In particular, the Maoists in Nepal seem unable to take their strategy of area-wise seizure of power (base areas) in large parts of the country to the higher phase of a nationwide revolutionary organ of power, the alternative proletarian state, which is supposed to accompany the smashing of the present state order. This has meant that the immense achievements of the “protracted people’s war” in decimating feudal, state power and revolutionising social relations in vast majority of rural areas, are unable to catalyse an urban insurrection which would smash the present state and inaugurate a new, proletarian state. As we shall see, the Maoist movements’ inability to develop nationwide revolutionary organs of power to replace the old state organs, akin to the Soviets in 1917 Russia, undercuts the rationale of an urban insurrection. Thus the Maoists’ latest announcement of “standing on the back and hitting at the head”, of concentrating on the capital city has meant no more than the 12-point agreement with political parties that are supposed to be still dominant in urban centres.

Contrary to Prachanda thought’s promise, therefore, the revolutionary overthrow of the present order and state by combining the tactics of armed urban insurrection with that of the protracted people’s war seems to be a perpetually deferred moment of revolutionary jouissance. The longer this deferral lasts the greater the chances that those tempered and solidified so far in people’s war, in revolution, might melt into the air of so-called democratic politics. Unless alternative organs of power, of the revolutionary proletarian state are developed at the central level, the Maoists’ oft-repeated commitment to multiparty democracy, competitive politics and dialogue with civil society can eventually bog them down to mere parliamentarism, to the democratic game, notwithstanding the presence of a people’s army (the only saving grace?). Such a possibility, while making so-called civil society and “democratic” forces happy, might however be no more than rites of passage for the Maoists to serve as the left-of-capital: the political revolution ending up in economistic restructuring.5

This raises certain larger questions. Does the Maoist reconfiguring of production relations, objectively speaking, come down to unleashing the development of productive forces, in a way which facilitates heightened extraction of surplus value in the interests of capital and a new, “progressive”, left-of-capital ruling class? To what extent is the Maoist project headed towards a future proletarian state, which is what they claim in their party documents? Or, are they headed towards a radical left-nationalist anti-imperialist state fostering some form of national capital, that is, towards a form of economism and not revolutionary transformation?

It is perhaps this tendency which allows certain progressive circles in south Asia to view the Maoists as forces that should not, for a change, be Othered, but as Us, as merely “the flowering of our discontent”, as though they are born out of some deviant malfunctioning of the system and not from its inherent, inner logic.6 Indeed, this kind of left-liberal warning to the present state not to treat the Maoists as just a law and order problem but to take account of their viewpoint and incorporate them for its efficient, smooth reproduction seems to set the stage for the Maoists to warm up to the “democratic process”.7 While the Maoists’ acquiescence to this left-liberal sanitisation of their revolutionary goals might be a part of their revolutionary-front tactic, a study of their actual politics shows that this acquiescence might follow with some necessity from certain gaps in their revolutionary practice. The gap identified here is the inability to develop alternative, organs of proletarian political power at the centre in order to consolidate the gains of the people’s war. In such a situation, any urban insurrection meant to smash the present state order would always seems premature, possibly leading the revolutionary struggle to the castrating terrain of formal democratic contestation and bourgeois right.

Thus, even as Maoists mark a definite advance over social movements and parliamentary communist parties, their project in turn needs interrogation regarding the possibility of extraction of surplus product (value) and of surplus power by a class which ultimately derives its power and legitimacy from its “revolutionary”– nationalist character. Such a state would moreover carry on the liberal dichotomy between the political and the economic, along with the paraphernalia of juridico-political rights that enshrine and encode inequalities and oppression. The struggle to decisively break from liberalism down to the inner recesses is therefore a problem for Maoists, as it is, to a much larger degree, for the social movements and the parliamentary communist parties.8

We start by presenting the main strands of social movement thinking. They are then critiqued, in the second section, for overlooking the question of political power and the deep structural unity between capital and the state. In contrast to this, it will be pointed out in the third section, the Maoists take this question as fundamental to any project for revolutionary social transformation. The following three sections then together make the point that the Maoists’ stated ideological objective of smashing the present state order and developing a new proletarian state does not seem to be adequately confirmed by the flow of their current practice as described in their own writings. Through an examination of Prachanda and Bhattarai’s writings, it will be argued that the crux of the problem seems to stem from the apparent inability of the Maoists to take what seems to be the largely accomplished task of building base areas to the higher level of developing and integrating them into an alternative, qualitatively higher form of revolutionary power at the national level which would then replace the old state order. The experience of Soviets during the Russian Revolution and Lenin’s engagement with them will be recalled in order to show gaps in the practice of the Maoists.

Finally, the discussion reveals the paradox in Nepal today of a largely revolutionised social relations at the base without a corresponding political consolidation “at the top”, leading to the failure of “holding together” the revolution, of consolidating it into a “victory”. Thus, in the conclusion, we raise the question: But can the Maoists not see that capital has too often in history fired its volleys through the ideology of nationalism, nay sometimes of revolution? Can the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist teaching, seemingly upheld by the Prachanda path, of the need to smash the present state as part of the process of developing alternative organs of proletarian state power, be reconciled with the present (left-liberal or radical bourgeois) initiatives of the Maoists in Nepal for an elected constituent assembly, interim government (radical-bourgeois) republic, etc?

Broadly speaking, the field of social movement thinking can be mapped through three principal positions identified here as progressive liberal, autonomist and the social democratic or parliamentary left. As we shall see, all three positions are ultimately oblivious of the question of political power and, in practice, also of the social forces that undermine radical social transformation. The Maoist position however appears to be much better grounded on this question.

Following Marx and Foucault, we can argue that the main problem with the progressive liberal position is that rights are often merely a veil on the actual process of extraction of surplus value or energy from the human body and nature. Duely endowed with rights, the sovereign individual of liberalism is, however, the “free” labourer, who is unfree in the free economy, the free market. Referring to the nexus between juridico-political institutions (rights) and the process of economic appropriation of life and nature, Agamben writes that “declarations of rights represent the originary figure of the inscription of natural life in the juridico-political order of the nation state”.9

Social movements fighting for rights for the individual or afflicted groups and for curbs on the economy and the modernist state might bring temporary respite but must very soon defer to the systemic logic. People-oriented mobilisation of the juridical resources of the state, with a broadened, holistic notion of rights to include capabilities and livelihood entitlements, too often gets frustratingly circumscribed by contrary pressures, apart from creating new interest groups which, in quickly becoming part of the bargaining game of market democracy, provides it fresh subaltern legitimacy. The right to information and the Rural Employment Guarantee Act in India are fresh instances of this process.10

Thus, far from posing the question of political power and the overthrow of the state as decisive to the any project for social transformation, the progressive liberal position merely further entrenches the liberal state. In south Asia, this is particularly pertinent in the Indian context, as large number of political commentators try to explain the “success of Indian democracy”, pointing to the incorporation of backward castes and other marginalised sections in the political processes since the 1970s.11 In the name of making the state more representative, more inclusive and more accommodative, what frequently happens is the trading off of historical injustices as bargaining chips for elites from “deprived sections” to join the coveted ranks of ruling elites. As an aside, one can here note that, in its structural logic, this process is not entirely different from the creation of zamindars by the British as the local watchdogs of empire in India. Some myopic dalit intellectuals’ most ignominious heralding of Macaulay’s policies, one of the key pillars of British colonialism, is then perhaps symptomatic of a larger trend which definitely also includes those who are not so politically incorrect.

The autonomist position is here taken to possess two strands of social movement thinking expressed in the form of either fighting for the rights of traditional communities vis-à-vis the disciplining and enumerating norms of the modern state and the “development process”, or in the form of considering labour as autonomous from capital. The latter position is easily associated with the ideas of Italian autonomism, identified more with Antonio Negri’s thinking.12 The other position which seeks or bases itself on autonomy from modernity or from the modern state is more in line with a good number of social movements in the third world who speak on behalf of traditional communities and groups.13 Such a position informs diverse movements from the Narmada Bachao Andolan to Chipko, to those based on the Gandhian idea of gram swaraj.

For Negri, “today capital is parasitical because it is no longer inside; it is outside the creative capacity of the multitude”.14 Since capital is “outside” and the workers are potentially autonomous from it (even within the existing capitalist relations of production), the task for social movements is then supposed to be one of reclaiming what belongs to the multitude, an uncoupling of the common, of the social cooperation from being exploited by capital. Italian autonomism tries to undermine the liberal juridical framework through invoking a multitude purportedly unrepresentable and building towards an eventual uncoupling from capital command.

This position is however too taken in by the apparently selfsubsisting and autonomous nature of the common of abstract labour and, following from this, too oblivious of the institutions of the state and particularly its political and repressive apparatus.15 In arguing that capital is outside of the creative capacity of the multitude and exploits workers from the outside (like a parasite), the constitutive role of the internal relations between capital and the state in the exploitation of workers is overlooked.16 Given such misplaced understanding of the nature of capitalism and the state, the autonomist position eventually contradicts itself by ultimately having to work within the juridicopolitical framework of capitalist democracy or its euphemism, radical democracy.

Now a similar problem exists with the position of those autonomists who critique modernity or capital from the vantage of the traditional or pre-modern society, for example the more poststructuralist strands of subaltern studies. Here, it is not the workers or artist-activists who are regarded as (potentially) autonomous from capital but traditional communities, tribals and ways of life and modes of being that are supposed to emphasise, say, on “belonging” rather than having or owning and are supposedly resistant to (linear) historicisation. Not only does this perspective wrongly assume the autonomy of the traditional communities from capital, the collusion of the oppressive relations within these communities with those of capital and the state is grossly underestimated or overlooked.

Such an autonomist position derives from the larger problem of positing domination as occurring between capital and the modern state on the one hand and the traditional community or multitude on the other. That is, the relation between the two, between the two aspects of the relation of domination, is taken to be a relation of exteriority, not an internal relation, a relation of unity and struggle with each other. Both the above two autonomist positions posit the workers or those who are exploited and dominated as somehow not internally constituted within capitalist relations of production.17 From such an understanding, the task of the social movements turns out to be one of merely uncoupling or unhinging the community or multitude from capital command or from the stranglehold of the modern state.

Both the alternatives to the liberal juridico-political order deriving from the above two autonomist positions, therefore, seem to be terribly lacking. The Negri-type autonomist position premised its alternative on the supposed nature of society today wherein capital lives off the common of abstract labour, of social cooperation in such a way that it can be disconnected “in a flash” from capital command. The power of the state in perpetuating the power of capital is wished away with the consequence that the question of the state and political power is not regarded as decisive for any project of social transformation.

The point is that both the autonomist and the parliamentary left positions in their own way reinforce the liberal contagion of separating the political and the economic so that the field of economic production, the logic of the economy is never really problematised. They do not take up, or rather, include in their political programme, the task of building of a new type of economy and instead restrict themselves in actual fact to making progressive demands for curbing the excesses of the economy (e g, Tobin tax) or attenuating its negative effects (compensation for workers retrenchement, etc). And, even when they have a much radical, comprehensive critique of the system, there is no political programme to back it up or the willingness to assume power and attempt setting up a new social order. Certain social movements who propose “sustainable alternatives” (small dams), people’s plans and decentralisation, etc, often recycle circuits of power in new forms.28

It is perhaps understandable why the autonomist and the parliamentary left, indeed most streams of social movement thinking, do not raise the question of building a new type of economy and society, except as enclave-type “sites of a new subjectivity”, for this immediately brings up the question of what are the conditions necessary for it. Is it possible to build a postcapitalist economy and society within the present juridicopolitical system, which legitimises state power and the prevailing/ corresponding social relations? That is, the problem no longer lies in the realm of the paraphernalia of the juridico-political institutions and provisions but, given the internal relations between capital and state power, it is a question of political power.

This also means that in practice the critique of the dominant liberal juridico-political framework cannot be complete without formulating the conditions under which a new relation between humans and of humans to nature can be established, which is not based on exploitation, domination and repression. Most social movements have not only failed in carrying out this task but they do not even pose the question in the first place, perhaps in tune with the conservative anti-political, non- or post-ideological age we are supposed to be living in, coupled with a power-shy, antipower progressive thinking.29 Thus, one particular form this has taken at the ideological level within social movement thinking, is the disavowal of any attempt to take power and, what is its obverse, the belief that attempts to take power invariably smack of totalitarian ambitions.30

The refusal of social movements to fight towards ridding capital of the power of the state through dismantling the latter has meant that they are never really able to transcend the juridico-political framework of liberalism. To be sure, the specific depredations of capital and its “excesses” are challenged and sometimes even halted, but its political form, provided by the liberal democratic state, is never sought to be dismantled and frequently not even properly, foundationally critiqued. Fighting capitalism or the globalised economy without questioning the fundamental structure of parliamentary democracy, of the political, has become the dominant form of left wing politics.31 This is where one can talk of the Maoist intervention in Nepal and India, particularly Nepal.

Bereft thus of political abstraction, the autonomist and parliamentary communist positions lead inexorably to economism in its different forms, not excluding the possibility for progressive changes: the economism of the new social movements in its bid to undo the old economism found within Marxism of a certain kind.32 In contrast to this, understanding the economy, state and social relations as constituted in accordance to a logic which goes beyond particulars, opens the way to raising the question of political power and the state along with that of the depth of social relations that provide the basis for a radical restructuring of society. This is the perspective from which the Maoist movement needs to be approached. Indeed, in relation to their emphasis on the capture of political, state power, questions have been raised in some quarters about the Maoists in Nepal heading towards imposing terror and violence in the manner of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot.

In other words, would the Maoists, at least in certain phases of their revolutionary fervour, really relinquish economism in all its forms, only to impose political terror from above, or would they just arrive at economism via the added trauma of political terror? Or, is there a better option available, one which would transcend the binary between economism and political terror? That is, can we visualise a revolutionary intervention which, in going beyond a new social movement, does not lead to the imposition of a “revolutionary” political logic from above? It is proposed here that the theory and practice of Maoists can be meaningfully interrogated from such a perspective.

It will be seen here that the Maoists in south Asia, particularly in Nepal, are clearly aware of the need to ground the political and often necessarily abstract logic of revolution in the concrete restructuring of social relations.33 It is reflected in the questions they raise about the need to always take the people as the final repository of power and the need to finally eliminate distinctions between the people and the (future revolutionary) state. This involves revolution, not just at the level of coming to power at the helm of the present state, but revolution at all levels of social and political life.

In the context of the actual revolutionary process and the current people’s war in Nepal, the grounding of the political logic of revolution in corresponding restructuring of social relations is reflected in Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)’s attempts to grasp the revolutionary dialectic on several fronts. From their writings, it will be seen that they are struggling to embed the revolutionary process in the interrelation between the local and the national, between developing local organs of power (building base areas) and connecting them up with the central state level, between the Peoples Liberation Army and the United Revolutionary People’s Council (URPC), and ultimately in the balance they try to bring about between the tactics of urban insurrection and protracted people’s war.

In a recent interview Prachanda claimed that the only reason Maoists, in spite of their required ability and strength, did not capture power at the centre is the fear of foreign intervention in Nepal.34 However, it seems that the deeper political reason for that seems to be their inability to develop an alternative, revolutionary form of the state specific to the Nepalese context. While the Maoists in Nepal are fully aware of the danger of getting ghettoised at the local level and being unable to develop the state form at the centre (this is their criticism of the Indian Maoists), they are still unable to live up to this task in their concrete practice. Interestingly, one of the key insights of Prachanda’s thought has been the idea of combining the tactics of people’s war with the tactics of urban insurrection so that an intervention at the central level is rendered possible in order to ensure the success of the revolution. This is his conception of total war, which we now examine. We will then dwell upon the URPC as an attempted development of the new democratic state.

Organs of Revolutionary PowerOrgans of Revolutionary PowerOrgans of Revolutionary PowerOrgans of Revolutionary PowerOrgans of Revolutionary Power

Now, how does such a strategy of total war affect the overall trajectory, the build-up of the entire revolutionary process? What is crucial here is the question of political power and, specifically, the development of new revolutionary organs of power as the germ of the revolutionary apparatus at the central level. This has been the experience of the October Revolution. Writes Lenin, “if the creative enthusiasm of the revolutionary classes had not given rise to the Soviets, the proletarian revolution in Russia would have been a hopeless cause, for the proletariat could certainly not retain power with the old state apparatus, and it is impossible to create a new apparatus immediately”.45 Prachanda’s notion of total war, however, does not really address this key question with any significance.

Interestingly however, as we will soon see, the writings of Bhattarai seem to be more aware of this question. Moreover, the Maoists in Nepal do refer in their documents of “building a state of conscious and armed masses as a guaranteed organisational methodology of reaching communism through people’s democracy and socialism”.46 The questions that are left unanswered in both Maoist theory and, more so in, practice seem to be: What however are the organs or platforms of proletarian power around which the armed masses would rally and consolidate their victories? How would such organs representing the area-wise seizure of power through base areas in large parts of the country be woven together to feed into the formation of a proletarian state at the centre?

This is the question of bridging the local-national gap, which we raised above. This problem is their apparent inability to devise an alternative organ of power around which vast masses of people can rally around and which can emerge in place of the old state apparatus and bureaucracy. Does the capture of power in large parts of the country lead on its own, progressively, to the capture of state power in the centre without the need for an alternative political institution for proletarian power?

To be sure, the Maoists in Nepal have developed what are called People’s Committees functioning at village and district levels that come closest to the role played by the Soviets in Russia. These Committees are representative of the united front strategy, including all oppressed groups, castes, nationalities, etc, as part of the New Democratic Revolution. Thus, the germ of the future political, state power, which is “a central broad-based united people’s front incorporating all these oppressed groups”, called the United Revolutionary People’s Council (URPC), was formed in September 2001.47

Quoting a Maoist leader, the monthly Mulyankan reported on the URPC: “given the process of destruction of the old state power in rural areas and the establishment there of revolutionary people’s power at different levels and forms, the URPC was created in 2058 B S (2001) for providing coordination and direction to local people’s power, and which would work as the germ of state power at the central level”.48 The Maoists themselves report that the URPC is supposed “to intervene not only at the local level but also at the central level so as to enable the integration of insurrectionary tactics within the strategy of protracted people’s war”.49

Going by the documents of the Maoists and looking at their actual practice, the URPC however does not seem to be so important in the overall thinking and practice of total war. Of course, one cannot say for sure what role the URPC will take in future, given the extremely tumultuous turn of events gripping Nepal recently. There does not however seem to be a thriving political culture developing around the People’s Committees nor has it emerged as a live organ of proletarian power at the local level, not to speak of the central level. This might be explained to some extent by the extremely repressive conditions and situation of emergency imposed by the monarchy there. And, maybe such Committees are indeed functioning as future repositories of proletarian power in say the base areas but about which we do not know due to lack of information and of access.

However, as we saw above, at least the notion of total war seems to have overlooked this question of the development of proletarian organs of power as the harbingers of the incipient proletarian state. The other indication of this comes from Bhattarai’s article on ‘The Question of New Kind of State’ and other writings on the question.50 He discusses at length the Leninist position on the need to dismantle the old state and the role played by the Soviets in building of the new proletarian state. The point about the Maoists’ ideological commitment to such a line of thinking is also convincingly made alongwith some key insights of Prachanda thought. However, frustratingly enough, it has hardly anything to say about the Maoists’ own activities along these lines, with no more than an oblique reference to the URPC.

Bhattarai writes that the Programme of the URPC is supposed to contain “the overall framework of the new democratic or people’s democratic state to be established after the revolution”.51 So if it is meant to be an organ of state power ‘after’ the revolution, the function of the People’s Committees, as the Soviets did in Russia under Lenin, seems doubtful. Thus, the URPC declaration without any other balancing assertion in the article gives the impression that far from being akin to Soviets as the harbinger of proletarian state power, the URPC and its local committees would only be more like a government in exile (not the germ of future proletarian state power) meant to stake power at the opportune moment as a radical left nationalist force in Nepal. The danger of the revolution heading towards radical left nationalism rather than towards proletarian socialism seems a bit too real here.

Bhattarai is of course clear about the interrelationship between the local and the central organs of power in the course of the revolution. He quite incisively points out the necessity of a central organ “not just for purposes of centralised coordination of the struggle but for the development of a new form of political power”.52 However, the overwhelming emphasis is always on local organs of power, so that the central organ of power seems to be never more than the arithmetic addition of base areas. The idea of the central organ of power, the new form of the proletarian state, representing a higher form of power seems to be lost in the detail of local power. Bhattarai’s writing shows this limitation when he states that “the resilience of base areas and local people’s power requires not just their own military and popular strength but also continuous cooperation and protection from the central level”.53

That is, while Bhattarai is acutely and rightfully aware of the need to strengthen the local base areas and local organs of people’s power as the basis for central power, he seems to be viewing local bases of power as themselves adding up in linear fashion to such a power: where the leap from expanding local power to a higher form of central power takes place is not addressed at all. The question of how and in what manner these local bases of power provide the conditions for a higher form of central power is discomfortingly skipped. In the language of dialectics, this is the question of the transformation from the quantitative to the qualitative. His view about central power formed out of the (quantitative) addition of local base areas is clear when he writes about “the formation of a base area out of the addition of local organs of people’s power and the formation of a new central democratic state from the addition of base areas”.54

The URPC, otherwise supposed to be the germ of the future proletarian state, therefore, does not seem to represent a whole which is more than the sum of its parts: being a mere agglomeration of the parts, its power is merely the combined, quantitatively cumulated power of so many base areas. The URPC does not represent a qualitatively higher form of power, namely, proletarian state power. There is no real dialectic between the local and the central power, so that the question is never raised about the conditions that the central power is supposed to provide for the base areas to finally weave themselves into a proletarian state of the future. In practice, this has meant the failure of the Maoists in Nepal to develop a proletarian state form that would create the politico-material basis for the destruction of the present state. The paradox of the Maoists wielding de facto power in Nepal today and yet not able to translate it into state power therefore seems to be the result of their failure to develop organs of central power similar to the countrywide Congresses of Soviets of Workers, Soldiers and Peasants Deputies in Russia during the October Revolution.

Revolution Beyond the Base?Revolution Beyond the Base?Revolution Beyond the Base?Revolution Beyond the Base?Revolution Beyond the Base?

The paradox is however deeper and reveals a tragic revolutionary situation. And this takes us back to the question of political terror versus economism, which we raised above. So often have revolutions failed due to the intransigence of the old form of social relations. Such failures, often accompanied by terror, revealed that society cannot be revolutionised through imposition of a political logic of revolution from above without accompanying restructuring of social relations. Nepal today proves the opposite point: that the revolution fails even if the bottom is revolutionised but there is nothing “at the top” to consolidate the gains. Ageold traditions and deeply embedded hierarchical structures and practices have been, by all accounts, massively challenged by the mass energies triggered by the Maoist movement in vast areas of the country. But this historic revolutionary churning is taking place at the level of base areas, which is at the local level: the question of how to consolidate this at the central level therefore seems to be a crucial question.

The gaping vacuum of a dialectic, which would provide the foil for local revolutionary power to flower into something higher, as the new form of proletarian state power, is perhaps what is goading the Maoists to adopt their present line of reforming the present state through an elected constituent assembly and a republic. Destruction of power at the local level and refusal to do so at the central level, and alongside it, development of new proletarian organs of power at the local level and inability to develop them at the central level have meant that the Maoists are constrained to restrict their present political objectives to what seems most progressive within the present state form. And, with the utterly reactionary moves of the king having reduced the threshold of what and who is progressive, the stage seems set for the Maoists’ engagement with so-called civil society and with objectively bankrupt political forces.

If the destruction of the existing state is the core part of any socialist revolution then would the Maoists in Nepal, true to their revolutionary credentials, smash the state once it is duly formed as a republic, through the process of an elected constituent assembly? If that seems unlikely then the inability of the Maoists to smash the present state and develop their own form of proletarian state power in spite of wielding de facto power means that the prospect of the Maoist project ending up as (yet) another radical nationalist project cannot be ruled out. This raises the ugly prospect of the movement degenerating into a form of economism albeit of the progressive, radical leftnationalist variety.

And, it is here that we need to point out the need to expose the juridico-political framework of liberalism and of social movements, and its possible extension, mutatis mutandis, to any left-of-capital regime.55 This means that the Maoist movement must be able to do away with the old state and replace it with the new proletarian state as the prelude to communism and removing the distinction between the state and the people, if surplus extraction for capital accumulation is to be ended.

Cunning of Capitalist ReasonCunning of Capitalist ReasonCunning of Capitalist ReasonCunning of Capitalist ReasonCunning of Capitalist Reason

Let us recall some of the points made above regarding the three different viewpoints and corresponding strands of social movement thinking.

The progressive liberal position was seen to be characterised by ideological blindness to the extraction of surplus value and surplus power under the guise of defending the rights of the sovereign individual through the juridico-political paraphernalia whose concentrated expression is ultimately the state. Even as the autonomist position often mounts such a critique of liberal thinking, it restricts itself in its political vision to either withdrawing from the system’s (modernist) logic (neo-traditionalist position) or of identifying such characteristics (e g, the common of abstract labour) spontaneously generated by the system (or capital) that in itself supposedly throws up the possibility of “unplugging it from capital command”. This position, it was pointed out, ultimately ends up taking no more than a progressive liberal position of reforming the capitalist system. In this sense, the parliamentary left position is no different, even though in its critique it does take account of the role of the state in fostering the existing social relations of capital.

It is precisely in formulating a political programme that would steer clear of either a left- or a right-deviation (political terror or economism), and yet raise the question of political power as the principal question, that our understanding of society in terms of internal relations and the depth of the social assumes crucial salience. The unity of social relations cannot be affirmed for sure without identifying the point where all its factors and elements converge and affirm their systemic character. Thus, not only is it needed that society be viewed in terms of internal relations, social relations as a differentiated unity, but this unity would not carry much meaning if the point of convergence and divergence of its inner unity cannot be identified and, given the respective strength of the constituting classes and other social actors, acted upon or brought about through political intervention. To the extent that the internal unity of the social is itself a function of the power relations that define and hold it together in the existing form, plodding the inner layers and structural density of the social cannot be done without overturning the existing power relations, that is without a revolution.

It is the depth of power relations that pervade society and find their congealed expression in political or state power, which provides the conditions for an emancipatory programme based on the dismantling of the old state and replacing it with new revolutionary centres of power as the way forward for setting up new social relations, a new economy or mode of life. Now, the Maoists in Nepal have so far been largely successful in revolutionising the social relations in large parts of the country. The future of the revolution now crucially hinges on their ability to spread the revolution to urban centres culminating with an urban insurrection as its determining turning-point. How are the Maoists doing on that front?

As pointed out above, Prachanda recently claimed in an interview that but for the unfavourable international situation, the Maoists would have captured power in the capital. However, this seems only partly and secondarily true, for regardless of foreign intervention, the Maoists do not yet know how to transform their strength on the ground, their superior prowess, given the most unpopular monarch ever, into proletarian state power.

Specifically, they seem to be unable to come up with new organs of revolutionary power in order to replace the old organs. They seem to be falling short on their declared objective of replacing the centralised, old state with armed masses of people who will take charge of the whole state, thereby creating conditions for the eventual withering away of the state. We here tried to show how the Maoists’ inability to realise their declared ideological programme seems to carry the danger of leading to merely a form of left-nationalist (radical bourgeois) economy and state, and fail to develop real proletarian power.

Such a possibility has a logic beyond the merely empirical. Certain pockets in the world capitalist chain, for example Nepal, are less fully integrated due to capital’s inability to impose historically more efficient forms of exploitation and surplus extraction there. That this task of rationalising production, mobilising labour, increasing productivity – of capital accumulation – in the name of revolution or anti-imperialist nationalism or self-reliance (Nehruvian socialism) is sometimes paradoxically pushed forth by the most progressive, nay most revolutionary forces, in such areas cannot be ruled out. The cunning of capitalist reason sometimes free rides on those who intend to make history. The Maoists erring on the side of economism seems real if they fail to translate their present de facto power into a higher form of proletarian state power by dismantling the present state order in Nepal.

Now Prachanda, in a strikingly candid moment (of Maoist transparency!), seems to be himself suspecting the cunning of some kind of Reason, a hidden logic, what he calls, perhaps wrongly, a conspiracy: “The matter here is one of a grave conspiracy. Either destroy at the very start, if not, prolong it. Keep strategic bases under one’s control, and leave out the rural areas. This looks like a conscious strategy to push us towards what happened in Peru and Philipphines”.56 He is of course talking about how the people’s war gets protracted and increasingly confined and ghettoised in rural areas away from the strategically important urban areas, leading eventually to the kind of failures witnessed in several countries.

If Prachanda, suspects such a dark prospect for the Nepalese people’s war, is he then hinting at the limitations of his own thought? The suggestion here is that the oversight, if not limitations of Prachanda thought, might exist in the Maoists’ inability to develop organs of proletarian political power extending across the country right till the central level, which would replace the old state and political organs as they get overthrown through an urban insurrection. This inability might mean an indefinite deferral of any proper urban insurrection and hence of the consolidation and success of the revolution in Nepal today.

The Maoist intervention, the people’s war in Nepal, undoubtedly ruptured the given social relations and its ideological, politicohegemonic plane by revolutionising the very terms of political contestation and the balance of class forces: if this negation is, however, not to remain an internal moment of the old society, the negation of this negation must take place sooner than later. If not, the revolutionary project might end up, through a different and tragic route, in the economism of social movements and of parliamentary communists.

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Email: saroj_giri@yahoo.com