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What is Communism?

 

I am more left than you think

Jaggi Vasudev in The Indian Express

I am far more “left” than people can imagine, but I am not crazy left, where you make sure people are left out of all development and all possibilities. My idea of left is a more fair and just administration. I say “more” because there is no such thing as an absolutely fair and just society. All we can create is a society where things are largely happening in a fair manner, and if people are not equal, at least they have equal opportunity.

What left means is your life is not about yourself; your life is about the community. The Isha Yoga Center is a commune — in a way, it is a communist arrangement. Nobody is asking how much you have, your religion, caste, where you come from, who your father is. We will treat you like we treat everyone else. If you rise and show some special qualities, we will honour that as well. Communism means everyone is sharing and living together. For instance, you are willing to give away your phone to someone who does not have one, or at least share it with your neighbour because, after all, you are a party member. In the Yoga Center we do such things effortlessly. This is absolute left.

But the people who claim they are “left” are not living like that. Many are just living in their own home, talking left philosophy. Their lifestyle, opinions and attitude do not show that they are left or liberal. One aspect of this is that they feel only they should have freedom of speech and nobody else. Liberal means whatever is in my heart I will speak, and you should listen and tell me what is wrong with it.

You cannot point out one thing and just say, “No, I do not like it.” That will not work.

If you believe that your opinion is much more sacred than the people’s will in a democratic society, then you have a fundamental problem. When a majority of the people elect a government, even if you do not personally like it, it is still your government. It is not someone else’s government. For me, this is India’s government and I will support it. Not because I am someone’s fan or because of any political ideology, but simply because I am a citizen of India. The country is offering a certain order, facilities and fundamentals for us to live and work. For that, I will abide by whatever the government says by law.

You can vote against a Bill in Parliament, you can express what you think is wrong with it. If we have some concerns about a certain law, we can say, “this is our concern, please fix it”. But it is still the government’s choice whether they want to fix it or go ahead with it. So then you say: “I will take to the streets — my right to protest.” You have the right to protest for sure, but you do not have the right to disrupt even one citizen’s life. You have no right to block the road, cut off the water or electricity or whatever else. You must ask for permission, find an area, sit there and protest. The democratic process has enough proper platforms where you can protest.

If you do not agree with the law, there is a court where you can go. If it is in any way illegal, it will get knocked down.

But if it is legal and you still do not like it, you must strive hard to win the next election — that is the only way you can do it in a democratic country. Many people are not able to digest this simple fact. They do not have the necessary commitment to work for five years and somehow win the election next time. They just want to sit at home, wine and dine all their life but protest about everything that the government does. You cannot lose the election and pass the laws. If the losers want to pass laws and carry the trophy, it is not fair.

The tyranny of ‘Comrade Bala’

Parvathi Menon in The Hindu

ReutersAravindan Balakrishnan, who has been found guilty of offences, including cruelty to a child, false imprisonment and rape and indecent assault.


The details of the story Aravindan Balakrishnan – the 73 year old leader of a bizzare Maoist cult who was yesterday sentenced to life imprisonment for rape, sexual assaults, cruelty to a child, and false imprisonment – are being unraveled in the British media after two members of his collective broke the silence and secrecy that bound them for the last several decades.

The first is his 30-year old daughter, with the pseudonym “Fran” who was born into captivity ; and the second is Josephine Herival, the woman who helped his daughter escape but still insists that Mr. Balakrishnan is innocent.

In the time between his arrival in the United Kingdom in the 1970s as a young student from Malaysia come to study at the London School of Economics – a handsome young bespectacled man in his photograph – to the wizened old man shuffling to the courts accompanied by his wife, as TV images show him today, Mr. Balakrishnan created an alternate world for a group of people who came under his tyrannical control.

The Brixton-based Workers’ Institute of Marxism-Leninism Mao Zedong Thought established by Mr. Balakrishnan, was one of the many splinter groups that emerged in the radicalism of the late 1960s and 1970s in Britain. The bright, charismatic and articulate revolutionary attracted followers, including Sian Davies, Fran’s mother. The group set up office in Brixton, and in 1978 it was raided by the police in search of drugs that were not found. Several of them were arrested, including Mr. Balakrishnan. After this a number of people left and a remaining core slowly shut themselves out from the outside world and retreated into a small cult that revolved around a single leader who became increasingly crazed and despotic, Comrade Bala.

For these people, all women, the leader apparently imposed stringent rules about what they could and could not do or say. Comrade Bala frequently invoked the wrath of a universe-controlling machine called Jackie that would wreak hell and damnation on them if they fell out of step. In 1983, Comrade Bala and Ms. Davies had a daughter, but never revealed the fact to her. In unclear circumstances, in 1996 Ms. Davies fell from the bathroom window of a commune house after apparently becoming mentally ill.

Fran was 13 at the time. She had never been sent to school and was taught to read and write at home, becoming as she grew up a keen diarist. Much of what is known about life in the commune is documented in it. She described herself as a “fly caught in a web” and a “bird in a cage with clipped wings” in an interview to the BBC, in which her face was not shown. Her father used to regularly abuse and beat her and the other women, and tell the little girl who longed to go out and play on the swings with other children, that lightning would strike her dead, or she would spontaneously combust.

Fran made an unsuccessful attempt to escape when she was 22. It was in October 2013 that an opportunity presented itself again. Learning of a charity that rescued women, Fran, who believed she was desperately ill with diabetes, and another commune inmate, Josephine Herival, called the charity, which rescued her. The lid on the commune and its activities was lifted.

Clearly, however, Comrade Bala’s hold continues. Speaking to Channel 4 on Friday, Josephine Herival, insisted he was innocent. “I know Aravindan Balakrishnan…he is such a good person. Anyone who knows him will say the same thing.” She says that the evidence given against him in the court are “outrageous allegations.”

Fran is integrated herself into society well, according to her carers, starting formal studies and even becoming a member of the Labour Party – living life that was denied her for 30 years.

A Commune in Capitalist China

China cancels plans for Mao's 120th but in one village, his spirit lives on

Communist party in rethink on television series and celebration, but last commune remains a shrine

• 
• • Tania Branigan in Nanjiecun, Henan
  • theguardian.com, Thursday 26 December 2013 14.52 GMT

Workers at the noodle factory in Nanjiecun, China, which is still run as a commune. Photograph: Tania Branigan for the Guardian

The day begins at 6.15am, as The East Is Red blasts through the speakers and echoes down the wide, empty streets, past the blazingly white statue of Chairman Mao, his right hand aloft in perpetual salute.

It ends at dusk with the closing refrain of another revolutionary classic: "The socialist society will surely succeed! A communist society will surely be achieved!"

Nanjiecun is as close as anywhere in China comes to fulfilling that pledge: a commune in a land that long ago embraced capitalism. Land is still farmed collectively. Its 10,000 inhabitants spend food tokens in public grocery stores. Inside the gates, the clatter and clamour of modern life vanishes; exhortations from the Great Helmsman replace advertising slogans. Each home, provided by the government, has the same furniture – down to its electronic Mao calendar.

As China celebrates the 120th anniversary of Mao Zedong's birth this week, Nanjiecun officials believe him as relevant as ever.

"Only Chairman Mao thought can lead to common wealth," explained Wang Hongbin, the party secretary. "Although he has left us, we hope his spirit is immortal."

At its height, Mao's influence was felt not only in Asia but across Africa and in the bourgeois west. In Paris, student radicals waved their Little Red Books. The British left was less enthused, but when police arrested a man and woman in London last month on suspicion of slavery, it emerged that the roots of the case lay in a Maoist sect founded in the 70s.

"There was great variety in what people read into Maoism," said Julia Lovell of Birkbeck, University of London, who is writing a book on its global legacy.

"Some saw him as the heir to Stalin; a doctrinaire Communist leader. Others ran with the idea of Mao as an anarchic democrat; as a guerrilla leader; as a man of the people but also a philosopher and poet. You have this strange contradiction: admiration for him as a proletarian, but also as a cultured intellectual."

At home in China, Mao's portrait hangs in Tiananmen Square and his face gazes from banknotes. His birthplace, Shaoshan, has spent 15.5bn yuan (£1.56bn) on tourism projects.

Since becoming leader in 2012, Xi Jinping has consciously embraced some Mao-style tactics, such as holding televised "criticism and self-criticism" sessions, for people to highlight others' faults, and confess their own. But he has also said anniversary celebrations should be simple and pragmatic. A TV series on Mao has been dropped and a birthday concert rebranded as a new year gala.

Officials celebrate an icon of national revival and Communist party rule, rather than the revolutionary whose thinking was described as a "spiritual atom bomb".

Yet his promise of economic equality has renewed appeal in a country beset by corruption, injustice and a gulf between rich and poor, as the popularity of Bo Xilai's quasi-Maoist platform proved before the Chongqing party secretary's downfall last year.

With its dated atmosphere, quiet streets, wholesome ethos and street-corner Tannoys, Nanjiecun is uncannily reminiscent of the 60s TV show The Prisoner: a staged, self-contained world out of place and time.

To Fan Jinggang, who manages Utopia, the Beijing bookstore known as a centre of modern Maoism, it is not an anomaly but an inspiration.

"If all villages in China took Nanjiecun's path, farmers' rights would be guaranteed and living standards would be higher than now," said Fan. "You would not see so many farmers exploited in cities. They would not be discriminated against … The rights of the proletariat would be guaranteed and the polarisation between rich and poor would not happen."

Many of the social ills he lists are also cited by the liberals he denigrates: environmental degradation, wasted resources, corruption, social discontent.

But his diagnosis is wholly different: "The transformation of the Communist party is the root of all problems in China," he said. "The rebels, to a large degree, have kidnapped the Communist party and the republic."

Current plans for reform suggest a further embrace of privatisation and marketisation, which he warned would intensify economic polarisation and social instability.

Fan points to the successes of Mao's reign: then, life expectancy soared from 35 to 68 years, workers were respected politically, and there were warmer relations between cadres and the people.

"History has proven that Chairman Mao's thought is the truth," he said.

But others remember him as the man whose leadership caused tens of millions of deaths in the Great Famine and the chaos and violence of the Cultural Revolution. When China embraced reforms after his death, hundreds of millions climbed out of poverty.

It is impossible to know how many in China share Fan's views, but it is probably true that their numbers are easily underestimated. Many are poor, often old, and they lack connections and influence.

Utopia's website was closed after Bo's purge, although a sister site still publishes leftist content. Fan complained that he could not share his opinions freely, blaming neoliberalism among officials and in the media, which does not run leftist opinions, and which attacks individuals and their point of view, he said.

Still, neo-Maoists are more tolerated by authorities than those calling for multiparty elections. And while they complain of being silenced, they are frequently intolerant of other views. When the prominent economist Mao Yushi criticised Mao Zedong as a "backstage orchestrator who wrecked the country and brought ruin to the people",leftists petitioned for his arrest and threatened the 84-year-old with violence.

Nanjiecun's officials avoid this brand of harsh ideological rhetoric: they are confident in their sedate course.

"Because it's common wealth, we don't have big disparities between rich and poor … Living and working here, you don't have pressure, because the group will help you solve problems," said the party secretary, Wang.

"When people work together and are optimistic and active, that's a good atmosphere. People talk and laugh together."

When Nanjiecun land was decollectivised, local farmers simply handed it back. Fields are now tended by a team and a grain ration given to residents. Officials and workers are paid but also enjoy free water and power, free meals in canteens, and free medical care.

Despite reports of significant debt in 2008, officials insist the town is prospering. Nanjiecun promises security in a world of casual employment, scant social welfare and soaring property prices – which is why young people who have ventured out to China's busiest cities often opt to return.

Government-run factories do, however, include a joint venture with a Japanese noodle-maker. In theory, there are no private shops, but the staff of a grocery store seem surprised to learn this. And though labourers from outside contribute according to ability, they do not receive according to their need.

"Everyone wants to live in Nanjiecun, but it's hard to qualify," said 21-year-old Xiao Li, who works as a guide to the village but lives elsewhere.

Much of the Mao memorabilia, such as the full-size replicas of his former homes in the botanical gardens, seems aimed primarily at tourists. His statue was erected in 1993 and the giant portraits around it – Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin – went up the following decade.

Qi Hongyao, a local, had brought a visiting friend to admire the figure. But he was perplexed by the idea that Nanjiecun might be a model for other places.

"In the past, people never went outside and didn't know what life outside was like. In the past, people just wanted warm clothes and enough food. Now they have more, so they want more," he said. "You can't go back."