The opportunism of the CPI(M) perhaps finds its most glaring expression in the united front policy followed by the party. And this opportunism has grown exponentially with every struggle waged by the party against the so-called threat of Left sectarianism. The first seeds were sown during the very inception of the CPI(M). The 1964 Calcutta Congress had also adopted a report titled The Fight Against Revisionism. The report called for a struggle against all manifestations of sectarianism, particularly against the two main manifestations: “(a) sectarianism towards the masses owing allegiance to the ruling Congress party, (b) sectarianism towards the masses rallied behind the parties of opposition which are Right reactionary, or Leftist with rabid anti-communism, as their basic outlook”.
The same report also called upon the party to “intervene in all cases where ministerial or other crisis develops in a State or at the Centre. Removal of particular ministers, wholesale reorganisation of the ministry, charges and counter-charges made by the rival groups in the ruling party — all these occasions should be made use of and so handled as to strengthen the forces of radicalism in the country as a whole and in the ruling party. The attitude of contempt for such ‘petty quarrels’ among the ruling classes and sections within the ruling classes, refusal to intervene in and transform such situations (to whatever slight extent it may be possible) will make the Party a totally ineffective force in a rapidly changing political situation” (emphasis added). The CP1(M) was thus born with the dubious legacy of illusions about the forces of radicalism in the ruling party. Barely two months after the CPI(M)’s Calcutta Congress, the Seventh Congress of the CPI began in Bombay with the singing of Jana Gana Mana, the national anthem. The programme of National Democracy adopted by the CPI Congress had the following vision about the evolution of the National Democratic Front : “As the NDF becomes ever more broad-based, militant and powerful in the course of the rising temper of the mass movement, it defeats the forces of reaction inside and outside the ruling party and comes to the position of taking governmental power into its own hands …” The fight against revisionism, it would seem, was merely a fight between the two options — strengthening the forces of radicalism versus defeating the forces of reaction inside the ruling party!
But the party did not take the trouble to clarify how its intervention in favour of the so-called forces of radicalism inside the ruling Congress would help it “win the masses over to democratic policies and into the democratic front” unless the CP1(M) was thinking in terms of an eventual united democratic front with a radicalised Congress! Incidentally, strengthening the so-called radical sections inside the Congress was the CPI(M)’s way to fight the “left-sectarian Naxalite disruption” during the late 60s and early 70s, i.e., till the radical Congress turned against the Marxists themselves!
The next phase of struggle against “left-sectarianism” ensued during the Emergency which saw the ouster of P Sundarayya from the general secretary-ship of the party. The party blamed left sectarianism for its low-key and vacillating role during the first half of the Emergency. According to the review report of the CPI(M)’s Tenth Congress (1978), this left-sectarianism consisted in “grossly underestimating the conflict and contradiction between the ruling Congress party on the one hand and the bourgeois Opposition parties on the other, while-tending to exaggerate the basic contradiction between the great masses of the people and the ruling bourgeois landlord classes and parties as a whole”. If the CPI(M) could not play a sufficiently active and dynamic role at a time when the Congress had sufficiently bared its “semi-fascist” fangs, it was surely not because the party had exaggerated the basic contradiction between the masses and the system as a whole. In that case, the so-called left sectarianism should have manifested itself in vigorous anti-system action and not in passivity and vacillations. The Emergency is remembered as the reign of semi-fascist terror not only because the bourgeois opposition too had come within the purview of state repression but also because the people in general and revolutionary-democratic and left forces in particular were subjected to a brutal and systematic torture campaign. What prevented the CPI(M) from addressing itself to this latter aspect? Was it not the baggage of parliamentary cretinism and illusions of Congress radicalism it had inherited from the undivided communist party? Instead of facing this basic question, the party sought to enhance its political relevance and profit by “manoeuvering” the contradictions among different bourgeois-landlord formations, which in real life has been reduced to no more than a deceptive euphemism for the opportunist politics of tailism and power-brokering.
The struggle against Sundarayya’s left-sectarianism culminated in the Jalandhar Congress blueprint of Left and democratic unity. The Congress classified the Left and democratic forces into the following seven categorise :
(i) The CPI(M) and mass organisations led by it,
(ii) Partners of the Left Front in West Bengal and Kerala and their mass organisations,
(iii) CPI and its mass organisations,
(iv) “Large numbers in all parties who take a critical attitude towards the policies of their leadership and take a radical stand in several issues. This potential force has to be harnessed by nurturing it and developing a proper approach to it from issue to issue,
(v) Left and democratic forces in the Janata Party comprising the former Young Turks, radicals from the Congress, members of the Socialist Party, independent individuals with a firm stand against authoritarian forces and radical individuals and groups in all constituents of the Janata Party,
(vi) Forces of the breakaway Congress who are opposed to Indira Gandhi’s authoritarianism and also tend to take radical positions on many socio-economic issues,
(vii) Democratic forces like the AIADMK, DMK, Akali Dal and Republican parties.
This was further theorised by the CC in the wake of the July Crisis of 1979. The CC report adopted at the party’s Eleventh Congress held in Vijayawada in January 1982 rejected the criticism voiced by the West Bengal state delegation that by assisting in the break-up of the first Janata government at the Centre the CC had involved itself in the ‘unprincipled squabbles of the groups inside the Janata Party”. Defending the party’s role in the July crisis the report went on to assert:
“Most of the conflicts and quarrels among the bourgeois-landlord parties relate to the issue of sharing political power, and that is the ‘overriding principle’. The adoption of ‘principles’ and ‘platforms’ by different bourgeois-landlord parties and groups is aimed at subserving that ‘overriding principle’. When sections fell out within’ the ruling Congress party and formed the Bangla Congress, Utkal Congress, Jana Congress, Jana Kranti Dal, Kerala Congress and the like in 1966-67, we did not think some lofty ‘principles’ were involved in it. The CPI(M) had supported or allied with some of them with the only one over-riding consideration of breaking the monopoly of one party rule in the country.
“It is difficult to judge these bourgeois-landlord parties and their inner conflicts and feuds and factional strife through the yardstick of some ‘principles’. The CPI(M), while uniting with some of them on certain issues or in forging electoral alliances and even forming State Governments with them, never tried to judge them and their ‘principles’, though their announced pledges and principles were taken into account. “Enlightening the central party school in 1985 on “Party line on current tactics”, EMS defended his and the party centre’s role during the July 1979 crisis in still stronger language as “the further development and enrichment of the idea put out at-the Seventh Congress on the need for intervention in the various manifestations of the political crisis that erupts in bourgeois politics and how the intervention should be so planned and executed as to strengthen the position of the proletariat and its allies”. EMS did not take the trouble to tell his audience how the proletariat actually benefited from the toppling of the Morarji Desai government by Charan Singh and the subsequent return to power by Indira Gandhi. But one thing was clear: over the years the CPI(M) had freed its tactical line from all sorts of programmatic or principled rigidities.
The party helped topple the Morarji government in 1979 ostensibly over the RSS question only to join hands with the BJP to bring another Janata Government to power after another ten years. Once the Congress monopoly of power was formally broken in 1977 and particularly after the rise of BJP in the late 80s, the CPI(M) would switch back to the late 60s and early 70s tactic of supporting the Congress to stave off the threat of right reaction. Thus we saw the CP1(M) side with the Congress in the last Presidential election and only the other day on the issue of the electoral reforms bill. The whole history of united front politics of L’PI(M) has thus been one of constant oscillation between a democratic (anti-authoritarian or anti-Congress) and a secular (anti-BJP) front. The plank of anti-imperialism and nationalism (national unity or national sovereignty) is invoked as a bridge joining these two fronts while the slogan of Left Unity serves as a stopgap arrangement.
Even their concept or practice of Left Unity is highly economistic and hence capitulationist. Left unity is understood not as an independent political core of any broader oppositional or democratic unity but as a disjointed and dependent economic complement of the politics of alignment and realignments in the bourgeois camp. It is only in relation to the Left Front governments that the Left parties move together as a political front of sorts, otherwise Left unity or unity of fighting forces is mostly sought to be realised through joint action of mass organisations without any political edge or thrust.
