Why should the CPI(M) have problems with Mamata's Rally???
Almost all the texts, elaborating the Marxist definition of communism, stress upon the need for communists to make full use of the contradictions within the capitalist camp and push ahead for the revolution. There are a number of texts, written by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, that lay down as imperative for the communists to use all means available to further the struggle for change. The Marxist understanding is that the communists must always be seen with the oppressed people and convert the collective anger of the oppressed into a revolutionary situation.
All the Marxist texts also stress that although the communists seek a fundamental transformation in the system by peaceful means, the ruling classes do not let such a change happen in a peaceful manner; that the violence by the state, in the Marxist approach, will also have to be dealt with by the communists even if they did not desire violence. It is in this context that the communists look at violence as inevitable and forced upon the revolutionary forces; and that the state is seen as a machinery of the oppressor in any system.
The CPI(M) programme too mandates something like this. Paragraph 7.18 of the CPI(M) programme, for instance, says: ``The Communist Party of India (Marxist) strives to achieve the establishment of Peoples’ Democracy and Socialist transformation through peaceful means. By developing a powerful mass revolutionary movement, by combining parliamentary and extra parliamentary forms of struggle, the working class and its allies will try their utmost to overcome the resistance of the forces of reaction and to bring about this transformation through peaceful means. However, it needs always to be borne in mind that the ruling classes never relinquish their power voluntarily. They seek to defy the will of the people and seek to reverse it by lawlessness and violence. It is, therefore, necessary for the revolutionary forces to be vigilant and so orient their work that they can face up to all contingencies, to any twists and turn in the political life of the country’’.
I was provoked to make this short exposition of Marxism and cite a paragraph from the CPI(M)’s programme in the wake of the questions that the CPI(M) has raised over the rally that Mamata Banerjee organised at Lalgarh this week.
Well. Let me clarify, at the outset, that I am not all that naïve as are Medha Pathkar and Swami Agnivesh to expect Mamata Banerjee reverse all the pro-MNC measures that Buddhadeb Bhattacharya had taken. Nor do I expect her to take the Maoists along with her to rule over West Bengal after May 2011. I am certain that she will emerge the next Chief Minister and that her love for the Maoist cadre will last until then. She needs them to deal with the lumpen elements that the CPI(M) cadre is made of now (and in sharp contrast to those who built the party and sustain it during the Seventies against the state terror that the S.S.Ray government let lose then) and once the elections are won, the Maoists will be dumped by her.
But then, the Maoists too are not all that naïve and they too have experienced this with others in Andhra Pradesh, Chattisgarh and Bihar. And they have their own agenda. It is, after all, a fact that their strategy in West Bengal hinges on the CPI(M) being unseated from power and it makes sense for them to prop up a Mamata Banerjee. The Maoists do not believe in the parliamentary path.
But then, the point is that the CPI(M) too does not consider, at least if its programme is to be taken seriously, the Parliamentary path to be sufficient. And hence it talks about the need to chart through the extra parliamentary path too. And if one goes by the normative description of this extra-parliamentary means, one must not exclude such actions as rallies, demonstrations, strikes and hartals as such forms of actions. In other words, the CPI(M) programme mandates that the party continues to resort to such forms of struggle as much as the Parliamentary form (which is contesting and winning elections) at the same time.
That must mean that the party mobilised the people against its own Government to expose the limitations of the Bourgeois Parliamentary Democracy and thus take the struggle towards socialism to its next stage: The Peoples’ Democratic Revolution.
It is strange that the party’s Politburo and its extended Central Committee meeting at Vijayawada decided to forget all these and is now seen with the BJP in Parliament attacking Mamata Banerjee for having held a rally at Lalgarh. The BJP has its own agenda when it comes to the Maoists given the large number of mines that the Raman Singh Government is bent on leasing out to domestic and foreign mining corporations. Home Minister P.Chidambaram may have another set of agenda in this regard. But then, it is inexplicable that the CPI(M) too perceives the issue in the same way.
Almost all the texts, elaborating the Marxist definition of communism, stress upon the need for communists to make full use of the contradictions within the capitalist camp and push ahead for the revolution. There are a number of texts, written by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, that lay down as imperative for the communists to use all means available to further the struggle for change. The Marxist understanding is that the communists must always be seen with the oppressed people and convert the collective anger of the oppressed into a revolutionary situation.
All the Marxist texts also stress that although the communists seek a fundamental transformation in the system by peaceful means, the ruling classes do not let such a change happen in a peaceful manner; that the violence by the state, in the Marxist approach, will also have to be dealt with by the communists even if they did not desire violence. It is in this context that the communists look at violence as inevitable and forced upon the revolutionary forces; and that the state is seen as a machinery of the oppressor in any system.
The CPI(M) programme too mandates something like this. Paragraph 7.18 of the CPI(M) programme, for instance, says: ``The Communist Party of India (Marxist) strives to achieve the establishment of Peoples’ Democracy and Socialist transformation through peaceful means. By developing a powerful mass revolutionary movement, by combining parliamentary and extra parliamentary forms of struggle, the working class and its allies will try their utmost to overcome the resistance of the forces of reaction and to bring about this transformation through peaceful means. However, it needs always to be borne in mind that the ruling classes never relinquish their power voluntarily. They seek to defy the will of the people and seek to reverse it by lawlessness and violence. It is, therefore, necessary for the revolutionary forces to be vigilant and so orient their work that they can face up to all contingencies, to any twists and turn in the political life of the country’’.
I was provoked to make this short exposition of Marxism and cite a paragraph from the CPI(M)’s programme in the wake of the questions that the CPI(M) has raised over the rally that Mamata Banerjee organised at Lalgarh this week.
Well. Let me clarify, at the outset, that I am not all that naïve as are Medha Pathkar and Swami Agnivesh to expect Mamata Banerjee reverse all the pro-MNC measures that Buddhadeb Bhattacharya had taken. Nor do I expect her to take the Maoists along with her to rule over West Bengal after May 2011. I am certain that she will emerge the next Chief Minister and that her love for the Maoist cadre will last until then. She needs them to deal with the lumpen elements that the CPI(M) cadre is made of now (and in sharp contrast to those who built the party and sustain it during the Seventies against the state terror that the S.S.Ray government let lose then) and once the elections are won, the Maoists will be dumped by her.
But then, the Maoists too are not all that naïve and they too have experienced this with others in Andhra Pradesh, Chattisgarh and Bihar. And they have their own agenda. It is, after all, a fact that their strategy in West Bengal hinges on the CPI(M) being unseated from power and it makes sense for them to prop up a Mamata Banerjee. The Maoists do not believe in the parliamentary path.
But then, the point is that the CPI(M) too does not consider, at least if its programme is to be taken seriously, the Parliamentary path to be sufficient. And hence it talks about the need to chart through the extra parliamentary path too. And if one goes by the normative description of this extra-parliamentary means, one must not exclude such actions as rallies, demonstrations, strikes and hartals as such forms of actions. In other words, the CPI(M) programme mandates that the party continues to resort to such forms of struggle as much as the Parliamentary form (which is contesting and winning elections) at the same time.
That must mean that the party mobilised the people against its own Government to expose the limitations of the Bourgeois Parliamentary Democracy and thus take the struggle towards socialism to its next stage: The Peoples’ Democratic Revolution.
It is strange that the party’s Politburo and its extended Central Committee meeting at Vijayawada decided to forget all these and is now seen with the BJP in Parliament attacking Mamata Banerjee for having held a rally at Lalgarh. The BJP has its own agenda when it comes to the Maoists given the large number of mines that the Raman Singh Government is bent on leasing out to domestic and foreign mining corporations. Home Minister P.Chidambaram may have another set of agenda in this regard. But then, it is inexplicable that the CPI(M) too perceives the issue in the same way.
posted by Krishna Ananth at
3:53 AM
1 Comments:
Nice analysis, Thank you!
But what Do you expect from ther CPIM? Do you really expect them to embrace the non-parliamentary revolutonary struggle? It was Marx himself who rightly pointed out to the fact that any actor in the political sphere is given a certain role in the capitalist system. As soon as a party goes for elections, they become part of the "Überbau". And let it be like that. It is a normal part of history that former revolutionary forces tend to move to middle and create new spaces on the left side. I think we chould be more worried about the "kind" of left forces that appear these days. The Maoists, tough I do not want to blow in the same horn like the mainstream discourse, are NOT very progressive.
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