Prachanda’s Gamble

LLCO.org

There once was once a man with a small purse of gold. He held that purse as if it were his child, allowing no person near it. He thought of nothing but that gold. One day, he dropped his purse over the side of a ship. Immediately, he jumped off the ship after his gold and drowned. Did he have the gold or did the gold have he?

— Parable

Since Lenin, one mark that distinguished communists from revisionists is their respective orientations toward bourgeois democracy. Lenin understood that in capturing bourgeois power, one is captured by the bourgeoisie. That a revolutionary organization that abandons the construction of its own, new power in order to gain hegemony within bourgeois political structures ends up captured, transformed by those very structures it sought to capture. Revolutionary organizations do not capture bourgeois state power. Rather, bourgeois power captures and transforms revolutionary organizations. Once again, Lenin’s lessons have been demonstrated in Nepal. Prachanda’s gamble led his party into the trap of bourgeois parliamentarism. Real, proletarian power in the form of a people’s war was traded in for illusory, bourgeois, comprador power. The press the world over pointed to the irony of “Maoists” leading the bourgeois government in Nepal. However, by the time Prachanda sat on his throne, he had ceased being a Maoist — if he ever was one at all.

These events dramatically exposed the international communist movement. For a long time, the real anti-revisionist movement exposed the First Worldist revisionism that, unfortunately, passes for communism among the degenerate and stupid. The lone public voice exposing the revisionists in Nepal for abandoning of the ABCs of Marxism, including their tossing of Lenin’s teachings on the state, was the Leading Light Communist movement. Of course, this hasn’t stopped the liars from trying to rewrite the history of the confrontation with revisionism in Nepal. Nearly every single movement claiming to be Maoist either remained silent or cheered as the bourgeois state captured and dismantled a people’s war, as the revisionists in Nepal tossed Leninism to the wind. For example, the parties of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM) were revealed as the chest-beating buffoons that they are. For all their phrase-mongering about “Marxism-Leninism-Maoism,” they stood by and cheered as a bourgeois state dismantled proletarian power in the name of “twenty-first century socialism.” They showed themselves to lack even the most rudimentary understanding of Maoism. These movements dressed themselves up in a militant idiom, but they are no different than any other collection of liberal parties in the world. So much for the so-called “Maoist” movement.

Now, Prachanda has been forced to resign as Prime Minister. There has been a conflict over whether the reactionary head of the Nepal army, Rookmangud Katawal, would be allowed to stay in office. The Prachandaists sought to oust Rookmangud Katawal for insubordination to the civilian government. Rookmangud Katawal’s response was to send a letter refusing to step down. President Ram Baran Yadav then vetoed the decision to fire the general. In response to the unconstitutional act, Prachanda has resigned as Prime Minister. And, Prachanda’s party pulled out of the government. Prachanda’s Party has launched an agitation campaign on the streets to protest the veto. However, without the threat of people’s war, such a campaign is hollow — something not lost on their opponents. Not only has Prachanda dismantled a people’s war, but he’s lost significant power within the bourgeois system. His revisionist gamble has failed even in its own terms.

It is possible that the imperialist forces, in the name of stability, will put pressure on the ruling comprador parties in Nepal to enter into a new power sharing arrangement with Prachanda. Prachanda has made it clear to the imperialists that he is willing to play ball, so there is no principled reason that they would sideline his party. No matter what though, even if Prachanda does regain his lost power, with or without imperialist help, the bubble around him has burst. Even those who supported his revisionist gamble to exchange proletarian for bourgeois power will see through the illusion. This may open the door for genuine revolutionary forces to make progress in Nepal. Let’s hope.

The path forward in Nepal is a new, revolutionary movement grounded solidly in the fourth stage of revolutionary science. The path forward is a new, great wave of people’s wars waged under the banner of Leading Light Communism.