Programmatically, Karat has the following main objections :
(1) Adherence to Mao Zedong Thought which allegedly acts as a hindrance to the development of an integrated Marxist-Leninist world outlook; (2) Characterisation of India as a semi-feudal and semi-colonial society which he feels is incompatible with India’s political independence and the fact that we have a bourgeois-landlord alliance in State-power; and (3) Characterisation of Indian big capital as comprador.
It is true that many petty bourgeois revolutionary groups invoke Mao Zedong thought only to absolutise the specific path and experience of the Chinese revolution. But for us Mao Zedong thought has its importance precisely as a product of a vigorous ideological struggle to defend the Marxist-Leninist world outlook against Khruschevite neo-revisionism and Stalinist metaphysics. One may or may not incorporate Mao Zedong thought as part of the guiding ideology, but to pit Mao Zedong thought against Marxism-Leninism is to commit the same error which Karat would otherwise treat as something characteristic of petty bourgeois revolutionism – conceiving Mao Zedong thought as an absolutisation of the Chinese experience and deny or fail to appreciate its broader relevance especially in the present-day Third World context. This in turn is rooted in the frozen, Soviet-inspired understanding of the Chinese revolution and an opportunist centrist approach to the Great Debate and to the problems of socialist construction.
As for Karat’s objection to the characterisation of Indian society as a semi-colony and his argument of incompatibility between semi-colonial status and political independence, let us recall that Lenin recognised semi-colonial states as an example of the transitional form of state in the era of finance capital. “Finance capital and its foreign policy, which is the struggle of the great powers for the economic and political division of the world, give rise”, says Lenin, “to a number of transitional forms of state dependence. Not only are the two main groups of countries, those owning colonies, and the colonies themselves, but also the diverse forms of dependent countries which, politically,, are formally independent, but in fact are enmeshed in the net of financial and diplomatic dependence, typical of this epoch.” Semi-colony is one form of such financial and diplomatic dependence, in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism Lenin cites the cases of Argentina and Portugal as two other forms, the former being “almost a British commercial colony” and the latter though formally an independent sovereign state is actually a British protectorate. “Finance capital”, warns Lenin, “is such a great, such a decisive, you might say, force in all economic and in all international relations, that it is capable of subjecting, and actually does subject, to itself even states enjoying the fullest political independence”. We use the expression “semi-colonial” in our characterisation of the Indian society precisely to connote this reality of multifarious dependence underlying India’s formal political independence. Otherwise the present set of economic and foreign polices could not have been introduced as smoothly, they would have called for a cow; d’etat in India a la East Europe.
There is absolutely no contradiction between the semi-colonial semi-feudal nature of Indian society and the bourgeois-landlord domination in state power. The bourgeoisie’s alliance with landlords is a necessary corollary to semi-feudalism while semi-colonialism implies the formal exclusion of imperialism from state power.
Similarly, there is no incompatibility between the comprador nature of big capital and its monopolistic mode or scale of functioning. Karat finds a contradiction here, because to him monopoly invariably implies independence. But monopoly capital in India has not evolved on the Western pattern i.e., monopoly as it arose through the classical model of free competition in an independent capitalist context. In India the monopoly houses have reached their present strength by drawing on state protection and patronage and as junior partners of imperialist finance capital. Monopoly does imply a certain scale and strength, but that is certainly not sufficient to get out of the framework of dependence especially given the enormous strength and technological edge of international finance capital.
Karat is equally mistaken when he argues that our analysis of Indian society in general and Indian bourgeoisie in particular makes us soft pedal the imperialist threat and underplay the importance of anti-imperialist struggle. On the contrary, this saves us from nationalist illusions, from reducing the communist party’s anti-imperialist role to merely one of mounting pressure on the vacillating national bourgeoisie, guards us against giving undue concessions to our ‘own’ bourgeoisie in the name of waging a common war against imperialism and exhorts us to heighten our own independent anti-imperialist role. Moreover, this also enables us to assert our proletarian political independence from the vicious ideology of national chauvinism, both externally as well as internally.
Karat also finds fault with our analysis of the international situation, particularly with the formulation that it is the Third World versus imperialism contradiction which constitutes the principal contradiction in the international arena. He says this leads us to deny or understate the significance of the socialist system and makes us liable to “lapse into petty bourgeois radicalism which relies on other revolutionary currents and not the primary, the one based on the working class and the scientific system of socialism.” On the contrary, we feel their thesis of centrality of the socialist camp (led by USSR) versus imperialist camp (led by USA) contradiction – as distinct from the ideological contradiction between socialism and imperialism – has undermined the very primacy and essential independence of revolution in India, affected their independent judgement and left them vulnerable to the thoroughly misleading theory of peaceful transition to People’s Democracy and Socialism through the so-called non-capitalist path with the help of Soviet aid. The contradiction between two systems or two blocs generally operates within its own diplomatic framework and though every democratic revolution led by the proletariat today is part and parcel of the world socialist revolution, such democratic revolutions cannot be treated as an extension of any central contradiction between two rival power blocs even if they represent two diametrically opposed social systems like socialism and imperialism.
