Hail the victory of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)
Much to the amazement and
consternation of the capitalist world, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)
[CPN(M)] has won the Constituency Assembly elections in Nepal, leaving its opponents trailing far behind in its wake. Of the 218 (out of 240) directly
elected seats finalised by 18 April 2008, CPN(M) had won 116, compared to 34
for the Nepali Congress, 31 for the Nepali Communist Party – United Marxist
Leninist [NCP(UML)], and 24 for the Madhasi People’s Rights Forum (a ruling
class party from an oppressed region of the country, relying on regionalism for
its support).
The Constituent Assembly has a total of 601 seats,
with 335 to be decided by proportional representation (as opposed to
first-past-the-post), with quotas to ensure a strong representation of women,
lower castes and ethnic minorities. 26 seats are to be appointed by the
interim cabinet which will obviously now be dominated by the CPN(M). The
Maoists are expected to do even better in the proportional part of the ballot
than in the directly-elected seats, as a result of which there is at the time
of going to press (29 April 2008) a chance that the Maoists will in fact secure
an overall majority in the Constituent Assembly.
The Maoists are also seeking alliance with other
parties, in particular those that seek to represent the working masses. It is
reportedly close to reaching a unity accord with Janamorcha, the mass front of
the Communist Party of Nepal (Unity Centre) which has so far secured the 8th
highest count in the voting. It is also anxious to win over the NCP(UML), a
party which disagreed with them on the appropriateness in the conditions of Nepal of engaging in armed struggle, but which nevertheless aspires to be Marxist-Leninist.
The argument over whether armed struggle was appropriate or not for Nepal has been won clearly and demonstrably by the Maoists, leaving no basis for the
NCP(UML) to continue to exist as a separate party. Assuming that the NCP(UML)
do not succumb to sectarianism, but do in fact accept the Maoists’ hand of
friendship, the strength of the left in the Constituent Assembly will be
unassailable. Although the NCP(UML) reacted in a panic-stricken manner to its
poor electoral showing, pulling its members out of the government, it is much
to be hoped that it will overcome these difficulties and respond to the call of
the Maoists to return to its post. As Comrade Prachanda says, if it fails to
do so, the people will not forgive such a betrayal.
The future
The road ahead is fraught with difficulties, but
for the immediate future at least there is one clear task for the new
government: to depose the king and declare a Republic. This is what the people
of Nepal have voted for by an overwhelming majority. Indeed, the Maoists’
election victory is in great measure down to the fact that on this issue they
have been the only party to be absolutely steadfast and insistent.
There is some possibility that troops loyal to the
king will try to prevent his removal from the palace and demotion to the status
of an ordinary citizen living from running his businesses, but the Maoists have
made it clear that no nonsense will be tolerated and the king would be risking
his life if he tried anything of the sort. It is therefore doubtful that he
would be so stupid.
However, declaring the Republic is the easy bit.
More difficult is to keep faith with the millions of people who have placed
their faith in the Maoists to lead them in the elimination of feudalism and the
grinding poverty and misery which that system entailed, a cause for which
thousands have given their lives. Nepal is a very small country with powerful
enemies. The United States still has the CPN(M) on its list of terrorist
organisations. India just next door, although it was instrumental in helping
to broker the peace deal which led to the current Nepalese elections, certainly
did not expect the Maoists’ overwhelming victory and will not be happy about
the boost this will give to the Maoist insurrection in India itself. Within Nepal itself, reactionaries are whipping up the regionalism of the
Madhesis with a view to Balkanising what is already quite a small country
(about the size of England). On top of all that, Nepal is one of the poorest
countries in the world, ranking 158 out of 179 in per capital GDP according to
the World Bank. Its per capita GDP is only a fifth of China’s and less than half that of India. The state budget is $1.2 billion (and 30% comes from
western aid). There is rampant unemployment and very little industry. One
third of the population, i.e., some 10 million people, live on less than $1 a
day. And on top of that, the class enemies who tried to eliminate them by
force, with the help of overwhelming firepower supplied by Nepal’s then western allies, are still for the most part alive and kicking and represented
in the Constituent Assembly, where they will undoubtedly try to do their worst.
The size of the mountain that has to be climbed is
dizzying, just as daunting in fact when some 13 years ago the CPN(M), which was
a party of really insignificant size at that time, took up the armed struggle
to depose Nepal’s feudal relics. Anybody would have said the task was totally
impossible, yet today they are well on the way to achieving this goal throughout
the whole country, having achieved it already in the two-thirds of the country
that was liberated and ruled by them before the peace process began.
Needless to say, the Maoists have not achieved what
they have by never compromising – on the contrary – and every time they have
compromised they have been denounced in various so-called ‘left’ quarters as
having ‘sold out’ the revolution, etc. Yet somehow in the course of these
supposed sell-outs the Maoists have always advanced steadily towards their democratic
anti-feudal goals. In the liberated areas they transformed the lives of the
poor, brought huge advances in the position of women and people of so-called
low castes, brought education and medical care. Now they want to bring
electricity to the whole country, industrialisation and jobs for all, and they
want to achieve this goal as quickly as is possible.
To do so, they are prepared to compromise, just as
they have always been prepared to compromise in the past. They want to
encourage foreign investment so that their country can progress, and are
prepared to give guarantees to any potential investors for that purpose,
guarantees that they will undoubtedly honour. They are prepared to let the
soon-to-be ex-king, never mind less noxious persons, set up businesses.
Already the howls of betrayal from the pseudo left are deafening: K Ratnayake
and Peter Symonds, writing on behalf of an internet Trotskyite outfit, WSWS on
18 April 2008 (‘After election landslide, Nepalese Maoists reassure investors and
major powers’), for example, say:
“Many voters supported the Maoists in the hope
they will usher in a new period of democratic rule, peace and prosperity.
These illusions will soon be dashed, however. Maoists have promised all things
to all people, but at the centre of their program is a commitment to retain
capitalism. For anyone familiar with the Stalinist two-stage theory [i.e.,
the Leninist two-stage theory, as set out by Lenin in Two Tactics of
Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution (1905)], the declarations
of the Maoist leaders come as no surprise. The CPN(M) bases its ‘bourgeois
peasant revolution’ on the poorest rural layers, not the working class. The
stated objective of the ‘first stage’ is to clear away the remnants of
feudalism including the monarchy and the caste system – not abolish capitalism.
Socialism is relegated to the distant future.”
However, the two-stage theory is merely a common
sense approach for a relatively weak force to set about defeating a stronger
one. It involves, first and foremost, facing your enemies one at a time, while
safeguarding the unity of your own forces and maintaining the highest standards
of discipline and ideological and theoretical training. These are tactics
which give the working masses a good chance of success which will certainly not
be secured by any Trotskyite outfit trying to build socialism overnight in the
conditions now prevailing in Nepal, with all the powerful internal and external
enemies of the revolution.
The watchword for the Maoists is dialogue and
negotiation. It will offer business opportunities, but it will also demand
much better conditions for workers than those they have been used to. It will
accept multi-party democracy, but this will be alongside a system which
involves the masses directly in decision-making. It will incorporate its
freedom fighters into a professional army which includes soldiers and officers
of the Nepalese army, and it proposes the army should become both smaller and
more professional, but only on the basis of (a) democratising the army, (b)
finding work for unneeded combatants and (c) keeping the masses of the people
armed in militias in case of need. It will keep the border with India open, but it will regulate who crosses it and who doesn’t. And yes, these are all
dangerous policies, but in making revolution there are no policies that are
safe or that lead to guaranteed success. There is no magic formula for making
the class enemy disappear overnight, and that enemy will be putting all its
energies into frustrating the Maoists’ plans, especially the plans to move
forward at a later stage to socialism. There is no chance of defeating the
enemy without putting the brain into gear. That is what the Communist Party is
for.
For our part we wish the Maoists
every success. They have made a very great beginning, which is an inspiration
to communists all over the world. We have not the slightest doubt that they
will advance to ever-greater victories in the future and that the masses of the
Nepali people will forever bless the day that they came to power in Nepal.