Opinion

Identity crisis

Having seemingly abandoned the class struggle, the Maoists are now searching for a new political identity

Published at : February 19, 2014

Updated at : February 19, 2014 08:48

From the recent debate among Maoist leaders, it is clear that they are raising some fundamental questions on what it means to be a Maoist in Nepal. Suddenly, we are now told that Nepal has graduated from a 'semi feudal' state to a capitalist state. Normally, one would have expected that this transition meant a new emphasis on the class struggle that is embedded in the capitalist mode of production. Class struggle, however, figures nowhere in the current Maoist rhetoric and a newfound appreciation of key elements of bourgeois political values have become the hallmark of a new Maoist order for the 21th century.

Intellectual vacuum

Developments during the last seven years have made it clear that Nepali Maoists are completely lost about their political and economic model. They seem to realise that the so-called 'dictatorship of the proletariat' is fast becoming a meaningless concept and is nothing more than a veil to justify a one-party dictatorship, if possible. On the economic front, the Maoists are caught in a contradiction between their desire to establish their revolutionary credentials as outlined in the communist manifesto—which declares its commitment to take a hard line against private property and private investments—and the need to justify private property and capitalism, which they see as being indispensable to the new engine of economic growth.

At present, the Chinese have managed this problem with a focus on a market economy under one-party rule. This is the great contribution of Deng Xiaoping that created an economic miracle in China. How it will affect China's political evolution in the future is yet to be seen. The Nepali Maoists, however, cannot openly declare their love for Dengism, for that would do injustice to the very name of the party. So the Maoist political rhetoric swings from hard line communist ideology based on one-party dictatorship to a commitment to constitutional equilibrium and economic liberalisation that would be music to international financial institutions.

The Maoists are slowly but surely transforming into a political organisation that is steadily internalising a thought structure where politics is a new form of business for leaders. From a feudalistic structure, where economic exploitation was accepted as normal, Nepal is moving towards a new form of neo-feudalism, labeled in recent Maoist rhetoric as 'capitalism', where ideology is used as a smokescreen to establish a new elite that is determined to use state power without the normal constitutional checks and balances for the unrestrained authority, both economic and political, of its leaders and top cadres. All in the name of the masses.

Resolving contradictions

The contradiction in Maoist theory and practice in Nepal has created an identity crisis for the party and the leaders seem to have realised this.

The Maoist top guns are now publicly arguing that the party is rapidly becoming a part of bourgeois democracy and is being sucked into the parliamentary quagmire that it was determined to abolish from the nation. Some are arguing for a new brand of Maoist democracy suited to 'Nepal's unique conditions'. And what exactly are those conditions? What do they imply in terms of framing new political and economic parameters suited to our unique conditions? On this question, the Nepali Maoists are a confused lot. Publicly, Maoist leaders are now letting us know that they are still searching for an answer to this question and are afraid that the party might end up as a poor replica of the CPN-UML in the future.

In their quest to chart a new identity, it is interesting that the Nepali (Pushpa Kamal Dahal) Maoists now accept the so-called bourgeois values of free press, freedom of association, party competition, periodic election and rule of law as essential components of their new understanding of democracy. For a change, they now resent the idea that all these values of governance are not in line with Marxism, notwithstanding the fact that in Lenin's words, which they are always ready to quote, "only the dictatorship of the proletariat is able to liberate mankind from the yoke of capital, from the lies, the sham and hypocrisy of bourgeois democracy…" However, once Marxism-Leninism-Maoism internalises the political values of a

bourgeois democracy, how does it deal with the issue of class struggle and the notion of the dictatorship of the proletariat? Are we now to assume that for the Nepali Maoists, the whole issue of class struggle, which is the bed rock of the radical left, is now irrelevant in view of the 'unique characteristics' of Nepal?

For the Dahal Maoists in Nepal, the defining character of Maoism is presumably going to be the values of liberal democracy fine-tuned to include affirmative action, proportional representation and the possibility of a referendum on various issues of national concern. But all these measures are part of the evolving structure of a liberal democratic system that tries to look after the interests of all stakeholders in the system. How then is Maoist democracy in Nepal a different model from that of the Nepali Congress, the UML, the Rastriya Prajatanra Party or other democratic parties in the nation?

Conceptual problem

The Maoists, in their struggle against the state, started with the logic of identity politics and it provided them with the strength and dynamism for a sustained struggle against the Nepali state for ten years. However, at the end of the day, it is ironic that they have been forced to go soul searching to define their own political identity. As the leader of a once revolutionary party that even named its road map as 'Prachandapath', Pushpa Kamal Dahal 'Prachanda' now has the task of rising to the occasion and defining what it means to be a Maoist in Nepal. Good luck to him. He has a tough conceptual task ahead of him.

Lohani is a senior leader of Rastriya Prajatantra Party