Power And The Politics Of Profit

Yuba Nath Lamsal

Politics and power are inter-linked. Politics, in principle, is for power. In other words, the politics is the vocation whose core objective is to seize or grab state power and rule the country.  There is also a school of thought that prophesizes politics as social service that should not take politics as a profiteering vocation but a route and means for public good. But this school of thought is slowly losing ground and the politics of power and profit is gaining currency in the present day world including Nepal.

In the modern day, politics is not being taken as social service nor is it viewed purely as a means to rule. It is a mix of both. But politics is being widely viewed in the eyes of the public as the means to grab power by a group of people to control state apparatus and nation’s treasury through which the winners dole out positions, perks and benefits of various kinds and nature to their supporters and followers. Be it in the authoritarian systems or democracies, there are visibly two sets of people—the rulers and the ruled.  In the feudal system, the rulers and ruled are distinctly manifested as the later are often exploited and discriminated more visibly. This distinction is slightly blurred in the modern liberal democracy championed by the western capitalists. In liberal democracy or multi-party system, the rulers tend to avoid the terminologies ‘rulers and the ruled’. Instead, they use the word ‘majority’ for the rulers and the ‘minority’ for the ruled. The liberal or multi-party democracy is also called a competitive political system in the sense individuals and political groups or parties compete to prove their merit through periodic elections. This merit of individual candidates or parties and their popularity is tested in the election held on the basis of adult franchise. Elections are, thus, competition to determine the worth of candidates and parties. The winners are the majority, who are entitled to rule whereas the losers are minority or the opposition, who are to be ruled.

Marxists define the society and politics from the perspective of class analysis. In the Marxist lexicon, the society, as it is at present in the world, is composed of two classes—the bourgeoisie and the proletarian. The competition between these two groups or classes is always stiff and fierce, which the Marxists or communists define as the class struggle. Karl Marx, father of communist philosophy, has defined the world and the history of mankind as the history of all hitherto class struggles. And the communists and Marxists preach and prophesize class struggle as the vehicle to seize power. Marxists believe that proletariats will win and prevail over bourgeoisies in the class struggle as bourgeoisies are only handful, whereas poor and proletariats are in overwhelming majority all over the world. This will, according to Marxists, ensure control of proletariats over the state machinery and the earlier rulers bourgeoisies will be rendered into the status of minority or the ruled. This is how communists and Marxists enforce ‘proletarian dictatorship’. In the classical Marxist or communist lexicon, election has no space and the power is seized only through the use of force or armed revolution.

Classical Marxists and communists do not believe in election instead they define the election as a bourgeoisie conspiracy to keep the state power in their hands for ever and render the majority poor and proletariats powerless. In communist philosophy, only the violent class struggle guarantees power in the hands of the majority, which is the basis to eliminate classes and create classless society. Although communism preaches equality and egalitarianism, classes do exist in communist system, too, in the form of ruling class and the ruled class, which was evident in several countries where communism was experimented. The classless society is a utopian idea that is less likely to materialize in real life of the people.

Politics is, thus, a vehicle to seize power. Only the means and methods vary, but all individuals that have chosen politics as their vocation and the political parties have one and only goal that is power seizure. But their approach, line and policy make the difference. Feudal rulers as seen in Nepal under Rana Oligarchy and king’s absolute regime prohibit and discourage any kind of competition and choices to the people, through which they tend to ensure their rule and control over state power for ever without any kind of challenge and threat. The approach and method of ensuring the feudal control over power is the control over armed forces, bureaucracy and national treasury.  In feudal system people are taken as a mere tools for serving the rulers and masters.

Feudalism began to see its decline once the feudal exploitation over people became unbearable. For the first time in the history of the mankind, French people revolted against the brutal and ruthless feudal exploitation that had virtually rendered the people as slave machine in the service of the ruling elites and heralded the dawn of people’s power by establishing their own government in 1789. The slogans of liberty, equality and fraternity soon resonated on the streets and alleys of Paris. The idea of French revolution slowly reached out to elsewhere in the world as a message of free people. Coming to the 20^th century, the message and meaning of French revolution had eventually become a lingua franca of the human society and it continues to be the same even now. Earlier in 1783, the American War of Independence had succeeded in liberating the United States from European rule. This heralded a new era of national liberation movement, which later became a source inspiration for many countries and people of colonized countries in Asia, Africa and America. Similarly, the revolts of British people against King Charles I and his execution and followed by several other great upheavals including the industrial revolution were yet other important events of great significance in the history of mankind. All these events slowly paved the way for bringing feudal era to an end in Europe and marked the beginning of capitalist era not only in Europe but in the entire world.

Now the world is capitalist. In capitalism, focus is laid mainly in production and profit. The more you produce and the more profit you make. But the profit goes to the pocket of the owner, who invests money, which Marxists call an anathema. But the capitalists assert that one who invests must get the profit and take it as a natural phenomenon. Marxists and communists are of the view that the workers are the principal force for production, who should get the real benefit but are paid a meager wage that is hardly enough for their survival nor is it worth the sweet and tears they shed during the production process. However, capitalists contradict with the Marxist views on investment and labor. According to them, the investment and investors are the principal force in the production sector whereas workers are hired on contract basis to perform their job and they are paid according to their works and performance. According to propagators of capitalism, the workers have no risk and they are concerned only with their job and the wages. Whatever are the logics and counter logics, one thing is true that capitalism thrives on profiting. If profit is not guaranteed, the investment would not be forthcoming and in the absence of investment there would be no production.  If there is no production, there would neither be masters nor workers.

Anyway, capitalist path and capitalist revolution is the way forward in the world including Nepal. All political forces including the communists are advocating for capitalist revolution in Nepal. The Nepali Congress is already a staunch supporter of capitalism and the CPN-UML’s bahudaliya janabad (People’s Multi-party democracy) is nothing other than capitalist democracy. The UCPN-Maoist that had been advocating the new democratic revolution to establish the one-party communist regime, too, has abandoned this path and embraced the capitalist approach and peaceful competitive political system. In the Hetauda Congress, this party formally adopted the political line of spearheading a capitalist revolution for augmenting national production and economic growth.

In capitalism, profit is the principal driving force, which has been clearly reflected in our politics.  Thus, politics has been a profiteering business in the present context of Nepal and this business is thriving. In this politics of profit, only losses and gains are calculated and strategies and policies are adopted accordingly. Gone are the days of value-based politics. Present politics is thus devoid of values, principles and morale. And the norms in politics are to ‘get power’ by hook or by crook, which is evident in the political actors of the present day Nepal.