Class struggle in Nepal enters new phase

After massive demonstrations that forced the retreat of Nepal’s reactionary monarchy, communist revolutionaries and Nepal’s interim government have reached an historic agreement dissolving the current parliament and overturning the 1990 constitution.

Negotiators from both the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) and the current coalition government, which contains parties of both the left and center, have reached an eight-point agreement that will pave the way for establishing an interim constitution and a new interim government that will include the revolutionaries. The agreement also calls for elections to a constituent assembly to rewrite the constitution within a year.

Leaders of the CPN(M), whose people’s war has liberated most of the countryside from landlord-capitalist rule, have embark ed on a nationwide campaign to train their party’s cadre in preparation for elections to the constituent assembly. The party is organizing for the elections under a banner that calls for the elimination of even a ceremonial monarchy, the establishment of a democratic republic, and revolutionary land reform that addresses the deep inequalities stemming from Nepal’s 237-year rule of feudal forces in collaboration with foreign capital.

Class struggle continues,
under new conditions

Some elements of the Nepali ruling class have resisted these moves to establish a republican form of government inclusive of the revolutionaries.

The Nepali Congress Party’s central com mittee has expressed its dissatisfaction with the eight-point agreement, citing the fact that it does not require the revolutionaries to disarm as a prerequisite for joining the new interim government. The Maoists say they won’t disarm as long as the current state is armed to repress the people.

The Congress Party’s leader, Girija Prasad Koirala, who is also the new prime minister, has stated his party’s support for a ceremonial monarchy.

A day after his remarks, protests called by the Free Students’ Union erupted on campuses across the capital, Kathmandu. The students burned effigies of Koirala, called for his resignation and disrupted traffic in opposition to the continuation of any form of monarchy.

Earlier in the month the CPN(M) had organized a rally of hundreds of thousands in the heart of Kathmandu. Deputy commander of the People’s Liberation Army, Comrade Prabhaker, sought to clarify his party’s stance in light of recent developments. According to Prabhaker, the PLA and CPN(M) “are not tired and don’t want to give up war to share power. We want to attain our goal, through as little bloodshed as possible.”

The CPN(M) organized hundreds of buses and minivans to transport supporters from neighboring districts. Hundreds of revolutionary activists distributed revolutionary literature and pamphlets calling for an end to the monarchy.

Historical precedent

No observer of the Nepalese revolution can guarantee its outcome. However, it is important to note that recent CPN(M) maneuvers are not without precedent in history.

In 1917, the Bolshevik Party in Russia competed in elections and called for all power to the popularly elected Soviets—councils of workers, soldiers and peasants—even though at the time it first raised this slogan, it did not have a majority of the delegates. But the Soviets were genuine organs of mass authority in contrast to the existing capitalist reform government, which had replaced the hated tsar but would not change the class or property relations that held down the masses.

After the Bolsheviks played a major role in resisting an attempted counter-revolution by the monarchist General Kornilov, they began winning majorities in the Soviets. Less than a month later, in a massive insurrection, they came to power and began to implement their program of peace, land and bread. Workers took over factories, peasants chased the landlords off the land, and the Soviet government took Russia out of World War I and brought the troops home.

The Communist Party of China also maneuvered politically while not giving up control of its liberation army when it joined a coalition government in 1946 with Gen. Chiang Kai-shek. Chiang had been a nationalist during the struggle against Japanese imperialism, but became a puppet of the U.S. after Japan’s defeat. The 1949 War of Liberation brought the CCP to power across the country.

In both instances revolutionary communists used elections and posts in government not as a forum for compromise but as an arena to carry out the class struggle and to demonstrate more clearly to the masses the necessity of smashing the old bourgeois state as a precondition for real revolutionary reform.

The CPN(M) maintains that it is using the current period of power-sharing and constituent assembly elections to fulfill its revolutionary goals while avoiding unnecessary bloodshed.