Prachanda NYC Speech: A Maoist Vision for a New Nepal
Posted by Mike E on September 27, 2008
Prachanda at the New School. Photos by Zelig from Kasama/Philly
“A Maoist Vision for a New Nepal” - an MP3 recording of a talk by Nepalese Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, aka Prachanda, presented by the India China Institute of New School University.
These MP3 recordings include remarks by Professor Andrew Arato, the Dorothy Hart Hirshon Professor of Political and Social Theory at New School University; remarks by Kul Chandra Gautam, advisor to the Nepal Democracy and Development Initiative at the India China Institute; as well as a Q&A between PM Pushpa Kamal Dahal and the audience.
These MP3 audio clips are presented by Hegemonik. They have been edited for length. As the program was both in English and Nepali (without translation equipment), clips have had Nepali language conversation excised. An unedited version is available upon request to the author.
[Kasama has requested the full version, including the Nepali comments, and hope to post them soon.]
NSPF said
In the Q&A session there is this guy who says “from one Maoist to another …”
Any idea who he is or which organisation he represents?
NSPF said
Is there any chance (or plan for)providing a transcript of the three speeches?
First impressions:
The Prime Minister’s speech is, perhaps understandably, routine, diplomatic and contains nothing we don’t know about; he is there to sell his governments’ New Vision for Nepal. the question is, are there any prospective or potential buyers out there as things stand?
This is where Andrew Arato and Kul Chandra Gautam come in, as experts and interlocutors for you-know-who!
Their contribution to the event is by far the more interesting and profound. This is, I belive, where we can see a glimpse of what really goes on behind closed doors of diplomacy and expert advice. The expert is quite frank and the diplomat is, well, extremely diplomatic and full of charm. On the whole, the two of them together put an excellent case forward of their vision of a new Nepal. It just happens that I do not share that vision.
There is a number of lessons to learn from these two, in addition to a great deal of insight; the least of which is not to criticise people who are standing on the same side of the barricades as you when confronting your adversary in a situation like this. Support the Prime Minister if you must but leave the nose browning to the diplomats; afterall, they know how to issue threats while smearing their face in it.
The interaction of the audience is, to put it mildly, dull and depressing.
NSPF said
One more interesting thing: This is the first time in quite a while that CPNM is publicly using the Prachanda Path expression. I had heard, unconfirmed of course, that they were planning to officially do away with it. perhaps it was an unfounded roumor?
nando said
CAn anyone volunteer to transcribe the talk today? In particular, it would be valuable for our discussions to transcribe his answers to Jed’s question about imperialist encirclement (since he went into many matters of importance and contention among communists.)
Anyone want to transcribe just that question and just that answer (for starters)?
Kalash said
the ‘from one maoist to another’ question came from the kasama contingent, i believe. i won’t go into any details as he may wish to remain anonymous on these boards.
ShineThePath said
“from one Maoist to another …” I believe came from somebody in FRSO/OSCL.
NSPF said
Yes, on a second round of listening carefully to the Q&A session there were a few spikes of quite interesting interaction. I would still be very much interested in a transcript.
irisbright said
I can transcript, i won’t have it up until late tonight though.
irisbright said
Which question is Jed’s question, I’ll transcript it right now and put it up asap.
hegemonik said
I must warn, that while it’s very easy to understand Prachanda in a pedestrian fashion, it is very difficult to transcribe some of the idiosyncratic his English (particularly, he has a habit to place stray definite articles that make it unclear whether he is talking about specific policies or abstract concepts).
Thus I’m having much difficulty trying to get exact phrasings of Prachanda’s answer to the aforementioned question.
If I may sum up, Prachanda:
1) Stresses the formulation, “concrete analysis of concrete conditions is the soul of Marxism.”
2) Finds unnamed Western (presumably Marxist) intellectuals “dogmatic” “sectarian” and (I am unsure of this) “self-centered” in their denunciations of the Maoists for having accepted multiparty competition, COnstituent Assembly, and restructuring of the State. Lays stress that the Maoists have engaged in concrete analysis of concrete conditions.
3) States that Maoist acceptance of multi-party competition and Constituent Assembly came during the People’s War, not during the peace process — that there was a period of 1.5 years in a time when the Maoists were “victorious” when there was intense debate and discussion on democracy.
4) That Prachanda’s analysis is in part derived from his perception that Lenin could dynamically shift from War Communism to the New Economic Policy, raising the slogan “organized socialist competition in economy.” From this he postulates that had Lenin lived 5 or 10 years further, that he would introduce competition in politics as well.
5) That Maoist policy is derived from Lenin and not Stalin, who made errors in “ideology, philosophy and science.”
hegemonik said
oh ironies, that I made an (idiosyncratic) error in English . . .
Artemio said
The following is an imperfect but more or less complete transcript of Jed’s question and Prachanda’s answer
Jed: Lal Sallam, Its a very exciting time in Nepal. You are carrying out a national democratic revolution, you are also the first communist to become head of state in mnay years, in my lifetime, and Im not a young man. How do you plan to reconcile the serious tasks of national democratic, even new democratic revolution in nepal with the crisis the world is going under considering the actions of the united states government, the europeans, and the hegamonists who believe a handful of nations can dominate the rest of the world into backwardness. How you gonna do it?
PM Prachanda: Concrete analysis of concrete conditions is the soul of marxism. what we are doing is concrete analysis of concrete conditions and we are devising our policy and program according to the changed situation of the first decade of the 21st century. and what we are doing as proffesser arato also raised this question ver savily… and very provocatively you know. I understand the depth of history and dynamics of his expression you know.. but what we are doing in the first decades of the 21st century is concrete analysis of concrete conditions. We are trying to understand the whole phenomoenon of the change, the revoultion and development of communication and electronic sciences, and the change that occur. Time and again, when i have a serious debate and discussion with intellectuals about developed country, many of the western intellectuals. time and again i say that we are trying to understand the changed phenomenon, and we are trying to develop our ideology according to the changed situation. But you always blame us, from very sectarian and dogmatic, and very self centered understanding. I try to have a serious debate and discussion with that kind of intellectual. Why we can’t have multiparty competition. Why we have raised the questions of election constituent assembly. Why we participate in government and the radical change, and radical restructuring of the state. According to my understanding, this is the development of ideology,this is the development of science itself, and we do not want to be rigid, to be static, to be sectarian and dogmatic. We want to be more vibrant. When we were in the war itself, just after the initiation of the war, 5 years after the initiation of war, we have a serious debate and disucussion inside our ranks, 1 1/2 years of debate about the democracy. Either we should support multiparty competition or not. This is not the case, that would be (recording unclear, can not make out a sentence or so which goes here). This is not the case. We devised this multi party competition while we were in the war. We were waging war and we were victorious at that time. you know. At that time we have a serious discussion and what we devised is that if Lenin had lived another 5 or 10 years he would also introduce multiparty competition, this is my understanding. (Applause, few words from Prahanda unclear).. so creative and so dynamic that, during this New Economic Policy, just after the October Revolution and this War Communism had finished, and the civil war had finished, he introduced NEP, this NEP was in essence a capitalistic economic policy. He gave the slogan” Oranize Socialist Competition in the Economy”… When he introduced the slogan of organizing competition in the economy. If he would have lived another 5 years he would have introduced competition in politics. Therefore it is not something we are suprisingly making this multiparty competition. because Stalin had made a serious mistake of ideology,in philosophy, in science- and all the workers movement has taken so much loss from the deviation from dialectal materialism- this is our understanding. What we think and believe, we are fully confident that we are developing the ideology from Lennin, not from Stalin. And this multi-party competiton is the product of that ideological development, Thank You.
irisbright said
Thanks, artemio!
Artemio said
I have never transcribed a thing in my entire life, so the above may have a few mistakes. I found it very difficult- about 1 1/2 hours to produce the 1 question and answer. I’ll volunteer to assist with this, and perhaps we should attempt a collective effort to get a full transcript together in a timely fashion?
Artemio said
John from the Philly Kasama Collective took a number of pics at the Prachanda event at the New School on Friday, check them out here
http://flickr.com/photos/jonprc/sets/72157607540392093/
irisbright said
I call the P.M. Dahal speech. I’ll work on it tonight.
2mv said
Hey, it’s Evan from Boston. Going to write something up this week. Sorry I missed out on you guys later, passed out hard. :]
Edmond Caldwell said
Did the RCP have any kind of presence there at all?
irisbright said
People interested in transcribing, please go here:
http://z11.invisionfree.com/Kasama_Threads/index.php?showtopic=280
Artemio said
Edmond,
Li Onesto from Revolution was there wearing a press pass, sitting in the reserved section. Other than that I didn’t see an RCP presense. So I guess the question at this point- is can we expect an article in Revolution sometime soon?
areaman said
there were about a half dozen RCP supporters there (including Li Onesto and Mary Lou Greenberg). There was some attempt to sell their Revolution newspaper. As far as I know they didn’t ask questions from the floor. Someone said they sat on their hands and had their new sour look during the talks.
redflags said
In terms of who was visibly present at the event, there was a fairly even mix of NGO types, UN folks including Ian Martin, Nepalese national organizations (including from the Terrai), Maoists and some students.
There were supporters of the Kasama Project, Freedom Road Socialist Organization (Refoundation), many former members of the RCYB, the Poor Righteous Party, and some current supporters of the RCP (who remained silent throughout the event).
Outside, literature was distributed by Kasama, the Brecht Forum, the United Nations Mission in Nepal, and the Philadelphia-based Poor Righteous Party. There were also a couple folks selling the RCP’s Revolution newspaper, which consisted of their recent 16-page manifesto (and its criticisms of all things not Avakian).
There were also advocates for the position of the Dalai Lama and his exiled lamaist organizations.
Unlike the event hosted by the International Action Center, which I did not attend, this talk was not geared to a left audience or even the general public.
The introduction by Anthony Arato, posted above, was about normalizing states during situations of regime transition, which is something Mr. Arato apparently specializes in. The moderator of the event, also from the New School’s international program, was a former UN official (I believe with UNICEF) and was Nepalese.
And in this sense, it was fascinating. The lucid analysis from Arato, who was not a partisan and took the existing international order as a fact, was worth listening to. He had a grasp of the balance of forces in Nepal and regionally, and seemed mostly concerned that Prachanda and the CPN-M adopt pragmatic, developmentalist approaches.
Definitely check out the entire program and not just the parts with Prachanda. Also, I heard that the audio from the IAC event has been made available…
redflags said
Click here for the audio from event for “left activists” associated with the IAC