In-
dian revolution is socialist and not peo-
ples democratic. )
Ramachandran is also said to have
opposed the participation of the CPI(M)
in the opportunist electoral front with
the Sampurna Maharashtra Samiti, noted
for its regional chauvinist character,
along with reactionary bourgeois parties
like the Hindu Mahasabha and the Muslim
League.
Issues posed by Ramachandran and
the action taken against him have pro-
voked a major controversy inside the Bon-
bay unit of the CPI(M).
Meanwhile B.T.Ranadive, a leading
theoretician of the CPI(M), has launched
a broadside against the so-called "anti-
arty tendencies" in the party's weekly
eoples Democracy ยป edited by him. In an
article entitled "Behind the Revolution-
ary Phrases, Disorganising Struggle
Against Imperialism" in the latest issue of the journal [July 2], Ranadive, true to his Stalinist past, has invoked the bogey of Trotskyism while replying to the charge made by the dissidents that the Left CPI lacked inner-party democracy.
He says: "The demand for the right to form factions inside the party has international but bad precedents." Here Ranadive quotes what Stalin, of all per~ sons, had said about Trotskyism in his report to the Sixteenth Congress of the CPSU(B), in a highly slanderous manner. Stalin has been quoted by Ranadive saying:
"The essence of Trotskyism is lastly a denial of the necessity for iron discipline in the party, recognition of freedom for factional groupings in the party .. According to Trotskyism the CPSUCB) must not be a single united militant party, but a collection of groups and factions, each with its own centre, its own discipline, its own press, and so forth."
Apart from the distortion of Trotsky's views on the Marxist-Leninist concept of democratic centralism governing a proletarian party, the inference is obvious. Ranadive is trying to scare the dissidents (who in West Bengal are considerably influenced by Maoist ideas) away from authentic Marxism-Leninism as enunciated by the Trotskyist Fourth International, by telling them in effect that they are following a Trotskyist line on organisational and political questions by their "disruptive attacks" on the leadership and through their methods of "sticking denunciatory bulletins in public.
He forgets, however, that the dissidents have been driven to the stage of "sticking denunciatory bulletins" mainly as a protest against the bureaucratic practices of the leadership and absence of inner-party democracy inside the party.
The dissidents "many of whom" (even according to Ranadive) "might be upright and honest people" have also relied on Lenin's ideas of democratic centralism. They have cited Lenin's views on the subject:
"The elaboration of a common programme for the party should not, of course, put an end to polemics; it will firmly establish these basic views on the character, the aims and tasks of our movement which must serve as the banner of a fighting party, a party that remains consolidated despite partial differences of opinion among its members on partial questions." (Collected Works, Vol.4, page 231.)
While conceding these views of Lenin, Ranadive seeks to make a subtle distinction between the polemics on the "basic party line" once "firmly established" and the "polemics" on "partial differences on partial questions." In his opinion the dissidents have exceeded the limit laid down by Lenin. In fact he thinks that they have no place in the party since they "reject the Party line from A to Z."
An important difference he has discovered with the dissidents is about their characterisation of the present Indian state. The dissidents describe the state in India as "a neo-colonial state" or a "state of neo-colonial powers" as against the official party definition as "a state of the bourgeoisie and landlords led by the big bourgeoisie who are increasingly collaborating with foreign finance capital in pursuit of the capitalist path of development."
There is no literature available so far to explain the real positions of the dissidents on these basic questions apart from the interpretations doled out by Ranadive, or by the bourgeois press for that matter. The whole controversy raised by the dissidents in the left CPI needs to be discussed more fully. But it would suffice here to mention that Ranadive's criticism of the dissidents is that they are in effect "disorganising the struggle against imperialism" by their insistance on a line of class struggle, which alienates the coalition partners of the Left CPI in the so-called "peoples democratic fronts."
This is a negation of the official strategy of an alliance with the "progressive national bourgeoisie"! Says Ranadive: "To agree to their formulation is to agree to disorganise the struggle against American imperialism, against the surrenderist policy of the Government and help the worst reacticnaries in India."
Ranadive's logic is simple. The main struggle of the Indian masses is against imperialism and feudalism to conmplete the democratic tasks of the Indian revolution. Any struggle against the Indian bourgeoisie and the bourgeois state, which it thinks can pursue "an anti-imperialist position under certain favourable conditions," disrupts the "anti-imperialist, anti-feudalist peoples democratic front" and therefore helps the "worst reactionaries in India."
The dissidents rightly reject this concept as "class collaborationism" and "revisionism." That is the genesis of the present split in the Left CPI although it is still not clear whether the dissidents link the present opportunist policies of the leadership with their basic theory -- essentially a Stalinist and Maoist theory of a four class-bloc in the so-called "peoples democratic front."!
RAMACHANDRAN