[Reader-list] [The Moderates] Ramchandra Guha is Wrong

[Anil Bhatia]

Mani sir,

Not sure about the other points, but for sure, the 3rd point is true - West
Bengal remains one amongst the most backward states.

As I sit typing this in Kolkata, I can't wait to get back to Mumbai, a city
I otherwise despise, being from Delhi. But Kolkata makes Mumbai look
remarkably good.

It is ironical that history would record Left Front's biggest achievement as
land reforms (Operation Barga), and record its biggest failure as forced
land grab (Singur, Nandigram).

While it is stupid of mainstream media to write off Left post the last West
Bengal elections, it indeed would take a bit of 'revisionism' on part of the
Left to bounce back.

Regards,

Anil

On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 9:04 PM, A. Mani <a.mani.cms at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.
>
> ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
>
>
>  Best
>
> A. Mani
>
>
>
> --
> A. Mani
> ASL, CLC,  AMS, CMS
> http://www.logicamani.co.cc
>
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