Rising of the Masses, the Leadership and the Struggle for a Revolutionary Program
- Rajesh Tyagi/ 20.9.2025
The recent surges in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal, in quick succession to each other, have left its ruling elite reeling under worrisome expectation of more violent explosions.
The terrified elite has noted it with concern, fear and anxiety how within a short period of an year, South Asia has been jolted by three eruptions, with each one more violent than the earlier.
At their target had been the spectacular enemy- the incumbent governments!
As they do not fit their precasted mental frameworks, the pedantics have accused these risings for not being sufficiently generous and subtle to their enemies and for the destruction caused by them.
The explosion of mass anger, however, would never seem any different than that!
As the masses abruptly enter onto political stage to take their destiny into their own hands, to settle the scores with injustice meted out to them for centuries, the ruling classes are made to pay through their nose.
This is how, whether you like it or not, the uprisings occur!
The three uprisings are the opening shots of the upcoming revolution in South Asia.
What we are witnessing on the political horizon, is a real revolution in the offing.
Historic role of these explosions is to open a threshold to the revolution. However, a threshold is a threshold and not the revolution itself!
The mass surge is the sabre of history, through which it disrupts and shatters the old order before turning it over its head. In this, it's role remains totally negative and destructive.
Blind forces of history have their own course. Their interplay is free and independent of the will of the man.
When Nepali Mensheviks were engaged in debating the character of revolution in Nepal, agreeing among themselves to reject the path of October Revolution, these blind forces were silently preparing the hammer to break their dull skulls.
Rising in revolt, masses are seldom driven by books, theories or ideologies. It is rather their impulsive reaction to the suffocating conditions of their lives.
It is their instinctive wisdom, learnt and extracted chiefly from their life experience in the past that motivates and prompts them into an uprising against the existing order.
This experience is sum total of the hellish conditions created around them by the masters of the old society- their class enemies.
The gigantic task of preparing and drawing the masses to the revolution, is however assigned by the history, not to the friends but foes of the revolution- the knights of the old order.
They are the one, with all pervasive control at their disposal, over the means of influencing the mass- from media houses to educational institutions and above all 'the state'- who decide everything!
Paradoxically, their hands are used by the blind forces of history to perform their own tasks and achieve their own goals. These tasks include, promptimg the outdated masters to dig their graves with their own hands!
This is what we witnessed recently happening in Nepal after Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
It were the deeds of these elite masters that forced the masses to rise in rebellion against them.
That is why when our critiques ridicule us for 'not going to the masses', we only pity them with a smile. It is their political ignorance and illiteracy that forces them to seek their place among the backward mass, the backyard of the revolution, instead of it's vanguard.
The sudden and abrupt character of the mass revolts, stems out, amazingly, not from any radicalism of its participant mass but from the peculiarity of the historical evolution of mass consciousness- that is its inert, sluggish, indolent and lethargic response.
As material productive forces of a society- science, technology and technique- develop and stride forward, human consciousness is often left far behind. So are left out the political institutions created by it in the past and depending on it
All further march of these forces of production, continues to escalate the social tensions, till the inert mass is suddenly catapulted to themselves by these dynamic forces. The ensuing tweaker action of this slingshot, is the revolution!
The revolutionary strategy, thus, must not disorient and waste itself into undertaking the unrealizable task of preparing the mass for a revolution. On the contrary, it must aim to patiently and consistently forge the spearhead of the revolution through mobilisation, training and political arming of the most advanced elements of the revolutionary social class.
This vanguard force- the political party in our times- must thus prepare and arm itself and 'lay in ambush' to 'seize the power' till the conditions for it mature during a mass surge.
This 'laying in ambush' is not the counsel for 'passive wait' for opportune moment to approach, but the most active venture of a revolution to bring that moment ever closer. It is in fact an incessant exercise that continues through all roughshods.
To do this, the vanguard must make most active and conscious efforts to impregnate every mass struggle with consciousness of revolutionary tasks and goals.
It must intervene in all aspects of the life of the class and through merciless criticism of the existing social conditions, draw best of its elements to itself.
Thus must operate a live conveyor belt between the vanguard elements and the struggles of the fighting mass- from factories, streets and Universities to the Parliament.
What all three recent mass uprisings had in common was the absence of this conveyor belt as no leadership, equal to the tasks of the impending revolution, existed.
The violent mass surge has, in fact, caught the class unprepared, with consciousness of the vanguard lagging far behind that of the rebellious masses.
The raw steam could not be used in the locomotive despite the force it came with. More than once, the revolution missed the opportunity!
In abortion of the revolutionary situation, the crisis of leadership has manifested itself once again.
The revolts have spectacularly demonstrated this lack of leadership.
This failure at the critical juncture of history, has caused significant loss to the cause of revolution. As the leadership failed to raise itself upto the tasks presented to it by the history, the mass was left in disarray and the tide turned into ebb, one by one in all three countries.
About a century ago, the leader of the Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky, realising and underscoring this weak side of the revolutionary movement, had emphasized the forging of such leadership as most pressing task of our times.
Neddless to say that this leadership, in the historic times we live in, can only be a wotld party of the proletariat armed with a marxist program.
The rich experience of four Internationals, constitutes the shining legacy of marxism to illuminate this road.
More than eight decades before, Trotsky himself had ventured to organise the Fourth International upon eclipse of the Third by Stalinist bureaucracy.
The task ahead is to assemble all the forces of revolution around the struggle for realisation of the program of 'Permanent Revolution'.
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