Bipin Balaram
“The
task of a bourgeois professor is not to lay bare the entire mechanism, or to
expose all the machinations of the bank monopolists, but rather to present them
in favourable light.” - Lenin [1]
Good
Bye Lenin! So bids one of the pre-eminent theorists of Indian parliamentary left,
Prof. Prabhat Patnaik. He
has come up with the thesis that post-WWII, the ‘Leninist conjuncture’ has been
superseded[2].
Based on this thesis, he goes on to elaborate the right way for the Indian left. This right way involves two things:
unequivocal de-linking from globalisation and the embrace
of democracy and alliances with ‘progressive-democratic’ forces. Patnaik
contends that ambivalence towards globalisation and democracy is at the root of
left’s irrelevance in many parts of the world today and that
In
countries where communists have shed their ambivalence both towards opposing
globalisation and towards defending democracy, they have remained a formidable
force; and India is one such country.
Patnaik’s
thesis is based on the assertion that the basic premise of ‘Leninist
conjuncture’ was the imminence of world
revolution and that by the end of Second World War, the world had already
started moving away from this ‘conjuncture’. As revolutionary upheavals were/are
not imminent in the post-war era, the ‘Leninist conjuncture’ has been
superseded. Hence, the left has to follow his right way. Patnaik’s thesis on the demise of the ‘Leninist
conjuncture’ and his elaboration of the right
tactical line for the Indian left serves as archetypal examples of
reformist thought and opportunistic praxis. His article, which was published
just days after the left – congress alliance in West Bengal came a cropper in
the state legislative elections, has to be put in its proper political context.
Patnaik’s painful theorising has to be seen as offering ideological prop-up to
the social democratic, reformist line of Indian parliamentary left. So it is
important that different strands of this thesis and the suggestions that flow
from it be analysed and exposed from a proletarian revolutionary stand point.
That is what this essay attempts to do[3].
1. Imminence of revolution vs Actuality of revolution
Patnaik’s
whole argument about the supersession of the ‘Leninist conjuncture’ stands on
the premise that it is based on imminence
of revolution. Patnaik argues that post-WWII capitalism “… made three major concessions to ward off the
communist threat: decolonisation, the institution of democracy based on
universal adult suffrage, and state intervention in ‘demand management’ to
maintain high levels of employment…” This meant that “… the world had started moving away from what
one can call the ‘Leninist conjuncture’[4].
The moment of dazzling success of communism was also ironically the start of
its decline”. Then Patnaik proceeds to analyse the simple reason for this decline:
The
oft-repeated question why did communism collapse so suddenly, has, I believe, a
simple answer: because the premise upon which it was founded no longer held,
the premise of an imminent world revolution. As this imminence receded,
communism had to reinvent and restructure itself, to come to terms with a
post-Leninist conjuncture, in order to remain viable. This was difficult
enough; it was made more difficult by a common but undesirable tendency among
revolutionaries to place moral purity above practical politics and deny the
non-imminence of revolution.
Two
things need to be carefully analysed here. One, is imminence of revolution the basic premise of communism and/or ‘Leninist
conjuncture’? Two, was the post-WWII collapse of communist movements due to the
supersession of the ‘Leninist conjuncture’ and the ‘undesirable tendency among
revolutionaries’ not to come to terms with it?
Georg
Lukacs, in his celebrated essay on Lenin, locates his unique place in the
pantheon of proletarian revolutionaries thus[5]:
Historical
materialism is the theory of the proletarian revolution. … The stature of a
proletarian thinker, of a representative of historical materialism, can
therefore be measured by the depth and breadth of his grasp of this and the
problems arising from it; by the extent to which he is able accurately to
detect beneath the appearances of bourgeois society those tendencies towards
proletarian revolution which work themselves in and through it to their
effective being and distinct consciousness. By these criteria Lenin is the
greatest thinker to have been produced by the revolutionary working class
movement since Marx.
For
a bourgeois thinker or an academic pen-pusher, it is important to present the
material basis of the bourgeois society as eternal even when he is being
critical of things which he regards as collateral
excesses of capitalist system. The historically contingent nature of capitalist
mode of production and bourgeois relations of production never become a factor
in his analyses. Hence he remains impervious to the destabilising tendencies
inside capitalism which, with every passing day, continue to prepare the
objective ground for its destruction. So it is natural that proletarian
revolution does not even find a place in the horizon of this thoughts. With a
vulgar Marxist, things are even worse
…
to a vulgar Marxist, the foundations of bourgeois society are so unshakeable
that, even when they are most visibly shaking, he only hopes and prays for a
return to ‘normality’, sees its crises as temporary episodes, and regards a
struggle even at such times as an irrational and irresponsible rebellion
against the ever invincible capitalist system.[6]
Patnaik
reveals his academic, vulgar Marxist, reformist orientation very clearly when
he asserts that imminence of
revolution is the basis of ‘Leninist conjuncture’. What this means for Patnaik
is that the ‘Leninist conjuncture’ becomes valid only once revolution becomes imminent; until then the proletarian
party need not bother about Lenin nor do they need to act in a revolutionary manner. It becomes a
theoretical framework which can be used to justify all reformist, opportunist
compromises and to advance a social democratic tactical line as the ‘Marxist’
one. It becomes a weapon to smuggle in a theory of stages into the proletarian movement which preaches thus: until the
revolution becomes imminent, the
‘left’ may shed its revolutionary orientation, become more flexible, place practical politics above ‘moral purity’, and may
unite with bourgeois and petty bourgeois parties “…in struggles, on platforms and even in government”[7];
once revolution becomes imminent the
movement may switch over to the revolutionary ‘mode’. The stages theory preached by Patnaik is an infallible strategy to make
sure that a revolution never becomes imminent;
it also ensures that the pristine silence pervading the CESP corridors is not
broken and that the academicians sitting inside can continue their exercises in
sophisticated reformism. Here Patnaik conveniently forgets that the
revolutionary orientation of the proletarian movement is one of the factors
contributing to the maturing of a revolutionary situation. As Lenin contented[8]:
“… our propaganda and the propaganda of all social-democrats[9] is
one of the factors determining whether there will be a revolution or not.” Thus
it emerges that waiting for the imminence
of revolution cannot be the basis of genuine revolutionary praxis.
To
grasp the real premise of the ‘Leninist conjuncture’, we have to follow Lukacs
closely who asserts that actuality of
revolution, and not its imminence,
forms the real core of Lenin’s thought
The
actuality of revolution: this is the core of Lenin’s thought and his decisive
link with Marx. … This means that the actuality of proletarian revolution is no
longer only a world historical horizon arching above the self-liberating
working class, but that revolution is already on its agenda.
What
does actuality of revolution mean?
Isn’t it the same as imminence?
Doesn’t the phrase ‘revolution is already on its agenda’ above mean that the
revolution is imminent? No, the
Marxist-Leninist actuality of
revolution and Patnaik’s imminence of
revolution are very different premises. But before we go into that, let us
examine the dictionary meanings of these expressions. Merriam-Webster gives the
meaning of imminent as “happening
very soon”, “ready to take place” and “hanging threateningly over one's head”
and that of actuality as “the quality
or state of being actual or real” and “something that is actual or real”. Imminence of revolution means that
revolution is about to take place and
its actuality means that revolution
has ceased to become a utopian illusion, that the germs of revolution can be clearly
discerned in the interstices of the present society[10].
Lukacs makes clear that the theory of historical materialism is itself a
product of this actuality of
revolution, not its imminence.
For
historical materialism as the conceptual expression of the proletariat’s
struggle for liberation could only be conceived and formulated theoretically
when revolution was already on the historical agenda as a practical reality;
when, in the misery of the proletariat, in Marx’s words, was to be seen not
only the misery itself but also the revolutionary element ‘which will bring
down the old order’.
As
Engels has stressed in Anti-Duhring,
Fourier, Saint-Simon or Owen could not have gone beyond utopian socialism
because of the insufficient growth of capitalism during their times. Marx could
frame the revolutionary theory of historical materialism because mature
industrial capitalism in England already flaunted its contradictions to the
judicious eye[11].
The ‘Leninist conjuncture’ is based on nothing else but the Marxist ‘conjuncture’
of the actuality of revolution; what
Lenin did was that he “re-established the purity of Marxist theory on this
issue”[12].
Imminence of
revolution assumes a fully matured revolutionary situation, actuality of revolution signifies an
economic, political and social situation which is pregnant with reality of revolution, a situation in which the
contours of revolutionary potential, even though imperceptible to the bourgeois
or reformist eye, is nevertheless clear to the discerning look of materialist
dialectics. Imminence of revolution
is a static concept, signifying the
impending revolution without any reference to the historical processes that lead
to the constitution of such a situation or to the development of the
revolutionary agency which will consummate the revolution; actuality of revolution is a dynamic
concept which resides in the flux of history, in the process of history,
signifying the slow but steady maturing of the contradictions of capitalism and
the growth of the historical agency of working class and its consciousness as
the subjective element of this actuality. Patnaik hopes to find, as if
by magic, a revolution which is imminent
and to suddenly flip a switch which will impart revolutionary agency to a
movement drenched in opportunist compromises and welfare illusions of its pre-imminent
phase. Lenin discerns, under the calm exteriors of bourgeois society, the
churning of an objective historical process preparing the ground for its own
destruction and understands the need to develop the subjective agency which is
conscious of this actuality and which is steeled enough through revolutionary
political struggles to consummate this actuality. And most importantly, actuality of revolution connects the
everyday political work of the revolutionary workers’ party to its ultimate
goal, the proletarian revolution, something that Patnaik’s specious theory of imminence could never hope to do.
…
it was through this actuality that both [Marx
and Lenin] gained a sure touchstone for
evaluating all questions of the day. The actuality of the revolution provides
the key-note of the whole epoch. Individual actions can only be considered
revolutionary or counter revolutionary when related to the central issue of
revolution, which is only to be discovered by an accurate analysis of the
socio-historic whole. The actuality of
revolution therefore implies study of each individual daily problem in concrete
association with socio-historic whole, as moments in the liberation of the
proletariat.[13]
The
actuality of revolution, as a guiding
principle, affects the dialectical union of the process and goal, of the
day-to-day work of the working class movement and the final goal of proletarian
revolution, whereas, imminence
fragments the totality of revolutionary struggle into pre- and post-imminent
situations with no continuity between them, at the border of which the movement
is supposed to switch over from reformist to revolutionary mood at the snap of
a finger. Actuality asserts the
totality of the revolutionary struggle whereas imminence fragments it and lends it impotent. Imminence presents every political question in the pre-imminent
phase as a question only of reform
whereas actuality “means that every
question of the day – precisely as a question of the day – at the same time
became a fundamental problem of the revolution.” This dialectical union of the ‘question of the day’ and the
‘fundamental problem of revolution’ shines through as the biggest achievement
of Lenin’s thought and politics. All of Lenin’s political thought is a
study in the dialectical union between the immediate political questions and
the ultimate revolutionary struggle.
Neil
Harding has extensively documented[14]
the ‘remarkable coherence and consistency’ in Lenin’s political strategy. This
consistency owes its existence to two factors: one, Lenin always based his
political strategy on detailed class analysis of existing economic relations
and two, each one of Lenin’s strategies was informed by the actuality of the final aim, that of
proletarian revolution. For Lenin, the primary duties of the vanguard of the
working class were to exactly gauge, based on class analysis of the objective
socio-economic reality, the potentialities of each political situation and to
orient the proletarian struggle towards consummation of the most radical
potentiality, in direct opposition to the bourgeois and petty bourgeois[15]
efforts not to take the situation to its radical limits. The radical
potentiality of concrete situations will only be revealed in relation to the final aim of the movement. In other words, it is
the actuality of revolution which
informs the theoretical analysis and practical strategy of the vanguard. As
Harding remarks[16]
The
task of the social democratic vanguard was always to have the next stage of
development in view. It was, as Lenin once put it, ‘to see the future in the
present’. Theory, far from being retrospective, was, for Lenin, valuable only
because it was predictive. The claim to authority of the social democrats (and
later communists) was derived from their prescient awareness of the broad
outlines of the next phase of the historical progression – they claimed to know
what was coming into being.
So,
it is obvious that Lenin saw the struggle for the liberation of the proletariat
to be a continuous process and that seeing the ‘future in the present’ to be
nothing else other than to be informed and guided by the actuality of revolution. Leninism
urges us to analyse and realise the full potential of the concrete present in relation to the actuality of the future revolution. This also shows us that
Leninist thought and practice is not a switch which is to be flipped on only
once the revolution is imminent, as
Patnaik would have us believe, but is a constant presence which stresses the continuity of proletarian strategy and
the need to view each political situation in a revolutionary manner. Probably, Lenin had people like Patnaik in
mind when he wrote that[17]
It
is not difficult to be a revolutionary when revolution has already broken out
and is in spate, when all people are joining the revolution just because they
are carried away, because it is the vogue, and sometimes even from careerist
motives. After its victory, the proletariat has to make most strenuous efforts,
even the most painful, so as to “liberate” itself from such
pseudo-revolutionaries.It is far more difficult— and far more precious— to be a
revolutionary when the conditions for direct, open, really mass and really
revolutionary struggle do not yet exist, to
be able to champion the interests of the revolution (by propaganda, agitation
and organisation) in non-revolutionary bodies, and quite often in downright
reactionary bodies, in a non-revolutionary situation, among the masses who are
incapable of immediately appreciating the need for revolutionary methods of
action. To be able to seek, find and correctly determine the specific path
or the particular turn of events that will lead the masses to the real,
decisive and final revolutionary struggle.
Instead
of exhorting the left to be vibrant and radical, Prof. Patnaik is urging the
Indian left in the opposite direction, to stop being revolutionary until
revolution is imminent, to be
flexible and to hide behind the back of opportunist alliances and to barge in
once the revolution is served on a platter. Lenin correctly identifies such
people as ‘pseudo-revolutionaries’ with ‘careerist motives’ from which the
proletariat has to ‘liberate itself’. If Lenin was alive today, our ‘Professors’
would have branded him a puritan
fool!
In
the above quoted passage, Lenin provides an exact and succinct description of
the revolutionary duty of communists in a non-revolutionary situation: “… to be able to champion the interests of the
revolution (by propaganda, agitation and organisation) in non-revolutionary
bodies … To be able to seek, find and correctly determine the specific path or
the particular turn of events that will lead the masses to the real, decisive
and final revolutionary struggle”. We have already seen that reformist
social democrats like Patnaik envisage a totally different path. When the
former tries to “determine the specific
path or the particular turn of events that will lead the masses to the real,
decisive and final revolutionary struggle” and to orient the specific
strategy of the moment based on this, the latter, having lost any and all
appreciation for the actuality of the
‘final revolutionary struggle’ because of their petty bourgeois class
orientation, gropes in the dark, sees only the present, vacillates, weighs
different options in compromise and at last arrives at the easiest regressive
option meant at diffusing the present crisis as quickly and uneventfully as
possible. Many examples for these two diagonally opposite approaches can be
cited from the Russian experience itself, but let me restrict myself to one,
that too very briefly.
During
Russia’s 1905 revolution, both Lenin’s Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks were
convinced that the scope of this revolution was bourgeois-democratic in nature[18].
But they drew vastly different conclusions from this premise. The Mensheviks
concluded that as it was a bourgeois-democratic revolution, the class that will
lead this revolution had to be the bourgeoisie; the proletariat had to play
second fiddle, in alliance with the bourgeoisie and has to be careful not to do
anything ‘reckless’ which will make the bourgeois ‘recoil’ and retreat from the
revolution against the monarchy. In other words, the Mensheviks argued that the
revolution had to remain strictly within the coordinates of bourgeois
aspirations and should go only as long as the bourgeoisie take it; they were
for hiding carefully behind the bourgeois backs who were given the leading
role. Lenin violently disagreed[19].
He correctly argued that in countries which already had a fully formed
proletariat, the bourgeoisie will never be interested in fully realising all
the progressive potential of democratic revolution. Instead of decisive and
complete decimation of the monarchy and feudal super structure, the bourgeoisie
would want many of the ‘remnants of the past’ to be carefully preserved so that
they act as an impediment to the growth of proletarian class consciousness and
can be used as a bulwark in the class struggle against the proletariat. Based
on this class assessment of the ‘inconsistency’ and ‘treachery’ of the
bourgeoisie, Lenin concluded that consummation of the most “complete,
determined, and consistent democratic revolution” in Russia was the duty of the
proletariat! Hence, what was needed was not an alliance with the bourgeoisie
but that the proletariat take up the leading role in the revolution and force
the hands of the bourgeois class which is “self-seeking and cowardly in its
support of the revolution” to consummate the democratic revolution in the most
complete and radical manner.
What
is the root cause of this difference of strategies between Lenin and the
Mensheviks? Mensheviks approached the democratic revolution in an ahistorical
manner, in an empirical vein, as a problem of democratic revolution alone. They
had long since forgotten the dialectical link between the present struggle and
the final aim. But Lenin, a dialectician to the core keenly aware of the actuality of proletarian revolution, was
able to understand that the way in which the democratic revolution was
consummated would have a direct bearing on the balance of the class struggle
between proletariat and bourgeoisie after that and on the prospects of
proletarian revolution, i.e., he saw ‘the future in the present’. The bourgeois
would only be interested in the consummation of democratic revolution in a form
that was least beneficial to the proletariat, in a partial, inconsistent form affected
through compromises with the monarchy and feudal forces. But the proletariat is
interested in a form of democratic revolution which will sweep away all the
decayed remnants of the feudal past, ensure the “broadest, freest and the most
rapid development of capitalism” that will set the stage for a rapid and
unhindered maturing of class contradictions and proletarian class
consciousness. Hence the famous expression from Lenin that “there are bourgeois
revolutions and bourgeois revolutions”. So it clearly emerges that the
difference between the opportunists and Lenin was based on his appreciation of
the actuality of the proletarian
revolution, which allowed him to see the present democratic revolution as a
stage in the whole continuous process of class struggle. What Lenin is
advocating here is the dialectical unity of the present strategy and the final
aim; to make sure that the bourgeois revolution is consummated in a form which
is most beneficial to the struggle for the ultimate liberation of the
proletariat. This makes it absolutely clear that actuality of revolution is the cornerstone of Leninism and that
Patnaik’s imminence is its vulgarisation
and a reformist excuse; ‘Leninist conjuncture’ is one in which revolution is an
actuality.
So,
has the ‘Leninist conjuncture’ been superseded? We are living through the most
severe and drawn out capitalist crisis since WWII. Major capitalist economies
are stuck in a mire with no immediate prospect of revival in sight, the so
called emerging economies are being pulled into it. With the Chinese economy
which, according to World Bank data, made the largest contribution to global
economic growth over the past decade experiencing major problems, the
contradictions of global capitalism are beginning to be laid bare more than
ever. The unipolar supremacy of the US is eroding, the European bloc is
imploding from within and inequality levels are touching pre-1930 standards. On
the subjective front, spontaneous movements are cropping up in all parts of the
globe, may it be the occupy movement, the unrest in Greece or struggles in even
developed parts of Europe. Statistics show that there has been a manyfold
increase in the number of strikes in China which is experiencing a surge in
workers’ militancy. Rank and file workers’ struggles are on the rise in India
too with some of them, like the textile workers agitation in Bangalore, bringing
the whole state apparatus to its knees in hours. Many of these struggles are
not explicitly anti-capitalist in nature, many of them are not even proper
working class movements, most often they are spontaneous outpourings of pent up
anger. But what cannot be denied is that such movements arise because the acute
contradictions of capitalism has made its effect felt on the toiling class
which is beginning to question the sustainability of such a system more than
ever. Furthermore, liberal parliamentary
democracy has been thoroughly exposed as nothing but a bourgeois façade. The
very foundations of the bourgeois edifice is visibly shaking. In such a
condition, for a class conscious proletarian revolutionary, the actuality of revolution shines through
with exceptional clarity. There has been no other age in the post-war history
in which the Marxist-Leninist conjuncture based on the actuality of revolution has been more pertinent. The ‘Leninist
conjuncture’, far from being superseded as Patnaik’s reformist theory would
have it, is being realised right in front of our eyes, Leninism is THE living,
throbbing, motoring force of history right now which the toiling class has to imbibe.
In
spite of this, it remains true that revolution is not imminent. The spontaneous rank and file movements arising in every
part of the globe does not still exhibit a consistent anti-capitalist
orientation and are not conscious enough to see the liberation of the working
class as the only practical solution
of the existing contradictions. They are still ‘economic’ in nature and are, at
best, advocating the fair redistribution of wealth rather than a change in the
mode of production. This is because a class conscious proletarian vanguard
which can uncover the social and political roots of these economic grievances
to the toiling class and which can unify these spontaneous struggles into a
broader and more purposeful social struggle does not exist[20].
This void was created, as Patnaik correctly remarks, due to the slow and
gradual decay of working class parties worldwide in the post-war era. What was
the main reason for this decay? It is here that Patnaik fires his second great
salvo. He has already theorised that the ‘Leninist conjuncture’, based on imminence of revolution, was superseded
after the war. This situation, opines Patnaik, called for communism to “reinvent and restructure itself, to come to
terms with a post-Leninist conjuncture, in order to remain viable.” It
failed to live up to this task, he suggests. “This was difficult enough; it was made more difficult by a common but
undesirable tendency among revolutionaries to place moral purity above
practical politics and deny the non-imminence of revolution.” Thus he
asserts that it was the inability of the left to correctly gauge and appreciate
the demise of Leninism that led to their downfall. This is a naked travesty of
post-war history. It is not just that the decay of left was not caused by their
inability to outlive Lenin, but that the exact opposite is true. The decay of
the global left has its roots in its inability to gauge and appreciate the
topicality of the Marxist – Leninist conjuncture based on the actuality of revolution, in its
abandonment of the revolutionary question, in its metamorphosis into social
democracy and in its descend into the ranks of ‘welfarism’. Through what
Charles Post has termed the ‘gradual process of social democratisation’, the
left parties
…adapted
the political strategy of social democracy – alliances with capitalist and
middle class liberals in defence of the institutions of the democratic
capitalist state, and seeking reforms through parliamentary activity and
routine collective bargaining rather than mass, militant struggles
and
drifted towards a political orientation “designed to administer the crisis and not to make profound transformations”[21]. They began to resemble closely the
social democratic parties of the second international for which “…the daily non revolutionary routine became
the be all and end all”. This ‘social democratisation’ had clear political
economic reasons. The post-war capitalist boom which ushered in the so-called
‘golden age of capitalism’ bred illusions in much of the intelligentsia
…it
became the orthodoxy on the right and much of the left to proclaim that the
contradictions in the system perceived by Marx had been overcome. The key
change, it was argued, was that governments had learned to intervene in the
economy to counteract tendencies to crisis along the lines urged in 1930s by
John Meynard Keynes.[22]
It
is not surprising that petty bourgeois ‘Marxists’ like Patnaik still identify
this ‘golden age’ as the one in which ‘Leninist conjuncture’ was superseded. The
left, faced with a booming capitalism and the claim that the contradictions had
been dealt with, chose exactly the same option that Patnaik is advocating now;
forget the actuality of revolution, prostrate before the logic of capital and
become reformist. So when crisis, which was supposedly consigned to the
historical dust bin, came back crashing through the front door in the late 60s
and early 70s, the reformist left was caught napping. Because by then, as Post
remarks, “Decades of routine collective bargaining and parliamentary –
electoral politics combined with a highly centralised and bureaucratic internal
life had transformed the bulk of the rank and file of the communist parties
into supporters of the forces of official reformism – the labour and party-parliamentary
officialdom”. It was the capitalist
class which made quick and thorough use of the crisis to pull history further
towards right because they were much more class conscious and prepared; the
bourgeoisie had never seen ‘welfare state’ as nothing else but a temporary
adjustment to wade through a difficult post-war situation. At the first
opportunity, it phased out the welfare state and rolled in neo-liberalism,
crushing any resistance that was offered. The left, devoid of all revolutionary
content after all those years of peaceful, flexible, non-puritan,
non-revolutionary politics, could conjure up nothing but a pitiable squeal to
return back to the good old days of ‘state funding’[23].
Thus it is not the demise of ‘Leninist conjuncture’ that led to the decay of
the left. It is left’s stance based on the ‘irrelevance’ of Lenin in the age of
capitalist boom and the drift towards reformism that led to its downfall.
Patnaik urges the Indian left to repeat history, this time as farce.
Patnaik’s
conjecture on the demise of Leninism and his assertion that the decay of the
left was caused by its obstinacy to let
go off Lenin immediately runs into trouble. It fails the very first
practical test that it is put to by its author itself. This illusionary
construct implodes on its very first contact with real history. Unable to make
sense of facts with his reformist conjecture, Patnaik presents them as riddles of history[24].
During
the ‘golden age’ years when one would have expected the appeal of communism to
diminish, it did not, while in the era of globalisation when the misery of the
working people are mounting everywhere and capitalism is attenuating democracy
and the welfare state, communism, far from gaining ground, seems to be at loss.
I
shall suggest a simple method to solve this riddle;
take off those reformist glasses and prepare yourself to look the facts in the
eye. Replace the word ‘communism’ above with ‘social democracy’ and the riddle
solves itself! But with it, out goes the ‘Patnaik conjecture’.It was
bureaucratic social democracy that ‘retained’ its parliamentary support base
during capitalist boom and it is the same social democracy which is finding it
difficult now to stop it from eroding. The support was retained in the ‘golden
age’ by caving in for popular notions about the infallibility of capitalism and by converting themselves into
fixers of capitalism. The class essence of this support was thoroughly petty
bourgeois. In the neo-liberal era of recurring crisis and mounting misery, it
is obvious that a movement which based itself on the possibility of a humane
and crisis free capitalism, and which internalised these welfare illusions in its day-to-day political
practice, would find its support deserting it. When, as Patnaik correctly
remarks, ‘capitalism attenuates the welfare state’, how can a Left which had
rooted itself in the possibility of achieving a just society through welfare
state stop from being irrelevant?
Hence, this is no ‘conundrum’ as laid out by Patnaik, but is the logical result
of Lefts’ reformist embrace.
A
communist movement thrives on capitalist crisis[25];
crisis serves as the most effective lesson in historical materialism to the
working class and impresses upon them the correctness and practicality of revolutionary Marxism. When a capitalist crisis
erupts and workers’ lives take a turn from bad to worse, revolutionary
communist movements alone, which had relentlessly preached to them the inherently contradictory nature of
capitalism shall preserve the locus
standi to direct the working class. Hence, at seemingly ‘golden’ times for
capital, the proletarian vanguard does not drop its guard and switch over to
non-revolutionary politics but keeps the actuality
of revolution alive in workers’ consciousness, organises its troops and build
strength in workers’ struggles. Once the crisis flaunts capitalism’s
contradictions, the workers, even those who had no sympathy to them, gradually
grasp that the consistent revolutionary line of the vanguard was all along the
correct one. The prospects of Lenin’s Bolsheviks provide a good example for
this. With limited presence even in the bigger cities prior to the imperialist
war, their popularity and reach exploded once the war went sour. Every passing
day aggravated the crisis and showed to the working class the hollowness of the
patriotic line of the bourgeoisie and the pacifist or centrist line of social
democracy. The Bolshevik’s consistent revolutionary line even at the beginning
of the war when the patriotic fervour
was at its peak was at last vindicated, which began to swell their ranks. This
sudden reversal in the fortunes of the Bolsheviks still remain such an
incomprehensible mystery to
specialist bourgeois historians that they are forced to conjure up exotic
theories to explain it[26].
The prospects of reformist movement takes the opposite course, their ranks
swells in calm times, with workers
deserting them once the crisis breaks. Clearly it is this course that the social
democratic left of the post-war era has taken.
2.
Imperialism,
War and Revolution – Patnaik as the Indian Kautsky
We
have seen that the very first contact with history obliterated the ‘Patnaik
Conjecture’ and its explanation for left’s post-war decay. Now, we have to wade
through Patnaik’s next theoretical contribution in his article, that of warless imperialism.
Patnaik
goes on to enlighten us about the reasons for his assertion that revolution is
not imminent. He sees the present age
as one characterised by “… a muting of inter-imperialist rivalries” mainly due
to the “… emergence of globalised or international finance capital which saw
all partitioning of the world as standing in the way of its freedom to move
globally.” He emphatically concludes that[27]
The
era of struggles for repartitioning the world among rival nation-based monopoly
combines was over since such combines no longer held centre stage. In short,
the ‘Leninist conjuncture’ had been superseded; wars of course continued, but they did not express
inter-imperialist rivalry, not even by proxy.
The
gist of Patnaik’s logic is very clear: imminence
of revolution was the basis of ‘Leninist conjuncture’ and inter-imperialist war
was the reason for this imminence.
Now that finance capital has obliterated imperialist rivalries and with it the
chance of imperialist wars, revolution cannot be imminent. Hence ‘Leninist conjuncture’ stands superseded. Nice!
This argument is a shocking travesty of the spirit of Marxism-Leninism and a
naked vulgarisation of Marx’s ideas of revolutionary change. But first we have
to dwell upon some historical parallels which will make the class basis of Patnaik’s
argument clear. In 1915, Karl Kautsky had put forward his theory of
‘ultra-imperialism’ in order to justify his ‘centrist’ line of not opposing the
imperialist WWI in a revolutionary
way and of maintaining a laughable false neutrality in the face of war. Lenin
characterised it thus[28]
‘From
the purely economic point of view’, writes Kautsky, ‘it is not impossible that
capitalism will yet go through a new phase, that of the extension of the policy
of cartels to foreign policy, the phase of ultra-imperialism’, i.e. of a super
imperialism, of a union of the imperialisms of the world and not struggles
among them, a phase when wars shall cease under capitalism, a phase of ‘the
joint exploitation of the world by internationally united finance capital’.
Thus,
what Patnaik is really asserting is that we are living in the age of Kautsky’s
‘ultra-imperialism’.
In
the year 2000, when Leftword Books brought out an edition of Lenin’s Imperialism, they got a theorist of international
repute from among the left intelligentsia to write its introduction. This
introduction spiritedly attacked the notion that inter-imperialist rivalries
have died down and that Kautsky’s prediction has proved to be correct rather
than Lenin’s. In it, we read the following
The
fact that globalisation of finance capital has brought about a degree of unity
among the imperialist countries, at least in their dealings with the Third
World, may create the impression that the world has moved to the Kautskyan
vision of ‘ultra-imperialism’ rather than remaining submerged in
‘inter-imperialist rivalries’ as Lenin had prognosticated, that real
developments have vindicated Kautsky rather than Lenin. To believe this,
however, would constitute a serious misreading … of contemporary reality.
Patnaik’s
assertion that inter-imperialist rivalries have been muted and imperialist wars
have ceased, constitute such a ‘serious misreading’. The irony is that the
‘reputed theorist’ who wrote this introduction and attacked all varieties of
Kaustkyan ultra-imperialism in 2000 was none other than Prof. Prabhat Patnaik[29].
Surely, some drastic qualitative change in the character of capitalist
imperialism has happened in the last 15 years that prompted our Professor to do
an intellectual somersault. Now he embraces the theory of warless
super-imperialism brought about by finance capital that he had completely
rejected and attacked in 2000. We shall go through his arguments in 2000
against his own position now and try to guess what prompted him to change his
stand in such a dramatic manner.
Patnaik,
in his 2000 Introduction, summed up
Lenin’s approach to the theory of conflict-less imperialism thus
‘Ultra-imperialism’
thus was repugnant to Lenin because it conjured up a vision of global peace
under capitalism … The line of his [Lenin’s]
attack was as follows: uneven development
under capitalism necessarily implies that any agreement among the imperialist
powers for the joint exploitation of the world, which is based on their
prevailing relative strengths, gets undermined over time: a redrawing of the
agreement is achieved through the use of force. Conflicts and struggles between
the imperialist powers, even if interrupted by periods of truce, are a
perennial feature. Peaceful periods are mere interludes of temporary truce;
permanent peace under capitalism is impossible.
Back
then, Patnaik was in complete agreement with the Leninist attack on the
‘reactionary ultra-imperialist fable’ and proclaimed that war was ‘an inevitable
outcome of imperialism’. He was very sure that the current phase of imperialist
unity in the face of globalised finance capital was only a transient
phenomenon. He wrote
The
current unity among the imperialist powers too may prove to be only transient.
What is more, even if the unity lasts, i.e., even if inter imperialist
conflicts remain muted, this still does not mean that wars would have been
avoided, since other kinds of wars would break out to disrupt the ‘joint
exploitation of the world by internationally united finance capital’. One
obvious example would be wars between united imperialism and countries
unwilling to toe its line.
It
is amazing how much distance Prabhat Patnaik has covered in the last 15 years,
from being an unequivocal supporter of the Leninist notion of ‘permanent
strife’ under imperialism, to an ardent advocate of a ‘warless, peaceful’
imperialism with all rivalries obliterated by finance capital. All this, only
to be able to proclaim the ‘demise of Lenin’ and to justify the
‘non-revolutionary’ politics of the reformist left. It is important to note
here that, back then, Patnaik had highlighted two important points in support
of the Leninist version of imperialism. 1) Any unity among imperialist powers
can only be temporary, inter-imperialist conflicts, even if interrupted by
lengthy periods of truce, cannot be avoided. 2) Because of ‘uneven development
of capitalism’, which Lenin had stressed, imperialist wars may take the form of
wars by a bloc of developed countries on other countries ‘unwilling to toe
their line’. He now vehemently opposes both of these points. Patnaik maintains
now that finance capital has heralded in an era of ‘warless imperialism’ and
that the current truce among imperialist powers is permanent. For him, the wars
being fought now are not the expression of contradictions of imperialism and
have got nothing to do with inter-imperialist rivalries, ‘not even by proxy’.
Why such a dramatic change in opinion? Is it prompted by any equally dramatic
qualitative change in the characteristics of finance capitalism and imperialism
in the last 15 years? Obviously NO. If Prof. Patnaik can perceive such a change
in the basis of imperialism which has
made it ‘ultra’ and ‘rivalry free’ in 15 years, he should not hold it from his
disciples! What can be clearly perceived is that finance capital’s pursuit of
the whole world has intensified many fold in this time and this has led to
increased imperialist manoeuvring. This has led to the intensification of antagonisms
between imperialist powers and between imperialist powers and others. After
2000, we have seen wars upon wars unleashed by imperialist powers in many parts
of the world on the thinnest of pretexts. It is amazing to see Patnaik maintain
that these wars have nothing to do with imperialism. His claim that imperialist
rivalries have muted down and do not express themselves in wars ‘even by proxy’
is downright laughable in the face of prolonged conflicts in Syria with
different imperialist blocs adopting different tactics, fighting for different
results and supporting mutually opposed parties. At least on some occasions,
the war in Syria has threatened to spill over into a war between some of the
imperialist backers (as when the Russian Sukhoi jet was shot down by Turkey)[30].
Patnaik’s
newly found support of Kautskyan ‘ultra-imperialism’ conveniently forgets two
things. One, that the wars that the united
imperialism is currently waging against the third world is itself an
expression of deep rooted contradictions of monopoly capitalism. Patnaik uses
all the ingenuity of an academician to
divorce such wars from imperialism by noting that they do not express inter-imperialist rivalries. Even if,
for the sake of argument, we concede that finance capital has put an end to the
urge to repartition the world, it is very clear that it has failed conclusively
to put an end to contradictions that breed imperialist war. Wars continue to be
waged, killing millions, decimating whole countries and converting them into
heaps of rubble. Blood of innocents drip from the profits that keep the capitalist
ruling class stuttering along. These contradictions of monopoly capitalism
which the imperialist powers look to surmount through wars can, in reality be
ended only with the advent of the next higher stage of human history which is
socialism. This calls for the organisation and struggle of the world working
class in the spirit of the actuality
of revolution; it is to escape this conclusion that Patnaik divorces these wars
from imperialism[31].
Two, in keeping with his reformist orientation, Patnaik forgets the real spirit behind Lenin’s assertion
that inter-imperialist conflicts are unavoidable in monopoly stage of
capitalism. According to Lenin, what are the reasons that necessitate such
conflicts? Can they be avoided forever by ‘inter-imperialist’ alliances, as
Patnaik maintains? Lenin answers these questions in the context of early 20th
century, thus[32]
Let
us assume that all the imperialist countries conclude an alliance for the
peaceful ‘division’ of these parts of Asia; this alliance would be an alliance
of ‘internationally united finance capital’… We ask, is it ‘conceivable’, …
that such alliances would be more than temporary, that they would eliminate
friction, conflicts and struggle in every possible form? The question has only
to be presented clearly for any other than a negative answer to be impossible.
This is because the only conceivable basis under capitalism for the division of
spheres of influence, interests, colonies etc., is the calculation of the
strength of those participating, their general economic, financial, military
strength etc. And the strength of these participants in the division does not
change to an equal degree, for the even development of … countries is
impossible under capitalism.
Any
change in the relative strengths of the participating countries necessitates a
re-division which is sure to lead to conflicts- this is the reason given by
Lenin for the volatile nature of inter-imperialist truce. It is true that the
hegemony of finance capital has made the direct administration of countries by
imperialist powers unnecessary[33].
But, each imperialist power is keen to make sure that the ruling class of the
third world country act in strict accordance to the imperialist consensus and
that they orient their policies and practices in a way that a) facilitates the
imperialist plunder of its resources and b) favours this imperialist power in accordance to its relative strength
vis-à-vis others. We have already seen that wars can arise if any country is
unwilling to satisfy the first condition. Such wars will most probably be waged
between ‘united’ imperialisms and that country. Patnaik concedes that such wars
are possible but refuses to see their connection to imperialism. But that is
not all. The second point also can be the source of inter-imperialist rivalries
and wars as the relative strengths of imperialist powers are subject to change
with even the superiority of US fast eroding. Any such realignment in the
relative strengths of rival imperialisms can still have a direct impact which
may lead to conflicts. They may start as domestic wars between proxy groups
inside the country but can easily spill over to inter imperialist-conflicts,
even if carried out in foreign territory. This is especially so in times of
overall capitalist crisis wherein all the imperialist powers are reeling from
its effect and are in the desperate lookout for a larger portion of the pie.
A
routine argument advanced against the chance of wars is that current
imperialism, characterised by the absence of direct administration of foreign territories
by imperialist powers and dependent on the all-pervasive nature of finance
capital, cannot lead to inter-imperialist conflicts as the players (large
corporations) are not rooted in any country and have operations across the
globe. So, individual states will not take up the struggles between these
corporations and will only be interested in facilitating operational freedom
and ‘right to exploitation’ for them across the globe. This will be made sure
by the ‘united’ imperialist bloc. Such a view arises from a basic misreading of
the situation. As Chris Harman remarks[34]
… the capitals today, far from not needing states, require them as much
as –if not more than – ever before. … The internationalisation of firms’
operations, far from leading to less dependence on state support, increases it
in one important respect. They need protection for their global interests. …
There is no world state to undertake such tasks. And so the power of any
national state to force others to respect the interests of capitals based
within it has become more important, if not less. … All are dependent upon
“their” states to persuade other states to let them get their way.
As
far as capitalist ruling class is concerned, war is the most persuasive way to persuade. The roots of
the globetrotting multinational giants are still firmly entrenched in a
particular state and they retain extremely close relations with its political
elite. A look at Hillary Clinton’s aggressive lobbying for Walmart’s entry into
Indian retail market is a case in point[35].
Thus, to expect the international reach of finance capital to mute
inter-imperialist rivalry is to miss the point. As Harman points out
The
giant company does not end its link with the state, but rather multiplies the
number of states – and national capitalist networks – to which it is linked. …
The successor to state capitalism of the mid-20th century has not
been some non-state capitalism but rather a system in which capitals rely on
“their” state as much as ever, but try to spread beyond it to form links with
capitals tied to other states. In the process, the system as a whole has become
more chaotic.
This
chaotic nature, very much in keeping with capitalism’s basic structure, does
not rule out inter-imperialist rivalries but broadens and intensifies it.
With
his fantasies on the ‘muting of
imperialist rivalries’, Patnaik is only repeating Kautsky. As Lenin pointed out[36]
… ‘inter-imperialist’ or ‘ultra-imperialist’ alliances, no matter what
form they may assume, whether of one imperialist coalition against another, or
of a general alliance embracing all the imperialist powers, are inevitably
nothing more than a ‘truce’ in periods between wars. Peaceful alliances prepare
the ground for wars, and in their turn grow out of wars; the one conditions the
other, producing alternate forms of peaceful and non-peaceful struggle on one
and the same basis of imperialist realisations and relations within world
economics and world politics. … over-wise Kautsky separates one link of a chain
from another, separates the present peaceful alliance of all the powers … from
the non-peaceful conflict of tomorrow. … Instead
of showing the living connection between periods of imperialist peace and
periods of imperialist war, Kautsky presents the workers with a lifeless
abstraction in order to reconcile them to their lifeless leaders.
Patnaik
proclaims that the era of imperialist rivalries are over and with it has ended
the possibility of imperialist wars.
He then alludes that social revolutions are impossible without imperialist wars
and that they are non-imminent. As,
according to him, the ‘Leninist conjuncture’ is based on the premise of imminence of revolution, Patnaik
concludes that ‘Leninist conjuncture’ has been superseded. He advises the left
to let go off Lenin and to chart an
alternate path based on alliances and compromises. At the time of the biggest
post war capitalist crisis, at a time when Indian working class is once again
showing signs of regaining its vitality, he advocates strict non-revolutionary
politics. All this to justify Indian social democracy’s opportunistic and
regressive alliances with outright reactionary parties[37].
Patnaik is thus donning the role of an Indian Kautsky.
It
is important to note that Patnaik reduces Lenin’s rich ideas on imperialism as
the highest stage of capitalism to inter-imperialist rivalries alone. This is
done so that the present apparent truce between imperialist powers can be made
a pretext to argue that ‘Leninist conjuncture’ is no more valid. But we have to
appreciate that Lenin’s critical approach to imperialism is based broadly on three
important points out of which the inevitability of wars is one. Patnaik make no
effort to engage with the other two points because that will make the
topicality of Lenin’s analysis clear to the readers. First, what was the
primary aspect of Lenin’s critique of imperialism? Was it that it breeds war?
No. Though it was very important, it was not the primary aspect that convinced
Lenin that social revolution is the only way out of imperialist phase.
According to Lenin[38],
“If it were necessary to give the
briefest possible definition of imperialism we should have to say that
imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism”, a stage in which
capitalism has outgrown all its progressive potential and is in a state of
decay. “Monopolies, oligarchy, the
striving for domination and not freedom, the exploitation of an increasing
number of small or weak nations by a handful of the richest or more powerful
nations – all these have given birth to these distinctive characteristics of
imperialism which compel us to define it as parasitic or decaying capitalism”,
declared Lenin. These words can be used verbatim to define the age in which we
live now. Lenin’s definition of imperialism as ‘moribund capitalism’ retain their
exact literal meaning now. The progressive phase of capitalism was connected
with the age of free competition which had made necessary social relations
based on freedom and democracy. But, in Neil Harding’s words[39],
Lenin saw that, “The extinction of free
competition signifies the end of the essential progressive role of capitalism
in history.” Freedom and democracy are under vicious attack in one region
of the world after another because they are not compatible with the imperialist
stage of capitalism[40]. Capitalism,
in its imperialist stage, has exhausted all its progressive potential, it is a
‘zombie’ now and has nothing to offer to mankind. This is the real incentive
behind the Leninist call that the era of social revolutions has arrived. This
is why Lenin maintained that the practical
alternative to imperialism cannot be an illusionary
return to free competition or formal democracy, but an advance to socialism. It
is this revolutionary conclusion that Patnaik tries to hide by not invoking
this dimension of the Leninist critique of imperialism. Instead, he shamelessly
vulgarises Lenin’s thought and asserts that as there are no imperialist wars
now, we ought to go back to ‘strengthening democracy’!
But
a revolutionary advance is not something which can be conjured up at will. The
decay of capitalism in its imperialist phase is one thing, but if this is to be
translated into a revolutionary advance, the question of maturity of objective
conditions required for such a transition will have to be examined. This is
where Lenin offers his second crucial insight on imperialism which Patnaik,
evidently, never considers important to mention. Lenin clearly locates the
place of imperialism in history[41]
We
have seen that in its economic essence imperialism is monopoly capitalism. This
in itself determines its place in history, for monopoly that grows out of the
soil of free competition, and precisely out of free competition is the
transition from capitalist system to a higher socio-economic order.
In
the last chapter of his ‘Imperialism’ titled ‘The place of imperialism in
history’, Lenin unambiguously asserts that imperialism leads to the maturing of
objective conditions for the transition to a higher stage of human history. As
Harding remarks
Lenin’s
fundamental premise was that capitalism had changed in nature. From being
competitive, thrusting and progressive, it had become monopolistic, passive and
degenerate. At the same time, however, finance capital had carried the
socialisation of productive process to its ultimate extent and had erected, in
the banks, cartels and trusts, mechanisms through which social control of
production and distribution could easily be achieved. The obverse of the
degenerate, parasitic side of imperialism was that it had finally established
the objective basis for an advance to socialism in all the industrially
developed nations.
This
is the most crucial of Lenin’s insights on imperialism. This objective basis
that Lenin pointed to has become ten times more elaborate and deep in our time
of crass imperialism. Lenin offers a striking graphical description of the
development of socialisation of production and its effect on the social
relations of production
When
a big enterprise assumes gigantic proportions, and, on the basis of an exact
computation of mass data, organises according to plan the supply of primary raw
materials to the extent of two-thirds, or three-fourths, of all that is
necessary for tens of millions of people; when the raw materials are
transported in a systematic and organised manner to the most suitable places of
production, sometimes situated hundreds or thousands of miles from each other;
when a single centre directs all the consecutive stages of processing the
material right up to the manufacture of numerous varieties of finished
articles; when these products are distributed according to a single plan among
tens and hundreds of millions of consumers (the marketing of oil in America and
Germany by the American oil trust)—then it becomes evident that we have
socialisation of production,… that private economic and private property
relations constitute a shell which no longer fits its contents, a shell which
must inevitably decay if its removal is artificially delayed, a shell which may
remain in a state of decay for a fairly long period (if, at the worst, the cure
of the opportunist abscess is protracted), but which will inevitably be
removed.
Remember
that Lenin wrote this down 100 years ago, decades before the advent of
computers. Now, the above said processes happen on an infinitely wider, quicker
and more efficient scale. Thus monopolistic capitalism has clearly created all
the necessary objective conditions for transition to a higher mode of
production. But Patnaik’s reformist eye sees none of these. It perceives only
one thing, the absence of imperialist wars. This is more than enough for him to
‘rule out revolution’ and to proclaim the demise of Leninism. Academic vision is a remarkable thing;
with great dexterity, it selectively highlights that ONE thing which serves its
purpose – that of eternal postponement of revolution.
As
Harding remarks about Patnaik’s reformist European friends, “… these host of permanent postponers of
revolution, shut their eyes to the evident facts and continue their endless
vigil for the objective conditions to mature.”
Lenin
admonished such petty bourgeois theorists
They picture socialism
as some remote, unknown and dim future. But socialism is now gazing at us from
all the windows of modern capitalism; socialism is outlined directly, practically, by every
important measure that constitute a forward step on the basis of this modern
capitalism.
So
the crux of the Leninist argument on imperialism is this: Imperialism which is the moribund stage of capitalism, make social
revolution a necessity. The ripening
of objective conditions brought about by imperialism makes social revolution a possibility. Imperialist wars bred by
contradictions in monopoly capitalism, makes social revolution inescapable. The difference between
revolutionary Lenin and reformist Patnaik is very clear now. The ‘Patnaik
conjecture’ says that the left need act with a revolutionary orientation only
once the revolution becomes inescapable.
It further contends that for revolution to become imminent, imperialist war is a necessary pre-requisite. As we don’t
have wars, no revolutionary imminence
and hence no need for a revolutionary left. How simple and how ridiculous!
Lenin, ‘the embodiment of revolutionary readiness’, instead views the above
three stages in its totality. The first two ensure that revolution becomes a practical possibility, an actuality. Even in the absence of
objective conditions which make it inescapable, Lenin urges the vanguard to
steadily develop the class consciousness of the working class, to impress upon
them the necessity and possibility of revolution. As Lenin incessantly repeated[42],
the revolutionary duty of the vanguard is to educate the toiling class on “… the need for, and the urgency and
inevitability of, the revolution.” When
Patnaik ensures the working class that revolution is not on the agenda at all
and ‘invents’ reasons to prove it, Lenin drums into them the inevitability of revolution; when
Patnaik sings them lullabies, Lenin prevents them from dozing off by whipping them
with hard truth. Lenin himself vividly captures this difference:[43]
“… a revolutionary Marxist differs from
the philistine and petty bourgeois by his ability to preach to the uneducated
masses that the maturing revolution is necessary, to prove that it is
inevitable, to explain its benefits to the people and to prepare the
proletariat and all working and exploited people for it”, even when the
revolution is not imminent and is only a possibility. It is clear that the
Patnaik’s call to the left to remain non-revolutionary makes him, in Lenin’s
words, a first rate petty bourgeois philistine.
Does
Marxism – Leninism agree with the Patnaik conjecture which makes
inter-imperialist conflict a necessary pre-requisite for imminence of
revolution? Not at all. Imperialist wars make revolution inescapable, but it is
not, by any means, the only scenario which makes it inevitable. In Russia,
imperialist war acted as the immediate
cause of revolution, but it takes an academic to turn this around and claim
that revolution cannot be triggered by anything but imperialist war. This is
very clear, for example, in Lenin’s opinion about England[44]
We
cannot tell—no one can tell in advance—how soon a real proletarian revolution
will flare up there, and what
immediate cause will most serve to rouse, kindle, and impel into the
struggle the very wide masses, who are still dormant. … It is possible that the
breach will be forced, the ice broken, by a parliamentary crisis, or by a
crisis arising from colonial and imperialist contradictions, which are
hopelessly entangled and are becoming increasingly painful and acute, or
perhaps by some third cause, etc.
It
is crystal clear that Lenin considers imperialist crisis to be one among many
possible ‘triggers’ of revolution, but not as the only one. Patnaik bases the
imminence of revolution on imperialist war because his petty bourgeois analysis
assures him that imperialism has outgrown inter-imperialist conflicts. He picks
that pre-requisite for revolution
which, he thinks, will surely not be satisfied. It is a school boy trick aimed
at eternal postponement of the revolutionary question.
Conclusion
‘Patnaik
conjecture’ identifies imperialist war as the necessary condition of imminence
of revolution, Leninism recognises it as one of the many causes that can
precipitate a revolutionary situation. Patnaik asserts that imminence of revolution, brought about
by war, is the basis of ‘Leninist conjuncture’. The fact is that the basis of ‘Leninist
conjuncture’ is actuality of
revolution. Patnaik urges the Indian left to embrace opportunist,
non-revolutionary, alliance based politics when revolution is non-imminent.
Lenin urges the vanguard to embody the dialectical union between day-to-day
work and final revolutionary aim and thus to retain revolutionary orientation
at all times. Patnaik embraces the Kautskyst theory of ‘ultra-imperialism’ and
makes it the basis for eternal postponement of revolution. Leninism reveals the
contradictions and antagonisms of crass imperialism and makes them the basis of
revolutionary struggles. Status quo
is Patnaik’s mantra; in the midst of one of the deepest capitalist crisis, he
wants the proletariat to hide behind parliamentary alliances. In an era of
spontaneously exploding workers’ struggles, he wants the left to remain
strictly non-revolutionary. If Patnaik
treads this reformist path any longer, history will confer to him the same
first name that it gave Kautsky – renegade.
[1]Lenin, Imperialism,
the highest stage of capitalism, Collected
Works, Vol. 22.
[2] Prabhat Patnaik, Things that
the left needs to do right, The Hindu, 24 May, 2016.
[3] Many naïve ‘Marxists’ frequently express the opinion that such
efforts will cause fissures inside the ‘united left’ which is not advisable in
the face of a fascist onslaught. In fact, the exact opposite is true. The
growth of hindutva fascism and the impending capitalist crisis makes it
essential that every ‘shade’ of reformism and opportunism in the ‘left’ ranks
be thoroughly exposed. A ‘united’ left based on opportunist and reformist
compromises and led by petty bourgeois elements is sure to implode in the face
of crisis. It is this implosion that will ensure the victory of fascism. The
need of the hour is the advocacy of proletarian revolutionary position and for
that the unmasking of every petty bourgeois trend is a must. We should never
forget the different courses that Germany, with its ‘united’ social democracy
and Russia, with a ‘purist’ Bolshevism, took post-WWI.
[4] What does Patnaik mean
when he asserts that “…the world had started moving
away from what one can call the ‘Leninist conjuncture’ “ or that “… the ‘Leninist conjuncture’ has
been superseded”? Nothing else but that ‘the state of affairs’ or the
‘combination of circumstances or events’ that made Leninism valid does not
exist now. Patnaik is claiming, in ‘academic jargon’ of course, that Lenin’s
ideas are not relevant in this changed scenario. This claim converts Leninism
into a relic, something to be revered
and praised, but never to be applied.
[5]Georg Lukacs, Lenin – A study on the unity of his thought, Verso, 2009.
[6]ibid
[7] Prabhat Patnaik, Things that
the left needs to do right, The Hindu, 24 May, 2016.
[8]V I Lenin, Platform
of reformists and platform of social-democrats, Complete Works of Lenin,
Vol. 18.
[9]It has, of course, to be kept in mind that
Lenin uses the word ‘social-democrats’ in completely different senses prior to
and after 1914. Before 1914, it loosely translates into ‘communists’ and after,
it denotes the opportunists of second international.
[10]“… neither Marx nor Lenin ever thought of the
actuality of proletarian revolution and its aims as being readily realisable at
any given moment”, says Lukacs. Even a casual acquaintance with Marx and Lenin
make this very evident. Thus, Patnaik’s claim that ‘communism’ was founded on
the premise of imminence of world
revolution is shocking!
[11]Of course, as Engels also stressed, mature
capitalism could not have, by itself produced the theory of proletarian
revolution, it needed the insight of a genius to pick this up and formulate it.
[12]Georg Lukacs, Lenin – A study on the unity of his thought, Verso, 2009.
[13]ibid
[14]Neil Harding, Lenin’s political thought, Vol. 1 & 2, Haymarket Books,
Chicago, 1983.
[15]History tells us that this petty bourgeois
contingent always includes social democrats and reformists, like centrists and
pacifists in Germany in 1914, Mensheviks in Russia in 1917 and parliamentary
left in India now.
[16]Neil Harding, Lenin’s political thought, Vol. 2, Haymarket Books, Chicago, 1983.
[17]Lenin, Left-wing
communism, An infantile disorder, Collected Works, Vol. 31.
[18]“Only the most ignorant people can close their
eyes to the bourgeois nature of the democratic revolution that is now taking
place”, wrote Lenin.
[19]Lenin’s stand is detailed in his 1905 pamphlet Two tactics of social democracy in the
democratic revolution, Collected Works, Vol. 9. All the quotes in this para
are from this pamphlet.
[20]Where they exist, they do so in the form of
relatively small groups which, in spite of their gargantuan effort, are unable
to exert wide influence.
[21]Charles Post, What is left of Leninism, Socialist Register 2013, The Merlin
Press, London, 2012.
[22]Chris Harman, Zombie capitalism, Haymarket Books, Chicago, 2009.
[23]This is the only option that the JNU ‘left’ contingent
has to offer against neo-liberalism too, they advocate the ‘return to state
funding’ as a magic wand to solve all the problems, see the conclusions of
Chadrasekhar and Ghosh, The market that
failed.
[24] Prabhat Patnaik, Things that
the left needs to do right, The Hindu, 24 May, 2016.
[25]Exemplified by a quote generally credited to
Mao: “Everything under heaven is in utter chaos; the
situation is excellent”.
[26] Historians like Robert
Service sees sheer luck at play here
along with Lenin’s genius in real-politik.
[27] Prabhat Patnaik, Things that
the left needs to do right, The Hindu, 24 May, 2016.
[28]Lenin, Imperialism,
the highest stage of capitalism, Collected Works, Vol. 22.
[29]Prabhat Patnaik, Introduction to ‘Imperialism,
The highest stage of capitalism’, Left Word, New Delhi, 2000.
[30] At the time of
writing, inter-imperialist rivalries are flaring up in Syria with the US and
allies accusing Russia of ‘war crimes’ and the proxy war in Syria threatening
to boil over. See the report in Independent: US and
Russia 'will go to war' unless proxy Syria conflict resolved, Turkey warns
[31]The Indian social democracy, under the
ideological stewardship of thinkers like Patnaik, maintains that the way out of
imperialism is ‘economic nationalism’ and not socialism; i.e., de-linking from globalization and going
back to the ‘welfare state’. I had talked about this petty bourgeois nostalgia
for state funding in an earlier essay, ‘Planning commission – Right’s
intention, left’s reaction and the way forward’, which is available here: http://revolutionaryspring.blogspot.in/2015/01/planning-commission-rights-intentions.html
[32]Lenin, Imperialism,
the highest stage of capitalism, Collected Works, Vol. 22.
[33] But imperialism is
never shy to use this option whenever necessary, the classic example being the
Iraq war which was carried out to monopolise oil resources. For details see,
Greg Muttitt, Fuel on the fire – Oil and
politics in occupied Iraq, Bodley Head, London, 2011.
[34]Chris Harman, Zombie capitalism, Haymarket Books, Chicago, 2009.
[36]Lenin, Imperialism,
the highest stage of capitalism, Collected Works, Vol. 22.
[37]In Tamilnadu, an alliance was assembled with
Vijaykanth as its Chief Ministerial candidate!
[38]Lenin, Imperialism,
the highest stage of capitalism, Collected Works, Vol. 22
[39]Neil Harding, Lenin’s political thought, Vol. 2, Haymarket Books, Chicago, 1983.
[40]It is for this reason that Patnaik’s call, in
his essay, to go back to ‘democracy’ becomes a fantasy. We shall see this in
detail in another forthcoming essay.
[41]Lenin, Imperialism,
the highest stage of capitalism, Collected Works, Vol. 22.
[42]Lenin, Platform
of reformists and platform of social democrats, Collected Works, Vol. 18.
[43]Lenin, Proletarian
revolution and renegade Kautsky, Collected Works, Collected Works, Vol. 28.
[44] Lenin, Left wing communism,
An infantile disorder, Collected Works, Vol. 31.
