English

[Interview by Kalpana Wilson of South Asia Solidarity Group taken in March 1994.]

Can you explain how you see the current so-called crisis of socialism which has followed the collapse of the Soviet Union?

I essentially think that socialism itself is not a complete or stable system. Socialism is meant to be a transitory system, between capitalism and communism. So it is a very specific phenomenon. It does have certain features of communism — the society which is to be established — and it retains certain features of capitalism in the sense that what Marx calls ‘the principle of distribution’ remains essentially the same — to each according to his work. For example, in a socialist system, say there is a factory which is supposed to be representing ownership by people. A worker there, on the one hand, has the feeling that he is part of the people, so in a sense he is the owner of the factory as well. On the other hand, because he receives according to his work, he feels that he is a wage worker. So this duality operates in the worker’s consciousness.

As far ownership is concerned, on the one hand, it is ownership by the whole people; on the other hand, this ownership is managed through state ownership, (because the state still exists in a socialist society) and exercised through officials appointed by the state. So the ownership aspect also has a duality and is liable to degenerate into bureaucracy. This duality of both workers and ownership is characteristic of the transitory society.

There is also the fact that we have been experimenting with socialism in backward countries, not advanced capitalist countries. Productive forces are backward and you cannot establish any higher system of ownership immediately. Different kinds of ownership exist: ownership by the whole people, ownership by the collective, small private enterprises... only gradually can you move to another stage. Commodity relationships, money, all this not only continue but it has a role to play because capitalism has not exhausted itself. A lot of exchange is really commodity exchange, market exchange. For example, exchange between enterprises owned by the people and enterprises which are collectives — enterprises at different stages — is essentially commodity exchange. Because of this particularity of socialist society and especially of socialism in backward countries, socialism has both possibilities — it can advance towards communism or it can slide back towards capitalism.

Originally the conception had been that a socialist society will be established and after some time it will go over to communism. But later there were theoretical developments in Marxism, Lenin started saying that this transition will take a long time, and then in China Mao said that it’s still not settled whether capitalism or socialism will win, it may take hundreds of years. This change came about because of the particular conditions under which socialism had to be built. And formulations started appearing about the existence of class contradictions, class struggles in socialist society, whereas the original proponents of Marxism had envisaged socialism as a classless society. So I feel that Marx’s original thesis only gives a general outline, because his whole conception was based on the analysis of a capitalist society, and that too in abstraction, the perfect capitalist society. In concrete terms even a very highly developed capitalist society doesn’t conform to Marx’s ideal standards. So you can’t even say that the study of capitalism is complete because capitalism is still present and it has evolved very fast, it has not run its course. And more importantly, the study of socialism and the economic laws of socialism is still at a very primitive, primary stage. Because of all this I believe that Marxism, for its retrieval now, requires what in popular terms I call a new Das Kapital. The time is ripe for that. The basics are there, they will continue to operate, but the study of capitalism remains uncompleted. Even when Lenin studied monopoly capitalism, he too had the conception that this monopoly capitalism was the last stage of capitalism and it was moribund and would collapse. But you can see that monopoly capitalism has taken new forms and continues. So new studies are needed. Then there is the [need for a] study of the economic laws of socialism, with the experience of 75 years in Russia and later China... so I feel Marxism needs a work comparable to Capital, particularly because all the experiments with building socialism are going on in the backward countries — in China, Vietnam and so on. If socialism as a transitory society has to continue for hundreds of years, that means you can’t see commodities, money and markets just as a liability, and start taking steps to overcome them. Rather, even in a socialist society they may require development, they may require a particular utilisation for advancing the cause of socialism itself. It’s not something which has to be just dispensed with or a necessary evil which you have to go through. Planning is supposed to be a socialistic phenomenon and we saw that capitalist society used planning to check the anarchy of production with which capitalism is associated. So similarly, communists will have to think about how to utilise commodities, money and markets to build socialism in a positive way.

There is one more point that Marx made when he said that socialism was a transitory system: he said that proletarian dictatorship was an absolute necessity. So I feel that in case where proletarian dictatorship is weakened, the chance of that transitory system slipping back to capitalism is obvious. For example if we look at the Soviet Union we find that before its collapse, the economic model was more or less a traditional socialist one. All belonged to the state sector; privatisation and foreign capital were virtually absent. But they started losing proletarian dictatorship from Krushchev’s period itself, and from there we find that somewhere the gateway to capitalism was opened. In contrast I feel that Mao studied this danger of socialism going back to capitalism, the potential for reversal which the Russians denied was possible.

With the concept of Cultural Revolution — the Cultural Revolution was conceived not for tampering with the economic laws of socialism, not for bypassing backward productive forces and building some sort of advanced communist production relations — actually Mao wanted to strengthen proletarian dictatorship. And proletarian dictatorship is another name for broad people’s democracy of 90%. And he this tried to build through the Cultural Revolution: dictatorship over the few and democracy of 90%. And the Cultural Revolution had that emphasis — big character posters, mass enthusiasm etc. Socialist countries like Russia, East European countries…by proletarian dictatorship they understood just the dictatorship. The other part, that means democracy for 90%, this question of socialist democracy was not perceived as an integral part of proletarian dictatorship. So other forces took up the question of democracy. In China also, this question has always been there and Mao’s was the first attempt to generalise this democracy under socialism. Tiananmen again represented the desire for democracy, and I think every ten years, or five years or seven years, we are witnessing some big people’s movement, and if you don’t take it up from within a socialist framework it will be taken up within a bourgeois framework.

Anyway the Cultural Revolution was an experiment with that. It is true that certain petty bourgeois social forces emerged and the whole Cultural Revolution was derailed, and some people started tampering with the basic economic laws of socialism, trying to develop some sort of higher relations. The Party, which has to be the instrument of this, got disorganised. So it ended in failure. But my point is that it raised certain very important questions of socialist democracy. It did create a lot of enthusiasm among masses although it could not be organised properly and that was a problem.

At present in China they are carrying out economic experiments and keeping intact the Communist Party’s leadership — this is something I do appreciate and as an experiment it is worth watching and studying. But the other aspect, the desire for democracy, is also present. China will witness some sort of democratic movement once again. A country cannot just survive on economic statistics. And there I think the lessons of the Cultural Revolution will again be useful, for the sake of reference at least. So this is how I see this whole crisis of socialism or problems of socialism.

Can you elaborate on experimentation with the market in the Indian context, how might the CPI(ML) attempt to carry this out?

You see in China, even during the stage of democratic revolution Mao divided the bourgeoisie into two categories — the compradors and the national bourgeoisie, something for which he was also highly criticised. Comprador bureaucrat capital he named them. They were a target of revolution. Mao experimented on two things: one was the alliance with the peasantry, and in that process he transformed the peasantry into a revolutionary force. This was a new contribution to Marxism, to the strategy of revolution at least. And the other aspect was his alliance with the national bourgeoisie. While building socialism from democratic revolution he saw the transformation of the national bourgeoisie step by step as a long term process. Instead of just expropriating them he tried to utilise them and transform them. And he was condemned for that wasn’t seen as true socialism. But I think in Indian conditions too this question will be of great importance. China’s national bourgeoisie was very weak and not that significant. In India by the time the revolution becomes victorious I think it is quite possible that there will be a split in the bourgeoisie and that we will have to contend with a section which has been transformed into a national bourgeoisie. And that national bourgeoisie will be quite a force in Indian conditions. Even in the alliance with the peasantry, among the middle peasants, or farmers, a big section has emerged who have capitalistic tendencies. On the political front while attempting socialist transformation handling these forces and even utlising them for the sake of socialism — these are particular questions we are facing in India.

Some people say that as the ruling bourgeoisie in India is comprador, and comprador means agents of imperialism, so state power in India rests with imperialism. When the CPI(ML) was being built and its programme was being drafted, in 1969-70, we differed with that. We said this is wrong. We think that Indian state power rests with the Indian bourgeoisie and landlords. That is the whole essence of the transfer of power — it’s not just technical. In class terms they operate within the framework of imperialism but state power rests with them. Those who see imperialism as controlling the Indian state have the formulation that India’s principal contradiction is with imperialism, so they say an anti-imperialist broad front is what is necessary. Well, we do have a basic contradiction with imperialism, but that is in an external sense — the nation vs. imperialism. But internally we don’t see this as the principal contradiction.

Now the question naturally arises — what is the actual character of these compradors? We said that this too has to be looked at in a new way. If you just think of them as agents, very crudely formulated, this is not correct. We said that the Indian bourgeoisie operates as a class, different sections many have links with different countries but there is a common thread. Indian compradors have a single strategy, and they enjoy a degree of relatively independence, which is maintained by utilising the contradictions between different imperialist countries, and having relations with the Soviet Union. This was not independence in an absolute sense, they are not free from imperialist control. But by locating state power in the hands of the comprador bourgeoisie and landlords, and acknowledging their capability for maneuvering or operating some sort of independent position, our Party tried to depart from old formulations, and to conform more with the real situation.

Now that the Soviet Union has collapsed and the Indian bourgeoisie is developing closer relations with the West and the IMF/World Bank, the suggestion has come up again that India has lost it political and economic sovereignty, it has more or less turned into a neo-colony, state power is now in the hands of imperialism, and therefore imperialism vs. the Indian nation is the main internal contradiction now, so we should go for the broadest possible united front against it. People have started saying that earlier the Soviet Union had been playing a balancing role, and on the basis of its relations with the Soviet Union Indian could bargain with Western countries, but now that the Soviet Union has gone it can no longer do so. True, with all these changes in the situation and in India’s polices, overall imperialist penetration has really gone deep. But I still think that he Indian bourgeoisie has that relative independence. It is not finished. One can talk of the ‘threat to India’s political sovereignty’, ‘threat to Independence’ for popular mobilisation in a broad anti-imperialist front. But this shouldn’t be taken in a very literal sense. The Soviet Union is gone but there are still contradictions between imperialist countries. So India can try to diversify its relations in a different way. The whole tactic of utilising the contradictions to whatever extent possible still remains. Its relationship with the Soviets was not based on any socialist ideal, it was just a bargaining lever. The may try this with Russia also if they can, and with Japan, Germany etc., because India’s bourgeois economic relations are so diversified, and imperialists also have their contradictions, their crises, their competitions. So maybe this bargaining capacity, this utilisation of contradictions, this relative independence is more restricted now but I don’t think that it has gone. State power remains with the Indian bourgeoisie. It is necessary to grasp this because otherwise the internal contradiction is ignored.

I’ll give you one practical example, say here in Bihar. Now Bihar is a backward state, with a lot of feudalism and struggles over land and so on. So we are taking up land struggles and even the CPI and CPI(M) are also trying to take up these issues. The government here, Laloo Yadav’s Janata Dal government, is not in a position to take up land reforms. It doesn’t have the political will, or the structure. So what are their tactics? All of a sudden they have started talking about ‘Dunkel’ saying Dunkel is a very dangerous thing, it is against peasants etc. In this way they are trying to develop relations with CPI and CPI(M). And CPI and CPI(M) are also not in a position to carry on land struggles to any serious extent. Because when you take up land struggles seriously, then so many tensions, armed confrontations start developing. It’s not easy to solve things just in a legal way. They want to avoid this situation, but they also want to maintain their revolutionary face. Just then Laloo comes up with Dunkel, and he becomes a champion of anti-imperialism! But why is he bringing all this up? The man understands nothing about Dunkel — he just said that Dunkel is a donkey so he had a procession of donkeys and so on! And in Bihar’s context I don’t think that Dunkel will have that much impact because capitalist farming is not that developed. Of course, we are also for taking up this question, and are doing so even in Bihar. But the way they are bringing it up, the whole purpose is to dilute the internal contradiction. And CPI has also started joint activities with the Janata Dal on Dunkel, and has given up the land struggle. This is something we have to be wary of. My point is that while the danger is of course there — and we are trying for a broad front — if you come to the conclusion the India has already turned into a Banana Republic, we have internalised the contradiction with imperialism, internal contradictions are of no importance and we must have all kinds of alliances, and that determines you practice, I don’t think that is correct in our context.

Your were talking of the possible emergence of genuine national bourgeoisie. From where would it emerge? And what would be its contradictions with the rest of the Indian bourgeoisie?

The search for a national bourgeoisie has been a very serious problem for the Indian communist movement. Because form the very beginning under Soviet influence the CPI started saying that now India has a national bourgeoisie which is an anti-imperialist force. Sometimes Nehru was seen as the representative of this force, sometimes some other person. As a result the whole emphasis turned to developing relation with the national bourgeoisie and CPI started saying that they would be playing the leading role. This weakened the communist movement. Our point of view is that instead of carrying out a search beforehand and seeking their representatives, let this question be resolved in course of the struggle. Let us go on with our movements, anti-imperialist movements as well as anti-feudal struggle, and there let us see which forces eventually come up and join hands with us. CPI(ML) has done that from the beginning and essentially I still believe the same thing.

In one sense you may be able to distinguish the national bourgeoisie as the small and medium bourgeoisie: ideologically they don’t have anything national about them, but objectively they may be forced to operate as national because it is not possible for imperialism to satisfy everybody. But if you start searching for political representatives of the national bourgeoisie, you may even come to the conclusion that the RSS is such a representative because of its call for ‘Swadeshi’ and against Dunkel. Even some sections of Bombay businessmen have opposed GATT and Dunkel and the entry of multinationals to India.

But the national bourgeoisie is not something which is just there and you have to search for it and find it. Rather we started from the formulation that they are all compradors and let us see if from among the compradors, in the course of anti-imperialist struggles, a national bourgeoisie emerges. In this sense the national bourgeoisie has to be created.

We started off talking about democracy. In this context what is the practice of the Party and the relationship between the Party and mass organisations?

As far as mass organisations are concerned we thought that they should be more than just party wings. Different mass organisations represent different sections with their own characteristics. For example, a student/youth organisation has it own dynamism, its own way of operating, its own sentiments. If the party makes certain formulations and the organisation is asked to operate within the bounds of that, that may kill the whole vitality, initiative and dynamism of that organisation. Similarly, women’s organisations have particular forms of operating, they face specific forms of oppression and therefore their forms of expression will also be different. Therefore they have to be allowed to operate relatively independently. We felt that the mass organisations of CPI(M) in particular are more like party wings. And that has been the traditional Russian or even Chinese practice. Mass organisations just become paper organisations. They only count in terms of their membership — 40 lakhs, 50 lakhs. There is a lot of interference in their programmes. So this is one thing we have tried to experiment with – giving them a lot of freedom, accepting their particularities or rather encouraging them. This was one thing, and secondly, we also thought that there should be a dialectical relationship where on the one hand the Party leads them and on the other they act as a sort of watchdog on the Party itself. Even when you are not in power certain strains and tendencies like bureaucracy do emerge within the Party.

Now, for example, suppose some Party cadre has misbehaved with a woman, the Party committee has discussed the matter and fearing a reaction has just suppressed the whole thing. The complaint goes to the women’s organisation. They take up the matter and put pressure on the Party that this is wrong. We see this as a good thing because often within the Party system things may not be seen from the women’s point of view. The particular woman concerned may not be in a position to articulate her feelings, to protest the injustice. But if the women’s organisation takes up the case then naturally the Party has to face pressure.

To whatever extent we get some power, for example, in the district council in Karbi Anglong or maybe in the future in some government, we emphasise that peasant associations and other organisations should operate independently and they should put pressure on the officials, on the Party. That is our vision of mass organisations — on the one hand encouraging their independence so they can properly reflect the characteristics of the sections they represent, which will give them vitality and dynamism. The Party should only confine itself to providing leadership and on the other hand the mass organisation should act as a watchdog for the Party.

One of initiatives which has been very striking has been the formation of the Inqilabi Muslim Conference which was one of the first times that the Left in India has been prepared to organise round a religious identity.

We took up this matter because recently the country has been divided on this basis: Hindutva and Muslims as its target. They started saying that Hinduism is more than a religion, it is a socio-cultural category. So they say that Muslims are also a part of Hinduism because they live in India — historically and also culturally. They use the word ‘Mohammediya Hindu’ and say, Muslims can go on living in India if they give up their separate identity and become part of a broad Hindu formation, then we are ready to accept them as Mohammediya Hindus. They also said that Sikha, Jains, Buddhists are also Hindus. Some worship god — one god, ten gods, crores of gods, or no god at all, yet all are Hindus! Hinduism is a broad socio-cultural category in India and all should be a part of it including Muslims. And their willingness to do this is a test of their patriotism and nationalism. So this was the particular attack, the demand that Muslims should give up their particular religious, cultural, and social identity. It was an attack not just on religion but also socially and culturally. Muslims were threatened as a community. Naturally the reaction was on a community basis. Now this Muslim reaction had one fundamentalist element — the counterpart of the BJP. But other Muslims felt that this would not be correct in a country like India where Muslims are a minority and 80-85% of people are Hindus. So in Indian conditions they felt that secularism is better.

It is not that bourgeoisification has occurred among Indian Muslims and from that position they are talking about secularism. Their religious beliefs are against the concept of a secular state. But the concrete Indian conditions encouraged them to go for secularism.

Secondly, Muslims have developed a friendly relationship with the Left. They may be in this or that bourgeois party for the sake of elections but generally a feeling has come up that the Left are genuinely secular. Earlier on sections of Muslims were with the Left, there were progressives, communists. Many important communists were Muslims, and many Muslim workers participated as a class. Then there were progressive intellectuals, many progressive cultural workers. But for the community as a whole this sort of a positive approach to the Left is something new. Earlier sentiments had been very much in favour of Pakistan. But now there is no desire for any further division of the country.

So these were the changes. Muslims were under attack as a community, then they had this support for secularism and a friendly relationship with the Left.

We wanted to consolidate this relationship. But how to give it an organisational form, an institutional shape? That was the whole idea which gave birth to the Inquilabi Muslim Conference. It was necessary to take into account the community aspect and the Inquilabi aspect. The idea behind it was not to strengthen Muslim exclusiveness, rather to articulate Muslim interests against the BJP etc. Importance was attached to organising social change within the Muslim community. So Inquilabi is not Inquilabi against the BJP, but Inquilabi within the community. That is why we placed a lot of emphasis on raising the question of Muslim women’s position. This is a question which has come up from within the community.

[Inaugural address at the Central Party School, June 1994.]

Dear comrades,

I welcome you all to the Central Party School. As you are aware, our Party, over the years, has cultivated the habit of a comprehensive and creative study of Marxism-Leninism and all throughout ’80s, although working in underground conditions, we organised Party schools from central down to the grassroots levels. In these schools the study of both Marxist classics as well as the socio-economic conditions of India were undertaken. This has been an important weapon in the hands of the Party to integrate the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism with the concrete conditions of India and thus enrich the Party line and unite the whole Party around it. This aspect of vigorous ideological-theoretical work undertaken by our Party is little known outside and that is why outside observers are often baffled by the smooth transition our Party has made from one stage to another. Many people don’t know that while conducting political activities through IPF, the Party structure was kept intact from top to bottom, not simply as a scheme of work division but more importantly as the ideological-theoretical guide to the whole course of the movement. Those who maintained that the Party has been sacrificed at the altar of IPF are at a loss to explain the present situation when Party has taken over the entire political command without a hitch.

A month or so back, I met a comrade from an ML faction. He had a lot of criticism against our Party but he praised us for what he called the expertise in Party building. Actually it is neither a question of organisational skill, nor of the charisma of individual leaders, but of taking the ideological-theoretical work as the key link of Party building that has enabled us to advance the cause of Party building amidst the all-round political confusion and organisational chaos in the ML movement. This is something unique to our Party, a fine tradition which we must cherish and preserve.

As you know, the study of Marxism has long been abandoned in the CPI. Soviet propaganda material was the only literature in currency there, and after the Soviet collapse the whole propaganda network of CPI has simply collapsed. In the CPI(M), it had always been a regimented study with heavy doses of metaphysics. There is just no scope for any independent and creative study of Marxism or for any ideological-theoretical debates within the party. Ultra-left groups have nothing to do with Marxism-Leninism. As regards their adherence to Mao’s thought, they first detach it from its Marxist-Leninist roots and then pick up certain quotations of Mao in isolation from the whole body of Mao’s thought and interpret them conveniently to suit their own idealist-anarchist thinking.

In contrast, our track record is far better, but I don’t think all is well in our Party too. Particularly in the last year or two there has been a certain decline on the ideological plane, and the theoretical level of the Party has generally gone down. I think if a survey is made here of comrades present in this school, in all likelihood it will reveal that a good majority of comrades have hardly touched the classics in recent times and perhaps the majority among them will blame the pressure of day-to-day work for this predicament.

If I correctly remember, one of our major aims while opening up the Party had been to take on the renewed bourgeois challenge to Marxism. We shall perhaps all agree that whatever has been done in this regard is precious little compared to the challenge ahead. Now, when the Party is poised for a rapid expansion and we have called upon all communists to join CPI(ML), the ideological-theoretical consolidation of the Party has assumed a new urgency. Moreover, in an environment where the different branches of Party practice are assuming more and more independent status with their increasing volume of work and full-fledged separate structures, any neglect of ideological-theoretical work is bound to give rise to one-sided and metaphysical way of thinking. Ideological-theoretical work is like the life-blood of the Party without which the Party shall be reduced to a lifeless body. It is like the engine of the Party ship without which the Party ship will aimlessly float in the vast ocean without ever expecting to reach the shore. This Central School is expected to make a fresh beginning in this regard, and in the coming months, the school system must be expanded to the grassroots.

Our Party has completed 25 years of its life. Since 1993, when it started functioning openly, the Party’s influence has spread far and wide and by all accounts, we have entered a new phase; rather a decisive phase of Party’s advance. I say a decisive phase because precisely at this moment both the right-opportunist tactics epitomised by the CPI(M)-led Left Front government and the left-opportunist tactics of immediate seizure of power practised by People’s War group have been caught in a blind alley and are showing definite signs of decay and degeneration.

The LF government experiment in West Bengal, even after 17 years of its existence at a stretch, has not only failed in generating any impact on worker-peasant masses of the country, it has also failed to achieve its other declared objective of effecting a restructuring of centre-state relations. It has failed to provide any alternative economic policies and, despite tall claims of providing left and democratic or secular alternative, has failed in arresting the consolidation of Congress(l) rule at the centre. On the negative side, the Left Front rule has virtually turned into a mechanism to consolidate the bourgeois-landlord rule in West Bengal and opened the floodgates for all sorts of opportunistic socio-political alliances by the party at the national level. CPI(M)’s obsession with power in West Bengal has led it recently to vociferously champion the Poll Reforms Bill in league with Congress(l).

On behalf of the revolutionary left camp, it is only our Party which has evolved a comprehensive critique of the theory and practice of the Left Front government. While we criticise and oppose its anti-people and anti-democratic acts on all fronts, we lay particular emphasis on effecting a split in its rural social base on distinctly class lines. Karanda1 confirms that its Achilles’ heel lies there. Moreover, in a dialectical negation of the social-democratic practice of government formation we have raised the question of a left government as the genuine instrument of class struggle. It must be understood that like all the lines of demarcation in nature and society, the one between Marxist and revisionist tactics too keeps on shifting and is determined by concrete conditions. In the concrete conditions of today, upgrading our tactics on government formation is the best way to deal a severe blow to social democrats and win over their mass base and rank and file. The rest is all phrase-mongering, which won’t touch even the fringes of social-democratic influence. It’s not a mere coincidence that despite its limited strength in West Bengal, it is only our Party among all other ML groups that has carved a niche for itself in the mainstream politics of West Bengal. Defying all pressures we have consistently upheld our principled position of left opposition to the government in West Bengal and opposed CPI(M)’s opportunist theoretical and political positions on almost all fronts.

Within the left movement in India we are regarded as the other pole in contrast to CPI(M). We have earned this distinction without for a moment sacrificing the cause of the left unity. Our tactic vis-a-vis CPI(M) represents the continuation of the historic struggle against social democracy, albeit on a higher plane. With each passing day more and more revolutionary communists are able to grasp our tactics as the only viable, effective and broad-based challenge to the social democratic experiment which has reached a dead end while our Party is in a position to take new and bold initiatives. This is one aspect I have in mind when I say that our Party has reached a new phase, a decisive phase of its advance.

Since our unity efforts in general and with the Andhra group led by Sitaramayya in particular failed in early ’80s, Party reorganisation proceeded along two different lines. The Andhra group, which was highly critical of Charu Mazumdar and the annihilation line, put emphasis on legal and mass activities. In collaboration with certain factions operating in Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra it went on to organise a central body of federal nature which popularly came to be known as the CPI(ML) People’s War Group. It did make a promising start by developing powerful mass organisations of rural poor and of students but it soon relapsed into full-fledged dalam activities. Its theoretical-political positions were never very clear and were popularly perceived as armed militant actions for redressal of grievances, particularly of tribal people. But at the political-tactical plane they can only be comprehended as attempts to set up base areas of red political power. We need not repeat here the whole story of its metamorphosis into an anarchist group. Suffice it to say that this group at present is suffering from serious ideological dissensions and organisational splits and reports suggest that the leadership is contemplating major tactical changes to wriggle itself out of the impasse.

By late ’70s, however, our Party, on the other hand, had realised that the first phase of direct revolutionary onslaught is over, and any immediate call for building red army and base areas by raising armed struggle to new heights will be nothing but left adventurism. While continuing to put primary emphasis on developing the mass peasant movement including armed resistance wherever necessary, we decided to make full use of legal and even parliamentary opportunities to expand our influence among broad masses, to take up united front activities to seek new allies from various strata of Indian people as well as to utilise the contradiction within the enemy camp.

While developing the whole range of tactics suited to the concrete Indian conditions as well as to the specific stage of the revolutionary movement we had to struggle against liquidationist tendencies within our Party — which advocated the renunciation of Marxist-Leninist ideology and the communist party in favour of a vaguely defined left ideology and a left formation, which opposed the basic class approach in peasant movement and which favoured turning our Party into an appendage of Left Front or Janata Dal variety of government – and the Party had also to consistently struggle against all manifestations of parliamentary cretinism. Our policies were vehemently opposed by the whole crowd of petty-bourgeois revolutionaries who accused us of betraying the cause of revolution, and sometimes branded us as the agent of Deng Xiaoping and at other times as official naxalites. Our Party firmly and unitedly rebuffed this ultra-left onslaught and exposed the real worth of left opportunists who subsequently degenerated into full-blown anarchists, practised the worst kind of political opportunism and some even indulged in brutal killings of common people and communist cadres.

To recall the historical experience let me quote Engels from the preface to The Class Struggles in France: "(after the defeat of 1849) vulgar democracy expected a renewed outbreak any day. We declared as early as autumn 1850 that at least the first chapter of the revolutionary period was closed and that there is nothing like crisis. For which reason we were excommunicated, as traitors to the revolution, by the very people who later almost without exception, made their peace with Bismarck — so far as Bismarck found them worth the trouble".

Writing on the new form of struggle in the new phase Engels said, "And if universal suffrage had offered no other advantage than that it allowed us to count our numbers every three years; that by the regularly established, unexpectedly rapid rise in the number of our votes it increased in equal measure the workers’ certainty of victory and the dismay of their opponents and so became our best means of propaganda; that it accurately informed us concerning our own strength and that of all hostile parties, and thereby provided us with a measure of proportion for our actions second to none, safeguarding from untimely timidity as much as from untimely foolhardiness — if this had been the only advantage we gained from the suffrage it would still have been much more than enough. But it did more than this by far. In election it provided us with a means, second to none, of getting in touch with mass of the people where they still stand aloof from us; of forcing all parties to defend their views and actions against our attacks before all the people; and further it provided our representatives in Reichstag with a platform from which they could speak to their opponents in parliament and to the masses without, with quite other authority and freedom than in the press or at meetings....

"With this successful utilisation of universal suffrage, however, an entirely new method of proletarian struggle came into operation, and this method quickly developed further. It was found that the state institutions in which the rule of the bourgeoisie is organised, offer the working class still further opportunities to fight these very state institutions."

It happened in Russia too where after the failure of 1905 revolution Lenin reorganised the party for legal and open activities and for participation in the Duma. In the Russian party too, left opportunist trends emerged at this juncture which accused Lenin of betrayal and equated Bolshevism with boycottism. Lenin firmly repudiated these trends, branding them as infantile disorder and stressed the need for cautious adjustment with state institutions.

Left adventurist mistakes in China led to loss of almost all the base areas and a considerable section of Red Army and forced the CPC to undertake the Long March. Left opportunists blamed Mao for betrayal when he developed the line of united front with Chiang Kai-shek against Japanese imperialism.

I refer to all these historical instances only to reiterate the fact that the revolutionary struggles in every country pass through different phases of advance and retreat, and therefore, the policies and tactics of the parties should be readjusted accordingly. This is the whole essence of Marxist thinking on tactics as well as the art of leadership. Dogmatically following the tactics suited to a different condition and calling for a direct struggle even when the situation demands reorganisation of the Party and of accumulating strength, means walking straight into the enemy trap.

It was quite right for us to start with the Chinese model because that was the only available blueprint for revolutions in semi-feudal and semi-colonial countries. But in the course of our own experiences of last 25years and also with the better understanding of specific aspects of Indian society, it is only natural to make necessary adjustments and modifications in the Chinese model to evolve in course of time the Indian path of Indian revolution. Dogmatic adherence to Chinese path negated the very essence of Mao’s thought. Mao had to carry on a firm struggle against Chinese dogmatists who despite severe losses were bent upon blindly copying the Russian model in Chinese conditions. The famous formulation of Mao on the integration of the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism with the concrete conditions of China arose only in the course of this struggle.

Many people are unaware that our Party line has grown in course of serious struggles against these left opportunist trends and while their activities have increasingly reduced to squad activities, we have increasingly expanded the scope and sweep of mass revolutionary movement of peasantry and the activities of our armed resistance groups have become an integral part of the same. Now with the anarchist course followed by the PWG running out of steam, our Party stands on a firm ground to unite revolutionary communist forces around the correct line. This is the other aspect of what I refer to as a decisive phase of Party advance.

As I see it, social democracy represented by the CPI(M) remains our chief ideological adversary within the left movement in general and anarchism represented by PWG, our chief ideological adversary within the ML or Naxalite movement, in particular. A proper combination of ideological-political struggles against both these trends is imperative for building a revolutionary communist party in India.

Here I must say a few words about our tactics in parliamentary struggles. There is no denying the fact that this has brought into our own organisation serious unhealthy bourgeois tendencies. It was shocking to find people squabbling for tickets, entering into all sorts of opportunist alliances to manipulate victory, and then many of the elected representatives clamouring for money, fame and bourgeois privileges and eventually several of them betraying the Party to join ruling parties to serve their personal ends. Communist conduct, Party principles and Party discipline were all thrown to the winds in a most shameless manner and all this brought a lot of disgrace to the Party. This shows that the significance of the Party’s election tactics has not gone deep into the body of the Party organisation and, moreover, the Party organisation has proved quite weak in enforcing Party discipline over the parliamentary group. The Party has to go much farther in utilising elections and parliamentary institutions in concrete Indian conditions but if the present situation continues, any further experimentation is fraught with dire consequences. I have already quoted Engels on utilisation of election platform and here I refer to Marx’s address to the CC of the Communist League:

" ... That everywhere workers’ candidates are put up alongside of the bourgeois-democratic candidates, that they should consist as far as possible of members of the League, and that their election is promoted by all means. Even where there is no prospect whatsoever of their being elected, the workers must put up their own candidates in order to preserve their independence, to count their forces and to bring before the public the revolutionary attitude and Party’s standpoint. In this connection, they must not allow themselves to be seduced by such arguments of the democrats as, for example, that by doing so they are splitting the democratic party and making it possible for the reactionaries to win. The ultimate intention of all such phrases is to dupe the proletariat. The advance which the proletarian party is bound to make by such independent action is infinitely more important than the disadvantage that might be incurred by the presence of a few reactionaries in the representative body." Comrade Lenin too has repeatedly stressed this communist tactics vis-a-vis bourgeois-democratic parties in election and defined the role of communists as that of revolutionary opposition in the parliamentary arena. This must undoubtedly be our starting point.

The question of seat adjustments or electoral alliances and even participation in governments at the state level shall all come up while pursuing parliamentary struggles in our conditions. Such and other questions must always be decided on the basis of upholding the Party’s absolute independence and broadening the scope and sweep of revolutionary mass movement. Although India too is semi-feudal and semi-colonial like pre-revolutionary China, the power structure of the Indian ruling classes is vastly different from that of China and this very difference is reflected through the Indian parliamentary system. The growing phenomenon of caste, religious and regional mobilisation and the growing diversity of political forces sharing power at different levels, point more and more to the representative nature of the parliamentary institutions in the sense of power-sharing arrangements among diverse sections and strata of the ruling classes, as well as the growing strains within the system itself. The situation also provides scope for revolutionary democratic forces to effect a breach within the system to this or that extent and this opportunity must be fully utilised to bring about a mass upsurge for revolutionary democracy. There is simply no alternative to this tactics in the present phase of our movement.

It must be understood that the Party’s election tactics is part and parcel of its overall tactics of developing revolutionary mass movements and is no way a means for career building of individuals. Hence the Party can and must rely on tested comrades in pursuing this tactics to a successful end.

Building the broadest possible democratic front is a strategic task before our Party. Our relations with sections of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois democrats have developed in recent times. This is perhaps the era of synthesis! We are trying to develop a theoretical framework of unity between revolutionary communist and radical socialist forces, drawing from the past history of cooperation during freedom struggle and emphasising the new round of cooperation after Soviet collapse and consequently the renewed offensive of imperialism. Ironically, our call for a left confederation has turned into a struggle against the CPI(M)’s hegemony over the left movement. The CPI(M)’s premise of united activities with us, as formulated in their Congress documents, was essentially based on our ‘rectification of mistakes’; in other words, our moving closer to the CPI(M)’s positions and hegemonic fold. As subsequent developments belied their expectations they went back to their old line of trying to isolate us by all possible means. I think it is always better if people shed their illusions and encounter the realities as it is. We need not worry much about the CPI(M)’s vehement opposition to us. This too has its positive contribution to our growth. The CPI(M)’s earlier attempts to dismiss and isolate us have come to nought and the fresh attempts are also doomed to fail. And in future, with the turn of events, our relations will be resumed on the basis of equality and recognition of differences. Only that will be a healthy and principled unity. We have to patiently work towards bringing about such a change.

A few words about the international communist movement. The collapse of Soviet bloc and the far-reaching changes in China have drastically changed the scenario of the international communist movement. The old division between pro-Soviet and pro-Chinese parties, a legacy of the Great Debate of the ’60s, has become irrelevant. The Soviet collapse, however, has brought about a reorganisation of communist parties and communist platforms in Russia as well as in several East European countries. These parties are reassessing their past, particularly the harmful effects of revisionism. On the other hand, several ML parties the world over which emerged during the stormy days of 1968-70 and sustained themselves have also been analysing the ultra-left deviations they had suffered from. This has created a favourable situation for the parties belonging to both the streams coming closer. This typical phenomenon was reflected in the recent international seminar held under the auspices of the Workers’ Party of Belgium where more than 50 parties and groups belonging to both the erstwhile streams as well as ‘independent’ streams participated. Our Party too was represented there and extended its cooperation to such coming together.

We think that reducing the concept of the unity of the International communist movement to simply the unity of ML parties who uphold Mao’s Thought, and that too a particular interpretation of it, is too sectarian an approach and unsuited to the present conditions.

I think it is necessary to reiterate our attitude to China as it remains a great source of confusion and polemics. In our opinion, building of socialism should not be viewed in abstraction devoid of concrete conditions of the country concerned and the concrete times. Building socialism in a backward country like China and in conditions where socialism does not exist anywhere except in a few small socialist countries and there are no prospects for any proletarian revolution for a fairly long time to come in any advanced capitalist country, is a specific problem. So it is not the question of building socialism in general that ought to be discussed; rather building socialism in China in the present-day conditions that must be the point of departure for any meaningful discussion. These considerations only lead us to appreciate the general orientation of Chinese reforms. There is no question of supporting each and every measure of CPC and Chinese government. The support to the general orientation at the same time implies our serious concerns over the risks involved and, of course, criticisms of the policies which we consider harmful to the general interests of socialism and the international communist movement.

We are neither in favour of a China- or CPC-centred international communist bloc nor are we eager to join any international formation that makes condemnation of China its central concern. This I think sums up our attitude to China as well as to the international communist movement.

We are living in times when almost all the basic tenets of Marxism are being challenged and declarations are being made about the end of history. This reminds me of Marx who in his Poverty of Philosophy wrote some 150 years back, "When they say that the present-day relations — the relations of bourgeois production — are natural, the economists imply that these are the relations in which wealth is created and productive forces developed in conformity with the laws of nature. Thus, these relations are themselves natural laws independent of the influence of time. They are eternal laws which must always govern society. Thus there has been history, but there is no longer any."

So bourgeois philosophers and economists had declared the end of history much earlier. But still history progressed and Marxism played a guiding role in its advance. Marx had challenged the eternity of bourgeois relations of production and through a rare scientific insight shown that these relations too, like earlier relations, are but transitory in nature. The eternity of change lies at the core of Marxist philosophy and all future attempts to change the world shall only draw sustenance from Marxism. Marx in his grand treatise Das Kapital had exposed the exploitative basis of bourgeois relations of production. He wrote in his Wage Labour and Capital, "Even the most favourable situation for the working class, the most rapid possible growth of capital, however much it may improve the material existence of the worker, does not remove the antagonism between his interests and the interests of the bourgeoisie, the interests of the capitalists. Profits and wages remain as before in inverse proportion.

"If capital is growing rapidly wages may rise, the profit of capital rises incomparably more rapidly. The material position of the worker has improved, but at the cost of his social position. The social gulf that divides him from the capitalist has widened."

Despite all the changes in the structure and organisation of production, the exploitative basis of the bourgeois relations of production, the extraction of surplus value remains intact and if anything, the social gulf between imperialism and dependent countries on the international scale and between the proletariat and bourgeoisie within the developed capitalist world has only widened. And hence the antagonism, the motive force that continues to propel the history forward.

And yet the proletarian struggle has suffered setbacks, socialism built over a large part of the globe has suffered reversal. Hence, mere reiteration of faith in Marxism, in the victory of proletariat, is not enough. Marxism can be defended only through its enrichment.

By the time Marx’s study of British capitalism, the most ideally developed country of capitalism, the base material for his Das Kapital was complete, free competition had started giving way to the monopolies. The stage of finance capital, of monopoly capitalism, replaced competition within the country by competition among capitalist countries for the world market. And thus arose the phenomena of world wars and of proletarian revolution breaking the imperialist chain where it is weakest. And then again the rise of a single economic, military and political bloc of imperialism led by USA and the defeat and subsequent collapse of socialism in the prolonged cold war.

This interrelation, in the background of structural changes in capitalist production owing to scientific and technological revolution and virtual stagnation in the socialist economy, opens up new fields of study and investigation for Marxist theoreticians the world over. Communists have before them over seventy five years of experience of building socialism. One learns only through one’s mistakes and hence the study I mentioned shall essentially bea study of the political economy of socialism, comparable only to the dimensions of Das Kapital.

Note:
1. The village in Burdwan district of West Bengal, where six of Party comrades – all agrarian labourers who had come over from the CPI(M) fold – were brutally killed by CPI(M) goons on 31 May 1993. At least thirty others were seriously injured and the entire garib para (poor people’s hamlet) was raged to the ground.

[From Liberation, October 1991.]

The Strategic Perspective

Indian People’s Front or the Communist Party? Let us begin with this question which is currently under wide discussion both within our Party and in outer circles. Some comrades feel that when the Party was working underground, the IPF did have a relevance as its legal apparatus. But with the Party increasingly coming out into the open, the need for a separate legal apparatus has withered away. Prakash Karat, the CPI(M) theoretician, in his polemics with us raised the same question: "The future relationship between the CPI(ML) and the IPF is problematic. As the CPI(ML) is moving to become an open Party with legal functioning, what will be the purpose of running IPF when the same CPI(ML) is its leading and guiding force?"^[1]

We are familiar with the other view which demanded the dissolution of the Party itself as all its practical programmes were being taken care of by the IPF.

Our Party has consistently held that both the Party and the IPF are needed. The moot point is how to divide and how to combine the tasks of both.

Let me elaborate. As a communist Party, our task is to organise the urban and rural proletariat and accomplish the socialist revolution. In popular terms, to abolish the rule of capital and transform private property into public property. The road to socialist revolution everywhere passes through democratic revolution, and as democratic revolution in our country has remained unfinished, indecisive, we must pay utmost attention to its completion. Recent reversals that socialism has suffered worldwide further confirms that hasty steps in building socialism bypassing the tasks of democratic revolution do not bring us any extra advantages.

In India, capital has developed immensely in its modern industrial forms and has also penetrated substantially in agriculture. Exploitation of labour does take the capitalist form in many a case. We do find all the modern institutions of bourgeois democracy – the constitution to parliament based on adult suffrage to a judiciary. One can easily call for a socialist revolution. But this is only one side of the coin.

On the other side, medieval relics, feudal and semi-feudal institutions, reactionary Brahminical caste system, religious fundamentalism, all symptomatic of the old system and the bureaucracy deeply attached to it remain enormously strong and they all add up to capitalist exploitation. Capital, otherwise a purely democratic institution, here in India makes alliance with the reactionary forces of the old society.

Moreover, the abject dependence of Indian capital on international finance capital is the other characteristic feature of Indian capital.

All the modern bourgeois institutions turn into a mockery at the grassroots. The whole environment seriously degrades the development of class consciousness and retards the growth of political thought among all sections of the people, and it becomes extremely difficult to organise even the urban and rural proletariat and build their solidarity on communist lines.

In such a situation no real fight for socialism can be fought for without first achieving general democratic demands and completing the democratic revolution. And, as no section of the bourgeoisie is in a position to lead this struggle for democracy in a thoroughgoing and consistent manner, it is the historic duty of the proletariat and its Party, the Communist Party, to take the lead. Through this struggle, a quite protracted one, the Communist Party only creates and facilitates conditions for a decisive struggle for socialism.

In Russia, the most backward European country and broadly a semi-feudal country, Lenin repeatedly emphasised this point and formulated the concept of revolutionary democratic dictatorship of workers and peasants. This Leninist idea was successfully translated by Mao in China, a country which, apart from being semi-feudal, was semi-colonial too. He advanced the concept of four-class dictatorship (viz., workers, peasants, petty-bourgeoisie and national bourgeoisie) and called it New Democracy.

From what we have discussed above, two things come out in bold relief. First of all, we need an independent and consistently principled communist party, which is not only the sole guarantee of the victory of socialism, but also imperative for the decisive victory of democratic revolution itself.

Secondly, we shall never forget the importance of democracy, and more than any other, should champion the cause of democracy. We must always strive to unite with all the forces of revolutionary democracy against the autocratic system, against all feudal and semi-feudal institutions, against the reactionary caste system, religious fundamentalism etc., in short, against the old system.

By revolutionary democratic forces we mean those who accept the democratic programme of the communist party and are firm and active in revolutionary actions, but lack the class-consciousness of communists. These forces are heterogeneous in character and remain at different stages of transition towards socialism and communism. To begin with, they often appear in a host of non-party forms or act as pressure groups within certain political parties. They have the potential of evolving as revolutionary democrats. Acceptance of the communist party’s democratic programme should not be understood as necessarily a formal acceptance and agreement with them and it may be an unwritten fighting agreement. It is our duty to identify such forces, help them in their evolution as revolutionary democrats and forge a fighting unity with them.

IPF symbolises this effort of our Party. More so, IPF is not simply an organisation mechanically built by our Party, rather it grew in the course of powerful democratic movements and assumed a distinct character of its own.

In the concrete conditions of ours all attempts to develop a separate democratic party by revolutionary democratic elements so far have not borne fruit. We keenly watched the experiments of a non-party political formation by Swami Agnivesh, emergence of a National Coordination of Farmers’ Organisations, and even the Democratic People’s Front. None could evolve into an independent democratic party with which we could make a fighting agreement, and, oscillating between revolutionary and liberal democracy, in concrete political situations, they joined various factions of the Janata Dal.

A large number of revolutionary democratic elements did come over to the IPF and it became a common front for Communist Party and a large number of non-party democrats who came over to it from various political streams. We are of the firm opinion that if IPF persists with its programme and activities, in the changed political situations fresh streams of democrats from various parties, particularly Janata Dal will join its ranks. In the subsequent stages IPF will have to redefine its slogans, adopt a more flexible approach, make necessary adjustments in its programme and structure in order to broaden its social base and this is all natural in its process of growth. But it definitely has a bright future ahead.

The Struggle between the Two Tactics

Let us make it clear at the very outset that Naxalism is neither any special trend nor do we intend to make it one. The entire bourgeois propaganda and also the CPI(M) propaganda depicts Naxalism as something special, something alien to the mainstream communist movement of India, something of the nature of a ‘New Left’. As Naxalism developed into a popular revolutionary movement in the ’70s, it was obvious that various petty-bourgeois revolutionary trends joined it and some even tried to transform it into a special, a ‘New Left’, trend. After a period of setbacks and scores of splits eventually these petty-bourgeois trends got separated and they subsequently matured into anarchism whereas the main part of the movement reaffirmed its identity as the revolutionary wing of the Indian communist movement.

The communist movement in all countries, at least till the revolution is over, always gets divided into revolutionary and opportunist wings and India can be no exception.

Our entire first generation of leadership emerged out of the protracted struggle between the two tactical lines within the Indian communist movement in general and the CPI(M) in particular. Comrade Charu Mazumdar, the founder of our Party, repeatedly pointed out that we are the inheritors of that Communist Party under whose banner communists fought the heroic battles of Punappura-Vyalar, Tebhaga and Telengana and embraced martyrdom.

However much we are dismissed as ‘New Left’ we have been and shall always be the revolutionary wing of the Indian communist movement as against the opportunist wing represented by the CPI(M).

Individuals have deserted us and we cannot rule out such desertions in the future too. But the trend we represent can never be liquidated as it is deep-rooted in the history of nearly 70 years of the communist movement in India and is reinforced by the objective conditions which are crying out for a revolutionary solution.

Let us move to the main topic. The CPI(M)’s tactical line is composed of three elements which the leadership tries to eclectically combine into one whole.

Firstly, it considers the Left Front government in West Bengal as the most advanced left formation in the country and considers creation and stabilisation of this model as their main achievement.

Secondly, it places top priority on the broadest unity of the left and secular forces i.e., Janata Dal and NF, to fight a Congress(I) comeback and counter the BJP’s communal challenge.

Thirdly, it considers defending national unity as the priority task of the Left and under this pretext it enters into formal or informal alliances with Congress(I) and the BJP.

How should we judge the CPI(M)’s tactical line? On the basis of the main achievement, top priority or the priority task? Let us turn to Mr.Prakash Karat for help.

Says he, "The CPI(M)’s tactical line must be judged as to whether it is successful at this juncture in mobilising a bulk of the bourgeois opposition parties on the secular platform which can help in political alignments shaping up to counter the Congress(I) manoeuvres to split the opposition and to fight the serious menace of the communal consolidation behind the BJP-VHP." Prakash^[2] wrote this prior to October ’90. We will resist the temptation to deal here with the "success" or otherwise since then, as this is beyond the scope of this paper.

Put in simple terms, Prakash says and CPI(M) believes that, the main tactics of the Left is to ‘create’ pressure on the parties of bourgeois opposition to resist the BJP’s communalist danger. If the platform is essentially a secular one and if the bourgeois opposition’s essential character is secular, it is obvious that the entire mobilisation is directed against communalism represented by BJP. As Congress is not regarded a communal party the logical extension of this tactics will be widening the secular platform by incorporating Congress(I) or at least a powerful section of it.

At this particular moment, forced by political circumstances, they are doing precisely this. The entire tactic emerges out of the strategic understanding that as India is at the stage of bourgeois democratic revolution, it is obvious that the bourgeois opposition will have to take the lead in fighting against the old forces of fundamentalism and obscurantism. The Left is weak and is destined to remain weak at this juncture and the maximum it can do is to pressurise the bourgeois opposition to go forward. In the crucial Hindi heartland, the party envisages its advance only as the tail-ender of the Janata Dal and the same is repeated in relation to Telugu Desam in Andhra and the DMK in Tamil Nadu. Its fortunes are thus tied up with the rise and fall of the bourgeois opposition in the rest of India except in West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura, where there has been no bourgeois opposition worth the name. These traditional strongholds of the communist movement were built up only in the course of independent left assertion and powerful mass movements for decades.

Day in and day out we are abused by CPI(M) and its junior brother the CPI of belittling the danger of Congress(I) and BJP. The fact is that in its entire history CPI(ML) never entered into any overt or covert deal with either the BJP or the Congress(I). This ‘credit’, however, goes to our friends in the CPI and the CPI(M) and this is why they are rightly termed as ‘opportunists’. Their whole exercise at accusing us of belittling this danger is aimed at justifying their tactics of tailing behind the Janata Dal. Similarly, we are accused of overlooking the danger to national unity. This again is an exercise to rationalise their pacts with the Congress(I) and the BJP. We are further accused of not differentiating between bourgeois parties of different colours and considering all of them as a single reactionary mass. All these accusations are slanderous, aimed at covering up the tailism of their tactics.

Our lone Member of Parliament abstained from voting in the confidence vote sought by the VP government in November ’89, precisely because the government was propped up by the BJP. The same member did vote for the government when it was threatened by the Congress(I)-BJP combine. We did vote for the Laloo government in Bihar in the face of Congress(I)-BJP opposition, did it on principle and not because we were forced, as Prakash alleges. Our lone MP in this Parliament too voted against the confidence motion sought by the Congress(I) government.

We do differentiate between bourgeois parties and that is why we have participated in joint struggles with parties like Janata Dal against the Congress(I) and the BJP.

The point is that we make one more differentiation between the forces of bourgeois democracy, i.e., between liberal and revolutionary democracy. We strive to free the forces of revolutionary democracy from all the liberal illusions and win them over to the revolutionary fold. This is the essential difference between the revolutionary and opportunist tactical lines, between the policy of independent left advance and the so-called mobilisation of the bulk of bourgeois opposition parties on a secular platform, between the strivings for establishing proletarian hegemony on a democratic revolution and the tailing behind the bourgeois opposition. The struggle between these two lines will decide the outcome of the Indian revolution and obviously the Hindi heartland has the ideal settings for the resolution of this debate. Let us sum up this debate on political tactics with what Lenin said on two tactics:

"...the main fallacy of Menshevism as a whole was the fact that it did not understand which elements of the bourgeoisie can, together with the proletariat, carry through to the end the bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia. The Mensheviks even now go astray by thinking that the bourgeois revolution must be made by the "bourgeoisie" (bourgeoisie in general, irrespective of "colours"!) while it is the function of the proletariat to help it. ... The Bolsheviks have asserted, and still do, that the only firm and reliable ally the proletariat can have in the epoch of the bourgeois-democratic revolution (until that revolution wins) is the peasantry. The peasants are also "bourgeois democrats", but entirely different in "colour" from the Cadets or Octobrists. ...These "bourgeois democrats" are compelled to fight against the very foundations of landlord power and the old state authority connected with it. ...Therefore in their tendencies — which are determined by what they are compelled to do — these bourgeois democrats are revolutionary democrats." (From How Comrade Plekhanov Argues about Social Democratic Tactics)

The main opposition in our ranks to any alliance with any bourgeois party comes with the argument that as Communists it is our basic duty to expose all the bourgeois parties and, thus, how we can go into any, even temporary, alliance with any of them. Let me quote Lenin again, " to expose all bourgeois parties is the duty of the socialists in all countries and at all times. ...It is in a period of bourgeois revolution that to say "expose all bourgeois parties" means saying nothing, and indeed, saying what is not true; for bourgeois parties can be seriously and thoroughly exposed only when particular bourgeois parties step into the foreground of history." (From How Comrade Plekhanov Argues about Social Democratic Tactics)

Our Tactics in Relation to Liberal Democratic Parties

In states like UP and Bihar, historically, the socialist trend had a strong presence. In course of time and through a highly complicated process of amalgamation with several political streams, it now stands as Janata Dal and enjoys a considerable influence among peasant castes. It upholds the liberal democratic values in its pronouncements and a large section of democratic intelligentsia and, of late, Muslim minorities are also under its influence. All this makes our interaction with it inevitable. Lenin said "only those who are not sure of themselves can fear to enter into temporary alliances even with unreliable people; not a single political party could exist without such alliances."

There are of course two ways of effecting any alliance. One is the opportunist way pursued by the CPI and the CPI(M) which does not give any class analysis of liberalism and democracy. Be it the ‘socialistic’ slogans of Congress in earlier phases, the grand secular phrase-mongering of Mulayam Singh Yadav or the ‘social justice’ of VP Singh-Laloo Yadav and co., opportunists applaud them to the skies. This approach bases itself on good intentions, kindness and on fine declarations and nice slogans of the bourgeois politicians.

The revolutionary way neither bases itself on the reliability of bourgeois politicians, nor can it expect them to give up their phrase-mongering and shrewdness, which constitute their very soul. It bases itself on the class analysis of liberalism and democracy, identifies to what extent, objectively, a particular bourgeois politician or party can go with it and seeks cooperation in the actual field. And instead of devising a criterion of a good and kind bourgeoisie worthy of concluding agreements with, "supports", as Lenin said, "any, even the very worst bourgeoisie, to the extent that it actually fights autocracy". He further said, "such support is necessary in the interests of achieving the independent social-revolutionary aims of the proletariat." (From Working Class and Bourgeois Democracy)

In the eleven-month rule of the Janata Dal at the centre, we played the role of the only Left opposition in the Parliament, the role we continue to play in the Bihar and Assam assemblies as well as in Parliament. In the Mandal campaign we refused to join the bandwagon despite all the euphoria created in Bihar, and even when the broad democratic majority was overshadowed by the liberal illusions of ‘social justice’ spread by Janata Dal, we held aloft the independent banner of revolutionary democracy. We refused to give unconditional and uncritical support to the Mandalised politics of Janata Dal and exposed its limited class aims, its betrayal of ‘the right to employment’ and the social injustice perpetrated under its patronage against the most oppressed sections of the people.

If in the ’89 elections, the phenomenon of Muslim minorities coming out of the fold of Congress(I) and aligning themselves with the left parties and the Janata Dal was surely an indication of secularisation of Muslim politics, in ’91, by contrast, Janata Dal leaders entering into an unholy pact with the forces of Muslim fundamentalism only strengthened the grip of such forces on the Muslim masses. From the left and democratic camp, even at the risk of isolation, we were the only ones who exposed this murky side of the Janata Dal.

The point I want to emphasise is that our Party has never let down the banner of revolutionary democracy, and unlike the CPI, has refused to give up our consistent principled positions just for the sake of a parliamentary seat with the help of Janata Dal.

The situation, however, has taken a radical turn. The Congress is back to power at the centre, the BJP has further strengthened its position and the Janata Dal is back to its traditional role of opposition and back to its strongholds. We shall now have to explore the prospects of joint moves with it against the Congress(I) and the BJP.

It should be kept in mind that the Janata Dal is a heterogeneous party and various trends and factions operate within it. Whatever joint actions and temporary alliances we develop with it, our basic aim should be to split it and develop a closer relationship with factions and elements inclined towards revolutionary democracy.

Our Tactics towards Dalits and National Minority Movements

Diverse kinds of political forces have emerged in different states and regions of India and we shall have to decide our specific approaches towards them.

For example, the BSP, a party championing the cause of dalits has, by now, acquired a stable base in Uttar Pradesh. Its leadership is staunchly anti-left, politically rank opportunist and represents primarily the interests of the dalit bureaucracy. For the broad dalit masses, who are at the same time landless poor peasants, it has nothing concrete to offer. It has, however, raised the aspirations and militancy of dalit masses who have all the potential to take up revolutionary democratic orientation. We shall, therefore, have to revise our tactics towards BSP, explore the possibilities of entering into a temporary alliance on definite issues, and, in the process, to influence and win over the positive sections.

We may adopt a similar attitude towards PMK in Tamil Nadu. Though it has an anti-dalit overtone, still it signifies a break in backward caste mobilisation and from traditional Dravidian politics.

Our experience in Karbi Anglong, at a very small level though, in combining the question of tribal autonomy with economic and social transformation of the society itself is worth mentioning here in some detail.

ASDC, a common front of communists from among the same nationality and the democratic elements of the nationality movement, emerged through a popular mass movement. The movement was directed against the corrupt rule of the Congress(I)-controlled district council. Incidentally, the Congress there, too, champions the cause of an autonomous state. The movement, from the very beginning, had an element of class struggle in it, comprising primarily the broad majority of landless, poor and middle peasants pitted against mahajans, landlords and other reactionary elements patronised by the Congress(I). The reactionaries, too, in the majority of cases, belonged to the same nationality. The movement was led by the communist elements who received communist education under the overall impact of ML movement and later translated it into the Karbi movement and not vice-versa. Elections to the district council were won amidst the rising flames of powerful and militant mass movements, where victory over the reactionary elements was first won in the social arena. Since then, efforts have been going on to deepen mass work, enhance the democratic values and sharpen the class struggle. Free from chauvinistic overtones, ASDC has extended its influence over other national minorities, brought about a polarisation among Biharis and draws support from sections of Bengali and Assamese people of the region.

In our Party’s tactics, ASDC is sought to be used as a launching pad to provide a revolutionary democratic orientation to the other tribal autonomy movements of Assam and North-East and for democratic restructuring of the Assamese society itself instead of just remaining confined to the district council. It is this full-fledged political role of the ASDC and its ever-increasing influence over the other sections of the people and other regions which provides it a distinctive feature.

The question naturally arises in the light of the experiences in Karbi Anglong as to whether we should make a fresh appraisal of our tactics towards Jharkhand, Uttarakhand and other such movements.

Comrade A.K. Roy was mistaken when he thought that Jharkhand, the state of tribals, whose society contains the features of primitive communism, would itself transform into a Lalkhand. In the process he could only give birth to a primitive bourgeois Sibu Soren.

The point is to transform the Jharkhand movement into a Lalkhand and that can only be done by developing the elements of class struggle in the Jharkhandi society and uniting with the democratic elements against the reactionary elements within JMM. Only a strong communist party, having a strong communist group among Jharkhandis, can successfully pursue this tactics.

JMM itself has been toning down its demand for a Jharkhand state, to a state confined to the Bihar districts only and then again to some sort of autonomous region within Bihar. It is divided among powerful sections differing in their attitudes towards the political forces and towards the contradictions in Jharkhandi society. Our Party’s influence too has been growing in the area and we are now placed in a better position to take up the policy of active intervention which does not rule out temporary alliance with JMM or factions within it.

In Uttarakhand too, where the BJP has vastly improved its position, we shall have to revise our tactics to check its growth by actively posing the demand of a separate state.

The Tactics of Forming Governments at Local and State Levels

Marx had said that we must prepare not a government party but an opposition party of the future. We firmly adhere to this principled position. In Indian conditions, however, opportunities do arise at local and even state levels for communists to form governments in collaboration with other democratic forces through winning a majority in elections. In our tactical line we have not ruled out this tactic, and, have kept it in consideration even if as an exception. This tactic, however, has to be made a part of raising mass movements to a broader and higher level.

In CPI(M)’s tactical line, this tactic is of cardinal importance for changing the balance of forces to raise the level of mass struggles and for expanding its influence at an all-India level. They have also succeeded in forming governments in West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura. The Left Front government in West Bengal is now running for more than fourteen years at a stretch. This record of a sort, otherwise a tremendous achievement in itself, has ironically produced a serious theoretical crisis for the party.

Contrary to the pronouncements and expectations of the CPI(M), the most advanced left formation has singularly failed to create any impact even in the bordering states, what to speak of the all-India level. Every victory of it in West Bengal seems to further diminish its all-India relevance and makes it more and more an exclusively Bengal phenomenon.

In the Hindi belt, it seeks expansion only as an ally of the Janata Dal, parroting their slogans. The only achievement of the Left Front government it projects is the containment of communal forces. With the BJP making its strong presence felt in Bengal, this propaganda too has suffered a setback.

The CPI(M) theoreticians while waxing eloquent on the achievements of the LF government in Bengal, refuse to evaluate the role of this supposedly ‘most advanced left formation’ as a launching pad, as desired by their own tactical line.

Their predicament resembles what Engels had described in the Peasant war in Germany: "The worst thing that can befall a leader of an extreme Party is to take over a government in an epoch when the movement is not yet ripe for the realisation of the measures which that domination requires."

The leader of the extreme party will have to, according to Engels, "advance the interests of an alien class, and to feed his own class with phrases and promises and with the assurances that the interests of that alien class are its own interests. Whoever finds himself in this false position is irrevocably lost."

Don’t we hear daily the interests of Tatas, Birlas and Goenkas in opening industries in Bengal being projected by the Left Front leaders as the interests of the labouring people of Bengal?

Prakash Karat admits that the West Bengal experiment is a social-democratic one, as the socialist way is not possible in that state under the bourgeois-landlord system. He implores us to understand that within the scope and limits of such state governments, it is forced to collaborate with foreign and Indian monopoly capital. He admits that there are failures and shortcomings in other fields. Prakash accuses us of treating the Left Front government virtually just as another non-Congress(I) government and demands from us just critical support, a positive attitude, so to say.

Dear comrade, we are well aware of all the limitations. We never expect this government to play any revolutionary role. By making ‘more power to the states’ the sole plank of national intervention and making common cause with the non-Congress(I) governments you yourselves have degraded this government to the level of any other non-Congress(I) government.

Still, we do support you in relation to the Congress(I) and its manoeuvres, be it in elections or in anti-centre struggles. We are always ready to extend you critical support on any of your positive measures. But, as revolutionary communists, we will be failing in our duty if we don’t expose the myth of the so-called most advanced left formation and don’t oppose the anti-People measures resorted to by this government. We will be committing a crime to the Indian revolution if we fail to point out that the Left Front experiment began in West Bengal by crushing the movement of Naxalbari peasants led by a section of the Party itself and therefore, such governments can never provide an impetus to the mass movements, and instead, can only dampen its spirit.

History has proved that fourteen long years of ‘most advanced left formation’ has failed to create any impact outside Bengal, whereas ironically, the Naxalbari movement, although crushed in Bengal, spread at an all-India level, carved out a base for itself first in Andhra and then in Bihar despite extreme repression and scores of splits. The movement even created an impact in Nepal and rejuvenated the communist movement there, a fact grudgingly accepted by Comrade Surjeet himself.

Election Tactics

Whenever elections come, all hues of liberals start accusing us of belittling the danger of the Congress(I) and the BJP and advise us to refrain from contesting elections so as not to split the opposition votes and instead, offer unconditional support to the liberal opposition. This argument finds a receptive chord among petty-bourgeois intelligentsia surrounding our Party and some sections within the Party. We are advised to settle for a seat or two in the bargain, because after all, it the seats which matter.

We have repeatedly explained that our election tactics are nothing special, they are only the application of our general political tactics to a particular case. Moreover, more than a formal consideration of the arithmetical possibility of splitting the votes, we must rather visualise the political possibility of this happening. This election too proved that the arithmetical prospect of the victory of the Congress(I) and the BJP due to our contesting the elections was mechanical. If at all any such things happen they are only exceptions. Had we succumbed to the liberal pressure we would have missed the opportunity of conducting massive independent political propaganda and creating conditions for future advance. Lenin and the Bolsheviks had to face similar accusations from Mensheviks who charged them of overlooking the Black-Hundred danger. Lenin replied, "everywhere in all countries the first independent entry of the social democrats in an election campaign has been met by the howling and barking of the liberals accusing the socialists of wanting to let the Black-Hundreds in.

"....by refusing to fight the cadets you are leaving under the ideological influence of the cadets masses of proletarian and semi-proletarians who are capable of following the lead of the Social-Democrats. Now or later, unless you cease to be socialists, you will have to fight independently, inspite of the Black-Hundred danger. And it is easier and more necessary to take the right step now than it will be later on". (From Bloc with Cadets)

He also said "A joint list (with cadets) would be a crying contradiction to the whole independent class policy of the Social-Democratic Party. By recommending a joint list to the masses we would be bound to cause hopeless confusion of class and political divisions. We would undermine the principles and the general revolutionary significance of our campaign for the sake of gaining a seat in the Duma for a liberal! We would be subordinating class policy to parliamentarism instead of subordinating parliamentarism to class policy. We would deprive ourselves of the opportunity to gain an estimate of our forces. We would lose what is lasting and durable in all elections — the development of the class consciousness and solidarity of the socialist proletariat; we would gain what is transient, relative and untrue — superiority of the cadet over the Octobrists." (Social-Democrats and Electoral Agreements)

Comrade Lenin repeatedly emphasised the absolute independence of the communist party in election campaign and said, "it must under no circumstances merge its slogans or tactics with those of any other opposition or revolutionary party...Exceptions to this rule are permitted only in cases of extreme necessity and only in relation to parties that fully accept the main slogans of our immediate political struggles.

He also said, "In the cities, where the working class population is mostly concentrated, we must never, except in cases of extreme necessity, refrain from putting up absolutely independent social-democratic candidates. And there is no such urgent necessity. A few cadets or Trudoviks more or less (especially of the popular socialist type) are of no serious political importance, for the Duma itself, can, at best, play only a subsidiary secondary role."

In our concrete conditions, our main areas of struggle in the countryside fall in the same category.

Our election tactics have firmly upheld Lenin’s teachings and this is only worthy of a Marxist-Leninist Party.

As election tactics are nothing but the application of general political tactics to a particular case, it is obvious that the political alliances which are built up in the course of extra-parliamentary struggles will naturally find expression in seat adjustments and other electoral agreements. And on this score we have always tried to be as flexible as possible within the limit of our principles.

Formation of A Left Bloc — The Only Viable Tactics

We have a protracted struggle ahead. The coming together of the three main communist streams, smaller left parties, Naxalite factions and grassroots movements who give up anarchist perception and join the political struggle, revolutionary democratic sections from the Janata Dal, dalit, minority and nationality movements, and the revolutionary petty-bourgeois and bourgeois intelligentsia will give rise to a left bloc or what we call a left and democratic confederation. With the withering away of the Soviet bloc in the international arena, and the new economic policy of the Congress government which revealed the abject dependence of Indian capital on international finance capital and with the public sector losing its role of commanding heights, opportunists are facing the worst theoretical crisis of their career. It is now hard to defend ‘imperialist versus socialist bloc led by Soviet Union’ as the principal contradiction, to applaud the ‘progressive’ foreign policy of the Indian government, to uphold the national character of the Indian bourgeoisie and the role of public sector in contrast to the private monopoly houses. The third formation of the LF-NF combine, which had started dreaming of coming to power at the centre — the CPI having already declared its eagerness to join the government and the CPI(M) preparing itself to "cross the bridge" — suffered a rude shock in the elections. The Left finds it hard to go with the Congress and also uncomfortable in the company of the truncated bourgeois opposition. Perhaps attempts will be made to search for secular forces within the Congress to widen the secular platform. But the compulsion of the situation will force it to adopt more and more independent position and resort to popular movements against the economic policies of the government.

Emergence of a left bloc is necessary and inevitable in the course of Indian democratic revolution which in turn will change the whole course of the revolution itself. The basic orientation of our political tactics is directed towards achieving this goal, conditions for which are maturing day by day.

Lenin had said in relation to the Russian bourgeois democratic revolution, "In this revolution the revolutionary proletariat will participate with the utmost energy, sweeping aside the miserable tailism of some and the revolutionary phrases of others. It will bring class definiteness and consciousness into the dizzying whirlwind of events, and march on intrepidly and unswervingly, not fearing but fervently desiring the revolutionary democratic dictatorship, fighting for the republic and for complete republican liberties, fighting for substantial economic reforms in order to create for itself a truly large arena, an arena worthy of the twentieth century in which to carry on the struggle for socialism."

At the fag end of the twentieth century we only need to replace this with the twenty-first century, but for the rest what Lenin said equally applies to the Indian proletariat.

Note:
1. The reference is to the protagonists of the liquidationist trend which arose in the Party Congress in 1988.
2. "CPI(ML)/IPF – Quest for a Left Role" by Prakash Karat, The Marxist, October-December, 1990.

[Translated from Deshabrati, October 1989 Special Number and published in Liberation, January 1990.]

Our Party’s Fourth Congress identified the assertion of the left forces as an important aspect of the present-day Indian politics and put forward the task of rallying the left forces as an independent political force vis-a-vis the bourgeois opposition in the fight against the Congress. The left forces were called upon to take up the challenge of providing political leadership to the bourgeois opposition rather than tailing behind it. The call for building a left and democratic confederation, as issued by the Party Congress, was a bold initiative in this direction.

This call and consequent concrete political tasks, on the one hand, opened up the prospects of interactions and unity with the other two major left forces, the CPI and the CPI(M), and on the other, raised our historic struggle against them to a new level.

The left confederation is nothing other than a united front. Since the CPI, CPI(M) and the CPI(ML) have been envisaged as the principal partners in this united front, in the final analysis one cannot deny the possibilities of changes and transformations within all the three parties in the course of conflicting political events and trends, of their coming closer to each other, of revaluation of the historic splits of ’64 and ’67 and of eventual reestablishment of a single unified communist party of India. However, these are the possibilities of a distant future, and to ponder over them at present can only result in abstraction in theory and diversion in practice.

At the moment, the slogan of left confederation has only raised the contention between the three parties to a new plane. New, because it is for the first time that the struggle against social democracy has been elevated from the level of abstraction to that of a concrete tactical line, because the contention would now be directed towards wide interaction and a united front.

The slogan of left confederation demands clear-cut answers to the following questions:

1. What should be our specific relation with the CPI and the CPI(M) at the present stage?

2. What should be our attitude on the question of forming leftist governments in states and particularly, towards the Left Front governments led by the CPI(M)?

3. What should be our starting point with regard to the confederation and how are we to consider it?

Here, I would like to put forward my views on these questions.

At the very outset, we should keep in mind that we are in no position to say the last word on the political behaviour of social democracy. Are they mere agents of the bourgeoisie and other reactionary forces and enemies of mass movements, or are they natural allies of the communists and of mass movements? Perhaps it is not possible to answer this question in terms of a simple ‘yes’ or a straight ‘no’. In different historical stages they have played, and are likely to play, quite different roles. That depends on objective conditions, political developments, the balance of forces among different sections and strata of their leadership and on conscious endeavours by the communists from outside.

We may take the example of the CPI in this context. From 1964 to 1977, its development followed a process that gradually led to its becoming an appendage of the Congress, forming coalition governments with it and ultimately becoming the only supporter of the Emergency. For all practical purposes, it became difficult to distinguish it from the Indira Congress. To act as agents of the capitalists in trade union movement, to collude with the class enemies against communist revolutionaries in the countryside and the like became their hallmark. The events of 1977 saw the party in a crisis of existence and from then onwards, the party began moving away from its old position. For this, it had to undergo an intense inner-party struggle. Dange, Mohit Sen and Kalyansundaram were expelled. Adopting an anti-Congress position, they strove to return to the mainstream of leftism. Debates started inside the party regarding the basic programme too. At present, they are also trying to initiate some mass movements. They have launched movements against the Telugu Desam government in Andhra Pradesh despite opposition from the CPI(M), have decided to oppose, and, if necessary, even launch movements against certain policies of the Left Front government while remaining a partner in it, and have come forward to develop relations with us. In their theory and practice there are still some aspects, which can once more make them tilt towards the Congress. It may be that they want to utilise their relationship with us merely as a bargaining counter vis-a-vis the CPI(M) in the Left Front. Nevertheless, perhaps nobody can deny that there is a significant difference between its role in 1977 and that in 1989.

The developing interaction between the CPI and us demands institutionalisation of the relation between the two at various levels. On the other hand, they are already having a close institutionalised relationship with the CPI(M). Despite opposition from the CPI(M), they have decided to develop relations with us but, on the other hand, they are putting constant pressure on us to change our attitude towards the Left Front and to become a partner in it. It remains to be seen whether they succeed in their attempts to act as a mediator between the CPI(M) and us or find themselves in a deeper crisis under the pressure from two opposite sides. The improvement of our relation with them would be primarily determined by the next stage in the process of their evolution.

The CPI(M) is the largest left party and they are leading governments in two states. On the basis of this strength, they have in recent years, secured an important place in national politics as well. They consider themselves as the natural leader of the Indian Left and to them, the Left Fronts under their leadership are the only concrete form of left unity. The two state governments led by the Left Front occupy the central position in their tactical line and it is on this basis that they strive to achieve a polarisation in national politics. In their language, the concrete expression of this polarisation is a united front of the left, democratic and secular forces.

Barring West Bengal and Kerala, where the CPI(M)’s leadership is an established fact, on the national level their independent strength is limited and they can, at best, only form a strong pressure group. In national-level parliamentary politics, they will have to remain only an opposition force. They could have advanced significantly in unleashing a nationwide wave of mass movements on the basis of their strong position in parliamentary opposition. But they are not willing to take this revolutionary path. They prefer other ways of increasing the strength of their party.

They want to portray the increase in their parliamentary strength through political alliances with the Telugu Desam in Andhra, the DMK in Tamil Nadu and the Janata Dal in the Hindi belt as the strengthening of the left forces. The CPI(M) leadership knows well enough that every single seat in the assembly or the parliament won in this way is won at the cost of corrupting the political consciousness of the masses and weakening their potential for revolutionary movements. To facilitate the institutionalisation of this increasing political alliance with these giants of bourgeois opposition, who, in their own spheres, represent the same bourgeois-landlord combine, a theory of secular front has been put forward by joining the word ‘secular’ with ‘left and democratic’. This appears to be nothing but an inverted repetition of the CPI’s practice of alliance with the Congress.

It is evident that the CPI(M) won’t have a leading role in this secular alternative. Therefore, what should be its position in it, and if this alternative replaces the Congress to form a government at the centre, whether it should join it or support it from outside — such questions have become the subjects of debate within the party. Nevertheless, in their programme of extending the frontiers of bourgeois democracy at the present stage of the ‘people’s democratic revolution’ — a programme which, in concrete terms, is centred around restructuring of the centre-state relations — they have accepted the bourgeois opposition as their natural leaders and themselves have become the latter’s natural ally. Hence, at the present stage the CPI(M) does not consider the forces of revolutionary democracy — forces that do not find any potential for radical extension of bourgeois democracy in the bourgeois opposition and instead depend on the broad masses of poor and toiling peasants in the countryside – as left forces at all. Rather, they are considered as anarchist forces divisive to the ‘peasant unity’. This is only natural, as our struggles in the countryside inevitably strike at the social base of their secular allies.

Our slogan of left confederation reflects the objective contrast between the two tactical lines. In such a situation, struggle remains the principal aspect of our relation with them. This slogan will, of course, help us concretise and sharpen our polemics with them and, on that basis, increase our interactions with their cadres and the masses under their influence. At this stage, there is practically no immediate possibility of any large-scale joint activities or institutionalisation of relations with them. However, joint activities have taken place in Bihar even at state level and elsewhere at local levels. Some recent experiences have shown that in West Bengal too, it is possible to normalise relations and even launch some joint activities with their cadres at local levels. Everywhere they began with an all-out attempt to isolate us and oust us from their strongholds by force. But wherever we succeeded in politically defeating these attempts and survived, their attitudes have gradually changed and the relations have been somewhat normalised. This process can definitely be carried forward. However, for any radical change in their attitude we will have to wait for further political developments. The conditions for changed relations in the future can only be created by this groundwork done today at lower levels. To think that we can skip this hard, painstaking and long-drawn process of the groundwork and change the attitude of our traditional rival like the CPI(M) merely by means of certain slogans or tactical handling is utopia, pure and simple, particularly since it is still in a stage of political ascendancy and the leadership has succeeded in creating an illusion of success of their tactical line among their cadres.

As an answer to the second question, one can say that in the process of parliamentary struggles the question of forming a leftist government in certain states may arise and we may utilise such a scope. The Fourth Congress has made this important addition to our tactical line.

So far, this question had been a taboo in communist revolutionary circles. As soon as we raised the question, there was a hue and cry all around and we were damned. The last bastion of demarcation with social democracy was now gone! And inside the Party, from the same premise, but from the right extreme came up the question: now why don’t we join the Left Front as a partner?

The question of forming governments in some states as the highest form of parliamentary struggle has been present in the Indian communist movement since as early as 1957. Even in the inner-party struggle prior to Naxalbari, the revolutionary communists did not reject the tactics of forming governments. In fact the Party was united regarding utilisation of such governments for furthering mass movements. Conflicts arose only when the CPI(M) leadership used the United Front government to crush the Naxalbari movement. The period after that was for us a period of open revolutionary struggles when parliamentary struggles were discarded, and the CPI(M), too, did not get any chance of forming government in the face of fascist terror.

In this particular form of struggle, we must proceed with extreme caution and only step by step. That’s why the Fourth Congress has provided only some general guidelines on the question and has left more specific considerations for the future. At what stage of development of the revolutionary movement should we raise this question; for example, what are the different prospects in this regard in Bihar at present — the Party should start deliberations and debates on these questions. However, as the Fourth Congress has laid down, we will develop our practice on this question only on the basis of a dialectical negation of the Left Front governments led by the CPI(M).

It is of course true that the opposition-led state governments have a role to play in opposing the Congress regime at the Centre and in creating a breach, however small, in the Indian state machinery as a whole. But, such circumstances also create conditions for a widespread mass awakening, don’t they? One can understand the logic and the necessity behind a non-left government’s attempts to divert this mass awakening towards regionalism; but when a left government too follows the same method, we cannot but oppose it in spite of its ‘Left’ label.

For these reasons, to extend critical support to the Left Front governments in their anti-Centre movements and to play the role of revolutionary opposition in the internal affairs of the state — this has to be our basic stand on this question.

Now comes the third question. We have talked of the left confederation concretely in the context of the Rajiv Hatao movement. Despite the same slogan, the left forces have an approach qualitatively different from that of the bourgeois opposition; the leftists want to combine the Rajiv Hatao movement with the mass movements on the basic demands of the people; the alliance of the Left with the bourgeois opposition is only issue-based, temporary — it is precisely to assert this independence of the left forces vis-a-vis the bourgeois opposition that the left confederation becomes necessary.

In popular consciousness, the difference between the Left Front and the National Front is being perceived only in terms of their willingness or unwillingness for an alliance with the BJP. This is restricting the independent identity of the Left merely to the question of communalism.

Our propaganda should be on the following line: our alliance with the CPI(M) in this confederation is definitely possible, as we have already recognised a certain relevance of the Left Front government in the national perspective, we support the anti-Centre struggles led by these governments and we have no hesitation whatsoever in resisting any conspiracy by the Centre to dismiss these governments. Our opposition to the anti-people activities of this government inside West Bengal or the CPI(M)’s opposition to our peasant struggles in Bihar — these may remain issues of polemics within the confederation. Gradually these differences can be further narrowed down and the confederation can be further consolidated. We should start, and it is definitely possible to start, from the minimum common points that already exist between us.

We have seen in Bihar that while we have stuck to our attitude towards the Left Front governments and the CPI(M) to theirs regarding our peasant struggle, joint activities have been possible even at the state level. Even a proposal is being discussed among all the three parties that the left parties like the CPI, CPI(M) and IPF should, while engaging in joint activities with the bourgeois opposition, have a separate institutional arrangement among themselves. The seed that is being sown in Bihar today may very well grow into a left confederation in the coming days.

The initiative for this left confederation will obviously come from the Hindi belt in general and from Bihar in particular. The new political initiative that we took seven years ago through the IPF is ushering in a resurgence of the Left in the concrete conditions of the Hindi belt — we are already getting indications of this. In the most important part of the country, in the nerve-centre of the Indian politics, where the left movement has traditionally been weak, a new wind has started blowing today. This region alone can become the meeting ground of the three main currents of the left movement. The phenomenon of a large number of cadres and masses under the influence of the CPI and CPI(M) joining the IPF in UP and Bihar is a form of this confluence. The beginning of joint activities at first with the CPI and gradually with the CPI(M) is the second form of this confluence. This trend will undoubtedly develop further and it is here that the foundation of a left confederation at the national level — in which our independence and initiative will be guaranteed — will be laid.

Though it may sound paradoxical, the dialectical truth is that the revolutionary comrades of West Bengal can contribute in building this confederation only by going the opposite way, i.e., only by holding aloft the banner of revolutionary opposition against the anti-people policies and activities of the Left Front government.

[From Liberation, November 1988.]

Our Party’s Fourth All-lndia Congress has put forward the slogan of building a left and democratic confederation. This slogan has been put forward in a situation when, after a long time, the left movement in India is poised on the threshold of a major breakthrough. On the essence and the process of realisation of this slogan our Party Congress says, "In the present phase, our relation with the CPI(M)-led alternative can only be that of struggle first and unity second. And this aspect of unity does envisage co-operation in the Rajiv Hatao movement to whatever extent possible. Now, in the process of political development, in the face of direct attacks by the Centre to overthrow Left Front governments and an upswing in the revolutionary struggles of the people and consequent strengthening of our forces, the situation may undergo a drastic change. Struggle may become the secondary aspect and unity primary, and conditions may mature for developing a broad left and democratic confederation on an entirely new basis".

Let us analyse this slogan of the Party Congress from various aspects.

First, we must see what should be the Marxist approach in formulating a slogan. Should our slogan demand only what can be achieved at that particular moment with that particular balance of forces or should it correspond to the developing trends irrespective of whether the demand contained in it is immediately realisable or not? Should our slogan concern itself with only the practicability of the given moment or should it take all the possible developments into consideration? The Marxist approach teaches us that we should fix our political objective at the furthest point we can foresee towards our orientation — towards the ultimate goal we want to reach. That is to say, our slogans should be realistic and while they must contain the concrete tasks of the present, they should also contain guidelines on the direction of our advance. To restrict our slogans, our tasks, to just what is achievable at a given moment is pragmatism, which has nothing in common with Marxism. Similarly, slogans totally cut off from reality and based on subjective wishes are nothing but political gambling. "Communists represent the future within the present" — this celebrated saying of Engels should be our guide in formulating slogans. We must distinguish ourselves from the revisionists, who represent only the present within the present, as well as from the utopians, who negate the present to indulge in colourful dreams of the future. We must ensure that the broad masses can understand our orientation from our slogans.

I feel that our slogan of building a left and democratic confederation is consistent with this Marxist approach. This slogan, on the one hand, has provided impetus to our present attempts of developing interactions and joint activities with various left and left-of-centre parties, and on the other, it has underlined our orientation of revolutionary democratic alternative as opposed to the ‘Left Front-government-centric left and democratic alternative’ of the social democrats. Our slogan of building a left and democratic confederation on a new basis — on the basis of militant mass movements — may not be realised exactly the way we generally tend to think, but it will undoubtedly give rise to a new polarisation among left and democratic forces. Exactly how this polarisation will develop — this we cannot fully predict at this moment. But this much is certain: it will get us one more step forward in the struggle for revolutionary democracy.

The question that naturally arises here is whether one recognises the basic difference between the left and democratic alternative proposed by the CPI(M) and our concept of revolutionary democratic alternative or not. Once we recognise this difference, the competition between the two concepts has to be considered primary, and the joint activities get subordinated to that competition. Debates may take place, and may be necessary too, regarding our specific tactics towards the Left Front governments. But any attempt to confuse the fundamental difference in the name of unity with the CPI(M), in the name of assessment of the Left Front governments, is bound to prove suicidal. Our recent experience shows that whoever has tried to confuse these fundamental differences in the name of practicality, has lost his Party spirit and revolutionary spirit, to become a victim of various liquidationist tendencies.

Does the dialectical process of development, which we have envisaged as creating the possibility of the emergence of a left and democratic confederation and which we have tried to reflect in our slogan, constitute a real thing? This is a question that demands deep study and analysis.

What is the historical basis of our slogan? The CPI, the CPI(M) and the CPI(ML) constitute three trends of the once united Communist Party. In 1964, that Party was split into the CPI and the CPI(M), centring on the slogans of national democracy versus people’s democracy. Within the CPI(M), struggle between the two tactical lines of people’s democratic revolution -- the opportunist line and the revolutionary line -- was being waged from the very beginning. This struggle over tactical line took definite shape in the concrete clash between the Naxalbari struggle and the United Front government, and our Party, the CPI(ML), was born. This struggle between the two trends, the opportunist and the revolutionary, still continues today in the struggle between social democracy and revolutionary democracy.

The situation, in the meantime, has undergone a lot of changes. The Indian ruling classes are no longer haunted by the spectre of red governments, the Left Front governments. They no longer consider the prolonged existence of these governments as a threat to their class interests. On the contrary, these governments are increasingly being used against mass movements. So, those who still dream of revolutionary propensities in these governments are living in a fool’s paradise. However, as a natural culmination of this process, these governments have become vocal in demanding major reforms of the present political superstructure within the parliamentary arena. Through this political struggle the CPI(M) has been able to expand its mass base in West Bengal and Kerala and has succeeded in mobilising many new forces, particularly the youth. The CPI also has been forced to distance itself from the Congress and to take to some movements. Hence, the political initiatives that the left parties have taken on the "Rajiv Hatao" issue have increased the prospects of joint activities with them.

Now, let us consider the process of evolution of our Party. In an intermediate period, New Left and anarchist ideas had gained much currency in our Party. These ideas were gradually alienating the Party from its roots in the soil of the country, from the mainstream of the communist movement. This process would have culminated in the liquidation of the Party itself. Even today, various groups are continuing with these ideas, and consequently, have been reduced to marginalised political formations. Some have degenerated into academic circles, some have taken recourse to nationality or minority-based movements, while some others have become anarchist groups in the name of conducting armed activities in some remote and isolated forests and mountains. What is worse, they have accepted this state of affairs as their destiny. Without an all-lndia perspective, without participation in the ongoing nationwide political movements, merely local or partial struggles, however militant, do not bear any significance for communists. In the course of fifteen years of hard work, we have been able to build a centralised, unified Party from a fragmented state, overcoming our one-sided ideas of struggle and organisation we are trying to combine various forms, and overcoming the confines of localism we are trying to forcefully assert ourselves as the trend of revolutionary democracy in the nationwide political struggles. Coming back from the brink of liquidation the CPI(ML) has got a new lease of life. This situation has increased the scope of interactions with various left and democratic forces, has created conditions for normalisation of relations and conducting joint activities with leftist parties at various levels, and has made our propaganda, aimed at influencing their mass base, more realistic. Instead of indulging in petty bourgeois revolutionism that rests content with simply negating the CPI, the CPI(M) or the Left Front governments, we have made our criticism more concrete. Even earlier we had talked of building broad left unity from below, but could not make any headway, because this needs some agreements from above as well. This development of tactics can effectively advance the cause of developing left unity from below. With the deepening of the revolutionary crisis, the broad left masses, as a historical rule, will be attracted towards the revolutionary stream; various leftist parties, or major parts thereof, will also be forced to take steps that indirectly go in favour of revolutionary democracy. If we continue our attempts to create conditions for left unity from this day, we will be able to keep the initiative in our hands in building the confederation in future.

Our slogan reminds us of the fact that we are the revolutionary trend within and not apart from the left movement in India, opens up vast revolutionary prospects for us, and demands that we plunge ourselves with all our might into translating those prospects into reality.

What is the relevance of our slogan in the present situation? We find that both the political combinations of the ruling classes, the Congress and the National Front, are trying to utilise the left forces. While the Congress is at its old game of playing the card of maintaining national unity and opposing communalism to split the left forces and turn them into passive allies, V.P.Singh is trying to rally the leftist forces behind him declaring that ‘leftists are my natural allies’. In the past, the CPI made a blunder in allying with the Congress in the name of anti-fascist alliance, and it would be just as serious a blunder today to join the National Front bandwagon in the name of a federal and secular alternative. The need of the hour is to strengthen the left alliance and to try and create polarisations within the National Front on the basis of our independent assertion. The National Front is an unstable political formation and among its constituents, the Janata Party and the Lok Dal are facing severe internal crises. So, independent initiatives by the left forces may well result in their emergence as a strong opposition force. We can popularise this propaganda campaign based on the slogan of confederation among the left-leaning masses.

Moreover, there is a growing tendency among the Left Front partners to assert their own identity independently of the CPI(M) and even to openly criticise the anti-people steps of the Left Front government. The CPI, in different states, is trying to develop its programmes separately from the CPI(M). All these partners are generally coming forward to promote interactions with us, even in West Bengal. Even in the CPI(M) there is a tendency at different levels to normalise relations with us. The slogan of confederation is bound to give a boost to these tendencies.

To sum up, from the Marxist viewpoint, from a historical perspective as well as from considerations of the present political situation, our slogan of building a left and democratic confederation is definitely appropriate. But if the leading core of all these activities, the Party, gets weakened by any means, if the task of building independent mass movements is neglected, we will not be able to advance this cause. So, let the call of the day be: Smash all evil designs to weaken the Party, increase manifold our own independent mass base and advance boldly in the struggle for building a left and democratic confederation.

[From the Political-Organisational Report adopted at the Fourth Party Congress, Jan.1988.]

Here we shall deal with the CPI(M)’s tactics of government-formation in states and its concrete application, with particular reference to the classical case of the Left Front government in West Bengal.

The CPI(M)’s programme on the formation of such governments is that (1) in conditions arising from mass movements, governments may be formed in different states under the Party leadership. This tactic is a transitional form of struggle; (2) such governments will undertake certain reform measures intended to improve the people’s living conditions. This tactic will help people rise in struggle for a better future; and (3) through the experiences of running such governments people will get educated about the limitations of the bourgeois-landlord system.

When this programme was formulated, the Party was not quite sure about the prospects of stability of such governments, hence the programme only referred to some welfare measures through which people were to be roused in struggles for a better future. The question of formation of such a government at the Centre was ruled out and that marked a big difference with the CPI, for which the road to revolution was exclusively a parliamentary one centering, in concrete terms, around the formation of a government at the Centre in tandem with progressive sections from within the Congress.

After 1977, however, the CPI(M) found itself in a paradoxical situation. Not only did it succeed in forming state governments in the three states of Kerala, West Bengal and Tripura, this time, as against the 1967-1969 period, the government in West Bengal went on to stay in power for a full decade, winning a handsome victory in elections for the third time in a row. And if nothing extraordinary happens, the Tripura government, too, is all set to record its third successive victory. And after a lapse of five years, the Left-Democratic government is also back again in Kerala. From 1977 onwards, there have been no such extra-constitutional steps on the part of the Central government, or by the ruling classes, to overthrow these governments and the rules of the parliamentary game are being observed, more or less.

This uninterrupted rule in West Bengal for over a decade has put additional burdens on the ‘transitional government’. Undertaking certain welfare measures and educating the people about limitations of the bourgeois-landlord system did not prove sufficient and the Party concentrated on the demand for more money and power from the Centre and for restructuring the centre-state relations. For the last ten years, this had been the central slogan of the Party, the core strategy for working out a united front of all state governments irrespective of their political colour (Mr.Jyoti Basu often unites with many Congress Chief Ministers too). The justification given has been that the Centre discriminates particularly against West Bengal and that, with more money and power, the state government can indeed do much more for the people. This propaganda often borders on the nationalist propaganda that Bengal and Bengalis are deprived of their due share, and cooperation is sought even from the Congress(I) MPs and MLAs from West Bengal to fight unitedly against the Centre for Bengal’s interest, the recent alliance with Ashok Sen being a case in point.

Again, the responsibility for the ‘industrialisation’ of Bengal has also fallen on the shoulders of the state government. For this, the government had to seek collaborations with domestic monopoly houses and foreign multinationals, while discouraging strikes and militant workers’ movements. And this ‘responsibility’ has become still heavier as West Bengal has been suffering from a serious crisis on the industrial front. The phenomenon of industrial sickness is fast spreading in the state.

Unfortunately, however, there is no way the working class can take up the job of industrialisation on its shoulder in the present conditions. Only monopolies and multinationals can undertake the job now and hence the whole message boils down to a call for maintaining industrial peace, and it goes without saying that this has radically transformed the character of the CITU in West Bengal. The workers’ defiance of this CITU diktat has often been met with a heavy hand by the state government. And the cumulative result of this policy has been the party’s growing isolation from the working class as manifested in the successive election results. The party, however, preferred to explain away the defeats of almost all its trade union stalwarts in the 1984 parliamentary elections by pointing to the abnormal wave that followed Indira’s assassination. And the defeats in several working class constituencies in the 1987 assembly elections were attributed to the so-called caste, communal and Hindi chauvinistic sentiments prevailing among the non-Bengali workers. Forced by the objective conditions of its existence, the Left Front government is behaving increasingly like the managers of a capitalist economy; worse still, it has taken upon itself the job of crisis management.

The responsibility of presiding over the administration and state machinery, and of tackling the agitations of various dissatisfied sections of society like the junior doctors, engineers, national minorities, apart from sections of workers and peasants, has fallen on the shoulders of the government. This job has forced the government into the unpleasant course of strengthening the police administration and defending police officers and their high-handed approach. It has the same conventional approach in dealing with mass agitations, asking for more and more CRPF from the Centre to quell the Gorkha agitation and then invoking the same anti-terrorist act which it had vowed not to invoke in West Bengal.

In the countryside, the CPI(M), however, still enjoys overwhelming mass support and has even succeeded in expanding its social base. It brought about certain agrarian reforms through Operation Barga, panchayats and various relief measures and experimented in agricultural development through government support to the small holdings. All these measures could and did have only one effect, given the prevailing economic structure, namely, an impetus to the development of capitalist agriculture.

A CPI(M) theoretician had this to say about the rural scene in the state in the Sharadiya Deshhitaishi, 1987:

(1) Economic disparity and income gaps could not be reduced in the countryside.

(2) In every area, one finds cases where Bargadars have voluntarily given up their land to the landowner, and poor peasants who receive pattas lease out land to middle or rich peasants on yearly contracts.

(3) The process of peasants losing their land and joining the ranks of the landless could not be stopped, rather it has assumed complex forms.

(4) The tendency of hiring labour has increased. There has been a sharp increase in the number of agrarian labourers and their regular gatherings at railway stations and village market sites, offering their labour-power for sale, have become a familiar scene.

These are all symptoms of the growth of a capitalist economy, of the growth in income and consolidation of position of modern jotedars, rich peasants and capitalist farmers. Our own studies confirm that while the old type of landlordism and semi-bondage conditions of labourers have been seriously affected, capitalist economy has got a boost. The lion’s share of loans from cooperative societies as well as other credit and input facilities are being grabbed by capitalist farmers. The concrete agrarian programme of the CPI(M) has become a balancing exercise: facilitating the growth of rich peasant economy and periodically allowing some increase in the wages of agrarian labourers. The middle peasant economy is facing stagnation. On the whole, the CPI(M), at the all-India level, is nowadays putting greater emphasis on unity of all peasants including rich peasants, and on the demand for remunerative prices.

The important question, however, is: What makes these governments remain in power all these years, with the ruling classes observing the rule of the game and allowing these governments "to raise the consciousness and organisation of people, to make them aware of the limitations of the bourgeois-landlord system"? The CPI(M) leaders have the readymade answer that it is the fighting consciousness of the people of Bengal. They never discuss the other part of the story: the new and improved tactics of the ruling classes of allowing such governments to function.

Undoubtedly, the Left Front in West Bengal enjoys mass support and the Congress(I) is still a discredited and disorganised force (although it should be kept in mind that the Congress still single-handedly polls nearly 40% of votes in elections and a shift of only 5% will tilt the balance in its favour), and this is an important reason for the ruling classes to allow it to go on. The Left Front, for the very reason of its mass support, is a better bet for ensuring industrial peace. As regards its posing dangers to the hegemony of the ruling classes, suffice it to say that the moderate programme of some welfare measures to improve the people’s living conditions is actually the programme of almost every government in India. Only rates of implementation may differ here and there. The only different thing that the CPI(M) preaches, is educating the people about the limitations of the bourgeois-landlord system. The ruling classes do not mind this education on limitations. In real life, however, the long-term continuation of such governments educates the people more about the unlimited possibilities of parliamentary democracy. Education on limitations of the state system has gradually been transformed into, first, education on the limited power of state governments and then on limited funds!

The strategy of the ruling classes in the present phase is not to hatch conspiracies to topple these governments — something the CPI(M) leaders want the masses to go on believing — rather the strategy is to bring constant pressure to bear upon them so that they become a responsible government. And this precisely has been the central theme of all bourgeois propaganda on this question. They have learnt from experience that this pressure will work on the CPI(M). The bourgeois-landlord system does have that great flexibility and this is precisely what is happening with the Left Front government. This is the essential question which the CPI(M) never raises.

From running responsible state governments, the CPI(M) has had no other option but to take the next logical step in its programme: government formation at the Centre where all power lies. With three state governments in hand and the crisis of the Rajiv Gandhi government intensifying, conditions were mature for the party to indulge in the next round of theoretical acrobatics. In the words of Jyoti Basu, the chief idol of the West Bengal experiment and the main architect of the new line, "The CC has not only demanded resignation of the Rajiv government and the holding of fresh elections, it has also talked about the formation of an alternative government. In the resolution adopted by the CC, there are clearcut indications about the nature of such a government."

He then goes on to quote the CC resolution: "The CC is of the opinion that the people of our country want a government having a secular outlook; a government dedicated to combat communalism, determined to fight authoritarianism, protect democracy and eradicate all corruption; a government which stands for proper centre-state relations, for non-alignment and for defending world peace; a government which will defend national unity, oppose imperialist forces seeking destabilisation; a government which will provide remunerative prices and immediate relief to the unemployed and those getting inadequate wages."

And then Jyoti Basu declares, "Our Party will provide all help for the formation of such a government".

This unity of secular forces, this government of a "secular front", according to Jyoti Basu, is "neither a people’s democratic front" nor a "left and democratic front". He then goes on to assure party members that "we have not deviated from our basic aim (of formation of a people’s democratic front), nor shall we ever deviate from it."

However, there can be no escaping the fact that this "secular front" is a new addition to the CPI(M)’ s tactics. And the way they are trying to forge special ties with VP Singh and making constant appeals to Congress MPs and to the "silent majority" within the Congress to rise up for secular ideals and break away from the Congress, betrays the whole essence of this "secular government". It represents the CPI(M)’s moving very close to the CPI’s position of forming a coalition government at the Centre with ‘progressive’ (read secular) sections of the Congress via the parliamentary road. And the circle is thus complete.

[From Liberation, January 1984.]

By now it has become well-known that our Party’s idea of building a people’s front at the national level has come under equally sharp attacks from both liquidationist and anarchist points of view. The liquidationist point of view opposes it on the ground that the front, in its bid to challenge authoritarianism/fascism practiced by Indira Gandhi, excludes sections of comprador bourgeoisie and the parliamentary opposition from its ambit; while the anarchist viewpoint is opposed to building any political front as such in the name of upholding the ‘basic line’ of smashing the old state machinery. This is an instance of both these ‘extreme’ viewpoints converging in their opposition to the idea of building the front. Here we shall deal with the criticism of our Party line made by a Party faction, Central Organising Committee (Party Unity), in its journal Party Unity (August 1983 issue). Their criticism, we believe, originates from the anarchist point of view and, in the process of critically reviewing the same, we hope to further elaborate the theoretical propositions that guide the building of the people’s front.

Why a National Political Front?

The COC(PU) claims to have risen above narrow localism and agrees that to organise and lead the masses in democratic mass movements of partial nature on a national scale different national forums of transitory nature can and should be formed. (emphasis added)

What happens to these national forums ‘after the intensification of class struggle to a certain degree and with the attainment of necessary conditions for People’s Democratic Front’ (PDF)? This question remains unanswered.

To proceed. The PDF ‘emerges in course of time with a revolutionary programme of action and armed struggle as the main form of struggle’, and further, it ‘may act as the forum for leading partial struggles on a national scale too’.

On the question of building PDF, COC(PU) claims to have rectified the Party’s line in the ’70s on two counts. Firstly, they have rejected the rigid condition of ‘red political power in at least a few areas of the country’ and replaced it by ‘extensive areas of armed struggle in the countryside, though the areas may not be liberated zones’. Heaven only knows the difference between these two conditions. If we possess ‘extensive areas of armed struggle’, is it not but natural that a few of them will turn into red ones, or to put it the other way, without developing a few red areas, is it at all possible to spread armed struggle to extensive areas?

Secondly, they advocate a ‘comprehensive policy’ of united front as opposed to the ‘narrow policy’ envisaged in the Party line of the ’70s. This comprehensiveness is defined thus: "to unite with various political parties and forces, including those belonging to the parliamentary opposition camp, to fight ESMA, NSA, Press Bill, price hike, capitulation to the ignominious conditions imposed by the imperialist power bloc etc."

To sum up, either you have national forums including the parliamentary opposition, to organise and lead democratic mass movements of partial nature on a national scale or a PDF with extensive areas of armed struggle as the basis.

As far as the PDF is concerned, by their own admission, conditions have not matured yet and one can safely presume that they are not likely to mature at least in the near future. Now, our Party has simply refused to worship spontaneity under the excuse of ‘conditions have not matured’; it has also refused to remain content with a national forum to lead democratic mass movements of partial nature. The fact of the matter is that although we lack extensive areas of armed struggle, we do possess quite a few areas of peasants’ resistance struggle in different parts of the country. We do exert great ideological and political influence over many sections of the Indian people. If we, the revolutionary and democratic forces of India, decide to join hands and formulate an urgent programme of political action, we can indeed become an important force. We can make effective moves to isolate the parliamentary opposition including the revisionists from the mainstream of democratic struggles, we can leave a revolutionary democratic imprint on the general democratic movement, and we can forcefully project our alternative views on burning questions of national politics. And in this way we can move one step towards building PDF. Mind you, one step towards PDF and not PDF itself. This one step should concern itself not just with mass movement of partial nature on a national scale, rather it should stress the independent political mobilisation of the masses and nationwide political struggles.

Learning from the past and living in the present, our Party has decided to march one step towards the future, and this one step has caused all the controversy. And, all phrase-mongering about PDF not withstanding, in the real life of the present, one can well discern the convergence of liquidationist and anarchist viewpoints in sacrificing the political initiative against autocracy to the bourgeois opposition and in remaining content with national-level forums together with the parliamentary opposition to organise and lead democratic mass movements of partial nature on a national scale.

The people’s front we envisage shall draw its forces exclusively from the social support of New Democracy. This is a question of principle. The banner of patriotism and national unity will only help it win over masses from the fold of the big bourgeoisie and big landlords and also to gain support from enlightened landlords and some bourgeois intellectuals. However, issue-based joint activities with parties and mass organisations of the bourgeois and revisionist opposition are never ruled out. What forms these will take, how are the contradictions among them to be utilised, what rifts can be created among them, what changes will take place in smaller parties and particular individual leaders with the passage of time — these are all things to be decided by the tactics pursued by the front regarding them. We have very little experience in this regard and it is obvious that there will be certain mistakes. We shall learn from them and go on perfecting our policies.

The Front and Base Area

Reviewing the history of peasant struggles since Naxalbari, we find that the armed peasant struggles — whether in Naxalbari, Srikakulam or Birbhum — did not last for more than a year or two. And by 1976, except perhaps Bhojpur of Bihar, all other areas of peasant struggle had suffered setbacks. It was only after 1977 that these efforts were revived afresh to develop such areas and, thanks to adjustments in the Party line, the areas of peasant struggle are now lasting for much longer periods. In the Patna-Gaya-Bhojpur belt of Bihar, peasants’ resistance struggles have been maintained with advances here and retreats there. The peasant upsurge in the Patna-Nalanda-Gaya region in particular has assumed unprecedented proportions in recent years. Such efforts are being made in many other places of India by us as well as by other factions of the Party and there are important successes too.

Still, even in the most advanced areas of peasant struggle in Bihar, we cannot venture to turn them into base areas in near future. On the questions of unity with middle peasants and overcoming caste prejudices to win over large sections of the middle and upper middle strata of the dominating castes of landlords, we are yet to achieve any significant breakthrough. We also have a long way to go in mobilising the masses politically and turning the class and social balance in our favour before we take up the task of raising armed struggle to a higher phase and building base areas. It is heartening to note that comrades of the COC(PU) faction in Jehanabad have decided to shed some of their initial absurd notions and have come to certain practical conclusions. One of their sum-ups published in the ctober 1982 issue of Party Unity says: "The nature and level of armed activities must correspond with the existing level of mass movements and help to advance mass movements further," and, "at present the movement in general is being waged on partial issues. It is therefore imperative at this stage to mobilise the broad masses of people by taking advantage of the legal opportunities as well as by skilfully utilising the different contradictions in the enemy camp." Therefore, as regards extending armed struggle to wider areas, or in other words, taking decisive steps towards building red areas, the demand, at present and also for a long time to come, is to preserve our forces, develop them step by step, and attain a major breakthrough in turning the balance of class forces in the areas of struggle, in our favour. This is a point on which all serious revolutionaries of India, who refuse to go the Nisith-Azizul way despite all provocations, share a common opinion.

However, this realisation itself is not sufficient. Building base areas or extending armed struggle to wider areas requires a favourable national situation too. In China, as Chairman Mao put it, the continuous conflicts and war among different sections of the ruling classes was a vital condition for the existence and development of red areas. Conditions are different in India.

Inheriting a central colonial state apparatus, the Indian ruling classes, through a parliament, have by and large been able to contain their contradictions within limits. Universal suffrage and formal institutions of bourgeois democracy have also had a soothing effect on the people’s rebellions and provided a fertile ground for the growth of social democracy. From time to time the existing political system has gone through sharp stresses and strains and the revolutionary and democratic forces have stepped in to utilise this situation. In the present period conflicts are developing among sections of the ruling classes, new social forces are demanding a new balance in the power structure, the air is charged with cries against separatism and for national integration, regional parties are asserting themselves vis-a-vis the national parties, and communal and religious tensions are developing. The conflicts are increasingly becoming unmanageable within the framework of existing institutions and debates on centre-state relations, unitary versus federal character of the state, transition to presidential form of government, etc., are various manifestations of the political crisis which is shaping up in the form of a constitutional crisis.

Instead of remaining a passive onlooker in this period of growing political crisis, the Third Party Congress firmly decided to actively intervene in the national political scene so as to turn the balance of social forces in favour of revolution and endorsed the idea of building a people’s front.

Comrades of COC(PU) agree that the two trends as discussed in the Party Congress report (resistance struggles of the peasantry and democratic movements of various sections of Indian people -Ed.) are running parallel in contemporary India. But they disagree with the Congress declaration that the two trends must be combined. Now, what does this combination mean? Building base areas in the countryside is the central task of our Party and never for a moment will the Party slacken its efforts on that score. And a people’s front shall precisely revolve around this task. Building a political front at the national level is not a deviation from building base areas; on the contrary, taking the circuitous route through a people’s front is perhaps the only way to advance the same in the concrete conditions prevailing in India.

The people’s front, in its ultimate programme, definitely incorporates the programme of New Democracy (if only you have enough patience to look at it and make it a principle to indulge in criticisms only after authentic reading). It has declared extra-parliamentary struggles as the main form of struggle and that surely includes armed struggle. However, as it has to begin its journey in the conditions prevailing around it — conditions which are not matured, by your own admission — at present, it has to emphasise on political mobilisation for immediate political and economic reforms, concentrate on exposing the hypocrisy of government concessions and the outwardly democratic forms of awarding them, and declare that, on its part, it will prefer peaceful methods of struggle, but what course the people’s movements ultimately take will depend on the government’s attitude towards them. Whatever shift it will be able to effect in the correlation of class forces on a national scale will provide a new impetus to the struggle for building base areas, and the changed conditions, in their turn, will demand that it puts more and more emphasis on its maximum programme and adopts militant measures — to the extent of leading insurrections and armed struggles and smashing the old state machinery — to achieve that. In this process, the people’s front will transform itself into a full-fledged People’s Democratic Front. This must be the basic orientation of the front according to our Party Congress.

This is the crux of the matter which certain people, victims as they are of their past, just refuse to understand.

The Front and Election

The incorporation of the term ‘parliamentary struggle’ in our Party programme has been attacked most virulently by the COC(PU) critique and it has predicted our Party’s definite ‘submerging into the mire of parliamentarism’. Well, the history of the Indian communist movement is replete with such instances of degeneration and the people cannot be blamed for having apprehensions about our Party in this regard. In a certain sense we too have such apprehensions. But then, how does one do away with such a danger? By reverting to widespread guerrilla actions and forming revolutionary governments overnight? Mahadeb Mukherjee went in for all-out guerrilla actions and the Nisith group formed a revolutionary government — still all this only accelerated their submerging into the mire of the worst kind of opportunism. We do not want to dig into the past, yet it is quite well known that your sympathies lay with these persons against us.

Wherein does the remedy lie then?

In the ’7Os we had raised the great banner of ‘boycott of elections’ and consequently plunged into developing armed struggle and building red areas. That great upsurge had violently challenged, for the first time in the post-47 India, each and every existing institution of our so-called bourgeois democracy, and had striven to develop alternative centres of people’s power. Herein lies the great significance of that great upsurge and it could have never been possible without the slogan of ‘boycott of elections’. This part of our history represents a glorious tradition of our Party and the martyrs and we have all along upheld this tradition much to the chagrin of the renegades who malign the great heritage of our Party in the name of rectifying past mistakes.

However, our revolution was defeated and all of us had to make adjustments with institutions of the society in which we live. Now, some amongst us rushed to make adjustments with the first signs of setback; they degraded the revolutionary traditions and disgraced the revolutionary martyrs and even threw the great red banner of CPI(ML) overboard. They are renegades who shamelessly crawled to surrender to the enemy. We rightly hate them despite their claims of being ‘the first in rectifying the mistakes and rectifying them completely and thoroughly’. There are others, the revolutionaries, who fought till the last, who never surrendered to the enemy and fell to the ground while fighting. They now find themselves in different conditions and are forced to make adjustments with the existing institutions of the society, they are now regrouping their lost forces and biding their time for the final onslaught. They do it hesitatingly, and step by step, and for this they have to face no less ridicule from different quarters including yours. Their present tactics represent the continuation and logical development of their old tactics.

It is a futile theoretical exercise to decide our tactics regarding the parliament on the basis of its character, i.e., whether the parliament is a semi-colonial one or similar to the one in an independent bourgeois country. Your task of exposing and smashing the parliament does not become any less important because the parliament is semi-colonial, particularly when it provides a favourable subjective condition for the growth of revisionism. Our tactics towards the parliament can only be decided on the basis of the presence or absence of conditions of upsurge.

The question of Marxist approach to parliament is basically a tactical one. It is supposed to assume strategic dimensions in a semi-colonial country where it is presumed that immediate revolutionary situation always exists enabling the communists to go in for building base areas. However, it should be borne in mind that after the Chinese revolution, not only revolutionaries but world imperialism too has taken its lessons. It has made India its showcase-cum-laboratory for experiments. Combined with the particularities of the Indian conditions, the conspiracy of world imperialism and lots of other factors, including the degeneration of socialist Russia into social-imperialism, have led to the maintenance of the parliament and other such institutions for a much longer period than in other countries of the Third World. While the basic path remains basically the same, in many of its particular tactics, however, the Indian revolution cannot be a copy of the Chinese revolution, if only for the simple reason that we are making revolution in India of the ’80s and not in China of the ’40s. Considering all these factors and the situation in particular, which all serious revolutionaries agree is not that of immediately going all-out for building red areas, it is necessary that we reconsider our tactics regarding elections. At least on principle this should be regarded as a tactical question. While readjusting our general tactics in conformity with the actual situation we must, however, decide about the particular tactics regarding elections by giving due weight to the specific character of the Indian parliament in contradistinction to those of the West. Recognising the election issue as a tactical question does not mean rushing for elections immediately and everywhere indulging in all sorts of unprincipled compromises. By its negative examples in this regard, the PCC acts as a good teacher. Adjustment in policy does not mean renunciation of revolutionary struggles and pursuing, as in the West, a policy of work inside the parliament and preparing for nationwide insurrection for a very long period of time.

For the time being when you do not have the alternative model of people’s power nor can you go in for the same immediately, if you are to raise the political consciousness of the people to the point of grasping the politics of seizure of power, you can ignore the negative way of doing that only at your own peril. Your representatives go to the enemy parliament and, through their speeches inside and other propaganda outside, you expose the parliament, i.e., you explain to the masses which particular combination of the ruling classes rules through the parliament and how. This task can well be carried out from outside. However, if properly organised, communist representatives working inside can particularly sharpen the exposure campaign.

You may well give a call for boycott of elections, but that immediately demands from you to go all-out for armed struggle, for building base areas. In theory you can live in your own utopia, but in practical politics there is no midway. If on the one hand you call upon the people to boycott elections and on the other hand describe the stage of the movement as that of partial struggles (on whatever scale), you are deceiving yourself, indulging in mere sophistry and in this case your boycott call will be just a passive one and for all practical purposes, it will make the people follow this or that bourgeois party.

An underground party concentrating its energy on developing areas of peasants’ resistance struggle, a people’s front emphasising extra-parliamentary struggle as the main form of struggle, utilisation of election campaigns for the sole purpose of exposing the real intentions behind the government measures like concessions and reforms, and subordination of all participation in election to the goal of unleashing mass initiative and developing mass movements — these are the conditions that can check a party’s degeneration into the mire of parliamentarism. There is no short cut and left phrasemongering will only hasten this degeneration.

Mere repetition of the ‘basic path’ will not take you anywhere near the goal. It is time for new experiments. And healthy polemics among the communist revolutionaries will pave the way for real advance and the genuine Party Unity worth the name.

Dear leaders of COC(PU), when tracks are submerged in flood waters, sometimes to go north, you are forced to board a southbound train and travel upto a point. We do not know if there are any serious differences between left phrasemongering and left pretensions (the COC critique has charged us with left pretensions but absolves us from left phrasemongering). If there are any, you are guilty of both.

[Excerpts from the Political-Organisational Report adopted at the Third Party Congress, Dec.1982.]

The present situation of India, which is giving rise to a revolutionary crisis, is also marked by a parliamentary and constitutional crisis. The Indian constitution and parliamentary democracy in India were by no means the result of any bourgeois democratic revolution and so never had the vitality of bourgeois democracy. However, to whatever extent the facade of democracy might have been maintained in relatively peaceful periods, in times of strain it was thrown overboard and utilised in the interests of the ruling party. At present when the Indira autocratic clique has reduced these institutions to a mockery and is even proceeding towards a presidential system, bourgeois intellectuals and bourgeois opposition parties are making a great hullabaloo. It appears that the entire orientation of democratic struggles of the Indian people is to safeguard the sanctity of bourgeois constitution and bourgeois parliament. Various brands of alternatives are being peddled, everyone is claiming that he alone is capable of maintaining the sanctity of the constitution and parliament. The CPI(M) revisionists have also come up with their brand of national alternative based on the governments run by them and have named it Left and Democratic Front. In the Vijaywada Congress held this year, they declared, "The struggle for the building and realisation of Left and Democratic Front starts in conditions in which neither the CPI(M), nor the working class is accepted by others as the leading force. They are accepted as important partners and equal partners only. With the growth of the unity of these forces and the struggle for the realisation of the programme put forward, the weight and influence of the working class will certainly increase but this will be a far cry from the leadership of the working class which is achieved under a quite different correlation of forces." This clearly reveals that the CPI(M) has entirely discarded the programme of people’s democracy led by the working class which is a ‘far cry’ to it and in the name of the transitory stage of ‘Left and Democratic Front’, what it advocates is safeguarding the ‘purity’ and sanctity of the bourgeois constitution and parliamentary democracy. For this purpose it proposes to form governments with opposition parties not as a leading force, rather as an equal or, at least, important partner.

We, of course, will always oppose any attack by autocratic forces on any democratic right of the people, even nominal or formal ones, but any transitory phase towards people’s democracy can be termed transitory only if it helps the masses cast away illusions of parliamentary democracy. Even the participation of communists in bourgeois parliaments is meant to break it from within and not to safeguard and strengthen it. It is evident that the CPI(M)’s transitory phase is transitory towards submerging itself in the ocean of parliamentary democracy and is the renunciation of people’s democracy. And this formulation, on which it is at one with the CPI with only minor differences, brings about the unity of the two parties’ concepts of People’s Democratic Revolution and National Democratic Revolution via the Left and Democratic Front. On other matters of foreign policy, the CPI(M) has already traveled back to the CPI’s line and with LDF, major differences on tactical line are also removed. That is why the two parties, with the expulsion of Dange, were never so close as today.

Under these conditions, communist revolutionaries of India should resolutely hold high the banner of people’s democracy and devise the forms and methods of advancing towards this goal. In the present situation, when many non-party forces are coming up and a widespread urge and struggle for democracy is developing even on the part of bourgeois intellectuals, it is the duty of the Party of the proletariat to come forward with its banner of ‘National Alternative’ in forms and slogans which are acceptable to, and capable of uniting, the broadest sections of the democratic forces. Definitely such a forum must be mainly extra-parliamentary, depend on people’s struggles for its expansion, consolidation and victory and must only include the social forces of democratic revolution, i. e., the working class, peasant classes, intellectuals and progressive sections of the bourgeoisie. This front will also make adjustments with parties and mass organisations of the bourgeois opposition in democratic struggles without, however, joining with them in a single programme-based front. Such scope for adjustment may also be there with certain individuals in these parties as well as with some of these parties on particular issues of anti-imperialist struggles. Revolutionary Marxist-Leninist and other revolutionary parties and organisations, democratic mass organisations and patriotic-democratic individuals will be the component parts of this front. This front must include the democratic-patriotic sections of Indian people living abroad, must support their struggles against racial and other discriminations and through them must also widely propagate abroad every anti-democratic act and repression on the people of India.

The front must also learn to skillfully utilise the contradictions among the ruling classes, to project itself as an alternative against all sorts of bourgeois and revisionist combinations and within the front, the Party of the proletariat must always be consistent in fighting liberal-bourgeois tendencies to make the front a non-political one, a routine or parliamentary one, a front of social reform, of unprincipled compromises with sections of ruling classes etc. and provide it a clear direction towards militant mass struggles and the ultimate goal of seizing political power.

Originally, we had the idea of building a front with forces other than workers, peasants and petty bourgeoisie only after building at least a few areas of red political power. For, areas of red political power are the concrete manifestations of worker-peasant unity. However, in practice things turned out differently. We have not been able to build up or maintain areas of red political power, but for 15 years the Party of the proletariat has been conducting battles to this end and now we find that two trends, two objective facts leading to the same democratic goal have emerged. On the one hand, there are the areas of resistance struggles of the peasantry — more or less stable — the areas where red terror is exercised over the class enemies, in certain pockets of Bihar and perhaps Andhra; and many such areas were built up elsewhere but either they perished or suffered setbacks and are in the process of reorganisation. On the other hand, there is a trend of democratic movements of vast sections of the Indian people, movements coordinating various sections of the people and even of nationwide character. Take the case of the 19 January strike, or even the recent Bihar Press Bill. Has it not become an all-India issue? Not only journalists but all other sections of the people are raising voices against this Bill. They are doing so because they feel that it is an attack on freedom of expression. Today the press is censored, tomorrow nobody will be allowed to speak. And hence this trend of democratic urge, of democratic struggles. Now there are opposition parties, revisionists and selfish people who will try to divert these movements. And therefore the proletariat must step in. For 15 years, it has been with the peasants, organised and led them in revolutionary struggles which were unprecedented in breadth and scale and today it maintains areas of resistance struggle. And therefore these two trends must be combined. There must come up an all-India people’s front basing on the areas of resistance struggle.

Why should this front base itself on the areas of resistance struggles? Because such areas of resistance struggle are built up only on the basis of radical agrarian programme and without a radical agrarian programme there can be no proletarian leadership. Moreover, these areas of resistance struggle should serve as a model for united front work. ...

Some people ask what these intermediate forces are. By intermediate forces we mean those who are intermediate between us and the ruling classes. In different forms and forums they are organised as petty-bourgeois leaders of the working class, nationality leaders, civil libertarians, bourgeois intellectuals, even some religious and oppressed caste leaders etc. It is quite natural that they will vacillate; sometimes they may come to us, sometimes may even send telegrams to Indira Gandhi. Now, how are we to be blamed for that? We have already said that they are intermediates. They have non-party ideas. What is this ‘non-party idea’? This is an anti-socialist bourgeois idea as Lenin says. And communists will fight this idea. Still non-party organisations are there and truly speaking, the whole of the democratic revolution from appearance will bear a non-party stamp — a front stamp. But within it the struggle between proletarian and bourgeois ideas, between parties inside and outside will go on and that will determine the essence of the matter. The Party will maintain its independent areas of struggle and also work within the front.

Now it is true that this front is based on resistance struggles and its expansion and development will help develop armed struggle and base area building. But how will this front proceed, in what form will it develop? What are its laws of development? On this question, we are in the midst of experiments. Initially, we have built up a front with certain sections of communist revolutionaries and intermediate forces from many parts of India. This is a great achievement for a small Party. In contrast to the CPI(M)’s tactics of forming governments in states, this front should come up with its slogan of people’s government — the slogan of a genuine democratic republic. The time many come when this front may have to advance the slogan of a provisional revolutionary government to convene a constituent assembly based on popular representation. The question of provisional revolutionary government brings forward the question of insurrection. Through organising insurrections from above, the Party plans to combine class struggle from both below and above. In this context comes the question of utilisation of parliamentary elections. The election question at a certain time may be linked up with insurrection and then you will be forcing elections on the government. In other times, when there are no prospects of slogans for a constituent assembly and provisional revolutionary government getting popular for a long time, you may think of utilising elections, while in other prospects you should not.

[Adopted at the Fifth Party Congress.]

1. The CPI(ML) firmly upholds the banner of the Great October Revolution of 1917 led by Comrade Lenin in Russia. This was not only the first successful proletarian revolution in the world, it also brought about a new awakening in Asia. Though, after 75 years, the revolution is defeated, its historic significance can never be obliterated.

2. The CPI(ML) reaffirms the crucial role played by Comrade Stalin in building socialism in Soviet Union and in defending the Soviet Union against fascist aggression.

Stalin, however, had a lot of metaphysics in his approach and this was the main source of his grievous mistakes. During his period, inner-party democracy as well as socialist democracy in society suffered from gross distortions.

3. The CPI(ML) stands by the struggle conducted against modern revisionism by Mao Zedong and the CPC in the Great Debate of early 1960s.

Comrade Mao’s theses regarding the existence of class struggle in socialist society end its reflection within the communist party; the danger of capitalist restoration and the as yet undecided nature of the struggle between socialism and capitalism have been borne out by history. Mao’s thought thus developed in negation of both Stalinist metaphysics and Khruschevite revisionism and put Marxism-Leninism back on the rails once again.

Mao’s struggle had a great impact on the Indian communist movement. His thought contributed a lot to the emergence of our Marxist-Leninist party in struggle against all the Indian variants of modern revisionism.

4. In order to revitalise socialism, the Soviet Union in the post-Breznev period was in crying need of a thorough transformation of its superpower status, restructuring of its rigid economic structure and rebuilding of its socialist democratic institutions. That is why when Gorbachev embarked upon Perestroika and Glasnost, he received overwhelming support from communists, progressive forces and democratic people throughout the world. However, it turned out that Gorbachev had been operating within the framework of liberal bourgeois ideology and economic-political collaboration with western imperialism. The CPI(ML), therefore, denounces Gorbachev as a renegade.

5. The CPI(ML) is firmly against any international centre and any super party. In international affairs, it believes in following an independent policy based on its perception of the international situation. While welcoming the Chinese efforts to normalise and improve relations with Vietnam, we cannot but criticise the Chinese foreign policy response to the Gulf War.

6. The CPI(ML) does not rule out the possibility of a proletarian state with a multi-party system in Indian conditions. Its nature and form can, however, only be decided in the course of practice.

7. The CPI(ML) considers it to be the Party’s foremost duty to rise in defence of Marxism which is now facing an all-out attack by the world bourgeoisie, to retrieve its revolutionary essence and to enrich it further in course of accomplishing the Indian revolution.