Rejoinder: From Naxalbari to the problem of revolutionary organization

By Prof. Suresh Deman*  

Harsh Thakor’s reconstruction of Naxalbari and the early CPI(ML) in his book review, ("Chronicling Naxalbari: History, journalism and revolutionary debate", Counterview, August 16, 2026), is valuable because it refuses both the reduction of the episode to mere violence and its conversion into uncomplicated mythology. It takes seriously the controversies around Charu Mazumdar, the annihilation line, armed struggle, mass organizations, revisionism, and later self-criticism. Yet a deeper question remains: who controlled the Party, and what class forces controlled those who controlled it? This is not a liberal objection; it arises from within Marxism-Leninism itself.

A revolutionary political line does not exist apart from the organization that formulates, transmits, implements, and corrects it. Organizational authority is never independent proof of political correctness. Mao insisted that knowledge develops through the movement from practice to theory and back to practice. It is therefore insufficient to separate an “essentially correct” line indefinitely from systematic errors of implementation. 

Individual annihilation, hostility to mass organizations, substitution of cadre actions for mass mobilization, and sectarian relations with other communist forces cannot be detached from the mechanisms through which the line acquired authority. A materialist analysis must ask who formulated the line, who could challenge or replace those who formulated it, how experience from below reached the leadership, what happened when practice contradicted expectation, and what relationship existed between the leadership and the masses expected to make the revolution.

Democratic centralism is often reduced to obedience to higher organs. Its democratic claim requires that authority arise through participation, deliberation, election, criticism, and experience from below; central organs then synthesize and return decisions for unified action. The movement must be reciprocal. When the upward movement of criticism and correction weakens while the downward movement of command remains strong, democratic centralism ceases to operate dialectically. 

“Democracy” becomes consultative at best and “centralism” the real source of authority. The Party risks converting a principle meant to organize collective revolutionary capacity into a mechanism for reproducing the power of those already controlling the apparatus. The decisive question is not formal authority but whether those below retain effective means of correcting those above.

Mao’s mass line—“from the masses, to the masses”—describes a reciprocal relationship in which dispersed ideas from the masses are concentrated through analysis and returned for testing in practice. If the final movement from practice into correction disappears, the formula becomes “from the Party, to the masses.” 

This is why the CPI(ML)’s treatment of mass organizations matters more than a tactical dispute over armed and mass struggle. When mass organizations are dismissed as economistic and cadre actions become the principal expression of revolutionary politics, the organization begins to substitute its own actions for the political development of the masses. The distinction between vanguardism and substitutionism becomes critical. Organization is indispensable, yet it can generate hierarchy, informational asymmetry, and autonomy from those it claims to represent.

Han Suyin’s assessment of Mao is instructive. She described his contribution as the creative extension of Marxism-Leninism through continual involvement in action, practice, and theoretical synthesis, adding that “no eternal infallibility is claimed.” If Maoism is a method rather than a closed doctrine, fidelity to it cannot mean insulating Mao—or a line claimed in his name—from historical correction. The same principle denies organizational infallibility. No revolutionary theorist or political line derived from one possesses eternal infallibility.

Mazumdar’s revolutionary commitment and the repression the movement faced must be recognized. But integrity cannot place a political line outside materialist criticism. When implementation repeatedly produces isolation from mass organizations, weakening of networks, substitution of individual action for collective struggle, and sectarian hostility, the question arises: were these merely errors of implementation, or did contradictions exist within the line itself? Practice is one of the means through which political knowledge is tested. A materialist method cannot protect theory by attributing every adverse result to incorrect application.

A revolutionary critique of the CPI(M) must distinguish leadership, organization, cadres, and the workers and peasants influenced by them. Failure to do so converts political struggle into organizational antagonism; sectarianism then mirrors revisionism by isolating revolutionary politics from the actual movement of the masses. Parallel issues arise with clandestine organization. 

Secrecy under repression is legitimate, but it is an organizational form, not a class character. An apparatus insulated from mass criticism can become an autonomous command structure that acts instead of the working class and peasantry rather than as their organized vanguard.

Can an organization composed substantially of revolutionary intellectuals and other petty-bourgeois strata acquire proletarian character merely by adopting a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist program? The answer cannot automatically be yes. The relevant question is the process through which the organization becomes rooted in proletarian and peasant mass practice. 

Petty-bourgeois revolutionism can display courage and sacrifice, yet it may also generate impatience with prolonged organization, romanticization of violence, individual heroism, and frustration with the slow development of mass consciousness. The decisive issue is not individual class origin but whether the Party itself becomes sufficiently proletarianized through sustained interaction with mass political practice.

Self-criticism must do more than retrospectively admit mistakes. If earlier practice produced serious errors, materialist self-criticism must ask what assumptions, organizational mechanisms, and social relationships allowed those errors to become authoritative policy. Otherwise it remains confession rather than rectification. 

A Party able to correct subordinate cadres but unable to examine the institutional mechanisms through which its own leadership produces errors has not solved the accountability problem.

Naxalbari thus points beyond its Indian history. Before victory the problem is how a Party can lead without substituting itself for the masses. After victory the same contradiction intensifies because the Party exercises state power. Revolutionary institutions must remain corrigible. The democratic element of democratic centralism must not disappear after centralization succeeds; the mass line must not become a one-way transmission belt; the vanguard must remain capable of being corrected by the masses. 

If contradiction continues, the capacity for correction must continue.

Thakor’s reconstruction allows this deeper question to emerge. The early CPI(ML)’s difficulties may not be adequately understood merely as incorrect implementation of a correct line. They may reveal a contradiction between proletarian objectives and an organization whose social composition, accountability mechanisms, and relationship with the masses were insufficiently proletarianized. 

A Party does not become a proletarian vanguard by declaring a correct line, displaying courage, or invoking Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao. Its claim must be tested through class struggle and through its capacity to learn from and be corrected by the organized masses. Democratic centralism at its strongest is a continuing movement in which experience and authority rise from below, are synthesized at the center, and return as coordinated action whose consequences are again subjected to criticism from below. 

When that circulation is blocked, centralism remains but democracy empties out. The decisive question is not merely who controls the Party but who controls those who control it, and what institutional relationship ensures that the organized masses can ultimately correct the Party itself. That question belongs to the unresolved problems of revolutionary organization and, after victory, of socialist political power.

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*Director, Centre for Game Theory, Economics & Finance. This is the abridged version of the author's original rejoinder