were On Contradiction, On Practice, the Analysis of Classes in Chinese Society, The Role of the Chinese Communist Party in the National War, Problems of Strategy in Guerrilla War Against Japan, On Protracted People’s War and On New Democracy.

The fruits of this study, theoretically, is to be found in the analysis that the CPP developed. See the CPP History page and the CPP Documents page at philippinerevolution.net.

Revolution in India: Interview with CPI-Maoist Leader Ganapathi

The following interview with Communist Party of India (Maoist) leader Ganapathi (Mupalla Laxman Rao) is from Open Magazine, by Rahul Pandita, October 17, 2009:

“We Shall Certainly Defeat the Government”

Somewhere in the impregnable jungles of Dandakaranya, the supreme commander of CPI (Maoist) spoke to Open on issues ranging from the Government’s proposed anti-Naxal offensive to Islamist Jihadist movements

The supreme commander of CPI (Maoist) talks to Open in his first-ever interview.

At first sight, Mupalla Laxman Rao, who is about to turn 60, looks like a school teacher. In fact, he was one in the early 1970s in Andhra Pradesh’s Karimnagar district. In 2009, however, the bespectacled, soft-spoken figure is India’s Most Wanted Man. He runs one of the world’s largest Left insurgencies—a man known in Home Ministry dossiers as Ganapathi; a man whose writ runs large through 15 states. The supreme commander of CPI (Maoist) is a science graduate and holds a B Ed degree as well. He still conducts classes, but now they are on guerilla warfare for other senior Maoists. He replaced the founder of the People’s War Group, Kondapalli Seetharaamiah, as the party’s general-secretary in 1991. Ganapathi is known to change his location frequently, and intelligence reports say he has been spotted in cities like Hyderabad, Kolkata and Kochi. After months of attempts, Ganapathi agreed to give his first-ever interview. Somewhere in the impregnable jungles of Dandakaranya, he spoke to RAHUL PANDITA on issues ranging from the Government’s proposed anti-Naxal offensive to Islamist Jihadist movements.

Malcolm X on John Brown

John Brown  was a guerrilla fighter, who worked together with Harriet Tubman, and who fought and died for African American National Liberation.

Today is the 150th anniversary of militant white abolotionist John Brown’s armed raid on the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, an important moment in the African American Liberation struggle. To mark the occasion, here is a quote from Malcolm X in 1965:

There are many white people in this country, especially the younger generation, who realize that the injustice that has been done and is being done to black people cannot go on without the chickens coming home to roost eventually. And those white people, even if they’re not morally motivated, their intelligence forces them to see that something must be done. And many of them would be willing to involve themselves in the type of operation that you were just talking about.

For one, when a white man comes to me and tells me how liberal he is, the first thing I want to know, is he a nonviolent liberal, or the other kind. I don’t go for any nonviolent white liberals. If you are for me and my problems - when I say me, I mean us, our people – then you have to be willing to do as old John Brown did. And if you’re not of the John Brown school of liberals, we’ll get you later – later.

Afghanistan: the days of colonial occupation are numbered

The following is from the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist):

Afghanistan: the days of colonial occupation are numbered
Inter-imperialist contradictions are being forced into the open by heroic forces of patriotic resistance.

No sooner had the polls closed in Afghanistan on 20 August than the leading representatives of the occupation regime declared this electoral farce a success. Nato’s Secretary-General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, praised the Afghan people’s determination to build democracy, while the leaders of the US, Britain, Germany and France – the main participants in the imperialist predatory war against the Afghan people – rushed to pat themselves on the back for facilitating this alleged exercise in democracy.

The Communist Party of the Philippines warns against escalation of US military intervention

The following is from Philippine Revolution Web Central:

CPP warns against escalation of US military intervention
September 30, 2009

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) today warned the United States government against using the killing of two US soldiers in Sulu yesterday to justify an escalation of its military intervention in the country and demanded an immediate pullout of all US troops from Philippine territory, an end to the local operations of the US Pacific Command’s 600-strong Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines (JSOTFP-P), and the termination of the one-sided Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA).