The Swing Back - Tridib Chaudhuri
It has continued in this way for the past sixteen years of the history of the CPI—of one series of mistakes replacing another and being replaced in turn by newer ones. Infantile left-communism of the initial adolescent years (1934-35) was 'corrected' by right-reformism and class-collaboration introduced on the pleas of United National Front and subsequently on that of an Anti-Fascist People's War (1936-47). This was 'corrected' in its turn by a new version of earlier Leftism—now discovered to be nothing other than 'left-opportunism' (1948-50). This is now sought to be put right by a more subtle form of class-collaboration on the plea of a fight for the defence of national independence and sovereignty, against Anglo-American imperialism and their big-bourgeois Indian collaborators for People's Democracy! This may pershaps be again found to have concealed some novel kind of mistake under convenient theoretical trappings. Or even this might prove "too left". Who knows? It will all depend on the kind of 'shift' that occurs in the international correlationship of forces. If past experience proves any guide for coming events, we are to be confronted for some time with another spate of 'self-critical' penance for the expiation of past sins, of 'critical, self-critical' heart-searchings, and confessions of all sorts of deviations from the true Lenin-Stalin path. There will be fresh declarations of "firm Bolshevik determination" for the undoing of past mistakes, of making a complete turn and working back to the "true" revolutionary path by mercilessly exposing and fighting these mistakes. We are already witnessing that inevitable process of self-critical confession of guilt by the CPI Polit-Boureau and its leading cadres of Provincial and District units by instalments every month these days.
The CPI Polit-Boureau itself was perhaps no less confused and bewildered this time than the rank-and-file, after the publication of Cominform Editorial. They could hardly believe that after all the buck-up that they received from Soviet publicists like Dyakov and Balabushevich they could be let down so suddenly and so soon without any warning, as was done by the Cominform Editorial of January 27. It took more than one month for CPI leadership and Mr. B.T. Ranadive to decide what to do. The Cominform article was not given any publicity in CPI-press for more than a month. Ranadive then came out with a short statement hailing the Editorial article in LPPD as "a great contribution to the understanding of the problems of national liberation struggle in India" and "fully accepted" its conclusions. It was also announced that the article could be "an invaluable weapon" in the hands of the Communist Party for removing all "errors and mistakes" that hampered its growth. This was the first indirect admission by the CPI leadership that any "mistakes and errors" were involved in the policy hitherto followed by them, which might have hampered the growth of the party. But there was no indication of the nature or significance of these mistakes.
In the middle of March, the Polit-Bureau came out with a longer statement justifying the general line of the policy which it was pursuing during the last two years, but deigned to admit in the light of the Cominform article "certain errors in dogmatist and sectarian directions" here and there. In an indirect attempt at justifying and offering a plausible explanation of the errors that they were charged with having committed, it was argued that these were but a natural reaction from right-reformism to the opposite direction and "a result of dogmatic over-zealousness" in combating the latter. Thus it came about that party documents "often failed to bring out sharply the colonial character of Indian economy" after the grant of the so-called 'national independence', and to lay proper stress on the anti-imperialist, anti-feudal, national liberationist character of the mass-struggles in the present historical phase. Similarly "a distinction was not always drawn between the big bourgeoisie and other sections of the bourgeoisie" who could become "fellow travellers" of the CPI in "the struggle for national liberation." Rich peasants were in the same manner often lumped together with landlords and which led to the ignoring of the basic fact that "the struggle in rural areas were mainly anti- fedual"and that the class struggle between rich peasant and the agricultural poletariat and poor or middle peasants "were of secondary importance as yet," and soon.
We shall have to examine the actual significance and relevance of these self-confessed mistakes of the Ranadivite leadership later on. Here it is enough to note that even in this very unwilling admission of mistakes the CPI Polit-Bureau was practically forced to concede that it had committed errors on every fundamental question at issue with regard to the movement—the definition of the historic phase of the mass struggle, the classes against which it had to be waged and the forces on which it would rely. The only consolation that it could derive, was from its attempt to make out that these mistakes were in the nature of dogmatic over-emphasis here and under-emphasis there. Otherwise it had always been in general agreement with the fundamental outlook represented by the Cominform Editorial. It also sought to hold fast to the 'achievements' of Second Congress Thesis by reiterating the Balabushevich characterisation of it, as "a great step" in the life ofthe party and "the starting point of unleashing the forces of People's liberation struggles in the Indian Union and Pakistan." The Balabushevich-article seemd to be the last thin straw at which it could frantically stretch out its hands, in order to save itself from the impending disgrace. This article was therefore simultaneously published in the main theoretical organ of the party, the Communist, along with the Cominform Editorial article and the statement of the Polit Bureau on the same.
Leading party-cadres outside the PB and Provincial Executive were however not slow to point out the manifest contradiction between the real ideological and political implications of the Cominform Editorial and the very mild and half-hearted confession of a few dogmatic mistakes of the Polit-Bureau simultaneously with its special pleadings for the tactical line since Second Congress. Hounded by erst-while supporters now turned critics, the ill-fated Polit-Bureau bosses were again compelled to issue another Statement last April, which frankly owns up all sorts of "anti Marxist,'' "left-sectarian," "opportunist" and even "Trotskyist" mistakes and crimes. This new PB document even admits that it was, as a matter of fact, the basic errors contained in the formulations of the Second Congress Thesis of the party adopted at Calcutta which lay at the root of all subsequent mistakes. Thus the Calcutta Thesis of the CP, which was supposed to have set the "new revolutionary line" for the party two years ago, and was regarded as "a great step in the life of the party" by all foreign fraternal parties at that time, and again by Balabushevich towards the close of the last year, is now in the process of being relegated into the limbo of rejected trash.
Joshi, we have seen, was stampeded into admitting his own mistakes in 1948. Now it is the turn of Ranadive. Joshi-ites are gloating over the fact that the 'day of reckoning' and nemesis has come for their humiliators now. Some Adhikery, Dange, Namboodripad or Rajeswar Rao will now be brought forward as the leading figure of this stalinist marionette show in the next phase. The Ranadive peirod is over—its practical usefulness has exhausted in the eyes of the international centre for the present.
But every one of us who are interested in the healthy development of a sound and Broad-based revolutionary working class movement in India on the basis of Marxism-Leninism must seriously ponder over these developments. Are the so-called mistakes, blunders, right or left deviations merely the results of the theoretical ineptitude and betrayals of individual leaders—of a Joshi or a Ranadive; or a Browder (USA), Furubotten (Norway), Sanzo Nosaka (Japan) or Konakanishi (Japan)—to take some foreign examples? Or are these persons merely the helpless pawns of some cynical calculus of exigencies extraneous to the fundamental interests of the revolutionary working class movement of their own countries? Every individual member of the CPI who feels that his primary allegiance is to the vast millions of the toiling people of India, to the revolutionary working class, and to the cause of Indian and international Socialist revolution, must find an answer to this question for themselves.
The essence of the Marxist outlook on life—as the founder of Scientific Socialism emphasised long ago—is above all, "critical and revolutionary." Will CP-ers dare to submit the whole history of this self-confessed, collossal political ineptitude of their party as evidenced by the record of the fleeting zig-zag of its errant policies, and the admission of their own leaders to a closer examination from that outlook?