(This is the second part of the elaborated version of the speech given by Comrade Vinod Mishra at the Central Party School in October this year. The first part was carried in our December issue.)
Next, I would like to comment on certain questions that have come up in the discussion here. One comrade has opined that the tactics of revolutionary opposition is not suitable in the context of slow growth of revolutionary movement. This tactics should rather be applied in conditions of upsurge. I think there is a basic flaw in this argument. ‘Opposition’ is a parliamentary category and revolutionary opposition is the specific tactics that a revolutionary communist party adheres to in parliamentary struggles. In times of revolutionary upsurge, revolution itself and not the revolutionary opposition will be the immediate agenda before the Party. In other words, during revolutionary upheavals parliamentary struggles may become obsolete and quite possibly the election boycott or even dispensing with the bourgeois parliament may become the Party’s action slogan. Obviously, when there will be no parliamentary struggles or even no parliament, the category of opposition too, revolutionary or otherwise, shall cease to exist. This is quite easy to understand. It is only in the present conditions, when the parliamentary struggles acquire quite an important position in Party’s tactics, does the question of revolutionary opposition arise and this determines Party’s basic orientation in parliamentary struggles. There should be no confusion on this score. Its application, however, becomes quite a complex affair with Party’s growth in electoral support and parliamentary strength.
Well, using parliament as a propaganda platform is a common refrain and there can be no dispute on that. In real life situations, however, you confront a whole range of practical problems. There comes up the question of seat adjustments and election alliances with what is called ‘like-minded parties’, another parliamentary term. Then there is the question of forming blocs within the parliament. Our representatives there have to take definite stands on specific issues and bills and participate in voting. We have to seek allies and also distinguish between various bourgeois formations. Should our representatives confine themselves to moving adjournment motions, rushing to the well of the house and staging walkouts? Or shall they also engage in business-like discussion, move amendments, demand constitutional reforms and put forward alternative drafts in the form of private member bills etc.? What shall be their role as members of various parliamentary committees as well as constituency-level planning and developmental bodies? All these belong to the domain of reforms and the moot point is to perform all these roles within the ambit of revolutionary opposition. This is a million-dollar question on which hinges the whole future of the Party.
The fundamental mistake that leads the communist parties to the royal road of parliamentary cretinism, popularly known as degeneration, is negating the essential bourgeois character of the parliament and forgetting that the given parliament is nothing but the political superstructure of the bourgeois society. If you consider parliament just a fraud, an artificial creation of exploiters devised to befool the masses, you’ll actually be fooling yourselves and no one else. It is so because such simplistic ideas will prevent you from studying and analysing the dynamic of the bourgeois society and thus devising specific slogans and tactics. You’ll end up in dismissing and abusing the parliament in harshest of terms without however making any impact on its health. Such phrasemongerings are aptly called infantile disorder.
On the other hand, it is more serious a deviation if the parliament is considered a non-class or supra-class institution where the proletariat has just to enter, attain the majority and then wield it for the socialist transformation of the society. Parliament operates within the ambit of the bourgeois constitution and in thousand and one ways is attached to the strings of capital. It is well-nigh impossible for the proletariat to attain a majority in the parliament and we have seen through our experiences how the whole election system is tilted in favour of strong power groups and in favour of moneybags and how tough it is for revolutionary left to win every seat.
Still, this is not my main contention. For the argument’s sake, even if it is presumed (in a certain exceptional situation let us grant this as a real possibility) that the proletariat can attain majority in the parliament, the question still remains as to whether the socio-economic enslavement of the proletariat can be done away with, or in other words, can the foundations of the bourgeois society be altered in any fundamental way. Marxism answers it in the negative. The best of the communist governments with the noblest of intentions can only undertake certain reforms of the bourgeois system and nothing more than that. Proletariat cannot use the given, readymade state machinery to achieve its mission. The old state has to be smashed and a new state machinery has to be created. This declaration as recorded in the Communist Manifesto, after the bitter lessons of Paris commune and elaborated in Lenin’s State and Revolution remains the cornerstone of the Marxist theory of state. Incidentally, even in a socialist society which operates on the principle of from each according to his capacity and to each according to his work, the element of bourgeois right does persist and Lenin once even described the socialist state as the bourgeois state without the bourgeoisie. Only with the principles of from each according to his capacity and to each according to his need can the bourgeois right be dispensed with altogether. But that means ushering in a communist society where the state itself withers away.
So the whole debate about parliamentary Vs. extra-parliamentary path of revolution is irrelevant simply because there doesn’t exist any parliamentary path. Proletarian revolution essentially means dispensing with bourgeois state including the parliament. Obviously therefore, there cannot exist a parliamentary road to revolution. It can only exist on the basis of very rejection of the essence of revolution. Proletarian revolution creates a proletarian state along with its own representative assembly. This representative assembly shall bring to full play the democratic participation of broad masses in running the state affairs and combine within a single entity the legislative and executive functions of the state; in short, a new political superstructure that corresponds with the new society.
The whole communist tactics about parliament revolves around its utilisation to this or that extent and in the process creating conditions for its eventual negation in favour of a qualitatively different form of representative assembly.
The question of peaceful or violent revolution has of course been discussed in Marxist tactics but this is a very different question and has nothing to do with the so-called debate of parliamentary Vs. non-parliamentary path. Peaceful revolution, an exceptional and the rarest of the rare possibilities has been given a due thought in Marxist theory of revolution and in certain special circumstances of the balance of class forces. Marx talked of such a possibility in America when standing army and bureaucracy had not taken shape there. Lenin envisaged such a possibility during the February Revolution. Such a possibility also arose in China after the successful conclusion of anti-Japanese war and Mao advanced the proposal of ending the civil war and forming a coalition government with Chiang Kai Shek. None of these possibilities, however, materialised into an actuality. Still, in the realm of theory, Marxism does not altogether reject this possibility.
Here it must be understood that a peaceful revolution is not synonymous with a parliamentary coup. This still entails dispensing with the bourgeois state lock, stock and barrel. If revolution would have succeeded peacefully in Russia in February, would its significance have been any less than October Revolution? Moreover, the actualisation of this possibility, if at all that takes place, is crucially dependent upon the maximum state of preparedness of the proletariat including its armed might to take on the reactionary challenge. Devoid of this preparation peaceful revolution is a utopian dream that will only result in more severe a bloodbath of the proletariat as witnessed in Indonesia and Chile.
Therefore when our Party programme talks of peaceful revolution as an exceptional possibility that should neither be equated with parliamentary path nor should be interpreted as any slackening in the state of preparedness. In fact, more a party is prepared to go all-out for the non-peaceful option, better can it put to use any possible situation of a peaceful changeover. Peaceful revolution is equivalent to enemy surrendering without a fight and one can easily imagine how exceptional and at what level of our preparedness can it be possible.
Now some people first turn the exceptional possibility of peaceful revolution into a generalised one. And then equate peaceful revolution with the parliamentary path and spread the illusion that the proletariat by gaining parliamentary majority can alter the basic foundations of bourgeois society and usher in socialism. All this is rubbish and nothing but revisionism.
We face a whole barrage of criticism by so-called ML factions who accuse us of giving up almost all original ML positions and moving towards what they call neo-neo-revisionism. They accuse us of revising the Party programme to the extent of making it almost the same as that of CPI(M) and speculate that we are preparing to merge into CPI(M). Some charge us of craving to join the Left Front for sharing the spoils and brand us as official Naxalites. They have been predicting all this now for so many years but how do the things stand today? Neither have we joined the Left Front nor merged into CPI(M). On the contrary, we have revived the Party at the national level, reestablished it as a major trend in the left movement and emerged as the principal rival to the CPI(M)’s hegemony in the left camp. And all this we have accomplished on the strength of powerful movements of rural poor in the countryside where we are facing the powerful wrath of feudal forces, their private armies, the police and the political establishment, right from BJP to CPI(M). In majority of the cases, this resistance struggle assumes militant and armed dimensions with the participation of broad masses. This is the essential spirit of Naxalbari and I reiterate only our Party and our Party alone is carrying it forward.
Anyway, with the changing times and changing context we have indeed made major revisions in our tactics. This is perfectly natural and rather the sign of a living organism. Every living body reacts to the changing environment and adapts itself accordingly to continue to live and grow. Only deadbodies don’t react to changing environment, or in other words, a living body that fails to adapt itself gradually becomes extinct.
I must insist that we have only revised certain of our slogans and tactics but our strategic perceptions remain the same. Naxalbari continues to remain our guiding spirit and whatever tactical changes we make, they are made within its revolutionary framework. We have made tactical changes in our party line first of all because objective conditions have made them imperative and secondly because they put us on a favourable terrain to expose the fallacy of CPI(M). For example, instead of rejecting the possibility of communists forming government at state levels in certain states, in certain cases, we have raised the debate to the level of two possible utilisations of such a government. One, to act as the centre of mobilisation of workers and peasants, of playing revolutionary opposition vis-a-vis central power and of precipitating the crisis of the bourgeois parliamentary system and the other, of gradual absorption into the bourgeois-landlord system, the path of social-democracy of CPI(M). This debate on tactics at this juncture when due to a long stint in power the LF government has lost much of its shine and is increasingly exposing its reactionary features, is of crucial importance in enforcing a new polarisation within left ranks.
Naxalbari had made the fundamental division between revolutionary and opportunist wings of Indian communist movement. No one can obliterate this fundamental division. But mere repetition of all this is not going to help us in any way and is likely to degenerate into abstract phrasemongering. Necessary tactical changes that our Party made has helped us, after a long gap, to regain initiative against social democracy at the ground level.
Social-democratic practice of CPI(M) is heading towards a blind alley and its contradictions are increasingly coming to the fore. Take the recent case of serious division in party leadership over the issue of joining UF government or the ongoing debates on the characterisation of UF, on party’s tactics of aligning with bourgeois parties, on party’s stagnation in parliamentary arena and failure to advance in the Hindibelt, on tactics towards regional autonomy movements etc. All these point to developing fissures in the party. All this demands raising to new levels the ongoing polemic between revolutionary and opportunist wings of the Indian communist movement and thus affecting a new polarisation among left ranks. Our Party is precisely doing that and tactical revisions have stood us in good stead on this score.
I don’t say that this is going to be an easy affair. Social democrats too make adaptations to ensure their unity and influence revolutionary ranks. The struggle that began from 1967 thus goes on and will assume newer and complicated forms and will also determine our relations with CPI(M) (or sections within CPI(M)) in the coming days. What shape this relationship will assume in practical terms is difficult to foretell but one thing is certain that CPI(M) and CPI(ML) shall continue to remain principal ideological adversaries in the Indian communist and left movement, each trying to out do the other. This I think sums up our vision vis-a-vis social democracy.