Why communists are stupid

Only one goal needs to be taken on, the elimination of feudalism, a remnant of British rule. Isolate the feudal lords, liquidate the feudal lords, and smash British imperialism, without at the same time touching the other imperialists. If this works, it will make matters easier. Well, if the American imperialists butt in, then the struggle against them will have to be waged, but the people will know that it is they who attacked, not you.

But then each in his own turn. Ghosh : Now it is clear to me. Dange : Will this not interfere with waging agitprop work against the American imperialists and fighting them?

Stalin : Of course not. They are enemies of the people and they need to be fought. Dange : I asked this question so that no one would interpret the task of struggling against American imperialism in an opportunistic way. Stalin : The enemy needs to be isolated cleverly. Propose a resolution not against American imperialists, but against British imperialists.

If the Americans butt in, then that is another matter. Rao : Among the kulaks there is a small group which engages in feudal exploitation: they lease land and are usurers. They usually side with the landlords. In comparison with the great overall goal of liquidating the feudal lords, this is a particular case.

In your propaganda you need to speak out against the feudal lords, but not against prosperous peasants. But you yourselves ought not incite kulaks into an alliance with feudal lords. The kulak has great influence in the village and peasants think that the kulak became someone thanks to his great abilities, etc. The kulak need not be given the ability to defeat the peasants. Are your feudal lords nobles?

Stalin : Peasants do not love nobles. You need to latch onto this in order not to give the feudal lords an opportunity to have allies among the peasants. Punnaiah : We have confusion among ourselves concerning the issue of the national bourgeoisie. What is meant by the national bourgeoisie? Stalin : Imperialism is the policy of seizing foreign countries. Does your national bourgeoisie really think about seizing foreign countries?

Meanwhile, the British imperialists are seizing India. The national bourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie of India, is the middle and big [bourgeoisie]; these are your own national exploiters. You need to say that you are not going against them, but against a foreign enemy, against the British imperialists.

Many will be found among the national bourgeoisie who agree with you. The top level of the national bourgeoisie is already in league with the imperialists but this is only a part, and moreover not a large one.

The bourgeoisie is mainly interested in supporting you in the struggle for the complete independence of India. It is also interested in feudalism being liquidated. The bourgeoisie needs a market, a good market.

If peasants obtain land there will be a domestic market, and there will be people able to buy. All this needs to be explained in the press. It is to your advantage that the national bourgeoisie not switch to the side of the British. You need to arrange things so that the British imperialists do not get new allies in India. There are no steps being contemplated in China to expropriate the bourgeoisie. They have nationalized only Japanese property in China and even American enterprises have not been nationalized; they are operating.

If you have the Chinese type of revolution you should not for the time being take steps which would push your bourgeoisie in the direction of the British imperialists. It means that one can say that the American imperialists inside China are isolated. As regards the partition of India, that this was an act of fraud organized by the British.

If you outline a program of action then you should say in it that you are demanding a union between Pakistan, India, and Ceylon, [both] military and economic. These three countries, artificially cut off from one another, will draw closer together. It will end with these three countries uniting. You should promote this idea of rapprochement and the people will support you.

The leaders of Pakistan and Ceylon will oppose it but the people will crush them. What this artificial partition has led to is evident from Bengal alone. In the first place, the Bengali provinces are disconnected from Pakistan.

Dange : In the concept of national bourgeoisie they constantly taught us in the spirit that the middle bourgeoisie is called the national bourgeoisie. In India the big bourgeoisie went over to the side of the British imperialists. Stalin : Are there purely British banks in India? Dange : Yes, there are British banks in India, and there are joint[ly-owned] banks. In our platform there are demands for the nationalization of the big bourgeoisie. This is bureaucratic capital.

Stalin : This is not bureaucratic capital, this is industrial and commercial capital. Bureaucratic capital in China was acquired from state resources. This is capital associated with the state and very little with industry. The Sung and other families received money for favorable agreements with the Americans. As regards the large industrialists and merchants in China, they remained intact. I would not advise you to expropriate the big capitalists, even if they are in alliance with the American and British banking capitalists.

It is better to say quietly that those who openly go over to the side of the enemy will lose their property. Unquestionably, part of the big capitalists will bolt if a revolution flares up there.

Act like they do in China. If you have a demand to expropriate the big bourgeoisie in your platform then it needs to be eliminated. You need to draw up a new platform or a program of action. It is very much to your advantage to neutralize the big bourgeoisie and split off nine-tenths of all the national bourgeoisie from it. And so you have many of them.

The problems of a revolution are decided in stages. All stages cannot be lumped together. Your people are copying our revolution. But these are different stages. You need to take the experience of the other fraternal parties critically and adapt this experience to the specific conditions of India. Bukharin and Trotsky criticized Lenin from the left but they ended up ridiculous. Ranadive has criticized Mao Tse-tung from the left, but Mao Tse-tung is right - he is acting in accordance with the conditions of his own country.

Pursue your own policy and pay no attention to leftist shouting. Now about the second question, about the Chinese way. This will be an agrarian revolution. They regarded this as partisan warfare with liberated areas and with a liberation army.

It means it was necessary to talk about an armed revolution and partisan warfare, and not about armed struggle. Armed struggle means more than partisan warfare, it means a combination of partisan warfare by peasants with general strikes and revolts by workers.

Partisan warfare is still [larger] in scale than armed struggle. How did the Chinese begin an armed revolution? In the Chinese comrades broke with the Kuomintang. Having a trained army of , men against the Kuomintang, they broke away to a separate camp. This army was the basis for partisan warfare. They began to hide in the forests and mountains far from cities and railroads.

The Chinese Liberation Army could not base itself in a city. It was lightly armed, and in order not to be surrounded and broken up, they withdrew far from cities and railroads and established free partisan regions in a number of places. They were surrounded, escaped encirclement, abandoned the old liberated areas, created new ones, tried to avoid battle, and the longer it lasted the more the Chinese communists were cut off from the workers and cities.

Of course, Mao Tse-tung did not want to break off ties with the workers, but the path of partisan warfare led to losing touch with the cities. This was an unfortunate necessity. Finally, they were based in Yenan where they defended themselves for a long time. They summoned the peasants to them, instructed them in how to wage an agrarian revolution, expanded their army, and turned it into a serious force. But all the same they did not avoid the serious drawbacks which are characteristic of partisan warfare.

What is a liberated partisan area? It is nevertheless an island in a country. This region has no rear area, it can be surrounded and blockaded. There is no rear area on which one can rely. Yenan was surrounded and the Chinese withdrew from there with great losses.

And this would have continued for a long time had the Chinese Communists not decided to relocate to Manchuria. In moving to Manchuria they improved their position right away and found a rear area in the form of a friendly country. This was now no longer an island but something like a peninsula which relied on the USSR at one end. After this, Chiang Kai-shek lost the ability to encircle the Chinese partisans.

And only after the Chinese had rested did they acquire the ability to conduct an offensive from the north to the south. What are the implications of this? Partisan warfare by peasants is a very serious matter and a great gain for a revolution. The Chinese introduced something new in revolutionary practice in this area, particularly in backward countries.

This is undeniable. But at the same time it follows from the experience of the Chinese comrades that partisan warfare with liberated areas has its own big drawbacks. These drawbacks are that partisan regions are an island which can always be blockaded.

The Chinese made a wise move in relocating to Manchuria. Partisan warfare will always lead to victory if it relies on a friendly neighboring country.

It is very characteristic that before moving to Manchuria the Chinese comrades did not want to attack, fearing encirclement, and only after this move did they deliberately begin to attack and have success against the forces of Chiang Kai-shek. These drawbacks of partisan warfare need to be considered. It is important that this war of ideas be framed as a clash between the founding principles of the US government and the CCP—not their citizens.

American and Chinese people have enjoyed a long and rich history of mutual benefit and respect, and that should endure. But the goals of Xi and the CCP do not tolerate—let alone enable—any competition. That is the crux of the ideological war.

It is in the realm of ideology where China is most brittle and vulnerable—and the United States strongest and most resilient. By its own admission , in fact, the greatest threat to the Chinese Communist Party is ideology. The CCP abhors chaos and does all it can to erase it, while the resilient character of democracy shines in chaos. The democratic institutions of the Free World have been tested fiercely and found resilient.

The last US president was impeached twice in one term and voted out of office. And on January 6, in the face of a rowdy mob, US legislators returned to the Capitol in the middle of the night to certify the election. In the battle of ideas, the United States is stronger because it leads by the will of the people against the state coercion of China.

It is the marvel of Indian democracy, the resolve of Taiwan, the strength of Japan and South Korea, the soundness of Australia and New Zealand, and the aspirations of movements and leaders in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and Central Asia.

And an expanded G10 gives new voice to these Asian democracies. There are no greater soldiers of democracy than the brave students of Tiananmen Square and Hong Kong, who were inspired by US ideals.

Kaush Arha is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. He previously served as the senior advisor for strategic engagement at the US Agency for International Development.

General Secretary Xi Jinping appears to have decided that this is no longer acceptable. The Chinese government, under his leadership, has started putting the Communist back in the Communist Party, at least to some extent.

It hasn't really appeared yet on the street side propaganda posters but this can't be far off. It is now the cornerstone of what China's leader is doing. Under this banner, targeting tax evasion by the wealthy makes more sense, as do moves to make education more equitable by banning private tutoring companies.

The ongoing crackdown on the country's tech giants can also be seen as part of the plan. So does Xi Jinping really believe in this idea of a communist project? As a comparison, in the past it didn't feel like that with many other Party officials. The thing is that - along with the wealth redistribution aspects of the communist path - Mr Xi also seems to believe that this means thrusting the Party back into most aspects of daily life, as the only realistic way of achieving what needs to be done.

Kids are being lazy, wasting away their youth playing video games? Party to the rescue: three-hour gaming limit. Teenagers having their minds poisoned with silly, idol-worshipping television?

Party to the rescue: "sissy looking" boys banned from programmes. Demographic time bomb ticking: Again, the Party has the solution: Three-child policy for all! Football, cinema, music, philosophy, babies, language, science… the Party has the answers. To try to understand what has made Xi Jinping the leader he is today you have to take a look at his background. His father, Xi Zhongxun, was a Communist Party war hero, known as a moderate, who was later purged and imprisoned in the Mao era.

At the time Mr Xi's mother was forced to denounce his father. After his father's official rehabilitation in , he pushed for economic liberalisation in Guangdong Province and reportedly defended one of China's most progressive leaders Hu Yaobang. Given the persecution of Mr Xi's father at the hands of Communist Party zealots, given his father's inclination towards reform, many have asked why Xi Jinping now seems to be taking the Party in a direction which would appear to be at odds with his father's beliefs?

Perhaps he simply disagrees with his father's line on certain political matters. Or maybe China's leader intends to pursue a plan which, while different in emphasis to the priorities of his father, will not end up anywhere near the policies of the Mao era.

At least not intentionally. When his father was sent to prison, Xi Jinping, at the age of 15, was made to go to work in the fields for years, living in a cave house.