What The Communists Stand For

Q 1. You communists always talk in terms of class struggle, the proletarian party, seizure of power etc. Can’t you avoid such jargons?

Sorry, but every science has lo operate with certain conceptual tools or technical terms, and Marxism is a science.

Never mind, we will make it simple for you.

Different people occupy different positions in the economic system, in the social arrangement of production and exchange; thus we have peasants, capitalists, workers and so on. These social positions, which basically determine the different incomes, life styles, outlooks etc., of these groupings, are called classes. Some of these, like peasants and workers, produce everything necessary for society but are exploited and oppressed — they are called producing classes or oppressed classes. Others like landlords and capitalists are called exploiting or ruling classes because they do not produce anything but exploit and lord it over peasants, workers and other toilers thanks to their ownership of land, capital etc. and control over state power.

Struggle between exploited and exploiting classes goes on uninterruptedly in different intensities and forms like wage struggle, agitation for political democracy, electoral battle for ousting a corrupt government, and so on. At critical junctures it flares up into revolutions which drastically change the economic, political and cultural shape of society. We may cite the classic example of French revolution where the then revolutionary bourgeoisie, supported by peasants and other loiters, seized political power from the feudal aristocracy represented by Louis XVI thus becoming itself the ruling class. In time, however, the bourgeoisie lost its revolutionary fervour. Not only in France but throughout the world it gave up the struggle against feudalism and became the champion of status quo, interested only in enriching itself and in perpetuating its class domination.

Classes carry on their struggle through their mass organisations like trade unions as well as through political parties representing them, or sections of them. In our country, for example, parties like the Congress, the BJP etc. represent and work for capitalists, landlords and kulaks.

A communist party represents the revolutionary interests of the modern working class, also called the proletariat. This does not mean, of course, that every member of a communist party should be actually a worker, just as every member or activist of a bourgeois party need not necessarily be herself/himself a bourgeois. What it essentially means is that a communist party is guided by the proletariat’s revolutionary ideology or outlook, which finds scientific expression in Marxism-Leninism. Among all the toiling and exploited classes, it is the proletariat which is most organised and disciplined. It is organically connected with modern science and, having nothing to lose but chains of wage slavery, imbued with a forward looking vision and most consistent in revolution. This class forms the very base of the social pyramid. So when it rises against and overthrows its direct oppressors, the ruling bourgeoisie, it mobilises the support of all other toilers and thereby brings the entire pyramid — the whole oppressive highrise — down to the ground. This is the socialist revolution, humankind’s gateway to an exploitation-free world, the world of communism.*

Note:
* The above description is true in world-historic terms, but in the specific conditions of varying times and climes this is actualised in different forms and methods. For example, in our country, where the growth of capitalism is retarded and distorted by strong feudal remnants, to abolish the latter and accomplish radical land reform becomes the first task of the proletarian party. This involves an intermediary stage called peoples democratic revolution, which grows directly and uninterruptedly into the socialist revolution. We shall discuss this topic in some detail in one of our forthcoming booklets, devoting the present one to an elucidation of the general ideals of communism.

Q 2. You may have a noble goal, but your means are wrong. Violence never pays. In this strife-torn, gory age of ours, shouldn’t one work for mutual understanding and peace rather than for more bloodletting?

Why, we are doing precisely that : only our approach is perhaps different.
From the Buddha to Gandhi and from Jesus Christ to Leo Tolstoy, universal experience demonstrates that the noblest doctrines of love, compassion and non-violence have never gone beyond replacing one form of exploitation and oppression by another. Of course, this is not to say that conflicts and violence by themselves beget peace. The real thing is that so long as society remains split in mutually antagonistic classes and strata, there can be no final riddance from ill will and bad blood, from torture and revolt, either by preaching peace or by wielding the gun to punish the oppressors. The only solution therefore lies in putting an end to social antagonisms which breed violence and counter-violence in so many forms. And we communists are striving for just that — for a society where classes will be abolished and, on that basis, other social relations (gender, ethnic, etc.) harmonised.

Tliis. however, is not a novel idea “invented” by the brilliant brain of Karl Marx. What he and his friend Engels did was to demonstrate that such a solution, which was objectively impossible earlier, is now possible and historically necessary : that is to say, in capitalism class society has reached its highest, most developed form and is now ripe for a transformation into a classless society. They located in the modern proletariat the real force which can — and owing to its social position, must — lead this transformation; formulated the broad philosophical and theoretical frameworks required for that; and set about organising the working class along these lines. Thus, started the Marxist proletarian project for making this planet a peaceful place to live happily together. But can such epochal change be brought about peacefully?

History knows of no instance where a ruling class rendered superfluous left the stage of its own accord. “A Cromwell guiltless of his country’s blood”* could exist only in the poet’s fancy, and we cannot think of the great French revolution without the guillotine. Whether one likes it or not, class struggle and its explosive intensification in revolution has always been the real locomotive of history, and force, the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one. In this background, we deem it our duty not to deceive the masses with empty rhetoric on peace and love, but to organise them for radical reconstruction of society. If by any chance that can be achieved peacefully, we would be the happiest. And if in the process masses are compelled by vested interests to take up the gun to destroy all guns on earth, we march on the front ranks.


Note :

* From Thomas Grey’s The Elegy, Oliver Cromwell led the sanguinary bourgeois democratic revolution in England in mid-seventeenth century.

Q 3. Welt, why not then give us a short general idea about communist society?

Communism abolishes all forms of exploitation of man by man and ushers in a classless society. But these cannot be achieved at one stroke.

The first stage of communism, usually called socialism, still carries the birth marks of the old capitalist society from whose womb it has just emerged. The means of production (big landholdings, factories, etc.) owned by the exploiting classes have just been confiscated by the state on behalf of society. Thus there are no landlords, kulaks and capitalists in the traditional sense. But such dispossessed individuals are still there and they carry on frantic efforts to regain their property and power with the help of friends abroad. Also the old division of labour (workers, peasants, economic and political administrators, small traders, self-employed professionals etc.) largely remains. Thus vestiges of classes and class struggle continue under socialism and at times the latter grows very sharp. The destructive anarchy of capitalist production and exchange is done away with and everybody works happily for the common good under a comprehensive plan based on the requirements and available resources of society as a whole. So there is real abundance for all while the stale provides for free education, health services etc. Yet some income differentials, though incomparably narrower than under capitalism, remain. For people are paid by society according to the quantity and quality of work done (e.g., an engineer earns more than a worker, a professor more than a clerk) and not yet simply according to needs.

These and other limitations, however, are consciously overcome in a protracted process. With great technological upgradation in agricultural and vast all-round improvement in rural life on the one hand and planned spread of industries throughout the country on the other, the anti-thesis between “town and country” will be resolved. So will the anti-thesis between manual and mental labour. The higher stage of communism, or communism proper, is reached. The vestiges of classes and class struggle gradually disappear. As this happens within a nation, so do hostilities between nations, and universal brotherhood flourishes on the basis of free economic, cultural and scientific exchanges. Thanks to rapid all-round development of productive and creative activities, society can now inscribe on its banner the motto “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” That is to say, society takes from everyone whatever she/he can contribute by way of work and gives away whatever she/he needs. On the basis of such radically changed circumstances, and in course of a protracted cultural revolution, remnants of retrograde values and attitudes such as ego-centrism, male chauvinism and national or ethnic intolerance are overcome. The new communist man and woman are born. The history of classes and class struggle — which is actually a prehistory of humankind, comes to a close and the latter’s true history begins in full glory.

Q 4. But socialism is equated with statism and totalitarianism. What is your basic position on that?

The basic Marxist position is that the state is a product of class antagonism, and so with abolition of classes — under communism, that is — it will disappear. Let us explain.

The state is always an instrument in the hands of the ruling class to manage the affairs of society in its own interest and to exploit and hold down the oppressed class. The Indian state, for example, is such an instrument in the hands of big capitalists and landlords. The state does everything in the name of the masses but actually in the interests of these classes alone. Look at the annual budgets and economic “reforms”, look at the way the police and the administration works, and this will be immediately evident. The parliament and the polls, the so-called “Independent” judiciary and all that are nothing but modern devices to conduct this class dictatorship in a veiled manner.

Through the socialist revolution the working class seizes state power and makes itself the ruling class. In the first stage of communism it has to exercise dictatorship over the erstwhile ruling classes which have just been overthrown but not yet annihilated, to crush by force the latter’s violent attempts at counter-revolution. Regarding this stage Marx had commented:

“Between capitalist society and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this there is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.” (From Critique of the Gotha Programme)

The dictatorship does not necessarily mean one-party rule. This form was practised in Russia which had no tradition of parliamentarism, but there may be many other forms — just as bourgeois dictatorship is exercised in so many stale forms. As Lenin had clarified, proletarian power means “not the abolition of representative institutions and the elective principle, but the conversion of representative institutions from talking shops into “working” bodies.” In our country, for example, the multi-party system may be retained after revolution, people’s power is to be exercised by elected bodies at all levels down to the grassroots, non-elected posts like governors are to be abolished and a whole set of democratic reforms including the right to recall introduced. For along with dictatorship over the counter-revolutionaries, the new slate also has to ensure genuine democracy for all the working people so that they can give full expression to their enormous creative energy for the construction and self management of a new society.

As socialism or the first stage of communism grows into mature communism as described earlier, the whole scenario changes:

“As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection; as soon as class rule, and the individual struggle for existence based upon our present anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from these, are removed, nothing more remains to be repressed, and a special repressive force, a state, is no longer necessary. The first act by virtue of which the state really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society — the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society — this is, at the same lime, its last independent act as a state. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; … The state is not ‘abolished’. It withers away ‘(From . Anti-Duhring)

The difference is thus clear. The capitalist state is the exploiting minority’s organ for suppressing the toiling majority, the socialist state — just the reverse. The bourgeoisie perfects the state machine to perpetuate its class dictatorship behind the facade of democracy. The proletariat proclaims and exercises dictatorship over the vested interests to extend democracy for the masses and to pave the way for the final dissolution of all classes, all state forms, all dictatorship.

Q 5. So, as per your statement communism caters to the common good. But then it allegedly smothers the individual, cripples creativity and makes man a machine. What do you say to that?

We say that this description is perfectly valid — for capitalism. Nobody is born a carpenter, a businessman, or a doctor, but division of labour — whether traditional casteist or modern capitalist — makes him so. It crushes, stifles and distorts the individual’s multi-dimensional potentials and creates in their stead certain narrow ‘”aptitudes” necessary for the allotted “job”. This is true not only for manual labourers tied to routine work, but also for today’s over-specialised intellectuals, artists etc., who suffer under an unbalanced way of life and an alienation from broad social praxis.

All this will completely change under communism. With classes will be gone the crippling subjugation of the individual to the division of labour, and with that, the traditional antithesis between manual and mental labour. All the springs of cooperative wealth will flow abundantly, so that the individual will be free — and, thanks to universal advanced education, competent — to engage in several productive and creative activities :

“to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, cowherd, or critic.” (From The German Ideology by Marx and Engels)

Labour thus ceases to be a burden and becomes a pleasure, a self-expression of life. From a means of subjugation of the individual, it becomes a means of emancipation. The individual-collective dichotomy is solved and at last we have a harmonised society where the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.

Q 6. Sounds fine … but on what ground do you want us to believe that this is practically realisable?

On the ground that conditions for the emergence of this future society have already matured in the womb of the present.

Capitalism itself has achieved tremendous developments in industry, agriculture, commerce and communications, as also in scientific, artistic and literary pursuits. So much so, that now for the first time in history it has become technically possible to satisfy almost all the material and cultural needs of every human being. But reality stands in crying contrast to this great possibility :

“In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary. Machinery, gifted with the wonderful power of shortening and fructifying human labour, we behold starving and overworking it. The new-fangled sources of wealth, by some strange weird spell, are turned into sources of want. The victories of art seem bought by loss of character. At the same pace that mankind masters nature, man seems to become enslaved to other men or to his own infamy. Even the pure light of science seems unable to shine but on the dark background of ignorance. All our invention and progress seem to result in endowing material forces with intellectual life, and in stultifying human life into a material force.” (From Speech at the Anniversary of The People’s Paper by Marx and Engels)

The root cause of this universal contradictoriness of our time is to be traced in the essential character of capitalism, in its strength and weakness. The strength lies in its advanced feature : continuous technical revolutionisation and socialisation of production. The latter means that in giant factories and big mechanised farms thousands of labourers and technicians pool together their enormous manual and mental labour power to produce huge quantities of high quality goods at low costs. But only part of the capacity is utilised. For, the individual owners of factories and farms produce only such goods and such quantities as can be sold at a profit for them; they would not care if people go without food and clothes but do not have the money to buy these. And this is what actually happens all the time because millions go unemployed or underemployed while most others do not have enough purchasing power, enough earnings required for buying goods and services. The practically unlimited potential of modern, i.e.. capitalist production, thus remains fettered. And by what? By capitalism’s basic weakness, its retrograde feature private ownership (of lands, factories etc.) which gives the owners exclusive private rights to control production and appropriate the products. Socialism removes these fellers by socialising this ownership, this control, this appropriation. Capitalist private property, a relic of the past, which has now become superfluous, is abolished while the historical achievements of capitalism — constant technological upgradation and socialisation of production — is retained and allowed lo develop freely. In other words, the fundamental contradiction of capitalism — that between socialised production on the one hand and private ownership and appropriation on the other — is resolved and the two sides harmonised.

In place of a society dominated by capitalist exploiters is thus born a “society of associated producers” where the latter decide all questions relating lo production and appropriation in their collective interest, for satisfying needs of society as a whole.

That this positive transformation has become a crying need of our days is already manifested through certain indicators. To name a few : joint stock companies which bring about a restricted degree of socialisation of ownership by combining thousands of small shareholders, but under the domination of one or a few big capitalists; the state operating, on behalf of society, the railways, the postal departments, core industries, banking etc.; state planning and budgets; the multinational corporations which coalesce capital and labour from all parts of the planet and so on. These do not change the status of wage workers nor abolish capitalism. But they do constitute a solid de facto socialisation of economic life, and further prepare the ground for eventual transition to socialism.

Q 7. You are for socialisation. Will the state take over the small holdings of even the self cultivating peasants ?

We have already clarified that the target of socialisation is that form of property which has become a hindrance to social development — the private properly of capitalists, landlords and kulaks. As the Communist Manifesto had proclaimed, the intention was to “do away with a form of property, the necessary condition of whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society” — and not “the property of the petty artisan and the small peasant.”

In countries like ours, where the land reform is yet to be accomplished, the communists’ basic slogan on the peasant front remains “land to the tiller”. Owning their own lands and organising themselves in different types of cooperatives as well as organs of local self governance, which are no longer manipulated by vested interests but sincerely assisted by the state, peasants will combine their traditional wisdom with latest techniques and bring about — for themselves and for society — real prosperity and happiness. Depending on the specific conditions and stage of development, a whole range of forms of ownership and organisation will naturally evolve. These may be : collective ownership by a group of peasant households (say, by those belonging to one village), family ownership or leasehold under “the responsibility system” (where the family is responsible for handing over a contracted amount of the produce to the state at an agreed rate and is free to sell the rest in the market), big state farms and plantations, and so on. Whatever the form, the guiding principle will be to combine the collective and the individual interests, not sacrificing the one for the other.

Q 8. You Marxists are so blindly “classists” that you do not sec the movemental identities of caste, nationality and gender. In our country you go on chanting class struggle while the movement for social justice emerges as the main plank of progressive politics today….

This is a blind allegation, to say the least. We communists are active on all three levels, only we approach them from a class perspective. Since the questions of caste and nationality can be dealt only in a specifically Indian context and we have plans to publish a separate pamphlet for that, here we give only a brief general idea. Take the social justice movement. We are very much a part of it at the level of national politics, but more importantly at the grass roots, where under the communist party banner dalit peasants and agrarian labourers are up in arms for land, livelihood and dignity. But when in Bihar the latter come under fire from backward caste (especially Kurmi and Yadav) landlords and kulaks, and when such reprisals are found to break all previous records precisely during the reign of Laloo, the messiah of backwards, the process of class polarisation within backwards becomes self evident. Similarly when the country’s first dalit chief minister Ms, Mayabati joins hands with the country’s most aggressive Brahminical-communal party, the BJP, it only symbolises a process of upwardly mobile sections of backwards colluding with the ruling sections of forwards for a stake in slate power. Even the supreme court seems to recognise this economic stratification within backwards when it asks the creamy layer to be skimmed off the purview of reservations! And the process is not without its match at the bottom, where an increasing number of people from backward castes are daily losing their privileged positions and being galvanised into the class actions of workers and toiling peasants.

It is this essence of class dynamics in our society that we the Indian communists try to unravel, penetrating through the appearance of caste struggles. And we always integrate the struggle against Brahminism with the overall struggle against feudalism, of which the former is but an ideological-cultural expression. For only on these basis can we organise the movement for radically changing the entire socio-economic system and thereby eradicating casteism lock, stock and barrel.

Starling from this premise, we do support the Mondal Commission’s recommendation for caste-based reservations as a progressive and democratic measure of limited significance. However, our own concept of social justice is much broader and extends to all those sections who are denied a decent living. Our primary emphasis therefore remains on land reforms, industrialisation and creation of more jobs. And our battle cry : Right to work as a fundamental right.

Q 9. Well, do you have a programme for national unity and nationality struggles as well ?

Certainly we do. Generally speaking, we are for building national unity from below on a democratic basis where the broadest possible autonomy is to be ensured for all. even the smallest national groups and national minorities. We strongly oppose the Bismarkian way of imposing it from above with iron and fire. In India, therefore, we oppose state terrorism in Kashmir, Punjab, the North-East and elsewhere. While politically opposing the separatist and national-chauvinist tendencies within some of the nationality movements, we support their just aspirations and opt for amicable settlements through dialogue. Wherever possible, as in Jharkhand, Uttarakhand and Assam, we are active in these movements as a distinct independent wing cooperating with others. A model of nationality movement under communist leadership is being built up in Karbi Anglong, Assam.

Socialism does not automatically mean a satisfactory solution to all the complex problems relating to nationality and national unity, for which special efforts are necessary, but it is certainly a basic condition for that. As Lenin had pointed out. … “It is impossible to abolish national (or any other political) oppression under capitalism … By transforming capitalism into socialism the proletariat creates the possibility of abolishing national oppression; the possibility becomes reality ‘only’ – ‘only’! — with the establishment of full democracy in all spheres, including the delineation of state frontiers in accordance with the “sympathies” of the population, including complete freedom to secede. And this, in turn, will serve as a basis of developing the practical elimination of even the slightest national friction and the least national mistrust, for an accelerated drawing together and fusion of nations that will be completed when the state withers away.”

Q 10. What is the communist viewpoint on gender relations, marriage and women’s emancipation?

Man-woman relation is regarded in Marxist classics as a basic constituent of human nature, of the human essence; and as a measure of the level of overall human development. In class society, however, it is distorted by class relations; only with the abolition of classes does it attain full maturity and pure form. And communists strive precisely for that.

Now for women’s liberation movement. Gender and class (in the Indian case, also caste) domination arose as parts of one and the same historical process since the break up of class societies which were basically matriarchal and communistic in a primitive sense. Later these were supplemented by national subjugation. Struggles against male domination, class rule, caste oppression and national subjugation are therefore closely interrelated though each has its own features. A communist party actively mobilises women in all these struggles and coordinates and leads these towards a domination-free society. At the same time, of course, it builds up women’s organisation specifically for spearheading women’s movement.

A socialist country takes quick measures to free women, as far as practicable; from domestic drudgery and worries of child-rearing by setting up community kitchens, creches and hostels etc.; to promote women’s full and equal participation in production, socio-cultural activities, political, administrative and scientific responsibilities; to introduce pro-woman reforms in personal laws and so on. All this gives a great boost to the cause of women’s liberation. For the complete eradication of male chauvinism and sexual domination, however, a protracted struggle has still to be carried on.

Regarding the institution of marriage we believe that it has evolved through several stages and will continue to do so in the future. Under communism the negative features of present forms of marriage will disappear. With the removal of economic worries for all, marriage will be really free and based on nothing but mutual affection. Dominance of the male partner will become a thing of past, and so will the indissolubitity of marriage. As Frederick Engels explained in his celebrated work The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, only those marriages which are “based on love” and in which “love continues” will be regarded as moral. “… A definite cessation of affection, and its displacement by a new passionate love, makes separation a blessing for both parties as well as for society. People will only be spared … the useless mire of divorce proceedings.”

What will be the new features of marriage then? “That will be settled after a new generation has grown up : a generation of men who never in all their lives have had occasion to purchase a woman’s surrender either with money or with any other means of social power, and of women who have never been obliged to surrender to any man out of any consideration other than real love, or to refrain form giving themselves to their beloved for fear of the economic consequences. Once such people appear, they will not care a rap about what we think they should do. They will establish their own practice. …”

Finally to come back lo our general approach, we believe that barring those imposed by nature, all differences between man and woman are artificial. If a certain period of historical evolution institutionalised these artificial divisions, we have already entered another period which is to see their gradual dissolution under the impact of progressive movements. Only with that, only when the relation between the sexes becomes natural, frank and friendly, will it be possible for humankind lo regain its undivided self. And the long march towards this goal will not end at, but definitely pass through, a total revolution which inscribes on its banner : Socialism and Women’s Liberation.

Q 11. For all other differences, capitalists and socialists share a common craze for break-neck industrialisation which causes great harm to the environment and make the cities inflate by bleeding the countryside dry. Do you deny this ?

Well, there have emerged in the last decades several political and semi-political forces with sole concern for environmental protection like Green movement in Europe and their Indian counterparts. They accuse industrialisation as such (both capitalist and socialist) and even scientific and technological development for the evil. But their crucial mix-up is in missing the essential class nature of the problem.

Now let us take a look at the problem proper. Capitalism has today gained an edge over socialism, but at the same time has produced the Grecn-House-Effect, posing a crippling threat to the whole mankind. The nuclear problem has also assumed global significance. The Chernobyl devastation in the former USSR notwithstanding, capitalism is at its mischievous helm in this front too.

Then there are regional problems, like destruction of Malayasian forest to supply raw material to US plywood industry. The world bank-sponsored ‘social forestry’ in India has replaced natural forests in many parts of the country by large-scale eucalyptus planting, just lo provide enough pulp to the paper industry, thus depriving the forest-dependent local folk of their livelihood. Large dam constructions like Sardar Sarovar Project have not only evicted huge number of villagers in the vicinity but have created flood-proneness and salinity in large tracts of agricultural field also. This again is a world bank design. And then there are the Bhopal gas victims who would, for years together perhaps, continue to expose what capitalism really means for us. We the third world people stand the most unfortunate prey to the profit greed of capitalism who has the audacity to treat this earth, this nature and the people even as its property

In contrast, the communists promise a different discourse, not for pragmatic reasons but as a part and parcel of their world view. Marx says : “… Even a whole society, a nation, or even all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not the owners of the globe. They are only its possessor, its usufructuries, and like boni patres familias, they must hand it down to succeeding generations, in an improved condition.”

With this vision the communists march forward in the struggle for environmental protection and join hands with the petty bourgeois formations all over the world and thus strengthen their declared war against capitalism. The communists’ commitment is most ardent because a more balanced and eco-friendly growth is conceivable in socialism, the only anti-thesis of capitalism. Let us see how statesmanly Engels visualised this truth nearly one hundred and fifty years ago : “… abolition of the antithesis between town and country is not only possible. It has become a direct necessity of industrial production itself, just as it has become a necessity of agricultural production and besides, of public health. The present poisoning of air, water and land can be put an end to only by the fusion of town and country, and only such fusion will change the situation of the masses now languishing in towns, and enable their excrement to be used for the production of plants instead of the production of disease …” (from Anti-Duhring)

Q 12. Agreed, you Marxists are working for common good. But why with an imported ideology? What sort of patriots you are ?

Scientific knowledge cannot be confined by any national boundary. It is internaltional by its very nature. Although it is true for scientific knowledge, examples of many a rubbish being internationalised is not hard to find in the history. Before going into that discussion, we must lake a close look at what the accusers themselves practise.

What about Indian parliamentarism and Indian constitution? Was not the constitution compiled by randomly picking up ‘progressive’ phrases from the constitutions of different European countries? Do not the saffron swadeshis call Hitler their model prophet and draw their ideological inspiration from Fascism? These are bare facts and just cannot be denied.

For the communists, however, things are radically different. They are not in favour of copying any “ism” in Indian soil.

The basic thing about accepting a modem technology is adoption, adaptation and upgradation. So is true for Marxism,

True, Marxism was originally developed through synthesis of Classical German Philosophy, British Political Economy and French Socialism in mid-nineteenth century. But in no time it acquired international dimension and in its eventful journey across the globe proved its potential as a powerful weapon of people’s liberation movement anywhere and everywhere, against domestic and foreign oppressors. It gave a new meaning to the lives of the working people, their class consciousness. And moreover, despite being born in an advanced capitalist country it awakened the people of backward Russia and still more backward China in the days of World War II and after that to inflict the most crippling blow to the imperialist demon like Hitler’s Nazi brigade and Japanese aggressors led by Tojo. Similar happenings are rife in the history of economically underdeveloped nations. Vietnam, North Korea and Cuba are cases in point. Is there any better evidence of patriotic awakening in modern history?

In the freedom struggle against the British Raj in India communists did play a positive role. It was not for nothing that the former identified them as the greatest threat to its rule. They were subjected to brutal persecution in the conspiracy cases named after Peshwar, Kanpur and Meerut. But unlike in Russia and China in the mid-twentieth century they could not establish themselves as the leader of anti-imperialist struggle. This failure explains our truncated freedom, our distorted democracy. Still this failure cannot in any way question the communists’ unstinted commitment to their nation.

Marxism was adopted by enlightened people in various countries, adapted to their situations and was further enriched in the process. Indian communists have long been trying hard to organise people in their patriotic struggle. And today when the fangs of globalisation are posing ever greater threat to our economic, political and cultural sovereignty, is it not obvious that only those with an international approach can effectively guide the struggle?

Q 13. For you religion is opium and you are out to destroy it. But throughout the world the religious wind is now blowing strong again, with more and more people finding in it the sole solace of our troubled times. How about that?

Marx fully recognised the palliative function of religion and it is in this sense that he made his widely (mis)quoted comment (“religion is the opium of the people”). This will be self evident when the short paragraph which ends with this comment is read in full. “… Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creatures, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people.” (From Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right)

Religion is thus seen, on the one hand, as an analgesic (this was the principal use of opium in Europe of Marx’s time), a source of solace : and on the other hand as an expression of the agonies of the suffering humanity and a sort of protest. Has there ever been a more sympathetic understanding of religion? Or a better explanation as to why the appeal of religion tends to grow proportionately with the rise in human sufferings unless a more effective form of protest is readily available? But, in addition to being sympathetic, Marx had also to be scientific, to show that religion is false consciousness produced by a falsified world, where humankind knows not its real self, where right is wrong and wrong right : “… Man makes religion, religion does not make man. In other words, religion is the self-consciousness and self-feeling of man who has either not yet found himself or has already lost himself again. … This stale, this society, produce religion, a reversed world-consciousness, because they are a reversed world.”

The source of religion is thus clarified. And Marx goes on. without a break : “Religion is the general theory of that world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in a popular form, its spiritualistic point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn completion, its universal ground for consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realisation of the human essence because the human essence has no true reality.”

It is against these sources, against this unjust, agonising world, that we Marxists have declared war. We are convinced that with victory in this struggle, with the elimination of the oppressive conditions which foster religion, the latter will “die a natural death” in the sense that people will no longer need it. We therefore do not impatiently indulge in a crude crusade against religion “and thereby help it to martyrdom and a prolonged lease of life.” (Engels in Anti-Duhring). Such crusades, in fact, have always been a prerogative not of Marxists, but of religious fanatics themselves.

Having arisen spontaneously, however, religion is given an organised shape and utilised very consciously by ruling classes and castes for making the oppressed people accept their sufferings as “fate” or “wish of God” and thereby keeping them away from the path of revolt. Today the opium of religion is not only freely available for people’s consumption at will, it is administered in the social organism conspiratorially to numb the people and perpetuate oppression. So the working people’s struggle for emancipation has to include freedom from this spiritual bondage too, and here the communists do help them by spreading a scientific, rational world view. And within the communist party every member is required to rise above religious consciousness, shun all idealism generally and firmly grasp the dialectical materialist outlook of Marxism.

This is not the place to discuss the Indian scene in any detail Suffice it to mention the Britishers’ policy of “divide and rule” based on religion and the sinister role of present day fundamentalists and communalists. Against such machinations and abuses we communists certainly wage a direct and militant mass, struggle. And we demand total separation of politics and of stale administration from religion, which is a private affair of citizens — completely a mailer of individual freedom lo believe in this or that religion or not to believe at all.

Q 14. Staunch materialists that you are, you only run after material prosperity and neglect man’s spiritual development. But we Indians place the latter above everything else and cannot accept your vulgar worldview.

Vulgar misinterpretation of materialist philosophy has long been rife in our country as well as in others. This has been done by a section of its philosophical adversaries, i.e., the idealists, to degrade the materialists. In India, for example, the materialist school of Charvaka is falsely reduced lo crude advocacy of ego-satisfaction as the supreme aim of life citing one sloka out of context : “Live in pleasure and luxury, borrow money to drink milk and honey” (literally, ghee or purified butler). Here we cannot go into intricate philosophical debates. But we would like to clarify our own position and remove the unfounded apprehensions. Before that let us better put a question. Those who have already attained enough economic power and social clout ask the havenots, to run after spiritual emancipation and forget material worries. They themselves, do not, however, miss any opportunity for sensual pleasure starting from alcohol to woman. Is this not our experience with Rajnish to Chandraswamy, from gurus of different creed to the Sankaracharyas? Is this not a clever ploy for protecting their own heaven of sensual pleasure and digress the heathen people’s attention towards something else so that the latter do not stand up and stake a claim in this earthly heaven?

That the mass of the people excludes all vulgarities from what they mean by material prosperity is a different matter. Here we only intend to unearth the hypocrisy of the preachers of spiritualism.

For us materialism has nothing to do with hankering after material wealth and sensual pleasure. As one of the two great camps of philosophy, materialism insists on the primacy of matter to mind, of objective reality to consciousness : white the other camp (idealism) insists on just the opposite. In our view, therefore, basically it is the social being of men and women — the material conditions of their life and work — which determines their consciousness, and not vice versa; although the latter does influence the former. In any country the social and political institutions, the legal systems, the cultural values and religious doctrines etc. together constitute a superstructure, so to say, rising on the economic structure or foundation. The structure basically determines the superstructure : in our country, for example, laws and government policies are framed to serve the exploitative economic system and to strengthen the positions of big capitalists and landlords; while the dominant streams in culture and media also serve the same interests. Of course, the superstructure too enjoys a degree of relative autonomy and reacts on the economic foundation : important shifts may take place in the government policies and affect the economic system for good or bad.

What are the practical-political implications of this viewpoint? If you are to change the realm of consciousness — the social, political and cultural values and attitudes — you cannot hope to do that simply by dim of the most sincere and convincing appeals and arguments; you must change the socio-economic foundations from which that realm and those values grow. If you want to bring about a great flourish of what may be called a spiritual civilisation, you must first create the material premise for that by radically transforming the economic and political situation which condemns the overwhelming majority to a subhuman existence and spiritual death.

As materialists we are working precisely for that. In all hitherto existing societies only a tiny minority used to have the privilege of engaging in scientific, artistic and other “creative pursuits”, while to make that possible the vast majority laboured like beasts. But now freed from the daily drudgery of repetitive labour, from all material worries, all men and women will energetically participate in all kinds of creative work. Communism will transform “spiritual development” from a prerogative of a privileged class into a way of life for all humanity.

Q 15. One last question. The eternal quarrels between communists and social democrats appear to us rather baffling, if not irrelevant. Could you explain what is really at issue?

Communism means a classless society evolved on the ruins of capitalism (which is based on capitalist exploitation of wage labour). This is to be achieved by intensification of class struggle to the point of abolition of the two poles of the antagonism – capital and wage labour. Whenever and wherever communists participate in institutions of bourgeois democracy — e.g., the parliament — they do it exclusively with this end never for harmonising the interests of the opposing classes.

By contrast social democrats take such institutions “as a means, not of doing away with two extremes, capital and wage labour, but of weakening their antagonism and transforming it into harmony. However different the means proposed for the attainment of this end may be, however much it may be trimmed with more or less revolutionary notions, the content remains the same. This content is the transformation of society in a democratic way, but transformation within the bounds of petty-bourgeoisie.” (From The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx)

In a word, communism is essentially revolutionary : its adherents value reforms basically as stepping stones to revolution. Social democrats are essentially reformist : they advocate and work for reforms to prevent revolution. They cannot altogether avoid the hard reality of class struggle, but there they always seek to strike a compromise, to balance and “harmonise” the antagonistic interests. They thus work for preserving the capitalist social order, albeit in a more democratic, more civilised shape. This is where their petty-bourgeois outlook coincides with that of the more intelligent sections of the big bourgeoisie.

Thanks to this outlook and their stubborn struggle against revolutionary communists, social democrats earn the trust of the ruling bourgeoisie. In the face of crisis the latter sometimes allows or even supports social democratic parties to form governments in the existing parliamentary system and act as crisis managers on their behalf. Such governments play this role through state welfarism (providing reliefs) and by persuading the exploiters and the exploited to agree to a set of compromises (in the name of industrial peace and development, national interest etc.) so that class conflicts are kept within bounds and a revolutionary conflagration is avoided. In the process however, they get assimilated in bourgeois parliamentarism — in the capitalist system itself — and acquire all the vices of this system such as corruption, anti-people bureaucratic attitudes and so on. Such cases have been experienced in many a country; and also in our country at the slate level.

The essential difference between communism and social democracy does not however, always appear in a clear-cut manner. Social democratic trends often infiltrate into communist parties, because in real life the proletariat and the petty-bourgeoisie closely mix with each other. If this process of infiltration continues unopposed, a communist party may even become essentially social democratic while retaining its original sign board. In fact this is how social democracy has actually evolved in our country.

Indian Institute of Marxist Studies

Founded December, 1995 On the initiative of CPI(ML) Liberation
Objectives :

* Dissemination of Marxism among popularisation in a new idiom;

* Conducting basic study and research on Marxism and other currents
of progressive thought, cultural currents, scientific advances and philosophical probes;

* Channelising debates on the burning political questions of the day:
from the centrality of class to the plurality of women’s issues and new social movements; caste class and Brahminism; and so on.

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