Maoist Leader Elected Prime Minister of Nepal

by Wayne Rossi / September 2008

On Aug. 15, over two years after the revolution that overthrew King Gyanendra, Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) leader Prachanda (Pushpa Kamal Dahal) was elected prime minister. He was sworn into the office on Aug. 18. The Maoists have come to power despite losing their bid for the largely ceremonial presidency and with stiff opposition from the Nepali Congress Party, which was formerly the main electoral party in the country.

Nepal's king was forced to step down in April 2006 by a massive protest movement and general strike. For 10 years before that, the CPN(M) led a "people's war" in the countryside, which led to 13,000 deaths before a stalemate in late 2005.

In February 2005, the king overturned Parliament, which eventually led to his downfall. The old political parties and the Maoists worked in a provisional government until this May when the Constituent Assembly declared the country a republic and officially removed the king.

The Maoist position seemed uncertain after the CPN(M) failed to win an absolute parliamentary majority, and the Congress party candidate won the presidency, but Prachanda's candidacy as prime minister had broad support from all of the rivals to the Congress Party.

Despite these events, Nepal remains one of the poorest countries in the world. Outside of tourism-driven Kathmandu it has a primarily agricultural economy, and is dependent on trade with India and China. A significant portion of the population are transient agricultural workers who cannot make their living by farm labor alone.

In recent months, a fuel shortage has driven the price of food and other commodities to perilous levels. The poorest fifth of Nepal's people spend up to 73% of their income on food, and high prices are now the major crisis that the new government must face.

Prachanda has long discussed what he calls the "Prachanda Path" for the Nepalese revolution. His plan was for a guerrilla war with the goal of a "people's government" in Kathmandu and the overthrow of the monarchy.

The Maoist strategy is in reality nothing more than a restatement of Stalin's tired old theory of political stages, which insisted on separating the democratic and socialist "stages" of revolution, and only moving on to the struggle for socialism after the democratic "stage" was complete.

This false theory has proven a crushing counter-revolutionary weight, in China in 1927 and Indonesia in 1965, when workers paid the price in blood. Following the same path, the Maoists in Nepal have entered into a multi-class government that will prove incapable of moving forward in the vital tasks that they have before them.

Leon Trotsky counterposed his theory of Permanent Revolution to Stalin's stages. For Trotsky, there was no separation between the democratic and socialist tasks; the democratic revolution could not be completed without becoming a socialist revolution.

In Nepal, history has vindicated Trotsky's theory. The 20th century saw many popular movements for democracy in Nepal, but none of the fragile democratic governments were able to address the basic problems. The monarchy was unable and unwilling to tolerate the kind of radical changes that Nepal would need. After each upsurge had passed, the king withdrew democracy, claiming it was a failed experiment.

Yet, in important ways, 2006 was different. This was in no small part because the Maoists, despite their major flaws, proved to be excellent organizers for the protest movement. The CPN(M) was the first party in Nepalese politics to focus primarily on the majority of the country's population outside of the Kathmandu Valley, and embrace the aspirations of many of Nepal's ethnic minorities, who have long been subject to caste-based discrimination. The Maoist party’s organizational structure helped to focus the radicalization, and it deserves full credit for its achievements.

The revolutionary moment in April of 2006 was the time to move ahead and proceed with the struggle for socialism. But rather than propel the revolutionary wave to overthrow the entire old order, the Maoists held it back. The rebellion's heat was channeled into the movement toward a bourgeois republic, following the Stalinist blueprint.

On Aug. 18 of this year, Prachanda finally reaped the reward for this act: the prime minister's office. But he is finding stiff opposition from the Congress Party, which has no interest in radical measures, while the war-torn country is in the grip of a food crisis.

Resolving the food crisis may prove impossible for Prachanda, and will certainly cause setbacks in his plans. This is no accident, but speaks to the nature of the capitalist state that he leads.

Beyond this, the structural problems facing Nepal are among the worst in the world. Basic infrastructure is almost nonexistent outside of the Kathmandu Valley; much of the country even lacks paved roads. Land reform and wholesale economic restructuring are needed for the country to even have a chance of providing a decent living for most of its people.

Any real solutions would necessarily involve large-scale expropriations and redistribution of property, thus undermining the ruling classes, both domestic and foreign. It would shatter the cross-class coalition that the Maoists have built, and disrupt the Stalinist "stage" of democratic revolution.

Domestic capital is too weak to fund a Nepalese industrial revolution, and foreign capital has no reason to finance it. This is the logic of combined and uneven development that Trotsky saw in Russia a century ago. It leads to a decisive confrontation with capital, in which the working class must move forward to the socialist revolution or give up all it has gained.

The Maoists, however shining their moment now seems, have placed the working and peasant masses of Nepal on the latter path. If they prove unable to solve the immediate crisis, the door will be left open to vicious reaction. A revolutionary party that can lead the fight for socialism is now the most urgent need in Nepal.