[Reader-list] By R.J. Rummel

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

Dear all, dear Pawan,

I totally agree with Pawan Durani that an accounting for the genocidial 
violence unleashed by the regimes that were in power in the Soviet 
Union, and the one that continues to be in power in the Peoples Republic 
of China is necessary.I say this,  as someone who was raised within the 
Communist tradition, and as someone who has no hesitation in saying that 
I continue to hope for a stateless, classless global society, free of 
nations, corporate profit and war, if not in my lifetime, then at least 
in the lifetime of generations to come. Everyone has their own vision of 
a better world, I have mine, parts of which or all of which I might 
share with the visions of others, as they might share theirs with mine, 
and I do not see any reason to be apologetic for that vision. I say this 
because I have no shame, or regret in calling myself a Communist. I am 
not now, nor ever have been a member of any communist party, but just as 
I hope it is possible for people to consider themselves Hindu even if 
they were not member of the RSS, or Muslims even if they did not 
necessarily subscribe to a specific jamaat, or Christians who followed 
the example of Christ rather than the doctrine of an organized church, I 
do believe that it is possible to consider oneself a non-party Communist.

Communists, more than anyone else, must deal with, account for and take 
responsibility for the fact that their convictions were perverted and 
held hostage by ruling formations, cliques and classes that led to some 
of the most vicious and ruthless dictatorships known to human history. 
They must account for letting this happen, even when they were 
themselves the first and most frequent victims of these regimes. Their 
being victims of Stalin's purges does not excuse them from the 
responsibility of creating a figure like Stalin in the first place. The 
totalitarian nightmare of Stalin's USSR, Mao's China, Caesescu's Rumania 
or Hoxha's Albania are not a legacy that anyone can be proud of. Nor can 
we be proud of the intrigue and petty authoritarianisms that mark the 
Trotskyite and Maoist or Marxist Leninist formations that continue to 
function, after a fashion, in our midst.

  I say this knowing that the majority of those who perished in Stalin's 
gulag, were, Communists. When Leon Trotsky ordered soldiers to fire on 
the striking sailors of the Kronstadt, he was a communist sanctioning 
the murder of communist militants. The millions who died in Siberia, who 
went to forced labour camps, were Communists. They went to the firing 
squad singing the Internationale - a song whose jaunty tune still has 
the capacity to lift  my spirits on a glum day. And I love to whistle it 
when it rains.Still, It breaks my heart to hear it sung, because it is a 
song sung by executioners and by those that thyt executed, but hey, who 
said the world was a simple place where it all works out in the end? 
Everything is messy, and each of our histories is part of the mess.

All this happenned, in my opinion, because, the nationalist logic of 
'Socialism in One Country'  and/or a tragic romance with the 
intoxication of newly won state power perverted the deeply democratic 
and internationalist elan of the global communist movement beyond 
imagination. From a movement that actively desired the withering away of 
the state, it became a political formation that presided over the 
withering away of society, of everything but the state. This is an 
object lesson for all revolutionaries and insurgents. Yesterday's 
fighters for freedom often become tomorrows prison wardens. I know of no 
exceptions.

The logic of Capital is not necessarily a logic of private property. 
Advanced forms of Capitalism actually abolish private property, 
concentrating socially produced wealth in giant coroporate abstractions 
far more efficiently than 'nationalization' by so called socialist 
regimes can. What happenned in the Soviet Union, China and the erstwhile 
so called 'Peoples Democracies' was not 'socialism, or communism' but a 
monstrous amalgam of Capital and the State in the name of saving, yes, 
the Nation State. That is why there is no contradiction between the 
hyper capitalism that prevails in China today and the twisted dialectic 
of Mao Zedong thought. That is why Stalinists adore big dams, nuclear 
power and nuclear weapons to the extent that they do.

Our own so called Communist Parties are no exception. I would like to 
illustrate this with an example that has current relevance, which has 
been gestured to even in the link that Pawan Durani has forwarded in one 
of his recent postings, and which might be of interest to some - I am 
talking of the current impasse over what is being called the 'nuclear 
deal' with the United States of America. Having deceived most people in 
this country, that they were against the Nuclear Weapons programme, they 
(the mainstream parliamentary left, led by the two so called Communist 
Parties) have now come around to a public posture of trying to create a 
protective 'fence' around our own weaponization programme, which is what 
they mean as 'strategic autonomy' under the banner of national 
sovereignty. In doing this, they have come full circle, and are now 
saying more or less exactly what the BJP has been saying all along. They 
are also in the same ideological boat as the ruling juntas in Islamabad, 
Tehran and Tel Aviv, which are also committed, overtly and sometimes 
covertly, to their own 'patriotic' nuclear deterrents.

I am not an advocate of the 1-2-3 Treaty that will lock India locked 
into a military embrace with the United States. I am totally opposed to 
it, and I think that it will put us all in harm's way. But I think that 
the only way to oppose it is to insist on de-nuclearization - by arguing 
for the scrapping of the nuclear weapons fantasies of our ruling elites 
and by creating a sharp and coherent opposition to the idea of India 
becoming some sort of super power in Asia. This process (of achieving 
super power status) will being untold misery on the people who live in 
this country and in Asia at large. The greedy fantasy of energy security 
which makes our ruling elites salivate at the thought of sending Indian 
troops to guard 'indian' interests and assets in central asia is 
something that sends shivers down my spines. For the sake of all our 
futures, I hope such dreams are never realized. They will lead us 
straight towards war, and disaster.

But our mainstream parliamentary left is as involved in living out this 
fantasy as anyone else is. It's argument for 'strategic autonomy' means 
that it wants to keep India's arsenal of nuclear weapons, wants to 
strike a patriotic pose, and is willing at a pinch, basically to hand 
this country back to the right reaction of the BJP - all in the name of 
proving how nationalist they are. The red in their flags is turning 
slowly to saffron.

The choice that we could be making as a society  is not one of  choosing 
to strike alliances between an Imperialist United States or a fascist 
Iran, or an expansionist China. The only choice worth making is that of 
jettisoning nuclear weapons, demilitarizing South Asia, firstly by 
finding a solution to Kashmir that is acceptable to the majority of the 
people who live there, by making peace with our neighbours, and by 
ending the military occupations of the north eastern territories. It is 
a sign of the poverty of political imaginations in this country today 
that these choices are precisely those that the so called 'left' parties 
are bent on jettisoning but clinging to their new found doctrine of 
'strategic autonomy', which puts them straight in bed, whether they like 
it or not, with the Bharatiya Janata Party.

It was nationalism that perverted the communist ideal. That made the 
Soviet Union travel a distance from being the product of a revolution 
that had abolished the standing army to becoming a power that could only 
sustain itself with brute military force, and then not at all.

 From a conviction that held only one thing sacred, and that being that 
the world should have no walls, it became an ideology that built walls 
and the barbed wire fences of the gulag. From a form of political 
culture that privileged the widest liberty, with Rosa Luxemburg stating 
that freedom of expression is not freedom unless it is for those who are 
against us - communist parties travelled a long distance - to presiding 
over the routine suffocation of all dissent with a banal brutality.

And for all this, I hold the virus of nationalism, to a large measure 
responsible. That is why though I have no quarrel with people who use 
the label socialist, communist, or even anarchist to describe my 
positions, I will never agree to be called a nationalist. When you put 
nationalism and socialism together, you get something called National 
Socialism. And effectively, there is little for me to choose between the 
National Socialism that prevailed in Germany from 1933 to 1945 and the 
Socialist Nationalism that prevailed in USSR, for the better part of the 
twentieth century, and that continues to prevail in China today. The 
differences that do exist are not of kind, but of degree.

I am willing to accept the necessity to conduct a personal atonement for 
the millions who perished under regimes that called themselves 
communist.  I personally think that it is the responsibility of anyone 
who calls himself or herself a communist today to undertake to mourn for 
all those who were (or are being) killed or displaced or imprisoned or 
imprisoned in the name of communism, to repent and ask for forgiveness.

Because I am a communist,  I hold nothing higher than humanity - 
ordinary simple humanity - just the worth of human beings as human 
beings, in all their unpredictable, unscriptable variety. Neither 
nations, nor parties, nor god, nor gods, nor any ideal or abstraction of 
progress can be more important than the health and well being of a 
child, or the freedom to do with our time, our leisure and our labour 
power as we see fit. I do not want martyrs or heroes, I want to live my 
life with ordinary people, doing ordinary things. I want no one I love 
or care for to have to die for the sake of a flag or any abstract idea, 
because flags and abstractions  cannot feed, clothe or shelter human 
beings with dignity or liberty for all.

This does not mean that we abandon politics, it just means that we work 
very hard to fashion a politics that does not demand the sacrificial 
offering of our humanity on a daily, hourly basis. I am willing to 
engage with anyone, no matter what they believe in, who is sincerely 
committed to this enterprise. But it does require us all to take a long 
and hard look at ourselves. I want to know which political ideology, 
which nation, which religious faith has not, in the history of humanity 
demanded and received its due in blood. Everyone can claim the status of 
victims for themselves, and everyone has the blood of others on their 
hands. And the arithmetic of who has killed more, and who has killed 
less is far less interesting than the more difficult and demanding task 
of accounting for the actions of the executioners on your own side.

What I want to know is, will those who call themselves nationalists 
undertake to mourn for all those who have been killed in order that 
their beloved and sacred nations remain the fictions that they are on 
the map of the world?

For me, the communist idea remains what it was for the Communards of the 
Paris Commune, for the partisans of the Petersburgh Soviet and for the 
Workers and Peasant Councils of Republican Spain - that of a world, and 
a social order where people, not corporations or governments, control 
the relations they enter into in order to produce the things that make 
life possible and worth living. A world without armies, states, police 
forces, intelligence agencies, weapons traders, or factories that 
pollute the earth or poison peoples bodies. A world without alienated 
and alienating labour. Where each of us labour according to our 
capacities and receive the fruits of  our labour according to our 
neends. Where we begin to move from the shackles of necessity to the 
emancipation of desire.

For this reason, I am willing most of all, to look hard and long at the 
legacies that I have inherited, and subject them to the sharpest 
possible critique if they are found poor and wanting in relation to the 
dream of a just and free world. If this list is a place where we can all 
begin this process of reflection on the limitations and areas of 
darkness within all that we profess and have inherited -  whether as 
liberals, islamists, hindutva-vadis, secularists, nationalists, cynics 
and sceptics then it will be worth the provocation that Pawan Durani has 
put before us. I thought I would rise to the bait, and risk making a 
fool of myself, if necessary. Of course, if we all think that none of us 
have anything to reflect on or atone for, I, and I hope Pawan, will be 
sorely disappointed.

Your turn Pawan. Tell me what you think is wrong with the fact that the 
Indian state killed so many thousands of people in Kashmir. Do you think 
  there is anything wrong? Or would you like to pass over these 
thousands of deaths in silence.

I have heard more than the odd person with separatist sentiments in 
Kashmir make the gesture of apology for the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits, 
and for the death of Kashmiri pandits, for the destruction of their 
property. Sometimes the sadness and regret in that apology is a ritual, 
but often it is not fake. I walked with a friend in Srinagar one night 
in the vicinity of the Khanqah and mosque of Shah Hamadan, and he 
pointed out to me a place close by the bank of the river where a shrine 
once stood, and then we both stood in front of it in silence for a 
while. And he tried to find words to talk about the strange days of 
1989. It wasn't easy for him, and I did not make it easy for him, but 
the conversation did not damage our friendship.

He told me what I knew already, about the way Jagmohan, then then 
governor of Jammu and Kashmir, engineered  the exodus, about the rumours 
and panic that was spread through the grapevines carefully cultivated by 
the state, and about the painful slogans in the streets. All this I 
know, we all know. But he also said, "It was wrong of the state to make 
them go, It was wrong on the part of those that created the climate of 
fear (and he meant the separatists, or those within their ranks who had 
undoubtedly attacked some high profile Kasmiri Pandit individualsr, and 
it was wrong on their part for them to go and to leave us at the mercy 
of the state, but it was also wrong on our part that we did so little to 
make them stay".

I want you to think carefully and tell me if you can respect this 
feeling of loss? I agree that you have every reason for your pain, but 
what if I said, abandoning those who were your neighbours also gave them 
no opportunity to heal or at least address your pain. Have you ever 
considered what it is like to be yourself, when someone who is not you, 
who is the other, is no longer there to speak to, to be with, to be 
different from? What is the strange loss we feel when the person we 
think is our most intense antagonist leaves us alone to be with 
ourselves? For many Kashmiri's who remain where they have always lived, 
who did not have places to go to where the Indian army would not hound 
them, perhaps It comes from a strange and difficult to explain sense of 
loss at seeing the abandonment of their neighbours home. Perhaps It 
comes from the unease of knowing that no 'azadi' will ever be complete 
if it is won at the cost of the exodus of a minority. Sometimes it comes 
from the memory of a Pandit school master in a village school who 
suddenly disappeared on that night that you all mention.

I always find it interesting to come to that point when someone says 
that  his or her people have done something wrong. Often it means 
risking being called a traitor. I think in our times, traitors are 
saints. Imperfect, flawed, awkward saints, but the only kind that I can 
light a candle to. So all heretics are my friends. They make it possible 
for people in the camps of their enemies undertake necessary acts of 
counter-treason. When two traitors meet from opposite sides, there is 
the possibility of an encounter very different from the kind that 
normally gets scripted by the security forces of our beleagured 
republic. There is the possibility of an unpredictable conversation. 
This list, over the past few days, has been the setting for some 
unpredictable conversations, I do not wish them to end.

I am a traitor, and many communists will call me one for saying the 
things that I have said in this post in response to your provocation. 
But then I think that sometimes, treason is the only honorable thing.

However,  I have yet to come across a Indian nationalist ideologue who 
believes Kashmir to be an indivisible part of India express any regret 
over the thousands of Kashmiri Muslims who were killed by Indian 
soldiers or who disappeared in the nineties in Kashmir,  or about the 
thousands who were tortured or imprisoned, because all this happenned to 
keep Kashmir's within the map of India. For them, this violence was 
justified and necessary. Those deaths were necessary.

You may meet many communists who will say that the killing of millions 
in the Soviet Union or in China was justified and necessary. I am not 
one of them, and there are many others like me. But I am still looking 
for the Indian nationalist who is willing to say sorry for Kashmir, for 
Manipur, for Nagaland.

Perhaps you could be the one who makes a beginning. Try it out in your 
head and tell me what it feels like. Reject it if you want, but at least 
try it out. And tell me what it feels like for a moment to be a little 
larger than your own corner of the pain that engulfs us all. Please do 
share your feeling with this list.

regards,

Shuddha






Pawan Durani wrote:
> With the passing of communism into history as an ideological alternative to
> democracy it is time to do some accounting of its human costs.
> 
> http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/COM.ART.HTM
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