[Reader-list] Ramchandra Guha is Wrong

[A. Mani]

>From http://www.pragoti.in/node/4442

Ramchandra Guha is Wrong

Subhanil


Ramchandra Guha is undoubtedly a very popular historian within the
English speaking classes in India. He is at the same time a public
intellectual who participates in debates on contemporary issues of
national importance, giving many interesting perspectives. Recently,
his attention has fallen on the Left and particularly the CPI(M),
after the defeat of the Left in Kerala and West Bengal. He has tried
to analyze the defeat of the Left Front in West Bengal in an article
published in the magazine Caravan, dated June 1, 2011. This is an
attempt to refute the position of Ramchandra Guha on the politics and
ideology of CPI(M), as articulated in the above-mentioned article.



Guha, in his article, makes many important and unimportant points.
What we will do is to mainly try and capture the ideological points
that he is making vis-a-vis Marxism in general and CPI(M) in
particular and show the vacuity of his arguments.



Untruth No. 1:



Ram Guha: “Marxists are as much in thrall to the printed word, or
Word, as are fundamentalist Muslims or Christians. True, their God had
more than one Messenger, and these messengers wrote multiple Holy
Books. Withal, like Christianity and Islam, Marxism is a faith whose
practice is very heavily determined by its texts. Thus, communists the
world over justify their actions on the basis of this or that passage
in the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin or Mao.”



The above-mentioned quote from Guha's article can hardly be called a
specimen of scientific writing at all. He is just giving his opinion,
as if it is his 'Word' which is the gospel and should be taken at face
value, and the readers as mere mortals have to accept his 'Word'. It
is however the case that his prejudice needs to be challenged and
falsified. Religion is the ultimate justification of the status quo of
the world as it exists with all its injustice and inequality. To
equate Religion and fundamentalism with the theory whose premise is
changing the world is nothing short of intellectual dishonesty. It is
not the case that Ram Guha is not aware of this. But he deliberately
wants to belittle the ideology of Marxism. Secondly, it has always
been the case that Marxism has evolved through the process of
challenging conventional wisdom and the written Word. If Lenin had not
challenged the established Marxist intellectual like Kautsky, the book
Imperialism would never have been written. If Mao Tse Tung had
mechanically adopted the Soviet route to revolution then there would
never have been a Chinese Revolution.



Even in India, there have been many debates within Marxists on the
road to revolution, on the correct path to take in Indian context and
so on. Each time, the leading communists in India, particularly the
CPI(M), came up with this position that the Indian revolution must
follow an Indian path and not the Soviet or the Chinese path. In doing
so, the CPI(M) was criticized both by the CPSU as well as the CPC. But
the party steadfastly defended its position in spite of being isolated
at the international level. If Marxism was a religion then such
application of the Marxist principle in a country like India would
have been impossible, since the Indian communists then would have to
choose either the 'Lenin God' of Soviet Russia or the 'Mao God' of
China. Ram Guha believes that such application is like religious
fundamentalism! One can only say that either he is being naive or it
is his prejudice that is speaking not his historian self.



Untruth No. 2



Ram Guha writes that the CPI(M) basically believes in one party rule
and it is averse to multi-party democracy.



This is again a complete falsification of historical facts. The Indian
Left has the history of leading the first democratically elected
communist government in the world in 1957, much before Salvadore
Allende was elected in Chile. In fact, the CPI(M) has the unique
experience of evolving as a communist party, leading movements and
forming governments in a parliamentary democratic set up. Moreover,
the CPI(M) believes that the parliamentary system existing in India is
an advancement for the working people. The Party programme of the
CPI(M) says:



“Although a form of class rule of the bourgeoisie, India's present
parliamentary system also embodies an advance for the people. It
affords certain opportunities for them to defend their interests,
intervene in the affairs of the State to a certain extent and mobilise
them to carry forward the struggle for democracy and social progress.”
(para 5.22)



Further, the CPI(M) programme goes on to argue:



The threat to the parliamentary system and to democracy comes not from
the working people and the parties which represent their interests.
The threat comes from the exploiting classes. It is they who undermine
the parliamentary system both from within and without by making it an
instrument to defend their narrow interests. When the people begin to
use parliamentary institutions for advancing their cause and then move
away from the influence of the big bourgeoisie and landlords, these
classes do not hesitate to trample underfoot parliamentary democracy
as has been done many times in the dismissal of elected state
governments by the Centre. The semi-fascist terror in West Bengal and
Tripura and the naked violation of all constitutional provisions in
these states provide vivid examples of the vicious extent to which the
ruling classes can go. The talk of adopting a Presidential form of
government and truncating parliamentary democracy are authoritarian
symptoms which have grown with the regime of liberalisation and the
increasing pressure of international finance capital. It is of utmost
importance that parliamentary and democratic institutions are defended
in the interests of the people against such threats and that such
institutions are skillfully utilised in combination with extra
parliamentary activities.(para 5.23) (Emphasis mine)




To argue that a party which thinks that 'parliamentary democratic
institutions' should be 'defended in the interests of the people', as
a party that does not believe in multi-party democracy is blatantly
false and deliberately misleading. It is unfortunate that a historian
like Ram Guha has succumbed to his prejudices rather than relying on
facts.



It is true that in the CPI(M) party programme adopted in 1964, it was
mentioned that the People's Democratic State will be run on the basis
of Democratic Centralism. But in the updated party programme of 2000,
this was dropped. In the words of Com. Harkishan Singh Surjeet,



“Another provision made in the updated programme concerns the
multi-party system and the right to form political parties and
associations in the peoples’ democratic stage. It is a new idea that
has been added, particularly the right to form political parties and
associations, freedom of movement and occupation, right to dissent.
These shall be ensured. ”



Ram Guha is busy debating an article written by Com. BTR in 1978, but
has no time to read something that Com. HKS wrote in 2000 and the
updated programme of the party adopted in 2000. It surely does not
befit an historian of Ram Guha's stature.



Untruth No. 3

Ram Guha: “Bengal was once ahead of the rest of India. India’s first
modern social reformers, first modern entrepreneurs, first scientists
of world class, first globally influential writers and filmmakers, all
came from Bengal. On the other hand, Marxism’s sense of its own
superiority is harder to accept. Our scepticism is mandated not so
much by the fall of the Berlin Wall, or by the barbarism and brutality
of communist regimes before the Wall fell, but by domestic and
provincial events. If, after all the advantages that West Bengal
started with, it still lags behind the more advanced parts of India,
surely the blame lies to a large extent with the party that ruled the
state for the past three-and-a-half decades?”



Ram Guha is an historian. But the above quoted passage is an example
of how such reputed historians can completely close their eyes to
historical facts due to their prejudices. Bengal was the first colony
to be set up by the British in India. As a result, Bengal got the
first taste of modernity and capitalism, as a result of which the
first bourgeois values in India, developed in Bengal. This is why the
first social reformers, modern entrepreneurs came from the state. But
what lies beneath this story is a complete pauperization of the
peasantry, resulting in massive famines killing millions of people.
Amartya Sen was witness to one such famine in 1943, which was one of
his major motivations to write the book Poverty and Famine. Even as
late as 1960s, there was a food crisis in West Bengal, resulting in
the historic food movement led by the Left and CPI(M).



All this resulted in huge poverty in West Bengal. According to the
poverty estimates of the Planning Commission rural poverty in West
Bengal was 73.2% in 1973-74, which declined to 28.6% in 2004-05, as
against the decline of poverty at the all-India level from 56.4% in
1973-74 to 28.3% in 2004-05. Urban poverty in West Bengal declined
from 34.7% in 1973-74 to 14.8% in 2004-05, as against the decline of
urban poverty at the all-India level from 49% in 1973-74 to 25.7% in
2004-05. In other words, the Left Front Government in West Bengal
reduced rural poverty by 50 percentage points and urban poverty by 16
percentage points. This achievement has been noted positively even by
the Planning Commission of India. But Ram Guha is completely silent on
this.



Additionally, there was the problem of the partition of India and a
huge influx of refugees to the state. It is the CPI(M) and the Left
Front who fought for the rights of these refugees, who were pushed to
utter destitution. Which past glory of West Bengal is he talking
about? The 1960s and 1970s were witness to massive unemployment,
agrarian impasse, complete break down of educational system. It was
essentially an attack on the working people of West Bengal. The Left
Front Government came into being fighting these attacks. Has he
forgotten these facts? The past glory of West Bengal that he is
referring to is only the glory of the elites and the rich. Ram Guha by
praising such past glory is essentially articulating the angst of the
elites, whose interests were surely harmed by the Left Front
Government.



This is not to argue that West Bengal emerged as the best state in
India, under the leadership of the Left Front. Obviously, there were
faults and problems with the government as well as the party, which
has been accepted by the CPI(M) and Left Front. There was much to be
desired in the performance of West Bengal in education, health,
revenue mobilization, employment etc. However, this should not also
blind a historian from the achievements under the Left Front
government. Moreover, this portrayal of a golden past in West Bengal
before the Left Front came to power exists only in the imagination of
the rich and their spokespersons. For vast majority of the poor people
of the state, the reign of the Left Front was empowering both
politically and economically.



Untruth No. 4

Ram Guha being a historian and public intellectual cannot resist the
temptation of giving some advice to the CPI(M) after the defeat. His
advice is plain and simple-become revisionist, embrace Bernstein! In
other words, the CPI(M) should forget Lenin and go for a social
democratic path.



Prof. Prabhat Patnaik has already written about the vacuity of this
advice. Let me therefore not go into this. Rather, what I would like
to do is to point towards some other problems of Ram Guha's advice.



What does Ram Guha mean when he suggests that the CPI(M) should
embrace revisionism? He says that the CPI(M) should get rid of the
idea of one party rule, embrace the market logic and debunk the myth
of any transition to socialism and rely on the ballot instead. In
other words (since we have already demolished the myth of the CPI(M)'s
belief in one party rule), the basic appeal of revisionism is to
accept the market logic and embrace globalization, albeit with some
riders here and there. Secondly, any idea of a revolution should not
be entertained and only the ballot should be relied upon for any
change.



He condemns CPI(M) for being anti-foreign capital and for not being
market friendly. In the same breath he also condemns the CPI(M) for
not being sensitive to the environmental issues raised by Medha Patkar
and Sunderlal Bahuguna. What he does not understand is that the
environmental issues that are being raised in India (even granting
that the Left might had problems in aligning with them) are a result
of corporate capitalism that exists in the country. The unbridled urge
for higher profit of MNCs and Indian corporates is destroying our
natural resources. Therefore, the fight for environmental protection
and regulation is incomplete if it is not linked with the fight
against neo-liberalism. Ram Guha wants the CPI(M) to become
revisionist and thereby compromise its stand against neo-liberalism,
while on the other hand, he also wants the CPI(M) to resist
environmental degradation. To argue for both is fundamentally
contradictory.



This sort of contradiction arises in people like Ram Guha because at a
theoretical level they simply have no alternative to capitalism.
However, they are liberals and hence they want the capitalist
development in the country to be more humane. This is not possible
under neo-liberalism. The CPI(M) and the organized left represent the
most stringent critique of neo-liberalism in the country. But Ram Guha
also does not want it that way. He wants the CPI(M) to become
revisionist and abandon its positions against corporate led
capitalism. In essence then people like Ram Guha end up siding with
the ruling classes while making noises here and there about the
rapaciousness of corporate capital. It is precisely such theoretical
ambiguities that the Left does not have because of its rooting in
Marxism. Ram Guha's call therefore should not only be rejected but
Marxism should be practised more vigorously by the Left and CPI(M) in
India to emancipate people from the bondage of neo-liberal capitalism.



Secondly, what Ram Guha wants the CPI(M) to do is to forget about any
project of transcending capitalism and rely on multi-party democracy
under a bourgeois parliamentary set up to do whatever can be done for
the people. While it is true that parliamentary democracy does mark an
advancement of the people, the CPI(M) and the Marxists are aware of
the fact that the situation of the people cannot alter fundamentally
without changing the basic class relations in India. This change
cannot be brought about without a project for transcending capitalism.
Ram Guha accuses that Com. BTR and the CPI(M) believe in violent
overthrow of the regime and is against a peaceful transition. This is
however incorrect. The CPI(M) is clear about the mode of bringing this
change. The Party programme says,



“The Communist Party of India (Marxist) strives to achieve the
establishment of people's democracy and socialist transformation
through peaceful means. By developing a powerful mass revolutionary
movement, by combining parliamentary and extra parliamentary forms of
struggle, the working class and its allies will try their utmost to
overcome the resistance of the forces of reaction and to bring about
these transformations through peaceful means. However, it needs always
to be borne in mind that the ruling classes never relinquish their
power voluntarily. They seek to defy the will of the people and seek
to reverse it by lawlessness and violence. It is, therefore, necessary
for the revolutionary forces to be vigilant and so orient their work
that they can face up to all contingencies, to any twist and turn in
the political life of the country.” (para 7.18) (Emphasis mine)



Conclusion

In the aftermath of the defeat of the Left in the West Bengal and
Kerala Assembly elections, attempts are being made to not only
discredit the record of the Left governments but also to prove that
the basic politics and ideology of the Left and CPI(M), in relying on
Marxism is wrong. Ram Guha's article falls in the second category.
When such intellectuals take up the cudgel of advising the left to
become revisionists, it is essential to reassert the revolutionary
legacy of Marxism and expose the prejudices of these intellectuals
against the Left.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________


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A. Mani



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