English

[Summary of talks with several Party committees. From Liberation, November 1986.]

1. On Intensifying the Political and Ideological Education of the Party Rank and File

There is a danger of the school system degenerating into formalism. Statistics of the number of classes and lessons are good and fine, but that’s not the main thing. Whether or not the ideological and political level is raised — this is the main question. In any campaign, formalism creeps in and there is the need to be on your guard.

Through these classes we aim at developing a Marxist-Leninist understanding to study and analyse various social phenomena; how classes behave, how class interests operate and so on.

For example, in one area, peasants were under the CPI(M)’s influence. Our comrades tried to win them over through abstract propaganda about CPI(M)’s revisionism, parliamentarism etc., but failed. People at large act from their class interests and when this or that party appears to be reflecting their interests, they follow them. Nobody is born a CPI(M), a Congress or a DMK person. Now, as the CPI(M) in that area, in the long process of its stint with power, started compromising with the landlords and moving closer to rich peasants, the contradiction intensified within its erstwhile social base. Our comrades who were already having their independent organisation and movement grasped this contradiction, took up the issues and slogans affecting broad peasant masses and strove to develop joint activities with the lower-ranking CPI(M) cadres and masses under their influence. This time they succeeded. Gradually people shifted their allegiance and came over to us.

Now you will often find many petty-bourgeois intellectuals, a good number of them quite honest and militant, attracted more towards ‘left-wing’ organisations like CRC, PWG etc. It is so because the petty-bourgeoisie by its class position is more inclined to anarcho-syndicalist ideas. The working class and the peasantry are, by their very nature, not averse to politics, thanks to their close integration with reality. Hence, you will not find any lasting influence or mass base of such groups or for that matter of grassrooters among working class and broad peasant masses. You cannot simply win over these intellectuals from the fold of such groups through sheer polemics. Only when more and more independent political initiatives and powerful mass movements develop will these intellectuals change sides.

Many people attribute the AIADMK’s influence in Tamil Nadu to MGR’s charisma. A deeper analysis will reveal that if a good majority of poor and middle classes support this party, they do feel that some of their interests are fulfilled by it, or at least they have that expectation. On the other hand, AIADMK’s basic class position always clashes with its efforts to maintain and develop a broader social base.

We must understand these realities and develop our slogans, tactics and movement accordingly. This is the way we should move in practical politics so as to intensify the internal contradiction between the social base of these parties and their basic class position.

If you act only from your heart, your emotions, you will only land up in condemning these parties. And as emotions do not last long, do not get transformed into material force, ultimately the whole thing will degenerate into self-condemnation. You will have to act from your mind too and evolve concrete policies and tactics, slogans and styles, so as to expose these parties in concrete terms and disintegrate them by helping the masses learn from their experiences and ultimately win them over.

The majority of people in our movement act from their hearts and not from their minds. As a result, in terms of revolutionary phrases they are the first, but in terms of mass following they are the last. The masses continue to remain under the influence of reactionaries, social democrats and regional chauvinists. What is more serious, some people are least bothered about this, they are not ready to change any of their slogans, no matter whether the masses follow them or not! These people seem to believe that revolutions are made by words and not by the masses. This is what is called left phrase-mongering.

The study of Marxist classics will help you grasp the objective laws governing the society, the movement of classes and their struggle.

It will help you in perfecting your slogans, policies and tactics starting from realities and not from subjective wishes.

2. On Firmly Establishing the System of Democratic Centralism

Democracy within the Communist Party is somewhat different from what is commonly understood by this term. It is democracy under centralised guidance. The Party Central Committee decides when and on what questions debates and discussions should be allowed. Otherwise, the Party will degenerate into a debating society. The CRC group is an extreme example of ultra-democracy. They carried on their so-called two-line struggle endlessly, claiming themselves to be true followers of the Cultural Revolution and asking everyone to debate and debate. What’s the outcome? They have disintegrated into a number of factions. Some of them are now debating whether Marxism is correct or not, others say that the Leninist concept of ‘democratic centralism’ is wrong. Many people feel that CRC is a very democratic organisation. There is a flaw in this argument. Ultra-democracy is something which the petty-bourgeois intellectuals may prefer but then you cannot have an organisation. There cannot be an organisation without centralism. In the early ’70s, a friend of mine told me that this concept of ‘individual subordinating to the organisation’ and ‘minority submitting to majority’ was very humiliating and he claimed that the Cultural Revolution had abolished this by declaring that ‘truth often rests in the minority’. I told him that you cannot have an organisation then.

This man who subsequently deserted the Party, now runs an ‘Internationalist’ centre. But alas, he is alone in his mission!

The Party line is decided in the Party Congresses. Prior to that, debates and discussions are conducted on all aspects of the Party line. Now once things are decided in a Party Congress, the whole Party must implement those decisions. Again there will be a Congress, there will be debates. In the meantime too, on questions of new policies and tactics, and on questions which are treated as experimental ones, debates and discussions are always conducted, and opinions gathered. Decisions are taken on majority-minority basis and the minority is allowed to keep their views reserved.

Now some people say, your Party is not democratic enough and that is why you have not split. Your consistent unity shows that you are not democratic. The CRC, the PCC and others are always splitting because they are democratic. Some others say, you are united because you keep your ranks in the dark, you don’t educate them politically, you don’t allow them to read the literature of others or to come in contact with others; and your leadership is based on an unprincipled unity between two, or perhaps three, factions who otherwise hold extremely divergent and opposite positions.

You know this is all rubbish. Actually, these people indulge in such fantasies only to justify their own anarchism, their own failure to build a party based on democratic centralism. All these groups dread centralism and use the Cultural Revolution and Mao as a smokescreen for their own anarchism.

Some people claim that SN’s basic contribution was upholding democratic centralism against CM’s bureaucratic authoritarianism. If that were so, why did he miserably fail to develop a united party? Why did his PCC split whenever any issue came up for debate? And how is it that those who stayed with CM ultimately succeeded in developing a united party? Actually, what SN fought for was ultra-democracy and went on to hit at the basic tenet of centralism, and that too in a period of extreme repression. CM had quite rightly emphasised that democracy was not a plaything for a Party engaged in life-and-death struggle. He had correctly laid stress on centralism in periods of white terror. Basically speaking, he was correct. Now it’s true that certain deviations had come up with centralism being over-emphasised. But in spite of this, genuine and serious revolutionaries did remain with CM and gradually overcame the deviations and under a different set of conditions, democracy was brought back to full play. But the singular failure of SN clearly demonstrates that he was fundamentally wrong and that his struggle was not for democracy but against centralism.

We have been successful in establishing democratic centralism in the main. Still some wrong tendencies do exist in our organisation. In the case of mass organisations we do stand for their independent role and functioning, and as regards cultural organisations we do support their autonomy. But some Party persons in these organisations misinterpret this independence and autonomy. Well, you can say they opt for ‘separatism’. Independence and autonomy are weapons for uniting with larger and larger number of people, for developing creativity and skill in your work. You can term this independence as ‘relative independence’. But ‘separatism’ is different: it demands the right to violate the Party line, the Party’s guidance and Party discipline.

Nowadays many people violate Party decisions, they prefer to be called ‘dissidents’. They are critical of every step, of every idea which comes from the Party leadership under the pretext that they were not consulted. I know some members who want all the rights of a Party member but are not ready to shoulder any responsibility given to them by the organisation. If anything goes against their will, they will simply not obey it.

The primary requirement of membership is that you must fulfil the responsibility entrusted upon you by the organisation. While deciding upon this responsibility you must be consulted and your assent obtained, but once decided you must carry it out with all sincerity. If this minimum Party sense is not there you are not eligible for membership and therefore for the rights of a Party member.

These are a few manifestations of ultra-democracy. You should not brand each and every problem as the manifestation of ultra-democracy. Some reports say that not taking up hard work is ultra-democracy. When we began our struggle against liquidationism, I remember one report finding liquidationism in coming late to meetings or in somebody falling asleep during some serious talks. I am afraid this may not be correct. If you brand everything as ultra-democracy you may well miss the real target.

However, centralism is based on democracy. If discussions and debates are disallowed in the Party, if a regular system for gathering various opinions and consulting various persons is not there, if undue interference goes on in every tid-bit affair of mass organisations, then centralism will turn into bureaucracy.

Again, if you do not have correct policies, if there is no timely guidance, if there are no rules, no proper divisions of work, then also centralism and discipline cannot be established.

And last but not the least, enforcement of centralism and discipline is closely related to the stature of the Party leadership in the eyes of the ranks. If there is widespread resentment below, if confusion and dissent abound, then the root cause must be sought in the leadership. If leaders do not have a good grasp of the situation and of Marxism-Leninism, if their lifestyle and their attitudes smack of decadent bourgeois culture, if they are not modest, sober and hardworking, if they do not enjoy spontaneous love and respect from the ranks, their simply holding a high post in the Party hierarchy will not be of any use. Only when the core of leadership is mature and dedicated and therefore enjoys high prestige, is it possible to enforce organisational discipline. Otherwise, all such attempts will only be counterproductive. All dissidence, therefore, should not be considered anti-Party and everywhere we should not try to solve the problem by using the stick of discipline and sharp criticism. I do think that at some places some leaders and certain Party committees have considerably lost their prestige. And this is the primary problem to which we must address ourselves during this consolidation campaign. This is not to weaken the centralism of the Party but to really strengthen it. I emphasise centralism, because many new comrades don’t understand its necessity and more so, because all around you anarchist groups are bent upon weakening the centralism which the Party has built up through hard efforts all these years. Moreover, for an underground Party which is already operating under conditions of extreme repression in certain areas, and the situation in other areas may anytime take such a turn, centralism is absolutely important.

3. On Consolidating the Lower-level Party Organisations

Truly speaking, lower-level Party organisations are all in a shambles. Well, we do have a Central Committee and a number of Central Departments. State Committees, too, function more or less regularly and on a stable basis, but when it comes to committees at regional or still lower levels and to units and cells, you won’t find any proper Party system with any degree of regularity and stability. This situation is also responsible for much of the confusion and anarchism below and serves as a veritable breeding ground for the bureaucratic attitude of leaders, for the concentration of power in a few hands and decision-making by a few brains.

To alter this situation, the CC has directly addressed itself to the RCs and asked them to submit their periodic progress reports straight to the CC. In the first phase of consolidation, Party cells, units and committees were formed everywhere, but by now many of them have again become defunct and comrades realise that this is a formal way of doing the things. Learning from experience, comrades are changing their methods. At many places they are combining the process of forming study groups with that of forming cells and units. They are putting emphasis on developing first the organisers and nucleus elements around whom these lower-level Party organisations will be formed.

The system of developing Party committees on a factory, institution, office and university basis has not made much headway, neither have the Party cores in mass organisations been stabilised. Still, the exclusive system of having area-based Party committees is still in vogue. Leading cadres have not paid much attention to this aspect of party building and the old pattern continues. This is so because many people are yet to appreciate the full significance of the radical changes that have taken place in our Party’s activities and the diversification of its work in various fields. The old Party pattern is no longer capable of keeping command over the entire work: either the Party remains cut off from the whole stream of work, or a few leaders rush everywhere issuing commands and making undue interference. Much of the work is now in the legal sphere and many new faces are getting attracted towards the Party. The old pattern of Party organisation cannot cope with all these new developments. The new pattern must have a completely underground and illegal nucleus at the core surrounded by a vast network of Party units, cells and groups, many of them operating in semi-legal and some even in legal conditions. Strengthening the lower-level Party organisations does not just mean forming many more committees, units and cells; rather the idea is to make these bodies active and effective in their varied fields and forms of operation. This aspect has been totally neglected so far.

4. On Concentrating Work in Particular Areas

Here the question is of not merely concentrating work within specified geographical boundary, rather it symbolises a particular style of work, ‘conscious area of work’, if you will. Most of the reports indicate a spontaneous style of work, running behind the events. Somewhere jewels are stolen from some temple, or an issue has come up concerning Cauvery waters, and you rush to develop movements. Here you are running after events, and activists developed on the basis of this style of work will be seasonal activists of a partial nature. In the wake of some major events they will become active. At other times they will lie dormant.

‘Concentrated areas’ should be developed as models of a particular style of work where you have conscious plan and programme, a longterm perspective, policies and tactics, a style of work where you have activists undertaking day-to-day mass work. If you have this infrastructure, you can take timely initiatives to meet any swift turn of events.
In many reports I find no mention of any policies and plans of work. If you had some policies, firstly, what experiences have you gathered through their implementation? And secondly, does this experience demand any change in policies? On these questions, many reports prefer to remain silent, and this is the greatest drawback in our style of work. At many places, either there have been no policies and plans, or they have remained only on paper. Working blindly means working on the basis of wrong policies. If you have no correct and conscious policy, you have wrong policies, spontaneous policies, and you are not alive to the dangers inherent in following such a course. Consolidation of a Party committee always revolves around the policies it makes and implements and a constant review of these policies. Leaders again have not paid sufficient attention to this aspect. Their job is to concentrate on particular areas or fields of work, develop policies, analyse typical cases, and guide the whole organisation in the light of these experiences.

To add a conscious element to the spontaneous struggle of the people — it’s for this purpose that a Communist Party is there, otherwise it loses its raison d’être.

5. On Strengthening Class and Sectional Organisations

It is through these organisations that the Party maintains closest living links with the masses. The task of these organisations is to take up the most primary demands of the masses, daily expanding their links with the latter.

We have observed that in their bid to develop themselves as state-level or all-India bodies, these organisations have lost much of their dynamism and their links with the masses at the grassroots have become rather loose. At many places they have just been made dummies of the mass political organisation, thanks to our over-enthusiastic efforts to instantly transform partial struggles into political ones. Maintaining the correct interrelation between the class and sectional organisations, on the one hand, and the mass political organisation, on the other, is crucial to the development of both. The two should actively help each other, but one should not try to play the other’s role. Whereas the mass political organisation is to be strengthened first at the national and then at the state level, class and sectional organisations must be strengthened first and foremost at the local and regional levels and then at the state or national level.

[Excerpts from the concluding speech at the Central Party School in 1984-85. From Liberation, March 1986.]

The Central Party School marks a further advancement, after the Rectification Movement, in the same direction. At that time we were concerned with getting various mistakes and deviations rectified; in the process many debates ensued and important developments in the Party line took place; and all these were concluded at a certain stage through Debates on Party Line. Now our endeavour is to raise the debate among the communist revolutionaries (CRs) to a new plane — to a thorough and open-minded study of the newly-emergent questions, to a lively debate on these questions. And this is why the questions set to you were framed in a rather provocative manner — in such a way as to force you to think anew. Of course, even after conducting a thorough research, a fresh probe into the questions, you might well arrive at the same old formulations, but it won’t do to start from the premise that we must refute the new formulations because these are ‘attacks’ on our Party line. In fact, without discarding such a wrong approach it is not possible to achieve any new theoretical breakthrough. So the new formulations given to you were presented as serious and genuine opinions forcing you to think anew. And, as some of the papers submitted by you amply demonstrate, our attempt to provoke you has borne fruit: some new ideas and concepts have emerged, though not yet in a final shape.

In the past we had in our Party some outstanding revolutionary intellectuals who had been veterans of the inner-Party struggle since the days of the undivided CPI and CPI(M). Later, they were martyred, or dissociated themselves from the mainstream after the setback. Today, we, who have taken up the task of reorganising the Party, don’t have amongst us any such stalwarts from the glorious past of our movement. So we are faced with the challenge of building a new theoretical contingent from the practical cadres themselves. Of course, in this process such stalwarts will emerge again, for in our India there has never been any dearth of great personalities, but for the moment it is on us practical cadres that the responsibility for theoretical breakthrough lies. And since we are practical cadres, the practical responsibilities will also continue to increase day by day. And since we are still a party of young people, we must exert ourselves still more, we must fully utilise our enormous untapped potentials. We must undertake greater theoretical tasks simultaneously with more practical jobs: this is what the objective situation demands of us at present.

Now, wherein lies the great importance of a major theoretical breakthrough on our part? As you know, none of the other CR groups is serious enough about Party-building as a conscious process involving the entire ranks, cadres and leaders. As a result, the field still remains open for the CPI(M) to assert as the only organised, disciplined, communist party. Against this we are trying hard to make ourselves, a disciplined, united, mass party with an all-India character: on this score as well as on the score of militant revolutionary struggles our Party has greater achievements and favourable factors compared to all other CR groups. But these efforts and these favourable factors will go in vain if we fail to powerfully tackle the major theoretical problems facing India today, to find convincing answers to these questions. On this score we are beginning to take organised initiatives so that on behalf of the third camp, on behalf of the CPI(ML), we can throw up a strong theoretical challenge to the CPI(M).

And this is all the more important because in India the possibility of yet another major split in the CPI(M) — one involving the leadership as well as the ranks cannot be altogether brushed aside. Of course, the CPI(M) is a dead force, but nothing in the world is absolutely dead. Hence, it may so happen that the multitude of conflicts, pressures, failures etc. which the CPI(M) is subject to, may ultimately add up to and culminate in a situation where a living section out of the moribund party comes forward to unite with, to combine with the living CR forces in one form or another, while some sections of the CRs get stuck and degenerate. It is we who will have to create the conditions for such a breakthrough by such means as taking various all-India initiatives and major theoretical offensives. While building up our theoretical contingent, this perspective should not be forgotten.

We should remember that theoreticians are produced not by Party Schools but by sheer hard labour. Renowned Marxist theoreticians emerged as theoreticians by dint of great determination: barring a few, most of the revolutionary theoretical leaders did not have any particularly bright academic background either. On the other hand, Party Schools may have a negative impact also: it may generate a sense of dependence on the School at the cost of self-study, which is always the main thing. If you are really determined to assert yourself as a theoretician, then you will do it, no matter whether you are in a Party School or not. Painstaking self-study and bold determination to achieve theoretical breakthrough — these are the decisive factors, these are the real things.

[From Liberation, December 1979.]

At present we are confronted with the task of Party building under certain new conditions. To understand these conditions a brief historical review of Party building is required. During the initial period of Party building we conducted struggle against revisionism-from-right on the question of basic principles of Marxism-Leninism and won over thousands of vanguards from the influence of revisionists. The Party rejected most of the old forms of struggle which were current in the Indian Communist movement and tried to develop new forms of struggle corresponding to the onward march of the revolution. The Party also mobilised the masses in revolutionary struggles at different places and to different degrees.

However, a large number of masses still remained under the influence of revisionist parties. After a few years, confusion and division occurred in our own ranks and the Party lost its unified all-India character. Quite a large number of factions developed mainly on a regional and state basis. The revolutionary wing of the Party could remain organised only in a few states. In recent years when efforts for uniting the Party ranks on an all-India level began, the first round was won by the opportunists. However, thanks to the rectification movement and the correct tactics adopted by the Central Committee, gradually we gained the initiative. Now, in the second round, where does the situation stand? Opportunists are clearly disintegrating and only our Central Committee has emerged as the firmly unified centre of the CPI(ML) which has an all-India character and is leading the armed struggle resolutely.

Naturally therefore, it is attracting the Party ranks everywhere. Our contacts with the masses are now more widespread and we are moving with thousands of masses in different places. However, the larger mass followings are still enjoyed by the opportunists and revisionists of different colours.

In the present situation when the ruling classes are facing serious political and economic crisis and are heading towards frontal battles with the people, the revisionists are getting rapidly exposed.

So the situation is favourable for us to win over the large mass followings of revisionists. Our All-India Party Conference (1979) has rightly directed us to shift our emphasis from the struggle of vanguards in coordination with hundreds, or in some cases at most with thousands, of masses (This was a particularity of our past struggles. It must be pointed out here that this situation was inevitable in the course of development of revolutionary struggles. And our point of view that the concept of the masses is related to the different stages of struggles is quite different from the point of view of those groups who never open their mouths without talking of ‘masses’ but are in reality small cliques of intellectuals with no mass following at all, and also different from those groups who temporarily mobilise a greater number of masses in the struggles for reforms, conducted in such a way that it only helps in blunting the revolutionary consciousness of the masses.) to the relatively bigger mass mobilisations with at least tens of thousands and develop this further to lakhs and millions. For this purpose ideological struggle on basic principles and propaganda are not sufficient. We shall have to get closer to the broad masses, understand their mood, join their struggles and patiently help them to come to the realisation on the basis of their own experience. In this context the struggle against revisionism from the ‘Left’ assumes great importance. ‘Left’ phrase-mongering which reflects complete failure to analyse concrete conditions must be resolutely opposed inside the Party if we are to mobilise the whole Party for the tasks before us.

(From Liberation, November 1988)

Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919) was an outstanding figure in the Polish and German working class movement. She was the leader of the left wing of the Second International. Rosa was one of the sponsors of the International Group in Germany, subsequently renamed the Spartacus Group and then the Spartacus League. She was one of the leaders of the revolutionary German workers during the November 1918 revolution and took part in the Inaugural Congress of the Communist Party of Germany. Rosa was arrested and murdered in January 1919.

Relations between Rosa and Lenin present a very complicated picture. They engaged in bitter polemics over the specific questions of the Russian revolution but shared the common platform of internationalist revolutionary social-democracy. Both waged a staunch struggle against the renegades of the Second International during the imperialist war. Lenin paid rich tributes to Rosa describing her as one of the finest representatives of the Third International.

Of late, there has been a good deal of revival of Rosa Luxemburg in Western Marxist circles. In our country too, representatives of various trends of thought are frequently making use of Rosa’s writings in support of their own concepts. Sharad Joshi, the leader of the farmers’ movement, refers to Rosa’s The Accumulation of Capital to prove his point that the realisation of surplus value produced in industrial sector is possible only through internal colonisation of the agricultural sector.

According to some socialist authors, the bureaucratic distortions in Soviet Russia, most glaringly revealed through Gorbachev’s reforms, owe their origin to the ‘undemocratic process’ of seizure of power by Bolsheviks in November 1917 and to the Leninist methodology of putting excessive emphasis on centralism, an apprehension expressed by Rosa in her manuscripts written in prison in 1918.

Then again Rosa is extolled for her opposition to Lenin’s ‘ultra-centrist’ approach to party building.

In short, behind this revival of Rosa Luxemburg, there appears to be a conscious attempt to pit Rosa against Lenin. We must, therefore, have a look at the multi-faceted relationship between Rosa and Lenin — their sharp differences as well as their internationalist proletarian unity — and see how it evolved in different phases of the international working class movement.

1. Rosa Luxemburg in her famous book Die Akkumulation Das Capitals, published in 1913, contradicted Marx and advanced the thesis that surplus value produced in the capitalist sector is realised in the pre-capitalist sector through the mechanism of colonisation of backward regions and countries.

Let us see how Marx visualised the realisation of surplus value. According to Marx, the total product of a capitalist country consists of the following three parts: (a) constant capital, (b) variable capital, and (c) surplus value. Furthermore, Marx distinguished between the two major departments of capitalist production, namely, Department I where the production of means of production takes place, and Department II where articles of consumption are produced.

Now, only a part of the surplus value is embodied in articles of consumption; the rest is contained in the means of production. The surplus value embodied in the means of production is ‘consumed’ by capitalists themselves, and takes the shape of constant capital for extended reproduction. This is the essence of the capitalist mode of production where at the end of every cycle constant capital increases and unlimited expansion of productive forces takes place. The home market, in capitalist society, grows not so much on account of articles of consumption as on account of means of production. This is what is called Marx’s theory of realisation.

Growth of foreign market is a product of historical conditions which appeared at a certain epoch of development of capitalism. Introducing the role of foreign trade means nothing more than considering a few capitalist countries together, instead of a single country. This does in no way effect the essential process of realisation.

As far as the peasantry creating a market for capitalism is concerned, it does so only to the extent that it is differentiated into classes of the capitalist society, namely the rural bourgeoisie and the rural proletariat. These classes are very much part of the same capitalist society. If the capitalist farming sector develops at a slower pace than the industrial sector, and if serious imbalances prevail in the prices of industrial and agricultural commodities, this is related to the theory of formation of capitalist society and has nothing to do with the theory of realisation in capitalist society.

Lenin, while referring to a review of Rosa’s book which appeared in Bremer-Burger Zeitung, wrote to the editor, "I am very pleased to see that on the main points you came to the same conclusion as I did in the polemic with Tugon-Bernovsky and Volkstumler 14 years ago, namely, that the realisation of surplus value is possible also in a "purely capitalist" society. I have not yet seen Rosa Luxemburg’s book but theoretically you are quite correct on this point. It seems to me, though, that you have placed insufficient emphasis on a very important passage in Marx, namely, where Marx says that in analysing annually produced value, foreign trade should be entirely discarded. The "dialectics" of Luxemburg seems to me (judging also from the article in Leipziger Volkezeitung) to be eclecticism’’. (Vol. 43, Jan. 1913). And again in a letter to L.B. Kamenev (Vol. 35) Lenin wrote, "I have read Rosa’s new book The Accumulation of Capital. She has got into a shocking muddle. I am very glad that Pannekoek, Eckstein and O. Bauer have all with one accord condemned her, and said against her what I said in 1899 against the Narodniks.

2. Rosa Luxembourg in an article entitled The National Question and Autonomy, published in 1908-09 opposed the right of nations to self-determination i.e. the right to secede. Countering Kautsky’s idea that the national state is the form most suited to present day conditions ... and that the multinational states are always those whose internal constitution has for some reason or other remained abnormal or underdeveloped, Rosa wrote, This ‘best’ national state is only an abstraction, which can easily be developed and defended theoretically, but which does not correspond to reality". She put forth arguments to the effect that the ‘right to self-determination’ of small nations is made illusory by the development of the great capitalist powers and imperialism.

Lenin in his polemic with Rosa pointed out, "For the question of the political self-determination of nations and their independence as states in bourgeois society, Rosa

Luxemburg has substituted the question of their economic independence". (Right of Nations to Self-determination, Vol. 20.)

Lenin referred to Asia and showed that the only country where the conditions for the most complete development of commodity production have been created is Japan, which is an independent national state.

Lenin said, "The national state is the rule and the ‘norm’ of capitalism, the multinational state represents backwardness or is an exception". (ibid.)

Rosa objected to the demand for independence of Poland from Russia, and argued that Poland had made rapid industrial development, precisely because its manufactured goods were marketed in Russia. She instead opted for autonomy for Poland, that too as an exception.

Lenin said, "If in a country whose state system is distinctly pre-capitalist there exists a nationally demarcated region where capitalism is rapidly developing, then the more rapidly that capitalism develops, the greater will be the antagonism between it and the pre-capitalist state system, and the more likely will be the separation of the progressive region from the whole with which it is connected not by "modern capitalistic", but by ‘Asiatic despotic’ ties" (ibid.).

Rosa objected to the inclusion of clause 9 (which dealt with the right of nations to self-determination) in the RSDLP programme, saying "Clause 9 gives no practical lead on the day-by-day policy of the proletariat, no practical solution of national problems".

On the question of ‘practicality’ Lenin had this to say: "The bourgeoisie always places its national demand in the forefront. and does so in a categorical fashion. With the proletariat, however, these demands are subordinated to the interests of the class struggle. Theoretically, you cannot say in advance whether the bourgeois democratic revolution will end in a given nation seceding from another nation, or in its equality with the latter; in either case, the important thing for the proletariat is to ensure the development of its class. .... That is why the proletariat confines itself, so to speak, to the negative demand for recognition of the right to self-determination, without giving guarantees to any nation, and without undertaking to give anything at the expense of another nation. This may not be ‘practical’, but it is in effect the best guarantee for the achievement of the most democratic of all possible solutions" (Ibid.).

Rosa was carried away by the struggle against nationalism in Poland and in her anxiety not to assist the nationalist bourgeoisie of Poland, rejected the right to secession in the programme of the Marxists in Russia. Supporting the right to secession, according to Rosa, is tantamount to supporting the bourgeois nationalism of the oppressed nations.

Lenin pointed out that the bourgeois nationalism of any oppressed nation has a general democratic content that is directed against oppression, and it is this that we unconditionally support. At the same time, Lenin stressed, we must oppose any tendency towards national exclusiveness.

Lenin added, "It is not difficult to understand that the recognition by the Marxists of the whole of Russia, and first and foremost by the great Russians, of the right of nations to secede in no way precludes agitation against secession by Marxists of a particular oppressed nation, just as the recognition of the right to divorce does not preclude agitation against divorce in a particular case" (ibid.).

For Lenin, however, "the right to self-determination is an exception to the general premise of centralisation. This exception is absolutely essential in view of reactionary Great-Russian nationalism; and any rejection of this exception is opportunism (as in the case of Rosa Luxemburg); it means foolishly playing into the hands of reactionary Great-Russian nationalism. But exception must not be too broadly interpreted. In this case, there is not and must not be anything more than the right to secede." (Letter to S.G. Shahnmyan, Vol. 19).

Lenin and Rosa, both being Marxists, were at one on the question that all the major and important economic and political questions of a capitalist society must be dealt with exclusively by the central parliament of the whole country concerned, not by the autonomous bodies of the individual regions. Lenin said, "Marxists will never, under any circumstances, advocate either the federal principle or decentralisation. The great centralised state is a tremendous historical step from medieval disunity to the future socialist unity of the whole world, and only via such a state (inseparably connected with capitalism), can there be any road to socialism". (Critical Remarks on the National Question, Vol. 20).

Lenin emphasised that in advocating centralism Marxists advocate exclusively democratic centralism. Democratic centralism demands local self-government with autonomy to every region having any appreciably distinct economic and social features, populations of a specific national composition etc.

In a letter to Shahnmyan (Vol. 19) Lenin wrote, "Right to autonomy? Wrong again. We are in favour of autonomy for all parts; we are in favour of the right to secession (and not in favour of everyone’s seceding). Autonomy is our plan for organising a democratic state. Secession is not what we plan at all. We do not advocate secession. In general, we are opposed to secession". According to Lenin, "The principle of centralism, which is essential for the development of capitalism is not violated by this (local and regional) autonomy, but on the contrary is applied by it democratically, not bureaucratically. The broad, free and rapid development of capitalism would be impossible, or at least greatly impeded, by the absence of such autonomy, which facilitates the concentration of capital, the development of the productive forces, the unity of the bourgeoisie and the unity of the proletariat on a country-wide scale; for bureaucratic interference in purely local (regional, national and other) questions is one of the greatest obstacles to centralism in serious, important and fundamental matters in particular’ (Critical Remarks on the National Question, Vol. 20).

On this premise Lenin castigated Rosa for her insistence that the demand for autonomy was applicable only to Poland and only by way of exception, and asked, "Why national areas with populations, not only of half-a-million, but even of 50,000 should not be able to enjoy autonomy, why such areas should not be able to unite in the most diverse ways with neighbouring areas of different dimensions into a single autonomous ‘territory’ if that is convenient or necessary for economic intercourse?" (Ibid.).

3. In 1903, after the second Congress of RSDLP, on the one hand, the Party was formally united, but on the other, it split into ‘majority’ (Bolsheviks) and ‘minority’ (Mensheviks). Immediately after the Congress the principles involved in this division were obscured by squabbling over co-option. The minority refused to work under the control of the central institutions unless the three ex-editors were again co-opted. In this fight, which lasted for two months the ‘minority’ used the weapons of boycott and disruption of the Party. The minority refused even to accept Lenin and Plekhanov’s proposal to put forth their point of view in Iskra, the central organ of the Party, and resorted to personal insults and abuse against members of the central bodies autocrats, bureaucrats, gendarmes, liars etc. They were accused of suppressing individual initiative and wanting to introduce slavish submission, blind obedience and so on. Plekhanov, though he condemned the minority’s anarchistic viewpoint, came out with an article What Should Not Be Done where he said that fighting revisionism did not necessarily mean fighting the revisionists. He further said that one should not always fight the anarchistic individualism so deeply ingrained in the Russian revolutionary, that at times some concessions were a better way to subdue it and avoid a split. Lenin could not share Plekhanov’s view and resigned from the editorial board. Minority editors were co-opted. Lenin’s offer to conclude peace on the basis of the minority keeping the central organ and the majority the central committee was rejected. The minority conducted its entire fight in the name of ‘principled’ struggle against bureaucracy, ultra-centralism, formalism, etc. It was at this juncture that Lenin wrote his famous book One Step Forward, Two Steps Back and analysing the Congress debates showed that the new division between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks was only a variant of the old division into the proletarian revolutionary and intellectual-opportunist wing of the Party.

Rosa Luxemburg’s sympathies lay entirely with Mensheviks and she criticised Lenin’s book as a clear and detailed expression of the point of view of ‘intransigent centralism’. Rosa felt that there were no two opinions among the Russian Social-Democrats as to the need for a united Party, and that the whole controversy was over the degree of centralisation. She condemned Lenin for advocating ‘ultra-centralism’ and stressed that centralisation should be gradual.

Lenin in his reply to Rosa Luxemburg pointed out that controversy in the Russian Party "has principally been over whether the Central Committee and Central Organ should represent the trend of the majority of the Party Congress or whether they should not....does the comrade consider it normal for supposed Party Central Institutions to be dominated by the minority of the Party Congress? Can she imagine such a thing? Has she ever seen it in any Party?" (Vol. 7).

"Comrade Luxemburg fathers on me the idea that all the conditions already exist in Russia for forming a large and extremely centralised Party. Again an error of fact. Nowhere in my book did I voice such an idea, let alone advocate it. The thesis I advanced expressed and expresses something else. I insisted, namely, that all the conditions already existed for expecting Party Congress decisions to be observed, and that the time was past when a Party institution could be supplanted by a private circle. I brought proof that certain academics in our Party had shown themselves inconsistent and unstable, and that they had no right to lay the blame for their own lack of discipline upon the Russian proletarians. The Russian workers have already pronounced repeatedly, on various occasions, for observance of the Party Congress decisions (Ibid.)

Lenin charged Rosa with ignoring the concrete facts of struggle in RSDLP and indulging in abstraction, thereby perverting Marxian dialectics.

Afterwards, however, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Kautsky were won over to the point of view of the Bolsheviks. Lenin said in 1909, "They were won over because the Bolsheviks upheld, not the letter of their own, definitely their own factional theory, but the general spirit and meaning of revolutionary Social-Democratic tactics." (Faction of Supporters of Otzovism and God-Building, Vol. 16).

4. The 1905 revolution in Russia brought to the fore the practical experience of Soviet power and the dictatorship of the proletariat. In contrast to the Mensheviks, Rosa immediately realised its significance and made a critical analysis of the same in meetings and in the press.

5. Rosa and Lenin again in 1913 on the question of the approach towards liquidators parted ways.

Rosa considered that what was going on in the Russian Party was nothing but the chaos of factional strife. She blamed the Leninist group for being most active in fomenting split. Rosa felt that differences in the Russian Party did not preclude the possibility of joint activities and it was possible to restore unity through agreement and compromises. She made a proposal on similar lines to the International Socialist Bureau in December 1913.

Lenin sharply differed from this opinion and reiterated that what was going on in Russia in no way resembled the chaos of factional strife, but was rather a struggle against liquidators. Lenin claimed that it was through this struggle only that a genuine workers social-democratic Party was being built up and already the overwhelming majority of class conscious workers — four-fifths of them — had been won over to the Party position.

In his report to the Brussels Conference, Lenin quoted from the 1908 Party resolution which had defined liquidationism as, "an attempt on the part of some of the Party intelligentsia to liquidate the existing organisation of the RSDLP and to substitute for it an amorphous organisation acting at all cost within the limits of legality, even at the cost of openly abandoning the programme, tactics and traditions of the Party". (Vol. 20).

Lenin further said. "Nowhere in Western Europe has there ever been, nor can there ever be, a question of whether it is permissible to bear the title of Party member and at the same time advocate the dissolution of that Party, to argue that the Party is useless and unnecessary, and that another Party be substituted for it. Nowhere in Western Europe does the question concern the very existence of the Party as it does with us i.e. whether that Party is to be or not to be.

"This is not disagreement over a question of organisation, of how the Party should be built, but disagreement concerning the very existence of the Party. Here, conciliation, agreement and compromise are totally out of question.

6. With the advent of the imperialist war, Kautskyites, who dominated the Second International and the German Social-Democratic Party, took the social-chauvinist position and advocated support to one’s own bourgeoisie in the predatory war. Rosa Luxemburg came out strongly against this line and called German social-democracy a stinking corpse.

When in Russia Mensheviks sanctioned Kerensky’s offensive Rosa severely condemned them for diluting the internationalist content of the Russian revolution.

Lenin hailed Rosa as a great internationalist and both worked together towards the formation of a new International, after the collapse of the Second International.

7. Rosa had certain apprehensions about the November 1917 revolution where Bolsheviks seized power. She had her reservations about the process of seizure of power, which she felt was undemocratic, and about the Leninist mode of excessive emphasis on centralism. Rosa felt that it would stifle the initiative of the workers from below and would give rise to bureaucratic distortions. Such views are contained in her manuscripts written in prison in 1918.

However, Clara Zetkin, who knew Rosa very closely, has testified that after her release from prison in December 1918, she had realised that her views were wrong and were based on insufficient informations.

8. Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht conducted a sharp political struggle against social-democratic traitors in Germany, reorganised the German Communist Party and stood at the forefront of the November 1918 revolution in Germany.

On Jan. 15, 1919 Rosa and Karl were murdered in cold blood by the white guards with the connivance of the government of Social-Democrats.

In a protest rally following their murder Lenin gave the following speech, "Today the bourgeoisie and the social-traitors are jubilating in Berlin — they have succeeded in murdering Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. Elbert and Scheidemann who for four years led the workers to the slaughter for the sake of depredation, have now assumed the role of butchers of the proletarian leaders. The example of the German revolution proves that democracy is only a camouflage for bourgeois robbery and the most savage violence. Death to the butchers."

In 1922 when Paul Levi, a German Menshevik, planned to republish precisely those writings of Rosa Luxemburg where she had differed with Lenin, Lenin commented that Paul Levi’s intention was to get into the good graces of the bourgeoisie and the leaders of the Second and the Second -and -half-Internationals.

Lenin wrote, "We shall reply to this by quoting two lines from a Russian fable, ‘Eagles may at times fly lower than hens but hens can never rise to the height of eagles’. Rosa Luxemburg was mistaken on the question of the independence of Poland; she was mistaken in 1903 in her appraisal of Menshevism; she was mistaken on the theory of accumulation of capital; she was mistaken in July 1914, when, together with Plekhanov, Vandervelde, Kautsky and others she advocated unity between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks; she was mistaken in what she wrote in prison in 1918 (She corrected most of these mistakes at the end of 1918 and the beginning of 1919 when she was released). But inspite of her mistakes she was and remains for us an eagle. And not only will Communists all over the world cherish her memory, but her biography and her complete works will serve as useful manuals for training many generations of communists all over the world. ‘Since August 4, 1914, German social-democracy has become a stinking corpse’ — this statement will make Rosa Luxemburg’s name famous in the history of the international working class movement. And, of course, in the backyard of the working class movement, among the dungheaps, hens like Paul Levi, Scheidemann, Kautsky and all their fraternity will cackle over the mistakes committed by the great Communist". (Notes of a Publicist, Vol. 33).

This is the best tribute to the memory of Rosa Luxemburg and it sums up everything.

[Speech delivered at the concluding session of the Central Party School held in October 1996. ]

The School is coming to an end. Though we do not decide Party policies in such schools, yet these discussions have an important role in the process of their formulation. In this respect, quite a few important questions have been raised and discussed here. In 1994 Party School I had expressed some ideas on the ‘crisis of Marxism’ and I would like to proceed with the same.

In nearly 150 years of its history, Marxism has passed through two or three periods of crisis when its very rationale has been questioned. Every time Marxism could overcome them and march ahead with a new vigour. Now, at the fag end of the 20th century, it has once again been pronounced dead. The crisis this time is indeed quite serious as it is accompanied by the collapse of the Soviet Union, the land of the first successful socialist revolution, the land of Lenin. The Soviet model came to be identified as the real embodiment of Marxism and hence its collapse naturally triggered off the old debates all over again. The Chinese model, which had claimed to be an alternative one, has lost much of its shine due to various reasons and the other remaining smaller socialist states hardly inspire any confidence.

Well, the first thing that should be kept in mind is that Marxism arose in the process of analysing the contradictions of capitalism and it provided the only comprehensive and profound critique of capitalism. Marxism, as the doctrine of class struggle, will surely lose its relevance in the classless society of communism, but till then it shall continue to remain the guiding ideology in transforming the capitalist world and experimenting with various possibilities of socialism. In a certain sense, the collapse of the Soviet Union indeed signifies end of a history, but every end at the same time symbolises a new beginning, and it is in this context that we have resolved to retrieve the revolutionary core of Marxism, and at the same time, to sharpen our tools for analysis, criticism and change.

In this School in particular, a lot of discussion has taken place on postmodernism. Postmodernism does not simply question the validity of Marxism or Socialism, rather it rejects the whole era of modernity, the era which began with the advent of modern classes of bourgeoisie and the proletariat. It rejects the entire age of Enlightenment and all the grand projects of emancipation of the mankind. It brands these projects as grand narratives which, in their bid to drive the society towards pre-ordained goals, only end up in establishing totalitarian political systems. Postmodernists also refuse to acknowledge any class or human solidarity cutting across the ‘imagined communities’ of race, gender, caste, ethnicity etc.

During the course of our discussions here we have also learnt about recent scientific theories. Some comrades might have found them quite difficult to comprehend. You may not go for all the details, yet as Marxists it is necessary to keep track of the latest in scientific theories. Quantum Mechanics says that the matter at sub-atomic level does not follow the laws of general mechanics and even the form of its existence at that level is quite puzzling. Determination of its various characteristics like position, momentum etc. is not only quite uncertain, it is also affected by the act of observation.

A certain philosophical interpretation of this scientific theory, quite popular in the West nowadays, questions the very basis of materialism, viz. the existence of matter or the objective world independent of the mind. Armed with the concept of ‘virtual reality’, the western world is witnessing a renewed interest in eastern mysticism where the objective world is described as Maya — an illusion. In the European renaissance the authority of the Church was challenged and the march of science posed a serious threat to the so-called divine codes. When Europe emerged out of the Dark Ages and the Age of Enlightenment began, 2000-year-old Greek philosophy was retrieved. The dialectics of the Greek philosophers was enriched by Hegel, a great philosopher of modern times and was subsequently put on a materialist basis by Marx. The march of science has again inspired some people to dig into the philosophical roots of ancient days and, ironically, they have come out with eastern mysticism. In the School we have tried to unearth linkages between the neo-idealist offensive in philosophy and postmodernism in social sciences.

As some comrades have pointed out, it is true that ‘new social movements’, or speaking in more general terms, movements on sectional issues, existed well before the advent of postmodernism. Actually the importance of postmodernism lies in the fact that it has given a new meaning and a new basis to these movements. Postmodernism absolutises their autonomous growth. It does so because for postmodernism the very agenda of analysing capitalism as a system is absurd.

The First Crisis of Marxism

While dealing with the all-important question of ‘crisis of Marxism’ in the present phase, it won’t be out of place to refer to the earlier phases of crisis. Here I would like to refer to the first crisis that Marxism was faced with in the late 19th and the early 20th century, the period that gave rise to the phenomenon of revisionism.

Capitalism faced an acute crisis at the fag end of the 19th century. The nature of the crisis was classical in the sense that all the parameters of the crisis were in excellent conformity with the Marxist visualisation. This period also witnessed the growth of the working class movement and of social democratic parties (as the communist parties were known in those days). In particular, in Germany, the Party grew rapidly.

As the crisis dragged on, capitalism gradually overcame it, but in the process, it radically transformed itself. Earlier it was free capitalism whose motto was free competition. This had resulted in the anarchy of production. Now capitalists entered into agreements with each other and cartels, trusts etc., which were at a rudimentary phase during Marx’s lifetime became the overwhelming norm. Capitalism acquired a stability, workers’ wages improved and parliamentary democracy flourished. The earlier enthusiasm among Marxists regarding the impending collapse of capitalism now gave way to despondency. Marxists, including Marx, have always behaved overoptimistically at every phase of capitalist crisis. This is very natural and has its own dynamic role in shaping history. But Marxism, as a rigorous scientific thought process, has only marked the historical tendency of social development from capitalism to socialism. Marxism, in contrast to other utopian theories of socialism or moral society, doesn’t proceed from a grand project of subjectively conceived socialism and then attempt to transform a society to conform to that model.

On the contrary, for Marxism, capitalism moves towards socialism precisely due to the motion of its own contradictions and because these contradictions can finally be resolved only in socialism. Capitalism also produces objective conditions, viz. a concentrated form of large-scale production, the class of proletariat etc., for a changeover to socialism. This, however, doesn’t mean that society by itself, spontaneously, without any conscious subjective effort, would pass over to socialism. Marx made the famous remark, "the point is to change the world".

After Marx died, Engels enjoyed immense authority and Bernstein and Kautsky, two German communists, were quite close to him. In his last writings, Engels made certain self-criticisms. In March 1895, only a few months before his death, Engels wrote, "History has proved us, and all those who thought like us, wrong. It has made it clear that the state of economic development on the continent at that time was not by a large measure ripe for the elimination of capitalist production; it has proved this by the economic revolution which since 1848, has seized the whole of the continent ... and has made Germany positively an industrial country of the first rank" ... "History has done even more; it has not only merely dispelled the erroneous notions we then held; it has also completely transformed the conditions under which the proletariat has to fight. The mode of struggle of 1848 is today obsolete in every respect, and this is a point which deserves closer examination on the present occasion."

According to Engels, given the scale of modern armies, the old tactics of street fighting, surprise attacks, etc. had become outdated. Quoting statistics from the gains of the German Party in parliamentary elections, he stressed upon making intelligent use of the universal suffrage. Engels concluded, "The irony of world history turns everything upside down. We the ‘revolutionists’, the ‘overthrowers’, we are thriving far better on legal methods than on illegal methods and overthrow. The parties of order, as they call themselves, are perishing under the legal conditions created by themselves ... whereas we, under this legality, get firm muscles and rosy cheeks and look like life eternal."

Engels advocated a change in tactics, in the specific context of Europe and in a particular period of capitalist development there. Starting from the same premise, Bernstein, however, advocated the revision of the strategy itself and thus he is rightly called the father of revisionism.

Bernstein argued that contrary to Marx’s prediction, concentration of production has progressed extremely slowly, and moreover, small-medium enterprises are not eliminated by large-scale production. Moreover, with the formation of cartels and trusts, capitalism has developed a system of self-regulation and thus averts any acute crisis. He further argued that society’s polarisation into two extreme classes has not taken place, and not only has the middle strata not vanished, the number of capitalists, property owners and shareholders has only increased.

He felt that the political institutions of modern nations have become democratised, putting a check on the exploitative tendencies of capital and eroding the basis of class struggle. In countries where parliamentary democracy is dominant, the state can no longer be seen as the organ of class rule. Therefore, Bernstein argued that workers should no longer strive to seize power through revolution, rather should concentrate on reforming the state.

In 1895, in the introduction to The Class Struggles in France, Engels expected a rapid decline of capitalism by the end of the century and hoped that even the legality devised by the bourgeoisie for its power could be successfully used against it by the working class.

Just one year later in 1896, Bernstein questioned the final goal itself and confines himself to just ‘day-to-day movement’. Marx, in Capital, had dealt with the phenomenon of joint stock companies and Engels recorded the phenomenon of cartels and trusts. Cartels were the confirmation of concentration of capital at a higher plane and proof of the ‘bankruptcy’ of free competition as the basic principle of capitalism. What Bernstein saw as decentralisation, self-regulation and democratisation of capital turned out to be monopolisation of the highest order, with the separation of ‘ownership’ and ‘management’ grew a whole class of parasitic bourgeoisie which thrived on speculation, an aggressive colonial policy and the rivalry among imperialist power blocs leading for the first time to the phenomenon of world war. Lenin dealt with all this in his Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism. Expropriation of small and medium capital too is a regular affair where big capital transforms them into ancillaries. It does thrive again in new fields and new production processes, where again in due course, big capital stretches its hand.

As far as parliamentary democracy is concerned, looking at it just as a fraud devised by the bourgeoisie to befool and entrap the working classes is too simplistic an idea. It is as foolish as assuming that religion was a conspiracy devised by priests to befool the masses. Parliament was not there in other periods of human society. This form of governance emerged only during capitalism and thus it is the specific form of the rule of the bourgeoisie. In feudalism, the exploitation took the form of extra-economic coercion and correspondingly the political superstructure sanctioned special privileges to the king and the feudal gentry. In capitalism, exploitation operates through and within the production process itself in the form of surplus value. The political superstructure of parliamentary democracy is quite compatible with ideal capitalism.

Marx wrote in The Class Struggles in France: "The comprehensive contradiction of this constitution^[1], however, consists in the following: the classes whose social slavery the constitution is to perpetuate, proletariat, peasantry, petty bourgeoisie, it puts in possession of political power through universal suffrage. And from the class whose old social power it sanctions, the bourgeoisie, it withdraws the political guarantees of this power." This is the essential contradiction of the bourgeois constitutional state — whereas everybody is brought into political life through universal suffrage, this sovereignty of people is only a formal one, the real interests continue to be dictated by the class antagonisms.

In contrast to revisionists who saw in the republic the resolution of the basic antagonism, Lenin argued that precisely because of the above-mentioned self-contradiction, it provides the best terrain for open class war.
So this is how the debate of Marxism proceeded against revisionism, and in the process, Marxism rejuvenated itself in the shape of Leninism.

On the Tactics of Revolutionary Opposition

Next, I would like to comment on certain questions that have come up in the discussion here. One comrade has opined that the tactics of revolutionary opposition is not suitable in the context of slow growth of the revolutionary movement. This tactics should rather be applied in the conditions of upsurge. I think there is a basic flaw in this argument. ‘Opposition’ is a parliamentary category and revolutionary opposition is the specific tactics that a revolutionary communist party adheres to in parliamentary struggles. In times of revolutionary upsurge, revolution itself and not the revolutionary opposition will be the immediate agenda before the Party. In other words, during revolutionary upheavals parliamentary struggles may become obsolete and quite possibly election boycott or even dispensing with the bourgeois parliament may become the Party’s action slogan. Obviously, when there will be no parliamentary struggles or even no parliament, the category of opposition too, revolutionary or otherwise, shall cease to exist. This is quite easy to understand. It is only in the present conditions, when the parliamentary struggles acquire quite an important position in Party’s tactics, does the question of revolutionary opposition arise and this determines Party’s basic orientation in parliamentary struggles. There should be no confusion on this score. Its application, however, becomes quite a complex affair with growth in electoral support of the Party and its parliamentary strength.

Well, using parliament as a propaganda platform is a common refrain and there can be no dispute on that. In real life situations, however, you confront a whole range of practical problems. There comes up the question of seat adjustments and election alliances with what is called ‘like-minded parties’, another parliamentary term. Then there is the question of forming blocs within the parliament. Our representatives there have to take definite stands on specific issues and bills and participate in voting. We have to seek allies and also distinguish between various bourgeois formations. Should our representatives confine themselves to moving adjournment motions, rushing to the well of the house and staging walkouts? Or should they also engage in business-like discussions, move amendments, demand constitutional reforms and put forward alternative drafts in the form of private member’s bills etc.? What would be their role as members of various parliamentary committees as well as the constituency-level planning and developmental bodies? All these things belong to the domain of reforms and the moot point is to perform all these roles within the ambit of revolutionary opposition. This is a million-dollar question on which hinges the whole future of the Party.

Is There a Parliamentary Path to Revolution?

The fundamental mistake that leads the communist parties to the royal road of parliamentary cretinism, popularly known as degeneration, is negating the essential bourgeois character of the parliament and forgetting that the given parliament is nothing but the political superstructure of the bourgeois society. If you consider the parliament just a fraud, an artificial creation of exploiters devised to befool the masses, you’ll actually be fooling yourselves and no one else. It is so because such simplistic ideas will prevent you from studying and analysing the dynamic of the bourgeois society and thus devising specific slogans and tactics. You’ll end up in dismissing and abusing the parliament in harshest of terms without, however, making any impact on its health. Such phrasemongerings are aptly called infantile disorder.

On the other hand, it is more serious a deviation if the parliament is considered a non-class or supra-class institution where the proletariat has just to enter, attain the majority and then wield it for the socialist transformation of the society. The parliament operates within the ambit of the bourgeois constitution and is attached in a thousand and one ways to the strings of capital. It is well-nigh impossible for the proletariat to attain a majority in the parliament, and we have seen through our experience how the whole election system is tilted in favour of strong power groups and moneybags and how tough it is for revolutionary Left to win a seat.

Still, this is not my main contention. For argument’s sake, even if it is presumed (in certain exceptional situations let us grant this as a real possibility) that the proletariat can attain majority in the parliament, the question still remains as to whether the socio-economic enslavement of the proletariat can be done away with, or in other words, can the foundations of the bourgeois society be altered in any fundamental way. Marxism answers it in the negative. The best of communist governments with the noblest of intentions can only undertake certain reforms in the bourgeois system and nothing more than that. The proletariat cannot use the given, readymade state machinery to achieve its mission. The old state has to be smashed and new state machinery has to be created. This declaration as recorded in the Communist Manifesto, reiterated after the bitter lessons of Paris Commune and elaborated in Lenin’s State and Revolution remains the cornerstone of the Marxist theory of state. Incidentally, even in a socialist society which operates on the principle of "from each according to his capacity, to each according to his work", the element of bourgeois right does persist and Lenin once even described the socialist state as bourgeois state without the bourgeoisie. Only with the principle of "from each according to his capacity, to each according to his need" can the bourgeois right be dispensed with altogether. But that means ushering in a communist society where the state itself withers away.

So the whole debate about parliamentary Vs. extra-parliamentary path of revolution is irrelevant simply because there doesn’t exist any parliamentary path. Proletarian revolution essentially means dispensing with the bourgeois state including the parliament. Obviously therefore, there cannot exist a parliamentary road to revolution. It can only exist on the basis of the very rejection of the essence of revolution. The proletarian revolution creates a proletarian state along with its own representative assembly. This representative assembly shall bring to full play the democratic participation of broad masses in running the state affairs and combine within a single entity the legislative and executive functions of the state; in short, a new political superstructure that corresponds with the new society.

The whole communist tactics about parliament revolves around its utilisation to this or that extent and in the process creating conditions for its eventual negation in favour of a qualitatively different form of representative assembly.

Peaceful Vs. Violent Revolution

The question of peaceful or violent revolution has of course been discussed in Marxist tactics but this is a very different question and has nothing to do with the so-called debate of parliamentary Vs. non-parliamentary path. Peaceful revolution, an exceptional and the rarest of the rare possibilities has been given due thought in Marxist theory of revolution and in certain special circumstances of the balance of class forces. Marx talked of such a possibility in America when the standing army and bureaucracy had not taken shape there. Lenin envisaged such a possibility during the February Revolution. Such a possibility also arose in China after the successful conclusion of the anti-Japanese war and Mao advanced the proposal of ending the civil war and forming a coalition government with Chiang Kai Shek. None of these possibilities, however, materialised into actuality. Still, in the realm of theory, Marxism does not altogether reject this possibility.

Here it must be understood that a peaceful revolution is not synonymous with a parliamentary coup. This still entails dispensing with the bourgeois state lock, stock and barrel. If revolution would have succeeded peacefully in Russia in February, would its significance have been any less than the October Revolution? Moreover, the actualisation of this possibility, if at all that takes place, is crucially dependent upon the maximum state of preparedness of the proletariat including its armed might to take on the reactionary challenge. Devoid of this preparation peaceful revolution is a utopian dream that will only result in a more severe bloodbath of the proletariat as witnessed in Indonesia and Chile.

Therefore, when our Party programme talks of peaceful revolution as an exceptional possibility, it should neither be equated with ‘parliamentary path’, nor should it be interpreted as any slackening in the state of preparedness. In fact, the more a party is prepared to go all-out for the non-peaceful option, better can it utilise any possible situation of a peaceful changeover. Peaceful revolution is equivalent to the enemy surrendering without a fight and one can easily imagine how exceptional this would be, and at what level of our preparedness it can be possible.

Now some people first turn the exceptional possibility of peaceful revolution into a generalised one. And then equate peaceful revolution with the parliamentary path and spread the illusion that the proletariat by gaining parliamentary majority can alter the basic foundations of bourgeois society and usher in socialism. All this is rubbish and nothing but revisionism.

CPI(M) Vs. CPI(ML)

We face a whole barrage of criticism by so-called ML factions who accuse us of giving up almost all the original ML positions and moving towards what they call neo-neo-revisionism. They accuse us of revising the Party programme to the extent of making it almost the same as that of the CPI(M) and speculate that we are preparing to merge into the CPI(M). Some charge us of craving to join the Left Front for sharing its spoils and brand us as official Naxalites. They have been predicting all this for so many years now but how do things stand today? Neither have we joined the Left Front nor merged into the CPI(M). On the contrary, we have revived the Party at the national level, reestablished it as a major trend in the left movement and emerged as the principal rival to the CPI(M)’s hegemony in the left camp. And all this we have accomplished on the strength of powerful movements of rural poor in the countryside where we are facing the wrath of powerful feudal forces, their private armies, the police and the political establishment, right from the BJP to the CPI(M). In majority of the cases, this resistance struggle assumes militant and armed dimensions with the participation of broad masses. This is the essential spirit of Naxalbari and I reiterate that our Party, and our Party alone, is carrying it forward.

Anyway, with the changing times and changing context we have indeed made major revisions in our tactics. This is perfectly natural and rather the sign of a living organism. Every living body reacts to the changing environment and adapts itself accordingly to continue to live and grow. Only dead bodies don’t react to the changing environment, or in other words, a living body that fails to adapt itself gradually becomes extinct.

I must insist that we have only revised certain of our slogans and tactics but our strategic perceptions remain the same. Naxalbari continues to remain our guiding spirit and whatever tactical changes we make, they are made within its revolutionary framework. We have made tactical changes in our Party line, first of all because objective conditions have made them imperative, and secondly, because they put us on a favourable terrain to expose the fallacy of CPI(M). For example, instead of rejecting the possibility of communists forming government at state levels in certain states, in certain cases, we have raised the debate to the level of two possible utilisations of such a government. One, to act as the centre of mobilisation of workers and peasants, of playing the role of revolutionary opposition vis-a-vis the central power and of precipitating the crisis of the bourgeois parliamentary system, and the other, of gradual absorption into the bourgeois-landlord system, the path of social-democracy of CPI(M). This debate on tactics at this juncture, when due to a long stint in power the LF government has lost much of its shine and is increasingly exposing its reactionary features, is of crucial importance in enforcing a new polarisation within left ranks.

Naxalbari had made the fundamental division between revolutionary and opportunist wings of Indian communist movement. No one can obliterate this fundamental division. But mere repetition of all this is not going to help us in any way and is likely to degenerate into abstract phrasemongering. Necessary tactical changes that our Party has made have helped us, after a long gap, to regain initiative against social democracy at the ground level.

The social-democratic practice of CPI(M) is heading towards a blind alley and its contradictions are increasingly coming to the fore. Take the recent case of serious division in the party leadership over the issue of joining the UF government, or the ongoing debates on the characterisation of UF, on the party’s tactics of aligning with bourgeois parties, on the party’s stagnation in the parliamentary arena and failure to advance in the Hindi belt, on tactics towards regional autonomy movements etc. All these point to the developing fissures in the party. All this demands raising to new levels the ongoing polemic between revolutionary and opportunist wings of the Indian communist movement and thus affecting a new polarisation among left ranks. Our Party is doing precisely that and tactical revisions have stood us in good stead on this score.

I don’t say this is going to be an easy affair. Social democrats too make adaptations to ensure their unity and influence revolutionary ranks. The struggle that began from 1967 thus goes on and will assume newer and complicated forms and will also determine our relations with the CPI(M) [or sections within the CPI(M)] in the coming days. What shape this relationship will assume in practical terms is difficult to foretell but one thing is certain — that CPI(M) and CPI(ML) shall continue to remain principal ideological adversaries in the Indian communist and left movement, each trying to outdo the other. This I think sums up our vision vis-a-vis social democracy.

Note:
1. The republican constitution produced by the French Constituent Assembly after the revolution of 1848.

[A popular introduction prepared for Party schools. From Liberation, June 1990.]

For the last 7 or 8 years the Party CC has been making efforts to cultivate the habit of study in the Party and turn the system of Party schools into an integral part of the Party body. Selected batches of cadres were enrolled in central Party schools and state and other Party committees too conducted schools at their respective levels. It was expected that all these measures will not only raise the level of knowledge and understanding of the entire Party, but shall make study a regular habit as well. How far has this aim been achieved? Everyone shall perhaps agree that the degree of success has been quite low. A few comrades have continued with studies, more due to their own inclination and the rest have gone back to their old status.

Now there are certain fundamentals of Marxism, ABC of Marxism and if you don’t know them you are liable to be put into the category of illiterate Marxists. I think the number of such people is quite large in our Party. Among those who may be called literates, again the majority has hardly crossed primary standards. The majority of our senior leaders and cadres too cannot claim to have entered the university of Marxist education.

This is a very sorry state of affairs and shows that a good majority of our comrades are either working blindly or working according to their whims. If you work blindly, i.e., faithfully memorising the slogans and implementing to the letter the instructions coming from the top, you run the risk of missing their spirit and you may never develop a creative practice. And if you work according to your whims, you are sure to go against the Party’s ideas, plans and line. Both the situations are equally harmful for the Party and people’s interests.

Now, I find some people quite happy as their main field of activity is the front organisation and they feel here they don’t need to study Marxism. Barring a few exceptions I don’t think front leaders and cadres nowadays pay any attention to studying Marxism. The level of many has even gone down and this is one important reason for the recent emergence of non-revolutionary practices on the part of a section of its leaders and cadres. These comrades failed to understand that the entire concept, programme and tactics of this front is derived from nothing else but Marxism-Leninism, from its concrete application to our concrete conditions. To succeed in its mission, the most advanced and revolutionary class must appear as the leader of the whole society. Communists must have to compete with and ultimately replace the bourgeoisie from its coveted position of natural leader of the society. United front, whatever form it takes at any particular juncture, is precisely the medium through which a Communist Party achieves this goal. Therefore, strategy and tactics of the united front i.e., the ability to transform the aims and slogans of the most advanced class into those of all the classes of the people, is the most crucial aspect of Marxist theory and practice. Communists who constitute the nucleus and backbone of the front organisation cannot acquire this ability if they remain illiterate Marxists.

A large number of new forces have been joining the front and the Party organisation. They are not only illiterate in the Marxist sense, many coming from CPI, CPI(M) etc. have even got a negative education.

The other day I met a comrade who had packed all his baggage including two bagloads of books and was all set to leave the Party — in his words, taking an indefinite leave from the Party, for the sake of study. This comrade — a young, promising and good practical worker — was very disgusted as he felt that there was no proper atmosphere for pursuing studies in the Party. He also felt that the Party was encouraging blind practice and as a host of complex questions remain theoretically unresolved, the present successes may prove illusory and in the long run we will run into a solid wall.

I tried to argue with him and persuade him to remain within the Party. He was an intelligent fellow and had already prepared his counter-arguments in anticipation of whatever logic other people were going to putforth. Hence I failed in my persuasion, and moreover, my rate of success in persuading comrades to refrain from deserting the Party has always been very poor. Anyway, that is another story.

Undoubtedly, the basic position of this comrade is wrong. His ambition is to develop as an academician and not as a Party theoretician.

By no means do I want to belittle the all-important role played by academicians, and truly speaking, without the useful research work undertaken by them, without the conflict of ideas, which invariably takes shape first in the realm of academics, it is virtually impossible to build upon the revolutionary theory. Still, academicians have their own limitations — their conclusions lack clarity or thrust and are often confusing and wrong. It remains for revolutionary theoreticians and political leaders of the proletariat to formulate the course of action. The bourgeoisie can afford a division between theoreticians and ‘practicians’, but for the proletariat, its leaders have been Marx, Lenin, Mao etc., the philosophers, economists and political leaders all combined into one.

In our Party history we have witnessed individuals and groups who made a mechanical division between theory and practice. In their opinion, first there should be a long period of study to derive a ‘correct’ political line and then the period of ‘correct’ practice would begin. Well, history has proved that all these people could reach nowhere after years and years of study; instead they ended up with more confusion than they had at the beginning. Revolutionary theory could only be advanced by those who remained in the thick of practice and learned from their mistakes and failures. Does it mean that everything that the comrade said was wrong and deserves only condemnation? I don’t think so. In my opinion he was quite right when he said that a lot of complex questions are crying out for theoretical solutions and if they are not urgently taken up we may in the long run crash against a solid wall. He did touch a sensitive nerve of ours when he pointed out the lack of proper atmosphere for studies.

It you agree with the above-mentioned assessment of the state of affairs in the Party, you will readily welcome the Party Central Committee’s plan to launch a mass literacy campaign for educating the entire Party membership in the ABC of Marxism.

To proceed. One question that may be asked, and quite legitimately too, is while socialism is facing a crisis worldwide and questions are being asked about the relevance of Marxism itself, won’t your emphasis on studying Marxist fundamentals reinforce orthodoxy?

Well, the crisis of socialism in general and the East European developments in particular demand a comprehensive analysis from all possible angles — changes in the world balance of forces, powerful socio-economic factors operating in Europe as a whole, the role of Soviet perestroika, the wrongs committed by the communist parties etc. etc.

But I think all this still does not touch the most fundamental reason of all. After the setbacks suffered by communists in East Europe, many expected a swing in favour of socialists, the exponents of ‘socialism with democratic principles’ as against ‘dictatorship’, who had been historical rivals of communists in Europe. That has not come and all efforts of erstwhile communists to reform and reorganise themselves as social democrats failed to retrieve the situation. Ascendancy of centre-right political combinations, the increasing role of the Church, and direct calls to go back to capitalism are all that is happening in East Europe. In concrete reality, therefore, socialism with all its varieties in different East European countries has failed and the democratic revolution, people’s democracies, the rule of the proletariat have only paved the way for the return of capitalism and the political rule of the bourgeoisie. Only the materialist conception of history, propounded in Marxist fundamentals, can provide a solution to this puzzle. Marx had said, "If the proletariat destroys the political rule of the bourgeoisie, that will only be a temporary victory, only an element in the service of the bourgeois revolution itself, as in 1794, so long as in the course of history, in its ‘movement’, the matured conditions are not yet created which make necessary the abolition of the bourgeois mode of production and thus the definitive overthrow of bourgeois political rule. The reign of terror in France, could only serve, therefore, to clear away from the soil of France, through its powerful blows, the remnants of feudalism. The anxious and considerate bourgeoisie would never have completed this task in decades. The bloody action of the people thus only prepared the way for it. Similarly, the collapse of the absolute monarchy would have been temporary, had not the economic conditions for the rule of the bourgeois class already ripened. Men do not build themselves a new world out of the fruits of the earth, as vulgar superstition believes, but out of the historical accomplishments of their declining civilisation. They must, in the course of their development, begin by themselves producing the material conditions of a new society, and no effort of mind or will can free them from this destiny". (Die Moralisierende Kritik... 1847). Moreover, the host of analyses appearing in liberal bourgeois and Marxist media have so vulgarised Marxism that refreshing the Marxist fundamentals has become our imperative need. For example, I had been reading an analytical article on East European developments in Economic and Political Weekly written by an academician — a regular contributor. He eventually drew the conclusion that communists there failed to understand the strong impact of religion on people’s minds and failed to properly utilise it. Continuing, he went on to praise Gandhi’s methods of making popular use of religion in the independence struggle and advised communists to learn a lesson or two.

Because of a fragmented and shortcut study of Marxism many people think that Marx failed to understand the important role of religion and just dismissed it as the ‘opium of the people’. In fact, Marx presented a very comprehensive view of religion. Let me quote from him,

"Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral affection, its solemn complement, its general basis of consolation and justification.

"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." (Marx-Engels Correspondence)

Had any materialist in the entire history of materialist thought ever presented such a comprehensive view on religion? Petty-bourgeois revolutionaries in their fashionable approach simply dismiss religion. Recently, I read a poem in Janmat where the meaning of religion is explained in the crudest possible terms and I think it will get a lot of claps from many of our comrades. You may enjoy that liberty in poetry but it’s harmful if translated in theory.

Religion is an inverted world consciousness, based upon the negation of man’s natural existence and nature’s human existence. Marx said, "Once the essence of man and nature, man as a natural being and nature as a human reality, has become evident in practical life, in senses experienced, the search for an alien being, a being outside man and nature (a search which is an avowal of the unreality of man and nature) becomes impossible in practice. Atheism, as a denial of this unreality, is no longer meaningful, for atheism is a denial of God, and seeks to assert by this denial the existence of man. Socialism no longer requires such a roundabout method; it begins from the theoretical and practical sense perception of man and nature as real existences. It is a positive human self-consciousness, no longer a self-consciousness attained through the negation of religion, just as the real life of a man is positive and no longer attained through the negation of private property (communism). Communism is the phase of negation of the negation, and is consequently, for the next stage of historical developments, a real and necessary factor in the emancipation and rehabilitation of man. Communism is the necessary form and the active principle of the immediate future, but communism is not itself the aim of human development or the final form of human society." (Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts)

Dismissing religion and carrying on struggle against it in the negative style of atheists are wrong. Similarly, all talks of making use of it for a modern socialist transformation of society are humbug. East European socialism failed to free people from the uncertainties of life, could not make them conscious as makers of their own destiny and instead degenerated into an oppressive system. This is the essential reason behind the lingering influence and perhaps the revival of the Church.

I don’t say that it’s simply a matter of explaining away the East European developments with the help of fundamental Marxist concepts, and that Marxism itself doesn’t need an enrichment, learning from experiences of all these years. My point is that in the process of historical advance it has often happened that mankind has rediscovered the fundamentals of original revolutionary thought and then improved upon them. I am confident that socialist thought will soon witness a new phase of renaissance and that will surely be based on resurrection of Marxist fundamentals.

When we talk of fundamentals of Marxism it should not be understood as reading a few books and memorising a few principal formulations. Deciding our approach towards study is the most important question, and on that rests success or failure of our whole campaign.

I have often seen that some people have their own ideas on certain questions and they read Marxist literature just to find support for those ideas. Perhaps one can always manage to extract suitable quotes in favour of any idea. We talk of Marxism as our guide to action but in reality we make it tail behind our ideas and actions. I think while studying we should start from the premise that our natural, spontaneous ideas are, in general, petty bourgeois in nature. It has to be so because bourgeois and petty bourgeois ideas are the dominant ideas in society and our world outlook, including that of worker comrades, is bound to be deeply influenced by them. While studying Marxism one should study it in contrast to one’s own ideas, and through a process of mental struggle, make a conscious effort to transform one’s own world outlook. Mao said in relation to China, "there are many comrades in the Party who have joined the Party organisationally and not ideologically". I find it even more true in our case. There are many comrades whose bodies are in the Communist Party, whose souls are dedicated to revolution, but whose minds live in the realm of the liberal-bourgeois world of ideas.

I shall illustrate the point by narrating a few examples.

I find many comrades are taken in by bourgeois propaganda and start harbouring illusions about this or that pronouncement of governments on, say, alleviating poverty etc. Liberals go on propagating that it is just a question of will, the political will in carrying out reforms etc.

Let us see how Marxism approaches this question.

Marx said, "The convention had for a moment the courage to order the abolition of pauperism not indeed ‘immediately’,.... but only after entrusting the Committee of Public Safety with the preparation of the necessary plans and proposals .... what was the result of the convention’s ordinance? Only that there was one more ordinance in the world, and that one year later the convention was besieged by starving weavers.

"Yet the convention represented a maximum political energy, power and understanding.

"No government in the world has been able to make regulations concerning pauperism immediately, without first consulting its officials. ... Insofar as states have concerned themselves at all with pauperism, they have remained at the level of administrative and charitable measures or have sunk below this level.

"Can the state act in any other way? The state will never look for the cause of social imperfections in the state and social institutions themselves! ... Where there are political parties, each party finds the source of such evils in the fact that the opposing party, instead of itself is at the helm of state. Even the radical and revolutionary politicians look for the source of the evils not in the nature of the state, but in a particular form of the state which they want to replace by another form.

"The state and the structure of society are not, from the standpoint of politics, two different things. The state is the structure of society. Insofar as the state admits the existence of social evils, it attributes them to natural laws against which no human power can prevail, or to private life which is independent of the state or to the inadequacies of the administration which is subordinate to it. Thus in England poverty is explained by the natural law according to which population always increases beyond the means of subsistence. From another aspect, England explains pauperism as the consequence of the evil dispositions of the poor, just as the king of Prussia explains it by the unchristian disposition of the rich, and as the convention explains it by the sceptical, counter-revolutionary outlook of the property owners. Accordingly, England inflicts penalties on the poor, the king of Prussia admonishes the rich and the convention beheads property owners.

"In the last resort, every state seeks the cause in adventitious or intentional aspects in the administration and therefore looks to a reform of the administration for a redress of these evils. Why? Simply because the administration is the organising activity of the state itself.

"The contradiction between the aims and good intentions of the administration on the one hand, and its means and resources on the other, cannot be removed by the state without abolishing itself, for it rests upon this contradiction. The state is founded upon the contradiction between public and private life, between general and particular interests. The administration must, therefore, limit itself to a formal and negative sphere of activity, because its power ceases at the point where civil life and its work begin. In face of the consequences which spring from the unsocial character of the life of civil society, of private property, trade, industry, of the mutual plundering by the different groups in civil society impotence is the natural law of the administration." (Economic Notebooks)

The other day I had a discussion with a comrade who felt that Marx’s concept of division of society into classes, of class struggle, seems unfounded. He argued that Marx talked about proletarian leadership etc. but you see workers appearing most conservative and seeing nothing beyond their economic interests. The comrade is wrong in attributing to Marx the credit of dividing the society into classes and inventing class struggle. Marx himself said, "No credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society, nor yet the struggle between them. Long before me bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this struggle of the classes and bourgeois economists the economic anatomy of the classes." (Marx to Weydemyer, March 1852)

Marx’s credit lies in discovering the class which would ultimately put an end to all classes including itself. This class is the proletariat, which is the only class objectively placed to accomplish this mission. Marx further said, "If socialist writers attribute this world-historic role to the proletariat, this is not at all... because they regard the proletarians as gods. On the contrary, in the fully developed proletariat, everything human is taken away, even the appearance of humanity. ... It is not a matter of knowing what this or that proletarian or even the proletariat as a whole conceives as its aims at any particular moment. It is a question of knowing what the proletariat is and what it must historically accomplish in accordance with its nature". (The Holy Family)

I found a comrade, whose integrity and sincerity for the Party and revolution is beyond question, to be deeply influenced by the Gorbachevian hypothesis of ‘peaceful and civilised imperialism’. This comrade failed to understand that he belongs to a country which is in the Third World, a country whose main external contradiction as a nation is with imperialism. A theory which advocates mitigating of this contradiction, and advocates toning down the struggle of developing countries against imperialism, is harmful for our national interest. Why is it that communist parties, various popular movements and many a national leader of the Third World have refused to ditto the new thinking of Gorbachev? It’s so because they are the conscious representatives of their national interests. This comrade of ours is taken in by liberal bourgeois propaganda and is not a conscious representative of the contradiction between imperialism and the Indian nation which forms one of the pillars of our Party programme.

I found several comrades who were carried away by the mass character of parties like AGP and Telugu Desam and movements like those of Sharad Joshi and Tikait and even advocated either joining these parties and movements or copying their programmes. They see the masses in their fold and their militant forms and forget all about the class nature and the goal of these parties and movements. It is quite an irony that while left and progressive sections of the people throughout India see a new hope in our movement in Bihar, primarily because it bases itself upon the most oppressed and most revolutionary classes in the countryside, because its mass character and militancy is being consciously directed towards the definite political goal of revolutionary democracy, a section of our own comrades ridicule their own movement and spread illusions about movements led by alien classes which advocate non-party, apolitical anarchism or certain partial economic and political reforms in the system.

Some of these comrades advocated supporting the Janata government and they even wanted us to join it. They got deeply influenced by the democratic pretensions of the Janata government and its emphasis on the rural sector etc. They felt that struggle against feudal remnants etc. could well be accomplished by a Janata Dal variety of government and we just needed to act as a pressure group. This theory could not stop here and, as the next logical step in its advance, questioned our emphasis on the rural poor and their militant mass movements. The theory ended with the negation of the Communist Party itself, and with the advocacy of a loose democratic formation pursuing the peaceful parliamentary path and essentially playing second fiddle to the Janata Dal and the social-democratic Left. They went to the extent of ridiculing the Naxalbari movement and ridiculed the ideas of independent left assertion and revolutionary democracy.

Well, these comrades failed to strictly adhere to the Marxist class approach. A Communist Party in rural areas can only base itself upon the rural poor and strive to win over the middle peasantry. Our stand towards the Janata Dal government etc. should be decided from this class standpoint only. Janata Dal’s social base in the countryside is essentially led by kulaks with whom the rural poor find themselves in sharp contradiction. In fact, this is the major and growing contradiction in rural India. As we base upon the rural poor and primarily champion their interests, our relation with the Janata Dal cannot but be primarily that of struggle. Now it is true that the middle peasantry too is following this kulak lobby, and as such they form the base of parties like Janata Dal. As we have to win over this middle peasantry, and gradually make it shift from the fold of kulaks and turn it into an ally of the rural poor, we have to go in for some sort of interaction with Janata Dal too. This makes our relation with them a complex affair of unity and struggle, where undoubtedly struggle plays the main role. These objective realities at class levels, we have tried to reflect in our political relationship towards Janata Dal, in our approach towards its government. As CPI and CPI(M) deny or belittle the contradiction between the rural poor and the emerging kulak lobby -- as is most glaringly exhibited in their condemnation of our movement as the struggle between workers and ‘peasants’ -- they advocate class peace in the countryside and hobnob with the kulak lobby.

Their unconditional support to the Janata Dal government, and to Telugu Desam and DMK governments, is quite compatible with their class approach. In the present objective conditions, generally speaking, the middle peasantry is following the kulak lobby and it rallies behind either centrist political parties or behind its ‘natural leaders’ like Tikait and Sharad Joshi. Thus its turning towards the Left depends upon the intensification of its contradictions with the kulaks. Recent experiences in Bihar show that to an extent we have been able to extend our base among sections of the middle peasantry. Improvements in our policies and approach are definitely needed but the whole process is bound to be slow and along with our direct efforts, we will have to take recourse to united front activities wherever possible with peasant organisations that are springing up here and there. If the Marxist class approach and the ground realities are forgotten, and if a communist just wishes to copy a Tikait or a Sharad Joshi for the sake of a quick and short-cut process, I am afraid he will not only fail in this endeavour, rather in the process, he will also lose his social base among the rural poor. Politically, too, he will end up just as a lackey of the bourgeois and social-democratic parties. A few people who left our Party advocating similar lines have already degenerated to that extent.

All such comrades have failed to develop as conscious representatives of the class interest we champion, and have become victims of deceptive liberal bourgeois and social-democratic propaganda.

Then there was a woman comrade in the Party, very active for the women’s cause. She was quite a promising and sincere comrade whom we expected to develop as a woman leader. But in the realm of ideas half her time was consumed in discussing the problems of freedom of love. She developed an affinity with a petty-bourgeois women’s organisation championing an extreme variety of feminism. We tried to explain to her that all these feminist movements are movements of a tiny minority of women, and, by pitting women against men within the democratic movement, they objectively play a disruptionist role. We pointed out to her that if thousands and thousands of labouring women enthusiastically and actively participate in the mainstream democratic movement led by our Party, this itself is proof enough that the cause of women’s liberation forms an important aspect of the movement and again the movement in turn has a liberating effect on womenfolk. When, in Bihar, women form over thirty percent of a 50,000 strong procession, it goes without saying that the basis of a mass-based women’s movement should be sought from within the broad democratic movement. Of course, you need to investigate how exactly the movement at the grassroots reflects and champions the women’s cause and how it creates a liberating impact on them. You need to investigate and formulate these and develop an autonomous women’s organisation. ‘Autonomy’ itself implies that your independence is relative and must be enjoyed as an integral part of the movement. Extreme feminists instead pit the ‘autonomous women’s movement’ against the broad movement for democracy. We explained it all to the concerned woman comrade, advised her to put aside for a while her firebrand variety of feminism, as it would only bring isolation from the women themselves and rather move to step by step keeping in mind the level of consciousness and state of organisation of women. Isn’t this the common practice of all communists? Isolated from the masses we are doomed and to move along with the masses, to raise their level of consciousness step by step, don’t we adjust with various institutions of society which we, in the final analysis, intend to break? Even participation in election — is it not an adjustment? However, all our explanations failed to create any impact and matters came to such a pass that we had to expel this woman comrade from the Party as her extreme feminist ideas were found to be incompatible with the Communist Party and Marxism-Leninism.

I have discussed the importance of study, emphasised the study of Marxist fundamentals and put forward the correct approach towards study. I have also referred to several examples to show how some honest and sincere practical workers came into conflict with Marxism and the Communist Party because they neglected study and refused to transform their world outlook.

This transformation is a long drawn process and hence study must be a regular affair. Otherwise, as happened with these comrades, wrong ideas go on accumulating till it becomes impossible for one to transform oneself.

As one of my colleagues correctly pointed out, high thinking is always associated with plain living and, I would add, with modesty.

I hope that practical workers who often avoid study on the pretext of pressure of work would learn a lesson or two from these negative teachers. In the present literacy campaign we have tried to adopt a popular approach. Senior Party leaders have prepared a series of popular essays on various topics. And after we get your suggestions and criticisms, the Party Central Committee plans to publish improved versions of these essays as permanent study material.

[From the Political-Organisational Report of the Sixth Party Congress.]

The collapse of Soviet Union and the end of Cold War led to a unipolar world. This was reflected in the Gulf War when all the major imperialist powers rallied around US in a grand alliance. However, this proved to be temporary. When the US wanted to enact the second edition of the Gulf War in September 1996, the alliance cracked. Russia criticised it openly, France registered its protest, China conveyed greetings to Saddam, the Japanese advised restraint and even US’ Arab allies turned the other way.

Internal differences are quite manifest on the question of expansion of NATO. From 1991 onwards, i.e. with the end of Cold War, France and Germany began mooting the idea of a pan-European security arrangement. The US is apprehensive that once Germany, on its own or with France, becomes hegemonic in Central Europe it may reach some agreement with Russia over excluding the US from Eurasia. To prevent the Europeans from forging an independent strategic entity, the US embarked on an eastward expansion of NATO and pushed through its unilateral decision as to which countries were to be admitted. The eastward expansion of NATO is an important way to keep Europe tied down to the US and assert America’s unipolar dominance. Moscow was opposed to this expansion of NATO but had to accede in exchange for economic incentives and a NATO-Russia permanent joint council where it will have its say in NATO decisions without veto rights.

Although the US talks of ‘positive engagement’ with China, in practice it doggedly pursues the policy of containment of China. China is deeply worried over the expansion of NATO in Europe and the growing strategic activism of US in Central Asia, which borders China to the west. To break out of the encirclement, apart from strengthening their nuclear and conventional capabilities, the Chinese have rapidly boosted their strategic cooperation with Russia. The joint communique issued after the summit meeting of Russian and Chinese leaders vowed to create an equal partnership aimed at strategic interaction in the 21st century and building a multipolar world. This development is of crucial importance as it is for the first time that the two big powers have openly questioned American hegemony and talked of a multi-polar world.

China is putting enormous pressure on Japan to exclude Taiwan from the ambit of Japan’s recent military alliance with the US. China has been strengthening its economic and political ties with East Asian countries and in a gathering of East Asian leaders the Chinese premier talked about a ‘new international economic and political order’ opposed to the ‘irrational western order’. The Chinese are invoking the national plank in a big way and have started taking more active and vocal role in world politics. Hong Kong’s unification has boosted both the economic strength of China as well as its nationalist plank.

Lenin had said that it is perfectly possible for imperialist countries to forge an alliance for the "peaceful" division of some region. "But the question is whether such alliances will be permanent and eliminate friction, conflicts and struggle in every possible form.

"The only conceivable basis under capitalism for the division of spheres of influence etc. is a calculation of strength and the strength does not change to an equal degree, for the even development of different undertakings, trusts etc. is impossible.

"General alliances, therefore, are like periods of truce in a war. Peaceful alliances prepare the grounds of war and in their turn grow out of war; one conditions the other."

A unipolar world is thus an anachronism. The objective process is leading towards multipolarity where Europe and the China-Russia axis may emerge as important poles apart from the US.

The US is bent upon exercising its hegemony all over the world. It continues to pursue policies like the economic blockade of Cuba which began in the ’60s, economic sanctions against Iraq and Iran and bullying China, Russia and Japan. It is engaged in trade wars with European countries. And it meddles in the internal affairs of a host of countries including India. And for these purposes it uses international financial and trade institutions as well as the UN which, of late, has become an instrument pursuing US policies.

For small and weak countries therefore, the national question continues to be of paramount importance in this age of globalisation.

In US strategy India fits in as a countervailing force against China. Indian foreign policy response is quite vague on this question. Though, of late, Sino-Indian relations have considerably improved, there is a strong pro-US lobby in India which raises the bogey of China’s expansionist designs, makes a hue and cry over the Tibet question, presents China as India’s main trade rival etc.

We did welcome India’s refusal to sign NPT and CTBT because, as a sovereign country, India should have the freedom to decide its course and not succumb to US dictates. But the threat of a nuclear race hotting up in South Asia is looming large before us. Despite the Gujral doctrine promising good neighbourly relations and despite making a beginning in talks with Pakistan, nothing concrete is expected to emerge. Outstanding problems between India and Pakistan, including the Kashmir dispute, can only be solved within a broader framework of cooperation that includes developing SAARC as a powerful regional economic bloc and concluding a bilateral NPT with Pakistan. India should also explore the potential of strategic cooperation with China in order to accelerate the process of multipolarity. But it is highly unlikely that India’s present ruling dispensation, attached as it is with numerous overt and covert ties with West, will tread this path.

The impact of globalisation is already being felt in Europe where the unemployment rate has gone up to 11% (in absolute terms 20 million persons are without jobs), a figure comparable to that of the pre-Second World War Great Depression. France, where the unemployment rate has reached 12%, is the worst hit. This coupled with a drastic reduction in social welfare has given rise to waves of protests and strikes.

The election outcome resulting in the Left’s victory in France or the voting out of ruling parties in several other European countries is essentially a backlash against liberalisation and globalisation. The recent victory of the socialist coalition in France is perhaps most significant. It has come in the wake of a decisive popular resistance by the French working class defeating attempts to place the economy on a Thatcherite path, as well as rightwing anti-immigrant legislation with racist overtones. By contrast, there is hardly anything socialistic or social-democratic about the victory of the New Labour in Britain. The term New Labour is essentially a misleading euphemism for what should be called New Conservative. Any euphoria over the so-called leftward shift in Europe would thus seem to be patently misplaced.

The European Monetary Union and the introduction of a single currency, Euro, by 1 January 1999, doesn’t hold any promise for the working class. On the contrary, individual countries in their bid to attain a competitive edge in an integrated Europe are further tightening the noose around the workers. Thus the working class is opposed to the whole exercise of unification and is organising major protests.

The economies of the republics of the erstwhile USSR and Eastern Europe are still trapped in their transitional trauma which is now threatening to grow into a kind of permanent paralysis. The so-called neo-liberal panacea has failed miserably in resolving this crisis. This economic reality has found its political reflection in the popular dissatisfaction with the new post-socialist regimes in these countries. The replacement of Soviet puppet regimes by Western puppet regimes in these countries has met with an early collapse, and in many cases ex-communists who appear to be more rooted in the soil, have come back sans the communist tag.

This year in Russia millions of angry workers demonstrated demanding immediate government action to pay back wages, procure jobs and restore social services. In the first stirrings of class action since the collapse of the socialist system, over 10 million workers participated in strikes.

The crisis of neo-liberalism is also evident in country after country in Africa, Latin America and Asia. This has given rise to a lot of dissension among the high priests of neo-liberal orthodoxy and Japan has reportedly begun to question the wisdom of the neo-liberal package of macroeconomic stabilisation and structural adjustment. The recent resurrection of the state in the neo-liberal discourse — redefining the crucial role of the state in the economy was the focus of this year’s World Development Report released by the World Bank — is said to be a fallout of this divergence between the US and Japan. Now in the wake of the recent currency turmoil in South-East Asia, this difference is becoming accentuated and coming out more strongly into the open with Japan calling for curbs on currency speculation and proposing a $100 billion monetary fund for Asia. The IMF, in its recent Hong Kong meet, has strongly opposed these Japanese proposals insisting on a single source of conditionality.

Unemployment in the USA remained at the rate of 6% but the proportion of low-wage service sector jobs has increased. Jobs are being created but many are temporary jobs without any security and without a future. Japan which till recently was paraded as the model of economic progress — and Indian capitalists missed no opportunity to preach to their workers about the cooperative attitude of the Japanese workers that is supposed to have worked wonders in Japan — has lost much of its shine. Gone are the heady days of the ’80s when Japanese companies seemed unstoppable. Seven years after the boom in the stock markets, Japan is in deep trouble. All attempts at overcoming the slump have had only a moderate effect. The US goes on pressurising Japan to deregulate its economy and open its markets for American goods. While Japan has entered the phase of political instability, the communist party there has significantly improved its presence in the last elections.

The Asian ‘tiger’ economies, assiduously projected as the model for developing countries, are now caught in a web of crises. South Korea’s growth rate is slowing down and its trade balance is upset. It was already rocked by the student protests against the stationing of 37000 US troops in South Korea. Now workers have come onto the streets. Tens of thousands of workers have marched on the streets of Seoul and other cities against a new labour law that makes it easier for employers to fire their workers. Thailand’s external debt has mounted to $90 billion, exports have declined and its current account balance has turned negative. This led to a free fall of the Thai currency whose tremors soon reached South Korea, Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia. A loan of $16 billion — of which, interestingly, $1 billion was committed by China — was arranged by the IMF to bail out Thailand but currently a fresh round of currency turmoil has engulfed the region. The Tigers have started showing signs of tiredness and in the coming years militant working class actions are bound to intensify.

In fact, a run on Third World currencies and sudden flight of capital resulting in a debilitating impact on the economy, first witnessed in a very acute form in the case of Mexican meltdown, is becoming a wider phenomenon rendering many Third World economies highly vulnerable in the era of globalisation. On the whole, in seven years of globalisation the growth record of the world economy has remained lacklusture — the average growth rate in this period being lower than the rate in the 1970s.

The Chinese Puzzle

Only the yuan, the Chinese currency, held steady amidst the recent currency turmoil in East Asia. This shows the strength of China’s economic fundamentals as well as its financial mechanisms, which do not give much scope to speculators. Its economy is growing at the rate of average 10% a year. China’s trade surplus stands at $16 billion whereas foreign exchange reserves have crossed the $200 billion mark. Foreign debt is meagre. China has attracted huge amount of foreign direct investment (FDI) — about 80% of which comes from overseas Chinese.

Although state-owned enterprises still employ the bulk of the 170 million-strong urban workforce, their share in the total industrial output has fallen to less than one-third, down from over three-quarters in 1978 when reforms began. State-owned enterprises are in deep crisis and it is reported that hundreds of thousands of workers have gone unpaid for months. The huge amount of money lent by the state banks to ailing state enterprises has risen to $120 billion last year. Much of the borrowing, however, went just to pay wages. Reform of the state sector has been the foremost agenda in the just concluded congress of CPC. The capitalist sector is making giant strides and China is at a crossroads.

The Chinese Communist Party has coined the term ‘socialist market economy’ based on the premise that within an overall socialist framework, viz. communist party rule and state control over planning, finance etc., the market can be guided, controlled and put to use for building socialism. This they call the primary stage of socialism, and it is expected to continue for the next fifty years till China attains a per capita income level comparable with moderately developed capitalist countries. This revision of the classical Marxist theory on socialism is what is known as Deng Xiao Ping’s theory of building socialism with Chinese characteristics. The genesis of this theory can be traced back to the two-lines struggle in the CPC since the 1950s.

We do acknowledge the enormous difficulties in building socialism in a single country, and that too in a backward Asian country.

We also refute the methodology that discusses the question of building socialism in the abstract, as an ideal utopian model that can just be transplanted anywhere, anytime by sheer will power. Instead we look at socialism as a society evolving out of contradictions of capitalism, evolving as a natural process of history and therefore adopting myriad forms in different contexts and different countries.

Still, the whole perception of socialist market economy appears to be highly controversial and in view of the fact that the Chinese economy is becoming overwhelmingly capitalist, regional imbalances and rich-poor divide are growing, a whole new class of neo-rich is coming up and corruption is becoming quite rampant, we cannot but feel seriously concerned about the future of Chinese socialism.

[From Liberation, April 1997.]

‘It doesn’t matter whether the cat is black or white as long as it caught mice.’ About this famous statement of Deng the only official clarification offered so far has been that the cat referred to was yellow not white.

Deng Xiaoping, the last link in the chain of veteran revolutionaries of China, remained a controversial figure all through his political career spanning over 70 years. The debate, whether Deng was building socialism or capitalism in China, remains inconclusive; still, there is no disputing the fact that under his command China indeed emerged as a major world economic power within a period of just 10 to 15 years. The pace of economic development in China has been described as unparalleled in world history — a miracle — and experts believe that within a decade or so China is poised to become an economic superpower, next only to the United States.

In the post-Chinese revolution phase, differences began to crop up between Mao and Deng on the all-important question of socialist construction. Deng believed that in the phase of socialist construction, the contradiction between the backward productive forces and the advanced production relations constituted the principal contradiction of Chinese society. In other words, without the rapid development of productive forces advanced production relations cannot be sustained and thus socialism will remain a utopia. Accordingly, along with Liu Shao Chi, he advocated primary emphasis on the development of productive forces. As for the production relations, they should correspondingly be developed step by step.

Under the leadership of Chairman Mao, new China made rapid progress towards building socialism and by the early sixties a powerful socialist infrastructure did come into being. In the next stage of development, inner-Party debates got intensified and eventually led to the cultural revolution. Deng was branded as the ‘Capitalist-roader No.2’ after Liu Shao Chi and was sent off to a factory far off from Beijing to work as an ordinary worker. Deng is reported to have made self-criticisms at least twice and even confessed that he was indeed a capitalist roader.

Nevertheless, the ideals that had motivated the Cultural Revolution, viz. preventing the dangers of capitalist revival, cultivating the advanced socialist consciousness and the making of a socialist man etc. remained a distant dream and after a prolonged spell of ten years, Cultural Revolution ended in a fiasco. Ironically, the most vocal proponent of the Cultural Revolution, Lin Piao proved to be a conspirator, who plotted a coup d’etat aimed at assassinating Mao and seizing power. The credit for foiling Lin Piao’s gameplan goes to Chou Enlai, considered otherwise a moderate in the parlance of cultural revolutionaries. Deng was recalled by Mao but his return proved to be a short-term affair. After the departure of Chou, the machinations of the notorious gang of four once again led to his ouster. After Mao’s death and the subsequent exposure of the gang of four, Deng made a dramatic comeback and thereafter there was no looking back. Till his end he remained the supreme leader of China.

He advanced the theory of the primary stage of socialism, quite a protracted stage indeed, and drastically restructured production relations and opened China for massive inflow of foreign capital and technology. He created special economic zones based on the premise ‘let some areas develop first’.

The western capitalist world widely acclaimed his policies of economic reforms. The West was euphoric over the prospects of eventual political reforms which would destroy the monopoly of the Communist Party rule in China and usher in multi-party parliamentary system.

Deng, however, proved to be a die-hard in this respect. He did not hesitate to mercilessly crush the clamourings for bourgeois political reforms at Tiananmen Square and for that the bourgeois media dubbed him as the villain of the piece.

Deng has built the super-structure of modern China only over the foundations of a socialist infrastructure built under the charismatic leadership of Chairman Mao. Committed to the rule of the Communist Party and the goals of socialism, both Mao and Deng were outstanding personalities of 20th century and both played their historical roles to the hilt. Yet the million dollar question posed by Mao ‘Which will win, socialism or capitalism?’, could neither be resolved by Mao’s Cultural Revolution nor by Deng’s agenda of socialist modernisation. The quest for its resolution shall continue to haunt China of the 21st century.

Deng Xiaoping performed the unique feat of getting rehabilitated, that too twice, in his lifetime. Like the proverbial cat, no matter white or yellow, he ‘had nine lives’.

Liberation pays tribute to the last great man in the series of historical personalities who shaped the 20th century.