T N Ninan: Who's in crisis?
WEEKEND RUMINATIONS
| Forty-two years ago, when the Communist Party of India (Marxist) broke away from the parent CPI and established itself as the main communist force, it formally advocated expropriating all foreign capital and all domestic landlords, without compensation. In its latest position, though, the party welcomes foreign capital provided it creates jobs, adds to productive forces and brings new technology with it. This sounds very much like the BJP, and isn't communist at all""and it allows Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee to bring in investment and create jobs in West Bengal. |
| While the party literature continues to portray the World Bank, IMF and WTO as agents of financial imperialism that seek to create new outlets for international capital, so as to impoverish the developing countries (yes, communist literature can be quite amusing), it also has to look to the interests of the communist-run state governments""which happen to borrow from the World Bank. The fig-leaf adopted is that loans will be taken only if they do not involve structural adjustment conditionality; ditto when it comes to taking loans from the British government's department for international development (DFID). In other words, practice now deviates from polemic because the realities of running governments intrude. |
| Some of the literature tries to deal with the contradictions, by arguing that socialism can be achieved only be engaging with the real world as it exists, not by refusing to deal with it""which must be the rationale for becoming participants in Westminster-style democracy and bourgeois elections. But the party literature manifestly struggles to deal with many elements of contemporary India. One is the dramatic spread of professional education through the birth of new private colleges and institutes, while public facilities languish, and another is the preponderance of private medical care, and the absence of a proper public health system. These are concerns that any social democratic party would express. But that is not the case when the party tries to deal with the rapid spread of grassroots non-governmental organisations and self-help groups. These organisations cannot be rejected outright, or the party will look silly; nor can they be endorsed because they are after all not Marxian. So the party tries to maintain a distance while avoiding outright condemnation. |
| Two words are striking because of their absence. One is "consumer" (all debate has to do with productive forces, and the question of what people might want in their role as consumers, does not enter the calculus). The other is "communism" as a goal, for what is advocated is socialism. You could argue that the two terms are meant to be inter-changeable, but that is not strictly true. In that sense, there is perhaps an attempt to blur the lines of distinction, though the pretence that the crisis in capitalism is ever deepening even as more people enjoy a better quality of life, starts to look laughable. |
| If one might attempt a hypothesis, it would be that India's communist parties would like to adjust to the reality of the day by giving up their old identities and becoming social democratic parties, but don't know how to make the leap. They have party cadres and trade unions to worry about, and any sharp shift could bring about internal turmoil. For all their new-found parliamentary strength, therefore, the crisis is not in capitalism but in the communist parties. Which wouldn't concern everybody else, except for the fact that economic reform is a hostage. |