Chronicling an unfolding method: the Nandigram Model: What do the incidents that took place in Nandigram in the last 10-15 days signify? It is interesting to note the responses from the top brass of the CPM itself. The Chief Minister of West Bengal had claimed that whatever had happened in Nandigram was a ‘pay back in the same coin’ of what those people there had done to the CPM supporters when they forced the latter out of their villages. Let us be fair to the Bengal CM. Does not he sound like Narendra Modi fresh after the post-Godhra riots? At Delhi, one could see a visibly angry, shivering CPM Secretary Prakash Karat, insisting that it is the Maoists who are responsible for the spiraling of violence in Nandigram. Had it been for the Maoists, things could have been settled in an amicable manner. What was the issue actually was never of his concern. So for the CPM Secretary and his Chief Minister it was justified to do whatever at ones disposal—be it shooting with SLRs and AK-47s at peaceful demonstrations by trained CPM goons, burning down houses of the people of Nandigram, mass rape of women, maiming the people—when you are pitted against the Maoists. The people cannot or should not stand with the Maoists nor can the Maoists talk about or support the genuine causes of the toiling masses! Any issue becomes a non issue when the Maoists raise it. Nandigram, Special Economic Zones, Displacement, Destitution, Destruction, Death—all becomes a non issue because the Maoists are raising it! For Karat, along with the Maoists who are unconstitutional, anarchic, yet another person who has crossed his constitutional limits was the Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi for speaking out against the CPM’s ‘recapture’ of Nandigram.
Well, things do not end there. The CPM mouth piece, “People’s Democracy” on November 18th termed the dastardly murder, rape and mayhem in Nandigram as the return of “Unity of the Rural Poor…”
Poverty of a critique or a parody on servility: The crowning glory for the CPM was when a group of CPM intellectuals under the tutelage of Prabhat Patnaik justified the carnage resorted to by the trained and organized cadre of the CPI (M). So pathetic was the defense that they even questioned the right of the villagers of Nandigram to organize into any other group than the CPI (M)! Prabhat et al could not just understand the simple fact—after lot of theoretical sermons on Privatization, Liberalization, Globalization, fascism, imperialism, October Revolution and you can add—that why the peasantry and the landless agricultural labourer in Nandigram should organize into a Bhoomi Uchhed Pratirodh Committee (BUPC) when Budhha babu had already assured them that there would not be any SEZ in Nandigram. Further the defense went on to hide beneath the carpet the real issue of development that is being forced on the people of West Bengal in particular and the country in general by all the parliamentary parties under the garb of industrialization. These intellectuals claim themselves to be associated with the Left movement in the country but indulge in such shallow legal niceties such as the right of the people who have been forced out of their villages to return to their hearths and homes. In a single vicious stroke of the pen they have turned upside down the whole issue of grabbing of the land of the people of Nandigram by CPM for corporate houses through its goons who have been trained in the nearby Khejuri camp for 4-5 months with sophisticated weapons as a natural return of the people to their hearths and homes! These intellectuals befit the description of Marx in German Ideology when he terms such agents as Producers of ideas, who find a livelihood in the culture of the self-deceptions of the dominant class.
What has been deliberately ignored is the central issue, of the model of development that is being pushed forward. And how have these apologists of the market hoodwinked the people from the real issue? By conflating the issue into a dichotomy between development and anti-development. Making it a Hobsons’ choice for the people. Either you are for industrialization through Special Economic Zones or you are against the interests of this country. And lo and behold! Who is talking against development? The Maoists. And what do they do? Instigate the people against the people. And what has CPI (M) done? Restored peace in Nandigram by uniting the people by bringing back the oustees to the villages. The clever manipulation of the debate by vitiating the atmosphere as a choice between violence and peaceful methods is how all apologists of the system would resort to when they are challenged by the people. In this act of deceit and deception forced on the people through the worst kinds of fascist terror, what CPI (M) has carefully shied away is from defining development from their own point of view. Or at least, they have hidden their treacherous past from the people. Can a Prabhat Patnaik or anyone of his kind please tell us how is it that the Congress, BJP, CPM—and all the other formations which form the farce that is the parliament—have the same blueprint of development for the people of this country? And how is it that right from Andhra Pradesh to Chhattisgarh to Orissa, Jharkhand to West Bengal that the ruling classes of this country—be it Congress in AP, BJD in Orissa, BJP in Chhattisgarh or CPM in West Bengal—have the same policy of brutally crushing people’s resistance against displacement of their lives and livelihoods?
It is important that we go back to the historical antecedents of the likes of CPI (M). Without understanding their treacherous past it becomes difficult for all of us to take a decisive position against the Left pretensions of the CPI (M) while being the able conduit of comprador and imperialist capital in this country. It is also important for all genuine leftists and communists to draw a sharp line against all apologists of the CPI (M).
The Roots of Social Fascism of the CPI (M): The history of the International Communist Movement (ICM) has been an arena of intense debate as to how to build socialism in countries where the exploited and oppressed sections of the society have overthrown the exploiter and seized power through revolution. It should be noted that the ICM could not ever agree with Lenin as to the possibilities of revolution in Russia. Nor do the ICM under the leadership of Stalin could agree with Mao about the strategy and tactics of revolution in China. But in both cases it was the concrete application of the tools of Marxism to the concrete conditions of Russia and China that saw the successful seizure of political power by the exploited and the oppressed. Further Mao had made an incisive critique of the nature of socialist construction in Soviet Union. It was in this critique that he had first pointed out that the mere unleashing of the productive forces (today the CPM in West Bengal says foreign investment specific to the needs of that state will help intensify class struggle) will not in itself bring in Socialism. Mao pointed out that without addressing the production relations and putting politics in command in each and every decision taken towards constructing a new society with class struggle as the corner stone of the foundations of that society it was not possible for the proletariat to defeat the bourgeoisie, which he pointed out was within the party too. In this context he pointed out the emergence of a new class within the then Soviet Union which Stalin had self critically accepted towards the end.
But this debate took a watershed with the end of the Second World War which also saw the success of the Chinese Revolution. It was during the same period that the debate started of between the Khruschev led Soviet Union and Mao’s China regarding the principle contradiction that had unfolded with the end of WW II. Here the mechanical Marxists in Soviet Union had predicted a collapse of the capitalist world post WW II. But to the consternation of the Soviet economists and crisis analysts, what turned out to be was a boom unprecedented in US capitalism. In need of a theory to explain out this predicament they went to the extent of declaring that US capitalism had developed a human face post WW II and hence the need to have ‘peaceful coexistence’ and ‘peaceful competition’ with US imperialism. Mao while critiquing this position characterized the new situation as a heightened contradiction between the oppressed peoples of the world and US imperialism. He stressed the need for standing with the oppressed nations and the various peoples of the world fighting for their liberation. This marked the beginning of Soviet Social Imperialism which under the garb of defending the Socialist Bloc had effectively divided the world market between US led imperialism and Soviet Union led State capitalism.
The Impact on India: The transfer of power from the British in 1947 which saw the formation of India and Pakistan was termed by the then CPI as a successful completion of the anti-colonial bourgeois democratic revolution. The Soviet Social Imperialism upheld this characterization. This analysis made it easy to gloss over the real nature of the big bourgeoisie in India which the CPI termed was capitalist in nature and was capable of leading India to an independent capitalist development. Contrary to the claims, the lack of capital and technical know how of the big bourgeoisie and their subservience to international capital was evident when there was a grand consensus under Nehru to start the Public Sector Undertakings which was an easy way to raise public money for private purposes as things proved to be in the years that unfolded.
All major industries of the so-called capitalist development were propelled by foreign aid and technology. The first steel plant in Bhilai was built with Soviet assistance. Significantly China under Mao’s leadership had declined to take Soviet help for technological development which they insisted would work against their policy of self reliance. From the mega dams such as Bhakra, Hirakud, Nagarjunasagar to all other steel plants and the HYV package euphemistically called as the ‘Green Revolution’, the then CPI and their early 60s sibling CPI (M) insisted along with none other than Nehru that these ‘Temples of Modern India’ would usher in capitalist development in the subcontinent. The compromise formula that was worked out between the rural landowning maliks and the comprador bourgeoisie was quite innocuously termed as Nehruvian Socialism. They along with the Congress conveniently hid the facts from the people that how much the model of development in India was tied to the interests of US imperialism. To what extent the aid from Soviet Social Imperialism was helping the dynamic of re-division of the world market between the two imperialisms. This model of development could successfully consolidate the power of the ruling classes—the trader-landlord-money lender nexus—which pushed the economy to further impoverisation with increasing gap between the rich and the poor and widening disparities between regions. It took the Naxalbari uprising which was led by a breakaway group from the CPI (M) which later formed the CPI (ML) to expose this treachery of CPI and CPI (M) to the oppressed masses of India. And how the CPI (M) ganged up with the Congress to crush brutally the Naxalite movement in the 70s is for everyone to see.
Sixty years have passed since the transfer of power in 1947. Today the country is being sold to MNCs and
foreign capital by commission agents sitting in Delhi and the various states. CPM has ruled West Bengal for the last quarter of a century. It has implemented every policy that is tune with the declared policy of the Indian State. And they have of late been king makers and the main supporters of the UPA government. It is this tying up of the revisionist politics that they inherited from their Soviet Social Imperialist masters when being reproduced in the Semi-feudal Semi-colonial reality of India that takes the form of Social fascism. It is the concrete manifestation of this that one witnessed in Nandigram. Not as Prabhat and co. insist as the denial of CPI (M) supporters their rightful entry into Nandigram village. For these supporters of CPM were the harbingers of the violent model of development that was being imposed on the people of Nandigram. Everything was planned to the dot. How to kill. How to destroy evidence. And the usual state policy of using sexual violence as a tool to control and subjugate a people who have refused to follow the diktats of CPI (M) sponsored World Bank Model of development. And last but not the least the police as bystanders to the ruthless ‘recapture’ of Nandigram. It is natural that the Maoists who have opposed this revisionist, social fascist muck of the CPI (M) since the days of the Naxalbari and have been fighting for a people centric model of development—the only way that development can be—free from all forms of exploitation and oppression has become the main problem for the bosses of CPI (M) and their apologists like Prabhat Patnaik! And it is natural that anyone who fights against the worst forms of exploitation and oppression and who can dare to stand by the people can only be Maoists today!
DSU invites YOU to a Public Meeting:
SOCIAL FASCIST CPI(M) IN NANDIGRAM:
DEVELOPING IMPERIALISM,
DEVELOPING DISPLACEMENT
Speakers
· Sumit Sarkar, Formerly Professor of History, DU
· Amit Bhattacharya, Head, Dept. of History, Jadavpur University
and Bandi Mukti Committee, West Bengal
KC OAT 22 Nov (Thursday) 6pm
Chronicling an unfolding method: the Nandigram Model: What do the incidents that took place in Nandigram in the last 10-15 days signify? It is interesting to note the responses from the top brass of the CPM itself. The Chief Minister of 
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