Pushpa Kamal Daha (better known as ‘Prachanda”, meaning “the fierce one”) has just become Nepal’s new Prime Minister. He received 464 out of 577 votes in Nepal’s Constituent Assembly.
In the recent elections, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) received more votes than any other party (although not an absolute majority). So they are “legally” in power. However this legal victory can be traced to the successful Maoist led people’s war in Nepal which forced the holding of elections as part of the peace process. As soon as real elections were on the agenda, the Maoists called off the war and oriented themselves toward winning via the ballot box.
The policy of the Nepalese Maoists is clear: what Nepal needs is capitalistic development and democracy! Continue reading ‘Prachanda is Nepal’s new PM!’
“We need capitalism before socialism” says Prachanda, the head of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), according to a report in the The Independent .
This is one of those old Marxist ideas that must take off again if a genuine left is to re-emerge from the ether. It has to become a new meme.
What Prachanda is referring to is the fact that a system based on social ownership can only be built on the conditions created by capitalism. This means eliminating the conditions that are the basis of class society – routine labor, low levels of education, a general lack of sophistication and economic backwardness.
Look at it this way. A society based on sharing is only viable when we are generally sharing good things, in particular interesting jobs and affluence. Sharing poverty and jobs that should be done by machines is a no show. Furthermore, we need average people who can do most of the thinking and deciding, and when they cannot, are at least able to monitor and hold accountable those with special knowledge and ability.
In poor countries a major obstacle to progress is statism in its various (including “socialist”) guises which has allowed those in power to plunder the economy and to hold back the development of an entrepreneurial capitalist class. This has usually been assisted by agencies such as the World Bank [1]
Another obstacle is the pseudo left in the rich countries who do not want poor countries to become rich. That would require lots of power plants, roads, railway lines, modern housing and factories. Instead, they just want to make subsistence agriculture more viable by things like donating goats, digging wells and “fair trade”. [2] Continue reading ‘New Meme from Nepalese Maoists?’
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