Uncertainties
The Left in Dilemma–Electoral Politics
Arup Baisya
It is very simplistic to
conclude that the capitalist crisis and neoliberal reconstruction have paved the way for the fascist forces to rise. The systemic crisis also ensures the communist left forces to rise. The disillusionment about the existing system and sporadic anti-systemic movements has their own ramifications to modulate the politics of the day and this is visible in the electoral politics. But despite the anti-systemic assertions of the masses, the system remains unscathed leaving space for capitalist manoeuverings and leaving the communists out of synch with time. It implies that the left is suffering from lack of tools to measure the events, situation and reality. This problem of measurement was not so complicated during twentieth century when the world witnessed two epoch-making revolutions in Russia and China and the communist-led peasant vis-à-vis people’s uprisings in the under-developed countries and the territories of capitalist weak-links. The territory of potential revolutionary epicentres could be surmised through a simple logic of relatively privileged status of the working class of the capitalist centres compared to super-exploitation of working classes of peripheries and the transfer of value from periphery to centres thereon. The behaviour of the social categories vis-à-vis classes in the peripheries and the capitalist weak-links were very much discernible and measurable as the behaviour of particles with a fixed point of reference with well-defined co-ordinates, though mistakes became evident at a later stage as the kinetic motion of the social categories were not always taken into cognisance. The events which were considered simultaneous from a point of reference became non-simultaneous when point of reference was shifted. The crisis brewing in the capitalist West was considered simultaneous from a point of reference of Russian revolution and was expected that revolution would be extended to the West. But that did not happen.
In the Post-Soviet Russian period, the approach of the Marxist left has not undergone much change from Leninist Paradigm. Rather vibrant revolutionary social dimension of Leninism has died down as an exercise of mind theory. Such constructs based on the Leninist methodology of dialectical materialism degenerated into sterile theory and staticity of mindset. When Lenin was developing his theoretical writings, he found himself placed within the time-space of revolutionary social upheavals. The theoretical proposition of weak-link was developed in the context of immediate task of Russian revolution. But the practising left in the post-Soviet world especially in India continues to emulate the methodology behind the theoretical propositions developed by Lenin as a part of his endeavour of “Concrete analysis of concrete situation”. For constructing the mind theory for social change, they use to gather the information from secondary sources and analyse any event with the help of a rigid tool of dialectical materialism and place it as a scientific project. Thus they fall into the trap of claiming themselves as the repository of scientific knowledge for a change of society directed towards the left. As a scientific project in social system, the observer and analyst are not objective, but operate on the basis of ideologically motivated theories. The object of observation is humans. The intuitive heuristic reaction unavoidably will produce errors. In the social sciences, it is often unclear whether the problem is the theory, the measure, or both.
The world witnessed the rise of left forces to power in three states of India viz. Kerala, West Bengal and Tripura through class-struggle, but the mind theory built on the basis of the methodology of Russian revolutionary era could not give a clue for its advancement. In the hindsight after the fall and decline continuously for a long period, people can now only become sceptical about the errors in left practice. No question was raised then, questions even if raised revolved around the static categories like state character, mode of production etc, but not from the premise that the basic foundation of mind theory might be wrong or aberrant Marxism.
In Materialism and Empirico-criticism, Lenin said, “mechanics was a copy of real motions of moderate velocity, while the new physics is a copy of real motions of enormous velocity”. Motion is the existence of matter and the central axis is time axis. But sitting within the garb of a situation of revolutionary upsurge, Lenin developed a methodological science despite the fact that it passed the test of a revolutionary period as it coincided with the notion of “concrete analysis of concrete situation”. The prediction failed when the methodology did not fit well with the developing situation of the West post-Russian revolution. If motion in time axis is the basic premise, then Marxism needs to be considered as a process, not a method or a science in classical sense of the term–classical concept of measurement is the idea that counting units result in ratio interpretations. Marx summed up in theses on Feuerbach, “The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but a practical question. Man must prove the truth i.e. the reality and power, this-sidedness of his thinking in practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking that is isolated from practice is purely a scholastic question.” In this précis, Marx emphasised praxis as a fundamental premise, not deterministic approach to fix objective reality. Because reality is emerged and changed through human practice as motion in time axis. So the underlying fact is the human practice that gives rise to class-struggle. Wave function of a localised social event indicates an energy-field associated with it. The observer as a practising left with its mental energy-wave emanated from his/her desire for change when find oneself within the realm of this particular event-horizon or the energy field of the event of struggle, involves in a social interaction and thus influences both through wave interference–weakening of class-struggle in one place and strengthening in other resulting in reform and revolution. Without this involvement, all measurements of reality are destined to be erroneous and deterministic. Human praxis and struggle are the inherent features. This praxis defines an entanglement with a different kind of action which is evident in Marx’s opinion, “History is the product of human action, even while men are the products of history. Historical conditions determine the way man makes subsequent history, but these historical conditions are themselves the result of human action…. The basic point of departure is never history, but man, his situation, and his responses.”(The Unity of Theory and Practice: A G Meyer). Motion, human desire and changes in time-axis constitute reality. That’s why Marxism is a philosophy of praxis and a process, not a method to determine objective reality.
Mandel rightly declares that Marx’s starting point is not the “concept of alienated labour” but “the practical ascertainment of working class poverty” that his thought will henceforth be rigorously “socio-economic” even if “philosophical scoria” subsist within it, and that, finally, it is to be interpreted as a transition to action: “its conclusion is in no sense a philosophical solution… The call to revolutionary action–to be carried out by the proletariat–has already been substituted for the abnegation of labour”. But that call for action for reform or revolution is somewhat deterministic in the sense that it’s the outcome of a decision-making process of a group of practising left. But decision-making exercise is not based on a methodological approach, but the result of a process of interaction delineated above. The occasional success stories of the predictions based on “concrete analysis of concrete situation” when the situation is marked by a social motion with very low velocity especially in the peripheries and territories of weak-links develops a mystical knowledge of a methodology of dialectical materialism. But the global expansion of capitalism after a long neoliberal phase transformed the society into dynamics of motion with very high velocity. The sign of re-emergence of left-oriented class-struggle leaves no space for any variants of determinism.
The re-emergence of left-oriented class-struggle opened the space for left forces and this is visible in electoral politics too. The left parties have jointly improved their performance in this Lok Sabha election as they managed to bag nine seats in four states. CPIM bagged one seat from Rajasthan as its candidate from Sikar Atma Ram won the election by more than 72000 votes. The CPI and CPIML(Liberation) gathered two seats each in Tamil Nadu and Bihar respectively. CPIM had cut inroads earlier into Rajasthan by winning two assembly seats in 2018 by wresting both seats from the BJP. Both the constituencies have been hotbeds of farmer agitation and left-wing militancy. The party there had organised a slew of farmer agitations against the BJP governments in the state and the centre.
The gain of the left in certain areas indicates that the situation is changing. But the statement “situation is changing” is meaningless even in the essence of Newtonian relativity in the laws of physics of uniform motion, provided the change is not considered relative to something. The gain in other places especially in Rajasthan relative to the loss in the erstwhile left bastion of Bengal, Tripura, and Kerala reveals that there is a mismatch between objective reality and left subjective effort. The gain in new areas, though a very small achievement in terms of electoral politics, indicates a living interaction between ongoing class struggle and the left subjective effort for a political resurgence of masses from below and reform initiative from above. Such a scenario is anathema to ruling class hegemony that necessitates reform from above and docile masses below. The left in their erstwhile stronghold has fallen trapped in the ruling class narrative of Hindutva passive revolution and thus the left is destined to leave space for BJP in their traditional bastions. The resurgence of class and mass struggle is the third dimension in here and now that breaks the status-quo-ante provided the left reorients their strategy to focus on the struggle as a pivot for change, and this sets the three-dimensional coordinate in motion for a radical change of space-time continuum. “If one could state position, mass and velocity of every particle at a given instant of time, then he/she would have said everything that could be said about the world at that time, and could, by applying the laws of mechanics, predict everything that was going to happen afterwards” – this dogmatic approach needs to be rejected. Even one need not have to assume any hidden variable for comprehending any quantum reality for Marxist praxis, the process of living interaction with the class-struggle would produce the best theoretical description of the reality and its direction of motion.
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Vol 57, No. 15 - 18, Oct 5 - Nov 2, 2024 |