The misguided policies of the Maoists are not just an obstacle to the country's political evolution, they are putting Nepal's future in jeopardy.

The Maoists are neither communists nor bourgeois democrats. They represent neither Marxist-Leninist-Maoist thought nor national capitalism.

They are suffering an identity crisis and are drifting towards social fascism. If this trend persists, we won't be making progress towards a dictatorship of the proletariat and we will not see a new people's revolution: we will drift towards a non-revolutionary fascist dictatorship.

The extreme 'leftist' ideology and the war the Maoists waged was a mistake and it was unsuccessful. But even after they abandoned their armed struggle, they haven't been able to shed their extremist tendencies and anarchist behaviour. The leadership, especially that of Pushpa Kamal Dahal, suffers from a careerist approach that is undermining the people's real interests as well as the peace process and the constitution.

The reason the Maoists get away with a lot of this is because progressive intellectuals and the media haven't really understood where the Maoists come from and have a tendency to tolerate, excuse or wish away their excesses. This is the why the Maoists have got a free ride in hoodwinking the mass public with their populist slogans of people's liberation and egalitarianism.

For a long time the Maoists have been saying they will not let a constitution be written until they can lead the government. That a large section of the intelligentsia has played along with this illogical line of argument is surprising. Only a party that has the support of a majority in parliament can lead the government, according to the Interim Constitution that the Maoists themselves helped write. The UML-led government got to power constitutionally because the Maoists lost the support of their coalition partners. The Maoists then tried to get to power via the streets, but failed and are now threatening to restart their rebellion.

If you have abandoned armed struggle and joined a constitutional process, you have to use due process to get into government. Even more surprising than the Maoists not understanding this is the inability of our so-called
intellectuals to grasp it. This is not to say that there aren't credible, independent and democratic-minded civil society leaders.

Nepal's intellectual class can be divided into three groups: those who support the Maoists out of an ignorant nostalgia for revolution, those who have either been bought, coerced or threatened to support them, and the royalists who see a convergence of interest with the Maoists. Somewhere within these three groups are intellectuals who have joined the Maoists not because they identify with their ideology but because they have dreams of getting into government or high positions.

Such behaviour, of course, is not uniquely applied to the Maoists: we have seen the Nepali intelligentsia sucking up to the NC or UML in the past. Lately we see even respected and independent analysts supporting erroneous Maoist policies and actions, and the reason could be a lack of intellectual clarity. Engels once said: "In general, traditionalist thinkers latch on to wrong beliefs."

For example, the Maoists started their armed struggle in 1996 because they thought the existing order could not be changed without a protracted revolutionary war. That is what Marxism-Leninism taught us. But there is another Marxist-Leninist line that says: "The objective conditions must be right before an armed struggle is launched in any country." In other words, an armed struggle can be an extremist blunder.

A party that has to rely on counter-revolutionaries and opportunists for support is itself weak and can crumble at any moment. The Maoists should realise that what they see as ideological solidarity from the intellectual class is actually undermining them. It is only when the Maoists realise they have taken the wrong turn in history, that once you join a democratic process there is no turning back to violence, that the party will make progress and be honest with itself.

Mohan Bikram Singh is the General Secretary of the Nepal Communist Party (Masal). Translated from a longer version in Himal Khabarpatrika, 30 May-14 June.

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