Marx, Marxism and the Indian Context
The
principles of Marxism and the Indian communist movement
Ish N. Mishra
“The ideas of the ruling class are in
every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force
of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual
force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal,
consequently also controls at the same time the means of mental production, so
that the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to
it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant
material relationships grasped as ideas; hence
of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the
ideas of its dominance. The individuals composing the ruling class possess
among other things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as
they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is
self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things
rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and
distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas
of the epoch.”
Marx in German Ideology
Introduction
Two hundred years ago (5 May 1818) in a
middle class family in the German town Trier, was born a boy, named Karl Marx, whose
ultimate ideal and goal was a stateless society, such ideas were apprehended so
dangerous for the ‘national, interest that he became a stateless, global
citizen since the age of 24. He dreamt
of and worked for a world free from exploitation and domination, a world of
classless and hence the stateless society, with the slogan of the unity of the
workers of the world. Marx remains the greatest revolutionary thinker, teacher
and activist after Buddha in ancient India (BC 6th century), who
envisioned and actively campaigned for an egalitarian, communitarian society,
free from miseries and sufferings. Like that of Buddha his teachings shall
remain relevant till the human emancipation. Here there is no scope to digress
into discussion on the democratic, scientific and dialectical education based
on debate and discussions inaugurated by Buddha, or the Buddhist social
revolution and Brahmanical counter revolution. The
purpose of reference to Buddha is to allude to the similarities in terms of
rational, scientific comprehension of society; the vision and the worldview;
and firm conviction and commitment towards creation of society free from sufferings
and pain i.e. free from exploitation of humans by humans, in their respective
contexts across the time and space. Like Buddha, Marx too was not only
interested in interpreting the world but also to change it. He had made his
activist intentions very clear in the early stage of his career. “The
philosophers have only interpreted the world in
various ways; the point however is to change it.” He
insists, “In practice man must prove the truth”. Thus rejecting the easy way
of discovering the truth through myth, revelation and authority, based on some
obscure God or prophet or Hegel, the truth needs to be practically proved.
19th Century Europe witnessed many
revolutions in the realms of social and intellectual movements. The common
people, who entered in the arena of political theory through Rousseau in the 18th century, found a profound spokesperson
in the genius of Karl Marx in the 19th century as the
new protagonist of the history, the proletariat. In the age of inventions of
knowledge, in the words of Louis Althuser, Marx invented a “new continent of
knowledge”. But the word continent gives a sense of imperialist
colonization; in-fact he invented a new galaxy of knowledge in the form of
historical materialism. His ideas are as
relevant to comprehend the dynamics of the neoliberal age of capitalism and the ongoing politico-cultural discourse, as
his contemporary liberal capitalism, though capitalism has taken many turns
different from his projection. After all, Marx was not an astrologer, but a
revolutionary scientist and activist, an organic intellectual of the
proletariat, in Gramscian terms. With informalization;
out-sourcing and contract labor system of the neo-liberal imperialist capital,
Marx’s idea of labor socialization leading to expansion of class-consciousness
and unity on the basis of class interest among in huge work places with the
advancement of capital, has become difficult and needs new principles and
strategies for transformation of class-in-itself into class-for-itself on the
basis common class interest. The link between the two is
the class-consciousness against the social consciousness. That is the radicalization of the social consciousness,
shaped by the epochal ideology.
Engels had commented in 1891 about some
doctrinaire Marxists that a Marxist is not one who quotes from Marx’s or his
writings but one who reacts in a particular circumstance, the way Marx would
have reacted. Marx in delineating the historical epochs based on mode of
production has repeatedly emphasized the uneven development of stages and
variations of method of development. In Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis
Bonaparte Marx underlines:
“Men make their
own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under
self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given
and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs
like a nightmare on the brains of the living.”
Lenin in his writings on
1905-07 revolution and counter revolution is quite categorical on the
revolutionary circumstance as the necessary condition of the revolution and
that the circumstance itself is no guarantee for the revolution. For a
revolution, concurrence of both the objective (crisis of the system) and the
subjective (readiness of the contending class to take over) factors is
necessary. Marxism, as it developed, unlike scriptures, is not static but a
dynamic science to comprehend the world and a revolutionary ideology to change
it. Rosa Luxemburg, in her celebrated essays on Russian revolution, after
praising the Bolsheviks under the leadership of Lenin for their accomplishment
in the peculiar, particular conditions then prevailing in Russia, had cautioned
that the policies; strategies and principles should to be advanced as universal
principles of international proletarian revolution. But most
of the parties founded under the auspices of Comintern did not heed her advice
and instead of looking at it as a method adopted Russian Revolution and Marxism
as models.
Application of Marxism
involves, first to grasp the existing contradictions, major/minor and
hostile/non-hostile and the composition of existing social forces, in
accordance with the Marxist principle, i.e. the principles of historical
materialism. Then the related, important and in my opinion, most difficult task
is to translate; adopt and adapt these principles into a particular historical
context and work out strategies to organize and agitate the oppressed for their
emancipation. Among the old generation Indian Marxists, Acharya Narendra Dev made
genuine attempts to translate and interpret the principles of Marxism in the
Indian context with reference to Buddhism. He was the
founding President of Congress Socialist Party (CSP) founded in 1934, had individual
members of the banned Communist Party of India (CPI) on its membership list. In
fact this period of the anti-colonial struggle has been an inspiring phase of
freedom struggle, from the view-point of the Indian left, in terms rise and
growth of organizations and movements of peasants; workers and students.
“It was formed at the end of the last civil disobedience
movement by such conges men as came to believe that a new orientation of the
movement had become necessary, a redefinition, a redefinition of its objectives
and revision of its method. The initiative could be taken by those who had
grasp of the forces of our present society. These naturally were those
congressmen, who had come under the influence of and had accepted Marxian
socialism.”
Marx’s critique of capitalist political economy
is based on his readings of contemporary capitalism as it was developing in
Western Europe, where the bourgeois democratic movement had already abolished
the feudal relations of birth qualification and economy had become the only
basis of the social division. That is why Marx and Engels declare in the
Communist Manifesto:
“Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses,
however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as
a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two
great classes directly facing each other — Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.”
But in India, for historical
reasons, the Renaissance-kind social and intellectual movement launched by
Kabir and carried forward by Bhakti movement with the central theme of social and
spiritual equality could not reach its logical conclusion. Also, India did not
witness any bourgeois democratic movement mainly due to colonial intervention
that did not allow the natural growth of capitalism. In his
series of articles on India for New-York Daily Tribune, Marx while deploring
the colonial rule for un-scrupled and
systematic deindustrialization, he takes serious note of so-called
self-sufficient village economy: “We must not forget that these little
communities were contaminated by distinctions of caste and by slavery, that
they subjugated man to external circumstances instead of elevating man the
sovereign of circumstances, that they transformed a self-developing social
state into never changing natural destiny, and thus brought about a brutalizing
worship of nature, exhibiting its degradation in the fact that man, the
sovereign of nature, fell down on his knees in adoration of Hanuman, the
monkey, and Sabbala, the cow.”
The failure of Indian communists to
fulfill the unaccomplished task of bourgeois democratic revolution,
subsequently led to the growth of the identity politics. In India’s present
political scenario the invocation of the caste identity by a section of the
forces of social justice is as big speed-breaker as the invocation of religious
identity by communal forces, in the radicalization of the social consciousness,
i.e. spread of class-consciousness among workers; peasants; Adivasis; Dalits;
the ever expanding ‘reserve army of the work force’; and other oppressed
sections of the society, so that they can lead the battle of their
emancipation. The caste politics, emphasizing caste identity emanating from the
coincidence of birth over their class identity of the economic positioning, is
neo-Brahmanism. Neo-Brahmanism supplements and does not contradict Brahmanism,
advocated by Hindutva forces that emphasizes the religious identity over the
class identity based on their economic status. In fact the ruling castes have
been the ruling classes also. The caste
and religious elements in India have been over emphasized over projected. The
minor, non-hostile, mostly artificial contradictions are overhighlighted to
blunt the edge of major economic contradictions.
1
Marx and
Marxism
Like Buddhism became a revolutionary
stream of thought in Buddha’s time itself in ancient India, so did Marxism in
Marx’s life time itself and became most prominent by the first quarter of the
20th century, particularly in the aftermath of the Russian
revolution of 1917, said to be the first revolution on policies and strategies,
based on the Marxist principles. Lucio Colletti rightly describes Marxism as
science of society and revolutionary ideology of class struggle simultaneously. Marx
considered science to be dynamic, not static like scriptures and hence so is
Marxism that includes not only the writings of Marx and Engels as intellectual source
but enriched by subsequent eminent Marxists.
Gramsci added new dimension to the theory of historical materialism, the
dimension of hegemonic culture.
Marx
The fall of Berlin wall in
1989 sent the capitalist camp into hilarious celebration. One its spokespersons
went to the extent of decaling the “End of the History” in an
article that he elaborated into a book after the disintegration of the Soviet
Union. He argues that the other systems of state (alluding to socialist
systems) have vanished because of their lacunas and inefficiencies, but the
“liberal Democracy has been successful, everywhere. Hence this is “the last
point of ideological development of humankind” and “thus it is the end of
history”. Exemplifying, the dual
character of capitalism, (any class society for that matter) in terms of
contradiction of theory and practice, he conceals the fact that the eternal
liberal democracy he is talking
about, is no more liberal but has become neoliberal. The liberal state was a laissez-fare state, a
non-interfering state, to only supervise the class exploitation. The neo-liberal
state is an active partner in the ‘development’. Tata on his own could not have
grabbed the land of Kalinganagar Adivasis, but needed help of governments of
Odessa and India to crush their heroic anti-displace movement. It is to be
recalled that on 2January 2006, the police fired at peaceful anti-displacement
protest killing 16 and injuring many, another repeat of Jallianvala. Latest being the Police firing at ant-pollution protesters
against the Vedanta, the England based notorious corporate shark at Tamilnadu
that killed over a dozen and injured many. The acts
of the land grab of peasantry for corporate; ‘disinvestment’ (sale) of state
enterprises and services and other state policies under the subservience of the
global capital, is called accumulation by dispossession by David Harvey,
which effectively is, the neo-liberal version of so-called primitive
accumulation. History never ends nor is there any final
point of development of ideas by humankind, as the ancient Greek Philosopher, Heraclitus
had said very long ago that the only constant is the change itself. Like
physical history, intellectual history too never comes to a final point;
knowledge is a continuous process. Both, the physical and the intellectual,
dialectically unite in motion to determine the course of history and the laws
of its dynamics. Ideas never end but move to create history. Marxism shall
remain as long as there are class societies and consequent class struggles.
“Class struggle is continuous process”. All the struggles
against injustices and inequality are integral parts of class-struggles. Once
the stage of human emancipation, i.e. of classless; stateless society is
attained, the Marxism shall become history.
Marx while pursuing his
studies in law, jurisprudence and philosophy at Bonn and Berlin Universities
got involved into student activism as Young Hegelians, a group of
radical students, teachers and intellectuals who derived radical implications
from Hegel’s theory of dialectics and turned it into critique of religion,
Hegelian idealism and his flirtation with the oppressive Prussian state. There
were clampdowns; rustications; terminations of radical professors. Marx by
the time of finishing his PhD Thesis on differences between the ideas of two
ancient Greek philosophers of nature, Democritus and Epicurus, must have known
that doors of university campuses won’t be open for him and turned to
journalism. He took up the offer of editing a liberal-democratic paper, Rheinische
Zeitung in Cologne and began to “prove the truth” and expose the
untruth, he invited the wrath of the power that be. The newspaper was shut
down. A biographical note on Marx is not intended here but through some
incidents to reiterate the fact that in class societies, the ruling classes are
always scared and horrified with rebellious or scientific ideas that exposes
their eternal contradiction of theory and practice. They kill, vanish imprison
and hound the thinker. Recent premeditated murders of rationalists Dabholkar;
Pansare; Kalburgi and Gauri Lankesh in India are few contemporary examples.
Marx moved to Paris in 1843
where he met French socialists and his future intellectual collaborator, F.
Engels and married his longtime girlfriend Jenny. In 1841 Ludwig Feuerbach
published The Essence of Christianity. Like
other Young Hegelians Marx was also quite influenced with his materialist
critique religion and Hegel’s dialectical idealism, which has been duly
acknowledged by Engels. Feuerbach “forms an intermediate link between Hegelian
philosophy and our conception. Feuerbachian
in influence is clearly visible in ‘A contribution to Hegel’s Philosophy
of Right’,
in which he reverses Hegel’s Dialectic to discover the truth by ‘turning it
upside down and thus the discovery of one of the laws of dialectical
materialism -- the law of mutual, dialectical negation of opposites.
Marx’s un-Hegelian, philosophic
journey begins with this critique, in which he opines, “Religious
suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a
protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature,
the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the
opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the
people is the demand for their real happiness.” Hence the false consciousness
of religion can be replaced only by class consciousness, i.e. by radicalizing
the social consciousness, shaped by, riling class ideas, what Marx calls “the
ruling ideas of the epoch”.
Thus by 1845 the foundations of
dialectical historical materialism were firmly laid. Marx’s existence in Paris
too was found inconvenient by Prussian government, which pressurized the French
government too vanish him from there. From there he went to Brussels and
denounced his German citizenship and became the world citizen. In the midst of revolutionary waves all over
Europe, he along with Engels wrote The Manifesto of Communist Party with the slogan of Workers of the world unite; you have
nothing to lose but your chains. In 1848 revolution
they moved to Cologne to guide the communist league revolutionaries and Marx
went to London afyr thr counter revolution, were he lived all his life in
poverty creating treasure for the posterity till his death in 1883. After
the revolution (Class Struggle in France)
and counter-revolution of 1848-51, Marx produced comprehensive review in
Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1851-52),
from the perspective of historical materialism. In 1852, after the
disintegration of Communist League, Marx went from activist-intellectual to
intellectual-activist mode till 1864, when the First International
–International Association of Working Men and Women was founded and he was
entrusted with preparing its Address.
During this ‘intellectual activist’
phase Marx devoted himself to the critique the political economy, the
foundation of which had been laid down in the EPM itself, as “the
anatomy of civil society has to be found in its political economy.” In the process Marx
published, in 1859, A contribution to the Critique of Political Economy,
whose 5-page preface has become ‘the preface’ and is a concise, comprehensive textbook
of historical materialism and continued it in the 1st volume of Capital
in 1867. The other two were published posthumously by Engels. There is no
scope of function, conflicts, impact and disintegration First International;
I have dealt with it elsewhere. Paris Commune was the most important
revolutionary, historical event, the first successful proletarian revolution
that Marx analytically documented in Civil war in France.
Marx lived in poverty enriching the world with revolutionary ideas till his
death in 1883. Engels in his funeral speech had said “…... the greatest living thinker ceased to think”. Among
others, historical materialism and theory of surplus value are two of the
greatest discoveries of Marx.
Marxism
The
Context
One of the democratic qualities of the
Renaissance (15th-16th century), preceding the
Enlightenment, in Europe was the abolition of the birth qualification. The
invention of printing press abolished the monopoly of clergy over the
scriptures and the invention of gun powder ended that of nobility over warfare.
The Renaissance also witnessed the emergence of a new species of the heroes,
the hero of the finance. This peripheral Renaissance hero was going to occupy
the center-stage in the next 150 years and become the Hero, as the
capitalism went ahead gaining the foothold and usher into industrial age from
mercantilism, under the new relations of production. An account of rise and growth
of capitalism is beyond the scope of this paper, its brutalities; cunningness;
treachery; and duality of standards are well depicted in many contemporary
novels. Most of the liberal thinkers agreed to the new miseries and agony of
the people but argued in its favor in the name good future for all. It’s first acknowledged, spokesperson, John
Locke declares that governance is a serious matter that can be entrusted with
only those who have proved their worth by amassing sufficient wealth.
The Enlightenment (mid c. 17th –
early 19th) was an intellectual revolution that emphasized the
reason and utility as the basis of explanation of the phenomenal world over the
tradition and faith, is concurrent with the rise and growth of capitalism. Emergent
capitalism on the ruins of the variety of feudal structures needed the
rationality against tradition and faith, the ideological source of the validity
of the feudal dominance. And hence the Enlightenment rationally is also the rationalization
of capitalism and the consequent new inequalities; forms of domination and
exploitations; unfreedoms in place of old ones. Enlightenment rationality is
also the rationality of private ownership of the means of production and ‘free
wage labour’ with twin freedoms – a worker is free to sell his labour-power and
equally free to kill himself, as capitalism has freed him from the means of
labour. The celebration of individual of Renaissance humanism was not the
celebration of ordinary but of spectacular, successful, extraordinary
intellectuals, people with heroic deeds, women with extra-ordinary beauty and
of princes. It celebrated the success and not only did not sympathize with the
failures but had disdainful contempt towards ordinary people that was subsequently
going to turn into haughty bourgeois contempt for the producing masses. With the erosion of
theological explanation of socio-historical events of the phenomenal world, in the
context of transition from feudalism to capitalism, new explanations were
needed.
In feudal monarchies, God was the source of
validity of the authority, the religion its ideology. With the erosion of
theological explanations, God vanished as the source of validity of rule. The
liberal political economists, David Hume to Adam Smith, worked out a four-stage
theory of development in terms of procurement of sources of livelihood --
hunting, pastoralism, agriculture and commerce. The four-stage theory in
Marx’s hands becomes historical materialism. Classical Political economists
defined the value in terms of labour time Marx took the argument further that
it must belong to those whose labour time is expended into it, and hence the proletarian
revolution to take back the control over the products of their labour. Marx’s
economic works are critique of political economy.
Bourgeois (liberal) political theorists,
beginning with Thomas Hobbes and John Lock in the 17th century took
up the task of finding the replacements God and religion as the source of
validity and ideology of authority respectively. They found the replacement of
the abstract idea of God in the abstract concept of the people as the
source of validity of the liberal (bourgeois) state and the ideology of
religion was replaced by the ideology of nationalism. Liberal political economists and political
theorists not only provided explanations of capitalism but also its justification
and under TINA syndrome (there is no alternative), its inevitability. Marx
proved that the live communities are never without alternatives. Central to
liberalism is self-centered individualism and natural right to property. With
exception of Rousseau’s dissenting voice most of the enlightenment thinkers
fall in Gramscian category of organic and profession intellectuals of
capitalism and in response Marx became the organic intellectual of the working
class. There is neither scope nor
need of going into details of liberalism, before Marx, Rousseau produced the
first critique of liberal state by dumping their contracts as contracts of
slavery, agrees with Hobbes and Locke that sovereignty emanates from people but
insists that it should remain with the people. Rousseau gives a romantic model
of collective self-government that anticipated the theory of dictatorship of
proletariat.
Marx challenges and rejects the liberal paradigm and provided an alternative
paradigm of analysis and a new concept of rationality, the rationality of
equality of basic human dignity. He inaugurated a new stream of thinking or a
new school of thought that in his life time itself came to be known as Marxism,
after him. Before concluding with the
application of Marxist principles, a brief sketch of key concepts is desirable.
Marx himself did not use the term dialectical materialism for his philosophical
worldview, yet he had begun discovering its laws from the very beginning of his
intellectual journey going back to critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right
followed by EPM and German Ideology; Poverty of Philosophy; Theses on
Feuerbach. before moving further, brief discussions on certain key concepts,
beginning with the philosophy of Marxism, seems imperative.
Dialectical Materialism
Dialectical
Materialism is considered to be the philosophy of Marxism, its world view
related to historical materialism, known as its science. The term was not used
by Marx himself but by subsequent Marxists to delineate the synthesis of Marx’s
critiques of Hegel’s Dialectics, which he called idealist and Feuerbach’s
materialism, which he called mechanical or metaphorical. For the first time the
term Dialectical Materialism was used by Plekhanov, a Russian Marxist, in 1891.
Any new stream of thought emerges from within the existing ones, in the same
way as the seeds of the new system mature in the old and germinates in the new.
Marx picked up two prevalent streams of thoughts, Hegel’s Dialectics and
Feuerbach’s materialism. He made them the reference point, challenged and
transformed them.
According to Hegel, reality is wholly or basically
constituted by thoughts or ideas and the phenomenal world is its image only.
Drawing the distinction between the appearance and inner world – the essence –
Hegel claims that the inner reality is concealed by, and is reverse of its
phenomenal form. “By the law of this inverted world, then, the selfsame in the
first world is unlike of it and unlike in the first is equally unlike to
itself. …. what by the law of first is sweet is, in this inverted reality,
sour; what is there black is here white.”
In reaction to this Marx demands, truth to be proved in practice, in this world
and not in the obscurities of its inversion, world of the abstract ideas. In
the labyrinth of philosophical jargons Hegel obfuscates the reality
transporting Plato’s World of Ideas into the vocabulary of classical German
Philosophy and his Ideal state into Prussian monarchy. According to Hegel,
“looked at one surface this inverted world is anti-thesis of the first in the
sense that it has the latter outside itself and repels that world from itself
as an inverted reality; that the one is the sphere of appearance, while the
other is the inherent being; that one is the world as it is for another, the
other again the world again as it is for itself.”
Hegel’s two worlds are not dichotomous. Appearance is the manifestation of the
essence and essence is the truth of appearance. “Thus the super-sensible world,
which is the inverted world, has at the same time reached out beyond the other
world has in itself the other, it is to itself conscious of being inverted,
i.e. it is the inverted form of itself; it is that world itself and its
opposite in a single unity”
Through the contradiction of essence and appearance, Hegel reached the
‘distinction per say’, in the ‘form of infinity’ or ‘absolute motion’. This is
the ‘ultimate nature of life, soul of the world, the universal life-blood’
which is it-self, ‘every distinction that arises, as well as that into which
all distinctions are dissolved’.
This means that the internal distinction is self-identity and
self-consciousness, if so the distinction between appearance and essence in the
natural world is a reflection in the distinction between self-consciousness
materiality itself becomes the inverted and the distinction between
consciousness and its object is thus eliminated.
“The main point is that the object
or consciousness is nothing else but self-consciousness, or that the object is
only objectified self-consciousness, self-consciousness as object.”
Hegel identifies alienation with objectification in terms of
producing object. Consciousness is absolutely alien to itself. Objectivity
therefore is alienated self-consciousness. To overcome alienation, i.e. to
re-appropriate self-consciousness implies to transcend the objectivity. And
consciousness is the essence, the reality; hence the process takes place in
consciousness. To overcome the alienation and inversion it entails, is merely
the recognition by the consciousness that the objectivity is its own inverted
creation. As Marx puts it, “the appropriation of man’s objectified and
estranged essential powers is therefore firstly only an appropriation which
takes place in consciousness, in pure thought.”
Thus the notion of inversion is defined in epistemological terms, natural
consequence of the process of production of thought and the simultaneous
production of reality as it’s opposite.
Marx takes the inversion from Hegel and reverses the thesis.
By means of their conscious practice, humans produce objective power that forms
the basis for the relations of production and forces of production.
Objectification of human practice is not alienating in itself but result of the
lack of control over that objective power. Alienation is result of particular
kind of inhuman objectification in which the men and women don’t control the
results of their labour-power but are controlled by them. For Hegel, “it is not
the fact that the human essence objectifies itself in an inhuman way, in
opposition to itself but that it objectifies itself in distinction from and in
opposition to abstract thought.”
For Hegel inversion is inherent in the self-consciousness and for Marx, it is
an attribute of a particular social condition. The consciousness does not
generate the inverted objective reality but the inverted reality generates the
inverted consciousness. If the religion is the inverted consciousness of the
world, it is because state and society that invented the religion are an
inverted world.
Object has historically existed without idea and the ideas
have historically emanated from the object. Newton didn’t discover the laws of
gravity to pluck the apples, but like any other object apples had been falling
vertically down from heights. Human beings are endowed with species specific
attributes of thought and imagination. This objective observation stimulated
Newton to investigate if there are any general laws about vertical fall and he
discovered the laws of gravity. With sense perceived reality we could answer
the only question, what? But not the
why? With what force and velocity at particular point, that can be answered
now. The matter is one aspect of the reality whereas mind (thought) is the other;
totality of the reality is created by their dialectical unity with priority of
matter. Priority does not mean more or less importance in its role as the
engine of the history.
The Feuerbachian materialism claims that the reality is
wholly or basically material. In the Essence of Christianity, Feuerbach
places materialism at the center. Nature exists independent of all the
philosophy. Nothing exists outside nature and man and the concept of higher
being/supreme power created by religious fantasies are the fantastic
reflections of our own essence. Due to inability to look at the history as a
process, he did not want to abolish but perfect the religion to be absorbed in
the philosophy. Marx saw in Feuerbach’s criticism of religion proposing the man
as the highest being for man forms a starting point for a truly revolutionary
philosophy. His claim that Hegel had reversed the role of subject and predicate
treating man as an attribute of thought, leads Marx ‘to turn Hegel on his head’
and his genetic method of inquiry into genesis and function of social
institutions was carried forward by Marx in materialist interpretation of
history.
Marx agrees with Feuerbach’s proposition that human-consciousness is product of
its material conditions and changed consciousness is product of changed
material conditions and asks him, how are the material conditions changed?
According to the Newton’s laws of motion, nothing changes on its own without
application of external force. This external force is conscious human effort.
Thus material conditions and conscious human effort are dialectically related
and the motion of this dialectical unity is the motor of the historical
changes.
“The materialist doctrine that men are
products of circumstances and upbringing, and that therefore, changed men are
products of changed circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is
men who change circumstances and that the educator must himself needs educating.
Hence this doctrine is necessarily arrives at dividing society into two parts,
one of which is superior to society.
The coincidence of the changing of
circumstances and of human activity (or self-change) can be conceived and
rationally understood only as revolutionary practice”.
Thus the matter is not totality of reality but
its condition and basis, the dialectical unity of matter and mind i.e.,
material conditions and the consciousness is the complete reality or the
totality of the truth. Ideas are not static but dynamic like material conditions,
which they change in practice.
“The question whether objective truth
can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question.
In practice, man must prove the truth. The dispute over the reality or
non-reality of thinking, which is isolated from practice, is a purely
scholastic question”.
The
dynamics of history is determined by the dialectical unity of the existing
material conditions and the level and form of the social consciousness. Thus
first law of dialectical materialism is, the truth or reality is constituted by
the dialectical unity of opposites – the object and its idea. From the above
discussion we can deduce the second law regarding negation of negation. Two
opposites continuously negate each other and in the process are negated by the
third, a higher element different from bot but containing the elements of both.
I demonstrate this to my students with the example of chemical reaction between
hydrochloric acid (HCl) and sodium hydroxide (NaOH) compounds with opposite
chemical qualifies, acetic and alkaline respectively, taking the chemical
reaction, as the process of dialectical unity, which unties two fatal
substances with opposite quality to give rise to third, the water and salt,
essentials of life.
HCl + NaOH = NaCl + H2O
Engels
terms Hegelian propositions: “All that is real is rational and all
that is rational is real”; and “In course of its development of reality
proves to be necessity”, as “philosophic benediction bestowed upon
despotism, Police government and censorship”.
With the examples of ‘real’ and ‘unreal’, statuses of Roman republic, Roman
empire or French monarchy, “destroyed by the great revolution” and thus
“Hegelian proposition turns into its opposite through Hegelian dialectics
itself”.
The revolutionary implication derived from by Engels is that anything that the
change is continuous and evolutionary, quantitative changes in course of time
mature into revolutionary qualitative change and anything that exists is destined
to perish, capitalism is no exception.
Basic
laws of dialectical materialism can be summed up as:
·
Law of dialectical constitution and
contradictions of the reality in terms of dialectical unity of the opposites,
of the object and its idea in an inter-causal relationship with the priority of
the object. This dialectical unity of the matter and mind constitutes the
totality of the reality and is the moving force of the history.
·
Law of transformation of quantity
into quality; gradual evolutionary, quantitative changes give rise to
revolutionary qualitative changes. Two most visible evolutionary changes in
India can be seen in the realms of Dalit assertion and scholarship and feminist
assertion and scholarship in the last 35-40 years. No change is just
quantitative.
·
Law of negation of negation; one
opposite negates the other and in turn is negated by an advanced historical
development, which is different from, but, preserves the elements of, both.
·
Anything that exists is destined to
perish.
It
has already been a disproportionally long prelude to the main issue. And hence
I must quickly wind up with description of other key concepts with as concise
description as possible.
Historical Materialism
. Key to historical Materialism is economy, the basis of
society. Engels in Marx’s funeral speech had also said, “Just as Darwin discovered the law of development of organic
nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history: the simple
fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first
of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics,
science, art, religion, etc.; that therefore the production of the immediate
material means, and consequently the degree of economic development attained by
a given people or during a given epoch, form the foundation upon which the
state institutions, the legal conceptions, art, and even the ideas on religion,
of the people concerned have been evolved, and in the light of which they must,
therefore, be explained, instead of vice versa, as had hitherto been the case”.
As stated at the outset, Marx, Like
Buddha wanted not to only interpret the world but change it also. For
comprehending the world, Marx and Engels developed the historical materialism, which
is known as the science of Marxism, as a theoretical tool to scientifically
comprehend the society. They had already declared in German Ideology that
the materialist conception of history or historical materialism was
going to be the basis of their future work. “The anatomy of civil society
has to be found in its political economy” Pre-Marxian social analysis
emphasized the law and the politics. Marx shifted the emphasis to economics. Engels
in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, describes historical materialism
as a historical perspective, “which seeks the ultimate cause and moving force
of all the important historic events in economic development of the society; in
changes in the mode of production and exchange; in the consequent
class-division of society and struggle of these classes against each other”. German Ideology (1845-46) Marx and
Engels, claim to have arrived at their distinctive world view of history that
is not based philosophically derived abstract ideas or dogmas of tradition and
custom but the correct articulation and depiction of empirically verified
facts.
Marx rejects the history of social
changes in terms of monarchs, their court ladies and fellow dynasts or in terms
of wars and battles. Marx attempts to locate the deeper causes of historical
changes beyond the wars and triumphs, in “the mode of production of material
means of existence that conditions the whole process of social, political and
intellectual life.” Historical Materialism is not a
philosophical but empirical theory; “a set of empirical theses”. In the preface, a compact para contains
the essence of historical materialism.
“In the
social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite
relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production
appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of
production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the
economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and
political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social
consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general
process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness
of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that
determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material
productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of
production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the
property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto.
From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into
their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the
economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole
immense superstructure.”
The human
beings began to distinguish themselves from animal kingdom by producing their
own livelihood by laboring with hands being the first tool of labour.
Henceforth, they continuously went on improving the tools of labour, owing to
the simultaneous development of species-specific attributes of reason and
imagination. The production is social and for social needs. Contrary to
bourgeois intellectuals’ pronouncement, individuals do not exist as ‘individuals’
but ‘in-and through society’. The ‘relations they enter into are existing
social relations, which with the forces of production, consisting of means of
production and the labour power, constitute the mode of production. Social
relations are determined by the nature of the ownership of means of
productions; production itself and the distribution of the value produced. The
economic structure is the base structure, on which rise the super structures
but the base having determined the super, further historic movement is their
dialectical unity. To a particular stage of development of material production,
“correspond definite forms of social consciousness.” The above quoted 3rd
thesis on Feuerbach says that the consciousness is product of material conditions
and conscious human efforts lead to change in the material conditions leading
to new social consciousness. The introductory quote of this paper tells us that
the ruling class ideology is the ruling ideology also. Capitalism does not
produce only commodities but also ideas through its ideological apparatuses
that shape the social consciousness, in which the inferior is convinced that
his deficiencies are responsible for his particular social positioning. Jean
Paul Sartre wrote in the preface to Franz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth,
“Not so very long ago the earth numbered 200 million people; 500 million
men and 1,500 million natives, former had the word and later the use of it”. Marx
and Engels had warned against the economic deterministic interpretation of
their view. “The economic situation is
the basis, but various elements of super structure -- ……., political, juristic,
philosophical theories, religious views and their further development into the
system of dogmas – all influence upon the course of historical struggle and in
many cases preponderate in determining their form.” Marx, in
the Eighteenth Brumaire, underlines, “tradition of all dead generations weighs
like a nightmare on the brains of the living.”
Marx and
Engels have repeatedly stressed that working class would fight war of its
emancipation on its own. The ruling class idea, the epochal ideology, that Marx
calls false consciousness, shapes consciousness of subject classes, how are
they going to emancipate themselves? They will do that by comprehending the
real contradiction and getting rid of false consciousness, by equipping
themselves with the class consciousness that shall be briefly touched upon in
subsequent sections.
Class-Conflict and Class Consciousness
Class and
class conflict is the central concern of Marxism, “The history of hitherto
societies is the history of class-struggles” became a proverbial statement
within few years of the writing of Communist Manifesto. But the conflict is not
discovery of Marxism. “What is specific about Marxist politics is what it declares
to be the nature of the conflict to be; and what it proclaims o be its
necessary outcome.” Marx
wrote in a letter in 1852, “…And now as to my-self no credit is due to me for
discovering the classes in modern society or struggles between them. Long
before me bourgeois historians had described the development of this
class-struggle and
bourgeois economists, the economic economy of the classes. What I did that was
new was to prove: (1) that the existence
of classes is only bound up with particular historical phases in the
development of production; (2) that the class struggle
necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat; (3) that this dictatorship itself
only constitutes the transition to the abolition
of all classes and to a classless society.” Class characterization of the members
of various economic strata of pyramidal capitalist structure and case of India
also the social structure determined by hierarchal pyramidal Hindu caste
system. In both the pyramids, except the lowest everyone finds someone below
him to look down at. The alliance between the upper strata of both the
structures in Indian neo-liberal economy is not surprising. By definition, whoever earns the
livelihood by selling intellectual/physical labour power is part of workers
collective but many harbor the illusion of being part of the ruling class. They
may be characterized as lumpen-bourgeois, extending the term coined by André
Gunter Frank for the Latin American imperialist agents.
Marx’s ‘discovery of proletariat’ as
‘the idea in the real itself’, a new political force engaged in a struggle for
emancipation, is the basis for Marxist theory of class struggle, history and
politics. Liberals before him do talk about this conflict but for them it is a
‘problem’ to be solved by good will, reason and reconciliation. For Marx, the
conflict is irreconcilable as it is not a ‘problem’ to be solved but a
relationship of domination and subjugation to be lessened and ended eventually,
by the total transformation of the society by ending the conditions, which give
rise to it. The antagonists are not the individuals, but the individuals in and
through a society, members of a social aggregate -- the class. “Society does
not consist of individuals, but expresses the sum of inter-relations, the
relations within which these individuals stand.” In
Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels, state, “Our epoch, the epoch of the
bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class
antagonisms. “Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great
hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other — Bourgeoisie
and Proletariat”. This is preceded by “In the
earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement
of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient
Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal
lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of
these classes, again, subordinate gradations.” In India, when the
communist movement took off with formation of Communist Party of India in
Tashkent in 1921 or even now “the complicated arrangement of society into
various orders” of caste, and community has not been simplified and the result
is the present day identity politics that has further complicated the class
division and remains a huge speed breaker in the way of radicalization of
social consciousness by expansion of class consciousness.
To ridicule Marx’s idea of proletariat,
the French anarchist, Joseph Pierre Proudhon wrote a book The Philosophy of
Poverty
that did not
make much impact, in response, Marx wrote Poverty of Philosophy, that is
a classic.
“Economic conditions had first
transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The domination
of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interest. This
mass is thus a class (in itself) as against the capital but not yet for
itself. In the struggle this mass gets united, and constitutes itself as a
class for itself. The interest it defends becomes class interest. Comprehension
of the collective interest of the class as a whole to which one belongs is the
consciousness of the class interest that makes the working class from a class
in itself into the class for itself.”
It
is the united struggles they evolve from the false consciousness acquired from
socialization under the existing social relations and corresponding form of
social consciousness, shaped by the ruling class ideas, what Marx calls ‘the idea of the age’ as quoted above. The
link between ‘class-in-itself’, a lump of mass, and a revolutionary
class-for-itself is the class consciousness. But that link has been a Herculean
task. It is more complicated and difficult in the Indian context owing to
specific history of Brahmanical (Varnashram) feudalism sanctioned by religion,
but doable. Hindu caste order is many layered
and sub-layered pyramidal structure like capitalism and neoliberal corporate
capital is using it to its interest. As mentioned in the introduction that
neo-liberal anti-labour policies; contract system and outsourcing;
informalization of labour, the labour socialization plank of class
consciousness becomes defunct, The only ways left are “united struggles” to
make the workers conscious of the common class interest and political education.
What this class consciousness is in reference to the working class? In Marxist
parlance it means an understanding that the emancipation of proletariat and
hence liberation of the whole society, the human emancipation, require the
overthrow of capitalism along with its ideas and ideals. The will and
preparedness to overthrow is its logical corollary. It is revolutionary in the
sense of its radical rupture.
Working Class is a universal class, as
the “previous historical movements have been movements of minorities, or in the
interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious,
independent movement of immense majority, in the interest of the immense
majority”. “The communist revolution would be the most radical rupture with the
traditional property relations” and “with traditional ideas” The transition from feudalism to
capitalism was transition from one class society to another class society;
transition from capitalism to communism is a qualitatively different
transition, from a class society to a classless society. Revolution is a
continuous process so is its countervailing process the counter revolution.
Rousseau gave the call of continually bombarding the Bastille. The first phase
of revolutionary experiments in 20th century on Marxist principles
seems to be waning away; momentum for the new, 21st century phase of
revolutions is building up all over owing to the pervasive discontent against
the imperialist global capital.
Class and Party
The ruling classes have all the powers
and privileges at their dispensation to maintain their dominance. How the
oppressed, with nothing but their person at their disposal are going to undo
the powerful oppressor? But the central and essential message of Marxism is it
can be and has to be achieved. It has to be achieved by the class-conscious
unity of the oppressed and their united struggles.
For Marx, workers can unite only in
the form of a political party and in the above quoted statement Marx says that
they get united in the struggles. Spontaneous, uncoordinated outpours like the Occupy
movement in the US play limited role. And the goal is abolition of the
private ownership. This implies confronting the ruling classes who have
everything at their disposal, enormous wealth; state’s coercive and ideological
apparatuses; a devoted mass base and media. But the essential message of
Marxism is that it can be and has to be done. Deepening of the contradictions
of capitalism resulting into crises and its impact on various super structures
is, in Marxian parlances, the objective factor, which on its own, is not
revolution. It also has the potentialities to degenerate into Fascism as it
happened in 1930s Germany. To bring
about revolution, the subjective factor of human intervention is essential. That is to say the working class must form
their party for its transformation from ‘class-in-itself’ to ‘class-for-itself.
No set ideas or ideals, ‘communists do not set up any sectarian principles of
their own, by which to shape and mold the proletarian movement.’ The
workers “have no readymade utopia to introduce” and “have no ideals to realize
but to set free the elements of new society” Marx’s life-long concern had been not the emancipation
of working class but by its own effort. “The emancipation of working classes
must be conquered by working classes themselves.” Despite repeated emphasis on the need
of organization of working classes he did not chalk out the form or structure
of the organization. As capital is global in the sense that it is not
geo-centric either in terms of source or investment and has no nation. Labour
too has no nation but as the oppression takes place within national boundaries
in nexus with the nation-state, the revolution would take place within the
national boundaries. The revolutionaries of various nations would work out the
structure and program, according to objective historical circumstances
prevailing there.
But most of the Parties formed in affiliation with Comintern adopted the
CPSU model of the Party. Form of the party is not important, important is the
working class and the development of class- consciousness and its struggle for
emancipation. The party is just the political expression and the instrument of
class struggle to help it carrying out its own struggle. “The fact is for them
class came first and party far behind. This cuts very deep and has a direct
bearing on the wider question of direct and indirect exercise of popular power
and on the meaning of socialist democracy”. Thus for Marx and Engels, Party is
means for higher revolutionary ends, but in practical politics, particularly in
the context of Indian Communist Parties, the means has become the end. Lenin
wanted to build a special kind of party in the special circumstance of czarist
Russia closely linked with the working class, but was careful of the dangers of
bureaucratization. Lenin termed the party as the vanguard of the revolution who
believed that given the level of social consciousness, without a proper
leadership, the working class cannot be a revolutionary force that is an
un-Marxian proposition, as Marx and Engels have consistently rejected the idea
of professional revolutionary groups bringing about emancipation of working
class. Party’s role, to my mind, as envisioned by Marx and Engels was to help
the working class being conscious of contradiction, i.e. radicalization of
social consciousness by political struggles and education.
There is no scope here to discuss
relationship of class and the party as it developed in Soviet Union or China, I
would like to conclude this section by a comment on party line which in a way
is un-Marxist rather anti-Marxist, that in place of sense of class
consciousness, it inculcates a sense of party devotion and hence obstructs the
process of the transformation of ‘class-in-itself’ into ‘class-for-itself’.
Self-Criticism
One of key concepts of the Marxism is
ruthless criticism of everything that exists, beginning with self-criticism. With due acknowledgement to Marx, in
my first class, I tell the students that key to any knowledge is questioning,
question anything and everything, beginning with the own mindset. “The
weapon of criticism cannot, of course, replace criticism of the weapon,
material force must be overthrown by material force; but theory also becomes a
material force as soon as it has gripped the masses. Theory is capable of
gripping the masses as soon as it demonstrates ad hominem, and it demonstrates
ad hominem as soon as it becomes radical. To be radical is to grasp the root of
the matter. But, for man, the root is man himself”. Marx applied the
principle of ruthless self-criticism on his own writings. In his article on
India in 1853, on the basis of available colonial material, he described the
colonial rule as “sub conscious implement” of development” but in 1881 he changed his views on
the basis of more authentic sources and described colonial rule as blood
sucker, which plundered the country without giving anything in return. Marx always eagerly accepted the
empirically proved concepts and incorporated them. His concepts and definitions
are never the final truth and they have to be interpreted and applied in
accordance with the historical context and conditions. The Communist Parties use
the concept only as rhetoric but never in practice, in a real sense of the
concept. Marxism is not a cult nor is it an abstract philosophy but a dynamic
science. Science involves experiments and there may be an error, a scientist
learns from that and makes corrections. Indian Communist Parties, despite
continuously loosing grounds, are not ready to critically introspect and honour
Marx’s this key concept, Self Criticism with an aura of ‘holier than
thou’ belief and self-righteous’ arrogance.
Theory of Praxis
Another key concept of Marxism is
Praxis. In Marxist sense, praxis refers to free, creative and self-creative
activity through which humans create and change their historical, human world
and themselves. A detailed discussion is beyond the scope of this paper, in
short it relates to unity between theory and practice.
2
Marxism in the Indian Context
Marx wrote in Eighteenth Brumaire
of Louis Bonaparte:
“Men make their own history, but they do
not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected
circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted
from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on
the brains of the living”.
What were the circumstances existing
already, given and transmitted from the past in the beginning and the journey
of the Indian Communist movement? What were the major and minor
contradictions? There were and are 3 major issues and corresponding
contradictions. 1. Contradiction of colonial rule and Indian people as a whole.
In today’s neo-liberal age of capitalism, colonial exploiting and domination
has been replaced by those of imperialist global capital coordinated by
international financial institutions like World Bank; 2. Of Between caste and
class, economic domination combined with socio-cultural domination and
subjugation sanctioned by religion, a sizable section of people was treated and
are being treated untouchable, now by publicizing on-camera meal at a Dalit’s
place. 3. Contradiction of capitalist and proletariat; and of landlord and
peasants. Many of them overlap; the ruling castes have been the ruling classes
also. Apart from these major contradictions, a fourth colonially created,
artificial contradiction had emerged in the form of communalism to disrupt and
derail the nationalist movement with formation of Muslim League and Hindu
Mahasabha. Many cities in India witnessed communal riots in many cities after
the withdrawal of the Non-Cooperation movement and again after the withdrawal
of Civil disobedience movement. The hate campaigns by the both the camps of
religious bigotry eventually led to partition of the country with unprecedented
bloodshed and exodus. Hindutva heirs of this colonial construct has become so powerful that after
coming to power in the center it has been dismantling all the democratic ethos
and institutions, but this is not our concern here.
The Colonial Question
The Communist Party of India was
formed in 1921 in Tashkent by MN Roy in Tashkent with Indian immigrants. MN Roy
had gone to Moscow to participate in the 2nd Congress of the
Third International, Communist International, the Comintern, as a
delegate of Mexican Communist Party with his American wife Evelyn Roy. He was
invited by Lenin in the committee on the colonial question and was asked to
write an alternative thesis. Roy’s thesis was accommodated in the draft as
supplementary thesis, though essentially is an alternative thesis. Without going
into details of Lenin-Roy debate, I find Lenin’s assessment and policy
guidelines were closer to reality than Roy’s. Roy compared the national movement
with the late development of capitalism and concluded that it would compromise
with colonialism as capitalist did under the fear of the working class. Roy was against joining the movement
and proletariat on its own will carry out the anti-colonial and the proletarian
revolutions simultaneously. Lenin characterized the anti-colonial movement as
democratic and progressive in the given situation and recommended communists to
join the movement while maintaining their separate identity and should try to
wean away its radical elements. Communists, formed Workers and
Peasants Party (PPP), joined the movement and were able make their presence
felt. But then came the 6th Congress of the Comintern (1928) that
decided against the united front tactic and the CPI, instead of analyzing the
concrete situation and decide accordingly, followed the Comintern dictate and
withdrew from the movement. In the context of anti-colonial social sentiment,
this action dented its credibility. Many prominent leaders of the party and
trade unions including 2 members CP of Great Britain were in jail in Meerut
conspiracy case.
CPI was banned and charged for conspiracy against British rule. 7th
Congress of Comintern in 1934 resolved in favor of united front and as already
mentioned, same year was founded the CSP by some young Congressmen who claimed
Marxism to be their ideological source. Communists were allowed to join in individual
capacity. As already mentioned, 1934-42 was the golden period for the Indian
left. CSP with its student’s organizations; trade unions and Kisan unions had
become a power to reckon with in the movement. It was able to ensure the
victory of Subhash Chandra Bose, twice, once despite Gandhi’s open support for
the opponent with emotional appeal that his defeat shall be his (Gandhi’s)
personal defeat. Its neutrality led to the passage of Pant resolution that made
the Congress President dependent on Gandhi for any substantial action. Without going into the merit or
demerit of neutrality, this implies that united front of left was able to
defeat the united force of the right wing in the national movement.
War is a serious issue in itself; it
cannot be solution to any problem, as underlined by Marx in his Inaugural
Address to the first International with serious concern from the view
point of workers’ international solidarity. Second international vigorously
campaigned against the imminent First World War till 1914. Lenin gave the call
of taking the advantage of the war crisis and to intensify the class-struggle
asking workers o all countries to turn their guns against their own rulers.
When war began most of the constituents joined the war efforts of their
respective states under one pretext or the other. German Social Democratic
Party (SDP) was the biggest constituent and proved to be the biggest traitor of
international proletarian cause. Rosa Luxemburg along with its other radical members quit it
and formed Spartacus Club and subsequently Communist Party. It is not intended to compare the
CPI’s stand on war but just to point to the anti-people character of the war
patriotism. CSP has been consistently carrying the anti-war platform but as
soon as Hitler attacked Soviet Union CPI section of CSP split away and took
began a pro-war platform. Things are different when you are making the history
than when you are analyzing it as a part of posterity. It was a dilemmatic
situation. Japanese forces had reached Assam. It is always enormously more
difficult to fight the fascist bourgeois colonialism than liberal bourgeois
colonialism. Apart from the fact that Soviet Union had joined the war against
the axis power, otherwise also it was a difficult decision but had the
leadership applied the principles of historical materialism more intelligently
to analyze the existing situation, it would have known that their support of
war would have made only symbolic difference on the cost of substantial
political loss in terms of credibility. It realized the mistake and presented
the self-criticism.
The Revisionism
As a result of party’s consistent work
among workers and peasants and leading their agitations on their immediate
issues, the cumulative effect was revolutionary peasants uprising of Tebhaga
(1946-47) and Telangana (1948) under its that was brutally crushed not by
colonial, but ex-colonial Indian Army under Nehru-Patel dispensation. After Telangana the left-right
deviation debate, begun before 1947 intensified and by 1950 it became quite visible on the issue
of cooperation with or the opposition of the government and eventually led to
many CPI leaders to join Congress under the Kumar Mangalam Thesis, to wreck the
system from within and as was historically expected, they themselves got
politically wrecked.
The left-right rift eventually led to 1964 split on the question
revolution and revisionism. The revolutionaries, CPI (Marxist), became more
revisionist than the revisionist, CPI, itself. A debate on revisionism within CPI
(M) itself started and became quite sharp by 1966. In 1967 it joined United Front
government under the leadership of Ajoy Mukherjee of Bangla Congress, the split
away group of the Congress as a leading partner. Jyoti Basu was the Home
Minister in that government that crushed the spontaneous peasants uprising
against the inhuman exploitation by the landlords. Many middle ranking leaders
welcomed the Naxalbari, left the party and joined the Naxalbari and eventually
formed the CPI (Marxist-Leninist) in 1969. In 1987 CPI (ML) – Liberation, also
resolved to take parliament path for revolution. Each of them is subject of
separate discussions. In course of time the qualitative distinction between
Communist Parties and other electoral parties diminished. Cut off from the
masses and mass movements, all the three parliamentary parties put together do
not have even 10% of parliamentary presence as the CPI had before 1964. The
parliamentarianism in communist movement shall be briefly discussed in next to
next section.
The question of Social Justice
“In the earlier epochs of history, we
find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various
orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have
patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals,
guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes,
again, subordinate gradations”.
In
India, there was no ‘epoch of bourgeoisie’ to split the society in two hostile
camps’; ‘a manifold gradation of social ranks’ in the form of hierarchal Hindu
caste-order, effectively caste slavery that still exists, though in the process
crumbling down under the pressure of continuously accentuating march of Dalit
scholarship and the consequent assertion, hence the audacity of arrogant and
violent reaction. The cracks had begun in my early
student days, in 1960s-70s, but were only microscopically visible. I use the
term Dalit in its literal meaning – the oppressed, which is inclusive of all
the erstwhile, socio-economically and educationally deprived and culturally
dominated sections of society. Hence the appropriate application of historical
materialism would have been, to take note of this existing realty. Caste and
caste-conflict for of manifestation of class-struggle are not just imagination are
things of the history but a living reality. There is no scope in terms of time
and space to deal with caste-class debate. This is just to point that the
vacuum left by communists was filled by Ambedkerites of various varieties and
process of the radicalization of identity politics which played a positive role
in instilling the self confidence among the oppressed castes. But it has
already played its historic role, it must march ahead from class-conflict into
class-conflict.
Though the communists have been in the
forefronts in the struggle but did not make it as a major contradiction on
their agenda that led to mushrooming of various varieties of identity politics
among a section of oppressed classes, who have more venom for leftism than for
Brahmanism or its corporate allies. Identity politics has accomplished its
historic role in terms of Dalit scholarship and assertion, now it has taken a
reactionary turn, the need now is transformation of identity consciousness into
class consciousness. Key to Brahmanism is personality assessment on the basis
of the biological accident of the birth. Whoever does so, directly-indirectly
strengthens Brahmanical values, presently championed by Hindutva forces. Many identity
politics stalwarts on social media are doing the same and thereby have created
a category of neo-Brahmanism that supplements Brahmanism. Both are inadvertent
allies and huge speed-breakers on the way of radicalization of the social
consciousness.
At the point of beginning of the
communist movement in colonial India, it was a caste ridden society with
Varnashram code of conduct intact. As mentioned in the introduction that in
Europe, in Marx’s time, economic positioning was the main basis of social
division. Unlike Europe India did not witness any bourgeois democratic
revolution that had smashed the birth qualification. Had there been no colonial
intervention, may be natural growth of capitalism would have taken a different
path. Indian feudalism was Brahmanical feudalism with occupation based
pyramidal caste system with many hierarchal divisions and sub divisions. Castes
at the base of the pyramid were treated as untouchable. The parasitical upper
castes had the monopoly over governance and knowledge system through which they
maintained the hegemony of Brahmanism for centuries. The ruling castes have
been the ruling castes also. Colonial policy of universal access to
intellectual resources created theoretical possibilities of Ambedkars. In 1938
in the congress of Independent Labour Party Ambedkar had said that politically
closest to his ideas were he communists. Had the CPI included the caste
question in its agenda, may be Ambedkar might have joined hands with it. The Congress leadership of the anti-colonial
movement was dominated by educated upper caste people, not interested in
touching the caste issue. In retrospective it was imperative on the communist
movement to undertake the unfinished task of bourgeois democratic revolution
and to include the caste-contradiction as one of the major contradiction along
with the class and colonial contradiction. To demarcate the character of
European and Indian feudalism Marx propounded theory of Asiatic Mode of
Production (AMP).
By mid 1980s the movement against
inequality got divided into the social justice stream, basically a dignity
movement and fractioned; fractured Marxist stream. The circumstance demands
dialectical unity of the struggles for social justice or the struggle for
dignity and the economic rights and the new consciousness shall emerge from the
united struggles and non-hostile contradictions shall be resolved. The friendly (non-hostile)
contradiction between the struggles for economic justice and social justice
would be resolved in the process of the united struggle. Any conflict between
the oppressor and the oppressed is class conflict. The slogan of Jay Bhim –
Lal Salam emanated from JNU agitation is symbolic expression of this
illusive unity. Substantial success of the land movement by
Dalits of Punjab, who combined the question of economic rights of land
with the question of dignity, is a model at a micro level for generalized
theorization of the unity of Jay Bhim and Lal Salam slogans. “There can be no caste annihilation
without revolution (on Marxist principles) and no revolution without caste
annihilation”.
The accusation of many identity
politics activists of casteism in Communist Parties is not for no reason,
de-casting is as difficult as declassing, as for this one has to undergo the
process of unlearning by honest introspection and ruthless self-criticism. This
is subject matter of separate discourse; I have briefly dealt with it elsewhere
in the context of the autobiography, Aamar Jiban (My Life) of Kanti
Bishwas, the education minister in the previous CPI (M) governments in West
Bengal. A Brahmin communist or a Dalit communist are paradoxical and un-Marxian
notions. The leadership not only did only not take up the caste question
seriously but many of them themselves have not being caste prejudices emanating
from the biological accident of birth. A discussion on this is beyond the scope
here; I have dealt with it elsewhere.
Parliamentarianism
The
liberal (representative) democracy termed as bourgeois democracy by Marxists is
the political expression of capitalist relation of production. First critique
of liberal democracy was produced by Rousseau in the mid-18th
century, at the early stage of its evolution, “The people
of England regards itself as free; but it is grossly mistaken; it is free only
during the election of members of parliament. As soon as they are elected,
slavery overtakes it, and it is nothing.” In parliamentary democracy people have right to decide which
section of ruling classes is going to oppress them for the next five years? In
the present Indian context, we have choice of choosing from the two the competing
camps of imperialist global capital, which is no more geo-centric either in
terms of its source or in terms of investment. Once in January, 2007 in a
seminar on globalization and Governance in Madras University, I was
asked about the qualitative difference Lenin responded to the revisionist
critique of the concept of the proletarian dictatorship and support of “pure
democracy.”
“The Scheidemanns and Kautsky's speak
about "pure democracy" and "democracy" in general for the
purpose of deceiving the people and concealing from them the bourgeois character of present-day democracy. Let the bourgeoisie continue to
keep the entire apparatus of state power in their hands, let a handful of
exploiters continue to use the former, bourgeois, state machine! Elections held
in such circumstances are lauded by the bourgeoisie, for very good reasons, as
being "free", "equal", "democratic" and
"universal". These words are designed to conceal the truth, to
conceal the fact that the means of production and political power remain in the
hands of the exploiters, and that therefore real freedom and real equality for
the exploited, that is, for the vast majority of the population, are out of the
question. It is profitable and indispensable for the bourgeoisie to conceal
from the people the bourgeois character
of modern democracy, to picture it as democracy in general or "pure
democracy", and the Scheidemanns and Kautskys, repeating this, in practice abandon the standpoint of the proletariat
and side with the bourgeoisie.”
Over hundred years of experience,
beginning with the emergence of revisionism in the Second International from
mid-1890s, Euro-Communism experiments and the parliamentary history
of Indian Communist movement have proved that socialism not only cannot be
brought through parliamentary participation but it gives legitimacy to
bourgeois institutions and leads to dilution and complication of the question
of class struggle. Marx, in Civil War in France and in the preface to
1972 edition of Communist Manifesto had reiterated that the bourgeois
state machinery has to be smashed, the apparatus of slavery cannot be the
apparatus of emancipation.
The
dilemma and conflict of lines with respect to cooperation with, or opposition
to Congress government, had begun even before the independence. The 1949
February CPI Central Committee resolution saw a turnabout from the 1947, June
(P.C. Joshi) resolution which welcomed the Mountbatten plan as a “Compromise”
that the imperialists had been forced to make to the “urgent demands of
national liberation movement”. However it pointed out that the forces of
imperialism and feudalism were still strong. It called for a united
anti-imperialist front – “unity of all from Gandhi to the Communists”. 1951 All India Congress of rejected the
parliamentary path in favor of mass struggles of the people, the
‘left-deviation line got adopted. .Party
did not participate in 1952 elections. There is no scope to various party
documents and debates, two-line conflict continued and eventually it decided to
participate in parliamentary election to use it as platform for the propagation
of revolutionary ideas; parliamentarianism was adopted as a means for higher
revolutionary end, but as has become the history now, eventually the means
became the end, leading to the miserable condition of the moment by now. In
1957 election, though Congress won a whopping majority, the CPI was the biggest
opposition with 27 seats and formed government in Kerala, the first elected
Communist government that was toppled by Nehru government, making the first use
of article 356 of the constitution, a big blot on the Nehru’s leadership. The electoral history of
CPI and its subsequent offshoots is not the concern here, but their
transformation into pure parliamentary party cut off from masses and mass
struggles. The MPs and MLAs could not and did not transform their electoral
base, the number power into people’s power by radicalization of the social
consciousness, shaped by the epochal ideology, as discussed above, with the
reference to German Ideology.
In
the modern Indian context owing to its peculiar historical positioning; the
social consciousness is impacted by an amalgamation of religious; caste;
tradition factors coopted by the commodity culture imparted by market forces.
Economy is the basis. In 1950s-60s certain belts in eastern UP were known as
red belt by electing communist and socialist representatives in the aura and
political clout of Nehru and Indira Gandhi.
In course of time, the
electoral bases, of many prominent Communist parliamentarians shifted to BJP
reflecting a regressive move in the form of social consciousness. As has been
explained in the first part of this paper, under the sub-title of Marxism,
some ‘keyword’ of it are: Man makes his own history’ in the ‘circumstances
given and transmitted from the past’;
class-in-itself and class-for itself; conscious ness is product of
material conditions and changed consciousness of changed material conditions;
to each stage of development corresponds certain form of social conscious ness;
social relations and productive forces conflict with each other; revolutionary
circumstance is pre-condition of revolution; working class shall fight its war of emancipation;
revolution is inevitable; .. .” By putting them together it can be concluded
that the proletariat will fight war of its own emancipation by acquiring class
consciousness through united struggled and transforming itself from class in
itself to class for itself. Hence the key to revolution is class consciousness,
i.e., radicalization of social consciousness, first by getting rid of false
consciousness of caste and community by sharpening the edge of major
contradiction, the economic contradiction. This could have been done by
participating in their struggle and leading them and political education that
these parliamentarians and progressive intellectuals failed to do.
Unlike
other political parties, a Communist Party lays more emphasis on theory, a theoretical system of ideas which defines
and analyses the evolutionary and the revolutionary progress of the political
processes with a historical perspective in terms of economic development and
related superstructures at various times and spaces. The guiding principles of
such a theory are derived from the principles of historical materialism on the
philosophical basis of the dialectical materialism, within which lie the roots
of social and economic change. Change is necessary in class divided systems,
the Marxists believe, which is ‘exploitative’, ‘unjust’ and clearly based on
the domination of the majority by a minuscule minority, which not only controls
the means of production, but also ‘power’ in all its institutional dimensions.
“The state is the instrument of the ruling classes”. However, the evolution of
theoretical and pragmatic Marxism has gone through immense internal stress,
encountered multiple contradictions and faced various questions, the answers of
which it has failed to provide, or it has simply reduced them into black and
white categories, in a way, the international Communist movement witnessed many
tragic situations when history overtook them with an unimaginable pace and
“official” revolutionaries sought immediate, and almost un-Marxian answers to highly complex situations.
The
more complex political contests became, the more they turned to simplistic
reductionism. The fear of confusion tormented the Communist leadership, the
fear of innovation of looking beyond the foundations of set, structured laws –
an insecurity symbolic of the Freudian ‘daughter-father’, ‘son-mother’
relationship the acceptance of the “objective reality” that the world had
changed, and so has the equations of the power and social relations, came very
hesitantly, while contradictions diversified, multiplied and acquired more
complex possibilities. Marxism remained reduced within the parameters of the
basic contradiction – ‘Labour – Capital’, ‘Proletariat– Bourgeoisie. The world,
thereby, became a matter of easy comprehension.
Various
streams of analytical, unconventional Marxism have entered the realm of social
sciences, especially after the 2nd world war, but the dominant
section of the International Communist movement led by the Central Committee of
C.P.S.U, remained happily submerged in the dogmatic theoretical structures of
early Marxism, later reinforced by Lenin in the precarious conditions of
Russia, the revolution and the aftermath. The Indian Communist
movement also constituted a part of the same political attitude. Since its
birth in 1921 in Tashkent and its first convention in 1925, after the initial
commitment to revolutionary politics, especially in the 1930’s when as part of
the Congress Socialist Party, it consolidated its mass
base in trade unions, student movements, and grass root politics in Kerala,
West Bengal, Tripura, Bihar, and Marginally in Punjab, Andhra and other states,
the post-colonial Communist Movement has gradually, and steadily moved towards
uni-lineal political passivity and degeneration. The Marxist- Leninist emphasis
on mass based politics no more troubled their conscience. The “mistakes” (which
were quite a few) of the past revolutionary years were “regretted” and
conveniently sidetracked. Blatant pragmatism became the fundamental premise of
the bankrupt politics – ornamented with the liberal use of jargons and slogans.
(Karl Marx is in heaven and everything is alright with the world). 100 years ago Marx turned Hegel upside down, over
100 year after, the Indian Communist movement has certainly succeeded in
turning Marx upside down.
Since
then, it has pragmatically rejected the “violent overthrow of state and ruling
class power” line and opted instead for the “peaceful transition” of power,
through constitutional, electoral politics. And though the conceptions of the
“dictatorship of proletariat”, and “classless society” remained the ideal of
its socialism and Utopia – it entered the constitutionalism of
“bourgeois–parliamentary democracy” with initial hesitation and gradually with
greater scientific deliberation. Passive Constitutionalism has come to dominate
the communist parties of this nation, though; at least apparently, its inherent
political indecisiveness and guilt conscience has been haunting them from time
to time.
Theory and Strategy - The
Dichotomy of ‘No Return’
One
of the fundamental problems which the Indian Communist Movement has been facing
is evolving a correct, analytical explanation of the Indian State, the
Congress, or, the “bourgeoisie” or the political elite. Unable to place the
European context of Marxism directly in the Indian situation, the dilemma of a
plausible definition, and thereby a strategic attitude towards it, continued to
plague its theoretical ideologues. The Indian bourgeoisie and its leadership
practiced policies which could not be explained in straight forward Marxist
postulates – even in its most generalized form.
In
fact, the Congress determined the articulation of political decisions and
channelization during periods of crisis and otherwise, whereas the Communist
leadership was forced to a position where it could only react or adapt, or
adopt counter positions. While they participated in the mainstream of the
struggle – the leadership and strategy of the movement was firmly entrenched in
the hands of the Congress. It was believed that the congress, though a mass
umbrella organization with various shades of political philosophies, was
essentially led by big business, feudal interest groups – who will further
reinforce the class divided exploitative structure of the polity if able to
acquire political power. The successive debates of Comintern Congresses further
reinforced this belief. As late as,
February 1984, this doctrine reappeared in the Congress of the CPI.
Therefore,
one has witnessed the intense Love-hate fluctuations in the
relationship-between the CPI - and the “bourgeois democratic national
liberation movement” (as the 2nd Congress of the Comintern termed it
after the famous debate between MN Roy and V. Lenin).
All
future categories of the CPI are derived from this premise. And the
contradictions increased many fold. Confused and pushed into the wall, the
movement immersed in repeated exercises of self-introspection – but mostly,
emerged, with a deeper sense of confusion. Thereby the need for reductionism
and pragmatism became stronger. Rigorous
analysis was discarded. Jargons, slogans and orthodox Marxism was grasped with
a drowning man’s delight, the second theoretical dilemma was related to the
first. It was difficult for the Indian Communist to understand the “relative
autonomy” of the political apparatus i.e. the superstructure which Nehru
professed to adopt and pursue under the conception of a “mixed economy”
Nehru,
despite the inherent problems of this framework, made an effort to transcend
the stereotypes of existing societal models. His was in a search for an
alternative in a country where indigenous capitalism had immense potential to
grow as a subsidiary force to the public Sector which comprised the core of the
economy, Nehru’s alternative was borne out of a compromise between his
socialism and the right wing, extremely powerful section of the Congress.
“The
transfer of power:, therefore, from the ‘white to the Brown Masters’, as the
Communist preferred to call it, resulted in the further strengthening of the
indigenous bourgeoisie which had a knack for innovation and experimentation in
the accumulation of private profit. The terrain was now wide open.
However,
Nehru’s domestic and foreign policy could not be placed in the same context as
that of banana republics or puppet regimes within the strait jacket to general
Marxist laws. The Communists were not
able to clearly analyze the polarizations of the Nehruvian notion of a
“mixed-economy based welfare state”. In its analysis of the nation-state, the
CPI was partially right and partially wrong. While on the one hand its understanding
seemed correct, but on the other this correctness could not be assumed as a
political finality. When stereotypes change, especially in liberal bourgeoisie
democracies, the deviations are much more difficult to perceive and analysis,
so multifarious they are in quality and approach. What is visible might be an
“objective reality” but the hidden “”invisibility” can also be a major
propellant for its concrete determinations. The subtleties of such political
processes are more intricate and intertwined, the balance of forces more
indirect and subject to change, the fluctuations more sharp and unexpected.
Here, the trap which pushes logic on either side of the cobweb, and thereby
escapes the fluctuations, becomes more authentic and vicious. Theory manages to
rationalize, if it does not innovate, to reject or accept, condemn or hail.
Later,
within a span of eight months it came round to the view that the Mountbatten
plan was a natural “culmination of the betrayal of the revolutionary struggle”.
This line continues to be reinforced even in the present state, although in
certain crisis situations as in the 1962 war and 1975 emergency era a section
of the CPI turned pro-congress.
Similar
was the crisis of political strategy during the “people’s war” line, when
Congress declared that the CPI has betrayed the movement and allied with
Britain, a country which was an ally or Russia in the war against Fascism. If
Russia lost the war, they believed, the world communist movement will be pushed
back or even destroyed.
The
second Congress of the CPI marked the stage for post war national independence,
which was an integral part of the overall war against colonialism. Tactics,
especially that of P.C. Joshi and the “rightists” within the CPI started
governing revolutionary Commitment – armed struggle, et al. Though armed
resistance or the violent overthrow of state was not ruled out, it was believed
that the leadership structure of the nation should not be disturbed. Communists
should mobilize grassroots opinion so as to create “pressure from below”. This was a dual policy,
but an important starting point of constitutional pragmatism. This was the line
taken by the Comintern from 1947 to 1953, and followed by most communist
parties of the world in the postwar era.
The
Bombay workers strike, the Telangana, Tibhaga movements, resulted again in the
sharp polarization between the state and CPI. It was no longer General Dyer
Killing people in Jalianwala Bagh but Indian Generals, commanded by Nehru and
Patel themselves. An isolated Telangana movement was lost over the dead bodies
of thousands of workers and peasants. The “historical blunder”, as Telangana
movement was later called, is perhaps the last battle the communists have
fought in their quest for socialism. The line changed rapidly
after that and led to lesser optimism in the later years. Thus started the
great debate -- Is armed struggle by mass mobilization and as undertaken by the
Bolsheviks and later by Mao’s Red Army, applicable in the Indian context? The
polarization within the CPI sharpened. The left, center and right were clearly
divided.
By
the mid-fifties, in the aftermath of Talangana, the polarization within the CPI
on political approach towards the Indian State became distinct. One stream of
thought discarded the “adventurist” and hasty characterization of the Nehru
regime. Led by PC Joshi, SA Dange and others, this line dictated a softer
approach towards Nehru –the national bourgeoisie has a strong progressive
element. It stated and suggested that questions of armed struggle, or direct
confrontation and hostility with the government should be discarded. Instead,
it argued that the “pressure from below” vis a vis cooperation theory should be
applied. This line came to be known as that of the “rightists” line within the
party. The other major deviation comprised a militant position led by Ranadive,
Basavapunnaia, P. Sundarayia and others, which stuck to the old position that
is was a neocolonial state controlled by monopoly business allied to the West
and feudal interests.
Therefore,
during this period one saw the party take up a position which was neither of
the left nor of the right variety but that of the center – a “minority line”
which was ambiguous and took no strong position on any issue.
The
factionalism and power game inside the party, however, continued. Which line will overwhelm? How long can this
“false truce” sustain itself”? The
crucial questions became more pronounced, though, at a subterranean level.
However, the more distinct the “internal crisis” turned, the more “left unity”
became an issue. With Khrushchev, there again followed a break in the
international theoretical line, which the Indian Communists had followed. The
Zhdanovist’s “tow-camp” theory was discarded by Khrushchev and a period of “peaceful
co-existence (even with the imperialist USA) followed.
In
the Indian context, the state sprung another major surprise. Under the 2nd
Plan, where emphasis was laid on heavy industry, large scale soviet
collaboration was realized, both with the public and private sector. This
further strengthened the “National bourgeoisie is progressive” thesis.
Meanwhile, the first elected Communist Government in Kerala (1957) was toppled
by the Congress Government at the Centre. The ideological confusion, now with
the absence of the ‘two camp’ theory deepened. The 1962 China – India War was
the final nail in the coffin of a United Indian Communist Movement based on
Marxist – Leninist revolutionary principles.
While
the rightists declared it as an aggression on Indian territorial independence,
the left were hesitant to call it in such blatant terminology. ‘It is a border
dispute, which should be resolved through negotiations’ they believed. The
polarizations, having accumulated over the last two decades – between “revisionist”
and “revolutionary” ideology – clearly
acquired objective conditions for the split. The split was inevitable – and its
roots could be traced back to the historical evolution of global and national
politics Vis a Vis the left movement. It was once again a replica of the
Menshevik-Bolshevik conflict. If time is a great healer, the left movement has
been certainly a beneficiary. The formation of the CPI and the CPI (M) in 1964
and their gradual internalization of bourgeois politics over the years helped
them accomplish themselves. While the rhetoric remained, as usual, more as a
self-rationalization of militant nostalgia, the application of Marxism as a
theory acquired new dimensions. Constitutional electoral politics requires
different calculations, slogans, intrigues, conspiracies and power games. The
connotations are certainly in absolute contrast to the militancy of the
communist manifesto or the 1951 tactical document (circulated in secrecy and to
a select few but later widely known), which did not rule out the inevitability
of an armed overthrow of bourgeois state power.
For
the CPI (M), the line, even now continues to remain, but both the left parties
have been overtaken by the power game of parliamentarianism, with such
remarkable consistency that despite the last semblances of revolutionary
rhetoric, the Khrushchev thesis of capturing power through peaceful transitions
– overpowered the political motivations and emotional sensibilities. Marxian
humanism was discarded in Toto and what followed was a Comte-humanism reflected
on the Congress Culture – with all its share of cold calculations, and blind
miscalculations, which have since then, backfired on the movement.
The
Love-hate relationship continued to flourish between the two left varieties and
the Congress The premises for people’s struggle, democratic rights &
consciousness, mobilizations of workers – peasants youth, women, intelligentsia
and left unity, etc., automatically got geared towards one goal – electoral
power.
Parliamentary
politics sucked in the left so deep that the value systems practiced by
bourgeois power games slowly got incorporated into it. Passivity, opportunism,
and strategic silence dominated the political conscience of the left.
While
history moved with its share of misfortune, brutality, and the state repression
and private profit flourished famines and floods, mass killings and holocausts,
even Fascism in its most blatant and naked reality, entered the polity with
regular consistency, the logic of “Parliamentary Marxism” was maintained,
legitimized and sustained.
Summing
up in a few lines, the degenerations of Marxist Praxis, A. K. Gopalan the
veteran Communist leader from Kerala wrote:
“A
new life, a new environment, a new alliance – I found myself in an environment
calculated to ruin a man. First class travel, comfortable chambers in the
parliament, a surfeit of money, magnificent quarters – and a life devoid of
heavy responsibility. All circumstances favorable to a life of pleasure. The
overall framework was such that we did not feel hopeful about this much
eulogized parliamentary democracy.” The Naxalbari movement in the late sixties
was an inevitable outcome of this stagnation. Mainly, a split from the local
leaderships of West Bengal, Andhra and Bihar supported and provided leadership
to the revolutionary flame ignited by the spontaneous peasants’ uprising at
Naxalbari formed the core of the movement. After an initial burst of intense
idealism and honesty, the movement fizzled out into disorganized, scattered
realms of political anarchy.
Arter
Telengana, this was the second major shock to the left moment, a shock, which
their ideologues had not perceived even in their most militant logic of
historical materialism and protest. Looking back into the dialectics of its
growth, the Naxalbari movement and the further splits in the left ideology can
be clearly traced back to the organizational and ideological crisis in the
party formally recognized in 1950. The crisis remained in the depths of its
structure, in undercurrents which grew stronger over an accumulated period of
stagnation. ‘Constitutional Freedom”, even in the divided CPI continued to be
viewed by a large section as illusions, a farce and a pseudo rationalization.
The crisis of constitutionalism in the left remained unresolved. The choices
now remained limited within the paradigm of bourgeois politics. Mass
participation became directly proportional to the number of votes required.
Caste-clan calculations no longer were purely bourgeois – communal gains but
also that of secular, communist forces. The state might still be the
“instrument of the ruling class” – but it certainly has a “progressive foreign
policy”. The CPI went so far as to declare its support for Mrs. Gandhi’s
Emergency at the behest of the Kremlin.
The
cycle of degeneration and perversions, as it seems, has ripened to a state –
where even rhetoric is not used, nor the pretentions of raising “mass
consciousness” or the workers – peasants’ unity in the democratic movement for
equality, justice and freedom. While the Indian state violates the constitution
as a matter of attitude the communists dip into it, with a ‘holier than the
Ganga belief.
Theoretically,
the left variety of parliamentary Marxism is trapped in the quagmire of no
return. Its methodology needs an “epistemological break” if it wishes to
restore and consolidate the essential doctrines of Marxism. A new tradition has
to be built, based on the changing forces of societal complex and state power,
and existential experiences directly linked to new modes of production, of
class alienation, of organization and strategy. This tradition needs to respect
the various streams of Marxist analysis which has flooded the theoretical
market, find the reasons for its origin, its deviations from the established
current, and seek more practical solutions based on humanism.
Reductionism,
in a constitutional stagnation, is inevitable; it is the comfort of political
hypocrisy clothed in mechanical, simplistic assessment of reality. Reductionism
is categorical. It cannot transcend its own wall, its own fortress of pseudo
rationalization, divorced from genuine self – introspection.
The
communist movement in India, however, is not in a mood or position to enter
into the trauma of self-realization
Conclusion
Both the official communist parties (CPI
& CPI (M) are at their peak of passivity, theoretically bankrupt, divorced
from revolutionary praxis. The cobweb, in which it has entered, can now only
expand further, till the point of Hegelian totality, when the cobweb, itself
would transcend the dichotomy, break apart, and create, perhaps, another Telangana
or Naxalbari. Till that time. There can be only a further elongation of
postponement. The sky is the limit. I have used Telangana and Naxalbari
metaphorically meaning new wave of revolutionary formation a new
internationalism on Marxist principles, the old one seems ready to give way.
Marx, Letter
to father https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1837-pre/letters/37_11_10.htm
Louis Althuser, Lenin and Philosophy, https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/1968/lenin-philosophy.htm
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/06/25.htm
Francis Fukuyama, The End of the History
and the Last Man (1992), https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/fukuyama.htm
socialistreview.org.uk/338/y-young-hegelians
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1841/dr-theses/index.htm
https://countercurrents.org/2017/01/18/thomas-hobbes-1588-167
https://countercurrents.org/2017/01/18/nationalism-and-the-egalitarian-alternatives/
Sumanta
Banerjee,
In the Wake of Naxalbari: A History of the Naxalite Movement in India,
Subarnarekha, Calcutta 1980
Sandeep
Bhardwaj, Kerala Crisis (1957-1959):
First Litmus Test of Indian Democracy,
