ON
ELECTORAL POLICY IN INDIA
By Kailas Chandra
Bonbay
The Revolutionary Socialist party has come under criticism from the Trotskyist journal Marxist Outlook because of its participation in electoral coalitions at. the expense of revolutionary-socialist principles. A reply that is not without interest appeared in the November issue of The Call, the official organ of the Central Committee of the RSP.
The editors state that the RSP does not entertain the illusion that. it can win a majority in a state legislature. Further, "the RSP as a Marxist-Leninist party does not believe that it is possible to usher in socialism and to establish the power of the toiling people over the state through bourgeois parliament, howsoever wide the popular franchise on which these elections may be held."
In fact the RSP also rules out the possibility of any left party securing an absolute majority "as a single party" in any state legislature except in Kerala and West Bengal. In these two states, it thinks, the possibility exists of a combination of opposition parties emerging as a majority party and providing a "'leftist' alternative."
Again, the RSP disclaims any illusions. The “anti-Congress united fronts" that have emerged in Kerala and West Bengal, it holds, “are basically nothing but bourgeois~ democratic electoral coalitions." Their aim is either that of "breaking Congress monop~ oly of. power in one or two States," or "“incréasing the proportion [!] of leftist and opposition representation vis-a-vis the Congress within the legislatures."
- The Call further asserts that the RSP certainly does not believe that these elec-— toral fronts "aim at the revolutionary overthrow of capitalist system, not at least directly or immediately.'
Why then. should a self-proclaimed "Marxist-Leninist party" join such "bourgeoisdemocratic electoral coalitions" which are expected to provide only a bourgeois alter- -native to Congress rule basically serving the capitalist system? This question has been raised before the RSP leadership not only by the Socialist Workers party but also by sections of the RSP membership in Kerala and other states._
In Kerala, four district units rebelled against the decision of the leadership to join an opportunist electoral front consisting of the left and right Communist parties and reactionary communal parties like the Muslim League and the Krashak Thozhilali party led-by the one-time anti-Communist Catholic Father Vadakkan. Some of these dissidents have joined the SWP.
The Call offers an ingenious, if not very convincing, answer to the question concerning why the RSP joins opportunistic electoral alliances. It believes that "Neither the level of political consciousness of the masses at large, nor the strength of their class organisations" have reached the stage where the masses demonstrate their "readiness for any kind of revolutionary alternative." Even in Kerala and West Bengal, the masses who are “utterly disgusted and disillusioned with the Congress Party" want, for "a variety of reasons L?]," only to replace it with a "'leftist' alternative"!
The Call, in fact, warns us not to mistake the disillusionment of the masses with the Congress for disillusionment with the "bourgeois democratic parliamentary system" -or with readiness to fight for a "revolutionary alternative." A devastating revelation, indeed!
The Call adds: "The very fact we are facing the fourth general elections in India indicates that the bourgeois democracy (which is really the political basis of capitalism) and capitalism has been stabilised to a considerable extent. To forget this basic fact and to ascribe some imaginary revolutionary character and content to the current political situation in the context of elections would not only be incorrect and unrealistic; it would be taking a very exaggerated romantic view of parliamentary politics verging on what Lenin called ‘parliamentary cretinism. '"
This is the defense offered by the RSP for its electoral aims, which, it maintains, “assume basic political and revolutionary significance in spite of the reformist bourgeois democratic milieu within which it moves in the immediate present and the compromises it is forced to nake."
The key point in this is the contention that capitalism in India has gained
stability. The fact is that even the staunchest apologist politicians would hesitate to affirm this despite the preparations for the fourth general elections.
The bourgeois rulers are in fact haunted by an unprecedented economic crisis facing them. And if what is happening in other underdeveloped countries is any indication, the bourgeois rulers themselves are losing faith in their own "parliamentary institutions" and the tendency in most of these countries is towards military coups.
The spectacular mass movements that erupted in West Bengal and other states, which came close, despite their limitations, to toppling the Congress regimes, do not seem to have registered with the leaders of the RSP, who are now trotting out their theory regarding the stability of Indian capitalism.
But assuming the political situation in the country to be far from revolutionary and the masses under the grip of reformism, even if this were so, how could that justify Marxist-leninists entering what the RSP describes as "“bourgeois-democratic electoral fronts"?
The opportunistic nature of the electoral fronts is described by The Call itself: "It has also to be remembered that none of the major leftist parties, e.g., the CPI-- Left, CPI-Right, SSP or Forward Bloc with which we are associated in the current electoral unity talks have the objective of socialist revolution in their immediate purview. The association of the Muslim league of Kerala with these electoral arrangements...also emphasises the non-socialist reformist character of the current left-—unity moves...Some of the democratic opposition parties like the Bangla Congress, for example in West Ben~ gal, move within the ambit of official Congress ideology: and programme and aim only at the ouster of the official Congress group from power and nothing beyond that.™
Fortunately for the RSP, "unity talks" between the left Communist party of India and its allies on the one hand and the right Communist party of India and Bangla Congress (of rebel Congress party men) on the allocation of seats (not political programme ) have failed in West Bengal and two rival left-sponsored united fronts have emerged. One includes the left CPI and six other left parties, among them the Samyukta Socialist party, the Revolutionary Socialist party, the Revolutionary Communist party, the Socialist United Centre; the other includes the right CPI, the Bangla Congress and the Forward Bloc. Here again there is not much to choose between in the programmatic positions of the opposition electoral fronts that have come up to fight the Congress party at the polls.
The logical extension of the RSP argument is that since all "major leftist" parties are opportunistic, the RSP also has every right to be opportunistic. Because the major left parties do not stand for a socialist revolution, the RSP, which is organisa~ tionally weak should also "compromise" its own programmatic positions. The RSP refuses to endeavour to give a revolutionary socialist lead to the masses and to project a programme of socialist revolution even as part of its election propaganda. It does not even seek to organise a united front of workers and peasants parties as a serious challenge to the bourgeois Congress. This is certainly not revolutionary Marxism but outright opportunisn.
The Stalinist leaders of the two Communist parties are at least somewhat more consistent in participating in multiclass electoral fronts. They do not stand for a socialist revolution in India. Their immediate objective is to achieve a "national democ-— racy" or a "people's democracy on the basis of a four-class bloc that includes the proletariat and the national bourgeoisie. But what about the RSP which claims to stand for the programme of socialist revolution? (In the Indian left movement, the RSP is considered by many to be even "near Trotskyist"; a reputation that is fostered by the fact that on certain problems The Call occasionally reprints articles from the press of the Fourth International.)
. The electoral aims of the RSP, according to The Call editorial, include taking full advantage of the relative democratic freedom allowed during the elections to propagate its view, to increase its effective representation in the legislatures and to join forces with other parties of the "left and democratic opposition" to break the "monopoly of the governmental power" in as many states as possible. In actual practice there is no difference between the opportunist politics of the RSP and that of other left parties. Despite the self-righteous attitude on the question of joining non- Congress coalitions, the RSP is also not opposed to the idea of joining such coalitions to provide an "alternative government" for the people as against the Congress "whenever necessary"!
Despite its organisational weaknesses, the RSP would have certainly made an impact on the revolutionary left and the rank and file of other left parties had it
stuck to the Marxist-Leninist positions as against the horse trading going on in the name of election fronts. What it has achieved in the bargain is not a mere "compromise" with the "reformist bourgeois democratic milieu within which it moves in the immediate present" but a betrayal of Marxism-Leninism itself.
THE GENERAL ELECTIONS IN JAPAN
The general elections in Japan, scheduled for January 29, will be’ watched with interest in many capitals and particularly in Washington, which is worried over the mounting antiwar sentiment among the Japanese people and the attrition of the ruling Liberal-Democratic party, which has collaborated so closely with the. Johnson administration in the pursuit of U.S. imperialist aggression in Vietnam.
The elections were forced by the opposition parties, particularly the Japan Socialist party. They boycotted the Diet, their action being so effective as to compel Prime Minister Eisaku Sato to dissolve that body and set new elections.
This is the tenth dissolution of the Diet since the end of World War II. Each of them has been given a name such as “surprise dissolution," "you fooi" dissolution, etc., depending on the particular circumstances under which it occurred. The present one was labeled in advance the “black fog" dissolution; or, to use a word of relatively recent vintage in the U.S., the "thick smog" dissolution. The smog refers to the scandals and corruption that have come to light and that have greatly damaged the public image of the Liberal-Democratic party although others have not escaped either, exposures having been made of members of the Japan Socialist party in the Diet accepting "political" contributions from industrialists.
Polls show the Liberal-—Democratic party at an all-time low in popularity but there has been no comparable rise in the popularity of the Japan Socialist party, at least as registered by the polls, due to the scandals in which some of its leading figures were implicated.
Nevertheless, the Japan Socialist party is singling out the antiwar issue as the most important one and is coupling it with another issue of wide public concern -- the need to establish relations with the People's Republic of China on a normal basis.
Kozo Sasaki, the chairman of the Japan Socialist party, announced December 24 that his party "will appeal for promotion of friendship and restoration of diplomatic relations between Japan and China" in the forthcoming