Maoists Join Nepal Government

by Wayne S. Rossi / July 2006 issue of Socialist Action newspaper

Following the massive and valiant popular stand that forced Nepal’s king to reinstate parliament and lose most of his authority, as reported in the June issue of Socialist Action, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) has come to an agreement with the Seven-Party Alliance and will form part of the provisional government that will rule the kingdom until a constituent assembly can be held.

We noted last month the limitations of the CPN (Maoist)’s Stalinist program; now the party is seen in action as it readily abandons its “People’s Governments” in the countryside and turns to building the bourgeois state. Its leader, Prachanda, has taken the first steps to bourgeois respectability, with the press supporting his willingness to throw away the armed struggle in return for legitimacy and a part in the provisional government.

While the CPN (Maoist) will not disarm, it has cut itself short, and left the freshly radicalized masses in Nepal without an effective revolutionary leadership. At this juncture, it seems as if Prachanda has not been faced with the pressures (including war with the United States) that forced Mao to uproot the rotten bourgeois society of China and create a deformed workers’ state following the 1949 revolution.

Disarming the king only removes one impediment to progress in the country. Nepal remains desperately poor and underdeveloped—essentially an economic pawn split between India and China. The bourgeois-democratic government, with or without the Maoists, is incapable of solving the nation’s contradictions within the bounds of imperialism.

Nepal is a largely agrarian society, which was unable to seriously develop modern industry for decades prior to the Maoist insurgency. It has a staggeringly large migratory population, and outside of tourist-friendly Kathmandu, the civil service is often the largest non-agricultural employer.

History tells us that the land reform and industrial development policies that Nepal desperately needs are unreachable within the limits of capitalism, but the CPN (Maoist), with faith in Stalin’s discredited theory of separate “stages” in the revolutionary process and support to pro-capitalist “democrats,” has given up on any prospect of socialist revolution.

However, people in a revolutionary situation do not always move predictably. The radicalization in Nepal has been remarkably broad, and if it turns out to be as deep it may well prove difficult for the CPN (Maoist) and the Seven-Party Alliance to move on to bourgeois “stability,” forcing either the Maoists or another force to continue a move leftward.

The valiant Nepalese masses who wrested power from the king are still capable of making a social revolution and changing the course of the nation’s history.

Related Articles

The International Food Crisis and Proposals To Overcome It

By ERIC TOUSSAINT and OMAR AZIKI
[Editor’s note: We reprint this article by the Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt (CADTM). In 1989, the Bastille Appeal was launched, inviting popular movements throughout the world to unite in demanding the immediate and unconditional cancellation of the debt of the so-called developing countries. This crushing debt, along with neo-liberal macro-economic reforms imposed on the global South, has led to an explosion of worldwide inequality, mass poverty, flagrant injustice and the destruction of the environment.

President Joseph Biden presented his third annual budget proposal at $6.8 trillion on Thursday, March 9. A day later Silicon Valley Bank (SVP), in Santa Clara, California, the nation’s 16th largest, declared bankruptcy, followed days later by New York City’s Signature Bank. A half dozen others faced similar and immediate disasters, brought on, as with the 2008-9 Great Depression collapse, by speculation-driven bank CEOs leveraging their assets far beyond the point when an impending collapse could be remedied with liquid assets on hand or a private quick loan. This time out, with disaster lurking, the failing bank CEOs secretly appealed for help to various top dog institutions like JP Morgan Chase, among the largest banks in the world with asserts at some $2.3 trillion. But in today’s world of high finance during crisis times, secrets are hard to keep. When the word got out, SVP depositors ran for t

The Myth of a New “Cold War” Between the U.S. and China/Russia

By JEFF MACKLER
AUKUS, or the new and secretly negotiated $66 billion nuclear-powered submarine agreement between Australia, the United Kingdom and the U.S., has momentarily ruffled some political feathers around the world, particularly in France and China.