- Rajesh Tyagi/ 25.5.2019
To secure an absolute majority in the lower house of the Parliament with a total of 543 seats, BJP needed only 272. With a score of 303 to its own account and even further counting upon an additional tally of around 40 seats of its erstwhile allies in the National Democratic Alliance, a political coalition led by it since 2014, BJP can expect to form and run the government, smoothly. Even if all of the opposition parties join together, they cannot expect to put even a remote challenge to BJP.
As prospects of return to power of the pro-big business government of BJP under Modi, started to appear, the sentiments of investors got a big boost. Stock markets immediately responded on a very favourable and positive note, first to the exit polls on May 20, that predicted in advance a tally of 303 seats for BJP in Lok Sabha and then as the BJP started to steal march over its rivals in poll count in the early hours of May 23.
Leaders of world imperialism, like Trump in the US and Netanyahu of Israel were prompt in congratulating Modi for the electoral success of the party under him. Their jubilance is understandable as Modi government has repeatedly pledged and has continued to reinforce the strategic economic-military alliance of India, forged by the Congress-led Governments, with the US-Israel led Imperialist camp.
Despite widespread anger and discontent against Modi Government, especially on count of its anti-popular measures like demonetisation and GST alongside the atrocities upon the religious and caste minorities, the BJP has succeeded in its score of 2014 with 21 more seats.
The popular discontent existed to the extent that even bourgeois think tanks in corporate corridors had started to anticipate and reckon with the possibility of a coalition government led by opposition parties, seriously. The big-business, however, hardly had any antipathy to this coalition, as the leaders of this coalition had to their credit a proven and reliable track record of servility to the interests of big-business, no less than that of Modi himself.
The opposition, however, miserably failed to eke out, even from this popular discontent, any electoral gains for itself.
To no surprise, BJP has secured a clean sweep in three states of Haryana, Rajasthan and Delhi, winning all seats in these states. In Delhi where it was routed completely by AAP in the Assembly elections, BJP has reclaimed its tally. In Rajasthan, it has thrown Congress out of gear once again, in close aftermath of the victory of Congress in the recent Assembly elections.
Traditional party of the Indian big bourgeoisie, and main rival to the BJP in the poll contest- Indian National Congress, could muster a meagre share of 52 seats, only a slight raise of 8 seats in its share from 2014. Even this improvement has not come at the cost of BJP votes, but mostly from the traditional vote bank of Stalinist left in West Bengal and Kerala and of AIADMK in Tamil Nadu. CPM and CPI are cornered at 3 and 2 seats respectively, with not a single seat in West Bengal and only one from Kerala. In the two states, where they had ruled the roost in the past, the Stalinist parties are on the verge of complete collapse.
In West Bengal, where Stalinist left front has ruled for 34 years in an uninterrupted row, it failed to secure even a single seat, while BJP raised its tally to 18. One among these 18, is an ex-MLA of Stalinist CPM. Except one, all of the Left front candidates have lost their security deposits. Stalinist cadres have defected to join the ranks of TMC in West Bengal on a big scale in the last decade. On even bigger scale, in this election, they have unofficially rendered all support to BJP candidates against the TMC. In Kerala, another bastion of Stalinist left, it could secure only one seat. For the decline of AIADMK in Tamilnadu only, Stalinists, by default, got three seats.
Decimated to 4 seats in total in 2019, in the Lok Sabha of 543, the Stalinists had secured around 65 seats in 2004 run up for Lok Sabha. The five year NDA misrule had resulted then in wiping out of the NDA government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Stalinists, however, used this number to aid the Congress-led UPA to take power at the centre and thereby directly assisted in resolving the political crisis of bourgeoisie. Instead of throwing an independent left opposition to the UPA government inside and outside the Parliament, Stalinists continued support to the UPA government, even when it implemented most reactionary policies at home and abroad. They played the role of a power broker garnering support of regional rightwing parties for UPA. This way they left the ground of opposition open to BJP for all sorts of maneuvers. After the carnage of Singur and Nandigram, the Stalinist government in West Bengal became totally unpopular and was wiped out in 2011 by TMC under Mamata Banerjee.
From 65 in 2004 to 15 in 2014, their seats have dropped down to pitiable 4 in 2019 and their vote share has dipped even lower. It shows that a big chasm has been created between the Stalinist left and the mass of workers and toilers. Stalinists have played criminal role in blunting the mass rage against Modi rule, by binding it behind the bourgeois opposition.
As for the Congress and its allies in the UPA, they were apostles of unbridled opportunism, fervently determined to serve the interests of big corporates. Even at the risk of a break with its Stalinist allies, resulting in fall of its government, the Congress forced through the signing of the US-India Nuclear Treaty.
Ousting the UPA and cornering the Stalinist left even further, the discredited NDA government once again captured power in 2014 under Narendra Modi and repeated in 2019 defeating the opposition with even bigger margin in both- seats and vote share.
Explanation for this victory of Modi and BJP and the failure of opposition can only be sought in the continued betrayals of the Stalinist Left alongside the historic impotence of bourgeois democrats in face of fascist advance.
WSP had warned of this devastation in advance, repeatedly and for long. Our predictions of the victory of BJP were based on express refusal by the left under Stalinists to break with the impotent rightwing parties and rather to place all faith in them.
Recovery of BJP in the three big states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, where it had suffered defeat recently, sending shivers down the spine of its top leadership, is directly attributable to the misrule and policies of its rival Congress.
Immediately after taking power, the Congress governments in the three states set out to repay their debts to big corporate and appease the conservative sections in power corridors. In Neemrana of Rajasthan, the Congress Government ordered brutal repression upon the protest of Daikin workers. Similar repression upon the workers of Maruti in Manesar, was also carried out on dictat of Congress Government in Haryana. In Madhya Pradesh, the newly elected Congress Government under darling of corporate, Kamalnath, brought more stringent law against cow slaughter to give a pro-hindu face to its government.
All parties of bourgeois opposition including that in the Stalinist left, are contributors to the BJP agenda of realizing the great power ambitions of Indian Capitalists in South Asia and the world as a subsidiary to US Imperialism.
The aggressive US strategies, mounting a permanent offensive to undermine the economic and military influence and capacities of China and Russia, have met with their echo in the ever escalating aspirations of Indian capitalists in South Asia.
Much before the BJP and NDA, it was the Congress-led UPA government that had started to bind India openly behind the strategic military-economic mission of the US led Imperialist Camp, in turn for garnering its support to the Indian Capitalists’ own ambitions for regional hegemony, in a quid-pro-quo.
Military strikes by the Modi Government inside territory of Pakistan on the pretext of Uri and Pulawama attacks, met with approval, cheer and applaud not only from the ranks of bourgeois opposition but also and equally from that of the Stalinist left. Opposition, including Stalinist left failed to question and challenge the militarist policies of Modi and his tirade against Pakistan and China. Instead of challenging the militarist and hegemonic designs of Modi government, the opposition dubiously criticised it for not acting in that direction with adequate vigour and firmness.
As in domestic policy too, the parties of bourgeois opposition including the Stalinists as well, stand in full agreement with Modi and BJP for aggressively advancing and accelerating the pro-market reforms. Not only they have rendered tacit support to BJP in its venture to implement the disastrous neo-liberal economic regime, but they themselves have implemented the very same policies whenever and wherever they got the opportunity to form governments.
In a bid to open the clogged-up state-led capitalism through aggressive economic reforms in 1991, the Congress government had triggered a neo-liberal economic regime at full steam, with implicit support from all quarters from right to left.
Since then, not only the Congress Governments that have earned a notorious record of imposing the pro-investor policies everywhere under their rule to the detriment of the working and toiling billions, but the regional opposition parties and the Stalinist left have shown no less zeal in implementation of these very same policies. In racing against each other to secure credit to them for execution of these policies, they have crossed all limits in enforcing these policies even through brutal suppression of all resistance to the bloodsucking pro-big business regimes, through most violent means.
In enforcing these policies, Stalinists, on their part, have not only rendered critical support to the successive bourgeois governments, mostly under Congress, even when they continued to execute the neo-liberal regime through brute force of baton and bullets, but have themselves executed the same policies under their own governments. Stalinist led Left front government in West Bengal was the first government to ban the strikes in IT sector. In Singur and Nandigram, the Stalinist Government under Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, had ordered brutal repression upon the peasants protesting the seizure of their farm lands by the Stalinists, in favour of big domestic and foreign corporates.
Modi has continued simply to drive down the road prepared by the governments led by Congress and other bourgeois parties, albeit at accelerated pace. The government under him has only reinforced the pro-corporate regime at home and has bolstered the ties with US led imperialist camp, abroad.
Stalinists have made curious attempts to cover-up their very close ties with the capitalist establishment and their support to it, through an ‘anti BJP’ charade. They claim that their adherence to the parties of bourgeois opposition, chiefly Congress, is a political maneuver to keep the rightwing BJP at bay. In this attempt, they peddle the rhetoric to paint the parties like Congress as ‘left’, ‘democratic’ and ‘secular’. Their campaigns like ‘Anyone but Modi’ or ‘Remove Modi, save Country’ are themselves a clever maneuver to promote the bourgeois rightwing parties as champions of democracy. Through this promotion, they attempt to get sanction for their drive for subordinating the youth and workers to the bourgeois rightwing political alliances led by these parties and their leaders. For the last many decades after 1947, the Stalinists have made every effort to bind the youth and workers to the political establishment of capitalism through sections of it that they claim to be democratic and secular.
Recently, when the prospects of a government led by erstwhile opposition were on the horizon, Sitaram Yechury had rushed to Congress leader Sonia Gandhi to discuss the arrangements for a new rigthwing coalition.
Working and toiling people, desperate to escape the rigors of capitalism and keen to improve their abominable living conditions, see no palpable difference between the successive governments on the right, left or centre, that had remained in power for last many decades after 1947. They find the continuous and uninterrupted intensification of the exploitative and oppressive regime, from top to bottom.
Perplexed and alarmed at the prospects of their crushing defeat in the polls, especially after the exit polls predicted a whopping score of 300 for BJP alone, the opposition parties had started to trumpet the hoax of EVM manipulation by the BJP. Wiser sections of them passed on the credit to the organisation of RSS appealing for more and zealous work at grassroot, in future. Many catered to their frustration by accusing the masses for not voting with good wisdom.
Not to our dismay, none of them has still questioned the fundamentally flawed policy of ‘popular frontism’, as advocated and executed by the Stalinist Parties, i.e. forging political alliances of varied descriptions with bourgeois rightwing leaders and parties and subordinating the youth and workers to them. This policy, a derivative from the discredited Menshevik formula, sanctioning a political alliance between the capitalists and workers in their assumed democratic revolution, is the nub of the infinite series of failures of the left in the last century. By subordinating the left to the right, the Stalinists, like their Menshevik cousins in the Russian Revolution, are preparing the broad road for sustained victories of the bourgeois rightwing and consequent defeats of the working class left. Ruinous outcome of this Menshevik policy, that Stalinists have implemented all over the world to great detriment of the socialist cause, for more than a century, still presents no reason to them for its review.
For this Menshevik-Stalinist policy of binding the left behind the power chariot of the right, despite the existence of chronic poverty, agrarian distress, mass unemployment, rising income gap and social inequality, declining living standards and communal and caste oppression, the working and toiling masses could not be mobilised to present their own class answer to the crisis of capitalism. Fascist demagogy, that finds its expression in speeches of Modi, thus fills the vacuum. Fascists thus succeed in diverting the mass anger against the social distress away from capitalism and towards the hoax of Pakistan and Muslims.
No credit can be given to Modi or RSS for it as is being claimed by many among the defeated ranks of the opposition. Neither the prank of EVM manipulation even touches upon the point, much less the accusation against the masses. The claim that more work among the masses needs be done, is yet another clever bid to evade the real issues. This formless sermon, ‘go to the masses’ neither presents any answer to political bankruptcy nor is a substitute for the program. On the contrary, in face of this victory of BJP, all ground work and the Stalinist claims to it, have fallen flat.
The issue is the policy and orientation of the left. Core issue is to restore the political independence of the working class by reversing the Stalinist policy of subordinating it to the bourgeois political alliances.
Needless to say, there was no dearth of the ground work by the left, but its orientation has been essentially Menshevik-Stalinist. With a wrong compass, the more you would steam up the ship, the more rapidly it would head towards the maelstrom and consequent shipwreck.
During election campaigns, the opportunist and criminal past of the Stalinists found its most finished expression in the demagogy of their more young leaders like Kanhaiya, who more crudely and clearly exhibited and stoked their love for nationalism and bourgeois democracy. In their public rallies, they unfurled the tricolor, wore tricolor turbans and pledged for defence of bourgeois democracy and Constitution.
Ignoring the proposal of the WSP to throw an iron front centred around the working class and supported by the toiling mass, against the fascists, Stalinists forged the shameful electoral alliances with the bourgeois rightwing parties like Congress, RJD, SP, BSP. They remained adhered to the rightwing Maha-Gathbandhan (the Grand Alliance) of reactionary capitalist, regionalist-casteist parties even when they were refused entry inside it. They shared common political dais with the leaders of the bourgeois opposition, many of whom were accused for murders of the left cadres like Chandrashekhar in Siwan, Bihar. In opportunist bids to secure votes, Stalinists stoked all casteist and regionalist equations.
The young activists and supporters were thus thrown in political disarray, totally confused to find the class enemies inside the ranks of allies.
Stalinists are adhered to the bourgeois democratic establishment and are anxious defenders of it. Instead of mobilising the youth and workers against it, they have mobilised them for its defence.
Using BJP as a scarecrow, Stalinists have forced their followers to serve the bourgeois opposition and assist it to take the power. They have justified their servile policy of subordination of youth and workers to the bourgeois opposition on the pretext of defeating fascism, but this dirty policy has in fact fuelled fascism, reinforced it and brought it to power. This policy has prevented the working class from mounting an effective challenge both to capitalism and bourgeois democracy. End result is- victory of fascism!
Through their phoney and hypocritic calls for defence of bourgeois democracy and the Constitution, the Stalinists had been sowing illusions among the youth and workers, orienting them away from the struggle for overthrow of capitalism and the fight for establishment of socialism. The task is not to go back to the bourgeois democracy, trampled under feet of authoritarianism and fascism everywhere in the world, but to fight for its destruction and establishment of a Workers’ and Toilers’ Government.
Fascism cannot be countered through disgusting nationalist and reactionary appeals to the conservative consciousness of the masses, much less through rightwing electoral alliances. It can be defeated only through an offensive centred around the revolutionary working class and supported by mass of urban and rural toilers.
Amidst the jubilant sentiments in the markets and the celebrations among the big business and investors’ circles, deep down there is the chilling wave of fear and concern for the spiralling economic crisis, reflected chiefly through the debt vortex, farm distress and an unprecedented increase in unemployment rate, never seen in the last half century. Huge corporate debt in Banking, most of which is already gone bad, is a big cause of trepidation. Breakout of the trade wars between the big power camps led by the US and China- recent being the withdrawal of services by google from Huawei, following a US dictate designed to paralyse Chinese mobile giant- are pushing the breakdown of world capitalist order to an ever new high. These trade wars are precursors to the military conflicts and we cannot say which moment a world war and a full blown nuclear conflagration may start between the rival camps.
Given the proximity and entanglement of India into the US-led military alliance against China and Russia, prospects of Indian Ocean becoming the battle ground for a future war, is a matter of great concern for the Indian and South Asian people.
On the question of Modi’s Hindu supremacist politics, the ruling elite is deeply divided. A vast section of the ruling bourgeoisie fears a sudden backlash from below against this strategy alongside a gradual disenchantment of the masses from the bourgeois state, law and political establishment.
Bourgeois establishment in India, is under double pressure. On the one hand the Indian capitalists want a more aggressive and robust strategy aimed not only at propelling the economic reforms at faster pace, intensifying the exploitation of working and toiling mass, imposition of austerity and withdrawal from all social welfare schemes but also for military domination in South Asia, against the rival players, above all Pakistan. On the other, the Imperialist partners like US, are bullying it to take up more burden and a frontline role in the war strategy against Russia and China. US is forcing it to cut off all diplomatic relations and oil imports from Russia, Venezuela and Iran, even at the cost of huge losses incurred by it.
Election has brought RSS strongman Modi and the BJP under him to power. However, neither Modi nor the BJP as a whole can add anything to the strength of Indian capitalism. On the contrary, his own strength is confined to the limits of capitalism. The spreading crisis of the Indian and the world capitalism is squeezing these limits, each passing day. Far from becoming an instrument of resolution of this crisis, soon Modi Government will find itself mired in the whirlpool of this irresoluble crisis. Workers and toilers will be impelled by their living conditions and their own experience of life to counter this crisis through their own answer- the revolutionary struggle for overthrow of capitalism. In all countries, capitalism is preparing itself for violent response to this crisis- through suppression of all opposition at home and promotion of the wars abroad. Fascism is precise political expression of this response.
The purpose and goal of the struggle of working class, is thus not to remove Modi or BJP alone, as the Stalinists claim. They are mere expressions of the crisis of capitalism. The goal is to smash the very source of this crisis, the capitalism itself, through a working class-led, socialist revolution.
The agenda of removing Modi or BJP, belongs to bourgeois opposition, not to the working class. Modi and BJP are no doubt the enemies of the working class, but they are not the sole enemies. Rahul, Lalu, Maya, Mamta all belong to the same ranks of class enemy.
Advanced elements of the working class and youth must derive precise conclusions from this victory of rightwing extremists. These conclusions endorse albeit in negative the lessons of October revolution. Prime among these lessons is that the left cannot be tagged to the right, there can be no political alliance between the two oriented to revolution. This alliance would lead to disastrous consequences for the left, strengthening only the rightwing.
The struggle of the left in the post election scenario thus demands above all a decisive and complete break by the workers and youth not only from the bourgeois rightwing parties, leaders and alliances, but also from the centrist leaders who refuse to take this break and continue to sit on the tails of bourgeois rightwing.
The Left needs be reoriented and reorganised around the program of ‘Permanent Revolution’ with which is associated the name of Leon Trotsky, the co-leader with Lenin of the Russian Revolution, which found its further endorsement in Lenin’s April Thesis and its final ratification in the October Revolution.
Capturing 303 seats in Lok Sabha and crossing the mark of 37% of the total votes polled, to its share, BJP has returned to power with a big bang. Vying for its continued rule for the second term at the centre, the BJP under the leadership of Narendra Modi has defeated its arch rivals in bourgeois opposition, while completely emasculating the Stalinist left. The poll results show a definite and strong push to the right.
To secure an absolute majority in the lower house of the Parliament with a total of 543 seats, BJP needed only 272. With a score of 303 to its own account and even further counting upon an additional tally of around 40 seats of its erstwhile allies in the National Democratic Alliance, a political coalition led by it since 2014, BJP can expect to form and run the government, smoothly. Even if all of the opposition parties join together, they cannot expect to put even a remote challenge to BJP.
As prospects of return to power of the pro-big business government of BJP under Modi, started to appear, the sentiments of investors got a big boost. Stock markets immediately responded on a very favourable and positive note, first to the exit polls on May 20, that predicted in advance a tally of 303 seats for BJP in Lok Sabha and then as the BJP started to steal march over its rivals in poll count in the early hours of May 23.
Leaders of world imperialism, like Trump in the US and Netanyahu of Israel were prompt in congratulating Modi for the electoral success of the party under him. Their jubilance is understandable as Modi government has repeatedly pledged and has continued to reinforce the strategic economic-military alliance of India, forged by the Congress-led Governments, with the US-Israel led Imperialist camp.
Despite widespread anger and discontent against Modi Government, especially on count of its anti-popular measures like demonetisation and GST alongside the atrocities upon the religious and caste minorities, the BJP has succeeded in its score of 2014 with 21 more seats.
The popular discontent existed to the extent that even bourgeois think tanks in corporate corridors had started to anticipate and reckon with the possibility of a coalition government led by opposition parties, seriously. The big-business, however, hardly had any antipathy to this coalition, as the leaders of this coalition had to their credit a proven and reliable track record of servility to the interests of big-business, no less than that of Modi himself.
The opposition, however, miserably failed to eke out, even from this popular discontent, any electoral gains for itself.
To no surprise, BJP has secured a clean sweep in three states of Haryana, Rajasthan and Delhi, winning all seats in these states. In Delhi where it was routed completely by AAP in the Assembly elections, BJP has reclaimed its tally. In Rajasthan, it has thrown Congress out of gear once again, in close aftermath of the victory of Congress in the recent Assembly elections.
Traditional party of the Indian big bourgeoisie, and main rival to the BJP in the poll contest- Indian National Congress, could muster a meagre share of 52 seats, only a slight raise of 8 seats in its share from 2014. Even this improvement has not come at the cost of BJP votes, but mostly from the traditional vote bank of Stalinist left in West Bengal and Kerala and of AIADMK in Tamil Nadu. CPM and CPI are cornered at 3 and 2 seats respectively, with not a single seat in West Bengal and only one from Kerala. In the two states, where they had ruled the roost in the past, the Stalinist parties are on the verge of complete collapse.
In West Bengal, where Stalinist left front has ruled for 34 years in an uninterrupted row, it failed to secure even a single seat, while BJP raised its tally to 18. One among these 18, is an ex-MLA of Stalinist CPM. Except one, all of the Left front candidates have lost their security deposits. Stalinist cadres have defected to join the ranks of TMC in West Bengal on a big scale in the last decade. On even bigger scale, in this election, they have unofficially rendered all support to BJP candidates against the TMC. In Kerala, another bastion of Stalinist left, it could secure only one seat. For the decline of AIADMK in Tamilnadu only, Stalinists, by default, got three seats.
Decimated to 4 seats in total in 2019, in the Lok Sabha of 543, the Stalinists had secured around 65 seats in 2004 run up for Lok Sabha. The five year NDA misrule had resulted then in wiping out of the NDA government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Stalinists, however, used this number to aid the Congress-led UPA to take power at the centre and thereby directly assisted in resolving the political crisis of bourgeoisie. Instead of throwing an independent left opposition to the UPA government inside and outside the Parliament, Stalinists continued support to the UPA government, even when it implemented most reactionary policies at home and abroad. They played the role of a power broker garnering support of regional rightwing parties for UPA. This way they left the ground of opposition open to BJP for all sorts of maneuvers. After the carnage of Singur and Nandigram, the Stalinist government in West Bengal became totally unpopular and was wiped out in 2011 by TMC under Mamata Banerjee.
From 65 in 2004 to 15 in 2014, their seats have dropped down to pitiable 4 in 2019 and their vote share has dipped even lower. It shows that a big chasm has been created between the Stalinist left and the mass of workers and toilers. Stalinists have played criminal role in blunting the mass rage against Modi rule, by binding it behind the bourgeois opposition.
As for the Congress and its allies in the UPA, they were apostles of unbridled opportunism, fervently determined to serve the interests of big corporates. Even at the risk of a break with its Stalinist allies, resulting in fall of its government, the Congress forced through the signing of the US-India Nuclear Treaty.
Ousting the UPA and cornering the Stalinist left even further, the discredited NDA government once again captured power in 2014 under Narendra Modi and repeated in 2019 defeating the opposition with even bigger margin in both- seats and vote share.
Explanation for this victory of Modi and BJP and the failure of opposition can only be sought in the continued betrayals of the Stalinist Left alongside the historic impotence of bourgeois democrats in face of fascist advance.
WSP had warned of this devastation in advance, repeatedly and for long. Our predictions of the victory of BJP were based on express refusal by the left under Stalinists to break with the impotent rightwing parties and rather to place all faith in them.
Recovery of BJP in the three big states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, where it had suffered defeat recently, sending shivers down the spine of its top leadership, is directly attributable to the misrule and policies of its rival Congress.
Immediately after taking power, the Congress governments in the three states set out to repay their debts to big corporate and appease the conservative sections in power corridors. In Neemrana of Rajasthan, the Congress Government ordered brutal repression upon the protest of Daikin workers. Similar repression upon the workers of Maruti in Manesar, was also carried out on dictat of Congress Government in Haryana. In Madhya Pradesh, the newly elected Congress Government under darling of corporate, Kamalnath, brought more stringent law against cow slaughter to give a pro-hindu face to its government.
Facing the poor, Congress promised many bounties like cheap healthcare and education alongside a minimum guaranteed income for the 20% in lowest income segment. Voters showed no confidence in these electoral promises, which more than often have turned out to be blatant lies.
All parties of bourgeois opposition including that in the Stalinist left, are contributors to the BJP agenda of realizing the great power ambitions of Indian Capitalists in South Asia and the world as a subsidiary to US Imperialism.
The aggressive US strategies, mounting a permanent offensive to undermine the economic and military influence and capacities of China and Russia, have met with their echo in the ever escalating aspirations of Indian capitalists in South Asia.
Much before the BJP and NDA, it was the Congress-led UPA government that had started to bind India openly behind the strategic military-economic mission of the US led Imperialist Camp, in turn for garnering its support to the Indian Capitalists’ own ambitions for regional hegemony, in a quid-pro-quo.
Military strikes by the Modi Government inside territory of Pakistan on the pretext of Uri and Pulawama attacks, met with approval, cheer and applaud not only from the ranks of bourgeois opposition but also and equally from that of the Stalinist left. Opposition, including Stalinist left failed to question and challenge the militarist policies of Modi and his tirade against Pakistan and China. Instead of challenging the militarist and hegemonic designs of Modi government, the opposition dubiously criticised it for not acting in that direction with adequate vigour and firmness.
As in domestic policy too, the parties of bourgeois opposition including the Stalinists as well, stand in full agreement with Modi and BJP for aggressively advancing and accelerating the pro-market reforms. Not only they have rendered tacit support to BJP in its venture to implement the disastrous neo-liberal economic regime, but they themselves have implemented the very same policies whenever and wherever they got the opportunity to form governments.
In a bid to open the clogged-up state-led capitalism through aggressive economic reforms in 1991, the Congress government had triggered a neo-liberal economic regime at full steam, with implicit support from all quarters from right to left.
Since then, not only the Congress Governments that have earned a notorious record of imposing the pro-investor policies everywhere under their rule to the detriment of the working and toiling billions, but the regional opposition parties and the Stalinist left have shown no less zeal in implementation of these very same policies. In racing against each other to secure credit to them for execution of these policies, they have crossed all limits in enforcing these policies even through brutal suppression of all resistance to the bloodsucking pro-big business regimes, through most violent means.
In enforcing these policies, Stalinists, on their part, have not only rendered critical support to the successive bourgeois governments, mostly under Congress, even when they continued to execute the neo-liberal regime through brute force of baton and bullets, but have themselves executed the same policies under their own governments. Stalinist led Left front government in West Bengal was the first government to ban the strikes in IT sector. In Singur and Nandigram, the Stalinist Government under Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, had ordered brutal repression upon the peasants protesting the seizure of their farm lands by the Stalinists, in favour of big domestic and foreign corporates.
Modi has continued simply to drive down the road prepared by the governments led by Congress and other bourgeois parties, albeit at accelerated pace. The government under him has only reinforced the pro-corporate regime at home and has bolstered the ties with US led imperialist camp, abroad.
Stalinists have made curious attempts to cover-up their very close ties with the capitalist establishment and their support to it, through an ‘anti BJP’ charade. They claim that their adherence to the parties of bourgeois opposition, chiefly Congress, is a political maneuver to keep the rightwing BJP at bay. In this attempt, they peddle the rhetoric to paint the parties like Congress as ‘left’, ‘democratic’ and ‘secular’. Their campaigns like ‘Anyone but Modi’ or ‘Remove Modi, save Country’ are themselves a clever maneuver to promote the bourgeois rightwing parties as champions of democracy. Through this promotion, they attempt to get sanction for their drive for subordinating the youth and workers to the bourgeois rightwing political alliances led by these parties and their leaders. For the last many decades after 1947, the Stalinists have made every effort to bind the youth and workers to the political establishment of capitalism through sections of it that they claim to be democratic and secular.
Recently, when the prospects of a government led by erstwhile opposition were on the horizon, Sitaram Yechury had rushed to Congress leader Sonia Gandhi to discuss the arrangements for a new rigthwing coalition.
Working and toiling people, desperate to escape the rigors of capitalism and keen to improve their abominable living conditions, see no palpable difference between the successive governments on the right, left or centre, that had remained in power for last many decades after 1947. They find the continuous and uninterrupted intensification of the exploitative and oppressive regime, from top to bottom.
Perplexed and alarmed at the prospects of their crushing defeat in the polls, especially after the exit polls predicted a whopping score of 300 for BJP alone, the opposition parties had started to trumpet the hoax of EVM manipulation by the BJP. Wiser sections of them passed on the credit to the organisation of RSS appealing for more and zealous work at grassroot, in future. Many catered to their frustration by accusing the masses for not voting with good wisdom.
Not to our dismay, none of them has still questioned the fundamentally flawed policy of ‘popular frontism’, as advocated and executed by the Stalinist Parties, i.e. forging political alliances of varied descriptions with bourgeois rightwing leaders and parties and subordinating the youth and workers to them. This policy, a derivative from the discredited Menshevik formula, sanctioning a political alliance between the capitalists and workers in their assumed democratic revolution, is the nub of the infinite series of failures of the left in the last century. By subordinating the left to the right, the Stalinists, like their Menshevik cousins in the Russian Revolution, are preparing the broad road for sustained victories of the bourgeois rightwing and consequent defeats of the working class left. Ruinous outcome of this Menshevik policy, that Stalinists have implemented all over the world to great detriment of the socialist cause, for more than a century, still presents no reason to them for its review.
For this Menshevik-Stalinist policy of binding the left behind the power chariot of the right, despite the existence of chronic poverty, agrarian distress, mass unemployment, rising income gap and social inequality, declining living standards and communal and caste oppression, the working and toiling masses could not be mobilised to present their own class answer to the crisis of capitalism. Fascist demagogy, that finds its expression in speeches of Modi, thus fills the vacuum. Fascists thus succeed in diverting the mass anger against the social distress away from capitalism and towards the hoax of Pakistan and Muslims.
No credit can be given to Modi or RSS for it as is being claimed by many among the defeated ranks of the opposition. Neither the prank of EVM manipulation even touches upon the point, much less the accusation against the masses. The claim that more work among the masses needs be done, is yet another clever bid to evade the real issues. This formless sermon, ‘go to the masses’ neither presents any answer to political bankruptcy nor is a substitute for the program. On the contrary, in face of this victory of BJP, all ground work and the Stalinist claims to it, have fallen flat.
The issue is the policy and orientation of the left. Core issue is to restore the political independence of the working class by reversing the Stalinist policy of subordinating it to the bourgeois political alliances.
Needless to say, there was no dearth of the ground work by the left, but its orientation has been essentially Menshevik-Stalinist. With a wrong compass, the more you would steam up the ship, the more rapidly it would head towards the maelstrom and consequent shipwreck.
During election campaigns, the opportunist and criminal past of the Stalinists found its most finished expression in the demagogy of their more young leaders like Kanhaiya, who more crudely and clearly exhibited and stoked their love for nationalism and bourgeois democracy. In their public rallies, they unfurled the tricolor, wore tricolor turbans and pledged for defence of bourgeois democracy and Constitution.
Ignoring the proposal of the WSP to throw an iron front centred around the working class and supported by the toiling mass, against the fascists, Stalinists forged the shameful electoral alliances with the bourgeois rightwing parties like Congress, RJD, SP, BSP. They remained adhered to the rightwing Maha-Gathbandhan (the Grand Alliance) of reactionary capitalist, regionalist-casteist parties even when they were refused entry inside it. They shared common political dais with the leaders of the bourgeois opposition, many of whom were accused for murders of the left cadres like Chandrashekhar in Siwan, Bihar. In opportunist bids to secure votes, Stalinists stoked all casteist and regionalist equations.
The young activists and supporters were thus thrown in political disarray, totally confused to find the class enemies inside the ranks of allies.
Stalinists are adhered to the bourgeois democratic establishment and are anxious defenders of it. Instead of mobilising the youth and workers against it, they have mobilised them for its defence.
Using BJP as a scarecrow, Stalinists have forced their followers to serve the bourgeois opposition and assist it to take the power. They have justified their servile policy of subordination of youth and workers to the bourgeois opposition on the pretext of defeating fascism, but this dirty policy has in fact fuelled fascism, reinforced it and brought it to power. This policy has prevented the working class from mounting an effective challenge both to capitalism and bourgeois democracy. End result is- victory of fascism!
Through their phoney and hypocritic calls for defence of bourgeois democracy and the Constitution, the Stalinists had been sowing illusions among the youth and workers, orienting them away from the struggle for overthrow of capitalism and the fight for establishment of socialism. The task is not to go back to the bourgeois democracy, trampled under feet of authoritarianism and fascism everywhere in the world, but to fight for its destruction and establishment of a Workers’ and Toilers’ Government.
Fascism cannot be countered through disgusting nationalist and reactionary appeals to the conservative consciousness of the masses, much less through rightwing electoral alliances. It can be defeated only through an offensive centred around the revolutionary working class and supported by mass of urban and rural toilers.
Amidst the jubilant sentiments in the markets and the celebrations among the big business and investors’ circles, deep down there is the chilling wave of fear and concern for the spiralling economic crisis, reflected chiefly through the debt vortex, farm distress and an unprecedented increase in unemployment rate, never seen in the last half century. Huge corporate debt in Banking, most of which is already gone bad, is a big cause of trepidation. Breakout of the trade wars between the big power camps led by the US and China- recent being the withdrawal of services by google from Huawei, following a US dictate designed to paralyse Chinese mobile giant- are pushing the breakdown of world capitalist order to an ever new high. These trade wars are precursors to the military conflicts and we cannot say which moment a world war and a full blown nuclear conflagration may start between the rival camps.
Given the proximity and entanglement of India into the US-led military alliance against China and Russia, prospects of Indian Ocean becoming the battle ground for a future war, is a matter of great concern for the Indian and South Asian people.
On the question of Modi’s Hindu supremacist politics, the ruling elite is deeply divided. A vast section of the ruling bourgeoisie fears a sudden backlash from below against this strategy alongside a gradual disenchantment of the masses from the bourgeois state, law and political establishment.
Bourgeois establishment in India, is under double pressure. On the one hand the Indian capitalists want a more aggressive and robust strategy aimed not only at propelling the economic reforms at faster pace, intensifying the exploitation of working and toiling mass, imposition of austerity and withdrawal from all social welfare schemes but also for military domination in South Asia, against the rival players, above all Pakistan. On the other, the Imperialist partners like US, are bullying it to take up more burden and a frontline role in the war strategy against Russia and China. US is forcing it to cut off all diplomatic relations and oil imports from Russia, Venezuela and Iran, even at the cost of huge losses incurred by it.
Election has brought RSS strongman Modi and the BJP under him to power. However, neither Modi nor the BJP as a whole can add anything to the strength of Indian capitalism. On the contrary, his own strength is confined to the limits of capitalism. The spreading crisis of the Indian and the world capitalism is squeezing these limits, each passing day. Far from becoming an instrument of resolution of this crisis, soon Modi Government will find itself mired in the whirlpool of this irresoluble crisis. Workers and toilers will be impelled by their living conditions and their own experience of life to counter this crisis through their own answer- the revolutionary struggle for overthrow of capitalism. In all countries, capitalism is preparing itself for violent response to this crisis- through suppression of all opposition at home and promotion of the wars abroad. Fascism is precise political expression of this response.
The purpose and goal of the struggle of working class, is thus not to remove Modi or BJP alone, as the Stalinists claim. They are mere expressions of the crisis of capitalism. The goal is to smash the very source of this crisis, the capitalism itself, through a working class-led, socialist revolution.
The agenda of removing Modi or BJP, belongs to bourgeois opposition, not to the working class. Modi and BJP are no doubt the enemies of the working class, but they are not the sole enemies. Rahul, Lalu, Maya, Mamta all belong to the same ranks of class enemy.
Advanced elements of the working class and youth must derive precise conclusions from this victory of rightwing extremists. These conclusions endorse albeit in negative the lessons of October revolution. Prime among these lessons is that the left cannot be tagged to the right, there can be no political alliance between the two oriented to revolution. This alliance would lead to disastrous consequences for the left, strengthening only the rightwing.
The struggle of the left in the post election scenario thus demands above all a decisive and complete break by the workers and youth not only from the bourgeois rightwing parties, leaders and alliances, but also from the centrist leaders who refuse to take this break and continue to sit on the tails of bourgeois rightwing.
The Left needs be reoriented and reorganised around the program of ‘Permanent Revolution’ with which is associated the name of Leon Trotsky, the co-leader with Lenin of the Russian Revolution, which found its further endorsement in Lenin’s April Thesis and its final ratification in the October Revolution.
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