HVK Archives: Waiting for apocalypse
Waiting for apocalypse - The Hindustan Times
Amulya Ganguli
()
26 March 1997
Title : Waiting for apocalypse
Author : Amulya Ganguli
Publication : The Hindustan Times
Date : March 26, 1997
An article in one of the last issues of Problems of Communism - a
magazine which closed down because its subject matter withered away
- described Marxism as "politics of the Apocalypse". Like all
millennial visions, Marxism was impatient with the present. As a
philosophy which sought to change the world rather than interpret
it, this restlessness and rejection of the status quo are
understandable. Inevitably, Marxist jargon reflected an emphatic
denial of the existing system. Parliament was "pig's sty" and
those opposed to "scientific socialism" were to be thrown into the
"dustbin of history".
Indian Communists have been no less adept at mouthing these terms
even though their achievements, in concrete terms, in shaping the
destiny of their country have been highly limited. Indeed, it may
not be an exaggeration to say that the communists in India have
been some of the most formidable armchair revolutionaries the world
has ever seen. Beyond that, it will be difficult to credit them
with anything substantial by way of advancing the cause in theory
or practice.
>From inception, theirs have been a marginal role. Not only did
they not play any major part in the freedom struggle, the
controversy surrounding their stance at the time of the Quit India
movement has not yet died down. The unpatriotic image which they
then acquired was reinforced during the 1962 Chinese aggression
when, in Mr Jyoti Basu's words, the communists did not know what
was happening in the snowy heights of the Himalayas.
A reason for that professed ignorance was the communist belief that
a socialist country was incapable of committing aggression.
Subsequently, the Naxalites went a step further than 'Mr Basu to
hail China's chairman as their chairman. It may not be too
far-fetched to suggest, therefore, that a certain dichotomy between
widely held perceptions on issues of national import and the
communists' doctrinaire approach based on alien textbooks is partly
responsible for the latter's failure to expand and consolidate
their areas of influence.
This inability is all more striking because, notwithstanding their
failure to make revolution, the communists had a head start in
election politics in some areas, winning in Kerala in 1957 and in
West Bengal ten years later. Even if this advance was due more to
the Congress' decline than any special affection for the left
parties, it is now clear that this forward movement has also come
to a standstill after their excellent showing in 1977. It is
unlikely that the communists will be able to use their bases in
Kerala and West Bengal to spread to other States because their
stints in power in these States have not quite been conducive to
enhancing their reputation. On the contrary, they are now seen to
be no better than those whom they were earlier relegating to the
dustbin of history. Not surprisingly, there has been a diminution
of their influence in States like Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab and
Maharashtra where they had some hold earlier.
Such decline, coupled with the collapse of the ideology worldwide,
should have induced serious rethinking in communist ranks. But,
apart from the tremors created by some of Mr Jyoti Basu's recent
comments, there is nothing to indicate that the communists intend
to ponder over what has gone wrong with them and their doctrine.
In fact, they probably think that they are doing fine, it is the
rest of the world which is in error.
Like cranky moffasil lawyers pouring over dusty case laws, the
communists are unable to break free from the prescribed line in
their holy books. So, to explain the CPI-M's decision to stay out
of the Deve Gowda Government, Mr E. M. S. Namboodiripad harks back
to Engels' advice to the Italian Communist Party, and the
redoubtable Mr Ashok Mitra hopes that Mr Chidambaram's 'pro-rich"
budget will finally set off a class war.
There is a snag, though, for a class war is supposed to be the
handiwork of the heroic working class. But the heroes have
apparently lost their valour. As Mr Mitra points out, "a class
uprising straddling the whole country against the non-gains of
globalisation is unlikely; the working class movement is much too
inchoate and disorganised for that kind of homogeneous reaction."
But all is not lost. The last hope lies in a secessionist movement
in the north-east. To return to Mr Mitra, "the stretch of the
north-east... has gained little not just from liberalisation, but
from being a part of the Union... As sources of livelihood
shrink... social discontent will intensify. At a certain juncture,
sections and groups who feel that they had had enough of
liberalisation, could want to break away." The communists will
probably then say that they did not know what was happening in the
hills and jungles of the north-east as they were ignorant about the
events in the snowy heights of the Himalayas in 1962.
What such an apocalyptical, after-me-the-deluge kind of approach
suggests is an ossification of the mind. Having failed to make
revolution and having reached a plateau in electoral politics, the
only course for the communists appear to be to lash out widely at
all policies which do not conform to their discredited ideology and
pander to their dwindling band of supporters in the middle and
working classes.
Indeed, the last category should perhaps be called the non-working
class, for if there is one ideology which the communists have
successfully inculcated among its followers, it is that of sloth
and inefficiency for which government and public sector offices,
particularly in West Bengal, have become known. Perhaps that
explains why no revolution has been possible. Samar Sen,
distinguished Bengali poet and onetime editor of the left-wing Now
and Frontier magazines, is credited with the observation made in
his disillusioned last years that if a revolution continued after 5
p.m., the workers would ask for overtime.
Such stagnation of mind and habit is, however, alien to the creed.
All the great leaders for which communism is known broke away from
the accepted doctrine and charted out a new course. Lenin did not
wait for Kerensky's bourgeois-democratic revolution to be completed
and made the transition straightaway from czarist autocracy to
Bolshevik tyranny, skipping one phase in the historical process as
outlined in communist theology. Showing similar disregard for
prescribed courses, Mao turned to the peasants to usher in the
revolution, denying the industrial proletariat its allotted role
after the failure of the Shanghai urban insurrection in 1927.
And Deng rejected Mao's Spartan and destabilising legacy to woo the
foreign devils and their money. As Newsweek said....... in an era
when capitalism became the most unifying force in the world, the
most influential capitalist of them all turned out not to be named
Rockefeller or Ford, nor Morita, nor even Gates. It turned out to
be a five-foot soldier in Mao Zedong's revolutionary army.
Thirty-five years after the revolution, Deng Xiaoping proclaimed to
a nation of one billion people that getting rich was glorious.
Nothing was the same again. Not for China. Not for the world."
If the Indian communists want to abandon their dreary and
debilitating sameness, they will have to break out of the
ideological rut and perhaps emulate the party with which Engels
once communicated. Explaining the Italian Communist Party's
transformation into the Democratic Party of the Left, Giorgio
Napolitano, a member of the party, wrote in the Problems of
Communism that the organisation was always deeply "involved in the
democratic political life of Italy and was behaving in ways similar
to those of a large social democratic party although it used to
deny it. And at the same time, it was attempting to establish
theoretically its own version of Marxism and socialism, taking
account of the complexity of Western societies and of the richness
of liberal and democratic values.'
He then goes on to say, "We must distinguish what is alive and what
is dead in Marx's work, and emphasise what is fruitful in the
sphere of 'theoretical reason' and what instead leads astray in the
sphere of 'political reason'. But the chapter on Marxism as a
'guide to action' is closed forever."
The similarity with the Indian scene is evident. In India, too, the
communist parties function mainly as social democratic
organisations while denying that they do. But it is unavoidable
given the complexity of Indian society and the "richness of liberal
and democratic values". All that is needed is a formal
acknowledgement that Marxism can no longer be their apocalyptical
guide to action. But having never taken an innovative step in
their life, they are unable to make such a decisive break from the
past.
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