Question: K.N. Ramachandran, the Secretary of CPI (ML) Red Star claims that the documents of the 10th Congress of his Party are rich in content so as to provide basic contributions to the World Communist Movement. What is your approach to these claims?
-K.C.
Raman, Mupliyam, Thrissur Kerala.
Answer:
[I] I think that it is necessary to
discuss three points in the main in relation with the documents of K.N.
Ramachandran’s Party before coming to a conclusion with respect to the claims.
They are: (i) the amendments to their party Programme, (ii) amendments to their
Party Constitution and (iii) the amendments with respect to the Principal
Contradiction adopted in the 9th Congress of their Party.
After getting split from CPI (ML) Red
Flag and merged with the group led by Com. Kanu Sanyal K.N. Ramachandran and
his Party has come out of it and renamed themselves as CPI (ML) Red Star. In the last Party Congress itself they had
put forward a new formulation about a fifth contradiction at the international
level and adopted a new symbol for their Party in variance with the
internationally agreed symbol of Communist Parties. We had written on this in
‘Comrade’ at that time and criticized the impudence to make tall claims about
the invention of contradictions and to change the party symbols. They didn’t
feel it necessary to make any correction in those regard but decided to plunge
into greater depths of blunders.
[II]The political reorganization
process begun by the Kerala unit of CPI (ML) and agreed by the Central
Leadership later has led to qualitative improvement of the Party in its 4th
Conference. The erroneous positions (worldview) of the Party which functioned
as the root cause of our mistakes were identified and rectified in the fourth
conference in 1997. The anti proletarian anarchic positions that the Party followed
up to that time were discarded. It was the erroneous perspective that negated
the central contradiction between socialism and imperialism that we discarded.
[III] The fifth conference of the
Party held in Raichur in 2000-01 led this rectification process to the
amendment of the Party programme. The sectarian and syndicalist position regarding
the path of the revolution such as, ‘to lead the democratic revolution through
the area-wise seizure political power’ was rectified and a perspective
regarding the path of revolution that enables to utilize all forms of struggles
according to the concrete conditions was adopted. As our tactical perception for
this, the amended Party Programme took the position of ‘Left Alternative’. In
the course of history, the position of ‘Left Alternative’ got accepted as
agreed position among the whole left movement.
[IV] But, a section within the Party
including the then party secretary K.N.Ramachandran, miserably failed to assimilate
the essence of the 4th and 5th Party conferences. Instead,
they resorted to abandon the political reorganization process that was leading
the Party to correct political positions up to that juncture and to adopt an
opportunistic organizational line of becoming a ‘bigger’ party by way of
permutation combination methods. At the same time, they unleashed a vicious
campaign within the party to tarnish those who were upholding the essence of 4th and 5th
conferences and were working with the perspective of left alternative as ‘total
revisionists’; and, with a view to facilitate this vicious campaign, created an negative polemical atmosphere of
‘pseudo left’ versus ‘real left’ . In short, by way of splitting the party in
2003, K.N. Ramachandran and his followers got rid
of the ‘burden’ of the ideological and political positions that were the vital
contributions of the 4th and 5th conferences.
[V] In the virulent discussions for
unity and merger to attain a ‘bigger party, reality’K.N. Ramachandran and his
followers quite opportunistically abandoned the importance of grasping the
contradiction between socialism and imperialism as the central contradiction
and the relationship between this grasping of the central contradiction and the
Leninist perspective regarding the era that ‘this era is the era of imperialism
and proletarian revolutions’ and the vitality of this grasp in assessing and
comprehending different phases and situations of revolution and the primacy of
this grasp in organizing and mobilizing classes and masses in accordance with
that. In the discussions with the Kanu Sanyal Group and New Initiative Group of
Andhra Pradesh etc. they were keeping mum about the centrality of the
contradiction between Socialism and Imperialism by accounting it as just one
among the main contradictions.
[VI] Similarly the 4th and
5th conferences of our Party had correctly evaluated the mistakes
committed during the Cultural Revolution in detail. Even though the documents
of the 10th Congress of the Party of K.N. Ramachandran raise certain
criticisms about Cultural Revolution the grave mistake committed on the ‘era’
question and on the rejection of Leninist forms of organization are not at all
mentioned with due importance. What it highlights is the repudiation of
Beethoven music in the period of Cultural Revolution. These kinds of criticisms
are raised mainly by western critics. They are not concerned about the denial
of Leninism at all.
[VII] It is the fundamental part of
the programme of democratic revolution to analyze the Indian society concretely
and to assess the class contradictions in it and to identify the main
contradictions and the principal contradiction on the basis of that analysis.
But K.N. Ramachandran resolved to forget all these principles and stated in a
convenient manner that “the contradiction between the corporate capital and the
broad masses has become the principal one”. By means of this declaration he has
relieved the feudal class from the “Indian state of the bourgeois-landlord
alliance”. Let it be decided in future regarding these kinds of amendments’
place in history.
[VIII] According to K.N. Ramachandran
‘contradiction between the nature and capital’ is the 5th main
contradiction at the international level. In the imperialist globalization
period the finance capital intensifies the exploitation rabidly to maximize its
profit. As a result of it the phenomena like global warming, green house
effect, climate change etc. have got intensified. This has posed great threat
to the very existence of humanity. But, to present these issues unassociated
with the imperialist exploitation and by extricating it from the process of
understanding social contradictions with class content is not at all conforming
to Marxism. What we can see in such a formulation of contradiction is nothing
but a non class approach of separating environmental exploitation and the
global stage of class struggle by way of curtaining it off from the latter.
Actually, this is a European contribution of green politics. As it can be seen
in every earth summit the imperialist forces try to impose the bitter burden of
environmental exploitation upon the non-developed and under-developed nations.
Peoples of the under-developed nations are coming forward to express their resentment
in these issues in every available international platform. It is the
intensification of the essential flaw of capitalism that is, its inner
contradiction between ‘socialized production and the private ownership’ which
leads to such destructions. But the fundamental principles like this are not
capable to prevent K. N. Ramachandran from making new inventions. K N
Ramachandran’s invention of the 5th main contradiction at the
international level could be understood connected with his efforts to build up
a 5th international criticizing (without assessing the concrete
reasons behind it in a scientific manner) Com. Stalin for dissolving the 3rd
international and Com. Mao for not making efforts to build up a new
international.
[IX] The amendment to the Party
Constitution put forward by K.N. Ramachandran is a part of his effort to
achieve necessary organizational changes that suit the new ideological and
political positions. “All party
members working in higher committees up to Central Committee shall be members
of a basic party committee, that is a Branch or Local or Area Committee active
in the place of his residence or functioning in nearby areas and shall attend
its meetings and functioning whenever he/ she is available in the area without
in anyway affecting performance of his responsibilities in the higher
committee. The renewal of their party membership shall be subjected to
ratification by these basic committees in which they are members”.
[X] The
amendment proposed as shown in the previous paragraph is nothing but a basic
negation of the principles of democratic centralism. What we can hear in this
proposed amendment is the slogan of Chinese Cultural Revolution i.e. ‘Bombard
the Headquarters’. One thing is kept hidden behind this slogan with left extremist
rhetoric. We can see that in the political organizational report of their Party
as follows.
“ The
hitherto experience show that under our present party committee system, even
after repeated pledges to form grass root committees, it is not happening or if
they are formed they are not capable of functioning effectively mobilizing the
people. When educated and experienced leaders of the ruling class parties are
actively functioning in their grass root committees and in the local bodies, to
challenge them and to put forward our alternative development paradigm
effectively and to make the party popular among the masses, party members
active in the higher committees, but are residing in their localities should
become members of these grass root committees, attend these committee meetings
and help their functioning, without affecting their higher committee
responsibilities. Now party is proposing it as a Constitutional provision that
the party membership of all comrades including those in the highest committees
have to be ratified by the grass root committees in which they are members.
According to the present provision in the Constitution, by virtue of their
membership in the higher committees these comrades shall become ex-officio
delegates to party conferences at that level. Now it is proposed to amend the
Constitution so as to make their ratification by the grass root committees
where they are members mandatory. It is seen that in the absence of such a
practice full time party comrades lack grass root contacts on the one hand, and
the grass root committees in their localities are remaining ineffective.
Participation of all the higher level comrades in the grass root committees
including in the activities of the local bodies whenever and to whatever extent
possible will take the party cadres and the party closer to the people”. Efforts of K.N. Ramachandran to build up a
‘real Communist Party’ by following the examples of protection of local
organizations by the ruling class parties will get them necessarily to nothing
but Bourgeois utilitarianism. If they continue the same path they will get to
the positions of constituency protecting ruling class party leaders without
delay.
Even
though K. N. Ramachandran claims, as it is pointed out in the question, that
the documents of his Party Congress are rich enough to make fundamental
contributions to the Communist Movement, what we can see in the very first
reading of those somewhat 200 pages of documents is that they are rich in non
Marxist theorizations and political positions. The positions put forward in
those documents, if adopted in full, will lead that party to get more and more
distanced itself from the Marxist line of thought and practice.