Dictionary of Revolutionary Marxism

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JANA ANDOLAN
A term in the Nepali language which means “People’s Movement”. In the recent history of Nepal there have been two major events which have gone under this name, and a third such event may soon develop:
        Jana Andolan-I was the mass movement in 1990 which ended the absolute monarchy and established a government which was nominally, at least, a constitutional democracy. It was also supposed to eliminate the Panchayat system of local and caste governance in Nepal. However, the monarchy still existed, the King still controlled the army, and he even dissolved parliament and re-established authoritarian control again. This led to:
        Jana Andolan-II in 2006 which overthrew the King again and abolished the monarchy completely. This mass movement led to the “Seven-Party Alliance” which included the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) [now renamed the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)] which had been leading a People’s War, and an agreement to end that war, merge the revolutionary army into the regular army, create a new constitution, and so forth.
        However the bourgeois parties [including a revisionist party called the “Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist-Leninist)”] have failed to live up to those agreements. This has recently led the UCPN(Maoist) to threaten to lead a Jana Andolan-III to force the reactionary parties to fully implement that earlier agreement and possibly to further develop the revolution in Nepal.

JANATHANA SARKAR (or: JANATANA SARKAR)
Literally, People’s Government. This is the name of the local governments being set up by the masses with the help of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) in the rural areas they already pretty firmly control.
        See also the document, “Introduction to the Policy Programme of Janathana Sarkar”, by the CPI(M-L) [People’s War], June 1, 2004, at: http://www.bannedthought.net/India/CPI-Maoist-Docs/PWG/JanathanaSarkar.doc

JANGALMAHAL
[Bengali:] The Jangalmahal, or sometimes two words: Jangal Mahal, and which means “forested belt”, is the region consisting of the largest parts of these three districts in the Indian state of West Bengal: Paschim Medinipur (or West Midnapore), Bankura and Purulia. The population of the Jangalmahal consists mostly of Adivasis or “tribals” (tribal peoples), who are very poor and generally severely exploited and oppressed. There are about 1.3 million Adivasis in the 74 “blocks” (sub-districts) of the Jangalmahal. There has been considerable Maoist revolutionary activity in this region in support of Adivasi struggles against the theft of their land, etc., especially in the area around Lalgarh village in West Midnapore.
        Occasionally the term Jangalmahal is used in a looser and broader sense to cover a much larger region of the forested, tribal belt in parts of five states of east-central India: West Bengal, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Bihar.

“Proletarian revolutionaries are uniting to seize power from the handful of persons within the Party who are in authority and taking the capitalist road. This is the strategic task for the new stage of the great proletarian cultural revolution. It is the decisive battle between the proletariat and the masses of working people on the one hand and the bourgeoisie and its agents in the Party on the other.
         “This mighty revolutionary storm started in Shanghai. The revolutionary masses in Shanghai have called it the great ‘January Revolution.’ Our great leader Chairman Mao immediately expressed resolute support for it. He called on the workers, peasants, revolutionary students, revolutionary intellectuals and revolutionary cadres to study the experience of the revolutionary rebels of Shanghai and he called on the People’s Liberation Army actively to support and assist the proletarian revolutionaries in their struggle to seize power.” —“On the Proletarian Revolutionaries’ Struggle to Seize Power”, Hongqi [“Red Flag”] editorial, #3, 1967; Peking Review, vol. 10, #6, Feb. 3, 1967, p. 10.

JEVONS, William Stanley   (1835-82)
A British bourgeois economist, and one of the founders of the notorious marginalist school of modern bourgeois economic thought.
        See also: SUNSPOT THEORY.

JIANG QING   (Old style: Chiang Ching)   (1914-91)
Jiang Qing was Mao Zedong’s third wife, and the most prominent member of the so-called “Gang of Four” who played a prominent role in leading the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and who attempted unsuccessfully to continue the Chinese revolution after the death of Mao.
        Jiang Qing played an especially prominent role in promoting revolutionary art, literature, music, drama and films during the GPCR. Many of the model revolutionary Chinese operas were produced with her guidance and direction.
        It seems that she and the other top Party leaders who tried to remain loyal to Marxism-Leninism, Mao Tsetung Thought [as our revolutionary science was then called] failed to use the mass line that Mao always strongly advocated, and failed to unite the great majority of the masses and the Party members against the relatively small number revisionists and capitalist-roaders within the Party. This is why Mao himself gave the friendly advice to this core of revolutionary leaders not to form themselves into a “Gang of Four” (which is the origin of the phrase).
        These revisionists bided their time until Mao died on September 9, 1976. Less than a month later, on October 6, 1976, Jiang Qing and the other members of the “Gang of Four” were arrested and imprisoned. A show trial for them began in 1980, and according to the revisionists only Jiang Qing bothered to mount any sort of defense. She stated that she had obeyed the orders of Chairman Mao at all times and always tried to defend Mao and his political line. She also made the famous statement that “I was Chairman Mao’s dog. I bit whomever he asked me to bite.” At the conclusion of the trial in 1981, Jiang Qing was sentenced to death. In 1983 her sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. While in prison she developed throat cancer and in 1991 was released temporarily to a hospital. She reportedly committed suicide before she could be returned to prison. In her suicide note she is said to have written: “Chairman [Mao]! I love you! Your loyal student and comrade is coming to see you!”

“You have been wronged. Today we are separating into two worlds. I am old and will soon die. May each keep his peace. These few words may be my last message to you. Human life is limited, but revolution knows no bounds. In the struggle of the past ten years I have tried to reach the peak of revolution, but I was not successful. But you could reach the top. If you fail, you will plunge into a fathomless abyss. Your body will shatter. Your bones will break.” —Said to be a prose poem, summation and warning written by Mao shortly before his death and sent to Jiang Qing. [As posted by Mike Ely on the Kasama-Threads website on Oct. 15, 2008.]

JUNK BOND
A bond issued by a capitalist corporation which has a very low rating by the securities rating agencies based on their estimate that company may not be able to redeem the bond when it comes due. In other words a bond issued by a company for which there is some reason to think that it might go bankrupt or otherwise be unable to pay its debts in the future. Unless and until the company actually does go bankrupt, the bonds it issues are not valueless, but they are obviously highly risky.
        Since junk bonds are risky, they command a higher rate of interest. Starting in the 1990s in the U.S., Wall Street brokers began selling junk bonds to the middle-class public in a major way. Obviously the term they themselves were using for these risky investments—“junk bonds”—did not promote their sale! Consequently alternative names such as “high-yield debt” were coined in order to better foist these risky investments off on unsuspecting yet greedy investors.

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