The Swing Back - Tridib Chaudhuri
It is evident that as an application of the Zhdanov thesis in the concrete national political situation of India after the Mountbatten Award and the so-called 'transfer of power' the Ranadive Thesis could not certainly transcend the basic limitations set on it by the political formulations of the former, which guides and determines the entire political outlook of the Cominform and the Stalinist world movement. In spite of outward left embellishments its general standpoint was elaborated within the theoretical frame-work of the same nationalist-oppositional, democratic social-reformist political outlook as the former, and was as much removed from the immediate historic perspective of a proletarian Socialist revolution and from the point of view of proletarian class-struggle against Capitalism. From this fundamental standpoint there could, therefore, be no fundamental difference between the Calcutta Thesis of the CPI and the new Cominform directive. But demands of partisan political expediency made the new 'left' leadership which came to power in the party in 1948 very much concerned about keeping the national-democratic reformist content of their professed leftism as much concealed from the eyes of the rank-and-file by stretching the scope of the theoretical formulations of Zhdanov to the maximum extent possible and without coming into a too obvious or direct contradiction with them. Political terminology was therefore often deliberately employed in a equivocal sense, giving an outward significance opposite to what was really intended, reformist qualification were kept cleverly hidden here and there behind a maze of left trappings, and would be often surreptitiously smuggled in behind a spate of revolutionary phrase-mongering. Demonstrative references were made to Socialist revolution and the tasks of Socialist construction in order to create the impression that the people's Democratic Revolution was really nothing but a process of completing the unfinished task of bourgeois democratic revolution under a proletarian leadership and would immediately go forward to the overthrow of capitalism and to socialist revolution. But in spite of everything the basic political formulations of the Ranadive Thesis about the anti-imperialist and national democratic character of the Indian revolution, even after the Mountbatten Plan and 'transfer of power' to the hands of the Indian bourgeoisie, and the principal strategic tasks that faced the party in that background, were couched in almost identical terms as the Cominform Editorial article.
The nationalist reformist context of these formulations can easily be sifted out from amidst the jungle of seemingly left phraseology with but little difficulty. The Cominform Editorial, as we have seen, especially sought to emphasise the democratic anti-imperialist, colonial national-liberationist character of the Indian mass-struggle. Outward left trappings notwithstanding, the Calcutta Thesis also did the same. Some excerpts from the Calcutta Thesis on these topics may be quoted here relevantly.
This is what the Calcutta Thesis said about the the Mountbatten Award.
.....The Mountbatten Plan partitioned India...It is one of the biggest attacks on the unity and integrity of the democratic movement.
...The plan keeps the princes, the age-old friends of the imperialist order, intact.
...The leading economic strings are still in the hands of the imperailists, who successfully use them to make the bourgeosie move against the masses, crush democratic revolution and establ ished a new line up of imperialism, princes, landlords and the bourgeoisie.
....The Mountbatten Plan is the expression of the alliance against the democratic revolution,... What the Mountbatten Plan has given to the people is not real but fake independence... Britain's domination has not ended, but the form of domination has changed....the bourgeoisie is granted a share of state power (subservient to imperialism) in order to disrupt and drown the national democratic revolution.... (pp38-40)
Then follows its views about Nehru Government, the Thesis said:
It (the Nehru Govt.) has not solved, said the Thesis, a single problem of the democratic revolution... Indian Big-business and the Government are mortgaging Indian economy to Anglo-American capital in their selfish interests. The natural result of this is not only economic but indirect political domination, so that both1 the economy and the political freedom are being mortgaged to the Anglo-American imperialists (pp 45-46).
The reference to "Big Business" here, and repeated in pp, 23, 24, 26, 27, 42, 45 and 48, make it amply clear that by referring to the Indian bourgeoisie as having gone "collaborationist' (in its relations, vis-a-vis imperialism) it is precisely 'big' business and 'big' bourgeoisie which the CPI leadership had in mind. Although by repeating the term 'capitalist' and bourgeoisie without the qualifying adjective 'big' a little bit too often, it deliberately sought to create the misleading impression that henceforward they would move against the Indian bourgeoisie as a whole and rally mass forces for fighting the entire class on lines of proletarian class-struggle. As a matter of fact by putting the term "Big Business" in parenthesis immediately after the term "Indian bourgeoisie" at the outset in p 23, it was ensured that the terms were to be taken interchangeably. In p 42, it was clearly said that the Congress Government "was carrying the plans of big business."
One of the main charges about Ranadive's left-deviation relate to his characterisation of the entire Indian bourgeoisie as collaborators of imperialism which, it is alleged, prevented the party from attracting "fellow travellers" from other sections of the bourgeoisie, who are not so 'big', especially the middle bourgeoisie and small capitalists etc., to the cause of its 'national liberation struggle. The statements of Mao Tse-Tung, Liu Shao Chi, Li LI San and other Chinese leaders point out on the other hand that one Of the main conditions which enabled the Chinese CP to build up its leadership was that it found the correct policy in differentiating the "national bourgeoisie" from the collaborator big bourgeoisie or "compradore bourgeoisie" subservient to foreign imperialism and treating the former as an ally. The line of Ranandive Thesis apparently treats the entire Indian bourgeoisie as an enemy. If we care to read between the lines, however, we would easily understand which section of the bourgeoisie Ranadive had in mind particularly, although he sought to create the opposite sort of impression in the minds of the uninitiated.
The Calcutta thesis asserted :
The desire for collaboration (between Anglo-American imperialism and the Indian bourgeoisie or Big business) takes the shape of retaining the colonial order...
The collaboration thus represents an economic and political alliance against the democratic revolution through which alone the people can liberate themselves from the yoke of the colonial order, of landlordism, of the princes and foreign and home capitalists. In the background of this correlationship of forces what was to be the character of the coming revolution in the opinion of the authors of the Calcutta Thesis? This is what the thesis said very clearly.
The old phase of the bourgeois democratic revolution is over, a phase in which the bourgeoisie was in the anti-imperialist camp. To-day the entire trend of events demand a democratic state of workers, toiling peasants and the oppressed petty-bourgeoisie as the only rallying slogan to surge forward to the defeat of imperialism and its bourgeois allies and the emancipation of the people (P-74).
It was in other words, a new phase of the bourgeois-democratic revolution (though new, still a bourgeois and democratic revolution all the same, from the point of view of its social content) that was now called for according to the Ranadive Thesis. This new phase was precisely nothing other than the people's Democratic Revolution.
In order to make it seem that the People's Democratic revolution was really the prelude to the Socialist revolution it was .added here that it "has to be achieved for the completion of the tasks of the democratic revolution and for the simultaneous building up of Socialism." But obviously completion of the tasks of democratic revolution came first, and by employing the phrase 'building up of Socialism,' instead of Socialist revolution in this connection, a deliberate attempt was made to confuse basic issues and confound the rank-and-file into thinking that People's Democratic Revolution was really indistinguishable from Socialist Revolution. In case of difficulty it would be possible to explain matters in terms of Zhdanov's reference to 'paving the way for entry to the path of Socialist development' in East European People's Democratic states.
It was on this theoretical premise that the CPI programme of the Democratic Front was formulated. A glance even at the first few lines of this programme would be sufficient to convince anybody that the fundamental political outlook of the new leaders of the CPI, Ranadive and his colleagues, who were responsible for the 1948 Calcutta Thesis, definitely moved within the limits of an anti-imperialist, bourgeois-democratic, national movement and did not overstep those limits by a jot. The apparent left-orientation of the new CPI political line of 1948 compared to the Joshi line of collaboration with imperialism and the national bourgeoisie, the heroic invectives that were hurled against the Nehru Government and capitalists, need not therefore be taken in their face value or regarded as a 'left-deviation' in the basic formulation of the character of the coming phase of Indian revolution in terms of a Socialist transformation of the existing capitalist-cum-imperialist-feudal, semi-colonial social order. That was initially ruled out by the pre-determined ideological moorings of the Calcutta Thesis based on the national-liberationist, popular democratic outlook laid down by Zhdanov and the Cominform for the entire Stalinist world movement outside Soviet Union.
This statement might seem rather strange in view of the universal chorus of indictment that has been raised in Stalinist circles lately against Ranadive's left-deviations since the publication of the Cominform Edito . We have already seen that it has been openly alleged, and subsequently meekly admitted by Ranadive and his Polit-Bureau colleagues also, that they had denied the colonial status of India under the domination of British imperialism after the grant of the so-called 'independence' and 'transfer of power,' they had identified India with a fully-developed bourgeois capitalist state under domination of the Indian bourgeoisie, and that they underestimated or even totally neglected the prime historic necessity of waging struggle against imperialism-feudalism, against the colonial domination of India by British monopoly-capital and the native princes and other feudal elements who together with a subservient group of native big bourgeoisie rule the Country today. Ranadive leadership was consequently led — it is further alleged — to revise the Zhdanov definition of People's Democratic Revolution as applied to colonial countries and the primarily national democratic character of that revolution. It had rather identified it directly with the phase of proletarian Socialist revolution for the overthrow of capitalism. The objection of Ranadive's critics are directed — it should be noted not so much against the Calcutta Thesis itself — which in spite of its recently discovered 'incorrect' 'left-deviationist' formulations — were unhesitatingly accepted two years ago by the entire Party Congress including many of Ranadive's bitterest critics of to-day. Their indicments are especially directed against the subsequent documents of the Polit-Bureau which sought to give an authoritative interpretation of the main political line adopted at Calcutta viz: the PB. Resolutions on People's Democracy and the Agrarian question (December 1948; published in Communist No. 1, 1949), and the Report on Strategy and Tactics, which contained a vehement criticism of certain aspects of Mao Tse-Tung' line of policy in China and the Mao version of People's Democracy.
Without entering into the details of these charges here, it can be safely asserted, in view of the quotations from crucial passages of the Calcutta Thesis given above (which provide in a sense the theoretical premise for the entire Democratic Front Programme), that the alleged left-deviations of the Ranadive line, as represented by that thesis and its subsequent elaborations, or its contradictions with the basic nationalist-oppositional, democratic and social reformist point of view of international Stalinism and the Cominform, are more apparent than real. The subsequent theoretical elaborations of the Calcutta Thesis must be read and interpreted in the context of the basic outlook represented by that thesis, unless it was openly repudiated by Ranadive; which he never did. Whatever contradictions there were arose, as already indicated above, from the clumsy endeavours of the CPI leadership to conceal the essentially reformist class-collaborationist character of the Stalinist theory of People's Democracy, and to pass it off as a variety of near-Socialism. These self-contradictions were already inherent in the formulations of Calcutta Thesis. Subsequently however under the impact of internal struggle for power amongst the leaders of the Party, and the unavoidable necessity of whipping up and mobilising petty-bourgeois leftism of the youthful rank-and-file of the party for launching 'militant mass-actions' against the Congress Government these contradictions became increasingly glaring. These naturally gave rise to all sorts of theoretical muddle-headedness, self deceptive confusions of thought and a wobbly leftism, which was not always much to the liking of the so-called 'left' leaders themselves.
In order to hurriedly get some sort of show of mass-opposition and organise resistance against the anti-Soviet and pro Anglo-American foreign policy of the Nehru Government pursuant to the over-all plan for resistance to "aggressive Anglo-American imperialist plans within the limits of the power-rivalries between USA, Great-Britain and the Soviet Union, as laid down by Zhdanov at the Cominform Conference, the CPI leadership had to fall back in the absence of any active or broad based political-support for its policies amongst the masses, on its own party-organisation and its severely depleted rank of militant activists. The reformist bourgeois and petty-bourgeois 'lib-lab's who had swelled the ranks of the party during the "People's War" days made hurried exit as soon as there was any talk of struggle against the government of the day. The following of the party amongst the working class and the peasantry were never very widespread, except in a very few isolated localities, and in most places party cadres were composed mainly of young enthusiasts coming from the petty-bourgeoisie and radical intelligentsia.1 In order to throw the predominantly petty-bourgeois cadres of the party into the fray willy-nilly and earn praises from Soviet spokesmen like Balabushevich, he had to indoctrinate them with favourite left-revolutionist catch-phrases of that class, to inspire them with the stirring thought that they were going to overthrow native capitalists like the Tatas and Birlas, Anglo-American imperialists, the Native Princes, landlords and all feudal riff-raff at a single stroke, and unleash by their 'militant actions' a mighty revolutionary upsurge of the toiling masses under the leadership of their party for the establishment of Socialism. Compelled by the logic of their international policy to launch some sort of struggle and create some sort of trouble for the Nehru Government, so as to prove to the outside world that the Congress allies of Anglo-America had entirely failed to stabilise the political situation in India on their behalf, or to appease the insurgent mass-forces (led by the Communists!) CPI leadership could not avoid catering to the demands of infantile petty-bourgeois leftism and cheap revolution-mongering both ideologically and tactically.
Ideologically Ranadive could hope to inspire the youthful petty bourgeois cadres of the party only by imparting a dazzling left — the anti-capitalist veneer on people's democratic reformism; tactically by glorifying their adventurist-terroristic hurrah-actions, divorced from any contact with the masses or their consciousness — as "the most advanced and revolutionary form of struggle", and creating the illusion that the masses could by these means be brought "to the point at which they will echo the party's cry of ending the government." It had therefore to be constantly dinned into their ears that the situation is "full of revolutionary possibilities" and the masses could be induced step by step, to move forward to "general strikes, political strikes and general uprising." The rank-and-file must not be allowed to get discouraged by the fact that neither the masses in general, nor the working class, were responding to their hurrah-tactics. They must be constantly administered self-deceptive pep-talks about "uneven development of the consciousness of the masses" and about the surety of most elementary struggles "setting in motion forces for a general uprising" in the objective background of a rapidly unfolding "revolutionary period." It was precisely these two aspects of Ranadive's alleged 'leftism,' demanded by the immediate practical exigencies of demonstrative political actions against the Congress Government which the CPI was called upon to organise in the name of "resistance to the aggressive plans of Anglo-American Imperialism," that found expression in the Polit-Bureau Resolutions on "People's Democracy" and the "Agrarian Question" and his Report on "Strategy and Tactics."
His attempt to give a Socialist and near-Socialist 'left' twist to People's Democracy by stretching the scope of its possible scientific political definition to the utmost, involved him in the queerest theoretical and ideological contradictions. These attempts often made him liable to formal charges of 'left-deviation.' For he was often compelled to keep the basic class-collaborationist reformist aspects of People's Democracy deliberately concealed from the view of his 'militant' rank-and-file' by 'leftist' glosses. But at the sametime, essentially moving withing the basic ideological frame-work of Stalinism, he was never able — nor did he actually want—to cut himself adrift from the reformist nationalist-oppositional moorings of 'popular democracy' altogether. Precariously depending on Zhdanov's guarded definition about the possible course of the next phase of development of People's Democratic States of Eastern Europe in terms of preparing the pre-conditions for undertaking the tasks of Socialist Construction ("paving the way for entry on to the path of"...etc., —'International Situation', pp 9-10) and the Calcutta Congress formulation of its tasks of People's Democratic Revolution as the "completion of the tasks of democratic revolution and the simultaneous building up of Socialism," he proceeded within the PB Resolution on People's Democracy to make a hotch-potch of everything. He termed the coming People's Democratic Revolution in India as a potpourri 'mixture' of the February and October Revolutions, "an interlacing of democratic and socialist Revolutions", for the establishment of "a democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry which quickly passes into the Dictatorship of the Proletariat." He apparently wanted to eliminate the bourgeoisie from any share in the participation in this revolution, or in the new state-power that would emerge in course of the People's Democratic Revolution. But at once got a theoretic funk and interpreted it as only meaning "eliminating the political rule of the bourgeoisie" for the present, and subsequently going over to policy of "squeezing out capitalist elements in the countryside" after the new state comes into being. He warned the party at the same time, against prematurely raising the slogan of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat so as not to alienate "the intermediary strata, parties and classes," for a large section of petty-bourgeoisie and middle peasants were coming into conflict with the bourgeoisie. By raising the slogan of proletarian dictatorship the "democratic front" would get disrupted and play into the hands of the bourgeoisie. In order to disguise his own colossal confusion of thinking, he made a play with the idea of the "hegemony of the proletariat" over the "bloc of peasantry, petty-bourgeoisie people etc.,"—a bloc in which the bourgeoisie would have no place and which will "go beyond bourgeois democracy" through nationalisation of industries etc. towards Socialism and proletarian dictatorship, and so on and so forth. But he could never bring himself to raise the issue of a proletarian Socialist Revolution in a direct and straight-forward manner as the immediate historic objective for the party after the installation of the bourgeoisie to the posiiton of the direct ruling class in place of imperialism and native feudalism, which had withdraw from the forefront and taken shelter behind the national bourgeoisie and their ruling power. He knew that he was prevented from doing that by the basic formulation of the Zhdanov thesis to which he had to swear allegiance always as a loyal Stalinist.
The depth of the theoretical quandary in which he landed himself in this way ultimately led him to make on entire topsy-turvy of Lenin's celebrated formulation of the 'Two Tactics' about the tasks and class alignments of the bourgeois-democratic and Socialist revolutions and confuse one with the other. He urged the proletariat and the CPI in all seriousness to complete the tasks of democratic revolution with the forces and class-alignments of a Socialist Revolution.2
Ranadive's theoretical performance is only paralleled, it should be remarked here, by the opposite sort of theoretical travesty perpetrated by the latest East-European exponents of People's Democracy like Dimitrov, Beirut and Hilary Mine, who seem to think that it is possible (and in East-Europe it 'has actually' been possible!) to successfully accomplish a Socialist revolution and to carry out the functions of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat with the class alignments of a democratic revolution, without any violence or civil war, "thanks to the all-round help liberally rendered by the Soviet Union" (see: Reports by Dimitrov & Beirut to the Workers Parties of Bulgaria & Poland; Lasting Peace No. 1, 1949.)
It is queer that since the publication of the Cominform Editorial it is being indignantly charged on all hands in Indian Stalinist circles that Ranadive had the 'impertinence' or 'cheek' to revise Zhdanov's definition of People's Democracy; but nobody seems to care or to have even noticed that he had the fool-hardiness to revise the classic formulations of Lenin himself! Perhaps Zhdanov is now theoretically more important to them than Lenin— after all Lenin could never envisage the "new type of state" that People's Democracy represents, and which was theoretically and practically analysed by the great Zhdanov especially for our epoch!
The apparent left-orientation imparted to the theory of People's Democracy by Ranadive, and its inevitable contradictions with the essential nationalist-oppositional democratic-reformist content of that theory as envisaged by the international Stalinist leadership, seemed to cause no harm so long as it helped the CPI to rally the forces of petty-bourgeois leftism in its ranks and hurl them against the bourgeois Congress Government suspected of slavishly toeing the anti-Soviet foreign policy line of Anglo-America. It was for that reason that, in spite of blatant theoretical self-contradictions of the Ranadive formulations from the very beginning, the international leadership went on shouting buck-ups to the CPI, and remained satisfied with veiled hints thrown in now and then, about exploring the chances of possible alliances with bourgeois, middle-bourgeois and petty-bourgeois groups and parties who might be opposed to the dominant big bourgeois or big-business groups having a upper hand in the government at present. All leading Soviet experts on India Zhukov, Alexyev, Dyakov and Balabushevich who discussed the Indian situation in Soviet press from time to time during the last two years since the Calcutta Congress of CPI did the same. But they never ceased patting CPI leadership on the back for their heroic success in organising and leading "the struggle for the hegemony of the working-class" in the "national liberation movement" and building up a broad-based mass resistance to the Congress government's policy of open collaboration with Anglo-America and upholding the cause of the Soviet-led Democratic Camp in this country.3
1. Ranadive's revelations in this respect are interesting. "One of the legacies of the reformist period,' he wrote in his "Report on Strategy & Tactics," is the over-whelmingly petty-bourgeois composition of the Party...The Party was based on the wrong classes. The working class, the poor and the agricultural workers were neglected... In the name of non-sectarianism, bourgeois and petty bourgeois intellectuals were encouraged with all their faults....
"With Marxist education discouraged.. and with workers not supposed to study Marxism:— it was next to impossible to inspire the workers to join in large numbers" (Communist, No. 4, 1949 p 35-35).
Even the petty-bourgeois elements, he further complained, "were prevented from taking a firm stand against capitalists and reformists and were denounced as 'terrorists,' when their anti-imperialist instincts (!) drove them to take a correct stand"! Naturally in this highly unsatisfactory state of the class-composition of the party which he inherited Ranadive had no other alternative but to rely on these petty-bourgeois militants and their anti-imperialist and their anti-capitalist 'instincts' (whatever that might mean) for the 'struggles' he was required to launch. It should also be remarked here that curiously enough his principal adversary Mr. P. C. Joshi also agrees with these views of Ranadive about the state of party organisation and its membership, with this difference that he refers to conditions to which the party 'degenerated' since his forced exit from leadership! In his letter to Foreign Comrades he reports that "regular contact with the masses is broken. Small squads of student comrades in their teens, guided by a fanatical underground worker, with sometimes a lad or two from the working class thrown in, are sent out when a strike call is given or a meeting is possible." And further, he says in another place "the working class is not responding to our practical lead." He also complains about the lack of Marxist education in the ranks (Views, No. 1. p 28-29); but magnanimously admits his own share of responsibility for it.
2. The actual formulation of famous 'Two Tactics' of Lenin runs as follows : 'Democratic Revolution' :
"The Proletariat must carry to completion the democratic revolution, by allying itself to the mass of peasantry in order to crush by force the resistance of autocracy and paralyse the instability of the bourgeoisie".
The appropriate slogan for this stage of the revolution according to Lenin is the "Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and the Peasantry". Socialist Revolution : "The Proletariat must accomplish the Socialist revolution by allying to itself the mass of semi-proletarian elements of the population in order to crush by force the resistance of the bourgeoisie and to paralyse the stability of the peasantry and petty-bourgeoisie".
The appropriate slogan for this stage of the revolution is the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat".
Ranadive amended Lenin's formulation in the following manner: "The proletariat must accomplish the people's democratic revolution by allying itself to the agricultural workers and poor peasants-followed by the middle peasants-in order to isolate the bourgeoisie and crush their resistance by force" ("Strategy & Tactics', Communist No. 4, P. 42). But the slogan of Socialist revolution or the Dictatorship of the proletariat must not be raised ''because intermediary stratas, parties and classes have not yet exhausted their possibilities and therefore, a bloc with them cannot be ruled out" ('On People's Democracy'). What then is the appropriate slogan for this stage? According to Ranadive, it is Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and the Peasantry (together with intermediary sarata, parties and classes). But Democratic Dictatorship is the culmination of bourgeois democratic revolution and demands on entirely different line of tactics than that outlined by Ranadive. The class alignment and the tasks of the People's Democratic Revolution as described by Ranadive belong neither lo Democratic Revolution nor Socialist revolution completely, and muddle the basic issues hopelessly.
3. As V. V. Balabushevich pointed out, the following were the principal achievements of the CPI during this period from the point of view of international Stalinism : (I) “resolutely exposing bourgeois machinations directed towards keeping India tied to the Anglo-American bloc” ....(2) The CPI has noted that “the South East Asia block and the Pacific Pact are instruments for the struggle against the rising national liberation movement in the countries of S.E. Asia and preparation in the East for a base of an attack against the USSR;” and last but by no means the least, (3) the CPI “emphasises that working masses of India look upon the Soviet Union as the leading force in the struggle against world reaction”. These were certainly imposing achievements and the tactics of CPI, whatever might be their lapses here and there in matters of theory — lapses dictated by the necessity of organising militant mass-actions against Anglo-American imperialism and their Indian bourgeois (or big-bourgeois) stooges — served their purpose all right.