This decade has been quite telling of the Communist
electoral experiment in India. While many observers and Communists alike have
pretty much panned the Communist Parties in India, barring the Maoist parties
engaged in people’s war, for being too engaged and invested in the electoral
route to power, there has been equal retorts that it is at least a way to get
to power and if you disagree, just look at the Maoists.
The debate itself is one that is largely academic to the point
of Communist academicians expounding doctrinaire dogmatism: highly divorced
from the reality of the world today and from the reality that is the Indian
masses. However, the stand of the Communist Parties on solely relying on
electoralism as a route to power has also been a failed strategy. This
demonstrated by the Bengal and Tripura routs, with the accompanying shame of
fallen Lenin statues. One counter to this is the Kerala re-election of the
Communist Party and that is a fair retort that can only be countered by a look at
the continuation of the development and social change agenda of the CPIM that,
thus far, inspires no confidence. But what are the criticisms and why do they
forebear doom and what is the doom anyway?
Tripura – the Communists didn’t just lose but lost to the
Far Right BJP, to a buffon-ish, Trump-like character, and couldn’t even defend
against physical attacks to statues or to the cadre.
Bengal – from a seven year long glorious reign to be being
reduced to 0 representation in the state. This after literally being the only
organised entity that fed people and gave them medical assistance during the
pandemic.
Kerala – bucked the trend and historically, the Communists
returned to power. Albeit by a complete ministerial revamp that has
subsequently demonstrated its absolute incompetence in office, buoyed and kept
afloat only by the actions and visions of the Chief Minister now.
The overall tally thus since 2014 looks like 3 losses in
Bengal and Tripura and 2 wins in Kerala or in more dire terms… presence only in
one state, the loss of any notion of a National Party status.
One must be careful here not to look at Kerala’s win as some
kind of analysis of what to do right – that will only make sense in 2025 when
the second term comes to an end. If this seems like a cautious position, it is
because there have been heady mistakes made within the first few months of the
Pinarayi govt returning. An incompetent Health Minister taking over in the
middle of a pandemic and no course correction in that portfolio allocation, a
non-existent Finance minister and Industries minister after a stalwart like
Thomas Isaac having warmed the chair for the newcomers, and refusal of Pinarayi
himself to cede the Home Ministry portfolio to a full time minister. All
indications here are that in 2025, Pinarayi himself will fall prey to the very
line he used to ensure new blood in Government and will have to step away from
being the State leader face for a third term. That will categorically be the
end of the Communists because the Party would have made the exact same mistake
it did in Bengal and Tripura – relied on the aura of a man over the work of the
Party.
This turn of events will depress many a young Communist, a
breed today that is torn between being part of a global resurgence in Communism
and Leftism and having to explain the ridiculousness of being powerless and
just target practice for the far right in many places.
For the old guard Communists, who will inevitably bandy
about the old tired lines of bourgeois democratic vagaries, it will also be
time of the setting of the Red Star over the subcontinent. The question is
where things go from here and what the programs should be.
Mass movements have definitely been a strong point for the
Communists and at times since the Modi regime came to power, it had seemed that
the Communists, using the Unionist arms, have been able to make more red flags
fly. Never forget that the two largest labour strikes in world history were
orchestrated by the Communist unions, the Farmers agitation had only one
visible party flag at its height – the hammer sickle and star. If these are the
standing positives, there are also the corrections to be made. Tripura has seen
five years of buffoonery from the local incumbent government and ten years of
mayhem from the centre. The feeling of “it was better before” is now truly more
palpable than ever. This combined with a splintered and nonsensical
agglutination of opposition forces actually give the Communists a fighting
chance but only if they abandon the Sarkar-ist tendencies of Gandhian adherence
to bourgeois democratic means.
In Bengal, the party has a steeper and higher hill to climb
where course corrections involve the change of the old guard, a return to the
rural mass bases, etc. The Communists of Bengal will have to re-read Lenin and
Mao here and abandon the “healing touch” method of campaigning and increase the
mass base. This would enrage many a Bengali communist but the stark fact is
that it makes no sense doing rallies at Brigade ground, Calcutta and ending up
with 0 seats. The Communists must stop
believing that they are indebted to serve the people whether that translates to
power or not. No. The people also have to realise that there are consequences
to their erroneous calculations.
But irrespective of geography, there is a more crucial point
where the Communists fail and will inevitably bang the final nail on their own
coffins – the lack of a long term program. There is simply no vision of the CPs
currently for what they want to make India to be in five or ten years. Kerala
made a small step by stating that it would eliminate absolute poverty; however,
the problem in Kerala was never absolute poverty to begin with – it was middle
class stagnation. To this end, by now, a vision should have existed,
specifically for wealth creation. This is a vision beyond a party manifesto –
it is a vision that should be tangible in the dreams of the masses and the
voters.
One cannot but rage at the prospect of a global resurgence
of Leftism and even Communism globally and even in the belly of the beast –
America but at the same time face a moribund expansionist reality in India.
The Communists of Tripura lie hacked and battered, of Bengal
lie singing Bella Ciao, playing Mother Teresa to the poor and overly reliant on
Student Politics to provide motivated cadre and existential relief, Kerala’s
Communists only speak of the wonders of Kerala and then fight the Revolutionary
fight against the bigger US Imperialist threat.
A word here on the growing petty bourgeois influences that
are a pathology among Kerala’s Communist minded youth. The infection of anarchist
kvostism, identity politics, a disconnection from materialism and mass reality,
parochial-ising Communism, and probably the worst of all, looking at the Latin
American pink tides in abstract as the way forward ail Communism in Kerala.
There are simply too many Communist youth in Kerala that have no working class
consciousness. These are kvosts and will inevitably desert the party and
Communism, failing ideological development or expansion of the old party into
new territories.
Here, the party itself is stuck because it relies on
unionism to spread into new territory like the Northern States. And even here,
in states like the Punjab and Haryana, the Unionism of the farmer’s agitation
and decade long labour struggles have not budged the Politburo to enter into a
fresh political ground. It can be said of the Communist Party’s method that it
gives a meal, free dialysis and a hug to the masses who have abandoned it and
ignores the masses who need it desperately – Tripura’s recent anti-Muslim riots
where even battling mobs in one village would have sent a strong message to the
victim community would be a million times more tangible than Manik Sarkar’s “condemnations
of government policy”.
The future of the Communist Party in India thus appears to
be to forever be in mass agitations. It thus can only be concluded that in a
sense, the Communist Parties will reboot and restart the Revolutionary
experiment that lost its way with the 70 year experiment with Bourgeois
Democracy that rendered it moribund.
And that might not be such a bad thing either because at the
end of the day, power is not something that flows down from Delhi or through a
Parliamentary bill. It is something that comes from the masses to the party and
back to the masses. The Farmer’s agitation is a stellar example of how no
Government can ever wield the power to overrule the masses. The local and
global demise of the Right Wing reactionary trend as providing any solution to
working class issues also acts like a bow wave to push the Communist parties to
bring the masses back after their fascist “phases”.
The Red star thus will definitely set over the Indian sky
but it can also rise only to shine brighter, if the party wills it.
