In Defence of Marxism

Nepal's Maoists, who until two years ago were involved in a decade-long civil war, look likely to have won a general election. Of 186 seats declared on Monday April 14th the Maoists had won 103. A complicated electoral system mixing direct elections with proportional representation makes the overall complexion of the impending 601-seat assembly still hard to predict. But the Maoists may have won an outright majority. In the process, however, the leader of the Nepalese Maoists seems to have seen the light of Deng Xiaoping and has now espoused a "mixed economy"!