Perhaps
the most significant feature of the recent Indian
election is the loss suffered by the Left. The BJP’s
defeat was more or less anticipated, except by the
psephologists, as was some loss by the Left; but the
actual extent of the Left’s loss has been quite staggering.
True, its vote share has fallen only marginally; but
in its Bengal base it has majority in only about a
third of the total Assembly segments, and in Kerala
even less, which is a serious setback. This setback
is significant because the Left, even though not a
contender for power at the Centre as of now, is a
major driving force behind India’s journey towards
a modern, secular and democratic society. It is of
course not the only such force: there are large numbers
of progressive social and political movements which
also play this role. But it differs from all of them
in one crucial respect, namely that it also has electoral
strength which they lack; and such strength does matter.
Any impairing of such strength therefore portends
ill for the progress of India’s democratic revolution.
The media have been full of analysis of the Left’s
loss and of advice for its revival, much of which
ultimately focuses on just one point: it must discard
its “phobia” about “imperialism”. This is occasionally
expressed directly, such as by Lord Meghnad Desai
in an interview to The Hindu, but usually indirectly.
Sometimes it is said that the Left should not have
withdrawn support from the UPA government; but since
the withdrawal was precisely on the question of India’s
entering into a possible strategic alliance with U.S.
imperialism, this argument amounts to saying that
the Left exaggerates the imperialist threat. Sometimes
it is said that the people’s verdict was in favour
of “development”, from which the inference can be
drawn that the Left’s electoral loss must be attributed
to its lack of success in ushering in “development”
(meaning “development” within the neo-liberal paradigm,
for which the different states in the country are
vying with one another to attract corporate and MNC
investment). This again amounts to saying that the
Left’s opposition to the neo-liberal paradigm, which
is linked to its anti-imperialism, is responsible
for its obsolescence, and hence defeat. Sometimes
it is argued that there was a “wave” in favour of
a secular and stable government which worked to the
advantage of the UPA and to the detriment of the Left,
since the latter forged links in the “third front”
with Parties that had done business with the BJP earlier.
If the conclusion from this claim is that the Left
should have gone into the election alone rather than
with “third front” allies, then that at least is compatible
with the Left’s ideological premises (though it is
unlikely to have made much difference to its electoral
fortune); but if the conclusion is that the Left must
always be with those who would be normally supposed
to ride such a “wave”, then that amounts to suggesting
that it should compromise on its anti-imperialism
to become a permanent fixture of the UPA camp. The
commonest advice to the Left in short is to stop making
a fuss over “imperialism”.
This is hardly surprising. All over the world, in
countries where the urban middle class has escaped
as yet the adverse consequences of globalization,
anti-imperialism among the students, the educated
youth, and the literati is at low ebb. On the contrary
there is even a desire to welcome closer integration
with the imperialist world as a means of ushering
in a secular and progressive modernity, and of countering
phenomena like feudal patriarchy, religious authoritarianism
and communal-fascism. Since Left ideas typically get
nourishment from the literati and the urban intellectual
strata, even though these ideas reach their fruition
in the struggles of the workers and peasants, who
are the victims of globalization but are sociologically
distant from the intellectual strata, the Left movement
gathers momentum in situations where the urban middle
class has also suffered from globalization and hence
makes common cause with the workers and the peasants.
But it faces problems in situations where the urban
middle class is a beneficiary of globalization. In
such cases, the resistance to imperialism and globalization
often gets championed by forces other than the Left;
or, if the Left remains committed to the interests
of the “basic classes” and resists globalization,
it often suffers through isolation from the intellectual
strata and the urban youth and students. (This loss,
though real, can of course be more than offset by
an increase in its support base among the peasantry
through its resistance to globalization).
The current anti-imperialist upsurge in Latin America,
which has brought Left or Left-oriented governments
to power over much of that continent, is a consequence
of the long years of crises that hurt, and hence radicalized,
the urban youth, students and intellectuals. On the
other hand, in much of central Asia, and now Iran,
where the urban youth has not directly experienced
the adversity inflicted by globalization, imperialism
still retains the capacity to mobilize, or at least
claim the sympathy of, vast numbers of the urban population
in so-called “orange”, “tulip” and “velvet” “revolutions”
that are supposed to bring in modernity and democracy
together with neo-liberalism. In India, since the
adversity of workers, peasants, agricultural labourers
and petty producers, under globalization, has been
accompanied by high growth rates, and rapid increases
in incomes and opportunities for the urban middle
class, a degree of pro-imperialism among this class
which includes intellectuals, media persons and professionals,
and hence a degree of exasperation with the Left’s
continued adherence to old “anti-imperialist shibboleths”,
is hardly surprising.
The Left’s error that accounts for its loss in the
recent elections can be located here. As long as the
urban middle class in India is not hit by the adverse
consequences of globalization, it will continue to
remain sympathetically disposed towards imperialism.
Anti-imperialist ideological appeals alone, though
they must continue to be made, will not sway it much.
Two additional factors that will contribute towards
this sympathy for imperialism are, first, the assumption
of US Presidency by Barack Obama who represents “imperialism
with a human face”, and, second, the strong opposition
to imperialism coming at present from the Islamist
movements with which broad sections of the Indian
urban middle class have little affinity. As long as
the Indian Left remains true to its ideology and the
interests of its class base, the pro-imperialist sympathies
of the Indian urban middle class will necessarily
entail some estrangement of this class from the Left.
This is a phenomenon that will haunt the Left for
as long as the current conjuncture continues. In the
recent elections, it follows that a certain loss of
urban support for the Left became unavoidable when
it broke with the UPA because of its anti-imperialism.
(In Kerala, such alienation from the Left was compounded
by certain specific local factors: the secular segments
of the electorate could not accept the Left’s relationship
with the PDP, and the Left’s stand on the SNC-Lavalin
Deal carried little credibility.)
If the Left had managed to increase its support among
the workers, peasants, petty producers and the rural
poor, then it could have offset this loss among the
urban middle class; even if it had managed to retain
its support among the former, its overall loss would
have still remained limited. But, notwithstanding
its opposition to imperialism, it did not have an
alternative policy on development, different from
what the neo-liberal paradigm dictated. In West Bengal,
the government led by it pursued policies of “development”
similar to what the other states were following and
in competition with them, which, being part of the
neo-liberal paradigm, necessarily brought with them
the threat of “primitive accumulation of capital”
(in the form specifically of expropriation of peasants’
land). These policies, though subsequently reversed
in several instances, had an adverse impact on the
“basic classes” and caused a crucial erosion of the
class base of the Left.
While some loss of peasant support on account of Singur
and Nandigram was anticipated in West Bengal, it was
thought that the Opposition’s thwarting of “development”
would make the urban middle class switch to the Left
as the preferred alternative (because of which pictures
of the Nano car were posted all over the state as
part of the CPI(M)’s campaign to remind the electorate
of the Opposition’s intransigence in thwarting “industrialization”).
As a matter of fact, however, the Left lost votes
both among the urban middle class and among the peasants
and the rural poor. It lost votes among the urban
middle class because this segment could not stomach
the Left’s anti-imperialism and its fallout in the
form of a distancing from the UPA; it lost votes among
the peasants and the rural poor because the Left’s
anti-imperialism was insufficient, in the sense that
it did not extend to the formulation of an alternative
economic policy. True, the scope for a state government
to produce such an alternative economic policy is
limited; but no effort in this direction was discernible.
The Left, it follows, cannot pursue its resistance
to imperialism unless it also evolves an alternative
approach to “development”, different from the neo-liberal
one which is promoted by imperialist agencies everywhere.
The central feature of such an approach must be the
defence of the interests of the class base of the
Left. Development must be defined in the context of
the carrying forward of the democratic revolution,
as a phenomenon contributing to an improvement in
the economic conditions of the “basic classes”, and
hence to an accretion to their class-strength. It
must be seen as having a class dimension and not just
referring to the augmentation of a mass of “things”.
A supra-class notion of development, such as the augmentation
of a mass of “things” or the mere growth of GDP, is
a form of commodity-fetishism, and a part, therefore,
of the ideology of imperialism. Hence any “development”
that entails primitive accumulation of capital (which
includes primitive accumulation through the state
budget via the doling out of massive subsidies to
capitalists for undertaking investment), that entails
a reduction in workers’ wage-rates, rights, and security,
cannot form part of the Left’s agenda. If, in the
context of the competition between different states,
private investment refuses to come into Left-ruled
states because of their development agenda being different,
then alternative ways of undertaking investment (e.g.
through public or cooperative sector investment) have
to be explored; and of course whatever relief can
possibly be given to the “basic classes” against the
onslaught of the neo-liberal policies must be provided.
Accepting the advice given to it to overcome its “outdated”
opposition to imperialism and to the neo-liberal policies
promoted by it will amount to self-annihilation by
the Left and to its incorporation into the structures
of bourgeois hegemony; it would entail a transformation
of the Left into a “Blairite” entity. The argument
may be made that a temporary acceptance of bourgeois
hegemony will quicken the capitalist transformation
of our society and hence bring the question of the
transcendence of capitalism that much faster on to
the agenda. This argument is not just similar to,
but actually identical with, the bourgeois argument
that the imposition of absolute deprivation on workers,
peasants and petty producers in the process of capitalist
development is of no great moment since such deprivation
is only temporary and will be more than made good
in due course. (The argument advanced, even by as
sensitive an economist as Amartya Sen, during the
Singur and Nandigram agitations, that building London
and Manchester must also have meant the dispossession
of some peasants of the time, suggesting that such
losses are eventually more than compensated, is of
this genre).
This is a flawed argument on several counts, of which
the most obvious one is the following: capitalist
transformation in societies like ours, even as it
erodes pre-capitalist and non-capitalist structures,
cannot absorb the producers displaced by such erosion
into the fold of the capitalist sector itself, since
the level of technology on the basis of which this
transformation is undertaken, and the rate of its
change, are such that its capacity to generate employment
is negligible. (The context in which London and Manchester
were built was altogether different: inter alia large-scale
emigration was possible at that time from the capitalist
Centre to the temperate regions which were opened
up through colonialism for white settlement). Capitalist
transformation in societies like ours is altogether
different: it gives rise to a process of sheer pauperization
but not of proletarianization of petty producers,
for reasons quite different from those adduced by
the Sixth Congress of the Communist International
that had first cognized this phenomenon in colonial
and third world societies.
The Sixth Congress had attributed this phenomenon
to the fetters put on capitalist transformation in
these societies by their integration into the world
economy, under imperialist hegemony, which trapped
them in a certain pattern of international division
of labour. But the phenomenon today would arise not
from the fact of such fetters, which obviously are
quite loose in the case of an economy like India:
it can apparently break out of this international
division of labour and experience rapid capitalist
transformation within a neo-liberal dispensation.
The phenomenon arises today from the contemporary
technological basis of such capitalist transformation.
It follows that if the Left fell prey to this argument,
of first seeking to usher in capitalist transformation
in the hope of working for its transcendence later,
and hence proceeded today along a “Blairite” path,
then it would remain a Blairite entity forever. The
moment of that passage from capitalist transformation
to the transcendence of capitalism will never come
as some natural historical break; and if there is
no such discontinuity then this entire distinction
between two phases becomes invalid.
Accepting the advice to eschew its opposition to imperialism
will not only erode the existing class base of the
Left, without ever creating the conditions for a revival
of revolutionary resistance later on a new basis;
it will not only fritter away the Left’s class base
built through decades of struggles in exchange, not
for a later rebirth as a revolutionary force but for
an incorporation in a Blairite fashion into the structures
of bourgeois and imperialist hegemony; but it will
also push the “basic classes” into the arms of extremist
ideologies, ranging from “Maoism” to Islamist anti-imperialism,
which not just unleash violence and restrict mass
political action, but, for this very reason, are also
“unproductive”, in the sense of being intrinsically
incapable of achieving even the intermediate goals
they set for themselves, let alone achieving a society
that emancipates people. Anti-imperialism is not a
product of the Left’s imagination; it arises from
the objective conditions faced by the people. If the
Left abandons it, then others, no matter how incapable
of overcoming these objective conditions, will step
in to fill the vacuum, and the people will be left
to their mercy.
July
1, 2009.
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