Things are back to being the same again in the CPI(M)’s house as they were before the recent rout the party has suffered, first in the 2009 general elections and then in 2011 from its two pocket states of West Bengal and Kerala. The party’s “congress’ at Kozhikode had held out the hope that the correct lessons would be drawn by the Marxists at their increasing irrelevance.
At the end of the three-day meeting, all the old leaders who were responsible for its downhill journey are back again in power. The CPI(M) has amended its constitution to limit the term of its office-bearers to just three years. But party boss Prakash Karat, who should take the blame for the ideological mistakes that drove the Marxist party out of even its ghettos, is back for the third term as the general secretary. So is another upholder of ideological orthodoxy, Biman Bose. But Budhhadeb Bhattacharya, former chief minister of West Bengal, has also been retained — much against his wishes — in the Politburo, the Marxists’ high command. Bhattacharya did not attend the party meeting “for health reasons”.
Former Kerala chief minister V S Achuthananadan, who wanted to be in the party’s high command, was successfully kept out by his state rival, Pinarayi Vijayan, who is facing serious corruption charges. And along with him, all his cronies from Kerala are also in.
The return of these old guards is a sign that nothing changes in the CPI(M). There isn’t an answer why the party was swept out in West Bengal so decisively. The party congress was expected to provide not just a review of the election results, but a complete revisit of its ideological ground.
The class conflict that is the bedrock of Marxism finds no takers even among the workers in whose name Marx to Lenin and Stalin—in fact all Marxists—claim to speak. Once a bastion of the Marxists, the growing middle class office-goers and professional classes are leaving not only trade unions but also the Marxist organisations themselves. Only a few colleges and universities like JNU are still clinging on to the Marxist model and revolution.
The inability of Indian communists to come out of their ideological shell was once again witnessed when the Marxist party congress criticised the Chinese communist party for its promotion of the market economy. By almost every account, if anything has transformed China into a front-ranking economic power with nearly two trillion dollars held as foreign exchange surplus, it is the resort to market economy after communist leader Deng dumped the socialism of Mao in 1976.
The Marxist party’s blinkers were also on exhibit when in their Kozhikode resolution they spoke repeatedly of the US imperialism as the biggest threat to the world order. Compare that with the type of reception US President Barack Obama is receiving in such “communist” countries as Vietnam, where they look to him as a counterweight to the big brother China who is threatening to take over their assets in the South China Sea.
The only reality the CPI(M) has confessed to is the end of the old ditty on the Third Front—the political platform for the national power through a non-Congress, non-BJP alliance with other parties. Beyond West Bengal and Kerala, the Communists—both CPI and CPI(M)— are at the mercy of the local parties for a seat either in the legislative assemblies or in Parliament. So for the CPI(M) to lead a Third Front, especially after losing power in both West Bengal and Kerala, would be moonshine. By abandoning the Third Front platform as a jumping ground for power at the Centre, the Communists have only admitted that they would be for long in the periphery of national decision making and growing irrelevance of their outdated ideology.
;E-mail the writer at punjbalbir@gmail.com.
;The opinions expressed in this column are the author’s own