Maoist Revolution in Nepal (Plus Preamble)

As my interest grew in contemporary revolutionary events, I was most attracted to the Maoist revolution in Nepal that started in 1996. My interest began in about 2002 - an added benefit was, that at this time, I had relocated to China. Earlier, in the 1990s I had been in the Former Soviet Union during its demise, and lived several years in the fledgling new republic of Kazakhstan, in actuality a basically benevolent dictatorship. Engaged during that period in projects of a humanitarian/business nature, it was only slowly that study of socialist history became amusing. Not until some more serious awakening through an infatuation with anarchism occurred, did I start to fantasize about actual activism of some sort.

For me, anarchism meant the purist form of socialism - the spiritual dimension so to speak of socialism, the pure egalitarian essence constituting the evolution of new humanity becoming. Taking into account, as we must, the historical actuality of human nature within the coordinates of our selfishness and violence, I nonetheless fail to dismiss the apparent Utopian vision of the evolution of human nature required for self-organization of society without the imposition of authority, either by a communist vanguard "democratic" parties or the "democracy" of parliamentarian multiparty elites. Nonetheless, some basis of communist theory and practice is necessary and this has historically taken place in the context of an elitist state of one kind or another.

So it was in China that I discovered the early relationship of anarchistic influences on the group of young people in Paris in 1921 who were eventually subsumed, so to speak, by the Marxist-Leninist faction in the formation of the Chinese communist party, there at that time in Paris. My reading therefore extended from anarchists (Classics: Bakunin, Kropotkin, Proudhon, Rocker, then Noam Chomsky mainly) to Marxist-Leninist thought (Marx and Lenin of course, but a lot through Althusser), then reading on Maoism - and eventually, following the scent, to opening my study of Alain Badiou and Savoj Zizek.

I started writing in 2005 about the Maoists in Nepal in an earlier blog, Nepal: Ending of Sorrow 2005-6, dedicated to that topic, because it seemed actual engagement in the world struggle should be attempted somehow - then, being "nearby" in China and having sandbagged some time and money I went to Nepal in 2006 to feel something for myself and interview a few people about the Maoists, mainly journalists and NGO groups. My focus in the blog was the child-soldier issue.
The Maoist movement grew out of a spontaneous uprising against an elitist Indian and Monarchist oppression - an almost feudal society, within which the rebellion emerged from among the poor, an under-caste, and also from among powerless indigenous groups. This spontaneity and its self-organization had, I thought, an anarchist flavor.

Of course, a vanguard Marxist-Leninist Maoist intellectual and authoritarian leadership of the revolution emerged and declared the "official" revolution in 1996. Today, as I write here in New York, a fellow visitor is here speaking at the New School: Prachanda, the Maoist leader and recently elected new Prime Minister of Nepal. Its ironic. The Maoists now control the majority of elected positions, though certainly not the entire situation (for example, the former rebel army is in cantonment with easy access to UN containers of their weapons, while the former Royal Army is far from disarmed). The whole story of the Maoist revolution, and now their participation in government, is fascinating. To what extent the "Maoists" are now becoming counter-revolutionary, or simply engaged in a modern strategy of revolution, is a compelling story.

In the spirit of this blog, I am not seeking to be a direct source of news or analysis of the Nepal revolution; I am engaged in bringing it to world attention through reliable links to the story (please see the blog introduction among the September 2008 entries). The Nepal tag at my Delicious social bookmarking site will take you to articles I find, read, tag and annotate. The Nepal tag below on this entry will take you to a selection of blog entries that touch on the Nepal revolution. The best content for a detailed history of the Maoist revolution (at least a thorough factual account of it, whether or not one adheres to its analysis and recommendations) can be found at the reports issued periodically by the International Crisis Group. Fortunately, our friend Nick's blog offers continuing news updates on the Nepal story at Democracy and Class Struggle.

Also among the initial entries in September 2008 is a guide to the use of Sefandav TV. The widget showing whatever storybook of videos being currently broadcast is on the sidebar to the right. The library of "on demand" video storybooks may, as well, be accessed at the widget. In the library are storybooks on the Nepal revolution, including an excellent documentary "Between Two Stones" spanning the full ten years of the armed conflict between 1996 and 2006.

Blog Guide: A discussion of blog features and primary topic content may be found at the initial entry. The first few entries give a good idea of how best to use the blog, especially for the tagging and social bookmarking at my external Delicious site, and for instructions regarding the Stefandav TV widget.

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Alain Badiou - Allegiance to the Truth Event

Now for Alain Badiou. My objective is cycle in these posts on the key individuals and topics regarding revolutionary praxis I wish to serve. Badiou is a key modern philosopher for me with respect to insights about revolutionary struggle as an outward focus and for his insights regarding the congruent internal development afforded to ones thinking ability by his minimalist mathematics (ontology = mathematics). Today I simply hope to awaken your interest in his political observations and will address the mathematics later.

I refrain from interpreting or analyzing myself. Rather I follow the instincts and intuitions operative in my exploration of information on the web and collect and share bookmarks through the Delicious tool linked on the sidebar. To date there are some 70 links to articles on or by Badiou. These are all annotated with excerpts and tagged for database management for your use. I have selected four entries I feel are most germane to my present objective(some hint at the meaning of his "Truth Event" and the political action that is inspired in "allegiance" to the event):

Alain Badiou - 'On the Truth-Process', August 2002

"For the process of truth to begin, something must happen. Knowledge as such only gives us repetition, it is concerned only with what already is. For truth to affirm its newness, there must be a supplement. This supplement is committed to chance—it is unpredictable, incalculable, it is beyond what it is. I call it an event. A truth appears in its newness because an eventful supplement interrupts repetition."

On Evil: An Interview With Alain Badiou

"Today we see liberal capitalism and its political system, parlimentarianism, as the only natural and acceptable solutions. Every revolutionary idea is considered utopian and ultimately criminal. We are made to believe that the global spread of capitalism and what gets called "democracy" is the dream of all humanity. And also that the whole world wants the authority of the American Empire, and its military police, NATO."

Savoj Zizek - On Alain Badiou and Logiques des mondes

"In the revolutionary explosion as an Event, another utopian dimension shines through, the dimension of universal emancipation which, precisely, is the excess betrayed by the market reality which takes over "the day after" - as such, this excess is not simply abolished, dismissed as irrelevant, but, as it were, transposed into the virtual state, continuing to haunt the emancipatory imaginary as a dream waiting to be realized. The excess of revolutionary enthusiasm over its own "actual social base" or substance is thus literally that the future of/in the past, a ghost-like Event waiting for its proper embodiment."

Alain Badiou — Philosophy as Biography

"I have given a philosophical order to myself : 'transform the notion of truth in such a way that it obeys the equalitarian maxim', this is why I gave the truth three attributes: 1) It depends on an irruption, and not on a structure. Any truth is new, this will be the doctrine of the event. 2) All truth is universal, in a radical sense, the anonymous equalitarian for-all, the pure for-all, constitutes it in its being, this will be its genericity. 3) A truth constitutes its subject, and not the inverse, this will be its militant dimension"

Blog Guide: A discussion of blog features and primary topic content may be found at the initial entry. The first few entries give a good idea of how best to use the blog, especially for the tagging and social bookmarking at my external Delicious site, and for instructions regarding the Stefandav TV widget.

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Stefandav TV - Sidebar Widget Instructions

Producers can use the Mogulus browser-based Studio application to create LIVE, scheduled and on-demand internet television to broadcast anywhere on the web through a single player widget."

I installed the widget on the sidebar. This provides live video feeds from my Mogulus user studio. It opens with the volume off and the videos cued on. You can turn up the volume of the widget as needed. You can turn the feed on and off.

There is a menu accessed on the widget window that offers two more functions. One kind of menu function enables you to capture the code you need to embed selected videos wherever you want them. The other menu function lists videos "On Demand".

There are also two buttons on the widget window to toggle between the current live cue of videos and the on demand part of the menu. Also on the panel are buttons to embed the current set of live streaming videos, or to expand the window full screen.

The videos on demand are divided into sets of "story boards" consisting of a set of one or more videos. All the story boards made available to the public are listed and may be opened. These include the current story boards in the live broadcast, but also those not currently live.

I will be writing introductions to individual story boards in a blog entry on the day they are installed.

Blog Guide: A discussion of blog features and primary topic content may be found at the initial entry. The first few entries give a good idea of how best to use the blog, especially for the tagging and social bookmarking at my external Delicious site, and for instructions regarding the Stefandav TV widget.

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Zizek: "A Plea for Leninist Intolerance"

The quote in the header of this blog comes from the article by Savoj Zizek with the title above. Again:

"Lenin's obsessive tirades against formal freedom worth saving today; when he underlines that there is no pure democracy, that we should always ask whom a freedom under consideration serves, his point is precisely to maintain the possibility of a true choice. Formal freedom is the freedom of choice within the coordinates of the existing power relations, while actual freedom designates the site of an intervention that undermines these very coordinates."

Why I chose this quote for the header is twofold, though there is only one reason. It says something true to me about the distinction between formal and actual freedom; while I comprehend Lenin, and in turn Zizek, experienced the distinction at some point as a core truth to which obviously they demonstrate allegiance. So I was enlisted in that allegiance. Second, not actually second, I experience that the action of allegiance is in the intervention, that being actual freedom and the only real freedom - the site is now.

The article is "A Plea for Leninist Intolerance" . This article and many others by Zizek, as well as many other links from the tags below are available at My Delicious Network

Blog Guide: A discussion of blog features and primary topic content may be found at the initial entry. The first few entries give a good idea of how best to use the blog, especially for the tagging and social bookmarking at my external Delicious site, and for instructions regarding the Stefandav TV widget.

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Blog Introduction

My net-activism aims to introduce information on "revolutionary" praxis with an emphasis on certain Marxist-Leninist lines of thought. The range of my topics is described below following some guidance on how this blog can best be used:

About Using the Blog

Each blog entry will begin with some discussion of my purpose in making the entry. Rather than engaging is much interpretation or opinion, I introduce links referencing authoritative resources. Usually the link will have some quotation from the resource itself, or annotation, so you can know more about it and hopefully become interested. Of significance is that each entry is provided some number of tags. You can use any tag provided to get a display of all entries in the blog that have been supplied that tag.

I organize my internet research on another website, Delicious , also included among the "Stefandav Primary Links" on the sidebar. This social networking site enables sharing research with others based on the use of common tags. The user may also select text or provide text annotating the link when it is bookmarked. Finally, tagged and annotated links may be bundled into groups of related tags. When I cite a reference in this blog it will link to the original source on the net rather than my Delicious site, but I add the tags for that link and annotation with reference to my Delicious database organization. This means that you as a user of this blog may go to my Delicious site and find any tag of interest and get many citations including the one I have cited in the blog entry.

The Topics of the Blog

I am most interested in the Marxist line through Althusser and psychoanalysis as per Lacan - and the modern developments in these today by Alain Badiou and Savoj Zizek. Certain other writers about these political philosophers are also emphasized. The blog entries will often take up specific ideas of personal significance and reference article, blog, book, website and other information resources with appropriate links.

I follow world revolutionary movements particularly in Latin America, Nepal and North India. The struggle within China should be a focus of net-activism because global access to this information is perhaps the most suppressed on the planet. Again, blog entries will provide appropriate links referring to information resources about historical events on which I feel attention should be focused.

Another site I use is Mogulus , from which I broadcast stored video clips to a widget installed in the sidebar of this blog - you can view and select video from the widget or from my external site also among the "Stefandav Primary Links" listed on the sidebar as "Stefandav TV". Blog entries are made introducing new video storyboards as they are added. The initial series of blog entries includes one which provides detailed information on how to use the widget - everything can be done from the widget that can be done at the external website.

I live and work in China and usually spend two months a year in New York City.

Blog Guide: A discussion of blog features and primary topic content may be found at the initial entry. The first few entries give a good idea of how best to use the blog, especially for the tagging and social bookmarking at my external Delicious site, and for instructions regarding the Stefandav TV widget.

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Read more!