24 Apr 2016, Frontier Weekly.
Left politics and some critical questions:
An observer’s note
An observer’s note
Arup Baisya
The dichotomies in both
subjective and objective situation of present day India have revealed certain characteristics.
The mainstream lefts are declining for valid reasons. The post-Russian socialist
project not only failed everywhere including the east European countries, but
also knowingly or unknowingly inflicted sores in the left body-politic. In this
backdrop, the Indian mainstream left like their counterpart in many other
countries felt it pragmatic to make a class compromise with neo-liberal order
of state. But on one count, within the practising left, these mainstream lefts
were successful in combining people’s movement with electoral battle. But it is
natural that the class or group of classes who controls the state power will
not relinquish the power willingly and will resist the forces that have an
agenda alternative to neo-liberalism and restricted democracy. The
unwillingness of the left govt. to go ahead with anti-neoliberal measures by
ensuring the participation of people in promoting democracy and to build
resistance movement whenever necessary to hold ground against neo-liberalism
and for democracy leads to their inevitable decline.
On the other hand, the rank
and files of radical left except the Maoists are in a dilemma because their
hearts are with the concept of completing the Jaocobin task of violent seizure
of power in single stroke, but their brains are with the building of People’s
democratic movement to create more democratic space to ensure people’s power. So
they take a defensive stance by articulating their participation in electoral
battle as a means only to use the occasion for propagation of ideology. Their
participation in election, which is the most important democratic battle for
the people and the continuation of people’s movement, is of pedagogic in
nature. The fulfilling of pedagogic task in the election is very much important.
But as they cannot accept the electoral battle as one of the principal strategic
battles to ensure people’s participation in the affairs of Govt functioning
with a view to seize the state power through a long drawn out working class
struggle, their participation in election even in pedagogic content remains as
mere window-dressing exercise. The battle ground is always discovered by the
working class in their workplace and living space while confronting with the
policies of their adversarial classes, but electoral battle is the only battle which
is pre-decided outside their periphery. The working class vis-a-vis people are
not taught to fight this predetermined battle with much preparation and vigour.
This also has a pedagogic content of developing consciousness among the working
class about how the ruling class uses state-machinery, money, media and other
wherewithal which are beyond their reach. This is not done with a fear that the
revolutionary image that is built on the foundation of concept of violent
seizure of power is diluted. This is one of the reasons why the people’s movement
remains bereft of achieving any electoral success.
The non-party left intellectual
activists who are committed in building people’s movement to establish people’s
rights and to fight exploitation for humanitarian cause also perceive the
electoral battle as the battle of so called political class, not as their own battle,
and their duty is confined only for trying to induce morality into this battle.
They fail to visualise that like every other socio-political battle or activity
they are spearheading all throughout the time to influence the policy making,
electoral battle is most important because it can raise the representatives of
the oppressed classes to the status of policy makers.
However, the process of
dilution of revolutionary character or pro-people position and the process of ideological
degeneration get initiated when the participation in the Govt is equated with
grabbing of state power and the process of ensuring democratic participation of
people from below and above is stalled, and the task for greater battle to grab
the state power is concealed from working class.
The Maoist, on the contrary,
has remained stuck to the strategy of seizure of power through localized insurrection
and vote boycott. This strategy so far has not thrown any political challenge
to ruling class politics; rather it has been successfully projected as law and
order problem by the elites, and to a certain extent it has really been
degenerated into indiscriminate killings and lum-pen activity in many pockets. However,
the Maoist presence is predominantly in those areas where forcible land
acquisition as a part of ‘primitive accumulation’ of neo-liberal capital to
establish SEZ has been let loose, and the people mostly ‘Adivasis’ are engaged
in resistance movement to save their land and livelihood.
But the objective reality of the
rural and urban landscape of India has already undergone a drastic change.
After long post-independent dirigiste Nehruvian development strategy under
uneven and combined global development model and especially after neo-liberal
development spree post eighties, there have been a long haul of simultaneous proletarianisation
and pauperization. The rapid urbanization, capitalization of agriculture and
also due to agricultural distress, the land issue per se has taken a backseat.
The slogan of ‘land to the tiller’ has gone on the back burner. On the other
hand, the organized working class has almost been dismantled through
privatization and contractualisation. The vibrant organized working class was
not only the ideological source of motivation but also the subjective strength
in the fight against Indira fascism of 1975. The strike movement of this
organized working class contributed immensely in enthusing the masses in the
fight against emergency. But at this juncture the working people in both urban
and rural sectors are mostly unorganized, casualised and contractualised in
private sectors and service sectors. Whether we can consider the period of
emergency, when the system showed the sign of crisis of bourgeoisie-landlord
power, as the dateline for a qualitative change in production relation may be
debatable, but it can be reasonably argued that in the changed circumstances of
class/caste dynamics, the strategy of left movement needs to be formulated anew.
The working class dynamics has shifted the coordinates of caste/community
cleavages towards left and as a result the organic intellectuals are gradually
getting more and more audience and followers. That’s why fascist forces have
targeted those intellectual centers. When this new dimension of mass movement will
get impetus is solely dependent on the correct formulation of working class
political strategy and its implementation. In this strategy, the success in electoral
battle is an important milestone.
Now let me cite few points on the question of
fascism which is a stark reality in Indian political scenario. To combat the
fascist takeover of Indian state, the broad based unity of all forces must be
the call of the day. There are similarities between the German situation prior
to the rise of Hitler in power and the present day Indian situation almost in
all respects, and in that sense Dimitrov formulation is very much relevant in
the Indian context too. But there are also certain dissimilarities. During
Hitler’s rise, left movement was also in the rise and left project had its own
social acceptance. But today both the left movement and the prestige of the
left are in its nadir. In Hitler’s time, Industrial capital was backed by
finance capital, but today financialisation of capital is at its peak.
Financial capital has created its own independent market for profit and
accumulation, and thus weakened the role of working class in influencing the
market forces. So anti-fascist forces have to take the new factors into
cognizance for formulating the strategy against fascism.
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