A few days back, a Maoist Constituent Assembly member who is also a well-known columnist discussed the need to redefine nomenclatures like imperialism and colonialism. In an article that appeared in a leading daily some two weeks before, he admits that as a young communist he understood very little the meanings of most of the terminologies that are frequently used by communists to denote and denounce enemies of multiple grades and varieties such as imperialists, social imperialists, neo-imperialists, colonialists, semi-colonialists, feudalists, semi-feudalists, fascists, reactionaries, expansionists, hegemonic, revisionists, subtle-revisionists, neo-liberalists, status-quoists, abandoners (bisarjanbadi), capitalists and its various sub-classifications such as broker-bureaucratic-capitalists (dalal-nokershahi-punjipati), national-capitalists (rastriya punjipati) and so on. He further reveals that most of his party cadres do not understand the meanings of these glossaries even now, yet they applaud cheerfully whenever their leaders use those jargons to condemn enemies. He therefore argues that his party should properly educate the cadres about these vocabularies.
His articles used to be published in prominent Indian dailies as well when he lived in Delhi as a ‘university scholar’ during King Gyanandra’s direct rule. Although most of his write-ups were nothing more than pieces of propaganda directed against the royal regime, for reasons other than professional, even newspapers like The Times of India offered him prime space in their op-ed pages during those days. With due respect, his recent arguments are even more hypocritical, which imply that party cadres should now be educated about the ‘concepts’, which they had been brainwashed (to believe) long before. Similarly, I simply could not swallow his logic that ‘newer forms and meanings’ of imperialism and colonialism be sought as the traditional ones are not valid anymore. For example, he argues, imperialism today is no longer based on geographical expansion; it is founded on global capital and its flow.
Similarly, he further opines that colonization today does not mean territorial annexation either, acquired through military/naval conquests; rather it is the spread of neo-liberalist policies and practices of Bretton Woods institutions and transnational corporations. Here, my question is: If terms like imperialism and colonialism have ceased to exist in their accepted connotations, why re-invent them ‘in newer forms and meanings’?
In the grand old days, there were real enemies as there were real imperialists and colonialists. There used to be landlords who were tools or symbols of oppression in rural areas in agrarian set-ups. Mao in China and Charu Majumdar/Kanu Sanyal in India found in them cause for their respective communist revolutions. However, it is a different world today.
Maybe, such questions do not make sense to people brainwashed enough to live in a make-belief world of their own that is full of enemies. In fact, communism is a power of negation. If one has nothing to negate, fight or hate against, one cannot be a communist, or remain one for long. Therefore, to thrive and to survive, communists always have to look for newer and more enemies. Those enemies serve as both cause for their revolution and alibi for their failures. So, spitting venom against US – most powerful of all enemies, whether real or perceived – is only natural for the likes of Mr Dhakal even if US may not have anything to do with the ever deteriorating situation of his country. For the stereotyped, even Ahmadinejad – the anti-Zionist head of a theocratic state, and not a communist by any definition – is a hero because he is the enemy of his enemy.
Things were not so before; there might have been few Dhakal type hate-mongers, but ever since communism was invented till its global collapse in the 1990s, there used to be a great number of enlightened and idealist people as well who genuinely hoped or believed that communism would liberate mankind from the age-old chains of inequality, oppression and backwardness. To their disappointment, it did not. Conversely, it proved a failure in course of time and application. It did not work and its methods and applications, based on violence, terror and fear psychosis, were anything but humane. As a result, with the passage of time, more and more noble people quit or changed communism for good. If scholars like Arthur Koestler revolted as early as 1940s and announced that the God has failed, visionaries like Deng Xiaoping and Michael Gorbachev mended their ways during the 1980s. Even among the not-so-enlightened ones such as our CPN-UML leaders, many abandoned their course or continued half-heartedly yet some hardliners defected to the radical Maoists. And, among the Maoists, the more hardcore ones who view everyone except them as enemy of the people are rallying behind the dogmatic leader Mohan Baidya to launch a new ‘people’s war’ against the enemies (that includes their own leaders and fellow comrades).
In the grand old days, there were real enemies as there were real imperialists and colonialists. There used to be landlords who were tools or symbols of oppression in rural areas in agrarian set-ups. Mao in China and Charu Majumdar/Kanu Sanyal in India found in them cause for their respective communist revolutions.
However, it is a different world today; ever since the end of Second World War, imperialism and colonialism have swiftly disappeared from the earth while rural landlords have decreased following land reforms, commercialization of agriculture and industrialization in most agrarian countries. This has led to serious shortage of raw materials required to produce communist revolutions in agricultural economies. (Nepal’s case is different; here shortcomings and foolishness of their opponents that ranged from successive monarchs to the leaders of Nepali Congress provided communists with cause and tricks to thrive). And, the forecast of Karl Marx that revolution of the working class will bring dictatorship of proletariat first of all in the industrial nations proved quite opposite.
However, brainwashed people hardly reconcile to those realities. Although brainwashing may produce dedicated, obedient and militant cadres so useful for insurgencies, they become a liability the moment rebellions end, more so when they end in compromises the way it ended (?) in our country. Indoctrinated cadres may be good at destroying values, institutions and individuals that unfortunately form part of some revolutions, but their usefulness are low in nation-building and almost negative in reconciliatory political process. Even the most skillful and strongest of leaders find themselves helpless when it comes to transforming their organization into a governing political party from a revolutionary or guerilla network mainly because of such cadres.
Unfortunately, this seems to be the case with Nepali Maoists now.
jeevan1952@hotmail.com
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