Goodbye Socialism

Economic & Political Weekly
Sumanta Banerjee
At the January 14-16 conferenceof the Communist Party of India(Marxist)’s West Bengal statecommittee, the one-point agendaof industrialisation with themarket in command took thecentre stage. Does this indicatea fundamental change in theparty’s approach to economicreforms, or a temporarystratagem in the implementationof its original programme?There is an apocryphal joke aboutMao Zedong. When he took Nixonfor a drive in the Chinese countrysidein 1972, the car reached an intersection,and the chauffeur turned to Maoand asked: “Comrade Chairman, do wetake the left or the right turn?” With aside-long glance at Nixon and a twinkle inhis eyes, Mao said: “Give the left signal,but turn right!” Did the warhorse have aninkling of the course that his successorswere to take after his departure?In Mao’s car, the left-hand indicator atleast still blinked. But in the Tata Nano ofpolitics that the Communist Party of India(Marxist) (CPI(M)) is driving today, eventhat seems to have been switched off, asapparent from the latest utterance by theparty’s octogenarian patriarch Jyoti Basu,followed by policy announcements madeby his successor in West Bengal, chiefminister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, at hisparty’s state conference in Kolkata.“Socialism is not possible now”, Jyoti Basuwas reported to have said at a recent pressconference in Kolkata, adding: “We hadspoken about building a classless society,but that was a long time ago.” Hasteningto reassure his followers of his continuingcommitment to the cause, he said: “Socialismis our political agenda and was mentionedin our party document, but capitalismwill continue to be the compulsion forthe future” (Indian Express, January 6,2008). As an afterthought as it were, whileinviting both foreign and domestic capital,he added the caveat: “But we have to takecare of each other’s interests and alsosafeguard workers’ interests” (The Hindu,January 6, 2008).A few days later, Buddhadeb Bhattacharyafleshed out Basu’s arguments in concreteterms while addressing the 22nd stateconference of the West Bengal CPI(M).Explaining his government’s industrial programme,he came out with major policydecisions. “Let industry grow”, he said,“on its own momentum”. He addedreassuringly: “There is no need for anypolitical interference in the process ofindustrialisation”. He was reported to havestated that decisions regarding where andwhat type of industries should come upand which investors should be allowed toset up bases in West Bengal, should be keptout of the domain of either Writers’ Building(the state’s administrative head quarters) or Alimuddin Street (where the CPI(M)’sparty headquarters is situated). The decisionsshould be left to the investors. Butthen – following the cue from his guru JyotiBasu – according to press reports, Bhattacharyaalso sought to assuage the fears ofhis party’s working class followers by addingthe usual caveat: “The only sphere inwhich the party’s involvement is needed isto ensure that corporate social responsibilityis being carried out properly” (IndianExpress, January 18, 2008).
A Paradigm Shift?
Do these statements and utterances indicatea fundamental change in the CPI(M)’sapproach to economic reforms, or a temporarystratagem in the implementation of itsoriginal programme? To seek answers, wehave to go back to a long simmering ideologicaldebate that had marked the chequeredhistory of the Indian left ever since1957, when for the first time the communistscame to power in Kerala through parliamentaryelections. Jyoti Basu and BuddhadebBhattacharya have stoked – unwittinglythough – the embers of that debate.The Kerala event threw up a number ofquestions before communist activists likeSumanta Banerjee (suman5ban@yahoo.com)is best kn0wn for his book In the Wake ofNaxalbari: A History of the Naxalite Movementin India (1980).Commentaryjanuary 26, 2008 Economic & Political Weekly 14us at that time. How far can our leadersimplement pro-poor measures within thegiven structure of the Indian Constitutionand its plethora of laws that are heavilyloaded against the poor? By agreeing togovern a state under those laws, aren’tthey legitimising the anti-poor system anddiluting their commitment to the revolutionarygoal of overhauling that very system?How are they to reconcile the twinpriorities of “struggle” and “governance”– struggle against the bourgeois order,and governance of states which they ruleunder the same order? Our party leadersthen assured us that while the basic strugglewould continue, the communistministers would take advantage of thegovernment machinery to give someimmediate relief to the people within thesystem. E M S Namboodiripad, the firstcommunist chief minister of Kerala, madeit clear that his administration was doingno more than implementing the agrarianreform that had been suggested by theCongress itself. But the Congress governmentat the centre was unwilling to accepteven such a modest programme of bourgeoissocial democratic reform, and underpressure from its feudal landlord lobbyand orthodox religious constituency (boththe Hindu Nairs and the Christian Catholics),dismissed the Kerala ministry.Having gone through that bitter experiencein Kerala in 1959, 10 years later in1969 when the Indian communists againhad a chance to share power in coalitiongovernments in Kerala and West Bengalthrough elections, the leaders of the CPI(M)(the radical wing that had come into existencein 1964) chose to take a hard line. Itprioritised “struggle” over “governance”.In June 1969, the veteran CPI(M) leaderB T Ranadive, explaining the role of hisparty’s ministers in the United Front governmentsof Kerala and West Bengal, declaredthat their task was to “unleash the discontentof the people rather than give relief”.Elaborating on the issue, he added: “...theMarxist ministers have been told to pressahead with legislation which is likely to bevetoed by the centre or the high court. Suchconfrontations are designed to tell the massesof the impossibility of carrying throughfundamental reform under the presentConstitution” (Indian Express, June 22, 1969).But, then, was the CPI(M) in a position tomobilise these “discontented people” in analternative viable direction, beyond givingthem the negative message of the futilityof reforms under the Constitution?It faced the test soon, when in 1969 inWest Bengal its ministers of the UnitedFront government launched an agitation todistribute surplus land (held in excess bylandlords) among the landless. As predictedby Ranadive, it came into confrontationwith the centre and the judiciary, as the landlords obtained stay orders from thecourts, and the CPI(M) defying such ord r sen couraged the peasants to forcibly occupythose lands, which prompted the Congress led centre to raise the bogey of violation ofthe sacrosanct “law and order”. The industrialscene was also marked by CPI(M)-ledstrikes in jute, tea, textile and engineeringindustries. While at times, they helped the workers to secure gains in terms of betterwages and working conditions, in most cases the industrialists closed their units,and abandoned West Bengal for greenerpastures else where. Thus, a capital strikeby the business interests left West Bengalsliding down in economic terms. In the absence of a long-term perspective of eitherradical innovative responses (by takingover the closed down factories, for instance,and running them by cooperatives of theretrenched workers, and follow-up programmesof further consolidation of the gains ofthe peasant movement in the countryside),or an alternative defensive stratagem ofworking out a compromise while retainingthe gains, the CPI(M)’s confrontationiststrategy ultimately ended up in its isolation.The party’s isolation in the 1969-70 period was further aggravated by its belligerent attempt to extend its organisationand establish hegemony in the state’spolitical scene. The CPI(M) leaders madean adroit use of both their ministerialpowers and police administration, as wellas their armed activists, to oust their leftistrivals from their bases. The violentclashes between these CPI(M) activists andtheir political rivals which disrupted publiclife not only alienated the non-involvedcitizens, but also antagonised other partnersof the ruling United Front, who bandedtogether against the CPI(M). Their withdrawalof support led to the collapse of theUnited Front government in March 1970,the imposition of president’s rule, and aseries of developments that were to stultifythe organisational growth of the leftmovement in West Bengal for a long time,till the lifting of the Emergency in 1977.
‘Rationalising’ Capitalism
Given this chequered history of communistsas rulers under a capitalist system,and the crossroads at which they standtoday, the reported statements of bothJyoti Basu and Buddhadeb Bhattacharyaacquire importance for the left movement.At face value, they may look like merelyreaffirming what had been known since1977, when the left came back to poweragain in West Bengal and Kerala. In thisnew phase, neither did the communistministers of the Left Front state governmentsclaim, nor did the people of thesestates expect that the left-led governmentswould bring in socialism. From a soberassessment of their capacities, the parliamentarycommunists only promised toprovide the people with some basicsocio-economic benefits like landreforms, wage rise, trade union rights andbetter governance, among other things.To quote the CPI(M) programme, suchgovernments were of a “transitional character”with a “modest programme ofgiving immediate relief to the people”– inother words, to manage the prevalentbourgeois system in a more democraticand efficient manner with a tilt in favourof the poor and the underprivilegedwho voted them to power.The objective approximated to the welfarestate model that the social democraticparties had introduced in the post-WorldWar west European capitalist states. Likethem, the CPI(M), instead of breaking withthe economic structure of the prevalentcapitalist system, agreed to work within itto make it more amenable to the demandsof the poor – perhaps humanise it. Fairenough! But again, its constant refrain thatits hands were tied down by a capitalistruledcentre’s impositions created the feelingthat nothing much could be achievedtill the left captured power at the centre inpursuit of its final objective of “the establishmentof people’s democracy and socialisttransformation through peaceful means”.As a result, its experiment in West Bengaldegenerated into a half-hearted exerciseof limited reforms, and a full-heartedCommentaryoperation to extend solely its party organisationthrough money and muscle power –lulling its followers into the belief that byexpanding in such a way the CPI(M) wouldone day come to power at the centre.The short-term measures of providing“immediate relief” (the oft-quoted wordsused both in the party programme and byparty leaders) met the economic demandsof the rural poor and urban middle classemployees. Once having satisfied them(through the initial land reform measureslike Operation Barga, minimum wages foragricultural labourers, higher salary scalesand perks for government employees,teachers, etc), during the last 30 years theLeft Front government sat back, neglectingthe long-term supplementary measuresthat were necessary to follow up the“immediate relief”. It ignored both the responsibilityof completing the agrarianreforms (through redistribution of the vestedland among the poor, encouraging them tobuild up co-operatives, creating agro-economic small-scale industries to employtheir sons and daughters), and the need ofrestoring the industries (jute, tea, engineering,among others) that were closed downthrowing thousands of workers out of jobs.The CPI(M)-led Left Front government alsoremained indifferent to the task of improvingsocial welfare measures in educationand health (the two sectors where the LeftFront government has notched up a miserablerecord, what with increasing dropoutsin primary education and a steady deteriorationin medical ser vices). It thus fails tomeet even the standards of the welfarestate model of the social democratic parties.These accumulated failures are nowcoming home to roost. Faced by growingunemployment among the rural youth(victims of the Left Front’s negligence ofthe need to train them in employable vocations), and the crisis of the small farmer sunable to sustain their small plots, theCPI(M) is desperately looking for a wayout. Opting for industrialisation within theneo-liberal framework, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya trots out the argument – there isthe need for creating jobs for which industrieshave to be set up, and since the statecannot mobilise capital for establishingthem, the economy has to be opened up toprivate entrepreneurs like the Tatas andmultinationals to invest in West Bengal. Hehas spelt out the implications in unambiguousterms: these big corporations will guide all decision-making, the building ofinfrastructure will be oriented towards the promotion of their business interests, andinvestment in health and education will bemade only if surplus resources are available.The much touted promise of increasingavailability of jobs is again rele vantonly for the technically skilled educated middle class youth, while the younger generation from the peasant homes whose requirements for training in skills had been neglected all these years by the Left governmentwill lag behind, and can at bestwork as temporary labourers in the newindustrial sites that are being set up (as ishappening in the Tata Nano factory site inSingur, where the local farmers wereoffered, as compensation for the acquisitionof their lands, jobs of manual labourersto cons truct the boundary wall of theproposed factory, but once the constructionwas over, they were fired).
Alternative Options
Is the CPI(M)’s present rationalisation ofcapitalism an inevitable fallout from itsoriginal decision to form governmentswithin the prevalent economic systemand constitutional structure? One neednot come to that fatalistic conclusion ifone remembers that alternative optionswere – and are – still available within thissystem. In fact, a number of leftist economistsand social activists in West Bengalhad been urging for years for popularmeasures from below, like small-scaleagro-industrial projects, promotion ofpoultry, milk cooperatives, cultivation ofselected commercial and high-yieldingcrops, building of infrastructure like roadsand bridges, all of which could provide year-round employment to the rural people.Further, reopening of the closed factories and re-employment of their workers, attemptsto run them by forming workers’ cooperatives and marketing networks,diversification in the manufacturing of products, etc, could have been the alternativemeasures in the industrial sector.They had been stressing the need for
decentralisation of powers and democratic participation of local people inprogramme formulation, along with therevival of the planning, welfare and regulatoryfunctions of the state for the coordinationof economic activity and provisionof basic social welfare services like healthand education. Curiously enough, none ofthese alternative proposals found mentionin the deli berations of the January 14-16conference of the CPI(M)’s West Bengalstate committee. The one-point agendaof industrialisation by putting only themarket in command took the centre stage,reaffirming the self-righteous approach ofthe party leadership. In fact, its refusal tolisten to suggestions of substitute optionsfor development was evident much earlierwhen it set its goons on Medha Patkar and other social activists who opposedthe Singur and Nandigram model of industrialisation.“Many bourgeois leaders”, says the CPI(M) programme, “demagogically use socialist phraseology for deceiving the masses”.These words might well fit the party’s general secretary Prakash Karat when he talks about the CPI(M)’s goal of fighting against neoliberal forces and protecting the interests of the poor, while wholeheartedlypatting on the back of his West Bengal comrade who is turning the goal upsidedown – protecting neo-liberal forces and fighting against the interests of the poor.