Nepali Leftists In Post-communist World

Almost thirty four years have elapsed since the fall of the Berlin Wall in November1989. In its wake, communist rule collapsed throughout Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, bringing an end to perhaps the broadest sustained attempt to consciously reorganise social, political and economic life across many nations through a negation of the existing order. However, Nepal's case in this context had been entirely different. At a time when epitaph was written on the demise of communism in Europe and elsewhere, Nepal had witnessed a surge of communism substantiated by the formation of elected communist government headed by late Manmohan Adhikari. 

At least four communist leaders have become prime ministers in repeat terms during the consecutive periods following late Man Mohan Adhikari. They include incumbent prime minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda, KP Sharma Oli, Dr. Babu Ram Bhattarai, Madhav Kumar Nepal and Jhala Nath Khanal. Like elsewhere in South Asia, especially India, the communist movement in Nepal has traversed a long journey since first communist party was formed around seventy-five years ago. Today, there are many communist parties and most of these parties don’t have any significant footprints in electoral politics. 

However at least two parties – CPN- UML and  CPN Maoist Centre – have maintained their place as the key players in the Nepali political firmament and commanded sizeable representation and participation in the electoral politics.

Relevance

Nepal should perhaps be the only country in at least South Asia where communist parties have established their relevance and elected to rule with recourse to democratic rules of the game despite the fact that divisions and splits time and again have weakened them. Today, the communist parties in Nepal have come to such a pass that they have to tone up their leadership, organisation, ideas and ideology. They are engaged in devising the ways as to how to stay relevant and afloat in the post-communist world.  Of course, CPN- UML is well entrenched in the body politic of the country with its strong organisational base and network. 

The party has made an identity of its own and looks confident on its legitimacy and democratic credentials despite the fact that it carries with it Marxist-Leninist appellation. KP Sharma Oli sits on the top of the party echelon and his supremacy as a communist boss remains more or less unchallenged yet far. Though CPN- UML holds communist logo and designation, it practices sheer pragmatism and vacillation and its policies and programmes affirm free market-oriented capitalist economy. This makes the party, as its detractors say, a double speak organisation caught into the warp of formalism-realism hiatus. The central committee meeting held recently indicated that the party is going for soul-searching exercises.

In the same way,  the then CPN-Maoist, now CPN-Maoist Centre, that had launched ten-year-long violent conflict is fighting a battle within itself  as how to overcome the looming crisis of  identity and legitimacy in the prevailing political situation of the country. It is set to revise the party statute purportedly with a view to foster legitimacy. However, looking at the contents of the proposed statute and ongoing polemics within the party, it looks like that Maoist Centre is not yet prepared to shed its orthodox communist veneer in the party organisational structure and leadership. Though there are voices to reform and democratise parties even by shedding the classical ideological arsenals, there is not much that could be expected. 

Like CPN-UML, the Maoist Centre has headed the coalition government time and again. It also practices free market economic policy exposing its double standards and contradiction in words and deeds. Coming to the global context, the era following the collapse of communist regimes in Soviet Union and the Eastern European countries is known as the post-communist period characterised by political and economic transformation. In most countries in the Eastern European countries, the communist parties had been split in two factions: a reformist social democratic party and a new less reformist-oriented communist party. The newly created social democratic parties were generally larger and more powerful than the remaining communist parties. 

In the Western European countries, many of the communist parties reacted to situation by changing their policies to a more moderate and less radical course as their influence in those countries had not been remarkable. In countries such as Italy and reunited Germany, post-communist era has been characterised by the increased influence of the existing social democratic parties though right wing parties are taking away their influence during these days. Several former communist states following the then soviet model transited from a planned economy towards a more market-oriented one. Such countries include Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. In these countries, the post-communist economic transition was much more abrupt and aimed at creating fully capitalist economies.

Market-oriented reforms

Today the former communist countries have abandoned the traditional tools of communist economic control and moved more or less successfully toward free-market systems. Initially average standards of living registered a catastrophic fall in some of the communist countries that came into being following the disintegration the former Soviet Union. But they have readjusted themselves and began to rise again through the market-oriented economic reforms during the last decades. 

Many countries have achieved political democratisation and economic gains considerably of which the countries such as the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Slovakia could be mentioned. As the new political groups claiming to provide alternative to the traditional parties have emerged and made electoral gains, the communist parties in Nepal should read the writing on the wall and undertake institutional and organisational reforms shedding their double standards to stay relevant in the current context.

(The author is presently associated with Policy Research Institute (PRI) as a senior research fellow.  rijalmukti@gmail.com)