The Swing Back - Tridib Chaudhuri
Under directives from the Cominform the ever-changing political line of the Communist Party of India is Changing again! In 1947 it was a shift from 'right' to 'left'; this time it is to be a shift back from 'left' to right! -Not to the wrong sort of 'right', 'right reformism', which P.C. Joshi represented. It is to be the right sort of 'right', 'right-revolutionism' perhaps (or a left- reformism?), which is now being eagerly searched for, through the usual process of 'critical, self-critical' analysis in the light of the new revelation handed out from Cominform centre.
A little more than two years back at the time of the Second Congress of the CPI in Calcutta (February-March, 1948) the new leadership of the party under B.T. Ranadive proclaimed to a staggered rank and life, and to the political public at large, that for the past five years or more the party had been actually following a fundamentally mistaken line of policy-a right-reformist class- collaborationist policy at that-under the leadership of P.C. Joshi, the acclaimed CPI-boss of the 'People's War' period!
The 'People's War' was however over more than two years then. With the end of the war the correlationship between the world of Socialism and the world of Capitalism, between Soviet Union.and Anglo-American imperialism i.e., had changed altogether, asserted the new Political Thesis which was presented to the Congress by Ranadive. The balance was said to have shifted in favour of the world of Socialism against that of capitalism. 'People's Democracy' had come into existence in a number of Right About Turn!
Under directives from the Cominform the ever-changing political line of the Communist Party of India is Changing again! In 1947 it was a shift from 'right' to 'left'; this time it is to be a shift back from 'left' to right! -Not to the wrong sort of 'right', 'right reformism', which P.C. Joshi represented. It is to be the right sort of 'right', 'right-revolutionism' perhaps (or a left- reformism?), which is now being eagerly searched for, through the usual process of 'critical, self-critical' analysis in the light of the new revelation handed out from Cominform centre.
A little more than two years back at the time of the Second Congress of the CPI in Calcutta (February-March, 1948) the new leadership of the party under B.T. Ranadive proclaimed to a staggerred rank and life, and to the political public at large, that for the past five years or more the party had been actually following a fundamentally mistaken line of policy-a right-reformist class- collaborationist policy at that-under the leadership of P.C. Joshi, the acclaimed CPI-boss of the 'People's War' period!
The 'People's War' was however over more than two years then. With the end of the war the correlationship between the world of Socialism and the world of Capitalism, between Soviet Union.and Anglo-American imperialism i.e., had changed altogether, asserted the new Political Thesis which was presented to the Congress by Ranadive. The balance was said to have shifted in favour of the world of Socialism against that of capitalism. 'People's Democracy' had come into existence in a number of East European countries as a "new state form of the rule of toiling People" and as an "intermediate transition stage" to Socialism.
The world now stood divided-it was further asserted with some emphasis-into two camps. viz the anti-imperialist democratic camp led by the Soviet Union, and ranged against it there was the imperialist anti-democratic camp led by Anglo- America.
This changed correlationship of forces and the division of the World into two opposite camps expressed itself, according to the new Thesis, in the frantic efforts that Anglo-American imperialists were making to save the capitalist social order from its impending doom. It also expressed itself in the desperate offensive which Anglo-American imperialism had launched to rally together all reactionary forces in every country, including India, to prepare the ground for a new world war for the destruction of the Soviet Union and the People's Democracies.
It will be apparent to the informed reader, that these formulations of the Ranadive Thesis about the changed correlationship of forces on the international plane, and the new alignment of powers, were but a literal word to word echo of the analysis of the post-war international situation which was put forward by the late A. Zhdanov, as the spokesman of the Soviet Communist Party [Zhdanov was one of the three Secretaries of the CPSU (B) under lvi. Stalin, who is the General Secretary], in course of his speech to the inaugural Cominform Conference held in Poland, in September, 1947'-('The International Situation'- by A. Zhdanov, Chaps. I & 11; Foreign Language Publishing House, Moscow).
The policy of People's War alliance with Anglo-American imperialism and the so-called bourgeois democracies (as well as with 'anti-fascist' bourgeois political parties) forged in the background of Anglo-US-Soviet collaboration against Nazi Germany and Japan continued unchanged for Stalinist Communist parties in every country (not for Joshi alone in India!) during the first one year and a half after the close of the war, from September 1945 up to the meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers (US Great Britain, France and the SU) in Moscow, in March and April 1947. It was hoped that the Anglo-American ruling circles could still be pursuaded, or forced by the organised pressure of democratic public opinion in their countries, to respect the terms of Yalta, Teheran and Potsdam Agreements with Soviet Union about post-war division of spoils, and co-operate with the latter in building up the basis of "enduring peace and a democratic post war settlement acceptable" to all concerned. It however became clear to the Soviet leaders gradually that with defeat of German and Japan, the common danger that had so long kept Anglo- American powers united in their uneasy alliance with USSR was gone, and that the imperialist ruling circles of USA and Great Britain had finally abandoned the old course of unity and close political and military co-operation with the Soviets. They were now passing over to a new policy-the policy of securing unchallenged world domination, an imperialist expansion for themselves, a policy which necessarily involved their coming into hostile clashes with the growing influence of the Soviet Union in Asia and Europe.
The war-time political and military collaboration with Anglo American imperialism, on which the whole ideological edifice of People's War alliance stood, was necessarily scrapped under the impact of post-war international developments.
By the close of 1947 Communist parties outside Soviet Union were accordingly switched to a policy of all round resistance to Anglo-American imperialist plans and their aggressive intentions against the Soviet Union. The old line of international policy viz: that of strengthening the unity and alliance of the three powers on the basis of a common struggle against Fascism and for the defence of 'democracy', was no longer suited to that of the post-war world situation.
All Stalinist parties outside the Soviet Union, and more particularly the nine European Communist Parties which were associated in the Cominform, were directed to try their utmost to organise and throw up popular mass resistance under their leadership to the Anglo-American plans of imperialist expansion "along every line Government, economic and ideological."
The Ranadive formulation about "a fundamental shift" in the international correlationship of forces in the post-war period was derived from the above analysis; and was, as a matter of fact, nothing very original in itself. Neither Ranadive himself, nor any one of his supporters who came to the forefront in the Calcutta Congress of the CPI or thereafter, did come by their new found enlightenment, before the inaugural Cominform conference in September 1947, or the above referred Speech of A Zhdanov in that conference. None of the spokesmen of the new line of the CPI and upholders of the new thesis did feel any urge in themselves to raise the question of a change of the fundamental line of policy of the party in the light of altered international situation of the post-war period any time before December 1947, i.e., three months after the trend of discussion and decisions of the Cominform conference became known. The post-war period was already more than two years old. But nobody yet felt the necessity of taking note of what was but a very obvious and long anticipated development in the international situation viz: the inevitable break- up of Anglo-US-Soviet alliance in absence of the common cause, once Germany and Japan were defeated. An acquaintance with the elements of Marxism-Leninism, or even plain commonsence, should have aroused anticipation of this inevitable development which was bound to result from the basic contradiction between Soviet Socialism and Anglo-American imperialism.
But nothing changes in the Stalinist pattern of thought, without the cue of that change coming from the highest directive centre of their world-thought viz: the leadership of the CPSIJ itself. The cue was eventually handed in September 1947 in the shape of the new Zhdanov formulation about the altered post-war international situation. The international situation became changed almost overnight for all Stalinist Communist parties. The majority of the old Central Committee of the CPI, for instance, refused in June, 1947 to regard the Mountbatten Plan for the division of India and transfer of power to the Congress and the Muslim League as a deal between British imperialism and the Indian bourgeoise as their mutual safeguard against the rising revolutionary upsurge of the toiling masses. They preferred to look at it more as "an important concession" which the relatively progressive Labour Government of Britain (Labour victory in British election was regarded as 'a victory of popular forces' till then!) was forced to make "to the urgent demands of the national liberation movement of the Indian people" against the stiff resistance of imperialist vested-interests as a result of popular democratic mass pressure both in British -and in this country. At home the British labour movement "would not back the reconquest of India." All over the world, democratic opinion "immensely strengthened by the victory over Fascism," demanded Indian independence to which British imperialism was now compelled perforce to bow down. Their reading of the international and national situations in terms of the then current official Stalinist categories of thought thus led them to see even in the diabolical Mountbatten Plan an indirect "victory of the popular forces." In December 1947, however, after the new Zhdanov formulation became known in this country, the majority of the same old Central Committee suddenly woke to the fact that the international situation had after all "undergone a fundamental change" in the post-war period, which called for a change in the formulation of the fundamental line of policy of the party in India also, a change in the characterisation of the Mountbatten Plan, as well as that of the relationship of the Nehru Government and the Indian bourgeoisie with Anglo-American imperialism. The Mountbatten Award was from now on to be seen not as "a retreat of imperialism", "but as a cunning counter-offensive against the rising forces of the Indian people", a plan for "the subservient collaboration of Indian capitalists and landlords with British imperialism." (see CPI CC statement on Mountbatten Award and the December 1947 Policy Statement.)
It was almost like the sudden 'qualitative change' in the character of the imperialist war in 1941 after Nazi attack on Soviet Union and the forging of the Anglo-Soviet-US alliance against Nazi Germany; the direction of the change this time however being in the opposite direction. In 1941 Anglo-American imperialism had become "prisoners in the camp of the people" and were forced to collaborate with the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany in order to save themselves. In 1947-48 these two imperialist powers must have some-how again managed to escape from "the people's camp." They were now desperately trying to overthrow and destroy that camp and actually preparing to unleash a new war of aggression against the Soviet Union. The international situation must, therefore, have changed necessarily, specially when the fact of the change was now duly noted by Soviet Communist leadership officially. The latter had also laid down the new line of policy that was to be followed by all fraternal CP-s in the background of this change, through the Cominform. There was, therefore, no longer any scope for unnecessary theoretical vacillations.
In every country, including India, the bourgeoisie and their servitors were now seen clearly lining up with Anglo-American imperialism. In India this line-up might have been doubtful when the Mountbatten Plan was actually announced and accepted by the Congress in June 1947. But in December 1947, or February- March 1948, when the Congress Government was working under the very same Mountbatten Plan which they had accepted in June 1947, it could no longer be held in doubt. It came to be announced with a certain amount of flourish, as if a very wonderful discovery was made, that by accepting the Mountbatten Plan the Nehru Government in India had openly joined hands with Anglo- American imperialism. There could, therefore, be no longer any talk of a difference between the confirmed right-winger Patel or the so-called "progressive" Nehru as the old Joshi-ite Central Committee thought. The entire Indian bourgeoisie as a whole, as represented by the leadership of the Indian National Congress and the Congress Government under Nehru and Patel, had really after all, gone over to imperialism.
The Congress Government had to be opposed therefore by all means at the disposal of the CPI. The foreign policy of the Nehru Government was actually nothing but a policy of collaboration with Anglo-American imperialism. Under cover of 'neutrality' and 'third bloc' it only sought to keep India away from the democratic camp (the Soviet camp i.e.) and had opened the way to India's line-up with the imperialist camp.
Joshi's policy of all-out support to Nehru and the Congress 'national' Government was under these circumstances nothing but a piece of unalloyed "opportunist right-reformism," according to Ranadive and his supporters. It was the inevitable result of Joshi's clear deviations from the true Leninist path of revolutionary Marxism. The Joshi line was simply a case in instance of "reformist petty-bourgeois revisionism masquerading under the garb of Marxism." The Communist Party and its rank and file were called upon by Ranadive to finally break with the reformism of Joshi-ite leadership which prevailed in the party for the past five years or more.
The Second Congress of the Communist Party was supposed to have done this, i.e. decisively broken with past reformist mistakes and class collaborationism of Joshi once for all.
It was hailed in CP Press all over India, as well as outside India, as marking "a great turning point in the history" of the party and a supreme example of "a magnificent united initiative of the rank-and-file delegates and the leadership of the Party in evolving a revolutionary line, policy and tactics in a period of revolutionary crisis in India" (Review of the Second Congress of the Communist Party of India P. 29).
"As a result of this Congress"-it was claimed, "the party emerges solidly united behind the new revolutionary line and behind the new leadership, ready to go into action with firm faith in Marxism-Leninism, and full confidence in the revolutionary spirit of the masses ...lt did honour to the rank and file delegates and leadership of the party, to their loyalty to the principles of Marxism and Leninism' (ibid).
This was in February-March 1948. Joshi was dropped from General Secretaryship and from the Central Committee of the party as well. A new Central Committee with B. T. Ranadive the pet 'left' doctrinaire of the party, and supposed to be the most determined fighter against all shades of overt or covert reformist deviations-was elected to lead the party on the newly discovered revolutionary line. The Central Committee elected in this Congress contained,The official report of the Party Congress said, a majority of those members who had fought for this new line, as the only correct one for the party to adopt in the changed national and international situation.
The communist rank-and-file, who were hitherto taught to regard the CPI line always correct, whatever might be the temporary turns and twists of its strategy and tactics, received a rather severe mental jolt to learn that they had been following a fundamentally incorrect and thoroughly reformist line of policy all these years under boss Joshi's leadership, whom they were made to look upon more as an infallible demigod than an ordinary mortal. Some remembered with pangs the episode of the spirited protest of Soli Batliwala against Joshi's line of collaboration with imperialism and his expulsion by the old Polit-Bureau and Central Committee in which, curiously enough Comrade B. T. Ranadive was also a member. Why did he not raise his voice against Batliwala's expulsion then?
In spite of these disturbing notes of interrogation in their minds they were eventually persuaded to re-inforce themselves in their wonted confidence in the wisdom of the party with the re- assuring thought, that whatever might have been the mistakes of the party in the past under the reformist leadership of Joshi, it had now found the "correct" line after all, an orthodox "revolutionary" line, true to the basic teachings of Marxism-Leninism.
It was no longer a line, moreover, of shameless collaboration with the war efforts of hated Anglo-American imperialism foisted on the party by the arch-reformist Joshi during the 'People's War' days, which had brought any amount of shame and popular odium upon the very name 'Communist'. Nor was it a 'line of grovelling obsequiously' before Gandhi, Nehru and the reformist bourgeoisie, or lending indirect support to the communal demands of the Muslim League in the name of national self-determination. This time it was to be a consistently militant and revolutionary political line, a proletarian class line of total opposition to the collaborationist bourgeoisie and the Congress Government under whose oppression the masses were groaning literally. The masses were becoming increasingly disillusioned with the Congress Government and any opposition to it was bound to be popular. The Communist Party might of course, have committed very serious mistakes in the past. Which party does not? But only a genuinely Bolshevik, Stalinist Communist Party like the CPI knows how to correct these mistakes in a 'revolutionary' way, in the light of Marxism-Leninism; and again throw up an adequate revolutionary leadership, fitted in every way to guide the party in the new 'correct' line.
Outside Communist ranks, the new political line of the CPI, as formulated by the 1948 Calcutta Thesis under Ranadive's leadership came to be regarded in certain 'leftist' circles also, as a welcome change from past reformist betrayals of the People's War period. It entitled the CPI, in their eyes, to re-entry into the ranks of revolutionary anti-imperialist fighters, and the confidence of the masses. It was therefore held up by the new leaders of the party as a sort of an 'achievement' of which the party could be legitimately proud of, and on which it could claim the congratulation of all genuine leftists and Marxist-Leninists in the country.
In common with Stalinist Communist parties all over the world the entire Indian Communist Party was thus switched to the 'left' in 1948. The Cominform had already been brought into existence some months before (September 1947). A clearly discernible 'left' orientation in international Stalinist strategy and tactics was initiated under he forceful leadership of late Andrei Zhdanov. Communist Parties everywhere were asked to engage in "the historic task of leading and organising resistance to the Anglo-American imperialist war-mongers all along the line." The long-drawn negotiations of the Chinese CP for a coalition with Chiang Kai-shek were also finally broken off and the party took to the path of armed resistance and Civil War against American- backed KMT. The Communist Parties in Eastern Europe also threw overboard about this time, the policy of uneasy coalition with bourgeois parties maintaining sympathetic political contacts with Anglo-America, and began to push themselves to a position of unchallenged supremacy in the governments of their countries, with the assurance of Soviet military and political backing guaranteed before hand. Even British, French and Italian CP-s were induced to take up a pronouncedly fighting and militant tone and tried to organise large-scale political strikes and other political demonstrations. The CP. USA unceremoniously dropped Earl Browder from leadership and reorganised itself under the avowed 'leftist' William Foster. The shift to the 'left' which occurred in the political line of policy of the CPI about this time therefore came to be justified as following from the new 'left' orientation of the international movement and to have the tacit approval of international leadership. It was hailed with approval in Stalinist press abroad as "a great step." Thus the new party-line naturally came to be regarded by the CPI rank-and-file as the only "correct" line consistent with the new left orientation of the international movement. No opposition to the new line was therefore voiced in the Congress. Everybody there was only too eager to prove himself completely outgrown from the past reformist mistakes. Even P. C. Joshi himself was stampeded into admitting his past errors and had to promise unconditional support to the new line of policy adopted by the Second Congress.1
1. That however did not prevent his suspension and subsequent expulsion from the party like Browder in USA