Perhaps the single most significant consequence of the recent elections is the dramatic decline of the reformist left of the Communist Party of India (CPI) and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) - CPM. This decline was sharpest in West Bengal and was undoubtedly related to the tragedies of Singur and Nandigram for which Buddhadev Bhattacharya bears principal responsibility. But since the centre of gravity of Indian politics has shifted steadily to the right over the last three decades, it is hardly surprising that the self-described ‘liberal centre’ will apportion greater blame and show greater hostility to Prakash Karat than to the West Bengal Chief Minister. One positive from this election verdict is that the reformist left has received a much needed wake-up call.
But a wake-up call to what end? The CPI and CPM are best characterized as Stalinized social democratic parties whose own fulcrums (despite ongoing internal tensions) have also shifted rightwards. This is as much a result of the de-ideologisation and therefore brutalization and bureaucratization of their cadre-based organizational structures as of their programmatic and behavioural (unprincipled alliances) shifts carried out in the name of pragmatism and realism. Lessons offered on what this left should now do vary. Those most strongly committed to the rightward shifts in domestic and foreign policy, to what can be called a ‘disciplinary neoliberalism’, will welcome this left decline. The weaker it is the better, and best perhaps would be its extinction. Those more sympathetic to what can be called a ‘compensatory neoliberalism’ has seen some value in this left’s role as a check on the Congress and as a spur to greater social sector spending. Both neoliberal variants will likely agree that the future for the left lies in it simply shedding its leftism. It should give up its ‘anti-Americanism’ and its Marxist ideological baggage (which it doesn’t much follow anyway) and accept the basic rationale and practice of the current liberal economic reform agenda.
This, however, is a direction that the left must not take. It can only have meaning and value if it pursues a politics that is recognizably and strongly left, i.e., hostile to the right and its policies, critical of the ‘liberal centre’. It cannot hope to flourish in the long term by out-Congressing the Congress, that is, by trying to be something to everybody. It must pursue a socially partisan politics which is unashamed to arouse passions but of course in pursuit of just causes. Such an Indian left must not only combine parliamentary and electoral politics with an extra-parliamentary politics of periodic mass mobilization, but the latter arena of activity should be far more important to it than the former. Indeed, if pursued consistently and effectively, it provides the best promise for making significant gains on the electoral front itself. The great and widely acknowledged problem for the CPI and CPM (apart from their failure long ago to merge) is that it has failed to make a strategic breakthrough in the Hindi heartland states.
But it can only hope to do so by carrying out a politics of mass mobilization. This would also involve connecting with and supporting already existing progressive social movements where they exist. Instead, this left has paid far more attention to tailing this or that party -- be it the various offshoot parties coming out of the Lohiaite tradition -- or this or that personality be it V.P. Singh or Mayawati. It has believed that this would be the short-cut to making a strategic breakthrough and it is time that it now realizes the comprehensive failure of such an approach. At the same time this left has displayed suspicion towards the independent social movements because these non-party political formations enjoying grassroots popularity are outside its control. Relations between the left and these progressive social movements have deteriorated over the last few years, not strengthened. Blame can be attributed to both sides but much more of it rests with a left unwilling to accept a subordinate role where required and unwilling or unable to even behave as a serious parliamentary tribune for these movements.
The CPI and CPM are still cadre-based parties and it is what happens to their cadre character that will decide their future. In this sense, it is something of an equivalent to the forces of Hindutva at the other end of the political spectrum. As long as the RSS is strong and its cadres active, enthusiastic, ideologically committed and disciplined, its electoral wing, the BJP, will also be a force to reckon with and Hindutva, a major threat and problem. The key to left endurance and revival lies in it having an ideologically-driven, committed and disciplined cadre force willing to seriously devote itself to the cause of justice for the most downtrodden and oppressed. And this comes from both theoretical training and practical action. It is here that the quality of leadership is most needed and has been most absent. A leadership that refuses to reassess and internally re-educate its party membership and activists by honestly coming to terms with, and repudiating its Stalinist past, only helps to confuse, demoralize and corrupt its cadre activists.
But there is one key difference, or should be, between left parties and those of the centre or right. For the latter, coming to power at the states level or at the Centre is the be all and end all. To this purpose their programmes are secondary. For most such parties it is the party that basically makes the programme. Shabby manoeuvring, programmatic reversals and unprincipled and money-mediated alliances are all part of the game. For the left it is the programme that makes the party. Achievement of power in, say West Bengal/Kerala or a share of it at the Centre, must never become more important than achieving the goals of its programme where pursuit of these goals all too often requires opposing the centres of power in order to transform these centres and their policies. In West Bengal at some point in its prolonged rule since 1977, the Left Front lost its vision; its cadres their ideological clarity, commitment and, above all, integrity. The politics of organizational manipulation became dominant and the sustained pursuit of an extra-parliamentary politics of mobilization virtually absent even outside its areas of governance, Tripura, Kerala, West Bengal.
If this reformist left wishes to gain electoral ground once again, to rise to 80 to 100 seats whereby it could then be the nucleus of a third force, then ironically the route towards this lies in not succumbing to the temptations or compulsions of electoral politics. That will be the constant practice of the centre and the right, and let it so remain. Compared to any other country India has by far the largest number of people who are economically exploited and socially oppressed. Its liberal democratic polity makes this situation more bearable because it allows some space for organization and struggle and therefore for occasional and limited improvements. But the brutalities and inequalities remain and interests of the rich and powerful reinforced. Does this reformist left have the desire and capacity to seriously connect with and sometimes lead these struggles? Or is it going to continue ploughing the same furrow of conventional mainstream politics waiting, preparing and pushing for the swings of the electoral pendulum in Kerala and West Bengal? Only time will tell.
Achin Vanaik is a fellow of the Transnational Institute and Professor of International Relations and Global Politics (South Campus) at the Political Science Department of Delhi University. He is the editor of Selling US wars, Interlink, 2007.
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