This is my rejoinder to an article of Mr. Achin Vanaik published in July - August 2011 issue of New Left Review.
The article of Mr. Achin Vanaik: http://www.newleftreview.org/?page=article&view=2910
The article of Mr. Achin Vanaik: http://www.newleftreview.org/?page=article&view=2910
Subcontinental
Strategies for Revolution.
K.N.Ramachandran
Mr. Achin Vanaik’s New
Left Review article on Subcontinental
Strategies mainly deals with the problems of the left in India. According
to him, the existence of both parliamentary left and Maoists with comparatively bigger strength here than
in other countries is due to “macro-structures of bourgeois liberal democracy
co-exist with extremely undemocratic, violent socio-political realities at the macro and micro levels,
especially, but not only , in the country side. Secondly steady capitalist
development has brought dramatic polarizations between prosperity and extreme
deprivation, overlaid onto the enduring pre-capitalist structure of the caste
system, with great social at one end of the hierarchy and contemptuous
exclusion at the other”. According to him, in such a context “traditional
Stalinized and Maoist notions of developmentalism
in the name of socialism continue to exert a powerful appeal for large masses
of people”. The author will have to
strive hard to substantiate this argument. In spite of the presence of basically
similar objective situation, and of both ‘Stalinists and Maoists’ visible in a
number of other countries also, why the
‘real or false’ subjective forces are not powerful enough in many of them
compared to these few countries mentioned by him? Either he is not aware of the
strength of the revolutionary forces in many countries or he is cutting down
the subjective forces in many countries to suit his argument.
In this article, one
of the points on which the author has
gone nearer to objective reality is the present condition of the CPM-CPI forces
in the country. He has correctly analyzed that both CPM and CPI “are
increasingly incapable of carrying out mass mobilizations among the poorest and
most deprived, either to defend them or to help fulfill their basic needs and
aspirations”. According to him, if Europe’s former mass communist parties went
from Stalinism to Euro-communism to ultimate submission to their Euro-socialist
competitors, here CPM and CPI have become the main social democratic forces in
Indian politics. “Formal commitment to a communist future leaves no imprint on
these parties’ programmes or behavior”. According to him, during the last four
decades the transformation of these parties to social democratic positions has
completed. Again, following the Chinese policy of inviting FDI to promote
industrialization, the CPM’s state leaderships took advantage of the 1991
reforms to push the party towards an increasingly neoliberal line. This was the
strategy that led to the Singur and Nandigram episodes of state sponsored
violence, which backfired dramatically in political-moral as well as electoral
terms. “It has no other vision except gaining its lost positions in its
strongholds. If the chance to join a central coalition government arises, CPM
will this time most likely take it”. Almost a very objective evaluation.
Another aspect which the author has gone nearer to truth is the
state’s over reaction to the Maoist violence by dubbing it as the ‘enemy number
one’. “The government’s stance is all the more dangerous because it receives
legitimation from a whole array of intellectuals , academics and media figures”.
The author correctly points out that “the forces of Hindutva have carried out
violence and brutality on a scale that dwarfs anything the armed Maoism has
done”. The author also correctly points out that the state’s efforts to
‘eliminate Naxalism’ are a cover for de-legitimizing all forms of radical left
politics”.
But while explaining the spread and strength of the Maoists
the author is only repeating the intelligence reports the government issues at
frequent intervals. He is repeating the fable about the ‘red corridor’ also
even after the relations between the Maoists in India and Nepal have strained
to a point of no return. At the same time he has explained why the Maoist
politics is going to face a setback and the limitations of its militarized
strategy. But while dealing with the ‘Naxalite’ forces, or the forces who
uphold the revolutionary heritage of Naxalbari Uprising, except Maoists the
author sees only the CPI(ML) Liberation, which according to him is ‘itself
stagnating’. He refuses to see or is unaware of those forces who have rejected
the sectarian approach of ‘Chinese path is our path’, and have taken up the
development of the ideological-political line based on a concrete analysis of
the present international and national situation and is seriously pursuing the
party reorganization at all India level. We shall return to this point later.
In the concluding part, while discussing about the radical
perspective before us, the author has pointed out the justification given by
many for continuing to support the CPM-CPI forces that they are preventing a
further rightward drift to communalist, anti-democratic forces. Along with
this, the New Economic Policy(NEP) ,
contrary to the Leninist position that it was only a temporary retreat which
should be thrown out as soon as the initial crisis faced by the new born Soviet
state is over, is theorized and a flawed perspective that the transition to
socialism will involve ‘some kind of interrugnam of social democracy or its
equivalent in developing countries’ is propagated justifying the formation of
‘third front ‘ and pursuing ‘imperialist globalization with a human face’. The
author calls for ‘a much more radical and offensive perspective, guided by
explicitly anti-capitalist politics’. He has given some examples for these
radical ruptures which show that his theoretical position, do not go beyond his
age-old critique of Stalinist, Stalinized
approaches he has repeated ad nauseam
all along this article. As a result, in spite of a fairly good critique of the
right opportunist politics of CPM-CPI like forces and of the Maoists and about
the political situation in the country, he has not contributed anything on the
basic causes for the disintegration and degeneration of the Communist offensive
except repeating Stalinism as the
only reason for it. That is, his theoretical positions have not gone beyond the
realm of Trotskyist critique of Stalinism,
made during the pre-Second World War years.
Trotskyism Revisited.
According to the author, “In South Asia, the ‘socialism in
one country’ perspective of both Stalinism and Maoism was and is a disaster”.
For him the main crime of the ‘Stalinized mainstream left parties’ is that they
‘have been consistently unprepared to offer a public repudiation of Stalinism’.
Though Stalinized, they inspired
involvement in mass struggles in the past, “there is no question of CPM somehow
rejuvenating itself to become a much more radical anti-Stalinist force”. In this manner he is repeating his attack on Stalinism
as if it was and is the only reason for the severe set backs suffered by the
international communist movement (ICM) as a whole. Then, naturally one will be
compelled to ask the question: if Stalinism
is only responsible for the set backs suffered by, and degeneration of the
communist movement, why the Trotskyist forces including himself summarily
failed to rejuvenate the movement, in spite of their attacks on Stalinism for the last so many decades?
The problem with Trotsky was that, in spite of the
glorification by his followers, in theory and practice he was metaphysical in
outlook. Take the case of his attack on the ‘socialism in one country’ concept
itself. For Trotsky, it was bound to fail and one should work for ‘permanent
revolution’, for world revolution, starting from the capitalist-imperialist
countries. So, he was against the Bret-Listovik Treaty to help the survival of
the Bolshevik revolution. He wanted the Red Army’s advance to Western Europe to
promote world revolution, a suicidal step in the then European situation.
Lenin, on the contrary, called for consolidating victory in Soviet Union and
advancing towards building it as the base area of world revolution. Putting
dialectical materialism in practice, Lenin linked building socialism in Soviet
Union with the task of fulfilling international tasks. For him there was no Chinese wall between national tasks and
international responsibilities, of course always taking the latter as the principal
task. Trotsky rejected this dialectical approach and stood against the building
of socialism in SU, turning his contradiction with the CPSU leadership in to
antagonistic one. As Mao evaluated in the Critique
of Soviet Economics’, since Stalin was also metaphysical to a great extent
and reversed the relation between national tasks and international ones the
other way round, giving priority to the former, he could not tolerate the
criticism of Trotskyists and saw it antagonistically. The problem with Achin is
that he takes Trotskyism as a gospel. As the Trotskyists are far away from revolutionary practice they
still fail to see the flaws in their approach. They refuse to see the failure
of Trotskyism everywhere in practice, in spite their voluminous writings.
Another example of the metaphysical approach of Trotsky was
that unlike Lenin who through his
Colonial Thesis analyzed the two streams of World Proletarian Socialist
Revolution, the socialist revolution in the capitalist-imperialist countries and
the People’s Democratic Revolution (PDR) in the colonial, semi-colonial,
dependent countries under the domination of imperialism, and put forward the
strategic approach to be followed in both under the leadership of the
proletariat, he failed to distinguish the two and applied same strategic and
tactical approach to both these streams of revolution. His mechanical
understanding was criticized by Mao and the Marxist-Leninist forces in the
course of the debate on the colonial question in the Comintern.
The great contribution of Lenin to the treasure house of
Marxism is that when the Second
International was facing liquidation under the influence of
Kautsky-Bernstein like forces who put forward an erroneous evaluation of
imperialism at a time when capitalism had transformed to the stage of monopoly
capitalism, that is imperialism, he through his epochal work: Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism
developed Marxist theory according to the concrete conditions of
imperialist era. But in carrying forward this Leninist tradition there were
weaknesses in the post-Lenin decades. But Trotsky could not contribute anything
in the debate taking place on the perennial crises confronting the imperialist
system. Similarly, except for repeating his condemnation of the so-called concept of ‘socialism in one
country’, on the question of developing an alternative to the
capitalist-imperialist concept of ‘development’, or on the question of
transcending bourgeois democracy and developing proletarian democratic concepts
also there were no contributions from Trotsky. In short, Trotsky’s criticism
was limited to critique of forms only, they did not go to developing the
content of the two streams of revolution, the relation between national and
international tasks, to developing an alternative development perspective
against the imperialist concept of development, and to developing democratic
concepts in continuation to the contributions of Marx and Lenin. So, when the
Comintern was dissolved in 1943, the Troskyists had lauded it, but could not
explain why their Fourth International
could not advance an inch forward in developing the ideological line of ICM.
They rejoiced at all weaknesses getting manifested in Soviet Union under Stalin,
but could never provide a positive Marxist critique of it.
After the Second World War, when under the leadership of US
imperialism the colonial forms of plunder was transformed to neo colonial
forms, in line with, and developing the practice the US had developed in the
Latin American countries for almost a century and under it the territorial domination
was replaced, by and large, with control through imperialist capital, market
control and technology, developing IMF-World Bank like financial institutions,
United Nations like political instruments, numerous military alliances like
NATO and transforming the cartels to MNCs controlling international production
and markets, the followers of Trotsky could not provide any insight in to them.
If the socialist countries led by Soviet Union and the powerful communist
parties and the national liberation movements (all led by the Stalinists, according to Achin) almost
failed to evaluate these transformations taking place at international level
and started collaborating with many of these imperialist initiatives, leading
to later erroneous theoretical evaluations like ‘peaceful competition and
peaceful co-existence with imperialism and peaceful transformation to
socialism’, except parroting the old gospels of Trotsky, his disciples had
nothing to offer in theory or practice to overcome these errors. As a result in
countries like Sri Lanka where they had considerable influence once, all of
them degenerated or disintegrated fast. And in countries like Pakistan where
they have some strength they are incapable of putting forward a revolutionary
line before the people.
It is this theoretical bankruptcy which is repeated by Achin
in this article by defining India as a
sub-imperialist country. His friends in Pakistan call that country as a
capitalist one ready for socialist revolution in spite of the virtual control
of the US led imperialist forces in every field. Internationally they minimize
the importance of imperialist domination in new forms under neo-colonization.
For them, whether in US like countries, or in India,
Pakistan like countries, the stage of revolution is socialist. They refuse to
see the importance of overthrowing the imperialist domination and the rule of the
compradors, agents, lackeys or dependents or junior partners or whatever one
may call the ruling classes in these countries, uniting all those who can be
united, in countries like India, in order to reach the stage of socialist
revolution.
As a result, similar
to what the ruling class and the
corporate media do to distort the political forces confronting the ruling
reactionary system, by reducing the left forces to CPI-CPM like ‘mainstream’
parties on the one hand or to Maoists or utmost to Liberation like forces who
still stick to semi-colonial, semi-feudal, people’s war’ approach on the other,
Trotskyist writers also follow the very
same reductionist approach to obliterate all other ideological-political
strands. It is in this context the ideological struggle launched by the CPI(ML)
in the pages of its theoretical journal The
Marxist-Leninist becomes all the more important. In order to intensify this
debate it has published a paper on the ideological challenges confronting the
ICM in its July-September,2011, issue which is available in its website(www.
cpiml.in) also. It is a fact that the Marxist-Leninists or Maoists or
Trotskyists, or any other stream of left forces are concerned, in spite of the
ever-intensifying crisis faced by the imperialist system, making the objective
conditions of revolution more and more favorable day by day, even in the
countries Achin has mentioned or anywhere else in the world, the subjective
forces of revolution, the communist parties capable of leading the revolution
to victory, are not existing presently. Though unlike in the past one or two
decades in almost all countries the Marxist-Leninist forces have emerged or
strengthened, still their strength is not sufficient to influence the mass
upsurges taking place and to overthrow the ruling forces, achieving a
revolutionary breakthrough. Similarly, even after the socialist experience
starting with Paris Commune, almost one and half century of revolutionary
experience, even when the internationalization of production has reached
unprecedented levels opening the possibility of the victory of world proletarian
socialist revolution more than ever, many of the forces who are sitting on
judgement on others are not daring to take up a comprehensive evaluation of the
sources of the shortcomings of the movement, and ways to overcome them. This is
a serious lacunae, the revolutionary movement has to overcome. It is with this
understanding the CPI(ML) has called for the intensification of the ideological debate on
the problems confronting the ICM.
On Achin’s Proposals to Overcome the Setbacks.
Before concluding it will be better to mention
the three differences, which Achin has mentioned, visible in West Bengal and Kerala, according
to him, after the CPM led rule there.
Firstly, in Kerala, though the ‘ten cents of land’ was given to all households
in 1970s beside distribution of a part of the government and surplus land
beyond land ceiling, no land reforms based on ‘land to the tiller’ was
implemented there also. Besides, in spite of passing of the Adivasi Land
Protection Act to give back land taken away from the them, it is not
implemented in Kerala also. So struggle for land is still one of the main tasks
in front of the revolutionary forces there. Secondly, it seems that Achin has a
misunderstanding about the Panchayat system and the much lauded ‘people’s
planning’ in Kerala. As Kerala has reduced to one of the best show-cases of
neo-colonial plunder, the ‘efficient’ panchayat system and ‘people’s planning are utilized to
integrate the society from the lowest level with micro-financing, self-help
groups etc. Panchayats are reduced to neo-colonial institutions taking
corruption to lower most levels, blocking any revolutionary change. Thirdly, in
spite of the far superior levels of health and education in Kerala, all these
are now almost totally commercialized and the inequality in all fields in the
society is intensifying at an alarming rate. The alienation created by the
present ‘development model’ and the domination of caste and religious influence
in new forms have led to de-humanizing the social values which had strengthened
under the renaissance movement followed by the early phase of the communist
movement. That Kerala’s per capita liquor consumption is the highest in the
country and sex tourism has reached an extreme level are not signs of social progress, but of
degeneration. As much of the published material by government, NGOs etc are
giving an erroneous macro and micro analysis about the situation in the state, one should not be misled by them. What is
happening in Kerala and Bengal like
areas after decades of CPM led rule also is a factor to be taken in to
consideration and analyzed along with what happened in the erstwhile socialist
countries after capitalist influence started coming to dominance there, when
the Marxist-Leninists are taking up the debate on the ideological challenges confronting the ICM.
