Marxism 14

Anirban BhattacharyaAbsolutely correct observation and very good articulation. We, the various shades of Marxists in India, instead of adapting Marxism as a science to analyse and comprehend the objective reality and make strategies to change, we adopted it as a model, an anti-Marxist act in Engels's terminology. Joining the politics of change a student activist in pre-emergency 1970s who not only did wall writings and hoped but "believed" that the revolution was round the corner and the decade of 1970s shall be the decade of emancipation, in introspection/retrospection, we realize the mistake. With disillusionment and realization of fact that revolution was not so round the corner, the radical left began to disintegrate. No serious theoretical attempt was made to analyse the stagnation of left of all shades. Kanhaiya is right in saying that our generation has left a fractured legacy bereft of sound theoretical basis. You are quite correct that taking "super structural" caste and gender injustices as to be automatically salvaged with revolutionary overthrow of "base structural" injustices was a huge theoretical mistake. Like you grown up in an orthodox ritualistic Brahmin family back ground with the cruelties of caste(Brahmanism) and gender (patriarchy) were still functional in an aggressive way, I also thought that the call for universal equality of Marxism takes care of all the relations of domination-subjugation. Though it has been the leftists who have been in fore front of struggles against the caste oppression but left to address the agenda and harvest electoral benefits to the "social justice" section of the ruling class parties. In fact I was to continue a review article of Arun Maheshwari's book समाजवाद की समस्याएं before getting distracted by your article and plan to deal with it. Rohith Vemula's martyrdom has brought together the slogans of JAY BHIM _LAL SALAM, this symbolic unity of struggle needs to be theorized in the form of synthesis of the teachings of Ambedkar and Marx. When Marx was discovering the laws of the dynamics of capitalism in Europe, the birth qualification and birth based social division had already been demolished during the Renaissance and the enlightenment. Economic was the sole criterion of social division that makes Marx and Engels to write that capitalism has simplified the antagonism by splitting the society into the hostile camps of bourgeoisie and proletariat. In India, the Varnashram brand feudalism still remains a reality. The communists were/are faced with twin tasks of social and political revolution but they subordinated the former to the latter. Students have taken the initiative, we must follow them. Let the real democratic centralism of politics from bellow prevail in place of dictatorial Centralism of politics from above. Let us wage an unrelenting war against Brahmanism and corporatism acting in tandem. Proud of young Comrades of JNU, HCU and other universities, the leaders of the ongoing cultural/intellectual war between Brahmanism and anti-casteism; between reason and jingoism on whose shoulders lies the responsibility of uniting all the democratic and radical forces, including non-affiliated ones who show up in crisis, for the long drawn struggle against fascism. Jay Bhim, Lal Salam.