Perhaps
the most significant feature of the recent Indian election
is the loss suffered by the Left. The BJP's defeat was
more or less anticipated, except by the psephologists,
as was some loss by the Left; but the actual extent
of the Left's loss has been quite staggering. True,
its vote share has fallen only marginally; but in its
Bengal base it has majority in only about a third of
the total Assembly segments, and in Kerala even less,
which is a serious setback. This setback is significant
because the Left, even though not a contender for power
at the Centre as of now, is a major driving force behind
India's journey towards a modern, secular and democratic
society. It is of course not the only such force: there
are large numbers of progressive social and political
movements which also play this role. But it differs
from all of them in one crucial respect, namely that
it also has electoral strength which they lack; and
such strength does matter. Any impairing of such strength
therefore portends ill for the progress of India's democratic
revolution.
The media have been full of analysis of the Left's loss
and of advice for its revival, much of which ultimately
focuses on just one point: it must discard its ''phobia''
about ''imperialism''. This is occasionally expressed
directly, such as by Lord Meghnad Desai in an interview
to The Hindu, but usually indirectly. Sometimes it is
said that the Left should not have withdrawn support
from the UPA government; but since the withdrawal was
precisely on the question of India's entering into a
possible strategic alliance with U.S. imperialism, this
argument amounts to saying that the Left exaggerates
the imperialist threat. Sometimes it is said that the
people's verdict was in favour of ''development'', from
which the inference can be drawn that the Left's electoral
loss must be attributed to its lack of success in ushering
in ''development'' (meaning ''development'' within the neo-liberal
paradigm, for which the different states in the country
are vying with one another to attract corporate and
MNC investment). This again amounts to saying that the
Left's opposition to the neo-liberal paradigm, which
is linked to its anti-imperialism, is responsible for
its obsolescence, and hence defeat. Sometimes it is
argued that there was a ''wave'' in favour of a secular
and stable government which worked to the advantage
of the UPA and to the detriment of the Left, since the
latter forged links in the ''third front'' with Parties
that had done business with the BJP earlier. If the
conclusion from this claim is that the Left should have
gone into the election alone rather than with ''third
front'' allies, then that at least is compatible with
the Left's ideological premises (though it is unlikely
to have made much difference to its electoral fortune);
but if the conclusion is that the Left must always be
with those who would be normally supposed to ride such
a ''wave'', then that amounts to suggesting that it should
compromise on its anti-imperialism to become a permanent
fixture of the UPA camp. The commonest advice to the
Left in short is to stop making a fuss over ''imperialism''.
This
is hardly surprising. All over the world, in countries
where the urban middle class has escaped as yet the
adverse consequences of globalization, anti-imperialism
among the students, the educated youth, and the literati
is at low ebb. On the contrary there is even a desire
to welcome closer integration with the imperialist world
as a means of ushering in a secular and progressive
modernity, and of countering phenomena like feudal patriarchy,
religious authoritarianism and communal-fascism. Since
Left ideas typically get nourishment from the literati
and the urban intellectual strata, even though these
ideas reach their fruition in the struggles of the workers
and peasants, who are the victims of globalization but
are sociologically distant from the intellectual strata,
the Left movement gathers momentum in situations where
the urban middle class has also suffered from globalization
and hence makes common cause with the workers and the
peasants. But it faces problems in situations where
the urban middle class is a beneficiary of globalization.
In such cases, the resistance to imperialism and globalization
often gets championed by forces other than the Left;
or, if the Left remains committed to the interests of
the ''basic classes'' and resists globalization, it often
suffers through isolation from the intellectual strata
and the urban youth and students. (This loss, though
real, can of course be more than offset by an increase
in its support base among the peasantry through its
resistance to globalization).
The current anti-imperialist upsurge in Latin America,
which has brought Left or Left-oriented governments
to power over much of that continent, is a consequence
of the long years of crises that hurt, and hence radicalized,
the urban youth, students and intellectuals. On the
other hand, in much of central Asia, and now Iran, where
the urban youth has not directly experienced the adversity
inflicted by globalization, imperialism still retains
the capacity to mobilize, or at least claim the sympathy
of, vast numbers of the urban population in so-called
''orange'', ''tulip'' and ''velvet'' ''revolutions'' that are
supposed to bring in modernity and democracy together
with neo-liberalism. In India, since the adversity of
workers, peasants, agricultural labourers and petty
producers, under globalization, has been accompanied
by high growth rates, and rapid increases in incomes
and opportunities for the urban middle class, a degree
of pro-imperialism among this class which includes intellectuals,
media persons and professionals, and hence a degree
of exasperation with the Left's continued adherence
to old ''anti-imperialist shibboleths'', is hardly surprising.
The Left's error that accounts for its loss in the recent
elections can be located here. As long as the urban
middle class in India is not hit by the adverse consequences
of globalization, it will continue to remain sympathetically
disposed towards imperialism. Anti-imperialist ideological
appeals alone, though they must continue to be made,
will not sway it much. Two additional factors that will
contribute towards this sympathy for imperialism are,
first, the assumption of US Presidency by Barack Obama
who represents ''imperialism with a human face'', and,
second, the strong opposition to imperialism coming
at present from the Islamist movements with which broad
sections of the Indian urban middle class have little
affinity. As long as the Indian Left remains true to
its ideology and the interests of its class base, the
pro-imperialist sympathies of the Indian urban middle
class will necessarily entail some estrangement of this
class from the Left. This is a phenomenon that will
haunt the Left for as long as the current conjuncture
continues. In the recent elections, it follows that
a certain loss of urban support for the Left became
unavoidable when it broke with the UPA because of its
anti-imperialism. (In Kerala, such alienation from the
Left was compounded by certain specific local factors:
the secular segments of the electorate could not accept
the Left's relationship with the PDP, and the Left's
stand on the SNC-Lavalin Deal carried little credibility.)
If the Left had managed to increase its support among
the workers, peasants, petty producers and the rural
poor, then it could have offset this loss among the
urban middle class; even if it had managed to retain
its support among the former, its overall loss would
have still remained limited. But, notwithstanding its
opposition to imperialism, it did not have an alternative
policy on development, different from what the neo-liberal
paradigm dictated. In West Bengal, the government led
by it pursued policies of ''development'' similar to what
the other states were following and in competition with
them, which, being part of the neo-liberal paradigm,
necessarily brought with them the threat of ''primitive
accumulation of capital'' (in the form specifically of
expropriation of peasants' land). These policies, though
subsequently reversed in several instances, had an adverse
impact on the ''basic classes'' and caused a crucial erosion
of the class base of the Left.
While some loss of peasant support on account of Singur
and Nandigram was anticipated in West Bengal, it was
thought that the Opposition's thwarting of ''development''
would make the urban middle class switch to the Left
as the preferred alternative (because of which pictures
of the Nano car were posted all over the state as part
of the CPI(M)'s campaign to remind the electorate of
the Opposition's intransigence in thwarting ''industrialization'').
As a matter of fact, however, the Left lost votes both
among the urban middle class and among the peasants
and the rural poor. It lost votes among the urban middle
class because this segment could not stomach the Left's
anti-imperialism and its fallout in the form of a distancing
from the UPA; it lost votes among the peasants and the
rural poor because the Left's anti-imperialism was insufficient,
in the sense that it did not extend to the formulation
of an alternative economic policy. True, the scope for
a state government to produce such an alternative economic
policy is limited; but no effort in this direction was
discernible.The Left, it follows, cannot pursue its
resistance to imperialism unless it also evolves an
alternative approach to ''development'', different from
the neo-liberal one which is promoted by imperialist
agencies everywhere. The central feature of such an
approach must be the defence of the interests of the
class base of the Left. Development must be defined
in the context of the carrying forward of the democratic
revolution, as a phenomenon contributing to an improvement
in the economic conditions of the ''basic classes'', and
hence to an accretion to their class-strength. It must
be seen as having a class dimension and not just referring
to the augmentation of a mass of ''things''. A supra-class
notion of development, such as the augmentation of a
mass of ''things'' or the mere growth of GDP, is a form
of commodity-fetishism, and a part, therefore, of the
ideology of imperialism. Hence any ''development'' that
entails primitive accumulation of capital (which includes
primitive accumulation through the state budget via
the doling out of massive subsidies to capitalists for
undertaking investment), that entails a reduction in
workers' wage-rates, rights, and security, cannot form
part of the Left's agenda. If, in the context of the
competition between different states, private investment
refuses to come into Left-ruled states because of their
development agenda being different, then alternative
ways of undertaking investment (e.g. through public
or cooperative sector investment) have to be explored;
and of course whatever relief can possibly be given
to the ''basic classes'' against the onslaught of the
neo-liberal policies must be provided.
Accepting the advice given to it to overcome its ''outdated''
opposition to imperialism and to the neo-liberal policies
promoted by it will amount to self-annihilation by the
Left and to its incorporation into the structures of
bourgeois hegemony; it would entail a transformation
of the Left into a ''Blairite'' entity. The argument may
be made that a temporary acceptance of bourgeois hegemony
will quicken the capitalist transformation of our society
and hence bring the question of the transcendence of
capitalism that much faster on to the agenda. This argument
is not just similar to, but actually identical with,
the bourgeois argument that the imposition of absolute
deprivation on workers, peasants and petty producers
in the process of capitalist development is of no great
moment since such deprivation is only temporary and
will be more than made good in due course. (The argument
advanced, even by as sensitive an economist as Amartya
Sen, during the Singur and Nandigram agitations, that
building London and Manchester must also have meant
the dispossession of some peasants of the time, suggesting
that such losses are eventually more than compensated,
is of this genre).
This is a flawed argument on several counts, of which
the most obvious one is the following: capitalist transformation
in societies like ours, even as it erodes pre-capitalist
and non-capitalist structures, cannot absorb the producers
displaced by such erosion into the fold of the capitalist
sector itself, since the level of technology on the
basis of which this transformation is undertaken, and
the rate of its change, are such that its capacity to
generate employment is negligible. (The context in which
London and Manchester were built was altogether different:
inter alia large-scale emigration was possible at that
time from the capitalist Centre to the temperate regions
which were opened up through colonialism for white settlement).
Capitalist transformation in societies like ours is
altogether different: it gives rise to a process of
sheer pauperization but not of proletarianization of
petty producers, for reasons quite different from those
adduced by the Sixth Congress of the Communist International
that had first cognized this phenomenon in colonial
and third world societies.
The Sixth Congress had attributed this phenomenon to
the fetters put on capitalist transformation in these
societies by their integration into the world economy,
under imperialist hegemony, which trapped them in a
certain pattern of international division of labour.
But the phenomenon today would arise not from the fact
of such fetters, which obviously are quite loose in
the case of an economy like India: it can apparently
break out of this international division of labour and
experience rapid capitalist transformation within a
neo-liberal dispensation. The phenomenon arises today
from the contemporary technological basis of such capitalist
transformation.
It follows that if the Left fell prey to this argument,
of first seeking to usher in capitalist transformation
in the hope of working for its transcendence later,
and hence proceeded today along a ''Blairite'' path, then
it would remain a Blairite entity forever. The moment
of that passage from capitalist transformation to the
transcendence of capitalism will never come as some
natural historical break; and if there is no such discontinuity
then this entire distinction between two phases becomes
invalid.
Accepting the advice to eschew its opposition to imperialism
will not only erode the existing class base of the Left,
without ever creating the conditions for a revival of
revolutionary resistance later on a new basis; it will
not only fritter away the Left's class base built through
decades of struggles in exchange, not for a later rebirth
as a revolutionary force but for an incorporation in
a Blairite fashion into the structures of bourgeois
and imperialist hegemony; but it will also push the
''basic classes'' into the arms of extremist ideologies,
ranging from ''Maoism'' to Islamist anti-imperialism,
which not just unleash violence and restrict mass political
action, but, for this very reason, are also ''unproductive'',
in the sense of being intrinsically incapable of achieving
even the intermediate goals they set for themselves,
let alone achieving a society that emancipates people.
Anti-imperialism is not a product of the Left's imagination;
it arises from the objective conditions faced by the
people. If the Left abandons it, then others, no matter
how incapable of overcoming these objective conditions,
will step in to fill the vacuum, and the people will
be left to their mercy.
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