After 10 years of guerrilla struggle in the countryside, Nepal’s Maoist party has agreed to join the ruling government coalition of capitalist Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala.
The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) has taken this step even though the hated monarchy of King Gyanendra remains in place.
Last year saw an end to a period of absolute rule in which Gyanendra had governed without a parliament or any elected representatives. But despite the self-sacrifice of the CPN(M)’s militants, it was not the long guerrilla struggle that brought this absolutist dictatorship to an end. It was the revolution in April 2006 in the cities, especially in the capital Kathmandu, which brought workers and youth onto the streets, shut down the city in a general strike, paralysed the armed forces and threatened a full scale insurrection.
If at that time the Maoists had put their 15,000 rifles at the disposal of the mass movement, they could have smashed their way through the demoralised and wavering army and police, seized the royal palace, executed Gyanendra and his royal line, and opened a struggle for working class power based on workers’ and peasants’ councils.
Instead, despite all its fiery rhetoric and military training, the CPN(M) acted in accordance with the true essence of its Maoist ideology. Pursuing Stalin’s theory of revolution by stages, it aimed not to secure a socialist revolution, but merely a democratic revolution, therefore limiting itself to keeping the rule of the King and the parliament.
In this the Maoists reveal how far they are from the policy of Leninism.
The Leninist policy in this situation would be to refuse to join the coalition government of seven capitalist parties, and to call instead for the complete abolition of the monarchy, immediate elections to a Constituent Assembly, land to the peasants, the expropriation of industry and the banks, and the spreading of revolution through a revolutionary appeal to the masses of India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and China.
The path to this lies through the revolutionary smashing of the Nepalese armed forces and state bureaucracy.
A genuine communist party in Nepal would only serve in one type of government – a government of the workers and peasants based on their own democratic organisations. The betrayal of the struggle of the peasants and workers by the Maoists is a lesson for everyone.