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"At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or - what is but a legal expression for the same thing - with the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution."
- Karl Marx

1.0 CONTEXT AND THEORETICAL PREMISES

An armed People's War has been initiated in Nepal from February 13, 1996 under the leadership of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) with the proclaimed aim of establishing a New Democratic socio-economic system and state by overthrowing the present socio-economic structure and state. This should be understood under the background that Nepal has slided to the status of the second poorest country in the world in terms of physical and cultural developments; 71% of its population fall below absolute poverty level; 46.5% of national income is in the hands of 10% of the richest people; more than 60% of it's total population is illiterate, more than 90% of it's total population live in rural areas and 81% of the labour force is engaged in the backward agricultural occupation; 10% are fully unemployed and 60% are under-employed or in disguised employment. Similarly the growth rate of food grain production, the most important national production, has shown decline in the last 30 years; foreign debt constitutes more than 60% of the gross domestic product and its intensity is increasing as years pass. It is thus but natural for everybody to be eager to know how the People's War and New Democratic Revolution is going to solve the above formidable problems. It is no secret that the present reactionary state for the last 50 years has been harping various attractive slogans along with eight Five Years Plans in the name of solving these problems, but after each plan or campaign these problems have been further aggravated and the socio-economic position of the country has further slided down compared to other countries. In this context it is necessary to find out the root cause or the causative factor of this condition and provide a scientific solution, instead of merely looking at the outer symptoms of problem and solving it in a partial or isolated manner. For this, it is necessary to find out the solution by analysing the problem with a historical materialist method, or the concept of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist political economy; and today in Nepal the Maoist People's War is trying just that.

In the process of producing goods required for satisfying their physical and cultural wants people use certain objects and technology (i.e. productive forces) and in that process a distinct relation (i.e. productive relation) is established among themselves. It is through the interactive combination of productive forces and production relations that a particular social system (i.e. mode of production) takes birth. Similarly, the contradiction between the ever changing productive forces and production relations provides the motion for the development of the society. In general, since the development of productive forces is faster and the development of production relations takes place at much slower pace, at some stage of development of society the productions relations block the development of the productive forces and this leads to retardation and distortions in society. Under such a situation it becomes necessary to smash the old production relations and to develop new production relations in their place. Only through this way that it is possible to remove the prevailing distortions and obstacles and in their place to develop new productive forces and give impetus to the forward march of society. This is the process and point of time of social revolution. Against this, the reactionary ruling classes of society and their allies attempt to develop productive forces by using various reformist steps, without smashing the old production relations, which have become obstacles to the process of development. Thus, in history, the first path to development is known as the "revolutionary" path and the second one as the "reformist" path. However, the relevance of the "reformist" path will only remain so long as there is possibility of developing productive forces within the old production relations and upon exhaustion of that possibility the "revolutionary" path becomes necessary and inevitable. It is important to understand here that in Nepal the attempt to create a New Democratic system by smashing the old system through the protracted People's War under the leadership of CPN (Maoist) has been made when all the attempts to carry out reforms within the old semi-feudal and semicolonial system long ridden with crisis had failed.

Similarly, it is important to note right in the beginning that, just as in the case of all objects in the world, the decisive factor in the development of society is the motion generated by the inner contradictions within itself (i.e. between productive force and production relations). However, under specific conditions the intervention of external forces affect the internal development process in significant ways. Specially after the advent of capitalism and its highest stage, imperialism, because of the process of centralisation and concentration inherent in the capitalist process of development (i.e. the process of devouring all the small capitals by the tentacles spread by the bigger capital and the expanded reproduction of capital), today no social system in the world is outside the influence of imperialist interventions, and it is not possible either. Similarly, the more the social formations are in primitive and backward state the more damaging is the influence of imperialist interventions in their internal development process. Specially in societies which are on the eve of transition from feudalism to capitalism, the alignment with imperialism distorts the internal production relations by promoting the growth of comprador and bureaucratic capitalism (i.e. a fake capitalism which functions as an agent of foreign monopoly capitalism, engages in financial and commercial activities instead of productive activities and assumes a monopolistic character since the very beginning by relying on the state) instead of industrial capitalism. That is why it is necessary to smash the relationship with external imperialism while bringing progressive transformation in the internal production relations through revolutionary means.

Besides this, it is important to understand the dialectical inter-relationships between the development process of society and the spatial structure. This is because along with the development of the social process, changes take place in the physical structure too, although the nature and quality of the change may be different or less than in the social structure. As far as the relationship between the two processes are concerned, it would be more scientific to view the physical structure more as "reflection" of the social structure and to a lesser degree as the "causative factor". It is necessary to understand the transformation processes of the social and spatial structures in their inter-relatedness as the distortion and malady of the social process is reflected in regional structure through uneven regional development, etc. It is only through this that the importance of the Maoist protracted People's War based upon the strategy of encircling the city from the countryside can be understood.

Based upon the above short account of the conceptual premises, the external and internal class relations of the Nepalese society and the resultant socio-economic and spatial problems may be analysed and the path of the People's War to solve these problems may be evaluated.

2. THE EXTERNAL RELATIONS PROCESSES IMPERIALISM AND EXPANSIONISM

2.1 THE IMPERIALIST OPPRESSION

The present is an era of imperialism or monopoly capitalism. Because of the nature of unequal and uneven development inherent in capitalism most of the world's capital and wealth has become concentrated in the hands of the few imperialist countries of the West and the North, whereas most of the countries of the East and the South (i.e. Asia, Africa and Latin-America) are suffering from underdevelopment and poverty. That the gap between the rich and the poor have never been so wide in the history of mankind so far and this is growing ever wider has been acknowledged by the statistical findings of the imperialist organisations themselves. For example, only the annual sale amount of 200 big multi-national companies of the imperialist countries exceed the gross domestic production of all the countries except the nine big rich economies ( i.e. U.S.A, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Russia, Italy, Canada and Australia) and they alone own one-third of the world's wealth. Similarly, the income differences between the world's richest and poorest countries in the decade of 1960s was thirty times whereas now it has increased to more than sixty times in the decade of 1990s. In a worldwide scale the siphoning of wealth from the oppressed countries to the imperialist countries takes place in the form of profits of capital investments in industries, interests of financial loans, commercial profits of trade in goods and services, etc. That is why whatever capital investments the imperialist forces make in oppressed countries through multilateral means like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, etc. and through unilateral means like transnational corporations of their own country or their government, they take away ten times more capital to imperialist centres from the oppressed countries in various ways. Besides this, through their monopoly in science and technology, communication and capital the imperialist countries have caused the overall development process of the oppressed countries to be distorted and dependent. At the other end, according to the "bigger fish eats smaller fish" logic and rule of the imperialists there will always be fierce competition among monopolist capitalist groups to expand their hegemony and there will be war in order to maintain their own economic areas of influence (or territories), or to redivide the old economic territories. This is proved by the fact that after the advent of imperialism in the current 20th century, two world wars have occurred (more than l 60 wars have occurred after the Second World War ) and six times more people have lost their lives in wars in this century as compared to in wars in the previous 19th century. Similarly, the very fact that imperialists spend one thousand billion US dollars per annum in armaments (almost half of which the USA alone spends) proves the nexus between imperialism and war. That is why imperialism is also called "era of war capitalism". Thus, at one end, contradictions between imperialism and oppressed nations are sharpening intensely and, at the other end, imperialism is pushing the whole world to the brink of war. Under such a situation it becomes not only natural but also inevitable for oppressed nations to fight the war of liberation based on the strategy of relying not on capital, armament or technology but on the oppressed masses.

Among the oppressed nations of the world, Nepal stands amongst the most oppressed ones. The very fact that it has slided down from the thirteenth position among the poorest countries in the decade of 1970s to the second poorest position in the world now indicates the pathetic state of the country. That this poor and underdeveloped state of the country is not because of lack of natural resources or due to laziness of the labouring masses but due to the internal and external reactionary class relations, can be proved by comparing Nepal's position before and after the semi-colonial Sugauli Treaty of 1816 with other contemporary countries of the world. Nepal sandwiched between the giant states of China and India and surrounded on the southern, western and eastern sides by India in the lap of Himalayas, was in its history first oppressed by British colonialism, and after the 1950s oppressed by various imperialist powers, and principally by Indian expansionism. After the Sugauli Treaty and upto now, the internal development process of Nepal has remained stunted and distorted by the destructive effect of external imperialist or/and expansionist forces. All the economic and non-economic indicators of social development proves this. Specially after the decade of 1950s when it was tied to imperialism through trade, finance and other means, the process of underdevelopment, distortion and dependency has become all the more intense. The fact that today the foreign debt has mounted to more than 150 billion rupees 1*, annual trade deficit has reached nearly 50 billion rupees (which is equivalent to the annual budget), dependency in every field of economy has aggravated, etc. provides enough indication of the oppression of imperialism. According to the stipulation of the International Monetary Fund, any country whose foreign debt is more than 200 to 250 percent of the total export trade and whose debt servicing ratio is more than 20 percent of the export trade is said to be in a "critical" state. However, in Nepal, both of these parameters have jumped in 1994-95 itself to more than 600 and 35 percents respectively. Hence there is no doubt that the condition of Nepal has become critical and tragic because of its entanglement in the imperialist net. It has thus become necessary to wage People's War in Nepal in order to get liberated from the oppression of imperialism and to march forward along the path of self-reliant development. From this point of view the People's War in Nepal is part of the world anti-imperialist national liberation movement.

2.2 THE EXPANSIONIST OPPRESSION

The biggest direct manifestation of world imperialist oppression and exploitation in Nepal is the Indian expansionist exploitation and oppression. Expansionism is the process of exploiting and oppressing the smaller and the weaker economy by a stronger economy which has not developed to the level of imperialism but derives its strength from the backing of external imperialist forces and its own state. Similarly because its hegemony cannot be maintained on purely capitalist competition the expansionist power uses extra-economic coercions (e.g. military, political, cultural, etc.) to maintain its economic areas of influence or the market. That is why Indian expansionism which is itself a prison-house of various oppressed nations has been exploiting and oppressing various neighbouring countries of South Asia and other Asian