Some days back I was in Nagpur for a seminar on the Dalit question. A dalit leader told me an interesting fact (which needs to be verified) that Ambedkar’s slogan for the movement raised during the formation of Bahishkrit Hitakarani Sabha, (Association for the Welfare of the Ostracised) in 1924 was not shika, sanghatit vha va sangharsh kara (“EDUCATE, ORGANISE AND AGITATE”). It was actually shika, sangharsh kara, sanghatit vha (“EDUCATE, AGITATE AND ORGANISE”). And the change, according to him and I agree, was significant since the original slogan perceives an organisation as produced and reproduced (made, unmade and remade) within the process of movement. The change in the slogan leads to the status-quoisation of the movement, as within this changed framework the institutionalised structure of an organisation manipulates the movement for its own reproduction.
Category: Politics
Marx’s lessons on unionism beyond economism
1.
These few hints will suffice to show that the very development of modern industry must progressively turn the scale in favour of the capitalist against the working man, and that consequently the general tendency of capitalistic production is not to raise, but to sink the average standard of wages, or to push the value of labour more or less to its minimum limit. Such being the tendency of things in this system, is this saying that the working class ought to renounce their resistance against the encroachments of capital, and abandon their attempts at making the best of the occasional chances for their temporary improvement? If they did, they would be degraded to one level mass of broken wretches past salvation. I think I have shown that their struggles for the standard of wages are incidents inseparable from the whole wages system, that in 99 cases out of 100 their efforts at raising wages are only efforts at maintaining the given value of labour, and that the necessity of debating their price with the capitalist is inherent to their condition of having to sell themselves as commodities. By cowardly giving way in their everyday conflict with capital, they would certainly disqualify themselves for the initiating of any larger movement.
At the same time, and quite apart form the general servitude involved in the wages system, the working class ought not to exaggerate to themselves the ultimate working of these everyday struggles. They ought not to forget that they are fighting with effects, but not with the causes of those effects; that they are retarding the downward movement, but not changing its direction; that they are applying palliatives, not curing the malady. They ought, therefore, not to be exclusively absorbed in these unavoidable guerilla fights incessantly springing up from the never ceasing encroachments of capital or changes of the market. They ought to understand that, with all the miseries it imposes upon them, the present system simultaneously engenders the material conditions and the social forms necessary for an economical reconstruction of society. Instead of the conservative motto, “A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work!” they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword, “Abolition of the wages system!”
After this very long and, I fear, tedious exposition, which I was obliged to enter into to do some justice to the subject matter, I shall conclude by proposing the following resolutions:
Firstly. A general rise in the rate of wages would result in a fall of the general rate of profit, but, broadly speaking, not affect the prices of commodities.
Secondly. The general tendency of capitalist production is not to raise, but to sink the average standard of wages.
Thirdly. Trades Unions work well as centers of resistance against the encroachments of capital. They fail partially from an injudicious use of their power. They fail generally from limiting themselves to a guerilla war against the effects of the existing system, instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead of using their organized forces as a lever for the final emancipation of the working class that is to say the ultimate abolition of the wages system.
2.
Trades’ unions. Their past, present and future
(a) Their past.
Capital is concentrated social force, while the workman has only to dispose of his working force. The contract between capital and labour can therefore never be struck on equitable terms, equitable even in the sense of a society which places the ownership of the material means of life and labour on one side and the vital productive energies on the opposite side. The only social power of the workmen is their number. The force of numbers, however is broken by disunion. The disunion of the workmen is created and perpetuated by their unavoidable competition among themselves.
Trades’ Unions originally sprang up from the spontaneous attempts of workmen at removing or at least checking that competition, in order to conquer such terms of contract as might raise them at least above the condition of mere slaves. The immediate object of Trades’ Unions was therefore confined to everyday necessities, to expediences for the obstruction of the incessant encroachments of capital, in one word, to questions of wages and time of labour. This activity of the Trades’ Unions is not only legitimate, it is necessary. It cannot be dispensed with so long as the present system of production lasts. On the contrary, it must be generalised by the formation and the combination of Trades’ Unions throughout all countries. On the other hand, unconsciously to themselves, the Trades’ Unions were forming centres of organisation of the working class, as the mediaeval municipalities and communes did for the middle class. If the Trades’ Unions are required for the guerilla fights between capital and labour, they are still more important as organised agencies for superseding the very system of wages labour and capital rule.
(b) Their present.
Too exclusively bent upon the local and immediate struggles with capital, the Trades’ Unions have not yet fully understood their power of acting against the system of wages slavery itself. They therefore kept too much aloof from general social and political movements. Of late, however, they seem to awaken to some sense of their great historical mission, as appears, for instance, from their participation, in England, in the recent political movement, from the enlarged views taken of their function in the United States, and from the following resolution passed at the recent great conference of Trades’ delegates at Sheffield:
“That this Conference, fully appreciating the efforts made by the International Association to unite in one common bond of brotherhood the working men of all countries, most earnestly recommend to the various societies here represented, the advisability of becoming affiliated to that hody, believing that it is essential to the progress and prosperity of the entire working community.”
(c) Their future.
Apart from their original purposes, they must now learn to act deliberately as organising centres of the working class in the broad interest of its complete emancipation. They must aid every social and political movement tending in that direction. Considering themselves and acting as the champions and representatives of the whole working class, they cannot fail to enlist the non-society men into their ranks. They must look carefully after the interests of the worst paid trades, such as the agricultural labourers, rendered powerless [French text has: “incapable of organised resistance”] by exceptional circumstances. They must convince the world at large [French and German texts read: “convince the broad masses of workers”] that their efforts, far from being narrow — and selfish, aim at the emancipation of the downtrodden millions.
Instructions for the Delegates of the Provisional General Council, 1866
3.
The political movement of the working class has as its object, of course, the conquest of political power for the working class, and for this it is naturally necessary that a previous organisation of the working class, itself arising from their economic struggles, should have been developed up to a certain point.
On the other hand, however, every movement in which the working class comes out as a class against the ruling classes and attempts to force them by pressure from without is a political movement. For instance, the attempt in a particular factory or even a particular industry to force a shorter working day out of the capitalists by strikes, etc., is a purely economic movement. On the other hand the movement to force an eight-hour day, etc., law is a political movement. And in this way, out of the separate economic movements of the workers there grows up everywhere a political movement, that is to say a movement of the class, with the object of achieving its interests in a general form, in a form possessing a general social force of compulsion. If these movements presuppose a certain degree of previous organisation, they are themselves equally a means of the development of this organisation.
Where the working class is not yet far enough advanced in its organisation to undertake a decisive campaign against the collective power, i.e., the political power of the ruling classes, it must at any rate be trained for this by continual agitation against and a hostile attitude towards the policy of the ruling classes. Otherwise it will remain a plaything in their hands, as the September revolution in France showed, and as is also proved up to a certain point by the game Messrs. Gladstone & Co. are bringing off in England even up to the present time.
For the consciousness that would make generals redundant!
Working class revolutionism, but beyond sectism
The trade unions and political parties cannot be reformed, ‘captured’, or converted into instruments of working class emancipation. We don’t call however for the proclamation of new unions, which in the conditions of today would suffer a similar fate to the old ones. Nor do we call for militants to tear up their union cards. Our aims are simply that the workers themselves should decide on the objectives of their struggles and that the control and organisation of these struggles should remain firmly in their own hands. The forms which this self-activity of the working class may take will vary considerably from country to country and from industry to industry (PC – from time to time). Its basic content will not.
Emphasis mine
For the consciousness that would make generals redundant
A crisis of values and an increased questioning of authority relations are, however, developing features of contemporary society. The growth of these crises is one of the preconditions for socialist revolution. Socialism will only be possible when the majority of people understand the need for -social change, become aware of their ability to transform society, decide to exert their collective power to this end, and know with what they want to replace the present system. IT FOLLOWS that we reject analyses … who define the main crisis of modern society as a ‘crisis of leadership’. They [the party leaders] are all generals in search of an army, for whom recruitment figures are the main yardstick of success. For us revolutionary change is a question of consciousness: the consciousness that would make generals redundant.
Emphasis mine
“They [the party leaders] are all generals in search of an army, for whom recruitment figures are the main yardstick of success”. This one line explains so much about the reality within the left formations in India – with their sectism and membership ((re)conversion!) drives.
Obviously, there is much to appreciate in Solidarity (UK)’s document – As We See It / Don’t See It (Maurice Brinton) quoted above. However evident at least in tenor is also (like a major section of autonomist and anarchist comrades) their refusal to apply their own understanding in AS WE SEE IT to deconstruct the existing working class organisations/parties and struggles within them (including their generation and degeneration) as representations of class self-activity “at different levels of awareness and consciousness” . Rejectionism dominating in AS WE DON’T SEE IT in effect produces a dehistoricised conception of working class consciousness and activity – a maximalist revolutionary idealism, especially when they talk about the past and existing organisations/parties and their degeneration. However, this is not to imply that they are not aware of the dynamic logic behind the generation and degeneration of party forms, as the document succinctly concludes:
we hold that organisations whose mechanisms (and their implications) are understood by all can alone provide the framework for democratic decision-making. There are no institutional guarantees against the bureaucratisation of revolutionary groups, The only guarantee is the perpetual awareness and self- mobilisation of their members. We are aware, however, of the danger of revolutionary groups becoming ‘ends in themselves’. In the past, loyalties to groups have often superseded loyalties to ideas. Our prime commitment is to the social revolution – not to any particular political group…
However it seems the document does not ground party dynamics in the class processes and inter/intra class struggles.
Development Discourse – income vs class
A fundamental problem of development discourse in India, even among the so-called Marxists, is its income approach to development, rather than a class-struggle approach. Even when class is recognised, it is the level of income or poverty etc that is used as the criterion. So the basic attention goes to whether capitalist development will be ‘beneficial’ or not. Obviously in the name of objectively defining these benefits, the ‘Marxists’ trained in economics would like to use some ways of quantifying them. Whatever this be, it is not a class-struggle approach to development – it does not seek to grasp class contradictions in every moment of development. Thus what they tend to find out additionally is whether technological change, growth (in figures) etc have occurred or not, along with obviously as leftists they have to talk about whether these benefits are ‘equitably’ distributed or not. But the question that is obscured in this process is the class cleavage which does not depend on income/poverty etc at least at the level of its constitution – income levels etc can of course further structure the labour market increasing the level of competition among proletarians, which might dampen class unity and consciousness.
On the other hand, the class-struggle approach starts off with the process of class formation, i.e., the process of formation of the working class and the capitalist class. Under this process the trajectory of proletarianisation is important – not whether this or that individual is proletariat. This makes the poor peasant, landless struggles, factory workers’ strikes, the various issues of self-determination etc as different levels (not vertical) of manifestation of class struggle against the hegemony of the capitalist class over human capacity and activity. This is what is sometimes called the needs of capital vs. the needs of human beings. This approach allows us to see ‘class within and beyond identities and their struggles’.
The income approach is politically non-class, too, as for it it is sufficient if poverty is decreasing, people have income, nutrition etc; the issue of control over production process and other channels of human fulfillment is secondary and peripheral. For this approach solution for every problem is always statist and vanguardist, i.e., at the level of policy-making, whether we have right people at right places deciding over and overseeing the ‘trickling down’ and redistribution channels. This way the issue of “popular protagonism” is reduced to populist protagonism of the leadership.
A Note on Party 2
Pratyush Chandra
In West Bengal (in fact, everywhere in India) the working class and the poor peasantry have outgrown the traditional left. This is not something new and to be lamented upon. It always happens that organisations develop according to the contemporary needs of the class struggle, and are bound to be institutionalised, and even coopted, becoming hurdles for further battles, not able to channel their forces for the new exigencies of the class dynamics and struggle. This happens so because in the process of a struggle, a major segment devoted to the needs of this struggle is caught-up in the networks it has established for their fulfillment. It is unable to detach itself from the fruits of the struggle, therefore losing its vitality and is overwhelmed by the existential needs.
In the name of consolidation of movemental gains, what is developed is a kind of ideologisation, a fetish – organisation for organisation’s sake. This leads to the organisation’s and its leadership’s cooption in the hegemonic setup (obviously not just in the formal apparatuses) which due to struggles had to concede some space to new needs. In fact, this is how capitalism reproduces itself politically. And this is how the societal hegemonies gain agencies within the radical organisations, and they are organisationally internalised – developing aristocracies and bureaucracies.
Two important points regarding the agitations in West Bengal can be fruitful for us in understanding the above mentioned dynamics:
1) As prominent Marxist historian Tanika Sarkar says, “an amazing measure of peasant self-confidence and self-esteem that we saw at Singur and at Nandigram” is a result of whatever limited land reforms the Left Front (LF) initiated and is in the “very long and rich tradition of the Left politics and culture”.
2) The price of state power that helped sustain this was the cooption of the LF in the hegemonic policy regime, which is neoliberal for now. So the vested interests that developed during these struggles and cooption led to the situation where “[b]eyond registration of sharecroppers and some land redistribution, no other forms of agrarian restructuring were imagined.” Also, “industries were allowed to die away, leaving about 50,000 dead factories and the virtual collapse of the jute industry,” as competition and the flight of capital were not challenged (which probably in the federal setup of India could not be challenged) by questioning the nature of production relations.
However, there is no fatalism in the above view – the radical vitality of an organisation/party is contingent upon the sharpening of struggle between the hegemonic and counter-hegemonic tendencies within an organisation, which in turn is embedded within the overall class struggle. I.e. it all depends on the class balance and struggle within an organisation.
A Note on Party – An Institution or in Movement?
Pratyush Chandra
A comrade working in India recently circulated a question – “Are there no possibilities of outside party movements now?”. This question is already internationally debated, prominently within a large section of radicals, who have either been part of the party based movements or have struggled fervently against what can be called the party’s tendency to “substitute” the spirit of self-emancipatory struggles through its organisational conservatism and control. However, this question has been reframed in various ways, especially as, “Is there any possibility of party movements now?” The issue has become all the more relevant in the context of recent revolutionary upsurges in Latin America, given the rising scepticism among the traditional left and jubilation among the non-party/post-party left. In India, where the communist movement despite its splintering has been a decisive force both within state politics and radical politics, the question has become significant with the mushrooming of diverse varieties of movements independent of party influences. However, I believe, this question of party and beyond-party has always been a central concern in the socialist movement the world over. The Luxemburg-Lenin debate on party too was centred around it.
In my opinion, any “yes-no” answer to the above question is bound to be refuted by counter-examples. In fact, crucial part of the answer to that question lies in understanding movement, party and party building as processes, in their fluidity, not as fixtures imposing themselves on the spontaneity of the masses. If a party is organically linked to a movement, then it perpetually recreates itself in the moments of that movement. A revolutionary party is nothing more than an organisation of the militants of a revolutionary movement. You can have a group-structure (well-organised or loose) prior to any movement, but until and unless it refounds itself within the movement, it generally polices the popular energy.
There are innumerable examples of movements throughout the world that can claim to be partyless – prominent among them are the Venezuelan, Argentine and Zapatistas in Mexico. However, there are numerous groups, even traditional party structures operating within these movements – but none of them individually can claim these movements to be ‘theirs’. What is a movement which is not more than a party? But in the very “organisation” of all these movements, we find a continuous party building process or rather processes going on in the attempts to give definite expressions to the goals and visions of the movements.
So, in my opinion, to put it rather schematically, what we witness in the formative processes of a movement is that groups or group-structures (it is immaterial whether they call themselves parties or not), with their own prior movemental experiences come into contact with mass spontaneity – where they are either reborn as groups of “militants” trying to give expression to the movemental needs and goals or they come as predefined structures shaping the movement according to their own fixed needs and goals (for example, to win elections etc).
However, when I say they “come”, it does not mean that these groups are not there. But their there-ness is defined by the consolidation and institutionalisation of their prior experiences, gains and failures. During these latter processes, these groups either congeal as having interests which are now accommodated within the system or they are ready to unlearn and relearn during the course of the new struggles of the oppressed and the exploited. In the first case, they are there as part of the hegemony or as its agencies (conscious or subconscious), and in the second case, they are “reborn” as groups or parties of militants, of organic intellectuals – intellectuals organically linked to the working class, as Gramsci would put.
On this perpetual making and remaking of the organisation and party within and with relation to movements, Marx makes a very interesting observation in his letter to Friedrich Bolte (November 23, 1871), where he recapitulates the role and problems of the First International:
“The political movement of the working class has as its object, of course, the conquest of political power for the working class, and for this it is naturally necessary that a previous organisation of the working class, itself arising from their economic struggles, should have been developed up to a certain point… [O]ut of the separate economic movements of the workers there grows up everywhere a political movement, that is to say a movement of the class, with the object of achieving its interests in a general form, in a form possessing a general social force of compulsion. If these movements presuppose a certain degree of previous organisation, they are themselves equally a means of the development of this organisation.”
It is important to remember and grasp the dialectics of Marx’s dual assertion about the need of a communist party, on the one hand, and what, as Engels asserts in his 1888 preface of the English edition of the Communist Manifesto, “‘the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself”. The latter was already there in the General Rules of the First International (“That the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves”). In his Critique of Gotha Programme too, while criticising the Lasalleans, Marx says, “The international activity of the working classes does not in any way depend on the existence of the International Working Men’s Association.” Marx clearly rejects here any substitutionist tendency, which has been rampant within the workers and peasants’ movements in India and elsewhere, as the ‘vanguard’ organisations attempt to “possess” movements. A striking example is the following quote from the party programme of probably the most organised constituent of the Indian left:
“The people’s democratic front cannot successfully be built and the revolution cannot attain victory except under the leadership of the working class and its political party, the Communist Party of India (Marxist).”
In the above-quoted letter to Bolte, Marx makes a very illuminating remark on the function of sectism within the working class movement, which can be a lesson for all of us today:
“The International was founded in order to replace the Socialist or semi-Socialist sects by a real organisation of the working class for struggle. …The Internationalists could not have maintained themselves if the course of history had not already smashed up the sectarian system. The development of the system of Socialist sects and that of the real workers’ movement always stand in inverse ratio to each other. So long as the sects are (historically) justified, the working class is not yet ripe for an independent historic movement. As soon as it has attained this maturity all sects are essentially reactionary. Nevertheless what history has shown everywhere was repeated within the International. The antiquated makes an attempt to re-establish and maintain itself within the newly achieved form.”
As the most recent and clear example of “the antiquated” making an “attempt to re-establish and maintain itself within the newly achieved form” are, what Michael Lebowitz calls, the “glum faces” in reaction to Chavez’s call for a unified party in Venezuela. To resist the replacement of “the Socialist or semi-Socialist sects by a real organisation of the working class for struggle” at the time when the working class has attained maturity is “essentially reactionary”.
In India, too, at the grassroots level the labouring classes have time and again come together and demonstrated their will and energy to move beyond the systemic logic, but the presence of the “antiquated” becomes a hurdle in transforming this solidarity into a decisive challenge to the system. This hurdle is perpetuated by schematically subordinating the working class consciousness (dubbed “economistic”) to the “politics” of parties. The party becomes an organisation above class rather than “the organisation of what already exists within the class” (Tronti), in other words, as the organisation of class capacity. Hence the issue of class seizure and control of production apparatuses and means of production as a challenge to the capitalist hegemony transforming the social relations is relegated to the secondary level, while the issue of ensuring formal political consolidation and stability in a competitive setup becomes the end of the party politics. The issue of posing class alternatives to capitalist regime of accumulation is sidelined in the process of “accumulation of power”.
However, this “antiquated” cannot be fought by wishing away the notion of “party”, it can only be done by viewing party building as a process with all its contradictions and as a continuous class struggle, including against internalised hegemonies – against labour aristocrats and party bureaucrats.
"Neoliberal" Leninism in India and its Class Character
Pratyush Chandra
RADICAL NOTES
“Criticism – the most keen, ruthless and uncompromising criticism – should be directed, not against parliamentarianism or parliamentary activities, but against those leaders who are unable – and still more against those who are unwilling – to utilise parliamentary elections and the parliamentary rostrum in a revolutionary and communist manner. Only such criticism-combined, of course, with the dismissal of incapable leaders and their replacement by capable ones-will constitute useful and fruitful revolutionary work that will simultaneously train the “leaders” to be worthy of the working class and of all working people, and train the masses to be able properly to understand the political situation and the often very complicated and intricate tasks that spring from that situation.” (V.I. Lenin, Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder, Chapter 7)
1. Lenin and the CPIM’s Leninism
The Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPIM)-led Left Front government in its endeavour to industrialise West Bengal, admittedly within the larger neoliberal framework of the Indian state’s economic policies, is ready to scuttle every act of popular vigilance in the manner which Lenin would have called “bureaucratic harassment” of workers-peasants’ self-organisation. India’s official left position on neoliberal industrialisation and its potentiality to generate employment is very akin to what Lenin characterised “Narodism melted into Liberalism”, as the official left “gloss[es] over [the] contradictions [of industrialisation] and try to damp down the class struggle inherent in it.”(1)
In fact, the mass organisations of the official left in West Bengal have for a long time been the main bulwarks of the state government to pre-empt any systematic upsurge of the workers and peasants. They have become increasingly what can be called the ideological state apparatuses to drug the masses and keep them in line. And in this, Leninism has been reduced to an ideology, an apologia for the Left Front’s convergence with other mainstream forces on the neoliberal path, giving its “steps backwards” a scriptural validity and promoting an image that in fact this is the path towards revolution – all in the name of consolidation and creating objective conditions for revolution. For justifying their compromises locally in West Bengal, CPIM leaders have found handy innumerable quotations from Lenin, and sometimes from Marx too. Contradictory principles and doctrines can easily be derived from their statements, if read as scriptures and taken out of contexts. Hence, as a popular saying in India confirms, baabaa vaakyam pramaanam, which loosely means, you can prove anything on the basis of scriptures.
Of course, this can be a variety of Leninism, as there are varieties mushrooming like religious sects, but such was not Lenin. Lenin himself never treated Marx’s writings as scriptural for justifying his every tactical move. Furthermore, especially after the defeat of other European revolutions, on many occasions he was ready to acknowledge Russia’s “steps backwards”, even during the formulation and implementation of the New Economic Policy. His defence of the independence of working class organisation and power beyond state formation in his attack on Trotsky’s advocacy of the regimentation of trade unions was especially for countering the counter-revolutionary potential in the Russian state’s “steps backwards” by ever-stronger working class vigilance. Lenin had the guts to say, “We now have a state under which it is the business of the massively organised proletariat to protect itself, while we, for our part, must use these workers’ organisations to protect the workers from their state, and to get them to protect our state. Both forms of protection are achieved through the peculiar interweaving of our state measures and our agreeing or “coalescing” with our trade unions.”(2; emphasis mine)
Such was Lenin even as the leader of the Soviet State, unlike the CPIM-led Left Front’s leadership, which seeks to stabilise its rule in a tiny part of India, where, it admits, its government can have no sovereignty.
The CPIM’s energetic peasant leader Benoy Konar (who rails against Naxal conspiracy in every disturbance in West Bengal), a major stalwart in the present debate on repression and agitation in the state, says, “West Bengal is a federal state in a capitalist feudal country. What its government has done is just a miniscule step compared to what Lenin was forced to do, even after the revolution. If this is what upsets these “true” Marxists so much, we request them to stop living in their imaginations and step into the real world.”(3) This logic is very instructive, indeed. It is precisely the case – Lenin could afford to do what he was forced to do because the revolution had taken place. Also, the “steps backwards” were essentially for the sustainability of the state, without changing its basic character – workers-peasants state, taking the risk of further bureaucratisation and distortion, which he thought the independent assertion of the working class would weed out eventually. If Konar and his gurus are forcing themselves to do the same in a “capitalist feudal country”, then it is for whose sustainability – of the “capitalist feudal” state?
2. CPIM and its Self-Criticisms
Throughout its thirty years of continuous rule, the West Bengal government’s main concern has been to stabilise its local rule within the parameters set by India’s state formation, and the hegemonic political economic set-up in the country. It boasts of its successes, but at what cost? The exigencies of the parliamentarist integration reinforced the accommodation and consolidation of a “supra-class” ideology within the communist political habits imbibed during its appendage to the nationalist movement, throughout India in general, and West Bengal in particular. This explains a less radical approach towards land reforms in the region.(4) The CPI-CPIM’s role became limited to controlling and policing the radicalisation of its own mass base, as in the 1960s-70s, especially with regard to the Naxal movement. It is interesting to note today how every attempt to form an organisation of the rural proletarians and small peasantry, independent of the rich and middle peasant (who benefited from the movements on tenancy rights and against the Bargadari system) dominated Kisan Sabhas, is systematically repressed by Bengal’s state machinery and party.
When the CPIM capitulated to electoral politics resorting to tactical measures and strategic sloganeering, because of the so-called popular mandate in its parliamentarist pursuit, militancy became a thing to be repeated only in speeches and slogans as its practice can alienate few votes, precious votes. This is not to say that it was only a subjective transition or a matter of conscious choice, rather, it represented the latent politics of the party leadership’s class character. In fact, the only thing lacking was a conscious and consistent opposition within, despite the fact that the party was aware of this from the very beginning. In one of its early documents, it noted:
“The struggle against revisionism inside the Indian Communist movement will neither be fruitful nor effective unless the alien class orientation and work among the peasantry are completely discarded. No doubt, this is not an easy task, since it is deep-rooted and long-accumulated and also because the bulk of our leading kisan activists come from rich and middle peasant origin, rather than from agricultural labourers and poor peasants. Their class origin, social links and the long training given to them give a reformist ideological-political orientation which is alien to proletarian class point and prevent them from actively working among the agricultural labourers, poor and middle peasants with the zeal and crusading spirit demanded of Communists. Hence the need and urgency to rectify and remould the entire outlook and work of our Party in the kisan movement.”(5)
To this P. Sundarayya adds in 1973 (when he was the party’s general secretary), “the same old reformist deviation is still persisting in our understanding and practice”, which frequently leads to “the repudiation of the Party Programme formulations.” (6)
This was all before the concern for stabilising its rule and building social corporatism – “peace”, “harmony”, etc., in West Bengal became the party’s prime agenda. Today, the state government’s industrialisation and urbanisation policies express the needs of the neo-rich gentry, a considerable section of which is the class of absentee landowners, dominating the bureaucratic apparatuses and service sector, who legitimately want a share in India’s corporate development. When the Kolkata session of the All India Kisan Council held on January 5-6, 2007 asks “the state government to forge ahead on the path of industrialisation based on the success of land reforms and impressive agricultural growth” (7), it is simply expressing the interests of all those who have benefited the most from the success of limited agrarian reforms.
The party is aware that if they alienate these class forces, it will not be possible to remain in power in “a constitutional set-up that is not federal in nature” and which reproduces their ideological hegemony through various identitarian and legal relations influencing the voting pattern of the electorate. As the present party general secretary Prakash Karat, notes:
“It was clear then as now that the policies implemented by Left-led governments would always be circumscribed by the fact that State power vests with the centre while state governments have very limited powers and resources. This is the reality of a constitutional set-up that is not federal in nature. This understanding was further clarified when Left-led governments began to rule in the three states of West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura for longer periods of time. Within all the constraints and limitations of office, these governments have to take steps to fulfil their commitments to the people and offer relief to the working people. While there are urgent issues before Left-led governments, including those of protecting livelihoods in agriculture, creating jobs by means of industrial development, and improving the quality of people’s lives, alternative policies in certain spheres can be implemented only within the constraints imposed by the system.”(8)
If this is not the Third Way, the there-is-no-alternative (TINA) syndrome, then one wonders what it can be. Zizek defines the Third Way as “simply global capitalism with a human face, that is, an attempt to minimize the human costs of the global capitalist machinery, whose functioning is left undisturbed.”(9) It is an old disease that inflicts all social democratic parties, once they start talking about consolidation within the bourgeois framework. Compare:
“Let no one misunderstand us”; we don’t want “to relinquish our party and our programme but in our opinion we shall have enough to do for years to come if we concentrate our whole strength, our entire energies, on the attainment of certain immediate objectives which must in any case be won before there can be any thought of realising more ambitious aspirations.”
To this Marx and Engels answered back in 1879:
“The programme is not to be relinquished, but merely postponed – for some unspecified period. They accept it – not for themselves in their own lifetime but posthumously, as an heirloom for their children and their children’s children. Meanwhile they devote their “whole strength and energies” to all sorts of trifles, tinkering away at the capitalist social order so that at least something should appear to be done without at the same time alarming the bourgeoisie.”(10; emphasis original)
This is the state of a self-acclaimed “revolutionary” party caught up in an existential struggle – “tinkering away at the capitalist social order”! Why not, “the journey towards socialism would begin only after the accomplishment of the task of the bourgeoisie democratic revolution. If the bourgeois did not join the democratic revolution, it would be easier for the working class to establish its leadership in it which would help in the next stage of socialist revolution.”(11) So friends, nothing to worry about, on behalf of the working class, the CPIM is actually taking a time out for accomplishing the ‘democratic revolutionary’ tasks. If the working classes – rural and urban – are being forced to shut up, it is all for ensuring their leadership! So, “the programme is not to be relinquished, but merely postponed – for some unspecified period…”
The CPI(M)’s capitulation to an alien class-ideological orientation is stark in its continuous effort to de-radicalise the left trade union politics. Parallel to Sundarayya’s self-criticism, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya too has been time and again indulging in his own variety of self-criticism. His statements are very straight-forward, as he seldom minces words in his pandering to corporate interests. In one of his interviews to The Hindu (November 16, 2005), he says: “We did commit certain wrong things in the past. There were investors really afraid of trade unions here. But things have changed… I am in constant touch with our senior trade union leaders and keep telling them that it is now a different situation. …I tell [trade union leaders] they must behave. If you do not behave companies will close, you will lose your jobs.”(12)
The combination of subjective and objective factors determines the tenor of the official left politics everywhere in India today. So the repression of strikers at the Kanoria jute mill in 1993-94 and Singur/Nandigram incidents are not something unexpected. They are expressions of the Left Front’s stable rule in West Bengal for thirty years. These are the imperatives rising from the limitations, about which the Front and CPIM never tire to talk, and in which their existential politics is embedded. They do so, as there-is-no-alternative.
3. No “Doublespeak”, but the “Narodnik-like Bourgeois” speaks
Unsurprisingly, the CPIM’s present general secretary Prakash Karat whom some of us used to admire for his strong positions uncomfortable for the parliamentarian lobbies within the party has come out strongly in defence of the same parliamentarianism. His general secretaryship demands that. In India, the days are gone when within these communist parties, a general secretary used to be the voice of a particular programmatic tendency. The designation has been increasingly reduced to a ‘post’ in the permanent hierarchy, where the post-holder like a civil servant voices whichever tendency dominates in the party.
Prakash Karat accuses the ‘left opposition’ to the Left Front’s industrialisation policies of Narodism, which too is not very surprising. It is one of our standard abuses, along with ‘infantile disorder’, ‘revisionism’, etc… However, Karat in his defence really means it, when he says: “The CPIM will continue to refute the modern-day Narodniks who claim to champion the cause of the peasantry”, as he appends this with a note on the Narodniks.(13)
It seems Karat is ignorant – either he feigns it, or it is real – about Lenin’s analysis of Narodism. Lenin’s criticism of the Narodnik revolutionaries was mainly centred on their faulty understanding of Russian reality; unlike the Narodniks he saw a slow, but definite evolution of capitalism and capitalist market. He stressed strategising on the basis of this new reality. On the other hand, the Narodniks saw capitalism still simply as a possibility, and thus like true petty bourgeois revolutionaries dreamt of evading the ruthlessness of capitalist accumulation, while often lauding bourgeois freedom and democracy. Lenin in his diatribes obviously underlined the utopianism of this programme, but only on the basis of a critique of the political economy of capitalism in Russia. His fundamental stress was to describe the processes of capitalist accumulation, the ruthlessness of which was compounded by its impurity, its ‘incompleteness’. Definitely, an important component of Lenin’s programme was embedding the democratic struggle against feudal remnants in the unfolding of the socialist revolution:
“Thus the red banner of the class-conscious workers means, first, that we support with all our might the peasants’ struggle for full freedom and all the land; secondly, it means that we do not stop at this, but go on further. We are waging, besides the struggle for freedom and land, a fight for socialism. The fight for socialism is a fight against the rule of capital. It is being carried on first and foremost by the wage-workers, who are directly and wholly dependent on capital. As for the small farmers, some of them own capital themselves, and often themselves exploit workers. Hence not all small peasants join the ranks of fighters for socialism; only those do so who resolutely and consciously side with the workers against capital, with public property against private property.”(14; emphasis mine)
Lenin’s analysis of capitalism in agriculture showed a growing peasant differentiation. This led him to stress on the heterogeneity of proletarian attitude towards diverse peasant classes. He criticised the populism of the Narodniks and also the liberals who put forward a homogenised notion of “narod” (people). The same notion is found in the Indian official left’s attitude towards the peasantry and its assessment of the land reform efforts in the left-ruled states. When it calls upon consolidating the gains from land reforms achieved in a “capitalist feudal” society and pursuing industrialisation on their basis, it consistently evades the question of peasant differentiation. Such evasion is a reflection of the consolidation, within the left leadership, of the hegemonic interests that necessarily rose after the limited land reforms measures. As Sundarayya indicated, this lobby had already congealed within the CPIM and been affecting its work in the rural areas, much before it enjoyed the cosiness of the state power. Its consistent success in undermining the rise of the rural proletarians and their organisation in West Bengal is indicative of the strength of this lobby. When Benoy Konar and the All India Kisan Sabha speak for industrialisation based on the gains in agriculture, they speak on the behalf of the rising kulaks and upper middle class in West Bengal who would like to invest and profit on the peripheries and as local agencies of the neoliberal industrialisation – in real estate, in outsourcing and other businesses which are concomitant appendages to the neoliberal expansion.
While differentiating the agrarian programme of the Social Democrats (when the revolutionary Marxists still identified themselves with this name) from that of the liberals, Lenin criticised the latter’s “distraught Narodism” – “Narodism melting into Liberalism”, which represented the Narodnik-like bourgeoisie, and explained:
“Firstly, the Social-Democrats want to effect the abolition of the remnants of feudalism (which both programmes directly advance as the aim) by revolutionary means and with revolutionary determination, the liberals – by reformist means and half-heartedly. Secondly, the Social-Democrats stress that the system to be purged of the remnants of feudalism is a bourgeois system; they already now, in advance, expose all its contradictions, and strive immediately to extend and render more conscious the class struggle that is inherent in this new system and is already coming to the surface. The liberals ignore the bourgeois character of the system purged of feudalism, gloss over its contradictions and try to damp down the class struggle inherent in it.”(15; emphasis mine)
Here Lenin clearly states that “distraught Narodism” lies, firstly, in its reformist means, and secondly, in not recognising that the system is already a bourgeois system, hence the basic struggle is against the rule of capital. As Lenin indicated and as it is clear in the case of the CPIM in West Bengal, the ideology of “distraught Narodism” is an ideology of the class of Narodnik-like local bourgeoisie, which is necessarily Janus-headed. On the one hand, it feels insecure before its established competitors and their ‘bigness’, thus consistently calls upon the state to protect its interests. On the other, it is mortified when it feels the presence of its impoverished twin – the growing number of proletarians – as a result of capitalism in agriculture and also due to neoliberal “primitive accumulation”. Most dangerous is the faithlessness and weariness that this class of rural and urban proletarians displays towards the neoliberal euphoria – since it has already experienced more than 150 years of ups and downs of capitalist industrialisation, and its increasingly moribund nature. The Bengali political elites’ “doublespeak” vocalised by the CPIM is actually the reflection of the “Narodnik-like” character of the local bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie, torn between the ecstatic possibility of their neoliberal integration, on the one hand, and the rising competition and class struggle, on the other. However, the ideology of homogeneous Bengali interests, along with the “communist” organisations and pretensions come handy in controlling these volatile segments, at least temporarily. It is interesting to note, how the CPIM leadership evades recognising the class character of “land reforms”, “impressive agricultural growth” and industrialisation as far as possible in its discourse, while overstressing their virtues. It is similar to the discursive habits of the Russian liberals – “distraught Narodniks”, which Lenin thus noted, while criticising “Mr L.”:
“Depicting the beneficent effect of the French Revolution on the French peasantry, Mr. L. speaks glowingly of the disappearance of famines and the improvement and progress of agriculture; but about the fact that this was bourgeois progress, based on the formation of a “stable” class of agricultural wage-labourers and on chronic pauperism of the mass of the lower strata of the peasantry, this Narodnik-like bourgeois, of course, says never a word.”(16)
4. Conclusion
When enthusiasm for neoliberal industrialisation is not well received, as a last resort in defence of the neoliberal policies in West Bengal, ‘vanguards’ like Prakash Karat and his associates have a ready apologia that “in a constitutional set-up that is not federal in nature”, the left government policies “would always be circumscribed by the fact that State power vests with the centre while state governments have very limited powers and resources.” (It does not matter that the CPIM’s other leader, Benoy Konar, talks of the same constraints by admitting West Bengal as “a federal state in a capitalist feudal country.”)
It is tempting to interpret this demand for more federalism in India as representative of “the demand made in certain circles that local self-governing institutions should also be given the autonomy to borrow and to negotiate investment projects with capitalists, including multinational banks and corporations”, as Prabhat Patnaik, a foremost Indian political economist, known for his allegiance to the CPIM and who has been lately appointed as Kerala’s State Planning Board Vice-Chairman, puts it. He continues, “this will further increase the mismatch in bargaining strength between the capitalists and the state organ engaged in negotiating with them, and will further intensify the competitive struggle among the aspirants for investment… This can have only one possible result which is to raise the scale of social ‘bribes’ for capitalists’ investment. This increase in the scale of social “bribes” is an important feature of neo-liberalism.”(17)
Particularly relevant in this regard are the CPIM leadership’s and the West Bengal government’s statements on Singur, in which they consistently fetishise the Left Front’s ability to win away the Tata project from a poorer state of Uttarakhand – an example of its competency in ‘social bribery’! Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya again and again with all his frankness defended his Singur sale to Tata – “We showed them various sites, but they settled for Singur. We could not say no to such a project, otherwise it would have gone to Uttarakhand.”(18)
This is symptomatic of the extent to which the official Indian left has re-trained itself in the competitive culture of neoliberal industrialisation. Of course, it does not have any parliamentary stake in Uttarakhand. Or does the party leadership want to entice the Uttarakhand people to choose CPIM, for its efficiency in negotiating or ‘bribing’ for neoliberal projects? It is obvious that in order to remain the sole contender of the nationalising and globalising interests of the West Bengal hegemonic classes, the CPIM leadership has been giving vent to Bengali parochialism of the local “Narodnik-like bourgeoisie”.
Notes:
(1) V.I. Lenin, The Narodnik-Like Bourgeoisie and Distraught Narodism, 1903.
(2) V.I. Lenin, The Trade Unions. The Present Situation and Trotsky’s Mistakes, 1920.
(3) Benoy Konar, Left Front Govt And Bengal’s Industrialisation, People’s Democracy, October 08, 2006.
(4) See Dipankar Basu, Political Economy of ‘Middleness’: Behind Violence in Rural Bengal, Economic & Political Weekly, April 21, 2001.
(5) P Sundarayya, Central Committee Resolution on Certain Agrarian Issues and An Explanatory Note, CPIM Publications, 1973.
(6) Ibid.
(7) All India Kisan Council, Resolution: Unite To Fight And Defeat All Moves To Stop The Industrialisation Of West Bengal, People’s Democracy, January 14 2007.
(8) Prakash Karat, “Double-Speak” Charge: Maligning The CPI(M), People’s Democracy, January 28 2007.
(9) Slavoj Zizek, The Fragile Absolute, Verso, 2000, p.63.
(10) Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Circular Letter to August Bebel, Wilhelm Liebknecht, Wilhelm Bracke and Others, 1879.
(11) Benoy Konar, West Bengal: Rationale For Industrialisation, People’s Democracy, November 06, 2005.
(12) The Hindu November 16, 2005.
(13) See (8)
(14) V.I. Lenin, The Proletariat and the Peasantry, 1905.
(15) See (1)
(16) Ibid.
(17) Prabhat Patnaik, An Aspect of Neoliberalism, People’s Democracy, December 24, 2006.
(18) Frontline, Jan. 27-Feb. 09, 2007.
The Lost Left
The Times of India (December 28, 2006)
Considerably modified version of the article can be found in RADICAL NOTES & ZNET
The events in Singur are signs of a crisis borne out of a disjuncture between the Left Front’s pragmatic policies and the legacy of the movement and class interests that empowered it.For a long time, the open eruption of this crisis was evaded by the West Bengal government’s success in convincing its mass base of its ability to manoeuvre state apparatuses for small, yet continuous, gains. It justified all its limitations and inefficacy by condemning the faulty Centre-state relationship and a larger conspiracy to destabilise limited reformist gains, for instance, those from reforms in the Bargadari system.
The allegation of conspiracy seemed tangible only to the extent that parliamentary politics drives every opposition party to encash the difficulties incumbent governments face — by peddling popular grievances for electoral gain. For illustration, one needs to just review the history of the exit-entry of governments and their economic policies over the past 20 years. There were economic grievances that contributed to the Opposition’s success in destabilising governments and forming alternative ones, yet there was a remarkable continuity in economic and financial policies. Because of the Indian state’s ability to contain popular opposition within the precincts of electoral democracy — the ritual of elections — it could evade any fundamental political economic crisis and did not have to deter from its neo-liberal commitments.
Once the Left in West Bengal chose to play by the rules of parliamentary democracy, it faced the constant threat of defeat in electoral competition. The internalisation of the need to evade this threat transformed its character, thus leading it to aspire beyond being a class party of workers and peasants. It had to become an all people’s party — a party that could negotiate between diverse, dynamic and antagonistic interests.
A cosmetic radicalism though is advantageous in the states where it is the incumbent power. It can mobilise its traditional class base, by playing on victimhood, and rituals of national strikes. Alongside, it has been increasingly using the threat of capital flight to justify its concurrence with the national economic policies. Behind these usual mechanics of stabilising its position in the representative democratic set-up resides an essential dilemma for the official Left.
The historical legacy of the peasants and workers’ movements has been both a boon and a bane. This has gravely severed its ability to use traditional means of state coercion for containing its mass base, forcing an informal accommodation or para-legalisation of the Left’s traditional mass organisations — their transformation into ideological state apparatuses. Herein lies the danger.
Once these organisations are identified with officialdom, the grass roots are alienated and the scope for their independent assertion amplifies. In the history of Bengal’s Left, this has happened many times — the most formidable one was the Naxalbari movement. Singur is the latest case.
One must question the motives of mainstream non-Left political parties like the Congress and Trinamul, which represent the interests of the landed gentry that use ‘kishans’ — hired labours and bargadars — for cultivation. This class, who the West Bengal government claims have consented to land alienation in Singur, join such movements essentially to obtain various kinds of concessions — a higher price for giving up land to the state and perhaps also for increasing the price for future real estate speculation around the upcoming industrial belt.
But there is a larger section of the landless peasantry and those frequenting nearby towns for work; for them, the struggles like that of Singur are existential ones. They do not possess any faith in neo-liberal industrialisation based on flexible, informal and mechanised labour processes. Recently, in many parts of the country, these sections of rural poor have been the object and subject of radical mobilisations.
It is the fear of their politicisation in the wake of its drive for competitive industrialisation, which is the real worry for the accommodated Left in West Bengal, especially CPM, which has traditionally resisted the mobilisation of the landless in the state, even by its own outfit.
Protest Letter against the West Bengal Government action in Singur
FORUM OF INQUILABI LEFTISTS (FOIL)
To: Members of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)
December 6, 2006
Dear Comrades,
We, members of the Forum of Inquilabi Leftists, a broad network of US based South Asian Leftist scholars and activists write this to register our protest at the manner in which the CPI(M) led Left Front Government of West Bengal dealt with the land acquisition process in Singur for the Tata automobile plant.
The protests by the oustees of Singur whether by landowners or by the thousands of landless poor drawing sustenance from the local economies are emblematic of a new political force that is arising in both rural and urban areas of India. The challenge of this force cannot be met with by brutal repression. By resorting to such highhandedness, the Government of West Bengal leaves the CPI(M) with little credibility while protesting similar actions by other state governments in India.
We acknowledge the incontrovertible fact of opportunist politics by centrist and rightist political parties in Singur. But opportunist politics arise in the first place because there are opportunities to exploit. Those opportunities in the case of Singur, we believe, were created by the Government of West Bengal by prioritizing private investments with little promise of equity over large local economies that sustain numerous social groups that are marginal to the formal economy.
That such an approach has been adopted by the only leftist political party in India to hold elected state power is disappointing at the very least. It makes us wonder whether: the leadership of the CPI(M) in its capitalist-parliamentarist pursuit has dangerously internalised the dominant class/caste structures of the Indian society at the expense of unwavering loyalty of the poor peasantry and the working class that handed the control of the state machinery to CPI(M) in West Bengal.
As a group of people committed to the advancement of socialist democracy, we urge you to:
1) Immediately take steps to encourage democratic political activity in Singur, especially the five affected villages by:
a) dropping charges against the protesters and releasing them from custody
b) lifting Section 144 of the CrPC and withdrawing police camps, and
c) desisting from imposing formal and informal barriers to people visiting Singur.
2) Initiate a process to rethink your strategy for economic development in the context of globalization by keeping in mind the dangers of largescale dispossession of people everywhere. Such a rethinking is the imperative for a party like the CPI(M) especially because outside of Bengal – where the party is not in power, the CPI(M) has a responsibility to oppose similar projects.
In short, we are writing this to you to remind you of a historic responsibility that any leftist party has to confront. It cannot be sidestepped through circulating platitudes about the ‘reality of globalization’ as the spokespersons of the CPI(M) have been wont to in the wake of the incidents at Singur.
In solidarity,
Forum of Inquilabi Leftists (FOIL)
[signed on behalf of FOIL by:]
Anantakrishna Maringanti, Anivar Aravind, Anu Mandavalli, Ashish Chaddha, Ashwini Rao, Aurnab Ghose, Biju Mathew, Girish Agarwal, Kaushik Ghosh, Nandita Ghosh, Partho Ray, Pinaki, Pratyush Chandra, Raja Swamy, Ra Ravishankar, Ravindran Sriramachandran, Satish Kolluri, Sayan Bhattacharyya, Shalini Gera, Shourin Roy, Sushovan Dhar, I.K. Shukla, Sukla Sen, C.K. Vishwanath
Indian Fascists find Bush their "National"
A Comment
The chamaleon character of Indian fascism does not allow us to rely on its views except on its consistent barbaric Hinduism. However, it is sometimes worthwhile going through the weekly magazine, ORGANISER, of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), India’s mother fascist organization, to understand how and why it reacts to certain issues in certain manners. One such interesting piece is the edit on the US-India nuclear deal published in this weekly dated July 09, 2006.
When one starts reading this edit, it seems to be a standard write up from an organisation in opposition jealously opposing the achievements of the party in power. It talks about anonymous skeptics saying, “that there are many hidden clauses perhaps in the deal”, and finds ruling government’s unilateralism “as most worrying”. It goes to the extent of accusing the government of destroying “the hard work of Indian scientists with a deal that permits outside interference that emasculates its nuclear options in military and civil sectors. This deal has made India perpetually dependent on the US on nuclear energy. The deal has put restrictions on India’s capacity to have a minimum nuclear deterrent capability.” All these are standard salvos targeted against the deal by both left and right.
Definitely, unilateralism as such is not a problem for the RSS. Unilateralism was far graver when the RSS’ political wing – the BJP led government tested nuclear bombs at Pokhran in 1998, and made the parties then in opposition, which included the Congress that leads the ruling coalition presently, desperate for credits for at least the researches that made India nuclear-capable. Undeniably, what is happening between India and the US today, including the deal, has a strong foundation in the past, especially the Vajpayee Government. Hence, it is natural for the BJP and RSS to accuse the UPA government for attempting to take all the credits for the deal. So the edit asserts, “[T]he NDA government under Atal Behari Vajpayee proudly declared India a nuclear power in 1998. That is a process which has culminated in the present deal.”
The edit makes it a point to differentiate the RSS-BJP’s criticism from the Communist opposition to the deal. And in this zeal it clarifies that it does not have anything to say against the deal.
This feeble attack on the deal is surpassed by the tremendous appreciation expressed for it after the two introductory paragraphs. Whatever lacuna it finds with regard to minimum deterrence etc “can be taken care of if the Indian government insists, when the US legislation that seeks to exempt India from the 1954 Atomic Energy Act is taken up in the full floor of the House of Representatives this month end”. On the whole, the “deal has presented India with a new opportunity. The other option was to continue with its nuclear isolation, and perpetually be in competition with Pakistan”.
Typically, the edit finds pride in Bush supposedly taking the deal “as his most important foreign policy success”. And “skeptical Democrats …don’t want to be seen as voting against India”, that is why they are supporting the deal. What a revelation or pity! The American politicians nowadays go in such deals not for their strategic significance, but more because they are afraid of being seen opposing it. Then, definitely, “it only proves India’s growing clout as a world power. This should make India proud.” And all those who are opposing the deal must be part of the “pro-Pakistan lobby” or “inspired by the Islamabad-Beijing nexus”
But most revealing is the final ecstatic couplet – “American companies and the NRIs [Non-Resident Indians] lobbied hard with hostile Congressmen to make the deal possible. The bottom line is enlightened national interest.” What does one make out of this separately paragraphed final in the cacophonous arrangements of arguments in the edit? When the domestic opposition is “pro-Pakistani”, American companies have “enlightened national [Indian=Aryan] interest” in mind! Certainly, the CEOs of American companies must have found that they are from some lost tribe of Aryans; only then they could find “enlightened national interests” in making the deal possible.
Beyond Capital 