[From Liberation, Vol. I, No. 6 (April 1968).]
In the month of April 1968 our "Marxist" heroes are going to arm themselves with an ideology. Perhaps, if left to themselves, they would have preferred to do without this rather inconvenient thing, for absence of an ideology, like ignorance, is sometimes a bliss to a certain type of persons known as opportunists. An ideology, rather an open formulation of it, is often unhelpful to their cause, for this may unmask their true faces.
Four years ago, when the Party Programme was adopted, an unequivocal stand on ideological issues was considered too premature. Lesser Communists might feel troubled for want of an ideology and might think that there could be no Party Programme without an ideological basis but the ways of the "Marxist" leaders are different. So in the resolution On Ideological Differences, which they adopted at the Seventh Party Congress in October-November, 1964, they declared:
"The Tenali Convention which decided on convening this Seventh Congress rightly came to the conclusion that within the short time between then and the Congress, it would not be possible to organize a thorough-going discussion on these differences, which was absolutely necessary to come to proper conclusions" (Italics ours).
Their Draft Programme was prepared and circulated in April 1964, and a little over six months was considered sufficient enough for discussing and adopting the programme but not quite sufficient for "a thorough-going discussion" on the ideological differences and for clarifying their stand on these issues. Ideology seemed irrelevant to the Programme! So these rank opportunists could embellish the programme with various Khruschevite gems like the following:
"If only the peoples of these countries that have won their independence take their destinies in their own hands, they can, with the disinterested assistance of the mighty socialist system with its ever-increasing capacity, rapidly overcome their economic dependence and backwardness, defend and strengthen their national independence and trail a bright future for the people" (Para 6).
Thus, on the plea of a lack of sufficient time — a characteristically false plea — the "Marxist" leaders shelved all ideological discussions and pushed through the Party Congress a Programme replete with contradictions, revisionist formulations, etc. Their purpose is now sufficiently clear. They and the Dange revisionists are birds of the same feather, but in their factional fight against Dange and the Dangeites they wanted to exploit the deep resentment and the just revolt of the rank and file comrades against the renegade clique — the unashamed propagators of Soviet revisionism. A clear ideological stand would have given the game away.
So, when the ideological struggle was raging fiercest within the international communist movement, our sham Marxists were prevented by lack of sufficient time from taking an unequivocal stand! In words, they were neutral between the Marxist-Leninist camp headed by the great Communist Party of China and the treacherous revisionist camp led by Khruschev and his men. But in deeds, they were a part of the revisionist camp, continually attacking the CPC on the issues of the Sino-Indian border, the Kashmir issue, etc., etc. And, among other things, they peddled all the time the revisionist filth that Soviet neo-colonial aid to the Indian reactionaries is socialist aid that strengthens India's national independence, declared time and again that they fully supported the Indian Government in its efforts to strengthen the defence of the country (efforts which actually amount to robbing the toiling people in order to pay the imperialist monopolies, the comprador big bourgeoisie and the big landlords), fully supported the Soviet-U.S. plan for the Tashkent conference, refused to recognize the right of self-determination of the Kashmiri people (and of other nationalities like the Nagas and the Mizos), were quite enamoured of the Congress variety of parliamentary democracy and of the Indian Constitution [1], advocated, like the Dangeites, the peaceful path to People's Democracy and Socialism [2], and sent their General Secretary P. Sundarayya immediately after the Party Congress in 1964 to Nanda to give a sort of undertaking to the Home Minister that though these sham Marxists might raise the slogan of a People's Democratic Revolution, they would really "act as a legal party and function openly" ("Sundarayya Answers Nanda," People's Democracy, 19.9.65). "The proletariat's right to revolution", to use the words of Lenin, "was sold for a mess of pottage — organizations permitted by the present police law" (The Collapse of the Second International). Heroics for the consumption of the rank and file comrades turned into a whimper before Sundarayya's masters in New Delhi!
Behind a mask of sham neutrality between Marxism-Leninism on the one hand and revisionism on the other (as if such neutrality is possible), this bunch of crafty opportunists has been tirelessly peddling all kinds of revisionist filth and pursuing the revisionist path of class-collaboration and betrayal of the Indian revolution. When, during World War I and after, Lenin was fighting the great ideological struggle against the leaders of the Second International and the established Socialist Parties of Europe that had betrayed the cause of socialism, Marxism demanded of every Marxist that he should rally behind Lenin and Lenin's Party. An even vaster and more difficult struggle faced the Marxist-Leninists when the leadership of the Soviet Party and of many other parties was usurped by the revisionists, bitter foes to the cause of socialism. During the last few years Comrade Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese Party, aided by Marxist-Leninist Parties and groups in different countries, have waged a heroic struggle against most of the old, established parties under the sway of the revisionists, smashed them ideologically as Lenin had smashed their predecessors, and carried the struggle to a victorious end. Mao Tse-tung, Marxist-Leninists all over the world agree, is the Lenin of our era and Mao Tse-tung's Thought is the Marxism-Leninism of our age when imperialism is crumbling to dust and socialism is marching towards final victory. Far from rallying behind Mao Tse-tung and his Party during this historic struggle, as Marxist-Leninists throughout the world have done, these wily, crafty opportunists, who talk the language of Marxism, serve in actual practice, like their Dangeite counterparts, as "running dogs of U. S. imperialism and Soviet revisionism and lackeys of the big Indian landlords and bourgeoisie" (to quote the words of Peking's People's Daily).
An analysis of the Central Committee's Draft for the Ideological Discussion will reveal its hypocritical, deceitful character. While pretending to accept Lenin's teachings in the abstract, it repudiates them in the concrete. One may recall Ranadive's own confession made in 1950: "My pose to accept Stalin and C.P.S.U.(B) only and at the same time attack on Mao was nothing but a subtle repudiation of Marxism-Leninism — for I was rejecting the concrete application of the teachings of Stalin on the colonial question. And this has been the essence of all bourgeois trends which masquerade as Marxism — accept in the abstract to repudiate, amend, ignore, revise in the concrete" (Italics ours). The sting of the draft is actually in its tail. While pretending to rebuke the Soviet Party for its "deviations" from Marxism-Leninism, it concentrates all its fire against the Chinese Party for refusing to respond to the revisionists' slogan of 'Unity in Action' and for "interfering" in the affairs of "our" Party. The long series of articles in defence of the Draft published recently in People's Democracy, are even more venomous attacks against the Chinese Party (though the CPC is hardly mentioned in these articles) and all other Marxist-Leninist Parties and Groups. We are publishing in this issue a few articles unmasking the true character of the notorious ideological draft adopted at Madurai.
Here, we may refer to the method by which this anti-Marxist-Leninist and rabidly anti-Chinese draft is going to be imposed on the Party comrades. "The only way", said Comrade Mao Tse-tung, "to settle questions of an ideological nature or controversial issues among the people is by the democratic method, the method of discussion, of criticism, of persuasion and education, and not by the method of coercion or repression" (On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People). "This unity of democracy and centralism, of freedom and discipline", Mao Tse-tung said, "constitutes our democratic centralism" (Ibid). He further said, "This democratic method of resolving contradictions among the people [not only among Party members] was epitomized in 1942 in the formula 'unity-criticism-unity'. To elaborate, it means starting from the desire for unity, resolving contradictions through criticism or struggle, and arriving at a new unity on a new basis. In our experience this is the correct method of resolving contradictions among the people" (Ibid).
What is the method of Ranadive, Sundarayya, Namboodiripad, Basavapunniah and Co. for resolving differences on ideological issues? It is the same old bureaucratic method of theirs, which is the very antithesis of the Marxist-Leninist method and which has stifled the growth of the Party. They adopted the same method while pushing their Programme through the Party Congress: no Forum was published, no views contrary to those of a handful of usurpers of the organizational machinery could find expression in the Party press, while the Party journals in different languages and all other Party publications made it their sole business to circulate and popularize the official document and various articles in defence of it. And this (plus the rigged elections within the Party) these shameless men tried to palm off as democratic! This time, too, the same method, utterly undemocratic, bureaucratic and anti-Marxist-Leninist, is being followed. This time, too, the Party journals and Party publications in different languages have devoted all the space at their disposal to propagating and defending the anti-Marxist-Leninist views of a handful of usurpers of the Party machinery. All dissent, all resolutions repudiating the C.C. stand, have been completely suppressed.
Hundreds of Party Committees including the Andhra State Plenum and the Assam State Plenum, besides thousands of comrades, have rejected the official draft and adopted resolutions opposing it. From the Party press one cannot have any inkling of this fact, for the Party journals only announce the names of Committees and Plenums which have supported the C.C. Draft and not those which have rejected it. People's Democracy and other party journals have published a long series of articles defending the Draft and attacking its critics but without mentioning who these critics are and without publishing what they have actually said. The other day, P. Sundarayya thundered out at a Press conference in Calcutta that the Andhra alternative document was "untenable and anti-Marxist" and threatened Andhra comrades with disciplinary measures (The Statesman, March 20, 1968). These arch-revisionists, who withhold the Andhra document from the Party ranks out of fear, violating all Party norms, have the cheek to sit in judgement over it! To these disguised counter-revolutionaries, Party democracy means their right to dictate and the duty of all other comrades to obey them. This is bourgeois democracy, the exploiters' democracy, which is opposed to communist democracy, and the duty of a communist is to rebel against it.
We have seen what "a thorough-going discussion" these agents of reaction within the Party have organized. Comrades are also aware that in many States, plenums at the district or the State level were held with hand-picked men. For example, in West Bengal district plenums were held only in six out of sixteen districts and these, too, with comrades not elected at local conferences but with men selected by the usurpers of the Party machinery. Besides the members of the State Committee, the other participants from West Bengal at the Central Committee Plenum at Burdwan will be those nominated by the arch-factionalist Promode Dasgupta and men of his ilk. Comrades are also aware that thousands of Party members have been expelled or quietly dropped and hundreds of Branches, Local Committees and District Committees in West Bengal have been formally dissolved or quietly disbanded for the 'crime' of opposing the counter-revolutionary political line or the ideological draft of these disguised agents of reaction. Similar things have happened also in other States. So the entire Central Committee Plenum affair is a rigged one.
Revolts are brewing within the Party against the counter-revolutionary political line as well as the bureaucratic and dictatorial methods of functioning of Ranadive, Sundarayya, Namboodiripad, Promode Dasgupta and Co. Naxalbari raised the banner of revolt and revolutionary comrades throughout India are rallying round it. The year 1967 marked the historic turning-point in the Indian revolution. Comrades all over India are realizing the truth of Comrade Mao Tse-tung's words: "An erroneous leadership that endangers the revolution should not be accepted unconditionally but should be resisted resolutely."
In 1915, Lenin was saying:
"The building of a revolutionary organization must be begun — that is demanded by the new historical situation, by the epoch of proletarian revolutionary action — but it can be begun only over the heads of the old leaders, the stranglers of revolutionary energy, over the heads of the old party, through its destruction" (Collapse of the Second International — Lenin's italics). The Communist movement has suffered too disastrously and too long because our comrades allowed themselves to be deceived by the revisionists and Right opportunists, who "pay lip service to Marxism" but who have really been "attacking the quintessence of Marxism." Our comrades may well remember the words of Comrade Mao Tse-tung:
"As for criticism, do it in good time; don't get into the habit of criticizing only after the event."
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