CPM’s ‘Socialist World’

CPIM says all sorts of crazy things that cannot be supported by the theory they claim to adhere to. Prajasakti, the CPIM’s mouthpiece, says in its banner headline: The future is for the Red Flag only. That is okay. It also says that 25% of the population lives under the canopy of socialism.

Perhaps CPIM considers China as the vanguard of socialism. China’s population is 17.2% of the total world population. What about the remaining 8%? Any guess? Probably, they are referring to Cuba and Venezuela. Cuba accounts for 0.13% of the world’s population, and Venezuela for 0.36%. Still, about 7% remains unaccounted for.

Are the CPIM ideologues–now under the safe lap of the Kerala line of Prakash Karat–reeling under the delusion that Kerala is cosily ensconced in socialism? How lucky the southernmost people must be, living under socialism! But Kerala’s population is just 0.44% of the world’s total population.

So, where can one rope in some bigger countries to make up the 7% of the world’s population to be drawn under socialism, to prove the assertion made at the CPIM’s 24th Conference?

CPIM has lost West Bengal. And there is no light at the end of the tunnel to hope for power in Nabanna (Kolkata’s seat of power). CPIM developed a master strategy of helping the BJP in many key seats to defeat TMC in West Bengal. Masterstroke? That is why the CPIM found a new ideological nugget, characterising the BJP as having “only neo-fascist trends, and that it is NOT fascist for now.”

In any case, these tricks can never help CPIM recover West Bengal.

So, where is the 7% of the population living under socialism? That is still a crore-rupee question.

17.2% of China’s population is not living under socialism. China metamorphosed from socialism to capitalism under Deng and became an imperialist country. Luckily, CPIM is not calling Russia a socialist country.

China turned into an imperialist country since 2008–09, which coincided with the exceptional financial crisis, a result of the internal crisis of the US, which came out in the form of the bursting of the housing bubble or the subprime mortgage crisis. China steadily grew–financially and militarily–to the position of number two, replacing Europe and Japan.

Sitaram Yechury, after wrapping up his tour of Romania, wrote a rosy piece in their party organ. ‘Romania was described as heaven on earth. People were said to be enjoying the fruits of socialism’. Hyperboles continued endlessly.

Well, in one evening, this writer was listening to the BBC, and protests had erupted in Timi’oara and quickly spread to other parts of the country, including Bucharest. A week later, Ceaușescu and his wife Elena attempted to flee Bucharest by helicopter but were captured by the military. They were subjected to a summary trial by a military tribunal and found guilty of crimes including genocide, damage to the national economy, and abuse of power. They were executed by firing squad immediately after the verdict, in a courtyard in Târgovi’te.

Sitaram felt no shame about his so-called eyewitness report in People’s Democracy. CPIM continued to defend such regimes–the so-called socialist regimes. Still, the delusion of the existence of a socialist world haunts the CPIM.

[Contributed by  Subrahmanyam, Varanasi]

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Frontier
Vol 57, No. 45, May 4 - 10, 2025