The Indian Communist Party today suffers from a scarcity of trust and imagination to think and act differently. It has become just another political force
Published Date – 20 July 2024, 11:55 PM
By J Prabhash
The Indian Communist Party will be completing a hundred years of its existence next year. During this century-long existence, it has faced many ups and downs — from periodic splits to severe decline in electoral fortunes. For instance, the combined strength of CPI(M) and CPI — the major component of the Left in the country — in the Lok Sabha, which has been two-digit for about seven decades, has hit an all-time low since 2019. So is its governance record in the States, from three to just one (Kerala). Significant still, its electoral fortunes in other States depend on the support of other political parties like the DMK in Tamil Nadu and the Indian National Congress elsewhere.
Trade Unions are singing their swan songs and workers are fast becoming spare parts who could be easily replaced either by ‘intelligent’ machines or by the reserve army of the under/unemployed.
One could notice a paradox here: there is a huge gap between the Left as an imagination and the Left as an electoral force. Even while the former — ideological appeal, sense of justice and ethical strands — has deep influence among the country’s poor, they are generally reluctant to assign power to the Left. Bengal, Tripura and Kerala have been the only exceptions to this trend. Even this has been weakened now, a sure indication that the Left is losing out even as an imagination. Incidentally, the latest example in this regard comes from Kerala which, as the only remaining outpost of the Left in the country, needs a detailed discussion. Moreover, one can draw a parallel between what’s happening in the State with the events that unfolded in West Bengal and Tripura eventually leading to its (Left’s) decline.
Lok Sabha Result
For quite some time, at least for a decade or so, many things have not been right in the Kerala Left, especially in the CPM. The drubbing it got in the recent election was just a culmination. Here again, more than its defeat (won just 1 of the 20), what matters is the unusual electoral performance of the NDA. For the first time, it got a seat and a vote share of 19.21%, an increase of 3.57% compared with the previous election. Assembly segment-wise, it emerged first in 11 seats and second in another 8.
Parent CPI asserts that the party was formed in December 1925 in Kanpur where its first conference was held and the party was named. The CPM and the CPI are the two most prominent Left parties in India
As things stand now, the next Assembly election is going to witness a strong tripolar contest in at least 30 of the 140 constituencies. Added to this is the erosion in the social base of the Left, that too in a manner favourable to the BJP. This is witnessed in many of its strongholds and among its traditional supporters including the Scheduled Castes and the numerically powerful Ezhava community. More than all these, a section of the Christians too voted for the BJP. The writing on the wall is thus clear: Kerala’s graduation from bipolar politics to a tripolar one is almost complete with dire consequences for both the Congress and the Left, the latter in particular.
Ailing Left
That the Left, CPM within it, has been facing an existential crisis is clear to all discerning eyes. For the past eight years, especially since the second term of Pinarayi Vijayan as Kerala Chief Minister in 2021, the party and the government it leads have been in the news for all the wrong reasons: corruption, nepotism, arrogance, mismanagement of public finance, centralisation of power and what not. Charges of corruption and nepotism against the government including the Chief Minister and his family are rampant. This is equally true of many party functionaries at various levels of the organisation. Many a scandal of financial misappropriation involving party cadres and leaders in the cooperative sector and their liaison with all sorts of mafias, daily reported in the press, stand testimony to this.
Centralisation of power within the government and the party is also palpable. The party has neither control over the government constituted in its name nor control over itself as, by and large, the Chief Minister’s writs run through both. This has dire consequences for inner-party democracy as it has foreclosed all avenues of informed debates and fearless exchange of views within the organisation. At another level, it has also paved the way for opening the party doors, for sycophants, opportunists and even shady characters to gain entry into it thus changing the very style of its functioning. Keeping the top leadership in good humour rather than working with the people and involving in their life concerns has become the new normal.
This has not only distanced the party from the people but has also lent an air of arrogance to its cadres. If this trend continues the party will soon become mere grass without roots. One is reminded of the dialogue of Rubashov, the character in Arthur Koestler’s novel, Darkness at Noon. Speaking on the infallibility of the party, Rubashov says:
The party can never be wrong. You and I can make mistakes, but not the party. The party, comrade, is more than you and me … The party is the embodiment of revolutionary idea in history. The individual [is] nothing, the party [is] all; …the branch that broke off the tree must wither.
But looking at the present conjuncture of the CPM, and the organised Left in general, it begs an important question: What happens if the party/movement itself is wrong and suffers from multiple political maladies?
The Communist Party of India was formed in Tashkent on October 17, 1920 with seven members – MN Roy, Evelyn Roy-Trent, Abani Mukherjee, Rosa Fitingov, Mohammad Ali, Mohamad Shafiq and Acharya, according to CPI(M)’s documents
Another noticeable development is the rightward shift of the CPM in terms of public policies and even structurally. The LDF government today is at the forefront of implementing many policies which it had vociferously opposed earlier, on purely ideological grounds, including those pertaining to wooing private capital, borrowing money from the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and other such multilateral lending agencies and allowing foreign direct investment.
In the fields of education, industry and infrastructural development, the shift is glaring. In another important development, when the issue of the non-payment of welfare pensions to the poor came up for hearing before the High Court of Kerala, the government didn’t have to think twice to aver that pension is not a matter of right of the citizens but mere munificence on the part of the state!
Along with this is the willingness of the party to welcome to its fold functionaries belonging to other parties, including those with clear-cut BJP/Sangh Parivar connections and criminal backgrounds. The best example in this regard is the recent move by one of its district committees (Pathanamthitta district) to confer party membership to former BJP cardholders some of whom have tainted personal records — one booked for a series of criminal cases including molesting women, another booked for carrying drugs and yet another charged with attempted murder of its own activists.
On the other side, migration of the CPM cadres to the BJP is also not uncommon these days. The party has also little qualm in seeking the support of caste and communal forces in its bid to capture power. By implication, this means that ideological differences between the Left and the Right have started thinning and political boundaries are rather hazy.
Catch-22 Situation
All these show that the Left is confused, ideologically, as to the manner in which and ways through which globalisation and its attended neoliberal policy regimes are to be confronted and tackled. At the same time, all the ills of globalisation have crept into the party. It is in a Catch-22 situation, a situation which is more or less similar to the one earlier envisaged by the famous Marxist theoretician, Antonio Gramsci, in his Prison Notebooks—the old world is dying and the new world struggles to be born, in the interregnum a great variety of moribund symptoms appear.
It is not merely that the old is dying and the new is struggling to be born. Equally important is the fact that we live today in accelerating times in which changes take place swiftly and, much of that, outside the agency of the state. Further, modern capitalism shows that it could withstand many radical interventions than may appear possible. Trade Unions are singing their swan songs and workers are fast becoming spare parts who could be easily replaced either by ‘intelligent’ machines or by the reserve army of the under/unemployed. In such a world what is of crucial significance for the working class is full employment rather than the fact of exploitation involved in it!
And, it is for the Left to think as to why even in the face of such acute forms of exploitation, people are not flocking around it politically but moving towards the Right culturally. In other words, the right-wing has succeeded globally in channelling popular discontent from the forces of capitalism to some hypothetical ‘Others’, minorities, immigrants, people of colour, and other marginalised groups.
Interestingly, more than any other group, it is the youth who are the primary victims of this machination. Exceptions apart, they are no longer the angry young generation of the yesteryears who, attracted by the Left imagination, fiercely reacted against social injustices. Nobel laureate, Annie Ernaux, beautifully brings this out while depicting a street scenario she had once witnessed in Paris: on New Year’s Eve all the beggars, both young and old, were chanting “Happy New Year”! For them (the younger generation) concepts such as bourgeoisie, imperialism, finance capital, dialectical materialism and the like are mere jargon which make little sense and connection with their life.
The Left is in a Catch-22 situation, a situation which is more or less similar to the one earlier envisaged by the famous Marxist theoretician, Antonio Gramsci, in his Prison Notebooks—the old world is dying and the new world struggles to be born, in the interregnum a great variety of moribund symptoms appear
The Indian Left has to understand this, especially the critical changes taking place in society including the revolutionary transformation brought about by information technology on human relationships and the modes and methods of production. It has to think differently and invent new ideas, vocabularies and strategies to mobilise women, Dalits, minorities, unemployed, underemployed, workers in the informal sector etc., to confront the Right. In short, it needs a new manifesto. Here one is reminded of the opening lines of The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie, “to be born again first you have to die”. Similarly, for the Left to be rejuvenated, it has to unlearn and relearn many a thing.
It is worthwhile to remember that in the past, Marxism in India was not merely about class and class struggles. It was also a class apart in the sense that it had a touch of class in everything it did, from the way it thought about the world and the problems and the quotidian concerns of the people who inhabited that world, to the strategies to be adopted in addressing human issues. This is exactly what is at a discount now. Today it suffers from a scarcity of trust and imagination to think and act differently. It has become just another political force.
Oldest living Communist in India
In 1964, the Communist Party of India (CPI) split over ideological positions with 32 members walking out of its national council to form the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Of the 32 members, VS Achuthanandan, or VS, is the only one alive and is the oldest member. VS, who last year turned 100, was the face of the Punnapra-Vayalar uprising of Communist workers against then Diwan of Travancore state. A stalwart of Kerala politics, he is respected for his unwavering commitment to the principles of the Communist movement in India
(The author was Professor of Political Science at the University of Kerala)