The Maobadi Thermidor

The revolution has been replaced by a conservative bureaucracy; historically, this is a typical development

NOV 29 -

The split between the left wing of the Maoist movement and its mainstream historical party, the UCPN (Maoist) currently headed by Pushpa Kamal Dahal  ‘Prachanda’ and Baburam Bhattarai, is no exception in communist and socialist world history. The poll-boycotting, hardliner party known as the CPN-Maoist and its leader Mohan Baidya (alias Kiran), a big figure in Nepali Maoism, have a number of historical antecedents in chronicles of revolutionary movements. In the former Soviet Union, in Asia, Europe and Latin America, Marxist-Leninist movements have long been replete with dissent and internecine conflicts between compromising and more radical streams. This has led to internal clashes, assassinations and armed combat.

This development can lead to a condition known to historians as Thermidor. The term originates from an episode in the French Revolution after the fall of Robespierre and the Jacobins (1794). After a period of massive executions of so-called counter-revolutionaries and of vehement verbal violence, the Revolution suddenly took a more tolerant path. Revolutionaries rejected violence and compromised with other parties. Thermidor is thus seen as a reaction to revolutionary excesses. For post-Trotskyist Marxists, the word Thermidor has retained a derogative meaning. It is the moment in the rise of a revolution when the masses begin to withdraw from active intervention in history and the original leadership of the revolution is replaced by a conservative bureaucracy. In communist vocabulary, it is a rejection of fundamental Marxist premises, a form of revisionism.

Revolution to social peace

In his book Anatomy of Revolution, a classic in political science published in 1939, Crane Briton writes about Thermidorian reactions in all four major political revolutions: the English (1640), the American (end of the eighteenth century), the French (1789-1794), and the Russian (1917). The author outlines common patterns in these four periods of political turmoil. Behind these different Thermidors, he stresses the restoration of many pre-revolutionary practices and a return to more conservative ideas about social issues. Yet, according to Briton, all of these revolutionary movements—except for the American Revolution—ended in political forms akin to dictatorship (Cromwell, Napoleon, Stalin) and in the replacement of a ‘missionary spirit’ to spread revolution by an aggressive form of nationalism.  

A number of differences exist between these four revolutions but essentially, the same process has been repeated in Nepal. The struggle between two opposed Maoist factions, the reformist and the extremist, has traversed the entire history of the Jana Yudha (the People’s War). The major bone of contention concerns the decision by Maoist leaders to join the pluralistic political mainstream in 2005. Kiran was in prison in India at that time but he was quick to express his reservations. He subsequently condemned the policy Prachanda and Bhat-tarai had implemented after 2008 in collaboration with the ‘feudal’ and ‘capitalist’ parliamentary establishment. Bai-dya’s followers judge the manner in which former Maoist combatants, “the army of liberation”, have been integrated in the Nepal Army as being particularly degrading. They consider Prachanda and Bhattarai’s whole policy as a blatant failure and a betrayal of revolutionary ideals. They brandish the threat of a second ‘People’s War’ to promote the rights of the exploited. It will be difficult to reconcile the two rivals, even tactically, after the debacle of UCPN (Maoist) in the recently concluded elections. 

Baidya denounces the role of the Indian government and encourages a sense of Nepali nationalism to which royalist supporters are sensitive. It must be remembered in this respect that the shift from revolution to social peace has been bitterly criticised by the international communist movement and labelled “opportunistic and counter-revolutionary”. It has particularly created tensions with the neighbouring Communist Party of India (Maoist). 

Tactical compromise

The arguments brought forward by Bhattarai and Prachanda to defend their choice of substituting a military rebellion with a political fight are twofold: the unfeasibility of overcoming the state’s loyalist armed forces in urban centres and Nepal’s geopolitical environment. After ten years of insurgency, the two Maoist leaders, Prachanda and Bhattarai, have both concluded that Nepal cannot live with closed boundaries to its south, and with no foreign aid or NGOs on its territory. However, the decision must have been a difficult one to take. To abandon revolutionary objectives at a time when most of Nepal’s rural areas were practically under Maoist control is rather puzzling. The agreement seems to be purely tactical, conciliation between the two previously opposed leaders at the expense of the left wing. 

Whatever the case may be, the Thermidorian reintroduction of the UCPN (Maoist) to mainstream politics has led former revolutionaries to accept a ‘bourgeois’ order and to compromise their ideals in a somewhat risky manner. They have succeeded in establishing a republic but their years of unproductive rule have altered their image. Marxist activists from the UCPN (Maoist) have recently been nicknamed ‘Cash’ in view of the supposedly large amounts of money they have amassed, as opposed to the ‘Dash’ hardliner CPN-Maoist. Why this name? Because, unlike most of the other communist parties that use brackets in their name, Baidya’s party uses a dash: Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist. 

Interestingly enough, Prachanda’s supporters are still called Maobadis/Maoists. This persistent usage seems to be nothing but political amnesia. After all, the UCPN (Maoist) has renounced its armed rebellion and has put an end to the revolution. Its members still revere Stalin and Mao Zedong, two of the greatest tyrants of the twentieth century, but they have abandoned the project of conquering the ‘bourgeois’ or ‘feudal’ state with the use of arms. Any new tactical change will be problematic and incomprehensible to most people. Also, the conclusion of the 1996-2006 civil war blatantly contradicts one of Mao’s strategies about seizing power by encircling the cities with armed peasants. Such a tactic dramatically failed in the hills and the mountains of Nepal. 

Toffin is Director of Research at the National Centre for Scientific Research, France