Indian Communists versus Marxism-Leninism

The Congress is a bourgeois-democratic party. This perception is the spine of applied communist ideology in India. Since its commencement, all strategies and tactics adopted by the communist movement to make India red has been engineered by this immutable dogmatism. Hence the Communists dedicated their whole potency to put an end to the monopoly of the Congress in the freedom struggle and the administration thereafter. In partial dispensation of this historical mission, they propped up the Congress-led government at the Centre upholding the theory of lesser evil for four years from 2004. Upon every step of failure experienced in gearing and steering the government through the delineated passages, they called for intermittent hartals, general strikes and bandhs and at last that double-dealing was concluded with a farcical withdrawal of their support. It may be seen that this outlook—the Congress is a bourgeois party—of so-called class-politics was intertwined with the emergence of communist activities in India inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. After the establishment of the proletarian dictatorship Lenin undertook the task of building a new global organisation of Communists in spite of the failure of the First International established by Karl Marx in 1864 and Second International instituted by the French socialists in 1889. He invited prominent socialist leaders and representatives of labour organi-sations in the world to Russia to set up an international communist confederation. At that conference the Third International or Comintern was formed under the presidentship of Zinoviev and Lenin declared that it would be the pure successor to Marx’s organisation.

The Second Congress of the Comintern met from July 19 to August 17, 1920. The opening session was held in Petrograd and subsequent sessions in Moscow; it was attended by over two hundred delegates representing workers organisations of 37 countries: among them there were the Indian delegates headed by M.N. Roy with other members Abani Mukherjee and M.B. T. Acharya, but the voting right was limited to M.N. Roy only. In that Congress, the main ideological question to be resolved was the approach to be taken by the Communists towards national movements. M.N. Roy presented a supplementary thesis on the national and colonial question in that session after marking necessary amendments by Lenin. In his decision-making speech, Lenin differentiated the approach to be taken by Communists in oppressed and oppressor nations based on the Marxist ideology. During that time about seventy per cent of world’s population belonged to the oppressed nations; these were subjected to either direct colonial dependence or of semi-colonical dependence. At the opening of the 20th century capitalism had developed to its highest and final form, imperialism. The main source from which European capitalism derived its energy was colonial possessions and dependencies. This energy was used by the European capitalists to dominate the proletariat class there. So, without strengthening imperial control over extensive markets and vast fields of exploitation in colonies, capitalist powers of Europe could not maintain their existence even for a short duration. After considering all these facts Lenin came to the conclusion that without liberating the colonial countries from the oppression of capitalistic countries, Communists cannot weaken capitalism for an easy defeat. The colonial countries can only be liberated from European oppression by nationalist movements developing on their material realities. Thus the nature of revolutionary movements in different nations will be varying.

Then almost all oppressed nations were belonging to two continents, Asia and Africa. While speaking on the Marxist line towards the anti-imperialist movement, Lenin emphasised the role of the nationalist movement in British India (that struck roots by 1757). He said:

The mass of working people and colonial and semi-colonial countries who constitute the overwhelming majority of population of the globe were roused to political life at the turn of the twentieth century, particularly by the revolution in Russia. British India is at the head of these countries and there a revolution is maturing in proportion, on the one hand, to the growth of the Industrial and Railway proletariat, and on the other, to the increase in the brutal terrorism of the British, who with ever greater frequency resort to massacres (Amritsar), public floggings, etc.1

Lenin in these words asserted that insurrections of Indians against colonialism had a pivotal role in the anti-imperialist movement in the world and finally in the global revolution against capitalism. The year 1920, when the Second Congress of the Comintern was in session, was the most important year in Indian history as Gandhiji had taken up the supreme leadership of the national liberation movement after achieving enormous experiences of his experiments with truth in South Africa.

In 1894, Gandhiji founded the Natal Indian Congress,2 which developed into the African National Congress subsequently and continued the fight against apartheid and oppressions simultaneously. He had experimented his equipage Satyagraha against injustice and found success in South Africa, and experienced jail life many a time there. He established in 1910 the Tolstoy Farm there with 1100 acres of land where people led self-sufficient, self-reliant and harmonious life under a socialised form of production irrespective of religion, caste, colour and language. Perhaps the positive results of the Tolstoy Farm were the inspiration for Lenin to constitute Agricultural Communes in Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution, supposed to be the threshold to socialism. But the underlying difference is that the Tolstoy Farm was based on voluntariness whereas the Agricultural Communes were managed under administrative torments.

Before Gandhiji’s leadership, the Indian National Congress had organised the Swadeshi Movement to boycott industrial products from Britain to strengthen the protest against the Bengal partition in 1905. It was a mass movement having participation of people from all sectors of life pledged to use Indian goods alone. They picketed shops selling imported goods and in many places foreign goods were burnt. As a creative result of these protests many capable Indians started modern industries. The Swadeshi Movement, along with the Khadi movement introduced by Gandhiji later, was a strong politico-economic war intended to weaken British capitalism and uproot colonialism, the final form of capitalism. The Comintern studied this popular movement in India and the strategy and tatics behind it. In principle, every popular movement against capitalism or imperialism should be supported by Communists. In the case of the Indian national movement, it was lead by the Indian National Congress, a political formation of persons born and brought up in rich families of agriculturists or businessmen, otherwise called bourgeoisie. So a vital question before the Comintern was whether it is desirable for Communists to support such movements. In his speech at the session on July 23, 1920, Lenin generalised this question and expounded is guidelines on the basis of the Marxist-ideology.

This is a question that has given rise to certain differences. We have discussed whether it would be right or wrong, in principle and in theory, to state that the Communist International and the Communist Parties must support the “bourgeois-democratic†movement in backward countries. As a result of our discussion, we have arrived at the unanimous decision to speak of the national revolutionary movement rather than of the “bourgeois—democratic†movement. It is beyond doubt that any national movement can only be a bourgeois-democratic movement since the overwhelming mass of the population in backward countries consists of peasants who represent the bourgeois-capitalist relationship. It would be utopian to believe that proletarian parties in these backward countries, if indeed they can merge in them, can pursue communist tactics and communist policy, without establishing definite relations with the peasant movement and without giving it effective support.3

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In the meanwhile peasant movements had arisen sporadically in India and some of them, controlled by revolutionists, turned bloody. Intervening in peasant uprisings Gandhiji applied his unique weapon of Satyagraha for the first time in India at Champaran, a district in Bihar, and registered victory. In 1918 he led another peasant struggle successfully in Kheda district of Gujarat in the same way. Lenin, being head of the only communist nation after the October Revolution, had undertaken measures to fulfil his obligation to conduct a global revolution. He employed agents throughout world, as far as possible, to collect details of progressive mass movements which could be turned socialist in future. In India also he had enough agents, and got a clear idea about contemporary political developments in this country. He had studied two streams of peasant movements, one moved with terrorism to failure and another moved in non-violence to success. Comparing these two channels, Lenin came to the conclusion that indeed it would be extremely erroneous in many of the Oriental countries to solve the agrarian problems according to pure communist principles.4 That is to say, the communist concept of eradication of the bourgeoisie through armed revolution, as done by him in Russia, cannot be applied everywhere irrespective of tangible veracities existing in society.

Regarding the Communist Party of India affiliated to the Communist International, it was constituted in Russia in October 1920 soon after the Second Congress of the Comintern. Among the founder members M.N. Roy was a member of the Central Asiatic Bureau of the Comintern and was subsequently elected to the Polit-Bueau of the Comintern. Other prominent members were Thirumal Acharya and Abani Mukherjee. The next important member was Rosa Fittinghoff, private secretary to Lenin and the wife of Abani Mukherjee. This shows a close association of the CPI with the Comintern and Lenin. But ignoring the scientific views of Marxism-Leninism they dogmatised that economic imbalance among people is the only reason for all social evils in India and by remoulding of the economic system of the country to the socialist form through armed revolution, can this imbalance be eradicated. They pointed out that in Communist Russia everybody is working according her/his ability for the government which provides everything according to their needs. The theory of economic equality in the socialist system spread through secret study classes and pamphlets. They organised the have-nots for an armed revolution to annihilate the enemy class in the manner of the ‘Great October Revolution’. In villages small groups of pugnacious peasants and wage labourers holding the red flag attacked vehemently the landlords and policemen and created victims on both sides. The expansive forms of such a revolution, said to be class struggle, were seen in Telangana in Andhra Pradesh and Vayalar in Kerala and resulted in thousands of victims. The Telangana struggle is the Paris Commune of India. Lenin had said well in advance that armed revolution is not possible in India to solve agrarian problems. Communists, who were not ready to accept him, conducted the Telangana-model revolts in their influential areas. Those groups of Communists, who can’t accept the natural failure of Telangana, still continue to be Naxalites and Maoists. On the other hand, Communists organised industrial labourers and taught them that wealth accumulated by industrial capitalists is the surplus value of labour which is the right of workers. They began to start with incessant uncompromising strikes for exaggerated demands. Lay-offs and lock-outs became inevitable in Indian life. On mediation some strikes were settled by approving the demands and in such cases profits earned by industrialists turned to losses as many such factories got closed. Production centres of unyielding capitalists were also closed forever.

Thus, Indian industries, which had started to substitute British products inspired by the Swadeshi Movement along with traditional industries, began to collapse due to labour problems. It was a boon to British capitalists and their agents in India promoted such activities. At the same time Communists tantalised the ousted labourers of locked-out industries, having nothing to lose, that all their miseries will be remedied with the establishment of imminent socialism for which they have to fight. Indian Communists elevated the Marxist hypothesis on surplus value to economic fundamentalism and made the people believe that imitation of the Bolshevik Revolution and eradication of the bourgeoisie is the sole remedy for all injustices in society and recruited people to their brigades of failed revolts. Who is responsible for this? The answer to this question had already been furnished by Friedrich Engels much earlier:

Marx and I are ourselves party to blame for the fact that the younger people sometimes lay more stress on the economic side than is due to it. We have to emphasise the main principle vis-à-vis our adversaries, who denied it, and we had not always the time, the place or the opportunity to give their due to the other factors involved in the interaction. But when it came to presenting, that is, to applying the theory in practice, it was a different matter and there no error was permissible. Unfortunately, however, it happens only too often that people think they have fully understood a new theory and can apply it without more ado as soon as they have assimilated its main principles, and even those not always correctly. And I can’t exempt many of the more recent Marxists from this reproach for the most amazing stuff has been produced in that quarter, too.5

This observation of Engels is self-explanatory in the wake of the economic fundamentalism and concept of class war adopted by the Indian Communists.

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It is usually assessed by critics that at the period when they grew the Indian Communists depended on Marxism distorted and used by Stalin to impose socialism in Russia. Another critical evaluation is that many of the Communist leaders were uneducated or undereducated without scholarship to immerse into the depth of Marxism. All these assessments are factual but partial. Because the founder-leaders of the Communist Party like M.N. Roy and others had deep knowledge of Marxism. They discussed with and heard from Lenin the Marxist strategies to be adopted in India. Moreover Communist leaders from affluent families in North India were lucky to have their education in prestigious Cambridge and Harvard. They acquired comprehensive knowledge in Marxism from the original works of Marx and Engels. Returning to India they blindly followed economic intolerance and political extremism as their manifesto. They gave leadership to chalk out mechanical interpretations to political economy without considering the material realities of the country. They used their intelligence and knowledge to produce ‘the most amasing stuffs’ and tried to apply these in a democracy. Why they ignored the hard-core ideas of Marxism-Leninism always is a puzzle. The solution had already been furnished by Engels in the 19th century itself:

According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately determining factor in history is the production and reproduction of real life. Neither Marx or I have ever asserted more than this. Hence if somebody twists into saying that the economic factor is the only determining one, he transforms that proposition in to a meaningless, abstract, absurd phrase. The economic situation is the basis, but various elements of the superstructure—political forms of the class struggle and its results, such as constitutions established by the victorious class after a successful battle, etc., judicial forms, and especially the reflections of all these real struggle in the brains of the participants, political, legal, philosophical theories, religious views and their further developments into systems of dogmas also exercise their influence on the course of the historical struggle and in many cases determine their form in particular. There is an interaction of all these elements in which, amid all the endless host of accidents, the economic movement is finally bound to assert itself. Otherwise the application of the theory to any period of history would be easier than the solution of a simple equation of the first degree. We make our history ourselves, but, in the first place, under very definite antecedents and conditions. Among these the economic ones are ultimately decisive. But the political ones, etc. are indeed even traditions which haunt human minds also play a part, although not the decisive one.6

Thus Marxism looks at revolution in a very broad sense whereas it is only the aggressive economic programme for Indian Communists that is the panacea for all social maladies. Marxism stands for the basic importance of the economic aspect. But the course and form of revolution is determined by social customs, religious sentiments and traditions of the individuals who undertake the mission of revolution, it believes. In the first decade of the twentieth century itself, revolutionary groups had started operations in the vast plane between Sindhu and Ganga which decides the political kismet of India. Now it is called Cow Belt by despairing Communists as that area is forbidden to them. Inspirations for these revolutionary attempts against imperialists was not Marxism but Hinduism, especially interpretations of Bhagavat Geeta from the materialistic point of view. In the Comintern speeches Lenin expressed his excessive hope on those movements and the preliminary duty assigned to the CPI was to co-ordinate and reorganise them with a Marxist outlook. But when they started their activities, both underground and open, they abandoned the principal ideas of Marxism-Leninism and turned to class war for the eradication of economic inequality through armed revolution. As a part of the ideological struggle they fought against religion like amateur atheists and rejected the cultural heritage of India. At the same time their thoughts and actions were always influenced and guided by the negative aspects of religion, culture and tradition reflected in medieval Indian life.

That medieval tradition is also seen in the Indian Communist Party structure from the very beginning in the form of groupism, around some leaders. If it is scooped out, at the first it is alleged as a fable created by the bourgeois media and thereafter explained as a feature of internal democracy admissible in the party. If a person or a quarrelling group is expelled at the climax, it is elucidated as internal class struggle continuing in the party. Admitting the fact that there is internal class struggle they themselves accept that their party is not a proletariat one but a syndicate of bourgeois, petty-bourgeois and proletariat. Because, if there are no conflicting classes there is no necessity for class struggle. Not being a proletarian party they are always affected by economic fundamentalism, dogmatism, terrorism, revisionism, sectarianism, ideological fluctuation, secessionism, better evil chicanery, coalition fancy and fortune-hunting contrary to Marxism-Leninism. So they could not accept the Marxist guidelines spelt out by Lenin in the Comintern speeches. So they blacked out the scientific finding of Lenin that Gandhiji is a revolutionist and the Congress is the national revolutionary movement of India and it is the obligation of the Communists to merge in and strengthen it. The CPI, being a non-proletarian movement guided by the traditions of the medieval period, rejected Lenin and selected the means of blood and thunder which ultimately retarded the anti-imperialist movement led by the Congress. After independence, they did not accept even that independence, they assessed the Congress Government as a bourgeois government and obstructed national reconstruction activities with Soviet cooperation to the best of their ability. If Communalists could apply their sense of reasoning it was easy to see that a government, supported by robust Stalin and the CPSU could not be counter-revolutionary in any way.

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Lenin described Gandhiji as a revolutionist. Lenin was the leader of an insignificant minority of the Russian population and hence adopted terroristic measures in the October Revolution to impose socialism. But Gandhiji, the foremost leader of the whole nation, practised non-violence and passive resistance. Lenin was capable of analysing this difference from the Marxist point of view along with the fact that Gandhiji was leading a mass movement against imperialism, the highest form of capitalism, much stronger than the Czar, and arrived at the conclusion that he was a revolutionist. Gandhiji was a caste Hindu, but eliminated all traits of medieval sacerdotalism from his self-being through self-purification and maintained equanimity always, something the Communist personalities failed to do. At the same time he transmuted himself to an ideal Brahmin as decreed by Bhagavat Geeta (18:42): A man having control over his thoughts, actions and words, purified mind and body, immobility of mind at perils, efficiency to perform duties, uprightness, self-knowledge, spiritual knowledge, meditation and theism can only be a Brahmin according to divine decree. It is not difficult to find a person having some of the above qualities. But Gandhiji was the only man in history possessing all those qualities of an ideal Brahmin. He was not a hermit living far away from society. He lived in society as a hermit and led a revolution against all forms of injustice. His revolution was not political alone. It was also against traditional elements like groupism, sectarianism, casteism, provincialism and all such narrow ‘isms’ making discord and hatred among people. It was a revolution to get freedom for the production and reproduction of real life to the whole people as envisaged by Engels and so Gandhiji was a true revolutionist according to the materialist concept of history.

Although it is quite late in the day, all Communist Parties in India have to recognise that their superficial concepts on armed revolution, Bolshevik discipline, proletarian dictatorship, democratic Stalinism, partisan idiosyncracy and economic determinism have been antiquated. More- over it is to be realised that every Communist Party in India is a multiclass syndicate and there is no difficulty to melt their weary dogmatism and reorganise themselves, including Naxalites and Maoists still sticking to the original militancy of the Indian communist movement, into a single Social Democratic Party like what the erstwhile Euro-Communists have done. They should understand that both Marxism and Gandhism had originated from a common point: earnest desire for the defeat of British civilisation. Marx and Engels witnessed that civilization in Victorian England, presented many treatises expounding the exuberant wealth of pre-colonial India, and how despicably Queen Victoria and her predecessors continuously plundered it for the prosperity of starving Britain. They also detected that the industrial revolution and capitalistic economy of Britain were built through loot and pillage of India which was further utilised for exploitation of their own proletariat class. Marxism arrived at that conclusion that emancipation of the proletariat class and colonial nations was impossible without the forceful eradication of the bourgeoisie together with bigoted religion and parliamentary democracy nurturing the capito-colonial devilry. Marx and Engels explored ideologically, with facts and figures, that the Indian struggle of 1857 was not a sepoy mutiny but a nationalist revolution of India, and it was the intellectual calibre of Lenin to theorise that India could be the axis of a Global Revolution. During the course of his struggle in India against British subjugation Gandhiji fought against their deceptive democracy and spoke out against the British Parliament:

That which you consider to be the Mother of Parliaments is like a sterile woman and a prostitute. Both these are harsh terms, but exactly fit the case. That Parliament has not yet, of its own accord, done a single good thing 7

Marx has also spoken nothing more than that and popular democracy espoused by Marx and Gandhian democracy, not the Balwant Rai Mehta Commission report, are two identical streams. After the formation of a nationalist Communist Party of India, if it happens, under the Marxist banner, it can go ahead with the Congress to reorganise
India with Gandhian democracy. Only then would they qualify to claim themselves as truly ‘Marxist-Leninist’ according to the materialist conception of history.

References

1. Comintern Documents, Vol. 1 (1919-1923), p. 201.

2. Natal: a former provice in South Africa.

3. Comintern Documents, Vol. 1 (1919-1923), p. 171.

4. Op. cit, p-184.

5. Engles to Joseph Bloch in Koningsberg dated 21-9-1890.

6. Op.cit.

7. Selected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. III, Navjivan Publishing House, 2006, p. 96.