Opinion Democratic Stalinism

Communist parties do not allow free and open democratic debate about their failings. They use words like ‘rectification’ which ordinary mortals never do. The very word implies its opposite.

It is a pity that this should be so especially in India after sixty years of electoral democracy in which Communist parties have been a vital part. They now are the only parties with any ideology or even a principled politics. I do not agree with their principles,but then as for the other parties, they don’t have any principles to disagree with. They have a mushy populism with no forethought. Thus,petrol price rise,which is a good thing since rich middle classes should not get a subsidy,will attract any party which is in Opposition and even some in the ruling coalition.

The Left will have to come to terms with its defeat. It is not only in India but around the world that even in midst of the Great Recession,Left parties are failing to win support. This is true even for social democratic parties,not just Communist parties. Indeed all sorts of Leninist factions,including Trotskyist ones,come out for demonstrations and agitation. They are a weatherbell of public disaffection. They do not translate that into electoral support but they never die away.

The basic problem is an understanding of how capitalism works. Leninism was predicated on the bet that capitalism is in a terminal crisis and will collapse before long. Instead,the Leninist State in the USSR collapsed before capitalism did. The fact that capitalism has its ups and downs,that it fosters inequality and that it creates insecurity,is all true. But the cure is not to wait for its demise even by giving a push but to see how it can be regulated and cured. Each generation has to face the task anew since capitalism is capable of immense innovation and change. Even poor people like the casino aspect of capitalism because that is better than regimented poverty which is what Communism offered them.

The Left in India needs a wide and open debate. They have a lot of sympathisers who can help. I recall that in the 1950s,the Communist party used to be in the vanguard in critiquing old and outdated religious superstitions. Kosambi,Dhurjati Prasad Mukherjee,Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya gave us a basis for rational life in face of Hindu mysticism. All that is lost today. Outside some fine history scholarship,the Left is no longer performing a critical task. What we have is a repetition of old anti-colonial,anti-imperialistic rhetoric with no new economic thought.

For a while,from the days of Indira Gandhi to the days of Harkishan Singh Surjeet,it looked as if the Left was becoming a useful ginger group of the Congress. After all,the Congress needs a whiff of conscience now and then and even some ideology. Congress let the Left run its universities and control research patronage,hence the Jawarhlal Nehru University (JNU). But after the fracas over the Indo-US nuclear deal,this has broken down. Since those days,there has been a retreat for the Left.

The Left has to realise that it can only flourish as a plant growing in the shade of the Congress. It can do radical things if it wishes to but this requires rejoining ordinary political discourse. This means jettisoning silly names like politburo where every one else has an executive committee. It means taking a view on ‘jati’ and Dalit reservations and asking if this is a way an egalitarian society can develop. It is to challenge the cloying hold of gurus and swamis and temples and dargahs over our political life. It means being radical,not just rectified.