As an ex-Communist, any critique I make of the Left runs the risk of being dismissed as the rant of a renegade. However, today the number of ex-Communists in the world probably exceeds that of the remaining faithful, which is why Communist parties would do well to analyse why so many have deserted their ranks. My personal tryst with the organised Left ended three decades ago before the collapse of the Berlin Wall signalled the end of the Marxist dream. In these decades, Communist parties have shrunk significantly both in size and influence. It hardly needs reminding that officially, Communist parties are in power only in China, Vietnam, North Korea and Cuba.
As for China, the ruling party is Communist only in name; its market economy bears no resemblance to socialism while, instead of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat envisioned by Marx and Lenin, what we have in Beijing is dictatorship of a party flaunting Marxist homilies without implementing them in practice. Vietnam’s story is quite similar. Although the perverse form of dynastic dictatorship in Pyongyang may hold out for some more years, the writing is on the wall there too. The regime in Cuba is tottering and may be forced to yield power once the ailing revolutionary icon, Fidel Castro, leaves the scene. China is on the way to replace the erstwhile Soviet Union as a countervailing force against US hegemony in a unipolar world, but it does not represent the kind of ideological challenge to market capitalism and multi-party democracy the former USSR did.
With the Left losing power after 34 long years in West Bengal and also Kerala (although the latter may be temporary), democratically elected Communist regimes are perilously close to terminal decline. India and Nepal were the two countries where Communist influence thrived at a time when it was on the wane throughout Europe and getting transformed in Asia. The loss of power in West Bengal must hit the Indian Communist movement very hard for two reasons: It has devastated the illusion of permanence the CPI(M) nursed in what was the designated laboratory of socialism in India. Second, with the organised Communist parties’ rout there is a clear and present danger that its infantile variant, namely Maoists, may well emerge as the principal moral force of the Left in India. That the Government in New Delhi would love that to happen is evident from its wooing of convicted terrorist ideologue Binayak Sen.
Reasons for the CPI(M)’s pre-scripted collapse in West Bengal have been doled out by all and sundry in recent weeks. Arrogance of power, detachment from the people, domination of the party by high-handed apparatchiks, failure to generate economic growth, cultural intolerance and other such factors have rightly been suggested for the Left’s near-decimation. The question that should, however, really engage us is whether the organised Communist parties can rise from the ashes in the foreseeable future.
It is my assessment that the era of Leninist parties is well and truly over. By their very organisational structure, Communist parties can never internalise the ethos of countries in which they operate. The CPSU strenuously attempted to engineer the evolution of the ‘Socialist Man’ in Russia and its satellites during its 70-year stranglehold, but failed abysmally. Religion, which Stalin viciously sought to stamp out, is back with a bang in the former Socialist Bloc, so much so that Islamic extremism now poses a serious danger to the stability of several Central Asian republics. Communism and the highly regimented culture that it ushered was always an imposition from above, representing a hybrid organism that took roots nowhere.
Take the neighbourhood itself for example. Two Communist parties, Khalq and Parcham, led an uprising against the feudal monarchy of Zahir Shah. Despite financial and military backing of Brezhnev-era USSR, indigenous Communists were swept aside by the rising tide of Taliban and today it is impossible to find any trace of the Communist movement there. Similarly, the Trotskyite Lanka Sama Samaj Party in Sri Lanka, once a major electoral force, has been obliterated from the island. Nepali Maoists are fighting a rearguard battle to stay relevant, while the ruling Communist Party is a pale pink shadow of the past.
The problem with the culture of Communist parties is the inherent belief in their own infallibility, resulting in a superiority complex being drilled into the psyche of the cadre. This follows from the Leninist dictum of the Party being the vanguard of the proletariat and hence bestowed with moral supremacy over ‘the people’, whom it is ordained to deliver from capitalist tyranny. This foundational principle militates against a democratic temperament: The ‘ignorant’ masses need to be led by their superiors who are steeped in doctrinaire idealism and therefore know what is good for the people at all times. This attitude permeates even Left-led trade unions in India. With revolutionary zeal and doctrine of class struggle deeply embedded in the mindset of Communist leaders in workers’ organisations, political militancy rather than economic betterment becomes the primary goal. Consequently, in recent decades, less-militant trade union organisations such as BMS and INTUC have stolen a march over CPI-backed AITUC or CPI(M)-sponsored CITU.
It is ironic that in the raging agitation over land acquisitions, the Left is nowhere to be seen. No Communist leader made even a token appearance in the disaffected Greater Noida region. Probably because the CPI and CPI(M) are allies of Mr Naveen Patnaik’s BJD in Odisha, they have been completely silent on the Posco and Vedanta issues. In fact, sundry NGOs and environmentalists, apart from freelance farmer associations (some with Maoist leanings) have been much more active than mainstream Communist parties. The Left, which was in the forefront of kisan agitations between the 1940s and 1970s, has declined precipitously in the Indian countryside, even in States like West Bengal and Kerala where they once helped tillers get security of tenure. Surprisingly, no visible attempt is being made to resurrect Left-leaning Kisan Sabhas that once set the agenda for agrarian struggles.
Ironically, the organised Left’s marginalisation has happened at a time when political parties are aggressively championing the cause of the downtrodden. While Ms Sonia Gandhi’s NGO-driven agenda has given welfarism a cutting edge in official policy, the BJP’s accent on caring for the “last man in the queue”, in accordance with Deendayal Upadhyay’s notion of Antyodaya, has helped the party reach out to the poorest of the poor. In other words, variants of egalitarianism, an ideal championed most vocally by the Left so far, has got internalised in the programmes of ‘bourgeois’ parties which have outflanked the Communists at their own game.
The Left may still be able to revive its ideological influence if not electoral clout provided it reinvents to conform to Indian realities, factoring in the gigantic changes the country’s economic and social fabric has undergone since independence. But in the stultified study chambers of old-fashioned Marxism-Leninism — in which the Indian Left operates, nursing the belief that it invariably stumbles from correctness to correctness — winds of change are rarely allowed entry.ource: The Pioneer
As for China, the ruling party is Communist only in name; its market economy bears no resemblance to socialism while, instead of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat envisioned by Marx and Lenin, what we have in Beijing is dictatorship of a party flaunting Marxist homilies without implementing them in practice. Vietnam’s story is quite similar. Although the perverse form of dynastic dictatorship in Pyongyang may hold out for some more years, the writing is on the wall there too. The regime in Cuba is tottering and may be forced to yield power once the ailing revolutionary icon, Fidel Castro, leaves the scene. China is on the way to replace the erstwhile Soviet Union as a countervailing force against US hegemony in a unipolar world, but it does not represent the kind of ideological challenge to market capitalism and multi-party democracy the former USSR did.
With the Left losing power after 34 long years in West Bengal and also Kerala (although the latter may be temporary), democratically elected Communist regimes are perilously close to terminal decline. India and Nepal were the two countries where Communist influence thrived at a time when it was on the wane throughout Europe and getting transformed in Asia. The loss of power in West Bengal must hit the Indian Communist movement very hard for two reasons: It has devastated the illusion of permanence the CPI(M) nursed in what was the designated laboratory of socialism in India. Second, with the organised Communist parties’ rout there is a clear and present danger that its infantile variant, namely Maoists, may well emerge as the principal moral force of the Left in India. That the Government in New Delhi would love that to happen is evident from its wooing of convicted terrorist ideologue Binayak Sen.
Reasons for the CPI(M)’s pre-scripted collapse in West Bengal have been doled out by all and sundry in recent weeks. Arrogance of power, detachment from the people, domination of the party by high-handed apparatchiks, failure to generate economic growth, cultural intolerance and other such factors have rightly been suggested for the Left’s near-decimation. The question that should, however, really engage us is whether the organised Communist parties can rise from the ashes in the foreseeable future.
It is my assessment that the era of Leninist parties is well and truly over. By their very organisational structure, Communist parties can never internalise the ethos of countries in which they operate. The CPSU strenuously attempted to engineer the evolution of the ‘Socialist Man’ in Russia and its satellites during its 70-year stranglehold, but failed abysmally. Religion, which Stalin viciously sought to stamp out, is back with a bang in the former Socialist Bloc, so much so that Islamic extremism now poses a serious danger to the stability of several Central Asian republics. Communism and the highly regimented culture that it ushered was always an imposition from above, representing a hybrid organism that took roots nowhere.
Take the neighbourhood itself for example. Two Communist parties, Khalq and Parcham, led an uprising against the feudal monarchy of Zahir Shah. Despite financial and military backing of Brezhnev-era USSR, indigenous Communists were swept aside by the rising tide of Taliban and today it is impossible to find any trace of the Communist movement there. Similarly, the Trotskyite Lanka Sama Samaj Party in Sri Lanka, once a major electoral force, has been obliterated from the island. Nepali Maoists are fighting a rearguard battle to stay relevant, while the ruling Communist Party is a pale pink shadow of the past.
The problem with the culture of Communist parties is the inherent belief in their own infallibility, resulting in a superiority complex being drilled into the psyche of the cadre. This follows from the Leninist dictum of the Party being the vanguard of the proletariat and hence bestowed with moral supremacy over ‘the people’, whom it is ordained to deliver from capitalist tyranny. This foundational principle militates against a democratic temperament: The ‘ignorant’ masses need to be led by their superiors who are steeped in doctrinaire idealism and therefore know what is good for the people at all times. This attitude permeates even Left-led trade unions in India. With revolutionary zeal and doctrine of class struggle deeply embedded in the mindset of Communist leaders in workers’ organisations, political militancy rather than economic betterment becomes the primary goal. Consequently, in recent decades, less-militant trade union organisations such as BMS and INTUC have stolen a march over CPI-backed AITUC or CPI(M)-sponsored CITU.
It is ironic that in the raging agitation over land acquisitions, the Left is nowhere to be seen. No Communist leader made even a token appearance in the disaffected Greater Noida region. Probably because the CPI and CPI(M) are allies of Mr Naveen Patnaik’s BJD in Odisha, they have been completely silent on the Posco and Vedanta issues. In fact, sundry NGOs and environmentalists, apart from freelance farmer associations (some with Maoist leanings) have been much more active than mainstream Communist parties. The Left, which was in the forefront of kisan agitations between the 1940s and 1970s, has declined precipitously in the Indian countryside, even in States like West Bengal and Kerala where they once helped tillers get security of tenure. Surprisingly, no visible attempt is being made to resurrect Left-leaning Kisan Sabhas that once set the agenda for agrarian struggles.
Ironically, the organised Left’s marginalisation has happened at a time when political parties are aggressively championing the cause of the downtrodden. While Ms Sonia Gandhi’s NGO-driven agenda has given welfarism a cutting edge in official policy, the BJP’s accent on caring for the “last man in the queue”, in accordance with Deendayal Upadhyay’s notion of Antyodaya, has helped the party reach out to the poorest of the poor. In other words, variants of egalitarianism, an ideal championed most vocally by the Left so far, has got internalised in the programmes of ‘bourgeois’ parties which have outflanked the Communists at their own game.
The Left may still be able to revive its ideological influence if not electoral clout provided it reinvents to conform to Indian realities, factoring in the gigantic changes the country’s economic and social fabric has undergone since independence. But in the stultified study chambers of old-fashioned Marxism-Leninism — in which the Indian Left operates, nursing the belief that it invariably stumbles from correctness to correctness — winds of change are rarely allowed entry.ource: The Pioneer
