The Swing Back - Tridib Chaudhuri
Was the history of the Communist Party to be looked upon then as nothing but a string of ideological and political errors, a succession of petty-bourgeois opportunist deviations and anti Marxist betrayals of the working-class cause? Logically such a conclusion seems almost irresistible? And, what about those heroic rank-and-file fighters who were ordered to the firing line and fell fighting, facing machine-gun bullets and rifle volleys unflinchingly in the conviction that they were sacrificing their lives for carrying out the correct revolutionary line of the party, in order to prepare the grounds for a People's Democratic Revolution and the rule of toilers? It now seems that they were as a matter of fact following a "petty-bourgeois" "opportunist" line, and were sacrificed only to satisfy the whims of certain wrongheaded leaders. Besides, what about the scores of militant working class and peasant cadres who had to take upon themselves the terrible fury of police and military onslaughts and were literally massacred at the altar of the mistaken lines of policy of the politically imbecile leadership of a party which only knows how to replace one mistake by another?
Who were to pay for these lives and recompense their sacrifice? Why could not the international leadership intervene earlier? Why it went on irresponsibly shouting approval at every step taken by CPI, Balabushevich fashion, and encouraging the utterly irresponsible CPI leadership to persist doggedly in justifying their terrific mistakes and the wanton waste of human lives and resources at the disposal of the party? Why now, when all this mischief is done and eyes kept deliberately shut all the time, is the rank-and-file worker being asked to repudiate unceremoniously the very same leadership who had "earned the gratitude of the entire working class", were they told to rescue the Communist Party from the rut of Joshi-ite right-reformism and class-collaboration with a "new revolutionary" Marxist- Leninist formulation of the task before the party and by their programme of the "Democratic Front"? There was no proper explanation.
The allegedly right-reformist Joshi-ite leadership was repudiated in the name of a fundamental 'shift' in the international correlationship of forces between the Soviet Union and Anglo- America after the war, of a new alignment of classes both on the national and the international plane which joshi failed to evaluate properly or to take note of. But what is the 'new' shift in international situation which makes the repudiation and denunciation of the Ranadive line historically imperative now?
No satisfactory answer has been vouched by international Stalinism on this score either, uptil now, at least directly.
Stalinist theoreticians in this country-some of them enthusiastic supporters of Ranadive till the other day-seem to think that it is not a question of any new 'shift' in the international alignment of forces having occurred in the meantime. It is more a question of fundamentally misunderstanding the significance of the changes that had taken place in the post-war period, of over- estimating certain aspects and under-estimating others, of running too far ahead of the actual historical possibilities of the situation and a bit too fast. Ranadive, according to his defenders, took into account the post-war division of world forces and the new international situation all right. But he had misunderstood the actual significance of this division and the political consequences to which- it was leading. But if that be really so, why he was not pulled up by the international Stalinist leadership1, or by our national stalinists either, these two years? Or has the Ranadive line, which was relatively correct in 1948, suddenly become incorrect now it 1950, owing to some mysterious 'qualitative' change in the national or international situation? There again, we have no clear cut answer.
The only fact that stands out above everything else is the formulation of anew line of political strategy and tactics for Indian Communists by the Cominform and discarding of the line which held ground for the last two years.
From now onwards this will in its turn be the "new revolutionary line"and the "only correct" Lenin-Stalin line at that. Just as the Ranadive Thesis embodied the "only correct" Marxist-Leninist revolutionary line in February-March 1948, or in the period between 1948-50; just as the Joshi line was the "only correct" line of "concrete" Marxism in the National Front and People's War phases, so now we are again presented with another "correct line"-the author this time being the international Stalinist leadership of the Cominform, as represented by the LPPD- Editorial Board. Who will dare to say that it is not the "true" Marxist-Leninist formulation, till it is repudiated in its turn and replaced by a new formulation of political strategy equally "correct," equally "revolutionary" and having equal claim to "true" Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist wisdom? The CPI, so it seems has the wonderful knack of having been always in the right in the 'immediate present". It always follows the "correct", "scientific" Marxist-Leninist line, the "true" Bolshevik Lenin-Stalin line- with one qualification however, that is, it always does so "in the present." But subsequently it always discovers itself having strayed from the correct Marxist-Leninist path "in the past" and to have committed all sorts of "opportunist" mistakes, right- reformism, left-sectarianism, Trotsky-ism, Titoism and all other crimes known in Stalinist vocabulary.
In 1936-37 Joshi, made wiser by his new-found enlightenment from the Dutt-Bradley thesis (the Programme which was then drafted for the CPI by Ben Bradley and R. P. Dutt of the Communist Party of Great Britain) found the past policy of the party since 1934 to have consisted of a series of ultra-left, sectarian and isolationist mistakes, which prevented the party from taking up its rightful place in the national mass-struggle against imperialism, as its builder, initiator and principal leader. In those days, he claimed to have found the "only correct" revolutionary path-the path of "United National Front" with reformist Congress bourgeoisie. The National front tactics of class- collaboration and unconditional support of the bourgeois-reformist Gandhi-Nehru leadership inside the Congress was then forced down the throats of the party as the only correct application of the Anti-Fascist Popular Front tactics formulated by Dimitrov in the Seventh World Congress of the Comintern. This anti-Fascist masquerade was however given up as soon as the Soviet Union entered into a Non-Agression Pact with Nazi Germany and the war started. So long as the war remained confined between the Nazi and Fascist powers on one side and Anglo-French imperialism on the other,-it was regarded as an imperialist war with Great Britain and France (and not Nazi Germany!) as the main aggressors. After the occupation of Western Poland by the Nazis, and the entry of the Soviet Army in Eastern Poland by aggreement with Nazi Germany, Britain and irance were indicated as "aggressive war-mongers who having taken the path of war do not want to leave it"-because they had rejected the Nazi proposals for peace on the basis of the recognition of Soviet- German occupation of Poland. It continued in this way for the first 21 months of the war.
With the attack against Soviet Union by Nazi Germany in June 1941, we all know how the character of the war became "qualitatively" changed for communists all over the world. In India the CP persisted, for the first few months, in opposing the war-efforts of British imperialism without taking into account this "qualitative" change in the character of the war from that of an imperialist war to an "Anti-Fascist People's War". In November- December 1941 the leadership obtained the new authoritiative version of the "correct" Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist line from CPGB by way of Ceylon, and came to realise that they had been pursuing a fundamentally mistaken line these six months, a line of "Jawharlalist"-nationalist deviation2 from the "true" path of Lenin Stalin and internationalism!
This deviation was however corrected in time and the right royal People's War alliance with Anglo-American imperialism came into operation from November 1941.
The People's War line of collaboration with imperialism, and that with the reformist national bourgeoisie continued to be regarded as "unmistakably correct" as late as December 1947 i.e. for more than two years after the war. Between December 1947 and March 1948 however the party again came by new revolutionary enlightenment and discovered that the line of policy formulated by Joshi in 1941, and followed unhesitatingly by the party rank and file for a period of more than five years, was fundamentally incorrect and anti-Marxist. It constituted nothing but a string of right-reformist class-collaborationist deviations leading practically to a line of "abject surrender to the national bourgeoisie and a marked decrease in the sharpness of the Party's struggle against imperialism." It led the party to think in terms of a "peaceful development of independence and socialism and to abjure struggle" etc.
Taking the cue from Zhadanov and the Cominform, the party was however enabled to overcome these "gross reformist deviations" this time also, and forge another 'correct' Marxist line in 1947-48 under the leadership of Ranadive. Armed with this rediscovery of the "Correct" revolutionary line, it went into action with a firm faith in its "Marxism-Leninism" and "full of confidence" in the revolutionary spirit of the masses.
But even this revolutionary line now transpires in retrospect to have been a fundamentally anti-Marxist, anti-Lenin-Stalin, left sectarian opportunist line!
1. Soon after the Second Congress of the CPI in Calcutta the 'Bolshevik', the theoretical organ of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, contained an article by M. Alexyev in its issue of June 15, 1948 which reviewed the decisions of the Congress and may be said to have made alternative formulations on certain points e. g. on the role of the Indian bourgeoisie.It spoke of the Indian big bourgeoisie only as collaborating with Anglo- American imperialism. The Calcutta Thesis did not specially mention the 'big' bourgeoisie and gave an impression that it was up against the entire Indian bourgeoisie as collaborationist. Mr. P.C. Joshi, thinks that it ought to have been regarded as a warning to the new CPI leadership against their Ultra-leftism. But unfortunately the whole article of M. Alexyev was interpersed with such encomiums for the CPI and the Second Congress that it could hardly be regarded as such by any body without much hair-splitting interpretation of terms (Sec: "Views by P.C. Joshi" No. 1).
2. Because Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru wanted to oppose British imperialism and its war efforts in spite of his professed sympathy for the 'democratic' Anglo-US Soviet coalition against Nazi Germany & Japan. This was due to Jawaharlal's 'nationalist' weakness. The continued oppoisition ofthe CPI, during the first five months of the Soviet-German war, to SU's 'democratic' ally Britain was likewise put down to 'nationalist' deviations.