Instead, Prakash Karat became a regular invitee to the court of Hugo Chavez. The Chavez brand of Communism does not have the ideological sanction that Fidel Castro’s Cuban socialism possessed. Venezuelan oil-rich Communism can be equated with superficial anti-Americanism, an ideological brand that traditional Marxists would have abhorred. The Chinese Communists kept in touch with the Indian Left and while their October party congress a month ago didn’t utter a word against American neo-imperialism, Karat and his colleagues continue to write volumes against so-called evil American designs. For them, any mention of a strategic alliance with the US implies reducing India to a banana republic. The Left appears unconvinced about the strength of Indian democracy and its expertise in negotiating a good bargain. Communists refuse to accept that neo-imperialism doesn’t rely any more on state power and that multi-national corporates have rewritten the code of national sovereignty. They are fighting the ghosts of enemies that have long withered away.

Karat and his doctrinaire politburo colleagues will have to take the blame for disallowing a discussion on dealing with imperialism in the 16th, 17th and 18th party congresses of the CPM. The party’s ideological gurus have taken advantage of the hesitation among the rank and file to ask embarrassing questions of party stalwarts. The usual war cry has been sounded decrying the practitioners of that exploitative, market-centric expansionism. A.K. Gopalan Bhavan in Delhi has seemed completely out of sync with developments at Writers Building in Kolkata in Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s regime.

... contd.