PUBLISHER’S NOTE
The Indian Institute of Marxist Studies has produced this booklet compiling articles, speeches, notes and interviews representing CPI(ML)’s views on imperialist globalisation and the Party's commitment to the vision of glorious socialist future of the humankind.
Arindam Sen is a Central Committee Member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) and Director of Indian Institute of Marxist Studies.
Vinod Mishra was General Secretary of CPI(ML) from 1974 to the day of his untimely demise on 18 December 1998.
Dipankar Bhattacharya is the General Secretary of Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist)
DO we really want to carry to completion the work left unfinished by Carlo Giuliani, Rachel Corrie, Lee Kyang Hai
[Adopted by the Fifth All India Party Congress of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), Kolkata, December 1992 ]
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 and 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.
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 as 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 incomplete. 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 this he 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.
A few words about the international communist movement. The collapse of the 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 a 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 the 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 be a study of the political economy of socialism, comparable only to the dimensions of Das Kapital.
AMERICAN political scientists who are fond of designing new theories of world order at the slightest possible provocation have understandably been quite busy over the last few years. The unfolding post-Cold War world however continues to surprise and refute them and defy even the best of bourgeois trajectories of analysis. Ironically, while bourgeois thinkers and propagandists prefer to dismiss Marxist analyses of the contemporary world as idle exercises in conspiracy theory, every Seattle and September 11 sends them back to the mother of all excuses: ‘intelligence failure’!
Seattle of course did not happen overnight. The signal from Chiapas came early in the 1990s. It was quite evident that the working people and revolutionary and progressive forces the world over had a more ambitious and active agenda than merely lamenting and analysing why the Soviet Union had finally collapsed. Even before the World Trade Organisation was formally launched, the Uruguay Round negotiations of the GATT had been greeted with bitter protests in large parts of the developing world. Powerful militant demonstrations of tens of thousands of people against the neo-liberal dictates of the IMF, World Bank and WTO were being routinely reported from almost all corners of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Seattle marked a new high. It also set a new trend. One could say it produced a huge demonstration effect.
For those of us who were understandably worried about the future of the Seattle spirit after the trauma of September 11 and more importantly in the wake of the war that followed, let me say at the outset that we have good reasons to believe that the Seattle spirit has not only survived, but it is also getting stronger. Only the other day we heard this roaring resolve at the second World Social Forum meet in Porto Alegre: “WTO, IMF and World Bank will meet somewhere, sometime. And we will be there.” And now Barcelona has shown that it need not be only WTO, IMF or World Bank.
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the larger Soviet bloc and the onset of pro-market reforms in China obviously marked a major opportunity for capitalist expansion, extensive as well as intensive. But this expansion could only be achieved by aggravating the internal contradictions of an increasingly globalised capitalism. Even as the contradiction between socialism and capitalism was relegated for the time being from the domain of practical politics to the realm of ideology, the heroic Cuban resistance notwithstanding, and inter-imperialist rivalry remained somewhat muted, the contradiction between imperialism and the third world grew sharper and the rift between capital and labour in advanced capitalist countries wider. For the cronies of capitalism, Seattle was a rude reminder of the growing intensity and unmanageability of global capitalism’s own internal contradictions. For the soldiers of socialism, it signified the beginning of an exciting and challenging new phase for pressing ahead.
One could not however miss a rather pronounced streak of American conservatism in the Seattle showdown. But as the theatre of action travelled from Seattle to Melbourne, Prague and Genoa, the tone became increasingly anti-imperialist, the US imperialism was squarely named as the number one global enemy and issues like third world debt began to figure much more prominently alongside the other issues that are of immediate concern for the youth and the working class. I am happy to tell you that Carlo Giuliani is popularly acknowledged among Left circles in India, and I hope the same must be true of many other countries, as the first martyr of the anti-globalisation resistance. Rudy Giuliani may be the hero of New York after September 11, but Carlo Giuliani remains the hero of the worldwide campaign against globalisation.
From Seattle to Genoa, the context of anti-globalisation resistance however remained predominantly economic. In a way this was probably inescapable. For if we are thinking and talking in terms of mass resistance to globalisation, it cannot be based merely on the premise that globalisation is bad. The point is, globalisation is not just bad but it hurts and it hurts so many millions the world over and in such a massive way. For the broadest majority of the people cutting across communities and cultures, countries and continents, the hurt is probably felt most acutely in the realm of economy. It is quite understandable that the recent anti-globalisation protests have grown in a climate of global economic slowdown or recession that refreshed and refuelled memories of the Great Depression in all major capitalist centres.
But then as Lenin showed so brilliantly and categorically a century ago in his classic What Is To Be Done, transition from the economic to the political does not happen spontaneously. And this is precisely where he located the most crucial role of revolutionary ideology and vanguard organisation. One is inclined to remember this teaching of Lenin not just as a basic principle of class struggle and proletarian or communist politics. In the face of a revolutionary crisis, when the question of power cries to be clinched, it is politics which becomes decisive, which makes or mars a revolution. Look at what is happening in Argentina now. Blossoming in full glory right in the American backyard is a mighty movement of millions of Argentinians, a veritable festival of mass resistance against the neo-liberal offensive of globalisation. Understandably, parallels are being drawn in Left circles to the great Paris Commune of 1871. After all, it’s not everyday that one gets to see a popular movement assume such gigantic proportions and come so close to even wresting power. Yet another teaching of Lenin, of the imperialist chain snapping at its weakest link, appears in striking distance of being vindicated once again. But the question that remains to be answered: Is the movement in Argentina politically and organisationally prepared for such a possibility?
To return to Seattle and September 11 and the world defined by these markers, one is tempted to see it in terms of an ongoing transition from the economic to the political. The surface reality of globalisation does not always reveal the underlying imperialist content and dynamics with the kind of clarity and precision that the aftermath of September 11 has provided. Even though many Marxists insist on using the term imperialist globalisation in place of the widely used ‘corporate globalisation’, and some would like to give up the word globalisation altogether and stick to imperialism, no amount of theoretical debate and discussion could possibly have brought imperialism back on the practical agenda in a way that September 11 and its aftermath has done.
Ironically, even as protesters fought pitched battles on the streets from Seattle to Genoa, a book that began making waves even in the anti-globalisation camp declared imperialism to be a thing of the past. And this book, Empire has been compared to the Communist Manifesto and its authors have been described as Marx and Engels of the Internet age! The book was of course written long before Seattle, it was possibly only marketed with an eye on the Seattle effect. The authors in fact tell us that it was written during the interregnum between the Gulf War and the war in Kosovo, and that makes it look all the more strange and silly.
It is difficult and perhaps not necessary to try and explain September 11 directly in terms of the logic of globalisation. In fact, it is the proponents and apologists of globalisation who would like us to believe that September 11 marked a desperate revivalist backlash of the old and the outdated against the grand vision of a technology-driven future. They are however appalled that the perpetrators of September 11 had the audacity to use the same sophisticated technology to such brutal precision and lethal ends, a prerogative that Washington considers to be exclusively America's own. Promotion and export of terror has always been a core element of the American drive for political hegemony and this was probably the first major occasion when part of this terror took the reverse route.
Washington knew only one way to respond to the 'opportunity' provided by September 11. An American author has rightly said, “for America, there are only two kinds of years, the war years and the interwar years”. When imperialism does not actually wage war it prepares for one. War is where the economics and politics of imperialism attain the closest convergence, and what better and surer way could there be for recession-hit America to spend its way out of recession! We need not elaborate here the strategic objectives prompting America’s war in and on Afghanistan. The crucial geo-political significance of Afghanistan from Washington’s point of view is now common knowledge.
Along with war we have also got a whole set of freebies, the usual war accessories and adjuncts: racist attacks, theorised as the clash of civilisations; massive layoffs and redundancies; globalisation of repressive legislation or should we say competitive and compulsive cloning of the USA PATRIOT Act; and media censorship or self-censorship, if you will. This catalogue is of course only indicative and not exhaustive. Meanwhile, the Afghan war itself is by no means over as one overt operation merges into another, not to speak of the clandestine war that never stops. Operation Enduring Freedom gave way to Operation Anaconda and the praxis of devil has now once again invoked the axis of evil argument so that the war machine can roll on without gathering much of a moss.
As we have already noted, in the wake of September 11 there was widespread apprehension that the fledgling anti-globalisation campaign might get derailed. Colonialism and imperialist wars have indeed an alarming record of disrupting and distorting the international working class movement and there can be no underestimating the damage potential of September 11. But for once the apprehensions do not seem to be coming true, if anything, the war seems to have only helped further politicise and galvanise the anti-globalisation movement. It was heartening to note that the organisers of the September 29 New York demonstration against IMF and World Bank did not give up their planned programme, instead they went ahead with a bold call against Bush’s war plans. In fact, for once the anti-war movement did not wait for the bombings to start and large sections of the anti-globalisation camp had little difficulty in making opposition to the war and racism a key agenda of the anti-globalisation campaign.
American and Western propaganda managers tried all possible tricks to sell the war. There were shrill cries of a crusade against Islam, thoroughly demonised and equated to fundamentalism and terrorism, as were clever chants of freedom and democracy. There were images of humanitarian intervention and most crucially there was this thoroughly reprehensible attempt to project the war as liberation of Afghan women from the bondage of the Talibans. But nothing really worked. In fact, women’s organisations in different parts of the world have been among the most active and vocal against the war. We must especially salute the courage and determination of the fighting women of Afghanistan who continued to call the American bluff and boldly demarcated their agenda from America’s war campaign.
The anti-war movement continued with undiminished energy and resolve even after the calls of Jihad died down following the fall of Kabul. In fact, one of the biggest demonstrations against the war was held in London on November 18, shortly after the Talibans had fled Kabul. And from Barcelona to Rome, we continue to hear anti-war slogans echoed by million voices all over Europe. It is quite encouraging to note that representatives of social movements attending the second World Social Forum at Porto Alegre called for a resistance to not just neo-liberalism, but war and militarism as well, stating clearly that “opposition to the war is at the heart of our movement.” And while Bush goes on expanding his agenda, the anti-war movement has also begun to identify increasingly with the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people for their land and freedom, and for peace with dignity.
The wild hope of seeing Vietnam being repeated in Afghanistan has turned out to be wishful thinking. The retreat of the ragtag band of Taliban fighters without virtually a fight has once again established the fact that guerrilla warfare is not a question of mere terrain or technique, its success or failure depends primarily on the extent of popular support and mobilisation. Having said this we must also recognise that with every passing day the balance in Afghanistan is bound to turn increasingly against the American troops. Reports of significant casualties of US troops have begun to reach from the inhospitable interiors of Afghanistan. Mr. Karzai's imported regime remains as rootless and clueless as ever. He may be making waves in the world of fashion, but back home his government’s writ does not run beyond Kabul. The shock of September 11 followed by the speedy overthrow of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and the apparent retreat of Osama bin Laden has of course expanded the hitherto narrow domestic support base of the Bush presidency. Bush's rating and diplomatic manoeuvreability have also gone up in the international arena. Washington made full use of this conjuncture to effectively clinch the issue of opening a new trade round at the Doha summit of WTO in November. And by all accounts, the US is now really desperate to do an Afghanistan in Iraq.
But it is equally certain that the US will not be able to muster the kind of global support it enjoyed at the time of the Gulf War or early in the war against Afghanistan. Most apologists of US foreign policy agree that the unipolar moment of the US is over and Bush would have to shed his unilateral stance and rely more on multilateralism. In fact, Samuel Huntington describes the present world as a uni-multipolar one, a state of transition from a brief unipolar moment at the end of Gulf War towards a really multipolar arrangement.
On the economic front, officially, the US economy is now out of recession even as the global economic outlook continues to be gloomy especially with the recession in Japan showing no signs of abating. But following Enrongate, corporate confidence and credibility have hit a rock bottom in the US. It has now been exposed quite conclusively that the fountainhead of crony capitalism is located not in East and South-east Asia, but right in the US.
Politically, consensus around Bush's anti-terrorism campaign remains confined to the US, elsewhere it is being seen increasingly as America’s own agenda in spite of a visible worldwide consolidation of the right and the hard right at that. Even in countries like India and Pakistan, both of which are vying for closer strategic partnership with the US, the ruling classes are not completely united on going the whole hog with the US on the entire agenda. In India, the ruling party of the hard Right, the BJP suffered a humiliating defeat in recent elections held in four provinces including Uttar Pradesh, the biggest and politically most crucial of Indian provinces. Terrorism, let me tell you, was the principal poll plank of the party. And now it has had to resort to an unconventional joint session of the two houses of the Parliament to get the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act passed.
Where do we go now from here? The anti-globalisation campaign has taken the first steps towards a sustained and powerful anti-imperialist movement with a clear opposition to the war and racism. We must step up international political cooperation and coordination among broad sections of anti-imperialist, anti-globalisation forces to accelerate the tempo of resistance. While exploring and utilising every possible opportunity to broaden the frontiers of this movement and get more shades of people on board of the growing coalition for peace, democracy and progress, I think the crying need of the hour is to deepen it in every available national and even local context. The deeper we go, the stronger we grow. And with strong roots among the masses, there can be no fixed limits for revolutionary imagination and initiative. Argentina shows the way.
Just as it is important to name and target the global enemy, it is no less important to identify and target the numerous local linkages of the global enemy. Let us remember that the imperialist war machine moves on several wheels and every wheel has numerous cogs. It is therefore crucial to resist every local linkage and stop every real and potential and aspiring ally of the US from aiding the war campaign in particular and the neoliberal economic offensive in general. The best way, for example, we in India can oppose imperialist globalisation and the war and racism is by defeating the Indian collaborators of US imperialism who are unleashing a rein of what we call communal fascism in India. And even in this struggle, let me tell you, we derive our greatest strength from the anti-feudal struggles of the landless and poor peasants, from the growing awakening and assertion of the rural poor for basic freedom and human dignity. I say this not to belittle the unquestionable importance of more direct forms and avenues of anti-imperialist struggle, especially struggles of urban organised and unorganised workers, but only to highlight the great reserves of revolutionary strength and energy that are still waiting to be tapped in the Indian countryside and I am sure, the same must be true of many other third world countries.
In this context let me also add that to resist the neo-liberal offensive of imperialist globalisation, it is absolutely important to scotch the rumour of the so-called retreat of nation-states. This talk of nation-states beating a retreat may be music to our ears schooled in proletarian internationalism and eyes dedicated to the ultimate communist dream of a classless and hence stateless society, but the point is it is just a rumour and a dangerous rumour at that. Bourgeois nation-states are perhaps more active than ever before, they have only reshaped their policies and reordered their priorities. If the proletariat of each country, as called upon by the Communist Manifesto, must first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie; if, to quote the Manifesto again, the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself the nation, the practitioners of proletarian politics and proletarian internationalism cannot afford to suffer from any confusion on this score. The importance of nation-state as an arena of class struggle has only grown and not diminished in the present era of globalisation. And in third world countries where the bourgeois rulers are fast capitulating to imperialist dictates and are busy selling off key and scarce national resources, the renewed relevance of economic nationalism can hardly be overemphasised. Just as parliamentary treachery and the historical obsolescence of parliament has not made parliament practically and politically irrelevant to communists and socialists the world over, the crimes committed in the name of bourgeois nationalism and the technological marvels that are purportedly shrinking the world into a village cannot render nation and nationalism superfluous in the international struggle against global capitalism. After all, internationalism as opposed to globalism can only become more meaningful when it strikes strong national roots.
To conclude, the world since Seattle and September 11 is an immensely exciting and challenging world. The times are testing but full of promises. With imperialism on the offensive and the war machine rolling on with all its force, many a former voice in the left and liberal camp has fallen silent. Worse still, many are singing different tunes. This is how bourgeois liberalism has always exposed its limits. And this is why it is called bourgeois liberalism. But for every voice that is falling silent there are dozens more that are turning vocal. And there are millions more that are waiting to be heard. As Lenin said almost a century ago while surveying what he called 'Inflammable Material in World Polities’, “Less illusions about the liberalism of the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie. More attention to the growth of the international revolutionary proletariat.” We have a war to defeat, and a world to win!
WE have assembled here to hold a political convention against globalisation. A little distance away from the venue of this convention, the first Asian Social Forum is being held on the Nizam College grounds. Does this corroborate the notion that social is social and political is political, and the twain shall never meet? For me, the answer is a big NO. I think more and more of us who are attending either this convention or the ASF or maybe both increasingly realise that the twain must meet. Political devoid of social is plain managerial -managing the crying contradictions of the society and the economy in a way that only reinforces the status quo. Similarly, social divorced from political is bound to remain rather ineffectual – for all its noble intentions sheer social activism can hardly scratch the surface of the existing reality.
The theme of our convention is “against globalization”. I need not waste any time here discussing what globalisation is and why it should be opposed. Each one of us present here can explain the process and dynamics of globalisation from a number of angles. Each one of us is aware of its disastrous consequences for people who are at the receiving end of this skewed process that reinforces the unevenness of development and accentuates all kinds of disparities. Each one of us can therefore list any number of valid reasons as to why globalisation should be questioned and opposed.
I’ll address myself to the question of how we can put up a more effective resistance to globalisation. Ten years ago, in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, when we began to understand globalisation against the backdrop of IMF-inspired Structural Adjustment Programmes, the view of globalisation that was discussed most widely the world over was primarily economic. Globalisation was analysed primarily in terms of the IMF and the World Bank, and the giants called MNCs. The Dunkel Draft and the transformation of GATT into WTO gave us a new target. The Mexican meltdown and the subsequent Asian currency turmoil acquainted us with the unprecedented volume and volatility of finance capital. In the midst of globalised economic crisis and transnational offensive of big capital many argued that globalisatbn is weakening and disciplining nation-states, including the most powerful of all states, the United States of America.
But post September 11, we are now more aware than ever before how the talks of globalisation weakening the US — the seat of the most concentrated might of imperialism — have been nothing but wishful thinking. The speculative offensive of finance capital and American mega corporations is fully underwritten by the growing military muscle of Washington. Globalisation means imperialism and imperialism means war. The anti-globalisation campaign must therefore also grow into a powerful anti-imperialist anti-war movement. And this is precisely what is happening in more and more parts of the world. The anti-globalisation forces in India must also strengthen their voice against imperialism and war.
Pitted against the enormous might of the US imperialism and the mega corporations and huge institutions like IMF, WB and WTO, it is natural that we should also look for a powerful global rebuff. It is indeed quite heartening to note the global growth of solidarity and shared resistance. But it will be a folly to believe that globalisation can only be confronted on a global level. No globalisation is conceivable without the active connivance of sundry ‘local’ agents. In fact, it is these local agents who promote and sell globalisation whether by painting it in rosy colours or by invoking the TINA (there is no alternative) factor. Have we not seen successive central governments in India, from the days of Narsimha Rao and Manmohan Singh to the present period of Vajpayee and Jaswant Singh, surpass one another in pushing through pro-globalisation policies? Various state governments are also playing a similar role as active agents of globalisation. Some governments, and the one in Andhra is leading the pack, are doing it quite brazenly; others are doing it in a guarded manner behind some veil or the other. If the World Bank is too discredited, they say they are borrowing from the Asian Development Bank; if the dictates of the WTO cause uproar they present them as the prescription of a ‘hired’ international consultancy firm.
To confront globalisation effectively, we have to take all these local vehicles of globalisation to task. Effective resistance has to be built up here and now. This is precisely what is happening in Latin America. In Andhra too, this has been the logic of struggle. It is issues like cotton growers’ suicides, the visit of Bill Clinton and steep hike in power tariff that ignited powerful mass protests and the Left unity developing in the state is a product of this struggle. We cannot go to Washington to challenge the policies of IMF and World Bank, but we can surely convey a clear message to all our governments that if these policies are not changed, then we will go ahead and change the governments themselves.
We cannot fail to notice the fact that in India predatory globalisation and aggressive communalism have been working and growing in tandem. Cyberabad and Ahmedabad are two sides of the same coin. In fact, Gujarat itself is one of the most advanced laboratories of globalisation in India and now we have incontrovertible evidence to show that the genocide in Gujarat has been hate-funded by MNCs, imperialist lending agencies and the VHP's own variety and network of globalisation.
Evidently, in India the opposition to globalisation must also go hand in hand with the opposition to the communal fascist offensive of the saffron brigade. But such a convergence is often lacking and we find a disjunction between the two lines of opposition. Globalisation is treated as an economic process and the task of opposing globalisation is often delegated to the trade unions. Comrade Yechuri has spoken about the duality displayed by the working people in opting for the red flag in economic struggles and choosing another flag in the arena of politics. This duality actually starts from above when opposition to aggressive communalism is taken as the sole defining principle of political mobilistaion and opposition to imperialist-globalisation is not stretched to its political conclusion. The result is an anti-communal alliance of various shades of pro-globalisation forces and the opposition to both communalism and globalisation gets diluted in the process. The answer lies in taking consistent opposition to both communalism and globalisation as the key-link in politics, as the irreducible basis of political mobilisation.
This is the basis on which we can have the broadest possible unity of the Left, a glimpse of which we are seeing in Andhra, on a nationwide scale. This is the basis on which we can redefine and strengthen the politics of a third front in the country and check the growing trend towards bipolarity. This is the lesson of our unity and struggle in Andhra.
Hyderabad today is one of the key laboratories of globalisation in India. The result of this globalisation can be best measured in terms of the growing phenomenon of peasants' suicides in the state. Yesterday, it was the cotton-growers of Warangal, today it is the turn of the groundnut-growers of Anantapur. Time was when Telangana used to vibrate with a different political culture, when the name of Telangana used to evoke the images of a powerful mass revolutionary upsurge. Today once again we need to resurrect that glorious spirit to halt imperialist globalisation in its tracks and give a fitting rebuff to the fascist offensive of the communal forces.
WHETHER we discuss the future of socialism or socialism of the future, we now have more than eighty-five years of experience with building socialism. From this vantage point of history we can survey the debris of what used to be the Soviet Union till recently, we can study the experiment that is going on in China and a number of other countries in an admittedly adverse environment. Naturally we have strong opinions as to what socialism should be like in different respects. The inadequacies and imperfections of past and present socialism prompt us to dream of a perfect socialism in future. We want socialism to be totally different from capitalism, we want it to look and feel totally different.
But we would do well to remember Marx’s caution that socialism can only be constructed in a historically given situation and emerging from the womb of capitalism, socialism cannot but carry all the birthmarks of capitalism. A lot of social, economic and cultural details that we often discuss, the high degree of decentralisation that we want to see in socialism, may well be perfectly compatible with the vision of communism. Indeed it is communism and not socialism which really constitutes the negation of capitalism.
It is communism which envisions a classless society in which the state can only wither away and decentralisation reign supreme, in which the differences between the city and the countryside disappear, labour finally overcomes its dehumanising and alienating capitalist context and mental and manual work finally loses all distinction to merge into an integrated, glorious and profoundly satisfying celebration of human creativity.
The whole concept of socialism arose on the basis of the realisation that the journey from capitalism to communism could only progress through a period of transition. This transition was theorised as socialism. So even in theory, socialism is a compromise, it is an approximation, it is quite imperfect. Quite early on in the battle for socialism, Marx and Engels realised the importance of making a clear distinction between utopian and scientific socialism. The word scientific is bound to raise many eyebrows in the present era when words like science and truth are viewed with considerable suspicion. But even after stressing all the differences between natural science that can be verified in a laboratory and social science that can never be as exact, it is important to separate myth from reality, fact from fiction, and grasp socialism as something real and practical as opposed to something that is only imaginary and absurdly romantic.
Making a distinction between Utopian and scientific socialism was however not enough. It turned out that history had many more surprises in store and that the first break came in backward Russia and not in advanced Europe. It was nobody's case that socialism could be better constructed in a single country and on a backward social, economic and political foundation, but that’s how it happened in history. As revolutionaries we can only make the most of a chance that comes our way in history. We must grab it with both hands for in history we do not have the luxury of rejecting a chance simply because it does not conform to the predetermined parameters and standards of our theory.
The debate however still continues and the collapse of the Soviet experiment has only refuelled it. An eminent Marxist like Istvan Meszaros has predicted that the United States might well be the next land to turn socialist and that will really be socialism on a solid technological and political foundation. I wish history were to prove him true. A socialist US will surely be a stunning negation of US imperialism, the most barbaric imperialist power of the world ever since the Sun set on the British Empire and German fascism was overpowered in the Second World War.
But contrary to Meszaros’ belief, the countries that have turned towards socialism since the Russian Revolution of November 1917 have all been backward countries of the Third World. In other words, it is socialism which has had to take on the responsibility of freeing the world from feudal and pre-capitalist survivals while capitalism has continued to lay the scientific and technological foundation for its own eventual negation. The banner of socialism in the present day world really stands for extensive growth of productive forces while intensive growth is still happening within the contours of capitalism. It is probably this combination of extensive and intensive growth which will aggravate the inherent contradictions of the capitalist system and eventually push them up to and beyond a point when the capitalist integument is torn asunder and socialism starts cornering capitalism in its traditional strongholds.
As far as the ongoing battle for socialism is concerned, the overall scene today certainly looks far more encouraging than any period in recent past. During the later years of Soviet Union there was an atmosphere of complacency. The more the quality of socialism deteriorated inside the Soviet Union and worldwide Soviet socialism became synonymous with a never-ending and totally unmanageable arms race between two superpowers, the louder became the claims of developed socialism and even transition to communism. The Chinese experiment with socialism is at least not marked by such a crying contrast between theory and practice. Worldwide, the forces of socialism now have a much better understanding of the limitations of the earlier and ongoing experiments with socialist construction. The relentless development of science and technology and the concomitant growth of people’s consciousness are creating stronger possibilities of a more democratic and less bureaucratic socialist order. And now we have a powerful anti-globalisation anti-imperialist anti-war movement providing a vibrant and conducive international environment for the fight for socialism in any part of the world.
As revolutionary communists we can only feel more hopeful and confident. It is not our job to denounce or idealise the socialist attempts going on in other countries. Our job is to prepare for the victory of socialism in India and to make sure that when we get a chance we can prove it in practice that we have learned a lesson or two from the Soviet debacle or the protracted Chinese experiment with socialism.
Socialism is necessary. Socialism is possible. Socialism is irresistible.
THE WSF slogan or motto ‘another world is possible’ has quite understandably given rise to widespread political debates. In contrast to the triumphalist bourgeois claim of “there is no alternative,” the WSF slogan did reflect the popular yearning for a progressive alternative to the decadent and oppressive capitalist order. It also exuded a resolute optimism and even enthusiasm for such an alternative world order. Yet, with many forces within the WSF talking increasingly about the possibility of a regulated and reformed capitalism, of a romanticised and humane globalisation, the inherent ambivalence and vagueness of the WSF motto has also become quite clear. The slogan indeed says nothing about the nature of another world, and for another, it also does not address the important question of how that possibility of another world is to be realised.
Socialists of the world are more or less convinced and agreed that the only meaningful another world we can talk about is a socialist world and that the path to socialism proceeds through revolutions and not reforms. But then the WSF is not a World Socialist Forum, it is merely a world social forum and it is futile to expect sharp and crisp statements and definite calls to action from a body which calls itself a context, a process, a space, virtually anything and everything but an organisation or a movement.
When the WSF was born, the word ‘social’ was apparently stressed as a counterpoint to ‘economic’. If the annual World Economic Forum meetings in Davos, Switzerland were a jamboree of the big MNCs, and policymakers of capitalist states, the WSF was projected to be a global counter-gathering of activists, an international rainbow of protests against the oppressive Fund-Bank-WTO order. But the world has undergone major changes since January 2001 when the WSF was born in Brazil. In the wake of America's Afghan war and the subsequent Anglo-American invasion and occupation of Iraq, the whole world has been forced to sit up and confront the brutal and barbaric reality of imperialism and militarisation. And over the last two years we have seen a huge worldwide anti-war movement come up in almost every corner of the globe. But the WSF has been completely aloof from the anti-war movement and remained busy only with ‘social concerns’ that refuse to lead to any commensurate political action. The ‘social’ in the WSF thus increasingly seems to be building bridges with the ‘economic’ in WEF while moving further away from the developing leftwing political trends of socialism and anti-imperialism.
Coming in the wake of the series of anti-globalisation demonstrations that began with Seattle, the WSF initially seemed really huge and promised to bring a new impetus and a lot of fresh inputs to the anti-globalisation campaign. But now that the anti-globalisation campaign has already acquired a strong anti-war anti-imperialist thrust, now that we have already seen millions of men and women marching across the globe demanding an end to war and racism, to all the accumulated debt burden imposed on the third world and to the entire ‘multilateral’ framework of domination and plunder, the WSF has started paling into insignificance. A world solidarity forum aiding and encouraging all the live and vibrant anti-globalisation anti-imperialist movements of the world would of course be relevant, but an exclusively social and avowedly non-party forum does indeed look like a forum too many. With its present orientation, the social forum does indeed run the risk of being rendered superfluous by the onward march of events.
The word ‘possibility’ has been vulgarised a lot in bourgeois politics. When bourgeois politicians and ideologues define politics as the art of the possible, we know we are being asked to prepare for the worst. Every opportunist alliance, every marriage of convenience, every act of betrayal to the cause of independence and democracy has been sought to be legitimised in the name of the art of the possible. Yet when the people seek to bring about a revolution and push beyond the capitalist frontier, it is sought to be dismissed as a futile exercise in Utopia, something that is outright impossible and undesirable. In the framework of bourgeois politics, the ‘desirable’ is always sought to be defined in terms of the ‘possible’ and the possible is then reduced to the existing. In other words, politics, the art of the possible, is reduced to a worship of the status quo, the worst kind of conformism. The point of departure in socialist or communist politics, on the contrary, is transformation of what is existing into what is not just possible but also desirable and necessary.
History continues to reveal before us a range of possibilities. During the last one hundred years two world wars have been shown to be possible, revolution in backward Russia and China has been shown to be possible, facism and nazism have been shown to be possible, the collapse and disappearance of the Soviet Union has been shown to be possible, recolonisation of Iraq has been shown to be possible. Indeed, world history evolves through a constant battle between conflicting possibilities. The point is to choose the kind of possibility that one finds most appealing and fight for its realization and development. The fight for socialism began long before the first socialist republic was born – as many as seven decades elapsed between the initial articulation of the Marxist vision of socialism and its first realisation in the form of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The fight continues today even after the collapse of the USSR and even in the midst of continuing retreat of the existing socialism in a few republics like China, Vietnam and Cuba.
Marxism however considers socialism to be not just desirable and necessary but also inevitable. Like the word ‘possibility’, the word 'inevitability' too has often been interpreted in a very mechanical manner. The ‘inevitable’ in Marxism is not automatic or spontaneous, but very much an outcome of conscious historical action. This inevitability is a projection into future of the laws of motion that have determined the trajectory of human history since the beginning of the written phase. Capitalism seeks to portray the present as the ultimate or eternal, and the laws governing capitalist market economy are sought to be passed off as natural laws. But if history has evolved through successive modes of production from the era of primitive communism through the age of slavery to the days of feudalism and capitalism, why should the process of change suddenly come to a standstill with the present phase of domination of capital? Why cannot there be social life beyond the frontiers of capitalism? Why cannot the small changes daily taking place in the capitalist context add up to a qualitative leap heralding the onset of a post-capitalist or socialist order?
This quest found its answer in the analysis of the dynamics of the processes of capitalism, and the vision of socialism provided a real solution to the contradiction between the growing socialisation of production and private appropriation and concentration of wealth by matching socialised production with socialised ownership and control over the means of production and the output.
The term scientific socialism has also been a matter of great controversy. The term scientific was used as opposed to Utopian notions of socialism which were rich in imagination but had little roots in social action or the history of social progress. And in today's technologically driven times, the distinction between scientific and technological must also be underscored. Scientific socialism did not provide any technological blueprint for building socialism, it only provided broad general guidelines for organising a socialist revolution. And these broad guidelines have been proved to be essentially correct even in considerably different circumstances. More importantly, the applied science of socialism has not remained static. Initially, it was considered scientific to expect socialism to arrive in developed capitalist countries where possibilities of further development of productive forces would have been exhausted under capitalist production relations. Also socialism was expected to announce its arrival simultaneously in a number of countries. In real life, the break however came in a single backward country. Uneven development of world capitalism made it virtually impossible for socialism to win simultaneously in several countries and forced socialists to go about building socialism in a single country.
It is true that following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the retreat of socialism in China and other existing socialist countries, there is now not much practical evidence or display of the inherent superiority of actually existing socialism over capitalism. There are plenty of analyses about the degeneration and eventual collapse of socialism in the former Soviet Union, but a significantly superior model is yet to emerge. Yet if socialism remains a dream, the reality of capitalism is becoming increasingly nightmarish and the notion of a truly and universally peaceful, prosperous and democratic capitalism has been proved to be completely fictitious and illusory. Indeed, the model of postwar welfare capitalism seemed to work only so long as countering the socialist model of social security and employment for all remained a priority for advanced capitalism. It is no wonder therefore that the collapse of the Soviet system also signalled a rapid 'retreat' of the welfare state and return of predatory capitalism with all its ugly features of imperialist plunder and aggression.
On the eve of the revolution in 1917 when Lenin began to talk about the impossibility of simultaneous socialist revolution, he also started stressing the importance of anti-imperialist wars of national liberation. Massive economic plunder and brutal national oppression have been the two basic characteristic features of both colonialism and post-colonial or neo-colonial imperialism. The ‘clashes of civilisation’ argument is nothing but a theory of racist national oppression. From Palestine to Iraq, there has been no let-up in the imperialist campaign of national oppression. Along with socialist class wars, the battle for national liberation and independence from the clutches of the imperialist machine of plunder and humiliation therefore continues to remain central to any international vision of anti-imperialist resistance.
The two wars of anti-imperialist resistance — we can loosely call them class war and national war — are of course dialectically inter-related. During large parts of the twentieth century the two surged in tandem, each encouraging and strengthening the other. The leadership of the national wars of liberation, however, passed on in most cases into the hands of a vacillating bourgeoisie which in turn did everything to throttle the internal class war. As we approach yet another combined wave of class war and national awakening and assertion in large parts of Latin America, Asia and Africa, the forces of socialism must try to gain the upper hand both on the internal and external fronts of the war against imperialism.
A lot has been said about the disintegration of the organised working class and even the dismantling of the organised economy. We have heard any number of stories about the miraculous rise of the new economy, about computers replacing human hands all along the chain of production and human beings having little more to do than to press the occassional button of sophisticated electronic machines. Well, if capitalism has succeeded in partially doing away with the concentration of thousands of workers in a single production point, it is because production centres have been considerably relocated and the production chain or net has been cast much wider. For every automated production plant, there are sweatshops proliferating all over the third world. Socialisation of production has not been reversed, it continues to grow and in the process it has crossed national boundaries. If we keep the big picture in mind we will see that what is happening is not disintegration of the working class but dispersal and expansion of the class. From highly educated and skilled groups working with state-of-the-art computers and sophisticated machines and electronic equipments to vast masses of unorganised and informal sector workers, the working class today occupies a much bigger social turf than any time before.
Of course the class remains to be welded with a new consciousness and spirit, the transition from being a class-in-itself to a class-for-itself is certainly a very big challenge. But on this score too, there are a lot of new inputs. Apart from local trade union and other struggles, the anti-globalisation anti-war movement is also shaping up as an excellent international training school for the working class. The communication revolution especially the rise of satellite television and the arrival of the internet has opened up whole new avenues for not just dissemination of information but also networking for actual struggle. The vibrant two-way traffic between networking in the cyberspace and actual demonstration of solidarity and unity on the street is indeed an exciting development of our times.
A socialist world still remains a dream. Even during the heyday of the Soviet Union and China, the world was very much a capitalist world even though there was a powerful socilaist challenge. The conflict between the two worlds — the dominant capitalist world and the socialist challenger — has proved to be more intense, with more ups and downs, and twists and turns, than was possibly imagined in the early days. But the historical and material foundation of socialism, developed and democratic socialism if you will, continues to mature within the womb of global capitalism. And the forces of socialism are also gaining in maturity and strength. With the structural crisis of capitalism spreading deeper and wider and inter-imperialist rivalry intensifying all over again, socialism is sure to bounce back with new strength and vitality.
A socialist world is possible. It is necessary. It is the future of humankind.
Their (the disarmament advocates’ — ed) principal argument is that the disarmament demand is the clearest, most decisive, most consistent expression of the struggle against all militarism and against all war.
But in this principal argument lies the disarmament advocates’ principal error. Socialists cannot, without ceasing to be socialists, be opposed to all war.
Firstly, socialists have never been, nor can they ever be, opposed to revolutionary wars. The bourgeoisie of the imperialist “Great” Powers has become thoroughly reactionary, and the war this bourgeoisie is now waging we regard as a reactionary, slave-owners’ and criminal war. But what about a war against this bourgeoisie? A war, for instance, waged by peoples oppressed by and dependent upon this bourgeoisie, or by colonial peoples, for liberation? In Section 5 of the Internationale
That is obviously wrong.
The history of the 20th century, this century of “unbridled imperialism,” is replete with colonial wars. But what we Europeans, the imperialist oppressors of the majority of the world’s peoples, with our habitual, despicable European chauvinism, call “colonial wars” are often national wars, or national rebellions of these oppressed peoples. One of the main features of imperialism is that it accelerates capitalist development in the most backward countries, and thereby extends and intensifies the struggle against national oppression. That is a fact, and from it inevitably follows that imperialism must often give rise to national wars. Junius (Rosa Luxemburg – ed.), who defends the above-quoted “theses” in her pamphlet, says that in the imperialist era every national war against an imperialist Great Power leads to intervention of a rival imperialist Great Power. Every national war is thus turned into an imperialist war. But that argument is wrong, too. This can happen, but does not always happen. Many colonial wars between 1900 and 1914 did not follow that course. And it would be simply ridiculous to declare, for instance, that after the present war, if it ends in the utter exhaustion of all the belligerents, “there can be no” national, progress, revolutionary wars “of any kind”, wages, say, by China in alliance with India, Persia, Siam, etc., against the Great Powers.
To deny all possibility of national wars under imperialism is wrong in theory, obviously mistaken historically, and tantamount to European chauvinism in practice: we who belong to nations that oppress hundreds of millions in Europe, Africa, Asia, etc., are invited to tell the oppressed peoples that it is “impossible” for them to wage war against “our” nations!
Secondly, civil war is just as much a war as any other. He who accepts the class struggle cannot fail to accept civil wars, which in every class society are the natural, and under certain conditions inevitable, continuation, development and intensification of the class struggle. That has been confirmed by every great revolution. To repudiate civil war, or to forget about it, is to fall into extreme opportunism and renounce the socialist revolution....
Only after we have overthrown, finally vanquished and expropriated the bourgeoisie of the whole world, and not merely in one country, will wars become impossible. And from a scientific point of view it would be utterly wrong — and utterly unrevolutionary — for us to evade or gloss over the most important things: crushing the resistance of the bourgeoisie — the most difficult task, and one demanding the greatest amount of fighting, in the transition to socialism. The “social” parsons and opportunists are always ready to build dreams of future peaceful socialism. But the very thing that distinguishes them from revolutionary Social-Democrats is that they refuse to think about and reflect on the fierce class struggle and class wars needed to achieve that beautiful future.
Theoretically, it would be absolutely wrong to forget that every war is but the continuation of policy by other means. The present imperialist war is the continuation of the imperialist policies of two groups of Great Powers, and these policies were engendered and fostered by the sum total of the relationships of the imperialist era. But this very era must also necessarily engender and foster policies of struggle against national oppression and of proletarian struggle against the bourgeoisie and, consequently, also the possibility and inevitability; first, of revolutionary national rebellions and wars; second, of proletarian wars and rebellions against the bourgeoisie; and, third, of a combination of both kinds of revolutionary war, etc.
[From Liberation, October 1991.]
The last bastion of communism in Europe has crumbled. Desperate last-ditch attempts to save it through a coup d’êtat have only hastened its doom.
There was a time when the spectre of communism haunted Europe and now the spectre of Europe is haunting communism everywhere. Will the demise of communism in Europe affect the future of communism in Asia too? How long can China withstand the capitalist onslaught? How does it all affect the Indian communist movement? These and many other questions are haunting the minds of communists and Marxist academicians of our country and are becoming major questions of public debate.
Let us start with an analysis of the events in the Soviet Union. The setback for socialism in the country of the first successful proletarian revolution, in the country of great Lenin, is indeed a most shocking event for communists. For weak-hearted communists it may well provide grounds for dejection and desertion. But for the Marxist-Leninists it only reveals the protracted and highly complex nature of class struggle in the international arena — the struggle between socialism and capitalism.
There is no use blaming American designs or individuals like Gorbachev and Yeltsin. The essential point is that while capitalism overcame the setbacks after the Second World War and renewed itself, the socialist system at a certain stage of its development began failing to deliver the goods and stagnated. It was being rejected by the people themselves including the working class. The socialist chain was put under tremendous strain and it broke at the point where distortions were severest — first in East Europe and then in Soviet Russia.
To defend the socialist Soviet Union from imperialist aggression a huge nuclear arsenal was built up. Achieving military parity with the USA, and even surpassing it, had become the sole motto of the socialist state. In the process, the peculiar phenomenon of a hegemonic superpower built on socialist economic base had emerged. Ironically, when the crunch came, not even a single shot was fired and the Soviet Union’s transformation became a classical case of ‘peaceful evolution’. The mechanical transplantation of the basic contradiction between the two systems of imperialism and socialism into the principal contradiction between two blocs in the present stage gave rise to the phenomenon of super leader, super party and superpower which definitely had its genesis in Stalin’s period itself. As a natural corollary to those absurd ideas, the socialist bloc underwent a split as Mao refused to subscribe to this theory and China refused to accept Soviet domination. Militarisation of the Soviet economy left vital gaps in the sector of primary and essential commodities and people were fed with false statistics. Socialist democracy was given the go by, no dissidence of any sort was tolerated and, in return, people were served the illusions of ‘developed socialism’, ‘primary stage of communism’ and of a superpower syndrome often reminiscent of the great Russian chauvinism. Under cover of all this, a communist party and a regime grew which was detached from the masses and was corrupt and degenerate.
The socialist economic base could not sustain this superpower structure for long and the Soviet Union was already sitting on a volcano by the middle of the ’80s. Gorbachev initiated reforms to salvage the situation, but it was already too late. His perestroika and glasnost brought far-reaching changes in Eastern Europe, kindled national aspirations within Soviet Union and unleashed a host of social forces within the Soviet society and soon a pole emerged around Yeltsin demanding full-fledged restoration of capitalism. Western powers got a fertile ground for meddling in Soviet Union’s internal affairs. All the efforts of Gorbachev to tame the forces unleashed by himself proved futile and one after another he had to surrender his positions with the fond hope of striking a harmonious balance. Economic rejuvenation of the society remained a far cry and he had virtually to beg before the Western powers for assistance and in return offered them one political concession after another. As a net result, his own position went on weakening and that of Yeltsin grew stronger. With all the political and constitutional changes the communist party had already been pushed to the sidelines. With its old formation it became out of tune with the multi-party parliamentary democratic system. Gorbachev mooted the idea of a social-democratic party and opted for a new union treaty.
It was at this point of time that the much-discredited coup came. We don’t have with us all the facts to judge what really prompted the coup leaders to act and what went on behind the scene.
But to brand them as hardliners and conservatives is wrong. They were all Gorbachev’s handpicked men, the products and the mainstay of Gorbachev’s reforms. When the entire cabinet is found to betray the President, the more logical explanation seems to be that it was actually the President who betrayed the trust placed in him. They expected Gorbachev to halt at a point and use the emergency powers he himself had obtained to arrest the drift. They felt that the time had come but Gorbachev, becoming victim of his own creation, refused to oblige. The abrupt rupture left no other option but to seize power through a coup. The coup was destined to fail because Gorbachev was still the leader of pro-perestroika forces and the coup leaders remained a vacillating tiny and incoherent group from the very beginning. Yeltsin sensed the crack and stood in valiant defiance. The coup collapsed and masses flocked over towards Yeltsin, the hero. A dejected Gorbachev returned to find his social base eroding fast and he himself being forced to surrender vital positions to Yeltsin. A weakened central power accelerated the process of disintegration and the three Baltic republics have, for all practical purposes, separated from the Soviet Union. Yeltsin whipped up an anti-communist hysteria. After remaining for a few days virtually under the dictates of Yeltsin, Gorbachev has started making moves for his consolidation vis-a-vis Yeltsin. His moves to disband the communist party are actually the preparation for launching a social democratic party as per his original scheme, now in a roundabout way. To be sure, major sections of the Communist Party will transform themselves into the Gorbachevian scheme. In the coming days it will be interesting to watch how the cooperation and rivalry between the two representative personalities of the present Soviet society advance.
We do not know how the Marxist-Leninists of Russia will regroup themselves. We also don’t know how the ‘hardliners’ and ‘conservatives’ are going to react and what sort of dramatic developments are still in the offing. But we do know that for the second edition of the November Revolution in Soviet Union we shall have to wait much longer.
In over a century, from France to Germany to Russia, the centre of the communist movement has decisively shifted to China now and of course, India will be the other country most keenly watched.
Now a few words of polemics. The CPI(M) theoretician Mr.Prakash Karat[1], citing our positive evaluation of the 28th Congress of the CPSU, accused us of turning totally pro-Gorbachev and pro-Russia from the totally anti-Soviet position of our earlier days. They take credit for criticising Gorbachev from the very beginning. Let facts speak for themselves. In the great debate we sided firmly with the CPC’s position and criticised the Khruschevite thesis. We never believed in the ‘equi-distance theory’ and sided resolutely with Mao and China. We took Mao’s thought as our guideline, which in international relations opposed the thesis of a leading party, which put the Third World versus imperialism as the principal contradiction in the present day world, and which opposed the superpower hegemonic status of the Soviet Union. Not the metaphysics of Stalin but the dialectics of Mao, was our philosophical guide and it helped us to understand the existence of class struggle in a socialist society and also the danger of capitalist restoration. We did commit mistakes and sometimes went to the extremes but our basic premise has withstood the test of history. The CPI(M), on the other hand, ridiculed Mao’s philosophical thought, applauded the superpower status of Soviet Russia and backed to the hilt the Czechoslovak, Afghan and Kampuchean invasions. The CPI(M)’s basic premise has proved to be subjective despite some correct criticisms of this or that mistake.
We were the first to criticise the 2 November speech of Gorbachev in the harshest of terms, in our Fourth Congress document in January 1988 itself. The CPI(M) opened its mouth much later — only after visits to Moscow. All along we have been severely critical of Gorbachev’s approach towards imperialism. Regarding Gorbachev’s ideas on class struggle etc., we termed him as nothing else but a sophisticated version of Khruschev. We welcomed Gorbachev’s measures in dismantling the superpower status of Soviet Russia and bringing democratic reforms within a highly authoritarian system. If the CPI(M) still harbours illusions about the Brezhnevian model of socialism, it should not forget that the model had reached its saturation point and was bound to collapse. Gorbachev only acted as the catalyst of history. One should also not forget that it was the same Brezhnevian regime which supported the Emergency and the authoritarian regime of Indira Gandhi in India. As regards the 28th Congress, in the then balance of forces within the Soviet Communist Party, we only supported Gorbachev against Yeltsin and it was nothing more than that. We knew that the search for ‘genuine revolutionary communists’ of our imagination in present-day Soviet Union is subjectivism, pure and simple. The search leads the CPI(M) to pin their hopes on Ligachev & Co. and the 28th Congress exposed their real worth.
Now if we don’t support the coup it is only because we know that howsoever satisfying it may appear to our senses, in conditions obtaining in Russia, the coup did not enjoy even a minimal popular support. If we don’t make any hue and cry over the American interference in Russian internal affairs, if we don’t weep for the demise of the Communist Party there, it is because there is no voice being raised against all this from within the Soviet Union. We cherish socialism, but as a social system it can never be imposed on a people. If the Soviet people, after 74 years of experience with socialism, have decided to reject it, how can we advocate its imposition through army, KGB and martial law? When there was still time left to check the drift nothing was done and all criticisms were just branded as CIA-inspired both by the Soviet leadership and their henchmen in India. In the concrete conditions now we can only support the lesser evil against the bigger one and wait for a favourable turn of events when communists will be able to seize back the initiative. This can be the only Marxist approach. All the rest are hysteric cries, cries in the wilderness out of sheer frustration.
China is different from the Soviet Union in many respects and particularly due to its strong ‘Maoist’ legacy. Socialism, of course at a primary stage, survives there and enjoys popular support despite the unfortunate events in Tiananmen Square and despite several distortions. We should not try to keep people’s faith in socialism intact by presenting a golden image of China, the method which the CPI(M) is now well set to adopt. This is not only factually incorrect, it is counter-productive too. We should tell the people the reality and educate them about the zigzag course of the struggle between socialism and capitalism.
When the CPI(ML) began its journey, in its perception only China the tiny Albania were socialist countries and yet it never dampened our spirit to dedicate ourselves for the democratic and socialist transformation of our country. In India where the struggle for democracy against the old system is the main agenda, the future of the communist movement is definitely bright. Whatever concern is there relates to the rule of Left Front government in West Bengal where reactionaries may try to whip up anti-communist hysteria exploiting the misdeeds of the Left government. We hope that the CPI(M) leadership will be more tolerant to criticisms, mend its ways and join hands with the revolutionary communists in defence of Marxism and in the mass movements.
Note :
1. "CPI(ML)/IPF – Quest for a Left Role" by Prakash Karat, The Marxist, October-December, 1990.
