Of Organisation and Movement

Pon Chandran

[The document below is drafted by the author for a wider discussion among communist revolutionaries, based on the inspiration and inputs received from the late S N Nagarajan, a leading communist revolutionary from Tamil Nadu over a period of time, say last three/four decades.]

The oppressed people have nothing without an organisation. The author also subscribes to the Leninist principle of organisation that a revolutionary party is to be led by professional revolutionaries. A professional revolutionary is one whose thought and action centres entirely on how to carry out the revolution in the given context. Lenin insists on this because only such people can lead the revolutionary party as their only preoccupation with revolutionary work without prejudices. But Lenin’s organisational principle has been reduced to uncritical organisational discipline in the name of “democratic centralism”. Another inseparable part of Democratic Centralism is the minority submitting to the majority; the lower committees to the higher committees.

Why a decision cannot be taken by way of consensus in a committee of professional revolutionaries?

In practice, this writer has found that the division of votes inevitably leads to the manipulation of numbers. Moreover, it is invariably assumed that the majority represents and ‘reflects’ the opinion of the majority of the people in the Society. This “Reflection Theory” was vehemently criticised by Lenin as dogmatic and authoritarian as the minority is condemned to submit to the majority and implement the decision of the majority.

The majority is not bound to respect the minority, although the minority is bound by the majority. Owing to such a grudging relationship, each section will strive to prove the other wrong. If this is perpetuated, it will only lead to split in the organisation only to weaken the functioning of the Party. Earlier days the split was deemed as dialectical, as it goes by the logic “One divides into two”.

These days this logic has been changed. “One divides into three” is the Rule.

The historical writer K Mohan Ram who wrote the history of the Communist Movement in India, particularly after the break of the Naxalbari uprising rightly named his book Maoism in India is as “Splits within Splits”. Some may defend it as inevitable for political reasons. But it is essentially Organisational. The intolerance or mutually disrespectful relationship!

If anything Consensus is the remedy for this malady. If the number in the committee is unwieldy to reach a Consensus, then, the committee could go for division of votes without branding or ridiculing the other. Total transparency and all accepting Democratic Process shall be the precondition for such a process. Any decision has to be collective by way of consensus by the nominated Committee for the purpose.

On the contrary, if the cadres are forced to submit, in the name of organisational discipline, this is more of submission than voluntary association, which is the bedrock of a Communist Party.

In order to carry forward the revolution the party organisation has to take the form of a movement, which is intrinsically dynamic. Whereas the organisational method followed in the context, particularly in the Indian context, has not evolved itself as a movement. A movement is one which is not static, which is organically evolving and all-encompassing. While the communist parties which should have evolved as a movement continue to run as static organisations; whereas paradoxically, there are other political organisations which are for maintaining the status quo that evolved themselves into a movement.

Dravidian movement is one such experiment in India. While the communist parties inspired the toiling masses to organise themselves in trade unions, Dravidian parties inspired the people to get organised as Cultural and later as political movements. It transformed every domain of the Tamil society, be it language, belief systems or other cultural practices. A Tamil family inspired by the Dravidian movement evolved its own unique practices from cradle to grave. Some of the prominent practices like naming a person, organising self-respect marriages without any bar/ discrimination became a sort of inspiration among the masses. However, it has to be noted a section of this movement got degenerated into Casteist and anti-Dalit dogma, owing to its class- collaborationist/ opportunist Electoral Politics.

This is not to debunk the communist movement altogether. The working-class families inspired and influenced by the early communist movement did have their own cultural pursuits which were basically progressive and non-discriminatory. The communist movement worked among the most oppressed people and inspired the so-called untouchables into its fold.

In Tamil Nadu in the very beginning, as the movement offered them self-dignity., and at least in Tamil Nadu the party earned the name as the party of Dalits (Pallar & Paraiyars) but it was not able to sustain this momentum when it did not pursue the land question to its logical end. And finally, it got bogged down in Trade Unionism and crass Economism.

Institutionalisation is inevitable if the core of the main values cherished by a movement has to take roots and spread among the targeted masses. Paradoxically, many a time the institutionalisation itself becomes an impediment against the very spirit of dynamism. One classic example is the Church. Churches of all denominations have become institutions against the ideals of Christ, while it did play a role in spreading the religion as a dogma. Liberation theology tried to break this fetter to some extent.

Institutionalisation leads to beauracratisation. Unfortunately, institutionalised Communist movement is not an exception. Communist Parties will have to resurrect themselves as a movement if its ideologies and philosophy have to “grip the masses and to become a material force,” eventually, as Marx envisaged in the beginning. Communist Internationals and later Cominform played a determining role in spreading the idea and the need for a communist revolution the world over. Whereas, the current trends of more and more institutionalisation and bureaucratisation are contrary to the vision of Marx.

In the context of the Indian sub-continent, what is needed is to evolve a Communist movement in each nationality which can jointly form a federation to accomplish the New Democratic Revolution, with socialist content and liberate the oppressed from the hegemony of neo-colonialism and the imperialist order.

[Pon Chandran is associated with Anti-Fascist School, Coimbatore]

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Frontier
Vol 57, No. 37, March 9 - 15, 2025