“Far from Well-Read on Nepal, But….”
Posted by Mike E on May 1, 2008
by Mike Ely
[this post was a little redundant, so I shortened it]
Kalash writes:
“comments may have been asking a serious question there, perhaps not just sarcastic. he may have been asking (as i am asking now) whether the ‘gain legitimacy through the system’ idea is actually the cpn(m)’s line or merely your interpretation. i admit that i’m far from being well-read on nepal today, but this approach to the ‘cease fire and elect’ decision is new to me.”
Kalash: forgive me while I just dig into one part of that.
“I’m far from being well-read on Nepal today, but….” This describes the situation (and outlook) of many comrades.
The struggles in Nepal is a real revolution: It may win. But it also fail. It may be crushed by overwhelming force. It may be “betrayed from within.” It may go off the rails. It may be surrounded and bled dry by embargos and threat. The masses may ultimately go one way, while the communist try to pull another. This is always true about revolution — most revolutions fail in history.
But, this much is clear: this is the first communist revolution close to power in two generations, after endless claims of “communism is dead.” We are 12 years into that revolution, These comrades have fought their way to the doorway of power — with some stunningly creative and original tactics (from the very beginning)! They are facing accelerating U.S. meddling and Indian intervention of several kinds.
How is it possible that many dedicated revolutionaries in the U.S. know very little about it. Have not studied it. Aren’t familiar with the history or the controversies or strategic plans.
How did that happen? what happened to the internationalism that once characterized the Maoist movement in the U.S.? What LINE led to this? And how do we change that, QUICKLY!
* * * * *
On the other matters in Kalish’s comment:
I often talk to folks who say “I find the Nepali events confusing.” In fact real revolutions are by their nature “confusing” — and not just to you observors but to the participants themselves.
Over the last difficult years, there has been a flowering of paper assumptions about “what such things must look like.” And the real world, by its nature, scatters such assumptions and carves its own path. We should learn deeply from the revolutions around us, not only to “understand Nepal” — but because we need to break with dogmatism in the way we analyze real conditions (and seek to reach the minds of real people).
Kalash put quotes around “gain legitimacy through the system.” And that captures something about how some people (living in the U.S.) see the Nepali events through their own prism.
The pharase Kasama used in its leaflet was different:
“To win over the urban people of Nepal, they [i.e. the Maoist] took part in elections for a “Constituent Assembly” – a historic gathering expected to throw off the hated king and create a new political order.”
Kalash’s formulation implies the Maoists are entering “the system” and seeking to gain legitimacy by seeming respectable and by following approved channels. but this is not the case.
Nepal is not a country with (like the U.S. or even India) an entrenched, stable, accepted, known “electoral process.” And the Maoists are not planning to accept the previous system (monarchy with a corrupt pig sty of reactionary parties). They are fighting for New Democratic revolution — and have gone through a substage of anti-monarchy struggle and the constituent assembly.
In fact the “system” in Nepal is an feudal autocratic monarchy that has repeatedly suppressed even bourgeois parliamentary procedures. The “Constituent Assembly” process is not “part of the system” — it is a process for busting the system, that came into being as a concession to the demands of a revolutionary upsurge of the people. A Constitutent assembly (like the “constitutional congress” in U.S. history, or the Constitutent Assembly in 1917, or the estates general during the French Revolution) have historically been ways where the people express their desire for a NEW system. And where the REVOLUTIONARY demands of various sections of the people get the legitimacy of public mass support (and even majority).
They have said that their revolution has phases where political work is emphasized, and others where the military struggle takes the central stage. To take power you do need public “legitimacy” of course (you need the high moral ground, you need to be seen as the representative of the highest hopes of large and growing sections of the people etc.) but that is not the same as the “legitimacy” that people get in the U.S. by getting “into the system” (i.e. by accepting the legitimacy of the reactionary political order set up by our oppressors.)
There has been a serious, totally unexpected and intolerable retreat from internationalism among revolutionary communists in the U.S. we need a sense of responsibility toward the revolutionary movements of the world — especially the most advanced ones aiming to carry through to socialism and beyond. We need to learn from them and help create political conditions where US. interventions are opposed and exposed.
If there is a test of strength in Nepal… over the next weeks, or months, or in the next few years…. what position are the organized revolutionary forces in (within the U.S.) to expose and oppose the U.S. role?
May 1, 2008 at 11:04 am
A modest question -
Isn’t it a basic marxist principle that communists shouldn’t take executive office in capitalist states - that we’re supposed to be about smashing the capitalist state and building a dictatorship of the proletariat in it’s place?
I happen to think that Prachanda and Dr Bhattarai’s statement’s are pretty clear - that the plan is for the CPN(M) to, basically, run Nepal on behalf of the Nepali bourgouisie.
And I’m sorry, but that’s just not communist!!!
May 1, 2008 at 4:05 pm
I think you are mistaken on both points.
First, I don’t thin there is somewhere some simple list of “basic marxist principles” that dictate what people need to do in various situations.
second, Nepal is in the middle of a revolutionary situtaion, where much of the country has gone through a process of revolutionary power, and where the revolutionaries have their own army.
Third, i don’t believe your characterization of the remarks of the Nepali Maoist leaders is even close to reality.
May 1, 2008 at 4:59 pm
I agree with Mike. Marxism is not a set of ‘established principles’ that are to be applied regardless of concrete conditions.
As the article states, Nepal is emerging from a feudal monarchy into a republic. The Maoists understand that their role does not stop or end in leading a republic; it is to lead the New-Democratic revolution and fulfill the highest demands of the people for a new system.
As Mike has emphasized, and like all Maoists and Marxists should, we have to investigate the conditions in a particular situation to see why they are doing what they are doing and what road they are taking - and if it is truly revolutionary or not.
As far as I am concerned the Nepali Maoists are genuine revolutionary communists because they have built a mass movement with the people of Nepal on revolutionary principles and are at the ‘doorway’ of a seizure of power.
Finally, there are different line within the CPN(M). Like Mike said, this is inevitable. No doubt, there are ‘communists’ within that Party that call for a capitalist republic as the ends and for Nepal to integrate into the world market, similar to how Chinese revisionists did so as well.
May 1, 2008 at 11:31 pm
Communists don’t raise tactics to the level of principle.
May 2, 2008 at 7:59 am
onehundredflowers,
“Tactics” that consolidate and serve the interests of the people and in turn arms the people - to fight for the internationale principle is a different bug, eh?
Better to investigate the history of and consolidation of the revolutionary base areas in Nepal - if anything to discover some lessons for revcoms in US.
All dogmatic and recipe thinking aside - what is wrong with flexibility, with thinking like a fish among fish swimming upstream? Is Peoples’ War always wave after bloody wave of martyrs charging screaming slogans into the oppressor’s firing lines? No neighborly loyalties here, just varying forms of mass suicide - empathy, acts of redress - a principle of unity based on, at first, a simple love of personal liberty?
gangbox, (my snark)
Better to teach the masses to loot some supermarkets, pit “advanced” industrial workers against “stoop labor” agri-workers,than for them to build autonomous networks of food solidarity. Oh, that would be “economist” and “revisionist.”
May 2, 2008 at 8:27 am
I’m sorry folks, but communists are supposed to be about OVERTHROWING capitalist states not HELPING TO RUN THEM.
And no, that’s not a ‘tactic’ that’s a basic matter of principle!!!
May 2, 2008 at 8:56 am
Gangbox: clearly the burning issue (for revolution in Nepal) is whether the current tactical and strategic plans of the Maoists in Nepal are leading toward such an overthrow of the old state. They are “not helping to run” a capitalist state, but developing the political conditions for overthrow and the creation of a new state. (Nepal is not a “capitalist country” btw, but a heavily feudal one — headed by a state rooted in those feudal and semi-feudal conditions.)
These tactics may not succeed. They have themselves spoken movingly of the “risk” involved in their approach.
Their road may ultimately lead them somewhere else — transforming their party in the process. But analysing this process (and critiquing it) can’t proceed from simply rules you have invented. (For example, where is the list of “basic matters of principle” that you are proclaiming? Is it written down somewhere? where are these rules about tactics derived from, other than your own personal emphatic assertions?)
May 2, 2008 at 9:39 am
Gangbox,
The problem is that you treat your analytical categories (like “capitalist state”) as if they are stable physical objects rather than as moments in a dialectically unfolding process. Assuming the Maoists are able to consolidate state power in Nepal they will be presented with the task of governing and transforming a complex social reality. The revolution that has carried them to power will have swept away certain feudal forces but not the bourgeois ones. This isn’t because the Maoists love the bourgeoisie, Its because thats the actual configuration of forces in Nepal. Now the Maoists will have a choice between immediately expropriating Nepal’s puny bourgeoisie and probably driving a substantial fraction of its college educated population into exile in the process and very likely sabotaging their own revolution in the process OR making certain concessions to the bourgeoisie and professionals. Nepal’s main problems today do not come from its own bourgeoisie but from the feudal forces and their imperialist friends in India and the US.
There is certainly a real risk that in encouraging capitalist development in Nepal that the Maoists will themselves be transformed into the representatives of the Nepali bourgeoisie. Even were they to expropriate the bourgeoisie there is a major danger that they would be transformed, as was the CP in China, into a new bourgeoisie. This is what is meant by the idea of class struggle under socialism. There is no formula or slogan or tactic or even “principle” that gets you around it.
Communists are supposed to be about overthrowing capitalism. But the situation is complicated when the state one is fighting is not a capitalist one to begin with and the transformations historically associated with the capitalist mode of production remain largely incomplete.
It is tempting to think that Nepal is country where all that is neccessary is for the workers to dump the parasitic bosses off their backs and take control over the means of production. But thats not the situation. The Nepali people need hospitals and schools with electricity. They need doctors, teachers, engineers, and more or less competent administrators that we take for granted. They need whole industries that they don’t have yet and that can’t be brought into existence without capital and expertise that will be even harder to come by if they strangle their puny bourgeoisie.
This may all seem like an elaborate excuse for collaboration with the class enemy to you, but these are real problems that ANY revolutionary party would face wer it to come to power in a country like Nepal.
The question that faces the CPN(M) is how to advance down the socialist road without driving the rickety truck they inherited into a ditch. The back of the truck may be filled with folks willing to push it, but there is a certain wisdom in letting the one guy with a socket wrench who can read the manual ride shotgun even if he is prone to lording it over everybody else at least until you get over the hill or somebody else learns to read. You can yell that its unfair that he doesn’t have to ride in the back of the truck but until you develop the capacity to replace his expertise your insistence that this is a matter of principle won’t resolve the actual problem.
Some of this dynamic is simply an expression of Nepal’s level of economic development. But not all of it. The high-tech society we live in depends on experts as well and any revolution here will have to deal with concrete contradictions between the need to empower the people on the very bottom of society and the need to keep at least a fraction of the professional and technical classes in an uneasy alliance. Are there dangers in all this? Hell yeah. But they are only increased by pretending that the problem doesnt exist or can be solved by the simple application of already known “principles.” We make the road by walking.
May 2, 2008 at 4:12 pm
I think that’s the best paragraph I’ve ever read in my life! Thanks TellNoLies for making important and usually dry points of theory fun to read and easy to understand!
May 2, 2008 at 10:11 pm
TellNoLies, the truck analogy is great. However I don’t think it gets to the heart of the matter, because the bourgeoisie itself does not actually fit the description of the dude riding shotgun. That better matches the ‘doctors, teachers, engineers, and more or less competent administrators’ which you mentioned. But those people are not the bourgeoisie (short for ‘big bourgeoisie’ or ‘national bourgeoisie’ here), they are the petit bourgeoisie (or ‘middle class’ in popular American English).
Not trying to tear you down here, by the way. It’s just that I’m trying to figure this out too, & that doesn’t quite answer it for me.
I’m fairly familiar with the Maoist/RIM/etc views on New Democracy. But, especially in the interest of being truly materialist & non-dogmatic, we need to rethink things often (& if we arrive at the same conclusions as before, none the worse for wear right?). Anyway, I get the whole thing of retaining expertise & building capital. I also get the historical role of the bourgeoisie in economic development as it’s gone so far in the history of capitalist countries. However I’m not so sure that this is a role inherently only capable of being filled by the bourgeoisie.
That is, why does this class (again, talking about the big bourgeoisie not the petit bourgeoisie) need to be in charge or even helping with this kind of thing? Because they’ve done it so far? Well they’ve been in charge of production, in charge of making laws, etc etc — but no communist will say these things are impossible without the bourgeoisie. What exactly do they contribute, what can capitalism accomplish which socialism cannot? Socialism (not communism) does not do away with the law of value, abolish the wages system per se, etc (rather it hacks away at these things as much as possible, as it goes along). So, why is socialism seen to be a bad way to do these things like create ‘whole industries that they don’t have yet’?
And does this inadvertent-brain-drain theory really hold water? Was there an exodus of experts & intellectuals from USSR after the seizure of power — not just sizeable numbers leaving, but a crippling exodus? What about China? In fact, let’s get more specific: was there a brain drain in China when it changed from New Democracy to Socialism? If so, why & why did the CP keep on with socialism anyway? If not, why not? Would there have been one if they’d gone straight to Socialism in 1949 & how could they tell? Also I must point out that the inadvertent-brain-drain theory is what is used as an excuse for the US & German bourgeoisies’ refuse to truly carry out denazification — a quite different situation to be sure, but those similarities which exist do give me pause.
Eagerly awaiting comrades’ thoughts on this…
May 2, 2008 at 10:57 pm
I’m aware of the distinction between the professional and technical classes and the big bourgeoisie. (How “big” they get in Nepal is a separate question.) And its a good question whether the latter can be dispensed with immediately in ways that the former obviously can’t. Here I think some further disaggregation is important. The big bourgeoisie don’t just sit around and collect dividends. Some do of course, but in order for them to do so others must take a more active interest. We should also distinguish between entrepreneurial and financial capitalists — those who borrow capital to build up businesses and those who loan it to them for a share of the surplus value. There is expertise involved in both these functions and in a world still dominated by capitalism that expertise will matter for a country like Nepal. But even if it didn’t we need to understand the relationship between the big bourgeoisie and the professionals and the ways that expropriating the former will fuel the anxieties of the latter, who in any event may be members of the same family or have property or investments as well.
And remember we aren’t just talking about the flight of expertise but of capital. Expropriating the big bourgeoisie will instantly close the spigot on capital flows into the country and encourage many of the not yet expropriated to transfer as much of their wealth as possible out of the country. Capital strikes are no joke and while the day of reckoning is likely to come eventually for the CPN(M) it is probably better if it happens AFTER they consolidate state power.
I’ll let more knowledgeable folks comment on the brain drain in the Russian and Chinese cases. It was definitely an issue in Cuba and Nicaragua and I think the dynamics are bound to be different for smaller countries.
Finally, I want to be clear that I don’t think concerns over a brain drain or capital flight should be viewed as trumping all other considerations. I raise them in order to be as concrete as possible about the dangers of a dogmatic insistence that everything must be done instantly or else we’re not real communists.
May 3, 2008 at 3:30 am
Funny how truck analogies come so readily to mind on this website!
You guys sure do seem to think that it will be easier to steer once you get it moving! Good luck with that!
May 3, 2008 at 4:01 am
I support the Kasama project. I think the Maoist revolution in Nepal in the way it has taken shape is an experiment that has to be supported by Maoists. Until of course we see that the Maoists there have in practice abandoned the socialist road. That is, in practice they have ceased to be Maoists.
The practice itself has been quite impressive. Eighty per cent of the country in the course of the people’s war. Half of the electoral vote in the contest among parties.
Of course, the success so far of the Maoist movement in Nepal should not make its recent parliamentary shift a model for Maoist revolution in India and other South Asian countries. If successful all the way to socialism, it seems to me a unique model based on unique Nepalese conditions.
What I think controversial is their theory of the socialist road they are taking. Their theory of creating a capitalist Nepal under the leadership of a Maoist proletariat is not quite the same as the New Democracy theory of Mao. This makes it controversial.
But I have the sense that the slogan of a capita